Ice Storm

  Ice Storm

  By Lou Cadle

  Copyright © 2020 by Cadle-Sparks Books

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Chapter 1

  Raysan Mitchell looked up from the doodle of a spaceship in his notebook. The intercom came on with a click, and then a hollow noise and the faint rustle of papers hinted at someone broadcasting from the main office. His AP World History teacher didn’t notice until the intercom voice rode over his.

  “Because of the weather forecast, school will end today as of the end of this period. All extracurricular activities are canceled. Busses will leave at the top of the hour—that’s two o’clock sharp. The school building will stay open until three o’clock for students waiting for a ride home, in order to give your parents a chance to get here. If you’re walking, phone your parents and walk straight home. We’re texting parents, and there is an alert on the school website.” The voice droned on.

  “What kind of weather?” a kid two rows behind him asked. Maybe he was asking no one in particular, but it was for sure he wasn’t asking Ray. Ray could count his friends on one hand. One finger, at this point.

  “Ice storm,” said a girl to the kid. “Don’t you have a television?”

  “As a matter of fact,” the voice started, but the teacher hissed and pointed at the intercom.

  Ray had tuned it out. His mother was at work and wouldn’t pick him up. His house was walking distance from the school. He didn’t have any extracurricular activities—not a jock, not a musician, not a joiner. None of it applied to him.

  Mr. Hardin was getting out his cellphone bag and distributing the phones back to students. “Texts only, and to your parents first. I’ll hand back the papers now. See me tomorrow—or the day after if school is cancelled tomorrow—if you have any question about your grade.” He handed Ray’s phone to him, and Ray turned it on, looking for a text from—well, anyone. There wasn’t one. He opened up the note app and poked at it so he wouldn’t look like a weirdo loner while everyone else was texting. When Mr. Hardin came by a second time with his essay, folded so no one else could see the grade, he put his phone away and checked the grade.

  “A. Great job. Watch your commas, which kept you from an A+.” A few more comments were scattered throughout. Ray read them. In a regular class, he knew not to do that, to show interest in a teacher’s comments, but this AP class was half the kind of kids who were driven to get an A+ on every paper and it was normal behavior here, to focus on a teacher’s every word of feedback.

  He wasn’t driven like some of them. He was expected to go to university, and maybe even grad school, and he probably would, but some of the kids in AP were like Chihuahuas about their grades, shaking and looking about ready to faint if everything wasn’t perfect. He was just as glad he wasn’t one of them and felt okay about a B+ or above. The essay had been on their choice of topic, and though they were a few months from studying World War II in the textbook, Ray had written about how the war had destroyed British Colonialism, inevitably, accidentally, and ironically. Mr. Hardin had circled his use of “death knell,” and put a happy face by it. Kind of ironical itself, that.

  Mr. Hardin had a difficult time getting everyone to pay attention to his closing words, but he managed—he was a good teacher—and he rattled off homework assignments for a week, “just in case.” At least he was the only teacher who had the chance to. There was a one-pager in English do to, his algebra he’d already done over lunch, and so all he’d have to do was the history homework. Otherwise, snow days meant gaming days for him. Cool.

  When the bell rang, Ray joined the rush of students in the hallway moving toward the southern door. It was a more purposeful flow of people than on most days. Fewer couples making out against the wall, fewer congregations of kids around a single locker. Ray didn’t need to go to his locker. He went straight outside and stopped at the circle drive in front of the school. A few parents were already there, waiting in their cars. They had to be people who didn’t have to work, or who worked from home, and who lived close. Ray’s own mom was at work, and the only time she picked him up was the rare day he was sick.

  Ray caught sight of Omar and drifted his way, trying to make it a subtle movement. When Omar saw, he pointedly turned his back. Still pissed off, obviously. Ray had no idea why. Omar had been his best friend for a year and half, almost since the day they had met in homeroom the first week of high school. But Omar had gotten angry over something, and he hadn’t spoken to Ray for almost a month. Ray had felt gutted.

  Then when he got beyond that first shock and hurt, he analyzed every interaction until the memories were tattered and falling apart. Had it been something that happened during a game? Something he’d said in school or after? On the phone or in person? Had he insulted Omar’s favorite musician or his mother? He’d gone over every recent interaction many times, but had come up with nothing, and Omar wouldn’t explain. Omar had sent one text, “I don’t want to talk to you anymore,” and then total silence. A tingle of irritation mixed with the grief Ray felt. If Omar wouldn’t tell him how he’d screwed up, how could Ray ever know if he’d screwed up at all? Or how would he know not to repeat the same screw-up in every friendship for the rest of his life? He felt like running over and grabbing Omar and screaming, “Talk to me!” but he’d never do that.

  Brew, his last remaining friend, strolled up and said, “Waiting for your mom?”

  “She’s working. No way could she get off to come get me. Your mom?”

  “Will be here in about fifteen minutes, she said. Hang out with me while I wait.” They continued down to the street and stood together on the sidewalk at the edge of school property, talking mostly about games and only a little about school. Brew made a comment about a girl who passed by. Ray blushed because he thought the girl might have heard. The comment was positive, about her butt, but his mother had drummed it into him that it’s creepy to say things like that to girls. “Wait until you’re intimate with a girl and then praise her body parts all you like. But if you do it to strangers, you reduce them to nothing but body parts. That’s not a good feeling for a girl.” Ray wasn’t sure he entirely understood that—or if he agreed, for he certainly wouldn’t mind if a girl passed him and said something nice about his butt—but she sounded so sure of it, he had done as she said. He usually did take her advice. His mom was pretty cool, and she didn’t nag him with advice all the time. Her only real rule was “do not get a girl pregnant,” and there was zero risk of that happening anytime soon. Not unless sperm learned how to fly.

  The girl was long gone and Brew had changed topics two or three times, when the sleet started falling, tiny pinpricks of ice. Brew’s mother pulled up a minute later, her back seat full of kids. Brew was the eldest of six. Ray had no idea what that might be like, except he had experienced firsthand that it was noisy. Noisy even now, as Brew opened the passenger door and let out the sounds of several voices talking or arguing. He ordered a younger sibling out and into the back seat. An argument broke out about who was sitting where. “See ya,” Ray called into the din, and he started the walk home.

  The schoolyard had more than half cleared out, and Ray noticed out of the corner of his eye a group of tough kids—seniors, probably—looking his way. He knew not to look back and make eye contact. But as he walked down the sidewalk, heading for home, he had a bad feeling they would follow.

  As he turned the first corner, he saw his bad feeling had been right.

  Chapter 2

  Predator-prey behavior. That’s what it was like sometimes in high school. Like in the photo safari his father had taken him on whe
n he was ten. At school, Ray was definitely on the gazelle side of the equation rather than the lion side. As he felt, rather than saw, the guys behind him, he thought through his options. He could circle the block and go for the safety of the school again, but then what? If they waited for him to come back out, he’d really be in for it, having shown his fear. It seemed they hadn’t yet decided what they’d do. They were just following, not closing the distance, not even calling out insults.

  Running would trigger them to make a decision, so he wouldn’t run. He was experienced enough prey to understand that their decision in such an instance would not have a good result for Ray. Show no signs of fear—not even of awareness. Could be they were merely walking the same direction as he was, but he doubted that. They were too—intentional. Good word. He’d try to work that one into homework soon.

  Ray made more turns at corners than he usually would, keeping a steady pace, rapid but not panicked. He was thinking through the buildings ahead that he could reasonably go into to shake off the pursuit. There was a hairdresser over a block that he didn’t want to use, but might head to, if the footsteps behind began to speed up. A Laundromat was straight down two blocks on the street he was on. But why would a kid alone go there? A sudden urge to wash his gym clothes? Doubtful. Again, that would be like admitting he knew he was being followed and was afraid. Prey shouldn’t do that until the real chase came. There was a café over two blocks and ahead one. That was a place he might stop legitimately at, but where the safety of strangers and the rules of normal human behavior would keep him safe.

  He planned his route so that at the last second, he’d turn left and slip into the café without them seeing. He usually had a few dollars on him, but he didn’t today, so he couldn’t order anything. Maybe the waitress would take pity on him and give him water, so he could sit at a table and blend in. He found himself speeding up, now that he had a plan. Every turn he made, he could peripherally see the guys behind him, still trailing. Looking for prey. Or entertainment, maybe, was a better way to think of it. Ray didn’t want to be anyone’s entertainment.

  He rounded the corner, ran a dozen steps, and flung open the café door. Three people were inside. A man at a table with a laptop, typing furiously. A lady with two empty plates and a cup at another table, filing her fingernails. And an older man—the owner?—standing with a broom, sweeping a corner of the room. Ray stepped in, positioned himself behind the doorframe in a way that hid him from a casual glance from outside, and stayed dead still. Prey behavior.

  A full minute passed, and another, and there was no sign of the older kids. Maybe they’d given up on him? That’d be ideal.

  “Hey, kid, it’s not a bus stop.” The man with a broom.

  “I’m waiting for my father. I’m supposed to meet him here.” His second lie of the day. Maybe third, depending on how he counted telling the English teacher he was enjoying the novel they were reading. He didn’t hate it, but he knew better than to say so in those words.

  “Well, sit down, then,” the man with the broom said.

  “Thanks. I’ll wait here.” But then his cellphone rang in his backpack, and he moved to the nearest table to set down the pack and pull out the phone. His mom. He answered just before it would have gone to voicemail.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Are you still at school?”

  “Halfway,” he said, with a glance at the broom-wielding man.

  “I’m going to be stuck at work.”

  “I know. I mean, I figured you would be.”

  “I’m sorry, kiddo. I don’t mean this second only. I mean I’m probably going to be stuck here until well after supper. You’re going to need to fend for yourself this evening. I think there are three or four supper choices in the freezer, labeled, with directions. Eat something hot with veggies, and not a sandwich.”

  The man with the room disappeared into a back room. “Can I go out to Manny’s?”

  “It’s your allowance. Do what you want with it. But I thought you were saving for some new superhero game.”

  He didn’t correct her about the game he wanted. She didn’t understand gaming at all, and only paid enough attention to make sure there wasn’t too much violence—“angry, personal violence” is what she said she hated, meaning first-person shooter stuff—before okaying most of his games. Or all of his games, now. He didn’t bother to pick anything he thought she’d hate. He had played some of that stuff at Omar’s, but he didn’t miss that part of the friendship. Pure shooting games didn’t appeal to him anyway, or driving games, or anything like that. He preferred strategy games.

  His mom was talking, but not to him, to someone with her, her voice muted. “This weather is going to make things crazy here,” she said, when she returned to Ray. “Buses will be late, so people will be screaming.”

  “Not at you anymore.” She’d been promoted a year ago and now was in charge of the people who got screamed at rather than being one of the screamees.

  “Possibly not. Staffing—well, never mind. Not your worry. But if I’m late, don’t get into trouble. Stay inside. Play games, do homework, eat dinner. It’ll be slick out there soon.”

  “Not yet. But you can tell it will be.” He reached up to touch his hair, damp with melted ice. There had been ice forming on his walk. Not on the sidewalk yet—it was too warm—but he’d seen the sheen of it on metal handrails and parked cars. The temperature was right around freezing. Not bad if you were doing something. He’d been walking with his jacket unzipped and gloves still in his pockets.

  “Then be extra careful. Get inside soon.” A noise in her office. “I gotta go, kid. Love you.”

  The phone shut off before he could answer. “You too,” is what he usually said.

  The kids who had been following him drifted past the café, but they didn’t look inside. They were talking and laughing with each other, no longer looking like hunters. He felt his whole body relax. He would let them get out of sight, turn back around the corner he’d taken to get here, and take a parallel street toward home. He pretended to still be talking on the phone for another minute. Then he put away his phone and picked up his pack.

  The man with the broom said, “Can’t he make it?”

  “No. No, he can’t.” That didn’t count as a lie. His father lived 9000 miles away. They couldn’t meet up for coffee—or for anything.

  He decided to forgo a Manny’s burger. Not because his mom had told him to go home, but because he could hear her voice in his head, as if the conversation about his budget continued: “Think it through, Raysan—how many Manny meals does it take to buy your new game?” That’s what she’d have said if she wasn’t so rushed. She wouldn’t have said “no,” just asked him what his priorities were.

  As he walked the last eight blocks home, the freezing rain pelted down harder. Where it hit his bare hands, it felt a little like how it feels when your hand has gone to sleep from lack of blood flow, and then the blood comes back, that tingling feeling. The ice melted on his face and hair, but a few degrees colder, heavier sleet, and it wouldn’t. Stay out here long enough, and he’d look like Iceman.

  He heard a siren screaming a block over. It stopped moving, and the noise wound down. Whatever it was, he wasn’t far from it. Might as well take a look. The tough kids from school had forgotten about him, and he wasn’t but a few blocks from home. The weather wasn’t that bad, so he had some time to waste on a detour.

  Chapter 3

  The sirens were for a fire. Two fire engines and an SUV with fire department markings were parked in front of a house at angles. Smoke was drifting out of one open window. A few people stood in their yards nearby, watching.

  Ray walked as close as he could to the action, and when the firefighters were busy setting up ladders to the two-story roof, he sidled closer. A firefighter emerged from the front door, hauling a huge fire extinguisher, far bigger than anything you’d have at home. “Hey, kid, back off. Get across the street.” It was a woman, not a man, which sur
prised Ray. Mostly firefighters seemed to be male, though the city cops and school security had women.

  “What happened?” Ray asked her.

  “Flu fire.”

  Ray frowned in confusion.

  “Eff-ell-you-ee. Flue, as in chimney fire.” She put down the equipment and turned back. “Now get across the street, just in case.”

  In case of what? Ray wondered. It didn’t look like a huge fire. There weren’t flames pouring out of the roof. Though there was smoke pouring out of the chimney at a pretty good rate. Ray obediently crossed the street and watched them work from there.

  “Scary,” said a voice behind him. “Glad it’s not my house.”

  Ray turned around. It was a tall girl, vaguely familiar, standing in the walkway leading up to the house behind him. “Do you go to my school?”

  “Freshman,” she said, nodding.

  “I’m a year ahead of you.”

  She nodded again.

  He wondered if that meant she knew already, or if she was just acknowledging the fact. “You know those people in the house with the fire?”

  “They rent. Someone new is in there every year. So no, I don’t really know them.”

  They stood together—or near each other, at least—and watched the firefighters work on the roof. Some were inside. The woman firefighter was outside, talking to a fat fire guy without a fire hat on, probably a supervisor, Ray thought, because they wouldn’t let fat guys run up ladders.

  “Takes a while to put it out, I guess,” the girl said.

  “I’m Ray.”

  “Julia. Julia Payne, as in pain in the ass.”

  He smiled politely. “Are you one?”

  “Sometimes, but it’s the usual joke I hear, so I’ve learned to get ahead of it.”

  He liked that. “If you promise not to tell anyone, ever….”

  “Okay.”