Ice Storm Page 3

  He heard a soft pop and then a sound like autumn leaves being blown around from a pile. But there was no wind. He turned toward the sound, unsure of what it was. It had been like leaves blowing, or like Christmas wrapping paper being gathered at the end of the morning to be thrown away. A mightier crack made him twist his head around, and he watched as a big tree limb fell from a tall tree across the street. And then he got what that paper/leaf sound was. It was the shedding of ice from the limbs as they fell, shattering against the ground. Cool.

  He stood unmoving for several minutes, during which he heard three distant pops, like popcorn from close up, or gunfire from far away. It might be gunfire, but he thought even gangsters wouldn’t be out shooting people on a night like this. It was probably branches breaking, big ones, and he was too far away to hear the shushing sound of their falling ice. He walked a few steps on the sidewalk, slipped, and fell.

  More embarrassed than hurt, he looked around to make sure no one had seen it. Didn’t seem so. He had mostly taken it on his butt, but he must have cracked his right elbow too, on the funny bone, because it hurt and his fingers tingled. He bent his arm back and forth, and everything worked fine. But he didn’t want to break some important bone out here and have to crawl back home. That’d suck. He tried walking on the lawn, and that was better. There was as much ice built up there as on the walkways, but the dead grass broke it up, so it wasn’t like trying to walk across a skating rink in street shoes. He could get traction on the grass.

  Their own front yard tree was small, probably not as old as he was, and there weren’t many branches for the ice to cling to. It was the big trees that were cracking, all around, not the little ones. He walked across a few more lawns near the sidewalk, taking care with his footing as he crossed over people’s walkways and driveways. No one had cleared them or spread salt that he could see. Lights shone through most windows, and some porch lights were on. No one moved on the street but him.

  Not a car passed. Everyone who worked must have made it home already. Or like his mom, they were stuck at work. Schools had probably let out all over town early, so kids had been home for hours. It wasn’t like you could play with ice the way you could with snow, so no little kids were outside. Ray could see the flickering light of TV in some windows. In one window without the drapes pulled, he saw a couple sitting facing each other at a table, eating supper.

  A violent crack ahead of him made him jump. He looked up into the pool of light cast by a streetlight and watched as a big tree split down the middle and half of it peeled off, bringing loads and loads of ice with it. The top of the tree fell first, the thinner branches, and then it split again, with a loud pop, and the whole top half of the tree fell, just grazing a car in a driveway.

  The car alarm went off, a horrible, piercing sound, unnatural and wrong. After making sure nothing else would happen, he turned away from it, glad it wasn’t their car, and he headed back toward his house. The alarm cut off after less than a minute, but it still echoed in his ears. It took a few more minutes until he could hear normally, hear the softer sounds of the ice storm, the hissing of sleet hitting ice when it fell off trees.

  Icicles were forming on the eaves of his house. If they’d last until the sun came out, he could take awesome video of a walk through the neighborhood of ice on the trees and houses and icicles. He started walking around the block to look at other houses, seeing what the ice had done.

  Every time his feet hit walkway, he had to fight not to slip and fall. Part of him wanted his mother to be safe at home. But he didn’t want her driving on this stuff. It was possible he’d be sleeping alone in his house tonight. Likely, even.

  And he had left the house unlocked.

  Knowing it was a stupid thought, he imagined someone sneaking in while he’d been out here, around the corner. Now they’d be hiding in a closet, lying in wait for him. Like Slenderman. He wanted to stay outside for a little while longer. But he wanted to go back too, and at least get his key and lock the door.

  Locking what inside?

  Stupid. Little-kid stupid. Nothing was going to be inside.

  But he knew he’d check every room, every single closet when he went inside, to make sure.

  Chapter 5

  No one was inside, not even in the closets, which he checked every one of. He also checked under his bed and his mother’s bed. No one. Of course no one! He was embarrassed he’d taken fright even though there was no one but himself to be embarrassed in front of.

  It felt lonelier in here than outdoors. Which was stupid, because he was just as alone outside on the street as he was inside the house. Stupid or not, it was how he felt. But he didn’t want to leave again right now. He had spooked himself, and he would prefer to stay in, where it was safe, with all the doors locked.

  He checked his phone. There was a text and message, and his heart lifted. When he saw both were from his mother, he was disappointed it hadn’t been a friend. On a whim, he texted Omar, knowing he wouldn’t answer. Probably he had his number blocked. But he texted anyway. U okay? It’s great outside. Omar was the kind of person who would be able to understand how interesting the effects of the ice storm were. Brew wouldn’t.

  Then he read his mother’s text. Call me NOW. Time-stamped ten minutes ago. The phone message was from twenty-five minutes ago. She had said she was still busy and wasn’t sure it’d be safe to drive home. Call her as soon as he was out of the bathroom or whatever. She’d given him fifteen minutes to call back and then started to get mad. He hadn’t realized he’d been outside that long.

  So he called. “Hi, Mom.”

  “Where were you?”

  “My phone was charging, and I wasn’t in my bedroom. I didn’t hear it.” Damn, was that a lie? Technically, no. But in its spirit, yes, it was. He’d have to add it to his list.

  The answer seemed to calm her down, at least. “Oh, okay. Is it charged? We could lose power, so keep it charged.”

  “That’s what I thought too. I was watching TV and they showed all these power repair trucks lined up, so I plugged it in.”

  “If we lose power,” she said, “don’t try to get warm with the stove.”

  “The stove’s electric too,” he said. “It wouldn’t work.”

  “Oh, right. Silly me. Sometimes I still think we have gas like at the old place. You could carbon-monoxide yourself using a gas stove to keep warm.”

  “What should I do if the power goes out?”

  “There won’t be much you can do. Bundle up. Stay in bed. And wait for me to come home. I’ll get home somehow before you’re too cold. Maybe not until noon tomorrow when it warms up a little, but I’ll get home. Wish I had four-wheel drive. Not that I’m sure that 33 degrees, which is what they’re predicting, would help on this ice. We’ve had two bus wrecks, and they weigh tons, so if they can’t get traction, I certainly can’t with my little car.”

  “Is work still crazy?”

  “Slowing down. We’re taking all buses out of service. Most people are home, or somewhere warm and safe.”

  “So they don’t hate you.”

  “Oh, they hate us. And they hate the bus drivers. And probably the weatherman, though he doesn’t make the weather.”

  “People are pretty dumb sometimes.”

  “Well, sweetie, they’re under stress. Being poor means they’re always under stress, and they don’t feel like they have control over their lives, and not being able to afford a car and relying on the bus can make them feel more powerless. That makes them angry and sometimes I’m in the way of that.”

  “You’re a nice person, Mom. That you can think of them when people are mad and yelling at you.”

  “Well maybe not exactly when I’m getting yelled at. But afterwards, I understand it. And I say it to my staff. Anyway, you don’t care about my problems.”

  “I care a little.”

  She laughed. “That’s the exact right amount for you to worry. You’re a good kid, Raysan.”

  That made him f
eel more guilty for not admitting he’d been outside when she called. That was the thing about lies. If he had no conscience, he could lie all day long. But he felt bad when he did tell a lie. And he had to make up for it with good things, things that he’d accomplished. Then he could sleep better without going over and over his screw-ups and lies at night. Which he did sometimes anyway, even if there was good to balance out the bad, his mind spinning with it until one or two in the morning. Not that his mom knew that. Only Omar, and Omar didn’t like him anymore and probably didn’t care if he couldn’t get to sleep some nights.

  He had tuned out of what his mother was saying, and made himself pay attention again. She was telling him to get to bed on time. He’d probably only missed the eat-right and do-your-homework instructions. “Okay,” he said.

  “I’m going to go. Put your phone back on the charger. I won’t call again until morning. I might get lucky and show up in the middle of the night, and I probably won’t. Don’t get scared if you hear something, because it’ll only be me.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Love you, kiddo.”

  “You too.”

  He hung up and plugged his phone back in. It was half charged.

  What if they did lose power? He thought it through. What would he miss first? The computer, and looking things up. He could do that on his phone though, for a while. The phone’s charge would eventually die. Hot food was nice, but he didn’t think he’d miss it for a couple of days. Ham or peanut butter sandwiches would be fine, though he’d run out of bread in about three meals. If the power went off, he wouldn’t be able to microwave water or turn on the stove.

  An idea dawned. There was probably a Thermos around from when he took a lunch to school when he was a kid. In junior high, two years ago, he sometimes took his lunch when the school lunch was something he really hated. Nobody in high school took lunches. They ate out or ate whatever the cafeteria offered or just skipped lunch.

  It took him a half-hour to find his old lunch kit in the garage. It had a Thermos graphic he wouldn’t be caught dead with now. But no one would see it. He put water in a saucepan to boil and searched through the cabinets. There was also a can of chicken noodle soup. And tea bags of a couple of sorts. His mom really needed to shop. The cupboards were nearly empty. There was peanut butter, but only enough for a sandwich or two. He climbed onto the counter and on the top shelf found some hot chocolate packets, old, technically expired last month, but he bet they were still okay. He read the instructions. Six ounces of water per packet.

  While the water was heating up, he started a paper grocery list with “peanut butter” and “bread” on it. His mom kept the grocery list on her cellphone, but this would remind her to add those things if she didn’t know already. He stuck it under a magnet on the front of the fridge.

  He measured how much the Thermos held with a measuring cup filled with cold water. He dumped out the cold water and opened four chocolate packets. When the water had come to a boil, he filled the Thermos, and tightened the lid. He knew the chocolate in the Thermos would stay hot for five hours, which was the gap between leaving the house for school and lunch, but he didn’t know if it would for much longer than that. He had enough water left over for a mug of chocolate now.

  For forty-five minutes, he worked on the computer and sipped his mug of chocolate. He added the third lie to his chart in his journal, but also added the A on the paper to the “good things” column so it wouldn’t be so lopsided for the day. And, what the hell, the girl, Julia Payne-in-the-ass. He might not ever see her again, but he had pushed past his shyness and talked with her for ten minutes. And she interested him. Surely that was something.

  When he crawled into bed, earlier than normal, nobody else had texted him. He was such a dork, with only his mom as a friend he could count on. Pitiful. And more pitiful to feel sorry for himself for it. He pushed the thought away and tried to think of the good things for the day until he fell asleep.

  He woke from a dream that had the girl from today in it. She’d been saying, “I’m Payne. Julia Payne,” in the same way James Bond said it. And she’d looked a little strange, half human, but half big-eyed anime character with spiky hair instead of the long straight hair she had in real life.

  He fumbled for his phone and hit the screen to get the time. 3:45 a.m. Too early to wake up, though he’d had over six hours of sleep. There was a text from his mom: Sleep tight. She’d sent it at 10:00 last night. And there was a weather alert. Freezing rain predicted. That was right on top of things, telling him twelve hours after it had started falling. He checked the time of the alert. Okay, eight hours after it had started falling. But still, that wasn’t much of an alert. By the time everyone got it on their phone, they knew it already.

  After a few minutes of trying, it was obvious he wasn’t going to fall back asleep. He went to the bathroom and then to the kitchen. Yawning, he made himself some scrambled eggs with the last three eggs in the fridge and ate them watching the TV. There was a weather update running across the bottom of the screen on a local channel, and he muted the infomercial and read that text for a while. School closings, closed roads, that sort of thing.

  He went back to bed and fell asleep again once he got warm. The phone woke him, but he didn’t get to it in time. There was a voicemail. Just his mom again, saying good morning and to call her whenever he woke up. She knew he liked to sleep in, and it was after 10:00 now. He yawned. Maybe he’d slept too much? He felt slow and a little stupid.

  He went into the kitchen and saw the Thermos with the hot chocolate. He opened it and took a sip. It wasn’t hot anymore, but it was warmer than the air. He poured it back into the same saucepan, warmed it back up, stirred it, and poured it back into the Thermos. He put it in the living room by the sofa and turned on the TV. There was news on now, which was strange for 10:00 on a weekday, wasn’t it? Though what did he know? He was never at home on weekday mornings to watch TV.

  He watched them talk about traffic and streets until they had a commercial and then went to get his phone. He called his mom back.

  “What are you up to?” she asked.

  “Watching TV news. I don’t think you should try to drive. People are running into each other out there.”

  “I know I shouldn’t drive, but I hate leaving you alone another day.”

  “I can’t get into much trouble inside here.”

  “You sure?” She was joking.

  “I’m drinking hot chocolate and watching the news. Pretty trouble-free.”

  “Do you have any homework?”

  “History. He gave us a week’s worth, but he was the only one who did. So I can get ahead this weekend on that. School will be cancelled tomorrow, the TV says.”

  “Do you have all your books with you?”

  “Just my history and English books, and I can read ahead in English. Though sometimes she skips a story or chapter. But I know pretty much the kind of homework she gives.”

  “It won’t hurt to read something she didn’t assign. I thought you liked reading.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “So homework and what else?”

  “Um, do you want me to do something in particular? Or am I supposed to guess?”

  She laughed. “I wouldn’t complain if you pushed the vacuum around once.”

  “Okay, I can do that.”

  “But if you forget to, it won’t be the end of the world.”

  “We’re running low on groceries.”

  “I know. I was going to do a big shop this weekend, stock up on staples. You have enough though, don’t you?”

  “Oh yeah, enough for three days.”

  “I won’t be away that long.”

  “Good,” he said. “I’ll be down to chicken noodle soup for breakfast on Sunday.”

  They talked a while longer and then the weather person came on TV, a mom-type in a blue dress, pointing at maps. “Hang on. The weather is on. Do you want to know about it?”

  “We have
a TV here, and Jim has been watching all morning. He’s a security guy, stuck here too.”

  “Okay. I’ll go watch the weather.”

  “I’ll call when I’m headed home, or I’ll call at suppertime if I’m not.”

  “Don’t get into trouble,” he said to her, before she could say it to him.

  She laughed and hung up.

  The weather woman was saying the ice storm would continue. “Through tonight, at least. And then, snow.” She was wrapping up and summarizing what she’d said before. He’d missed most of it, talking to his mom, but he could see the clip on his computer in a half-hour or so because all the local stations put the weather segment up as video. And he could get hour-by-hour forecasts on the computer anyway, watch satellite views of the clouds, watch the winds blowing at nullscool.net, and whatever else he wanted.

  He flipped the TV off, went to his room, and played his current favorite game for a while, still being stuck on that same level he’d been on for most of the week. He could look up cheats online, but he wanted to figure it out for himself.

  He had a ham sandwich for lunch, and the dregs of a bag of blue tortilla chips. He finished the hot chocolate and rinsed out the Thermos.

  The hour-by-hour weather online told him the ice would slow down after 10 p.m. But the weather would get colder, so it wasn’t going to melt anytime soon. There was a chance of wind and snow tomorrow, 50% on the snow. His mom could drive in snow, but if the ice didn’t melt on the roads first, she still would be stuck at work.

  A lot of people at school would want to be left alone for a few days, but one night was enough for him. He wouldn’t get into trouble or tear up the house. In fact, he should vacuum like she’d asked. He knew she did it better than he ever could, but he was bored enough that housework at least appealed as something to do that was better than next week’s homework. He vacuumed the kitchen and dining areas, and the living room—they were all attached, like one big room. He left the vacuum cleaner in the hall and treated himself to another hour of gaming, which expanded into nearly two hours. But then he finished the vacuuming in the hall and his room. He put away the vacuum and, pleased with having something to put in his chart, put the chore under “good things.” No lies yet. No screw-ups. Though you really needed other people around to screw up in any big way. Or to lie.