Chapter five — belly of the beast

Caroline had forgotten how much she hated rodeos.

It was more the situational anxiety she'd adapted into back when Tyler was a rodeo rider—watching him, a stupid kid from deep Arkansas probably wearing a backwards Texas cap on his head (and that was it for skull protection), barrel across a sandpit on the back of a wild horse, or tempt a raging bull with a strip of his red flannel.

Back then Caroline had hated rodeos because she had to watch her boyfriend get trampled near to death every night.

Now, though, she realized she hated them for a different reason:

"They must treat these animals real bad," she said aloud, warily watching as one of the riders just barely made a last-minute turn around a barrel. "Only ways horses will react that quickly is either through good training or bad."

"And you think it's just gotta be bad, by default?" Tyler scoffed, leaning his elbows onto his knees to get a closer look at the show. He nodded off to the side; over toward the gates where the animals waited their turn. "Nah, they're alright out here. Look how pristine those bars are. A bad rodeo ain't worried about how clean their stage is—they're worried about how to keep their livestock from telling on 'em mid show."

Caroline smiled, mirroring his movement. "Oh, and if the tornado wrangler says it's true, it's gotta be."

He shot her an amused, sideways glance. "Alright, then, tree hugger."

She scoffed, offended, but soon her smile gave her away—Tyler pointed to it with an oddly victorious expression, like he was staking his claim at the fact that he finally got her to break.

"You did not," she said in reply to his expression, casting her gaze back over the rodeo.

"Did too," he protested, but he was laughing.

Someone behind them whooped loudly as the bullfighter made a narrow escape, hopping over an upturned barrel just in time before getting skewered by a pair of horns. Caroline winced.

"You got too much empathy for this," Tyler noticed—though how he'd seen her wince rather than watching the show, she didn't understand. Either way he was looking at her when she glanced over. "How did you ever make it through freshman year? Seriously."

"Well, it was different watching you," she admitted cheekily, then smiled in a prideful manner. "I knew your head was made of tin, so I didn't have to worry if you got it stomped in. It'd just pop right back out like a soda can."

Tyler laughed, shaking his head in disbelief. "Jesus, Line. You always knew how to make a man feel great about himself."

"Well, what can I say?" She grinned, lifting her shoulders. "You did have a damn empty head, back then. Full of cotton—or hot air."

"Sorry—did you say hot? I didn't catch—"

She rolled her eyes, bumping her shoulder against his as a way of shoving him. He only laughed—of course he did. Caroline found she didn't mind much.

Slowly, Tyler's chuckling faded off into a soft smile, his eyes glittering in the stadium lights. Caroline couldn't count on both hands the amount of times she had gotten lost in those eyes, even when they weren't shining beneath any special sorta lights or anything—she knew them when they were swimming with tears of laughter, or glinting with mischief, or softening with a fondness that could never be faked. Tyler's eyes were Caroline's favorite part of him. At least, the outside of him. She always was a sucker for his inside, too—how he had an ego the size of a lake, but the heart to match it; how he had such a gift for knowing just what to say to get her to break into a fit of giggles.

A man running lassos down in the sandpit—the one who'd just finished his round on the back of a bull—caught Tyler's eye in the crowd, smiling in a troublesome sort of way and twirling his finger like a little tornado.

It was there, watching Tyler grin down at the bull rider and return the mini-tornado casually, that Caroline realized she had been blind before. Tyler had never really turned into a clout-chasing skeezball looking to monetize helpless communities after storms hit—he still had that heart she had known all those years ago. He still had that gift. He still knew Caroline like the back of his hand. And if he claimed his team was in the business of helping, she believed him.

She smiled to herself. Tyler Owens really wasn't so bad. He never had been, she remembered—breakups happen for things less than hatred. Time, distance, miscommunication... Not every relationship can be made to last. Caroline and Tyler had their chance and they lost it all the same.

"Hey, I've been meaning to ask," Tyler said suddenly, his eyes still watching the rodeo—unaware to Caroline's stuck on him. Then he glanced over to her and she launched her eyes away like she'd been burned. "Are you okay after all that earlier?"

Caroline's smile melted. She swallowed a thick lump that had appeared in her throat, then lowered her eyes to the rodeo just so she didn't have to meet his.

"Yeah," she said, with a fake sort of enthusiasm behind the word. "'Course I am."

Tyler raised his eyebrows, tilting a bit, leaning one elbow onto his knee so he could face Caroline further. "Really?"

Caroline tipped her own head to the side like they were playing some sort of game. A smile danced across her lips. "Now why don't you look like you believe me?"

"Your damn pants are on fire, Line."

She laughed, dropping her posture and relenting in towards him. "God, Tyler, can't you ever keep your nose outta other people's business?"

"But it fits so perfectly there," he argued, laughing, spreading his hands like a preacher. Slowly his laughter died down. He wet his lips, giving Caroline a sadder smile than before. "Be serious, Line. C'mon. Was that the first storm you've seen this season?"

She shifted uncomfortably on the metal bench, her own smile dropping to a cleared throat and awkward inhale. "I mean, yeah, but that really doesn't mean—"

"Those are the worst for you," Tyler remembered, with a tip of his chin. His eyes searched Caroline's face imploringly. "How you holdin' up?"

She drew in a heavy breath, keeping her eyes on the rodeo now. She was grateful for the wind ripping through her hair, blocking her face from Tyler's view, even just momentarily.

"I'm a hell of a lot better than the people who live in that town," she said brusquely, "that's for damn sure."

Tyler clicked his tongue. "You and your dad were those people, though. Once."

Caroline fought back a scowl. "I'm pretty well aware, Tyler. Thanks."

"I'm just saying," he said, spreading his hands calmly, "that you always said chasin' storms wasn't for you. And now... here you are—in the damn belly of the beast. It's okay if it's hard."

"I don't chase storms," she insisted, lifting her head, giving him a fiery glance. "How many times do you have to hear that?"

Tyler smiled. "Well, my head is full up on cotton, so maybe just a few more tries and it'll get lodged in there like a needle in a haystack."

And, fuck—he did it again. She broke. Her shoulders shook with laughter and her head fell back toward the sky so he couldn't see her grin. But she also didn't mind if he caught a glimpse of it along the way.

Then, curiously, Caroline's eyes landed on a flutter of green leaves soaring overhead in the ink pit of an Oklahoma night sky. The smile on her lips drifted off as if the wind had caught that, too, and she followed the leaves as far as she could until another cluster took their place. Blowing in from the east on what was seemingly a peaceful breeze or two...

But Caroline knew better. She was familiar with peaceful breezes and how quickly they changed course.

"Tyler," she said, tapping his thigh, alerting him with her gaze to the winds picking up speed and drafting leaves through the air easily. "Ty, have y'all been tracking cells out this far?"

His head lulled backward toward the sky, brow furrowing as he watched the leaves Caroline pointed out. He wet his lips, a hand settling on the top of his backwards cap like he was anchoring it down.

When he came back from watching the sky, his face was written with all sorts of determination and worry.

It was as soon as he stood up and started yelling that the general alerts went off, too: His voice clashing with the blaring alarm trumpeting from hundreds of smart phones at once, picking up in the rising winds and carrying across the stadium.

Chaos ensued quicker than Caroline had ever seen in a storm. Tyler grabbed her hand and pulled her from her seat. Over the loudspeakers, one of the rodeo hands was yelling for everyone to take cover—that a tornado had touched down in the area, that evacuation was necessary and urgent.

Suddenly Caroline felt as though she'd been dunked in ice water, but she couldn't tell if it was due to the actual weather dropping or if her bones had just chilled to the core at what was coming.

The sirens blasted through the air, interloping with panicked screams, hurried feet crushing against gravel, the grunting of animals being shoved back into their slots. Caroline would've lost Tyler to the crowds if he hadn't been holding her hand—leading her.

Together they raced across the street. Caroline's eyes caught frantically on every person she passed that was scrambling to get inside their car and move, but she couldn't yell over the winds, her voice couldn't carry above the crowd. These people needed to get to shelter; their cars were the least-safest place they could be.

But Caroline couldn't do anything of it except watch tens of speeding cars race off down the highway.

Tyler pulled her across the street just as the Historic Stillwater sign succumbed to the wind, stumbling down a neon path to land with a sickening dent in the cement. From what Caroline could tell, nobody had been unlucky enough to end up stuck beneath it, but she didn't have a better view.

Her mind raced. She needed to help these people—but running the opposite direction from shelter was what had ripped her family apart. Then again, she thought, as Tyler drug her into a quiet little motel lobby, these people were all about to experience what Caroline had at ten years old.

Maybe there wasn't any way to stop it. Maybe tornadoes were supposed to pick people up and just never spit them back out.

She still hadn't laid eyes on the actual thing by the time Tyler slammed the door to the motel lobby shut behind them, but it was obvious, from the wind speeds and force behind the flying debris, that this was no EF-1.

Tyler asked the man behind the desk if they had a storm shelter.

Childishly, Caroline's mind wandered—she thought about all her test drives, all the failed attempts she'd used the most high-end storm data possible for. They'd amounted to nothing, and this storm was more proof of it.

"Line, away from the window!" Tyler's voice carried across the motel lobby, full of panic—he lunged over and pulled her back toward the desk. No sooner had Caroline blinked than a tornado siren, ripped from its stem, blasted through the window and blew shattered glass across the room like tiny daggers. Caroline threw her arm in front of her face, letting it take the worst of the hits. She winced as a thousand little pieces of glass scraped down her forearm.

A mother and her young son rushed toward their car, parked patiently beneath the awning of the motel. Caroline's eyes widened. She couldn't save all those people who'd tried to drive out of the storm—she couldn't save her own mom and brother—but she could stop these two from subjecting themselves to doom.

"Stop!" she screamed at them through the broken window. She waved her hands, rushing over to get their attention. "Don't get in your car!"

The woman whipped her head around, holding her son against her chest. She looked terrified. "Where do we go!?"

Caroline bit her lip, scouring the area—in and around the motel—in the limited illumination the lightning strikes provided. Then a blast struck once more, and with it, an idea: Caroline yelled Tyler's name and gestured toward her idea.

"To the pool!" She had to scream over the storm so the woman would hear her. "Get to the pool!"

Behind her, she felt Tyler's hand take hold of hers again, and they both used their free hand to wave the little band of people that they had picked up along the way: The woman and her son, the man from behind the motel desk, and two customers that had been trying to place complaints in the lobby.

"Get in, get in!" Caroline waved the woman and her son down to the open pipes in the deep end of the drained pool, then helped hold the mother steady as she aided her son in climbing down the metal ladder.

The slamming of car doors caught her attention. Across the parking lot, she watched the two motel customers—a young couple, from the looks of it—screaming at each other in their car, throwing it into drive and ripping out of the parking lot.

"No," Caroline said, watching in horror as lightning illuminated their path; they were headed right into the storm, and by the time either of them noticed, it was too late. "No, stop!"

In a blink, their car was plucked off the street like a toy, and they soared into the twister. All of the breath left Caroline's lungs.

"Caroline!" Somebody was pulling at her waist, trying to direct her into the pool just as she had done for the mother and her son. She turned to see Tyler's face streaked with rainwater and dirt, looking awfully serious. "You gotta get in! Come on! We gotta go!"

She nodded, suddenly set in a shell-shocked motion, and hopped down into the pool, landing clumsily thanks to the wind's pushing. She rushed over to join the mother and her son beneath the pipes.

"Stay low, stay low!" she told them, gesturing to the pipes for them to hold onto. "It's gonna be okay—it'll be fine, don't worry—!"

She whirled around to see Tyler dropping from the edge of the pool. "Tyler, come on!"

Tyler's attention, however, was caught by the motel attendant, stumbling into the pool's shallow end and landing on his back. He groaned in pain, rolling around. Tyler rushed over to help him.

"You gotta stay low, sir!" he yelled over the winds, his own position hugging the ground. "Stay down!"

"No, no," said the man, trying to wrangle himself back onto his feet. "I can do it, I can do it!"

"Stay LOW!" Tyler roared. The wind was picking up. "Sir, come over—I got you, but you have to stay down!"

"No, I got it!" The man finally struggled to a stand, despite Tyler's screaming insistence—and his feet were ripped out from beneath him, carrying him off into the storm at a terrifying speed.

Caroline screamed Tyler's name. The storm was on them now, just at the edge of the pool. Something came flying out of it, and only when it landed did Caroline recognize the sheer size of it: A bus crashed, landing on its end, into the shallow end of the pool, the force throwing Tyler off his hands and knees and onto his stomach. It tilted precariously toward Tyler.

"Tyler!" Caroline extended one of her hands, the other anchoring herself down to the pipes, and reached as far as she could to help Tyler before the bus lost its balance completely.

He clasped her hand with a gasping sigh of relief and pulled himself into the pipes, only just wrapping his body around Caroline's in time for the bus to topple over, crushing into the edge of the pool and forming a sort of shelter for the four trapped beneath it.

"It's gonna be okay," the woman beside Caroline kept yelling to her son, her eyes squeezed shut as the storm overtook them. "It's alright, it's alright!"

Caroline wrenched her head as close to the piping as she could, her own eyes shut as tightly as she could make them, as if blocking her view of the storm would change the outcome. She could still hear the wind ripping around them, the debris thrown from place to place, the thunder rolling deep through the storm.

Slowly, the ruckus died down. The wind's fury came to a quiet end. The crashing of monstrous wreckage colliding mid-air faded away.

Tyler's hands found Caroline's head. He curved so he could see her face, sitting on the floor of the pool next to her, his eyes searching hers, behind the grime and streaks of rain.

"Are you okay?" he asked her, his hands holding the back of her head. His gaze ran across her entire face twice, then down her body.

Panting, still returning to the shell of herself, Caroline nodded, her own eyes searching Tyler for any injuries. Then she turned behind herself to see the mother doing the same for her son.

Caroline let go of the pipe, her fingers cramping white.

She and Tyler stumbled to a stand, hobbling out from beneath the bus and gazing out at the ruin left behind. All around the pool, the town was unrecognizable, the place where Main Street had just been now demolished with debris and rubble. Houses were ripped in two. The motel from earlier had been entirely torn asunder.

The town was silent. Caroline knew this silence, though, and she greeted it like her oldest friend—it was the silence that came in death's wake.

Tyler wrapped an arm around Caroline's shoulder. She shrank into his touch, then curled her head against his chest at the last minute before the tears could begin to roll.

Was gonna have Tyler say britches on fire instead of pants cause southern but then I thought that was too niche