Chapter nine — his nonchalant ass

Driving into a tornado was like riding a bike—one of those things that you never forget how to do.

At least, that was what Tyler had said. Caroline disagreed.

After their little powwow in the back of his truck, Tyler and Caroline had informed Kate of the ecological repercussions of her science experiment. Caroline drew in tendencies and mannerisms from a class she'd once taken on psychology and persuasion—just to help Kate understand where she was coming from.

"It's a good idea," she'd said, nodding emphatically, "but the effect on surrounding areas would be catastrophic. And that's only if it works. If it doesn't..."

"It'll be dealing with tornado damage and super absorbant polymers," Kate had finished with an understanding nod, glancing between Tyler and Caroline. "I get it. So.. did you two just knock boots out in my front yard to get to that conclusion, or—?"

"No," said Tyler and Caroline at once. Caroline's cheeks flushed, but Tyler laughed so hard he damn near fell over.

They'd all three been on their way inside to Kate's kitchen to grab a quick lunch when Kate spared a prosperous glance off to the south, where the expansive open land gave her a brilliant view of graying clouds taking form a couple miles away. After a quick check on her computer to see how big the storm was going to be and an affirmative that they were only dealing with a little baby EF-1, the three of them loaded into Tyler's truck, and they headed off to do what Caroline had been so adamantly against all along: chase a damn storm.

"Holy cow!" Kate yelled over the wind, hopping out of the backseat of the truck and stumbling over to get a shot of the forming tornado. "It's so fast! Look how quick it is!"

Tyler jumped out of his driver's seat and watched the sky, a backwards cap on his head and flannel rippling in the wind like some sort of superhero. He put a hand over his eyes to block the sheaths of sun coming from above the clouds.

Caroline hung out the open door of the passenger's seat, one foot propped up on the step, an arm hooked around the door to keep her balance. She felt her ponytail whipping in the wind.

It was cool, watching tornadoes form. She'd never been in denial of any kind about that. The way the conditions had to be absolutely perfect, how the atmospheric pressure shifted almost instantaneously once a twister actually began forming. Especially the babies—EF-1s with nowhere to go except miles and miles of land. No houses in the way. No towns to be destroyed or families to be ripped apart. Those were the only ones Caroline could stomach watching. Otherwise her morals damn near choked her to death.

"It's perfect!" Tyler yelled, putting both hands on his head in shock. "It's—it's perfect! Look at that thing! Whew!"

"She's gorgeous," Caroline agreed from her spot above the truck, gazing up at the storm with a curious wonder. Then she nodded, resolute, and exhaled a short laugh. "She's totally gonna give us somethin'."

She lowered her eyes to see Tyler already watching her. "You think?"

"I know!" she said, waving him back toward the car. "Come on!"

He laughed and ran over to retake his spot behind the wheel. Kate slipped in the wind and let out a loud laugh, jumping in the backseat just as Tyler peeled off, continuing down the red dirt road that was leading them right to the storm.

"So tell me again," Tyler said, glancing off the road and toward Caroline briefly, "what exactly you plan to get from this sucker here? Somethin' about—?"

"Aerospacial dynamics," Caroline confirmed.

"I had it on the tip of my tongue," Tyler said, giving Caroline a rogue grin. "And do you mind, Sweet Caroline, lettin' us normal folk in on whatever the hell's goin' on in your mind?"

Against her better judgment, Caroline beamed at Tyler for a moment. Then she snapped out of it and turned her face to the sky, watching it darken with every second that passed. "I want to see if we can measure just how high this one goes into the atmosphere. If it reaches a certain point, the climaxing pressure will, statistically, eventually decrease with enough time and space. That makes this the perfect storm to check it out on—we got nothin' but time and space."

Kate's head peeked in between the two front seats. "And gathering these numbers would mean what, exactly, for your experiment?"

"Well, Kate," said Caroline, unable to stop smiling as she turned her head back toward her partners, "you wanted to stop a tornado from ever formin'. Your polymers were a fantastic idea and, I think, a stroke of absolute genius—in a perfect world. But we all know this world ain't perfect. Your beads would've done more harm to the surrounding ecosystems than a twister would have."

Kate glanced to Tyler. "So what's your plan then? 'Cause it sounds like—"

"I think there's absolutely no way to stop a good tornado from formin," Caroline clarified. Then, unable to stop it, another smile made its way onto her lips—this time of pure excitement. "But I'm thinkin' there might be a way to ever stop it from touchin' down."

For a second, Kate just stared at Caroline, eyes blank and expression unreadable. Caroline blanched, suddenly resolute in the belief that her new business partner was about to laugh in her face at the idea.

"It's just an idea," she added quickly, nervously, turning her gaze back toward the front. "A stupid one. But better than nothin', right—?"

"I think it's pretty damn cool," said Kate, and Caroline glanced back over to her to find a smile on her face. "A great idea, not stupid. How could you even come up with that?"

"Who, Line?" Tyler scoffed playfully. "She's full of those things. Her mind is a powder keg of good ideas. You shoulda seen her in college."

"You sayin' I've lost my touch?" Caroline said accusingly—and fondly.

"Oh, no, darlin'." Tyler spared her a grin. "I'm sayin' you've aged like a damn good bourbon. Now who's ready to drive into a tornado?"

"What?" Kate's voice reached at least two new octaves higher than usual, and she shot back in her seat to buckle up again. "What the hell, Tyler? You're kidding, right—?"

"Unfortunately," Caroline said, reaching back to harness up, "he's not."

Tyler just let out a whoop and stared dead ahead as his truck grew closer and closer to the twig of a tornado they were facing, preparing to meet it in the middle of an open field of grass. Nobody around for miles except the bonafide Tyler Owens red truck of tornado wrangling. He pressed down further on the gas pedal, earning a roar from his motor.

"But we can get perfectly fine data from outside the storm!" Kate insisted, watching Caroline strap herself down with wide eyes, then fumbling with the pieces of her own harness and tightening them around her chest as close as she could. "Why do we have to drive into it? That's really dangerous!"

"She's right, y'know," Caroline said, tipping her head lazily toward Tyler. "We could die. You ever think about that?"

Tyler twisted his lips as if he was thinking about it, peering up at the storm. Then he gave Caroline a charming little smile. "I'll tell ya later."

He reared his truck around in a wide loop as they approached the tunnel. Caroline heard the wind picking up outside her window, clumps of dirt flying through the air like bullets, but Tyler just leaned over and turned up the volume on his stereo so the music overtook the sounds of the storm. Once he decided they'd gone far enough in, he made a show of throwing the car into park and popping his knuckles.

"And... here we go," he said, twirling a finger down toward the large red trigger button on his center console full of buttons and switches. "Spurs deployed. Time to watch our numbers grow."

"Brace yourself," Caroline warned Kate as the storm picked up around them, but she herself just leaned forward in her seat to get a better view of the updraft. Her eyes danced between the storm itself and the numbers filtering across the screen on Tyler's dash.

"Sixteen thousand feet," Caroline yelled, clutching the armrest of her seat. They only had a few seconds until the storm would pass over them completely and they'd be stuck with the data they'd already picked up, so she knew their time in the tornado had to count, and it wasn't making her feel too lucky just yet. She shook her head. "It's too low!"

"What about the updraft?" Kate suggested in a shout from the backseat. "It'll be higher than the what the total height says 'cause of the—"

But before she could get the words out, the air around them died down to nothing more than a light breeze, and the tornado had gone. The numbers on the screen dialed back down to a resting point.

Caroline let out a little scoff of air, her face screwing up in disbelief. "16,000? That's it?"

"That is pretty high," Tyler said, frowning thoughtfully. "How much more do you need?"

"Tyler," she said, turning to face him with an unimpressed look on her face, "if this is gonna work on even the smallest of storms, we're gonna need it to reach double that. Maybe triple."

Tyler let out a low whistle. "Yeah, alright. Let's go ahead and get back to the basics."

It wasn't a long drive back to Kate's house, where they'd begun to shack up all their data—but it did become an awkward one, as Tyler rolled the truck to a stop on her driveway behind a crisp white Storm Par van. Outside it was Javi, leaning against the door, arms crossed and eyes watching the dirt. When he heard Tyler's truck pull up, he lifted his head hopefully.

"Well, shit," said Tyler, putting the car into park. "Y'all okay with this or should I just run him down now while I got the chance?"

Caroline scoffed a laugh. She glanced back over to Kate, furrowing her brow. "It's all you, Carter. I'm not the one he screwed over."

Kate inhaled a sharp, reassuring breath, nodding to herself like she was inwardly trying to get her confidence up. "Yeah. I can go talk to him. Just give us a sec, okay?"

Tyler saluted her off and Caroline nodded her affirmation, and they both watched as Kate hopped out of the raised backseat of the truck and approached Javi to meet him on her lawn.

"You think he's apologizin'?" Tyler asked Caroline in a low voice, as though Kate and Javi could hear them.

"Sure hope so," she responded in the same tone, narrowing her eyes. "Otherwise I'm pretty sure Kate'll kill him, or somethin'."

As Kate and Javi's tense, unreadable conversation carried on, Tyler's gaze shifted to the open window of the Storm Par van's driver's seat. His jaw tightened and he sat up in his seat, pointing across the dash to the man behind the wheel.

"That dick," he said. "I always saw you around with him at the beginning of the week. You and him aren't—?"

Caroline let out an involuntary laugh at the accusation. "Scott? God, no, Tyler. I could never stoop so low."

Tyler's lips turned up at the corners in a satisfied sorta smile, and he nodded to himself. "Alright. Good to know."

Then Caroline bit her lip, scheming—she looked back to Tyler with a mischievous glint in her eyes. "Don't tell me you're jealous, Ty. I thought you weren't about that kinda life."

"About what?" Tyler said, scoffing too hard. He shrugged his shoulders stiffly, stammering out an excuse. "It's–it–it's a valid question, okay, Line? I was just wonderin', and y—"

"Well, I wonder if you wanna hear that he asked me out last year," she offered as bait, trying to hide her grin.

"He what?" Tyler demanded, turning on Caroline at record speed. When he saw the smile on her face, he relaxed, but with an eye roll and laugh of relief. "Christ, Line."

"Jealous much?"

"'Course not."

Caroline laughed, shrugging. "If you say so."

Suddenly—having completely forgotten about the Javi-Kate ordeal they were supposed to be snooping on—Tyler and Caroline jumped as Kate knocked on the passenger's side window. The Storm Par van sped off down the road.

"What was that about?" Caroline asked, rolling down her window. "You okay?"

"Me?" Kate beamed at them, holding up a small black device and looking remarkably proud of it. "I'm great. Javi gave me Storm Par's scans of the recent tornado they developed—the highest-resolution records around. If you wanna track the height of these storms, Caroline, this data is gonna be what you wanna do it with."

Caroline's eyes fell on the device. She knew Storm Par had good stuff—the type of resolution in their database that made their scans seem like real-life rather than watching a CGI tornado on a screen—but she'd never seen it in action. She never stuck around long enough for that.

Except now she had her chance.

She broke into a smile, exhaling an exhilarated little laugh. "Well, alright, then. Let's get to work."

caroline: (watching the twister) she's gorgeous!
tyler: (NOT watching the twister) .... truth..

i just watched an interview of daisy and glen and she called her character kate cooper but i SWEARRR the movie said carter i'm literally gonna go insane what is her name