From The Wreckage - Complete (17 page)

Jules wakes up in a cold sweat with her heart pounding as she grips her bunched up covers to her chest. Her pillow is soaked from the tears covering her face. The clock on her bedside table reads six fifty-seven in the morning. She sits up, pulls her knees to her chest and takes deep breaths as her nightmare replays in her mind. 

She’s standing at the Ice Shack with West, and the gravel parking lot is dark and empty.

"Why do you keep following me, Buffy?" he asks; his voice slurring as he takes a sip from the silver flask he carries.

"Who's Buffy?" 

He opens his mouth to laugh, but instead of laughter the piercing screech of the tornado siren comes out of his lips. Jules turns away from West and suddenly she is standing in an open field. The Ice Shack is gone, and in its place is a blood red sky with a dark funnel cloud cutting its way to her. 

"Jules!" a terror-filled voice calls for her, and she squints in the distance seeing Tanya running towards her.

"Tanya!"

Jules tries to run for her but can’t move. Looking down, she finds her feet are nailed to the ground, literally, and her shoes are covered in blood. She watches Tanya running towards her in slow motion. The more she runs, the further away she actually becomes. Tanya releases a terrified scream as the funnel jumps behind her; the winds ripping at her short uniform skirt. Jules falls forward when the nails disappear, and she falls roughly to her knees.

"Tanya!" she cries, and awkwardly tries to stand. She limps and runs towards Tanya; jumping over downed limbs and debris to get to her friend. 

"No!" She hears a shout and West appears beside her. He grabs her hand and tugs hard, pulling her away from Tanya's struggling form in the distance. Jules watches her best friend being pulled back towards the twister like a vacuum sucking up dirt from the floor. The winds pull her closer and closer to its deadly center.

"I can't lose you! You have to come with me!"

"But what about Tanya?" she shouts over the howling winds.

"You can't save her!" 

"I can!" she cries back, and he releases his grip when she pulls forward once more.

Running from West, whose shouts echo behind her, she trips and stumbles her way to within arm’s reach of Tanya. She reaches her hand out and barely skims Tanya's fingertips when a forceful gust rips her back. Tanya's arms flail out to the sides, and then a foreboding silence fills the air. The wind stops howling, the siren stops blaring and their eyes meet. Stark terror is written on Tanya's face when she looks over her shoulder once and meets Jules’ tear-blurred gaze.

"I don't want to die!" she begs pitifully.

A strange growl sounds as the black funnel inches closer, and Jules falls to her knees with a whispered 'Tanya' as she watches the tornado cover her friend. 

"No!" she hears herself scream and then falls from her knees to her stomach; pounding the earth with her fists in anger.

"Buffy?" West's voice halts her tantrum when she feels his hand touch her shoulder.

Remembering the twister, she raises up. The sky is now an ominous red and the tornado is gone. She turns to West with a curious glance and falls into his open arms, allowing him to hold her closely as she weeps.

"What's wrong?" His voice sounds strange to her ears and she sniffles.

"I should have saved her," she confesses into his chest and feels his shoulder shake. 

"You couldn't save her, Buffy. You can't even save yourself."

"What?"

At first she thinks she misunderstood him or mistook his words, so she pulls away and looks up to see his smile and her heart stops. West Rutledge is no longer sitting in front of her. Instead, she stares into the face of a vampire; his fangs dripping with saliva as he licks his lips with the tip of his tongue.

"Dinner time." He laughs menacingly, yanks her towards him with a snarling laugh and tears his fangs into her neck; waking her instantly. 

The part about West turning into a vampire would be almost humorous if it wasn’t for the horror of seeing what she imagines were her best friend’s final moments in her mind. She reaches out blindly, grabs her cell phone from her bedside table and pulls up the Facebook app on her screen. Without thinking about what she is doing, she pulls up Tanya's page and types a quick 'I miss you' on her profile. She scrolls through post after post of thoughts from different people as her heart rate slows and the tears start to fade away.

She can’t help but wonder what Tanya would think of half of the comments on her page if she could read them now. Notes from kids she barely knew, coaches, teachers, family members. Jules comes across a simple heart from one person and is surprised it’s from Carter. A picture Katie posted from cheer camp is next. Overwhelmed, she clicks to her personal news feed and scans it. Stuart posted about his new school the day before: 'Houston is different. But I think it will be good.' She clicks the 'Like' button, but can’t make herself comment more than that just yet. 

As if she’s being compelled by a gravitational pull, she types in West's name and smiles when a shot of him with his two older brothers pops up in the search feed. It’s an older picture; a winter shot of them all in ski gear. West and his brothers share the same warm brown eyes and good looks. She stares at the three of them for a long time before she clicks on his name and is brought to his page. They aren’t Facebook friends. Funny, she thought she was friends with everyone on Facebook. His settings aren’t private though, and a few clicks later she’s looking at a cover shot of West on a snowboard, flashing his sly grin at whoever took the shot. It looks to be from the same trip as his profile picture, and she is fascinated by this unknown facet of the boy who has filled her dreams, and days, a little too much lately. 

Clicking on his photos tab, she scrolls through his pictures being the Facebook stalking expert she is. She, Katie and Tanya spent countless hours photo-stalking people through the years. West's pictures are pretty uneventful, though. There are a lot of pictures of his brothers, football games at A&M, some shots of motorcycles, and a few girls making duck faces in selfies with him. He is tagged in a lot more shots, parties, candid school shots and friendly girl pics, but none of the girls look to be a girlfriend. She can’t recall seeing him with a girl since Carley in tenth grade. Exiting the photos tab, she reads his last status. 

"I wish I could hold your hand right now."

Her breath lodges in her throat as she looks at those nine words typed at midnight, on Sunday. It was probably less than thirty minutes after their argument at Whitwell Park. She sees several likes — all from girls, naturally— and even a witty comment by a guy she doesn’t know which reads, 'Door’s unlocked, come over.' She laughs all the while feeling the need to cry.

What is
up
with you, West Rutledge?

Early morning dawns, and deciding it is pointless to try and sleep, Jules jumps in the shower. She lets the hot water wash over her; renewing her spirit and cleansing away the lingering effects of her nightmare. She pads down to the kitchen where she pours herself a glass of juice and eats some toast. Her dad comes down as she is finishing up and is startled to find her there.

"You're up early, pumpkin." He smiles and presses a kiss to the top of her head. 

"I couldn't sleep."

"I can understand that. Your mom is in with Jase again," he offers with sad eyes as he makes a travel mug of coffee. Jason switched to sleeping with her parents every night after the first few he spent with her. This week, in preparation of going back to school next week her mom is trying to make him sleep in his own bed, but he keeps waking up and begging one of them to sleep with him by the middle of the night. Jules has no idea what to do to help him overcome his fear. She’s having dreams about vampires and Tanya, so she doesn’t exactly think she is an expert on the matter, anyway.

She watches her dad putter around the kitchen; making his coffee, putting leftovers in a lunch box and grabbing his customary energy bar for breakfast. 

"Hey dad?" she asks. "How are things at work?"

"How do you mean?"

"I...I was wondering what things are like now. In town with people...nevermind." She shrugs and he sighs.

"Oh honey, you can ask, you know. Things are different. There's a part of me that feels so guilty every day when I go to the office because I pass so many places that were ruined by that twister. I have to work, though. The whole town has to get back to normal."

"How?" She stands as she asks the one question she hopes he can give an answer to. "How do we get back to normal when normal is gone, daddy?"

"You find a new normal, Jules."

But I don't want to
, she thinks to herself. Ten minutes later, she hugs her dad goodbye and plops down on the couch in the living room. She stares out the window at the bright blue sky and debates internally about what to do for the day. She has four days left before school will finally start. It was delayed for two weeks due to the state of emergency declared in Tyler, but she finally received her reassignment, Rossview High, the day before. She certainly isn’t looking forward to the complete awkwardness she knows it is going to be.

It isn’t yet eight in the morning when she decides to grab her bike and head outside. She considers taking her mom’s car but doesn’t want to wake her, and she doesn’t know if she'll need it this morning or not. Tyler is small and the town center is exactly that — in the center — with everything a few blocks away in each direction. A few blocks from her neighborhood, Jules rides into mid-town where her father's office is located, along with many other professional office buildings. This area was untouched by the storm, for the most part. The most damage was done on the main drag strip running through the town center. Hillsdale is located directly north on Main Street, and the tornado touched down somewhere due north of that. It ran south along Main Street and demolished the school, shopping centers and restaurants along the straight path until it hit the furthest southern tip of Tyler, the Ice Shack and Grier house. After hitting the field it jumped over county lines into Rossview, where it hit a small farm and then fizzled out within a mile of Tyler. 

As Jules makes her way around the crews working throughout town, she thinks about Stuart's mom. She kept complaining about the damage throughout town; the devastation that made it impossible to go anywhere without seeing a reminder of that night. Where Mrs. Daniels can’t stand to face it and wants to get away, Jules has an overwhelming need to stop and help. She doesn’t want to ignore what happened to her town, she wants to help them. When she comes across a familiar black sports car pulled up outside of a ladies boutique shop off Kenilsworth Street, she stops. 'Gail's' is one of her mother's favorite little shops in Tyler. It carries high-end clothing as well as custom handmade jewelry and accessories. Now it is a wreck. The glass front has been smashed out and is currently covered by plywood. The doors are propped open and she hears a radio blaring inside. She watches as a shirtless male carries a large metal trashcan out the door and dumps the contents into a dumpster on the sidewalk. The guy lowers the can to the ground and swipes his forearm across his forehead. He looks up and sees her standing there straddling her bike a few feet away.  

"I thought that was your car," Jules calls to him when he doesn’t look like he is going to speak to her.

"Um, yeah. Hey," Carter replies hesitantly, and looks around as if he expects someone to show up. "Out for a leisurely ride?"

Jules looks down at her bicycle and smiles. "I was. What are you doing here?"

He steps towards her hesitantly and she notices he has a small limp. "Gail's my mom. I'm helping her out."

"Oh." She never knew his mother owned this shop. How does she not know this? She hasn't been in the store with her mom in years, but something flits through her mind; a forgotten memory of a framed picture behind the cash register. A boy and girl about her age. "She had a picture of you and your sister on her counter, didn't she? I remember seeing it when I was in with my mom before. I didn't know that was you."

"Why would you?" he asks with a shrug.

"True." She sighs.

"She didn't advertise me as her son. She was worried about business." 

"The rivalry?"

"Yeah."

The rivalry between Rossview and Hillsdale has been going on for years. Friday night fights are just the tip of the iceberg in the hell the players wreaked on each other and the towns.

"Speaking of," he drawls, looking around again. "Where's your posse?"

"I don't have a posse."

"No? I heard about Daniels moving to Houston. A little mess scared them away, huh?"

Jules fumbles to answer this. She should stick up for Stuart and his parents, yet she can’t deny that she thinks the same thing. Instead of replying, she tips her head and climbs back onto the seat of her bike, getting ready to push off. Carter's face screws into a reluctant smile as he picks up the trash can again.

"Hey," he calls out when she starts to pedal away. Jules looks over her shoulder and then turns her bike in a loop, stopping back closer in front of him. "I'm sorry about Tanya. She talked about you and Katie a lot."