"You deleted it."

He raised his eyebrows and grinned coyly. "Or I kept a copy. You'll never know."

"Dude-"

"Speaking of which, we still have a ton of debris to round up and get rid of. I told mom that you'd be coming over this week and helping me do my share."

"Seriously, man? You're gonna blackmail me?"

His friend smiled. "Nothing I do to you will be worse than what I prevented."

"But you're my friend!"

"Yeah, well, then you should've gotten in touch with me at some point the past two weeks."

"Man, I'm sorry, I've been busy. And hey, it's not like we don't go all summer without hearing from each other-"

"Yeah, but this was like the storm of the century. I was dying to talk to you about everything that was going on." Roby frowned. "I tried to get my mom to drive us by last week and see how you guys were doing, but my dad is still militant about the gas. We've been driving everywhere at like twenty miles an hour. I thought he was gonna cut a hole in the floor and go Flintstone on us."

Daniel laughed.

"I'm serious, dude. He got all end-of-the-world. You shoulda seen him. We were on rations for the first week."

The more grave Roby tried to look, the harder Daniel laughed.

"I'm glad you think my suffering is funny."

"Ditto. But hey, at least you got to spend a ton of time with your girlfriend, though, right?"

"I wish. She has an aunt and uncle nearby. She went to their house after the party and stayed there for the storm. I just saw her a week ago as she was heading back to Columbia. I think she's gonna come back down in a few weeks, if her parents and NOAA say it's alright."

Daniel laughed.

"I'm not kidding," he said. "Her parents have already set up hurricane rules for our weekends together."

"Guess what?" Daniel asked. He figured now was a good time to fully explain neglecting his friend the past weeks. "I kinda met someone after the storm."

"Yeah?" Roby's eyes lit up. "A girl?"

"Guess what her name is. I'll give you a hint: It's real ironic."

"Like real ironic or Alanis Morissette ironic?"

Daniel thought about that. "I'm not sure, actually."

"Her name's Wendy," Roby guessed.

Daniel laughed. "No, but close." He shrugged his bag higher up his back. "Her name's Anna."

Roby stopped laughing. "Serious?"

"Yeah, and we're like boyfriend and girlfriend."

"Who's playing the girlfriend?"

"Shut up, dude." The bell rang, signifying two minutes to cla.s.s. Kids stood and stretched in the courtyard. Some hurried off, backpacks jouncing dangerously.

"What's this girl like?" Roby jerked his head to the side. "Walk while you tell me about her. And don't forget to kiss my a.s.s for making sure the first time she sees you in the buff is the first time she sees you in the buff."

"No, honestly, thanks for that. You being Jeremy's geek-on-call worked out for me."

"The girl," Roby said, waving his hand in circles.

"Anna," Daniel replied. "This girl's a category five, to be sure. Insanely smart. Pretty in a normal kind of way, not like cheerleader pretty or tall and exotic-"

"Kinda plain?" Roby asked.

Daniel shook his head. "There's nothing plain about her."

Roby held open the door to the English building, and Daniel stepped inside and let his eyes adjust to the fluorescent lights. He wondered what he could say about Anna that wouldn't sound silly, wondered if maybe Roby felt the same way about his girlfriend, how much more he and his best friend might now have in common. But before he could think of the first thing to say, they pa.s.sed a bulletin board with a weeks-old newspaper tacked up for the students to see.

"Holy s.h.i.t," Daniel said. He stopped and stared at the full-page image on the cover of the Journal.

"You haven't seen this picture?" Roby asked.

Daniel shook his head. "Haven't really seen the news at all."

"Listen, I've got to run to the end of the hall. I'll catch up with you at lunch, okay? I want to hear about this girlfriend of yours."

Daniel nodded and waved him off.

"And I want my a.s.s kissed properly," Roby yelled back as he blended in with the river of kids jostling and chattering down the hall.

Daniel barely heard him. He stood and stared at the newspaper behind the gla.s.s. In bold type across the top, it simply said: "ANNA STRIKES." Below that, and taking up the entire rest of the page, was a satellite photo. It showed a storm spread wide across the entire state of South Carolina, long trails of feeder bands curling down through the Atlantic, the northwest corner of the storm brushing Charlotte. But the part Daniel found himself transfixed on was the eye. There was a perfect circle in the center of the storm, a hole in the white shroud directly over Beaufort. Daniel stared through the gla.s.s display at the center of that hole and imagined himself down there, looking up at the blue sky, asking Carlton if the worst was over. And Carlton was saying it had just begun.

It felt like a lifetime ago. Like something a different person had lived through. Daniel lost himself in that image and the memory of a temporary quiet at the center of so much noise and destruction, and he realized, in an instant, that the eye was the storm. That low pressure at the middle, that intense calm and quietude surrounded by a wall of maelstrom, that was the hurricane. It's power came from the sucking void, was shaped by the spinning of the world, was fed by the warmth of the seas, and it had churned quietly along, oblivious and uncaring, pa.s.sing right over his home, whipping an unknown frenzy across his life with its wide and powerful winds, rocking him, changing him, with its mighty calm.

end.