The Tempest by A.J. Scudiere (best books to read in your 20s .txt) 📕

to check that Toto was still sitting there, claws still dug in. As her hand patted his soft fur and he squirmed a little under her touch, it calmed her racing heart for just one more moment.

“Hold on,” Jerry told her, bringing her back to the task at hand as a light flicked on.

Joule blinked, her head automatically jerking back and her hands coming up to ward off the brightness. She hadn't yet adjusted to the dark, but she wasn't ready for the light. Jerry walked down the last two steps with the way well lit.

Only then did she place what he had. “That's your cell phone!”

“Yeah,” he replied as if to say, what of it?

He'd had his cell phone this whole time?

He seemed to hear her incredulous thoughts. “The towers are out. I've got no signal.”

True, she thought, but still… “At least turn off the light and conserve the battery, so that when we do get signal, we can call someone.”

He didn't comment one way or the other, but the light quickly disappeared.

Once again, Joule blinked as her eyes adjusted. At least this time she'd seen her way around and knew where she was heading.

Jerry started to ask her something, but the roar from outside grew as it grabbed at the cellar doors and began to pummel them.

“What did you ask?” she called out, glad she couldn’t feel the wind down here, even if she could hear it. She pulled Toto from her shoulder and clutched the tiny kitten in front of her.

“I said—” he yelled. “I hope the cellar doors hold!”

She nodded, then realized he couldn't see her either. So she added, “Me, too.”

She wondered if he was having the same thought she was. The crowbar and the bungee cords were excellent and he’d put in the same knot she would have. Her dad had showed her how to build and design, and then she’d added a mechanical engineering degree to it. She knew that the doors themselves were likely to be the problem.

But she thought back to what she'd seen … When she pulled one open, it had been heavier than it had appeared. The plywood was a little warped, indicating it was thin, but the doors weren’t.

As Jerry tried to pull them closed, she’d seen the thickness of them, the flat side underneath. Her engineer’s brain had cataloged all of this. The hinges looked relatively heavy and new, though the doors were old. But they were bolted into the wood that framed the opening of the stairs, and that wasn’t too sturdy. The system was only as solid as its weakest point, and her money was on that wood giving way first.

She realized now what had bugged her about the doors: they had an underlay of newer, fresh plywood. It was done as though someone had seen fit to reinforce what was already there, rather than simply making new doors from the clean plywood …as if the builder didn’t want the repair noticed.

“Can we sit down?” he called out, and it seemed better than just standing here and waiting for the doors to blow off.

“I think so,” she said, then slowly began shuffling along, one hand out to feel for the edge of the shelves she'd seen before. “We should sit in a corner. Away from the cellar doors.”

The floor was made of wood, old slats that didn't quite look sturdy, and it brought to mind the Little House on the Prairie books she'd read as a kid. But she found the shelf and followed it along to the wall where she slid down and seated herself. Maybe she was glad she couldn’t see well. The place had seemed less-than-clean when the light was on. Definitely a root cellar.

“Over here,” she called out, using her voice to direct Jerry to sit next to her. She would have put him on the opposite wall were it not for fear of the tornado grabbing one of them and pulling them out. They had better odds together, and she liked those odds more than she disliked Jerry.

He thumped down next to her, taking a moment to arrange his less-than-lithe form. Clearly, sitting on the floor wasn’t something he did often, but she didn’t say anything.

As the noise outside got higher and higher, it seemed that each moment, the twister must be right on top of them. But in the next minute, the noise would get louder still, and the cellar doors would rattle even more, proving her previous thoughts incorrect.

She and Jerry fell quiet.

The raging noise outside seemed to calm for a moment, but Joule couldn’t tell what a calm day sounded like anymore. Maybe it was just a slightly less terrifying noise, but it made her wonder if the funnel had twisted away from them. Joule felt her hopes rise.

Jerry took the reduced noise as a hint that they should make conversation. She couldn’t fault him; maybe he was just soothing rough nerves.

“What did you say the kitten’s name was?”

“Toto,” she replied easily, thinking she could do this. She could make small talk with Jerry, especially about a cute kitten that had burrowed its way into her pocket again. She put her hand against the soft fur and thought that the studies about cats lowering the likelihood of heart attacks was probably right. By his very existence in her pocket, Toto was calming her.

She could survive this tornado, too. They could. And she could live to be mad about Jerry’s stupid protests another day.

“Why?” he asked. “Did you miss the rains down in Africa?”

She could hear him chuckle.

“Nooooo.” She drew the word out and wondered if he’d simply missed the reference. She prompted, “I found him after a tornado.”

“So?” Jerry asked. “That doesn’t explain his name. You could have named him, ‘Hold the Line.’”

Something inside her snapped. She'd had enough of this day, enough of these storms, and honestly, she'd had enough of Jerry long before this conversation had ever started. It was not her best foot forward.

“Listen,