Page 49 of It's a Brewtiful Day
“What's so funny?” Elliot asked, his voice getting louder as he turned onto his back, bending his knees so his feet were flat on the floor. There was no way he was going to have a great sleep, if he managed any at all.
“This is like a summer camp.”
“I never went.”
“What? Really? It's like a rite of passage.”Every summer I'd be blessed with a week away, and each year it was always somewhere fun. “My sister and cousins and I would do a weekend camp at Lake Edith, or maybe closer to the city, depending on the camp’s activities. It was the best. After it was lights out, we'd pull out the food we'd snuck into our bunks from the kitchens, and we'd eat junk and talk all night long.”
“Well, we're halfway there, we can talk all night, and I think there’s a donut left we haven’t eaten.”
“Why not? It'll be fun. Unless you're tired?”
“Even if I was, I don't think I could fall asleep.”
“Afraid to miss something?” I knew that was one of the reasons I wasn't going to go to sleep, but I wasn’tafraidto miss it, I was preparing to deal with it.
He cleared his throat. “Maybe. Maybe I'll just be listening for any far-off storms so I can find a way to distract you, in the event of it happening.”
I closed my eyes and whispered, “Do you think it's a possibility?”
“After the way things have gone so far, yeah, but I honestly hope not. For your sake. It feels too late to be banging pots and pans, and I don’t know if I have enough energy for another dance party.” A light chuckle escaped with his words.
“Me either.”
“Curious, with these teenage getaways…”
“I never said I was a teenager...” but I laughedwhen I said it. The weeklong summer camps started happening when I was twelve.
“Anyway, when you were gone, what happened when it stormed? What did you do to cope?”
“They never happened.”
“Never?”
I twisted onto my back and stared at the ceiling. “Just once. And that was enough.”
“And what happened?”
A knot of fear twisted into shape in the deep recesses of my gut. “Until I was almost seventeen, storms never bothered me, but that one summer, everything changed.”
The air around me cooled, and I did a perfect sit-up and shook out of my jacket. Laying back down, I draped it over me like a blanket while I stared up at the ceiling.
“My cousin and I were on the lake when a storm approached, and quite quickly I might add. There was a power plant nearby, so the storms could be super intense and seem to pop up out of nowhere. We paddled back to shore like our life depended on it, and hauled the canoe out of the water, as she didn’t want anything to happen to it.” My breathing hitched in response to the memory of how hard we had exerted ourselves and the push of feet on pebbled gravel up a slight embankment, the weight of the canoe seemingly weightless with the adrenaline rush. All around us the air was thick and the rainunleashed its fury as if someone above was dumping a bucket.
Elliot reached for my hand, grounding me to the Coffee Loft.
In hindsight, it was crazy to have been so concerned about the canoe—something that could be easily replaced.
I tipped my head in his direction. He was fully focused on me, and the quick pulse of a grip on my hand helped. I took a deep inhale, which only further dried out my mouth, and inched a little closer to him.
Swallowing, the memory flashed in my head once again. “Well, we were racing back to the cabin, with our canoe over our heads, and just as we set the canoe down by the trees, I felt it before I saw it.” My whole body tightened. Elliot moved closer. My voice fell as I was transported back to that painful moment.
“The noise was the worst part.” I never forgot that sound and won’t as long as I live. Every dark cloud served as a reminder. “The bolt blew apart the tree, sending burnt kindling like shrapnel in all directions.” I flinched with the recall. “The shockwaves knocked us off our feet. I was tossed away from my cousin, and the canoe, and lost my hearing briefly. The flash affected my vision, so I crawled around blindly, screaming out Coco’s name, who couldn’t hear me, until I found her.” Once again my pulse pounded ferociously and my breaths were clipped. Tears slipped out when I thought back to theaftermath. “I gripped her in my arms until my sister and my other cousin found us. Despite Cassie’s hollering, neither of us heard her and it freaked her out.”
“Take a deep breath,” Elliot whispered and he wrapped his arm around my waist after he climbed onto the wingbacks. “You’re safe here.”
I nodded, opening my eyes. After a long inhale, I continued, and so did the tears, however, there was a stoicism to my voice I hadn’t expected. “I was the lucky one since I didn't have any permanent visual or auditory damage. My cousin, however, had severe retinal damage and is still mostly blind from the ordeal flash. She’s also deaf in her left ear. The bolt had been much closer to her.”
“Holy beans, that’s wild.” His eyes nearly bugged out and an electric current of surprise enveloped his words.