The Ballad of Tornado John
Johnny Velazquest wore many hats...err, bags. He was an entrepreneur, video game expert, chef extraordinaire, and meteorologist.
No, really, by law, he was a meteorologist. See, there's no hard and fast legal definition of what does and does not constitute a meteorologist, so anyone could call themselves one and have just as much claim to it as Todd Terry on Channel 5. Granted, to get a job at a TV station or something, you had to have credentials, but...like...it wasn't against the law if you didn't, which actually made a lot of sense. Johnny didn't know about anyone else, but his local weathermen (the aforementioned Todd Terry, Jim Manfori on Channel 4, and that fat guy from Channel 8 who always looked like he was drunk and trying to act sober so he didn't get fired) were all a bunch of failures. If they said there was a 5 percent chance of rain, grab your umbrellas, because it was going to rain. If they told you "It's all good, fam, forget the sweater at home today" that meant it was going to snow. They had worse luck at predicting the weather than Tony Khan had at getting talent over and the big websites like WeatherBoizdotcom and The Weather Channel weren't much better either; their information was as useful as a bike on a snorkeling trip and if you relied on it, you'd be effed.
Like...do these guys know anything at all about weather? Did they really have a Doppler radar in their weather dungeon, or did they just lick their thumb and hold it up? Why, yes, the weather is made of weather today. How lame. Johnny was more of a meteorologist than they were because he actually liked the weather. Yeah, yeah, maybe the weather is a more boring pastime than stamp collecting to you, but to him it was fascinating.
Especially aberrant weather.
Think of it this way: No one wants to watch a movie or read a book about someone's normal day, they want something extraordinary to happen, right? Johnny was like that with the weather. Clear blue skies were boring, but hurricanes and stuff ruled. There's so much that goes into the formation of hurricanes that you'd think there wouldn't be so many of them. Like...the conditions had to be just right. Yet they happen all the time and every year there seem to be ten times more than the year before. That was largely due to the effects of climate change, but a lot of people didn't believe in that so he'd leave it alone. The point was: Interesting and singular weather events got Johnny's attention like Maggie's butt got Lincoln's. Johnny devoured books on record breaking weather phenomena, the Ice Age, and pulpy sci-fi stuff where solar flares cause apocalyptic heatwaves. He freaking loved those. There was a made for TV SyFy Channel movie from 1998 called Inferno that -
Whoops, going off into the weeds like Eric Bischoff. Sorry.
Johnny read all these books and each one drew him into the field a little bit more. He had come across unsubstantiated rumors of upside down tornadoes and cases of the Northern Lights appearing over Tierra del Fuego in 1897. Tierra del Fuego is literally as far south as you can go and still be in freaking South America. The Northern Lights had no business whatsoever being there.
Why? Why were they there? And how?
It was a mystery, and that's what made weather fun.
Another really interesting topic was St. Elmo's Fire. No, not that movie with Molly Ringwald that Mom watched three or four times a week. Per Wikipedia, where Johnny got butt loads of his information because you could trust it, unlike those weather hacks, St. Elmo's Fire is "a weather phenomenon in which luminous plasma is created by a corona discharge from a sharp or pointed object in a strong electric field in the atmosphere, such as those generated by thunderstorms or created by a volcanic eruption. It may be seen as a blue haze around persons or objects during a thunderstorm, when it can be a sign of an imminent lightning strike." In the old days, sailors and pirates used to see it at sea and thought it was ghosts and junk. Johnny couldn't blame them for being spooked. Imagine being an ignorant seaman in the year 1450 and sailing into uncharted territory where you don't know what is or isn't there, and BAM, you see some floating lights off the port bow.
Man, talk about scary. Johnny had mad respect for those old heads. Come on, back then they believed the earth was flat and if you sailed far enough, you'd go right off the edge...if all the terrifying sea monsters didn't get you first. If Johnny was around back then, he would have been far too much of a fraidy cat to leave dry land.
And don't even try dunking on those guys in Johnny's presence because he wouldn't stand for it. Sure, they weren't very well educated and they were definitely way too superstitious for their own good, but give them a break, they lived in the 1400s. How would you like it if some a-hole with the benefit of 500 years of scientific progress started making fun of you? You think you're perfect, don't you? You think you're so much better than everyone that came before you, huh? Those shoes on your feet and that iPhone in your hand were both made by slave labor and you're not saying anything about it. Shut up. Those brave men thought they were facing giant squids, vampires, and epic waterfalls, but they shoved off to explore and expand human knowledge anyway. They have more courage in their little finger than you have in your whole gutless body. They deserve your respect and if you were in Johnny's presence and didn't give it to them, he'd straight up make up. What would you do about it? Huh, coward?
Nothing.
Anyway, Johnny was into the weather and knew lots about it, which is why he had a bad feeling on the afternoon of April 20. The morning started unseasonably warm but cooled down as the day progressed. The sky assumed a nasty pea soup color after noon and as Johnny, Lincoln, and Ronnie Anne made their way home, Johnny noticed the clouds were rippled like big, celestial udders.
That could only mean one thing.
Sure enough, a weather alert came across Johnny's phone.
Royal County was officially under a tornado watch.
Crud.
"Check it out," Johnny said and showed Lincoln, his heart beginning to race. "We might get a tornado."
Lincoln, talking to Ronnie Anne about something that didn't matter since they all had a freaking target on their backs now, spared the phone a cursory glance and said, "Cool," in the most absent and dismissive way he could. He turned back to Ronnie Anne and Johnny punched his arm.
"Didn't you hear me?"
Spinning around, Lincoln shoved him. "You're gonna stop hitting me or I'm gonna hit you."
Johnny lunged at him but Ronnie Anne got in-between them. "You know, this sibling slap fighting stuff gets really old. It makes me not even wanna hang out with you guys."
The brothers Velazquest stopped and looked at her. "Then leave," Lincoln said.
"You started walking with us," Johnny said. "We never invited you."
"Yeah," Lincoln said and gestured vaguely west. "Go on, your house is that way."
A dark shadow crossed Ronnie Anne's face. "You guys suck. I'm out." She spun on her heels and marched off.
"See you tomorrow," Lincoln called.
She lifted her hand in acknowledgement.
When she was gone, Lincoln and Johnny walked the rest of the way home, Johnny nervously scanning the sky. Drops of rain began to pelt his face and shoulders and all at once, it occurred to him that the day was entirely still, with not even the faintest breath of wind to stir the humid air. "I'm telling you, dude," Johnny said, "we might have a tornado."
Now that he wasn't so busy having his head lodged up Ronnie Anne's butt, Lincoln actually looked at the sky. "Yeah, it does look kind of bad."
"Let's go," Johnny said.
They hurried home and got there just as the sky broke open with a furious crash. Rain poured from the rapidly darkening heavens and long stalks of lightning shot across the sky. In the living room, Mom and Dad were rushing back and forth like madpeople carrying stuff to the basement. Dad picked up the TV, the plug ripping from the wall, and sprinted to the cellar, knocking Mom aside. "Gang way, WWE network coming through!" Mom hefted a cardboard box full of 80s records and VHS tapes and ran after him.
Upstairs, Lincoln and Johnny started grabbing their things, Johnny getting the PC and Lincoln scrambling to gather all of his comic books. "Where's The Walking Dead Issue #47? WHERE IS THE WALKING DEAD ISSUE #47?"
"Forget about it," Johnny cried over his shoulder as he ran the PC downstairs. Dad was in his way, trying to pick up his armchair, and Johnny barreled through him. "Gang way, cat video coming through!"
The cellar was already packed with stuff: Boxes and plastic crates lined the stone walls and various odds and ends were strewn crazily across the floor. Johnny sat the computer down as carefully as he could and dashed back up the stairs, crashing into Lincoln at the top. Lincoln fell to the kitchen floor and the stack of comics he was carrying dropped like a sick mixtape and swept across the floor. "STUPID IDIOT!" Lincoln yelled.
Johnny ignored him and went upstairs, where he threw all of his clothes into a trash bag and tied it off. Back in the kitchen, Lincoln was on his hands and knees trying to pick up all his comics. Taking mercy on him, Johnny pitched in and helped.
The wind was blowing so hard now that the windows rattled in their frames and the trees out front bent to one side. The lights flickered and Johnny howled in fear. Suddenly, he was sucked up, feet leaving the floor. Oh no, tornado!
But it was only Dad.
Mom grabbed Lincoln and they all went into the basement, Mom pulling the door closed behind them. They huddled together in the middle of the floor, Dad shielding them with his body (probably the first time his fat had ever been put to good use). The earth tossed violently from side to side and the wind roared like a freight train. Plaster and dirt showed them and Mom screamed. Johnny tucked his chin against his chest and squeezed his eyes closed. The lights went out and and an apocalyptic din filled the world as the house above their heads was torn to pieces. Something landed on Johnny's head and he reflexively jerked. "Squawk, I'm too young to die, squawk," Sergio trembled.
A section of ceiling crashed to the floor off to their right, and everyone screamed in alarm. Johnny braced himself to be crushed under the ruins of his childhood home, but the killing blow never came: The shaking stopped, the wind died down, and after a few minutes, the only sounds were his own heavy breathing, Mom's quiet sobbing, and Sergio's whimpering. For a long time, everyone was too afraid to move, then Dad shook the dust and plaster from his back like a big dog and got to his knees. "Is everyone okay?" he asked.
"Boys?" Mom asked worriedly.
"I'm okay," Lincoln said.
"Me too," Johnny said.
Sergio squawked. "I died in a tornado, no, Elizabeth, I'm not okay."
"Oh, shut up, you're fine," Dad said and struggled to his feet.
Beams, boards, and heaps of sheetrock and twisted metal covered the basement floor, three feet deep in places. Dusty shafts of sunlight filtered through cracks in the ceiling, and Johnny' stomach sank. That could only mean one thing.
Dad went up the stairs first. The door was stuck and it took him a minute to get it unwedged. What lay beyond shocked Johnny even though he fully expected it: Devastation. His childhood home, where so many happy memories were made, had been reduced to a debris field. Walls had been knocked down, doors lay on their sides, pipes, chunks of floor, and other junk drifted four and five feet high. The house itself had been completely leveled. Aside from part of the chimney and some of the attached wall, it had all collapsed. The house next door was still standing, but its roof had come crashing down and there was a giant hole in the wall. The neighbor's car lay in the middle of the street on its hood and the trees and power poles that had once lined the sidewalk now blocked them. The tornado had touched down on the street behind Lincoln and Johnny's house and obliterated everything in its wake, leaving all of the houses on the other side of Franklin - including the Loud house - comparatively untouched. A few shingles and siding panels had been ripped from the face of 1216 and a portion of the tree out front had fallen against the roof of the porch, damaging it, but otherwise, it was fine.
Dad dropped to his knees, bent at the waist like a Muslim praying to Allah, and let out a Big No worthy of its own entry on TVTropes. Mom pressed her hand to her face and broke down crying, and Lincoln hung his head. Johnny removed his paper bag from his head and held it over his heart, a single teardrop sliding down his cheek like that Indian in that old commercial.
Sirens rose in the distance, and people started to emerge from their homes. Mr. Loud came out of 1216 and looked up at the structure's battered facade, his family clustering around him. They turned away, and when they comprehended the damage to the other side of the street, their jaws all fell open.
As Johnny sifted through the rubble of his former home, they came over and surrounded him. "Oh, my God, are you guys literally okay?" Lori asked.
Mr. and Mrs. Loud comforted Mom and Dad, and Leni and Luan did their best to console Lincoln, who stared down at his feet like a mourner at a funeral.
"Yeah," Johnny said and got to his feet. "We managed to save most of our stuff and we survived, so it's not all that bad." He looked around at the confused mess of beams, timbers, and bricks, and burst out in tears. "Who am I kidding? It's terrible! My house is gone! I'm going to have to move in with my super religious black grandma and go to church five times a week."
On hearing that, Lincoln started to cry too.
"Black church is fun every once in a while," Johnny sobbed, "but not everyday."
A hand fell on Johnny's shoulder and he twisted his head around. Mr. Loud looked down at him with a pitying expression. "You're not going anywhere, Johnny. You and your family can stay with us."
That first night, Mr. and Mrs. Loud made up the pull out couch for Mom and Dad and Luna spared Lincoln and Johnny a couple of her old sleeping bags. "I haven't used these since I was a Girl Scout," she said as she handed one to Johnny.
"I didn't know you were a Girl Scout," Johnny said and knitted his brow.
"I was only in for a year before I went AWOL in protest."
"Of what?" Lincoln asked.
Luna smugly crossed her arms. "The Girl Scout Industrial Complex. It's a menace, bro."
Uh...okay then.
There was so much activity outside that they didn't get to sleep until well after midnight. Emergency workers combed through two blocks of damaged and destroyed homes, aided by big flood lights that lit the night like daytime. Shouting, sirens, the incessant whump-whump-whump of helicopter blades, and the whine of saws drifted through the neighborhood. The power was out until shortly before ten and parts of Franklin and the next street over had been evacuated because of gas leaks and fallen power lines: Dad and Mr. Loud went to help search for survivors and when they came back, Dad shivered and cryptically said, "It's dangerous out there."
The news reported that three people died and fifteen more were junuried. Looting broke out downtown and footage of Flip standing in the doorway of Flip's and waving a shotgun at a crowd of looters played. "I plugged ten Iraqis in Desert Storm and I'll plug you too," he called. Johnny sat on the edge of the couch and waited in suspense to hear about the school, hoping it scored a direct hit and crumbled like that cathedral in The Church, and let out a frustrated sigh when it appeared whole and unscathed. The gym had been turned into a shelter/medical center and National Guard troops unloaded boxes of food and medicine from the back of army trucks. "I hope they cancel school tomorrow."
"They probably will," Lynn said. "But they better not cancel football practice."
Later on, Mr. and Mrs. Loud and the Loud girls drifted off to bed one by one. Lola and Lana were the last to go. They sat uncomfortably close on either side of Johnny and looked up at him with matching expressions of girlish reverence, making things mad awkward. Uh...maybe going to black church every day of the week wasn't such a bad thing. Those hymns are on point, tho.
Lucy and Lynn offered to let Lincoln and Johnny bunk with them, but Mom stepped in and said no. "I don't think it's a good idea," she said, then quickly added, "you'll keep each other awake and no one will get any sleep." She offered an innocent smile that wasn't so innocent. What, did she think Johnny and Lincoln were going to make out with Lucy and Lynn or something? Gross! Johnny could think of a million things he'd rather do than..that, maybe even two million.
There wasn't much room once the bed had been pulled out, and Lincoln and Johnny were forced to scoot against the fireplace. In minutes, Dad was snoring loudly and obnoxiously - which is how he did pretty much everything - and Mom's breathing had grown shallow. Lincoln dropped off quickly as well, and Johnny was alone. He laced his hands over his chest, took a deep breath, and let it out evenly. Now that the activity of the day had died down and he was able to hear himself think, it was finally starting to sink in. His house was gone. His room, the squeaky board at the top of the stairs, the flickering light in the bathroom, all the little dings, scrapes, and imperfections that made it home - all of it was gone, never to return. Even if Mom and Dad had an exact replica built in its place, it wouldn't be the same: It'd be a pale imitation and not the real thing.
That depressed him far more than it probably should have.
And what if they didn't rebuild? What if they had to move? What if they had to leave Royal Woods completely? If you would have told him this three or four years ago, he would have laughed at you (bitterly), but he liked it here. He had friends, roots, and had grown attached to town and everything in it. He didn't want to move anywhere else. He wanted to stay right here in Royal Woods, on Franklin Avenue, across from the Louds and down the street from Ronnie Anne.
He was still thinking about it when he fell asleep shortly after midnight. In his dreams, he was alone and afraid in total darkness, the world shaking around him and the wind screaming like the voice of God Himself.
This was the first tornado he would have…
...but it was far from the last.
Lynn was wrong: They didn't cancel school.
Of course they didn't.
The gym was closed off because it was still filled with people whose homes had been destroyed and a fleet of military vehicles stood in the parking lot, but otherwise, it was a normal day. Well...not that normal. Maybe Johnny had slipped into delayed shock or something, but all that morning, he went through his daily rituals like a man in a dream, numb and spacy. Normally, when something big happened - good or bad - he told his friends, but he didn't want to talk about what happened yesterday.
Unfortunately, they already knew. "I sure am sorry to hear about your house, Johnny," Liam told him in the hall. "If you need anything, let me know."
Stella and Sid both sought him out and battered him with questions. He reluctantly told them everything, and the color drained from their faces. "Oh my God," Stella said. "So...you lost everything?"
Hesitating, Johnny ticked his head back and forth. "Not really. We saved a lot of our stuff. But the house itself is completely gone. We're staying with the Louds right now."
"Are your mom and dad going to buy a new house?" Sid asked.
All Johnny could do was shrug. "I don't know." His stomach knotted with dread and he flicked his eyes to the floor. "I don't know what's going to happen."
Johnny wasn't used to being uncertain about the future anymore. Since he and his family moved into the house on Franklin Avenue, he didn't worry where he was going to be at the end of the day or where his next meal was coming from. He took every day for granted and worried about living. Now all that was done and over with.
Those emotions must have shown on his face for Stella and Sid each patted one of his shoulders. "It'll be okay," Sid said.
"Yeah," Stella said, "you'll probably even get a new house out of the deal. Like a brand new one."
"It won't be the same," Johnny said.
"No," Stella agreed, "but it might be even better. If the insurance company builds you one, you can have bigger bedrooms, and maybe a game room."
Sid's eyes lit up. "Or a pool."
Hmmm. A pool, you say?
At home, Johnny asked Dad if the house was insured. He was sitting on the couch and watching FallBrawl '97 on his tablet. Mr. Loud sat in his chair and Mom and Mrs. Loud handled dinner. "Of course it is," Dad said.
"Are they going to build us a new house?"
Dad didn't reply.
Johnny asked again.
"I dunno. Maybe."
Gee, thanks, Dad, way to allay my existential anxiety.
Leni called down the stairs for him, and leaving Dad to it, Johnny climbed the steps. Leni and Lisa waited at the top with Lincoln. "What's up?" Johnny asked.
Clearing her throat, Lisa said, "Leni and I have taken the liberty of building you and Lincoln temporary accommodations in the closet."
Inside the closet - which was surprisingly big for a closet but shockingly tiny for a bedroom - a set of bunk beds sat flush to the wall and a desk occupied the space beneath the window. Why did a closet have a window? Your guess is as good as Johnny's. "We built that," Leni said proudly.
"Indeed," Lisa said. "It's cramped, I'm afraid, but it'll do for now."
Luan popped out of nowhere, a big clown nose on her face. She honked it and said, "This gives a whole new meaning to the phrase being in the closet."
Everyone glared at her. "Okay, wow, that was offensive," Johnny said.
"Yeah," Lincoln added, "really uncool, Luan."
Luan sobered. "Hey, guys, I didn't mean anything by it."
Leni and Lisa crossed their arms. "Leni and I are not guys. Address us properly or return your head to your rectum and don't address us at all."
Hanging her head, Luan sighed.
At the same time, Luan was getting dunked on for annoying people, Lori, Luna, and Lynn were turning the garage into a little apartment for Mom and Dad. They set up a bed and two nightstands in the middle of the floor and added some paintings and flowers to make it homier. It was still a garage, though. The floor was cracked and stained with motor oil and the smell of earth and gasoline lingered in the air.
As a thank you for taking them in, Dad ordered pizza for everyone and they ate in the living room while watching a movie. Johnny had never wanted to live in the Loud house because it was total insanity, but so far, he was enjoying it. And he really appreciated the Loud's helping his family in their time of need.
I could get used to this, Johnny thought.
Then Lily puked on him.
Or maybe not.