Free This Is the Story of You by Beth Kephart Page A

herself clean under the shine of every light on. The rain was steady by now, and the winds were stronger than before, but they weren’t howling, I didn’t think they would be howling. They’d be gone by tomorrow. That fact was promised.
    I stood. I checked for a view through the front bay window and the kitchen side window and the windows in the back. But all I could see by now was me. The windows like mirrors, a million reflections of medium and more- than-medium scared. Whatever had gone down in the Zone I’d discover the next day in the sun. We’d faced much worse, but even so, I had a crawly feeling inside.
    Every five minutes I checked my phone. No Mickey. No Deni. No Eva. “Come on,” I finally told Sterling, leaving every light on and grabbing the cat’s Tupperware litter box and carrying it up the stairs. I slid it next to the claw-foot tub, and the cat purred. Her body swam between my calves, her tail a mop against my bones. There was a trace of warm milk on her whiskers.
    â€œTime for bed, Sterling,” I said, and she looked up at me, like she knew the drill, like she had nowhere else to go. I used the bathroom, took a shower, came back, and we were clean and ready as we’d be for many days now, but I had no idea what we’d gotten ready for.
    The biggest prize I ever won at the Mini Amuse was a walrus, stuffed with foam. I dug it out from the couch and named it hers, arranged it nice on my bed. I made sure that cat understood; she was a real smart cat. She put a claim to it at once. Padded it down, curled her body up, licked her front paws, settled her chin.
    â€œâ€™Night, Sterling,” I said, putting my
Wind in the
Willows
T-shirt on and checking the sliding door lock once again and cutting the one bulb in my room. I stood looking out for a while, watching the inscrutable dark. The white teeth on the black sea seemed closer than before. Old Carmen had abandoned her post, gone to wherever she went when she wasn’t at home by the sea.
    The wind seemed harder, but there was nothing I could do. Tomorrow I would wake to find the sun. Tomorrow Mickey would call and Deni would ask,
You keeping that cat? Holding tight? Need me for something?
And I’d say,
Yeah. Yeah. No, I’m good.
Then Deni would tell me the morning news on Eva.
    â€œâ€™Night,” I said again to Sterling.
    One hand on that cat’s head.
    One on the tusk of that walrus.

Later they would call it Monster, Colossal, Extreme.
They would say twelve hundred miles wide and shattering. One hundred sixty miles per hour and gusting. An eye like a country of cathedrals. Power slurped straight from the sea. Broke the models, broke the measures, broke the rules.
    Winner take all.
    Sometimes sleep is easy; it takes you sly. Sometimes it runs ahead, leaves you wakeful, tricked in, memories instead of dreams. That night, in my mind, Mickey was home—her long hair in a loose knot, her toenails painted Memorial fake, her hands too small for the cup she was sipping from, the scent of fruit tea rising. That night, Jasper Lee was home, too, of course he was. He was tall, he was fine, he wasn’t sick, he’d never been sick, he was sitting by the front door on a wooden stool, waiting on a canister of Cambodian sand. That night, Eva was lighting candlewicks inside mason jars and planting them on every sill, flowers growing like gardens above her ears, and she was saying, “Nope, girl, that must have been a dream. No thief in the Zone, Mira. The world is sweet.” That night, end of that night, there came Deni, climbing the stairs and breathless in the attic, with a haul of Friskies on her back, Santa Claus–style.
    â€œJust in case,” she was saying.
    Just in case.
    Deni. You call her. She’ll be there.
    She wasn’t there.
    It was after midnight, and the rain was blowing hard. It was dark, and Sterling and I were sleeping and maybe dreaming, and you might have thought