Vortex Read online

  Copyright © 2017 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

  Darby Creek

  A division of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  241 First Avenue North

  Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA

  For reading levels and more information, look up this title at www.lernerbooks.com.

  Front cover: © iStockphoto.com/cosmin4000; © iStockphoto.com/Marina Mariya (swirl).

  Images in this book used with the permission of: © iStockphoto.com/cosmin4000 (tornado); © iStockphoto.com/Marina Mariya (swirl).

  Main body text set in Janson Text LT Std 12/17.5. Typeface provided by Adobe Systems.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Acton, Vanessa.

  Title: Vortex / Vanessa Acton.

  Description: Minneapolis : Darby Creek, [2017] | Series: Day of disaster | Summary: "What do you do when you and your family are in the middle of a road trip when a tornado hits?" Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016014145 (print) | LCCN 2016028379 (ebook) | ISBN 9781512427738 (lb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781512430950 (pb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781512427806 (eb pdf)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Tornadoes—Fiction. | Survival—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.A228 Vo 2017 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.A228 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016014145

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1-41498-23359-7/1/2016

  For Mrs. Wassermann, a champion among school librarians, who can face down the eye of any storm

  1

  The day of the disaster, Blair O’Neill actually thought her weekend was improving.

  She and her brothers had survived their mom’s wedding. Now all they had to do was get home to Michigan.

  They’d left on schedule, exactly at eight. One hour down, twelve to go. Blair’s older brother, David, was driving, as usual. Her younger brother, Logan, sat in the back—earbuds in, eyes closed. Blair was in the front passenger seat. She’d offered to drive part of the way, since she had her permit now, but no luck. “You can drive us around once you have your license,” David had told her. “For now you’ll be my copilot.” Really, the GPS was his copilot. Blair was just moral support.

  “I’m so glad to be out of there,” David said as the car’s clock blinked to 9:02 a.m.

  “I noticed,” said Blair. Her older brother had been visibly tense ever since they arrived in Hatchville, South Dakota. He’d hardly said anything to their mom. Gritted his teeth through the overdue introduction to Theo, their mom’s fiancé—now her husband. Barely smiled in the wedding photos. Didn’t dance or mingle at the reception. For a guy who’d just turned twenty-one, he’d acted a lot like a cranky uncle—more so than usual.

  “I almost wish we hadn’t come at all,” he mumbled now, his eyes on the road. “It’s not like Mom would’ve missed us.”

  Blair tried not to flinch. She was used to hearing this from David. For a long time she’d felt the same way. But it had been six years since their mom left. Weren’t they old enough to know better now? “Come on, Dave, that’s not true.” Sure, their mom was flaky, but that wasn’t the same as not caring. And she’d wanted her kids at this wedding, for sure. She’d even offered to pay for them to fly out—an offer David had refused.

  David made a dismissive noise in his throat. “Now that she’s got Theo, it’s like she’s forgotten Dad even exists. And we’re right on the edge of falling off her radar along with him. Mom only ever thinks about what she wants to do, what’ll make her happy—not about what she leaves behind.”

  From the backseat, Logan said to David, “Well, Theo’s definitely way cooler than Dad. So there’s that.”

  Blair whipped around to glare at her twelve-year-old brother. His eyes were still closed. Blair knew David wouldn’t have said so much if he’d known Logan was listening. Then again, Logan wasn’t an innocent six-year-old anymore. It had been a long time since he’d needed David to tell him bedtime stories or arrange his food in smiley faces. A long time since Logan had burst into tears at any mention of their absent mom, or thrown a tantrum whenever their dad drove off on yet another business trip. He was old enough to hear what his siblings really thought—and to be obnoxious about it. “Don’t you have some death metal to concentrate on?” she snapped.

  “It’s not death metal. It’s doom metal. Blackened doom. And Theo is, like, at least twenty percent cooler than Dad.”

  “Logan, do me a favor. Shut up until you’re past puberty.”

  Logan responded with a gesture she ignored.

  “Take it easy,” said David, out of habit.

  Blair faced forward again and stared at the road. Not an inspiring view. Just a two-lane highway, empty except for David’s car. Surrounded by basically nothing: bare fields on either side, cloud-clogged sky above, the occasional tree or fence or distant farmhouse. Blair hadn’t realized that South Dakota was so flat. It was ridiculous. “If this is what it looks like here in May, people must gouge their eyes out in the wintertime.”

  David managed a weak laugh. “Guess you won’t be moving in with Mom and Theo?”

  “Never.” She looked over at him, but he kept his eyes on the road. The smile on his face wasn’t real. It was the same smile he’d used all weekend, at all the awkward moments—the smile of a guy who expected to be let down.

  Blair didn’t know what to do about it. Except promise not to move to South Dakota.

  For the past six years, she and David had been a team, taking care of things while Dad was at work—which was most of the time. Their dad had dealt with the divorce by burying himself so far into his job that he was barely home, which meant that Blair and David had to pick up the slack. Doing the laundry, learning to cook, looking out for Logan. Looking after their dad, too, in a lot of ways. When had David gotten bitter about it? Blair wasn’t sure.

  Better question: When had she stopped being bitter? Little by little, without really noticing it, she’d forgiven her mom for leaving and her dad for never being around. David hadn’t.

  That was his choice, of course. Blair couldn’t tell him how to feel. But she wished she’d been able to enjoy her mom’s wedding. She liked Theo—and she liked her mom, honestly. If David hadn’t been so obviously miserable, Blair might’ve actually had a good time.

  She wished David would let her drive. That would give her something else to think about.

  “I don’t like the look of that sky,” David said.

  He had a point. It had been cloudy all morning but now the clouds looked heavier—darker. They hovered so low to the ground that they looked close enough to reach up and touch.

  Blair pulled out her phone. “Want me to check the forecast?”

  “Yeah. Maybe put the radio on too. See if we can find a local weather station.”

  Blair had already pulled up her weather app. “Hold on—my phone still thinks I’m in Michigan.”

  She plugged in Hatchville, South Dakota. They were already an hour east of her mom’s home, but it was the only decent-sized town in the area. Blair wasn’t even sure anything else would show up on a map.

  The phone’s screen flashed with warning icons. “Whoa, there’s a tornado watch—for, like, the entire state.”

  “Did you say tornado watch?” asked Logan. Apparently he’d paused the blackened doom.

  “Just a watch, not a warning,” David said quickly.
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  “What’s the difference?”

  “A watch just means conditions are right for a tornado to form,” Blair told him. “A warning means a tornado’s actually been spotted.” Tornadoes weren’t common where the O’Neills lived. But as an outdoor lifeguard last summer, Blair had gotten a crash course in weather safety. And she’d heard her mom’s stories. Five years of living in Tornado Alley had made her mom an expert.

  “Cool,” said Logan. “Wake me if there’s a warning. I’m gonna take a nap.”

  David’s hands had tightened on the wheel. “Turn on the radio, Blair.”

  Blair hit the AM button on the dashboard. She didn’t even have to scan channels. A staticky voice was in the middle of a weather report.

  . . . and as far east as Mathison County. If you’re in those areas we advise you to stay indoors.

  Once again, folks, we have a major storm system moving north. There is a tornado watch in effect for much of north central Nebraska and southern South Dakota . . .

  The announcer ran through the list of affected counties again. Blair checked the GPS screen. The O’Neills were in Tate County, just east of Mathison County—right on the edge of the storm system. Off to Blair’s right, in the depths of the thick clouds, lightning flashed.

  “Sounds like the storm system’s southwest of us,” said David. He sounded calm—but he always sounded calm. Even when he was angry, he kept his voice flat and distant. The flatter and more distant, the more emotion he was holding in. “And we’re heading away from it.”

  “Sort of,” said Blair. “We’re going straight east. It’s moving north and east.”

  “We should be fine if we keep going.” Still, Blair saw the speedometer’s needle inch upward.

  The voice on the radio talked through the static . . . Line of supercells forming across south central South Dakota . . .

  Blair still remembered the statistics she’d looked up when her mom first moved to South Dakota. Only about ten percent of storms are supercells—thunderstorms with rotating air currents. And only about twenty percent of supercells produce tornadoes. Plus, most tornadoes happen in the late afternoon and evening, not in the morning. All of which meant that the O’Neills had good odds of not seeing any twisters today.

  Blair’s phone buzzed. Her mom had texted her. Weather looks bad—moving east. Are you guys near White River yet?

  Not yet, Blair texted back. But I think we’re ahead of the storm. It’s not even raining here.

  Good. Just be careful.

  You too. Tornadoes were business as usual for Blair’s mom by now. She and Theo had a hardcore storm shelter. They used it so often that Theo jokingly called it their summer home. No need for them to climb into their bathtub, like their neighbors who didn’t have basements or shelters. Hatchville had never actually been hit by a twister, though. Just plenty of watches, warnings, and near misses.

  Another flash of lightning, high up in the dense mass of clouds off to the right. Blair squinted.

  Those clouds . . . they looked as if they were slowly rotating.

  “Um, Dave?” Blair tried to keep her voice neutral. For years, she’d copied him in a lot of ways, but she’d never quite mastered his keeping-it-together tone. “I think we should pull off the highway at the next town. We don’t want to get caught in this.”

  David looked doubtful. “It’d probably be best if we just keep going. We should be out of range pretty soon.”

  Blair bit her lip. Was she imagining it, or was the churning motion becoming more distinct? Only twenty percent of supercells produce tornadoes.

  But she kept her eyes glued to the sky. Five minutes . . . ten minutes . . . until, in the center of the slow-turning cloud mass, she saw something new.

  A narrow finger of gray-black vapor, twisting downward.

  “Dave, that’s a funnel.” Blair’s voice spiked with fear. “That’s an actual funnel.” Instinctively, she grabbed the handle of the passenger door, just for something to hold on to.

  The spiraling upside-down cone was growing by the second—reaching toward the ground.

  “Okay, okay, don’t panic.”

  Fair enough. That was step one of surviving any crisis. Good start. But what next?

  Fragments of warnings and tips rattled around in Blair’s head: things she’d learned from her lifeguard training, from talking to her mom, from her own Internet research. Do not take shelter in a vehicle. Do not take shelter under an overpass. Do not try to outrun a tornado. Get inside. Stay inside.

  “We need to get off the road, Dave!” They had no cover out here. This land couldn’t have been any flatter if someone had bulldozed it. And the car would offer no protection against a twister’s massive wind power.

  “Okay, see where the nearest town is.”

  Blair glanced at the car’s GPS. It showed her nothing but the dot of her brother’s car and the east-west line of the road. She pulled up a map on her phone. “Twenty miles away. It’s called Aura.”

  “Oh, yeah—I saw a sign for it, a ways back. We need to stop for gas soon anyway. We can make a stop in Aura. And if the sky still looks bad at that point, we’ll wait there until this blows over. But that funnel might not even touch down—and even if it does, it might not come our way. We need to stay calm, Blair.”

  Easy for you to say, she almost snapped. Then she saw his hands: knuckles white on the wheel. He was as freaked out as she was. But he was trying to focus, trying to plan their next move. Just like he’d done every day for the past six years.

  Blair breathed out. “Okay. I’ll look up what’s in Aura—see what businesses are closest to the highway. There’s probably a convenience store or someplace like that—someplace we can duck into until we’re sure the coast is clear.”

  David nodded approvingly. “Good idea.”

  Blair enlarged the map on her phone screen, found a gas station located right off the highway, and plugged its address into the car GPS. By the time she looked back out the window, the funnel was hovering much closer to the ground. Wisps of brown dust and dirt swirled up from the earth, rising to meet the twister.

  “Logan,” she said over her shoulder. Her voice wavered, but only a little. “You might want to wake up now.”

  “Wha . . . why?”

  “Look out the window. To your right.”

  A moment later, Logan yelled, “Whoa! I gotta get a video of this!” Blair looked back at him. He was holding up his phone, pointing it at the tornado.

  The funnel had made contact with the ground now. The mini-cloud of dirt and dust at its base was growing. “Dave, it’s touched down,” Blair told her older brother, whose eyes were still glued to the road in front of them. “It’s the real thing.” And she wasn’t sure yet, but . . .

  “Wow, that is close,” said Logan.

  Now she was sure.

  Blair’s chest tightened. “It’s coming our way!”

  2

  “GUYS—” yelped Logan. “It’s actually moving toward us! It’s coming right at us!”

  “We noticed!” Blair snapped.

  “It’s moving fast!”

  “Go, Dave!” Blair stopped trying to keep her voice level. “Go, go, go!”

  “I’m going!”

  Blair felt the car speed up, but it didn’t seem to make a difference. The tornado was bearing down on them. With each second, it filled more and more of the view from Blair’s window.

  “We’re almost to Aura,” David said.

  Blair heard—and felt—the wind pick up. Rain started battering the car. David switched on the windshield wipers and kept a tight grip on the wheel. Blair could tell he was struggling to keep the car from swerving.

  Even the voice on the radio sounded urgent now. Blair heard blips of information through the static.

  . . . reports of multiple touchdowns in Mathison and Tate counties . . . take shelter . . . very dangerous situation . . . tornadoes on the ground . . .

  Logan had stopped filming. He seemed to be looking up something
on his phone. “We need to take shelter in a ditch!” he shouted.

  So now he was taking this seriously? Blair twisted around to look at him. “Do you see a ditch? Tell me where you see a ditch!”

  “We have to find low ground!”

  “There is no low ground! This whole area is completely flat! There’s nowhere to take shelter!”

  “We can’t outrun that thing!” Logan yelled. “It’s right on top of us!”

  “I know!” she yelled back.

  The realization hit her in the gut, then traveled up to her throat, burning in her mouth like vomit. We’re not going to make it to Aura.

  The rain was coming down in a thick, slanted curtain. The road in front of them became a blur. Blair felt the car losing traction, sliding on the slick concrete. David slowed down, clearly afraid of spinning out if he drove too fast.

  Then, a huge tree branch slammed into the car. A spider-web of cracks shot across the windshield.

  Before Blair could even scream, the branch was gone—blown away from the car as fast as it had been blown toward it.

  Blair curled up in her seat, knees tucked against her chest, hands over her face. “Dave, stop! Just stop! You can’t—”

  Every side window in the car shattered at once.

  No time to react. Glass showered over Blair. She shrieked, more from shock than pain, but the howling wind drowned out the sound she made. She felt her ears pop.

  David was shouting at the top of his lungs—loudly enough that Blair easily heard him through the vacuum in her ears.

  “Are you guys okay? Are you guys okay?”

  The car had stopped. The windshield wipers—one warped, one mostly gone—swept back and forth with a high-pitched scraping noise. The rain was still coming down—coming through the broken windows now, stinging as it hit Blair’s skin. Shards of glass dusted her whole body. She saw a few small scratches on her arms but didn’t feel them. “I’m okay,” she croaked. “Logan?”

  She turned to look at the backseat. Logan stared at her, stunned. “I think my phone is gone.”