Page 12 of The Snake in the Grass: The Prequel

I thought a lot of things. I could make a lot of excuses. But the truth is, I was wet, angry, and afraid; and I didn’t think my brother wanted me to find him.

So I turned away from the rain and hopped up into Wally’s pickup truck, closing the door behind me and dripping onto the rubber mats at my feet. Hesitantly, I told him, “Silas was out there. I don’t know where he went.”

“There’s no time to go looking.” Wally sounded frustrated. “There’s an abandoned Ranger station out there. Silas and I used to sneak out and drink beer there. I’m sure that’s where he was headed.”

“If you say so.” Truthfully, I was relieved to have an excuse not to go trudging out into the wilderness after my lost, angry brother. My ears were still ringing from the fall; when I reached up to press my palm against my ear, my hand came back tinted pink with blood. “He’ll be okay. He’s always been a survivor. Me, not so much.”

Wally snorted. “You can say that again. I remember that time our families tried to camp together and you nearly died and got us all killed in just one night. Now c’mon,” he flicked on his flood lights, “let’s get you on home.”

Chapter 8

Istared out the windows at the rain as Wally flicked on his phone and pulled up a playlist to feed into the speakers. Questions gnawed at me. “What happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“When you picked up Silas.” He was going slow, the wipers turned to max, the road barely visible in front of us. I shivered and rubbed my arms, leaning towards the heater like it could drive out the source of the cold. “I know something happened between you two. He’s not talking, so you’re my best bet to learn to truth.”

Wally’s hands flexed on the steering wheel once, twice. He looked like he was considering whether or not he’d have better luck out in the trees with the lightning.

“Tell me,” I urged him. “I’m his sister. If I can’t help him, who can?”

Based on the way Wally sighed, I knew I’d gotten to him. So I pushed a little harder, dug in a little more. “I just want to make sure everything is okay.”

“Nothing is okay.” He slowed down as the rain picked up in front of us, water sloshing across the road and spraying on either side of his tires. “I can’t tell ya half of what’s going on, Brenna, ‘cause I hardly understand it myself. Everything about this is...” Wally cleared his throat. “It’s different. Silas is different. The way he talks about that school you’d think going there was gonna save him.”

There was a lull in the truck cabin as both Wally and I thought about, but didn’t say, the scars Silas bore deep beneath his skin. I flexed my right hand, knuckles scraped raw, thoughts skittering about. I was afraid to think too long on what I’d done; I couldn’t bear to think of what it felt like to stare at Daddy’s expression on Silas’s face, his rage as he pushed me to the ground.

Minutes passed. The road darkened before us. Bolt of lightning came so close that they seared my vision, and the thunder shook the world around us.

Then, in the distance, I saw it.

A funnel cloud.

“Wally.”

“I see it too.” He sounded calm, centered; he was his father’s son, a salt of the earth type who plants his feet somewhere and stays, come Hell or high water. “We’re not gonna make it to your house, Brenna, so you’ll need to come stay with me and my family. We’ll make it into a tornado party.”

I nodded, throat tight.

And prayed to an undeserving god that my brother was somewhere out there, safe and whole.

As if hearing my thoughts, Wally said, “I’ve got an old radio back at the house. We can try to pick up the channel for the Ranger’s station, see if we can catch your brother. He’s probably halfway through a pack of MREs by now and drinking the last of the beer we stashed there.”

“Probably.” I gave him a wan smile. “God knows he’s survived worse.”

After a few moments, Wally said, “He wasn’t in the dorm he was supposed to be in.”

“What?” I blinked at him.

“When I picked Silas up.” Wally looked straight ahead at the road, I think not because he needed to, but because he didn’t want to look into my face as he told me. “He was supposed to be in some dorm called Hadley Hall, but he wasn’t there. Someone gave me directions and I went looking for him. He was in the girls’ dorms on the east side of campus.” Hesitantly, he added, “He was yelling at some girl. Telling her to delete a video. She kept shaking her head. I think... I think she was crying.”

“Oh.” I felt sick.

Wally continued. “He cut it out as soon as he saw me, before he did I heard him say ‘You’ll ruin everything.’ I didn’t get what it was about, but...” He trailed off. “I uh, I don’t go online much. I heard that’s where most of it is.”

Most of it.I could guess what “it” was, now that I’d heard the church girls. Fighting past my nausea, I thanked him for telling me, and let the rest of the trip to his family’s house pass by in silence.

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