“Been living here my entire life, those storms are hitting. Here, get there,” she says and hands me a card. “They’re German immigrants, built their motel chains stone by stone, we all sit them out there.”
“Amelie!” I shout as panic surges through my chest, staring at the card. I can’t, I just can’t deal with any of it anymore.
She comes with lemonade, chips and a stuffed turtle in her hand.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, as unconcerned as someone can be.
“You two had better get shelter there,” says the cashier to Amelie. “We all go there. That storm is gonna hit.”
“Thanks,” says Amelie, pays for the stuff and the gas with her black Amex, and pushes me out of the station.
Black Amex. Metal black Amex.
Something that I can focus on.
She must be rich, rich. It took my father a decade for Amex to offer him the black metal. And she has one before she even turns twenty.
Ten minutes later, we arrive at a grey, brick motel. The parking lot is filled with trucks.
“Wait here,” Amelie tells me as she gets out of the car. Her hair blows up, and she fights to even get into the reception. Meanwhile, I sit in the rattling car.
She comes back five minutes later.
Five minutes where I am alone with me an my fear.
I want to get home.
Lie on my floor with Black Matter and not entertain the idea of people for an entire week.
“Okay, good news and bad news,” she says when she hops back into the car, dripping wet from just five yards.
“They have a room, but it’s only one.”
I don’t know what to say. I can’t be with her in a room. I need to un-people. Un-her. Un-everything.
“I took it,” she continues, because look at this. She holds up her phone, showing the hurricane map.
“That’s us,” and she points right above the outskirts of the hurricane. “It grew stronger. We are staying here. It’s safe. So get out of the car and come.”
“I—“
“Out of the car, now!” she says. I just do as told. I don’t function right now. I feel like a four-year-old toddler.
Rain is pelting down on us as she walks me to the room. It’s not even nightfall, but the light outside is so dark from the nearing storm, it looks like dooming dusk. She opens the door.
“Get in,” she says harshly, “I’m getting our stuff.”
She closes the door, leaving me dripping on the carpet in the room and the wind howling outside. I stand there in the half-dark until she gets back.
When she opens the door, it flies from her hand and hits the wall with a loud bang. A bang that finally gets me back to my senses.
I move, take my stuff from her.
She closes the door with force and locks it from inside.
We both look at each other, wet as we are, and then she laughs.
“That was fun,” she says.
