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The Secret Storm

By Peggy Trotter

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Chapter One
Stormi Zobroski ignored her mother’s voice at the door and gripped the next stud in her tongue. “Forty-three.”
“What are you doing in there? Get out. I need to use the john.”
The clank of the metal stud clinked against the side of the glass jar. Don’t dump it. Smallest vanity ever. And grungiest. Eyebrow studs were history. Nose, top lip, and ear studs gone, too. Bingo. Face cleared.
The door rattled. “You hear me?”
“I need a couple of minutes.” She lifted her torn tank and made quick work of removing the three remaining studs beneath her clothing. Several hundred dollars were represented in the mound of metal in the jar.
Finished. Stud naked.
Her lips twitched as she met her own eyes in the chipped mirror. Those green/blue/gray eyes seemed to have such an issue picking one color or another. She’d always despised the color of her eyes. Blue the color of a June sky would have been much better. Or violet, deep iris purple, so captivating. Nope. She had…tealish muck.
Focus on the task.
She fingered the stubble above her ear and stroked the jagged rainbow Mohawk that had become her signature look. Blue, red, yellow. Clown hair. Not washed in six months. At one time, she’d been proud of that.
The dreadlocks resisted the wide-tooth plastic comb like a toddler in a muscle-seized fit. Tears collected in her transfixed eyes as she forced the knots from her hair. Strands stretched and popped, creating a multi-colored ball in the dirty sink.
When the locks freed, she parted and combed it straight down. She grabbed the dye box from the back of the toilet and examined the color. It was as close as she could get to her natural blond.
With the scissors, she lopped off the stringing ends, finishing with hair about three inches long. More needed to come off, but she wanted to hide the shaved sections above her ears. Plus, time was limited. This was a start.
The dye covered all vestiges of her multi-colored mop. She slicked it down. Now, the wait. She hardly recognized the creature in the mirror. Loud banging sounded at the door.
“Get out of there.”
Stormi pulled the door open. “Sorry.”
Her mother pulled back, eyes running over Stormi’s face and hair. “Finally got rid of all that git-up? About time. Get out. I’m about to pee my pants.”
Better not to confront. Stormi walked through her mother’s bedroom.
“You better not get that stuff all over this bathroom.” The door slammed.
“Yes, Mother.”
The door whipped open, her mother’s features thunderous. “And if you think I’m buying that subservient sass, think again.”
Stormi clenched her jaw and kept walking. She gained the living room, turned right, and marched across the dipping floor of the kitchen, through the back porch, and into her small sanctuary. Nothing more than a shed linked to the house as an afterthought. She shut the oversized door.
Why had she come home? She glanced around at two twin beds and the metal rods, hanging from chains, filled with clothes. Nothing was hers anymore. Mother hadn’t wasted much time getting rid of her stuff. True, she’d been officially gone seven years, four to college and three on her own earning her doctorate. Still, shouldn’t there be something left?
She rubbed her chilled hands together and headed straight for her phone. No message from Alan, and she refused to text him till the cleansing deeds were done. The outside door slammed, and Stormi breathed a sigh of relief. Mom off to another card party.
The car door sounded, and Stormi rose to return to the bathroom to complete her task. Out the kitchen door window, Mother’s sky blue car pulled away. The tenseness in her body eased. After a steamy shower, she emerged, rubbed the fog from the mirror with a towel, and looked full on her reflection.
That same old insecure, rebellious teenager stared her straight in the eye. Only older and less rebellious. And wiser. Much wiser. Her fingers probed the pierced knobs, wondering how long before they disappeared. She flipped up the hair and assessed the stubble. Nothing but time could repair that.
She applied a little gel and dried her hair, the hot air burning the bald spots. Well, not necessarily pretty, but better. Back at her phone in her room, she sent Alan a text. Well, it’s done.
She played with what was left of her hair, trying to get a good look of herself in the small rectangular mirror of her make-up case. Her phone flashed.
Done what?
She sank onto the bed, typing with her thumbs. Hair-blond, metal-gone.
Not what it’s about, he returned. Alan, ever the pastor.
4 me it was.
Then-congrats. But study.
Stormi’s eyes went to the Bible sitting on the other bed. Have been. And will. No going back.
She tossed the phone on the pilled brown blanket that served as a bedspread and stepped over to the other bed to grab her Bible. The wind blew through the narrow window sending the navy satin curtain dancing into the air. The one thing she loved about this room. Two windows exactly opposite of each other in the rectangular space. Perfect crosswind.
She settled beneath the window and looked out on the neighbor’s big house with its long porch, pew snugged against the wall, inviting one to rest. The window’s low position allowed her to set her chin on the wooden sill. Memories rushed in. Not all good. Most not. She reached back and grabbed the phone.
Trust God to lead you.
Stormi smiled at the text screen. Long distance social media conversion. Someday she hoped to meet up with her old high school classmate again. Oh, how she’d tortured him. Meanness, just plain meanness. He, a straight-laced Christian all the way. Never wavered. Now he pastored and she…a new creature.
The Bible flopped open in her lap where the bookmark lay. Second Corinthians chapter five. Her finger whisked down the column to verse 17. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.
The breeze wafted in, sending the glossy curtain across her face. She swiped it aside smoothly from her unstudded face. Indeed the old had passed away.
***
Concrete floor, two parking spaces for cars, a bathroom, a countertop, and a fireplace. What had the previous owner been thinking? The old garage establishment had been transformed into somewhat of a living space. Still, the two large roll-up doors were a little unsightly, not to mention drafty, though that wouldn’t matter until winter advanced a bit more.
Yet Stormi counted her blessings that the previous residents had enclosed a toilet, sink and shower, and put in kitchen cabinets as well as a large bar with stools. She had the basics, at least. But better still? Cheap. No more living with Mother and her demands. Her phone buzzed on the countertop to the side of her only door. The back door.
She rolled her eyes when she peered at the number. Speaking o’ the devil. Mother. Ignore her again and face greater wrath? No, thank you. Stormi pushed the button.
“Hello.”
“You picked a fine time to move out. Leave it to you. Always thinking of yourself.”
Stormi wiped imaginary crumbs from the cool countertop. “What’s going on, Mom?”
“You. The house is a wreck. I need you here. I can’t do this all on my own, you know.”
“I cleaned the house before I left.”
Her mother breathed an impatient sigh into the phone. “That was two weeks ago.”
Stormi rotated the bottom of the phone toward the ceiling and closed her eyes to count to ten. Why couldn’t her mother be normal? Like, How are you?, How’s the move going?, or I miss you. Etc. Ridiculous to expect that now. “I told you I was leaving.”
“What good does that do me? You owe me. Three weeks of free rent should mean something.” Her voice slanted into familiar cutting sarcasm. “Obviously it doesn’t.”
She could imagine her mother, planning her latest card party or bingo extravaganza, and it was tempting to explain that if she were healthy enough for those events, she could do a little laundry. Stormi bit both lips to keep it from spilling forth. Honor. Honor.
“I’m sorry the house is a mess. I can try to find someone to clean it for you. I’m sure it wouldn’t cost too much to have someone stop in once a week, and I could help pay for it―”
Swear words met Stormi’s ears. “Oh, you. You think I want a stranger in here doing what my daughter ought to do? Forget you. I’ll call Kim. She’s more like my real daughter than you ever were anyway.”
The phone slammed in her ear. Stormi gave a great sigh. If she had a dollar for every time her mother’s boyfriend’s daughter trumped her as a model offspring, she could have paid a maid for her mother for a year. She ran both hands in a routine pattern over her face. Brows, bridge, nose, lip. Then a swipe down both ears. Nodules still very much there. She pushed away the mother-guilt that had started to settle. More of her stuff still waited in the Saturn Ion to grace her new abode.
She ran her hand through the short hair over her ears and mentally calculated it to be slightly less than an inch. Good. Soon she could get a cut and brush away the dull straw hair she’d dyed several weeks back. Everything new. Away with her mother’s narcissistic shame. New job, new town, new goals, new life.
At the car she dragged out several more boxes of clothes and knick-knacks she couldn’t part with. Back inside she piled them beside her college air sofa and air chair in front of the fireplace. She lifted one side of her mouth. Nice combination. Blow-up furniture and a fireplace. One spark and whoosh.
She set up two TV trays and plunked her laptop on one and pressed the on button. With screwdriver in hand, she re-attached the back to her desk chair and gave a sigh of accomplishment when she slid it under the small table. Almost like home. Actually, better than home.
She turned and surveyed the rest of the thirty-by-thirty enclosure. Lots more space. She could actually park the car inside. Her snort lit up the air. Rich. Her, on a blow-up sofa in front of a roaring fireplace, with her Ion in the background. Could be worse. She could be at Mother’s.
Better check on her podcast and finish it. Contemplations about what to do with the rest of her house would wait. Shakespearean Studies would not. Her students would truly have an excuse not to sign in and complete the newest assignment. Besides, how would she pay for her new garage if DeLong University fired her?
She glanced behind her at the far white wall. Appropriate for a background. The box near her feet yielded her books, syllabus, and notes. Time to load up chapter six.
Once she filed her presentation, she fetched her walking shoes from the box near the door. Next, donning her heavy coat and topping her head with a turquoise beanie, she stepped out her back door and circled around the left where her faithful car waited. Drawing in a deep breath of chilled air, she decided to walk.
She hit the sidewalk at full throttle and had to tone down the speed on the downslope towards town. The bay greeted her around the corner, and she slowed to soak in the ambiance of the small fishing village of Stone Haven. Dove Harbor stretched wide with several fishing boats lining the weathered docks. Wooden stairways littered the sheer rock face of the bank.
The first dock, one farthest from the mouth of the bay, drew her attention. Ten men lined a rough-cut table filled with fish and hacked away, flinging bloody parts into the water. They passed the carcass down a line until it was reduced to a headless, gutless piece of meat in the cooler at the end. The smell of rotting fish, even in the cold air, made her turn her face away. Never had been a seafood fan. Yet here she was. Go figure.
Her phone buzzed again. Her sister.
“Yeah?”
“Mom’s driving me crazy. You need to get home and find out what’s wrong with her. I can’t take it anymore.”
Stormi pushed the phone underneath her beanie to hear better, although certain she didn’t want to. “ShaVonn, I’m eighteen hours away.”
Silence. “I thought you lived with Mom?”
“I told you I was moving out.”
“Where are you?”
“In Stone Haven.” Why did her sister never pay attention to what she told her?
A tisk and a huff of air. “Stone Haven? Why there of all places? Isn’t that like in New Hampshire?”
Stormi wiggled her nose which had turned frigid. “We’ve already discussed this.”
“You always leave me with her. She’s uber demanding. The constant nagging will kill me. I just know I’ll die before she does.”
The wind gusted and caught Stormi’s breath, and she ducked across the road against a brick building to block it. “I had to start over, you know that. God—”
“Yes, I’ve got it. God changed your life. Etcetera and so-on. Meanwhile, Mother is pushing me over the edge.”
At the corner a door beckoned. She paused in the shelter to finish the conversation. “I’m sorry, ShaVonn. I’ll try to help out. You know there’s no pleasing her unless you are at her beck and call every moment. She’s capable of cleaning her own house and taking care of herself.”
ShaVonn went on her usual cruise through hopeless lane, a familiar route of recalling every misstep Mom and Dad made for the last twenty-five years. “I know. Yes, I remember.”
“I really want to move to the Bahamas so I never have to see her again. I’m sick of the guilt.”
“I’m sorry.” Stormi hoped ShaVonn had reached the end of her bitter stream.
“You don’t know what it’s like to be the eldest.”
“True.” She gripped the building. Would that be a helpful statement or one to set her off again?
“Well, I’m personally jealous you’re a thousand miles away. I’ll go over there and appease her. I’ll have to apologize for something I didn’t do just to make her happy.”
Stormi closed her eyes. “Whatever you think is best.”
Why? Why go over there? She could feel her insides scream, but she stifled it. ShaVonn usually buried herself by constantly trying to placate their mother which only exacerbated her neediness.
“I gotta go, bye.” ShaVonn’s clipped tones barely registered before the line went dead.
Stormi dropped her arm to her side, tempted to bang the phone against the brick until nothing but dust lay in her hand. Instead, she turned and pushed through the glass door of Calvert’s Grill. Inside was darkened with lights hanging over a U-shaped bar in the middle. Had she missed the tavern sign?
The few hunched patrons at the bar grew still and stared at her. She pulled her mittens off and approached. It smelled of fish and beer. Shocker. But something else drifted in the air.

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