Riding Out the Storm

The power cut out at 8:47, and for a few seconds the apartment held its breath. Then the refrigerator sighed into silence, and the streetlights beyond the window vanished, swallowed by the storm.

'Nice,' my little sister muttered. 'What now?' Marcy was twelve going on thirty, and she liked to pretend nothing scared her — but I could hear her fingers drumming on the countertop, tap tap tap.

'Now we improvise,' I said. I found the flashlight buried behind a stack of cereal boxes and clicked it on. A weak yellow circle wobbled across the floor. Marcy laughed in spite of herself. 'That's the saddest flashlight I've ever seen.'

We built a fort out of chairs and blankets and sat in the middle of it, telling every bad joke we could remember. Outside, the wind rattled the windows like it wanted in. Inside, the fort held. And for the first time in a long time, Marcy leaned her shoulder gently against mine and left it there.