They didn't have to evacuate the little cottage in the Village By The Sea, but this is not the vacation Mr. Helms had wanted to take with his family. Florida was not so hot this time of year, and the kids loved the idea of taking a week off from school. Even Selene had been able to join them from the middle of her senior year at the University. Mr. Helm hadn't seen his eldest daughter in nearly nine months, and now he was watching her panic in the resorts largest cottage with his wife and three younger sons adding to the fray.
"Daddy, are you sure it's safe here, the wind is blowing the trees in half," Selene was freaking out, looking at out the window with her brother.
"Hey, Steven, come check this out, that car is moving across the parking lot by itself," Selene's window partner gleefully explained.
Ok, Sammy, Mr. Helms' middle son wasn't exactly panicking, but he wasn't helping either.
Little Shelby's screaming exacerbated the whole scene. Mrs. Helms was pacing the sitting room floor with the squirming two-year-old trying to escape her arms.
"Ok, every one on the couch, and quiet!"
Sammy and Steven obeyed, but then started hitting each other.
"Separate. Now!" Mr. Helms grabbed Shelby and put him between the ten-year-old and the eight-year-old, and suddenly he was quiet.
But his parents were ready to kill them all, or each other.
Selene decided it was time to close the curtain and do something else. Watching the hurricane outside was just making her feel panicky. It was making them all panicky.
As much as she loved her parents, they didn't do well in a crisis situation. It was time to send them to their room and give them a time out before her mother's pacing drove them all crazy. And their father's yelling was just out and out annoying.
"Why don't you guys go into the back bedroom and take a time out, the boys aren't going to calm down until you do."
Mrs. Helms knew her daughter was right, and she led her husband threw the hallway to the third bedroom on the other side of the kitchen.
Mom and Dad were out of their hair, but what was she going to do with the boys?
"Want to play Battle Ship, Sammy?"
"Give me a break Sissy, I want to watch the hurricane," Sammy said, getting up from the couch. Shelby was getting squirmy and Steven looked tired.
"How about lunch?"
Shelby was probably just cranky from hunger. Steven's eyes brightened up a little.
He said, "can we make our own?"
Sammy came from the window because the answer was the difference between their mother's leftover yucky meatloaf that she had said they would eat at every meal till it was gone; or p. b. and j. sandwiches, chocolate milk, and Cheetos.
Alas the cure in any crisis; junk food. Her smile was all they needed to run down the hall with the hurricane a distant memory.
"But be quiet or Mom will come in there and make you eat the yucky meatloaf," she called after them.
The storm outside was loud enough to drown their voices once they had gotten to the kitchen. So loud that Selene almost didn't hear the knock at the door.