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The sirens wail through the night, and a gunshot from the apartment next door makes Ponyboy flinch and curl up, Dally and Johnny immediately hurrying to whisper and reassure him even though he can feel that they’re both trembling.
For weeks, the news had been going on and on about weather patterns showing the possibility of a twister that, when formed, would be on unimaginable scales. The first time Pony had seen the news on it, he laughed and joked with Dally and Johnny about how no one outside the midwest and south really knows what a tornado is. The fifth time Pony saw the news cover it, he sat down and watched it. He was a little worried, but wrote it off. The seventh time was yesterday, and he was worried. And he was right to be, because now that tornado he’d laughed at yesterday was blowing through Oklahoma like the devil on a spinning top.
Wind whips around the building loudly, and he hears another window shatter. He doesn’t know if it was the other apartment’s window, but he can’t find it in himself to mind either way. He just wants to live. Dally is trembling like a leaf, and jerking like a spooked horse, which makes sense. Dally’s only lived in Tulsa for a little less than a decade, and he never had gotten used to the wail of sirens, and the way the entire earth trembles under their feet. Never gotten used to the idea that everything around him could be physically obliterated if they got unlucky. And today was unlucky, Ponyboy supposes. Dally is on Ponyboy’s left, with his arms wrapped tight around both Pony and Johnny, so Pony leans in and tucks his head under Dally’s chin while gripping Johnny’s hand tightly.
“‘S okay…We’re gonna be okay,” He mumbles, not believing himself, but hoping so anyway. Johnny lets out a shaky breath but stays silent, and Dally buries his head into Ponyboy’s hair, taking the quietest breaths possible so the two younger boys don’t hear his distress. In the distance, a scream rips through the air, mixing with the haunting whistle of the tornado to create a deadly tune. One that Ponyboy can only hope isn’t the soundtrack to their deaths. He wishes that they’d been able to get to the underground shelter in time, but they hadn’t. The tornado had arrived too quickly, too unexpectedly, so they hid in the closet and curled around each other. Bad time to be living on the seventh floor.
The ground shakes and more picture frames crash to the ground, the sound sending shivers down Pony’s spine. Johnny jolts, and Dally pulls them in tighter, muttering gruff reassurances. Pony and Johnny pretend not to hear the shake in his voice. The wind blows louder, and Pony’s eardrums pop, or at least it feels like they did. Another distant scream, the sound of shattering glass, a car alarm going off, and Pony starts to mutter all the prayers he remembered hearing in church as a little boy. Suddenly, the temperature drops, Pony’s throat gets tight, and he knows. He just knows. He pulls Johnny close as he can, and wraps his arms around him while pulling them both into Dally’s chest. Then, before they can question what he’s doing-