As if she knows I’m entertaining thoughts about her, a creak of the planks of wood behind me and a clink of a beer bottle signal her arrival. ‘Probably an EF3,’ she says, referencing the Enhanced Fujita tornado damage scale that only two kinds of people would casually drop: Meteorology majors and Tornado Alley-ans.

Her voice is rough, but it’s softened from earlier. ‘Almost decimated a town, but there’s still worse storms out there. Isn’t that sick?’

‘Sick’s a kind word for it.’ I turn to meet her quickly reddening, puffy eyes. This is the circle of life in Oklahoma, and seeing it this plainly, it’s obvious May’d resent me for leaving. For leaving everyone behind and saving my own skin from this. Like I said, she’s entitled to every word she said earlier. I can’t be anyone’s saviour when I wasn’t around for the past five years. It’s obvious she’d hate me because her junior year, the season it all went sour …

‘Last year, it cleared Pontiac. Just about fifteen minutes from here. My uncle and aunt’s … I’d be shocked if you saw the news from up in New England.’ Her tone is one of bitterness, each word a sting, but she sits down beside me anyway, nursing her PBR with two hands. ‘My dad’s youngest brother and his wife.’

‘Did they …’

‘Saying they’re fine now is probably an overstatement, Colt.’ She purses her lips, blinking back semblances of emotion. ‘Sure, they survived it. But all their stuff, their cattle, their equipment, gone. The way back from something like that …’ Hunched over, perched on the porch, all the fire in May’s eyes has fizzled out, replaced by a sense of helplessness. ‘My aunt cried for days because the storm took her old 4-H steer’s heifer. And maybe people say that crying over things like that is dumb because at least you’re alive. But when you lose everything you own? The kind of scared you feel? That’s like nothing else. It shook our family to the roots. Then we thought we were next. I couldn’t play right. My head was somewhere else. I mean, who gives a shit about lacrosse when your house could get ripped out of the ground tonight? Tomorrow?’

She slides her beer to one side, the glass scraping the uneven wood planks. ‘They called the first storm “The Widowmaker”. Like every tornado name in public media: shitty, crass and insensitive. And accurate. Clocked the highest death toll of any twister in the state in the past ten years. Auntie’s farm was fifteen minutes away from us, Colt, fifteen. And the fuckers didn’t stop. They kept coming, county after county after county. News said it was an epidemic.’