Camp Idol

Episode 14

Suddenly recalling in perfect clarity his deep, green eyes, his wet hair, his protective arms, one memory led into another, and Cori was soon reliving her experience of waking up next to Nicky that morning.

Cori shook her head as if she could fling the memory from her just as she had done with the spider, but her hug with Nicky U stubbornly clung onto her brain.

"Well, enjoy your memories," Cori told herself at last. "It's all you have. Memories and pictures in the magazines. Ugh!" she groaned, now remembering her magazine that was still somewhere back at Miracle 10's camp. "Great. I'm leaving here with even less Miracle 10 than I came here with," she laughed lowly at the sad irony, and with another sigh, continued to wait out the rain.

And wait.

And wait.

Even more unlike her previous stay in the makeshift storm shelter, the rain refused to let up. To the contrary, it continued to pour harder and harder, all the while growing colder and colder, darker and darker, and scarier and scarier.

"I hope this shed is sturdy," Cori began to worry as the howling winds shook the walls. Maybe it was because she was now alone, or maybe she had formerly been too preoccupied to notice, but the current storm seemed much stronger than the one before. "It didn't storm this hard the last time, did it?" she tensely tried to recall the details of the previous downpour, but all she could summon was the heart-racing anxiety of being trapped with Nicky.

In her nervousness of being stranded with the world-famous boy, she had failed to notice much of the weather- but now that she thought about it, surely it had been a pretty thunderous storm, too- and yet, she had never once given pause to fear. Besides the expected anxiety of being around such a gentleman, something about Nicky had always made her feel at ease; safe even.

Now, however, there was no feeling of security. The wind continued to roar. The rain continued to beat the roof.

"What if there's a tornado?" Cori panicked as the walls rumbled with a boom of thunder. "What do I do?" she looked around helplessly. "What do I do?" she repeated as another bolt of lightning crackled close by.

"AHHH!" Cori screamed, dropping to the ground between the logs, not even caring if there were any spiders.

For what felt like an eternity, Cori remained curled up in her tornado-drill position, coldly and fearfully shivering to the bone.

"When I said it was over, I didn't mean everything was over!" she cowered in a ball, listening hard for any sounds of an approaching natural disaster.

However, after an amount of time to which she was unsure, the booming outside began to subside, leaving only the booming in her own chest.

Cori breathed deeply, trying to become as calm as the storm now was.

"It's passing," she told herself, closely noting the lessened trickle of rain drops on the roof, but still shaking from the frightening ordeal, she remained planted to the dirt floor.

"Okay," she exhaled. "It's okay."

Closing her eyes and taking in yet another large inhalation, Cori finally managed to stop her trembling.

"It's done," she said, looking at her hands to check that they were no longer quivering. "It's okay," she said again, finally, and carefully, using a nearby log to boost back to standing.

Fine-tuning her ears to the sounds of the remaining drizzle above, Cori slowly became confident that the worst part of the storm had truly passed. The only noises now were the gentle drip of the left-over raindrops and a soft wooing of the wind.

Cori let out a sigh of extreme relief, her fear melting away like the rain she could hear now streaming down the outer walls of the shed.

However, before she could get too comfortable in her relaxation the shed door began to quake.

"Oh, no!" Cori's panic returned with full force as, she was sure, the storm was now too.

Another gust of wind whistled around the building and Cori watched in wide-eyed terror as the wooden door continued to rattle violently- and then, it ripped open.

Without a thought, Cori instantly collapsed back into her bundle of fear on the ground, shaking all over again.

With the door now open, Cori felt a chilly, hair-raising breeze, and the sounds of the wind and sprinkling rain seemed to magnify as they echoed throughout the shed.

Convinced she was about to be swept away by a twister, Cori braced herself among the firewood, but when nothing happened, she finally squinted up into the doorway.

The rain was trickling lightly, and a fog was swirling around the ground, the door frame- and something else.

Cori gasped.

Someone was standing in the doorway.