Read Online Tempest (#1 Destroyers Series) by Holly Hook - Free Book Online

with dreadlocks waved his hands in the
air. “My new car’s got a huge crack across the windshield now.”
    Mr. Deville bowed his head until the class
quieted. “Sorry to hear about all this. Hopefully your school year
will go a lot smoother than the last week. Now I’m going to—you
there in the front?”
    Janelle had stuck her hand in the air without
even thinking about it. Her cheeks heated as twenty-eight other
sets of eyes landed on her. It was bad enough being the new person
in class. Now she was embarrassing herself on top of it.
    At last, a question popped out of her lips.
“Yeah. I moved to Florida right when the hurricane was happening,
and I was wondering if they can skip over some houses the way
tornadoes do. Because my house didn’t take any damage at all while
everyone else on my street did. Since you teach Geography, I was
thinking you might know.” The desperation of her situation had
wormed its way under her skin in the past few days of enduring her
father's distance and waiting for Gary to turn up somewhere, so
much that it was all she could think about. She was willing to seek
answers from anyone at this point.
    Mr. Deville’s gaze stayed on Janelle for
several seconds before he answered. It was as if he was trying to
peer deeper at her motives, and wasn't sure what he was seeing.
“Hurricanes usually do their damage over a wide area, unlike a
tornado, so it’s more evened out. So I find that a little unusual.
What’s your name?”
    “Janelle.”
    The teacher leaned back onto his desk as he
studied her, but at least it wasn't the creepy type that rude woman
had subjected her to, just the friendly type of a teacher trying to
get to know his students. “Welcome to Florida. Now, if we’ll—”
    A girl in the back spoke. “Why do they give
hurricanes names?”
    Mr. Deville straightened up, showing no signs
of impatience. “Well, around sixty years ago, the World Weather
Assembly decided they needed a better way to keep track of storms.
So they invented a list of names that changes every single year.”
He eyed the entire class. “Any one of you could end up sharing your
name with one sometime in your lives. And did you know that they
originally wanted to use only women’s names on hurricanes?" He
smiled at the girl who had asked. "The plan fell through when one
of the Assembly members threw a fit over it and demanded that both
men and women’s names be used. So it’s been that way from day
one.”
    Janelle liked Mr. Deville--he seemed like one
of those nice, laid-back types--but he hadn’t told her anything she
hadn’t read online twelve thousand times. If she didn’t get any new
info by the end of the week, she’d have to give up on this search
and wait for the Bahamas trip, provided she'd even find anything
out there. That, and pray that scary woman didn’t come back.
    She hoped for a break and some time to think
in Chemistry, but unfortunately the teacher, Mrs. Vanderson,
cracked out an experiment ten minutes into class. She pulled a
large plastic jug filled with water from the storage closet.
    “Now, I’m going to give you a small
assignment to start off your year,” she said with a heavy twang.
“We’ll do a simple experiment so you can practice the steps and
methods you’ll be using for the real stuff. I went down to the
beach this morning and collected some ocean water. And what you’re
going to do is turn salt water into fresh water. Each table has a
bowl and a plastic cup, along with a roll of plastic wrap.”
    Janelle wasn’t sure if she’d even be able to
concentrate on that. Her birthmark itched. Ever since getting here,
it was bothering her more and more. She tugged her sleeve down,
making sure it wasn't visible to any of her classmates.
    “Work on the first day?” her pimply lab
partner asked. He ripped out a piece of notebook paper and put his
name, Donovan, on it. “That sucks.”
    “This doesn’t look like that bad of an
assignment,” Janelle said, still