Dark Night

Lightning illuminated the sky off in the distance, and thirteen-year-old Julia Cannon bolted upright in bed. Looking out her bedroom window, she saw that the wind was picking up, and a rumble of thunder confirmed her suspicion that it was about to storm. She hated storms, always had, but was particularly frightened of them since a tornado had ripped through their neighborhood when she was ten, and while her own home was hardly touched, seeing many of her friends left homeless, one of them motherless, had been enough to make her anxious every time the skies looked threatening.

Another boom, this one clos