Seafoam //Completed//

Chapter 27

It came out of nowhere. Hurricane Mathew. It came out of nowhere, but it was a long time coming, the news said. It came out of nowhere because Lulu wasn't paying attention. Luckily, the town had only been at the very edge of the storm, but being as unprepared as they were, four lives were lost when the storm hit. A tree had fallen on a nursing home and four elderly had suffered the consequences. Sunday night the town gathered to mourn those who had passed and by Monday, new life had been breathed into the sleepy beach town.

School resumed quickly. The town had pulled together in a surprising show of comradery and worked tirelessly to clean up the ruins of the fallen building. So by Thursday, students were already roaming the patched up halls. Since the gym and the cafeteria were gone, students were eating lunch in their fourth period classes and gym had become independent study. Portables were donated and efficiently installed at the back of the school to replace classrooms destroyed by the storm and classes were merged, doubling the amount of students in some of her classes. Lulu felt sorry for her teachers but felt a faint swell of pride for her little town that managed to pull itself up by the bootstraps and work through their tragedy.

Lulu, Matty, Ava, and Michael, along with a large portion of her classmates, volunteered to help clean up the school. She'd found the rented dress in the boys locker room, and returned it, and she'd managed to recover her purse and cell phone under the rubble of the gym. Efforts were still being made with the felled houses, including Lulu's, and Matty's parents were beginning to suspect something more was going on when her father didn't turn up at the house or in any of the hospitals. In the meantime, Lulu ignored their shared looks of doubt whenever she dodged a question regarding her father's whereabouts.

At school, the administration was choosing to overlook the fact that half the school was missing and continued almost as if nothing happened. Other than the pseudo inspirational assembly held in the auditorium about overcoming obstacles and triumphing over adversity, everything was the same as it was. Even Miss Denisov still wanted to keep Lulu and Zac for detention on Friday after class until Matty managed to convince her they had suffered enough being stuck during the storm at school. He claimed that an all-night detention session in each other's presence was punishment enough to cure Lulu of ever being disrespectful again. Zac looked rather amused the whole time Matty was talking but chose to stay quiet.

When their teacher begrudgingly relented, leaving them alone in the classroom, Zac went up to Matty.

"Hey, man. Thanks for that," he said, stretching out his hand slightly to the right of where Matty stood.

To Lulu's surprise, mild mannered Matty, ignored Zac's hand and shrugged. "I didn't do it for you, obviously."

Zac let his hand drop to his side, his brow furrowed slightly. "It's nice to know Lulu has someone that cares so much about her."

"Is it?" Matty crossed his arms over his chest. "Nice to know, I mean. What's it to you if she does or doesn't?"

"Matty!" Lulu was shocked to see him trying to pull off such a ridiculous display of machismo.

"I thought you couldn't stand her," he continued. "In fact I distinctly remember you deliberately trying to make her life miserable on an almost daily basis."

"Wow. Is this what you've been telling him, Lulu? That I make your life miserable?" he sounded hurt.

"No, of course not! Matty stop. Let's go." She pulled on his arm to try to get him to budge, thankful when he did.

"You're a real piece of work, dude." Zac called from behind them. "Now I'm convinced I did the right thing when I talked Gemma out of being with you."