Flash Flood

Roger was supposed to be looking for a Black-throated Green Warbler, but instead, his binoculars kept drifting over to where Kiki and her friends were horsing around, giggling and laughing while filming TikTok videos.

The birdwatching app that Roger used had sent out an alert that a flock of Black-throated Green Warblers had been spotted a few miles west on their annual spring pilgrimage through the Midwest, which is what had gotten Roger to log off his computer and rush down to Humboldt Park.

With its vibrant olive-green back, bright yellow face, and distinct black throat, the Warbler would've been an outstanding addition to his personal tally, but it was precisely its green coloring that made it so hard to spot through the foliage. That, plus the irresistible urge to keep looking over to see what Kiki and her friends were doing.

Roger knew it was wrong to spy on someone, but even an intellectual like himself found it hard to fight the biological instinct that all teenage boys have to look at a pretty girl. And Kiki Roberts wasn't just pretty - she was the most beautiful girl in school with a thin, petite build and long, straight hair that rippled as she walked down the hallway.

Of course, he wasn't the only one who felt that way - every girl wanted to be her friend, and every guy wanted to date her. Roger had never even spoken to her, but he'd watched her from afar many times, mesmerized by her confidence and grace.

Unlike a lot of the popular girls, Kiki wasn't stuck up at all. In fact, she was so cool that she had declined joining the cheer squad and yet was still the unofficial queen of Westmoreland High.

Who else could get away with that but Kiki Roberts? Yet it was precisely her popularity and beauty that made her totally out of his league. That's why he was standing deep in the shadows of the treeline, watching through binoculars rather than taking advantage of the serendipitous fact that they were both in the same place at the same time to go and talk to her.

Just then, a hard gust of wind hit him, and Roger thumbed over to his weather app, which was now warning that there was a 50% chance of a thunderstorm in the next hour. Heavy rains weren't unusual at that time of year, but a glance up at the sky revealed no ominous storm clouds, so Roger decided to give spotting the Warbler another chance before packing it up and heading home.

Using his binoculars, he began scanning through the uppermost branches one by one, looking for that telltale flash of yellow, but all he saw were a couple of robins and ordinary sparrows. For a quick second, he thought he saw something colorful way up high near the crown, but when he zoomed in, he saw it was just a plastic bag that had been carried there by the currents.

Disappointed, Roger felt his body begin to swivel, and the next thing he knew, he was watching Kiki and her friends again. They were gathered near the gazebo, Kiki out in front of course, doing some kind of coordinated dance to music that he couldn't hear. She looked absolutely fabulous in a pair of jean shorts and a bandeau top that showed off her exquisite physique.

A shudder ran through him as he wished he was filming this instead of looking at her through his binoculars. That would be a step too far, but that didn't stop him from imagining how much he'd love to watch that video over and over in the comfort of his bedroom. Everything about her turned him on so much, and he began to seethe with frustration that he would never have a chance to go out with her.

Roger's father had repeatedly assured him that the old days when only jocks got the good-looking girls were over, but it simply wasn't true. The cool guys at Humboldt were either football players, basketball players, musicians in a band, or had rich parents who would let you host parties on the weekend. And what did Roger have? Nothing that girls wanted, that's for sure.

He had his comic books, his love of chess, and his hobbies like birdwatching and encyclopedic knowledge of obscure historical facts, which didn't count for jack squat amongst his peers.

Even Sean Grady, who was pretty nerdy himself, could do magic tricks and tell funny jokes to impress girls. All Roger had was a perennial case of shyness, which is probably why he was wandering around in the park looking for a bird instead of hanging out with friends like normal people did.

As he sat down to get a more comfortable position to continue watching Kiki, he began to muse about which friends of hers was going to be the lucky one chosen to post the video on TikTok.

Kiki was so cool that she didn't even use social media, saying it was "harmful for her mental health," but that certainly didn't stop her friends from taking every opportunity possible to get a selfie with her or do a dance with her for their feeds.

Roger inwardly cringed as he realized that he was going to go home soon and then spend the next hour searching through every one of her friend's Tiktok channels until he found the video they were recording. Or maybe they'd post it on Instagram or Snapchat or whatever other app was cool at the moment, meaning he'd have to spend hours just to get another glimpse at her, which was pretty darn pathetic.

But Kiki was just so pretty and so energetic, her smile enlarged in the view screen of his binoculars making his heart pound in his chest. He'd probably die if she ever looked at him like that in real life. Even her teeth seemed to gleam as she grinned and waved her arms around to the rhythm of the song.

But his idle musings were interrupted when another powerful gust of wind shook the trees. Roger glanced down and saw that the chances of a thunderstorm had been upgraded to 80%, and the county had put out a flash flood warning for low-lying areas. Looking up, he saw that the sky to the west had turned black.

Logically, he knew it was time to head back home. But how could he give up this unique opportunity to watch Kiki up close like that? It wasn't like he'd probably ever get another chance.

She was always mobbed by friends and hangers-on at school, and he'd never crossed paths with her in public before except the one time he'd seen her at the grocery store shopping with her mother and two younger sisters.

And so Roger stayed right where he was, accepting the fact that he was a pathetic little pervert. But Kiki was in a public place, and he wasn't recording her, so it was just going to have to be something he'd live with.

And if nothing else, the scene before him would provide some lively inspiration for his imagination during those lonely Friday nights when everyone else was out having fun instead of playing chess online against 60-year-old alcoholics from the former Soviet Union.

It was only when the first hard drops of rain began to fall, causing Kiki and her friends to shriek and scatter, that Roger realized he'd stayed too long.

The storm was upon them, and it turned out to be far more destructive than he ever could've imagined.