Eye of the Storm (14 page)

“I can't.” I remember the feeling of hiding under his desk. What would he have done if he'd caught me? “It's too much of a risk. I can't.”

The light in Alex's eyes clicks off. “Then you're not the person I thought you were.” He looks more sad than angry as he pushes the book back onto the shelf and walks out the door.

In the morning, I sit in my usual auditorium seat and wait for a hand on my arm or a whisper in my ear. When Van finishes a quick morning update, Risha runs to meet Tomas, and I walk to the library alone.

I upload four new meteorology and climatology texts to my DataSlate and spend the next three days reading, bookmarking, and trying to get used to being a team of one.

Ms. Walpole drops a little paper bag on my table as she walks by on one of her book-shelving missions. Oatmeal raisin cookies.

“Thanks,” I whisper when she comes by again.

She stops next to my chair. “Where's our boy?”

“He's . . . not happy with me,” is all I can muster.

“Well, he'll get over it. Have a cookie,” she says, as if it's some ordinary boy-girl thing like him having a crush on somebody else. If only. “And tell him he needs to return that rare book before people start asking questions.” She raises her eyebrows at the ceiling, and I wonder again who's listening.

I keep watching the library door after she leaves, but Alex never walks through it.

He won't even look at me the rest of the week.

Saturday's too hot to go outside, so I spend the afternoon in my room, reading.

I try writing to Mom, but it bounces back again, so I call Amelia for a video-chat instead. It's good to see her face and great to hear what everyone's doing at home, but when she asks how things are going here, I don't have much to offer. I try to explain the projects at camp, but she makes a face, and I feel like I've moved away to another planet where the language isn't even the same as it is on Earth.

Sunday morning, Dad leaves for StormSafe before it's light, and
when I come downstairs, Mirielle is packing the diaper bag. “Good morning!” She winks at me. “I thought we girls might go on a little adventure today.”

“What kind of adventure?”

“Your aunt Linda invited us to visit.” She hums a light, breezy song that seems to match the lilacs on her sleeveless blouse. I watch her tickling Remi in her bouncy chair, setting the timer to make sure Dad's dinner will be ready later, and my chest tightens.

Who was that woman on the phone? Does Mirielle have any idea what Dad's whispering to somebody else in his office late at night?

Mirielle pauses with a bottle of juice in her hand and tips her head at me. “Are you all right? I thought you'd be pleased.”

I realize my whole face is clenched up, and I force myself to relax. “Yes, it's great. Thanks.”

As we drive out of town, past the beat-up trailer parks, past the Corrections Department energy farm and an underground play center that's seen better days, I lower my window. The country roads are lined with big old maple and pine trees that have somehow survived the storms. The fields are strewn with wildflowers. I take a deep breath and sigh. “I know it's not as safe out here, but it feels . . . I don't know . . . fresher. Cleaner, somehow.”

“It's safe enough for right now. We have two DataSlates. We'll get alerts if anything changes.” Mirielle glances over at me and smiles a little. “And I know what you mean about the air. Sometimes, Remi and I go for drives when your father is at work.” She glances in the rearview mirror. “Only when the weather's quiet, of course.”

We drive through a long stretch of woods—even the trees smell different out here—and then out into a more open stretch where the trees are smaller, planted in rows.

“Are these fruit trees?” I ask.

“Mmm-hmm.” Mirielle reaches behind her to tickle Remi's foot. “Peaches mostly. Linda grows them, too.”

Around a curve, the orchards end, and finally, there's a white farmhouse. It's old, the kind you'd expect to have lots of long hallways and closets. There's a porch with big pillars and rocking chairs out front. Behind the house is an old red barn, half falling down, and a brown horse wandering around outside a stable. Next to the barn, there's a tiny farm stand that looks like someone might have nailed it together out of old barn pieces this morning. A hand-painted sign leaning against it reads:

SWEET RASPBERRIES: $12/PINT
FRESH PEACHES: $2 EACH
COMPLIMENTS: FREE

Mirielle pulls into the driveway, and I smile. This place feels like everything I remember about Aunt Linda. She comes running from the house in a flowered blouse and blue jeans and pulls me into a hug the second I'm out of the car.

“My great stars, Jaden! It's been years.” She holds me back so she can look at me. “You are your mother's daughter, aren't you?”

“Most people say I look like Dad.”

Aunt Linda's smile flickers like a lightbulb with a loose wire, but then it's back. “Well, I suppose you look like Jaden,” she says.

The horse whinnies outside the barn, and I turn.

“That Nutmeg . . . always looking for a treat.” She digs into her pocket and pulls out a few sugar cubes. “Do you want to go say hello to her before we go inside?”

“Sure.”

Aunt Linda leans in to talk quietly to Remi as I clunk down the wooden porch steps and across the grass. It's hard to imagine a person as gentle and relaxed as Aunt Linda raising someone as intense as my father. But I guess part of who you are is genetics, and when I think of Grandma Athena's fiery eyes staring out from her frame, it's easy to see her spirit alive in Dad.

The sugar cubes are rough and sticky in my palm as I step up to the split-rail fence. Nutmeg ambles over, and I climb onto the first rung to pet her on the nose.

“Hold the sugar flat on your palm,” Aunt Linda calls to me, “so she doesn't get your fingers.”

I do, and Nutmeg's warm, snuffly lips scarf it up.

I feed her my last three cubes. She sniffs my pocket, decides I'm of no more use to her, and wanders away.

“She's beautiful,” I say, joining Aunt Linda and Mirielle back on the porch.

“She's been with me a long time.” Aunt Linda holds open the door to the kitchen, and we walk into a bright yellow room with a wooden chopping block in the middle and, above it, a rack of copper
pots and pans. The wall over the sink has old wallpaper with tiny apples all in rows.

Aunt Linda serves up lemonade and peach pie, and we sit at the big wooden table, talking about camp and Mom's trip and Remi sitting up all by herself. When I finish my pie, I get up to look at the dishes displayed over the sink, all painted in bright colors.

“That's my wall of fame,” Aunt Linda says, laughing. She pulls down a coffee mug with an old guy's face painted on it. On the other side there's a short poem called “Fire and Ice.”

“Robert Frost.” She nods up at the shelf. “And there's Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. All my favorite poets. I paint their portraits on one side and a poem on the other.”

Rita Dove's not there, but the poet mugs remind me of her. “Thank you for the book.”

“You are most welcome.” Aunt Linda pulls me into a hug and looks at Mirielle. “Can you stay a while?”

Way in the distance, thunder rumbles, as if it's answering for Mirielle.
No, time to head home.

Mirielle smiles but shakes her head. “We'd better go. But we'll find time for another visit soon. I'll get Remi changed, and then we'll be off.” She picks up the diaper bag and carries Remi into the living room.

“Thanks for today,” I tell Aunt Linda, and she has no idea how much I mean it, how much I needed some plain old family love. “I wish you lived closer.”

She grins and raises her mug. “Placid Meadows is not my cup of tea, my dear. But I would love for you to visit often.”

“Me too,” I say, “but there's Dad . . .”

“Oh, I know. He's not too fond of me these days.”

“He's not too fond of anybody. Except Mirielle and Remi sometimes.” I hadn't said it before, but that's how I feel. “It's kind of like he's not
my
dad anymore.”

Aunt Linda puts a warm arm around my shoulders. “Oh, sweet Jaden,” she says. “He loves you. But you can't count on him showing it in any of the usual ways, I'm afraid. Lord knows I loved that boy when he was growing up—still do—but he wanted his mother all those years and could never have her. Not even before she died, which is the saddest thing of all. She loved her work so much, and it was always urgent-urgent-urgent. She thought she'd have plenty of time for your dad later.” She shakes her head.

In the other room, Mirielle sings to Remi, something soft in French.

“So now Dad does the same thing,” I say, “to me.”

Aunt Linda looks like she wants to argue, but she can't. She gives me a squeeze.

“All set?” Mirielle carries Remi back into the kitchen. “We'll be back soon, I promise.” I hug Aunt Linda one more time and hope Mirielle means it.

Nutmeg is at the fence when we step off the porch, probably hoping for more sugar. “Bye, girl,” I tell her, and I pat her nose. It feels like velvet in the sun, soft and warm and good.

The clouds are already closer when we pull out of the driveway. Mirielle catches me sneaking glances out the rear window.

“Not to worry,” she says. “We will be home soon. Safe and sound.”

We will be, I think. But what about Aunt Linda? What about Nutmeg, who's not protected by anything other than weathered timber once she's in the barn? How long will it be before one of these storms makes a direct hit?

The storm comes just as we're pulling into Placid Meadows and passes quickly. It's small, so I don't worry about Aunt Linda—this time.

With the sun blazing again, it's steaming hot, so after lunch we collapse on the couch with iced tea while Remi naps in her bouncy seat.

Mirielle turns on the entertainment window. “Oh good! There's ballet streaming from the National Arts Center.” Two men and two women twirl and leap through a routine in the underground theater hundreds of miles away.

Mirielle watches the dancers. And I watch Mirielle. Her face flickers between happy and sad, and I wonder if she's remembering performances of her own, back when there were real audiences all over the world.

“Do other countries do this now, too?” I ask.

She startles as if she'd been far away. With the dancers, maybe. “Do they do what?”

“Have a national arts feed instead of live performances.”

She nods sadly. “Most do. My sister in Paris says they're building a new theater there, with a safe room directly underneath. Around here, there are only tiny local dance groups. They perform in church basements mostly, community safe rooms. Your father has never wanted to go, but I'd love to see them.” Her eyes drift back to the entertainment window, where one of the men is lifting the woman high over his head. In her gleaming white dress, she looks like a seagull soaring. Mirielle sighs. “They aren't professionals, of course, but it would be lovely to see real live people dancing again.”

Watching Mirielle's eyes mist makes me clench my jaw. Dad was probably too busy at work, too busy with whoever he was talking to on the videophone, for some stupid ballet. “I'd go with you some time,” I blurt out.

She smiles. “I'd love that. I'll see what I can find.”

“Maybe Aunt Linda could come,” I say. Somehow, I miss her already. I bet she'd like the dancing, too.

She nods slowly. “On some night when your father is busy.” Her green eyes dart over to his office door for a second. “We will tell him we are doing some shopping, perhaps.”

The doorbell rings then. “I'll get it.” I step carefully around Remi in her bouncy chair and go to the door, where Risha's lifting her hand to ring again.

“Where've you been all weekend?” She pulls her BeatBuds out of her ears, steps past me into the kitchen, and paws through the fruit bowl on the counter. Her hair is tied back in a gauzy purple scarf that flows down her back. “You have to come on a bike ride with
me or I'm going to die of boredom.” She polishes an apple on her purple-and-red-striped T-shirt and takes a big bite.

“It's too hot.”

“Jaden, pleeease? Just to the park for a while.”

If I say no, Risha will want to know what's wrong, and I don't want to talk about Alex, so I call good-bye to Mirielle and get my bike.

The air is heavy as soup-steam, but it still feels good to pedal.

“Hey,” I say as Risha takes a turn toward the fence. “Aren't we going to the park?”

“Change of plans.” She glances back at me, eyes twinkling. She's made plans with the boys, I can tell, and my stomach twists at the thought of seeing Alex now.

“Not today, Risha.” Besides, the clouds are starting to build again, and just because the first storm today was mild doesn't mean the next one will be. “You said you wanted to go to the park for a while. I'm not going outside the fence. There's weather coming.”

“Not even for a little while? Tomas has hardly talked to me all week. He's been acting all weird, and I know he's worried about his mom. I just want to see him.”

She keeps riding toward the fence, and I follow her, thinking I'll stay back while she goes to see the boys.

But when Risha jumps off her bike and climbs through the gap without looking back, something in me can't let her go alone with the clouds swirling. “Fine,” I say. “This better be fast.”

“Yay!” She's already on the other side, and I have to scramble through to catch her.

Risha winds her way toward the gazebo where we had our picnic—it's empty—and then races to the Carillos' barn and pulls open the door. Two chocolate-brown goats nuzzle each other in one stall. In another, a fat black pig is sleeping. Some chickens are wandering around, too. One wall is lined with bales of hay or straw. Another has dozens of tools—pitchforks, shovels, and axes—hanging from cast-iron hooks. “Hellooo?” Risha looks around. “Shoot,” she says, turning back to me. “They probably figured we weren't coming.”