Eye of the Storm (18 page)

“Terrific idea.” Dad's in one of his good moods. He reaches over to Remi's high chair and gives her a grape that looks like it came out of a mold in a factory. “I have a late meeting tomorrow, but I'd love to see all my girls for an early dinner. Why don't you drop by the office after your shopping, and we'll get something in the cafeteria?”

“Wonderful.” Mirielle takes the grape from Remi and cuts it into quarters so she can eat it without choking.

“Perfect,” I say, but my brain has left the dinner table and gone upstairs, where my DataSlate is waiting.

On the way to my room, I pass Grandma Athena's picture, and somehow her eyes seem sharper than usual. I stop and pick up the frame.

What Alex and I have been trying to do—what we're so close to figuring out—has absolutely consumed me these past weeks. If Mirielle didn't call me to the table for meals, I don't know if I'd even feel hungry. What I've been starving for is information, and the more I get, the more ravenous I am for more.

Tonight, looking into those charcoal eyes that almost pierce the glass, I understand Grandma Athena's passion for science more than ever.

I sigh and put the digital frame back on the shelf. Grandma Athena probably had a whole team of secret government scientists working with her.

Without Alex, I'm completely on my own.

I'm in pajamas, teeth brushed and lasered, and in bed, but as I'm about to power on my DataSlate, there's a knock at the door.

“Come on in.” I'm expecting Mirielle with clean laundry, but when the door swings open, it's Dad.

“Hi there.”

“Hi.” I slide the DataSlate onto my bedside table and pull up the covers. I don't think he's been in this room since I moved in.

He sits down on the edge of my bed and picks up the poetry book. I've gotten careless about leaving it out. I hold my breath as Dad reads the title. He opens his mouth as if he's going to say something, but then closes it. He turns a few pages, and I can tell he's trying hard not to frown at it. Then he puts it down. “Sorry I've been so busy lately. I haven't even had a chance to ask how you've been doing with the move. You like Placid Meadows?”

“Sure. It's great.”

He looks back at the book on my nightstand, but then reaches for my DataSlate next to it. My whole insides turn to ice. “Is your work at Eye on Tomorrow going well?”

“Yeah,” I say, frantically trying to think of what I can add. What would make this sound like an ordinary father-daughter summer camp conversation? What can I say so it will never occur to him that I know what I know? “It's fantastic. The library, especially.”

“Sure is. That's a top-notch facility, all around.” He looks down at the DataSlate.
Don't turn it on. Don't turn it on.
“Dad, I'm really tired, okay?”

“Okay.” He turns the DataSlate over in his hands and pauses, and a breath catches in my throat.

But he puts it down, the screen still empty black, and walks to the door. “Night, Jaden.”

“Night.”

I listen to the click of the door, his footsteps on the hardwood
floor of the hallway outside my room, the groan of the spiral staircase as he heads back down to Mirielle.

And then I reach for my DataSlate. The screen lights up, and I hold my breath until the menu loads.

The files are there.

They copied before I unplugged Dad's computer.

Every last one.

I breathe out.

It is all here. The real storm dissipation simulation report. The fake one. All the data that goes with those, and the full StormBank.

I open one of the files to make sure it's intact, and out pour the details of twin tornadoes that hit Gainesville, Texas, in April of 1936. There's less information for this storm than for more recent tornadoes, but the file still paints a vivid picture.

The debris in the streets was ten feet deep.

The image swirls in my mind—whipping winds and flying windows—until I shake my head and close the file. I have to try and get to sleep.

I create a new folder, drag the files inside, and start to type a label. I can't call it “Family Photos” like Dad. That's a folder he might open if he picked up my DataSlate in one of his good-father moods. Instead, I name it “Poetry” and turn off the light.

Tomorrow at camp, I'll try to get permission to run this data through the Sim Dome. After it works and I have what we need, I'll go see Alex and tell him, and he won't look at me that awful way he looked at me before. I can't wave a magic wand and make Newton okay again, but I can give him this.

I stare at the rectangle of blue-white light the moon casts through my skylight onto the carpeted floor. I try to sleep, but funnel clouds swirl behind my closed eyes.

I turn the lamp back on and reach for the book of poems.

“Geometry” would make my head spin faster to night, so I flip through the pages for something calmer, quieter, and I find one called “Adolescence.” It is about a hot summer night, like this one, about a girl hiding with someone, her cousin, maybe, behind her grandmother's porch. And the older girl whispers secrets to her in the quiet night and firefly light, tells her how soft a boy's lips can be, like the skin of a baby.

I close the book and look up at the ceiling, where there are no fireflies, only straight rows of perfectly round, recessed lights that never flicker.

Amelia kissed a boy once. It was Nico Groves, and it was winter, not summer. She was waiting for her mom to pick her up after a dance at the StormSafe teen center, and she says one minute he was talking to her about his new air-drum kit and the next minute he kissed her right there on the sidewalk. His lips were chapped, rough, she said. She never mentioned baby's skin, but I think she liked it anyway.

I fall asleep thinking about fireflies. And strawberries with raindrop seeds.

First thing in the morning, I hop on my bike, and with the wind blowing my hair from my face, I can think clearly again. I'll go straight to
Van when I get to camp, let him know I need time in the Sim Dome. And then . . . what? I wish Mom were here. My eyes burn thinking about her, how much I miss her, how much I need her.

Maybe today will be the day she answers. With tears spilling down my cheeks, I stop my bike and pull out my DataSlate. I can't help hoping. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

But there are no video-messages. No text messages. Nothing.

I pull up her contact page and press RECORD to try one more time. “Hi, Mom,” I say into the screen, and then I am sobbing. All at once, I can't hold it in anymore, and I cry and pictures flash through my head like some awful horror movie. The storm at the barn. Swirling feathers and dust. Newton whimpering in pain. And the look on Alex's face. Two weeks' worth of numbers and funnel clouds and secrets explode inside me, and I drop the DataSlate to my side, my arm hanging limp. And I cry.

I
can't
face all this by myself. But the more I think about it all, the more I realize what's happening, the more I realize I am absolutely alone.

When I'm empty from crying, I breathe in. I pick up the DataSlate—it's still recording—and I take a deep breath. “Mom.” My voice breaks. “I
need
you to come home.”

I stare at the red record light. I should delete this and do it over. But deep down, I know it won't matter. She'll never get it anyway; it'll be like all the rest, so I just send it. I start pedaling again, and my tears dry in the wind. They leave thin, salty trails down my cheeks.

When I pull into the Eye on Tomorrow campus, I squeeze the
brakes so hard I almost go flying with my backpack over the handlebars. Alex's mom is pulling away in the truck.

My heart jumps. Alex is here. He must be inside already.

I wave to his mother, and she gives a small, sad wave back before she drives away.

When I get to the auditorium, Alex isn't in his usual spot. He's in the back, way off to one side, a seat that has
don't-sit-by-me
written all over it.

I go to him anyway.

“Can I sit with you?”

His face is impossible to read. Empty like a cloud-gray sky. He shrugs. I take it as a yes and sit down.

I'm terrified to ask, but I force the words out. “How's Newton?”

“Not good.”

My throat tightens, and I wait.
Please don't let him be dead.
“Alex?”

He looks straight ahead. “His leg's not healing right, so they have to amputate. He's having surgery this afternoon.”

“Oh, Alex, I hope it goes okay.” But really, nothing is okay.

I blink away tears as Van jogs down the aisle to the front. He says it's time for another holo-sim lecture, since we're at a turning point where most groups should be switching from theoretical research to practical applications.

When Dad rises out of the floor, my stomach twists.

I turn toward Alex. “I went up to StormSafe with my dad,” I whisper. He doesn't respond, and his eyes are focused up front, but I keep talking over Dad's lecture on responsibility and ethics.
“I have . . . stuff from his computer. I have it here, on my DataSlate, and I was going to try and run the sim again. And then I was going to go find you and talk to you.”

Alex folds his arms in front of him.

“But you're here.” I turn to face front again because I'm too afraid to see his reaction to the last thing I need to say. “Maybe we could work together again?”

Before he can answer, the lights come on. Dad is gone, erased. If only it were that easy.

“All right,” Van announces. “Go wherever you need to go today. I know for most of you, that's the lab, but if you have more to do in the library, that's okay, too.”

“Library?” I whisper over my shoulder to Alex, hoping he'll say yes.

He doesn't say anything to me on the way out.

But Van does. “Jaden, I need a few minutes with you, okay? I've been trying to check in with all the first years for a quick conference.”

Without asking, Alex lifts my backpack from my shoulders. “I'll take this to the library for you. You can meet me there when you're through.”

I consider grabbing it back, but I'm so relieved he's talking to me that I just nod and watch him walk out the door.

“So,” Van says, motioning me to take a seat again in the empty theater. “Things are going well?”

I nod. “Mostly, I guess.”

Van smiles a little. “I know your partner was extremely frustrated
when your last Sim Dome experience didn't go as he'd planned, but that's all part of the process. Have you . . . decided to go in another direction now?”

“Kind of, yeah.” I consider telling him now about the new data but decide it's too risky. It will make more sense if I share it with him after we try the Sim Dome again, after I have real proof. “Can we get time in the dome soon?”

“I think so.” He swipes through a few pages on his DataSlate until he gets to a weekly calendar. “Maybe Thursday? I'll check the master schedule and let you know.”

“Thanks.”

Van looks at my empty hands. “I was going to do a DataSlate scan. We're required to check in every couple weeks with students who carry them on campus. Don't you usually have yours with you?”

“I do. But Alex took my stuff to the library.”

“No problem. I'll catch up with you later.” Van stands and heads for the door. “I'm impressed with your work so far, Jaden.” He holds it open for me, and the sunshine streams in from outside. It's going to be hot again. Storm weather later on.

“Thanks.”

“I'm serious.” He gives me a friendly cuff on the shoulder as I turn to head to the library. “If you're not StormSafe scientist material, I don't know who is.”

“Hey, Jaden!” Risha races up to me on the quad after Van walks away. “Hold out your hand and close your eyes. I have a present for you.”

I do what she says, and two little glass jars drop into my palm. “Same print?”

She nods. “Save them for a rainy day.”

Tomas waves from the Finger Factory steps, just as Van walks up to the building. He stands close to Tomas, talking, and Tomas looks down at the steps.

“He's been hanging around Van a lot, huh?”

Risha nods. “Van's kind of taken Tomas under his wing. He says he might know somebody who can pull some strings and get his mom into a treatment center sooner.” She gives me a quick hug. “I'll talk to you later, okay?” And she runs off.

Alex is back at our library table as if nothing happened. If it weren't for the healing cuts, the fading bruises on his face and arms, I might be able to pretend it didn't.

He points to a pile of books next to him. My DataSlate is on top. “I unpacked your stuff. I thought we could do a little more work on supercell formation today before we redesign the sim.”

I reach for my DataSlate. “Alex, we don't need to do more research,” I whisper. “I have whole folders full of—”

He puts a hand over my mouth—gentle but firm—and sweeps his eyes over toward the ceiling.
Shhh
. “Later,” he whispers. “Not here.”

I'm four or five pages into the supercell reading when the door opens and Van walks in from outside. “Hey, Jaden. Okay if we do that DataSlate scan now?”

“Sure.” I hand it to him and get back to my notes.

“Are you kidding?” Alex hisses, staring at me from behind a thick meteorology textbook. “He's going to find those files.”

“No, he won't,” I whisper. “They're hidden.”

“Not very well.”

“How do
you
know how well they're hidden?”

“Jaden, that DataSlate's only got one storage chip and there's a search function. You can't hide anything.”

“It's
fine
.”

He frowns but goes back to his reading. Van is back with the DataSlate in less than half an hour. “All set, Jaden. Looking good.”