Eye of the Storm (20 page)

It's a quiet drive home until we turn into the Placid Meadows gate. Mirielle flashes Lou her resident card, and as the gate starts to swing open, I see movement in the brush near the main road.

“Mirielle, wait!” She's already started pulling into Placid Meadows but stops and looks over at me. “I . . . it's nice out, and I could use some air. I'm going to get out here and walk back, okay?” I pull my backpack over my shoulder.

She raises her eyebrows. “You won't be long?”

“No, and I'm not hungry yet anyway. I may go to the park or something, see if Risha's around. If that's okay.”

“Of course.” I watch her pull away and wait until Lou is back in his booth playing a game on his DataSlate. Then I duck back out the gate and into the trees.

“Alex?” I whisper as loud as I dare.

“Here.” A hand closes on my wrist and tugs me deeper into the brush, behind a big old tree stump that's turned into a nursery for
mushrooms and moss. I lean against it, and the dampness seeps through my jeans.

“What are you doing?” I ask, looking at the DataSlate in his hands. “And . . . how's Newton?”

He takes a deep breath. “He made it through the surgery okay. He's gotta stay quiet for a couple days, and then I guess he'll learn to get around on three legs.” The rest of his air rushes out. He leans against the tree stump, close enough that our knees brush. “Jaden, I have to tell you something.”

“What?”

Alex squeezes his eyes shut for a second, then looks straight at me. “I stole files from your DataSlate.”

I grab his arm. “What?! That was
you
?”

He closes his eyes again. “When you stayed back to talk to Van this morning and I took it to the library for you? I . . . copied some files.”

I stare at the DataSlate in his hands, almost afraid to hope. “You copied them onto there?”

He nods. “I know it was a crappy thing to do, but—”

“And you have them on there,
now
?”

“I felt like I
had
to, Jaden. I didn't know at first what you'd found, but I figured it was important, and I was right. This information . . . It's
exactly
what we need.” His eyes plead with me to understand what he says next. “I didn't know if you'd show me or not. He is your dad, after all. But I had to do it. For
my
dad. And everybody else in my family. This is our lives, Jaden, it's—”

“But why would you erase the files from my device? Why not
leave them in case I was going to try to help, too? I
was
, you know.”

His eyes cloud with confusion. “I didn't erase anything. I only copied it.”

“You did so—when I turned it on after—” I interrupt my own thought: after Van borrowed it for the check, after Van said goodbye to me, smiling. It
was
him. “Never mind. It was Van.”

Alex's eyes puzzle back and forth for a few seconds, and then his face falls open with understanding. “He erased your files.”

I nod and shift my weight. A sharp edge of the tree stump is sticking into my hip, so I stand up and walk over to a pair of closetogether cedars that didn't get cut down. “I don't know how he could have known, why he chose that day to check . . . and I can't believe I was dumb enough not to back them up. But . . .” I look at the DataSlate in his hands. “You copied everything?”

He hands it to me. “Everything.”

I click on the folder, but Alex tugs my sleeve. “Not here.”

“Well, I can't take it home. Not after—”

An HV turns into the gate, and I cover the DataSlate's screen with my jacket so we can't be seen.

“We need to go someplace to look at this, where we can talk about it.” Alex ducks under a branch and starts heading out of the woods.

I follow him, my shoes squishing into the damp leaf litter beneath the trees. “There's campus if we can wait until tomorrow, but—”

He holds a branch out of my way and grabs my arm as I start to
pass. “We
can't
wait, Jaden.
This
can't wait.” Even in the shadows, intensity flashes in his eyes. “It's waited too long already.”

He's right. “Then let's go now.”

“To campus? It's closed for the afternoon. Everything will be locked. The outside gate, even.”

I pull the jar from my pocket. “I have the right fingerprint to get in.”

Alex's eyes get huge. “Your dad's?”

“Risha made it for me.”

He looks at me, hard. “You're willing to do this? To risk it?”

“Yes.” I am terrified, but I mean it. “My dad's gone, working on some . . . I don't know . . . but something that made him cancel dinner. He won't be home for hours, maybe not even until tomorrow. We'll have the library and the Sim Dome and whatever else we need. Come on.”

This time I lift up the branch, and Alex starts to duck under, but then he stops and stands straight again, his face inches from mine in the woodsy darkness, and whispers, “Thank you.”

He leans in, and his lips touch mine, gentle as the breeze, warm as summer grass.

He pulls away and ducks under the branch, a shadow walking in front of me. I put two fingers to my tingling lips and follow him out of the trees.

I wave to Lou as we walk past the gate, but as soon as he looks away, we run all the way to the house. The straps of my backpack dig into my shoulders, and by the time we creep into the garage, my hair is damp with sweat.

We lift bikes from the rack, coast down the driveway, and pedal down the street. As we pass Risha's house, I squeeze the hand brakes. “Wait. Let's get Risha, okay?” Alex nods and waits for me at the bottom of the driveway.

Risha answers the doorbell two seconds after the first ring, as if she'd been waiting for us instead of eating dinner with her family.

“Jaden!” She pulls me into a hug that smells like curry, and I whisper what's happening. I tell her everything we know and step back and wait for her look of shock, but it never comes. “What ever you need,” she says, already heading to the garage for her bike. “Count me in.”

We pedal the last few blocks. The breeze has died down to nothing, and the air sticks to my skin.

When we pull up to the locked front gate of Eye on Tomorrow,
I pull the jar from my pocket, wrap Dad's print around my fingertip, and press it to the biometrics panel. “I guess this counts as a rainy day, huh?” Risha looks pleased when it works on the first try. The light turns green, and the gate swings open.

“Come with me,” Alex whispers, and heads straight for the library.

“Not the library, Alex. It's not—”

“Shhh. I know where we can go.”

We follow the path to the library, but instead of reaching for the door, Alex veers off around the side of the building. In the back, old-fashioned fire-escape stairs lead up to the roof.

“Oh, good call. I haven't been up here since I came for my orientation tour a couple of years ago,” Risha says.

She and Alex take the steps two at a time, and by the time I catch up to them at the top of the fifth flight, I'm panting. When I look up, my breath catches in my throat.

The roof is enormous and . . . amazing. A gravel pathway winds through patches of garden with lush red and pink flowers. And flowers aren't the only things growing out of the patches of green. What looks at first like some kind of sculpture garden is actually a line of old-style anemometers. They remind me of little kids' pinwheel toys, twirling and dancing in the wind, spinning like little girls in fancy dresses. I'm dizzy just watching them.

“What is all this?” I ask.

“Ms. Walpole's outdoor classroom for the community education center.” He looks up at the hazy sky. “No cameras in the ceiling here.”

“They run weather programs for younger kids up here,” Risha says.

Alex takes my backpack and Risha's and tosses them onto a picnic table near the stairs.

“It's incredible.” And beautiful, in a way I wouldn't have expected.

With the weight of my bag off my shoulders, I almost forget for a minute why we're here. I walk to the edge of the roof and look out over miles of land that used to be full of people, buzzing with lives. The roads are so quiet now it's spooky. An abandoned water tower rises up out of the dirt like a spider grown too tall to be stable, whose legs might crumble into dust any minute. The old university campus is being renovated into another energy farm. There's a scattering of patched-up homes where people are still trying to pretend this is a fine place to live, to raise a family. Will it ever be again?

“Hey, we have to get to work, but come check this out first.” Alex crosses the roof to a circle of tall rectangular stones, all standing on edge and pointing at the open sky. In the center is an angled, steel rod. “It's a gnomon,” he says. “Like a pointer. The whole thing is a sundial. The ancients used them—”

“—to tell time with the shadows. I know.” I walk around the circle, running my hand over the rough stones. They feel so old, so yesterday, to be part of a camp with a focus on tomorrow. “Why is this here?”

“History of earth science. History of weather.” Risha walks the shadow cast by the gnomon as if it's a balance beam. “Van laughs at it, but Ms. Walpole's in charge of the rooftop classroom and always
says you can't just know where you're going. You need to know where you came from, too. Alex, remember that one time—”

“
Shhhh!
” He holds up his hand to quiet her, then closes his eyes, listening.

I hear it, too. Footsteps clanging on the metal fire escape stairs. I duck behind one of the stone sundial markers and hold my breath. Risha and Alex huddle behind the next one in the circle.

The thumping, clanging steps get louder—then change to the sounds of crunching gravel. Someone is on the roof.

The footsteps get louder. Closer. And pause.

I peer out from behind the marker and see a long shadow falling across the pathway. The shadow turns, and I can make out a ponytail. Van.

A DataSlate chimes and I duck back behind the stone. My stomach twists so violently I want to cry out. We left our backpacks on the picnic table. Van had to have heard that. He'll find them, find our DataSlates, and know we're here. And there's no way for us to get past him because the only entrance to the roof is that one set of—

“Yeah, what's up?” Van's voice rings out over the quiet roof. I peer out from behind the marker again, enough this time to see not only his shadow but the real Van, talking into a DataSlate. It was his. Not ours.

“I know. I'm leaving now. I was on my way out and heard noise on the library roof, so I came up to check it out. Musta been crows or something.” He shoves his hand in his pocket and turns, and I
pull my head back behind the stone.
Don't come over here. Don't come over here.

His shoes crunch on the gravel again, but I can't tell if they're coming closer or going away. Another pause.

“Well, you'll be happy enough when you hear what I found out from my young friend Tomas today. Mr. Hazen's accepting our offer.” Another pause. “I know. I told you he's a good kid . . . yeah . . . and he headed off a real mess letting me know about your little security breach. . . . No, he has no idea what it was really about. I just sent him to listen in on them, told him I was trying to keep his buddy out of trouble and needed his help. It's all good. And I told you I took the DataSlate and deleted it just in case. I don't think she would have understood it anyway.”

I look at Alex, and the hurt in his face tells me that he's put the pieces together, too. Tomas. Waiting outside the first aid clinic while Alex and I talked. That's how Van knew I'd stolen Dad's files. And now his family is selling their farm, too.

“So here's where we are on the other thing,” Van says. “I promised Tomas you'd hook his mom up with that clinic in New York as soon as they sign the contracts. I told you I'd take care of it.” A pause. Then he laughs. “Okay, I'm sure the wind did some convincing, too, but hey. Done is done. And now we can move forward.” More gravel crunching. Getting closer this time.

I look over at Risha. Her brown eyes are huge. And scared. Behind her, Alex has his eyes closed as if he's praying. Or maybe he can't stand to look at Van.

“Well, I don't think they'll be an issue for long.” The footsteps move away again. “Yeah, I know it's gonna be a busy night. I'm on my way.”

The footsteps crunch all the way back to the stairs—then pause near what must be the picnic table. Did he see our backpacks? My neck prickles with fear, but I lean out just far enough to see Van bending over near the gate, picking a stone out of his shoe. Then he starts down the stairs, and his footsteps clang away to quiet.

By the time I turn back to Risha and Alex, my neck is stiff from being twisted around so long, and Van must be long, long gone. Risha unfolds her legs and crawls to the edge of the roof to peer toward the gate.

“His HV's gone,” she whispers.

Alex stares off into the clouds. On his cheek, the shiny trail of a tear ends in a smudge of dirt, where he must have wiped it away.

“Alex,” I say quietly. “He couldn't have known what he was
really
telling Van about the DataSlate. Tomas must have . . .” I don't know what to say.

“Don't.” He blinks fast and hard a few times, then stands up and turns away from me. “I don't want to talk about him.”

“Alex, put yourself in his shoes for a minute.” Risha follows him across the roof. “His mom is sick, and they need help. She needs treatment. What were they supposed to do?”

I should follow them, should say something to make it better, but I'm the one whose father has done all this. I'm the reason Tomas's
family and Alex's are under pressure to give up the life their families have had for years. I'm the reason we're hiding up here on a roof and—