Eye of the Storm (8 page)

“Aw, cut it out.” I climb through the gap in the silver wires. “He did ask if I wanted to work together, though. And we're interested in the same theories of weather manipulation, so maybe . . .”

Risha strikes a professor pose, with serious eyes and hands pressed together. “We're interested in the same theories,” she mimics, and laughs. “I think you're interested in more than his theories, Jaden.”

When we reach the end of the dirt path, she looks up and down the street, hands on her hips. “What do you want to do? They're running Animals of Yesterday at the Entertainment Dome. You get to walk along a trail with a bunch of extinct wildlife—woolly mammoths and polar bears and stuff.”

“No, I think I want to go home.” I wonder how Mom's doing in
Costa Rica. I hope her endangered frogs don't become part of the Animals of Yesterday show anytime soon. I wish she'd get in touch.

Our DataSlate weather alerts go off, and I jump about a mile. Risha laughs.

The storm is close enough now that people outside Placid Meadows will be heading for safe rooms. Even here, the high-pitched alert makes me want to walk faster, but Risha veers off toward the park. “Relax, we're inside now. Let's hang at the playground a while.”

I follow her toward the slide. “Has it been like this since you moved in?”

“Like what?” She climbs the ladder and slides down.

I wait at the bottom. “Like this . . . where you just
know
the tornadoes won't touch down here?”

Risha dusts off her shorts and heads for the monkey bars. “Yeah, I told you, it was in the contracts.”

“But how can they promise that? Did the contract say
how
they do it?”

“Nope.” She shrugs. “Most people moved here from places where it's gotten so bad that no one cares
why
they're safe. I mean, people ask, sure, but your dad obviously can't be giving away all his company's secrets, and really everybody's just happy to be able to go outside again, you know?” Two little kids are on the swings, daring each other to go higher, while their moms sit on a bench by the carousel talking.

“But my dad's storm dissipation project failed—that's what
Mom said. It can't be that technology. And if it's not that, then what is it? Some kind of force field around the neighborhood?” I climb up to the top of the jungle gym and sit down on one of the crossbars, dangling my feet down through the middle.

“I guess.” Risha scampers up after me and hangs upside down from her knees a few bars over. “Does it matter what it is, as long as it works?” Thunder rumbles in the distance, and tree branches rustle as the wind picks up. The moms on the bench don't even miss a beat in their conversation.

“S'cuse me, lady!” One of the kids from the swing set climbs up the other side of the jungle gym and runs into our Jaden-and-Risha roadblock here at the top.

“Sorry.” I lower myself to the ground, and Risha climbs down the other side.

“Let's go swing!” She takes off and is swinging six feet off the ground by the time I even get started, but pretty soon I'm flying beside her. I can't remember the last time I was on a swing outside. Our underground play centers at home have great swing sets—huge ones—but the air on your face is still indoor air. Stale and safe. Here, it's real wind, carrying the smell of the storm.

“You know,” Risha says, her hair flying around her face, “if you swing back and forth a hundred times with your eyes closed and then open them at the very top, then the first boy you see from up there will be the one you marry. Think I can see Tomas from up here?”

“Doubt it.” I swing forward, so high that the chain goes slack
and for a second I feel like I'm hanging there, attached to nothing. Then the chain catches, and I swing back with Risha at my side. “Besides, they must be in a safe room by now. That storm's growing. Hey, how's his mom?”

Risha stops pumping her legs and just swings. “She needs to get into a treatment center, but Tomas says there's a waiting list for most of the good ones. We didn't talk about it much—and don't you dare tell Alex because he doesn't know this yet, but Tomas said they might even move.”

“
Move?
What about the farm?”

Risha smiles a sad smile. “Well, they know they won't have trouble selling it.” She waves her hand through the air as if that idea is a bug she can swat away. “But they've talked about other things, too, like his mom staying with his brother in New York if she can get into that clinic. I'm sure it'll be okay.”

“Mama, look! Look! It's almost to the fence. Let's do the rhyme!” The two kids from the jungle gym run toward the bench, pointing to the cloud. I stop swinging and listen.

Twister, twister, go away,
Don't you bother us today.
Take your rain and winds that blow,
Turn around now, I say, GO!

They point and giggle, and make shooing motions with their hands.

I stare at them, these kids who have no memories of a place
where storms come into the neighborhood. Here, it is nothing but a game. It's like that “Ring Around the Rosy” chant Mom told me about. The rhyme was all about symptoms of the plague—rosy cheeks, sweet-smelling breath, falling down dead—and kids chanted it, laughing while they jumped rope, without ever realizing where it came from.

I look up at the monster cloud and try to imagine what it would be like never to have been afraid of it. A funnel is creeping down from it, but the storm doesn't seem to be getting any closer. It looks like the system is stalling on the other side of the fence.

Just like Dad's contracts promise.

“Better do it one more time,” one of the moms says, smiling.

“I'm standing up on the bench this time,” the little girl says, climbing up. “So it'll hear me better.”

Twister, twister, go away,
Don't you bother us today.
Take your rain and winds that blow,
Turn around now, I say, GO!

She points fiercely toward the storm cloud, which is indeed moving away from the fence now, still churning, still blowing, but most definitely going.

“Yay!” The little girl jumps down and cheers again. “I made it go away!”

“Good job.” Her mother pulls her in and kisses her above her ponytail. “Now get your jacket, and let's go make Daddy some supper.”

I scuff my sneakers in the dirt under my swing and watch them leave. The mothers, the kids, the storm. All leaving.

Risha's been swinging this whole time. She jumps off and flies into the brown grass in front of me, tumbling into a somersault and laughing like the kids. “Clearly, I am the champion of the swing set,” she says. “How come you stopped?”

I shake my head. “No reason. You ready to head home now?”

She shrugs. “Sure.”

We make small talk on the way home, but I can't stop watching the storm as it moves away. It isn't dissipating. If anything, it looks like it's still growing.

And leaving.

As if someone steered it away, with a magic chant.

Or maybe with a bank of computers, in a home office, behind a shiny steel door?

“Jaden, what would you like? More oatmeal?” Mirielle is dancing around the kitchen clearing breakfast dishes and cooing to Remi, cradled in a blue and green scarf this time. She must feel like she's riding around on an ocean wave, the way Mirielle swoops and turns.

Mirielle's DataSlate reader is open next to her empty cup of tea; she must have been reading at breakfast. I'm surprised when I lean over to read the title on the screen:
Quantum Reality: The Physics of Consciousness in a Post-Romantic World.
Mirielle was one of Dad's interns in Russia; she was studying physics when they met, but she's so busy with Remi it didn't occur to me she'd still have time for science.

She sees me looking at the reader. “Would you like me to send you a copy?”

“That's okay.” I look at her, spinning away with the orange juice glasses. “I didn't know you were still interested in stuff like this.”

“Oh, I am interested in many things. Too busy to read about them all sometimes. Just like I'm too busy to dance anywhere but in my own kitchen these days.” She tickles Remi's chin.

“Where did you used to dance?”

“In Paris, of course!” She stops spinning and smiles. “And Moscow after I moved there. I danced professionally for six years. Your father never told you?”

“No. Why'd you stop?”

“Busy with my studies at first, and then as the storms spread, there just weren't opportunities.” She looks up at the kitchen lights as if she's remembering brighter lights on a stage. “And of course here in the U.S., there's only the National Ballet performed for cameras. It wouldn't be the same without a real audience.” She pushes my bowl of fruit closer. “You can't be full. At least have more fruit.”

“I'm fine, thanks.” I poke at a strawberry with my fork and puncture two little holes in its perfectness. I can't help but think of Alex and his father, and their farm. “Do you ever get organic fruit?” I ask Mirielle.

“Oh,
mon dieu
, no!” She glances quickly at Dad's office door as if it might slide open and eat us at the very suggestion. “We eat only DNA-ture. Always. The deliveries are so convenient; I never have to go out to the market,” she says as if she's in a DNA-ture advertisement. She looks at the door again, then leans in closer to me. “But your aunt Linda?” She lowers her voice. “She grows berries the old way, and vegetables, too. She gave me some raspberries when she dropped off your book. They were a bit overripe, some of them, but oh, they were so sweet!”

That makes me smile. And it makes me like Aunt Linda even more. “Can we go see her soon?”

Mirielle nods. “I think we can figure something out. Maybe later this—”

She stops at the sound of Dad's office door humming open. He's just inside the room, holding something small and round—is it a compass?—in one hand and his DataSlate in the other. He's on a video call. “No, Mom. I'm certainly not going to—” He sees us standing there and turns away, lowering his voice. All I hear after that is the word “later.”

Did I hear right? He almost always called Mom by her first name, Rebekah, but sometimes he'd call her Mom if I was around. Was that Mom on the phone in Costa Rica? And if it was, why didn't he let me talk?

He steps out and presses his thumb to the fridge panel.

“Who was that?” I blurt out.

“What?” He squints at me.

“On the phone? Was that Mom in Costa Rica?”

“Oh, no. No. It was . . .” He looks at Mirielle. “Your mother. She wants you to call her later.” She nods, and Dad reaches for the Bio-Wake Cola the refrigerator sent out. He's still holding the compass thing. It's made of wood and looks old.

“What's that?” I ask.

“This?” He looks down as if he'd forgotten it was in his hand. “It's an antique barometer I keep in the office. I use it as a paperweight, picked it up while I was talking, I guess.” He slips it into his pocket. “Listen, I need to head into work. I've called a meeting for noon at headquarters. We have to reevaluate the perimeter because
some debris blew up against the fence. There was never any danger, but we had a few complaints.”

“Was that the storm from dinnertime last night?” I take my fruit salad to the counter. “I . . . saw it turn away from Placid Meadows,” I say quietly.

“Of course it turned away, and in plenty of time, too. Nothing's hit since the fence went up, and if that's not—”

“How does it work?” I'd stayed up until midnight waiting for him to come out of his office so I could ask about the storms, where they went, and what made them go. But he must have worked all night.

He takes a gulp of soda, then holds in a belch. “What do you mean? You know about my research.”

“But Mom told me your project didn't work. And that was about dissipating tornadoes, anyway, wasn't it? The storm last night didn't stop rotating. It looked like it was getting bigger. If you're not destroying the storms, then what . . . what
are
you doing?”

Mirielle's DataSlate chirps on the counter. “Oh! It's my sister.” She jostles Remi, who's starting to fuss a little.

“Here, I'll take her,” Dad says, and carefully lifts her from the scarf. The baby wiggles a little, as if she can't quite get comfortable against Dad's bony shoulder. Dad strokes her soft fluff of hair until she settles. Then he takes a deep breath and looks at me. “You're right, Jaden. I'm not dissipating the storms.” The muscles around his eyes tighten. “That was my research, and that was my intent, but as I'm sure Mom told you, after all our years of research, the simulation failed. I've been over it a thousand times. It works on paper, but not in real life.”

“Have you
tried
it in real life? Maybe it does work.”

He shakes his head. “We can't. What if something went wrong and we made a storm more powerful? You can't test theories with people's lives. That's why StormSafe is so far out ahead with weather modification research. We have the patent on the Sim Dome, so we can actually test our theories.”

“And this one always fails when you try it as a simulation?”

He nods. “We have the very best Sim Dome money can buy up at headquarters. More advanced than yours at camp, and that's nothing to laugh at. It's failed every time.” He chugs down the rest of his soda, feeds the can into the recycler, and settles into a counter chair with Remi snuggled against him. “But I had already made a promise to all these people.” He nods to the hallway, where Mirielle is chatting into her DataSlate. “We
will
get it right one of these days. We will. But for the moment, the best I can do is keep my family, and a handful of other families like ours, safe another way.”