Paperquake
Authors: Kathryn Reiss
 
(Wedged in a Crack by the Window)
Copyright © 1998 by Kathryn Reiss
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduce or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be mailed to the following address: Permissions Department, Harcourt Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.
First Harcourt paperbacks edition 2002
First published in 1998
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Reiss, Kathryn.
PaperQuake: a puzzle/by Kathryn Reiss.
p. cm.
Summary: Certain that she is being drawn by more than coincidences into the lives of people living nearly 100 years ago, Violet, who feels like the odd sister in a set of triplets, searches for clues to help her avert an imminent tragedy. [1. TripletsâFiction. 2. SistersâFiction. 3. Earhquakesâ Fiction. 4. San Francisco (Calif.)âFiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.R2776á¹ap 1998
[Fic]âdc21 97-33217
ISBN 0-15-201183-8
ISBN 0-15-216782-X pb
Text set in Galliard
Designed by Camilla Filancia
Printed in the United States of America
H G F E
For
M
ARILYN
C
HANDLER
M
C
E
NTYRE,
who introduced me to earthquakes
and in memory of my mother-in-law,
V
IOLET
S
TRYCHACZ,
no shrinking violet, either
One generation passeth away,
and another generation cometh:
but the earth abideth for ever.
(Wedged in a Crack by the Window)âE
CCLESIASTES
1:4
March 25, 1906
Dear Diary,
Â
Truly, V frightens me now. She says such strange things and twitches while she speaks. What started as an ordinary job is turning into a nightmare. I know V needs me and, goodness knows, I need the workâbut when she gets that odd look in her eyes, she seems like a different person from the sweet, frail girl I came to take care of. She turns cold and hard and seems quite as ancient as the earth itselfâthe earth she keeps going on aboutâand I want to leave here. There are other positions where I can earn my living. There
must
be! Perhaps I shall start looking on my afternoon off.
It makes me feel better to have this plan to look for something new. Some normal sort of job with normal people. When V has one of her spells, she carries on and on about the earth as if it is something
alive.
That cannot be called normal. "Stretching," she muttered tonight, and I hurried to her side. "The earth needs to stretch.
"
"
Do you need to stretch?" I asked. These days she is sometimes too weak to do this herself. "Shall I help you turn over in bed?
"
"
Stretching out," she said, pushing my hands away. And I saw that her eyes were wide open, staring at nothing. "It's going to happen soon! Very soon! The earth ... deep inside ... People runningâover the bridgeâoh, there's no timeâthe bridge!
"
"
You're ill," I told her. "Just lie back in bed and relax. Close your eyes.
"
But her eyes stayed open. They glared hard into mine,
lit with fiery intensity. "We cannot stop it, no one can," she hissed. "We can only try to help. Help the children. Help the little girl! We must help!
"
"
I'm trying to help you," I said. "I'm trying to take care of you.
"
"
The earth takes care of itself," she moaned, tossing her head back and forth on her pillow. "But who will help the people?
"
I patted her hand where it lay limp on the white sheet and touched my palm to her damp forehead. I felt so tired suddenly. I wanted to crawl onto the bed next to her and collapse. She drains me when she goes on like this. "Go to sleep now.
"
"
Sleep?" V laughed, but it was a dark, unpleasant sound. "Don't you understand what I'm telling you? The earth
never
sleeps.
"
Finally she grew quiet. Finally she slept. But her words seemed to hover in the room; and as I sit here in my chair in the corner, writing in my diary, they hover over me still:
Chapter 1The earth never sleeps.
Violet Jackstone was doodling in her science notebook when her desk seemed to jump an inch to the right. She dropped her pen and turned to look at Beth, but her best friend was still taking notes as Mr. Koch lectured about rock formations. All around the classroom the other eighth graders rustled at their desks, shuffled papers, and whispered, waiting for the bell to release them for the weekend. No one else's desk had moved.
But then the entire room gave one great shake, like a shaggy dog after a bath. Mr. Koch stopped talking about rocks. The class held its breath, but then the room was still again, as rooms tend to be.
"Whoa!" cried Beth, breaking the tension.
"Was that an earthquake?" someone else called out.
"Cool!"
"We haven't had one in ages!"
Everyone started talking at once. Everyone except Violet, who sat with closed eyes, trying to breathe.
It's all right, it's over now,
she told herself.
Don't panic.
"All right, all right," Mr. Koch said, trying to quiet the class. "That was just a temblorâprobably hardly registered on the Richter scale. But what perfect timing!"
Violet's eyes flew open. Perfect timing?
"What was I just telling you about rocks?" Mr. Koch smiled as if he had personally arranged the earthquake. "I couldn't have come up with a better example. Rocks are not just dead bits and pieces. They are part of the wholeâpart of the whole living earth." Mr. Koch threw his arms wide. "Look out the windows!"
Everyone obediently swiveled to look. There wasn't much to see from where Violet sat. Tops of trees, leaves turning brown, squares of blue autumn sky. How could Mr. Koch just keep on teaching as if nothing had happened? What if the tremor was only a taste of another quake yet to come? How could everyone keep sitting calmly, taking notes? Violet clenched her hands into fists. She wanted to leap up and ran out of the room.
"What do you see out there?" Mr. Koch walked over to the windows to look down. "What do you see? It's the earth! The earth we live on! Houses, shops, parks, streets, people. Once there were forests and rivers, wild animals, native tribes living off the land. Now we're here instead. It's like layers of paint, one layer painted over another over another."
"What's he talking about?" muttered someone in the back of the room. "Art?"
"No, geology, I think," someone else whispered back. "But you know how he runs on."
"Scrape off the layers of our present culture and you're in another time. Dig into the earth, and it's the same. Layers of soil and rock, telling the earth's storyâjust as all of you will be telling part of the earth's story in your science papers." Mr. Koch glared at, the class. "Now, how many of you have chosen your topics?" His booming voice made Violet flinch. "I hope
all
of you, becauseâguess what, folks?âtime's up."
Violet slumped in her seat, the earthquake anxiety receding to the back of her mind as the more immediate worry about her science topic took over. She liked Mr. Koch, who both fascinated and frightened her with his intensity. But she hadn't come up with a topic for this month's project on some aspect of science especially relevant to their state of California She hadn't even started to think about it.
Hands shot up. "Beth?" asked Mr. Koch.
"How logging in northern California destroys ancient forests," Beth told him, and Violet sighed. Beth was a good student. Everything seemed to come easily to her.
Mr. Koch noted her topic on a pad of paper. "Good," he said. "Dina? What about you?"
"Umâlike, something about the Gold Rush? About, like, the process of mining for silver and gold?"
"Like, fine." He noted her topic on his pad while the class giggled. "Jack?"
"Soil erosion in the hills."
"Excellent. Melanie?"
"Water pollution control in the bay."
"Super. How about you, Violet?"
Violet looked at her desktop as if a topic might appear there in magic writing. Nothing happened. "IâI'm not sure yet," she said quietly.
"Not sure?" Mr. Koch left the windows and walked over to frown down at her. "Then I will have to choose for you. A shame, really, because we tend to be more interested in subjects we select for ourselves. But, let me see..." He tapped his fingers on her desk. She could feel heat color her face. "How about earthquakes? We've just been reminded that California is no stranger to earthquakesâbut do we know what causes them? You will do some research and write about what you discover." He scribbled her topic on his pad. "In fact, I have some books I can give you about the big earthquake back in 1906. San Francisco was all but destroyed thenâby fire as well as from the quake itself. You may as well focus on that quake for your paper."
Violet slumped lower as he walked away. She hated even
thinking
about earthquakes. But she wouldn't dare ask Mr. Koch to change her topic to another one now.
And then the teacher was at her desk again, holding out some books. "Take these," he ordered. "You may find them useful."
Violet accepted his books with a weak smile.
"In many ways, history and science are not separate subjects at all," Mr. Koch said, throwing his arms wide to encompass the whole class. "Both are the dust under our feet and the air we breathe. Sometimes things happen that we attribute to coincidence, but historians look for patterns. Scientists look for
reasons.
"
The students sat back, listening. They were used to Mr. Koch's ramblings. Sometimes the lectures were interesting, sometimes not, but his loud, gravelly voice compelled them to listen. "There are layers and layers of history all around us," he intoned, "just as the earth is made of layers of rock and soil. Mostly the different layers are hidden from us. But sometimes cracks form and we can see what came before."
"I think
he's
cracked!" whispered the boy behind Violet, and Beth snickered.
"Both scientists and historians delve into the cracksâ"
Mr. Koch broke off with a gasp as the room was lifted and dropped as though by a giant hand. "Not again!" someone shouted, and Violet screamed as the floor began dipping and the walls shook. The teacher yelled, "Duck and cover, people! Duck and cover!" He ran around the back of his desk and tried to fit his lanky form into the small space meant for the chair.
This was no mild shaking. This time the earth meant business. There was a grinding roar miles beneath the surface of the earth, and then the crash of books as they tumbled from the shelf in the back of the classroom. In half a second Violet was crouched under her desk, covering her head with her arms. Belatedly, a buzzer went off in the hallways, adding its noisy warning to the tumult. The floor rolled and the lights went out. Violet squeezed her eyes shut and sawâ
flames?
She saw three shadowy figuresâchildrenâmoving out from flaming wreckage, two taller figures and a little girl in tattered clothes, holding out her arms. The children's screams and Violet's merged into one desperate howl that seemed to go on forever.
"Hey, Vi, it's okay now," someone was saying, but it
wasn't
okay, it
couldn't
be until that little girl was safe, until all three of those children were safeâSomeone's arms wound tightly around Violet, and she shut her mouth abruptly. She uncovered her head and looked into Beth's eyes.