Paperquake (21 page)

"Give me an alarm clock any day," said Violet. Her heart was still racing.

"Poor Baby," her father said. "We'll have to see about that new staircase right away."

Over breakfast the family listened to the news. "An unwelcome Halloween trick was experienced by much of the Bay Area this morning as a chain of thumps jolted people from their beds," said the newscaster. Her voice was cheerful, as if the quakes were part of a pleasant weather forecast she was relating. "The largest of those jolts measured 2.9 on the Richter scale and seemed to be centered about three miles offshore along what geologists say may be a previously uncharted branch of the San Andreas fault."

Violet reached over and pushed the "off" button.

"Hey!" objected Rose.

"Leave it off," directed Lily. "I've heard much more than I wanted to hear."

 

At school everyone was talking about the quakes. The principal, Ms. Lynch, called an assembly to review earthquake preparedness. Violet diligently took notes about how much bottled water to have on hand, which supplies to put by, and how to stock the first-aid kit in anticipation of a really large quake. But the information didn't reassure her. The swaying bridge and crying children were shadows hovering nearby.

School ended with Mr. Koch's admonitions not to let the Halloween Ball interfere with their science papers. He would be chaperoning the dance with his wife and so would be on hand, he informed them with a smirk, to remind them. Most of the class groaned good-naturedly, but Violet's groan held real dismay.

Finally, she was hurrying home again. She went straight up to her attic room—the ladder now bolted firmly in place by Greg—determined to stop procrastinating. But first she laid out the clothes she would wear to the dance. The girls had decided on black tights and black sweatshirts. Their mom had fashioned black head scarves with antennae made from green florist's wire and orange pom-poms.

Violet's scarf lay on her bed, ready to be tried on. She stood in front of her mirror and pulled the band off her ponytail. She fluffed her hair with her fingers till it stood out around her face in a dark cloud. The purple highlights, at least in this light, were nearly invisible. The gymnasium, where the dance was to be held, would also be fairly dark. The scarf would hide most of her hair anyway.
What I really need,
she thought,
is one of those gigantic hats the Stowes used to make!

She remembered that Lily had a big straw hat wrapped with a green velvet bow. Her mom and dad had dressed in Victorian costumes for a party last Halloween. The long dress was still at the back of Lily's closet, Violet knew—a confection of green and black satin. For a second, as she pictured the dress, Violet could almost feel the long skirt swirl around her legs. Verity would have worn long skirts. Laela, too.

I wonder if Jazzy and Rosy would mind?
she wondered, and started for her ladder. Would her mom be annoyed that the third alien head scarf wouldn't be worn?

She climbed down and ran downstairs to ask her mom about the Victorian costume. Lily had taken the afternoon off from work to help the girls get ready for the ball. She was happy to let Violet wear the dress, and they went back upstairs to find the hat that went with it.

"I don't have time to hem it for you," said Lily when Violet pirouetted in front of the long mirror on the back of the bathroom door. "But we can shorten the skirt with safety pins. No one will see them."

"That'll be great, Mom!" Violet twirled around again, the wide skirt billowing. She held her arms out as if she were dancing, as if she knew how to dance. She felt happy and foolish at once, lighthearted for the first time since being jolted from her bed that morning. In less than an hour Sam would arrive.

Less than an hour! And she still hadn't opened a single book about earthquakes.

She slipped out of the dress, left it on her parents' bed for her mom to pin, and hurried back up to her attic. She sat at her desk and reached for the pile of Mr. Koch's books. She had not gone to the library to look for others. These alone would have to do.

There were four books. The first was a geology text called, intimidatingly,
Plate Tectonics.
Violet blinked uncertainly. The next book,
Shining City,
looked more promising. It contained photographs of San Francisco before the quake, one hundred years ago and more. Violet studied the pictures.

In some, the hilly streets were crowded with horses and trains. In others, people walked the streets. Violet looked closely at the narrow streets of Chinatown and the widei streets off Russian Hill with large, ornate Victorian houses. She looked especially at the people. It was odd to think that any one of these people could have known Verity or Hal or Laela—could even
be
Verity or Hal or Laela.

In all the photos the men wore hats and the boys wore caps. The women, in dresses with skirts so long they swept the sidewalks, also wore hats as they walked along carrying shopping baskets or pushing huge wicker baby buggies. Little girls wearing white pinafores sported straw hats or wore huge floppy bows in their hair. It was a good time, Violet could see, for the Stowes' millinery shop to be in business.

The next book,
The Earth Shook, the Sky Burned,
described the 1906 quake in horrifying detail. Violet turned the pages quickly past the scenes of fire, of piles of rabble, a dead horse in the street, long lines of suddenly homeless people waiting for free bowls of soup. She had seen pictures like these before—but in color—on the evening news after earthquakes had hit the Bay Area or Los Angeles, or devastated cities in Mexico or Japan.

What had it been like for Hal, she wondered, when the big quake hit? He must have been an early bird to be awake so early in the morning. But he had been writing to V of his plan to take her away when the room began to shake and the bricks began to fall from the fireplace. He had jumped up, no doubt, spilling his ink but never noticing. He had run out of the house—but where did he live? Had he run to Chance Street to save Verity?

She sighed, picking up the last book and flipping through it.
Our New San Francisco
was an old book. It seemed to be a compilation of newspaper articles and editorials about the rebuilding of the city after the destruction by the quake. She froze when she saw the name penned in flowing ink on the flyleaf—a name written in the distinctive handwriting she knew so well:
Hal Emerson, 1910.

Could that be
her
Hal? Hal's own book? Her finger trembled as she traced the name. Had Hal's own book been lying here on her desk even before she'd found the first of the letters from him? But how could Mr. Koch have come to have Hal's book in the first place?

Just one more strange coincidence? Or one more odd piece that would fit—somehow—into this puzzle from the past?

Violet dropped the book, and it landed with a thud on her desk. A folded paper flew out of the back cover. Stooping to pick it up, she caught her breath. She held it in both hands, a part of her wanting to feel shocked, another part acknowledging that this was fate at work, once again.

It was a diary entry—in Laela's tightly curled handwriting.

 

November 1, 1906

Dear Diary,

It is early morning now and I hold my pen with trembling hand. I awoke a short time ago, crying from
a
fearful dream, and though Hal held me close and comforted me, I could not stop shaking. He asked me to tell him what I'd dreamt, and I've tried—but my words did not convey my sense that this isn't just any old dream, that it means something more than the nighttime workings of an overactive imagination. Now he has gone back to sleep, but I
must write
this down.

Because, you see, it isn't just my dream. It was V's
dream, too!
It
was the same old nightmare that jolted her awake so often in the last weeks of her life—the one about the bridge. "Something bad is going to happen, Laela," she kept saying. And then she would struggle to sit up, imploring me to help. "The people! The earth will take care of itself, but who will help the people?" I would try to soothe her back to sleep.

After the earthquake, I wondered if she had somehow foreseen that terrible event. She always had something mystical about her, with her great dark eyes and gentle languor. If the badge dream foretells earthquakes, then what ami to do now that I've had it
? V
told me, and I didn't listen. I've told Hal, but he says I'm just remembering the dream because V had told me about it. And yet that cannot be, because I can picture everything so very clearly and V never described such details to me. The bridge was a fabulous golden bridge that spanned the entire bay. It was so huge it seemed to soar high in the sky before coming through the clouds again to touch land on the other side. It must have been high noon. I stood on this bridge looking down at the sailboats, with the sun directly overhead, warming me. And slowly I became aware that there was a dark-haired girl at my side. She did not speak. Then suddenly the bridge was shaking, and I grabbed the golden girder for support. But unlike real gold it was not solid, and seemed to melt away under my hand. Fire shot up around me, and through the smoke I saw three shadows reaching out their hands to me. Then we were falling, and falling around us, too, were strange vehicles, like horseless carriages or automobiles, but sleek and smooth and all shiny colors. There were people trapped inside, men, women, children—all screaming as we plummeted toward the churning water.

I awoke then, sick and miserable.

Poor sleepy Hal tried to reason it out. He said it is only natural, since we have lost Verity, that I should dream of a dark-haired girl at my side. He said it is only natural, since we survived the great destruction of San Francisco, that I should dream of other earthquakes. "You're not the only one who will forever link Verity and the quake in your memory," he said, reminding me of the letter he gave me soon after Verity's death, when I was still living at the Stowes'. He had been writing it to Verity at the exact moment the earthquake struck. An inkblot covered half the page. I kept that letter—hid it away in the back of my dresser and meant to take it with me when I left. There are no doubt other letters from Hal still stashed in secret cracks and crannies at that house on Chance Street—letters that I missed when I packed my bags to leave the Stowes' employ. No matter—the letters were only a poor substitute for the real Hal,
my
real Hal, who sat up comforting me tonight. "It was all a dream," he promised me, and I long to find solace in his words.

But I fold I cannot. The dream felt more than a dream, though I don't know myself what I can mean by that. I don't believe the girl at my side was Verity at all; she did not have Verity's tremulous air but one of firmer resolve. And the quake that dissolved the golden bridge, I feel quite certain, was not the quake we suffered. It was a different quake, a different girl, a different time.

By dreaming of it all I feel I have been inexplicably altered. I feel Verity's urgency now in wishing I could help those poor people.

But how? Who are they? Where—and when?

 

Violet slipped the page from Laela's diary back into Hal's book and gently placed the book in the center of the desk. She realized she was holding her breath and expelled it in a soft puff. She sensed that she, too, had in the last moment been altered.

She stood up, picked up the book, and moved slowly toward the attic ladder. She walked, trying to hold in her urge to run, to pelt headlong down the ladder in panic, to race to the safety and warmth of her parents' and sisters' presence. She stood in the upstairs hallway and called out for them. "Jazzy? Rosy?" Her voice sounded odd to her ears, flat, warped as if she were speaking from inside a tunnel.

"In here," came Jasmine's voice.

Violet walked to her sisters' room, and there they were, trying on their black head scarves with the bobbing antennae. They looked up and saw her in the doorway, and Jasmine waggled her head to make the pom-poms dance.

"It's just us, Vi," Rose teased. "You don't have to look as if you've seen a ghost!"

Violet's laugh was shaky. "Almost." She closed the door behind her and came into their room. "I'm not sure what's going on, but—something's changed. We have to talk. Right now."

"Okay." Rose tossed back her long hair. "What about?"

"Bridges," said Violet.

Jasmine raised a delicate brow. "The girl with purple hair suddenly spoke about bridges," she stated. She glanced at Rose. "Go ahead, Rosy. Yes and no questions only."

"Is the purple hair a wig?" asked Rose.

"Nope."

"Is the girl with purple hair an alien?"

"Yes!" Jasmine giggled.

"Is it a
real
bridge she wants to talk about? Or the card game?"

"Who knows?" said Jasmine. "Anyway, it's yes and no questions only."

"Come on, you guys. I'm serious," interrupted Violet.

Rose sighed dramatically. "You mean it's not another lateral thinking riddle? No? Well, that's okay. Bridges. It's an interesting enough topic, but
I
would rather talk about highways or train stations. Wouldn't you, Jazz?"

"Quit joking," Violet said harshly."
Listen
to me, you two."

"We are your captive audience," declared Rose magnanimously, and flopped down on her bed. Jasmine collapsed next to her, antennae bobbing.

Violet stood staring down at her sisters. In this silly mood they were unlikely to be receptive to her new theory. And yet she had to try. "All these letters and diary entries," she began firmly. "There's a reason that we're finding them. That
I'm
finding them."