Sky Jumpers Series, Book 1

by Peggy Eddleman

  “Class, why do we need to learn about history?”

  Everyone answered in unison, “So we don’t repeat the same mistakes.”

  Mr. Allen had asked the same question every day since we began this class in January, and we answered the same. I know he meant to stress the importance of history, but it always sounded to me like a challenge. And I liked a challenge.

  We finished Tens & Elevens learning about World War II, but Mrs. Kearney hated questions, so I had lots left from last year when we got into Mr. Allen’s class. That first day, I asked Mr. Allen the question that had bothered me the most—why they would build a bomb so much more powerful than the bombs of World War II, when they’d already seen the destruction the older bombs caused. It was like they hadn’t learned anything.

  Mr. Allen said they did learn things—they just anticipated wrong on some things, and hoped for the best on others.

  “For example,” he said, “they learned not to build a bomb that would damage the environment, like the atomic bombs did. They went to great lengths to make the green bomb ‘green.’ We have those scientists to thank for this incredibly fertile valley we live in.”

  It was true. My grandpa said the only people who survived the bombs were underground and far away from where any bomb hit. My grandparents and twenty-four others found one another and searched for a place to start over, gathering every stray animal they came across along the way. They were so happy when they discovered White Rock’s crater, the tunnel leading inside that the White Rock River flowed through, and everything green growing around and inside the crater. They knew they’d found home, even before Mr. Hudson, our town’s super-inventor, did tests to make sure the land and vegetation were safe.

  It felt weird to thank the scientists for making our farming life easier, though, when they helped cause the deaths of nearly everyone in the world. I was about to bring up that point when Mr. Allen said, “You have to understand the situation they were in. General Shadel had risen in power and convinced his government that they had a legitimate claim to rule neighboring countries. His leaders gave him authority to invade. He and his army overtook the first country quickly, and he overthrew his own government even more quickly.

  “General Shadel was both feared and respected as he set his sights on other countries he felt he had a claim to. Nations began to pick sides—either to join him or to try to stop his invasions. With his charisma, General Shadel gained many allies by making promises of a better world for all who supported him, even though that better world meant being ruled by a tyrant. Battle lines spanned three continents. Casualties numbered in the millions, with a threat of world domination from General Shadel on the horizon.” Mr. Allen shrugged. “Our side had to do something. Since the Worldwide Nuclear Disarmament Act eighteen years earlier, we didn’t have a weapon that could force General Shadel to back down. It sounds ironic now, but we developed the green bomb in order for the people of the world to survive. We thought that with the green bomb, we could win.”

  Like Mr. Allen said, we anticipated wrong.

  I stared at the two maps hanging on the wall behind Mr. Allen. The detailed one from before the bombs with all the cities and states and countries clearly marked, and the one from now, where cities had been drawn in by hand in a few places but most of the map was blank.

  The second day of class, I raised my hand again. “Mrs. Kearney said that after we got nuclear bombs, lots of other countries did, too. Why’d the scientists think they could build an even better bomb and no other countries would copy them?”

  Mr. Allen nodded. “They knew it was a possibility—they just didn’t expect it to happen so fast. In 2069, we moved our scientists to a secluded city they hoped was isolated enough. Anyone know where that city was?” He blinked a few times, like he couldn’t believe we hadn’t been taught that yet. “It was here, in Cook, Nebraska. Apparently it wasn’t isolated enough. Somehow plans were leaked to General Shadel’s scientists, and by the time we had a prototype, so did they. At that point, it became a race to see who could arm themselves with green bombs the fastest. We had hoped for the best and got the worst.”

  We knew the rest of the story. Our side led General Shadel to believe that we were further behind in making the bombs than we actually were. Everyone assumed there would be negotiations, and that the general would demand we surrender. He didn’t negotiate. Instead, he fired the green bombs on us and our allies. Nine of them destroyed the entire United States.

  He fired his other eighteen green bombs on our allies.

  During the few minutes after General Shadel fired the bombs but before they hit us, all the news stations told everyone to get to a bomb shelter if they had one, while we fired our thirteen bombs on him and his allies. We made sure the first one hit right where we knew the general was stationed.

  I looked at the circles on the map that were our history teachers’ best guesses of where each bomb hit. A circle represented the two-hundred-mile radius around each bomb where everything was decimated—people, animals, technology, buildings—and a much larger circle represented the area where everyone on the surface was killed but a few ruins of cities remained. There was no place where the bigger circles didn’t overlap.

  But today Mr. Allen wasn’t talking about World War III, the bombs, or General Shadel. He was talking about the inventions that existed before all that. “Before the bombs,” he said, “there were a million inventions people used every day that we no longer have.”

  Mr. Allen motioned to the table next to him. There were a few things I had seen before in the library or in other classes, but some of them I had no idea about.

  I loved seeing relics. But just like we gathered into groups and formed towns, bandits gathered into groups and stole from towns. It was dangerous to search for relics left over from before the bombs, and to transport them all the way back to White Rock, so we didn’t have many.

  “Since everyone seems to be in the mood for inventions today, we’re going to be talking about the technology revolution of the twenty-first century.”

  He reached out and grabbed something silver and shiny about three inches by two inches, and about a half inch thick. There was a strange circle thing on the front of it, and the back was mostly black, and buttons and knobs were all over it but they were almost flat against the metal. “Anyone know what this is?”

  Along with the rest of the class, I shook my head. Everything on it was so small. Even the words printed on it or carved into it were minuscule.

  Nate Vanlue raised his hand. “A cell phone?”

  A cell phone! I’d heard of those. They let people talk over long distances. Aaren’s brother Travin said they didn’t just carry voices, though. He said they contained images and books and music and moving pictures and games and news, but I didn’t believe him. I heard they were teeny.

  “Nope. Any other guesses?” When no one raised a hand, he told us. “It’s a camera.” I had heard of a camera before, too, but I’d never seen one. Mr. Allen picked up a book from the table and thumbed through it. “A camera could be used to take a picture of anything. Like this.” He held open a page that showed hundreds and hundreds of people sprawled out in a field, listening to people play musical instruments.

  Mr. Allen showed us a cylinder called a flashlight. Then he passed around a flat object about a foot square that had individual twists of something that looked like short pieces of thick string sticking up, but it was so much softer than any string I’d ever felt. He said it was called carpet, and that it used to cover the floors in people’s homes. When it was my turn, I just laid my cheek on the soft fibers and imagined an entire room of it. Then he showed us a picture of my favorite thing—a machine that actually washed your dishes for you!

  And the best thing about the inventions before the bombs was that there were enough people—thousands and thousands in every city—so not everyone had to invent. Only the people who were really good at it invented, and only because they wanted to. It was strange t
o think that if World War III hadn’t happened, I’d be living with the kinds of technology he showed us.

  It was even stranger that people I knew had used that stuff—all the twenty-six original members of White Rock. Since Mr. Allen was the first person born in White Rock, he was also the oldest person here who hadn’t used any of those inventions. The more Mr. Allen told us about the things that once existed, the more I understood why everyone placed such importance on inventing. They wanted that technology back.

  But it wasn’t going to happen.

  When the green bombs hit, they left behind side effects. Besides new plants, metals having different properties, weather patterns changing, and the existence of the Bomb’s Breath, the green bombs destroyed any ability to create a stable magnet. No magnets meant no electric motors. And no electric motors meant no to a lot of the inventions they had back then. The people in White Rock have invented some pretty great things, but no matter what we did, we’d never get back to the technology level that existed before the bombs. It meant inventing was more difficult now than it used to be.

  But just because it was difficult didn’t mean I was willing to give up.

  As soon as history was over and I walked into the inventions classroom, excitement buzzed through my veins. There were 917 people living in White Rock, and everyone four and older made an invention for the Harvest Festival competition. That was a ton of inventions. I hoped mine wouldn’t get lost in the masses. I wanted everyone to see it.

  The clock read 11:05, with Helen Johnson’s name displayed on the plaque below it. I imagined a plaque somewhere with my name on it. Maybe my potato-peeler invention would be installed in the school kitchen, and Mrs. Davies would use it all the time. Maybe people would even use it in their homes. Maybe we would use it in my home.

  I grabbed hold of my necklace. The pendant was from my birth mom, but the chain was from my parents. It was silver and woven so intricately, it reminded me of the woven pastry my mom baked only once a year on my birthday. The chain was made long before the green bombs and was the most beautiful thing I’d seen in my whole life. I ran my finger down its smooth surface and thought of my parents. I was going to make them proud!

  My inventions teacher, Mrs. Romanek, stood at the front of the classroom with an anxious face. Mr. Hudson, our town’s super-inventor, sat on a tall wooden stool next to her, his foot resting on the bottom rung, which was still charred from my first and last attempt at doing a chemical experiment two years ago. The black case he always carried lay on a table behind him. Mr. Hudson came to every grade each year on Inventions Day to see all the Harvest Festival projects. He was so good at inventing and figuring things out, he was the only person in all of White Rock who didn’t have a main job of farming and a split job of teaching, running a shop, mining, being a doctor, or something like that. His main job and his split job were inventing and teaching. Mr. Hudson had a kind smile, and eyes that always sparkled like something thrilling was happening in his head. Today he wore a dark blue suit, probably for the council meeting this afternoon.

  Mr. Hudson looked amused as he watched my noisy class, but Mrs. Romanek wasn’t happy at all. She held her grade book in one hand and rubbed her forehead with her thumb and two fingers as we all crowded into the room.

  “Quiet!” she called over the clamor, and narrowed her don’t-test-me eyes at each of us. “Class, this is a busy week. I know you’re excited about showing your inventions today, the field trip tomorrow, and then the Harvest Festival. We’re wasting time, though! It’ll take most of class—before and after lunch—to get through everyone’s inventions, so put yours on your desk and find a spot against the walls to watch.”

  This classroom was almost twice as big as our history classroom, and the half that wasn’t filled with desks was filled with equipment for working with chemicals, machinery for shaping wood and metal and even glass, and several bookcases of old reference books. Aaren sat his invention on the desk in front of me, and my cousin and second best friend, Carina, sat hers on the desk to my right.

  Carina and I were cousins, but since I was adopted, we didn’t share any genes. And it was obvious. My dark hair hung stick-straight and thick, while her blond hair fell in soft waves down to her shoulders. My eyes were brown; hers were blue. My skin looked like I spent all day in the sun, while hers was pale. I liked to do daring things; she liked to talk. Carina wore pants, and mine were cut into shorts, but otherwise we dressed almost identically. She looked much more girlish than I did.

  We still had fun together, though. I wished I could tell her about my morning, but she didn’t know we ever jumped through the Bomb’s Breath. Like everyone else, merely mentioning it made her twitchy.

  As I carried my invention, I almost dropped it when someone knocked into me. I knew before I even turned to see him place his invention on the desk in front of Carina that it was Brock. He might keep to himself, but he always let me know when he was nearby—usually with a shove, a punch in the arm, or a stomp on my foot.

  Aaren, Carina, and I walked to a wall together and sat down. Aaren and I were starting to be friends with Brock, but it was still hard to figure out if Brock wanted to join us or not. He pushed his way past some people and sat beside Carina. I guess today he did want to. With such strong, squarish shoulders, Brock seemed confident, but half the time his shoulders drooped, like worries weighed them down. And then there was the way his almost-black hair fell to his green eyes that made him look shy. I could never figure out which he really was—shy or worried or confident. He pushed the hair off his forehead and leaned against the wall. Confident. Smug, even.

  It made me want to gloat about the jump I made. As soon as I opened my mouth to speak, though, Mrs. Romanek said, “Sam Beckinwood. Please come show us your invention.”

  I stared at Brock until he looked at me. I kept my eyes on his as I dramatically pulled out the band that held my hair, then grabbed my ponytail with one hand and swept the fallen hair back into it with the other hand. I did it as slowly and meaningfully as possible, but it still took him a moment to catch on to why my hair had been such a mess.

  I could tell the second he figured out that I’d completed the double front flip, because he sat straight up and looked away from me. Not before I saw frustration on his face, though.

  It felt like victory all over again. Brock Sances, I thought as I leaned back and smiled, who’s wearing the smug look now?

  My smile didn’t fade as I tuned in to Sam explaining his invention. He said it was his farm’s turn to grow peas this year, and he hated to shell them. He placed five pea-pods, unopened, each into a separate shaft of the invention he held. With his other hand, he pushed a lever and all five pods opened and the peas fell into a bowl. He said he’d made a bigger one at home, one that would do twenty pods at once. Mrs. Romanek and Mr. Hudson asked a few questions, gave a suggestion, and told him he did a great job.

  Everyone in class cheered for him, especially me. It had been our turn for peas two years ago, and since then I’d always felt bad for anyone who was assigned peas.

  Mrs. Romanek and Mr. Hudson walked to the second desk and called Ellie Davies. Ellie picked up the metal case on her desk, then opened it to reveal a bunch of cylinders. She explained how the metal case clamped on to the pipes that came from the water tanks behind our fireplaces, and as the warm water passed through the pipes, it heated the cylinders. She said she then wrapped the cylinders in her hair until they cooled, and it made her hair curly.

  “I used to have to put curlers in my hair when it was wet,” Ellie said, “and then wear them to bed. It’s so hard to sleep in curlers! With my invention, you can put them in dry hair, and it only takes a few minutes to curl. As you can see”—Ellie bobbed her head to make her curls bounce—“they work perfectly!”

  Mrs. Romanek smiled, complimented Ellie, suggested a way she could alter the clamp to make it sturdier, then moved on.

  That was pretty much how it went at every desk. Each student was called o
ver, showed his or her invention, got praise and suggestions, then everyone clapped. As they worked closer to my desk, I got more and more excited. We saw Paige Davies’s machine for separating the grain from the chaff using beaters and a bellows, Holden Newberry’s model of an adjustable boat propeller that made steering into the pier on the river easier, and Nate Vanlue’s loud bell attached to a clock that rang when class was over.

  With as much training as we’d had, everyone in my class was good at inventing, and some of them excelled at it. This was the first year I hadn’t been dying to ask one of them for help. Every project we’d done since January had been in teams, but we were on our own for our Harvest Festival inventions. No one could get help, not even kids in Fours & Fives. The Harvest Festival was a celebration of how much a single person could contribute, and everyone in town respected the rules. No one even asked their parents for help, because they knew they wouldn’t get it.

  Twenty minutes remained before lunch when Aaren was called over to explain his invention. He showed an ancient-looking book from the town library about combining chemicals. “This has great recipes for medicines, but they all have to be cooked to an exact temperature. So I made a thermometer. I got some metal from the smith and coiled it at the bottom. When I put the thermometer in the liquid, it heats the coil, which turns the shaft hooked to the pointer. It took trial and error to get it calibrated, but now I can measure the temperature when I cook.” He gave his I’m-talking-about-science-and-people-are-listening grin. It was such a happy grin, it made me feel bad that I didn’t listen to him talk about science more often.

  “I made these yesterday when I used my thermometer while heating two chemicals.” Aaren grabbed a handful of some crystals from a bowl and held them out for us to see. Then he dropped them back into the bowl, ground them with a pestle, and showed us the powder. “When I mix this powder with a liquid to make a gel, it becomes a medicine that will keep infection away from cuts better than any herbs we use now.”