Aaren glanced back toward the closed paneling. “Is it your dad? Because you have to tell him about inventions class?”
I knew I couldn’t talk without my voice coming out squeaky, so I nodded.
The steam whistle blew barely loud enough for us to hear through the walls, and Aaren turned his head toward the sound. “We can take the four o’clock train; then we’ll have an hour before our parents expect us. Where do you want to go? We could sky jump.”
I shook my head no. “I just want to go home.”
My schoolbag sat in a heap at my feet. I pulled the strap over my head as I walked toward the end of the hallway, where a grate in the ceiling marked our way out. Aaren linked his hands together and I stepped on them as he boosted me to the opening. After I climbed up, I let down our rope. Aaren helped Brenna before he scaled the rope himself.
The grate led us to a three-foot-high crawl space, between the ceiling of the hall behind the gym and the roof of the building. It was small and dark, but big enough for us to crawl through. We crept along until we reached the roof’s access hatch.
The roof above the classrooms and hallways was flat, but the peaked part that covered the gym hid us from the view of almost anyone who might be outside. We snuck to the corner classroom—Fours & Fives—where the clay-brick walls made it easiest to climb down. I went first; then Aaren lowered Brenna to my waiting arms. After Aaren climbed down, we had to run to make the train before the double whistle blew.
The train wasn’t like trains before the bombs. The green bombs had changed the properties of steel, so now it was weak. We could make different types of metals, of course, but getting enough—even for our small steam engines that were barely big enough to hold the person manning them—was almost impossible. Besides, we didn’t need big trains, just ones big enough to pull two wooden cars. Some days the cargo cars were emptied, ready to haul something to or from the upper rings, but usually benches were placed along the outsides of the flat-bottomed cars, with the two-foot-high sides holding them in place for passengers to sit.
Since the meeting was still in session, there were only four other people on the train, and two were Aaren’s siblings. Aaren led us to where his older brother Travin was wrestling his three-year-old brother, Nick, onto a bench. We climbed into the same car and sat on the bench backward, our feet dangling off the sides.
“Couldn’t get Nick to stay still during the meeting?” Aaren asked as the double whistle sounded.
Travin slumped his shoulders. “No. And it was a great meeting, too.” He looked at Brenna, who was sitting like an angel between Aaren and me. “Why did you leave?”
Aaren glanced at me and shrugged. “We just didn’t feel like staying.”
The train jerked forward as it started to climbed up the hill. Aaren and Travin talked about Mr. Hudson’s idea and the crowd’s reactions. It was obvious that Travin was as afraid of the Bomb’s Breath as everyone else, but he still enjoyed Mr. Hudson suggesting something that fired up the crowd so much. I ignored their chatter and stared at the passing farms, but the truth was, I could barely stay in my seat.
When the train neared our stop on the third ring, I leaned toward Aaren. “Walk home with Travin, okay?” The train had barely slowed when I leapt off and ran the rest of the way to my farm. I didn’t even bother to change out of my school clothes; I just attacked my chores.
I had frustrated energy to burn, so the fact that my dad had assigned me the job of pulling out dried cornstalks actually worked well. I yanked on the stubborn stalks with all the strength I had. It was hard, but at least it wasn’t like working on an invention for nothing.
I didn’t stop until I knew my parents were home and dinner was ready. Exhausted in every way, I grabbed an armful of firewood and tromped into my house to the smell of the chicken stew my mom had put on to cook before the meeting.
The skirt my mom always wore to council meetings swished back and forth as she and my dad set the table. It was one of the few days of the month that I came into the house for dinner and she wasn’t wearing pants and a flour-covered apron.
Unlike my dad, my mom was quiet when she was growing up, and completely focused on baking. Everything everyone had eaten up to that point had been for survival. She changed things. She treated baking like an art form—she called it her creative outlet. Every single invention she made for the inventions show was something to help with baking—a new tool, a new method, or a new recipe.
“Hello, honey,” she said as I slipped off my mud-crusted shoes. She looked me up and down, shook her head, and reached out to rub some dirt off my cheek. “You can tell you’ve got a whole lot of boys raising you.”
My mom wasn’t talking about the guard members who often helped on the farm since we had a small family. She meant my eight brothers, who died before they were even born. It comforted her to believe they hung out with me as angels and acted like real brothers would while I did my farm chores. She wasn’t crazy. That was just her way of dealing with the fact that she wanted a house full of kids but only got one.
People say my mom used to be strong. She had always been thin, but each miscarriage made her a little more fragile. After the last one, where she had been far enough along we were all convinced I’d finally get a sibling, she seemed breakable. My dad wrapped his broad arms around her like a human shield and whispered something in her ear, and she laughed. I knew he’d protect her from anything. My dad told me once that he’d been in love with my mom since they were five. For twelve years she didn’t have a clue.
We sat down to eat, and my parents talked of nothing but the meeting. The meeting and the dangers of the Bomb’s Breath.
“Are you going to eat that stew,” my dad asked, “or just swirl your spoon through it all evening?”
I forced a smile.
“Feeling guilty about being late for school this morning?” My dad’s eyebrows were raised, and he had that You didn’t think I knew, did you? look on his face.
Oh, that. I had forgotten about being late. “Sorry. We went for a walk this morning and lost track of time.”
“Hope.” My dad put down his spoon. “You’re a leader. People follow you. That means the decisions you make affect more than just you. You need to have the good of others in mind, too.”
I scoffed. “Dad, I’m not a leader.”
My dad just looked at me for a moment. “You’re more of a leader than you realize.”
“He’s right,” my mom said. “You find yourself in any situation and instantly know what to do.”
I shook my bowed head. Leaders could set goals, then work hard and actually reach them. Like my dad did. I looked up at my parents. “My invention—” My voice caught in my throat. “It was every bit as bad as last year. No, worse. This year I can’t even be in the inventions show. I’m sorry.”
My mom reached out and gave my hand a squeeze. I dropped my head and watched a tear fall onto my shorts.
The silence lasted a few moments longer than I could stand. Then my dad’s chair legs scraped across the floor. He walked to me and lifted my chin with two of his stocky fingers.
“Hope. There’s a lot more that I love about you than your inventing skills.”
A laugh mixed with a sob hiccuped in my chest. I was pretty sure my dad would love me even if I had a second nose growing out of my forehead. That was just the way he was. But sometimes it was really tough being an only child. Just like my name said, all my parents’ hopes were smushed into one person. Me.
I grabbed my necklace and ran my thumb down the chain. The smooth chain that didn’t go with the rough stone pendant it held. I couldn’t help wondering how many times my parents had wished they had a kid with their own genes, someone they could have passed on their talents to. Someone who didn’t keep messing things up.
Someone who wouldn’t keep my dad from running for council head.
My class and I followed Mr. Allen as he rode my favorite of the town’s horses, Arabelle, in a slow walk to the edge
of the woods, then waited for us to stop talking. We couldn’t help being excited—field trips to places where we might someday work as splits were one of the best things about Twelves & Thirteens. And knowing how sick Mr. Allen was, we hadn’t been sure he’d be strong enough to join us, horseback or not.
We had taken the train to the end of the third ring, and the breeze helped whip away the crawlies I felt after cleaning the bathrooms. The community center had two toilets someone had scavenged from before the bombs, but the rest were cement with polished wood seats and were much worse to clean. I shuddered just thinking about it. Stupid detention.
We stood on the mostly uninhabited side of White Rock, directly across the valley from my house. To reach the mines where the river exited the valley, we first had to travel through the woods. As everyone gathered around Mr. Allen, I patted Arabelle’s neck and ran my hand down her jaw. She was the one I rode whenever my dad sent me to get a horse from the community stables to help haul wood planks for his split at the lumber mill.
Mr. Allen held up a hand for quiet. “You’ll work in teams of three. As you search for Ameiphus, keep your teammates in sight. I don’t want anyone getting lost or hurt.” He held up a clump of moss. “Make sure the Ameiphus you find is the dark green kind with the little rounded leaves, and only take it if you can see mold growing on it. You all know the importance of finding as much as possible. So”—he smiled—“the team who finds the most Ameiphus gets out of a week of homework and will each get a turn to sit at my desk during class.”
Everyone’s eyes were as wide as mine. No homework. Soft chair.
Mr. Allen looked at the clipboard in his hand. “We’ll form teams alphabetically.”
I turned to Aaren and frowned. “I guess we aren’t teammates. Have fun with Ellie and Paige.”
I scanned my class for Brock and my cousin Carina before Mr. Allen said, “Brock Sances, you’re with Carina Toriella and Hope Toriella.” It wasn’t like I couldn’t think through the class list by threes.
“Everyone come grab a sack,” Mr. Allen called out. “You’ll have about an hour to search on your way through the woods. Listen for my whistle. When you hear it, you have ten minutes to meet me on the road at the other end of the woods.”
Once Brock, Carina, and I stood together, I pointed to a path that would lead us downhill a bit and away from most of the groups of searchers. “Should we go this way?”
Brock eyed the area, like he was sizing up the competition, then nodded. We each found a flat rock we could use to dig the Ameiphus loose, then stepped over rocks and fallen trees and clumps of growing things, searching in the shade of every boulder and tree trunk.
We spotted a boulder as high as my waist—a perfect spot for Ameiphus to grow—and the three of us ran to it. Brock was the one who discovered the Ameiphus, and he bent to dig it out. I had hoped I’d be the first person to find one.
Brock pushed the Ameiphus into his sack, then moved back several steps. He gave a loud whoop, took a running leap onto the boulder, then jumped up with his arms and legs out. With as much as he’d been showing off during the jump, he landed like it was nothing. Using both arms, he pointed at Carina and me and said, “I’m going to get more than you.”
Competition on! We all took off running.
Ameiphus was one of the many side effects of the green bombs—it didn’t exist before they hit. Of course, neither did Shadel’s Sickness. At least thirty people got the sickness every year, but sometimes it was a lot more. It started with achy muscles and pale skin, and by the next day, your muscles seized to the point you could barely move, and your skin got covered with red splotches. Within a week, it moved to your organs and you died. There was an epidemic when I was four, and sixty-seven people came down with Shadel’s in the same month, including my three living grandparents and Aaren’s baby sister. It was a death sentence for all of them.
When Aaren’s sister died, Dr. Grenwood said she wouldn’t rest until she found a cure. Her theory was that if a new disease formed because of the bombs, then the cure did, too. Between her experience with medicine and Aaren’s dad’s expertise with plants, they eventually discovered that the mold that grew on the Ameiphus plant could be made into an antibiotic that cured not only Shadel’s Sickness, but also a dozen other illnesses and infections. Now you didn’t die if you got Shadel’s Sickness—you were just extremely sick for six weeks.
My eyes darted from tree trunk to tree trunk and from rock to rock as we searched. Ameiphus grew in moist places with no sun. It wasn’t something you could plant—you had to wait for it to grow on its own. The best time to find Ameiphus was in autumn, when we collected it for the entire year. Aaren’s dad was worried that with the lack of rain we’d had, we wouldn’t find enough this year.
Then something caught my eye. A clump of Ameiphus was growing in the crook of two branches in a tall pine tree, but the bottom branches were a dozen feet from the ground. I didn’t know Ameiphus could grow that high.
The tree bark was rough enough to scale, so I set my sack of Ameiphus and my lunch next to the trunk, then hugged the tree with my arms and legs and scrambled up.
Once I got to the branch with the Ameiphus, I swung a leg over it and dug the Ameiphus free. That was when I noticed that Aaren’s group had run into ours, and they were all watching me. Aaren shook his head and smiled like he did anytime I tried something dangerous that he totally expected me to try. Carina looked like she feared for my life. Brock had a gleam in his eye. I knew he’d be up a tree digging at an Ameiphus before I even got down from this one. But Paige Davies, the smallest girl in my class, just looked at me in awe. It made me smile. And it might have made me show off a bit as I swung from the branch back to the trunk.
I only found one more Ameiphus in a tree I had to climb. Now that the tree secret was out, everyone climbed the trees, even people like Paige. And of course Brock. He climbed more trees than anyone, even me.
While Brock was up in a tree, I knelt down to dig a piece of Ameiphus loose from between two roots. Carina crouched near me and nodded in Brock’s direction. “Someone’s in a good mood today.”
I looked up at Brock and smiled. “Yeah.” There was something about a competition that made him seem less worried.
“I think I know who his dad is.”
“Really?” Since we first met Brock when he started living with his grandpa and coming to school in the spring, we’d been trying to figure out why he’d never been to school before then. Or why we hadn’t seen him around town, at council meetings, or even at any of the festivals. We had no idea how he’d just appeared one day. Honestly, we weren’t even sure who his parents were. The adults were no help, either. Six months ago, when Mr. Allen had said we were getting a new student, we were all in shock. We’d never had a new student. Mr. Allen had told us not to make a big deal of it, and that the only important thing was making him feel welcome. I’d asked my dad, but he said it was Brock’s story and if Brock wanted me to know, he’d tell me. But anytime we asked Brock, he’d turn away, change the subject, or tell us it wasn’t our business.
Carina whispered next to my ear. “Remember the hermit who lives in the woods up near the warning fences? The one who only comes down during the Summer Festival?”
I nodded. A bandit attack or something before I was born had made him go crazy, and he didn’t like being around people anymore.
“I think Brock’s dad is the hermit,” Carina said.
I couldn’t remember if I’d ever heard the hermit’s last name, but it might have been Sances.
“Maybe he had a son all along, and it’s Brock. And that’s why Brock doesn’t like being around people sometimes—he’s not used to it.”
“Brock’s pretty smart,” I said. “Could a hermit have taught him so much?”
Carina shrugged like her explanation was the only one that made sense. “Why else wouldn’t he talk about it? I think he doesn’t want us to know his dad is nuts.” She nodded knowingly, then walked off in s
earch of Ameiphus.
I pushed the Ameiphus into my sack and looked up the hill to where Brock was staring at me from his perch in the tree. He grabbed the branch and swung down, dangled his feet for a minute, then dropped to the ground.
Was that his secret? That his dad was the hermit?
At the sound of the whistle, my sack held four clumps of Ameiphus. Mr. Allen blew the whistle a second time, and Brock, Carina, and I emerged from the woods to meet the others on the path.
Brock hadn’t even mentioned the fact that he didn’t meet us to jump yesterday morning. I’d known everyone in my class for my entire life, so if someone didn’t show up for something, I’d be able to guess why. I’d only known Brock for six months, though. With him, I had no idea. As soon as Carina was distracted, I whispered, “You didn’t come jump with us yesterday morning.”
He brushed his hair off his forehead, then looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “If I would’ve come, I would’ve been the first to land a double front flip.”
I laughed and gave him a little shove.
It was months ago when Brock had seen us hiking to the cliff, snuck up behind us, and stayed hidden while we made a few jumps into the Bomb’s Breath. When he stepped out into the open, I’d almost had a heart attack—I thought he’d tell on us for sure. He said he wouldn’t if we let him jump. That took me by surprise even more than his sudden appearance did. I didn’t think we’d find another person anywhere who would be willing to go near the Bomb’s Breath, let alone jump into it. But he did, and we’d met him for jumps ever since. It was one of the few times I’d seen him happy. Like he wasn’t weighed down with whatever made his shoulders slump.
He nodded toward my bag. “How many did you get?”
“Four,” I said with a smile.
He took a few steps ahead of me. Right before he squeezed between two kids, he turned around. “I got five.” He gave me a half-smile, then stepped into the crowd around Mr. Allen, out of my sight.
Ugh! I lost to Brock! It took away some of my excitement for being the first to land the double front flip, especially since he hadn’t even been there to try to win.
Sky Jumpers Series, Book 1 Page 5
