Sky Jumpers Book 2: The Forbidden Flats

by Peggy Eddleman

  The posts for the grain tram closest to us were mostly upright, and the rope that stretched from the top of the posts all the way to City Circle looked tight enough to hold the tram platform that hung from the line. Since it was the quickest way down, the ones most injured in our group situated themselves on the platform first; then gravity carried them along the pathway to the community center for help.

  Once they reached the bottom, we pulled the cables to bring the tram back up; then the five of us who remained climbed onto the suspended platform. Mr. Williams sat at the brakes and took us down slowly enough to get a good look at all the damage we passed. Everything was worse the closer we got to City Circle.

  When we neared the end of the line, Aaren, Brock, and I hopped off the tram and raced across City Circle Road to the small courtyard by the community center, where we had school. It was our town’s designated report-in area in case of emergency, and the one place I knew my parents would be if they could make it.

  Tons of injured people filled the courtyard. My dad leaned up against the building, clipboard in hand. I could tell that the leg in which he’d been shot months ago was bothering him more than normal by the way he stood.

  “Dad!” I yelled, running to him.

  Relief washed over his face as he limped toward me and lifted me off the ground in a tight hug. “Are you okay?” He pulled back to make sure nothing was broken and looked at my scraped-up hands and bruised arms.

  I brushed the hair out of my face. “I’m fine. What about Mom?”

  “She’s fine, too. She went inside to get more bandages.”

  I glanced at all the people in the courtyard. “How bad is it?”

  “It’s bad. Half the town hasn’t reported in yet, and Dr. Grenwood’s already got more injured than she can help.”

  Aaren took off running before my dad finished his sentence. Besides his mom, Aaren knew more about being a doctor than anyone else in White Rock. I hadn’t even turned toward the building when two horses raced into the courtyard, carrying Aaren’s brother Travin, Mr. Williams’s son Pax, and my cousin Carina. My breath left my lungs when I saw her pained face.

  “My leg,” Carina whimpered as Pax lowered her to Travin. He rushed her toward the several dozen people in the courtyard, Brock and me following closely behind.

  Some of the injured were already in casts, some were walking around, and some were lying in makeshift beds. Most were still waiting their turn. I sprinted ahead of Travin and Carina as my mom came out of the building with her arms full of new bandages.

  “Hope!” She set everything down and wrapped her arms around me. “Are you hurt?”

  I shook my head. “Why is everyone out here?”

  “Too much broken glass inside,” my mom said. She picked up the bandages and we headed over to where Mr. Williams’s wife was wrapping cuts on people not injured as badly as the ones Dr. Grenwood was treating.

  “Where should we help?” I asked.

  “It looks like Aaren and his mom are setting Carina’s broken leg. She’ll have to move on to the next person as quickly as she can, so help Aaren put a cast on it. I think Carina will be glad you’re there.”

  We had only taken three paces toward them when the ground began to shake again. I screamed, adding my voice to the din of all the others as I hit the ground.

  “Stay calm!” Dr. Grenwood called over the noise. “It’s only an aftershock! Everything will be fine!”

  It felt anything but fine. I closed my eyes for a moment to block everything out, but then I couldn’t tell which direction was up. My eyes flew back open in time to see the outside window of the Fours & Fives classroom, which the previous quakes had somehow missed, crash to the ground, shattering into pieces, causing a new round of frightened screams.

  When the tremors finally stopped, I was crouching on the ground, my shaking arms wrapped around my legs.

  “It’s over!” Aaren’s mom yelled. “If you’re not too hurt to help, find something to do. An aftershock that strong is sure to bring more injured. Move!”

  I forced myself to get to my feet and scrambled toward Carina.

  Four days after the quakes, Brock, Aaren, Jella Johnson, and I took hold of a wall frame on the ground next to the Johnsons’ house and pushed it upright, replacing their missing wall. Jella’s dad, mom, and older brothers nailed it into place. Aaren’s little sister Brenna dug in the dirt not far from where we worked. Cleanup began the day after the quakes, and it had taken us this long to remove all the damaged parts of the Johnsons’ house so we could start rebuilding it today. We were so exhausted from the work, we slumped against one of the house’s good walls while they hammered.

  Jella’s dad squinted up at the afternoon sun and then at us. “You’ve all been working hard. Tell you what—we’ll finish up this wall. You kids take a break for an hour or two.”

  Brock pumped his fist. “Yes!”

  “What should we do?” Aaren asked.

  I motioned in the general direction of the cliffs where we usually sky jumped into the Bomb’s Breath. “I think I want to go hiking.” The entire town knew that we had gone through the Bomb’s Breath when the bandits were here, but it was still deadly, and no one thought we should ever go through it again. With Jella’s family close enough to hear, I wasn’t about to mention it.

  Brock grinned. “I could definitely use a hike.”

  “Really?” Jella said. “I was thinking of taking a nap.”

  “As nice as that sounds,” Aaren said, “I could use a hike, too.”

  Brenna dashed to us and rocked onto the balls of her feet several times. “Hiking? Can I go? Can I go? Pretty please? You’re going up there,” she said as she raised her eyebrows, “right?”

  I swore she was going to give us away.

  Aaren gave her a warning look, then said, “Of course you can come.”

  She jumped up and down until Aaren knelt by her and whispered, “But you can’t hike too high up the mountain, you know. Not until you are ten, like we were.”

  Brenna’s face fell. Two days before the quakes, she’d turned six. “B-but …,” she stammered. “But you let me go before!”

  “Shh, Brenna.” I glanced around to make sure Jella’s family couldn’t hear us.

  “Only when it was more dangerous to not go,” Aaren said. “Right now, it’s not. You’ll have to wait.”

  During the walk toward the orchards, I wondered how long it would take to get things back to normal. Even with everyone working from sunup to sundown, I imagined it could be months before we got to the last damaged building or road.

  It took thirty minutes to walk, run, and hike up the mountain to our spot right below the Bomb’s Breath and would take another thirty minutes to get back, so we had an hour at the very most to sky jump. I could barely stand that it took us so long to get there. With the deep snows and then the mud from the spring melt, we hadn’t sky jumped since the bandits were here four months ago.

  I could tell Aaren was beginning to feel as if it was a mistake, though. Brenna hadn’t stopped trying to talk him into letting her jump the entire time.

  “I’m only trying to keep you safe!” Aaren said.

  Brenna folded her arms. “I went through it when I was sick and I stayed safe then. I can do it, Aaren! I can!”

  “I’ll make you a deal,” Aaren said. “I’ll work with you on holding your breath for a long time all summer. When you can do it while I sing the ‘Happy Birthday’ song three times, even if I try to startle you, then I’ll let you jump. Deal?”

  I didn’t think Brenna would’ve smiled any bigger if Aaren had told her that he was going to make her wings so she could fly. Which, I guess, is kind of what he promised her.

  “I’ll stay with her first,” Brock offered.

  “Really?” Aaren said. “Thanks!”

  Aaren and I waved our arms as we hiked up the mountainside, feeling for the dense air that made up the Bomb’s Breath—the band of air that nobody but the three of us dared go
through, because everyone in White Rock knew how easily it could kill us. We inhaled, then hurried up the mountainside and through the Bomb’s Breath, careful not to breathe while in the middle of it. When we reached the boulder that told us we were beyond the danger, we gulped air.

  My long hair was already pulled into a ponytail, but I braided it to keep it a little more contained, then pulled a band out of my pocket and wound it around the end. Aaren pushed his blond curls off his forehead—not that they were going to stay that way for long.

  “We’re out of practice,” he said.

  “Yep. So we should probably start with something easy. Belly flop?”

  He grasped my hand. “Running.”

  I responded by sprinting with him along the narrow face of the lower cliff until we reached our normal sky-jumping spot. I looked at Aaren to make sure he was ready. He nodded, and we took a huge breath and flung ourselves off the edge of the cliff.

  The lower cliff was a foot or two above the Breath, so we only free-fell for a moment before we plunged into the compressed air. It felt as if time stopped. Gravity went away. Earthquake damage seemed to disappear. Every care in the world floated somewhere above or below the Bomb’s Breath, and all that was left inside it was me flying. Me, lying facedown, seeing the cliff base, where Brock and Brenna stood below, as we drifted closer.

  I held my free hand up, then flipped it over. That was our cue to try a trick we had worked on for months last summer. We slowly moved our clasped hands downward, then flung them above our heads. The momentum yanked us onto our backs, and I stared up at the white fluffy clouds, imagining I floated on one of them. If I didn’t have to breathe soon, and if I wasn’t sinking closer and closer to the bottom of the Breath, I could stay here forever. Floating. Escaping.

  We squirmed around until we got in a crouching position, with our feet toward the cliff below. I enjoyed every last second until I fell out of the Breath and hit the ground with a thump. All was right with the world. All was right everywhere.

  We took turns being the one at the base of the cliff with Brenna, below the Bomb’s Breath. It had been so long since any of us had jumped, we raced up the mountainside to do our next jump faster than ever, waving our arms above us to feel for the compressed air as we ran. It didn’t take long before we tried doing flips. I even attempted a double front flip from the higher cliff like I had last fall, but I was too out of practice and ended up in a headfirst dive. I had a hard time holding my breath instead of laughing at my lack of skill on the jump.

  “At least we’re landing better,” Aaren said.

  “Speak for yourself,” Brock said. “I’ve been landing better the entire time.”

  Forty-five minutes into our jump time, I was taking a turn with Brenna at the base when I noticed a dead chipmunk on the mountainside. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it earlier—it lay on the side of the cliff, a little higher than eye level. It was right by the path, too, but a rock next to it kind of hid it. I hoped Brenna hadn’t seen it. Animals walked up into the Bomb’s Breath all the time, and it killed them as easily as it could kill us. It always made Brenna so sad. I pointed to Brock and Aaren, almost to the top of the upper cliff, and told Brenna to keep a close eye on them. I went to nudge the chipmunk with a stick to get it out of Brenna’s sight.

  When I got closer to it, I noticed the line we had drawn with a rock on the cliff face last year that showed where the Bomb’s Breath began. The chipmunk was below it. By almost a foot.

  I scooted in for a closer look, but the chipmunk wasn’t covered with dirt as though it had rolled down the hill. It looked like it had died exactly where it was. I reached my hand up to feel the compressed air of the Bomb’s Breath. Aaren’s and Brock’s excited squeals filled the air at the same time panic attacked my insides.

  “Hope!” Brenna called. “Come watch! You missed their flips!”

  I rushed back to Brenna as Brock and Aaren drifted out of the Bomb’s Breath and dropped to the ground.

  As soon as Aaren noticed my face, he said, “What’s wrong?”

  I wasn’t even sure I could talk, but somehow I managed to say, “I think the Bomb’s Breath lowered.”

  Aaren reached his hand up and moved it back and forth. “The Breath’s just above my head here. It’s never been this close! Why didn’t we notice?”

  “We were having too much fun,” Brock said.

  “And we felt for the Breath as we went up the hill each time,” I said. “If we hadn’t—if we had gone off our marking on the cliff instead—”

  Brenna finished my sentence for me, a horrified look on her face. “You could’ve taken a breath too late and died!”

  “We always take a breath early,” Aaren said. “We’d have been okay.”

  Brock looked across the hazy air in the valley, his eyes settling on the part of the mountainside with the wide crevices. “Do you think maybe the Bomb’s Breath hasn’t moved, but the earthquake just changed things enough that the mountain is in a different spot?”

  Aaren shook his head. “An earthquake capable of that wouldn’t have left a single building standing in White Rock. It’s something else. We need to tell someone. Hope, we have to tell your dad.”

  As much as I dreaded telling my dad that, once again, I had been jumping into the Bomb’s Breath, I knew we had to. The gnawing pit in my stomach told me this was serious.

  “Is it still lowering?” Brock said. “If it dropped a foot because of an earthquake, it’s not a huge deal—everything’s far enough away from it. If it’s still dropping, that’s a whole lot worse.”

  We stayed silent as that sank in. Or maybe we did because we couldn’t bear to say how bad that would be out loud. Well, all of us but Brenna.

  “The Bomb’s Breath is going to come down by our houses?” she asked. “We could jump off our roofs into it!” Then she spun toward the livestock farms on the fourth ring. “Oh, but the cows! What will they do? Is it going to kill the cows?”

  She looked up at Aaren with big concerned eyes, and he whispered, “No. Everything will be fine.”

  “We need to figure out if it’s still dropping before we cause a panic,” Brock said.

  Aaren walked over to our mark on the cliff face, picked up a rock, and waved his hand to see where the compressed air started. He drew a new line with the rock, then felt the air again and again to make sure his line was at exactly the right place. “We’ll come back tomorrow. When it’s time to leave home in the morning to go help the Johnsons, we’ll come here first. See if the Bomb’s Breath is any lower. Then we’ll tell your dad, Hope.”

  The next morning, Brock, Aaren, Brenna, and I raced across the orchards as the sun was peeking over the top of the crater.

  “Plan?” Brock asked, huffing.

  “If the Breath hasn’t moved, then everything is okay, and we can go to the Johnsons’ and tell my dad tonight,” I said. “If we hurry, we might get there at the right time. If it has lowered …” I took a deep breath. “Everything’s not okay, and we’ll take the nine a.m. train to my dad at the mill.”

  No one even asked about that part of my plan. They were probably hoping it wouldn’t matter. After all, it’s not as if the Breath would continue to lower. It had never done that. It just lowered one time because of the quakes. An anomaly. And like Brock said, everyone stayed far enough away that a foot wasn’t going to make too much of a difference. The warning fences were at the back edge of the fourth ring, and the bottom of the Bomb’s Breath was forty feet higher. And that was if you went straight up. If you hiked the mountainside, you had to climb several hundred feet to reach it. The fact that it dropped a foot wouldn’t make a difference at all.

  We climbed over the warning fences and up our path to the cliff face where Aaren had marked the Bomb’s Breath. I squeezed Brenna’s hand tight. Aaren waved his arm in the Breath over and over, and none of us breathed.

  Finally, he picked up a rock and scratched a line on the cliff face. It was a full two inches lower than the lin
e he had scratched yesterday afternoon.

  No one moved.

  “It’s only two inches,” Brock said. “That’s not too bad—right?”

  Aaren didn’t take his eyes off the mark.

  Brenna looked up at Aaren. “So it’s getting lower? It’s going to keep coming down?”

  I looked out across my valley. At all the homes and shops and farms and buildings my town had spent forty years building. This was the only crater left behind by the bombs for hundreds and hundreds of miles—it’s not as though there was another one we could move into. Without it, we wouldn’t be sheltered from bandits or the high winds that whip across the Forbidden Flats. We’d have to walk away from everything if the Bomb’s Breath lowered.

  I kept my eyes on the valley while I answered her. “No, Brenna. We’re going to find my dad and he’ll tell Mr. Hudson, and they’ll fix it. What time is it, Aaren?”

  “Eight forty-five.”

  “We need to get on a train to reach my dad, and the last one before dinnertime leaves City Circle at nine a.m. We have to make it!”

  We raced down the path to the warning fences and ran to the grain tram at the edge of the orchard. We pulled the platform to us and climbed on, our weight sending the platform soaring down the tram path at a high enough speed that it rocked back and forth. I scrambled to the brakes, slowing the platform only enough to keep us from flying out of it.

  The wind rushed past us, whipping my hair and making my eyes sting. We had barely passed the pole at the top of the third ring when the steam whistle at City Circle blew, signaling five minutes before the trains traveled up their tracks. Five minutes to make it a mile and a half.

  I let my foot off the brake, and the fields flew past us in a blur. When we started swinging a little too much, I put the brake on a bit. Once I could see the end pole, I pressed on the brake even more. We came to a skidding stop three feet before the end pole. Perfect timing on the brakes, if you asked me.

  We leapt out of the tram and dashed alongside the ditch that circled the ring of shops around City Circle. If it hadn’t been full of water, we’d have run in the ditch to avoid all the weeds and rocks along the bank. We were still a hundred feet away when the whistle blew, telling the trains to go.