The mailbox creaked as he opened it. It was too dark to see, so he felt around inside. No letters—just a brick.
A brick?
He pulled it out. It wasn’t a brick; it was something hard and brick-shaped, wrapped in brown paper. Almost a dozen stamps were stuck on it, crooked and overlapping. Underneath the stamps, was written JORY BIRCH. And the family’s address. Nothing else.
Jory stared at it for a moment. What in the world? Then he tucked it under his arm and ran for the house. In the shadows beside the porch, he tore it open.
It was one of their Worldbuilding houses.
He peered at it more closely, then held it out so the moonlight could catch it. She’d worked on it since he’d last seen it: now the walls were green, blue, yellow, and orange—one of each. On the roof, she’d painted a constellation of red stars. She’d used a pen to draw tiny, spiky flowers around the bottom. An itty-bitty dog looked out the window, with its paws on the sill. Black and white, like Panda.
“I thought you didn’t like him,” Jory whispered.
He turned the house over and found a message.
I AM FINE.
In big, bold capital letters, penmanship as shiny bright as Kit’s voice. Tears sprang to Jory’s eyes. He cradled the house against his chest, feeling worse and better.
But mostly better.
Kit loved the sky and the sun and the stars. She needed them. She didn’t want to be buried. Couldn’t be buried. As long as she was in reach of the sky…she’d be okay. Jory didn’t need a sign to tell him that. Whatever happened—whatever had happened, that day the Officials came—Kit would be okay.
She’d be fine.
If only Jory could say the same for himself.
Jory returned to his room and waited in the dark. It seemed like eternity. It seemed like no time at all. The minutes kept rushing around him, one after the other, spinning like a whirlpool with the moon at the bottom. Finally, he heard a knock on his door.
“Come in,” Jory said, expecting Mom.
It was Caleb.
“It’s time,” he said. “It’s time.”
THE NIGHT SMELLED ELECTRIC.
“A storm’s coming,” Mom whispered, hugging Ansel against her. She’d bundled him into his down jacket and a crocheted cap. His round-cheeked face peered out sleepily.
Jory wiped the prickly feeling from his nose with a numb hand. Everything felt dreamlike: the skree of crickets, the impossible weight of the navy-gray sky. It could all be a movie he was watching about somebody else. But the scent made it real.
“We’ll be underground before the rain falls,” Caleb said.
“You’re absolutely certain no water can get in?” Mom asked, looking nervous.
Caleb locked the back door and dropped the key in his pocket. “Of course I’m sure. I tested it.”
“How, exactly? I’m not sure you ever—”
“Don’t worry,” he said, cutting her off. “But we should hurry—we don’t want to get caught outside.” He nodded at the sky. “The storm might be the beginning.”
“Of what?” Jory asked.
“Of the danger.”
Danger. A word you never could get used to. It echoed in Jory’s head as they walked away from the house. Danger. As he stumbled through the canyon like a marionette, floppy and limp-limbed. Danger. Danger. Danger. If Jory thought it enough times, maybe it would become meaningless.
Instead, it sounded like an alarm.
Jory had been taught not to trust anybody but his family. Especially not the Officials. And just like Caleb had warned, the Officials had taken Kit away.
But Kit was fine.
He thought again of the Officials who’d knocked on his door. The curly-haired woman who’d given him her card. The sharp-toothed man who’d searched for candy in his pockets. At the time, they’d seemed so sinister.
But what if they weren’t? What if that had just been Caleb peering over Jory’s shoulder? Inhabiting Jory’s skin?
What if the Officials weren’t the enemy after all?
The family hiked down the ravine, like they had so many times before. But with the storm at his back, Jory couldn’t stop imagining it filled with rushing water. Was the bunker really waterproof? Don’t worry, Caleb had said. But Jory worried.
As they squeezed through the chaparral thicket, the bunker appeared in the brush like a hungry dark mouth. Jory could swear he felt heat radiating from inside.
Danger. “We’ve arrived,” Caleb said. “This is it.”
Mom and Jory and Ansel stayed silent.
A dog began to bark. Panda? Would he still be there, after?
What else would be left? Their house? All the stuff they didn’t bring into the canyon? Jory thought of the marks on the doorjamb where Mom had documented their height. He had grown almost a foot in the last few years. Kit had only grown an inch or two. Ansel hadn’t been standing all that long, so he only had a couple of lines.
Would they keep growing underground? Or would they wither and shrink, like plants shut away from the light?
“Time to say good-bye,” Caleb said, pinching Ansel’s cheeks. “Good-bye to all the houses and trees. Good-bye to the stars.”
But there weren’t any stars. The clouds covered them all. Another meteor shower could be exploding through the sky—a sign they should turn back, tuck themselves into bed and forget the bunker—and they wouldn’t even know it.
Jory thought of the neighbor ladies and their blueberry scones.
He thought of Mr. Bradley and the tunnels project he would never hand in.
He thought of Alice Brooks-Diaz, whose feelings he’d hurt so badly—and she forgave him anyway. It made him want to cry, thinking of that kindness. She’d only wanted to help Kit, after all. And so had Alice’s mom. He knew that now.
He felt the dampness in the air and its threat of coming rain. The grinning bunker, beckoning them closer. And the darn dog! Who kept barking.
And barking.
And barking, until Jory wanted to cover his ears. Because it, too, sounded like an alarm. He was standing at the brink of darkness, all alone with his family, Danger whirling all around him. Danger in the storm above. Danger in the ground below.
“All right, my family,” Caleb said. “Shall we go in?”
He held a hand out to Mom. She hesitated for a second, then joined him, hugging Ansel tight. “Jory?” she said glancing over her shoulder. “You ready?”
Jory wanted to join them. He wanted to believe them. But he kept standing there, his stomach tight.
He was in the canyon. But he was also hovering above it, gazing down at his tiny family. He thought of his dreams of darkness. Of the last star going out.
And suddenly, it washed over him in a hot, shimmering wave: the overwhelming certainty he’d always waited for, but never felt. Not with the whited-out newspaper, or the meteor shower, or the five dead birds Caleb had found in a row—if the birds had even existed, since nobody but Caleb had seen them. Not even when Jory had glimpsed the bright red star late at night.
Suddenly, Jory knew.
“No,” he said.
“No?” Caleb repeated.
“No, I’m not ready. I’m not—I’m not going.”
There was a moment of silence. The seconds throbbed against Jory’s temples.
“Jory…” Mom said, her voice shrill and panicked. “Of course you’re coming with us. We’re your family.”
Jory shook his head.
Caleb exhaled. A small hurricane of frustration. “Boy, now’s not the time to hesitate. We’ve had weeks to discuss this. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Please,” Mom begged.
“No,” Jory said again. And then he said it louder. “No. I’m not going in there. And neither should you, Mom.”
Her eyes welled up. “I’m not letting our family get split up again.”
She meant Kit. When Kit had been taken. Now Jory understood.
“You don’t want to split up the family?” He poin
ted at Caleb. “He split up the family! He lied about Kit, Mom. Protective Services took Kit away. Not to hurt her, but to protect her. From us.”
The wind picked up, chattering through the underbrush. The electricity in the air made his skin prickle and the hair on his arms stand on end.
“Protective Services?” Mom repeated. “But how—”
“I called them,” Caleb said.
She stared at him. “You called Protective Services?”
“I told them we’d found her in our pumpkin field—that we’d only just now found her. It’s not like she has the ability to tell them otherwise.”
“But why?”
“You knew as well as I did that Kit was going wild. Keeping her was always a risk. But her behavior has been too unpredictable lately. Too dangerous.” Caleb shook his head, looking contrite. “It’s regrettable, but I had to think of the rest of the family. Especially Ansel. Remember, Kit was never ours. Not like Ansel is.”
And not like Jory. Who wasn’t Caleb’s real son either.
Jory knew blood didn’t necessarily make a family—Dad wasn’t part of his family anymore, and Kit was. But both sides had to want it. Both sides had to feel it.
Jory was only family when he followed Caleb’s orders.
“That’s not true!” Jory exclaimed. “You’re a liar!”
Caleb’s eyes blazed. “If somehow you survive this, in the world after, we’ll never forgive you.” He placed a hand on Mom’s shoulder. “It’s time to go.”
Mom pushed his hand away. “No.”
“What did you say?”
She looked at him, her eyes wet and bright and almost as large as Kit’s. “You said you’d keep her safe. You promised.”
This silence lasted even longer than the one before. Caleb’s palms were open, his arms curved. A circle, but only half complete. “You’re giving up on your family.”
“Jory and Kit are my family too. A whole half of it. I can’t abandon them to save myself. If it’s even…” Her chin trembled. “If we even know…”
“Know what?”
“That the danger’s real,” she said.
Caleb laughed. A sound like bat wings flapping. “Of course it’s real! I’ve spent every second of every minute of every hour for years now confirming it—we’re in danger, it’s coming, it’s real. We need to go. Let’s go.”
Mom shook her head.
“Now!” His voice bellowed through the canyon. Mom kept shaking her head. Caleb advanced on her. But he didn’t reach for Mom.
He reached for Ansel.
“No!” Mom exclaimed, backing away. “You’re not taking him.”
Caleb kept moving toward her, his huge hands raised, every crease embedded with dirt. His chest heaved. “He needs me.”
“No!”
“I’m your father,” Caleb said to Ansel. He made a swipe for him, but only caught his shoe. Ansel began to cry.
Jory started toward them, then stumbled over a root. He glanced down. It wasn’t a root—it was Kit’s shovel. She’d hurled it into the brush the night she’d found the centipede nest. His fingers curled tightly around the shovel’s ice-cold handle.
“I’m taking him,” Caleb said. “And there’s nothing you can do.”
“I won’t let you.” Jory held up Kit’s shovel.
Caleb looked startled, then amused. “You don’t speak for this family, boy.”
“Neither do you.”
“I’m the head of the family—”
“Why, because you said so?”
“Because everything I do is for the family, can’t you see?” Caleb was shouting even louder now. “The birds! The five dead birds…and the stars! I didn’t make that up! Those were signs, and so was the newspaper, and if we don’t go underground now, we’ll never be safe. You need me—”
“No we don’t,” Mom said.
Jory raised the shovel.
Caleb backed away, until he stood at the entrance to the bunker, staring at the family. His family. Jory, gripping the shovel. Mom, unsteady beside him. Ansel, crying in her arms. Caleb looked tall and fierce and proud, and for an instant, Jory felt a flash of what he’d felt at the coffee shop, years ago—this man could protect us from anything.
Then Caleb ducked inside.
One by one, he rolled the boulders into the opening. Slowly, because he had no help. His bearded face became a pale triangle.
Then he pulled the rip cord.
An avalanche of earth tumbled down, until black met black and nothing remained. Just a cloud of dust drifting into the night sky. A heap of rocks and weeds and roots, blending into the natural disarray of the canyon.
The bunker was gone.
And so was Caleb.
THE FAMILY STOOD THERE A WHILE LONGER, clinging to each other. Mom wept silently, her tears like stars. Ansel gazed up at her, his fingers in his mouth. Jory wondered how much his brother understood. Maybe more than they realized.
The shovel felt hot in Jory’s hands. He jammed it crookedly into the earth. In that moment, it felt like something had severed—the imaginary cords that had bound them to Caleb. Ankle to ankle, maybe, but never heart to heart.
“Let’s go home,” Jory said. “And in the morning…”
Mom smiled at him shakily, her chin resting on Ansel’s head. “In the morning, I’ll make some phone calls. Okay?”
“You will?”
“Of course.” She took Jory’s hand.
“She’s fine. I know she is. And we’ll be…” He paused. When he thought about it, he realized he knew lots of people they could go to for help. They weren’t alone. Not this time. “We’ll be fine too.”
The first gray light brightened the horizon. Jory hesitated, looking toward the place where the entrance to the bunker had been. He listened.
From the earth, he heard nothing.
From the sky, however, he thought he heard a faint rumbling. Thunder, maybe? Or the pounding of his own head. His heart. Mom squeezed his hand, and he turned away.
Together, they began to climb.
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO MY TWIN SISTER, Danielle, and all those shared childhood books that wore our (tough) love like velveteen rabbits; stories that will reside forever in our bones.
Other important thanks:
My brilliant agent, Michelle Andelman, and the team at Regal Literary, Inc.
Emily Meehan, my editor at Disney-Hyperion, along with Jessica Harriton, Jenica Nasworthy, designer Whitney Manger, artist and photographer David Hughes, and art director Joann Hill for crafting a cover that so breathtakingly captures Jory’s story.
My family, the Hubbards and the Allens, especially my dear Bryson; and all my quirky, delightful, supportive friends. My critique partners Michelle Schusterman, Kaitlin Ward, Kate Hart, Sarah Enni, Kristin Halbrook, Phoebe North, and Stephanie Kuehn, along with the other authors at YA Highway (past and present) for unconditional love, humor, and inspiration. I’ll bet you’re made of more than 93 percent stardust.
Watch the Sky began its life ten years ago as a short story; it won UCSD’s Milton H. Saier Award, and was the first work of fiction I was ever paid for. Many thanks to Eileen Myles, whose encouragement helped keep the story in my head until it was ready to unearth and expand.
Last but not least, the canyons of Southern California, which I’ve grown to know so well: their scents and sounds, the way they look at night…and all the secrets that might be hidden there.
Kirsten Hubbard is the author of two YA novels, Wanderlove and Like Mandarin. She is co-founder of the popular blog YA Highway (www.yahighway.com) and she holds a BA in writing from the University of California—San Diego. Kirsten lives in San Diego. This is her first middle-grade novel. Visit her online at www.kirstenhubbard.com or on Twitter @KirstenHubbard.
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