“I know what’s true and what’s not,” Dick Miller roared, jabbing his finger in the air at Piper like a sword. “Don’t try to fool me.”
Piper flinched. “I’m just saying that maybe we could be more friendly to each other.”
“Friendly? We don’t need friends like you. It’ll be a cold day when we come calling at your door.”
With each insult Dick Miller hurled at Piper, she curled in on herself, holding more tightly to her stomach.
Dick Miller reached for his belt and unlatched it. “I’ll do what I should have done when you walked through this door; I’ll teach you a lesson, girl.”
Millie Mae gasped, pointing at Piper. “Heavens to Betsy!” A red glow was pulsing out of Piper’s stomach.
Piper groaned, holding herself as the light grew brighter.
“Pa,” Jimmy Joe said quietly, his voice shaking. “She’s supposed to be careful. Those others said she could blow up.”
“Pffff. Was I talking to you, boy?” Dick Miller turned on Jimmy Joe. Jimmy Joe prepared for the belt to come his way, but before Dick Miller could swing it, Rory Ray stepped between them, his eyes blazing.
“What’s this? You got something to say, boy?” Dick Miller roared at Rory Ray. “You think you got the brains to open your mouth and say something?”
Rory Ray fumbled, willing but unable to speak.
“Ohhhh.” Piper grabbed on to the door frame to support herself. The light inside her was so red and bright now it hurt the Millers to look at her. “I’m going home now. I don’t want to stay here anymore.”
“You’ll do as I say.”
“No,” Piper said quietly with command. “I’ll do as I say. I don’t belong here.”
With that, Piper walked out the door, not bothering to close it behind her.
Dick Miller’s body stiffened like he’d been jolted by a strong current of electricity. He didn’t like being spoken to in such a fashion. He didn’t like it. Particularly because what Piper said rang clearly of truth, and the truth burns in deeper places.
“You never come back here. You aren’t welcome. You bring nothing but trouble wherever you go. You hear me?”
Piper could hear him loud and clear, but still she did not listen. Holding on to her throbbing, glowing body, she began to walk home.
CHAPTER
25
The dark of night was bleeding out the blue of day in the sky above her as Piper stumbled down the road toward home. She had purposely avoided looking at the sky for days, but the calm that came over her at the thought of her release from the Miller household gave her hope, and that made her look up. It was such a sky—she filled her lungs with it. She’d flown on countless such nights but had never once thought during those flights that her time in the sky might be fleeting. She wished that she had savored it more.
How exactly had she done it? The actual mechanics of flying slipped further and further away, like water running through her fingers. What had it felt like to glide through the air?
Conrad had said the bugs were circling the globe right now. According to Stark Raven’s news, they were also longing for their own release from the cramped enclosure of their shell. She couldn’t see them, but she imagined where they might be.
Piper inhaled deeply and then again. The night air was a balm to the burning in her stomach, and the red glow dimmed and then flickered like a candle in a strong breeze.
“Piper! Piper!”
Piper turned to see Jimmy Joe running toward her, dusk closing in around him. “Ma says you’re to come back,” Jimmy Joe called out. “She says she gave her word to your ma and means to look after you until she gets back.”
“I’m not going with you.” Piper picked up her pace again. “I tried my hardest. I’m never going to fit in at your house, and I don’t even want to try anymore. Tell your ma that I’ve made up my mind and I’m going home.”
Jimmy Joe came up next to her, matching her pace and panting from his run. “But she said I had to get you.”
“I’m not going, Jimmy Joe.”
Jimmy Joe loped next to Piper, not sure how this was to be resolved. He wasn’t prepared to physically drag Piper back to his farm, and if she wouldn’t come willingly, that didn’t leave him many choices. “So what are you gonna do now?”
“Go home.”
Jimmy Joe looked over his shoulder. “My ma’s gonna be sore when you’re not with me.”
“Just remind her how different I am.”
Jimmy Joe laughed and Piper joined him. “You sure you’re okay?” Jimmy Joe nodded to the strange red glow in her stomach area.
“It’s been calming itself down. Last time this happened it took a while, but then it went away.” Piper shrugged it off. “That’ll probably happen this time too.”
“Okay.” Jimmy Joe stopped. “Well, I guess this is good-bye.”
Seeing that he meant to leave, Piper stopped too.
Jimmy Joe held out his hand. Piper took it and they shook.
“Maybe I’ll see you around?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t teach you how to fly.”
“That’s okay. I probably wouldn’t have been any good at it anyway.”
“I don’t think that’s true, Jimmy Joe. I think you’d have made a good flier. See you around.”
Piper turned to go, and Jimmy Joe did the same, taking one last look over his shoulder at her. Piper hadn’t been what he’d thought at all. He’d seen no traces of the wickedness his ma had warned him about. He was considering this when suddenly he felt the ground shake and turn to a jumble beneath his feet. Because this made absolutely no sense to him, he stopped and looked down in confusion. By the time he realized that running away would have been a better choice, it was too late, and he was already knee-deep and stuck.
“Ahhh!”
The timbre of Jimmy Joe’s scream told Piper there was trouble, and when she saw him sinking, his face the picture of shocked horror as the ground bubbled and quaked around him, she started. Jimmy Joe had no idea what was happening to him. Piper, on the other hand, knew exactly what was going on.
“Don’t move!” Piper ran to Jimmy Joe. He was sinking quickly. Throwing herself down, Piper crawled as close as she could to the hole.
“Grab my hand,” she said, reaching out to him.
Jimmy Joe latched on to her. Right next to him, a long black insect leg came thrusting out of the dirt, the sight of which made Jimmy Joe scream again.
With all her might, Piper pulled, but Jimmy Joe was heavy, and she didn’t have the strength to pull him out.
“Don’t let me go!” Jimmy Joe was falling fast.
Piper’s grip was loosening. Jimmy Joe’s fingers were slowly slipping out of her grasp. “Hold on!”
Suddenly, another set of arms reached over Piper and latched hold of Jimmy Joe. With a mighty tug, those arms popped him up and over the side to safety.
“Get moving!” Rory Ray screamed. He was in his full marine uniform with a knapsack over his shoulder, apparently ready to do battle. In the next moment, he was dragging Piper and Jimmy Joe away from the forming crater. They took cover behind a large rock, peeking over it at the black bug.
The bug thrashed about, flapping its wings and shaking off the dirt.
“Cover your ears,” Piper warned the two boys.
Sure enough, the bug let out an ear-shattering screech.
Rory Ray’s eyes were moons, so wide that Piper could see in them the reflection of the bug stretching out its wings. After several attempts, the bug lifted off and started into the sky. Inside her core, Piper felt an overpowering need to ascend—to burst out, to go up. Abandoning her hiding spot, she stood out in the open, watching the bug go up, up to the stars.
Now that the bug was gone, the drama and excitement dissipated quickly, the quiet of the night returned, and the three of them were left next to a large hole on a country road. Piper breathed out her yearning.
“Well, there goes another one,” she said.
&nbs
p; Rory Ray’s mouth opened. “It was just like you said,” he wheezed. “There are giant bugs coming out of the ground.”
“I told you so. Don’t know why you think I’m a liar when I never once told a lie to you.”
Jimmy Joe was shaking so much his legs buckled.
“You’re okay, Jimmy Joe.” Piper dusted him off. “It didn’t bite you. It’s when you get bit that you’ve got bigger problems.”
Gathering herself, Piper headed toward home. “If you come across another one, just get out of its way and you’ll be fine.”
“Wait!” Rory Ray croaked, his voice hoarse and dry. “Wait!”
CHAPTER
26
Piper was most of the way up her driveway before the shell-shocked Rory Ray, and later Jimmy Joe, were able to catch up to her. Joe McCloud had arranged for Milton Mooney to take care of the animals while he was at the hospital, but Milton had finished up hours before so that the farm was quiet and settled for the night.
“Wait!” Rory Ray’s legs were unsteady next to Piper’s sure gait. “What—that, that thing—what was that?”
“It’s a bug. Like I said.” Piper shrugged. “According to what I’ve seen, the bugs give off a blast. It’s like an electromagnetic burst, but we’d need Conrad to explain it scientifically. The point is that if they all blast together, they’ll burn out every computer, satellite, and communication system on the planet. It’ll shut everything down and throw us back into the Dark Ages.”
Rory Ray’s head hurt again. “And that’s something you guys, you and all your weird friends, can stop?”
“Yes and no. Yes, we want to, but this one’s too big even for us, and Conrad and the others are off trying to get help from the Chosen Ones. Oh, you don’t know about them, either. They live on Mother Mountain, that’s in Xanthia, but no one has ever been there. They don’t like Outsiders. It’s a long story.” Piper threw up her hands. She could hear herself and knew how it all sounded, knew that kids like the Millers would think it was crazy talk. “I don’t know why I’m explaining this to you anyway, because you won’t believe me. I might as well save my breath.”
Rory Ray eyed Piper carefully. “You sure this isn’t another one of your whoppers?”
Back to that? “Just forget it, Rory Ray. Go home. I’ve got things to do.”
Wrapping her hand around the handle of the old barn door, Piper waited for it to complete her identity scan. The barn door opened, and she stepped inside, activating the light sensors as well as the monitors. Piper headed for the team-meeting table, where the 3-D computer projected the globe that showed the current positions of all the bugs.
Following Piper into the barn, first Rory Ray and, soon after, Jimmy Joe, stopped dead in their tracks as the sheer impossibility of the McCloud barn was displayed before them; the strange technology, things they had never seen or dreamed of, surrounded them at every turn.
Rory Ray pointed and looked, then turned and pointed more. Jimmy Joe stood still, his mouth open wide. Having just barely recovered from the sight of a giant bug thrusting itself out of the earth, their brains once again tried to rearrange around this new information.
Meanwhile, Piper sat up on the meeting table and reached for the globe, turning it and studying the positions of the bugs. Like a net surrounding the entire planet, their formation was almost complete.
“We don’t have much time,” Piper said to herself. “Computer, show me the current location of Conrad.”
The globe flickered and then zoomed in on a mountainous region in the northwest. A flickering red dot throbbed like a heartbeat, indicating his position.
“Darn it—he’s still in Xanthia.” Piper wished she could reach him. The Chosen Ones abhorred technology, making it impossible to get a message in or out of the remote region unless you physically went there. What was taking him so long? If the bugs were ready to blast, the team should be on their way back already. Myrtle had told her the day before that Elder Equilla was giving her decision at sunset. What were they doing?
“What the—!” Rory Ray screamed and hit the deck. Piper looked up in time to see Fido flap past the place Rory Ray’s head had been moments before. He flew in his usual batty way so that he ended up crashing into Piper and, if she hadn’t grabbed hold of him, would have flown right on by.
“Grarrrrr.” Fido’s long purple tongue unfurled to lick Piper.
“Calm down, Fido. You could have hurt yourself, flying like that.” Piper pet Fido and then placed him back on the ground, where he circled excitedly around her feet. “I missed you, too.”
Rory Ray cautiously got back up. “What in the heck is that?”
“That’s Fido, Conrad’s pet.”
Fido flapped and scuttled over to greet the boys.
Rory Ray and Jimmy Joe looked at Fido’s wings and his strange leathery skin that was more reptile than dog. When his purple tongue came darting out again, they braced themselves.
“I have never seen anything so ugly in my life.” Jimmy Joe held his hands up to his chest so that he wouldn’t accidentally touch Fido’s strangeness.
“Is he … is he…” Once again, Rory Ray was on the verge of losing his voice. He also didn’t seem to be quite able to form an appropriate question to encapsulate the strangeness that was Fido. “Is he … poisonous?”
Piper had to admit it was a fair question. “Could be.” Fido wasn’t the sort of pet that would ever bite anyone, though. “I think he likes you, Rory Ray. Give him a pat.”
“You mean … touch him?” Rory Ray would have stuck his hand in fire before he willingly touched such a strange creature. “Maybe later.” Or never.
Jimmy Joe started poking around the place, picking things up and turning them over. “What’s this for?”
“Don’t touch that. It’s Conrad’s time machine!”
“What’s going on up in the loft?”
“What’s that smell?”
“How’d you get the picture to float above the table like that?”
“In this here picture you all are by a pyramid. Is that fake?”
The boys’ curiosity was endless, and they battered Piper with questions. Piper was happy to answer each one and even felt a growing sense of pride. This was her home; these were her things; she was in all the pictures with her friends.
And just as she was feeling better than she had in the longest time, Rory Ray had to go and say, “It’s too bad you can’t fly anymore and your friends left you behind the way they did.”
Piper stopped short, the excitement and energy of being back seeped down her legs and welled by her ankles. “They’ll be back. I can still help out.”
Rory Ray raised his eyebrows. Under his breath he mumbled, “You help them? I’d like to see that.”
Suddenly a loud clunk on the metal roof of the barn far above them made them all duck and crouch. The sound was so loud and unexpected they looked to each other for clues as to what was going on.
“What was that?”
Piper could hear scratching. Something or someone was on top of the barn. Standing back up, Piper cupped her hands over her mouth and called up.
“Hello! Who’s up there?”
The noise disappeared, but moments later the chickens in the henhouse exploded in squawking and clucking sounds.
Jimmy Joe was at Piper’s side by this point. “Sounds like you got a fox in your henhouse.”
Piper ran out of the barn, Jimmy Joe right with her. They could both hear something big inside the henhouse knocking into the wood. Throwing open the door, Piper exposed it to be empty of everything but extremely agitated hens.
“Over here!” shouted Rory Ray.
Tearing out of the henhouse, they found Rory Ray wading through a hayrick next to the barn. Like the marine he wanted to be, he was charging full tilt at some large creature under the hay that was fitfully moaning and violently thrashing around.
“I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” Rory Ray dove on top of the creature, tackling it.
The creature let out a garbled cry.
“Make one more move and you’re dead!” Rory Ray screamed.
Piper found Rory Ray’s rhetoric harsh and made a mental note to speak with him about it when he wasn’t in the middle of doing whatever it was he was doing.
Wrapping his arms around his quarry, Rory Ray lifted it up, dragging it out of the hayrick. When he was in the middle of the yard, he tossed the creature to the ground, preparing to subdue it further or prevent it from escaping or whatever else it might attempt.
Piper and Jimmy Joe gathered, forming a circle, also preparing themselves for any eventuality. They watched as a strange tangle of white cloth struggled about. There was something about the material that was familiar to Piper. As she leaned down, the odd creature untangled all at once, revealing that it wasn’t a creature at all but a girl.
She was Piper’s age, with long, auburn hair, an unblemished complexion, and absolute terror in her eyes. Piper recognized her instantly.
“AnnA!”
AnnA screamed!
“AnnA, it’s okay. It’s me … Piper.”
AnnA was crouching, preparing for an assault. Piper reached out to steady her. “Don’t be afraid. Nothing is going to hurt you.”
“Someone said that I am to die!” AnnA trembled.
“That was Rory Ray, and he was being dramatic. No one is going to kill anyone.” Except for Piper, who now had plans to kill Rory Ray. “This is Rory Ray, and this is Jimmy Joe. They’re my neighbors. That means they live over there.”
AnnA’s eyes were wild and roving. Piper put her hands on either side of AnnA’s face and forced AnnA to look at her and only her. “Look at me, AnnA. Look! It’s Piper.”
AnnA’s chest panted up and down several times. “Piper?”
“Your friend. I’m your friend Piper. You’re okay.”
“You are Piper?” AnnA whispered.
The Girl Who Fell Out of the Sky Page 13
