Saving Sky Read online

  He wrinkled his nose.

  “So, what’s our poor professor to do?”

  Sky heard a plaintive little sigh coming from somewhere to her right and turned to look. It was the new boy, Kareem, the one her mom had told her to be nice to. Actually, what Ana had said (in typical clueless parent mode) was “Make friends with him, Sky.”

  Ah, yes. Make friends. So easy. Piece of cake.

  Hello, Kareem, my name is Sky. I was just thinking, though you’re a complete and total stranger, maybe you and I could…

  She’d given it a try anyway, since he was new in town, and it would be a nice gesture, and her mother had asked her to do it. Unfortunately it had turned out to be just as awkward as she’d expected it to be. The only thing she could think of to say—that her mom knew his dad from the hospital where they both worked—had utterly failed to get things going. Kareem had merely nodded and said, “I know.”

  End of conversation.

  She’d caught herself nodding back at him, nodding and nodding like some demented bobble-head doll. She made herself stop.

  “So, anyway,” she’d mumbled, “you know, I mean, I just wanted to say hi and all….” It had been so embarrassing. He clearly thought she was an idiot.

  But now, in the split second before she turned away, Kareem caught her watching him and flashed a conspiratorial grin. She responded with a subtle eye roll and suppressed a giggle.

  Ah. That was better.

  Bunsen was still going on about Professor Frybrain, who was now in his laboratory, working and working to solve his problem.

  Please, please get to the point, Sky thought.

  “And then—eureka!” the teacher practically shouted. “He invented it! Stink-away Juice!”

  “Oh, joy,” Kareem whispered. Very softly, but Sky knew he meant for her to hear. She responded by crossing her eyes.

  Mr. Bunsen drew an outstretched arm on Professor Frybrain—he already had two, this one made three—holding a test tube. He labeled it STINK-AWAY JUICE. Gerald and his pals were snorting, and squealing, and playing drumrolls on their desks.

  “The next step, of course, was to test his new invention, to make sure it really worked. So he told his class that all of them would receive a dose of Stink-away Juice. But…”—he lowered his voice to a dramatic whisper—“only five of them actually did. The other five got sugar water. Now what would you call the five students who didn’t get the real medicine?”

  He looked around the room. Rachel’s hand was up.

  “Somebody besides Rachel this time,” Bunsen said. “All right, Travis?”

  “Stinky?”

  “Well, yes, we could probably call them stinky, but I was looking for something a little more…scientific? Somebody? Anybody?”

  Sky checked her watch. Fifteen minutes down, thirty more to go.

  “Arnold?”

  Arnold shrugged.

  “Bethany?”

  Bethany stared out the window.

  “Oh, come on, people. Kareem? Any idea what we’d call the group that got the sugar water?”

  “The control group,” he said quietly.

  “Excellent. And the sugar water?”

  “A placebo.”

  “Thank you, Kareem. Gerald, what’s so funny?”

  “Oh, nothing,” Gerald said, collapsing into a fit of strangled giggles, more of a series of snorts, really, as though Kareem’s mere existence—and certainly the fact that he’d actually answered a question—was just so unbelievably hilarious.

  Sky recognized the signs. Kareem was Gerald’s latest victim.

  He was an obvious choice. He was new, and he had a foreign name that Gerald could make fun of. His family had come from the Middle East, so there was the terrorist angle to run with. And best of all, Kareem was smart, and well behaved, and a good student. Gerald had lots of colorful names for kids like that.

  “Now Professor Frybrain got out his Smell-o-Meter,” Bunsen said. “A wonderful machine, one of his very best inventions—and measured the degree of stinkiness of each student.”

  Naturally they got a picture of the Smell-o-Meter, too. Bunsen liked to draw. Sky noted that it took up a minute and a half of class time. On the left side of the dial, he wrote FRESH AS A DAISY and on the right, SWEATY SOCKS.

  “And guess what he discovered?” Bunsen paused to let the tension build, eyes wide with excitement. Sky wondered if he secretly dreamed of being an actor—or maybe a stand-up comic.

  “The ones who’d been given the Stink-away Juice smelled fresh as a daisy, while the others smelled like sweaty socks. Would you say his invention was a success?”

  “Yes!” everyone roared.

  “I couldn’t agree more. A Nobel Prize for Professor Frybrain! Now, moving on, what aspect of his experiment would you say was the independent variable?”

  Silence reigned in the classroom.

  “Come on, guys. Didn’t anybody do the reading? Oh, all right, Rachel.”

  “The independent variable is whether the Stink-away Juice was given to the students or not; and the dependent variable is the result, which in this case was that the students who got the juice smelled good and the ones who didn’t smelled bad.”

  “Thank you, Rachel. Even more than I asked for. If they let twelve-year-olds teach school, you could take over this class.”

  “I’m thirteen.”

  “I stand corrected. Now. Professor Frybrain decided to refine his experiment, giving different amounts…”

  And so it went. Finally, finally the bell rang.

  But once that crew got all riled up, it was hard to tamp them back down. Out in the hall, the hilarity continued.

  “Yo! Abdool-a-mush,” Gerald yelled at Kareem. “Need some Stink-away Juice?”

  “Ew, what smells?” Javier made a face.

  “Cut it out, guys,” Sky yelled. “Leave him alone.” She was breaking her rule of avoiding Gerald, but she just couldn’t stand it anymore.

  Gerald stopped in his tracks and stared at her, a smirk growing on his face.

  “Yeah, hippie-weirdo?”

  “Yeah, Gerald. Try acting like a person for a change. See how it feels.”

  “Ooooh, ouch. So is Abdool-a-mush your boyfriend? Is that it?”

  She was about to come back with another smart remark when her eyes suddenly went wide. She’d just been blessed with an inspiration.

  “Say, Gerald,” she said, “remember that hamster, back in kindergarten?”

  “Shut up, Sky!”

  “It’s a great story. Javier, have you heard about the hamster? You, Travis?”

  “I said shut up!”

  “All right. I will, as you say, shut up—if you leave Kareem alone. Is it a deal?” She tilted her head and smiled.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” he snapped.

  “You sure?”

  He gave her a threatening look, then turned and started to leave.

  “Okay. Fine with me. Hey, Travis, want to hear—”

  “Oh, all right!” Gerald snapped. “Deal.”

  4

  The Universe Is One Great Spirit

  THE CALL CAME ON FRIDAY night, three days after the red alert.

  They had finished dinner, switched off the electricity to save the batteries, and brought out the “endless power” lanterns. They were the windup kind, designed for camping.

  The girls were curled up on the couch with a blanket, while Luke sprawled in his big leather chair and Ana sat ready, the book in her lap: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. It was reading time.

  She was only a few pages into the story when they heard the tones of “La Paloma” coming from the kitchen. That was Aunt Pat’s ring tone. Luke jumped up to answer the phone.

  They waited in stony silence. They could only catch the occasional word, but there was no doubt it was bad news. You could see it in the way his body slumped, the way he stared at the floor as he listened. Finally he told Pat good-bye, flipped the phone shut, and wordlessly herded them over to the kitch
en table. They sat in a circle as they always did, hands clasped.

  “There’s been another attack,” he said. His voice was gentle and soft. “Two, actually. They destroyed some oil refineries and petrochemical plants in Louisiana—”

  “What’s that?” Mouse asked. “What’s a petro—?”

  “Petrochemical plant. It’s like a factory. It takes crude oil and natural gas and turns them into things we use.”

  “You said there were two attacks,” Sky reminded him. “Did you mean the plants and the refineries? Two separate things?”

  “No. They also destroyed the pumping system for our Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That’s extra oil we have stored underground in case of a national emergency. The oil’s still there, but we can’t get it out until the system’s repaired.”

  “Oh.”

  Sky felt strangely unmoved. She knew what had happened was terrible, but somehow she couldn’t relate to it. The destruction of a building, or a tunnel, or a mall—that sort of thing she could understand. It had a human element. It was scary. But factories, and pumps, and oil…

  “What this means,” Luke said as though reading her mind, “is that fuel is going to be scarce for a while. Much more so than it is now.”

  “Was anybody killed?” Sky asked.

  “Yes. We don’t know how many. They can’t get in to search till the fires are under control.”

  He didn’t say anything more after that. He just sat there, a daughter’s hand in each of his, gazing meaningfully at Ana across the table. She gazed meaningfully back.

  There was more to this story; Sky could tell.

  Finally Luke squeezed their hands. That was it, then. He was ready to start the blessing.

  “People died tonight,” he said. “We take this moment to honor them.”

  “They were innocent,” Ana picked up the chant.

  “Some of them had children who will miss them very much.” As Mouse said this, she immediately started to cry.

  “They had husbands, and wives, and parents.”

  “Brothers and sisters.”

  “They were probably really scared.”

  “We didn’t know them, but we mourn them just the same. They walked this earth beside us, and they did some good, and they loved people, and they died too young.”

  None of them wiped their tears away; no one was embarrassed. This was their gift, their small acknowledgment of lives that had been lived, then lost. It was a sad thing. Tears were appropriate.

  They sat quietly for a while, focusing their thoughts on the spirits of the dead, now floating skyward to become one with the stars.

  “We send each of you our blessing,” Luke said, rising to his feet and leading them out the front door, onto the portal. They took their accustomed seats, Mouse and Sky rocking rhythmically in the porch swing.

  Ana brought out the blankets; it was already very cold. Then they sat in silence, gazing out at the dazzling light show spread across the sky. So many stars, so many spirits. Millions and millions of lives, begun and ended since the world began.

  Sky let her mind travel up to the heavens and imagined each person who had died that night. She blessed every one. You, and you, and you, she whispered in her mind. Good-bye. We will miss you. Be well.

  The blessing lasted about fifteen minutes. Ana always seemed to know when the right amount of time had passed. Then she took up the final farewell.

  “The universe is one great spirit,” she said. “Every breath you took over the course of your life is with us still. It fills the air we breathe. You have become part of us. You are eternal now.”

  “Eternal,” the girls repeated.

  And then, all together: “Good-bye.”

  They gathered up the blankets and went inside. Ana folded them carefully and put them away in the cupboard. Luke got a small yellow pad out of a kitchen drawer and, leaning against the counter, began to write.

  Ana turned to the girls, opening her arms wide. “Come here,” she said.

  Sky loved it when her mother did this. They snuggled together, the three of them, Ana encircling them in a gentle embrace. Sky could smell her sister’s hair. It always made her think of freshly ironed shirts. They swayed slightly.

  “That was a good blessing,” Ana said.

  “I thought so, too,” Sky agreed. She’d especially liked the part about the “one great spirit.” It had felt very true to her.

  “Will you be able to sleep tonight?” Ana asked.

  “Yes,” Mouse said, her voice muffled by Ana’s sweater.

  “Yes,” Sky agreed.

  And it was true. She felt serene and strangely hopeful now. They had blessed the departed, and been blessed in return. And all their spirits were eternal.

  With that reassuring thought, she wrapped an arm around her sister’s shoulders and the two of them headed for bed.

  5

  Voices in the Darkness

  AT SOME POINT DURING THE night, Sky woke up. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep, but she thought she’d heard a noise. Was it the phone? It couldn’t be, not this late at night. She must have imagined it. But she definitely heard voices.

  She got out of bed, crept barefoot into the hallway, and peeked around the corner. A fire was still going in the stove, but it was the only light in the room. Her parents sat in the near-dark, speaking softly.

  “It’ll be a lot of work,” Ana was saying.

  “I know. But I still think we ought to do it.”

  “The pantry’s full to bursting, Luke.”

  “Yes, but a greenhouse isn’t that hard to build, and it’ll be good to have fresh vegetables year-round. Plus, we can trade what we don’t need for other things: hay and firewood. Meat. Milk.”

  “Or give it away.” Sky could hear the smile in her mother’s voice.

  “Yes, that, too. A lot of people are going to need…”

  “I know, honey.”

  “We have to do our part.”

  “I agree. Do you think we can get the building materials?”

  “I hope so. We’d better be there when the stores open, though.”

  “What about the girls? Should we leave Mouse here with Sky?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. It’s really tempting….”

  “But they’re going to find out anyway. And who knows what they’ll hear at school. I think maybe it’s better if they see it for themselves, while we’re there to explain it to them. And if we get there early, and get out before the panic really starts, it might not be that bad.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “Me, too.”

  “So what can we get, then, of the rationed stuff?”

  Ana flipped through the coupons, holding them to the light so she could read. “Rice, sugar, cooking oil, salt—assuming there’s any to buy, of course. What’s on your list?”

  “A lot. All the building materials. Propane. A heater for the greenhouse. Candles. Lightbulbs. Soap. Shampoo. Seeds. Dog food…”

  Sky shivered and tiptoed back to bed.

  6

  Goat-Man

  WHEN ANA KNOCKED ON THE door to wake them, the stars were still midnight-bright. In the western sky, a fingernail moon hung low over the dark mass of the hills.

  Sky turned on the bedside lamp (they were on battery power till the sun came up) and looked at the clock. Four fifteen.

  “Dad and I are finished in the bathroom,” Ana said. “You need to get in and out, then see to the horses. We’re really pressed for time.”

  “Why are we getting up so early?” Mouse whimpered.

  “We’re going into town, honey. We have some shopping to do.”

  “The stores won’t even be open yet.”

  “Actually, they will,” Luke said, peeking in the door. “Albertsons opens at six. So does Home Depot.”

  “But why do we have to be there when they open?”

  “Because there are things we need to get, and we’re afraid there might be crowds.”

&n
bsp; “On a Saturday morning?”

  “Mouse!” Ana snapped. “Enough with the whining. Just get moving.”

  Sky could feel the urgency in the air. Her parents were anxious; everything was hurried. There was only time for a bare minimum of horse care before they gobbled down a skimpy breakfast, left the dishes in the sink, and headed for town.

  It was still dark when they pulled out onto the highway. The sun wouldn’t crest the hills for another half hour. Mouse loosened her seat belt and lay down, resting her head in Sky’s lap. Soon she was fast asleep.

  “Dad?” Sky whispered. “Was there another call last night, after we went to bed? Or did I dream it?”

  Luke and Ana exchanged glances.

  “Yes,” Ana finally said. “Another refinery. In Philadelphia.”

  “Was it—?”

  “Don’t dwell on it, Sky. It was pretty much like the others. We’ll have another blessing tonight.”

  “Okay.”

  Nothing more was said after that, but Sky understood that things were different now. Three attacks in a single night—that had never happened before. The war was…she searched her memory for the word she needed. It sounded like escalator. Escalating, that was it. The war was escalating.

  They turned onto Guadalupe Street, then into the Albertsons parking lot. It was crammed full. Hundreds of people had gotten there ahead of them. They had already parked and were waiting outside the doors for the store to open. On the street side of the lot, near the Wells Fargo drive-in bank, a small crowd had gathered by the ATM machine. There seemed to be some problem. There was lots of pushing and shouting.

  “Oh, my sainted grandmother!” Ana said. “Wake up, Mouse. We’re here.”

  Luke found a place to park at the far end of the lot. It couldn’t have been farther from the store, but with the flatbed trailer hooked to the back, they’d known they were going to have problems. Luke pulled in and locked the car, and they hurried toward the entrance.