Race the Night Page 5

  · Central A/C!

  · Huge front lawns!

  · Community pool!

  · Backyard gazebos!

  Eider didn’t know what a gazebo was. Or even how to pronounce it, for that matter. Gaze-bo? Gazz-ibo? Ga-zee-bo? Or some other way?

  · Stainless steel appliances!

  · Wireless Internet!

  · New laminate floors!

  More unfamiliar terms. The map on the back didn’t mean anything, either: just roads with numbers on them, a bridge, and a star that was circled by the letters N, S, E, and W. Feeling frustrated, Eider flipped the page and stared at the family again—the one with black hair, like hers. They smiled back at her. Unlike the yellow-haired family, their teeth were a perfectly normal color.

  Deep inside Eider’s chest, she felt a stirring. Not a memory-that-wasn’t, but something even farther back. Gone before she could grasp it.

  “Welcome home,” she whispered.

  For the second night in a row, Eider couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned, spun awake by her thoughts. About the wind-gifted pamphlet, and its glossy promises. About the families inside.

  Teacher didn’t control what the kids thought about. “It’s impossible,” she’d told them, time and again. “Nobody can control what you think. But I’m here to guide you. To help you look inward instead of outward. To help you focus your thoughts, instead of wasting them.”

  According to Teacher, many topics weren’t even worth thinking about. Some were frivolous or silly—like fairytales, for example. Some were very serious, like diseases and murder and war.

  “You’re too young to understand,” she’d told them.

  Other topics Teacher discouraged weren’t silly or serious—just distasteful. Like family.

  Family was literally distasteful, it seemed. When Teacher spoke about it, she acted like she’d eaten something unpleasant. A wormy date, or canned goods gone bad. Her mouth would twist, and her nose would wrinkle slightly.

  “Did everyone have a family?” Avis had asked once during Circle Time. “Did we?”

  “That’s not the right question,” Teacher had replied, waving her hand. “Because it doesn’t matter. Families aren’t anything special. They’re common—or they were common, Before. People were born into them, without any choice. Or even if they got to choose…they chose wrong.”

  She’d paused a moment before continuing.

  “But here, at the desert ranch? We’re better than family. I’m more than a parent, or even a teacher—I’m your guardian. Your guide. That is much, much stronger. Just like the bond all of you share.”

  “Why is our bond stronger?” Eider had asked.

  “Now that’s the right question.” Teacher had opened her arms like Mother Goose wings. “Because you were chosen—not only by me, but by fate. You were chosen to soar through the end of the world, and to land safely here at the desert ranch. You’re the best, the most brilliant, the smartest, the most purehearted. And the luckiest.

  “Who needs family when we are so much more?”

  It made sense when Teacher spoke that way. That the kids at the desert ranch were better than family. That family wasn’t even worth thinking about, since it didn’t exist anymore.

  But now that she’d seen the pamphlet, she couldn’t stop.

  She thought about fathers and mothers. Fathers and fathers. Uncles and great-grandmothers. Stepmothers. Stepdads. Cousins. Sisters. Families used to come in all shapes and sizes, she knew. Some families hadn’t looked alike—but most families had. Like the families in the pamphlet.

  Like Robin and Eider.

  Robin and Eider, sitting together on a sky-blue couch, smiling. Part of a family.

  Eider knew better, of course. But sometimes imagining felt just as good as believing.

  THE NEXT DAY WAS COOLER. Clouds floated overhead like lazy birds, sometimes blocking the sun entirely. It was Eider’s favorite kind of weather.

  But when Teacher announced Free Play, Eider didn’t know what to do.

  She was feeling sad, that was the problem. Sad, and a little lonely. Probably the pamphlet’s fault. From the rise, she watched Jay and Avis kick a ball back and forth, arguing the whole time.

  “Is that the best you can do?” Jay taunted.

  Avis stuck out her tongue. “Maybe if you watched your hooves, buffalo brain.”

  “Maybe if you watched your orangutang arms.”

  “It’s orangutan! Gosh, you’re hopeless.”

  They were annoying, as usual, but Eider still smiled a bit. The sun came out from behind a cloud, making her squint. She didn’t see Finch or Linnet anywhere. She hoped Linnet had found a better place for drawing.

  “Where do you go on your walks?”

  Eider turned to find Finch, who was shuffling his feet.

  “My walks?” she repeated, playing dumb.

  “Like…where do you go, specifically? When you leave the—”

  “Shhh.” Eider grabbed Finch by his bony elbow and tugged him down the slope, toward the date grove. “I didn’t know you knew about those.”

  “Where else would you find things? And anyway, one time I saw you leave.”

  She paused to stare at him. “You did? Did anyone else see?”

  Finch shook his head.

  “Okay. Well, I don’t go very far. Just along the edge of the ranch, mostly. In back, where nobody ever goes. There are ravines and stuff—”

  “Can I go with you?”

  For a moment, Eider was speechless. Finch, go exploring with her? She’d never even considered it. Sure, Finch was curious, but he always did what Teacher said. And besides that, he was so scared of the world Beyond—he didn’t even like visiting the slabs, or standing on the rise and looking out. “Now?” she said.

  “It’s a good time. Everybody’s busy.”

  That was true. But Eider didn’t really feel like exploring. “You can go by yourself, you know,” she said. “I don’t need to go with you.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “I’ll take you to the gap in the fence, okay?”

  Finch shuffled his feet. “I don’t know how,” he said again.

  Eider sighed. “Gosh, you’re hopeless. Come on, let’s go.”

  “Just duck your head,” Eider ordered from Beyond. “Make yourself really small, and take a big step. Don’t let your overalls get snagged on the fence….”

  Finch just stood there, staring at Eider through the gap. “You sure it’s okay?”

  “The hardest part is the first step. But it’s still just a normal step. Except there’s a fence in between.”

  “The hardest part is the first step,” Finch repeated. He paused a moment longer, then ducked his head and squeezed through the gap. “Nothing happened.”

  Eider laughed. “What’d you expect? Explosions and shooting stars? For such a smart guy, you’re acting pretty silly.”

  He reddened. “What, you weren’t nervous the first time you left?”

  “Of course, but I was with—” Eider stopped. “Forget it. This is the direction I usually go. There’s a bunch of metal garbage I’m sure you’ll find fascinating.”

  Unexpectedly, Eider discovered she liked having a companion to break up the desert silence. Finch in particular, with his head full of facts. Even though they’d read all the same books, he knew so much more. Like the names of the plants Eider stepped right over.

  “Creosote,” he pointed out. “Prickly pear. And that’s sage.”

  “I know sage.” Eider plucked a leaf, then crushed it. “See, you can rub it between your fingers and it smells good. Robin used to like to…”

  They were both quiet for a moment. Eider stole a glance at Finch, who was staring at the ground very intently.

  She cleared her throat. “I—”

  “This is cool!” Finch exclaimed, picking up a spotted gray stone. “We’ll get to Rocks sometime this month. Then we’ll know what all these are. Of course, we learned about some of them last year, in Geolog
y.”

  Eider’s lonely feeling intensified. She took a few steps, then paused. Something angular was sticking out of the dirt.

  She knelt and pried it out. It was a fragment of ceramic, like the mugs they drank from during meals. But those mugs were plain white. This shard was colorful: one side pinkish orange, the other smooth and glossy, painted white with cheery blue flowers.

  “It’s so pretty,” she said.

  Finch looked at it. “But it’s not useful.”

  “Does everything need to be?”

  He shrugged.

  Eider decided to keep the shard. Maybe she’d give it to Avis. Her best friend definitely preferred pretty over useful.

  “Oh, hey!” Finch exclaimed. “Isn’t that a motherboard?”

  “A mother what?”

  “A motherboard.” He picked up something square and green. “See? These helped control computers, Before. They carried information via electricity. And ones and zeroes. Isn’t that amazing?”

  Ones and zeroes? Sometimes Eider had no idea what Finch was talking about. “Yeah, wow.”

  “So neat.” He replaced it on the ground where he’d found it.

  “You’re not going to keep it?”

  “No. I don’t have any use for it.”

  “What exactly are you looking for?” Eider asked as they wandered on.

  Finch shrugged his skinny shoulders. “Oh, nothing.”

  But as they finished their walk, Eider noticed he was even quieter than usual. And when they squeezed through the fence, he seemed less relieved to return to safety of the desert ranch than she’d expected.

  “I guess it’s dinnertime,” Finch said, once they’d stepped inside the date grove. “Thanks for taking me.” He started to walk away.

  “Hey, Finch,” Eider said.

  He turned slowly, his face scrunched up. “Yeah?”

  “You never told me why you wanted to go exploring….” She was struck by a sudden thought. “It has to do with the missing pages in World Book Q–R, doesn’t it? What was missing? What did you want to read about?”

  Finch hesitated, as if trying to make a decision.

  “When it’s ready,” he said, “I’ll tell you.”

  EIDER HAD NEVER THOUGHT FINCH could surprise her.

  But when she thought about it, he was probably the second-most curious kid at the desert ranch. His curiosity was just a different kind than hers. The tinkering kind. The kind that drove him to build things, figure them out. To make things.

  Eider was pretty sure Finch was making something.

  And it probably wasn’t a tuba.

  She wanted to ask him for more details, but ears were everywhere. Linnet, trailing a few yards behind her. Jay, endlessly mocking and bellowing. Avis, who could never stand being left out.

  “Are you following him to the outhouse?” she said, as Eider tried to catch up with Finch after breakfast. “Ew!”

  “What?” Eider said. “No. Don’t be weird.”

  “You’re the weird one.” Avis bumped Eider with her hip. “Come on, your braid’s all lumpy. Let me fix it.”

  During Practical, Eider kept trying to catch Finch’s eye. But he never looked up from his notebook. She couldn’t tell if it was Finch’s usual awkwardness, or if he was deliberately avoiding her gaze.

  “I asked you a question,” Teacher said. “Are you paying attention? Eider?”

  Eider jolted. “I’m sorry. Did you ask a question?”

  The other kids tittered. Teacher sighed.

  “I was hoping we’d get to another Extrasensory lesson today, but it seems like someone isn’t ready.” She frowned at Eider. “Are you sure you’ve fully recovered from your spell the other day?”

  Everybody groaned except Eider, who squirmed with embarrassment. She’d hoped they’d all forgotten. “I’m fine,” she said. “I’m ready. I promise I’m ready.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Eider nodded adamantly.

  “Okay,” Teacher said. “Then we’ll meet in the Circle Time area after lunch. I have very high hopes for today’s lesson.”

  For their third Extrasensory lesson, Teacher divided the kids into pairs. Eider and Avis. Jay and Linnet. Finch and Teacher. “Just for the first round,” she said.

  Then she handed out a stack of cards. They were stiff, like Eider’s desert-flower postcard. Teacher had written a simple noun on each one:

  TREE

  STAR

  APPLE

  “Take turns picking a card from the stack,” Teacher said. “Keep the word a secret. But picture it in your head, as clearly as you can. Your partner will try to guess it.”

  “Like…reading each other’s minds?” Avis asked.

  Eider raised her eyebrows. Mind reading seemed awfully far-fetched for a lesson, even an Extrasensory one.

  Though if anybody could read minds, it would have been Robin. In Eider’s memories-that-weren’t, she always seemed to know what Eider was thinking or feeling. Sometimes Eider would catch Robin gazing at her, and she’d picture something ridiculous, on purpose. Like a monkey or—or a pineapple. And then Robin would grin, like she knew exactly what Eider was trying to do.

  Which made sense, since Eider was Robin and Robin was Eider.

  “Not mind reading, necessarily,” Teacher replied. “It’s more like sharing. Sharing words. Here at the desert ranch, you’re all connected. I want to test how connected you are.”

  Far-fetched or not, it sounded fun at first. But after just a handful of cards, it was clear: Everybody was terrible. Even after they swapped partners. Eider and Linnet. Eider and Jay—yuck. And then Eider and Avis again, who was having trouble keeping the whine from her voice.

  “Giraffe?” Avis asked. “Potato?”

  “Nope.” Eider concentrated so hard she felt her forehead crumple.

  “Just tell me.”

  Eider showed Avis the card:

  BANANA

  Avis snorted. “Not even close.”

  “Well…bananas are long, like a giraffe’s neck. And yellow. Maybe you got some of that?”

  “But my other guess was a potato. What does that have to do with a banana?”

  Eider didn’t know. “They’re both food?”

  “This is stupid,” Avis said. “Why would I want anybody to be able to read my mind anyway? Do you really want Jay to know what we’re thinking?”

  Eider glanced at Jay, who was making fish faces at Finch.

  “Good point,” she said.

  Avis scowled. “It’s creepy.”

  Eider hoped Teacher hadn’t heard. She knew Avis was just feeling frustrated again—she hated it when she wasn’t good at something. Even more than she hated being left out.

  Although in this case, none of the kids was a natural. At the end of the lesson, Teacher accepted the stacks of cards and wound rubber bands around them with a smack. At least her disappointment wasn’t aimed at just Eider this time.

  “We’ll have to try again,” she said. Smack. “You know I have faith in you—but faith only goes so far. You’ll need to try harder. Much harder.” Smack.

  Beside Eider, Avis exhaled audibly.

  Teacher raised her eyebrows. “Is anything wrong, Avis?”

  “Well…” Avis said. “No. But I was wondering. What if—what if we’ll never be any good at this?”

  “Maybe you aren’t good at it now. But you will be.”

  “But what if we just…can’t?”

  “That’s not possible.”

  There was an unmistakable warning in Teacher’s voice now. Luckily, Avis knew when to shut up.

  “And here’s why,” Teacher went on. “Brains are like wads of clay. They can become almost anything with the right pinching and prodding. But they’re not stuck that way. You can squash them and start all over again; remold them into something different. Something more.

  “It helps to start out as a natural, of course. But with you kids, it shouldn’t matter. As I’ve told you time and again, your brains are
the best and the brightest of all. With the most potential—if you’re willing to make the effort.

  “In other words,” she finished, “you’re just not trying hard enough.”

  That evening, Eider was first back to their trailer. She couldn’t get Teacher’s words out of her head. If brains could be pinched and prodded into anything, why couldn’t she stop thinking about Robin? Because she wasn’t trying hard enough?

  She sure felt like she was trying. But her thoughts constantly caught her off guard, especially when her real memories overlapped with memories-that-weren’t. Partial truths, partial stories. Confusing her reality.

  “What’s that?” Linnet asked. It came out in a squeaky burst, like she’d done everything she could to prevent the question from escaping.

  Instead of her penlight, Eider realized she’d pulled out the ceramic shard—the one she’d found while exploring with Finch. She really needed to do a better job emptying her pockets. “Just something I found,” she said.

  “Can—can I see?” Linnet asked.

  Eider hesitated a second. It wasn’t anything that would get her in trouble, she reasoned. Just a piece of junk, not anything off-limits or useful. She handed it over.

  Linnet held it gingerly in the center of her palm, as if she was afraid she might break it. “Are those flowers?”

  “I think so.”

  “I’ve never seen blue flowers before. Most flowers in real life are yellow, you know? Like the mesquite ones, and the cactus ones. What do you think it belonged to?”

  Eider smiled. She’d never heard Linnet talk this much. “A mug, maybe? Or a bowl?”

  “That’s neat.” Linnet reached out to return the shard—but hesitantly, like she didn’t want to let it go.

  “Do you want to keep it?” Eider asked.

  “Really?” It came out as a higher-pitched squeak than ever. “Oh, but—are you sure? It’s so special.”

  Eider wondered why Linnet was making such a big deal about it. The shard was pretty, but it wasn’t useful. Finch had been right about that. “Sure! I find lots of stuff. Maybe you can draw it?”

  “Oh, no, I…” Linnet touched the painted side, stroking the tiny flowers. “Thank you.”