Yesterday I read one Mark Twain story for English and did two chapters of math homework, but I wouldn’t be able to say one word about of any of them today.
All I’m thinking about—all any of us are thinking about—is whether it’s going to rain at one o’clock. I’m meeting Freddy, Patricia, and Basford in the Common Room as soon as this class is over.
Meanwhile, Owen is attempting to teach us about the atmosphere.
“. . . this is the troposphere, the layer of the atmosphere that is closest to earth. All together now, say
troposphere
. . .”
I check my watch. It’s 12:48 p.m. Owen says something about argon.
12:49 p.m. He uses the term
electromagnetic radiation.
12:50 p.m. Class is over.
I jump out of my seat and am the first person at the door. As I try to spring through it, Owen taps me on the shoulder.
“You know that you and your family are stronger than a few raindrops, right?”
“Sure,” I lie as I look for Basford. He’s scrambling around the desks. “Come on!”
Patricia’s in the room, sitting on the couch near Sam, Freddy’s by the window, his cell to his ear. I check my watch. It’s 12:59 p.m.
“Talking to Beatrice,” Patricia whispers.
I try to sit, but I can’t, not now. Finally I run over to Freddy, pulling on his shoulder. “Tell us!”
Slowly, Freddy turns around. He isn’t smiling.
“Okay then,” he says. “Thanks.” He snaps the phone shut, holding it in midair.
It’s 1:01 p.m.
“Nothing.” The words sound like gravel crunching. “Not a cloud in the sky.”
I move away from Freddy and fall into a chair. Sam and Patricia sit up against the cushion, and Basford looks at me, then back to Freddy.
I follow his gaze. It’s like Freddy’s whole face has lost its color.
“Wow,” mutters Freddy. He’s drawling almost. “Maybe it is really over. If there’s no rain, there’s no rhubarb . . .”
I cover my eyes.
“Um . . .” Basford whispers.
“What is it?”
“Company,” he says, and he points to the entryway. There, in the hallway, are about fifty of our friends. And non-friends. And perfect strangers.
In front of the crowd stands Jongy. She holds her pink cell phone, reading off of it.
“Says here it’s the third time in eighty-six years . . .” she announces. We catch eyes and she smirks at me.
“Get out.” Sam looms over Jongy, all two hundred and twenty pounds of him. “Now.”
Power is relative; Jongy’s a big deal for seventh grade, but she’s nothing next to the captain of the high school football team. She spins around, but not before she sneers at me one last time.
It’s only then that Patricia and I turn back to Freddy, who has slumped onto the couch. “Are you okay?” I ask him.
“I—uh . . . I feel like the wind’s knocked out of me.” He tries to smile, but he’s out of breath. I suddenly have a terrible, terrifying thought. Could the spiders have been talking about Freddy? Is he the one who’s sick?
No.
At that second, Mr. Horvat, our headmaster, runs into the room. Freddy tries to stand up. “I’m okay,” he says. And then his knees buckle. “Maybe if I could just lie down a little.”
Mr. Horvat acts quickly. “You all have two minutes to get to your next class or to study hall. Any of you who are still here, except for the Peabody siblings and you”—he points to Basford—“will be suspended.” He looks at his watch. “Go!”
Our classmates push and shove each other as they scramble to turn around. Sam kisses Patricia on the cheek.
“I’ll see you all later,” he says softly.
Mr. Horvat looks back at us. “Freddy, why don’t you go and see Nurse Skalley?” Freddy nods and slowly gets to his feet. He has his arms folded, across his chest, and he looks at the floor as he takes his steps.
It can’t be. Can it?
“Maybe when Freddy’s all checked out, you should go home.” Mr. Horvat says it as an order, not a suggestion.
“Yes,” Patricia agrees for all of us. “Okay.”
Simple facts are making my mind spin. The spiders told me that someone was sick. Today Freddy basically collapses after the news. And on the day he was born there was no rain, just like today. Just like last week.
What does it mean now, for Freddy, if the rain has stopped? The worst possible thought flashes through my mind, worse than anything conjured up by Jennifer Jong, or slugs, or even the Silo. I wish I could stuff it back where it came from, but it’s gushing, over and over in my head, repeating the same sickening thought over and over again.
If it stops raining for good, does that mean that Freddy’s going to die?
SAME DAY, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 8
Dad’s Plan
I don’t say what I’m thinking to anyone.
And anyway, Freddy is now acting anything but sick. Nurse Skalley gave him apple juice and a banana, and now he’s bouncing around the infirmary. Mom is on her way.
“I freaked out,” Freddy argues. “Wouldn’t anyone?”
Nurse Skalley nods impassively and hands him a piece of candy. “Your blood pressure’s normal, so that’s good.”
“Please, I’m begging. I’ve got practice.”
“Not today you don’t,” she says.
The rest of us slouch in chairs or against the iron cots. It is almost silent up here, except for the sounds of Nurse Skalley walking around. I stare out the window, looking at the green leaves of some maple trees.
No rain.
Patricia taps her fingernails together, murmuring. “I wonder what we’re going to do.”
“We’ll irrigate,” Freddy says. “Just like Dad said.”
“It won’t be enough,” she says matter-of-factly. “It’s over.”
“Why do you always have to do that?” I ask. “Why can’t you even pretend that there might be a way out?”
“Polly.” She looks at me like I’m a toddler. “Think about it. If there are pipes, and we don’t even know if there are, they’ll be rusted. Nothing’s set up. Nothing on our farm is figured out. Our whole family has just relied on . . .” She looks so exasperated that she sputters. “They just relied on clouds to show up on Monday morning and then built this entire empire around it.”
“We have a lot figured out,” I tell her angrily. “What about the rhubarb? What about the café, the Umbrella, the Transplanting?”
“If there’s no rain, it all dies.”
“Shut up, Patricia,” Freddy snaps. “Mom and Dad won’t let that happen.”
“Freddy?” Mom pushes open the infirmary door. Mr. Horvat follows her inside. She runs over to Freddy and hugs him so tightly I think he’s going to suffocate.
“Mom, Mom, I’m okay!” He wriggles free of her.
“Really, don’t worry. I think I was just expecting different news.”
“Me too.” Mom smiles halfheartedly. “Onward and upward!”
Patricia rolls her eyes.
“So now can I go?” Freddy asks.
“Go?”
Freddy puts on a hopeful smile. “Soccer?”
“Absolutely not,” says Mom. As Freddy opens his mouth to protest, she cuts him off. “Don’t waste your breath.”
Mom and Freddy go back and forth about potential irrigation schemes while we drive home, but I spend the ride staring through the windows, feeling sick. Grandmom dying was the worst possible thing for me. But she was old and had a disease—not that it made losing her any better, it just made it more
understandable.
I don’t understand what you’re supposed to do—how you’re supposed to
think
—when your favorite aunt wants to sell your home and your brother may be getting really sick because it’s stopped raining. I don’t understand this at all.
When we get to the White House, Dad pulls Freddy out of the car to hug him. Then he abruptly releases him and switches to doctor mode, looking Freddy over as if he were some kind of specimen.
“I’ve arranged for a full blood workup,” he tells him.
“Dad,” Freddy says. “I’m fine. Really.”
“There’s a nurse waiting for you.” He points to the archway of the White House.
“Uh, Dad?” Freddy gives him a half smile. “Maybe we should try the medicine you’re working on? If you’re so worried?”
“Not funny,” Dad mutters. “It’s not nearly ready for testing on people, especially not on my own son.”
Mom steps toward Dad. “Nurse Skalley thought he just had a scare.”
“Healthy seventeen-year-olds don’t just collapse.”
“I didn’t collapse,” Freddy says.
“Enough.” Dad puts his hand on Freddy’s shoulder, ushering him to the steps. “Come into the library when you’re done.”
As I walk up the steps, I turn around and look around the farm. I squint, trying to see the tips of the leaves from the PEACE maze. They’re stretching out, extending their leaves up to the sky, begging, I imagine, for the sun to go away for just a second. Maybe I’m imagining it, but it seems like the edges of the plants look a little saggy. I try to see beyond the maze. But from this distance, it seems green and pretty, exactly like it usually looks in September.
We go into the sitting room of the Rhubarb Archives, the place where we have a library of sorts about all things rhubarb. I sit down next to Basford on the sofa. Dad stands in the middle of the room, next to a large, square-shaped easel with a PowerPoint chart on it. Beatrice, Patricia, and Mom sit all around him in various soft chairs.
“We’re going to take turns,” Dad says. “I’ve rush ordered five lake-side pumps and hoses for Wednesday. Chico is responsible for getting them to work. Here’s the work schedule . . .”
Dad’s spent a lot of time divvying up the property so that we can go out there, every day, with our watering cans and hoses-that-are-attached-to-pumps-that-are-dug-into-the-lake.
“Why do we have to water so much? The rain only came once a week,” Patricia asks as she types her work schedule into her cell phone calendar.
“You get more rain with a rainfall than a jerry-rigged hose,” Dad says, touching the brim of his baseball hat.
“So no watering the regular rhubarb until Wednesday?” Patricia asks.
“You can water as much as you want by hand,” he says. “That’s what I’m going to be doing. I have to finish new tests next month for the Dunbar protocol and I can’t risk my crop.”
Basford’s studying the chart like it’s the subject of his next math test. But I can’t think straight. The graph makes me dizzy, and while I totally understand why we have to irrigate, I can’t shake the feeling that all of this is
wrong
. We’re missing something.
“Maybe we should just sell,” mutters Patricia.
I spin around. “What?”
Mom and Dad share a long look. Eventually, Mom shrugs. Dad actually allows a smile to cross his face. “Let me be clear about this.” His voice is strong and proud. “She could offer me a hundred million dollars and I would say no. A hundred trillion dollars. Don’t worry.”
I let out a deep breath, relieved.
“Who’s
she
?” asks Patricia. “And just out of curiosity, how much was she going to pay?”
“
She
is an old woman. Her name is Alessandra di Falciana. She’s related to us, actually, and used to live here.”
“Here? Why?” This is getting crazier and crazier.
“She’s your great-grandmother Enid’s sister.”
“She must be a hundred,” I mutter, thinking of Enid’s portrait.
“Eighty-six.”
“So how much?” Patricia insists.
Dad glances over at Mom. “Just a tad over fifty million.”
I’m sure I didn’t hear him correctly. “Fifty million?” I ask.
“Well, twenty-five for me, twenty-five for Edith.”
Patricia’s eyes brighten. “Maybe we should think about it.” Mom instantly gives her one of her death stares. “Kidding, kidding,” she says, recovering.
“Now listen.” Dad’s voice turns serious.“I don’t want this blabbed around. No one needs to know that Edith was trying to sell our farm. It’s no one’s business.”
“Who has that much money?” asks Patricia.
“Alessandra does. She married a duke. Or a lord. Something like that. She has enough money to think she can buy her way into anything.”
“Why does she even want it?” Patricia asks. “It’s not like she’s going to be a farmer.”
“She wants to move back. And she wants to uproot everything but the regular rhubarb. She would live here, and Girard would become the new manager. Edith had it all figured out.”
“You can’t sell it.” Blood rushes to my head. “Dad, you can’t sell it. You just can’t.”