Here is what I see: The plants, all of them dying, all of them depleted, have lifted their leaves up off the ground. I was right: The plants are all pointing toward the Dark House.
I lift my light higher.
It’s the same everywhere I look. The plants have lifted up their northern leaves and somehow swung them over the crown to lie on top of the southern leaves. I don’t know how they can do this, as weak and thirsty as they are. But I know as clearly as I know anything that they are talking to me, pleading with me to go to the Dark House. Go NOW.
I look quickly at the lake. The mist is faint, sparkly, but as thin as tissue paper. The lake is shrinking, despite the dragonflies’ best efforts. The genie—the one I imagine is the face of the farm—can’t stay alive without rain.
Suddenly, I hear a new noise. “Daaak! Daaaak!” I flash my light over the ground.The talking two-headed spiders are awake too. They stream from the chocolate rhubarb field in straight rows, hundreds of striped, black, eight-legged, two-headed creatures crawling behind me like a private army. Everyone’s outside tonight.
I point my book light in front of me. I smile. Lester’s arrived without me knowing. Spark has too. I can feel his comforting flutter behind my ear.
“Ready?” I ask.
“Daaak!” answer the spiders.
I take my first step to the Dark House. As I move, I flash the light over the fields, observing more and more dead and dying plants guiding me to the Silo. From here, I can see that the level of water in the lake, under the mist, is dangerously low, probably half of what it was just a week ago, when Freddy and I fell.
The image of Freddy asleep in the hospital spurs me on and I pick up the pace. As the Dark House comes more and more into view, I start to jog.The bugs match me, step for step, scrambling over the ground like a creeping black shadow.
Finally, the wooden door of the Dark House looms in front of me. In front of us.
I race up the incline and put my right hand on the doorknob.Then I yank my hand back because I receive the sharpest stab of pain I’ve felt yet.
I fall back, but then I think of Freddy and reach for it again, turning the doorknob and opening the door.
A mutant moth, the kind I always expected would live in the Dark House, swoops by my head. I duck. This entryway seems like it is blanketed in all our farm’s bugs, none of them dying and browning like our plants. I look over to the Giant Rhubarb plants, now standing like soldiers in tight, packed rows of barrels. Then I look behind me, at the spiders.
“Gooooood! Luuuuuck!” they say, waiting outside the door. Lester stands near them, a giant to their little selves. Spark zips in, hovering by my shoulder. I take my first step inside.
I shine my book light to my right. It’s the entrance to the Silo, built within the gray wall shared by the Silo and the shed. It’s painted white, and seems to shine. On the door, there’s a small sign hanging from a tiny nail.
NO ADMITTANCE.
I turn the doorknob of the Silo, but it’s locked. And then, every hair on my neck raised, I pull out the necklace and use the skeleton key, inserting it into the lock.
It fits perfectly.
Just as I start to turn the key, I hear a rustling noise. I turn around, shining my light over to the shed part of the building.
The leaves are clapping for me. Rather, the Giant Rhubarb plants are clapping for me. With their leaves.
Rustle.
Thwap!
Rustle.
Thwap!
A smile sneaks across my face, even though I know it’s strange timing. I have the wishful thought that Harry claps along with them, wherever he is. But then I spin around, facing the door. Slowly, I finish turning the key. The door is heavy, and I have to lean my shoulder into it to move it at all. I put my head down and press as hard as I can, my feet accidentally smashing some wayward slugs.
I’m sorry, Beatrice.
The door sweeps open, dragging a bit on the floor. I take a deep breath, trying to push aside my image of a silo haunted by ghosts and terrors and instead remember the plants guiding me, dragonflies and crickets, all helping out.
And much more importantly.
Freddy is in a coma.
It’s time.
SAME NIGHT, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27
Diamonds in the Sky
Grandmom is here with me. Not that I see her, or that she’s shimmering in front of me, like a ghost from a Halloween story. She isn’t visible—I don’t smell her or feel her hand—I just
sense
that she’s here. If I could see her, I’d be jumping, grinning, crying. I’d be happy just to stay in her arms, thinking that nothing had changed.
But that would be a different Polly.
That
Polly would not understand or accept that everything, and everyone, dies.
That
Polly would think that Aunt Edith is perfect.
That
Polly would believe “change” was some kind of animal, one that would stare her in the face, snarling.
That’s not who I feel like anymore.
This
Polly is plain old desperate. And exhausted. And, as luck would have it, fearless.
I step over the threshold, into the chamber of the Silo. The pain in my finger intensifies, blazing from the tip of my nail through my hand. It hurts so much, I squeeze shut my eyes and push my fingers into my palm as hard as I can and chant:
for Freddy, for Freddy, for Freddy
.
My eyes blink open and I absorb the interior of the Silo. It’s cavernous and tall, so tall that the domed roof above my head seems like it’s in outer space. I flash my tiny book light on the wall until I see a rectangular panel of light switches. I flick them on, wiping my whole hand across the panel, and suddenly enormous beams of white light flood down on me from wide, round lamps attached halfway up the soaring wall.
I’m a speck in here, a tiny, almost indistinguishable speck. Anyone would be—even Basford, even Dad, even the tallest person in the world. I crane my head back and look up at the roof. It’s the strangest thing: I can see the sky. The partitions holding the clear plate are visible, but it must be made of glass or clear plastic or something like that, because I can see stars, bright slivers of white stars, hanging above me. The walls are painted white, and the floor is wooden, swept clean. Someone comes in here; someone comes in here and sweeps the floors, keeps the space clean. Beatrice? Aunt Edith? Who?
Understanding spreads through my mind: secrets. My family has secrets. My farm, my genie, has secrets. Secrets that are kept hidden, secrets that may creep out from the corners like streams of tiny ants. Secrets I’m learning, right this second.
Again I feel that rush of Grandmom’s energy, as if she’s behind my eyes, in my brain, forcing me to see the Silo as
she
would see the Silo. If I were Grandmom, I’d be practical, forthright. I’d know that I was just following in tradition’s footsteps. That before Grandmom, there was Enid. After Grandmom, there was Aunt Edith. And now, courtesy of my crooked finger, there’s me. And whatever has to happen, has to happen in here. So where is it? Where do I go?
I tilt my head back again, gazing at the stars. This room isn’t scary. That’s the truth of it. It’s weird, but it isn’t scary. The inside wall is bright white, and there aren’t any bugs. Or if there are, they’re flying far above me, under the dome. I bring my head back down and start to pace around the edge of the room. It isn’t that wide: maybe just a little bigger than one of those parachutes you play with when you’re a little kid, when everyone grabs the edges and you float it up and down and then duck underneath. I make a complete circle of the room, running my hand against the wall as I move. The wall is made of that crumbly concrete, which makes me think that pieces could break off, that I could rub parts of the wall in between my fingers and it would dissolve into little particles of sand. I walk around and around the empty room. It’s in here. It has to be. I’m not looking hard enough. I can’t fail, I CAN’T FAIL.
I’m not trusting myself
.
Grandmom? I stop, my hand still on the wall, now near the light switches. My finger hasn’t stopped pounding since I walked in here. What am I missing? My eyes sweep over the room again. The only “artificial” part of this space is the lights and the light switches. Otherwise, it’s just walls and a roof and a floor. Walls and a roof and a floor. Walls and . . .
My eyes narrow as I notice something. On the light panel, the same panel of switches found in an ordinary kitchen, is something different. There are three normal light switches and one other thing. A tiny circular socket.
I walk over to it, breathing hard and fast, my eyes riveted to this one small difference. An odd-shaped hole, formed like an octagon, only about a quarter of an inch deep, as if a tiny stop sign was pushed into the panel.
An octagon. Eight sides. Like my emerald ring. A ring that could be a key in a socket, like the polygon from Owen’s class.
I move so fast, I don’t have time to think.
Freddy. Freddy. Freddy.
I push my ring, my eight-sided emerald stone, into the circular opening. Immediately, there is a faint but strong whirring noise, followed by a crackling, whooshing sound. It’s coming from high above, from the roof. Just like in science class, the roof of the Silo is pulling back. Amidst loud rumbling noise—the sounds, no doubt, that have haunted me—the entire curved roof of the Silo folds over to one side, opening it to the night sky. The stars seem to burn against the dark night and my heart and lungs and mind feel as if they’re in overdrive because then, just then, there is a rumbling under my feet and I jump, pressing my back against the wall, removing my ring from the socket, staring as the floor begins to
move
.
That is, the central plate of the floor
retracts.
A long, cut-out rectangular piece pulls back, revealing water—free-flowing, bluish water—streaming underneath the open roof, the night sky.
Water under the Dark House. Water that gives the slugs a home, that breeds dragonflies, that feeds into our magical lake. It is always, always about the water—the water that saved me and Freddy and that took my ring and that feeds our plants, our rhubarb, our family. Until it stops raining. Until the clouds don’t form. Until the water cycle
is stopped
.
As I kneel down on the floor, next to the open water, I keep my hand in a tight fist, casting a quick glance up to the sky, breathing hard, taking it all in. I’m joining my family in a different way right now, a subset of my family: all women, all crooked fingers, all programmed—genetically hardwired—to keep their farm alive. It isn’t like First Communion or graduation from middle school: it’s more specific and natural and
certain
—like that instinctive certainty you have when you plant one seed, give it water and sun, and know something will grow.
I’m
growing.
I look down at the water. I feel it: all of them—Harry, the farm, Grandmom—are waiting for me to take my place as the newest rainmaker in my family.
I plunge my hand in. The swooshing sound, the opening of my lungs, the volt of electricity shooting through my fingers—everything happens at once. I shut my eyes tightly.
Freddy is in a coma.
I keep my eyes closed until I can’t bear it. Then I open them, eyelids fluttering, realization pushing me back off of my knees and onto my bottom, so that when I see the thick ribbon of white vapor rising from the water, I’m sitting down, ignoring the water churning around my hand and the relentless jolt of energy surging up my arm, only staring as the vapor rises, spotlighted by the floodlights, heading up to the waiting sky.
I, Polly Peabody, am making a cloud.
A smile fights its way across my face, battling all my worry and fear, as I watch a very scant trace of a white cloud appear up against the black sky, blocking out some of the twinkling stars.
I stand up slowly and shake out my hand as I continue to stare.That’s when something else happens, something I don’t expect. The tip of my crooked finger pulses— it’s a strong and almost metallic feeling. I fling off more water droplets from my hand, but as I do, it becomes harder to keep my hand level, to keep it at, say, waist height. My eyes widen as I feel my arm pulled up, my finger drawn up above to the sky. It is as if there’s a magnet in the sky and a magnet in my finger—
Plus or minus. PLUS OR MINUS.
Polarization. Positive charges, negative charges. You’ve heard the saying that opposites attract . . .
I stretch out my fingers wide, far above my head, and then I bring them in close, making a fist, except my one small, bony, crooked index finger, which I extend, as straight as possible, pointing at the vapor. I don’t know that I’m holding my breath; I don’t know what’s compelling me to start twirling this finger in the air. But that’s what I do, and the truth is, I’m not surprised when I watch the cloud move with my finger, spinning itself into a more perfect circle.
Like Spark, I start to draw in the sky. I’m not forming words. I’m
making a cloud
.