Watch the Sky

by Kirsten Hubbard

  “Because we’ll only dig at night.”

  AT SCHOOL ON MONDAY, the meteor shower was all anyone could talk about.

  It bothered Jory. He liked to think that the falling stars had happened only for his family. But more than half his classmates had seen them.

  “I can’t believe I missed the meteor shower!” Alice complained at lunch, plunking herself across from Jory. “Did you remember to look?”

  “I forgot, but my—” He paused. “Yeah, we saw it.”

  “Wow, you’re so lucky. Erik tried to record it with his phone, but it was too dark…”

  Jory rubbed his temples. He’d felt foggy-brained all morning. As if the entire weekend had been a dream—the canyon, the meteors, the visit from the Officials, Alice’s phone call. Although he did remember hanging up on her. But she didn’t even mention it. She launched straight into the stars.

  “It must have been so wild,” she said. “Like the planetarium come to life! I heard it went on for like five whole minutes.”

  Only five minutes? It had seemed much longer than that.

  She sighed dreamily. “Just think of all the wishes people made last night.”

  Jory smirked. Earlier, he’d overheard other boys arguing about end-of-the-world stuff. Asteroids. Hunks of fiery rock crashing into skyscrapers. Cosmic dust blotting out the sun and freezing the whole world, like in dinosaur times. Leave it to Alice to think about wishes.

  “You’re smiling,” she said.

  Jory straightened his face. “No I’m not.”

  “Well, you were! You never smile. Life’s not all doom and gloom, Jory Birch.”

  Easy for Alice to say, Jory thought, as he walked home that afternoon. She wouldn’t know a raincloud if it bopped her on the head. Her parents probably told her all their secrets, and never fed her pickles, and only used shovels for gardening.

  Shovels. He wasn’t ready to think about those yet.

  Jory was so preoccupied, he walked two blocks before he realized he was on Vale Street. Uh-oh. He’d gone the short way—the wrong way.

  He considered turning around. But what if somebody saw him? He could say he’d forgotten his book, When You Reach Me. Even though it was in his backpack.

  “Jory, my man!”

  Too late. Erik Dixon sat on his porch, with Sam Kapur and Randall Loomis beside him. Jory couldn’t help noticing the other boys’ jeans and sneakers. So comfortable-looking and normal compared to his clompy boots and cargo pants.

  When Jory thought about it, dressing differently seemed like the opposite of hiding in plain sight. He was sure he’d blend in a hundred times better at school if Mom and Caleb let him swap his cargoes for jeans, low or otherwise. But he didn’t ask. He knew his clothes had a purpose—even if he didn’t know what the purpose was.

  “We’re trying to figure out how we’d spend our last day on the planet,” Erik called. “If the meteors really were headed for earth. Like, inescapable annihilation. What about you?” He waved Jory over.

  “What about me?” Jory called back, staying put.

  “Yeah, man. How would you spend your last day? For example, I’d get a supersized pizza and a boat, and spend it sailing the open seas. Randall said he’d find a supermodel to make out with.”

  Sam elbowed Randall in the side. “Good luck finding a supermodel who’d waste her final day on earth with you. I’d break into the candy store and stuff myself.”

  Erik waved at Jory again. “Come over here so we don’t have to yell!”

  Jory didn’t know what to make of Erik Dixon. He could never tell whether Erik was being genuinely friendly, or making fun of him, the way other kids sometimes did.

  Sam and Randall, he was even less sure about. One time, Sam had offered to let Jory cut in the computer line. “I might take a while,” he’d said. “I’ve got a jillion things to look up.” But Jory had refused. What if Sam had wanted to look over Jory’s shoulder? Even though he’d only wanted to read up on bicycle repair.

  “Some other time,” he called.

  He was in such a hurry to get away, he walked straight into the Mendoza twins.

  The twins weren’t even in Mr. Bradley’s class, which made their interest in Jory even more perplexing. The burly one bounced a basketball in Jory’s path. “Hey, Farmer Jory!” bellowed the skinny one. “You’ve got hayseeds in your teeth.”

  “Did your tractor break down?”

  “You forgot your little lamb! I thought it went everywhere you go?”

  Jory rolled his eyes and trudged onward. Two obstacles down. One more to go.

  He braced himself as he reached the final block of Vale Street. But to his surprise, Alice’s porch was empty. She must have been at her Down to Earth Club meeting—they met every Monday. Jory wasn’t part of any clubs.

  He watched her house a moment before walking on. Her windows had yellow curtains.

  Caleb went first, carrying Ansel in a sling on his back. Mom went second. Kit went third, remarkably light-footed in her heavy black boots, her dark hair bound in a ponytail.

  Jory went last. One step, then another and he was over the edge—inside the canyon.

  Mom had woken him at midnight. Or would have woken him, if he’d ever fallen asleep. He’d tossed and turned long past his early bedtime, wondering about the night ahead.

  But as soon as he’d stepped outside, the crisp night air had energized him. The shovel felt good in his hands, a perfect weight. Caleb had chosen well. He’d personalized the family’s shovels: five different sizes, big to small. Even Ansel had a toddler-sized shovel, made of red plastic.

  Jory used his for leverage as he navigated the canyon wall. The descent was steeper than it looked—the family’s combat boots finally made sense. There were plenty of shrubs to hold on to, but Jory didn’t want a poison oak surprise.

  “You doing okay?” he whispered to Kit.

  She glanced over her shoulder and smiled wryly. Like she found this entire late-night adventure kind of comical—and Jory supposed it was, if you squinted a bit.

  At the bottom of the canyon, Caleb led them down a dark ravine, snarled with wicked-looking trees. The family’s feeble flashlights only made the shadows worse. They ducked through a chaparral thicket and entered a small clearing, filled with more dirt, more brush, and more inky shadows.

  But that wasn’t all.

  Jory saw a pair of wheelbarrows, and beside them, a hatchet. A pickax. A pair of clippers taller than Ansel, and several smaller ones. A jug of water with a spigot. Five water bottles. Folded gray tarps. Stacks of six-foot two-by-fours. And more. Even if Jory couldn’t guess at each item’s purpose, Caleb had thought of everything, it seemed.

  “Wow!” Jory exclaimed. Then he whispered, “Sorry.”

  “That’s all right,” Caleb said. “We’re free to talk here, as long as we keep our voices down. Your mother and I tested it—there’s only an echo if you yell.”

  Jory chewed his lip. If they’d tested the echo, that meant Mom had been down here before. At the very least, she’d stood on the canyon’s edge while Caleb had shouted. Jory wondered when it had happened—late at night, or when he was at school? What else did Mom know that he didn’t?

  “How did you get all this stuff into the canyon?” he asked.

  “Some of it I carried,” Caleb replied. “Some of it I brought down in the wheelbarrows. Some of it—like the wood—I drove into the main canyon and hauled from there.”

  Jory thought of Caleb’s boots, dirt-caked in the morning. He really had been working at night. Not in the moonlit fields, but down here, in the canyon bottom. “So we’re digging here?”

  Caleb marched a few steps, then carved an X with his shovel. “Right here. X marks the spot.”

  “Are we burying something? Or digging something up? Or—or something else? I don’t understand.”

  “Jory,” Mom said sharply.

  “Sorry,” he said, embarrassed. He knew he was asking too many questions.

  “It’s okay,�
�� Caleb said. He came over and placed both hands on Jory’s shoulders. “I can’t tell you why we’re digging yet—but it’s for something very important. You’ll understand soon. I promise. All I want in the world is to keep this family safe.” He looked into Jory’s eyes. “Do you trust me?”

  “I trust you,” Jory said without thinking.

  “Good.” Caleb patted his shoulder, then turned to the rest of the family. Kit leaned against Mom with her arms crossed, and Ansel sat in the dirt. “Who’d like to break ground? How about Ansel?”

  Ansel looked bewildered.

  “That’s a great idea,” Mom said. She took his hand and helped him toddle to Caleb’s X. “Dig right here, baby bird. You know how.”

  Jory felt a little envious as he watched Ansel hesitate, then whack the ground with his plastic shovel. It barely made a dent.

  “Bang!” he shouted.

  “That’s my boy,” Caleb said, eye-beaming with pride. He hoisted his shovel. “Everybody ready?”

  Overhead, the stars glittered in the blue-black sky. A night bird sang a trio of haunting notes: low, high, low. Unexpectedly, Jory discovered he was smiling. His eyes met Kit’s, and she was smiling, too.

  Sure, they didn’t know why they were digging. But tonight, the mystery was enough.

  “Do we all just dig together?” Jory asked.

  “That’s right,” Mom said. “As a family.”

  FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE HE STARTED SCHOOL AGAIN, Jory forgot to do his math homework.

  “I’m sure it just slipped your mind,” Mr. Bradley said, marking something in his book. “Turn it in tomorrow, and we’ll be squared away.”

  Which was more than fair, but Jory still shriveled in his seat.

  After math came social studies. “Qin Shi Huang, China’s first emperor, was buried with an entire terra cotta army,” Mr. Bradley began, reading from a textbook. He was so tall, sometimes his voice seemed to boom from the ceiling.

  Jory leaned forward, intending to listen. He enjoyed social studies. He already had trillions of ideas for his project, mostly stuff he’d read about online during computer time: accidental mummies or Greek mythology or religious cults or folklore faeries or the Native Americans who’d inhabited the deserts east of their town.

  But his mind skittered like a pebble on a slope. Last night, his family had spent four hours in the canyon. Digging, hauling dirt, picking out stones, cutting branches with pruning shears. It was almost five in the morning when Jory had shed his dirty clothes and collapsed into bed.

  “Archaeologists estimate there are eight thousand terra cotta soldiers. Wow! All to protect the emperor when he woke in the afterlife.”

  Only two hours later, he had had to get ready for school.

  “They also found one hundred and thirty chariots and six hundred and seventy horses, along with terra cotta acrobats, strongmen, and musicians. Can you imagine the thrall the emperor had over his people, to inspire them to spend years crafting his army?”

  So Jory felt tired. And distracted. He had to force himself to invent some what ifs for Mr. Bradley’s lesson. What if the emperor had been an evil tyrant?

  What if he’d been a sorcerer?

  What if his people had crafted soldiers to murder him instead of to protect him?

  But Jory also felt…invigorated. Because despite the half moons of dirt beneath his fingernails, despite the ache in his weary shoulders, despite the inky blue spookiness of the canyon—it had been kind of thrilling, too.

  The novelty of the night. The teamwork with his family.

  And the inarguable sense that, at long last, he was getting closer to the truth. Caleb’s truth. The reasons behind everything they did.

  As the students packed up after class, Alice Brooks-Diaz tapped Jory’s shoulder. She’d only ever approached him at lunch. “Jory Birch,” she said. “You’re smiling again.”

  “No I’m not,” he said, smiling.

  “Are too! Did you get some good news or something? A new pet?” Alice shoved back her cuffs. “Oh, please tell me it’s a new pet. Wait—did you find a way into the locked barn? Is that why you’re smiling?”

  Jory shook his head and hurried away, trying and failing to straighten his face. He couldn’t help it. This time, the secret wasn’t being kept from him.

  He was keeping the secret.

  “I’ve figured out our schedules,” Caleb announced.

  The family was gathered in the patio for an after-school meeting. Jory sat with his back against the wall. With no shooting stars to hypnotize her, Kit knelt beside him obediently. Mom cuddled Ansel, who chewed on the end of her braid.

  “Everybody’s sleep schedule will be a bit different. We’ll find it difficult at first, but our bodies will adapt. You’d be stunned by the schedules I kept as a soldier.”

  Jory attempted to look more soldierlike.

  “My schedule is the only one that will vary. I’ll be picking up extra shifts at the factory and running errands. Your mother will also need to run errands sometimes.”

  Jory glanced at Mom, who was hugging Ansel. She didn’t drive, and public places overwhelmed her. Marrying Caleb meant she rarely had to leave the house, which was how she liked it. “My family’s all I need,” she would say. “If I only saw you guys for the rest of my life, I’d be happy as a meadowlark—or a badger, warm in its burrow.”

  “What kind of errands?” she asked uncertainly.

  “Don’t worry,” Caleb replied, taking her hand. “There won’t be many, I promise.” He turned to Jory. “From now on, you’ll have to send yourself off to school in the mornings. Your mother and the kids need more sleep than we do—we’re the men of the house, after all.”

  Jory nodded. Beside him, Kit crossed her arms tightly.

  At last, Caleb handed out the family’s schedules. He’d handwritten them on beige card stock, with perfect penmanship.

  JORY’S SCHEDULE

  Monday to Friday:

  Dig Days.

  School 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.

  Dinner at 5 p.m.

  Sleep 6 p.m. to midnight.

  Dig midnight to 5 a.m.

  Sleep 5 a.m. to 7 a.m.

  Saturday:

  Day of Rest.

  Sunday:

  Other Preparations.

  Sleep 6 p.m. to midnight.

  Dig midnight to 5 a.m.

  Sleep 5 a.m. to 7 a.m.

  Jory peered at his schedule. There was so little free time—only between three p.m. and five p.m. on weekdays. Except he’d need to finish his chores and help with dinner then, too. And when would he do his homework?

  “There isn’t much time to just…” he began, then trailed off.

  “To what?” Caleb said.

  Well, to play with Kit, Jory thought. But Jory knew Caleb didn’t find their games important. Even if their games were important to them. “Time to relax,” Jory finished.

  “That’s what Saturday is for,” Caleb said.

  “But…”

  Caleb silenced him with a look. “Now’s not the time to be selfish, Jory. This isn’t about fun. This isn’t a game. This is serious.” He paused. “A matter of life and death.”

  A matter of life and death? Just this morning, Jory had been feeling excited. Now all he felt was apprehensive.

  Caleb studied the family, as if assessing the impact of his words. “The harder we work now, the better off we’ll be after. Just keep trusting me, and we’ll be fine.”

  In the remaining twenty minutes before their new early bedtime, Jory and Kit sat cross-legged on the back porch and played Worldbuilding. It involved nailing wood scraps into the shapes of houses, then painting doors, windows, and other details with globby old paint.

  Jory’s houses were careful, realistic. Kit’s were always peculiar, improbable: rainbow swirls, polka dots, every wall a different color. Right now, she was daubing bright orange stars on a blue rooftop. The rest of the house was green.

  “Did the shooting stars hit the house?” Jory as
ked. “Or are the stars inside of it?”

  Kit shrugged dramatically. Her palms were smudged with orange paint.

  “Am I overthinking things?”

  She nodded, then reached over and painted an orange star on Jory’s elbow.

  They’d never told Mom or Caleb about Worldbuilding. But it turned out Caleb had known all along. One day, he’d brought home a box of wood scraps and almost-empty paint cans from the factory. Perfect timing, since they’d almost run out of both.

  “Just don’t let your imaginations get carried away,” he’d warned.

  They tried not to. But over time, their Worldbuilding homes grew more elaborate: balconies, shutters, tiny two-dimensional pets, window boxes brimming with flowers—Jory’s with daisy-perfect petals, Kit’s bristling, neon, extraterrestrial. They even painted little grocery stores and banks.

  They only crafted towns, though. Never cities.

  Mom had told them horrible stories about the city where she’d grown up. “Babies left in trash cans,” she’d said. “Children kidnapped right off the streets. Everybody just walks by the homeless. You can’t go ten feet without your heart breaking. It just breaks and breaks, over and over again.”

  “That’s because you have a kind heart,” Caleb had told her. Before he’d become a soldier, he’d lived in a city, too. “That’s what I love about you. But you can’t save everybody.”

  Mom had glanced at Kit. “I know that. But these people in the gutters—they’re right there in front of you, asking for help. And a dollar means so much more to them than it does to you.”

  “Say you give one man a dollar. But what about the man around the corner?”

  “One more dollar won’t hurt.”

  “So you’ve given away two dollars,” Caleb had said. “But are you going to give a dollar to every homeless person in the city? In the country? The whole world? Beyond? You have to draw the line someplace. Otherwise you’ll be the one who needs to be taken care of.”

  He’d taken Mom’s hand. “My line is a circle, around our family.”