Watch the Sky

by Kirsten Hubbard

  JORY WAITED EAGERLY FOR KIT TO SPEAK AGAIN. As they headed downstairs together at midnight, clad in combats and cargoes. At breakfast on Monday. When they bumped into each other in the tunnel Monday night—Jory heading out, Kit heading in.

  But she didn’t say a word.

  Jory figured it was because Mom and Caleb were never out of earshot. From time to time, Kit gave him a meaningful look. But then, her looks were always meaningful. For almost three years, they’d been her only language. Eyes widened and narrowed. Head tilts and shrugs. A sassy, stuck-out tongue, even after Jory joked that someday he’d pinch it off.

  But now, Jory realized they were just…captions. Subtitles. Guesses, really. They only represented the surface of Kit’s feelings. Even less of her thoughts.

  And nothing of her memories.

  Even if she didn’t remember the details, she’d lived a whole six years before Jory and the family. A whole different life. Yet she spent all day, every day, in the farmhouse, the fields, and the canyon. No wonder she seemed upset that Jory had nights off weekly. That he had a life outside the family.

  Maybe Kit wanted one, too.

  On Tuesday, Jory jogged home from school. The long way, so Alice and Erik couldn’t distract him. He’d already told Alice about his plan.

  Caleb’s truck was missing—good. Inside the farmhouse, the only sound was the lazy hum of the refrigerator. Mom and Ansel were fast asleep. Jory crept upstairs and knocked on Kit’s door. When he opened it, he found her sitting up in bed, as if waiting for him to arrive. Her usual way of knowing things.

  “Get dressed,” he whispered. “I want you to come with me.”

  She stared at him.

  “With me—and only me. Not Mom and Caleb. It’s nothing scary. Nothing we’re not allowed to do. I’m pretty sure, anyway.” He was trying to convince himself along with Kit. “You can even wear your ballet slippers, if you want.”

  A slow smile spread across her face. “Really?” she whispered.

  The sound of Kit’s voice made Jory grin. Until that moment, a part of him thought he’d invented their talk Saturday night—that he’d dreamed it, like the stars in her eyes. “Really,” he said. Kit dropped her flowered blanket on the bed and shoved her feet into her slippers.

  Suddenly inspired, Jory rolled up Kit’s blanket and stuck it under her sheet. He patted and prodded until it was sufficiently girl-shaped to fool Mom if she checked.

  Together, they tiptoed into the narrow hallway. The stairs creaked as they crept down. Of course they did, Jory thought. And soon he or Kit would have to sneeze, because that’s the way it always went in books.

  But nobody sneezed, and they made it outside without waking Mom or Ansel.

  Everything felt different as they hurried onto the road. The bright afternoon light. The puffy clouds, which only made the blue sky seem bluer.

  Jory led the way, with Kit’s hand in his. Gripping his. “You’re pretty strong,” he said. “You’re going to squish my bones into oatmeal.”

  She didn’t reply. Her eyes darted around like a frightened animal’s, and her mouth was a thin line. Usually she was so bold, taunting the blackbirds and dancing in the fields. Jory hoped he hadn’t made the wrong decision, leading her out here.

  But once they reached the eucalyptus grove, her grip loosened. Then it fell away altogether. She tipped her head back, looking up. The trees made patterns of light and dark on her smiling face.

  “Breathe deep,” Jory said. “That’s eucalyptus. In Australia, koalas eat the leaves.”

  Kit leaned over and picked up a leaf. She twirled it in front of her eyes, then licked it.

  “Kit!” Jory laughed.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Just a few more blocks.” He pointed. “I want you to meet Alice Brooks-Diaz. From school. You know, the one who asked if our house is haunted.”

  Kit’s smile started to fade.

  “She was kidding,” he added. “Promise. She’s just—she’s super interested in things. In everything, but especially mysteries. It used to annoy me, but now that I’ve gotten to know her, I think she’s a lot of fun. Her parents, too.”

  They continued through the fragrant grove. Suddenly, Kit shrieked. She grabbed Jory’s arm as the black-and-white dog bounded toward them, yapping.

  “It’s okay!” Jory laughed. “I know this dog. He’s nice, I promise.” He knelt beside the dog and patted its head. “See?”

  But Kit still clung to Jory. Did her memories include dogs? Mean ones? Jory decided not to push it—maybe next time.

  “Stay,” Jory ordered. For once, the dog listened.

  Alice was waiting on the corner of Vale Street, just like they’d planned. As soon as she saw Jory, she jogged over.

  “Oh my gosh! Is that her? Is that really her?” She beamed at Kit. “It’s so wonderful to finally meet you, Jory’s little sister! Wow, your eyes are like bowling balls. They’re gigantic.”

  Kit’s eyes grew even larger. Her hand crept back into Jory’s.

  “How old are you?” Alice asked.

  Jory watched Kit uncertainly. She didn’t reply. Which wasn’t a surprise—she’d only just started talking, after all. Plus, Alice was a lot to handle, even for him. Maybe they should have stayed in the eucalyptus grove.

  “She’s almost nine,” he said.

  “Can’t you speak for yourself?” Alice teased Kit.

  “Kit doesn’t really…” Jory felt helpless. “She’s…”

  Alice’s grin faltered only for a second. “Okay,” she said. “Well, I’m almost twelve. Which makes me three years older than you. Older doesn’t necessarily mean wiser, though. Just ask your brother.”

  “Hey,” Jory protested. Kit smiled tentatively.

  “So what’re we doing today?” Alice shoved back her cuffs. “We’ve got an hour till I have to be home for dinner. I’d invite you both, but Dad’s making kebabs and since he has to, like, craft them, he’d need more notice. They’re chicken. Isn’t that funny? Mom’s over her meatless thing, just like I said she’d be. Although she did manage three days this time.”

  Jory caught Kit looking at him questioningly. “Kebabs are…” he began, then realized he wasn’t sure himself.

  “Food on sticks,” Alice explained. “Like…stabbed meat. So you guys don’t have bikes, do you? I just got a new one.”

  Jory shook his head. He’d intended to repair his old bicycle for Kit, but he didn’t know how, and Caleb never had time to help.

  “Well, we could take a walk, or a hike. Or! We could hit the slopes.” Alice grinned at Kit. “I’ll bet you’d like them. They’re these really fun slides—”

  “They’re these crazy steep slides on a hillside,” Jory interrupted. Not that he didn’t love the slopes, but they were way too intense for Kit’s first outing. “Super dangerous. I heard about this one kid who slipped and broke every bone in his body.”

  Alice raised an eyebrow. “What kid?”

  “Anyway, they’re dangerous,” Jory said.

  Kit and Alice rolled their eyes at the same time.

  “But I’ll take you some other day! I promise.” He smiled at Kit. “I’ll take you everywhere.”

  She still didn’t speak, but she grinned back at him.

  “How about we just go to the park?” Alice suggested. “The one a couple blocks away? It’s not as good as the one they’re building at the new housing development—maybe a six out of ten?—but there are swings, and the normal kinds of slides…”

  “Great idea.” Jory couldn’t remember the last time he’d visited a park. Before Mom married Caleb, probably. Which meant he’d never visited one with Kit.

  Had she ever been to a park at all?

  Kit loved it. The monkey bars, the merry-go-round, the slide, the swings. She zipped around like a squirrel drunk on acorns, squealing, laughing. At first, Jory and Alice joined her. But Kit’s energy was endless—and exhausting. Finally, they sat together on a bench, watching her play.
<
br />   “Oh, to be nine again.” Alice shoved back her cuffs. “So what’s her deal, anyway?”

  “Her deal?” Jory repeated.

  “The deal with Kit, I mean.”

  Jory watched as Kit skipped past. Her dark hair stuck up in sixteen different directions. Though he couldn’t see them from here, he knew she’d gnawed her nails to the quick. Her ballet slippers were a total disaster—he couldn’t believe he’d let her wear them.

  He glanced at Alice. Her plaid coat was bright and cheerful, her koala hair neatly bound. Mom would have called her “put together.” If Jory hadn’t seen her rocket down the slopes, whooping like a night terror, he’d have found her intimidating.

  The way he used to.

  But Kit—well, Kit was definitely not put together. She looked like a kid who spent too many nights in the bottom of a canyon.

  “I just mean, you guys look so different,” Alice continued. “Is she your stepsister or something?”

  “Oh,” Jory said. “No, she’s…”

  Jory turned back to Kit, as she climbed on the swing and started to pump her legs. She swung higher and higher, her hair trailing behind her. Her dark hair. Her olive skin. Her big brown eyes that weren’t hazel at all, not even in a certain light. He hadn’t wanted to believe it, but he knew. He’d always known.

  Of course he and Kit weren’t related. Not by blood.

  “Something like that,” he finished.

  “And she doesn’t talk?”

  Jory paused, then shook his head.

  “Don’t you think that’s kind of strange? I mean, my mom gets worried when I give her the silent treatment longer than fifteen minutes.”

  “You can last fifteen minutes without talking?”

  Alice pushed him. “I’m just saying—has she been to a doctor?”

  “I don’t—I don’t think so.”

  “Has she ever said a word?”

  “I…” Jory didn’t know which was stranger: to claim she’d never spoken, or to admit she’d only spoken to him. It was strange either way. Whatever he did, whatever he said, Kit was strange. Her whole story, or lack of one.

  “Sometimes I think she fell out of the sky,” he said.

  A joke. That’s what he meant it to be, but it thudded onto the ground between them. Because it wasn’t really a joke. Because if things like that were possible, he’d have believed it. It’s not like Jory had a better explanation—about Kit, about digging, about anything. Until Caleb decided to give him one, Jory had no way to tell between what if and what was.

  “Not aliens again!” Alice said.

  Jory shook his head and looked away. He was tired of not knowing the answers to her questions. Tired of feeling stupid. Tired of all the secrets.

  Caleb had taught him to look deeper. To think outside the box. To take everything with a grain of salt.

  Everything else, that is.

  When it came to Caleb’s orders, Jory wasn’t supposed to question. He was supposed to believe there was a reason for everything they did. And why? Because Caleb was family? Because Caleb had saved them?

  That’s what Mom always said. But Jory was never clear on from what. He and Mom had survived just fine on their own.

  Alice tapped Jory’s shoulder, interrupting his thoughts. “Um, your sister’s swinging really high,” she said.

  Kit was soaring now. Higher than he’d ever seen anybody swing.

  “Hey, Kit!” he called, standing. “Take it easy, all right?”

  “I don’t think she heard you.” Alice frowned. “Do you think it’s possible to swing all the way over the bar? I thought that was an urban legend, or a suburban legend or whatever, but—wow, she’s really pushing it, isn’t she…”

  Jory hurried to the swings. “Kit!” He ducked as her feet whooshed past his head. “That’s enough. I’m serious.”

  She zoomed by him, back and forth, her legs pumping the air, like she intended to launch herself into the sky. Her laughter almost sounded taunting.

  “Kit, you’re scaring me!”

  Finally, she stopped pumping. The swing slowed. Jory waited until her arcs were normal, and then he started for the bench, his heart still thudding in his chest. “Little sisters,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant. “They—”

  Alice shrieked. Jory whirled back around right as Kit hit the ground.

  “Kit!” He ran to her, his heart in his throat.

  But she was already getting to her feet, so at least her legs weren’t broken. She’d scraped her knees, though. And the elastic on her right ballet slipper had snapped.

  When Kit saw her slipper, she started to cry. Silently, the way she always had.

  “It’s okay,” Jory said. “We’ll fix it.” He turned to Alice. “I should take her home. She wasn’t supposed to be playing—it’s my fault.”

  “Why? Is she sick or something?”

  “Something like that.” Another nonanswer.

  “But you can’t just…Look! She’s bleeding!”

  Jory looked. Blood leaked from Kit’s scraped knees, striping her shins.

  “My house is right over there,” Alice said. “My mom can fix her up.”

  Jory shook his head. He couldn’t explain that Kit was supposed to be a secret. “We need to go home. Come on, Kit.”

  He tried to pick her up: first by slinging her over his shoulder, and then with his arms under her knees and waist. He staggered three steps before he almost dropped her. He felt like crying himself—he couldn’t carry her all the way home. It was too far. She was too heavy.

  “You’re being unreasonable,” Alice said, stamping her foot. “Why can’t you just bring her over for a minute?”

  Jory ignored her. “Kit, you’ve got to walk. Can you walk?”

  Kit nodded. The tears in her eyelashes sparkled.

  Hand in hand, they hobbled away. Jory refused to look back, even though he knew Alice was still standing there, watching them go. Now she really would think he was crazy. Because of course it made sense, letting Alice’s mother fix up Kit’s knees.

  Or it would make sense for anybody else. For any other family but Jory’s.

  CALEB’S TRUCK WAS STILL MISSING, WHICH WAS A RELIEF. But as Jory and Kit crept across the yard, Mom threw open the back door. Concern creased her face, and she clutched her left temple.

  “I can explain—” Jory began.

  She pushed him aside and knelt in front of Kit. “Honey, you’re bleeding!” Mom glanced up at Jory. “What happened? Wait—let’s go inside. Keep it down.”

  “Caleb’s at work, right?

  “He could be back any minute.” She ushered Kit inside, her arm curved protectively around her narrow shoulders. Jory shut the door and locked it.

  In the bathroom, Mom helped Kit step into the tub. She rinsed the blood from her knees. The scrapes weren’t as bad as Jory had feared, but they still looked raw and painful.

  “Now tell me,” Mom said. “Where were you? How did Kit get hurt?”

  “She tripped and fell. We were playing in the fields—”

  “You weren’t in the fields. I searched for you all over.” She looked at Jory accusingly. “I even searched the canyon.”

  “You searched the canyon?”

  She nodded. “I was so worried about you.”

  “I’m—I’m sorry.” Jory didn’t want to lie. But he couldn’t tell the truth. Not the whole truth—that he’d brought Kit to meet Alice Brooks-Diaz. That would only worry Mom more, and she was worried enough already. “We just…we went for a walk. But Kit fell. That part’s real.”

  “You didn’t have permission.” Mom helped Kit from the tub, stroking her hair. “What if someone had seen her? We can’t let anyone know she’s here.”

  “But…the neighbor ladies see her all the time.”

  “The neighbor ladies?”

  “When we play in the fields. They even wave sometimes.”

  Mom sighed. “They’re harmless, I think. But not everybody is, Jory. You don’t know who y
ou can trust and who you can’t.”

  Jory sighed, too.

  “I just don’t understand what you were thinking. You know how upset Caleb will be when he finds out.”

  Jory’s throat closed up. “But—you don’t have to tell him, do you?”

  “Of course I do! I don’t keep secrets from your stepfather. And neither should you.”

  “Then why does he keep so many secrets from us?”

  Mom took a deep, shaky breath.

  “For our safety,” she said. “Caleb will tell us everything as soon as it’s safe. You know that.”

  There’s only so many times you can hear something before it becomes nonsensical. Like the word nectarine. Or the nursery rhyme “Mary, Mary Quite Contrary,” with its garden of silver bells.

  Jory had heard Caleb’s promise a thousand times by now. It was starting to sound meaningless.

  Jory had heaps of homework. He’d only just started his paper on tunnels. But he couldn’t bear to sit around the farmhouse, waiting for Caleb to arrive, while the rest of the family slept.

  He headed outside again. The fields didn’t feel comfortable either. And he couldn’t even look at the canyon without counting the hours until he’d be inside it, snipping, untangling, digging in the ever-expanding darkness.

  At the edge of the road, Jory opened the mailbox and peered inside. Nothing. But instead of turning back, he kept walking.

  Not toward town—away from it.

  The road veered south, through low hills the colors of autumn. After a few minutes, Jory reached another farmhouse. It was painted blue: a cheerful color, like a robin’s egg. But otherwise, it was a twin of his family’s. It made him feel strange, thinking of the people who lived there.

  A family like his, maybe. But different.

  Their Kit would have light brown hair, while their Jory and Ansel would be dark. The black-and-white dog would be brown and white, and it would belong to them, not their neighbors. Their family’s milk would always be fresh, not powdered. Pickles would be forbidden.

  Jory sighed and kept walking.

  He walked farther than he’d walked before. As he trudged up a slope, he thought he heard the highway: a low rumbly-rushing sound he felt in his chest. It might be just over the crest of the hill. It probably led to the city—Mom’s city. He wondered how long he’d have to walk to get there. If anybody would stop him.