Earth/Sky (Earth/Sky Trilogy)

by Macaulay C. Hunter

  “You could just stop wearing clothes,” Nash suggested. “That’s what I do when my clothes bore me. Do your clothes bore you, Diego? Easton?”

  Easton stuck a hand up his shirt to scratch at his stomach. “Dude, I have the worst clothes allergy. It gives me a rash all over. If it gets any worse, I’ll have to transfer to Nudie High. It’s on the coast.”

  “Shut up,” London said to both of them.

  “Can we invite other people?” Kitts hollered over the noise of the cafeteria.

  “Invite anyone and everyone,” London said. Juniors at Kitts’ table cheered and London added, “Except Billy!”

  “He’s out sick with food poisoning,” someone called.

  “Probably trapped a raccoon and ate it,” London grumbled.

  The rest of the lunch period was taken over in deciding on a time to leave and figuring out carpools. I leaned on Adriel, who dug his fingers into my scalp since I’d been complaining about how the exams drained me of the power to think. That aside, it had been a lovely week. As my mail truck was in the shop for a tune-up, Adriel had been my ride for the last two days. Both mornings, there was hot coffee in a sealed mug waiting in the cup holder as I slid into his car. It made me sorry that the truck was going to be ready for pick up this afternoon.

  “You’ll like the bridges, Jessa,” Nash said. “There’s a big park in the center of the town square, a man-made river and ornamental bridges going over it.”

  He was still trying to catch my eye, and coincidentally turning up outside one class a day. Adriel pulled me back a little closer and said, “I’ll have to show those to her.”

  “And take her to the ice cream place!” Easton suggested. “I love Pirri’s.”

  “Make sure you love it before noon or after two,” London retorted. “The last time I was there at lunch, the line was all the way out the door and around the side. It took me forty-five minutes to get to the counter.”

  “I don’t even know what your favorite flavor is,” Adriel said.

  “Chocolate,” I replied. The bell rang. We separated to fifth period, where Kitts and I moaned at the pop quiz. Who gave a pop quiz for typing? Keyboards rattled all over the room as we chugged out the timed test on our screens. Ms. Crane shouted, “Correct hand positions, people!” on two occasions.

  “The computer doesn’t know,” Kitts whispered, and I snickered.

  After the test ended, we moved on to our regular exercises. I raced through them and stared out the window for a while. Kitts pushed over a magazine, which I hid on my lap to read. Clothes, music albums, and pictures of the BBG triplets occupied me for a while. The group had teamed up with an indie band called The Becker Girls for a music video. Although it looked great from the still shots on set, I couldn’t watch it at home with the shoddy Internet, and I couldn’t watch it here with Ms. Crane.

  Then I remembered the poem that was due for sixth period. God, my brain wasn’t working at all this week! I returned the magazine to Kitts. Opening a blank file, I wrote through the end of the period and was printing it when the bell rang. “Good luck on your literature test.”

  “Seataw cannot come fast enough,” Kitts said while we put on our backpacks. “Sorry I’ll be a little late to join up with you guys. I don’t get off work until noon.”

  I snagged my poem from the printer. “How will you find us without a cell phone?”

  She pushed her glasses higher on her nose. “It’s Seataw, Jessa. I’ll just stroll around until I find you.”

  Mr. Rogers had us black out our names, put our poems on the table in the front, and pick up another one at random to read and review. We did this for the period, getting up and down and up and down again to read such masterpieces as first period’s too early, sixth period’s too late, I want to go home, but must graduate. Oh, for God’s sake. Most of the reviews had complimented the poet on his rhyming skills. Adriel and I switched poems to save on the times we had to get up and go to the front of the room for more. He shook his head over the poem that I had given him and I looked down to my new one. It just had the heading POEM over a blank page, and lots of positive reviews scribbled around the margins. I hated this class. The only thing that kept me from dropping was Adriel.

  No one was happier than myself when the bell rang to conclude sixth. School was done for the week and I had two days to recover. Friday afternoon was always the best part, in my opinion, since it was the longest point until I had to come back. Adriel and I went to our lockers. On a rampage of bossiness, London was getting verbal confirmation from everyone that they were coming to Seataw. I nodded with exaggeration and said, “Yes! Of course we are.”

  “Good!” she roared, and moved on to harass someone else.

  Grandpa Jack was waiting in his work truck at the curb, since his route was in this area and he could drop me off at the shop. Everyone was waving to him, a boy yelling, “Hey, Mr. Mailman!” I walked to the truck in a group of friends and climbed inside. We joined the queue of cars eager to quit the campus. Light sparkled above as we pulled out into the road. It was just a reflection coming off something, but my heart jumped in memory of the angels flying.

  “You’re popular,” Grandpa Jack grunted.

  “There are nice people here,” I replied. “We’re going to Seataw tomorrow.”

  “That’s good. You’ll have fun.”

  “Any cliffs on the way there I should know about?”

  “Not a one. Nothing but nice level roads the whole way,” Grandpa Jack said. “I’m having a little get-together for some guys at the house tomorrow afternoon to watch the game. Order some pizzas for delivery.”

  “That sounds like fun, too.” I sensed that he was glad I had somewhere else to be for the day.

  The phone rang a half-dozen times that evening so that London, Savannah, and I could continue to sort out carpools. As more people agreed to come, we shuffled and reshuffled the rides to ensure everyone had a seat. In the morning when I came downstairs, Grandpa Jack was cleaning up the living room. He gave me a twenty, saying rather gruffly that it was for some spending money.

  When I got into Adriel’s car, coffee was again waiting for me. Gratefully, I said, “You are a godsend.”

  “Literally, in some cases,” he said dryly.

  “I never got a chance to ask what your favorite flavor of ice cream was.” I waved to Grandpa Jack, who waved back and flapped the welcome mat to make a cloud of dust over the lawn.

  “Is he getting ready for something?” Adriel asked.

  “An old people party.”

  “I’m older than they are.”

  As he pulled into the road, I said, “But you don’t look a day over eighteen.”

  We drove around Spooner to pick up two of Kitts’ friends, junior girls named Marcy and Rachael who squealed with excitement in the back seat and returned to some previous conversation about bands. Their gabble flowed on the way up to Seataw without more than a handful of words necessary from either Adriel or myself. Neither was going back with us since Marcy’s older cousin lived in nearby Gillerman. She would meet up with the girls this afternoon in the square and they were spending the night at her house. Once the two of them had squashed their heads together to share earphones and judge a new Lady Whoha song on an ancient DVD player, the car received a breath of silence. Adriel said, “Vanilla.”

  “No one picks vanilla,” I said.

  “I like it.”

  “Ooh, are you talking about ice cream? I like strawberry,” Marcy announced, her voice carrying too loudly since she had music blasting into her ear.

  “Let’s go to Pirri’s!” Rachael cheered.

  We arrived at Seataw, which was as small as a postage stamp and cute as a button with lanes full of sweet cottage-style houses. No sagging sheds and yards full of rusting cars and heaps of junk, here the lawns were clipped and homes upkept. Our meet-up point was the entrance to the park at the center of town, where a dozen people from school were waiting. Adriel drove around the square twice to fin
d an open place at the curb.

  Although there were a lot of trees, great swathes of the park were left open to let the light shine through. Diego and Easton seized Adriel for a game of Frisbee in the park with some other guys; I was claimed by the girls and pulled along to a clothing shop across the street. Marcy and Rachael joined up with another friend and dashed down the sidewalk to get to the ice cream store before its infamous rush at lunch started.

  Kitts had been right: there was no way one could miss friends in tiny Seataw. A careful loop around the square and a jog through the park would remedy it in short order. But the clothing store we walked into had things as fashionable as any being worn at Bellangame High, for a good price made better with a sale. London gave me a sheepish look and said, “You’re used to better.”

  “Are you kidding? This is great,” I said. Wanting to offload the last of their summer stock, everything on the three racks in back was sixty percent off. We loaded ourselves down with prospective purchases and revolved through the single dressing room in turn.

  In the mirror, I looked at my reflection in a crochet sweater tank. It was ivory-colored, which went well with my tanned skin. This would be perfect for a pool party in June when I got back home, not to mention that it was a steal at ten dollars. Already I could feel the heat of the sun beating down on my shoulders. The only problem was that I didn’t want to go back to Bellangame, not since it meant leaving Adriel behind. But the Graystones moved every few years, and if they moved south I could still have them near me.

  “Does it look that bad? Come out and let us see!” London called through the curtain. I pushed it aside, stepped out, and turned around so they could judge it. Meeting with everyone’s approval, I went back in and changed to my own shirt. I didn’t know what the solution was to this problem. Yet it was one I had to find.

  Kitts found us there half an hour later, and she was not alone. Girls cried out to welcome Zakia, who loomed over the racks of dainty things and smiled. Everything that Adriel had told me about him was racing through my mind, and I tried to smile back without looking nervous. He had never hurt me. How much of a temperature change did it take for him to lose control? The air conditioning in the shop was turned up high. He plopped down in a chair to wait for us to finish.

  Savannah called that we’d left the boys in the park, half playing Frisbee and the other half charging off to a video game store. Shaking her head, Kitts said, “They’re not over there any longer in either place. You’re the first ones we’ve come across.”

  I returned to perusing the racks, although I’d seen pretty much everything there was to see in the shop. This was definitely a place to visit again during my stay in Spooner. London called for me to judge shirts she was waffling between, and after that I went to the counter to make my purchase of two shirts I couldn’t live without. The amount didn’t even come to the full twenty from Grandpa Jack. Even if I found nothing else worth buying the rest of the day, this trip was deemed a success. I’d wear the sweater tank to school on Monday.

  “Hey, Jessa,” Zakia said when I moved away from the counter and rattled through the bag for the receipt.

  “Hey,” I said, hoping I wasn’t showing any of the nervousness that I felt. “I wasn’t expecting to see you today.”

  “I wasn’t expecting to be here,” Zakia said. “I stopped in the flower store to get a card for Lotus’ birthday. Kitts said you were all descending on Seataw and invited me along. What have you been up to lately?”

  “Getting smacked with exams at school,” I said. It was so easy to be lulled into complacency by his sweet nature and handsome face. “Tell Lotus happy birthday from me. She must be so excited.” I couldn’t think of that little girl as being dead, or anything else but the child she appeared to be.

  “She is. I’ll tell her,” Zakia said.

  “Don’t you have to work?”

  Kicking off his shoes, he folded his arms behind his head. “No, I’ve got today off so I was killing time downtown. But I can do that just as well up here.”

  I stuffed the receipt into my wallet and slid it into my purse. Was he allowed to travel a certain distance out of Spooner without the Kreelings tailing him? The air conditioning let out a fresh blast and I shivered. Zakia’s good earth smell filled my nostrils. With my mouth outpacing my brain, I blurted, “You know, Zakia, I would swear on my grave that that was you helping me home when I was lost as a little girl. You and Jaden are that close to identical.”

  He just grinned. “We should make a Cooper calendar, twelve months of my brothers and my cousins and me. You’d think you were looking at the same guy on every page.”

  One of the girls going through the racks muttered, “I’d buy that calendar.”

  Once everyone had visited the cashier, we left the shop. This was such a sweet place. Many of the stores had benches outside for passerby to rest upon, and down an alley were more little shops around a penny-filled fountain. We flicked coins in for luck on our exams, with London tossing in a second penny since she had no idea which college to apply to when so many of them looked more or less the same.

  Where the guys had gone we had no clue, so with Zakia among us, we stormed a shoe store and afterwards a candy shop. I filled a bag with goodies to enjoy at home later. Some of the girls headed out to make a movie showing of a new release they were eager to see and one that wouldn’t make it to Spooner for a few more weeks.

  Leaving the alley, we pressed on past two wine bars, a children’s clothing store, and a bakery that smelled so good we stopped outside just to breathe it in. Eventually breathing was not enough, and we went inside for croissants and turnovers. I wished that I could have texted Adriel to meet us here. Seataw had cell service, but I hadn’t brought my cell phone and he didn’t even own one.

  A bookstore was beside the bakery and there our group split once more since others wanted to walk around the park. Bells tinkled as Savannah opened the door to the bookstore. I went inside to look around. A tabby cat jumped up on a stack of books to stare at me and make a demanding meow. He was little more than a kitten of six or seven months old. Letting him sniff my fingers, I said, “Should you be in here?” He had a collar on, and the employees in the two levels of the store weren’t paying him any attention.

  “He’s a shop cat,” Savannah called over the aisle. I patted him and moved on, the cat leaping to the next stack of books to demand more affection with a piercing voice.

  “Okay!” I said as he reached out to swat at me. Slinging him over my shoulder, I inspected the shelves with the little cat purring loudly in my ear. Twice I tried to interest him in getting down, but he was content to ride around with me and look at books. “What do people with allergies do with you, cat?”

  “Not shop here,” Savannah said with a laugh.

  A display of bookmarks was by the nonfiction section. The prettiest one was made of metal, an intricate design of little gold and silver leaves connected by point and stem to one another. Carrying it over to Zakia at the counter, I said, “Do you think Lotus would like this for a birthday gift? I know she likes to read.”

  He put down a journal and examined the bookmark. “She would love it. But you don’t have to-”

  “She made me that fantastic cream for my road rash. I’d like to send something along with you for a present to give her.” The cat nuzzled the side of my head. “But I need you to either take the kitty or the purse so I can pay for it.”

  “The kitty.” The creature went willingly into his arms, happy as long as someone was holding him. Zakia checked the name on the collar. “Hello, Remainder. You must be new. Wasn’t the old cat here named Remainder?”

  “The last Remainder passed over the summer,” said the cashier at the register. He motioned to pictures of cats on the wall, each one with a plaque underneath that read REMAINDER with birth to death dates.

  I didn’t think an animal would be so content to be pressed to the chest of someone without a soul. Then again, what did I know about it? The
bells tinkled at the door as I passed money to the cashier for the bookmark and gift-wrapping. Adriel appeared at my shoulder, as tense as a piano wire to see Zakia. Looking like politeness was coming at great cost, Adriel said, “Hey.”

  “Hey,” Zakia said with the same amount of strain.

  The bookmark was given back to me in white tissue paper with blue ribbons tied around it. I pushed it over the counter to Zakia. “There. I hope she has something fun planned for the day.”

  “What’s going on?” Adriel asked.

  “Lotus is having a birthday tomorrow,” I explained. “Where have you been?”

  “The stores on the other end of the park. Most of the guys are in a new arcade over there. What would you like to do now?”

  “I’d like to see these bridges that everyone is talking about.” I felt uncomfortable between the boys. Zakia was paying deliberate attention to the cat, and Adriel was paying the same deliberate sort of attention to me. That way they didn’t have to look at one another. Turning to Zakia, I said, “It was good to see you. Have fun today.”

  “I will,” Zakia said. Kitts called his name, so he and the cat headed down an aisle while Adriel and I left the store.

  “He has a soul,” I said once the door had closed on the tinkling bells. “You just can’t sense it.”

  “I can’t believe the Kreeling let them live.” When he saw my expression, he hastened to add, “I’m not trying to start a fight with you. Kreolos hunters live to kill creatures like him. This agreement they have between them is unprecedented. Now, come on! Let’s talk about anything else.”

  “Anything else,” I agreed. We crossed the street to the park. Offering his arm, Adriel guided me to a trail that ran between mounds of flowers. A stream trickled beyond them. Plaques jutted up among the vegetation to describe the kind of plants they were. A side trail wound to a white gazebo, which held within it a group of artists all busily sketching the stream and the flowers down below. I said, “You should draw that, everyone in a gazebo drawing something else.”