Despite Piper’s reverent appearance, her mind was imagining the faces of the other kids when they saw her fly again. Boy, would they be surprised. And they’d probably be sorry, too, that they’d left her behind today. Perhaps they’d be riddled with guilt, even. Of course, Piper would forgive them right off, but it was still satisfying to consider how bad they’d feel and maybe they’d even cry some over it.
Piper was well into imagining a scenario where Lily was weeping and begging to renew their friendship while at the same time Conrad was calling himself a louse and a heel for leaving her behind. And she, Piper, was standing like a saint, in a snow-white dress with a beam of sunshine blessing the top of her head, refusing to be angry or cast blame. No, she was all forgiveness.
It was right at this part of her fantasy that Piper realized she was feeling quite hot all of a sudden. She unfastened the top button on her dress to get some more air, and when that wasn’t relief enough, she did the same to the button beneath it. Clearly, she’d run too fast to church, and the day was hotter than she’d considered.
A minute later Piper was sure the church must be on fire. Yet no one else was suffering; not a single person had so much as a bead of sweat on their brow.
The heat kept getting turned up, and now Piper felt as though she were sitting on a raging bonfire. She rolled up the sleeves on her dress and pushed down her knee socks. It still wasn’t enough. With nothing else to loosen, she snatched up the hymnal in front of her and used it to fan herself.
Millie Mae did not approve of hymnals being used as fanning mechanisms. It was disrespectful and distracting. She pursed her lips and cleared her throat loudly so that her opinion on the matter would be known.
Oblivious to Millie Mae’s objections, Piper fanned faster, taking deep breaths in through her nose and out through her mouth.
Millie Mae inwardly seethed, biting her tongue while she clenched and unclenched her hand. Piper McCloud was causing a racket! If she were Millie Mae’s child, she’d see to it, right quick, that she stopped this nonsense once and for all. What was that? Piper was panting like a dog now? This was Millie Mae’s breaking point.
Swiveling around in her seat, Millie Mae opened her mouth to tell Piper McCloud exactly what was on her mind, but when she caught sight of Piper’s face, she froze. What she saw drove all words out of her mouth and thoughts out of her head.
Piper McCloud’s face had erupted in huge, bubbling boils, each one the size of a meatball. The boils were also poking out of her arms and legs and down her neck. The child was erupting like a volcano.
“Lord save us!” Millie Mae shrieked, getting to her feet.
It was at that precise moment that the largest of Piper’s boils, which was on her forehead, popped under the extreme pressure of its aggressive growth and spewed pus all over Millie Mae.
“AGGGGH!” Millie Mae screamed. “That child is possessed by the devil. LOOK—AT—HER!”
The look on Millie Mae Miller’s face, combined with the explosion on her forehead, tipped Piper off to the fact that there was something more going on than a simple case of being overheated.
Piper ran from the church and didn’t stop running until she got home—even though there were several boils that exploded on the way.
Betty, who’d started to feel better, was in the kitchen working on Sunday dinner when she saw Piper running up the front field toward the house.
“What in the name of—”
Piper came flying into the kitchen, her hands covering her face. “Ma! Ma, I think I’m gonna explode.”
“What’s happened?”
Piper threw herself on the floor. “I went to Stark Raven and she gave me something. I thought it might help me fly but now my body’s gone crazy and everyone saw me and I don’t know what to do.”
Betty sat down with a thud, putting her hand over her forehead. “Piper McCloud! I leave you alone for one hour, and this is what you get up to?”
Piper started to cry in earnest. “But I thought if I took it … I thought I’d…”
“Let me see what you took! Show it to me!” Betty held out her hand.
Piper slid the bottle out of her pocket and relinquished it to Betty. Betty unscrewed the top, took a whiff, and jerked her head back.
“What in the blazes is this?”
Piper shook her head, her eyes wide. “I don’t know. I didn’t ask. Stark Raven said it would unscramble me.”
Betty turned the bottle upside down. It was completely empty. “How much did you take?”
“A bit. Once I got started … I wanted to fly … I thought … I thought—”
“Piper McCloud, I swear you don’t have a patch of common sense in your head. Oh, child. Stop your crying. You know most of the stuff Stark Raven does is plum bonkers. Thank the Lord she’s no murderer, though. Whatever she gave you won’t kill you, but you’ll just have to wait until it runs its course.”
Betty drew a warm bath for Piper and filled it with Epsom salt, which stung but also soothed her raging skin. Afterward, Betty wrapped Piper in a cool, clean sheet and gave her plenty of liquids. As she suspected, by bedtime Piper was “popped” out, but in place of the boils were angry red pimples covering every inch of her body. The look and feel of them horrified Piper.
“Now I’m worse than I was before,” she wailed. “What am I gonna do, Ma?”
“You’ll stop this nonsense and let yourself be,” Betty sniffed. “Listen to me, child. Whether you like it or not, you can’t fly right now. There’s no telling if that’s going to change anytime soon, and so it’s up to you to find a way to make yourself useful without your flying. You hear me?”
“But, Ma…”
“No ‘buts.’ Idle hands do the devil’s work. Stop mooning around and find something to do to keep yourself busy. I hope to goodness you’ve learned your lesson this time. You hear?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
CHAPTER
13
While Piper was fast asleep that night, the team returned from their mission. They’d had a late night, but Conrad was still up before dawn and already hard at work when Piper found him in the barn.
“You’re back!”
Conrad kept his attention focused. “Hi, Piper. Things are moving fast, and we have a lot on the go. Sorry we didn’t get a chance to let you know we were leaving. It seemed better to let you rest.”
Piper came up behind Conrad and peeked over his shoulder. “What’s going on?”
Conrad had created three-dimensional computer images that were projected up into the air around him. He was manipulating a strand of DNA and isolating certain areas, then pausing to pull out data from them.
“The bugs are crawling out of the ground from everywhere around the planet now. Whatever it is Max started has set off a chain reaction. They’re coming faster and faster.” Conrad spoke absently, his mind on his task. “I’m tracking them and seeing if there is a pattern. It could be important.”
Piper leaned in, getting in Conrad’s way. “Look at this!” She reached out and stuck her finger in a brightly colored DNA strand.
“No, Piper, don’t touch—”
Piper poked it anyway. It flickered and then disappeared altogether. Behind them, electrical sparks firecrackered out of the mainframe.
Conrad jumped to his feet, throwing up his hands. “You can’t touch it, Piper. It can only handle one operator at a time or the system overloads. You know that!”
Clutching her offending finger, Piper winced. “Sorry. I forgot. I just wanted to help.”
Piper waited for Conrad’s fury, but he just looked at her sadly, like she was a guest he had to use his best manners with, or a small child who had to be treated with gentleness. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ll reboot the mainframe, reload the operating system, and start again. It’ll only take me a few hours.”
Now Piper felt lower than a snake’s belly. “I can help. Let me help.”
“No!” Conrad said quickly. “No, I—I need
you to … We really need someone to…”
“Yes?”
What exactly could Conrad have Piper do? “I’ve been noticing that everyone is getting very dehydrated,” he said at last. “Can you fetch a jug of water and some glasses?”
“Fetch water?” Piper bit her lower lip. “Sure, Conrad, I can get water.”
“And, Piper?”
“Yes?”
“Smitty tells me there’s a dance coming up.”
Piper’s breath caught in her throat. “A dance?”
“Yes, a dance. Some local thing in a barn. That’s good timing for us; I want to run drills over Main Street when no one is around. Can you let the others know?”
Piper swallowed hard and nodded.
Turning his back, Conrad got busy with his work, and Piper slunk out of the barn and into the yard. As she approached the house, she spotted Myrtle talking to Daisy on the porch outside the kitchen. The sight of them made her spirits rise—good old Myrtle and Daisy.
Since the time the two girls had first met, they’d been fast friends, and while Myrtle was normally shy, around Daisy she turned into a chatterbox. This morning in particular she had a lot to say.
“Conrad asked me to run all the way to New York,” Myrtle told Daisy excitedly, the enthusiasm in her voice carrying across the yard to Piper. “He said there were multiple bug sightings in Central Park, and he needed me to gather samples.”
“At night?”
“Yes, last night. It’s not really safe for me to run in the dark, but since Piper can’t fly, it had to be me. I made it in record time and got more information than Conrad even asked for and—”
Piper stepped on a twig. It snapped loudly.
Spotting Piper, Myrtle abruptly stopped talking and pushed her hair down over her eyes. Daisy blushed.
“Hi, Piper,” Daisy said awkwardly with a half wave, which was equally strange.
“Hi.” Piper felt oddly uncomfortable. Why did she suddenly feel like an outsider in her own home?
“It’s a nice morning,” Myrtle mumbled.
Piper looked up at the drab, gray sky. “Uh-huh.”
A thick silence lingered between them.
“You look good today, Piper.” Daisy tugged at her ear nervously. “You look … healthy.”
“Yes,” agreed Myrtle quickly. “Healthy and … well rested.”
Piper looked down at herself. Despite the fact that she was covered in angry red pimples, she looked the same way she always did. “Thanks.”
Piper waited for Myrtle to finish her story, but when she didn’t, she decided to help things along. “Did something happen last night?”
“No.” Myrtle waved it away. “It was nothing.”
“Huh. Well, you sounded pretty excited.” Piper felt confused. “It sounded like something important.”
“It wasn’t. Same old, same old. You know.”
Piper didn’t know. She waited for them to tell her, but Daisy and Myrtle didn’t.
“Well, we have to get going.” Daisy gestured vaguely at some point in the field as though there was something they urgently had to attend to there.
“Yes,” Myrtle agreed. “We don’t want to be late.”
The two girls took off, disappearing from view.
Piper found herself alone in the yard. Where was everyone?
Scratching her head, Piper walked to the house, thinking about how a week ago the story Myrtle had been telling Daisy was one she would have shared with Piper, too. Of course, a week ago, when she could fly, Conrad would have sent her to New York to collect data, and she would have been the one to return bursting with news and information.
Swinging open the screen door, Piper stopped in her tracks—the kitchen was empty.
“Ma?” Piper held the door in confusion.
Mornings used to always be Betty McCloud’s “go time” of the day; up before dawn, she was a whirlwind of cooking and baking and cleaning and getting the farm awake. This morning, the kitchen was as quiet as a tomb.
“Ma?”
“I’m in here,” came Betty’s muffled voice from the parlor.
Piper followed the sound and found her mother lying on the couch, a cold compress covering her eyes and forehead. “Ma? Are you sick?”
“No, no. Just not feeling like myself,” Betty said weakly. “Thought I’d rest up a bit till I don’t feel so dizzy.”
Over the last month or so Betty had taken to resting throughout the day, and when she wasn’t resting, she moved more slowly, like she was wading through mud. This was the first Piper was hearing about dizziness, though. “Maybe I should run and get Doc Bell…”
“No, no. It ain’t serious. It’s nothing. I best get breakfast going.” Betty took the cloth off her head and started to sit up. She got no more than halfway before a groan took her, and she returned to a reclining position.
“You don’t look so good,” Piper said, worried.
“Would you look at the time! Mr. McCloud will be in for his coffee soon, and I don’t have a blessed thing ready.”
“Well, I can do it! I can help! Let me do it.”
“No, no.” Once again, Betty tried to sit up and, once again, had to lie back down. “You haven’t so much as boiled an egg, Piper McCloud. You’ve spent all your time flying here and there and haven’t given one thought to kitchen work.”
“Oh, but I’ve watched you lots of times,” Piper insisted. “I can do it. You’ll see.”
Before Betty could stop her, Piper rushed back to the kitchen and got to work, determined to cook up a breakfast that no one would soon forget!
Piper decided on pancakes and bran muffins with bacon and eggs. This was pretty standard fare in the mornings on the McCloud farm; she’d seen Betty whip it together a million times. Easy peasy.
Piper grabbed a salad bowl and tossed in an egg and started to beat it. Those rascally eggshells got into the mix, but Piper shrugged it off: they’d add to the flavor. Betty only ever used one egg, but Piper thought two would be better and then added a third, because you can’t get too much of a good thing. With each egg came more eggshells. When the batter was ready, there was no denying that it had a very lumpy quality. There was no time to dwell on that, though, because Piper had to make up the muffins too.
When Joe had finished milking the cows, he walked into the kitchen to find Piper covered in flour and the place littered with coffee grinds, eggshells, smears of butter, and puddles of milk. On the stove, the bacon was sizzling like a forest fire, and Piper was wrangling pancakes that seemed to have developed minds of their own.
Piper quickly poured Joe a cup of coffee. “Here you go, Pa. Drink it while it’s hot!”
Joe gratefully took the cup but stopped short when he caught sight of the gritty, mud-like liquid in the cup. His brow twisted into a concerned knot.
“Oh, wait—you take it with sugar,” Piper said, misinterpreting his expression. She grabbed the sugar bowl and tipped it to the side, depositing a generous mound on the top. The coffee was so thick, it easily supported the sugar.
“There you go.” Piper ushered Joe to his seat. “Now, you sit down, and I’ll get your breakfast up lickety-split.”
The bacon started to catch fire, and so Piper quickly jostled the pan just as Kimber and Smitty came bursting into the kitchen with Jasper and Lily on their heels.
Lily was immediately alarmed and took a defensive posture when she caught sight of the state of the kitchen. “Are we under attack? Is it Max?”
“Geez, you’d think you’d never seen someone cook before,” said Piper, laughing it off. “Sit down. Sit down. Breakfast is ready.”
Nalen and Ahmed came pushing into the kitchen next and, like the others, stopped in their tracks. “This could be named a national disaster site.”
“Or a hazardous waste dump.”
Piper put her hands on her hips. “Do you want breakfast or not?”
The twins sat down.
Conrad was the last to find his chair, and by that
time everyone was sitting with plates of food in front of them. Each plate contained two blackened strips that at one point had been bacon but were now Group 1 carcinogens; a hard, rubbery ball that Piper kept calling a pancake; and eggs so runny they appeared to be yellow soup.
“Eat up,” Piper urged. “Don’t be shy. Growing bodies have to eat!”
Conrad resolutely picked up his fork. He nudged Smitty, who was sitting next to him, and Smitty very reluctantly picked up his fork too.
“Thanks, Piper. This is quite a … breakfast.” Conrad’s smile made his face look pained. He sharply nudged Smitty one more time.
“Mmmmm,” Smitty agreed.
Most mornings, the kids ate like wild animals, shoving food in their mouths and grabbing for seconds and thirds so that Betty had a hard time keeping up with their appetites. That morning, the kids poked and pushed at the contents of their plates in miserable silence.
“It’s not going to eat itself.” Piper’s smile began to falter. “Try the bacon, Daisy. I made it crispy, the way you like it.”
Unable to avoid it, Daisy gingerly bit into a charred strip. It was so stiff it didn’t budge. She tried a second bite, harder this time, and her teeth hurt from the effort. “Oh,” she said, smiling with all her might. “It’s very crispy. Super crispy.”
“I’m glad you like it!” Piper turned her attention to Smitty, allowing Daisy the opportunity to subtly hit her bacon against the table in an effort to break a piece off.
“I know pancakes are your favorite, Smitty. Dig in!”
“Thanks.” Smitty poked at the lumpy ball on his plate, but the pancake-ball slid away. He tried again with the same effect.
“Take a bite,” Conrad hissed at him.
“I’m trying to,” Smitty hissed back. “Have you seen this thing?” With his X-ray vision, Smitty sure had. “It’s got the chemical composition of a rubber ball.”
“Just stick it in your mouth and chew it.”
The Girl Who Fell Out of the Sky Page 7