My Diary from the Edge of the World Page 3

  The thing is, personal tragedy is the kind of thing that can get you a lot of attention at my school. If he’d tell people his story, they’d be flocking around him. But Oliver just sat through lunch quietly, barely looking at his surroundings. Everyone stared at him all through lunch, and some people looked at me to see what we should do. I just ignored him.

  Walking to the front office to be sent home later, I noticed him sitting by the fountain, whispering to the thing in his pocket, and I decided he was even stranger than I thought.

  PS: A note on sasquatches, from history class: The sasquatches were instrumental in helping the north win the American civil war. Sasquatches are generally brutal creatures with little or no conscience, but they abhor the enslavement of anyone, even their enemies (humans!). So in the 1860s hordes of them emerged from the deep woods of the Smokies to fight on the Union side. Thanks to them, the war was over three months after it started.

  September 16th

  I write this from under the covers with a flashlight. I’m too worried to sleep.

  Sam has one of his endless colds, and I can hear him coughing in his room down the hall. He went to the doctor again today and they’re doing some tests and I can tell that my parents are tense about it. Everyone has been quiet tonight. Dad is in one of his “swamps.”

  “Please stay out of trouble and don’t worry your father,” Mom keeps saying. But I don’t think it’s fair that Dad gets to hide in his swamp while the rest of us have to go on acting like normal people all the time.

  The Dark Cloud was on our block tonight when we came home from school. We were coming up the hill and there it was, just hovering about twenty feet above the street where we usually play roller hockey, gray and still and puffy, with that black hole swirling in the middle. (Millie says it’s the clown’s leering mouth.) We skirted widely around it, walking behind our neighbors’ houses and coming into our yard through the back, Millie pulling Sam along beside her.

  When we got inside, I noticed that Sam’s hand was a bright red from how hard Millie had been clutching it. She and I exchanged a glance, and I didn’t like what I saw in her eyes.

  There are only a few houses left on our street before the Cloud gets to ours. One of them is Michael Kowalski’s, though. I hate to say that’s where I’m hoping it’ll stop, but, well, I’m just being honest, and besides probably no one will ever read this diary.

  My parents, of course, already knew when we told them. Since my dad’s a meteorologist, clouds are practically his middle name. I was hoping he’d reassure us and make everything seem fixable like always, but he looks even more tense than Millie.

  The thing is, Dark Clouds are the most obscure branch of meteorology and—Dad explained to me once—few scientists choose to study them because they are an unsolvable mystery. Those scientists who have spent their lives studying them haven’t figured anything out. We know that Dark Clouds, unlike other clouds, keep their shape in any kind of weather. They’re always a dark gray, but they never give off rain. You can’t see into them, and where they take people when they die is a complete mystery. My dad, more than anyone I know, can’t stand unsolved mysteries.

  Anyway, Sam, for the moment, is blissfully unaware of it all and has been running around the house despite his cold, stripped down to his underwear, with another pair of his underwear on his head, yelling that he’s the Undie Bandit and to give him all our money.

  * * *

  Some yellow leaves are falling past the window, lit up by the floodlights, and I’ve been staring out at the dark silhouette of Bear Mountain, which I’ve said good night to every night before I go to bed ever since I can remember. I used to imagine it was a real giant bear, but a friendly one. Now telling it good night is just a habit.

  A while ago I went downstairs and no one even told me to go back to my room—I guess everyone’s forgotten I’m grounded. Millie and I flipped through Jeopardy! and The Biggest Octopus (a boring fishing show) and landed on the news. There were shots of the city of Chicago, showing trees and roots growing up through the sides of buildings. The city, over the past ten years or so, has become a forest again. Most of the people have left, and wolves and bears live in Millennium Park. These things happen, especially the farther west you go. The wilderness is always pushing back.

  Finally, unable to distract myself, I came upstairs and now here I am writing again. There’s something about putting things down on paper that helps me feel a little less lost in my head.

  Now I can hear Mom and Dad’s muffled voices arguing in their room, and I think they must be arguing about the Dark Cloud. Dad has his swamps, and he’s been kicked out of the society and people think he’s slightly crazy, but he’s also been voted Best Meteorologist by the Cliffden Herald three years in a row because he’s always right about the weather. If anyone knows what to do, it should be him, shouldn’t it? I keep telling myself not to worry, but it seems like when you do that you worry ten times more.

  * * *

  Years ago in the sky over LA there was an outbreak of guardian angels. The angels started pouring out of the clouds like rain, and then they just scattered to the four winds. Most of them stayed in LA, but some of them went into hiding in the national parks and some flew off to other continents.

  I like to imagine that one of the angels who headed north flew over Cliffden, saw me sitting on the grass out front, and thought, That girl is special. She’s worth protecting. I can just picture my angel somewhere up in the sky or hiding on the roof, secretly watching over me. Sometimes I even whisper to her at night in case she can hear me. Tonight before I go to sleep, I’ll whisper to her to please protect Sam instead.

  I just looked out the window, but it’s too dark to see any clouds now, and the sky is filled with a million clusters of stars that hang low over the hills. The lights of Cliffden in the valley below are like stars in a sky of their own.

  I just dozed off. I guess I’m too sleepy to keep writing.

  September 18th

  Oliver was absent from school today. Arin is talking to me again, and she said she’s pretty sure he was taken by sasquatches. She said she heard the ones who killed his mom and dad had some kind of vendetta against his whole family (sasquatches are excellent trackers, so if she’s right, it wouldn’t be much trouble for them to find Oliver), and I can’t tell whether she’s just being dramatic or not.

  Also, the doctor’s office called, and I guess it must have been with Sam’s test results, because after Mom hung up the phone she held her hand to her eyes and then disappeared into the bedroom with Dad.

  I’m usually nosy, but not right now. I know this sounds weird, but I don’t want to know what the doctor said. And it works out, because apparently Mom and Dad don’t want to tell any of us. At dinner tonight we all just ate quietly, and now there’s more arguing coming from the bedroom. I have my pillow squished around my head to make sure I can’t hear what they’re saying. It’s hard to write while trying to hold the pillow, so I’ll stop.

  September 19th

  Just home from school. I now know what my parents have been arguing about, and it isn’t what I thought. I saw it in the yard when I got home from school today. My dad has bought a Winnebago.

  The Dark Cloud has passed the Kowalskis’ house and is now in front of the Liptons’. They have an old basset hound named Dinky, and I’ve suddenly just had the thought that that’s who the Cloud’s coming for. Oh joy! Wouldn’t that be the best news of all time! Dinky is the worst dog anyway—all she does is bark and fart. Please let it be Dinky. Please please please, Dinky, die die die.

  I’m wondering if I should cross the last bit out, since it’s so awful. But the truth is, I really do want it to be Dinky, and I’m superstitious that if I cross it out, it won’t be.

  LATER THE SAME NIGHT

  I wish I could go back in time to this afternoon when I didn’t know why Dad bought the Winnebago. My whole life has changed since then.

  Dinner started out quietly enough—nobody was talking about the Dark Cloud or the Winnebago. Sam the Mouse was hiding under the table, pretending to be our pet cat and asking to be fed milk in a bowl on the floor. Dad was sitting in his usual spot but clearly far away in his mind (not unusual). I was seeing how many peas I could fit in my mouth, when Mom said, in a serious tone she hardly ever uses, “We have something to tell you, kids.”

  At the tone of her voice even Sam got up off the floor and sat on my lap to listen.

  “We’re putting the house up for sale.”

  If only there was one word you could write to capture the feeling of the world falling from beneath your feet. I think it would probably sound like thkkkuddge. A sudden heaviness landed on me, and I think Millie and even Sam felt it too.

  Dad sat by her silently while Mom went on, saying stuff about “expanding our horizons” and “seeing new places” and “having new experiences.”

  “Not that the house will sell quickly. It’s a down market,” she went on jibberishly. I knew without her saying it that this had something to do with the Cloud. And that Dad was behind it all even though he wasn’t the one talking. He always avoids talking to us when things are unpleasant, and it makes me want to scream.

  We were all completely silent. Finally, Millie stood from her chair, whispered, “How can you do this to me?” and then, chin held high, walked out of the room. That made Sam crawl back under the table. I just stared at my plate with an enormous lump of unswallowed peas in my mouth.

  Mom went on to tell me and Sam how we’ll start packing up, when our last day of school will be, and so on. Toward the end, Dad—who still hadn’t said a word—limped off upstairs, tapping his head as if he had a headache.

  I stayed in my seat, festering. “I think it’s coming for Dinky Lipton,” I said, and Mom’s eyes shot to Sam, then back to me.

  “What’s coming for Dinky?” Sam asked.

  “The groomer,” I lied ingeniously. “Haven’t you noticed he’s getting shaggy?”

  * * *

  My anger kept building until finally, as soon as we were excused, I followed Dad upstairs. He was up in the cupola, where he loves to hide from us, looking out the window with his telescope.

  I was trying to think of what horrible things I wanted to say, when he turned and saw me, reached a hand toward me—careful not to bump my cast—and pulled me onto his lap, which he probably hasn’t done since I was ten. He hugged me tight, which took me by surprise, and then pointed out the window.

  A shudder ran through me once I saw what he wanted me to see.

  There above the middle of our lawn, still about twenty feet off the ground, but waiting as if to be let in through the backdoor, was the Cloud. It seemed to be a deeper gray than it had been yesterday, a thick mist I couldn’t see through, about three feet across.

  A strange whimper came from somewhere, and then I realized it had come from me. All I could think was Sam Sam Sam Sam Sam.

  “You have to make it go away,” I said to Dad. “Please, just figure out how to make it go away. I know you can do it.”

  “I can’t, Gracie.”

  Dad didn’t say anything else for a while. Finally he held the telescope eye toward me.

  Reluctantly, I leaned forward. Dad wasn’t pointing the telescope into the Cloud, though, but upward, toward the dusk-darkening sky. A tiny wavering white light glowed in the middle of my vision, much brighter than the tiny bright lights around it.

  “It’s a new star, just born” Dad said.

  I squinted. It looked like a dot to me, nothing special. I tried to imagine what it must actually look like if you got close—a giant burning ball in all that darkness—but I couldn’t. I tried to imagine I was one of the neighboring stars who’d watched it get born, but I couldn’t picture that, either. Like I said, my imagination is not as good as it used to be.

  “Do you know the universe is getting bigger all the time?” Dad asked.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat, annoyed, wondering why he was talking about this now.

  “It’s blowing up like a balloon,” he went on, “but really slowly.”

  I pulled away from the telescope and looked at him. His glasses had slipped down his nose a little, and I noticed for the first time his hair was graying at the temples. He looked tired.

  He pushed at his glasses and rubbed at his stubble. “You and Millie and Sam are my baby stars,” he said. “You are my magnificent works. I can’t make the Cloud go away, but I’ll do what I need to do to protect you.”

  I felt the angry words I wanted to say dribbling away. “Where will we go?” I finally asked.

  “First, we’ll go to your grandmother’s. To the Crow’s Nest. We don’t have much choice. Your grandma knows things. She’ll help us figure out how to get there.”

  “How to get where?” I asked, getting chills at the thought of meeting Grandma, and something more.

  Dad didn’t answer. But I know where the where is that he means.

  And I know that it doesn’t exist.

  * * *

  It’s almost midnight and I still can’t sleep. My glow clock casts a light across my room, and the shadows make the old rocking chair against the wall look three times bigger than it actually is.

  It feels like I’m coming down with strep throat, but my mom said it’s “psychosomatic,” which she explained means that I want to cry but I don’t know it. She said hurting in weird places is my body’s way of crying for me. She made me a bowl of chocolate pudding after dinner, but I couldn’t eat it.

  “Mom,” I asked, glancing around to make sure Sam wasn’t nearby, “what does the Cloud look like to you?”

  Mom gazed at me for a moment as if she wasn’t going to answer, then she went and stood at the window. “It looks like a snake . . . ,” she said, “. . . trying to steal a robin’s egg.” She turned away from the window and picked up my bowl of pudding. “It looks like something I hate.”

  I’ve just tried looking, now that she’s gone. But as hard as I stare at the Cloud, I can’t make out a robin’s egg at all.

  * * *

  I keep thinking of the Dairy Queen and the papery smell inside our post office, the bike store that smells like rubber and oil where I got my first bike, the cracked linoleum in Mr. Morrigan’s classroom and the place on my flowery wallpaper that looks like a mother rose rocking her baby to sleep, our yard and the view from the church stone. I just can’t believe that we’re going to leave it all behind. It gives me the feeling of falling into a big empty hole.

  I keep getting up and getting back in bed. When I press my face against the window, I can just see it. The Cloud is out there in the yard, lit slightly by the moon. I guess it’s one of the ones that waits patiently for you to be ready to go. I guess we are lucky.

  Still, no Cloud waits forever.

  September 21st

  Sitting on the front stoop, under shelter. It’s a drizzly, gray afternoon.

  This morning when I got up, my face was even crookeder than usual. I guess it’s because I cried a little before falling asleep. My features always take a few minutes to settle into themselves in the morning anyway—at first my face looks pretty much uglyish, but then it smoothes itself out into being halfway presentable by the time I leave for school.

  Mom kept Sam home today. I brushed my teeth and prepared myself to tell everyone in my class the news about moving, knowing there’d be crying and some squealing over me and generally everyone would be thinking about me the whole day, leading up to several presents this week, and of course going-away-party planning. Millie says I’m a “sociopath” for even caring about that stuff right now, but I can’t help it.

  I sat through history and Monsters of the Sea trying to think of the most dramatic moment to share the news. I was still working up to it when there was an announcement over the loudspeaker about Oliver.

  “Attention please, students. As you may know, Oliver Wigley went missing from his home several days ago.” Everyone murmured nervously. “We are confident Oliver will be found safe, but we ask that anyone who spoke with him before his disappearance or who might have any information leading to his whereabouts contact the school office immediately. Thank you.”

  So Oliver really is missing. We all whispered about it after class and basically the class broke down into two camps: the doom-and-gloomers who think he’s definitely been eaten by the same sasquatches who killed his parents (that’s the Arin Roland camp), and the more hopeful ones who think that he might have run away.

  By the time I got around to telling everyone my news about moving, it got lost in the discussion about Oliver, and only Arin pretended to cry a little.

  It’s actually a relief that people are distracted, because nobody’s asked why we’re moving, so I don’t have to tell them about Sam . . . and where we’re trying to go.

  Anyway, I’ve started to feel guilty about ignoring Oliver so completely. I have to admit that when I think about that strange boy who is so quiet that he might disappear, out in this chilly, wet evening, it makes me feel glad that I have my family and a warm place to call home (at least for now).

  I’d like to sit against my church stone in the backyard with binoculars to scan the town for him—a little lonesome speck on one of the streets below—but I don’t want to go back there because of the Cloud. I’m sitting in the front instead. I have a thorn in my toe from walking barefoot around my mom’s rosebushes, pretending to be Saint Francis and trying to talk to the butterflies. I was trying to talk them into saving us somehow, because it seems animals must have special powers we don’t understand. But I guess you can’t just make up a butterfly language and expect it to work.

  So here I am, bundled up in my orange rain jacket in the shelter of the stoop, propping my cast against a railing, looking at the Winnebago in the driveway.