“Look,” said his dad. “This is complicated stuff. Very grown-up stuff. You’ll understand it when you’re older, okay?”
And suddenly it was Evan’s fault. For not being older, for not being more grown-up, for not understanding things his dad needed him to understand. It was all his fault. And he still didn’t understand it.
“I’ve gotta go now,” his dad had said. “Your mom is . . . um, well. She’s pretty upset right now. You’re going to have to help her through this, okay? I know you will. You’re a Treski, and Treskis are tough, right?”
And then he’d climbed down from the tree and left. Evan heard the taxi pull into the driveway, the trunk door open and close, and then the opening and closing of the passenger door. The taxi had skidded on some gravel pulling out, and there was the long, slow fading sound of the car’s engine. Then nothing but silence.
For two hours Evan had sat in the Climbing Tree, the cold creeping into his bones until he didn’t think he could make his fingers work to grip the branches on the way down. But finally he had climbed down and walked into the house, and that had been that.
Now, here in the tiny attic office, the temperature was the opposite. The room was like a small oven, closed up and fiery. Evan felt as though every breath he took was sucking the last of the oxygen out of the shut-up space. And instead of going numb, he felt stung by his father’s words, his skin itchy and hot.
“All joking aside,” his dad said, “I really do have to go. It’s important work I do, Evan. You know that. Remember what I taught you? What John Stuart Mill said? That the press is the last security against a corrupt and tyrannical government. And it’s true. Without reporters like me, the governments of the world would do terrible things and no one would know to stop them. Hey, I’m keeping the world safe, Evan. For you and Jessie and your mom. That’s the truth.”
There was a long silence then, and Evan felt as if his dad was waiting for him to say something. As if his dad wanted something from him.
“I suppose we should thank you,” said Evan slowly. “Thank you for leaving us. Thank you for never being around when bad stuff happens. Thanks, Dad! You’re the greatest!”
“Don’t be a smart aleck, Evan.” His dad shook his head, disappointed. “It doesn’t make you sound smart.”
“Well, I’m not the smart one in the family, am I?” Evan felt as if his words were a wave pouring out of him. There was no holding it back. “I bet you wonder how you ended up with a dumb kid like me.”
“Evan, you’re a terrific—”
“I bet you don’t even tell people you have kids. All those people in India and Afghanistan and Iraq! You probably don’t even tell them that you have a family. And that’s good, because you don’t!”
“Evan, lots of families are separated like we are.”
“No! No one is like us. Those dads live nearby, and they see their kids all the time. But you go away for months and months, and sometimes we don’t even know where you are.”
“My work is different. I can’t broadcast where I am all the time. Sometimes I’m in hiding with the soldiers. I can’t put them at risk to send you a birthday text. C’mon, Evan. You’re old enough to understand that! Some things are more important than a phone call from your daddy.”
Standing, Evan was taller than his dad sitting down, and now he crossed his arms and looked down severely. “Family comes first. That’s what Mom says.” Suddenly Evan wished his dad would leave, right that minute. They didn’t need him! They were fine without him. Better than fine!
Evan walked out of the office without saying another word. There was nothing left to say. When he got to his own room, he hung up the Locked sign, closed the door, and didn’t come out for the rest of the evening.
Chapter 13
Patter
patter (n) a soothing, repetitive sound; a magician’s continuous talk during a performance that lulls an audience so they won’t notice something that’s happening onstage
When Jessie woke up, it was raining—a soft patter on the roof—and the first thing she thought of was Professor Hoffmann. She wondered if he could hear the rain down in the basement and if the sound had made him nervous in the night. He seemed to be a very nervous rabbit to Jessie. The second thought that popped into her head was that today was the day her mother was coming home. Finally. Jessie couldn’t wait.
She slipped out of bed and straight into her slippers. She didn’t like walking barefoot, even in the house. Then she quickly made her bed.
The window to her bedroom was open a couple of inches, and rain was blowing through and onto the floor. She slammed the window shut, then headed downstairs.
In the basement, Professor Hoffmann was nervously circling inside his large box. Jessie squatted down and put her head close to the edge, hoping that the sight of a giant human head peering down on him wouldn’t make him even more scared.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice.
But Professor Hoffmann kept going around in circles. This was one of the things that Jessie didn’t like about animals. You couldn’t explain things to them. They just didn’t understand. Especially rabbits. Still, she liked Professor Hoffmann. He was a good worker. He had practiced his tricks and learned to sit still and never kicked her when she put him in the rabbit box.
She checked his food tray and refilled his bowl with fresh water. Then she headed upstairs to the kitchen to wash her hands and get some breakfast.
On the kitchen counter was an envelope, and on the outside of the envelope were the words “Evan and Jessie.” Jessie frowned. The handwriting was her father’s, all capital letters and a little sloppy. Why would he write them a note? Maybe he wanted to sleep in and was telling them not to wake him up until it was time to go to the airport and pick up their mom.
Jessie quickly washed her hands, then picked up the note and hurried upstairs. Evan was still sleeping, but the note seemed important.
She hesitated a moment outside his door. Now that Evan was almost eleven, he had started sleeping in on the weekends. When they were younger, he and Jessie had both gotten up early whether it was a school day or not.
The Locked sign stared her right in the face, daring her to knock—and face the consequences. She knocked.
“Go away!”
“But it’s important!”
“You always say that!”
Jessie paused and thought about the last half dozen times she’d knocked on Evan’s door. “But it is always important.” She didn’t knock without a good reason.
“Ugh. Come in.”
Jessie hurried in and jumped onto Evan’s bed, climbing over his stretched-out legs to position herself with her back against the wall. She liked being able to see everything that was going on, no matter where she was. Without a word, she handed Evan the note.
When he saw the handwriting, he sat up quickly and tore open the envelope. He pulled out a piece of Mom’s nice stationery, the kind she used for formal letters and thank-you notes. Jessie crowded next to Evan so they could read the letter at the same time.
Jessie read the note twice. Then she read it again, just to make sure she hadn’t missed anything. But there was nothing to miss.
“He’s gone,” she said at last.
“Yep,” said Evan, crumpling up the note and throwing it into his trash can. “Just like always.”
Jessie pulled her knees up to her chin and thought for a minute. Evan was wrong. This time had been different. He had stayed a really long time. Days and days. But in the end, he still left. “Why?”
Evan shrugged. “I don’t know.” Then he lay back down, as if the conversation were over. Jessie wondered if Evan was about to kick her out of his room, but he didn’t say anything, so she figured she was allowed to stay. She looked at the rows of basketball trophies that Evan kept on the bookshelf above his desk.
“Is it because he doesn’t like us?” asked Jessie, but in her head she was wondering, Is it because he doesn’
t like me? Any dad would be happy to have a son like Evan—basketball star, most popular kid, talented magician. But she wasn’t so sure what her dad thought of her.
“He likes us okay,” said Evan. “He just likes other things more.”
“What other things?”
“Work. Travel. Living out of a suitcase. Pretty much everything. I bet if Dad made a list of the most important things in his life, we’d be like number fifteen. After his cell phone, that’s for sure.”
Jessie studied Evan and could tell he was feeling bad. First of all, he wasn’t looking at her when he talked. Second of all, his voice didn’t sound the way it normally did. Third of all, he hadn’t kicked her out of his room, even though he clearly wanted to sleep.
And then she wondered what she was feeling, and she decided to do her Feeling Check. Very quietly, she began to run through her list. “Am I happy? No. Am I sad? No. Am I scared? No. Am I angry? No—”
“Je-e-e-ss . . .”
“I’m doing my Feeling Check,” she said.
“I know what you’re doing. Can you do it inside your head?”
“No. It only works out loud.”
“Ugh!” Evan said, covering his head with his pillow to block the sound. But still, he didn’t kick her out of his room, which was very unusual for him, and Jessie couldn’t figure out what that meant.
“Paint a picture,” she whispered to herself, and closed her eyes. The first thing that flashed in her mind was the picture of the little baby spiders in Charlotte’s Web that float free like balloons at the end of the book. She knew it was supposed to be a sad moment in the story, but she always thought it was wondrous.
Jessie opened her eyes. “When is Mom getting home?”
Evan looked at the clock on his night table. “In about four hours.”
“Okay. Then I’m going to go watch cartoons.” Usually Mrs. Treski didn’t allow Saturday-morning TV, but since there wasn’t a grownup around to ask . . . “You wanna come?”
“Nah. I’m going to sleep some more.”
Jessie wandered out of the room but came back just a few minutes later.
“Evan! You need to come see! Quick!” She yanked on the blanket covering him and tried to grab his T-shirt to pull. “I’m serious. Get up!”
He must have heard the panic in her voice, because he jumped out of bed. “What?” he asked as they ran downstairs.
“The storm is coming! Here! It’s not tracking to the west. It’s headed straight for us! And it’s not a tropical storm anymore! It’s a hurricane!”
In the family room, the TV was on, with a large map of the East Coast of the United States filling the screen.
“It’s on all the channels. No cartoons. Just the weather!” said Jessie. “Listen!”
“. . . highly unusual to have a Category 1 hurricane on the East Coast this early in the season. We’re going to see sustained winds of up to eighty miles per hour. The real damage, though, is going to come in the form of flooding. As soon as the storm makes landfall later tonight, we’re going to see heavy, heavy rain . . .”
“I want to call Mom!” said Jessie loudly.
“We can’t call Mom,” said Evan. “She’s on a plane. And besides, we don’t want to tell her that Dad isn’t here. She’d freak.”
“There’s a Category 1 hurricane coming!” shouted Jessie “We don’t have anything we need! The house is going to get blown to pieces. This is why Professor Hoffmann was acting so weird! He knew! He knew all along!”
“Relax!” barked Evan. “Just calm down. Mom is going to be home in a couple hours. Let’s just turn off the TV—”
“No!” shouted Jessie. “We need to know what’s happening, even if it’s bad.”
“Then you have to calm down! ’Cause I can’t deal with you flipping out, okay?”
“Okay, okay. I’ll calm down. I promise.”
They sat side by side on the couch in front of the TV and tried to make as much sense as they could of what the TV reporters were saying. Jessie was right: the weather was on every channel, and it was big news. There had never been a hurricane in their area before Memorial Day, so all the newspeople were saying it was a one-in-a-million storm. The storm was expected to make landfall sometime around midnight and continue through all of Sunday. The airport was closed, and the governor had declared a state of emergency.
“Evan! The airport is closed! What about Mom?”
“Maybe she’s already landed,” said Evan, looking at the clock. “Let’s . . . let’s eat breakfast. I’m hungry.”
But Jessie couldn’t eat anything except chocolate pudding, and only a few spoonfuls of that. Her stomach felt as if it was ready to turn itself inside out, and her head was achy and heavy.
At ten o’clock the phone rang, and Jessie put her hands over her ears to stop the sound from splitting her head in two. Evan picked it up on the third ring.
“Oh, hi, Mom!” said Evan. Jessie crowded close to the receiver so she could hear too. Usually Evan would have pulled the phone away, but this time he let her listen in.
“Bad luck, guys,” said their mom. “I tried to be sneaky and get an early flight out to beat the storm, but the plane they put me on had engine trouble, and now I’m stuck in Cincinnati, of all places!”
“What do you mean, ‘stuck’?” shrieked Jessie.
“No, it’s okay! Don’t worry. I’m fine. Just let me talk to Dad now, and then I’ll fill you in on all the details.”
Jessie clamped both of her hands over her mouth and pressed hard. She wanted to scream, He left! He left us! but Evan was giving her a look that meant Don’t you dare say a word! and Jessie knew to keep her mouth shut.
“He had to go out,” said Evan.
“Out? I guess to get stuff for the storm. But I’ve been trying to get him on his cell phone and he doesn’t pick up.”
“Well, you don’t need to worry,” said Evan. “Everything’s fine. We’re fine. We already had our breakfast, and now we’re just watching some TV.” Talking to his mom like this made him think of his magician’s patter—the way he talked onstage to keep the audience from noticing what was really going on. Jessie shook her head vigorously, but she kept her mouth closed tight.
“TV? In the morning?” said Mrs. Treski, then paused. “Okay. When Dad gets back, have him give me a call. If he can. My battery is running low. Honestly, it’s been one thing on top of another. I can’t remember the last time I had so many things go wrong all at once. But you guys are fine?”
“Yep,” said Evan.
“All right,” said their mom. “I’m doing my best to get home, but there’s not a lot of information at the moment. I heard the airport at home is closed, so I don’t think there’s a chance I’ll make it until after the storm passes. Tell Dad to check to make sure you have batteries. And fill the bathtub with water, just in case. Jess, are you okay?”
“Yes,” squeaked Jessie. “I want you to come home.”
“I know, sweetie pie. I’ll be home as soon as I can. Are you having fun with Dad?”
Jessie started to cry. Evan pulled the phone away.
“Yeah, we’ve been having a good time,” he said. “So, we’ll see you soon!”
After Evan hung up the phone, Jessie really started to wail. Evan put his hands on her shoulders and marched her into the laundry room, where their mother had hung up an old-time poster that was popular in England during World War II. The bright orange poster showed the British crown with the words KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON emblazoned underneath.
Their mother said the British were an inspiration to the whole world. They had survived months and months of bombing by the Germans and still went about their daily business and kept the country running. When she felt overwhelmed by laundry, she liked to think of their courage.
“C’mon,” said Evan. “We’re fine. Look at us. At least no one’s dropping bombs on us.”
It was true. Everything was fine—for the moment. Jessie stared at her mother’s poster, then said, ??
?We need to get all the things in my newspaper article.”
* * *
Be Prepared!
What You Need In An Emergency
By Jessie Treski
Big storms like Annabelle take big preparation.
Here’s a list of everything you need to survive a big storm.
Water, one gallon per person per day for three days
Food, a three-day supply of nonperishable food
Battery-powered or hand-crank radio and extra batteries
Flashlight and extra batteries
First-aid kit
Whistle to signal for help
Dust mask to help filter contaminated air
Plastic sheeting and duct tape
Moist towelettes, garbage bags, and plastic ties
Wrench or pliers to turn off utilities
Manual can opener for food
Local maps
Cell phone with charger (solar or hand-crank)
* * *
It was a long list. Some of the things were easy to gather, like flashlights and batteries, which their mother always kept on hand in case of power failures. But some of the things were harder to figure out. Three days’ worth of nonperishable food? They checked their cabinets for canned goods, but most of it seemed pretty gross. Cold white beans? Stale crackers? There were sardines, but that made both of them gag. Cereal was okay, but they’d have to eat it without milk if the power went out, and Jessie hated the sandpaper feeling of dry cereal.
And they didn’t have a battery-powered radio or a cell phone, let alone one with a hand-crank charger. Hopefully, if they lost power, it would only be for a couple of hours.
They spent most of the afternoon discussing—and arguing about—how to get everything on the list, not to mention where to keep it all. Jessie thought they should take everything up to the attic in case of flooding. Evan thought they should put everything in the basement, in case the roof blew off. In the end, they left a huge pile of food, blankets, batteries, duct tape, plastic bags, local maps, screw drivers, pliers, and paper towels in the middle of the kitchen floor. It looked like a garbage heap, but Jessie knew it might save their lives. Then they brought in everything from the porch—the soaking wet curtains, the rug, the scrap wood—and put all of that in the garage.