Sky Jumpers Book 2 (13 page)

Isha leaned across the box and put the textbook and the notebook into my hands. “You should be the one to have these, not me.”

I looked down at the cover of the textbook
—Geology: A Study of Rocks, Minerals, Ores, and Gems
. This had been my birth mom’s most prized possession. The way Isha spoke made my birth mom feel so real, I wanted her here. By me. To be the one showing me this book and her notes.

If my birth parents hadn’t died, I wouldn’t have my parents. I wouldn’t live in White Rock. I wouldn’t have my life. And although I’d never want to give that up, I still wished so many times that she hadn’t died. But in all those times I wished for her to be alive, never did I
miss her
like I did right now.

More than I had ever been, I was mad at the bandits who attacked my birth parents’ town. I was mad at the snowstorm that all but killed them on their way to White Rock. And I was mad at Luke. “What did he do?” I hadn’t really meant to ask, but my anger made it burst out.

“What did who do?” Isha asked.

“Luke. What did he do to get their family kicked out, so they couldn’t live here anymore? Because if he hadn’t
done it, then they wouldn’t have moved to the town that got attacked by bandits. Then maybe my birth mom would still be living here, and they wouldn’t have died.” I didn’t even look at Isha. I just looked down at the geology book, getting angrier and angrier at Luke with each passing second.

Isha reached out and put a hand on my leg. “If she hadn’t moved away, then she wouldn’t have met your birth dad.” The calmness in her voice surprised me enough that I met her eyes. “And he’s the one who helped her find her confidence again.”

“Again?” I asked. “How’d she lose it?”

Isha stood up, plucked the box off the bed, and pushed it underneath where it belonged. Then she looked at me the way I remembered my grandma looking at me when I fell and scraped up my knees as a toddler. “It wasn’t Luke who got them kicked out of here. It was Anna. Now pick up your books. I think we’d better get you back to your friends.”

I wanted to ask Isha what Anna had done to get them kicked out, but I could tell by the look on her face that she wasn’t about to tell me. I think maybe she wanted me to hear it from Luke.

Back at the infirmary, with Brock at my side and
Aaren constantly checking on Cass, I couldn’t stop flipping through the book. For an entire section, each page had the name of a rock in large print at the top, showed a picture of the rock, and had paragraphs of information about it, with a chart telling about its properties at the bottom. Anna had written notes in the margins throughout the book. The notebook was set up the same way as the textbook, listing rocks with all their information. She had even drawn pictures in the places where a photograph would’ve been. I wished I had weeks to read everything. To know why this was so important to her.

But I didn’t have weeks. I didn’t even have days or hours.

I closed the two books and placed them in the bag I carried over my shoulder that also covered the bag of Ameiphus I’d been carrying since Mr. Williams pushed it into my hands. I was going to carry this book around everywhere, like my birth mom did.

I turned to Cass. “How are you feeling?”

“Better.”

I could tell. Her face wasn’t nearly as pale, and the circles under her eyes weren’t nearly as dark.

“She doesn’t have a fever,” Aaren said, “but we better give her Ameiphus to be safe.”

I pulled one of the pills out of the bag and handed it
to Cass. She stared at it for a moment, then looked up. “Where’s my dad? Why isn’t he here yet?”

Cole reached out and squeezed her hand. “I’m sure he will be soon.”

“How far did Mr. Williams say this place was from Heaven’s Reach?” I asked no one in particular.

“Almost exactly halfway,” Aaren answered.

I felt a stabbing pain in my stomach. “I’m going to go up and talk to Luke, okay?”

Both Brock and Aaren looked at me and leaned forward, as though they were wondering if they should offer to go with me, then seemed to understand that I wanted to go by myself. I needed the long walk down the tunnel to get my thoughts unjumbled.

At the end of the tunnel, I climbed up the ladder, through the opening in the stone floor, and into the main building. High on the catwalk, I found Luke using a pair of ancient binoculars to look through one of the windows, in the direction of the road we’d traveled. I climbed the wooden rungs of the ladder.

“Hi,” he said, the binoculars still at his eyes.

I knew now that it wasn’t Luke’s fault that they had to leave the ruins. But for some reason, the anger hadn’t totally disappeared.

The view from this height was incredible. The hail had stopped, and raindrops shone as they pounded down on
the metal of the buildings, working to push away the remnants of anger I felt.

When I was little, my dad made me some blocks with wood left over from the lumber mill. I would stack them up, building vast cities on our living room floor, similar to the cities I saw in our history books. When Brenna was a baby, she crawled through my blocks and knocked everything down. This city here was like that—the buildings were everywhere! None of them except the one we were in stood straight. Not a single one. And the closer I looked, the more I realized that the building skeletons outnumbered the buildings with sides. It kind of looked like artwork.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Luke said.

I nodded. It
was
beautiful.

“Have a seat.”

I sat on the catwalk and dangled my legs out the window, swinging them twenty feet above the ground, not even caring that my knees were getting soaked by the rain. This window overlooked the building that was lying on its side. What used to be the side of the building—but was now its top—was almost completely removed. Its high walls protected everything inside. Corrals, pens, coops, and stalls of every size ran along the outside walls, all filled with different kinds of animals. The parts of the
roof that still remained kept the rain off them. The middle of the area was grassy, and I guessed that when it wasn’t stormy, many of the animals grazed there. And I could see Arabelle! She was in a mostly dry stall, munching on some hay.

“Whenever I needed to find Anna, I always checked there first.”

I jerked my head toward Luke. “Really?”

“She loved animals and loved being outside. She spent every second she could down there.”

I looked back at the animal area and watched the girl who had taken Arabelle’s reins from me earlier. She walked along to each of the pens, completely ignoring the rain while feeding the animals, giving them water, and petting them. I imagined my birth mom doing the same thing.

Luke searched through the binoculars for a minute or two longer, then put them down at his side and sat next to me. “We have to leave without the others,” he said. “That’s why you’re here, right?”

I hesitated for a minute, then said yes. I knew we would have to—but I hadn’t admitted it to myself until just then. It wasn’t even fully in my mind when I decided to come talk to Luke. But the truth was, if we waited any longer, there was no way we would get back in time to save White
Rock. We had already used up almost nine days, and we were only halfway to Heaven’s Reach.

“I think Mr. Williams wouldn’t want us to wait—he’d want us to try to save White Rock.” Except when we were in Glacier, he didn’t even want us walking down the street without him. I actually didn’t know what he’d want us to do right now.

Luke shrugged. “He’d probably have a heart attack if he knew you were even thinking about going without him.” He paused a minute, then added, “But he would say that the people of White Rock don’t find things impossible! They
invent
a way to make it work.”

I snorted at both the way he summed up my town, and the voice he used to do it. But at the same time, he was right. We always found a way—it’s what we did.

“We should go,” I said. “I think it’s worth the risk.”

“We’ll go, then.” He squinted out over the city. “Storm’s going strong, but eventually it’ll die down. The muddy roads will slow our trip, but as far as chances go, I think this is it.”

“We’d have to leave Cass here,” I said. “She couldn’t make the trip in her condition.”

“I know.”

“And Cole will want to stay with her.”

“Probably so.” He peeked out at the storm-darkened
sky. “You get ready. I’ll talk with Jack, and get him to keep someone on watch until Aaren’s dad and Mr. Williams make their way here. We’ll camp at the highest point we can find tonight, and I’ll get some dry wood from Jack so we can build a fire. That way when the two of them get here, Jack can send them on, telling them to watch for it.”

“Thanks,” I said. I stood up and went to the ladder, then stopped on the first rung down. “Is it nice to be back here?”

“Yeah. It is.”

“Do you think you’ll ever move back?”

He looked at me for a long moment, then looked back out over the city. “No.”

While Brock and Aaren were in the main room, I told them that we needed to leave. We didn’t even have to ask Cole if he was going to stay with Cass. We all knew he would never leave her all alone in a strange place while she was injured and knew no one.

“I know Isha’s not a doctor,” I said, “but she’ll take good care of Cass.”

Aaren nodded.

We packed up everything we had, which wasn’t much—only the stuff we happened to be carrying in our small bags when the storm hit. Then Isha, Thomas, and
the muscled man walked into the infirmary and set four canvas saddlebags on the ground.

“There’s bedding and food in there,” Isha said, “along with some raincoats. And that one has a tent. It won’t be much against the rain, but it’ll be better than nothing. And they should fit with the ones you already have on your horses.”

“I …” I was so overwhelmed with gratitude, I didn’t know what to say. So instead, I reached into my bag and pulled out the smaller bag of fifty Ameiphus doses that my dad had set aside in case of emergency, and handed it to Isha. “As a thank-you.”

Isha looked down at the bag of Ameiphus and smiled, the wrinkles at the sides of her mouth making little exclamation points on her smile. Then she said, “I hope you have a safe trip. And that you find lots of answers.”

“I hope so, too,” I said.

My throat tightened at the thought of leaving Cole and Cass behind, even if it was just until both their dads arrived and they caught up to us.

“You’re sure you’ll be fine?” Aaren asked.

“Yes,” Cole said, “I think I can handle life without my little brother for a few hours.”

“Take Arabelle.” Cass motioned to her bandaged shoulder. “If I can’t ride her, I’d rather she be with you.”

“Thanks!” I was thrilled that I’d get to ride Arabelle again.

We picked up the saddlebags and followed Thomas through the main tunnel. When we reached the entrance
building, Luke was waiting for us. Thomas went over to the wall and slid open a part that I had no idea was actually a door. It led into the building lying on its side that held the animals, and Thomas motioned for us to go in. The ground was muddy, and my shoes stuck in it with every step, but at least the rain wasn’t falling as hard. I walked across the open space to the horses, Luke, Aaren, and Brock somewhere behind me. Arabelle nuzzled into me, and I stroked her jaw.

We brought the horses out of their stalls and put the new saddlebags on them. Then Thomas started walking toward the door that would take us back into the main building.

“We’re not going out to the alley?” Aaren asked.

“No,” Thomas said. “This way’s a shortcut.”

The four of us led our horses across the entrance building, their hooves clacking on the stone, to a door on the opposite side of the building that led to a small, closed-in area with a tiny alley leading out of it.

Aaren walked up to the underside of a building that had fallen most of the way over, making a leaning wall behind us. Pipes of all sizes came out of the building, broken from when the building tipped. Aaren reached up and touched long, skinny cords of something in reds and
greens and blues and yellows, all bunched together. “Is this electrical wiring?”