Storm Rising by Dandi Daley Mackall

Author:Dandi Daley Mackall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zonderkidz

8

Storm walked home from the shop. Annie had wanted her to wait until closing so she could give her a lift, but Storm didn't want to wait around. After Cody left and Gracie made her little comment, the sadness had come back so strong that she was having trouble keeping Party Storm going. She wanted to be by herself. But now that she was by herself, walking back up Main Street, she didn't like being alone. Her footsteps echoed in the street, and her mind raced.

Storm tried praying. God, I'm really lonely here. Mick always said Jesus was like her best friend, always around. But Storm couldn't seem to focus. Already, her mind was wandering, and she felt even lonelier than she had at Sam's.

She shifted gears to her next column for the Shark. The paper was something new and exciting. She was sure Mr. Maxwell would want her to do another food article. Maybe this time she'd write about the junk kids ate in the cafeteria. She made herself compose the article in her head, hoping it would keep her mind away from the emptiness, which was worse than sadness. She could feel it crouching like a lion ready to pounce.

“Okay. Lunch. Candy bars,” she muttered, angling toward the high school and across King. She'd seen dozens of kids eating junk at lunch. The jocks might appreciate learning that Baby Ruth candy bars were named after President Grover Cleveland's daughter and not the baseball player. One of the guys had Twinkies. Maybe she'd tell the story about the inventor of Twinkies, DeWar, who ate two Twinkies a day during the Great Depression and still lived to be eighty-eight years old. She might work in cookies too. Like how Fig Newtons were named after Newton, Massachusetts, even though they were created in Cambridgeport.

Or she could write about fortune cookies. That was a great story because they were invented in 1916 by a Los Angeles noodles manufacturer, David Jung. And he was probably thinking about the ancient Chinese rebels and how they passed secret messages inside buns. But the Chinese didn't like the idea of fortune cookies. Maybe she could finish the article with a tirade about the unfairness of fat-burning and the fact that men burn fat faster than women.

Storm crossed into the Old West End. The second she stopped thinking about material for her lunch article, the emptiness pounced. Its claws dug into her so deep that she couldn't make herself think of anything else. She wondered if Mick ever felt this lonely.

She glanced up at the stars that were popping out from the black sky. Storm really did believe the things she'd heard in church all those years when her parents had made her go. Jesus was God's son. You needed him to get to heaven. She'd always thought it made pretty good sense. She even prayed sometimes, usually one liners, like “Help!” or “Get me out of this, please!” or even an occasional “Thanks.”

But God felt as far away as the stars.

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