The Sight by Jude Watson

Author:Jude Watson [Judy Blundell]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780545283274
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

THIRTY-FIVE

Naturally, Torie is no help with baking the cake, but I find the recipe book and manage to do it. I even find birthday candles. Long ago, Jonah had stocked the closet with paper plates and party hats, but the kids say that they never celebrated birthdays before. If they remembered their birthdays, they kept it to themselves.

Tate sets up the projection screens in the dining room. Everything is ready to go.

Everyone has a job to do.

And now everything just has to go as planned.

This is our best shot.

Maybe our only shot.

Because if we fail…I don’t want to think about if we fail.

It is four o’clock when we call the others to the table. It looks festive, with streamers and paper plates. Jonah has a party hat on. He pokes his head in the kitchen. “Is the cake ready?”

“Yes.”

“Should I get Nell? I’ll get her.”

He ducks out again. He is sixteen again. He is going to get his sister, to take her to the party she never had.

He is that far gone. He has no sense now of who we really are. He is in a place that is somewhere between the past and the present.

We turn out all the lights. Torie is ready in the kitchen, the others ready to run to the bedrooms and playroom. Hank is behind the door. Tate is ready by the computer.

Jonah leads her in. Emily looks terrified. Frozen.

“Come on,” he says, urging her. “It’s a surprise.”

She shakes her head, not moving.

“Get in there,” Torie hisses to me. “The wacko is going to blow it.”

I burst in with the cake. We sing “Happy Birthday.” I try to give Emily courage with my gaze, but hers keeps sliding away.

Tate flips on the projections. The screens light up with a summer rainstorm. The rain is rhythmic. It would be soothing, but Tate has pumped up the volume.

Jonah stops singing. “Stop it! Stop it!” he shouts. “Turn off the rain!”

Tate turns up the volume.

“No!” Jonah yells.

Emily is supposed to take his hand now. That was the plan. She doesn’t do it.

Hank moves toward Jonah. Emily remains standing still. She covers her ears with her hands as Jonah yells to turn down the rainstorm.

“Now!” I yell, and we scatter.

We all count in our heads as we run. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. They are running to the computers, to the space heaters in the bathrooms. I run to the dishwasher, Torie to the two ovens. Six. Seven. Eight. Jonah is shouting, but it’s just noise now. Nine. Ten.

At the same moment, we flip on everything we can. Torie cranks the oven to five hundred degrees and switches on all the burners. I switch on the dishwasher to its hottest setting. Maudie has started the three dryers. In the bathrooms, the heaters are on, the blow-dryers for the girls’ hair. In the playrooms, the TVs, the computers, the stereo.

The generator blows.

We are plunged into darkness.

I push open the door to the dining area. I can see faintly by the light coming from the skylight in the living room.

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