The Cloud Chamber by Joyce Maynard

Author:Joyce Maynard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atheneum Books

Seventeen

IT WAS THURSDAY AFTERNOON. NAOMI WASN’T COMING over because her parents were saying she’d gotten behind on her Bible studies. On the bus Larry and Travis weren’t sitting together, and Larry was looking mad.

When Nate got off, there were police cars in front of his house again. One of the officers was riding a three-wheeler over the fields where, this time last year, Nate and his father had made the first runs with the tractor. Another man was there with a diving suit and mask, like Lloyd Bridges on Sea Hunt.

“What’s going on?” Nate asked Poppa, who was out in the implement shed working on a blade.

“That blasted rifle. They’re still looking for it. They’re bringing in men to dredge the pond.”

“They’d better not still be around on Saturday when Junie’s party’s going on,” Nate said. “She’s been looking forward to it for weeks.”

“I don’t know what all the fuss is about a birthday party,” Poppa said. “Back in my day we didn’t have birthday parties. We worked.”

On the bus the next afternoon Junie was bouncing out of her seat. “You know what tomorrow is, huh, Pamela?” she called out to a girl two rows in back of her. “My birthday party! And everyone’s invited, remember? Wait till you see my special cake.

“There’s going to be games,” she told Debbie, the girl who said, every time Junie asked if she could come, that she had to check with her mother.

“And prizes for the winner. And prizes for everyone else, too, so no one feels left out.”

“I’m not sure yet if I’ll be there,” Marsha told her. “My mom thinks we might be busy.”

Nate felt his stomach clench and his throat tighten.

“Don’t worry if you don’t have time to buy a present,” Junie told everyone. “There’ll be plenty of other presents. Just come.”

When they climbed off the bus, Nate was relieved to see the police and the diver gone. They had found nothing in the farm pond, Poppa told him. “Waste of taxpayers’ money. What else is new?”

Junie raced ahead of Nate, toward the back door of the house. In the kitchen their mother had set out all the ingredients for baking Junie’s cake, just like she’d promised. Junie inspected the packages of food coloring and sprinkles, the different-colored candles, and the letters that spelled out BIRTHDAY GIRL and LUCKY SEVEN. At the bottom of one bag she found a pair of plastic clowns, each holding a bunch of tiny balloons.

“These are even cuter than I was dreaming they’d be,” she told her mother. “This is going to be the best birthday ever.”

They set to work on a Betty Crocker mix called Strawberry Swirl to make the birthday cake look like a tent, and then Junie added yellow coloring to the store-bought vanilla frosting they’d chosen for the roof. After the cake had cooled and they’d spread on the frosting, her mother let Junie hold the tubes of other colored frosting—green, blue, and purple—to make stripes.

As she squiggled them on, Junie

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