The Storm Makers by Jennifer E. Smith & Brett Helquist

Author:Jennifer E. Smith & Brett Helquist
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: JUV013070
ISBN: 9780316202916
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2012-04-02T21:00:00+00:00

twenty

LATER, AS SIMON AND OTIS CONTINUED TO PRACTICE, the day around them quiet and still and completely uncooperative, Daisy finished off the last of the doughnuts, licking the powdered sugar from her fingers. When she was done, she turned to Ruby.

“So who’s building an energy converter out in your barn?”

Ruby raised her eyebrows. “You could tell that’s what it was?”

“Of course,” she said. “It’s a great idea.”

“It’s my dad’s invention. It’s part of the reason we moved up here.”

“Oh yeah?”

“It’s not really working out, though,” Ruby said, unable to hide the catch in her voice. “And if it doesn’t…”

Daisy raised her eyebrows.

“Then I guess maybe we move back,” Ruby admitted, pulling at a few blades of grass. “Which wouldn’t be the worst thing, you know? I mean, Dad could be a science teacher again, and Mom could go back to work at the flower shop. And we’d get to live in the suburbs again, instead of out here in the middle of nowhere. And…”

“And?”

“And then maybe we’d just be normal kids again,” Ruby said, raising her eyes.

Daisy reached out and placed a hand on hers, just briefly, before taking it away again. She shifted her gaze out past the water and the trees, through the small thicket where the golden fields peeked through. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way,” she said. “Simon is what he is. It has nothing to do with geography.”

Ruby was silent for a moment. Her brother was now crouched like a frog on the wooden panels of the dock, staring down at the water with a fierce intensity.

“You know, I was the opposite of you,” Daisy said, leaning back. “We lived up here when I was little, my dad and me, and then we moved down to Chicago when I was about your age.”

“How come?”

“He got a big job with the Society,” she said, smiling. “And it would’ve been a mighty long commute.”

“Did you always know he was a Storm Maker, your dad?”

“Not at all,” Daisy said, shaking her head. “You’re a complete exception to the rule. Usually even the families never know.”

“So what did you think he was?”

“He was a mechanic,” she said. “That was his first love. We used to spend hours out in our old garage together. I knew he was fascinated by the weather, too—always keeping an eye on the sky, obsessing over the satellite pictures on the news—but I didn’t find out until much later, when I flared up myself. As a kid, I never could have imagined he had this whole secret life as the Secretary of Hailstorms down at headquarters.”

“But he always planned to go back to being a mechanic?”

Daisy nodded. “He did,” she said. “But that’s the thing. It’s not like a job or a hobby or a piece of clothing you can just take off whenever you feel like it. You can’t ever give it up entirely. It’s a part of you, being a Storm Maker. You don’t have to be all that involved with the Society, but you still have to play by their rules.

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