Eye of the Storm Read Free Page A

storms are even worse than at home, so—”
    â€œHow many times do I have to tell you?” Dad shakes his head, smiling. “While you are inside the gates of Placid Meadows, you are safe. Totally and completely safe.”
    He presses another button on the dashboard. The garage door rumbles again, and behind us, the mouth on this safe, safe house slides shut.

Chapter 3
    When Dad opens the kitchen door, French disco music bursts out to meet us. Mirielle is twirling around the room barefoot in a long flowered skirt and lemon-yellow tank top. Remi is six months old now and swaddled in a big, every-colored scarf slung around Mirielle’s neck like she is part of the outfit.
    Mirielle presses a button to send the potatoes down for peeling and—“Oh!”—almost twirls into me on her way back for the carrots. “Jaden, you’re here!” She leans in to kiss my cheek. I smell Remi’s head—soap and baby. Mirielle turns to Dad. “Did you get caught in the storm? I hate when you have to go out there.” She says it as if “out there” and “in here” are totally different planets.
    â€œI know, love.” Dad steps up to the biometric panel on the refrigerator. He presses a finger to the reflective glass and taps impatiently, waiting for it to identify him by his print. “We spent about ten minutes in a safety lot. No problem.” For some reason, relief cools my face when the fridge sends Dad out a glass of iced tea. He still drinks it with lemon, and at this point, anything that hasn’t changed is welcome.
    â€œYou want something to drink?” Dad asks.
    â€œNo thanks.” I look past him and wonder where my room is.
    Mirielle catches me peering into the living room. “Would you like to see the rest of the house?”
    â€œGo ahead.” Dad steps up and rests his finger on another biometric panel just outside a steel door on the wall opposite the kitchen appliances. “I’m going to check in with headquarters before dinner.”
    I stand by the door for a second and see a bank of computers inside before I realize Dad’s office won’t be part of my tour. Then I follow Mirielle out of the kitchen and up a spiral staircase to a sleeping loft. It’s bigger than mine at home, but it has a bedspread of the same bright blue. I wonder if they did this on purpose, tried to make my room look like home so I wouldn’t miss Mom so much.
    But then Mirielle pulls open the little drawer on my nightstand, and what I see inside makes me miss Mom even more.
    It’s a book. The hardcover kind with pages you turn by catching the corner with your fingertip. We have this one at home, but I didn’t bring any paper books; Dad says reading paper books is like driving on square, stone wheels. He’s been reading exclusively on his DataSlate since before I was born.
    This book is by Rita Dove, an American poet who loves math as much as she loves words. In the photograph on the book jacket, she’s beautiful and maybe around Mom’s age, but she must be in her nineties now. I sit down on the bed and flip through the pages to find my favorite, “Geometry.” It’s about what she feels like when she proves a mathematical theorem.
    . . . the house expands:
the windows jerk free to hover near the ceiling, the ceiling
floats away with a sigh.
    When I first read this poem, the ceiling part freaked me out a little. Then Mom told me it was written way back in 1980, before most people knew what it was like to have the roof blow off your house for real.
    I run my hand over the raised letters on the book’s cover. “Did my mom send this?”
    Mirielle smiles and sits next to me. “She thought you might miss your books, so she had your great-aunt Linda pick up a copy at the antique shop and drop it off when your father wasn’t home.” Mirielle glances toward the door. “She suggested I tuck it away