Eye of the Storm Read Free Page B

for you.”
    â€œAunt Linda? Really?” Even though she’s technically my great-aunt, I’ve always known her as Aunt Linda. I haven’t seen her in years, though. She paints and gardens, and I’m not surprised she likes poetry, too. She took care of Dad when he was little, pretty much raised him. I put the book down next to me. “How close does she live?”
    â€œAbout twenty miles. But she and your father don’t really talk.”
    â€œHow come? Won’t I get to see her? It’s been a long time.”
    Mirielle’s pretty green eyes cloud over. “Your father thought Linda should move to Placid Meadows, but she’d have no part of it. He was furious, and so no . . . she doesn’t drop in for dinner.”
    My disappointment must show on my face. Mirielle reaches out and touches my arm. “But she is your relative, too, no? Maybe we will have a visit one day while your father is at work.” She standsup, tucks the book back in the nightstand, and gently closes the drawer. She smiles like we’re sharing a secret, and I realize we are. We both know Dad wouldn’t want paper books cluttering up his house.
    Besides, it’s poetry. Dad always says a world like ours needs science to save it, that pretty words never protected anybody from a storm.
    Which reminds me. “How do I get to the safe room from here?”
    â€œThere is no one safe room,” Mirielle says. “Everywhere is safe.”
    The ugly concrete designs make perfect sense now, and so does Dad’s promise to Mom. The whole
house
must be a giant safe room.
    â€œI will show you the living room instead, yes?”
    On the way downstairs, we pass the bathroom, and I peek inside. It’s enormous, and there’s no liter-meter on the wall, like at home. Could the Placid Meadows water rations be so much higher that we don’t even have to keep track? I add longer showers to the list of good things about living here for the summer.
    â€œHere we are.” Mirielle steps into the living room. One whole wall is an entertainment window. There are plush black chairs, an antique rocker, a leather sofa, and bookcases like ours at home. But no books. Here, the shelves are full of digital frames. Most are storm shots, black-gray blurs of tornadoes from Dad’s research trips all over the world, but the two frames on the end have a slideshow of family photos.
    I stand next to Mirielle and watch the images change.
    Mirielle and Dad at their wedding in Russia two years ago.
    Eating cake.
    Dancing.
    Photos of Remi as a newborn.
    Then pictures of me.
    There are a bunch of photos taken in the first house Mom and Dad owned. I’m three years old, pushing a toy lawn mower in the yard. It’s the old-fashioned kind that needed a person to steer it. There’s me in a high chair with jam smeared all over my face.
    Then I am four. Dressed for my first day of school. The tornadoes were spreading north then. I’d been so excited for school but so scared that a storm would sweep away the house while I was gone.
    There are school photos for the next three years. I am five, then six, then seven. My backpack goes from purple, to pink, to red with blue stripes, to bright orange.
    When the picture changes again, I am eight. The counter is torn up behind me—they must have been installing the SmartKitchen—and books are spread out on the table. That was the year before they built the StormSafe schools and shelters, and we all home-schooled with classes streamed to our computers. Mom created most of her own lessons, though, and I loved staying home. It was just before Dad left for Russia, too, the last year we were whole.
    The frame flashes again, and suddenly, my face looks older—last year’s school picture. Mom must have beamed it here.
    â€œWe need a new photograph of you,” Mirielle says. “Your hair is longer now.”
    â€œYeah, a little.”
    I step closer