Pi in the Sky Read online

  It doesn’t take long for me to realize why he did this. Once the chemicals sink into the center of the sun, chunks of rock and debris begin flying out in all directions, some landing on this side of the hill. My planets are being born! “I have to get back!” I shout, trying to pull away from Thade’s grasp. “I’ll be careful, I promise. I have to get the planets in the right orbits! I have to get Jupiter in place to protect Earth, I have to form the moon, I—”

  But he holds me there. “Patience,” he says. “Wait until some of the rocks have stuck together. There’s nothing you can do until then.”

  So we sit. I try to think clearly as the heat from the sun grows stronger and stronger, quicker than I’d have thought possible from how it was growing. What had the professor said comes next? Comets with water need to hit Earth? Where do I find those? And then life. Where do I get amino acids? I nudge Annika.

  “Do you still have those two data dots?”

  She looks confused, then remembers. “Yes! They…” Her face falls. “They’re on my dresser at Aunt Rae’s.”

  A huge explosion drowns out my next thought. It is the single loudest noise I’ve heard in my life. I instinctively throw myself over Annika, and Thade throws himself over me. We huddle there, in a pile, for what seems like forever. Finally the air stops vibrating with noise and heat and rubble and broken things.

  “Um, I think you can get off me now,” Annika says, her voice muffled.

  Thade lifts off first, then I untangle myself and kneel on the grass beside them. Annika smooths her dress and tries to adjust the leaf hat, which is mostly in tatters now. I know without looking that my sun is gone, along with the baby planets.

  “I’m sorry, kid,” Thade says, his voice thick. “You gave it your best shot.”

  Chances are, when we meet intelligent life-forms in outer space, they’re going to be descended from predators.

  —Michio Kaku, physicist

  I’m up on my feet and running back over the ridge. The ground is scorched a deep black. But something else covers the sizzling debris. Something filmy, which bubbles and glides as it spreads. I approach cautiously, and dip my finger into it. Water! Where did water come from all the way out here? Is that what made my sun explode?

  A speck of movement in the corner of my eye catches my attention. I whip my head around in time to see a tiny figure disappear into the distance. I run back over the ledge. “Thade! Will you make sure Annika gets back to Kal’s house safely? I have to do something.”

  “Okay, but the Powers That Be will—”

  Without giving him a chance to say more, I take off at a run, back in the direction of the central Realms. Every now and again I catch a glimpse of the figure, running faster than should be possible. I concentrate hard, and my legs turn into wheels. I pick up speed as I race forward, trying not to feel every pebble and uneven patch of ground. Bruises are already starting to form, and it takes a lot for our skin to bruise. But I refuse to lose sight of him.

  As I approach the populated areas, everything rushes toward me in a blur. I slow down, stumbling to a stop. I shake my wheels into legs again, and hobble around to get the feeling back into them. I’m in a neighborhood not too far from my school. I can hear the kids talking and the occasional burst of laughter. It all seems so normal.

  I turn all around, but don’t see anyone who looks like he’d just been running from an exploding sun. In frustration and exhaustion, I plop down on the ground and lean up against one of the many Grayden-inspired statues. This one is dressed as a winged fairy-like creature with a pointy hat and a wink.

  Do I try to remake the sun? I’d have to get all the chemicals from Ash again. No, I can’t do that. He said he’d given us all the ones he had. We’d have to start with a supernova, and generate all the elements the normal way. Could I do that? Could I make a sun huge enough that it could go supernova? Did I just lose my last chance to save Kal and get Annika back to her family? My thoughts are swirling so fast it takes a while before I realize I’m being watered, like a plant. I look up to see where the drops are coming from. There, hiding atop the statue, is my brother Bren, slowly losing his grip on the statue’s pointy hat.

  Our eyes meet. Mine narrow into slits. “Hey, little bro!” he says cheerily. “Some help here?”

  I just stare up at him. I should have known. First he takes the data dots, then right when the solar system gets going, he sabotages it.

  “Help?” he asks again.

  I shake my head.

  “C’mon, Joss, don’t be that way.”

  I purse my lips and cross my arms.

  He sighs. “Fine.” Then he lets go and drops to the ground. Instantly he’s up and running.

  He’s fast. But I’m faster. I tackle him before he can reach the other side of the statue.

  “Why, Bren?” I ask, holding down his arms. “Why did you do it?”

  A small part of me registers that Thade is sprinting up the street toward us, with Annika on his back. Bren tries to pull away, but I hold him down.

  “Kal told me to,” he says.

  “Kal?” My grip loosens slightly out of surprise and Bren takes the opportunity to wiggle out of my grasp. He doesn’t run away, though. “I was right around the corner from his house when I heard his voice coming from nowhere. I thought it was a trick, but he convinced me it wasn’t. He told me the box outside his house was his, that he’d left it there by mistake before he went to visit his parents OnWorld somewhere. I was just doing him a favor by holding on to it. Or so I thought. It wasn’t until I saw the labels on the data dots that I thought maybe he’d lied to me.”

  I sit back on my heels, dumbfounded by all this. “That makes no sense. Kal wants me to rebuild the solar system. He wants me to get him and his parents back.”

  Thade and Annika reach my side. “Are you all right?” Annika asks. She looks down at my banged-up legs and gasps. “What happened to you?”

  “Wheels,” I reply, only half paying attention. My head is spinning from Bren’s revelations.

  “Rats,” she says. “I missed it!”

  “Hi, I’m Bren,” Bren says, extending his hand to Annika.

  She narrows her eyes at him. “You’re the one who stole Joss’s data dots!”

  “I was going to give them back,” Bren says. “Eventually.”

  She still doesn’t shake his hand. “We could have rebuilt the solar system twice by now if we’d had those!”

  Bren lowers his arm. “That’s the point. Kal didn’t want you to rebuild it. Well, he does, but not yet. He thought taking the box would put the project on hold. Then when he realized that you’d made the sun on your own, he sent me to put it out.”

  I stare at my brother, my second-best friend. What kind of story is he making up? Maybe he really is jealous. Maybe he knew about the seventh-son thing all these years and has now decided to ruin things for me.

  “Turns out,” Bren continues, “that you can’t put out a sun with water. It just made it hotter till it grew and grew and then exploded.” He widens his arms. “Boom, like that.”

  “You’re not making any sense,” I tell him. “Why wouldn’t he want me to rebuild it as soon as possible? He and his parents—”

  “You mean the Sheinblatts,” Annika interrupts.

  I groan. “No, not the Sheinblatts.”

  Thade breaks in. “Annika! How did you know their OnWorld name?”

  I whip my head toward Thade so fast my neck hurts. “What? She’s right?”

  Annika lifts her chin. “Told you.”

  Thade stares at Annika with such intensity that she flinches a bit. “Well?” he demands. “How do you know their names? The OnWorlders’ code names are closely guarded.”

  Annika moves slightly closer to me, then says, “Um, they were friends with my parents. I didn’t know they had any kids, though. They lived down the street. The husband—Marvin, I mean—used to stargaze with us. He made the best homemade chili on the block. Next to my own father’s, of course