Pi in the Sky Read online

  “And I’m helping,” Annika chimes in, adjusting her leaves so they’re not covering her eyes. “I’m in a bag!”

  My mother tilts her head at that comment, then shakes it and turns back to me. “C’mere,” she says, opening up her arms wide.

  I’m surprised. Mom is not usually the warm, huggy type. But I move forward into her arms, feeling a little awkward in front of Annika. Still, it would be more awkward to refuse.

  My mother’s arms are strong and I feel myself relax. I close my eyes and the darkness is comforting. “Joss.” Her voice is a whisper, and I can tell it’s in an audio range Annika can’t hear. “Joss,” she repeats. “I’ll keep your secret, but of course I can’t help you, since I would never go against what your father ordered.”

  “I would never ask you to,” I reply in the same low tone.

  “But I will tell you one thing: You do more than deliver the pies.”

  I pull away. “What do you mean?” I ask, in my regular voice.

  Mom glances at Annika, then seems to decide she can be trusted. “You do more,” she says, emphasizing each word, “than deliver the pies.”

  “I know,” I reply. “I go to school, too. Well, I may have missed a few days….”

  “That’s not what I meant,” she says. But she abruptly stands up instead and busies herself clearing the table from Annika’s lunch. Annika jumps up to help and the two of them giggle again at the sink. I watch them and think for the first time, ever, that maybe my mother might have wanted a girl instead of the seven boys she wound up with.

  “Are you okay?” Annika asks as she watches me put my face in front of the reader. Just because Bren didn’t follow the rules doesn’t mean I’m about to break them.

  I nod. “Let’s just go.” I don’t want to get into all the emotions I’m feeling. It’s too much, and I need to focus.

  Annika follows me out, swinging the bag of snacks my mom packed her. “Where are we going?”

  “To find my brother Laz. He’s the middle child—number four—and can be a pain. But he’ll know how to build a sun.”

  “I have no idea how to build a sun,” Laz says when we find him on the hillside behind PTB headquarters (which is currently in the shape of a three-legged toad). He is sipping a cold drink and lounging on a beach chair. If I thought my job was easy, Laz’s is almost ridiculously simple. All he does is lie on his chair in front of a giant view screen of an ocean. We don’t have real oceans in The Realms, obviously, but this helps Laz to imagine a horizon like on the planets. Every once in a while Laz waves a stick in the air and the sun on the view screen begins to descend. He flicks a button on his chair and the scene changes to another beach, this one with two suns in the sky. Personally, I think they stuck him with this job to keep him out of trouble. Working on his own like this means he can’t argue with his coworkers.

  “What do you mean you can’t make a sun?” I ask. “We know all the ingredients, we just need to know how to put it all together. Isn’t it your job to control sunrises and sunsets?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t really control them, more like manage them. Or, technically, watch them, I suppose.” He takes another long sip of his drink.

  I push the confidentiality agreement I had been holding back into my pocket. I don’t even need to waste this one on him.

  “Joss, wait,” Laz says, as we turn to go. “I may not know how to make a sun, but when I was training for my job—”

  Annika interrupts. “You have to train to sit on a chair and wave a stick at a screen?”

  “Okay, fine,” Laz snaps. “While I was doing my very quick, blink-and-you-miss-it training for this job, I saw a really old part of The Realms. Like back when the universe was new and stars and planets were just being built. I bet if you go there you’ll find what you need.”

  “Thanks, Laz,” I say, feeling a little guilty that I was so quick to dismiss him. “Do you want to know why we need to build a sun?”

  “Nah,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “I figure you’ve got your reasons.”

  Laz is an odd one. Either he’s all fired up about something, or he can’t be bothered to act even remotely interested.

  He does give us the directions, though, ending with, “You’ll know it when you see it.” Before we leave, he gives Annika a long look. “Bum luck about your planet there. Sorry to hear of it.”

  “Um, thanks,” she says. “It’s been… difficult.”

  He nods sympathetically, then turns his attention back to his view screen and waves his stick at it.

  “You have a strange family,” Annika comments as we head back the way we came.

  “Don’t I know it,” I reply, looking up at PTB headquarters. I’m not sure which office is my father’s now. The toad’s head? His rump? Dad’s definitely been avoiding me. Or at least it feels that way.

  When we get to the other side of the building, I stop short. The statues of Kal’s parents have been completed! There have been a few alterations since the blueprint I saw. For one, Kal’s mother is now wearing pants, which would certainly please her, and Kal’s father is holding a hot dog in one hand and a cup of lemonade in the other. Is he supposed to be at a summer barbecue? Maybe Aunt Rae saw these statues and that’s why she suspected something earlier. Soon everyone will know. I want to throw a blanket over the statues, cover them up somehow, buy some time to get them back before the grieving sets in.

  “Hey,” Annika says, looking the statues up and down. “I know those guys!”

  I shake my head. “No you don’t. Those are Kal’s parents. They just look more human than most of us because their job was to blend in on Earth.”

  “No,” she insists. “I really do know them. That’s Rose and Marvin Sheinblatt from down the street. Marvin and my dad used to go fishing and stargazing together.”

  I know she’s mistaken, because OnWorlders are never allowed to make close friends. But the last thing I want to do right now is argue, and a small crowd has started to gather around us. I take Annika’s elbow and steer her quickly away to avoid them.

  We don’t get too far when I begin to hear the drumbeats. They start softly, then grow stronger and more insistent. I stop and call out Kal’s name.

  Annika puts her hand on my arm, alarmed. “Joss, are you all right? What are you doing? No one is here.”

  “Do you hear it?” I ask. “The drumbeats? Do you hear them?”

  She shakes her head.

  The drumming has become almost frantic now. I excuse myself and run a few yards away. Maybe he can only talk to me in private. But as quickly as it began, the drumming cuts off. Ice trickles down my back. I have a feeling Kal and his parents aren’t safe there much longer. How quickly can an entire universe collapse? Or maybe whoever the Supreme Overlord is (if there is one) has them locked up deep underground somewhere!

  I rejoin Annika and explain to her about Kal and the drums and how frustrating it is not to be able to reach him.

  “Another universe?” she asks. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around this one! What’s the other one like?”

  “I don’t know,” I tell her honestly. “But from what we learned in school, probably nothing like this one. I think it’s really unstable. Like the laws of physics aren’t working there.”

  “Oh. That doesn’t sound good. I’m sorry.”

  She sounds so sincerely sorry that I feel the need to change the subject. “Hey, so I found the empty box that those data dots were in. The ones that were stolen.”

  I hadn’t meant to tell her that. I guess she’s pretty easy to talk to. For a girl.

  “You did? Where?”

  “My brother Bren took them.” I cringe a little as I say the words out loud. It still stings.

  “Bren? Isn’t he your favorite brother? I thought you guys were really close.”

  I nod. “I thought so, too.”

  We walk in silence for a while. I’m half-wishing Annika would continue her tales of teenage girl angst, so I wouldn’t have to