Pi in the Sky Read online

  I grumble and look around the room for my holoscreen. I always lose that thing, which drives Annika crazy. She keeps sending me texts on it that I don’t answer. I told her she needs to get with the program and use the hologram feature, but she says no one needs to see a 3-D image of her asking, “When are you getting home from delivering those pies already so we can go bowling?”

  I find the holoscreen under a pile of comics and stuff it into my pocket.

  “And it wouldn’t hurt you to change your clothes,” Annika adds. “I’m getting really tired of seeing you in that outfit.”

  I look down at my clothes. I never give them a second thought. When you’re a kid, clothes in The Realms are purely functional. Colorless and nondescript, mostly. I glare at her. “I really need to get a lock on my door.”

  “Haven’t you noticed your brothers have started dressing better since I’ve gotten here?” she asks.

  I shake my head. Although now that she mentions it, both Bren and Grayden have looked a little more colorful lately. A splash of blue around the collar, a touch of red on the tips of their shoes. But all I say is, “Guys don’t notice what other guys wear.” If I truly had to be honest, she’s influenced more than just what people wear around here. If it wasn’t for her, I’d never have known being the seventh son actually did come with some extra benefits, and some extra responsibilities, which I’m still trying to sort out.

  Even with me sleeping in, we still manage to be the first to arrive at school. Annika’s right, the Niffum have now reached the outskirts of the Milky Way. They are only a few thousand light-years away now, approaching the spiral arm where the solar system used to be. It won’t be long. In the time we’ve been secretly tracking them, we’ve seen them briefly orbit eleven other planets and move on without finding what they needed there. Kal explained to us that the Niffum fleet can only travel their preset course, so once they’ve passed through the spot where they would expect to find Earth, they’ll have no choice but to keep going. Once that happens, we’ll be able to try getting everyone back again.

  Annika and I watch the fleet move silently through space until the teacher calls us away. I take out my holoscreen, ready to take notes. I’ve been paying more attention in school lately, which I can’t blame on Annika, although I’d like to. After everything that’s happened, I’m just trying to learn a little more about the universe, and about the part The Realms play in it.

  What I told Annika when I first met her was right. It’s not magic, what we do. It’s all the rules of nature, set up at the very start of our universe. There’s a lot I still don’t understand, though, and no one seems willing or able to explain it to me. I don’t understand why The Realms are so different from everywhere else in the universe. If Kal’s in another universe, how many others are there, and what are they like? How are we able to pull planets and people out of time, and how can we accelerate time to get it back?

  Fortunately for me, being the patient person that I am, I can wait to learn the answers. As long as I don’t have to wait too long.

  After school I return with Annika to Aunt Rae’s house, always the first stop on my route now. Bren is waiting with a plate of pie and some new game to show her. “Leave the door open,” Aunt Rae calls out as the two of them disappear into Annika’s room.

  I’m not sure why Aunt Rae said that, but I’m kind of glad.

  “Only three for today,” she says, hefting the steaming pie boxes into my arms. I feel the familiar weight work its way through me when I touch them. Why had I never stopped to wonder why no one else mentioned feeling like that when they touched a pie? It’s like I’ve been woken up when I didn’t even know I was asleep.

  “We’re almost back on track,” Aunt Rae adds, wiping her flour-covered hands on her apron.

  Because of everything that’s happened, I have a lot of deliveries to make up for. Not only from Aunt Rae, but from the other pie makers, too. I don’t mind the extra work, now that I know what my job actually entails. Hey, maybe it’s not too late to write that essay!

  As soon as I step out the door, I hear the drums. It’s been so long that my first thought is that the banging sound is probably just the boys down the street kicking their ball. I’m about to pass through Aunt Rae’s front gate when I hear it again. I rest the pies on the ground and strain my ears. Definitely drumbeats! He’s still alive!

  I turn to go back into the house to get Annika and Bren, but then Annika cheers as one of her video avatars scores a goal or kills an alien or something, and I change my mind. “Kal?” I call out, running to the street instead.

  “It’s time, Joss,” he says, or rather, his disembodied voice does.

  “Time?” I repeat.

  “I know the word is unfamiliar to you.”

  “Hey, I’m getting better. Sort of.”

  “Tell the others, okay?” His voice takes on an urgency I haven’t heard since his first contact. “The Niffum fleet is nearing where the solar system used to be. Once they’re past, you’ll need to get to work. I’d start now.”

  “Hey, that’s great!” I say, trying to sound like I mean it. And I do mean it. Of course I mean it.

  Don’t I?

  I clear my throat. “I’ll gather everyone together now.”

  “Wait, Joss. In case this doesn’t work, and, um, I don’t get to tell you this… I just want to say… I’m really sorry for all the secrecy, and for having to spoil what you’d worked so hard to do. You know, before. With the box and then when you were making that totally awesome sun. I didn’t want to rat out my parents, and I didn’t want you to stop trying for Annika’s sake. It all just got really confusing.”

  “You’ve already apologized, Kal. I get it.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll still owe you a big one when you get me back.”

  “I’ll hold you to that.”

  His voice breaks a little. “Hurry, Joss. Okay?”

  That’s the first time he’s ever sounded openly desperate.

  I nod. “Hang in there.” Not that I know if there’s actually anything to hang on to. He’s never described where he is. I’ve been picturing this black void of nothingness, with them sort of floating in the air, but for all I know they could have been lounging on beach chairs overlooking paradise. Probably not, though.

  As I run back into the house, I force myself to push aside the cold, hard truth. In order to get Kal and his parents back and restore the inhabitants of Earth and the Afterlives, not to mention the rest of the solar system, I will have to give up something I’ve grown very used to having around.

  I wonder if she’ll miss me, too.

  Whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

  —Charles Darwin, naturalist

  We gather around the still-scorched spot of land where my sun had its short, blazing run at glory. Annika has been unusually quiet since I told her the news from Kal. I think she’s afraid to get her hopes up again. I don’t blame her. Since recovering the data dots, I’ve watched the films over and over again. I’m as prepared as I’m ever going to be.

  I still don’t understand how we’re going to be make five billion years of history pass as though it weren’t any time at all. My mother tried to explain it to me on the way here, but the whole sixth-smartest-out-of-seven thing kicked in, and I stopped following after a while. Basically it’s something about space and time actually being two parts of a whole, which I knew, and you simply have to know how to manipulate space in order to manipulate time, which I didn’t know. Bottom line is, it’s something we can do here in The Realms and I might as well accept it.

  Everyone watches me now, their faces reflecting a wide range of emotions—pride (Mom, Thade, and Aunt Rae), excitement (Bren), excitement mixed with doubt (Ty, Ash, Laz), and excitement mixed with doubt and jealousy (Grayden). Worry, anticipation, and something else I can’t pin down flash across Annika�