Paperquake (2 page)

Beth crouched in the aisle, holding Violet. "Major panic attack," Beth said.

Violet took a shuddering breath. The room was silent for a long moment. Was she the only one who had screamed?

"That was a big one!" the girl in front of Violet said with a nervous giggle.

"I bet it was only a three," a boy called from across the room.

Violet drew a shaky breath and edged cautiously out of Beth's grip, out from beneath her desk.

Around the room kids began joking and talking. Violet didn't see how they could laugh.

"Whoa! That was like a roller coaster—"

"I was just thinking the other day that it's been a long time since we felt a quake, and now we've had two in one day—"

"I thought for a second I was going to barf—"

Mr. Koch walked down the aisles, checking on everybody. He looked pretty shaky himself. "Are we all okay?"

The door to the classroom opened cautiously, and a girl stepped inside. "Vi! Oh, Vi, are you okay?" It was Jasmine, one of Violet's two sisters. Violet groaned.

It was bad enough that she'd been the only one screaming her head off, but having her sister come to check on her was even worse.

The nervous tension that gripped the class during the quake evaporated into laughter as Jasmine hurried over to Violet's desk.

"I'm fine," Violet said stiffly. She wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans. Her heart was still pounding so hard she could hardly hear what anybody was saying.
Who were those children in the fire? Wasn't anybody helping them?

Then she thought:
What fire?

"She's fine," echoed Mr. Koch. "But it was nice of you to come see for yourself." He looked at Jasmine curiously.

Jasmine's face still wore an expression of concern, but she smiled at the teacher and waggled her fingers at Beth. "Well, um, I guess I'd better get back to English. If Vi doesn't need me—"

"I don't," muttered Violet, her voice tight with embarrassment. "You can go now."

"I was just trying to help," Jasmine murmured. She turned and left the room.

"Hey, can I go check on my brother?" a boy called out from the back row. And then other kids chimed in, all insisting they wanted to roam the halls, looking for siblings and friends. This excited chatter gave way to further speculation about the quake's magnitude and location.

Violet wanted to be able to laugh off all the things that scared her—like ghost stories, airplanes, and earthquakes, especially earthquakes—the way her sisters and friends did. She sometimes thought she was still getting over the quake they'd had a year ago. She'd been soaking in the tub when that one hit, rolling the bathwater into waves that splashed out onto the floor. She still dreamed of that quake and remembered it every single time she took a bath. Usually she took showers now, trying to keep the memory of her terror at bay. The only time she'd screamed more loudly was when she was four or five and a big earthquake sent books tumbling off the shelves in the public library where she had been listening to story time. That time she thought she was going to be killed. Some people had been, though not in the library.

"Enough now," said Mr. Koch, as the loudspeaker sputtered on the wall. "Let's hear what the official word is."

The lights flickered on again. The principal's voice came crackling over the loudspeaker, informing everyone that the first news reports were measuring the earthquake at 3.8 on the Richter scale. That wasn't particularly large, but it seemed to have been on the Hayward fault, Ms. Lynch told them, the one running right through Berkeley, quite near their school. There were no signs of damage, but the students could leave for home right now.

The eighth graders cheered.

"I think Mother Nature just paid a visit to remind us of her own role in California's history," Mr. Koch joked uneasily. "Maybe Violet should ask for an interview for her report."

The class chuckled obligingly, but Violet sat silent. She was remembering what Mr. Koch had said about cracks. Did bits of the past crack through more easily in California than elsewhere because of all the fault lines? The thought made her feel shivery. She pushed it out of her head and started packing her notebook into her backpack. The extra books from Mr. Koch made a bulge.

Mr. Koch picked up an eraser and swept away the writing from the chalkboard. Then the bell rang and the students rushed toward the door. "Don't forget, we're going to the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco on Monday," he reminded them as they filed out into the hallway. "Be here on time." Then he added, "You kids go straight home now. There could be aftershocks."

Violet's sisters, Jasmine and Rose, were already waiting by the lockers when Violet and Beth arrived. "Hey, what's shakin'f" Rose greeted them.

Violet was taking deep breaths, trying to calm her fluttering heart. She didn't answer.

"It
is
a pretty cool start to the weekend," said Beth. "You have to admit."

"Yeah," said Rose. "But are you okay, Vi? You look like you're going to feint."

Immediately Jasmine reached for Violet's backpack. "Here, I'd better carry this."

"I can do it!"

But Jasmine held tight to the backpack. "I'm sorry if you're mad that I came to check on you," she said earnestly. "But our classroom was just next door, and I thought I could hear you screaming though the wall. I was scared."

"I thought about checking on you, too," Rose chimed in. 'I was trying to tell Mr. Yarns that you are really terrified of quakes and have a weak heart, and that you might have an attack or something, but everybody else was talking, too, and he wasn't even listening. Brett Hudson agreed with me, though. He said he'd come with me to check on you—"

"I'm fine!" Violet crossed her arms and glared at her sisters. They were wearing nearly identical outfits, as they always did since entering junior high—jeans and baggy red sweaters. But Rose wore low black boots and Jasmine had on red high-tops so people who needed to could tell them apart. Their gold-flecked brown hair flowed to their shoulders and their blue eyes sparkled. Violet was wearing jeans and a red sweater, too, but it didn't help much.

She reached out and plucked her backpack off Jasmine's shoulder. "I'm fine, and I can carry my own stuff!"

Jasmine still looked worried. But Rose just shrugged.

Beth tried to smooth things over, as she often did. "So what's this about Brett Hudson, Rosy? Do you like him?"

"Brett is cool," Rose said, closing her locker. "In fact, he and I decided we're going to hang out at the Halloween Ball."

"Then I'll see if Casey Banks wants to go, too," said Jasmine.

"You mean you guys are going with boys to the dance?" asked Beth. "With
dates?
"

"Oh, nobody dates," said Jasmine, flipping back her long hair with a sophisticated gesture Violet had tried before to emulate. "We just, you know,
hang.
"

"Like Vi, hanging on to the legs of her desk during the quake," Rose added with a smirk. "
Tight.
"

Violet gritted her teeth.

"What?" demanded Jasmine.

"Why are you looking at us like that?" asked Rose.

Violet pushed ahead of them down the hall. They drove her crazy with their combination of teasing and overzealous protection. Her parents weren't much better. Her father joked that she was the favorite vacation spot for every flu and virus bug on the continent, and both her parents were always feeling her forehead for fevers and making comments about her appearance—discussing whether she looked flushed or pale or somehow
wrong.
But at least that was only at home. They didn't come barging into her classroom.

She would die of embarrassment if they didn't leave her alone.

The problem was her sisters meant well. They really did. They always wanted to help her—their poor baby sister who had nearly died at birth. Beneath their teasing was their worry, and Violet knew it. But it had to stop.

"Mr. Yarns just stood there, holding the chalk and waiting for the room to stop shaking so he could finish talking about calculating the frequency of genetic mutation or something," Rose was saying as the other girls reached Violet. "He's one cool guy—he barely missed a beat."

"You can always tell the people who grew up around earthquakes from those who didn't," agreed Jasmine. "Poor Ms. Martuscelli looked terrified. She tried to get under her desk but didn't quite fit."

Violet fell into step with her sisters and Beth.

"She must not have lived in California very long, then," said Beth. The girls headed outside and started walking home. "Everybody here knows that these small quakes are nothing to worry about, that they just, you know, relieve the pressure."

"Yeah?" Jasmine grinned. "Tell poor Vi." She reached over and squeezed Violet's arm.

Violet pulled away.

Two boys from the ninth grade coasted by on bikes and howled like wolves.

"Look, it's Brett and Casey," squealed Rose, and she and Jasmine waved hello.

"Hey, it's Jazzy and Rosy, the gorgeous twins!" shouted Casey as the boys sped past.

But they
weren't
twins! Violet stamped along the sidewalk, resentment flaring up more fiery than ever. They weren't twins at all. They were
triplets,
and she was their third, invisible member.

As she walked, resentment turned to remembering. Three shadowy children, flames behind them, had cried out from the ruins. They, too, had been nearly invisible.

Violet and Beth walked together behind Jasmine and Rose, Beth chattering on about her mom's latest boyfriend, Rose and Jasmine discussing boys. Their voices were muted by traffic and the rustling leaves of the trees, but Violet wasn't really listening anyway. In her head she heard again the screams of the shadow children and her own scream merging with theirs. It had only been her imagination, she reminded herself. A scary vision brought on by the earthquake.

The Berkeley streets were crowded with children on bikes and with people walking dogs. Beth waved good-bye at the corner of North Street, and the triplets continued on with Violet still lagging behind. The Jackstones' brown-shingled house stood back from the street, shaded by oak trees. Hanging baskets of colorful nasturtiums, left over from summer, dotted the porch. Violet saw with surprise that their mother's car was parked in the driveway.

Lily and Greg Jackstone owned two busy florist shops, one in Berkeley and one in Oakland. Lily worked in Oakland and Greg in Berkeley, and the girls sometimes helped out by filling orders on weekends or during holidays when flowers were in great demand. The shops were open until five o'clock, but neither parent arrived home before six.

Violet hurried ahead of her sisters now. She ran into the house, dumped her backpack by the stairs, and went straight to the kitchen, where her mother was arranging a huge bouquet of autumn flowers in a ceramic vase.

"You're home early, Mom," she said. "Because of the quake? Are the shops all right?"

"Hello, Baby," her mother greeted her. "Everything's fine. I came home early to celebrate—but I can't tell you the good news until your sisters and Dad are all here. Come tell me all about your day. Were you scared in the quake, darling? I thought of you, poor little one."

"I was okay." Violet pulled out a stool at the counter.

"It knocked over the fern in the dining room—I just finished vacuuming up the dirt. Only 3.8, I heard on TV. But still enough to make a mess."

"It's been a long time since we had a quake," said Jasmine, coming into the kitchen.

"Yeah, really," agreed Rose. "About time, I'd say." She perched on a stool next to Violet.

Violet watched their mother pour out tall cups of cider—Jasmine's in the yellow cup, Rose's in the pink, Violet's in the purple.

Lily Jackstone was long-boned and fine-featured like Jasmine and Rose. She had the same gold-streaked light brown hair (her streaks came from a bottle, but the effect was the same) and happy blue eyes.
Mom looks more like the third, triplet than I do myself,
Violet thought sadly. And the resemblance only became stronger as the girls grew older. Violet looked like her father, Greg: dark and small, with frizzy brown hair and brown eyes.
It's not fair,
she thought.

"Now tell me about school," Lily invited, joining the girls at the counter with her own cup of cider.

"I was in English when the quake hit," said Jasmine. "Poor Vi was in science. She was roaring like a lion, and I rushed in to see if she had been swallowed up in a huge crack."

"I was fine!" snapped "Violet. "Mom, tell her to stop doing things like that. I mean it. I'm going to die of embarrassment before I'm ever killed in an earthquake."

Maybe,
said a little voice inside.
Maybe not.

Rose laughed. "And just listen to our little cub snarl!"

"Now don't tease," said Lily. "Poor Baby needs her sisters on her side."

"We were interrupted by the quake right in the middle of a really neat assignment," Jasmine told them. "Ms. Martuscelli was talking about logic—we're supposed to write logical arguments in our essays. But she was teaching us these really cool puzzles, called—um, what was it?—
lateral thinking,
that's what she said. It's when you're thinking along certain lines, trying to solve a problem, and you just can't get anywhere, and nothing makes sense. And then suddenly something shifts in your brain, and you can think about the problem in a whole new way—and then everything makes sense!"

"You mean, sort of like hidden pictures?" asked Rose. "You know, where you stare at a picture and it's of a beautiful young woman, and then you blink and—bingo!—she somehow looks like an old hag?"

"Yeah," nodded Jasmine. "Like—here's one we did in class. Rosy, see if you can do this. Mom, you try, too."

Violet sipped her cider and listened resentfully. She wasn't very good at doing puzzles, but it was typical of the others to leave her out.

"Here's the situation," began Jasmine. "A man lies dead in a cabin on the side of a mountain."