Free Eye of the Storm by Kate Messner

Alex has dropped his hand from my shoulder again, and the one that held the strawberry hangs at his side, still pinching a clump of leaves and a bit of berry with my teeth marks.
    â€œNow are you in mood for fruit?” he asks.
    I would answer, but I’m afraid it would come out a million kinds of stupid. So I nod, and bend down to pick another berry. It’s rough and imperfect, and perfectly warm, in my hand.

Chapter 9
    â€œYou
have
to partner with him at camp. You guys look so cute together!” Risha’s cheeks are flushed as we hurry back to the fence, and I’m not sure if it’s because we’re rushing now that the clouds are rumbling closer or because she was having her own picnic moment with Tomas and the daisy chain.
    â€œAw, cut it out.” I climb through the gap in the silver wires. “He did ask if I wanted to work together, though. And we’re interested in the same theories of weather manipulation, so maybe . . .”
    Risha strikes a professor pose, with serious eyes and hands pressed together. “We’re interested in the same theories,” she mimics, and laughs. “I think you’re interested in more than his theories, Jaden.”
    When we reach the end of the dirt path, she looks up and down the street, hands on her hips. “What do you want to do? They’re running Animals of Yesterday at the Entertainment Dome. You get to walk along a trail with a bunch of extinct wildlife—woolly mammoths and polar bears and stuff.”
    â€œNo, I think I want to go home.” I wonder how Mom’s doing inCosta Rica. I hope her endangered frogs don’t become part of the Animals of Yesterday show anytime soon. I wish she’d get in touch.
    Our DataSlate weather alerts go off, and I jump about a mile. Risha laughs.
    The storm is close enough now that people outside Placid Meadows will be heading for safe rooms. Even here, the high-pitched alert makes me want to walk faster, but Risha veers off toward the park. “Relax, we’re inside now. Let’s hang at the playground a while.”
    I follow her toward the slide. “Has it been like this since you moved in?”
    â€œLike what?” She climbs the ladder and slides down.
    I wait at the bottom. “Like this . . . where you just
know
the tornadoes won’t touch down here?”
    Risha dusts off her shorts and heads for the monkey bars. “Yeah, I told you, it was in the contracts.”
    â€œBut how can they promise that? Did the contract say
how
they do it?”
    â€œNope.” She shrugs. “Most people moved here from places where it’s gotten so bad that no one cares
why
they’re safe. I mean, people ask, sure, but your dad obviously can’t be giving away all his company’s secrets, and really everybody’s just happy to be able to go outside again, you know?” Two little kids are on the swings, daring each other to go higher, while their moms sit on a bench by the carousel talking.
    â€œBut my dad’s storm dissipation project failed—that’s whatMom said. It can’t be that technology. And if it’s not that, then what is it? Some kind of force field around the neighborhood?” I climb up to the top of the jungle gym and sit down on one of the crossbars, dangling my feet down through the middle.
    â€œI guess.” Risha scampers up after me and hangs upside down from her knees a few bars over. “Does it matter what it is, as long as it works?” Thunder rumbles in the distance, and tree branches rustle as the wind picks up. The moms on the bench don’t even miss a beat in their conversation.
    â€œS’cuse me, lady!” One of the kids from the swing set climbs up the other side of the jungle gym and runs into our Jaden-and-Risha roadblock here at the top.
    â€œSorry.” I lower myself to the ground, and Risha climbs down the other side.
    â€œLet’s go swing!” She takes off and