Free Eye of the Storm by Kate Messner Page A

is swinging six feet off the ground by the time I even get started, but pretty soon I’m flying beside her. I can’t remember the last time I was on a swing outside. Our underground play centers at home have great swing sets—huge ones—but the air on your face is still indoor air. Stale and safe. Here, it’s real wind, carrying the smell of the storm.
    â€œYou know,” Risha says, her hair flying around her face, “if you swing back and forth a hundred times with your eyes closed and then open them at the very top, then the first boy you see from up there will be the one you marry. Think I can see Tomas from up here?”
    â€œDoubt it.” I swing forward, so high that the chain goes slackand for a second I feel like I’m hanging there, attached to nothing. Then the chain catches, and I swing back with Risha at my side. “Besides, they must be in a safe room by now. That storm’s growing. Hey, how’s his mom?”
    Risha stops pumping her legs and just swings. “She needs to get into a treatment center, but Tomas says there’s a waiting list for most of the good ones. We didn’t talk about it much—and don’t you dare tell Alex because he doesn’t know this yet, but Tomas said they might even move.”
    â€œ
Move?
What about the farm?”
    Risha smiles a sad smile. “Well, they know they won’t have trouble selling it.” She waves her hand through the air as if that idea is a bug she can swat away. “But they’ve talked about other things, too, like his mom staying with his brother in New York if she can get into that clinic. I’m sure it’ll be okay.”
    â€œMama, look! Look! It’s almost to the fence. Let’s do the rhyme!” The two kids from the jungle gym run toward the bench, pointing to the cloud. I stop swinging and listen.
    Twister, twister, go away,
Don’t you bother us today.

Take your rain and winds that blow,
Turn around now, I say, GO!
    They point and giggle, and make shooing motions with their hands.
    I stare at them, these kids who have no memories of a placewhere storms come into the neighborhood. Here, it is nothing but a game. It’s like that “Ring Around the Rosy” chant Mom told me about. The rhyme was all about symptoms of the plague—rosy cheeks, sweet-smelling breath, falling down dead—and kids chanted it, laughing while they jumped rope, without ever realizing where it came from.
    I look up at the monster cloud and try to imagine what it would be like never to have been afraid of it. A funnel is creeping down from it, but the storm doesn’t seem to be getting any closer. It looks like the system is stalling on the other side of the fence.
    Just like Dad’s contracts promise.
    â€œBetter do it one more time,” one of the moms says, smiling.
    â€œI’m standing up on the bench this time,” the little girl says, climbing up. “So it’ll hear me better.”
    Twister, twister, go away,
Don’t you bother us today.

Take your rain and winds that blow,
Turn around now, I say, GO!
    She points fiercely toward the storm cloud, which is indeed moving away from the fence now, still churning, still blowing, but most definitely going.
    â€œYay!” The little girl jumps down and cheers again. “I made it go away!”
    â€œGood job.” Her mother pulls her in and kisses her above her ponytail. “Now get your jacket, and let’s go make Daddy some supper.”
    I scuff my sneakers in the dirt under my swing and watch them leave. The mothers, the kids, the storm. All leaving.
    Risha’s been swinging this whole time. She jumps off and flies into the brown grass in front of me, tumbling into a somersault and laughing like the kids. “Clearly, I am the champion of the swing set,” she says. “How come you stopped?”
    I shake my head. “No reason. You ready to head home now?”
    She