Free Eye of the Storm by Kate Messner Page B

shrugs. “Sure.”
    We make small talk on the way home, but I can’t stop watching the storm as it moves away. It isn’t dissipating. If anything, it looks like it’s still growing.
    And leaving.
    As if someone steered it away, with a magic chant.
    Or maybe with a bank of computers, in a home office, behind a shiny steel door?

Chapter 10
    â€œJaden, what would you like? More oatmeal?” Mirielle is dancing around the kitchen clearing breakfast dishes and cooing to Remi, cradled in a blue and green scarf this time. She must feel like she’s riding around on an ocean wave, the way Mirielle swoops and turns.
    Mirielle’s DataSlate reader is open next to her empty cup of tea; she must have been reading at breakfast. I’m surprised when I lean over to read the title on the screen:
Quantum Reality: The Physics of Consciousness in a Post-Romantic World.
Mirielle was one of Dad’s interns in Russia; she was studying physics when they met, but she’s so busy with Remi it didn’t occur to me she’d still have time for science.
    She sees me looking at the reader. “Would you like me to send you a copy?”
    â€œThat’s okay.” I look at her, spinning away with the orange juice glasses. “I didn’t know you were still interested in stuff like this.”
    â€œOh, I am interested in many things. Too busy to read about them all sometimes. Just like I’m too busy to dance anywhere but in my own kitchen these days.” She tickles Remi’s chin.
    â€œWhere did you used to dance?”
    â€œIn Paris, of course!” She stops spinning and smiles. “And Moscow after I moved there. I danced professionally for six years. Your father never told you?”
    â€œNo. Why’d you stop?”
    â€œBusy with my studies at first, and then as the storms spread, there just weren’t opportunities.” She looks up at the kitchen lights as if she’s remembering brighter lights on a stage. “And of course here in the U.S., there’s only the National Ballet performed for cameras. It wouldn’t be the same without a real audience.” She pushes my bowl of fruit closer. “You can’t be full. At least have more fruit.”
    â€œI’m fine, thanks.” I poke at a strawberry with my fork and puncture two little holes in its perfectness. I can’t help but think of Alex and his father, and their farm. “Do you ever get organic fruit?” I ask Mirielle.
    â€œOh,
mon dieu
, no!” She glances quickly at Dad’s office door as if it might slide open and eat us at the very suggestion. “We eat only DNA-ture. Always. The deliveries are so convenient; I never have to go out to the market,” she says as if she’s in a DNA-ture advertisement. She looks at the door again, then leans in closer to me. “But your aunt Linda?” She lowers her voice. “She grows berries the old way, and vegetables, too. She gave me some raspberries when she dropped off your book. They were a bit overripe, some of them, but oh, they were so sweet!”
    That makes me smile. And it makes me like Aunt Linda even more. “Can we go see her soon?”
    Mirielle nods. “I think we can figure something out. Maybe later this—”
    She stops at the sound of Dad’s office door humming open. He’s just inside the room, holding something small and round—is it a compass?—in one hand and his DataSlate in the other. He’s on a video call. “No, Mom. I’m certainly not going to—” He sees us standing there and turns away, lowering his voice. All I hear after that is the word “later.”
    Did I hear right? He almost always called Mom by her first name, Rebekah, but sometimes he’d call her Mom if I was around. Was that Mom on the phone in Costa Rica? And if it was, why didn’t he let me talk?
    He steps out and presses his thumb to the fridge panel.
    â€œWho