Wood Sprites(92)

“You said you might not get through!” Jillian wailed.

“I can call people while I’m waiting at the border. I won’t have anything better to do. My whole family still lives in Pittsburgh. My mom and dad, my uncle and three cousins—I’ll call them all. They still live just across the river from Old Man Bell. I’ll have one of them go over and warn Alexander and see about maybe getting her to Earth. She can stay with me.”

“Really?”

“It probably would have ruined both our lives if I had tried to keep her when she was a baby. I was stupid young and had a lot of growing up to do. I couldn’t even keep a plant alive. Old Man Bell, he has a world of patience and was ready to make Alexander his entire world. But I always regretted having to let her go.”

If and when they found surrogate mothers for the babies, would they be able to let them go? April had done the hard thing because it was better for Alexander. Whatever they chose for the babies, they had to remember to do what was best for them.

“We should go home,” Jillian announced, pushing away her empty bowl.

April snagged her purse from off the floor by the couch. “Okay, I’ll take you home.”

“We can take the train.” Louise wasn’t sure how sober April was.

“What kind of mother would I be if I let you go home on a train alone at this time of night?”

“You’re not our mother,” Jillian pointed out.

“I could have been.” April was completely right there. A fraction of an inch in the right direction and they would have been born eighteen years ago. “Come on.” April paused at the door, wavering. “Remind me to let the car drive itself.”





23: SHUTDOWN


The alarm woke Louise. She lay in the darkness for a minute confused. Then she remembered that it was Shutdown and Pittsburgh was back on Earth. They had gone to bed early so they could spend all night trying and reach Orville, assuming that he was the Wright listed in the phone book. Her eyes adjusted to the dimness and she made out Jillian sitting on her bed, sheets piled around her, face illuminated by the screen of her phone. A quiet voice said “All circuits are busy, please try again later.” Jillian grunted as if hit and her fingers moved on her phone’s keyboard.

“Go back to sleep,” Jillian said after her third attempt got the same error message. “I’ll wake you up if I get through.”

“I want to stay awake.”

“If I don’t get through before three, you’re going to have to take over trying to get through. We have to keep trying until midnight tomorrow.”

April had said that it was unlikely they’d get through in the first few hours, but it was upsetting to think that three hours might go by without success.

* * *

It was still dark when Jillian woke Louise. “I didn’t get through and my battery is nearly dead.”

“April got to the border Saturday; she’ll get in,” Louise said with more confidence than she felt. She glanced at the clock. It was three-thirty. Jillian had let her sleep an extra half hour. They needed to be awake for school at five-thirty. Louise reset the alarm.

By failure number seven, Jillian was breathing deeply.

The world has strangely quiet as Louise sat dialing her phone. It seemed as if the whole world was holding its breath, just as afraid for her sister as she was.

* * *

At four twenty-three, the phone clicked instead of immediately giving Louise a recording. Her heart leaped up and then sunk down to her toes as it gave a standard busy signal. She hung up and redialed. It clicked and after a moment of silence, gave a busy signal again. Her heart had done the same dizzying loop of up and down and back to rest.

* * *

“Oh, you do have a phone!” Iggy said when they met him at the subway platform shortly after eight. It had become a ritual at some point that Iggy walked with them to school from the subway station.

“Doh!” Jillian hit dial to try yet again. “Everyone has phones, even the Amish.”

“Isn’t that against their religion?” Iggy asked.

“I report it, not explain it,” Jillian stated.

Jillian’s phone suddenly connected and a man spoke over her phone. “Hey, this is Oilcan. My life imploded and I’m not going to be home until probably Wednesday. I ran over my headset. It’s in a zillion pieces that not even Tinker could fix. If you really, really need to talk to me, call Tinker. Be warned that she’s in full Godzilla mode. If you don’t have Tinker’s number, call Roach.”

They stared at Jillian’s phone for several heartbeats.

“Normally you leave a message after something like that.” Iggy pointed to the still connected phone.