Sky Jumpers Series, Book 1 (9 page)

I wove through the crowd of people who milled around the dozens of mismatched tables we’d used for last night’s Harvest Feast. The tables now sat under the shade tents, covered with all the inventions.

Even though there was a big crowd here every year for the Harvest Festival, I didn’t think I’d ever get used to the sight of so many people gathered in one place. Sure, town meetings were crowded, but everyone who wasn’t too sick to walk, crawl, or drag themselves came to the Harvest Festival. Plus, we’d welcomed nearly two hundred adults from Browning through the tunnel yesterday afternoon, so the group was massive.

I wished kids from Browning came, too. They used to, just like kids from here used to go to the Spring Festival
every year in Browning. But when I was three, bandits attacked our caravan on the way home from the Spring Festival, and people died. Even kids. Now they never let us go.

Aaren, Brenna, and I wound through the maze of inventions until we found where Aaren’s and Brenna’s had been placed. When I woke up this morning and thought about how I was the only person over age four who didn’t have an invention displayed, I actually considered not coming to the Harvest Festival. I was good at history—I would trade being good at history for being good at inventing. I was good at reading and math—I’d trade those. Or
any
subject, really, that people cared less about than inventing. For a minute, I thought about staying in bed.

But I couldn’t. The bathrooms at the community center still had to be cleaned. Besides, I knew feeling sorry for myself wouldn’t fix anything—it would only make me miss one of the best days of the year. I took a deep breath and forced a smile on my face just like I had earlier this morning. This was a party, and I intended to enjoy it.

Aaren grabbed my hand and pulled me to one of the tables that held inventions by adults. Someone had mixed two metal alloys, one that was unique to the mountains surrounding our valley. I tried to listen to him go on and on because it made him so excited, but once he started talking about the properties of the new metal, I tuned
out. Finally, another invention caught his eye, and we moved on.

The smell of fresh-baked blackberry pies wafted across the invention tables, and my mouth began to water. Not only did Mrs. Davies make lunch for us at school every day, but she also, along with my mom and a dozen other people, made individual-sized pies each year and cooked them in solar ovens by the tables. Their smell alone made me wish we had the Harvest Festival every day. While Aaren explained yet another invention to me, I imagined myself holding one of the warm mini pies in my hands, biting into the flaky crust, and sinking my teeth into the sweet filling. By the time he finished talking, my stomach was growling.

Brenna tugged on Aaren’s sleeve. “Those kids are taking toy boats down to the water. Can I go?”

“In a minute.” Aaren leaned in closer to an invention.

She folded her arms and huffed. “No, now.”

“I can’t see the bank from here, Brenna, so I can’t watch you. We’ll play in a minute.”

Brenna let out a defeated breath but didn’t take her eyes off the river. I didn’t blame her—looking at inventions was boring. I glanced over to where a few horses were penned by the wagons that had brought all the supplies to the festival and saw a flash of red hair. I knew it was Cass, a girl who had graduated from Sixteens & Seventeens last year.
Now her split officially was taking care of the horses, even though she’d been doing the job unofficially for as long as I could remember. Sometimes during the summer, Aaren and I would come up here and watch her trick-ride on Arabelle. Always Arabelle. Maybe that was why she was my favorite horse—because I saw how much fun Cass had riding her. I’d much rather hang out and talk to Cass about horses than look at inventions. But just like Brenna, I walked through them with Aaren anyway because the Harvest Festival was only once a year, and we both knew what it meant to Aaren.

I turned from one table and bumped into Amy Beckinwood. She took a step back and brushed her long brown hair off her shoulder.

“Hey, Hope. I feel so bad they wouldn’t let you put your invention in the show.”

Great
. I’d had a stupid wish that somehow no one outside of my class knew. But Amy’s brother Sam was in my class, and if Amy knew, everybody knew. At least she was being nice about it. Amy was nice only some of the time. “Thanks,” I muttered.

“I mean, I’d feel
terrible
if year after year I was never able to do something worthwhile.”

Okay, so I was wrong. She wasn’t being nice about it.

“Amy,” Aaren growled. He stepped in front of me, like he could protect me from her words.

“What?” she said way too innocently. “I’m just saying what everyone else is thinking. Besides, she’s got to be used to it by now. You’re used to it, right, Hope?”

If I were used to it, I probably wouldn’t have had to convince myself to come to the festival this morning, or not to kick Amy in the shins right now. Luckily, something else grabbed Amy’s attention. She pointed across the crowd. “What do you think’s going on over there?”

Brock stood away from the main group of people, pleading with someone from Browning who I knew I’d seen before. We couldn’t hear them over the noise, but Brock looked upset. The man put his hand on Brock’s shoulder and said something. Brock dropped his head. After the man patted his shoulder, Brock trudged away.

“I have no idea,” I said.

Amy spun toward her friends and gossiped about what had just happened.

Before I even had time to think about what I’d seen, Mr. Hudson’s voice boomed and quieted the buzz of the crowd. “Gather around! It’s time to announce the Inventions Contest winners.”

We found Carina as everyone moved toward the performance platform where Mr. Hudson stood, bullhorn in hand. “There were some great inventions this year!” he said. “That means many people did what?”

Everyone called out, “Worked with their strengths!”

Mr. Hudson read the names of the winners in Fours & Fives and in Sixes & Sevens, then named the overall winner for lower grades. All three kids came to the front, beaming, to get their medals. The cheer from the crowd was deafening.

“And for Eights and Nines,” Mr. Hudson said through the bullhorn, “the winner is Amanda Allen for her automatic chicken scratch spreader. For Tens and Elevens, the winner is Livi Johnson for her recipe for ink. And for Twelves and Thirteens”—I grabbed Aaren’s hand and squeezed tight—“the winner is Brock Sances, for his bale grabber.”

I looked to Aaren, and then to Carina. “Brock had a good invention?” I hadn’t paid attention after mine failed.

Aaren nodded. “Yep. He did good.” Then his focus went back to Mr. Hudson. I could tell he still hoped to be the overall winner for middle grades. He’d won it once before, so we both knew it was possible. I crossed my fingers for him.

“And the overall winner for middle grades is Charles Beckinwood, for his wheeled seed-planting invention.”

Aaren’s shoulders fell. I didn’t know anyone who was more of a perfectionist than Aaren. He didn’t care if something took all his free time, as long as it turned out well. Especially if it was anything science-related. I knew he felt terrible, and that made me feel terrible.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Me too,” Carina said. “You deserved to win.”

“Brock Sances?” Mr. Hudson called his name through the bullhorn. Everyone searched the crowd for him. Once it was clear Brock wasn’t there, Mr. Hudson called out the winners for Fourteens & Fifteens and Sixteens & Seventeens, along with the overall winner for upper grades.

“Because we had so many outstanding inventions this year, we added two new awards.” Mr. Hudson held up a nine-inch stone carving of someone holding a large bowl over his head that was probably meant to represent our valley. “One goes to the overall winner for kids, and one to the overall winner for adults. For kids, this award goes to Aaren Grenwood for his medicine thermometer.”

I screamed and jumped up and down along with Carina and Brenna. Aaren looked stunned, relieved, and thrilled all at the same time. He was in such a daze, he barely managed to give me Brenna’s hand before he stumbled to the front to collect his award. The crowd hollered their appreciation of Aaren’s invention as he walked back to us, his grin bigger than any I’d seen.

When Mr. Hudson was almost through announcing the winners in all the categories for adults, I heard a
psst
.

I looked at Carina. “They’re starting the Twister after this,” she said. “If we leave now, we can be first in line.”

“Wanna get in line?” I asked Aaren. He gave me a look
like he couldn’t believe I’d suggest something as wrong as missing out on science-related awards, so I sighed and shook my head no.

“This was a great year for inventions.” Mr. Hudson put his hand on the six-foot-high stone obelisk that sat in the middle of the platform. “Within the next week, everyone who has won today will have their names carved into the Difference of One stone. Congratulations, winners!”

Aaren’s name would be carved for the fourth time—twice as a grade-level winner, once as a middle-grade winner, and now once as an overall winner. When Aaren looked like he’d finished basking in his win enough to leave, Carina and I pulled him and Brenna to the Twister. There was way too much fun to be had to spend any more time on inventions.

Apparently Carina wasn’t the only one with the idea to get to the Twister early. Lots of kids beat us to the line next to the twelve-foot circle of wood, raised by a rod in the middle, with a three-foot wall around the outside. Ten kids sat inside at a time, their backs against the wall, while the older kids and adults spun the circle as fast as they could. Trying to stay standing when you got off the ride was almost as much fun as the way the spinning sucked you to the wall during the ride.

“Puppy!” Brenna squealed as Holden Newberry got in line behind us, cradling his dog.

Holden put his dog on the ground, and Aaren let go of Brenna’s hand as she bent down to pet him.

“I’m gonna lift my butt when they first start spinning,” Holden said. “Then when it gets going fast, I’m gonna lift my legs to see if the force will hold me off the ground like I’m floating!”

“We have to try it,” I said to Aaren and Carina as we moved forward in the line. “We’ll see who can stay up the longest.”

I could almost feel my guts being pulled backward as I watched the kids on the Twister go around and around. If only there weren’t so many ahead of us in line. The performances might start before we got a second turn.

“Brenna, do you—” I was going to ask if she wanted to sit between Aaren and me, but when I turned around, she was gone.

“Brenna?” Aaren called out, his voice panicked.

“My dog!” Holden said. “He’s gone, too!”

The four of us left the line and searched for Brenna. The crowds were so thick, I couldn’t see her at all. Aaren and I ran to the solar ovens, to the inventions tables, then to the obelisk. Nothing. We were about to leave to search by the horses when Aaren froze. “The river!”

We rushed all the way to the bank, hoping to see the kids she’d begged to play with, but the bank was empty. Aaren ran left, toward the mill, but something about the path to my right made me take that direction. I didn’t think she’d go past the clump of trees at the edge of the river since it was a natural boundary, but I went past them
anyway, calling her name every step of the way. A few hundred feet down the path, I finally saw her, walking toward me with Holden’s puppy in her arms. Two men I’d never seen before walked close behind her.

“Hope!” Brenna called as she walked to me. Seeing her by the men sent a chill up my spine, but she had a smile on her face, so I guessed everything was okay.

“Your friend got a little lost,” the taller man said.

It was a strange thing for him to say, since Brenna knew all of White Rock and he obviously didn’t know his way around at all. There wasn’t any part of the Harvest Festival near the lake, but that was the direction they’d come from.

I grabbed Brenna’s hand. “Are
you
lost?” I asked the man.

He smiled, and his voice came out smooth and confident. “Not at all. We were just admiring your beautiful valley.”

The leathery look of his skin made it hard to guess if he was thirty or fifty. His sun-bleached light brown hair was wavy on top and brushed away from his forehead. The most noticeable thing about him, though, was a scar that ran from his right temple down to his jaw. Both men were thin and muscled, their clothes well worn but clean. The second man was shorter and had darker hair and skin.
He smiled, too. I was positive I hadn’t seen either of them when we greeted the people from Browning at the tunnel yesterday.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

The taller man gestured over the river. “A little town called Bergen, about eighty miles south of here.” He paused for a moment while I stared at him, then he added, “The name’s Mickelson. We came to talk with your city about possible trade.”

I’d heard about Bergen. Sometimes a group left White Rock to trade with another town, or to search for things left behind from before the bombs. They always stayed in Bergen when they traveled in that direction. And sometimes people from Bergen stopped in White Rock to bring news or to offer trades.