Olivia Brophie and the Sky Island Read online

  Chuck nodded. “All right. A deal’s a deal.” He turned back toward the house. When he looked back, Hoolie had already returned to the woods. “Come on in.”

  Olivia pushed past Chuck with a wild strength and smoothness that was almost feline. She practically flew into the kitchen. Glasses and plates rattled onto the counter as she poured orange juice. After gulping down the glass, she poured some milk. Then Coke. Somehow between all of that drinking, she had made a gigantic ham and turkey sandwich piled high with cheese, lettuce, mustard, and more cheese.

  “You didn’t say anything about taking food,” Chuck protested.

  Silently, Olivia’s eyes shot over his head like bullets. With a mouthful of sandwich, she pushed past him again carrying a pound of cheese, a bag of iced oatmeal cookies, and a box of strawberry popsicles. She opened the front door, stepped onto the porch and launched the food into the woods.

  “What are you doing?” Chuck screeched. But the crashing in the bushes answered him. The food was for Hoolie. After throwing him a giant can of mixed nuts, a full tub of moose track ice cream, and a jar of peanut butter, Olivia started making another sandwich for herself.

  “What a pig.” Chuck squirmed. Then he looked Olivia in the eye. “And you smell like one too.”

  Olivia stopped chewing for a second and sniffed her arm. “I need a shower.”

  “You sure do.”

  Olivia’s eyes scanned the house. Finding the stairs, she was halfway up before Chuck could say anything. This was also not part of his plan.

  Olivia yelled down to Chuck, “Bring me some clean clothes and leave them by the door.” She locked the bathroom door and let out a gigantic breath. For a moment, at least, she could relax. She walked over to the sink and sank her hands into the clean, flowing water. She washed under her eyes with the water, letting it run down her face and onto her shirt. She looked up and stopped in shock. In the mirror above the sink, she didn’t even recognize her reflection. The girl in the mirror was gaunt to the point of skeletal. Her eyes darted quickly, like a bird’s. For some reason, her eyes were pale blue, like a chicory bloom. They had changed color somewhere between Florida and Texas. Her face was covered with dirt from five states. The necklace of coral snake beads and a single green beetle shone in the light. Olivia pressed her lips together. This is not what she had expected when she had decided to run away from the Corcoran house. She had expected an adventure to be sure. But this was long and grueling. She took off her backpack and reached into the front pocket. Her fingers felt around until they curled around a chalky, shivering lump.

  “Squeak!” Squirt’s voice was exhausted and weak. Olivia filled the sink halfway with water and dropped him in. She had run out of water for him awhile ago. Even when she had extra water, she had to be very careful. Her accident with the Pearl back in Junonia had raised the freezing temperature of water. If Squirt’s water dropped below sixty-eight degrees, he would be trapped in a block of ice. He might even die. After a few minutes of soaking, Squirt perked up. He slid around the sink like a race car. Olivia threw a cookie and leftover crust from her sandwiches into the water. She didn’t know how much food he needed to survive, but she did know that he never turned it down. For such a tiny thing, he was insatiable. Squirt pounced on the food, sloshing the water over the edge of the sink.

  Olivia peeled the dirty clothes from her skin. The hot shower felt better than she had hoped. Rivers of mud and grime swirled down the plug hole. Her hair suddenly felt free and light. She never used to really pay attention to her Dad when he stood outside the bathroom yelling instructions, “Soap behind your ears,” and “Don’t forget your feet.” But this shower was different. Dad’s old advice was brilliant now. The soap felt beautiful. She couldn’t stop rubbing it between her toes and along the top of her back. She washed her face several times before the hot water started to run out. Reluctantly, she put down the thin stub of soap, turned off the shower, and started to dry off.

  Slowly cracking the bathroom door, Olivia glanced down the hallway. Sure enough, next to the door sat a pile of clean clothes. She regretted wearing the clothes of a brat, but she had purposely picked him for his height. She was positive his clothes would fit. She slipped into the jeans and a white T-shirt with green sleeves. Clean socks felt so soft against her sore feet. After tying her blue sneakers, she stepped back into the hallway.

  Chuck sat in the middle of the hall, cross-legged. He stood up when she came out. “Are you done? You better not have used all the hot water.”

  “Can I have another shirt or two?”

  “No way. That wasn’t part of the deal.”

  “Chuck. Please. I don’t have anything.”

  “No. I said no. Those are already my best skateboarding clothes.”

  “You can make this easy or you can make this difficult,” Olivia threatened. She had heard those words on a TV show.

  “No.”

  Olivia shoved past Chuck. Even though they were the same height, Olivia was far stronger than he was. Weeks of running in the wild had made her lithe and tough. She started opening doors until she found his room.

  “Transformers?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Transformer curtains? And bed covers?” Olivia could barely keep herself from bursting out laughing.

  “It’s my Mom’s idea.”

  “Sure it is.”

  “It is.” Chuck’s face reddened with rage.

  Olivia threw open the closet doors and shoved several more T-shirts and a pair of jeans into her backpack.

  “Hey, that’s enough. I thought you wanted a phone anyways. My Mom is going to be home soon and you better be outta here. The phone is in the study room.” Chuck’s eyes narrowed. He was nervous, but this was finally the start of his plan. He actually didn’t care how many shirts she took. He was about to get it all back.

  “All right, where is it?”

  “Down here,” he bounded down the hallway and opened a door. The study room was completely empty except for a small desk and chair. A dark green carpet covered the floor. There were no curtains or pictures on the walls. A single light glowed in the ceiling. Chuck had placed a phone on the desk.

  “Here you go. Like I said, make it quick.”

  Olivia entered the room and sat down at the desk. She grabbed the phone and dialed her dad in Sun Prairie. The obnoxious, out-of-service tone blasted through the earpiece. When is he going to pay his bill? She took a slow, deep breath.

  Olivia dialed another number.

  “Hello?” a familiar voice picked up.

  “Doug, is that you?”

  “Olivia! Where are you?”

  “Keep it down. Is your Mom around?”

  “She’s in the garage. Where are you?”

  “I . . . I’m not sure. I’m in Texas somewhere. How’s Gnat?”

  “Who knows what he thinks? He’s playing video games.”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you want to talk to him?”

  “In a minute. What’s happening?”

  “You are all over the news. Not just Orlando news either. National news. Sometimes, they show video of you and Hoolie running from a helicopter in Mississippi.”

  “I remember that. I thought they were going to catch us.”

  “Everyone is looking for you. People keep coming here and asking questions.”

  “What kind of people?”

  “Police. Firemen. 60 Minutes.”

  “60 Minutes? That TV show?” Olivia remembered her dad liked to watch 60 Minutes when he made Sunday brats and kraut. She couldn’t stand watching it though. It was a real snooze-fest.

  “Yeah.”

  “Did my dad call yet?”

  “I don’t think so. The cops even said they tried to find him. Everyone in class is talking about you.”

  “Are the moron twins leaving you alone for once?”

  Doug didn’t answer.

  “They’re bothering you again. I can tell. I’ll take care of them when I get back.”

  “Just . . . just don’t. Everything’s fine.”

  “It’s not fine.”

  “Everyone is moving south,” he was almost shouting trying to change the subject, “to be where the water isn’t frozen. They can melt water on the stove up in the north, but it isn’t enough. It isn’t raining. Almost all of the atmospheric vapor has precipitated out. The crops won’t grow. Some towns the army had to take over because people were fighting at the stores.” Olivia couldn’t believe her ears. “Oh, and I found out what sky island is.”

  “What? Where is it?” All of this time, she didn’t have a clue where they were going. Hoolie always seemed to know where to run, like he had a GPS system inside his brain.

  “It’s in Arizona.”

  “Arizona? That’s like half a world away.” Her hands almost dropped the phone. “There’s no way I can go that far. Are you sure there isn’t a sky island closer? Like maybe in Texas?”

  “That’s what the Internet says. It’s the name for a mountain isolated from other mountains by the desert. I don’t know how you are going to find the right one. There are lots.”

  Olivia was so intent on the phone that she hadn’t noticed the study room door slowly closing behind her. Finally, with a click, the door locked. She was trapped. “I have to go. I’ll call you later.” Olivia leaped out of the chair and started pulling on the door knob. It wouldn’t budge. She scrambled to the window. The locks on the window had been bolted shut.

  “Chuck! Chuck, let me out!” she screamed.

  “No way!” Chuck yelled triumphantly. “I know who you are!”

  “Chuck, you don’t know what you are doing. Let me out!” She fought against the unforgiving door.

  “There is no escape. Haw yeee, I did it. I reall
y did it,” Chuck taunted. He knew there was no escape because the study room was built specifically to keep him from escaping. The locks on the windows were disabled and even if he broke through the glass, it would be a two-story fall to the patio. The door itself only locked from the outside. Every evening, his mother would lock him inside the study room with his homework for one hour. This room is a study prison. Months ago, he had torn up a corner of the carpet and hid a portable video game under there. It gave him something productive to do while the nightly sixty minutes of incarceration ticked by. Thankfully, Mom never actually checked to see if he completed his homework. Regardless, there was no escape from the study room, at least from the inside.

  “I know who you are,” Chuck taunted again. “Everyone is looking for you. The Bear Girl is what they call you on the news. The police, the FBI, probably even the KGB are looking for you. I’m going to be famous.”

  “Chuck, you don’t understand. Let me out. Please. Before it’s too late.”

  “Never. I’ll bet there is a reward for catching the Bear Girl.”

  “No!”

  “How much is the reward? Tell me and I might let you out,” Chuck lied.

  Olivia’s fists wheeled against the door. Slamming and pounding. The house shook. An enormous crash reverberated from downstairs. Olivia squealed, “Let me out now!”

  Her cries were drowned out by what sounded like a series of explosions on the first floor. Sofas, tables, lamps flew against the walls. Doors splintered and folded in. Fabric ripped with long, tearing shears. TVs launched like boulders. Glass blew into a billion shards. Even the old upright piano thundered onto the floor.

  “Hoolie, no!” Olivia called out. But Hoolie’s rage only intensified when he heard her voice. Every piece of furniture was smashed and thrown as the frantic bear searched for her. Finally he saw the stairs and in two smooth leaps, he reached the upper hallway. Chuck’s eyes flared open as he stumbled backwards. There was nowhere for him to run. He was at the end of the hallway and the study room was the last door.

  “Hoolie, stop it!” Olivia screamed.

  Hoolie rumbled down the hallway like a runaway dump truck, bouncing against the walls, knocking the pictures off their nails. Chuck curled up in the corner, whimpering. With a gigantic blast, the study door flew across the room, breaking through the bolted window. He rushed up to Olivia, sniffing her all over and rubbing his large head against her side.

  “Hoolie, what have you done?” she scolded. She couldn’t be too mad at him for protecting her though. “We have to get out of here.” Olivia grabbed her backpack and Squirt from the bathroom and led Hoolie down the hallway and stairs.

  “You can get up now, Chuck. Can’t say I didn’t warn you,” she called up to him. All she could hear was a faint, wavering wail.

  The first floor was a complete disaster. Every room lay in shambles. Splintered wood crunched underfoot. Carpeting curled up in large piles. A thin smoke of pulverized drywall hung in the air. Olivia stuffed her backpack full with as much food as she could fit, grabbed a six-pack of Coke, and handed Hoolie a bag of bagels. She filled a large Tupperware bowl and Doug’s thermos with water. Part of her felt bad for Chuck as she stepped through the jagged opening of what was once the front door. But she knew they had to run as far away from Five Corners, Texas, as possible.

  3

  Aji el Diablo

  Days passed while Olivia and Hoolie snuck through the scattered suburbs of Wheeler County. Once in a while she heard helicopters crisscrossing the sky above them and police cars roaring down the rural roads. But for the most part, it was business as usual. Unless absolutely necessary, they traveled at night and slept during the day. Olivia assumed that Hoolie had never been to Texas, yet he navigated the secret bear highways with the confidence of a local. Sometimes, Olivia walked behind Hoolie. Sometimes she climbed on top of his back and fell asleep. The gentle hydraulic rocking of his large shoulders always made her drowsy.

  Resting for the day in a thick stand of mesquite and cottonwood, she thought about all of the places they have travelled through. Lyonia, Florida, seemed a lifetime away. There had been frantic races across bridges that spanned miles of open water. There was the time she first learned how to calmly enter a small grocery store and walk out with enough stolen food to keep them going for another day. There had been countless close calls with capture. There had been a wildfire rushing up behind and chasing them across the countryside.

  There were more wildfires than Olivia could ever imagine. She knew it was because of the drought that she caused. She smelled smoke everywhere they went. Several times, they had to cross large patches of charred earth, the black dust kicking up behind them as they ran. The soil had turned to dust. Even the dry air was hard to breathe.

  Olivia slid the Pearl out of her backpack. The gentle blue glow rose up underneath the cottonwood leaves. Cicadas began to chirr in unison high in the treetops. In the weeks since leaving Lyonia, she had improved her ability to use the Pearl. Little things were starting to make sense. Once she discovered something, she could replicate those results over and over. She just needed to find the switches that controlled water. She pulled out the Tupperware container with frozen water in it. The temperature was in the low sixties, so the water sat there like a chunk of vinyl. Frozen, but not cold. Her fingers trickled across the Pearl like hungry spiders. The Pearl unlatched and opened in five sections like a sliced orange. Olivia contemplated her next move. Every chance she got, she tried a different combination of switches. If the water stayed frozen, then she immediately changed back the switches to try something new. Eventually, she figured, she would discover the right switch for returning the thirty-two-degree transitional temperature of water. Thin arcs of green electricity spun off the surface of the Pearl, intensifying as she turned a conundrum dial. She had found the dial days ago and it was strangely relaxing to watch the green energy bolts zip in jagged paths into the air.

  “Hoolie, should I try the wood switch?”

  Hoolie stared at Olivia and chomped his jaws with a loud huff.

  “Boy, I wish you could talk sometimes.” Olivia furrowed her brow and stared straight into his eyes. “Come on. Talk. I know you can. I know you can understand me. Now, say something.”

  Hoolie stared back, then dropped his massive head to the ground. He was tired. Very tired. He understood what she was asking. Bears and humans speak the same language. They just do it in different ways. A sensitive observer can communicate very well with a bear. But bears can’t actually talk, of course. Hoolie looked up at Olivia.

  “OK OK. You can’t talk. But you can understand me and sometimes I just need to talk. All right, let’s try the wood . . . switch!” With a quick twist, she flipped the control and waited a second. The water in the Tupperware stayed frozen. The cicadas went silent in the trees. They started dropping like hailstones to the ground around her. By the thousands they fell, paralyzed in the brown leaves. Every beetle, every mosquito, fly, grasshopper, tree cricket, lacewing, dragonfly, thrip, moth, plant hopper, and caterpillar in the trees fell as if they all died in the same instant. Olivia quickly flipped the switch back to its original position. One by one, the insects stretched their legs and righted themselves, dazed from the fall. Olivia was surprised by the great variety and colors of the insects around her. Bright green mantids, midnight blue beetles, tiny golden flies all began to wake up. Olivia loved insects because she had learned to control their behavior with the Pearl. It was how she had signaled Chuck with the fireflies in his backyard. Her fingers moved to another segment. After a blur of fingers and switches, she paused and slowly turned a dial.

  The cicadas started to chirr in rhythm. Katydids buzzed the counter notes. After a few beats, the crickets chimed into a soft melody. The locusts sawed their sharp violins. Hundreds of tiny yellow moths twirled into the air, dancing in the leafy light. In their midst, tiny green moths hovered in a heart shape.

  “Ready, Hoolie? One . . . two . . . THREE!” And with another switch and whoosh, every insect launched itself into the air with a flurry of wings. Olivia laughed. “Whooo hoo!” The insects soared like a small tornado up into the sky, then settled back down to their simple lives.