The Girl Who Fell Out of the Sky Read online

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  CHAPTER

  1

  Jimmy Joe Miller sucked on a stale piece of gum and dangled his baseball bat between his hands. Keeping to the thin shade cast off by the awning of Jameson’s Dry Goods and Feed, he squinted his eyes and surveyed Main Street—not a soul to be seen.

  There wasn’t much to do on a stinking hot day like this in Lowland County, and Jimmy Joe was out scavenging for a boy his size or smaller with a mind to play ball. Of course, he could ask one of his four older brothers, but being the youngest meant they always bested him, and Jimmy Joe wanted to win. It wasn’t fun when you lost all the time, and it rankled him when they teased, which they did without mercy.

  Taking the tip of his tongue, he fussed at his gum and then blew into it. A plump bubble took shape as a horsefly buzzed up, bothering him. In no time flat, Jimmy Joe was swinging his bat wildly at it, his face puffing and red.

  “What in Sam Hill are you doing?” said a voice, unexpectedly coming out of nowhere.

  Startled, Jimmy Joe dropped his bat and spun around to discover a girl inches behind him.

  He didn’t like the look of this girl. She had sharp blue eyes that were hard to turn away from. Also, she was messy. She had on a pair of worn blue jeans with a rip over the left knee, and her T-shirt had stains: ketchup, by the looks of it. Her brown hair was arranged in tangled braids that were almost completely undone, with pieces of her hair sticking up about her head like they had somewhere else to be. Plus, she smelled bad. Well, he couldn’t actually smell her, but he was pretty sure that she’d smell like bird poop if he got close enough to get a whiff.

  Also, she was floating three feet off the ground.

  Jimmy Joe picked up his bat and took a step away from her. “Leave me alone, Piper McCloud.”

  “Suit yourself.” Piper shrugged, then floated away and touched down on the steps of Jameson’s store. Jimmy Joe watched her take out a couple of sheets of paper. At the Community Notice Board she relocated a MASSEY FERGUSON TRACTOR FOR SALE from the center and placed her notice in the prime spot.

  Jimmy Joe was careful to keep a safe distance.

  There was an unwritten law in Lowland County not to go near Piper McCloud. She was strange—dangerous, even—and it could be catching. There was a very good reason why folks said this:

  Piper McCloud could fly.

  Piper’s parents, Betty and Joe McCloud, had tried to hide her when she was small, but the older she got, the more difficult it was to hide a girl who liked to fly. For a while Piper was sent away to a special school that was supposed to fix her, but, as far as anyone could tell, it only made things worse. Not only that, but when she returned from the school, she brought home with her a pack of friends, each one stranger than the next, and the whole passel of them holed up at the McCloud farm, where they were up to untold mischief, or so the good folk in Lowland County thought. They didn’t even have the decency to pretend to be normal anymore. Jimmy Joe’s mother, Millie Mae, in particular, was affronted by their disturbing behavior.

  “It’s not right. It ain’t the way of things, and they know it,” Millie Mae would flap. “You mark my words, Jimmy Joe: no good will come of them kids. They’re wicked, and the stars above has their eyes on them.”

  As Jimmy Joe watched Piper at the notice board, he could see no sign of her wickedness, only her ineptitude. She was dropping tacks willy-nilly, trying to pick them up and keep the notice on the board all at the same time. She might be able to fly, but she sure as heck couldn’t tack a piece of paper up on a board.

  Watching her made Jimmy Joe feel antsy and superior. “You gotta hold ’em at an angle,” he called out. “Don’t drive ’em in straight like that or they won’t go.”

  She took his advice, but her tack tumbled off again.

  “Shoot.” Jimmy Joe threw his bat down. “Get outta the way! If I don’t do it, it’ll never get done.”

  Snatching the tacks out of Piper’s hand, he pushed her aside and set about jamming one tack into each corner of the flyer. When he was finished, he stood back to take a look at his work, and it was only then that he read the words on the paper itself.

  Flying Lessons

  Have you ever wanted to fly?

  Now is your chance.

  I can teach anyone to fly.

  I have years of flying experience. Beginners welcome!

  Contact PIPER McCLOUD

  Jimmy Joe felt tricked. “What’s this?”

  “Flying lessons!” Piper said brightly. “I’ll start out with lessons, but maybe in time I can have a whole flying school!”

  “No one wants your fool lessons.” He snatched up his bat and walked away. “No one cares anything about flying.”

  “Sure they care!” Piper followed him, bubbling with excitement. “Who wouldn’t want to fly? You can get places faster and see things from up high that you can’t see when you’re on the ground. When the breeze is blowing, it lifts you up, up, up.”

  There she went with all her talking. Jimmy Joe knew better than to listen, and he waved her away like she was a gnat. Or something lower than a gnat. “That’s not true. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  Piper flew over him and landed in front. He made sure not to slow down and that forced her to fly backward.

  “I’ll tell you this,” she said. “One time I was flying over the Grand Canyon, and this condor with wings bigger than my whole body came flying up to me.” She spread her arms out wide, causing Jimmy Joe to get a vivid image in his mind’s eye of the bird and what it must be like to fly through the Grand Canyon.

  “That condor wanted to get a good look at me, so I let ’em. That’s the truth. Another time, when I was flying over the Pacific Ocean, I saw something swimming way down low, and it was big and long, but it wasn’t a whale. It was something else. Something no one has ever seen before.”

  “Like what?”

  “I dunno.”

  “What it look like?”

  Piper checked to make sure no one was listening, and then she leaned in. “It looked like a sea monster.”

  Jimmy Joe snorted and pushed her out of the way. “Stop making things up.”

  “I could teach you flying tricks. I know lots of those.”

  A fully formed picture of himself diving through the air exploded like a kernel of popcorn inside Jimmy Joe’s head, and suddenly his heart began to beat faster. Maybe he’d look good flying. “What kind of tricks?”

  Piper threw her arms up. “All kinds. Whatever you want. I learned how to do this corkscrew that turns into a dive. It makes you dizzy, but it’s fun all the same.”

  Those blue eyes of hers were sparkling now in the way she made them shine so that you couldn’t look away.

  “Or, if you don’t want to go high, I can teach you to stay low to the ground and thread through trees. It’s tricky, and you gotta be real agile and keep your e
yes open.” She took his arm, pulling him. “C’mon, we can start your first lesson right now!”

  She was so close that her scent went right up his nostrils before he could stop it, but it wasn’t like he’d thought; she didn’t smell like bird poop or dirt or anything close to that. She smelled like getting a day off school when you weren’t expecting to. She smelled like catching a fly ball in your baseball mitt while everyone was watching and cheering. Her smell made him want to hit something.

  “I don’t want your fool lessons, and no one else will, neither. Get away. Git!”

  He pointed his finger at the ground like she was a mangy dog.

  “That’s not nice,” she said. “I was trying to be nice.” Her feet dropped down, hitting the dirt in the same sad way a balloon sinks a few days after a birthday party’s over. “You see, I got to thinking—wouldn’t it be something if I could get other folks to fly. That’s what I thought. When I’m flying up in the sky, it feels like pure freedom with a helping of happiness on top. I’m telling you there’s nothing else like it. I’d like other folks to know that feeling too, because … well”—Piper put her hand on her middle and pressed down against it—“to live your whole life and never know the joy of flying is about the saddest thing I can think of. Wouldn’t you like to know what flying feels like too?”

  For a moment, Piper’s words mesmerized Jimmy Joe, and he found himself nodding. He would like to know that, and so much more besides, but then what would his brothers think? Or his mother? Piper could talk and talk and talk and never stop. If he listened to her for one second more, he was going to do something—something bad. He turned his back to her, but she kept at it.

  “I’ll teach you for free,” she said. “It won’t cost you nothing.”

  “If it don’t cost nothing, then it’s not worth nothing.”

  Jimmy Joe started to hit the ground with his bat. Not light taps but violent, mean whacks, like he was hacking off his arm to get out of a trap before a bear ate him.

  “I DO NOT…”

  Whack.

  “WANT YOUR LESSONS…”

  Whack. Whack.

  “LEAVE ME BE!”

  Whack. Whack. Whack.

  That shut her piehole. Piper stood watching him and his bat with a curious expression on her face. Almost like she was thinking that he was the one who was strange.

  He kept at it for a while, but it was tiring hitting the ground with a baseball bat, and it made his arm hurt, so he stopped. Now he was panting and sweaty and hot, and it was all her fault.

  Apparently, she couldn’t care less how he was feeling and instead had taken to gazing off at something in the distance. He caught sight of a swirl of dust approaching at an impossible speed. Fast like a tornado. It was coming right at them.

  Jimmy Joe froze. Should he run? Duck? What in the heck could this thing be? It swerved sharply around a tree, turned the corner by Doc Bell’s office, and blazed a path right at their hearts. It was coming so fast there was no time to think.

  Then the swirl came up to Piper and stopped dead in front of her. The dust blew into Jimmy Joe’s face and wafted straight into his lungs. Before he had a chance to hack it out, he discovered that the swirl had turned into a girl; or, he realized, she wasn’t a swirl, but she’d been running so fast she had created one. Now she was standing right in front of Piper McCloud like it was the most natural thing in the world.

  “Conrad wants you,” said the girl to Piper. She was tall, a beanpole with shaggy dark hair covering half her face. She was older than they were; Jimmy Joe guessed fifteen.

  “Tell Conrad I’m busy right now, Myrtle.” Piper jammed her box of tacks into her pocket.

  “Conrad says it’s urgent.” The girl, Myrtle, shot a glance Jimmy Joe’s way. She flicked her head in his direction. “Who’s that?”

  “That’s Jimmy Joe Miller.”

  Myrtle kept looking at him like she had the right to look and not be polite. Like he was an animal in the zoo, and she’d bought a ticket and could stare for as long as she wanted. “Who?”

  “They’ve got the farm next to ours,” Piper said significantly.

  “You mean he’s a local?” Myrtle rolled her eyes and turned away; it was time to move on.

  Jimmy Joe could feel his fist tighten around the bat. Who did that girl think she was, treating him as though he wasn’t worth the time of day?

  “Conrad says we have to move out right away.”

  Piper looked up the street to the notice board on the side of the church. “But I’ve got to post a few more signs…”

  Myrtle’s eyebrow shot up to her hairline. “Max is at it again.”

  “Max? Again?” Piper sagged. “Darn it.”

  Jimmy Joe was standing right there, and they were talking like he didn’t exist. He should walk away and ignore them as they were ignoring him. But he was interested. What were these kids up to? Everyone in Lowland County would be dying to know. “Who’s Max?” he said.

  “None of your beeswax.” Myrtle kept her attention on Piper. “Conrad told me to tell you”—she cleared her throat and lowered her voice—“‘Piper, in case it’s slipped your mind, there’s a madman trying to destroy this world, and the only thing that stands between him and total chaos is us. So get back here, because you know we can’t do it without you.’” Myrtle put her hand to her throat and cleared it again.

  “Conrad doesn’t sound like that,” Piper said, and blew frustration out of her mouth and nose. “Fine. Tell Conrad I’m on my way.”

  Myrtle threw off a mock salute and disappeared. Or appeared to disappear. She ran so fast that one moment she was there, and the next a cloud of dust was whipping past Jimmy Joe, covering him for a second time. Jimmy Joe coughed and wiped dirt off his tongue with the back of his hand. What he wouldn’t give to run like that. If he could run fast, he’d be faster than that Myrtle, and then he’d leave her in a cloud of dust, and she could see how she liked it.

  Piper folded up her flyers and jammed them in her pocket along with the tacks. Then she began to float.

  The sight of her feet dangling in midair hit Jimmy Joe’s gut. “We don’t want you here. G’on home,” he spat.

  “How would you know if you want me or not? You don’t know me.”

  “I know all I need to know.”

  “You know what, Jimmy Joe?” Her hackles were up, and it was making her face flush pink. “I bet you would have been a good flier if you’d given it a chance. But now you’ll never know, ’cause you’re too scared to try. Like a ’fraidy-cat.”

  Jimmy Joe’s back snapped straight. “I’m no ’fraidy-cat.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  Throwing one arm up above her head, Piper rocketed into the air. In a matter of seconds she was so high she didn’t look like more than a dot in the sky. Then she came down, down, down—gunning for Jimmy Joe.

  What kind of outrageous things would an outrageous girl like her do? Jimmy Joe didn’t know, and he didn’t want to find out. He dropped to the dirt, throwing his arms over his head. She swooped down on him so close, the air above his ear felt the tickle of her not more than a paper’s slice away—that’s how close she came to him.

  “’Fraidy-cat,” she called out, flying away and not coming back.

  That was the final straw: Jimmy Joe jumped to his feet and ran to the bulletin board. He ripped Piper McCloud’s notice off the board, sending tacks flying in all directions. He crumpled the paper up and jammed it into his pocket.

  “Let’s see how many flying students you get now, Piper McCloud!” he called out, waving his fist in the air. Piper didn’t turn, probably couldn’t even hear him, she was up so high.

  Jimmy Joe stood in the middle of the empty street, his bat in one hand, his fist in the air. Darn Piper McCloud and her flying. And darn those others she was with too and all the fancy things they were probably getting up to at that very moment.

  The horsefly came back, buzzing around his head, but Jimmy Joe didn’t bother to swing at it. H
e’d lost all hope of finding someone to play ball with, let alone getting the chance to beat them. There was nothing for him to do and no one to do it with, and he might as well just go home. Allowing his bat to sag to the ground, he turned toward the Miller farm, walking slowly in the heat.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Piper flew like an arrow. She kept her arms close to her body, her legs straight, and her toes pointed. It was nothing for her to fly from Main Street to the McCloud farm, a couple of measly miles, less than a minute of her time.

  The sky was dotted with cumulus clouds, and Piper sliced through them, getting a cool misting on an unseasonably hot day. Below, the fields were turned over and ready for planting; spring had come to Lowland County.

  There wasn’t much to Lowland County. It was tucked up in the “pay it no mind” part of the country and consisted of forty-five assorted farms, painstakingly planted and tilled by the sweat of generations. Nothing in particular ever happened in Lowland County, and that’s the way the people there liked it. Folks got born, grew up, worked the land, went to church on Sunday, kept a keen eye on their neighbor’s business, and, in the fullness of time and without too much fuss, passed on to the promised land. That was the way of things.

  The McCloud farm was stuck smack-dab in the middle of Lowland County, and for generations the McClouds had done exactly as they were supposed to in the order they were supposed to do it. All of that changed the day Piper was born, and it changed even more when she brought her friends to live at the farm. Since the arrival of the brood of exceptional children, the McCloud farm had been transformed from struggling to prosperous. Acres of neatly planted crops, a herd of cattle, a healthy flock of sheep, and a teeming chicken coop were situated around a big old barn, tractor sheds, newly installed cow barns, and the little white clapboard house, which sported freshly painted blue shutters and flowered window boxes.

  It was the old barn that Piper flew toward, like a homing pigeon returning to the roost. From the outside it appeared to be no different from any other barn in Lowland County. In truth, it was the base of operations for the most sophisticated and unusual bunch of kids in the world.