Storm Warning (Paperback)

Chapter One

Storm Novelo bolted straight up in bed. Her thoughts were spinning too fast for her to grab onto them. She'd forgotten something. She was sure of that.

She struggled to line up the facts. Storm was all about facts. For example, today was the day after Memorial Day. Fact: Memorial Day was first called Decoration Day. Fact: Since World War I, it has also been called Poppy Day.

No help there.

Storm shoved her long, straight black hair out of her face and squinted at the morning light peeking through her window. What was she forgetting? Homework? Only nine school days left in the year. Nine more days as a freshman at Big Lake High School. Four of the days were makeups because Big Lake, Ohio, had used up all its snow days by early January.

But Storm would never feel this kind of panic over homework.

She yawned. If she could just go back to sleep ...

No way. Storm couldn't shake the feeling that she'd forgotten something major. It was more than a feeling. Close to a fact. A subconscious fact. Hadn't she just read last week that most memory lies in the subconscious? It was a great article too. About how seven items can pass through the gate of a person's short-term memory, but if you add the eighth, it's too much. And how even for seven items, the subconscious stores them better with a system, like memory hooks or mnemonics. Like remembering the colors in the rainbow as "Roy G. Biv," for red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.

This was so not helping. What had she forgotten?

Her blog? Storm was part of a blogging team made up of her best friends. They worked together on a website called That's What You Think! She'd promised Gracie, their chief blogger, that she'd have her trivia column written by this afternoon's blog meeting. She didn't have it yet, but she would. Trivia came easily to Storm Novelo. So that wasn't it.

Then she got it. "The Mexican hat plant!"

Bounding out of bed, she raced for the door. Her shin slammed into her mother's sewing machine. "Ow!"

She pressed on, shoving aside the maze of clothes hanging like drapes all around the tiny room. Storm's bedroom served as her mother's sewing room. Since Mom had taken the customer-service job at the supermarket, the turnaround on mending jobs had gotten longer. More and more clothes kept piling up.

Storm flung open the bedroom door and dashed to the kitchen.

Her mother set down the teakettle. "Storm? What's the matter?"

"I forgot!" Storm cried, crossing the kitchen for the little makeshift greenhouse. "Dad's plant! I forgot to bring it in last night."

"Oh, Storm." Her mother didn't need to say more. Her tone said it all. Storm's father did not need this.

Bringing in that plant was the only thing Dad had asked her to do for him. He'd babied his Mexican hat plant for months. That plant was just about the only thing he'd shown interest in for weeks. He'd carried the planter from the yard to the greenhouse and back again dozens of times, depending on the forecast.

But Memorial Day was his busiest day of the whole year, the day he had to make sure the cemetery lawns stayed groomed and clean. So he'd asked Storm to see to his plant. When he'd left for the cemetery, he'd reminded her to bring in the hat plant because the forecast called for severe thunderstorms, possibly mixed with hail. For once, the weathermen had gotten it right.

Storm and her blogging buddies had spent the evening eating ice cream at Sam's Sammich Shop, the local hangout owned by Samantha Lind. Annie Lind, Sam's daughter, had driven everybody home when it started to sprinkle. Storm had been dropped off last, and the sky had opened just as she stepped out of Annie's car. She'd had to run through giant raindrops mixed with tiny ice pellets.

And still she'd forgotten all about Dad's plant.

Storm slid on the waxed kitchen linoleum as she made the turn into the tiny greenhouse. It smelled like a jungle-musty, but fresh. Her dad had built it himself out of plastic and used lumber. The greenhouse opened onto their small backyard.

There in the corner of the yard stood Storm's dad, his back toward her. He was leaning over what was left of his favorite plant.

Dear God, Storm prayed, wishing she'd thought to pray sooner, please make Dad's plant be okay. Make me be okay too, while you're at it. Storm was still new at being a Christian, and she didn't think she was a very good one yet. If she had been, she wouldn't have forgotten something that meant so much to her dad, especially when he was like this.

Storm hadn't seen her dad this depressed since they'd made the move to Ohio. As far as she could tell, the depression had crept up on him, beginning a few weeks ago and gripping him tighter every day.

And now she'd done this, making everything worse.

Mud squished through her toes as she made her way to the back of the yard. Her dad didn't turn around. He showed no sign of knowing she was there. Instead, Eduardo Novelo stared into the white planter, his back bent sideways at exactly the same angle as the scraggly plant, as if the night's storm had been too much for both of them.

"Dad, I'm so sorry."

He didn't move. He didn't look at her.

"I didn't mean to leave it outside. I got back late. And I just forgot." Her excuse sounded lame, even to her. "I should have brought it in before I went out." She wanted him to turn around, to yell at her. Shout. Scream. Anything would be better than this silence.

"Dad?" She took another step closer. "Will you forgive me? Can I do something to make it up to you? I'll work extra hours at the supermarket, okay? I can earn enough money to buy another plant just like this one." She tried to remember what he'd said about the plant. He called it a Mexican hat plant, but it had other names, like mother of thousands, and a longer name she couldn't remember. She thought he'd ordered it from somewhere down South.

Without looking at her, he said, "It is my fault. I was a fool to try."

"To try what? To try to grow it here?" Storm asked. Sometimes she had to answer her own questions when he was like this. "Why? Because it's too cold in Ohio? Too wet?"

It was a long time before he spoke. Storm waited because she didn't know what else to do. "In Texas," he began, his voice barely above a whisper, "it grows like a cactus flower. I just thought ..."

"You thought you could grow it in the greenhouse," Storm said, finishing his sentence because he didn't seem to have the strength to finish it himself.

"In Florida," he continued, "it grows so freely that some think it is a weed."

Storm knew that even if everybody else in the whole world considered that plant a weed, her dad didn't. He called dandelions flowers. If dandelions didn't grow so easily, he insisted, they would be considered rare and beautiful flowers. Although he pulled them out of other people's yards, he took great care to grow them in his own yard. He'd cultivated dandelions to frame their whole backyard. She glanced around at the dandelions and was surprised to see how overgrown everything looked.

"It doesn't matter," he said, finally.

But it did matter. Storm knew it did, as much as anything could matter to her dad now. What she didn't understand was why it mattered so much. "Is the flower from Mexico?" she asked. There had been two blooms on the plant before the storm, and they really did look like Mexican hats, with tall centers and low petals that made the brim of a hat.

Her father shook his head. Storm caught a glimpse of his face, wrinkled and brown from hours in the sun doing yard work for rich people. "The flower comes from Madagascar," he said softly.

"But your parents grew them when you were a boy, right?" She was in dangerous territory now. She could almost see her dad growing smaller, sinking into himself. Her dad's mother had died before Storm was born. His father, Storm's only living grandparent, had never visited them. And they had never gone to Chicago to see him, at least not that Storm remembered. He'd remarried and had a whole new family now.

"I should have kept the plant in the greenhouse," her dad said. He'd turned his back on Storm again, so it sounded like he was talking to the leafless stalk of a plant. "I just wanted it to see the sun."

"Time for breakfast!" Storm's mother called from the kitchen, her voice loud and clear through the kitchen window.

Storm waited for her dad, but he didn't seem to hear. Usually, whenever Storm's mother called, her dad hopped to it. Tina Novelo was small, like Storm, not much over five feet and not a pound over one hundred. But she had an air of authority and strength about her. Storm's dad called her his Mayan princess.

Storm touched her dad's arm. "Dad? We better-"

"Storm, you'll be late for school!" her mother shouted. Storm started to say something to her dad, then gave up and walked inside. She wasn't hungry, but she sat at the kitchen table anyway. "Won't Dad even come in for breakfast?" she asked.

Her mother poured hot water into an old teacup, the cream paint cracked and stained. "Your father isn't hungry."

Storm hadn't seen her dad eat in three days, but she didn't question her mom. Her parents knew each other too well. They'd had a secret language her whole life, a way of communicating without words. Her mom knew her dad better than Storm would ever know either one of them.

"Why is he acting like this?" Storm asked, sipping the orange juice set on the table for her. There were three glasses of juice set out. A full Spanish omelet sat waiting in the pan on the stove. Maybe Tina Novelo didn't know her husband as well as she thought she did.

"Your father is depressed. You know that."

"But why? I don't know why."

Her mother sat down at the small kitchen table. "There's not always a why to know."

Storm waited for more, but she didn't get it. Finally, she went to her room and got dressed for school. She chose bright yellow-a yellow peasant blouse and a yellow peasant skirt. She reached for her yellow flowered sandals, the ones she'd bought at a garage sale for a dollar. Then she thought better of it. Why wear a built-in reminder of the flower disaster?

Storm studied herself in the mirror as she swept up her straight hair into a ponytail. She'd hoped bright yellow would change her mood. But so far, it wasn't working. She couldn't get the picture out of her head, the image of her dad slumping like the wind-broken stem.

(Continues...)