The Cloud Crystal

 

 

Middle Grade fantasy

 

 

Mock cover coming soon . . .

 

 

Chapter 1:

FACES IN THE WINDOW

It never occurred to Gavin to ponder the sound of a falling object. Quite differently, it was insisted in his household not to think of things that waste brain cells. Math, English, random scientific experiments (including ones on his sister) were all thoroughly approved projects—or thoughts—to be thought about. But no one thinks about the sound of something falling. Just like no one really wonders if a falling tree makes a noise even if no one is in the forest to hear it. What an absurd thought, why of course it makes a noise.

That’s beside the point. On this particular afternoon, it wasn’t until a faint noise whistled above him through the onslaught of rain that such a thought popped into his brain. Just as he started to question if he was hearing things, a sharp pain jabbed his shoulder. The object bounced off and clattered to the sidewalk.

"Ow!” Gavin rubbed the spot on his shoulder, looking at what would be a whelp by next morning. “Jeez." His eyes welled, and he felt incredibly lucky it was raining. The last thing he needed was a witness.

His little sister by three years stopped her trot up ahead and turned. "What is it, now?" Each step back to Gavin sent a wave of rain-water up Lainey’s muddy leggings. She huffed and peered at him through soggy chunks of brown hair.

Gavin bent down and swept the object up in his cold, wet hand. He took that second of distraction to pull himself together. The sting still throbbed and he half wondered if his shoulder might fall off.

He looked up and blinked through splats of rain. Had the thing fallen out of an airplane? There were no buildings around high enough. Had someone chunked it for trash? He wasn’t sure, and it wasn’t like he could stop what he was doing and go find out. Wiping his eyes, he brought it closer for inspection. The rock almost passed as a gem, clear but dull, dirty, and the size of a quarter—maybe a little bigger. Tied around it securely was a thin leather string. It seemed an interesting find, not something he’d seen before, but really, a little too girly for his taste.

Gavin curled his lip up in slight disgust, not helping but to expect such disappointment. Lately, everything had been nothing but one big lump of it. "A necklace." Of all the things to fall out of the sky, why couldn't it be something cool? Like a Gordon McGrim action figure, or better yet, the sequel to the first book (which wasn't due for another four months)?

"Oh, gimmee!" Lainey snatched a handful of air and saved the move by crossing her arms instead. "Oh come on, like you plan on wearing it?"

Gavin shrugged, feeling his disappointment turn to something a little sweeter. Power. He now had something she didn’t, and in the Gimble household, that was a major win. "I haven't decided yet. Besides, I found it first."

Not that he’d had to search and actually find it. If anything, it had found him. Without another thought, he stuffed it into his backpack pocket, not feeling the least bit guilty at the pout falling over Lainey’s rain-soaked face. With grinning satisfaction, Gavin set off down the sidewalk.

Thunder rumbled into the soles of his shoes. The wind grew stronger, biting into his bones and forcing him to hug himself. By the time they arrived home, Gavin came to the conclusion he would’ve been better off going to school in his swimming trunks. His shoes squished over the welcome mat, his socks perhaps permanently suctioned to his skin, and rain drops slid down his cheeks and dripped off his nose. The Weather Man needed to be fired. It wasn’t a practical idea any how seeing as he’d surely, as his mother so often put it, “catch the death of him”.

Lainey ran inside first, immediately met by their mother.

“Not on the carpet.” His mom ushered Lainey to the side and stared at Gavin. “Well, hurry up, come in! You guys are soaked to the bone.” She growled. Gavin was pretty sure it was to herself, as his mom did that often. “I knew I should’ve sent an umbrella just in case. ‘All day sunshine’ my rear.” She continued to mumble to herself, Lainey giggling all the while.

His mother, always prepared, handed Lainey a towel and a set of clothes. “Hurry up and change.” She hefted a lump of Lainey’s hair, if it could be called that considering its lumpy, slimy-looking state, off her shoulders and waved her off.

Gavin watched his sopping wet sister leave a small river trailing behind her as she stepped into the half bathroom under the stairs.

“How was school?” His mom asked, then attacked him with a towel over the head, rubbing so fast he had to wonder if he’d have any hair left when she finished.

“Ag, mom, cut it out!” He pushed her hands away, running his own through his untamable, even curlier-now-wet, mop of hair. He didn’t fail to notice the downturn of her lips and irritated green eyes beneath a sheet of brown bangs.

He almost forgot about the necklace. “You’ll never guess what hap—”

“All yours, electro-boy.”

Gavin quirked a brow at the name. Lainey rolled her eyes and pointed to his hair. He mimicked her in return with his own eye rolling, though mentally felt a little childish stooping to her level. “Lame, Lainey. Very, very lame.” He brushed past her with a bundle of dry clothes and stepped into the bathroom.

“Wait one second,” said his mother.

Gavin flinched and stopped in his tracks at that tone of voice. The kind of tone that meant a grounding was coming, or even worse, all of his Gordon McGrim stuff would be packed and thrown in the attic for an unknown amount of time. What had he done, now?

His mom’s hands rested high on her hips and that all-knowing glare she was so good at giving set her face to match the tone. Uh oh. If only he could remember what he’d done wrong.

“You never answered. How was school?”

“Uh, erm.” Gavin fidgeted with the dripping cords of his brown hoodie. “Fine?”

She stepped over to the foyer table. Lainey stopped halfway up the stairs, no doubt to be nosey. Next to the skinny lamp on the fancy, Victorian style table sat a small pile of papers. Familiar papers. Research papers. Oh, man. Not good.

In one motion, she whisked them in her hands, and was suddenly in his face, waving them. “This was due today, wasn’t it?”

“Well—”

She smacked the papers on her thigh and sighed. “Really, Gavin? What excuse are you going to give me, now?”

“I forgot?”

“Good thing ‘forgot’ starts with an ‘F’, because I’m fairly sure that’s what you’re getting in history.”

Gavin felt like shrinking down to the size of an ant. No, a flee. Or even a cell, or an atom, or something really, really small. Why’d he always get her so mad? For once, he wished he could do something right. He swore he didn’t do those things on purpose.

“I’m sorry, Mom.”

“Sorry doesn’t cut it. Mrs. Brook has already called. If you don’t make at least an A on your next test, you’re failing the class. No television, no games, no friends over, and no reading, unless it’s for school.”

“What?”

“I’m serious, Gavin. Not until you’ve finished this.” She slapped the papers back down on the table.

“But I finished the papers! I just forgot to bring them.” Gavin gripped his dry clothes, now damp from his dripping hands, as if sheer strength of fingers gripping fabric would change his mother’s mind.

“Well, you’re going to start a new paper, and maybe this time, remember to bring it to school.”

“But Mom, no reading? Come on! I’ve only got four chapters left of—”

“No ‘buts’, Gavin. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to learn to be responsible for once. Now go get dressed.”

“Aw man.” He only whined when he thought it might do him some good. He even put on his best please-don’t-hate-me face, but nothing worked. Gavin dropped his head and shuffled into the bathroom.

With the door shut behind him, he sat his wet backpack next to it and the dry clothes on the edge of the sink. Four chapters left in the third book. Just four, and now he won’t know who’s responsible for kidnapping Gordon’s sister, Penny, until his mom lifted his grounding. Whenever that would be.

Gavin gripped the edges of the porcelain sink and glared at his reflection, blurring his eyes so that his dark hair turned darker and he no longer saw the eyes that matched his mom’s. He hated disappointing his parents, but at the same time, it was just a stupid research paper. What did it matter if he’d turned it in late? At least he’d written it, right? He brought his focus back so that everything came back into sharp lines and edges and vivid colors. He wanted to throw something; growl, punch the wall, but what good would that do him? Only lengthen his punishment, no doubt.

Giving up coming to any solution as to how to change his mother’s mind, he started to change into the dry clothes. He got halfway into peeling his socks off when something from the fogged-over window above the toilet caught his attention. A shadow of someone’s head walking along the side of the house.

“Lainey?” Wait, it was still raining outside. She wouldn’t be out there. He climbed onto the top of the toilet and pressed his face against the window to try and see clearer. Whoever it was had moved out of sight.

Today’s lunch soured in his stomach. Quickly, he changed into his dry clothes, forgetting to check on the whelp on his shoulder. He dashed out, leaving his school clothes in a wet, rumpled pile on the tiled floor.

Slipping over Lainey’s river of rain water, Gavin shot an arm out and latched onto the stair rail. He pulled himself up and jogged through the hallway and into the kitchen, which faced the same side of the yard as the bathroom.

“What’s going on?” His dad lowered the newspaper, apparently taking a break from his office upstairs.

Gavin peered out the bay window, searching for someone, a neighbor, a mailman, or maybe a burglar. “I saw someone walk past the bathroom window,” he said, eyes glued to the yard. He knew his eyes hadn’t played tricks on him.

His dad laughed out his nose, short and breathy. He straightened the newspaper and returned to reading. “It’s pouring down rain, Gav. Shouldn’t you be cleaning up that mess in the foyer?”

“What?” Gavin broke his concentration to give his dad a confused look. “I have homework to do, make Lainey clean it up.”

“Excuse me?” His dad gave him a stern look.

This only brought fists to Gavin’s sides as he stood a little straighter. “Why don’t you believe me? I swear there’s someone out there.”

“Fine,” said his dad. He folded up the paper and placed it on the kitchen table. “If you’re that worried, I’ll go check it out. But while I do that, you need to go clean up that mess before someone slips and gets hurt. Honestly, I think you let some of those McGrubb stories get the best of you”

“It isn’t my mess,” Gavin muttered. “And it’s McGrim!” He moped back to the bathroom to grab a towel. His dad was probably right, anyway. Mom had always gotten onto him for his overactive imagination. Besides, it was right in the middle of the day. Maybe it was a neighbor. Of course, he had no way to rationalize why a neighbor would be walking along the side of their house. There was nothing there but mud and his mother’s attempt at a vegetable garden, which was now only a small forest of weeds.

The warm doorknob turned in his hand and he pushed open the door. Two steps in, he froze. His eyes trailed from the towel on the rack, to the face and palms pressed against the outside of the fogged window.

His heart lurched into his throat, every bit of his skin feeling like it would jump right off his bones. “Dad!”

The hands and face disappeared, but not the misted prints left behind. Gavin spun and darted out the bathroom. “Dad! I saw them! They’re running towards the fro—AHoomf!” His shoes squeaked over the tile and Gavin went careening through the foyer before smacking into the side of the stair banister.

“What’s going on? Any louder and you’ll wake up Kara!” His mom whispered harshly from the second floor.

Gavin couldn’t think straight. His eyes felt like they were rolling in the back of his head and his shoulder like it was on fire. The same spot that stupid necklace had hit.

Gavin whipped his head to the opened bathroom door. The necklace. . .