The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady - Elizabeth Stuckey-French [109]
She and Travis were standing at a display of knee-high pottery jars in the Indian council house, a large circular structure that could accommodate three thousand people, and Travis had gone quiet and was watching her. “What are you thinking about?” he asked her. “Are you bored? I’m sorry, I talk too much.”
“I was wondering how I was going to get home,” Ava said. She wasn’t, but she should have been, since Otis had roared off before she could make arrangements with him to pick her up.
“I can take you,” Travis said. “We could get ice cream first, if you want.”
“I want,” Ava said, knowing she’d remember this afternoon for the rest of her life, walking around Mission San Luis with Travis, realizing that she liked him, realizing what she wanted to study in school, realizing that she had to help her sister, come what may. Two great things and one awful thing in one afternoon. And there was Hurricane Grayson, which might or might not cause a lot of trouble.
Why did the good and the bad have to come together? It seemed, often, that they did.
Finally, the day had come. He got up early, dressed, ate a hearty breakfast of twelve toaster waffles before anyone else got up, enjoying the solemn ceremonial feel of this occasion, this day, August 12, 2006. A day that would appear in future science books, in news stories, in TV specials, maybe even movies. All this wonderful fallout would take a while, but right away, at least, he’d be in the local news. His story would wipe Hurricane Grayson off the front page of the Tallahassee Democrat and would do the same to the stories about Reverend Buffington Coffey, and give Rusty some peace and quiet.
He missed Rusty. She hadn’t been around since all the fuss started with Suzi and Rusty’s father. He’d texted Rusty and asked her to call him, but she didn’t, so he called her and left voice messages, saying that he missed her and that his reactor was nearly finished and he wanted her to be there when he put it together. When she didn’t call him back, he called again and added that he was sorry for everything that had happened with her father, and that he didn’t blame her and that he really, really liked her—he didn’t mention the word love again—but she wouldn’t text or call him back. There was so much he needed to tell her, so many things he’d had to do without her.
She’d missed out on the blowtorch. He loved his blowtorch. He loved the roaring noise, the metal mask he wore, the bright flame, and she would’ve loved these things, too. She could’ve helped him take apart the replacement mantles that the two of them had stolen from Target, extracting the thorium strips. She could’ve helped him dump the strips into his cast-iron frying pan, and he would’ve let her fire up his blowtorch and reduce those suckers to ash. Watching Rusty do it would’ve made it even more fun.
Next he’d had to isolate and purify the thorium from the ash, and he’d had a little chat with Granddad about how to do that. Granddad had suggested using lithium fragments to absorb the unwanted ash. Lithium batteries, his grandfather said, would be the best source.
He wanted to tell her how Granddad had become a virtual prisoner in his den, with himself as his own jailor. He was so scared of being accosted by Mrs. Archer that he never went outside anymore. He gazed longingly at the front yard, commenting on the yard work that needed to be done, but he wouldn’t venture out. He wouldn’t even go on walks with Otis and Parson, which had been one of his favorite things to do.
And his mother, who usually fussed over Granddad almost as much as she fussed over Ava, had stopped reading to Granddad and asking after him and bringing him snacks. It was all about Suzi now, taking Suzi to counseling, talking to Dad, in loud enough voices that even somebody who wasn’t trying to eavesdrop could overhear, about the four other girls from the youth group who were also pressing charges against Buff.
When he heard all this talk about Buff, Otis thought of Rusty, whom he realized now must’ve known something was screwy with