Dak finished by pulling in a long, satisfied breath. He looked around the room and saw nothing but blank faces staring back at him. Lots of blinking.
“Thanks for listening,” he finally said. Then he held up his water glass and yelled, “Cheers!”
His mom fell out of her chair.
The next day brought the field trip he’d been looking forward to for months. For someone who loved history as much as Dak did, going to the Smithsonian was better than getting locked in a candy factory overnight. He planned to gorge himself on information.
On the bus ride there, he sat by his best friend in the whole wide world. Her name was Sera Froste, and so far no one had given them any flack about being such good friends. Well, except for the occasional “when’re you gonna get married” jokes. And the “Dak and Sera, sittin’ in a tree” songs.
Okay, so they’d received plenty of flack.
“What exhibits are we going to see before lunch?” Dak asked her after he’d gone over the museum’s floor plan with fluorescent highlighters. “And which ones after?”
Sera looked up from the electronic book that she was reading on her SQuare tablet, fixing him with the sort of stare she usually reserved for a bug in a jar. Her long dark hair made her expression look even more severe, as if it were on display in a picture frame. “Would you relax? Let’s just play it by ear, roam around. I don’t know, actually enjoy ourselves.”
Dak’s mouth dropped open. “Are you insane?” And he really meant it — she obviously didn’t comprehend the opportunity they were about to be given. “We need to plan this to the second — I’m not taking any chance of missing something cool.”
“Oh, for the love of mincemeat,” was her only response before she returned her attention to String Theory and Other Quantum Leaps in Quantum Physics.
Sera was a nerd in her own right, almost nerdy enough in stature to compete with Dak himself. Oh, who am I kidding? Dak thought. She had him beat by a mile.
This was the girl who had recently convinced him to attend a Saturday afternoon thesis reading at the local university — “convinced” him by threatening to scream out in the middle of lunch that she was in love with him if he said no. Dak had fiercely protested because he’d wanted to see the guy at the state fair who swore he was so old that he’d been Mussolini’s foot doctor during World War Two. (The man evidently had toenail clippings to prove it.) But Sera swore that it’d be more exciting to hear a three-hour presentation called “The Effect of Tachyon Generation on Ambient Wellsian Radiation.”
It wasn’t.
Sera had finally agreed to leave the presentation early, but only because the speaker kept using the words baryon and meson interchangeably when, according to Sera, everyone knows that’s not proper.
Suddenly Dak had an idea. He ran his fingers through his sandy blond hair and stared intently at his color-coded floor plan. “I guess we can skip the Hope Diamond exhibit if we’re short on time. It’s supposed to be cursed, which is cool. I’m not sure what it means by ‘an exploration of the biogeochemical processes that give minerals their unique properties,’ though. It sounds like a total snooze fest if you ask me.”
“Who asked you?” said Sera, putting her SQuare down. “Let me see that map.”
By the time Dak and Sera marched off the bus, Dak’s heart was giddy with excitement.
They had two hours and forty-seven minutes before the earthquake that would almost kill them.
3. Halls of Boring Wonder
POOR DAK, Sera thought as she and her classmates filed through the entrance to the Smithsonian. Her best friend was always annoying people with his ill-timed speeches on useless historical facts. And his obsession with cheese was just . . . well, weird.
Last year in fourth grade he’d written an entire poem about types of cheeses and how each one of them was like a family member to him. Mrs. E’Brien had finally relented and let him recite it to the class in exchange for his promise to spare them any spontaneous sermons about people who were dead. He’d proudly done his performance, but then only made it a day and a half before he suddenly blurted out a five-minute information dump about the guy who invented the stepladder.
So yeah, Dak was quaint and unique and a little bit annoying in his own quaint, unique way. But none of these qualities were what made Sera think Poor Dak that morning. What worried her was how clueless he seemed to be about the true state of the world. The SQ. The natural disasters. The ever-increasing crime rates.
The Remnants.
That last thought made her pause, a deep ache pressing against her heart. . . .
And then the stinky kid named Roberk bumped into her from behind.
She knew it was him because an untimely draft pushed the boy’s patented smell across her body like rotten air escaping from a newly unsealed tomb. The odor itself was a one-of-a-kind mixture of fried liver and boiled cabbage — it definitely put her in mind of hydrogen sulfide. “Geez, Sera,” he said. “If you want a hug, just ask for it.”
Sera wanted to tell him all about hydrogen sulfide, about how it was usually produced by swamps and sewage, which basically made Roberk a walking sewer — but it was hard to say anything while holding her breath. So she just gave him the biggest eye roll she could muster, then continued walking. She caught up to Dak in the atrium of the building, where the exhibits began on the other side of a huge open archway. Dak was craning his neck so much she thought he might strain a muscle. He was obviously dying to see what awaited them in the museum.
“Don’t hurt yourself, there,” she leaned over and said to him, determined to slam a door on the sour mood that had crept up on her when she’d thought of the Remnants. “You’ll miss the whole tour if they have to take you away for emergency neck replacement.”
“Whoa!” he whispered back fiercely. “I think that’s a Viking longship in the next room! Must be a new exhibit. Do you think it’s a karvi or a busse?”
Sera got on her tiptoes to look — through the archway she could see the ornate carved dragon head at the bow of what had to be a massive wooden ship. “Cool.” She would’ve said more, but Mr. Davedson had just cleared his throat to get the class’s attention. Their teacher was an odd duck — the word crooked described his features the best. Hair, eyebrows, mustache, ears, tie, pants. Everything about him seemed to lean to the left.
“Okay, kids, listen up!” He always called them kids, and she’d been tempted for months to respond, “Yes, Grandpa?” But she hadn’t gotten up the nerve quite yet.
“We’ve got an awful lot of things to see today, and not much time to do it. Remember not to question the docent when he speaks — he’s a representative of our beloved SQ.” He shot a nervous look at a tall, smartly dressed bald man standing by the door. Sera had seen him when she’d come in, but she hadn’t noticed the silver SQ insignia he wore on the lapel of his suit. “I expect everyone to be on their best behavior — in tip-top shape and proudly representing the fine institution of Benedict Arnold Middle School! Can I have a woo-hoo?”
Oh, please, Sera thought in a panic. Not this — not in front of the museum staff!
When no one responded, Mr. Davedson cupped his hand behind his ear. “I can’t heaaaaaar you. Can I have a woo-hoo?”
The class halfheartedly gave him his lame cheer, and he shook his head sadly. “Well, I would’ve thought we’d be just a little bit more excited to come here during such dark times. The SQ has graciously released funds to ensure the continued operations of this museum, and we should all be grateful!” He shot a second nervous glance at the docent.
That was another thing that made Sera want to scream. Not only had she gotten the biggest goon at the school as her teacher, but he always said stuff like that about the SQ. It was ridiculous to her that they should thank the SQ for not closing down a public building. As if anything they did could make up for the way they bullied the governments of the world. Not that she should expect her teacher to grow a backbone when even the President of the United States was eating out of the SQ’s hand.
“Good ole Mr. Davedson,” Dak whispered to her. “Can’t say a bad word about anyone. You gotta love that guy.”
Sera smiled despite herself. Dak was oblivious, but somehow he always saw the positive in other people. Even if it did annoy her sometimes, it was a trait she wished she had.
The museum docent, stiff and gruff and chrome-domed, finally took over command, paying further lip service to the SQ for “visionary leadership in trying times.” Sera managed to suppress her eye roll until the docent had turned to escort the fidgety group through the huge archway and into the Age of Exploration exhibit hall. The longship Dak had spotted now loomed above Sera like a hovering spaceship, suspended by almost invisible wires. Naturally, the group stopped walking right when she stood in its shadow. One little snap of a wire and she’d be crushed, her head ending up right next to her toes.
The room was filled with other replica boats, an early compass, a detailed diagram showing the difference between Viking and Egyptian vessels, and (of course) dust. Lots of dust. As the docent started droning on about this and that and who said what about who did that, she had the sudden realization that this could end up being the longest day of her life. She ached for the cool halls and auditorium of the local university. There was science and technology on display here, but it was hardly cutting edge.
On the other hand, Dak stared with fascination at the SQ puppet preaching his boring knowledge. He couldn’t have been more riveted if a corpse had just dug its way out of a grave and started dancing. Half to annoy him, Sera nudged him with an elbow.
“So much for your step-by-step agenda,” she said under her breath. “Looks like we’re stuck with a babysitter.”
Without looking at her, he whispered, “Yeah, this is some fascinating stuff. I can hardly believe I’m here to see it with my own eyes.”
Sera realized it would be pointless to even try talking to Dak until lunch.
They moved on from there to other rooms and halls, learning about everything from dinosaurs to the SQ’s influence on the space race. Sera tried to question something the docent said at one point, but her teacher hushed her immediately, once again looking around nervously.
Ugh, Sera thought. She swore to quit listening altogether.
Every once in a while, Dak would tear his gaze away from the docent and look at her with wide eyes. Then he’d say something like, “Isn’t that cool?” or “Can you believe that?” or “Man, those Mongols had a sense of humor.” She’d simply nod and hope he didn’t force her to admit she hadn’t heard a word that had been said.
Eventually they circled back and found themselves in the Exploration hall again, where they stood for what seemed like hours before an exhibit dedicated to the discovery of the Americas by the famous Amancio brothers. Everybody knew the story, though the docent left out the best part — the grisly fate of the cruel man that the heroically mutinous brothers had disposed of, Christopher Columbus. In fact, Sera had only ever heard of Columbus because Dak liked to tell the story. The man’s name never came up in class or during Amancio Day celebrations.