The docent was just going off about how important the SQ had been in shaping the history of the world for the better when Dak cleared his throat loudly and raised his hand. Oh, no, Sera thought. Here we go.
“Excuse me!” Dak practically shouted when neither of the adults acknowledged him. “Excuse me! I have something important to say!”
Both men looked sharply at him.
“What is it?” Mr. Davedson asked. Sera knew that expression and that tone. The man had seen this happen far too many times — and he knew that indulging Dak at the museum could spell disaster.
“Well, I think you’ve clearly forgotten to say something important about the compass and its history.” He let out a chuckle and glanced around the room as if all the students would be nodding their heads vigorously in agreement. When no one did, he frowned. “You know. How the fourth-century writings of Wang Xu in China were instrumental — pardon the pun — to the eventual discovery of magnetism and the directional iron needle. Heh heh. Hard to believe there was ever a world where people didn’t know about that!”
The room had fallen tomb silent. Tomb-buried-under-three-miles-of-bedrock-under-the-ocean silent.
Someone sniffled.
Dak chuckled again. “Oh, man. Crazy stuff.” He shot an embarrassed look at Sera then looked down at the floor, his face awash in red.
And those were the moments Sera realized exactly why they were such good friends. They were both inhumanly dorky. No judgments. She reached out and punched him lightly on the arm.
“Ow,” he said. But he smiled, and the red in his cheeks started to fade.
“All righty then,” Mr. Davedson barked, clapping his hands once. “That wasn’t so bad. Let’s all gather —”
A sudden burst of violent movement cut him off. The entire building started to shake, along with everything inside of it, display cases shuddering as the great hallway seemed to bounce and tilt and wobble. Screams erupted from every direction at once. Sera planted her feet and fought to keep her balance while most of her classmates fell on top of one another. Dak was one of them, tangled up in a sea of arms and legs.
As if anyone needed to hear it, Mr. Davedson screeched one word at the top of his lungs:
“Eeeeeeearthquaaaaaaake!”
4. Cracks and Snaps
DAK KNEW very well that time made no sense during natural disasters — he’d been through a dozen or so over the course of his life. But as the terrible shaking of the world around him stretched on and on, he could have sworn that each second lasted a full minute. Terror filled his every muscle, bone, and nerve.
He currently had a foot in his mouth, and he was pretty sure it was Makiko’s, her toe somehow squirming its way between his lips as a whole group of people tried to wrestle free of one another on the floor. He swatted her leg away just as someone’s armpit replaced it, smashing against his nose. The ground beneath them felt like a nightmarish seesaw, pitching back and forth as the groans and squeals of bending wood and metal filled the air.
A hand suddenly slapped his back and squeezed the material of his shirt into a fist. Then he was yanked up to his feet. He spun around to see Sera staring at him with fear in her eyes. Somehow she’d turned into Marvelman when the quake started.
They stumbled away from the mass of kids on the floor to an open area that wasn’t beneath any hanging displays, then helped each other maintain their balance as they staggered two or three steps one way then back the other. He saw an ancient Mayan figurine suddenly roll across the floor from another room, just in time to get stepped on and smashed by Roberk. Dak’s heart broke a little, but a fresh jolt that threw him several inches off the floor brought him back to reality — he had to hope people didn’t get smashed like that, too.
“It’ll be over soon!” he yelled at Sera.
“If we don’t die first!” she called back.
“Well, it’ll end whether we die or not!”
“Thanks. I didn’t know!”
A sudden crack rang out, a splinter of thunder that made the hair on the back of Dak’s neck stand up. The sound had come from directly beneath them. He stared in horror as the ground split open before his eyes, a gap slicing across the floor like a zigzagging snake. Chunks of tile tore free and plummeted into a dark basement far below. Dak grabbed Sera by the arm and they jumped to safety, then watched as their classmates scrambled to get clear.
Two of their friends didn’t quite make it. They dangled over the abyss, holding on for dear life. Mr. Davedson and the docent were sprawled out on the other side of the room and seemed to have no intention of helping the endangered kids.
“Get them!” Sera yelled, already moving.
Dak followed her as best he could — the building continued to tremble and shake, making it impossible to walk. They dropped to their knees and crawled forward to Makiko, who gripped a jagged outcropping of tiled floor. Her eyes caught Dak’s, pleading for him to save her.
“I’ve got her!” he yelled at Sera. “Go help Fraderick!”
As Sera crawled away, Dak was left hoping he hadn’t spoken too soon. If the building pitched at the wrong moment, he could slide right past Makiko and into the abyss below — probably taking her with him. He lay on his stomach to get as much stability as he could. Then he reached out and grabbed both of her arms.
He pulled, trying to bend his elbows and lift her out of the hole. She hadn’t seemed very big whenever he’d looked at her before, but now she felt as if she weighed as much as Fat Bobby — that dude who sat in front of the Laundromat doing absolutely nothing on Saturdays. Dak screamed with the effort, throwing all of his strength into it. Makiko seemed to realize it wasn’t working and started to climb him like a ladder, using his armpits and belt as rungs and the back of his neck as a foothold. He gurgled in pain as she lurched up and over the edge then toppled off of his body.
“Thanks, Dak,” she said, facing him. “You’re my hero.” Then she giggled.
Dak could only stare at her. That was one messed-up girl.
He saw that Sera had gotten Fraderick pulled up safely as well, and everyone scooted as far away from the gap as possible. The building continued to shake, creaking and groaning all the while. But the hole in the floor had stopped growing. No one was screaming anymore.
We’re going to make it, Dak thought.
Then something snapped, like a loosed rubber band cracking through the air. Then again. Then again.
“Up there!” someone yelled.
Dak looked toward the ceiling and saw that the thin wires holding the Viking ship upright were breaking free from the walls, whipping out to smack into the wooden craft. Its port side abruptly tilted downward several feet, sending a spray of broken drywall snowing down on top of the crowd. Shouts and screams again filled the air as everyone half-staggered, half-crawled out of harm’s way.
He rejoined Sera as they moved toward the far wall. They were still a dozen feet away from safety when the floor lurched upward several feet then slammed back down again, as if the whole building had been picked up and dropped. Sera sprawled onto the floor as more snaps and cracks whipped through the air — this time followed by a terrible, creaking groan. The ship had torn loose and was tilting away from its perch, falling toward the ground as its final supports broke free.
Dak could see where it was headed and wasted no time thinking. He grabbed Sera by the hands and yanked her across the floor so hard that she slid ten feet and slammed into the wall. Then he dove after her. He didn’t have to look because he heard it well enough — the ship crashed into the ground right where he and his best friend had just been.
And as if that had been nature’s exclamation point on the whole affair, the earthquake ceased a few seconds later, everything almost instantly growing still. Dak twisted around to sit with his back against the wall, right next to Sera, who was pulling in heavy breaths, just as he was. They both stared at the smashed ancient longboat, now nothing but a pile of firewood with a carved dragon’s head sticking out at the top. Dak felt as if he’d just watched history itself being shattered.
“That was close,” Sera whispered.
“Yeah,” Dak agreed. “Good thing you have someone watching out for you. I’ll take your thank-you payment in cash, credit, or fine cheeses. Your choice. I just wish I could’ve done something about that poor boat.”
Sera shoved him gently. “If it was a choice between me or the boat, I’m okay with how it turned out.”
Mr. Davedson was the first one to stand up, and he walked around the broken ship toward the large crack in the floor, brushing dust and debris off of his shirt and pants. He reached the edge and looked down, then turned to face the students crowded up against the wall.
“I can’t believe it,” their teacher said in a dazed whisper. “I just can’t believe it.”
“What?” Dak asked.
Mr. Davedson shook his head slowly back and forth. “Seven earthquakes this month. And now they’re happening here.”
No one responded, and his words hung there for a moment.
“The SQ has everything under control,” the dust-covered docent insisted harshly.
Dak and Sera exchanged a quick glance. They’d never admit it aloud, but they couldn’t quite believe him.
5. False Memory
THREE DAYS later, Sera suffered one of the worst Remnants of her life.
Her uncle Diego was out running errands, so Sera was home alone when she had an overpowering disturbance inside her head. An uncomfortable itch that made her stop and rub her temples, as if she hoped to dig deep down enough to massage it out. She couldn’t explain it — she never could — but she knew with absolute certainty that she needed to go outside, to the backyard and fields behind her home, and walk to the old barn that was half a mile down the old dirt lane.
The sun shone in a sky without any clouds, but a grainy haze darkened the light to an orange glow, surreal and otherworldly. The haze came from forest fires in rural Pennsylvania, their fog of smoke drifting toward the sea on a light breeze like a noxious storm. Sera ran along the lane, enjoying the warmth despite the weirdness that had settled inside her, that pull to run to the barn for the umpteenth time in her life.
So she ran harder.
Dust billowed up from her footsteps and stuck to the sweat that had broken out on her legs. The dry heat nearly sucked her breath away. As she made her way down the lane, she thought of the earthquake at the museum and the SQ officials who’d insisted it was no big deal and all the other things that seemed to be wrong with the world. She also thought of Dak, her BFF Forever (which was redundant, but she still liked to say it that way) and how something deep inside her felt that there was a reason for their friendship. That something great waited on the horizon of their lives.
She reached the little grassy meadow that circled the barn, and stopped in the same spot she always did. A single granite boulder had stood there longer than anyone could remember — it probably went all the way back to the Precambrian age. It would probably outlast people. Leaning against it, Sera stared at the barn’s warped wooden slats and the faded red paint that flaked away a little more with each passing year. And then she waited.