light bulbs—just some near-death recovery thing. It’s only been a few days. Chloe just needs time to recuperate. I’m almost at the door when it blows open. From the kitchen, I hear Chloe’s mom call out again, but I don’t want to talk to her, so I run out the open door.
The sky is furious. Clouds as black as the River Acheron spin in the sky, and rain comes down so hard, it hurts when it strikes my face. The blast of sirens is almost muted from the storm. I glance up at the steel struts of the dome. Glass is growing fast. In the seconds I watch, it grows downward by a foot. I need to run to get out of the city. I take off and don’t look at anything around me. I don’t look back at Chloe’s house; she’ll be fine once the dome is sealed. She’ll be fine when she gets some rest. Debris fills the streets, but no one is around. There’s no sign of the work crews that had been there earlier. And I’m willing to bet a shuttle won’t come.
Litter flies past me and tumbles down the street. Something hard strikes me on the back and knocks the wind out of me, but I can’t turn to look. I have to get out of here. I’m vaguely aware of my FON vibrating in my pocket, but I ignore it. My mom’s calling, I’m sure, and given this storm, I don’t blame her. It’s like nothing I’ve even imagined before.
I’m almost out of the last steel support of the dome when the metal groans a final time. And then shards of glass start to fall to the ground. I dig into my reserves and run like I’ll die if I don’t. Once I’m free and clear and twenty feet away, I spin around and watch the destruction of the dome the city had prided itself so much on. Glass showers down, mixing with the rain until I can’t tell one from the other. My FON is going crazy in my pocket, so I stop under the overhang of a house’s roof and pull it out.
“b home in a few,” I text my mom. She’s probably absolutely nuts with worry.
“please tell me ur okay,” she sends back.
“fine,” I text.
“i love u so much piper. i never want 2 lose u,” she writes, and I surprise myself when a lump forms in my throat and pushes tears upwards to my eyes. Her words are simple, but she cares so much.
I wipe my tears, and wait until the storm begins to subside. I stand there under the patio roof of the house and watch as the clouds first blow away east of Austin and then nearly evaporate from the sky. The rain stops next, and when it clears, I see that most of the glass from the dome is gone, too. All that’s left is the shattered skeleton near the sides of the steel beams. The sky transitions first from a dark gray to a creamy butter and then to a denim blue. Then it’s back to the color of topaz, and the sun shines down from above, reflecting off every bit of glass littering the ground and the sky. The transformation is so sudden, so complete. There’s been a hurricane in Austin, and now, only its destruction remains.
The city is a wreck, but I don’t head back to Chloe’s house or anywhere near the dome. I need to get home to my mom. Because even with everything that’s happened, I want to be near her. I want her to tell me there’s been some mistake. That she was just angry and that she has no idea who Reese really is. But as I walk home, my stomach starts to turn queasy. My mom knows I went on a date with Reese; they know each other. And she wants us to move. Again. She’s been to see my father, and whatever path we lived on in the past has changed. I just don’t know to what extent yet.
The first thing I see when I get home is Reese’s pink calla lilies, still smashed on the floor, and nearly every pink petal missing. I pick a single stem up, and before I think about what I’m doing, I infuse life back into it.
The blossom moves under my energy, and even the green stem is given rebirth. Power flows out of my hands into the flower, and it bursts into color and vibrancy. I touch the bottom of the stem, and roots grow and twist around my hand and fingers. In turn, I pick up each of the remaining flowers and do the same, and when they’ve all reformed, only then do I stop and realize what I’ve done.
The cut flowers, once dead, are alive. I feel their life with my hands. I’ve had a green thumb my entire life, but this is paranormal. But then again, so is everything else that has been going on in my life recently. If gods walk the earth, then why can’t flowers regrow in seconds? I stick them back in the water-filled vase on the counter.
“Maybe you should just let them die.”
I turn and see my mom standing there watching me.
“I can’t.”
“Throw them out, and tell him to never come back.” She shifts, like she wants to say so much more than she is. Like she wants to run to me and hug me.
I set the plant on a shelf next to the sink. “Didn’t you already do that?” I walk past my mom, brushing her shoulder on my way.
“Of course, Piper. But he won’t give up.” Her voice shakes as she talks. “He’ll keep coming back because he thinks he has some right to be with you.”
“But why?” I ask.
My mom throws her hands up in the air. “I don’t know. I just don’t. He showed up here and said he was supposed to take you away. And I can’t let that happen.”
“Who am I, Mom?” I have to ask the question even though it sounds absurd to my ears.
My mom doesn’t even hesitate. “You’re my daughter, that’s who you are.”
I shake my head because her answer’s just so frustrating. “No, really. Who am I? There has to be something else.”
My mom comes over and pats my shoulder. “Piper, you’re beautiful and you’re smart and to me, you’re the most perfect thing this world has ever created. But that’s it. That’s all you are.”
“No,” I say. “There has to be something else. Something special.”
She looks at me like she feels sorry for me. “There’s nothing else, Piper. There’s nothing special about you at all.”
Her words sting. I feel them like worms digging into my heart. If she notices she’s hurt me, she doesn’t show it.
“We need to move. To go away,” she says.
“No.” I don’t raise my voice or argue or even try to make it sound like a compromise. I’m not moving. Not again. If I move anywhere, it’s going to be away from my mom—alone.
“Yes,” she says. “Your father will find you otherwise.”
“The dome shattered,” I say because I don’t want to talk about moving.
My mom stares at me a second, and I finally let my eyes meet hers. And then she pulls me into a hug. I don’t break away, but I don’t hug her back.
“I was so worried about you, Piper.” She puts a hand on my cheek, and the tears in her eyes tell me how much she loves me.
“I was fine,” I say.
“You were out there in the storm. Councilman Rendon called a council meeting to tell us about his plans. He’d gone ahead and activated one of the domes. He said there was a hurricane approaching Austin.” She shudders like even the memory is too hard to live with.
“I went to Chloe’s.”
“The council had a virtual meeting; he said he was going to activate all the domes.”
“The glass shattered,” I say. “It was everywhere.”
Anger flashes into my mom’s eyes. “It didn’t have time to regenerate. How does he think the glass will sustain a hurricane when the growth proteins haven’t had time to bond?”
I don’t answer because there’s nothing I can really say.
“He’s killing the city,” my mom says. “He’s killing the world. He’s pulling it apart with everything he tries.”
I know it’s true, but it seems a little unfair. “It’s not like he started the Global Heating Crisis.”
My mom’s nostrils flare. “No, he didn’t. It doesn’t matter at this point how it started, just how we get past it.”
I’m not sure I agree, but my mom doesn’t leave it open for debate. We head upstairs and flip on the tube. Reports of damage from the hurricane are still coming in. I try to zone out because most of the images they’re showing are horrific. People are dead everywhere. The shattered glass from the dome Chloe lives in caused so much destruction, they estimate it will take weeks to clean up. Councilman Rendon is scheduled to give a speech in a half hour to talk about the tragedy. I text Chloe to make sure she’s okay, but she doesn’t answer, so I call her mom who tells me they’re all fine, that aside from some missing roof tiles and the broken window, they got off
