Chapter Two

Seal leaned against the warped slats of her dad's barn. Flecks of old red paint stuck to her as little splinters latched onto the rough fabric of her clothing. The barn overlooked a field of sunflowers. Her dad farmed and taught agriculture courses at the Lakota technical school. His earnings provided only enough for his family and to keep the farm going.

A gust of wind whipped dust against Seal's bare ankles, stinging them like tiny ant bites. The noonday sun brightened the oblong yellow petals of the sunflowers. Each sunflower danced to the wind's tune, bumping against one another. Windblown dust settled on her face and rode sweat down her cheeks. The day sweltered, but Seal stubbornly wore her thick black dress. She rested her sister's doll against her thigh. It had been ten months since she had lost Beth.

The doll's stuffing bulged from a tear by its ear. Seal parted with the doll only during showers and at bedtime. It slept in her sister's bed each night in the room they had shared. The doll, clothed in real buckskin, had honey-colored felt skin and seven long strands of thick hair affixed to the center of its head by a single loop of thread. Numerous multicolored beads decorated it to honor their ancestors.

Seal was on a study break. Her mom arranged time off from her job as a library assistant to homeschool Seal, while they mourned. Seal had not been back to school since the accident. As she let the day waste away, sunflowers jerked unnaturally against the wind. They parted as something pressed its way through the field. Animals cut across her father's farm, but they usually only came at dawn or dusk. A lone bison once ran full speed across the field, ruining a wide swath of crop, but whatever trampled through her father's field now was much smaller. Whatever it was turned and headed towards Seal.

It brought back memories of the crazed man with the shotgun. Was he seeking revenge? No. He wouldn't leave prison for a long time. Seal involuntarily stiffened and held Paintchip closer. She could not see more than a foot past the muted green dark stalks that sat under the yellow heads. The commotion stopped abruptly. Everything went silent. Even the jays' obnoxious taunts disappeared. Seal held her breath.

Suddenly the sunflowers jerked forward towards her. Stalks broke in half. Their pulpy flesh exposed like a bone broken through skin, pale and wet. Something flew over them, then became tangled, spilling over in a tumble. The surprise attack landed well short of her. It was a boy. His errant, tattered red shoe landed at her feet. Seal recognized the boy. Beth had often called him silly. But Javin remained only an annoying boy.

He rolled over and looked up at her, upside down, "Did I scare you?"

"Not a bit," Seal said. "But my dad will chase you home when he sees what you did to his field."

"No, he won't." Javin pulled mushed yellow petals from his shirt. "I'm invited for lunch. I'm a guest." Seal's mom enjoyed having Javin over since learning he helped Seal on that terrible night. Seal felt less gracious towards him.

Javin was like the two-stroke engine of a lawn mower: lots of energy, always spouting pollution and exceedingly loud. He lived with his mom in the trailer park down the road.

"Let's play," he said.

"No," she said. Seal held Paintchip close to her and took a step away from Javin as he stood up. He brushed dust from his clothes, causing him to cough. Javin was half Indian. Not Lakota, like Seal, but Asian Indian, a rarity in the middle of nowhere South Dakota. His father was supposedly Hawaiian, even more rare around here. His parents met in Minneapolis, and Javin's dad wooed his mom away from her traditional family and took them where he could find work. He died when Javin was only three, after a truck sideswiped his motorcycle.

"We have time before lunch," Javin said. "Let's go to the clearing." He threw a thumb over his shoulder to point in its direction. Nothing grew in the clearing and most people that knew of it avoided it.

"Come on, your mom won't mind if she knows we are having fun." Fun for Javin was synonymous with getting into trouble. Javin was always in the middle of a calamity, and if not, he'd make one. One time, he nearly burned down his trailer, playing with firecrackers and rubber cement.

Javin was right, though. Seal's mom struggled to get her to mourn less and to find the positive in her life. Like you could just act happy, Seal thought.

"Go away, Javin. I don't want to play with you."

Javin stared at her; a hurt expression washed over his face before being pushed away with his inevitable smile. He seemed incapable of holding a negative emotion for too long.

"Can I have my shoe back, at least?" He pointed at his worn red shoe with half the shoelace missing. Seal lifted it with two fingers, holding it like it had the plague. He reached out, but his hand shot past hers and grabbed Paintchip. He disappeared into the sunflowers before Seal fully understood what happened. She chased him. His ruse had worked to get her to play, involuntarily as it was.

"Give her back or I'm going to hit you," she yelled.

"Catch me," Javin teased back. Sunflower stalks whipped across his arms. He ran with abandon, leaving an easy trail to follow.

Seal's bare feet scrabbled across the dry soil in between the rows of green and yellow. Insects and bees flew from her path. Her anger surged, but she also felt fear. She did not want to lose Beth's doll. She did not trust Javin not to drop it while he ran recklessly, playing his stupid game.

Javin broke clear of the field. His only shoed foot hit solid metal. He reached the clearing, running to the middle. The metal plate stretched at least one hundred feet in diameter. He waited, holding the doll in front of him. Seal broke her way into the clearing towards him. She did not slow.

"Stop, Seal. Your mom asked me to…," he pleaded. Seal did not stop. She tackled the annoying boy. They both fell onto the hard metal. She pried Paintchip from his fingers carefully, not wanting to damage the doll. Then she punched him in the center of his chest before rolling away.

"Ouch, you didn't have to hit me…" He sat up and rubbed his body. "… that hard." She inspected Paintchip to make sure it was not in worse condition. The doll appeared okay except more of the stuffing poked from its head.

Javin broke her gaze from the doll by asking her a question. "Do you think aliens left this? Maybe it's a buried UFO." He patted his hand against the enormous metal plate. It felt cool against his palm.

The mystery of the object remained unsolved. Her father found it after clearing several grass-covered mounds. Blow torches would not cut it and drill bits broke against it. For a few weeks it was a local media sensation. Once the tests came back with nothing dangerous, everyone forgot about it.

As she and Javin stood in the clearing, Seal's eyes drifted to the metal plate. Since Beth's passing, something about it made her uneasy.

"Do you ever think about what's under that thing?" Javin asked, crouching down to touch the edge of the plate. "It almost feels like... there's something alive down there."

Seal nodded, recalling the strange dreams she'd been having lately. Dreams of a massive, coiled serpent made of metal, lying beneath the earth, its eyes glowing. She had told no one about the dreams. But every time she neared the plate, the dreams felt more real.

As she stood there, a faint tremor ran through the ground, so subtle that she almost missed it. She glanced at Javin, who seemed to feel it too. "Did you...?"

"Yeah," he said, standing up. "Weird, right? Like the ground is... vibrating or something."

Seal frowned. Her unease grew. "We should go," she said.

"I don't," he said, interrupting her. "We're already here. What should we play?"

Seal felt like punching Javin again. Instead, she yanked his foot with both hands, ripping his remaining tattered shoe off. She threw it, drawing her arm far back before tossing it far into the waving sunflowers. She walked back to her house, away from the clearing, Paintchip safely tucked against her. One day, Javin might learn not to be stupid. Maybe he'd learn his lesson today while he searched for his missing shoe. But she doubted it.

Javin followed far behind Seal. They walked into her house from the back door and into the kitchen. The gray, crooked door slammed twice behind each of them. Javin wore only one red shoe. The other remained lost. The kitchen, like the barn, had known better days, but her family always kept it clean. Freshly washed dishtowels hung from the tops of brown dented cabinets. They smelled of wildflowers.

More than a few bronze knobs were missing from the drawers, replaced with mismatched hardware. The yellowed linoleum floor curled up from the baseboards. Seal's dad periodically glued them back, only to have them break free again. He'd laugh whenever one stubbornly popped up minutes later. He would ask Seal's mom for her heaviest bag of flour to rest on it while the glue set.

Javin and Seal sat at a small table. Seal's mom greeted them from the hall. "Go wash up, Seal. Where's your shoe, Javin?" Her mom missed nothing.

"Well, I found this one by your barn where I dropped it." He lifted his foot. "The other is near the clearing. Seal has a really powerful arm. I looked but I couldn't find it and I didn't want to miss lunch." He shrugged, unconcerned. "I'll look before it gets dark, Mrs. Kipp. Thank you for inviting me." He grinned and went to the kitchen sink to wash his hands.

Seal returned from the bathroom. Her mom shook her head. "Go wash your face, Seal." She would talk to her daughter about her manners after Javin left. Javin and his mom could no more afford to lose a pair of shoes than they could.

"Seal, I made you a chicken sandwich. Is that okay?" Her parents still called her Seal. Their pet name for Beth had been Bee.

"Yes, Ma."

"Javin, this one is yours." She handed him a sandwich, cut diagonally. Simple white bread sat on a thick layer of hummus, served alongside two sweet pickles. Everyone thought Javin was a vegetarian but his mom was the only one that didn't eat meat. He'd eat anything, just like his dad.

Javin had no idea what Seal's mom put in her hummus, but he liked it more than anything they sold at the grocery. "Great as always, Mrs. Kipp."

"Are you ready for school?" she asked. Javin shook his head while he swallowed his last bite of the first half. He ate like he talked, recklessly.

"No, I don't want to go back to school. Summer all year would be the perfect life," he proclaimed. "I'm trying to convince my mom. Any advice?"

"Well you get to go to school with Seal. You'll both be in the same homeroom this year." Seal glared at her mom. Seal already knew this, and it wasn't that her mom checked so much as arranged. Her mom had influence in the district. Seal did not want to share a homeroom with Javin any more than she wanted to go back at all. She thought she learned better at home, and she enjoyed spending most of the day with her mom.

Her parents decided a year break was long enough. They should all try to return to a more normal way of life. This would be her first year in middle school. Better to start it with everyone else than to be the new girl later.

Seal picked at her sandwich while she listened to her mom talk about what they would study. Seal doubted American history would include Lakota history. Her dad taught Seal about their culture, but they agreed it should be part of local classes.

They would also have science lab for the first time. Lab piqued Javin's interest too. "Using Bunsen burners will be excellent," he said.

Seal would sit far across the room when that day came. After he set fire to their trailer, his mom would not allow him anywhere near the stove or anything else that had a flame. Seal knew he had a secret collection of fireworks, though, stashed where his mom couldn't find them.

Javin went home after lunch. Mrs. Kipp offered to drive him, but he refused. He spent a few moments looking for his shoe before giving up.

Seal cleared the plates in a single armful, letting them spill into the sink. The plastic clattered against the chipped enamel surface. "Be nicer to Javin. He is a kind boy and you both need a friend. Maybe he causes trouble, but he has a kind soul," her mom said.

Seal rolled her eyes.

"I think he likes you," her mom teased.

"I don't want him to like me. Javin is twelve going on eight."

"Boys mature slower. But he's still cute, don't you think? One day you'll come to appreciate him. Or someone like him. Your dad was a bit of a class clown, as well."

"That I can believe." Her dad always acted silly with her.