It looks like Dad's, right down to the gobble-up-your-car garage door, only this one is pale blue instead of adobe colored. "It's pretty," I say.

"Not really." She laughs. "But it's bigger than our apartment in New York, and safer. Plus it's close to school." She points to a concrete and steel building halfway down the block. It looks brand new. "And not far from the Entertainment Dome."

"Do you go there a lot?"

Risha shrugs. "Not really. Once you know when the T-Rex is going to pop out, it's not that exciting. And the American History show just makes me mad. Can you believe they spent so long arguing before the courts decided that people can marry whoever they want? Maybe if they'd worried more about carbon emissions back then and less about bossing everybody around, we'd still have real museums with real stuff in them, you know?"

Risha lets out a huff and starts pedaling straight ahead, but the clouds off to our left catch my attention. They're closer. And darker.

"Hey, Risha, do you want to head home?"

"Why? Don't you want to see the campus?" She keeps riding.

The wind whips up dirt from the empty lot, and it stings my cheeks. "Risha, shouldn't we go? It looks bad over there."

She hollers something over her shoulder but I can't hear what, and then she turns-an abrupt right down a driveway I would have missed-and stops. Looming ahead of us is a building twenty times the size of the houses. It's behind a fancy, locked wrought-iron gate.

"Whoa!" I pull my bike up next to her. "What's this?"

"Eye on Tomorrow." Risha leans on her handlebars and rests her chin on her hands, grinning at the building. "Where the brightest minds of today prepare to lead us into the future. And that's just the reception building. You'll see the rest in the morning."

The reception building gleams, all steel and windows. There are another half dozen shining buildings behind it, built around a grassy quad. The largest has a huge white dome-five times the size of the Entertainment Dome-growing out of the center. Dad told me this place was impressive, but I thought he was exaggerating. This summer camp for schoolkids looks more high-tech than Mom's university.

It makes sense, though. StormSafe created Eye on Tomorrow four years ago as a model for the government's new Surge Ahead program to create leaders in math and science. The United States had been behind other countries in those areas when the storms intensified. Now, it's like everybody suddenly figured out science is important, so they're building facilities for gifted students around the country. Eye on Tomorrow was the first-and is apparently still the best.

"Were you here last summer?" I ask Risha.

She nods. "Once you test in, you get to come every summer. The idea is for campers to keep coming back and then work for StormSafe and its sister companies once they get out of school. Doesn't your dad tell you anything?" She looks at her watch. "Come on, it's almost eight o'clock, and I want to show you one more thing if you can keep a secret because my parents would kill me if they found out, and yours probably would, too. You can keep a secret, right?" She looks at me over her shoulder.

"Sure, I guess."

She leads the way down another hidden path through some brush. A branch tugs at my hair, and I have a pang of missing Amelia. She'd love this bike ride, with real trees and trails that aren't just in her imagination.

"Well, look who made it," a deep, older-than-us boy voice calls out, and again, I almost bump Risha's back tire because she stops so fast. In front of her, a chain-link fence rises up from the dusty ground to way over our heads. This must be the edge of Placid Meadows; the fence stretches out in both directions. The only opening is where the barrier is interrupted by a big old oak tree whose trunk and branches apparently ignored the fence and kept right on growing, twisting the wires and pulling open a gap that looks just big enough to squeeze through.

On the other side of the fence, two boys stand back a few steps, straddling bicycles of their own. Theirs are older and rusted, like they've been out in a storm or two.

"Sorry I'm late." Risha shrugs at the taller of the two boys. She jumps off her bike, climbs through the gap in the fence, and motions for me to come, too.

"We thought you stood us up."

"Never." She gestures toward me as I'm pulling a twig out of my hair. "This is my friend Jaden."

"Hey." The tall boy smiles one of those lazy, movie-star smiles with his eyes half closed. He must be the one she has dibs on.

"Jaden Meggs, meet Tomas Hazen and Alex Carillo."

"Hi." I nod to Tomas and wave past him to Alex, who's shorter, about my height, with dark skin like Risha's and black hair that curls around his ears.

"Hey." His brown eyes are asking questions, and he tips his head. "Meggs?"

"Jaden," I say. "I just moved in-"

"With your dad? The Stephen Meggs?" He looks at Risha and raises his eyebrows.

"Yes, her dad is Dr. Meggs, Alex. Get over it." Risha glares at him. "She's visiting for the summer because she qualified for Eye on Tomorrow." She turns to me. "Somebody's a little touchy about DNA-ture because his parents don't believe in factory-made foods. They're part of the organic farming collective that still grows stuff in fields."

"Yeah, well, somebody else can't seem to take no for an answer when a piece of property's not for sale." Alex folds his arms in front of him.

"Well, maybe somebody shouldn't have accepted the camp scholarship if he thought Jaden's dad was so horrible. But I bet you'll be there tomorrow." Risha walks off toward the riverbank with Tomas.

I'm left here with Alex. "I don't know much about my dad's work," I squeak out.

"Sorry," Alex says, looking down. Risha's argument seems to have taken the wind out of him. "I'm kind of defensive about the farm." He scuffs his work boots in the dust. "You must know your dad wants to build more houses, right?"

I wish I didn't. But I remember his conversation with Lou about Phase Two. "I kind of heard about it. He's offered to buy your farm?"

"Yeah . . . about ten times." Alex puts down the kickstand, climbs off his bike, and stands looking out over the field. "Most everybody's selling. Mom keeps telling Dad we should take the money, but he won't. Every time your dad sends somebody with another offer, they fight. Selling this place would kill my dad. I know it would." He shrugs. "This is what we do."

"Well, it's not like you have to sell. He's just asking," I say. But I remember the frustration in my father's voice when he talked about the land. I bet he's been pushing hard.

"I know. And she's right, too." Alex nods reluctantly toward Risha, who's tossing stones into the river with Tomas. "What I said before was dumb. You're not your dad."

"I don't even know if my dad is my dad anymore." The words slip out before I can filter what I'm saying to this boy I just met. They hang in the air like dust, and Alex looks at me. I bend down to pluck a blade of grass and arrange it between my thumbs to make a whistle. Amelia used to do it all the time and finally taught me how. I lift my hands to my mouth and blow. It sounds like a crow.

"You have some impressive skills there," Alex says, smiling a little.

"Thanks." I try to do it again, but the grass slips from my hands and flutters back to the ground. "Unfortunately, it's not a very useful skill. Do you think they have grass-whistling at Eye on Tomorrow?"

Alex frowns. "Hmm . . . you could study how the force of your breath and the width of the grass affect the rate of vibration. . . ."

"I think I'll stick to meteorology."

"Yeah?" Alex says. "That's what I studied last summer. What's your focus going to be?"

"Honestly?" I haven't told anyone this yet, not even Dad. "What I've always wanted to do is work on storm dissipation. You know . . . the theory that you can actually stop a tornado from forming if you change the conditions in the storm so-"

"I know what storm dissipation is." Alex looks at me as if he's seeing me for the first time, as if we just arrived at the fence. "How'd you get interested in that?"

"I don't know." I lean against the fence next to him, watching Risha and Tomas trying to balance on a log at the edge of the river. They're laughing, and it makes me think of Mom's tree house in the woods from when she was young. She took me there once, on a day when that seemed safe. I climbed up and watched the sun peeking in and out of the leaves. I never wanted to leave. "My mom tells stories about when she was little, before it got like this. I always kind of wish I could have lived back then. Without the storms being part of everybody's lives."

A gust of wind whips the tree branches back and forth over our heads, and a few leaves fly past. One gets stuck in a diamond in the fence. I reach out for it, just as Alex does the same. But he pulls his hand back and looks up at the swirling gray sky. The dark wall cloud in the west is looming closer.

"Hey, Tomas!" he calls. "We gotta get going."

"But we just got here." Risha pouts for a second, but then she's smiling again. "See you in the morning, bright and early!"

"Too early." Tomas grins. "See ya."

Alex waves, and they get on their bikes and ride away.

"Risha, we should go, too. It's getting bad."

We climb back through the fence and head for our bikes. Risha looks back and sighs. "He is so cute."

For a second, Alex's dark eyes flash in my mind, but I know she's talking about Tomas. I climb on my bike and put up the kickstand. "He seems nice. Kind of quiet, huh?"

"He's usually more fun. His mom's been sick, having all these tests, and they just figured out it's pancreatic cancer."

"They can get her treatment, can't they?" Pancreatic cancer was one of the last kinds to be totally cured, but there've been treatment centers around for at least five years now.

"Yeah, but not here. Probably New York-Tomas's brother is in college there-but his dad's worried about the farm and where they'll stay and money and everything. They'll figure it out; it's just on his mind is all."

Wind shakes the trees, and suddenly the weather's on my mind. It's getting darker. "Risha, come on. We need to go."

She looks at me as if I've suggested she bring an umbrella out on a perfectly sunny day. She's not even on her bike yet. "We're fine, Jaden. It's not like it's coming here."

But then thunder rumbles, and I don't wait to find out. I start pedaling, and once we're back on the main road, I see the storm is closer-way closer. The sky has turned a gray-green color that makes my stomach churn. I don't know if Risha's following, and I don't look up. I remember the turns, back over the bridge, past Risha's house, and back to Dad and Mirielle's place.

I stop in the driveway, gasping for breath.

Risha skids up next to me. "Now what?"

I turn to her, ready to tell her how crazy she is, but over her shoulder, I see the wall cloud, the heart of the storm, moving away from us.

I can only stare.

"It's going the other way," I say finally.

"They always do." Risha tips her head and looks at me. "Let me get this right, Jay-girl. Your father runs the company that built this place. And he didn't bother to let you know you're safe from the tornadoes here?"

"Well, he did, but . . ." I remember his words in the car. His promise to Mom. To me.

Inside the gate, you are completely, one hundred percent safe.

"I figured it just had safer . . . safe rooms or something." I can't stop staring at the cloud that seemed to bounce off our neighborhood as if the chain-link fence extended all the way to the heavens. As if steel wires could keep out the weather.

Risha rolls her eyes. "It's not only the houses. It's all of Placid Meadows. That's the whole deal with a StormSafe community; technology keeps the entire property safe."

"How?"

"Well, I don't know exactly." Risha frowns a little. "I always assumed the storms got . . . like . . . zapped at the perimeter somehow. But whatever it is, it works. They never hit us. It's even in the contracts."

"In the contracts?" Since when did nature make contracts with anybody?

"When you buy a house. Right there with the number of bedrooms and deeded rights to the playground and whatever. That's why people are willing to pay so much to live in such ugly houses, I guess." She laughs a little and looks at her watch. "I'm going to head home. Grandma's making chicken tandoori." She rides off in the direction of the storm clouds that are barreling off toward someone else's home.

Not ours.

Never ours.

It's in the contract.

Chapter 5.

"You won't need that," Dad says as I'm sliding my DataSlate into my backpack Monday morning. "Eye on Tomorrow supplies everything except the brainpower."

"Seriously?" Back home, nobody leaves the house without a DataSlate; how else would you get an alert when a storm's coming? But Dad reminds me.

"You're in Placid Meadows now. You don't need the storm alert." He smiles. "We don't allow DataSlates at camp anyway, until everyone's settled and understands the rules about keeping research confidential."

"Okay." I pull my DataSlate out of my backpack and run my finger around the cool, smooth edge.

"See you this afternoon." Dad goes to his office. A few notes of Mozart drift out before the door slides shut behind him.

I put my DataSlate back in my bag-I'll feel too weird without it-toss the whole thing over my shoulder on the way to the garage, and take off on my bike.

When I get to camp, the wrought-iron gate is wide open, and Risha's inside, riding her bike around the drop-off driveway with some other kids. There's a boy with a brush cut pacing back and forth on the sidewalk. Maybe he's new, like me. Tess and Ava Beekman, those twins from Britain, are sitting on the grass talking with a couple of boys.

"Hey, Jaden!" Risha waves and almost swerves into a dented green pickup idling by the reception building.

I gasp, first because I think Risha's going to crash, and second, because somebody's driving a gas-powered vehicle. They've been illegal for ten years. How could somebody still be driving one around? Are the rules here that different?

"Easy, genius!" Alex climbs out of the truck, waves to the woman driving, and brushes dried grass from his faded jeans. "Don't run me over on the first day."

Risha doesn't let a second go by. "Where's Tomas?"

"He had to help his mom; I guess she's been feeling pretty crummy. He'll be here later." Alex turns to me and smiles. "You up for this?"

"Of course." But looking up at the tower beyond the reception building, the billowing white dome next to it, the sprawling campus, I wonder if I really am.

Alex turns to say hi to another boy getting dropped off, and Risha and I start toward the reception building. I lean close to her as we walk. "What's up with the truck?"

She makes a scared face. "Oh my gosh, you're not a spy with the International Climate Commission, are you?"

"No, but-"

Risha laughs. "I'm kidding. You didn't really think it was gas-powered, did you? Nobody's that dumb. A bunch of the farmers around here have rigged up old trucks to run on vegetable oil. Kind of messy, but it's cheaper than a new HV." She pulls open the door to the lobby.

"Welcome, welcome." The man waving us inside has a reddish-brown ponytail and a face full of freckles that run together in splotches over his nose. He looks young enough to be a camper, but his badge says VAN GARDNER, EYE ON TOMORROW STAFF.