Steemjammer: Through the Verltgaat Read Online Free Page B

of ornamental yellow grass, but with all the moisture in the air, it snaked uncontrollably in all directions.
    “Like Medusa,” she teased. “Watch out!”
    He smiled. It was her first joke since their dad had vanished. Even though he’d moved his bed into her room, the past few days had been tough for her. She’d awakened several times a night, screaming from terrible dreams, and often he’d heard her whispering to herself: “Be tough.” Maybe, he thought, she was gaining some control over her emotions.
    “Just put the haaskooler on halfway,” Angelica said. “Not like before.”
    “With my luck,” Will said, stretching a chain-drive, “it’ll start snowing in the living room, and glaciers will carve channels down the staircase.”
    “Hey, Will?”
    “Hey, what?”
    “Dad’s coming back soon, right?”
    “Yeah. Probably tonight.”
    She nodded, and Will sensed she was doing everything she could to believe it.
    “Why does he talk about going home?” she asked.
    “I don’t know,” he said, thinking how he was just about to corner him on the subject before he vanished. “Maybe we’re political refugees. Maybe if we went home we’d be arrested.”
    “Isn’t Beverkenhaas our home?”
    “You know what he says. It’s not our real home.”
    “It’s my home.”
    “Yeah, but do you feel like you really belong here?”
    “I love Beverkenhaas!”
    “So do I,” he said. “I mean this area, these people. I don’t feel right here, but what if we go where Mom and Dad are from, and it’s even worse?”
    “What’s so bad about here?”
    He put down his tools. “We’re different, Angie-bee.” That was her nickname, because when she was full of energy, she seemed to buzz about the place like a hyper little honey bee. “Haven’t you noticed? Just wait until Brie starts asking why her mom thinks you’re weird and why you can’t text.”
    “She already does. I told her we could dig a trench and run a speaking tube from my bedroom to hers.” Beverkenhaas had a network of brass speaking tubes connecting most of the rooms. “She said ‘ew,’ and I guess that meant ‘no.’”
    He thought about the friends he once had, when he was her age, but then they’d noticed how different he was. For example, the Steemjammers sheared wool and converted flax plants into linen to make comfortable, homespun clothing, but his friends guessed it was from a thrift shop. Saying his parents were too poor to buy real clothes, they teased him mercilessly, so he’d stopped seeing them.
    “Why can’t I text, anyway?” she asked.
    “Do you even know what it is?” he said.
    “Yeah, it’s like a tiny typewriter you hold in your hand.”
    “That runs on electricity. Haven’t you heard it six thousand times? ‘Electricity is dangerous.’”
    A guilty look crossed her face. “I meant to tell Dad. I really did.”
    “What?”
    “The subject got changed, and then he vanished.”
    “Angie-bee, say it.”
    She looked down. “I used my friend’s computer.”
    “Really?”
    “I played games and looked up stuff.”
    “What? It didn’t break?”
    “No.”
    Distracted, he caught his thumb between the chain and sprocket. “Ow!”
    “That didn’t hurt,” she said.
    “Oh, really?”
    “You have to be tough. Dad says so.”
    “Stop being annoying.”
    “I’m not. He also says you can’t carp, and don’t tell me it’s a fish, because it’s not. It means to complain without any good reason.”
    He started to show her the blood blister on his thumb, but she’d turned her head toward the nearest window, already wanting to go check the yard.
    “The man’s gone,” he said. “Stop worrying.”
    She frowned. “I can’t. Will, something’s wrong. Can’t you tell? It’s not only that Mom and Dad are gone. That Dutch we’re learning? It isn’t Dutch!”
    “Huh?”
    She explained looking it up on the Internet at her friend’s house and discovering that she could barely understand the real Dutch on a