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Back The Cloud Chamber
Chapters (35)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Acknowledgments
  5. Author’s Note
  6. One
  7. Two
  8. Three
  9. Four
  10. Five
  11. Six
  12. Seven
  13. Eight
  14. Nine
  15. Ten
  16. Eleven
  17. Twelve
  18. Thirteen
  19. Fourteen
  20. Fifteen
  21. Sixteen
  22. Seventeen
  23. Eighteen
  24. Nineteen
  25. Twenty
  26. Twenty-One
  27. Twenty-Two
  28. Twenty-Three
  29. Twenty-Four
  30. Twenty-Five
  31. Twenty-Six
  32. Twenty-Seven
  33. Twenty-Eight
  34. Twenty-Nine
  35. Thirty

His grandfather stopped pouring milk and looked up at Nate. “These haven’t been the easiest times for your sister and you, have they?”

“It’s okay.”

“Just try to get it back to me in one piece,” he said, undoing the buckle. “If a man doesn’t know the time of day without a watch on his wrist by my age, I guess he’s got a problem, doesn’t he?” He handed the watch to Nate.

Nate’s mother had stopped playing her piano. At night she sat in the kitchen, sipping tea and talking on the telephone with Aunt Sal. About the only music at their house besides Junie’s two 45s was Nate’s Beatles album, played on Junie’s old kiddie turntable, with its needle that was so old, the voices of John and Paul sounded scratchy and a million miles away.

More and more lately, when he thought about what was going on, it seemed to Nate that the only safe place was just where his father always told him it would be: outside, looking up at the sky. He stood there in the darkness now, studying the constellations, the new moon, and Venus. Beyond that lay whole other galaxies besides their own. A million other suns, each with its own system of planets. A billion stars. Places where nothing that was going on down on earth made a difference. He hoped there was a window in his dad’s hospital room in Warm Springs, where he could look out and see the sky. Maybe, if he was looking up right now, he could take some comfort in thinking that the very stars that shone on him were shining on his son, too.

Junie never talked about their father when their mother was around or in front of their grandmother and Poppa. But at night, upstairs, she’d call to Nate to come and lie down next to her and help her get to sleep.

“I miss Daddy,” she said one night after he’d read her a chapter of Beezus and Ramona that featured the father. One of those regular-type dads, like on TV.

“I know, J,” Nate said to her. “I miss him too.”

“I don’t understand why we don’t get to see him. Even if he’s sick in the hospital, we could go visit. We’d cheer him up.”

“It isn’t up to us,” Nate told her. “The hospital where Dad’s staying is far away from here, and nobody will take us.”

“It’s not fair,” Junie said. “When it’s my birthday, I’m going to make Mom take me. If she won’t take me, I’m going by myself.”