Storm Girls (The Juniper Wars Book 4) by Aaron Ritchey (best books to read for teens .txt) 📗

back at us from beyond the grave. His grenade had weakened the pipes. Falling into the pit had hurt the Marilyn further. The hours of hard work had finally made it snap.

Without a closed system, the whole pressure system ceased to work. Could I fix her?

Nikola’s design was complex. And she was one of the best engineers in the world. What was I? Some desperate, wrung-out Juniper girl, on top of a mountain pass in a blizzard, with six people’s lives depending on how well I could think.

It was too far to go back.

Going forward was our only option.

Chapter Eight

I couldn’t have you less

But I couldn’t want you more

You only let me love you

When you’re halfway out the door

—Iris Heller

(i)

I WAS ON THE Marilyn’s arm with my tools, unratcheting, unscrewing, working even as hunger nipped at my belly. My migraine had worsened, making it hard to see, even harder to think.

Sharlotte sat next to me, making sure I drank water. We were boiling down snow as fast as we could. It tasted like cold ash in my mouth.

The rest of our people were milling about. A break in the blizzard allowed them a chance to get out and stretch their legs. The sun struggled to come out, but Mama would’ve called the little bit of blue above us a sucker hole; the sky was trying to sucker us into believing the storm was blowing on. It wasn’t. I knew it.

I couldn’t get to the busted pipe, so I wasn’t going to try to patch the hole. My best bet to get her running again was to dismantle that section of the steam system, turn off the arm for good and create a seal. Duct tape was all I had to work with, but the Sino-American War had given us about a million stories of how duct tape had saved the day. Had been a whole series about it you could find on the Eternity video library.

Sharlotte finally sighed. “Cavvy, what about transferring all of our gear to the Audrey Hepburn and just taking the one Stanley? It would be packed in tight, but some of us could take turns riding on the outside. Or maybe we can convert one of the trunks to allow someone to ride in there.”

“Almost got the Marilyn fixed,” I said.

Pilate would’ve used a Star Trek reference, something about someone named Scotty, but Sharlotte had our own history to pull from. “You always say that. Mama always said that. When you guys were working on the chuck wagon, you almost had it fixed for months. We ain’t got months, Cavvy.”

I stopped. I had to close my eyes, my head hurt so bad. I was feeling nauseated, but I wasn’t going to throw up. No. I wanted to keep the little bit of food I had in my stomach. Oh, how hollow I felt. So cold. The icy air numbed my fingers into frozen sausages.

“It was a bad idea,” I murmured. “Us going over the pass. If we had food, it wouldn’t be as dangerous, but we don’t. If I can fix Marilyn, it gives us one less thing to worry about. If we take the Audrey and she breaks down, we can’t walk out of here. Can’t. Snow is too deep. I just wish I wasn’t so hungry.”

“We got a week of fat on us easy,” Sharlotte said.

“Speak for yourself,” I returned, but laughed to show I was kidding ’cause no girl likes to be teased about her weight.

“All those poor thin people, they ain’t got the survival layers we got.” Sharlotte’s smile was bright. “On the cattle drive, me and Aunt Bea would hit the chuck wagon for butter and sugar all the time. Whip up a little frosting to keep our weight up for times like this.”

“Sharlotte Jeanne Weller!” I cried. “Don’t say the f-word.”

“Frosting!” Sharlotte shouted.

We both laughed. It felt good, though the laughter was like a hammer pounding on the anvil of my headache.

Sharlotte inched down the arm toward me. “Okay, genius, show me how you think you’re almost done.”

I gestured through the gearing and armament to the damaged pipe. I had dismantled the right missile launcher enough to get my hands down to the broken piping. A belt of thin red-tipped rockets dangled from the Marilyn’s arm.

“The duct tape should be enough to seal the pipe. If not, I’ll have to take off the machine gun ammunition feed and wrench off the whole pipe at the joint, then try using the tape to seal the end. I wouldn’t bet on my chances on that working. Not one bit. See? Almost got it.”

I got the duct tape around the pipe and ripped off enough to cover her. Sharlotte was there, helping me, joking with me, talking about food until I begged her to stop.

Once I fixed the Marilyn, I used the last of the water to fill the boiler.

Then we waited to see if my patch held. If it didn’t, or if there were other fissures in the pipes, we’d have to give up and leave the Marilyn and trust our luck in the Audrey Hepburn.

Then Sharlotte asked me a question out of nowhere. “If you had to choose between Aunt Bea’s corn tortillas or her flour tortillas, which would you choose?”

I yelped in hunger and frustration but showed her a smile. “Shar, please, stop. But if you must know, her flour tortillas, if they were fresh. Corn if we had to heat ’em up.”

Sharlotte shook her head. “Nope. Wrong answer. Warm or cold, old or new, Aunt Bea’s flour tortillas with butter and honey. The end.”

My belly spiked with hunger, and I winced. “Dang, Shar, you’re killing me.”

From the other side of the Marilyn, I heard Marisol giggle, heard Dutch’s low voice say something, and then Wren laughed loudly.

Then, of course, Rachel asked, “I don’t understand why that’s funny.”

Right then, they all truly felt like family, even Dutch, playing his part as the long-lost uncle with a checkered past.

With