"I think this whole thing bites!" I say, and storm out. My iPod remains on from the moment we leave the house to the moment the flight attendant says to turn off all electrical devices. I'm squished between Mom and Melanie, who is chomping loudly on honey-roasted peanuts and pointing out each type of cloud as we fly overhead. When we first came on the plane we had to walk through first cla.s.s and it was soooo nice. Roomy leather seats. Foot rests. And a cute guy in a college t-shirt checked me out. I might be the best-dressed person on the plane in my strappy sandals and pink cami and wraparound skirt. Everyone else looks like slobs in sweats or jeans or shorts. I firmly believe one should always look their best, no matter what the circ.u.mstances are. If I wasn't being sent to Purgatory, I might have flirted with College T-shirt Guy.

Melanie keeps poking me and reading pa.s.sages from a book about eclipses. "Listen to this one," she says, not waiting for a response. "In the middle of watching a solar eclipse, this woman says, 'If it could be repeated every day for a year, I would never budge from where I stood.' That must mean it's pretty amazing."

"Trust me," I say, closing my eyes, "I'll be able to budge."

Dad is waiting for us in baggage claim when we arrive. He looks tired, but he perks up when he sees us. Melanie goes running into his arms. I grunt a h.e.l.lo. I look for College T-shirt Guy when we land, but I don't see him. Flirting would at least be something to do. Even the airport is in the middle of nowhere. Cornfields and distant mountains and cows. It feels strange to see Dad's van parked in front of such an unfamiliar place. It bucks and grunts as he turns the key, but it feels a little like home.

After a few hours we arrive in a little town that as far as I can tell consists of two streets with a diner, a video store, a Laundromat, and a tiny market. We pull into the diner. I'm surprised to see the parking lot is full.

"We're about fifty miles from the Moon Shadow," Dad says as a little bell rings to announce our arrival inside.

"What's the Moon Shadow?" I ask hoa.r.s.ely. Then I clamp my mouth shut, remembering my vow of silence.

"That's the name of the campsite," Melanie says, bouncing on her heels. "Because during a solar eclipse the moon's shadow covers the earth. Isn't it a great name?"

"Fab," I mutter.

A waitress appears and leads us to the one empty booth. I bet they don't even have bottled water here. I'll die of thirst before I drink a soda. I can't help wondering who all these people are. Some old, some young, some even speaking foreign languages. They can't possibly all live out here. As if reading my thoughts, she waves her arm around the room and says, "Eclipse chasers. Come a few weeks early. I 'spect you all doing the same?"

Melanie and I slide into the booth as Dad says, "Actually we're here to take over the Moon Shadow Campground."

The woman hands me a plastic menu and then pauses. "Really now? I didn't know the Summers family was leaving. Where they goin' then?"

"We're not sure," Dad says, looking to Mom, who shakes her head.

"The Midwest, I think," she says. "This all happened very suddenly. In fact they're not even expecting us for another week. We figured we'd come a little early so we can learn how things are run before the eclipse."

Another WEEK? We didn't have to be here for another week? I fume into my menu, which is sticky with ketchup.

Once the waitress leaves, Dad nudges me and says, "You might want to try the meat loaf with gravy fries. It gets cold up here in the winter. You need to put some meat on your bones."

I stare at him as if he's just suggested I sprout wings and fly through the air. I can't put meat on my bones and expect to be ready to model when we get back to civilization. Then it hits me. Maybe being in Purgatory is, like, my test. It's not easy being a model. You have to watch what you eat all the time; you have to compete with all the other girls; you have to stand really still while bossy designers nip and tuck clothes around you. Plus you get really jet-lagged flying around the world. If I can handle this, I'll know I have what it takes to put up with all the hardships that go with life as a supermodel. Maybe it won't be so bad. After all, I can appreciate natural beauty. It will give me plenty of time to practice my runway strut. And without the smog from the city, I bet my complexion will be totally clear.

Oh, who am I kidding? It's gonna suck.

JACK.

3.

The ride to the bus is quiet. I'm in the backseat of Mom's Toyota, staring out the window. Most of the town is still asleep. Mike is in the front seat as usual. You'd think that since we're in the car because of me, he'd let me sit in the front. But no. He never thinks of things like that.

"I'm not pushing you into this, right?" Mom says, glancing at me through the rearview mirror. "It's your choice to go?"

Mom has asked me this three times since Mr. Sil-ver's call. "Yes, Mom, it's my choice. Don't worry, I'll be fine."

"I'm not worried," she says. But she clearly is. I don't have a great track record with school trips. In sixth grade she had to come pick me up from Six Flags because Timmy Johnson bet me I couldn't eat ten hot dogs. I ate eleven, and threw up all over the tilt-a-whirl and half the riders. Then last year my history cla.s.s went to a museum, and I thought a piece of modern art was a trash can and spit my gum into it. That didn't go over well either. But I'm older and wiser now. I plan on keeping a low profile and staying out of trouble. Plus Timmy Johnson-or anyone else-wouldn't bother to bet me anything now since they don't notice me at all.

We pull into the town hall parking lot and I see the bus idling in front. I feel a little flutter in my stomach, followed by a big flutter. Mom gets out, but I don't move from my seat. I pat the pockets of my jacket to make sure my book and sketch pad and Game Boy are still there. Mr. Silver is standing by the side of the bus, checking people in with a clipboard. Am I crazy to be doing this? What if I'm totally useless and Mr. Silver fires me and Mom has to drive hundreds of miles to pick me up? I don't want to let her down again. I don't want to be grounded again. For me being grounded means I can't go into the treehouse.

Mike gets out of the car, and I have no choice but to follow. He's already grabbed my duffel from the trunk by the time I reach it. He plops it on the ground in front of me. "I have something for you," he says, handing me a red folder. "I thought you might want to learn a thing or two about eclipses before you got there. You know, so you won't feel left out."

I open the folder and flip through the pages. There are three articles: "Elements of a Solar Eclipse," "What to Look for During a Total Solar Eclipse," and "Three Thousand Miles for Three Minutes of Totality." There are diagrams and photographs, too. I couldn't be more surprised. "Where did you get these?"

"I downloaded them early this morning."

We stand there awkwardly for a minute, looking around the parking lot. Mike was right, most of the people taking bags out of their cars are over fifty. But there are a few younger groups, and one family with a kid who looks around six years old. Mom approaches with Mr. Silver. I've never seen him in shorts and a t-shirt before. He looks younger than he does in school, not much older than my mom. I hold my breath. Now he's going to realize he's got the wrong guy. But he just swings my duffel over his shoulder and says, "Ready for the adventure of a lifetime?"

I glance at Mike and he gives me a little shove. "I guess I am," I reply, clutching the folder. Mom gives me a hug and slips five twenty-dollar bills in my hand. "For emergencies," she says. "And snacks."

I wave goodbye to them as I follow Mr. Silver to the bus. He tosses my duffel into the open compartment underneath. Good thing I don't have anything breakable in there. He's still checking people in, and tells me to go find a seat anywhere I like. I step onto the bus and feel a blast of air conditioning hit my face. The aisle isn't very wide, and I have to be careful not to jostle anyone on my way down. Whacking an old guy with my elbow wouldn't be a good start to the trip. I catch bits and pieces of words that make no sense to me. Words like Baily's Beads, Corona, Shadow Bands, Diamond Ring. Is someone proposing on the trip? I look where the voice is coming from, but it's an old man in thick gla.s.ses. He doesn't seem like a likely candidate to get married any time soon.

Most of the back of the bus is empty. I settle into the window seat in the very last row and flip open the folder. I only get two paragraphs into the first article when I sense movement toward my end of the bus. An old woman in a pink sweat suit is heading determinedly down the aisle. Please don't sit here, I silently beg. I'm sure she's a nice enough lady, but I really don't want to have to make small talk with a stranger for fourteen hours. Please be heading for the bathroom.

So of course she sits down next to me. She looks even older than the rest, with the brightest white hair I've ever seen. You could see her hair from s.p.a.ce, I bet. I can't imagine why she would have walked all the way down the aisle when there were plenty of open seats up front. She smiles at me, so I smile back. I hope she can't sense my disappointment at not getting to sit alone. She settles into her seat, lifts a huge container of red licorice out of her enormous pocketbook, and offers me a piece.

"Um, thanks," I say, peeling one off the top.

"What's that you're reading?" she asks, tilting her head toward my folder.

I glance down at my lap. "Some articles about eclipses. I'm, uh, trying to learn stuff before we get there."

She nibbles at her licorice and says, "You don't need to read any articles. You got a living, breathing eclipse expert right here."

I nod. "I know. He's my science teacher at school."

She laughs and then starts coughing. It goes on so long I start to worry. I wonder if resuscitating old people is on my list of official responsibilities. I move my licorice to the other side of me so she doesn't cough on it.

"Not Silver," she says. "Me! This is my sixth eclipse. I've traveled the world for 'em. Saved all my money to do it, too. Worth every penny and then some. I've got almost half an hour of totality-that's total darkness, you know-under my belt. If I wore a belt, that is. Never could understand the fascination with belts. Let's tie something really tight around our waists. Cut off our circulation. That's smart! The things people do for fashion. Doesn't make any kind of sense."

When I'm pretty sure she's done ranting about belts, I say, "Well, I don't know why women wear belts, but guys need them or else our pants would fall down."

Her brows rise under her white hair. "Is that so? I never knew that."

I nod.

"So what can I tell you about eclipses in exchange for that tidbit of knowledge?"

The bus is starting to pull out of the lot now, and I can see Mom and Mike standing by the car, watching. The windows are tinted and I know they can't see me, but my hand goes up to wave anyway. Yesterday if someone had told me I'd be here now, talking about belts and eclipses with a little old lady in a pink sweat suit while eating licorice, I'd have thought they were crazy. But here I am.

"Well," I say, swallowing the last bit of licorice, "I've only read a little bit so far, so I don't really know what to ask." She looks disappointed, so I think for a second. "But I guess you could tell me why people would spend their life savings to see it get dark for a few minutes. It's dark for, like, twelve hours a day anyway."

She laughs again and I'm afraid it's going to turn into another coughing fit. Fortunately, she catches her breath. "Only a poet can truly describe an eclipse, and I'm sorry to say I'm not a very good one. But comparing what you see during an eclipse to the darkness at night is like comparing an ocean to a teardrop. Do you see what I mean?"

I shake my head.

"Well, it's the same thing, what makes up a teardrop and the ocean, but completely different in magnitude. Yes, it gets dark during an eclipse, and the stars come out in the daytime, and that's all well and good," she explains. "But it's what the SUN does that makes it so special. At night, it's dark because the sun is shining on the other side of the earth, right?"

I know I'm supposed to say yes, but hey, I failed seventh grade science. I nod, figuring that is the safest answer.

She continues. "During an eclipse, it's dark, see, but the sun is still there, right in front of you. Only it's not, because the moon is completely covering it. So all you can see is this perfect circle of white streamers billowing out at you. And it changes everything around you. It changes you, too, on the inside." She lowers her voice. "Some religious folk even say it's the Eye of G.o.d. Could be, but all I know is it's something to marvel at for sure." She wipes a tear away from her face and I look away, totally clueless as to what to do.

While she fishes around in her bag, probably for a tissue, I become aware of a clacking sound. It seems to be coming from under the bus. Probably just something in the storage bins rattling around. Hopefully.

Mr. Silver's booming voice suddenly fills the air. "h.e.l.lo, everyone!" I peer over the seat in front of me and see him standing at the front of the bus, gripping the top of the seat for balance. He's holding a cordless microphone and is wearing a hat that I can only describe as a big stuffed sun. If the kids at school could see him now!

He tips his hat to the group and people laugh. He says, "h.e.l.lo and welcome to the Eclipse Tour. I recognize some faces from our trip to Tibet a few years back, and many new faces, too. Whether this is your first eclipse or your tenth, I know this will be an experience you'll never forget. Unlike the other trips, this one won't include much sightseeing or fancy meals or visits to local museums. You won't have to pack up your belongings each day to travel to the next location. This is a quieter trip, but no less extraordinary. We'll set up camp and explore the heavens under one of the darkest skies in the states. We'll learn how to tell Andromeda from the Great Bear. We'll search for faint fuzzies-those distant deep sky objects-with a variety of telescopes and binoculars. And during the day we'll search for intelligent life on other planets, we'll walk a labyrinth, and contemplate the beauty of nature from a kayak in the middle of a pristine lake. And then what happens at the end?"

He pauses here, and cups his hand over his ear. In unison, everyone (except me) shouts, "The eclipse!"

"That's right!" he says, laughing. "We're going to be on the only spot of American soil to witness all of nature holding its breath. Of course we'll be holding our breath along with it!"

Everyone cheers.

"Raise your hands if this is your first eclipse."

I raise my hand a few inches, even though no one can see me in the back row. About half the group raises their hands, too. This makes me feel better. I'm not the only clueless one.

"A special welcome to the newbies!" Mr. Silver calls out. "Where are you all from?"

Voices call out from all over the bus. "New York City! Memphis! Dallas! Seattle!"

I'm shocked. All these people came together in MY hometown to take a fourteen-hour bus ride?

"Who can tell me why they call a total solar eclipse Nature's Greatest Coincidence?" Mr. Silver grins as hands shoot up all around the bus. We're barely out of town and already I feel like I'm back at school, not knowing the correct answers.

Mr. Silver calls on a lady in the front and waves her up to the microphone. He places the sun hat on her head and says, "Whoever has the hat, has our attention, folks." She giggles, adjusting it on her head. Then she says, "The only reason we can see an eclipse is because the moon and the sun happen to look the exact same size from earth. But really, the moon is 400 times smaller. It's just that coincidentally, the sun is 400 times as far away as the moon, so they look the same size to us. If the moon were even a few miles smaller across, it wouldn't hide the face of the sun when it pa.s.sed in front of it."

Mr. Silver lifts the hat off her head and puts it back on his own. "Thank you for that concise over-view, uh -"

"Rebecca," the woman says, leaning into the mike.

"Thank you, Rebecca!" Everyone claps and Rebecca makes a little curtsy before carefully making her way back to her seat.

I still hear that clacking sound. Every once and a while a quick hiss joins in. Pink Sweat Suit Lady doesn't seem to notice. Although she's so old she could be hard of hearing. None of the other adults notice either so I guess it's just a normal bus noise and I'm being paranoid.

"I'm going to let you all relax in a minute, but I just want to introduce my a.s.sistant on this trip-Jack Rosten. Where are ya, Jack?"

My face burns when I hear my name. "Uh, I'm back here," I say, lifting my hand.

"Stand up, Jack," Mr. Silver booms. "Let everyone see who ya are."

I stand up awkwardly in my seat, and the folder goes flying onto the head of the person in front of me. Very coordinated.

"Jack here is going to be my right-hand man. Anything you need and I'm not around, you can ask him. Right, Jack?"

I smile weakly as everyone cranes their necks to look at me. The last time I was the center of attention like this was when I was a stalk of broccoli in the third grade play and forgot my one line. It was something about how broccoli is an important antioxidant or some-thing like that. The whole audience stared at me until finally the carrot stepped forward to deliver her line about carrots being good for the eyes.

"Pssst, I think you can sit down now," whispers Pink Sweat Suit Lady, tugging gently on my sleeve.

I quickly sit. The guy in front of me slips my folder through the seats and I take it.

"I didn't know you were such an important figure," she says, offering me another piece of licorice. I'm too shaken up to take it. How am I supposed to be this guy's right-hand man when I don't know anything about anything? I'm starting to think I made a big mistake. At least at summer school all I'd have to do is sit there.

Mr. Silver is talking again. "Now everyone lean back and enjoy the countryside. We'll stop for lunch in a few hours."

The chatter picks up again and then eventually people either drift off to sleep or start reading. It doesn't take long for corn and wheat fields to replace the strip malls and office buildings. I bury myself in reading the articles. All the words I had heard when I first got on the bus are explained in there. I guess it sounds interesting, but I honestly still don't see what the big deal is. I take out my sketchpad and a thin charcoal pencil and start drawing. Mr. Silver becomes a tall, thin alien in a sun-hat. Instead of standing in front of a bus, the alien is at the front of a s.p.a.ceship. A pudgy wizard in a high pointy hat stands next to him. I'm the wizard.

I thought Pink Sweat Suit Lady was sleeping, but she leans over and looks at my picture before I have time to jerk it away. "Remarkable likeness," she jokes. "You must really be interested in outer s.p.a.ce."

I shake my head. "Why would you say that?"

She scrunches her brows at me. "Well, besides the fact that you're the a.s.sistant eclipse tour leader, you're drawing pictures of aliens."

Okay, so she has a point. How can I explain that I never really thought of my aliens as living on other worlds, like they could possibly exist? I just think of them in some alternate reality, the same as wizards and monsters.

"My name's Stella," she says, extending a frail hand.

I reach out to shake it, afraid to hurt her. Her shake is surprisingly strong and firm.

"My son and his wife are up front," she tells me. "His wife doesn't like it when I'm in the way too much. So I try to stay out of the way. You know that old saying, 'your daughter's your daughter all of your life, your son is your son till he gets a wife'?"

I shake my head.

"Yeah, well, it's true. So be good to your momma while you're young." Then she pulls two long knitting needles out of her bag. A skinny red scarf is attached, clearly a work in progress. Stella starts knitting so quickly I can barely see the tips of the needles darting in and out of the yarn. I close my eyes and wonder again how I got here.

I must have fallen asleep, but the clanking and hissing awakens me. Most people are sleeping, too. Stella isn't in her seat. I see the restroom door says occupied, so she must be there. I lift up the armrest between our seats and slide out. We're going pretty fast, and it's hard to keep my balance, but I manage to make it to the front without too many "sorry's" and "excuse me's."

I kneel next to Mr. Silver, who is going through some papers. "I think there's something wrong with the bus," I whisper, so as not to alarm anyone nearby.

"What do you mean?" he asks.

"There's a clanking and a hissing."

"Can you describe the clanking and the hissing?"

"Well, the clanking sort of sounds like a clank, and the hiss is well, a hissing sound."

"I was kidding, Jack," Mr. Silver says, laying his papers on the empty seat next to him. "Lighten up, kid, or it's going to be a long two weeks."

Sometimes I'm not sure when people are joking. One of my many deficiencies.

"We're going to pull off for lunch soon, and I'll have the driver check it out then, okay?"