Black Blizzard

  Copyright © 2017 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

  Darby Creek

  A division of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  241 First Avenue North

  Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA

  For reading levels and more information, look up this title at www.lernerbooks.com.

  Front cover: © iStockphoto.com/Scott Cramer; © iStockphoto.com/carton_king,(dust swirls); © Andrey Armyagov/Shutterstock.com, (school bus).

  Images in this book used with the permission of: © iStockphoto.com/Scott Cramer; © iStockphoto.com/carton_king,(dust swirls); © Andrey Armyagov/Shutterstock.com, (school bus); © iStockphoto.com/Marina Mariya (swirl).

  Main body text set in Janson Text LT Std 12/17.5. Typeface provided by Adobe Systems.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Johnson, Kristin F., 1968- author.

  Title: Black blizzard / Kristin F. Johnson.

  Description: Minneapolis : Darby Creek, [2017] | Series: Day of disaster | Summary: “A team’s school bus breaks down in the middle of the desert after a disappointing loss at the State Championships, and a gathering dust storm threatens to turn their bus into a death trap. It will take some quick thinking to get through this!”— Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016017982 (print) | LCCN 2016034213 (ebook) | ISBN 9781512427745 (lb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781512430936 (pb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781512427813 (eb pdf)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Dust storms—Fiction. | Survival—Fiction. | Arizona—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.J624 Bl 2017 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.J624 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016017982

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1-41499-23360-5/16/2016

  9781512435061 ePub

  9781512435078 ePub

  9781512435085 mobi

  For Alisa

  1

  The day of the disaster, Tyler Manning couldn’t believe he had screwed up so badly. He leaned over and rested his forehead against the seatback. He clutched his cell phone in his hand, trying to focus on the maze game he’d downloaded the week before. Usually he could finish a level within a few minutes, but today he just wasn’t thinking clearly.

  The school bus lurched, jolting Tyler backward and forward so his head smacked on the seat in front of him. He dropped his phone. It skidded up the floor, crashing into the pair of feet in front of him.

  “Hey!” Sha’relle snapped, pulling off her headphones. Sha’relle’s music was playing so loud that even in the seat behind her Tyler could hear it was Beyoncé.

  “Yeah, watch it,” her seatmate Daniela said, glaring back at Tyler.

  “Sorry.” Tyler rubbed his forehead where he had smacked it on the seat. He felt around on the floor until he found his phone.

  His phone had lost service once the bus had gotten far enough into the middle of nowhere. Tyler wished he had some music saved on his phone since he could no longer connect to his streaming app, but normally he wouldn’t have needed it because he and Ethan would have been talking the whole way home. That’s what they did for the past speech-team events they’d gone to this year.

  Instead Ethan sat two rows back with L.J., who was in the spot Tyler had occupied on the way to the state tournament—right across the aisle from where Julia Evans sat. Since they left the tournament, Ethan had acted as if he didn’t even know Tyler.

  The panels of the bus’s front door were rattling. The way they rattled, one side had to be loose. Tyler wondered if the school district saved the rundown buses for these Saturday speech tournaments.

  The bus rumbled down Interstate 10 through the Arizona desert. The trip back to Phoenix was a torturous hour and forty-five minutes. Normally, that didn’t seem far, but today it felt like the longest ride ever—and they were only halfway there. Through his window, Tyler saw endless acacia trees, buckthorn, desert willow trees, and deer grass. On the way to Tucson, Tyler’s teammates had been all fired up, goofing around and practicing speeches for their events. But no one had that energy anymore after losing at State.

  With a sudden popping sound, the bus sputtered and lurched and slowed down. The driver struggled to pull over to the side of the road.

  “Why are we stopping?” Sha’relle asked, kneeling up on her seat.

  “Probably ran out of gas,” José said. Other students leaned up in their seats to get a better look. The noise inside the bus grew as they began chattering about what they thought the problem might be.

  Tyler spotted smoke escaping from under the front of the bus.

  The bus driver reached down from his seat, pulled a latch, and popped the hood. He whispered something to their speech-team coach, Mr. Dwyer, who then stood in the aisle and faced the team. The loose door shuddered as the driver opened it.

  “Everyone calm down. The driver needs to check something under the hood. We should be back on the road shortly.” Mr. Dwyer adjusted his baseball cap and scratched his beard. Tyler frowned. Their coach usually wasn’t a fidgety guy. He hadn’t even seemed this anxious at their tournament earlier that day. Something seemed seriously wrong.

  “We can’t get stuck here. I have plans tonight,” Sha’relle said.

  “Yeah,” Daniela piped up. “Me, too.”

  “Take your seats, everyone. Just give us five minutes while we figure this out,” Mr. Dwyer replied.

  Sha’relle finally sat down.

  Mr. Dwyer swung around the front handrail and met the bus driver outside. He continued his beard-scratching and cap-adjusting as he spoke with the driver and pointed under the hood. The driver waved his arms and wiped sweat off his brow. That dude sweats a lot, Tyler thought to himself.

  A wind picked up and blew Mr. Dwyer’s baseball cap right off his head and he ran after it. Whenever he got close to the cap, it lifted off the ground and traveled another five feet away. José and Kevin pointed from their seats and laughed. It did look like a comedy skit, but it was weird to see their coach so out of it. He was usually a pretty calm, thought-out guy—it was one of the reasons Mr. Dwyer was one of Tyler’s favorite teachers.

  Mr. Dwyer crouched down and finally caught his hat.

  Smoke continued rolling out from under the hood of the bus—that couldn’t be good. The wind blew the smoke sideways. Tyler watched as the bus driver stepped away from the hood and slammed it closed. The driver tore off his own hat and threw it on the ground in a fit. Almost immediately, his eyes looked over to the bus. By the way the man’s gaze drifted along a number of the windows, Tyler figured he wasn’t the only student who’d seen the driver do that. Several people were now leaning against the windows to see what was happening outside. The driver sheepishly glanced around and picked up his hat.

  “Yep, we’re stalled,” Sha’relle said.

  “Not just stalled,” Kevin corrected. “This bus has broken down.”

  Tyler looked down the road in both directions. They were in the middle of the desert, alone on the side of the road, with no towns in sight.

  “Aw, man!” said L.J. “I wanted to be home to watch the Sun Devils. ASU is in the playoffs!”

  Mr. Dwyer climbed back onto the bus. A moment later, the bus driver clambered up the steps and whispered something to Mr. Dwyer again.

  “All right, everyone, listen up,” Mr. Dwyer said. “The bus has broken down.”


  Groans.

  “Told you,” Kevin said to anyone who would listen.

  “I know. I’m not happy about it either,” Mr. Dwyer said. “The bus driver is calling for a replacement. Just sit tight until it arrives. Shouldn’t be long.”

  The bus driver picked up the two-way radio hand piece, which crackled with static. “Hello? Hello?” He looked up for a second to see if anyone was watching. Pretty much everyone was watching.

  What would Dad do? Tyler wondered. His dad was horrible with cars. He would probably call Triple-A. Tyler checked his phone again—still no bars.

  Tyler looked out the window. That’s just great, he thought. Let’s make this horrible ride home even longer. A clump of tumbleweed rolled by, much faster than ones he had seen earlier. Beyond the tumbleweed, clouds formed as if nighttime was approaching, but it was only mid-afternoon. The surrounding sky grew darker. Tyler studied the clouds again. They looked like a haze of gathering dust.

  2

  The screwup at the speech tournament was one of those moments Tyler often had nightmares about, but the nightmares hadn’t come true until today.

  The worst part was that Tyler’s event came at the end of the day. By then, his teammates had all finished their competitions and knew their team’s score and ranking, so everyone was watching Tyler. His storytelling performance would affect the overall placement of the team and everyone was counting on him to nail it.

  And then he froze.

  In the moments before he took the stage, he should have been turning over the first few lines in his head so he could ensure a strong opening delivery, but instead all he could think about was how L.J. had sidled up to Julia all day and kept chatting with her and touching her arm.

  When it came time for Tyler to begin, he’d walked up to the podium on stage, squinting into the bright spotlight . . . and his mind went blank.

  Tyler glanced around the auditorium. He’d completely forgotten the first sentence. He stood in silence for what felt like an hour before he finally stammered something. Once he got back on track, it was too late. The opening was worth a huge chunk of points, and he had blown it. And now he just had to keep going, because all eyes were on him. He felt himself sweating. The next time he spoke, the microphone made that horrible sound.

  SCREEEEECH!

  Feedback.

  The audience members covered their ears. The feedback problem wasn’t Tyler’s fault, but it probably added to his poor score because it threw him off even more.

  After that disaster, instead of Tyler getting the usual congratulatory pats on the back, he felt the stares of disappointed teammates.

  Since he had blanked on his storytelling piece, his team lost nearly all the points for that category and the team wound up losing the tournament. The Kennedy High School Speech Team made it to State because of their best season in three years, but now they had to go home defeated.

  It was the team’s worst loss since Tyler could remember. His dad had been impressed Tyler had chosen speech club because, as he liked to joke, most adults feared public speaking more than death. Tyler’s dad wouldn’t be so impressed to know Tyler had lost the competition for the team. Maybe he wouldn’t tell his dad what happened.

  But the real reason Tyler joined speech had nothing to do with pleasing his dad. He’d been interested mainly because it was co-ed and specifically because Julia Evans was on the team. Tyler had had a crush on her since ninth grade. She was pretty and smart—a win-win. She was also good at video games, which was cool. Tyler wanted to ask her to their school’s Spring Fling dance, but if he asked her right now—right after his big flop—she was sure to say no. The dance was a month away. If Tyler didn’t ask her soon, someone else might—someone like Lucas Jones.

  The worst part of today’s defeat was that Lucas Jones, called L.J. for short, had nailed his category, scoring the highest points for the team. And it was obvious to everyone on the team that L.J. was into Julia. Julia was a sophomore like Tyler, but L.J. was a junior, and it seemed like he could date anyone he wanted. Why did he have to pick the one girl Tyler was interested in?

  Tyler’s mouth grew dry. That wasn’t unusual lately, since pretty much everything in Arizona was dry. His dad said the drought this year was worrisome. His dad sold orange fencing to farmers, so he talked to a lot of them, and drought was a favorite conversation topic.

  When droughts happened, the state was ripe for other problems. In school, Tyler’s class studied the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, which was known as the worst dry spell in American history. The Dust Bowl had caused huge dust storms and crop failures in nearby states like New Mexico. Tyler could remember Ethan’s competitive speech on the Dust Bowl from the last tournament.

  The whole bus was quiet and tense except for Kevin and José, who kept telling stupid jokes in the back row. Mr. Dwyer always told a joke at the beginning of physics class, but his jokes weren’t as dirty as the ones Kevin and José were telling.

  There were twenty kids on the speech team, and they all came along for the State Tournament. The bus had more than twenty seats, so some people could have a bench to themselves if they wanted one. Tyler was one of those sitting alone.

  It was true that Tyler wanted to be alone, but he hated to think that no one wanted to sit with him because of his screwup. Be careful what you wish for, people always say. That empty space on the bench seat beside him crushed Tyler. He gave up on the maze game on his phone and couldn’t help himself from glancing over his shoulder to look two rows behind him.

  Julia was quietly reading a book, ignoring the noise from the others on the bus. He couldn’t see the cover but she’d been reading it the entire bus ride on the way to the tournament as well, so Tyler figured she had to be enjoying the book. He turned to face forward, wondering if it would be weird to ask her what she was reading. She had good taste in video games, so she had to like some good books too. Just as he was working up the nerve to turn back to her, L.J. also seemed to notice what she was doing.

  “Hey, Julia.” L.J.’s voice carried up the aisle to Tyler. “What are you reading?”

  “Have you heard about this new sci-fi trilogy that takes place on Mars? This is the first book in the series,” Julia said. “I just started it.”

  Tyler had to force himself not to turn around and glare at L.J. So much for his own interest in her book. If he asked now he would look like he was just copying L.J., even if Tyler actually was curious about what she thought of the book. He would have to think of another conversation starter.

  “Cool. You’ll have to tell me how it is,” L.J. said.

  Tyler couldn’t resist the urge to see how Julia reacted to this. He peered over his shoulder in time to see L.J. nudge Julia’s arm, which made Tyler want to jump out of his seat and block their eye contact across the aisle.

  Ethan, sitting next to L.J., looked up at Tyler. Tyler straightened in his seat, but then Ethan turned back to L.J. and said something Tyler couldn’t hear. L.J. laughed and nodded. Jerks. The speech team had always been like a second family to Tyler. How could family turn on you like that, after one lousy mistake?

  Tyler had told Ethan of his plan to ask Julia to the Spring Fling. He prayed Ethan wouldn’t tell anyone, especially L.J. The last thing Tyler needed was competition from someone who was older, someone who was a better speaker, someone who had his own car.

  L.J. was always bragging about how his dad had gotten him a sweet Honda coupe for his sixteenth birthday last year. Tyler’s dad didn’t think Tyler needed his own car with only two of them in the house. But Tyler planned to take his driver’s test as soon as he turned sixteen next month and he’d started saving as much money as he could so he could buy his own car anyway. L.J. hadn’t needed to do anything to get his car. He just had everything handed to him, but Tyler had to work for everything. His dad’s philosophy was that you appreciate things more if you have to earn them.

  Ethan and L.J. laughed at something again. They weren’t talking about him, Tyler reminded him
self. Or were they?

  Julia was absorbed in her book again. Any opportunity to start a conversation with her seemed to be gone at this point. Tyler had hoped being in speech club would give him more confidence when talking to girls. Now Tyler felt he was back to square one.

  He wanted to tune out everyone, but sounds seemed magnified today. His ears popped, which sometimes happened when a thunderstorm was coming, but the air had been so dry he couldn’t imagine they would get any rain.

  He was sweating more than usual, either from the stress of losing the tournament or from the heat of the day. He kept his arms down, trying to hide the stains on his shirt. All he wanted to do after letting everyone down was to crawl into his bed at home and hide his head under the pillow.

  Sitting there waiting for the replacement bus was excruciating. The dark leather seats heated in the sun.

  “Does anyone else feel like they’re baking on this bus?” Sha’relle asked, wiping a hand across her forehead.

  Tyler shook out his shirt to cool down. Outside, he saw another tumbleweed roll by.

  Sha’relle and Daniela fanned themselves with their speech notes.

  “Why are those cacti bending like that?” Julia asked. Tyler glanced back at her and saw that she was pointing out her window. He looked where she pointed.

  The group of cacti was bent sideways at a forty-five degree angle. The wind around them was picking up.

  3

  Tyler looked at his watch. 4:13 p.m.

  “Should the sky be this dark already?” he asked.

  “I’m going to say no,” Julia answered him. She turned in her seat and looked at the sky all around them. Toward Phoenix, their destination, the sky was blue and clear. But the sky toward Tucson was gray, almost black. The sun was low on the horizon.

  “Were we supposed to get a storm?” Julia asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Tyler said. It hadn’t rained all spring, thanks to the drought Tyler’s dad had kept going on about. His dad said it would be the worst drought they’d seen in years.