The Art of Saving the World

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4197-3687-2
eISBN 978-1-68335-644-8
Text copyright © 2020 Corinne Duyvis
Book design by Hana Anouk Nakamura
Published in 2020 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
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To Joan and Maggie:
Your patience, your support, your enthusiasm,
and your wisdom mean the world to me.
Thank you for being on my team.


PROLOGUE
The rift that opened on our farm the evening I was born was like a shard of glass: sharp and angled and not quite transparent, but tilt your head a little and it might as well be invisible.
So no one could blame my parents for not noticing it that first week.
When I was six days old, my parents took me to the pediatrician for my first checkup. They were discussing nursing habits when Dad’s phone rang.
Our nearest neighbor.
There had been an earthquake, she said, or perhaps a tornado, although West Asherton, Pennsylvania, was prone to neither. She knew only this: The worst noise had come from the direction of our house.
When the three of us came home, we found our neighbor standing in our driveway and staring at a tree that’d collapsed onto one of our barns, surrounded by snow and bare winter shrubbery.
It was a palm tree.
My parents noticed the actual rift when cleaning up the grounds.
Later, they told me it was the size of our three-seater couch and ended in jagged points on either side. It hovered diagonally three feet above the ground. The grass and dirt past it were distorted as though seen through a layer of water—jittery and inconstant.
When they approached the rift with a rake extended before them, the air trembled. A second later, the rift tugged the rake from Dad’s hands and sucked it in whole. Dad almost got yanked in with it; Mom pulled him back just in time.
They approached the other side of the rift next, carrying a video camera and a large stone. They tossed the stone through. It vanished.
The government confiscated the video, of course, even before deciding to garrison the farm. My parents were urged to leave with only their week-old daughter and hastily packed suitcases. Their other belongings would be shipped to their newly gifted home posthaste.
The farther we drove from the farm, the more agitated the rift became. It crackled at the edges, sent multiple physicists and agents into the hospital, and spat out gusts of fire and chunks of ripped-out pavement.
It took the researchers a while to suspect a connection and send for us.
The rift returned to cool, broken glass the moment Mom stepped onto the grounds with me in her arms, sound asleep.
At first, they thought it was Mom whose absence would cause the rift to go haywire.
A one-and-a-half-mile radius.
That’s how far I can safely roam.


CHAPTER ONE
“Sixteen years old!” Agent Sanghani raised her hand for a high five as I passed through the gate.
I laughed and took her up on the high five. “Technically, not until eight thirty-seven tonight.”
“You enjoying your last hours as a fifteen-year-old?”
“I’m planning to! After school.”
“Your dad wouldn’t . . .? It’s your birthday!”
“I didn’t get the day free from school-school. I don’t think Dad’ll let me off homeschool-school, either, at least not until Mom and Carolyn show up.” I lingered on the path to the house. Most of the MGA’s agents and guards were friendly—Agent Sanghani especially—but when they kept me like this, I never knew whether they genuinely wanted to chat. Keeping me comfortable was probably in their job description.
“At least tell your dad it’s unfair, all right?” Sanghani said. “Say it came from me. I hear I’m very intimidating.”
I nodded at the weapon holstered on her hip. “It’s probably the gun. Anyway! I’ll tell him it’s unfair,” I pledged, “if you tell Director Facet I’d like to stay out longer than two hours tonight.”
Her grimace told me enough. I shouldn’t have said it, even as a joke. Cheerily, I went on. “Worth a try!”
The rules weren’t Sanghani’s fault; she shouldn’t feel bad. Director Facet wouldn’t loosen up on the rules, anyway, especially since he’d spent the past days tightening them. A power outage from the other day had apparently made the MGA nervous enough to install extra agents and restrictions. I wasn’t allowed in the woods even with a chaperone, wasn’t allowed to walk home before checking in with the guard unobtrusively stationed outside my school, wasn’t allowed to visit the neighbors down the road to pet their horses . . .
I trudged toward the house. With my backpack dangling from one hand, I waved at the security camera affixed above the front door, then reached for the knob. I barely touched it before it burst open.
“Sixteen!” Carolyn tossed her head back dramatically. Practically howling at the ceiling, she repeated, “Six-teen!”
“You’re here? You’re early!”
She beamed and leaped at me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders.
I dropped the backpack and squished my sister close.
Mom was already coming down the hall. I jerked a thumb back at the gate. “Agent Sanghani didn’t mention you were here