“Okay.” Kimana flips a note card. “What was the quote about fear?”
Mateo grins at me. “‘Though she be but little, she is fierce.’ William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
I smack his seat. “Hey! I’m not little.”
“So why’d you think I was talking about you?” He smirks. “Sound familiar?”
“Beep! Wrong.” She wiggles a card. “That was fierce, not fear. Try again.”
Closing his eyes, he softly bonks his head against the window. “Um . . . some kind of warning, I think.” His eyes fly open. “Oh yeah! ‘Beware! For I am fearless and therefore powerful.’ Mary Shelley, Frankenstein. Right?”
“Right.”
“Okay. My turn. Hand ’em over.” He reaches for the cards and starts flipping through them. “Do . . . the dream one.”
After a deep breath, Kimana says, “‘It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.’ J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”
“Ah, that was too easy.” He slips card after card behind each other.
“How many do you need?” I ask.
“The class picked twenty at the beginning of the trimester, and we’ll be tested on ten, but we don’t know which ten, so we have to memorize them all,” Kimana says.
“The teacher is cruel, I tell you. This takes up too much brain space.” Mateo curls his fingers against his forehead. “Aaaah, my brain’s melting! Okay, name the quote about yesterday.”
“‘It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.’ Lewis Carroll, from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Give me the cards.”
We pull up to my stop, and I swing my backpack over my shoulder on my way to the door. “Don’t hurt your brains too much.”
“Too late!” Mateo waits till I look back, then opens his mouth in a wide grimace. “Aaagghh! Brains!”
“See you, Paige.” Kimana waves. “Mateo! Pay attention. Say the ‘don’t cry’ one.”
“Um . . . Dr. Seuss. ‘Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened.’”
I’m smiling when the bus pulls away—until I spy Scotty.
He waits at the end of our driveway, his collar stretched to the side where he’s been worrying at it.
“What’s happened?” I glance at our little island of trees at the end of the lane, though I don’t know what for. Smoke? Fire? “What’s going on?”
“He’s gone. He’s gone!” He taps thumb to fingers over and over.
Images of Grandpa fill my head, and I grab Scotty’s arms, holding him even as his fingers flutter like wounded moths. “Who? Scotty, who is gone? Is it Grandpa?”
“No. No, no.” He shakes his head. “It’s Royal.”
He must’ve forgot Royal wasn’t in the trees anymore. “No, I just put him away last night. I told you.”
He shakes his head. “No, no, no. Inside the barn. Dogs came inside the barn.”
“Wait—what do you mean gone? Like dead?”
His face crumples. “I don’t know. I don’t know!”
I don’t wait for Scotty. His lighter footfalls fade behind me, a distant echo to my boots pounding the dust.
The words “He’s gone” repeat in my head, but in Mom’s voice, not Scotty’s, and I don’t want to believe it. He’s gone.
He can’t be. Not this time. Not again.
My backpack hits the dirt somewhere by the yard, but I don’t stop till I reach the chicken barn and clutch the rough-hewn beam framing the door, my hand pressed to my side.
It takes me a moment to understand what I’m seeing. Splintered rabbit hutch panels lie beside what used to be a wall of straw bales. An overturned feed dish rests by the barn door with ground oyster shells strewn across the floor. The chain-link fence tilts, collapsed on top of the sawhorse, and claw marks rake the ground around the cage.
Almost nothing is left of our peacock cage. The dogs tore it all apart.
Gaping holes mar the edge of the straw stack where frenzied animals ripped down the straw. Broken and ruined bales sprawl at the base of the cage amidst feed barrels tipped on their sides, precious grain spilled into the dust.
In the center of it all, Mom’s rodeo tote lies on its side, with silk sashes torn and soiled, trophies scattered and broken, and shattered rose petals lost to dirt and straw.
“Oh gosh.” My breath comes in quick little gasps. How many would it take to do this? We’d had dog problems before—people always dump them out here—but Dad was always here to run them off.
Stupid. Stupid! It’s my job to protect the farm now. I should have been here. I let school get in the way.
Unnatural silence presses on my ears. Why can’t I hear the chickens?
The hens! I’m halfway to the chickens at the back, when something moves inside the hushed coop and my steps stall.
Are the dogs still in here? I know better than to come empty-handed. I glance to the side for a hammer—something, anything to fight with—but no, it’s only the chickens moving behind the coop’s thick wire door, their heads bobbing, watching with bright black eyes, their silence an eerie witness to the violence of the day.
Scotty runs up to the doorway. I want to hold him back, but he’s already seen it all. Every spike of fear and anxiety I hide is laid bare in him with every twitch of his fingers.
Maybe Royal took shelter at the top of the stack?
I climb up and almost fall from relief when no blue body greets me. A few downy blue feathers and one broken tail quill are all that’s left of our Royal. Cradled in my hands, the broken feather feels light and fragile, and I know I failed him.
It was my responsibility to keep him safe. I should have been there.
“He’s not there.” Scotty rocks from side to side. “I looked before I got you. And he’s not in his cage, or in the tree.”
“That’s a good thing.” Wasn’t it? A body would be worse. But my brain is churning like an engine stuck in high gear. The tracks below tell the story plain enough. A half dozen big dogs tore the place apart, and somehow, they knew our Royal was here.
The few loose blue feathers here are more akin to what’s left behind when a pheasant bursts into flight. If they’d gotten hold of him, feathers would be everywhere.
“They didn’t kill him.” My certainty grows with every word.
“You sure?” Scotty stills, his whole body focused.
“Positive—at least not in here. I think he got away.”
“But he’s hurt. What if they follow him?”
“I don’t know.” I climb down, trying to make sense of it all. What sent them into such a frenzy to start with? Did they hear him? Seems like those dogs had to be chasing something already to be so worked up by the time they hit the barn.
I study the rooflines of every building and stare at every tree, but as far as I can tell, Royal isn’t anywhere. I grab a pitchfork by the wall. Whatever happens, it’s my job to find him and take care of what’s left. I owe him that.
“Come on. Let’s see where the tracks go.”
It’s hard to tell direction, with paw prints everywhere, but after a couple false starts, I find tracks heading toward the copse of trees along the canal. “This way.”
Scotty scrambles beside me. “This would work better if we had bloodhounds on the trail. Their olfactory centers are highly specialized, you know.”
Even a bloodhound mix like T-Rex might help. He probably had a fit with all these strange dogs on his turf.
I skid to a stop. “Where’s T-Rex?”
“What?”
“T-Rex? Where is he?” He would’ve chased the pack off or died trying. I cup my hands to my mouth. “Rex! T-Rex!”
“He’s gone,” Scotty says, and my knees almost buckle.
He’s gone.
Royal. T-Rex. Dad.
“How can he be gone?”
“I don’t see him.” Scotty’s dirty blond head shakes.
“But when did you see him last? Was he here when you got home?”
“Not since this morning. Same as you.”
“Didn’t you notice?” There never was a dog more devoted to a boy, but Scotty doesn’t bother to notice when he’s gone?
“Yeah,” he answers in that distracted way of his when his mind is three steps ahead and the “now” is unimportant.
“If you noticed, why didn’t you say anything? What’s wrong with you?” I know I’m spitting sparks from a fire he didn’t start, but he notices everything, knows everything, and the one time I need him to know, he’s as clueless as me.
“I did! I did notice, but then I saw the barn . . .” His shoulders hunch, but my worry is too big to stuff down with a sorry, and I run on.
“Rex? T-Rex!” Nothing moves ahead. No blood, no fur. There’s nothing but tracks.
At the foot of the trees, grass and weeds hide fallen branches, and scrub is everywhere except for a bare hollow on the east side beside a downed log. Tufts of grass lie torn and discarded in careless piles, ripped away by sharp, digging claws, and eager muzzles.
“Rex?” My steps slow, eyes scouring every shadow and crevice. No sign of him. No blue feathers either.
I really don’t want to look in the hollow. What if he’s hurt down there, or dead?
Please don’t be dead. Don’t be gone.
But I have to look. It’s my job to watch out for them. I set the pitchfork down.
Gingerly, I kneel beside the log and peer down a small hole framed between several logs. No way could T-Rex fit down there, but the tunnel is fresh dug.
Deep in the gloom, two bright disks blink at me, and I still. We stare at each other, the eyes and me. One heartbeat, two. A shadow shifts, revealing the outline of a head and shoulder. The ears flatten.
A growl rumbles in the darkness, rising until a snarl tears from the hole.
An electric jolt as sharp as a hot wire shoots right through me, and I scramble back, expecting the shadow to come after me. I back away, and grab my pitchfork from the grass, but he doesn’t come out, and the growling dies.
A fox.
They were chasing a fox. Not my T-Rex.
Heart thundering, I jog a dozen yards down the path before realizing I should have looked to see where the dogs went from there, but I’m sure T-Rex never went that way. If he had, he’d still be standing sentry outside the fox’s lair.
So fine, T-Rex isn’t here. Where is he? And what about Royal? If the dogs chased the fox up to Royal’s cage, where’d he go? Did he make it to a tree? Or did they pull him from the sky by his tail?
Jaw set, I stride to the nearest outbuilding and jerk the door open. Maybe T-Rex got closed inside, or maybe Royal is stuck in there somehow. It doesn’t make any sense, but neither does anything else. I was supposed to watch out for them, take care of them, and I can’t even find them.
I slam the door so hard, boards vibrate on the wall and a horseshoe falls from overhead, the nails rotted out.
Bad luck, but instead of worrying, it just makes me madder. Why is everything a fight? I have to fight to keep my farm, fight to do the work, fight just to keep what’s left of my family together, and stupid Scotty is just standing there with his hands over his ears like I’m yelling at him—but I’m not!
I round on him. “He’s not here, okay? Put your stupid hands down. I’m not even yelling!” Except I am now, and I don’t even know why. I try to dampen the heat inside me, but hiding underneath it is a fear so strong, I think I might die if I face it straight on.
T-Rex. Royal. Dad.
Things I’ve loved and lost are all mixed together in a mishmash of pain so great, I cling to my anger like a lifeline.
Set free, rage bubbles up like a fryer spitting hot grease on everything. But the more I erupt, the more anger there is to throw. The fury loops inside me till I can’t hardly see straight, my hands in tight fists.
“Why does everything get taken away?”
The back door to the house slams shut, and I know Scotty’s run up to his room, but I can’t care about that yet. I’ve got more searching to do. I march off, cursing everything and everyone under my breath.
Barns, outbuilding, toolshed, pump house . . . All of them are empty.
No feathers, no T-Rex.
They’re just gone.
He’s gone.
I stomp into the house past T-Rex’s pile of old sleeping bags, the hollow in the middle where he sleeps as cavernous and glaring as Dad’s empty boots standing against the wall.
The darkened kitchen holds no welcoming smells, the counters wiped and sterile like I left them this morning. Only the stack of mail on the table tells me anyone’s been here at all—and that’s Grandpa’s doing, not Mom’s. I grab the stack and dump it into the basket—with all the other unopened mail—on top of the piano. The overflowing basket rankles me. It’s one thing for me to ignore reading stuff if I can get away with it, but Dad would never have let the mail get that out of control.
Dad.
I stare at the phone on the counter. I hate it so much. It steals time. Steals people.
Snatching the phone, I unplug it to call Mom and Grandpa, but my finger hovers over the screen. What if they’re driving? What if I call, and they answer, and—
I dial Kimana.
“Hey,” she answers on the second ring. “What’s up?”
“Have you seen T-Rex around?” I clear my throat, hating the wobble that squeaks out. “Or Royal—our peacock?”
“Not since I was at your place. Why? Is he missing?”
“There were dogs in the barn, and now they’re both gone.” I hate how weak I sound. “Let me know if you see them, okay?”
“Sure. You want me to come over?”
“Nah. I’ll be okay. Call you later.”
“Okay . . . ?” I pretend not to notice the question in her agreement, hang up, and dial Mateo.
“Bueno.” Mr. Rivas answers.
I stutter, “Mateo—uh, I mean, hola, Señor Rivas, is Mateo there?”
“He’s checking the herd. Left his phone inside charging. You want I have him call you?”
“That’d be great. Thanks.”
Wood creaks from where Scotty eavesdrops on the landing, but I’m not ready to play nice, not when I’m left with nothing but a stupid phone. I start to dial Mom’s number, but through the kitchen window, I see Grandpa’s truck round the bend and turn onto our lane. I drop the phone and run out to meet him.
I’m flipping through all the things to say—and not say—about the barn and the peacock and T-Rex, when a droopy-eyed head pokes out the passenger window, jowls flapping in the wind.
T-Rex.
Not gone. Grandpa has him.
I brace my hands on my knees and let my head hang forward to keep from falling. I stay like that, eyes closed, as the truck pulls up to the house.
“T-Rex!” The screen door bangs open, and Scotty pounds down the porch steps. “Hello, boy.”
I lift my chin to watch him as he runs—chattering all the while—and opens the passenger door, almost before Grandpa throws it into park. “There you are! You had me worried, you did. Where’d you take him, Grandpa? Did he go to the vet? Is he okay?”
Grandpa takes off his hat and wipes his brow. “Went for parts and didn’t have anyone to ride shotgun, and when I opened the door, ol’ Rex jumped right in.”
“Is Royal in the truck too?”
“The peacock? No. Just the pup.”
“He’ll come back, right? We made him better.” Scotty’s small fingers scrub T-Rex’s head and ears, his monologue only faltering for a moment when he passes me and flinches. “Did you go for a ride, Rexy? Rexy-boy, I missed
you. I knew you were gone. I noticed and looked. I swear. Come on, pup.”
I sigh. It’ll take some doing to get on his good side again. The little squirt has a long memory.
As Grandpa shuffles through the gate, I take a few bags with the John Deere logo from his overfilled arms and follow him to the toolshed. “So, why didn’t you tell me you were taking T-Rex?”
“Seeing as how your phone was on the counter like always, figured it wouldn’t do a lick of good to call it.”
Okay, so, point to Grandpa. “But where’s Mom? Why didn’t she go with you?”
He drops the armful of parts onto the workbench in the toolshed. “No time, not with her interview today and all.”
One of the bags slips from my arms. “Interview? But what about the farm?”
“Things being tight as they are, she’s lookin’ to go back to work in town.”
“If it’s work she wants, we have more than enough here.” I drop the bags beside Grandpa’s on the workbench.
“Don’t be too hard on her. She’s doing the best she can, same as you.”
Instead of soothing, his words stoke the fire that’s still smoldering inside me, fear and anger all twisted and mashed up together.
I told Mom that Dad’s calendar spells everything out simple, if we just follow it, but she won’t listen. Our farm is falling. I can feel it teetering and going over, but with Mom, it’s like I’m patching holes in a parachute as fast as I can, and she’s following right behind, cutting new holes with a pocketknife.
“If she’s doing the best she can, why is she hiding in her room all the time, and going to school, and now getting a town job? What about the farm? What about us? If she’d just work instead of doing all that other stuff, we’d be fine. She just needs to work harder. It’s like she doesn’t even care!”
The steel in Grandpa’s eyes freezes my tongue.
“You best leave off your mom. You’ve got no idea what’s going on.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Still stinging from Grandpa’s tongue-lashing, I walk the ditch banks, searching for Royal. Like castle walls, our canals sit taller than the rest of the farm and make for good lookouts.
The Wish and the Peacock Page 16