by Keir Graff
“I’m smart enough to know you spent Kristen’s money on a bad business deal instead of using it to pay the bills, which is why we’re all living out here instead of back home where we should be.”
That got him. When I said it, he flinched with his whole body.
He turned around, but I couldn’t see his face because he was still just a dark silhouette. “Life isn’t as simple as it seems when you’re twelve years old, Dagmar. Sometimes things don’t work out the way we want them to.”
“Sometimes, or always?” I said, sounding meaner than I meant to. “If you and Kristen could have worked things out, then maybe we’d have a nice house and nice things instead of . . . whatever it is we have now!”
He answered slowly, like he was choosing his words one at a time. “I’m sorry we can’t all earn lots of money like your mom. But we all make choices. I chose to be with you. That may not count for much right now, but it’s all I’ve got.”
That made me feel bad. It was true. Even if we didn’t have any money and we were living in the middle of nowhere and had no chance that things would get better, he had chosen me. And Kristen . . . well, she chose work, I guess.
Suddenly remembering that I still had a hundred and eighty bucks left over from our trip to the mall, I reached into my backpack for the book I’d been reading that day. Even though I’d finished it since then, the bills were still stuck in the middle like a bookmark.
“Here,” I said, holding the money out to Trent. “This will help with the food.”
“Where did you get it?” he asked, counting it by the light of the star lantern.
“Blake gave it to me when we went to the mall. He didn’t want it back.”
Trent hesitated, then folded the money and slipped it into his pocket.
“I’ll stop sabotaging things,” I told him.
“And I’ll try to be more open and honest about what’s going on—if you promise to listen,” he said. “We’re not going to be here forever. We’re just lying low and regrouping, living cheap while we wait for a better opportunity.”
“But what kind of opportunities do we have out here?” I asked.
He didn’t have an answer for that.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Reynold
The wind was blowing even harder when I woke up the next morning. I didn’t have a single spiderweb on me, probably because the spiders spent the night holding tight to trees and bushes so they wouldn’t get blown away. I was, however, covered in a layer of dust and pine needles and decaying bark—the stuff I think of as forest dandruff.
The surging, swirling wind got annoying fast. My hair kept getting in my face, it was hard to hear people when they talked, and when I went to the pump to take my “shower,” the water practically went sideways. The hot air dried my hair before I had a chance to brush it, and I’m guessing I looked like a tumbleweed.
I watered the garden—for real, now that I was done with sabotage—and hung the sheets on the clothesline, where they snapped like flags in the breeze. Then I told Trent and Leya I was going for a walk. Leya hardly looked at me, but Trent gave me a hug that I squirmed out of. He never stays mad for long.
My ankle and hip were still sore, but I wasn’t limping too much as I headed down the trail toward the creek, crossed on the plank, and made my way to the pasture. I was halfway across when I had the weirdest feeling, like someone was watching me.
I turned left and didn’t see anyone. Then I turned right and nearly jumped out of my skin. No more than twenty yards away, a couple dozen ginormous cows were standing there staring at me, their jaws working slowly as they chewed big mouthfuls of grass.
Cows! Where the heck had they come from? They were reddish-brown, mostly, with white faces and white stomachs, and each one looked like it weighed as much as a Smart car. They looked peaceful, but what did I know? I had never seen a cow in the wild before and was afraid if I made one wrong move, they’d trample me.
On the other hand, they were kind of cute. Not the way horses are cute, with their big, dark, liquid eyes, but the cows were shaggy, and . . . I kind of wanted to pet one.
Moving slowly, with my hand outstretched, I took one step after another until I was ten yards away. Then five. The cows shifted uneasily, and then one of them bellowed, MAAAAAAW—nothing like the gentle moo I’d expected.
I flinched, and the cows took a few nervous steps back. Close up, they were absolutely huge. I had no idea how anyone got hamburgers out of them.
I took one more step, and they started milling around restlessly, making me worry again about getting trampled. I wish I could say the cows and I made friends. But what happened next, if I’m being perfectly honest, is that I turned around and ran away as fast as my ankle would carry me.
I’m no cowgirl.
I went to the gate and let myself in, then headed for Blake’s house. I had barely gotten under the big redwoods when I heard something thrashing through the bushes in back of me. Ducking behind a tree, I sneaked a look, expecting a raging brown-and-white cow or a flying log or even two giant dogs to be bearing down on me.
But it was only a stocky, wheezing, five-year-old boy.
“Did you see those cows, Dagmar?” he asked, saying the word cows the way you might say aliens with tentacles.
“It was hard to miss them,” I said. “How did you get in?”
“The gate didn’t close all of the way,” he informed me.
I must have been too distracted by my bovine encounter to have noticed whether it clicked into place.
“That’s fascinating,” I told him. “Now go home.”
“Why were you throwing away food?” he asked.
“I wasn’t throwing it away; I was feeding the forest,” I said as I started winding my way through the towering trees, figuring he’d get scared and turn around.
“Forests don’t need food,” he said, following me.
“There are lots of hungry things in forests,” I said. “Big animals that like to eat small kids, for example.”
He looked around nervously. “I’m not small! But why do things in forests need our food?”
I shook my head. It was as if my guilty conscience had become real and taken the form of a five-year-old boy with boogers under his fingernails.
“You wouldn’t understand, and anyway, you don’t have to worry about it anymore,” I told him.
“Don’t you like us?” he whined, falling a little farther behind.
That was a question I couldn’t answer honestly. I think it’s possible to love someone without liking them very much, and that’s exactly how I felt about Santi at that moment.
“Go home!” I yelled, maybe a little louder than necessary.
“I might get lost,” he said. “Will you go with me?”
I was so annoyed and out of patience that I just yelled as long and loud as I could while Santi covered his ears. When I ran out of breath, I could hear my own voice echoing in the trees.
“I’ll wait here until you get back,” said Santi in a small, scared voice.
He sat down right where he was and stared at me—until he realized he was sitting on an anthill. Jumping up, he danced around and slapped his legs until he finally got all the ants off. He looked too nervous to sit down again.
As much as I wanted to leave him, I wasn’t 100 percent sure I’d remember where he was when I came back later. And I definitely couldn’t afford to get blamed for losing him.
“Fine, follow me,” I snapped. “But don’t talk to me. In fact, don’t even think about talking to me. Don’t talk, or think, just stay behind me and don’t get in the way.”
“Okay,” he said.
“I said DON’T TALK!”
“Sorry!” he yelped.
Apparently, he couldn’t help speaking when spoken to, so I just glowered at him before turning around and marchin
g off. I promised myself I wouldn’t turn around to see if he was keeping up.
I caved once, though, and when I did, he gave me a huge smile, like he was so proud of himself he couldn’t stand it.
“See?” he said. “I’m not saying anything!”
* * *
■ ■ ■
REYNOLD BERTHOLD HIMSELF opened the door.
Not with his hands or anything. When I pressed the doorbell, a voice asked, “Yes?” sounding so crystal clear I thought there was someone outside on the porch with us. But it was just the billionaire’s surround-sound intercom.
“It’s Dagmar,” I said.
“And who is that with you?” asked the voice.
“Santi,” I said, looking for the hidden camera but not finding it. “We’re here to see Blake.”
The door glided open to reveal a man in gray slacks and an ironed white shirt. He was standing about ten yards back from the door and holding a tablet, so apparently he did the whole thing by remote. It was pretty cool, but still, I wondered what was so hard about turning a doorknob.
“Are you Mr. B—Blake’s dad?” I asked, just to make sure.
He nodded. “Vladimir told me about you.”
It was weird to be around someone so famous, even if I hadn’t heard of him before Trent and Leya told me who he was. He was short and skinny with furry-caterpillar eyebrows and a shiny bald head that made me think of a turtle. For some reason I’d expected him to be bigger.
But even if he was a billionaire, he put on his underwear one leg at a time just like the rest of us—I knew that because his polka-dot boxer shorts were showing through the fly he’d forgotten to zip all the way up.
Santi must have seen it, too, because he giggled.
But Reynold Berthold didn’t notice. He just tapped his tablet, and the door silently closed behind us. Then, frowning at his screen, he padded away in slippers to another part of the house.
“I told Blake you’re here,” he said over his shoulder just before he disappeared.
While we waited in the entryway, I looked around, noticing things I hadn’t seen on my previous visit. There were touchscreens instead of light switches, and I couldn’t see a single electrical outlet or even a switch on a lamp. Every cord was hidden, and everything was controlled by voice or touch.
“Lights out,” I said, but nothing happened.
“Turn off the lights,” said Santi, and suddenly we were plunged into darkness except for dim sunlight coming through green-tinted windows.
“Turn on the lights,” I said, and they came back on so brightly it felt like we were caught in the glare of a spotlight.
“Turn off some of the lights,” said Santi, which worked, except now the lighting made me think of a haunted house in a horror movie. We needed to fix it before Blake showed up.
“Turn on all of the lights and dim some of the lights,” I said, just as Blake and Vladimir opened a door and came in. They were wearing matching tracksuits and had white towels draped over their shoulders.
Now the entryway was so dim it looked like twilight.
“Why are you messing with the lights?” asked Blake. Then, without waiting for an answer, he said, “Light setting day number one,” and the lights all went back to the way they’d been when we came in.
“Why don’t you have light switches, like normal people?” I asked.
He looked surprised. “I told you; it’s a smart mansion. Everything is connected so we don’t have to run around doing things one at a time. My dad says technology makes it easier to get things exactly the way we want them.”
I thought about Helen Wheels with its three light bulbs: one for the living room, one for the kitchen, and one for the sleeping loft. It was easy enough to get things how we wanted with three light switches. And we had our own version of voice-activated control: we just asked whoever was closest to flip the switch.
“It depends on the house,” I said.
“Vladimir, you can go,” Blake told his manny.
“But you still need elliptical machine,” answered Vladimir. “Also free weights.”
“I’ll do them later,” said Blake, sounding snotty. “Leave us alone.”
As Vladimir turned to go, Blake took the sweaty towel off his neck and handed it to him. The hulking man didn’t change expression. He just took the towel and left.
Money is weird, I thought. It changed the way most people behaved. Vladimir obviously needed the money Blake’s family was paying him, or he wouldn’t have taken orders from a rude twelve-year-old. And maybe, just maybe, Blake wouldn’t have been so rude if his dad didn’t have so much money.
It was also entirely possible he was born that way.
“So why are you here?” he asked.
“I thought I’d see if you want to hang out, because I literally don’t have anything better to do.”
Blake surprised me by grinning. It only lasted a moment, but I guess he thought my insult was a good joke.
“I don’t have anything better to do, either,” added Santi behind me.
For a moment I thought Blake would laugh, but that would have been a little too far out of character.
“Do you guys like swimming?” he asked instead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Smoke
The water in the Bertholds’ pool was exactly the right temperature: not too cold, not too warm, just cool and refreshing. There was a hint of chlorine but not so much that it burned my eyes like at the public pool back home. Technically, it wasn’t a natatorium, which is an indoor swimming pool, because it was half inside and half outside, with a retractable glass wall that sealed it off if they didn’t like the weather.
In the changing room, we picked out swimsuits from an assortment of different sizes, all brand-new, and grabbed fluffy white towels. There were even goggles and swim caps, but I didn’t bother with those because I figured swimming in that nice, clean water was the perfect way to get the dust out of my hair.
The pool looked like something out of a glossy magazine. The furniture around it was real wood, not plastic, and everything on the deck was spotlessly clean. Blake’s mom looked like someone out of a glossy magazine, too, when she came out wearing a pretty, flowing print dress and carrying a platter of food.
“Hello, kids, I’m Anjali, Blake’s mom,” she said. “I brought some snacks in case you get hungry.”
I was already hungry, so I climbed right out of the pool to inspect the food. First, I shook Anjali’s hand because I wanted to be polite. She wiped hers on a towel afterward, which I’m sure was only because mine was so wet. Anjali was really beautiful, with long black hair and an awesome nose and big brown eyes.
On the tray was a bed of crushed ice, and on the ice was an assortment of oysters, sushi, and sashimi.
“These were all swimming in the Pacific this morning,” she said with a smile.
“Except the oysters,” I told her.
“No, the oysters, too,” she assured me.
“Oysters don’t swim,” I said. “They drag themselves along with a foot until they find something to hold on to, and then they cling.”
She laughed, and I said, “No, really,” and then she laughed again, like I was just so funny. Her laugh was weird, kind of an a-ha-ha-ha.
Blake and Santi didn’t bother to get out of the pool. Blake, pretending to be a submarine, was chasing Santi, who’s not a very good swimmer, so he was flailing around in the shallow end.
We don’t eat raw seafood in our family, mainly because we can’t afford it, and I had never had an oyster in my life. I picked one up and eyeballed it. It looked like a whale booger.
“You just lift the shell to your lips, tilt it back, and take the whole thing in one slurp,” said Anjali.
I didn’t want her to think I was chicken, so I did what she said and gagged it down. It had the tas
te and texture of whale snot—salty and clumpy and gross. I swallowed it even though my eyes were watering because I have better manners than to spew half-chewed food all over the table.
“It’s good,” I lied. Trent told me once that lies are okay if you’re lying to be polite.
Santi had climbed out of the pool and was running and shrieking around the deck while Blake swam after him, lying in wait everywhere he tried to get back in. Santi was loving it, and I thought maybe Blake wasn’t all bad if he was willing to play with the gnome.
I didn’t like the look of the sashimi, but one of the pieces of sushi had cooked shrimp on it, so I gobbled that down. I was just contemplating removing the fish from the rest of the sushi so I could eat the rice when Santi suddenly cannonballed into the water right next to us and soaked everything: the furniture, me, Anjali, and the seafood platter.
“Oh, dear,” she said as the pool water melted the ice and the fish started to float. “I’d better get another one.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I told her. “I’m full anyway.”
Then I got a whiff of something that wasn’t chlorine, fish, or even the flowery perfume Anjali was wearing.
It reminded me of a campfire.
“Do you smell that?” I asked.
She tilted her head back and sniffed the air. It really was a magnificent nose: not too big, not too little, but interesting enough that you noticed it. I touched my own proboscis and wondered if anyone ever looked at me and thought, What a beautiful beak!
“Wood smoke,” she said. “I’ll bet the cook is heating the wood-fired oven. We’re probably having flatbread for lunch, or planked salmon. Does your family have a wood-fired oven?”
“We just have a regular stove,” I said. “I wanted to cook hot dogs over a campfire, but Leya says hot dogs are bad for you and Trent says it’s too dangerous to light a fire.”
“I see,” said Anjali, looking puzzled.
She carried the soupy snack platter back inside while I thought about the fact that there was a cook somewhere inside that huge house, working away while we played in the pool. I didn’t think about it for long, though, because Santi and Blake were looking the other way, giving me the perfect opportunity to cannonball between them. When I came up for air, they were going in opposite directions, coughing and snorting out the water I’d splashed up their noses.