Toby, who had only been half-listening, suddenly turned to Pippa. “She wears what?”
“A green snakeskin suit. Why?”
“No reason,” said Toby, who had only just realized that the woman from the billboards was the same woman whose limousine he’d looked at a few days before. No wonder there was baby formula in the sink, Toby thought. No wonder there were teething biscuits. For fear of losing his babysitting privileges, Toby had not mentioned the limousine to his sisters and brother. So now, instead of admitting that he’d met Clarice, he lamely offered, “Snakes don’t have feet.”
“Oh, Clarice has feet,” said Pippa. “She wears snakeskin high heels.”
Kim looked down at her feet which, like all the other children’s on the island, were bare. “Why would anyone wear those?”
“She wears them because she likes to be scary,” said Pippa.
Before he could stop himself, Toby said, “She’s not scary.” Then he waited nervously to see if any of his siblings would ask him how he knew. But they didn’t. They thought Toby was only talking about Clarice’s appearance on the billboards.
“She is too scary,” Pippa said. “Her smile on those billboards is downright creepy.”
“She must be nice, though. She loves babies,” said Kimo.
“She says she loves babies, but we just heard Tina sing about loving babies, and if there’s anybody who doesn’t love babies, it’s Tina.” Pippa let out a sinister laugh.
The road was beginning its climb up the mountain, so Kim pressed harder on the gas. The engine made a terrible grinding noise and then a sound like a cough. And then another cough. “It sounds sick,” Kim whispered to Kimo. “It needs a mechanic.” They knew they didn’t have enough money to repair the car.
“Maybe it needs a doctor.” Kimo tried a joke, but Kim didn’t laugh.
Almost as if she felt her sister’s worry, Penny began to cry again. Pippa turned in her seat and tried to distract her little sister with her favorite toy, a dirty, bedraggled, stuffed octopus.
“Look at your octopus. Isn’t he happy, huh? Happy!” The octopus did not look happy at all; in fact, one plastic eye hung by a few threads from the animal’s face, and the other was completely gone. Penny wailed again, as if voicing the octopus’s pain.
“Baby Loves getting out of the car,” Kim said as she swung the car into the parking lot marked Muldoon Park Parking Lot.
“Weird,” said Pippa. “A park is a place full of grass and trees and it’s also the thing you do to stop your car. But they have nothing to do with each other. Can someone explain to me why they’re the same word?” She shrugged and shook her head. “Another ridiculous rule made by a grown-up.”
CHAPTER
3
A few minutes later, the Fitzgerald-Trouts climbed out of the car at the far end of the parking lot, near the spot where two trails up the mountain began. While Pippa sat Penny down on the grass and gave her a bottle, Kim and Kimo passed a bag of potato chips back and forth and studied the map of the park that was posted on a tall wooden sign.
“We should take the left trail…” Kimo ran his finger along it. “That way, we’ll end up on the southern side of Muldoon, where you can see the bay and the Sakahatchi.”
“If you take the right trail,” Kim argued, “you can still see the bay, but you end up closer to the waterfall.” As Toby watched his older siblings, it occurred to him that Kimo had chosen the trail that ran farther from Gasper’s Gulch. He lifted the goldfish’s jar and thought very hard, Kimo doesn’t want to go near the wizzleroaches. He could see that Goldie was thinking the same thing.
“You can see the waterfall from here.” Kim licked the broken pieces of potato chip off her finger and tapped on a spot on the map.
“Maybe,” said Kimo. “But definitely from here.” He pointed to a different spot, and Toby saw that Kimo’s spot was most certainly farther from the gulch.
Pippa came over with the baby, who was now smiling and sucking on one arm of her octopus. “We can’t take your route, Kimo.” Pippa was already studying the map.
“Why not?”
“See how it goes past that old safari place?” Pippa grabbed the bag of chips while the others leaned in closer to look at the X on the map that marked the Wildlife Safari Park. It was a zoo that offered jeep rides through a large, fenced-in area filled with giraffes, zebras, and elephants. “Lehua Madigan told me that her family tried to go a few weeks ago, but the place was closed down. She said they wandered around but there was nothing there. No jeeps, no animals, nothing. Remember how they used to have that candy store—The Fudge Factory? Even that was gone. Lehua said the whole place got wrecked in one of the floods last summer and now it’s like a ghost town.”
“Ghost town?” Toby lowered his voice. It wasn’t clear if he was spooked or excited.
“Ghost town doesn’t mean there’s really ghosts,” said Kim. “It just means the place is super empty.”
“So what if it’s empty?” asked Kimo.
“It’s not that it’s empty,” said Pippa. “It’s that if the park was flooded, then the trail you want to take was flooded too. It’s probably washed away completely.”
“Or at least so badly marked we won’t be able to follow it.” Kim saw Pippa’s logic. The two sisters smiled at each other. It was a rare moment when they were in agreement.
“Sorry, Kimo.” Toby poked his older brother in the shoulder. “We’ve gotta go close to the wizzleroaches.” The others burst out laughing when they realized what Toby had known all along: Kimo wanted to avoid the gulch.
Pippa turned to Kimo. “Roasted by Toby.”
“No kidding,” said Kimo.
Toby smiled and snatched the bag of chips. “Gimme those.”
“Everybody ready?” Kim adjusted the backpack that she had loaded with extra gear—food, bottles of water and baby formula, toothbrushes, a Swiss Army knife, a flashlight, the textbook—and pulled out the compass.
“Wait,” said Pippa, looking up at the sky and realizing the sun was already on the other side of Mount Muldoon. “It’s too late to leave. It’s four o’clock. The sun sets at six. What happens if we don’t find the place before dark? We won’t be able to hike back down.”
“It’s not that far,” said Kim, who was resolved to get going. “It won’t take us two hours.”
Kimo nodded. “I think we should go.”
“Goldie’s saying yes,” said Toby, who was staring at the fish and trying to read its mind.
“My do it,” shouted Penny, sensing the spirit of the moment.
“Okay,” said Pippa, grimacing in a way that made her freckles darken. “I hope you guys are right.” She held out Penny to Kimo, who took the baby and slung her up onto his shoulders.
“This’ll give me a good workout,” he said as he started toward the trail. He began to chant, “Give a loud shout ’cause we’re Fitzgerald-Trouts. We…” He trailed off. He couldn’t think of a next line.
But remembering Kimo’s words in the car, Kim chimed in, “Don’t give up. We don’t give in. We…”
“Eat chips,” interrupted Toby, who had turned the potato chip bag inside out and was licking it to get the last of the salt.
“And sauerkraut,” said Kimo.
“And gin,” Pippa shouted out.
“Gin? We’ve never had gin in our lives,” retorted Kim.
“We’ve never had sauerkraut either,” said Pippa. “But gin rhymes with in.”
Kimo put the whole chant together. “Give a loud shout ’cause we’re Fitzgerald-Trouts. We don’t give up and we don’t give in. We eat chips and sauerkraut and gin. And now we start the chant all over again…Give a loud shout ’cause we’re Fitzgerald-Trouts…” Soon they were all repeating the words over and over, their voices carrying across the forest as they followed the steep trail up the mountain.
&
nbsp; * * *
—
By the time they had reached the last switchback to the top of Gasper’s Gulch, they were all wondering if Pippa had been right when she’d said that it was too late to leave. The sun lay far below the mountain and the purple evening was pouring into the gaps of sky between the tree branches. There was no chanting now. They walked in silence, except for Penny, who had begun to whine and wouldn’t be soothed even by a Baby Loves teething biscuit. Kim caught up to Kimo—who was still carrying the baby—and walked beside him for a minute.
“What do you think?” she asked.
He shook his head in a worried way, and Kim followed the thread of Kimo’s thinking and realized that he probably wasn’t concerned about the time, he was probably concerned about the possibility of wizzleroaches. “I’ll go first,” she said. “I’ll let you know if I see any.” She strode out ahead and crested the hill, looking down toward the gulch with a gasp. “Whoa,” she said. “Slow down.”
They all came to a stop and looked where she was looking. The gulch wasn’t there anymore; where it had once been was a space now filled with dark black rock.
“Lava,” said Pippa. “From this summer.” They knew what she meant. Over the summer there had been a series of volcanic eruptions from Mount Muldoon. Lava from the eruptions had poured down the volcano and where it had flowed it filled in mountain’s crevices, including Gasper’s Gulch. Now that lava was hardened to stone.
“Which way is the trail?” Kimo asked.
“No way,” Kim said. “It’s covered with hard lava.”
They stood in silence. None of them had any idea which direction they should go in. At last Pippa said, “Let’s split up in pairs and look for where the trail picks up again.”
“Good idea,” said Kimo. “Shout if you find something. Otherwise, we’ll meet back here in, say, about ten minutes.”
“How long is ten minutes?” asked Toby.
“The time it takes for water to boil in a pan on the campfire,” offered Kimo. They all knew exactly how long that was. So without another word, they took off in different directions. Kimo and Pippa headed uphill following the seam of black rock, hoping that the trail would reappear. Kimo was holding Penny and singing silly rhymes to entertain her. “Give a loud shout ’cause we’re Fitzgerald-Trouts. We don’t give up and we don’t give in. We eat ketchup with sauce and play violin.”
Kim and Toby climbed right up onto the black rock itself. Kim thought if they crossed the rock in the right direction, they might find the continuation of the trail on the other side. But the rock covered such a wide area that by the time they got to the other side, there was no sign of the trail at all. Ten minutes later, she and Toby were back at the original spot, only now the sky was that much darker; the night, that much closer.
“Go ahead and say it,” said Kim as Pippa appeared with Kimo and the baby. “Say, ‘I told you so.’”
But Pippa just shrugged. “I’m not glad to be right.” Then she added, “We should hike back down to the car while there’s still a little light.”
But Toby didn’t think so. He was holding up Goldie’s jar and peering in at the goldfish. “Goldie thinks we should find a place to camp for the night,” the boy said.
“Not a bad idea,” said Kimo. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. We can keep looking for as long as we want.”
“So we’re taking suggestions from a goldfish now?” Pippa snarked, but she didn’t disagree.
“We need to find a sheltered place to camp,” offered Kim, but the last word became a shriek of surprise as a pair of black wings swooped out of the darkness and flew past her ear. “What was that?”
“A bat,” declared Kimo. Then as another pair of wings and another and another filled the air around them, he amended his observation. “Bats. Lots of ’em!”
“They’re coming from up there.” This was Pippa, pointing up the hill to a break in the trees. The bats were coming through it and scattering—like black ink spilled across the bruised sky.
“Get me outta here.” Toby turned to run.
“No,” said Pippa. “That’s exactly where we need to go.” The others looked at her like she’d lost her wits. “Don’t you get it?” Pippa said. “Where there are bats, there are caves.”
* * *
—
They found the mouth of the cave just beyond the break in the trees. They built a campfire under a rock overhang on flat stones that were perfect for sleeping. Beyond the campsite, the cave narrowed. They knew not to go any farther in. Even though the bats were gone for the night, they didn’t want to be caught inside the cave when the bats returned in the morning.
Kim had brought a package of hot dogs. They each slid one onto a stick and roasted it over the fire while they discussed the day’s adventures. Somewhere during the hike up to the rocks, Kimo had realized that the lava flow in Gasper’s Gulch meant there might not be any wizzleroaches nearby. “They have to be gone, right? I mean, they used to live in the gulch and now it’s full of rock.”
“They probably flew off when they felt the heat of the molten lava coming down the mountain,” said Kim.
“I kinda feel bad for them,” Pippa offered. She was always taking the side of helpless creatures—even wizzleroaches.
But Kimo could not feel bad. He slid his cooked hot dog off the stick and tore it in half with his teeth. “I might get to like this house,” he said. “Now that the roaches are gone.”
“We haven’t found the house yet,” said Pippa, though she had begun to let herself imagine that they might, because if they did, she would have a place to hang her knickknack shelf. What would I collect if I had a place to put my collection? the little girl thought.
For Kim, who loved books, there was something perfectly poetically right about finding a house because of a hint in a book. “We will find it,” she said. “I’m sure of it.”
Pippa rolled her eyes. “You were sure we’d get there before dark.”
Kim ignored this. She had already eaten her dinner and was lying on a flat stone with her head resting on her backpack. She had a flashlight propped up under her chin and was reading from the textbook. “It says here Captain Baker lived in the house for twenty-five years. He had a garden of rare orchids and a pond where he kept fish.”
“Hmm,” murmured Toby, clutching the jar that held his own fish a little tighter.
“He collected rare books and scrimshaw.”
“What’s scrimshaw?” asked Pippa, thinking about her knickknack shelf.
“No idea,” said Kimo.
Kim picked up reading again. “Captain Baker used to take his baths in the pool beneath the waterfall. And he threw parties whenever there was a full moon. He invited musicians from all over the island. There was dancing and singing. And one night, Captain Baker…” Kim trailed off. She’d read a little ahead and what she’d read had alarmed her.
“What?” asked Pippa. “One night…what?”
“Nothing,” said Kim, snapping the textbook closed and turning off the flashlight.
“What does it say?” Pippa’s eyes were narrowed with suspicion.
“Nothing,” said Kim. “I think I should save the batteries.”
“Give me that,” said Pippa, reaching for the book.
But Kim held it close to her chest. “No,” she said. “You can look at it later.”
“You’re being weird,” said Kimo.
“Totally,” echoed Toby.
Before Kim could deny it, the baby began to cry and point at the backpack where her bottle was kept. “You want a bottle?” Kim slid one out of the pack. “Come and get it.” She held it out to Penny, hoping the baby would crawl to her, but Penny, who was sitting in Kimo’s lap, didn’t move.
“Should we be worried?” asked Pippa. “I mean, how old was I when I crawled?”
“About the same age as Penny,�
� Kim said, relieved that they had all moved of the subject of the textbook, which she now slid into her backpack.
She didn’t want any of them to read the words that she had read: silly words, full of superstition. If she were to share those words, her siblings would want to turn around and head back down the hill and never look for Captain Baker’s house again, because the words said that one night, at one of his parties, Captain Baker had slipped on an orchid petal, hit his head, and died. But he wasn’t entirely gone; since then, his ghost was said to have been seen roaming the forests of Mount Muldoon.
That night, while the others slept, Kim Fitzgerald-Trout did something she had never done before. She defaced her school textbook. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered as she slowly and methodically tore the offending page from the book. “It has to be done.” She crumpled up the paper and placed it on the dying embers of the campfire. Later Kim told me that if anyone had been able to see her face in the dark, they would have seen how guilty she looked as she watched the piece of paper catch fire.
From where she lay, Kim could see—just beyond the stone overhang—the full moon. Was it possible Captain Baker’s ghost was roaming the hills, even now? She didn’t believe in ghosts. She thought the very idea was ridiculous. But she knew her siblings would not feel the same way. They would not move into a house on a mountain if the house and the mountain were haunted.
CHAPTER
4
The next morning as they packed up their campsite, Pippa and Kimo argued about which direction they should hike in order to find the waterfall. Now that the path was obscured by the hardened black lava, there was no clear route. But Pippa was sure she knew which way to go. The problem was that Kimo was equally sure that he knew, and he was pointing in the opposite direction. Things were uncharacteristically tense between them and it didn’t help that they’d all had only one tube of crackers and a couple of sticks of beef jerky to share for breakfast.
Shout Out for the Fitzgerald-Trouts Page 3