“Maybe . . .” I’m a little nervous about Rae’s reaction. What if she thinks it’s a terrible idea? “Maybe we should do the things on Petunia’s list.”
“Oh.” Her tone sounds flat with disappointment. But then she says, “Hey, wasn’t the first one something about a snake?”
“Yes.” I swallow. “Fun, right?”
She seems to think about it. “Well, it’s not Shakespeare camp, but I guess it’s something postable.”
“Postable?” I ask.
“You know, on Facebook, Instagram—that kind of thing.”
“Oh, yeah,” I say, like I know, though I don’t. It’s another rule of my mom’s. No social media until I’m fourteen and my frontal cortex is more developed.
But Rae’s starting to sound a teensy bit excited. Or at least amused. “Actually, that would be kind of cool. Can’t you see it? A photo of me holding a snake?”
“Yeah.” A nervous laugh sneaks out. “It would be.”
“Oh my god, Edie! It would be amazing! I’d get so many likes!”
“Yeah, um—so cool!”
“Okay, Edie. Let’s do it. At least they won’t forget me back home,” she says, although she seems far from being forgettable. Then she makes her voice rich and British-y, and says, “Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.”
It sounds like Shakespeare again, but I don’t dare question it.
“Edie, you’re a genius.”
Technically, I’m not. The twins, sure—but not me. I don’t correct her. Because even if I don’t get Shakespeare, I’m feeling pretty smart indeed.
Chapter 6
Wild Things
“So, how are we going to do this again?”
We’re standing on the back porch, looking out toward the far part of the yard, where the snakes live in their hutlike enclosures. The morning sun shines like a spotlight on the gated cluster.
Rae tilts her head. “We’ve been through this three times already.”
“I know, but . . . I just want to make sure it makes sense.”
“Makes sense?” Rae asks, crinkling up her nose.
Ugh. I’m finding that Old Edith is pretty hard to shake. “I mean the plan,” I say. “I just want to make sure that makes sense.”
“Like we said a hundred times, we’re going to go out there, release the snakes from the cage, and then catch them again. That’s when the fun begins.”
“So, we’re catching snakes, as in plural?” I quietly swallow and try to keep my smile lifted, although item one on the list specifically says catch a snake. Which means one. Not hundreds!
She shrugs. “I think there are five of them out there. One snake is nice and all, but since I’m going to post this photo, the more the better, right?”
“Oh, yeah.” And then I say something really dumb. “The more the merrier!”
“Good. Then let’s just do it, not analyze it.”
“Analyze what?” Beatrice says way too loudly, appearing at the back door. She stares at me with eyes that look a little bare. Henry stands behind her, holding his camera and blinking through the lenses. It’s his turn with the glasses.
Rae shushes her. “Quiet. We’re supposed to be cleaning out the study.”
“Mom told us to come help you,” Beatrice says.
“Why’d she do that?” I say under my breath.
“Because Henry was using the drill,” Beatrice says. “He keeps thinking we can make a robot—”
“I already found a radio and a broken remote control,” Henry says, “and Dad said we could have all the old electronics in the house—”
“But I keep telling him we need a micro servo, so it’s not going to work,” Beatrice explains, as if it makes any sense to Rae and me.
“Okay, well, thanks, guys, but we don’t need your help right now,” I say.
Henry starts to lift his camera. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing, okay? And don’t even start—you’re supposed to be filming birds, not us,” I say. “Isn’t Dad taking you to the nature reserve today?”
“Yes, later. He’s helping Mom and Uncle A.J. with the Isoptera upstairs,” he says smugly.
“You’re allowed to just say termites,” I tell him.
“So can we hang out with you?” Beatrice asks.
“Actually, Edie, let them,” Rae says. “Henry can film us. That way we’ll have our hands free to catch the snakes.”
Henry and Beatrice both look at me with puzzled looks on their twin faces. Beatrice says, “But Edith’s—”
“Twins,” I say. “Look, do you want to come or not?”
“Yeah, but—” Beatrice tries.
“What is with you Posey-Prestons? Less talking, more doing,” Rae says. “Well, come on. The day is just waiting to be seized!” She runs down the back-porch steps toward the snake enclosures. I take a deep breath and command my feet to follow. The twins rush past me. And then I do it—I just start running toward the enclosures. Where the snakes lie in wait.
I tune out my brain and keep running. I’m my own superhero, right?
Rae gets to the gate ahead of me and reaches over to unlatch the door. “It’s locked,” she says, wiggling it.
And at the sound of those words, the superhero slips away and is replaced by a cold blast of common sense. Turn back!
“Maybe we can find a key!” Beatrice says.
“I’ll go look for it inside!” I say.
But Rae says, “We don’t need one. We can just climb over. Ready?”
I’m not the only the one who hesitates. “What about splinters?” Henry asks.
“What about them?” Rae says.
Henry glances over at me. Last summer, he got a particularly painful splinter in his thumb from a Popsicle stick, and I can see clearly that he doesn’t want to deal with another bout of tweezer trauma.
“I thought I saw a few keys in the kitchen drawer.” Although I feel cowardly, I’m relieved to have the excuse. “Be right back.”
I start heading back to the house. My nerves are on high alert. The sun is especially searing; the air feels particularly hot. I stop for a deep breath in the shade under a wide tree. Maybe I just need a take two.
Suddenly, something falls from a branch above me—SNAKE, OF COURSE! WHAT WAS I THINKING? I PRACTICALLY ASKED FOR THAT—and I suck in my breath hard and freeze, and hear, “Sorry, my bad!”
I realize that a sneaker, not a snake THANK GOD, has landed on the ground in front of me. Its tongue gapes out. I look up.
Two bare, bronzed legs are dangling from a branch above, one foot exposed. And then a boy emerges, like fruit dropping off a tree. He lands on the ground on one foot and picks up the fallen shoe.
I stare at him, my pulse pounding in my ears. He stares back with eyes that are somewhere on the color spectrum between blue and green. Turquoise? His hair is wild—growing outward like a mane, and brown with gold streaks, like something forgotten in the sun. He wears long swimming trunks as shorts, and his pale-red T-shirt is stained with a blot of purple juice. He looks like something feral—like an undomesticated tree-dwelling species.
I wait for some explanation, but he just stares at me wordlessly.
Then he finally speaks. “I’m Mitchell. I live over there.” He points to a small house in the distance, past a low stone wall. It’s a tiny cottage, like an old butler’s quarters or something.
“I’m Edith,” I say. “I mean Edie.”
He’s quiet. His eyes move back in the direction of the snake enclosures.
“Um, so did you know my grandmother, or—”
“Yeah, I did. We were friends,” he says. “Who are they?”
“Oh. The tall one’s my cousin, Rae and the other two are my brother and sister.”
Rae’s voice interrupts us. “Hey, Edie! We’re in. Forget the key and come back here.”
I turn to look. She’s inside the gate with Beatrice. Somehow she’s convinced Henry to climb over the gate as well.
“Oooh,
okay,” I say, trying to stay cool. But it’s Mitchell who seems to tense up.
“Who’s that?” Rae calls out.
“A neighbor!” I call back.
“Oh,” Rae says. Then she stands a little taller and her voice booms out. “No bars shall confine me; no walls shall pen me in!”
“What’s she doing?”
“I am free! And my destiny awaits!”
“Oh,” I say. “Theatrical lines, I think. I’m not sure if it’s Shakespeare—”
“No, I mean . . .” His voice gets tight and panicky. “What is she doing?”
“Oh, oh. They’re just releasing the snakes to take some pictures,” I tell him. My words are pretty calm, considering all the inner alarms that are going off.
“Hey, look, you guys—I got one! Henry, make sure you’re getting this!” Rae beams. She’s holding a gray-and-black spotted snake across her hands. The twins are practically chirping like baby birds with excitement.
Mitchell breathes in sharply. He walks to the enclosure. I follow a distance behind. Then he quickly climb-jumps over the fence.
“Her name’s Imelda, and I need you to give her to me right now.” He holds out his hands.
“Why?” Rae asks.
“Safety reasons.”
“Safety reasons?”
“Just hand her over,” Mitchell says.
Rae sighs and surrenders the snake. “Was she going to bite me or something?”
“No, for her safety. They get stressed out. It’s not good for them.” He puts the snake back into its home and gently picks up the other snake that Rae has freed.
“Wait,” Rae says. “It’s Edie’s turn!”
“Yeah!” I say, making my voice strong. Although I’m practically weak with relief that our snake-handling scheme has been shut down, I’m also disappointed that I won’t be able to call Taylor tonight and tell her how brave and exciting I’ve suddenly become.
“These snakes are animals. They’re not toys,” Mitchell says.
“What are you, some sort of snake patrol?” Rae asks with exasperation.
“Sort of. I help—helped—Petunia take care of them.” Mitchell’s gaze goes low, as if he’s addressing an ant in the grass. “Guess I still do. She loved them. They were her family.”
There’s a weird silence, and then Henry says, “Not technically. Snakes aren’t even mammals!”
“Yeah,” Rae says. “We’re technically her family. So these snakes are ours now.”
“We have pets!” Beatrice inflates with excitement.
“Yeah, so . . . ,” Rae continues, “we can take them out of their cages and play with them, or catch them and set them free, or whatever we want.”
I try not to visibly flinch with every word that comes out of Rae’s mouth.
Mitchell studies her. “Okay, yeah, I guess you’re right. So I should probably tell you how to take care of them.”
“Fine. Go ahead,” Rae says.
“Okay, you got to feed them once a week.”
“Easy enough.”
“They like mice,” Mitchell says.
“Mice?” Her nose flares.
“Or other small rodents.”
“Seriously?” Rae asks. “There’s not, like, snake food in a can or something?”
“In a can? No, but . . . they only eat about once a week.”
Rae’s lips are starting to curl.
Mitchell continues. “It’s the water that’ll keep you really busy. You have to change it a few times a week. They get into it and it gets dirty. And the cage—you got to wipe down the surfaces and change out the—”
“Okay. Never mind,” Rae says. “They’re all yours, Mitchell. Unless Edie wants to—”
“NO! I mean, I think we’re going to be way, waaay too busy this summer.”
A small smile shows on Mitchell’s face. “No worries then. I’ll handle it.”
“But I wanted to catch a snake,” Beatrice says.
“Me too,” Henry says.
“So.” Mitchell looks around. “If you want to catch something, I could, um, teach you how to catch frogs?”
“Frogs!” Beatrice and Henry are as excited as most kids would be for ice cream.
And a gigantic tsunami of relief washes over me. “Frogs! Yes, frogs! Frogs are good! I love frogs!”
Rae looks at me sideways, her forehead crinkling. “Oh-kay then?”
“I mean, I always wanted to learn. . . .” I let my voice trail off.
Mitchell turns and leads us down toward Corkscrew Swamp, and I remind myself that it’s a long summer ahead—a couple of housefly life spans, probably. So I have plenty of time to start becoming fearless.
“Frogs can’t turn their heads, so if you’re quiet, you can sneak up from behind,” Mitchell explains as we follow him down to Corkscrew Swamp.
“Hey, Mitchell,” Beatrice says. “Did you know that a frog sheds its skin once a week—and then eats it?”
“Everybody knows that,” Henry says.
“That’s pretty ew,” Rae adds.
Beatrice looks at Rae like Rae’s the weird one.
“Here’s another fact,” Beatrice continues. “There’s this type of frog called Darwin’s frog, and when its tadpoles are born—”
Henry scoffs. “Tadpoles aren’t born, Beatrice, they’re hatched!”
“Stop interrupting me! So when the tadpoles are hatched, their dad—”
“It doesn’t have to be their dad!”
“Okay, Henry!” Beatrice seethes. “Anyway, when they’re hatched, a male frog swallows them. He doesn’t eat them, but he swallows them into his vocal sac, and they live there for sixty days! And after that, he coughs them up, and they’re all fully formed frog babies!”
“Beatrice, Henry, you can stop grossing everyone out now,” I say, before they delve deeper into amphibian mating habits. “Please?”
“That’s nothing,” Henry starts. “The female Suriname toad—”
“Hey, you all?” Mitchell says in a hushed voice. “If you want to catch frogs, we have to be really quiet.”
The twins whisper their okays, thankfully, and we all crouch down near the edge of the swamp. As we settle in, there’s a ripple in the water that causes an old half-docked rowboat nearby to groan and sway. I try not to let myself wonder what’s causing the ripple.
“Whose boat is that?” Henry whispers.
“No one’s,” Mitchell whispers back.
“How can it be no one’s?”
“It’s just been here forever,” Mitchell answers quietly. “It belongs here. It’s always been here.”
“But—”
I shush Henry, but after another few minutes, he asks Mitchell, “Have you ever seen a real alligator?”
Mitchell nods. “Yep.”
Oh, no. Do I have bigger things to worry about? Bigger than snakes? “Uh, so . . .” I try to add a carefree quality to my voice, but it just makes me sound squeaky. “Are there . . . alligators in this swamp?”
Mitchell looks at me, squinting against the sun, his voice low. “Not really. Used to be, a long time ago, but the fishers killed them off. Then the swamp changed. It got too salty for them. But if you do see a gator? Dead or alive?”
How about we don’t?
“Just let me know, okay?”
“So, wait, if the swamp’s too salty, should we really expect to see an alligator—dead or alive?” Rae asks.
“Yeah, probably not,” Mitchell says.
Rae looks at me and mouths, “Oh-kay.” I smile that secret way back.
Mitchell puts his finger to his lips to quiet us completely. We hear a croak. A frog has jumped and landed on a fallen tree branch a few feet to our left, its back to us. Mitchell slowly knee-crawls up behind it. The frog’s croaking stops, maybe as it senses the small mob of us close by. Mitchell inches his arms forward, stealthily. Then, with one quick movement, he closes his hands around the back of the frog and, after a moment, gently lifts a hand away. The small creature sits in t
he cup of his hand, still and silent.
“He likes you!” Beatrice whispers.
“No,” Mitchell whispers back. “He’s just stunned.”
But the frog suddenly croaks and leaps, plunging into the water with a splash.
“Let me try.” Henry hands the camera to Beatrice so she can film him.
Mitchell points them to a log poking out of the edge of the water a short distance away. “You see where that frog’s at?” he asks.
“You mean, where that frog is,” Beatrice corrects him.
“Beatrice!” I whisper-scold. I know that she doesn’t mean to be annoying, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t.
“Maybe they don’t go to school here,” Henry muses to Beatrice.
I give Rae a look of alarm. She stands up. “Come on, you digotics. Let’s go catch some frogs.”
“Dizygotes,” Henry corrects her.
The three of them head toward the log, Henry way too fast and clumsily. I hear frogs bailing—little splashes of water as they jump from the log into the swamp.
“Sorry about that,” I say to Mitchell. “They didn’t mean—”
He shakes his head. “It’s no big deal.”
I wish for something clever to say. It would just be nice to have a laugh with him—if only to make up for the twins’ comments. A fly buzzes around us. Mitchell runs a hand through his wild hair. I notice that even though he’s a little shaggy looking, he’s not bad looking. He’s interesting looking. I’ve heard people say that about me before. For this first time, I see how it can be a compliment.
We hear a croak nearby. Mitchell turns toward me, his eyebrows raised. He nods toward the edge of the swamp, where I can see a fat green frog growing even fatter with every breath.
“Your turn,” Mitchell says.
Even though my nerves start to chatter among themselves, I slowly push myself to a crouch, and I notice that the twins and Rae are also quietly watching me. Not a snake, I tell myself. Not. A. Snake.
I lunge for it. But the frog is too fast for me. It leaps off, plunging into the water, and I land on my belly in the mud. I peel myself up, feeling ridiculous, noticing the ugly brown stains on the front of my T-shirt and shorts. But instead of sounding amused, my laugh comes out like a statement. “Ha ha ha.”
The Summer of Bad Ideas Page 4