Mitchell’s answer is muffled, but I hear Rae say something that makes me feel like I’m dying a little inside. She says, “I guess I should just tell her.”
Great. I look forward to it. The two of them, holding hands, declaring their undying love for each other. I’m sure there will be some Romeo and Juliet flung about—Rae will insist on that. How romantic.
I’ve been feeling bad about inventing Klaus, but she’s probably been lying to me all summer. Should I be surprised? She’s an actor. The summer’s been one grand performance. And for Rae, all the world’s a stage.
I think Shakespeare said that, too.
I sit on the porch, feeling incredibly alone. I’ve been betrayed by Rae and Mitchell, forgotten about by Taylor. I almost wish that Klaus was real. As lumpy and pale and big bottomed as he’s become in my head, I just want a friend to call on. I want someone to be on my side.
Petunia.
I sigh. Okay, there’s Petunia, sure. It’s her list. She’d be cheering me on. But I would like very much for that person to be alive.
And she’s not.
But I am. And I’ve done a lot of things this summer—things that once scared me. Even if everything hasn’t gone as planned, it feels like maybe someday, not so far over the rainbow, I’ll go camping. At the lake. And dive headfirst into the water at night. And talk to high school boys. And do other brave, bold, fearless things.
But if so, I shouldn’t be sitting alone on the porch, feeling sorry for myself—no self-respecting adventurer would be. She’d strap up her boots and embark upon the journey on her own.
I stand up, though my knees are wobbly; I straighten up, though my body wants to shrink. And I take my first step into the dark, unknown night.
Chapter 22
Swamped
I am approaching Corkscrew Swamp, my heart intent on crossing in the rowboat.
Well, truthfully, my heart is slightly more intent on being safely tucked away in my bed. But telling myself otherwise helps me feel a little more like a brave explorer than the scaredy-cat I really am, particularly at this moment.
I hear something shuffle in the tall grasses not far from me and freeze—a scream stuck in the base of my throat. I charge on. Or try to. But it’s like my body has been sprayed with glue. My arms attach tightly to my ribs, and my legs squeeze together as I walk. It’s hardly the heroic march that I imagined. I am aware, all of a sudden, that I’m not breathing, which is something that I must do in order to stay upright and not become anaconda bait.
I force myself to draw in a deep, boggy breath of thick swamp air. I take another step, but my boot sinks an inch into the muddy ground. As I try for another step forward, my heel almost slips out of the boot. I tug at the boot to remove it from the mud. With a wet, slurping sound, my boot is liberated, and I spot the rowboat, belly up, about ten feet in front of me.
Which is not how I left it earlier.
Clearly, someone was here after my trip here this morning. Someone has tampered with my carefully laid-out plans. For a few seconds, I think about turning around and giving in to that safe-in-bed intent, but the scene looks more sloppy than sinister. Besides, Gutsy Edie wouldn’t dream of such a thing.
I splosh through the mud toward the rowboat. When I reach it, I hook my fingers under the edge. It’s heavier than I expected, and the more I try to lift it, the more my feet sink, and I slip into the mud with a shriek that embarrasses me, even without an audience.
After struggling with the slimy terrain, I make my way back to my feet, using about nine muscles I never knew I had. I dig the heels of my boots into the mud. This time, I’m prepared. Again, I grip the rim of the rowboat. With a giant exhale, I flip the boat over. Then I begin to push it the short distance back to the edge of the swamp.
“There,” I say. For some reason, it feels better to say it out loud, like I’m with a friend. But the only response is the wind whipping through the trees—why does that always sound so spooky in the dark?—and the rustle of branches and grass.
I shake it off—fine, I’ll embrace it. I’m the lone adventurer, and that’s okay. In fact, that’s more than okay. That makes me even more of an intrepid pioneer.
But wait. There’s only one oar. Where would the other be? I wipe the lenses of my glasses and scan the moonlit ground. Nothing. I turn around to survey the area behind me. But although my eyes register nothing that will help me cross the swamp, my ears go on full alert.
Footsteps. Quiet. Slinking. Stealth-like. Leopard-like. Toward me.
Wait. Are there leopards in Florida?
I freeze again. And then I hear a whisper. Two whispers. I am not alone, and I’ve never before wanted to be alone quite like this.
“I can hear you!” I call out in my meanest voice.
Silence.
The whispers come again. But this time I can make out the words.
“See us . . . doing here . . . should.”
It’s the Posey-Preston should that gives it away.
The air sweeps back into my lungs. “Twins!” My voice comes out scolding. My nerves are confused: I’m thawing with relief; I’m simmering with exasperation.
Again, silence.
“Beatrice, Henry.” I let out a grrr of a sigh. “I know you’re there.”
Slowly their small figures emerge from the shadows.
Then we all say it together: “What are you doing here?”
“Wait!” I add. “You didn’t follow me?”
“No,” Beatrice says.
“Okay, but you were out here earlier, weren’t you? Playing with the boat?”
“What boat?” Henry says.
“Edith, we’re just trying to film my kitten,” Beatrice says. “He only comes out at night.”
“Out here, though? You guys! This isn’t safe! A million things could happen!” I don’t like how I sound. I take a breath. “Besides, Henry, I thought you didn’t believe in this cat.”
“I’ll believe it if I can see it,” Henry says.
“Why are you here?” Beatrice asks. She’s wearing the glasses tonight. She’s in charge.
“Just . . .” I think back to all the reasons that have gotten me here tonight. To keep my best friend. To conquer my fears. To be brave. To be Edie. To prove that I can.
“Just for . . . reasons,” I say. “You guys really need to go home.”
“We’ll go home when you go home,” Beatrice says.
“No, I—”
“Come on, Henry,” she says, and they both dart past me toward the rowboat.
Great. My night has been ruined not once, but twice. The only upside is that it can’t get much worse.
But they start pushing the rowboat to the very edge of the swamp, and Beatrice jumps into the boat.
“No, no, no, and no,” I say. “Get out of the boat. No one’s going anywhere. It’s not safe.”
“But we saw you—you flipped it over. You were going to go out in it,” Henry says.
“Yeah, Edith, why?”
I don’t answer—I don’t feel like explaining. It’s on a fifty-year-old list of random things our grandmother might have done one summer. Suddenly, this good idea seems like a really bad one all over again. It’s one thing to have my own safety to worry about. But it’s another thing to have the fate of two eight-year-old genius-slash-nitwits in your hands.
“Beatrice, out of there! Now!”
“Fine—we’ll go home and tell Mom where you are. You’ll be in so much trouble!”
“I don’t even care about that now, Beatrice. Just get out of the boat!”
Henry looks at me, pauses, and then jumps into the rowboat himself.
“Henry!”
The boat starts sliding into the swamp. I lunge and reach for it, but my fingers only graze the edge and push it farther into the water.
“Okay, look, you two. Just paddle back to me, okay? And I’ll get in, and we’ll all row out.” It’s a lie, but this time a necessary one.
Under the moonlight, I can se
e Henry’s face change into an oh-carp expression. “I forgot the paddles.”
I look down. In the grassy weeds, I see the single oar. Better than nothing. “Here’s one. I’ll try to float it out to you. Now listen, you’ve got to be careful. You can’t just lean out and grab it. You’ll have to reach for it. Slowly.”
“No, it won’t make it out this far,” Henry says. “There’s a current.”
“Maybe I can grab the other one,” Beatrice says.
“Yeah, I can’t find the other one,” I tell her. “That’s one of the major issues here.”
“I think it’s right there. It’s floating toward us.”
I turn my head. About thirty feet upswamp, there is a slow ripple. Something long is headed in the direction of the canoe.
And it’s not an oar.
I can’t tell what it is. I squint and try to focus. And then I see the moon shine off two round orbs, just above the surface of the water.
Eyes.
Reptilian eyes.
Fear charges through me like an electric bolt. I gasp, and freeze, and in fractions of a second, a million thoughts—most of them useless—race through my head. Jump in. Run away. Call nine one one. Scream. Stay quiet. Wake up!
I grab for the only ones that make sense. And even that might be a stretch.
Take the oar. Climb the tree.
There’s a tree with a thick branch bowing over the water. Maybe I can climb it and clock the alligator between the eyes. That’s what you do, right? Or is that a shark? Great—it’s not like I have time to look it up in the encyclopedia!
I tell the twins to be quiet and still.
“Why?” they ask.
I’m thankful for their fuzzy vision, their single pair of shared glasses. They have no idea what awaits.
“Just because.” That’s the best I can do, and that’ll have to be good enough. They seem to sense that they shouldn’t continue interrogating. Maybe it’s because they see me standing at the base of the tree, with an oar clamped under my arm, wondering how I can magically turn into Tarzan.
I reach for a branch of the tree and try to pull myself up, which is hard to do with the oar clamping going on. My muscles lose; gravity wins. But the fate of my siblings is in my hands!
I try again. This time I grab the low, thick branch and try to kick a leg up and over. But the bark is digging into my fingers; my hands are on fire.
“Edith?” Henry asks in a tiny voice. A tiny, vulnerable voice that belongs to a young child who is unaware that he’s about to become an alligator’s late-night snack. So much for these waters being too salty.
I don’t answer. I can’t answer. Every ounce of energy I have must be applied toward the twins’ survival. This time when I grab the branch, I’m fueled more by will than actual muscle. I swing the rest of myself up and over the branch. Finally, I am in the tree, straddling the branch.
I scoot a little farther out on the branch and take a strong hold of the oar.
Between the eyes, I think.
But this hungry predator has to be twenty feet away, and the oar is only five feet long. If only the alligator was a little closer!
For a second, it hits me that in a million years, I would never have wished for some alligator to actually be closer to me! Not in ever!
I scoot a little farther out on the branch, to try to get a better reach, but it causes me to wobble. I try to regain my balance, clutching the branch with my legs and free arm, but it’s too late.
CARP.
The oar plunges into the water, and gravity tips my body sideways. I am grasping the branch for dear life, suspended from the tree like a sloth. Raw, cold, unfiltered fear courses through my body. The alligator bobs a little and ducks partly under the surface of water. It must be preparing for its predatory strike.
Beatrice and Henry are the human hors d’oeuvres. I am the main course. Human shish kebab, conveniently hanging on a skewer just inches above the water’s surface.
“Edith!” It’s Beatrice’s voice, interrupting my silent but frantic prayers. “It’s an alligator!”
“Cover your eyes!” I yell, and clamp my own shut. “Don’t look!”
“Edie!” I hear Rae calling my name.
“Rae?” I call out.
“Edie, where are you?”
“No! Don’t! DANGER!”
I hear the frantic snapping of her flip-flops as she gets closer.
“We’re in the boat!” Henry calls out.
The footsteps approach the water. Her flashlight shines on my slothlike body.
“Rae,” I say, trying to breathe. If I can’t save the twins, or myself, I must at least save her. “Don’t come. Any closer!”
But she doesn’t listen. I hear ripples in the water, and then a splash.
She has foolishly gone into the water.
This is about to become an alligator’s Thanksgiving.
I scream. I fall.
Everything goes cold and black.
Chapter 23
Lumps of Sugar, Grains of Salt
“Would you wake up?” It’s Petunia’s voice—it has to be. There’s a texture to it, like crumbled lumps of sugar. Grainy and sweet. “Please?”
“It’s you,” I say, my eyes trying to flutter open.
“You’re not dead!” Petunia says, her voice sounding smoother.
I open an eye and squint to focus. My eyes feel naked without my glasses. A harsh light blinds me. I’m confused. Am I supposed to go toward the light, or away from it?
“Edith!” young voices call out. First in the air around me, then straight into my ear. Angels? Cherubs? They’re clinging to me, smelling wet and damp. Like swamp water. I guess no one thinks to tell you that angels kind of stink. And then, through my squinty eye, I notice—
Wait. These are no angels. Henry and Beatrice are hugging me. Rae stands over me with a flashlight.
I jolt to a seated position.
“Petunia!” I say. “Where is she?”
“Petunia?” Rae says. “What are you talking about?”
“She was here. Right here. Telling me to wake up.”
“Petunia is dead,” Henry says, so matter-of-factly that he seems like some especially rude kind of alien.
“Edie, that was me,” Rae says. “I was telling you to wake up.”
I blink and try to make sense of everything.
“Edith,” Beatrice says, “you know you fainted, right? And fell into the water?”
“I found your glasses,” Henry says, slipping them onto my face. “And Rae pulled you out.”
“You did?” I look at Rae. I still feel a little spacey.
“Well, yeah,” she says.
“Wow . . . thank you,” I say. Then the memory of everything feels like a cyclone, hitting me all at once. “Wait! There was an alligator! What—”
“It’s over there,” Rae says.
I start to scramble, trying to stand up.
“No, don’t.” Rae gently pushes me back down. “It’s a little waterlogged, but it’s not alive. Well, not anymore. It’s stuffed.”
“Like Odysseus,” Beatrice says. “And Herbie.”
“But it looked so real,” I argue.
“That’s the point of taxidermy,” Henry says.
“And the water was moving, Edie,” Rae says. “No wonder it looked real.”
“Well, how’d you know it wasn’t?” I ask Rae.
“It was turning belly up in the water when I got out here.”
“Oh.” So it was rolling over, not preparing for a predatory attack. I feel pretty stupid, although . . . “What was it doing in the swamp in the first place?”
“I don’t know. It was all so crazy, Edie. Wait till we tell Mitchell about this!”
Mitchell. Hearing his name triggers a sinking feeling in my gut. I remember that Mitchell is her secret boyfriend. That my night was wrecked and ruined, just because she wanted to hang out with him—wait, probably make out with him. Gross.
Then another thought
pops into my head. Item eight. Hug the person you least want to.
She’s standing right there.
After a whole summer of trying, here’s an easy checkmark in the box. Rae’s within arm’s reach; I could just give her a quick hug, and check it off right now. But I can’t bring myself to do it.
There’s the sound of a siren in the distance. “Oh my god,” Rae says. “I bet that’s for us. Our parents must have discovered us missing and called Officer Elwayne. I’m sure we’re really going to be in a whole carpload of trouble this time.”
“I don’t care,” I say. “I just want to go home.”
“Okay, let’s go home,” Rae says, offering her hands to help pull me up.
“No.” I push myself to standing. “Home home. Not Petunia’s place. Home.”
I start walking. Beatrice catches up to me and grabs my hand. “It’s okay, Edith. Summer’s almost over.”
Which is good, because I’m definitely over it. But I keep my mouth closed.
Beatrice holds my hand tighter, and we walk back together.
The house is lit up. Through the windows, we can see our parents moving around inside like outraged ants whose stash of crumbs has been stolen away. We hear loud and panicked voices before we even reach the porch. My mom is shouting at Uncle A.J. “Why is it that you’re never in charge of them?”
“I’m supposed to be in charge? Since when did you ever trust me to be in charge of anything?” Uncle A.J. shouts back.
I’m the first one inside. Our parents seem to talk all at once when they see us; their words come out in a big jumble.
“Elwayne, they’re here!” my dad says into the phone, his voice full of relief.
“What happened?” Uncle A.J. booms.
“Where were you?” My mom is frantic.
Their words crash into each other, so it’s not clear how to answer or who to address first.
I expect the twins to jump in with some sort of breathless recap, but no one speaks, not even Rae.
“Edith?” my mom prompts, her voice impatient.
“I was trying to cross the swamp. It was our last full moon and—” I realize how ridiculous it sounds and stop myself. “You know what? I know it was stupid, okay? It was a bad idea, and I shouldn’t have done it.”
The Summer of Bad Ideas Page 16