It was a girl.
And just her standing there made the world look different.
I walked up slowly. The girl stood looking down at Patrick, and they were both laughing. Patrick stopped when I reached them.
“This must be your sister,” the girl said. “You must be Missy.” Her sneakers were white and her shorts were white. She held a shiny silver lunch box.
“Melissa.” I settled in next to my brother.
“I’m Shauna,” she said, plopping down in front of us and making a tight little triangle. Patrick nearly choked out his carrot.
The girl named Shauna shook back her shiny black hair and smiled straight at me, crinkling up her eyes. She wore a purple bikini top with straps so thin, they could have been used as dental floss. “Patrick said this is your second day. It’s terrible, isn’t it?”
I pulled my sandwich from its plastic bag and glanced down at my hands, grubby against the white bread. I suddenly wished there was a place to wash them. “Why are you here, then?” I asked. “If it’s so terrible?”
“Punishment. Pure punishment.” She opened her lunch box and took out a water bottle wrapped in tinfoil. “Keeps it cold,” she explained. She unscrewed the lid and took a tiny sip. Then she licked her lips and said, “Aren’t you going to ask why I’m being punished?”
“Yes,” stammered Patrick. “Why? For what?”
I looked at him in surprise. His face was red and he’d stopped chewing. “What’s the matter with you?” I demanded. But he was staring at Shauna with his mouth half open.
Shauna said, “I borrowed some money from my mother’s wallet. I was going to pay it back, but she called it stealing. This is to teach me the value of money.”
“Oh,” said Patrick.
“I was originally supposed to go to tennis camp in California,” she added. “But my mom went rabid and canceled it. Well, of course she changed her mind back again, but by then my spot was gone. So she looked around until she found the absolute worst place to dump me. And here I am. Don’t you have hand wipes?”
“What?” Patrick asked, dazed.
“No,” I said. I took another bite of my sandwich. “We don’t.” I noticed her shoes, which were spotless, like she’d been walking on brand-new carpet all day.
“Here.” She held out two packs of premoistened antibacterial hand wipes. “I have a million.”
“No thanks,” I said. “Our mother doesn’t believe in antibacterial.”
Patrick took the wipe. After he cleaned his hands he uncrossed his scrawny legs, and then crossed them again. He cleared his throat as if to speak, but only a weird squeak came out.
“What?” I said to him. “Spit it out.”
“You’re the first person we’ve met,” Patrick finally managed. He cleared his throat again. “The first other kid I mean. We hear them but we don’t see them.”
“Oh, they’ll be out. We were here a few days before the rain started, so we’ve already learned some things.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Well, the longer you wait for lunch, the easier the afternoon will be. The afternoons are torture. Absolute torture.” She fanned her hand over her face.
“You didn’t wait,” I said. “For lunch.”
“Oh, most of my day is lunch, actually,” she laughed. Patrick laughed, too. I didn’t laugh. I never laugh just because other people do. It’s one of my absolute biggest pet peeves. If I could start a club it would be the Don’t Laugh Unless Something Is Really Funny Club.
I thought about how we had to beg our mom and dad to let us come. “You don’t think they want to be out here? The other kids?”
“Of course not. We all want to be at the lake. Don’t you want to be at the lake?” She glanced across to Al’s weigh station. Then she lowered her voice. “You know, though, you can actually have some fun out here. I’ll introduce you to the other campers. You’ll see.”
“We should get to work, Patrick,” I said. The idea of other kids made me nervous. I liked things the way they were, with just my brother.
Patrick acted like he hadn’t heard me. “How many pounds have you picked?” His voice was low and strange, like he was trying out for a part in the school play.
“Three. Or something. Nearly one of those little buckets. Just enough to get my Kool-Aid.” She smiled and leaned forward, close enough so we could smell her hair—sweet and clean, like fresh green apples. “I can’t imagine a worse place than this, but if I got kicked out, I’m sure my mom would find one.”
Patrick laughed and nodded his stupid bobblehead. “Yeah, mine too.”
I glared at him. Traitor. Liar. I scrambled to my feet and brushed the dust off my shorts. I was hoping some of it would find its way to Shauna’s smooth, bare belly or land in that silky, sweet-apple hair. “Come on. We have berries to pick, Patrick. No time for shenanigans.”
“Hold on a sec—”
“Let’s go, Patrick. Mom said we had to stick together.”
Shauna looked at my brother and laughed. “That’s okay. Go ahead. But at least tell me what row you’re on.”
“Thirty-six.” He got to his feet and smiled down at her with a look that was both shy and grateful.
She smiled back, straight into his eyes. “Maybe I’ll come and find you,” she said. “Just don’t yell ‘Row Hopper’ if you see me coming through the bushes.”
“I won’t,” Patrick said. Hypnotized monkey. “I never would.”
“I might,” I said as I walked away.
Shauna called, “Good-bye, Patrick. Good-bye, Melissa.” And hearing her say my fake name like that made me melt—for a moment, anyway—just like my brother had.
• • •
I spent the rest of the afternoon listening for the rustle of branches, the clanging of buckets, or the shuffle of approaching footsteps, but Shauna didn’t find her way to row thirty-six. When the sun got close to its three o’clock mark I said, “Okay, Patrick. Let’s go.”
My brother sighed and I knew that he, too, had been waiting for Shauna to appear. And even though she hadn’t, just the thought of her filled our space with something else, something new, something other than the two of us out there.
“Maybe we’ll see Shauna,” he said finally. And I could tell he was looking for an excuse to say her name.
CHAPTER 12
SHAUNA SHOWED UP EARLY THE NEXT DAY, BEFORE the sun had the chance to dry off the leaves. I heard a crashing through the bushes and thought, “Bear!” But before I could shout out a warning, I saw the flash of a white tennis shoe and then I knew.
She squeezed through to my row, wearing a different colored bikini top, white with yellow stripes. Goose bumps and drops of dew dotted her bare stomach.
“Ta-da!” she said.
I glared. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I found you.” She looked past me and then crouched down to see the other side of the row. “Where’s your brother?”
“Not here,” I said quickly, which wasn’t a complete lie. He wasn’t exactly where we were standing, so he wasn’t technically “here.” Anyway, it didn’t work. Patrick must have had extrasensory girl perception, or else the green-apple shampoo scent was seriously that strong, because before I even heard the branches move, Patrick was on my side of the row, looking more stupid than ever.
“Hey,” he said, smiling in this weird shy way.
“Hey,” she said, smiling back. “So you’re still here—on the same row?”
“Well, yeah.” His face was red, and he stood like he was flexing his chest or something. I snorted.
She said, “The best berries are on the other side of the field. I don’t know why the old guy stuck you two out here.”
“His name is Al,” I said. “Where did he stick you?” There were words underneath my words, and Patrick glanced a
t me with a warning in his eyes. But Shauna didn’t seem to notice.
“Just a few rows away,” she said. “But I don’t stay there.”
Just then I realized that something was missing from her outfit—something besides a shirt. “You don’t have a bucket,” I said. “You don’t have a picking bucket.”
She shrugged. “Whatever. I hate those things. They get my shorts dirty. Come with me, Patrick. I’ll show you where the really good berries are. You, too, Melissa.”
She was including me and using my fake name. I tried to hold on to my hate.
“Come on, guys,” she said softly. “I’ll show you around.”
Patrick made a clumsy move toward his big bucket, but he almost tripped because his eyes were stuck to her yellow-and-white stripes.
I said quickly, “No. We stay here. We’re supposed to stay here. It’s our job.”
“Then you stay here, Missy,” Patrick said firmly. He picked up his big bucket. “I’m going.”
I felt blood rush to my head: dizzy. The words were out before I knew they would be, before I realized the threat that they were. “Then I hope you enjoy your last day.”
Patrick froze. “What? What are you talking about?”
I took a deep breath, so my voice would sound stronger than I actually felt. “Mom said to stick together out here. And if she finds out that you ditched me—”
“I didn’t ditch you.”
“You’re about to.”
“Because you’re making the choice to stay here—”
“It’s not a choice, Patrick. It’s the rule.”
Patrick stared at me, and what I saw in his eyes made me look down at my shoes.
Shauna said, “Well—”
“Don’t go,” Patrick told her. He turned back to me. “Missy—”
I started picking again, even though I could hardly see the bush in front of me.
Shauna said softly, “If you ever want to find me, Patrick, listen for the radio. I’m always around a radio. Just follow the sound.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll find you.”
I cleared my throat loudly.
“Shut up, Missy.”
“It’s Melissa,” I said.
“Good-bye, Melissa,” Shauna said. “Catch you later, Patrick.” And then she was gone. And my brother might as well have been gone, too.
Later, when the radio turned on somewhere in the middle of the field, I heard him catch his breath. But other than that, the only sounds were the rustle of bushes, the soft tumble of berries, and the bugs and bees, making their own kind of music.
The thing is, I’d always had Patrick. When Mom and Dad split, Patrick and I traveled back and forth together, just the two of us. It was too confusing for Claude, or too hard for Mom, I don’t know which. So back and forth, from house to house, just me and Patrick. We stayed the same. He was the one person I could count on.
Both Mom and Dad always said the right things, all the things they were supposed to say. This isn’t about you, it’s about us. We’ll always be your parents together, even though we’re not living together. You kids don’t ever have to take sides.
But the truth was: They had no idea. If I wasn’t on a side, I’d be lost in the middle. Without a side, I wouldn’t be anywhere at all. So I did take a side. Patrick was my side. He had to be. And I’d do anything to keep him there, even if it made him hate me. That would only be temporary. After a while, things would get back to the way they were. They had to. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have anyone. I wouldn’t have a side.
• • •
When the sun pointed to noon I announced, “Time for lunch, Patrick,” like nothing was wrong. He came without speaking. I said, “Are you ever going to talk to me again?”
He stared straight ahead, and I could see how his jaw was clenched tight.
“You look like Dad,” I told him.
“Shut up,” he said finally, through that clenched jaw. And we walked the rest of the way with shut up echoing between us.
We ate underneath the tree, but the world had gone as flat and dry as my sandwich. On the walk back to our row, a truck rumbled down the tire-track road, the bright orange truck from up at the house. As we stepped into the tall grass to let it pass, I squinted to get a glimpse of the driver. I saw a bright green cap and not much more.
“That must be Moose,” I said, but Patrick had already slipped back into our row.
I stood where I was, though, determined to see what a farmer named Moose looked like.
The truck bounced to the end of the road. It came to a squeaky stop in front of Al’s weigh station, then the bright orange door swung open.
Here’s the thing: with a name like Moose you expect someone big, like a guy who plays professional football or makes his living carrying refrigerators on his back. But this Moose wasn’t a moose. He was the opposite of moose. From where I stood I couldn’t be sure, but he looked even smaller than me. And seeing that, even from a distance, gave my stomach a funny sort of tingle.
I waited and watched as he loaded up the crates of berries from Al’s stack. When he climbed back into the truck, I dashed to my row and slipped between the first bushes. “Patrick,” I called, running up the row. “Patrick—I saw Moose! I saw—” but then I stopped, out of breath. I stopped because I saw four feet where there should have been two. And they were facing each other. Four feet!
“Hey!” I said. “I see you there. I see exactly what you’re doing there!” As I pushed through to the other side, the feet moved apart.
“Hello, Melissa,” Shauna said sweetly.
Without a word, I turned and squeezed back through the bushes, to my side. Because that’s when I understood: There’s no stopping certain things.
CHAPTER 13
“YOU ACT STUPID AROUND HER.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes. You do.” He was supposed to say, “No, I don’t” again. But he didn’t.
It was late Friday afternoon, and we had officially completed our first week of blueberry picking. We were packed, freshly showered, and waiting for Dad to pick us up for the weekend. Mom had taken Claude to the park, which she often did on Friday afternoons so he wouldn’t be confused by Dad’s coming and going without him. As directed by the Parenting Plan, Dad got Claude every Monday and Wednesday evening, and also got to see him on most weekends, but not yet to spend the night. Mom had this thing that Claude was too young to be away from her overnight. I knew it was something they fought about, but never in front of us.
I put on my 3-D glasses and stared across the living room at the paint samples, still taped to the wall. They looked like long yellow bandages. I said, “I wonder if Mom is ever going to paint this room.”
“When are you going to stop wearing those stupid glasses, Missy?”
I shrugged. “Maybe I’ll start wearing them in the blueberry field. What do you think Shauna would say about that?”
“Why don’t you like her, Missy? She’s nice to you.”
I thought of her bright bikini tops and her shiny black hair. “Because—” but I stopped. I didn’t exactly know how to answer that question.
Patrick said, “You just want everything to stay the same forever.”
“That’s not true.” Still, his words made me feel a deep tug in my stomach, the way truth can sometimes do.
I turned away and looked up at the clock. Nearly five. I heard the car in the drive and grabbed my weekend bag. “Come on, Patrick,” I said. “Time for our second life.”
That weekend was, at first, like any other. We watched TV, ate dinner, played Monopoly, and went to bed. As usual. In the morning we got up late, ate strawberry pancakes, and watched more TV. As usual. Everything was like usual until Sunday. Sunday lunch. And even Sunday lunch was as usual.
And then it happened, right after lunch, when the s
un was filling the kitchen with a warm, yellow glow. Dad was at the freezer, pulling out two boxes of frozen treats. Tessa, sitting across from us, smiled way too much. She said, “So, how’s the blueberry business?”
I ignored her, like I always did, while Patrick smiled and nodded his head. “It’s good. Really good,” he said.
I made a loud cough—the kind that sounds like you might throw up. Tessa jumped in her seat, but Patrick pretended not to hear. “Are you okay, Missy?” Tessa asked.
I made the sound again, and this time rolled my eyes and let my tongue hang out of my mouth. She turned away quickly. “You’re both so tan,” she said, looking only at Patrick.
Patrick yanked up his T-shirt sleeve. “It gets super hot in the afternoon,” he said, pointing out how pale his shoulders were compared to his arms.
I gagged again. I was just about to say something about bikinis, when Dad set the ice-cream boxes on the table. “Kids,” he said loudly, “we have some news.”
My heart did one big thump and I sat up quickly. My foot, finding Patrick’s underneath the table, pressed hard against it. When his foot pressed back, I knew we were thinking the same thing: Dad was using different words, but the funny strain in his voice was exactly the same as when he’d told us he’d be moving out. Suddenly, the only thing I had was Patrick’s foot. Nothing else mattered.
I pulled the 3-D glasses from my pocket and adjusted them on my face. That extra border around my eyes gave me a comforting distance from my dad and Tessa and the flowers in the middle of the table. I pressed my Spectacular Vision Button and said in a robot voice, “You—are—breaking—up—that—is—your—news.”
For once, Patrick didn’t snort or make me feel stupid. His foot pressed harder into mine, not in a mean way, but in a “hold on tight” way. I pressed back, just the same.
“No, Missy,” Dad said gently. “We’re getting married.”
I looked around the kitchen with its restored wood cupboards and antique-store knobs and tried to swallow the ache that was rising in my chest.
The Secrets of Blueberries, Brothers, Moose & Me Page 6