The Secrets of Blueberries, Brothers, Moose & Me

by Sara Nickerson

  It wasn’t a big story, like you’d see in the movies. It wasn’t surprising, either. It was just, as a grown-up might say, “one of those things.” But I couldn’t help think in terms of right and wrong, even though I’d promised Al I wouldn’t.

  “So it was Moose’s fault,” I said as soon as he’d finished. As soon as I could trust my voice to speak. “He did steal it from Lyle.”

  “Well, there are two ways to think of it. While Lyle spent his young adulthood out seeing the world, Moose was right here, sweating on this farm. He helped his father develop those bushes. And the entire farm was originally supposed to be his, remember? All his. For the longest time, Lyle hadn’t wanted anything to do with it. So, that’s another way of looking at it.”

  “But, still. It wasn’t fair what he did. It was a trick. And a lie.”

  Al said firmly, “You promised not to make any judgments.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “It was a long time ago and a lot has happened since. Moose wasn’t after more money. Like I said, it wasn’t even valuable when he divided everything up.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said.

  Al shook his head sadly. “Everyone needs to find a way to make peace with the humanity of others. If you can’t do that, well, you’ve seen exactly what can happen. Maybe that will be your bigger lesson out here, Missy.”

  Who was Al to tell me about lessons? What did he know about my life?

  “I have to go,” I said. I turned around sharply. When I heard him calling my name, I didn’t look back.

  It was only when I was in the car and we were driving along Old Farm Road with the cool breeze on my face did I realize Al had called me by my real name. For the first time ever, he’d called me Missy.

  CHAPTER 42

  WHEN WE GOT HOME I DOVE STRAIGHT FOR THE COUCH and pulled the quilt up over my head. “Too much sun again,” I told my mom, so she tiptoed around, bringing me snacks and mint iced tea. I slept there that night and the next day and the next night, too.

  Even Claude knew something was wrong. He came with little gifts—a stick from the backyard, a tiny knight’s helmet from the castle set—and wanted to snuggle under the covers, but after less than a minute he’d wiggle out shouting, “Too hot! Too hot!”

  Then my friends returned from camp. They called the minute they came home and every day after that but I always told Mom to tell them I didn’t feel so well, that I was sleeping, that I’d call back. Finally, they just rode their bikes over. Luckily I heard them first, laughing up the drive, and I made a dash for my bedroom, just as the doorbell rang.

  Heart pounding, I closed the door and then quickly dove underneath my bed. Expertly, I arranged myself in Intruder mode and lay perfectly still, trying to calm my loud breath and pounding heart.

  “Missy? Missy?” I heard Mom’s voice, calling through the house. “Missy?” She opened my bedroom door.

  Through the tiny hole in Claude’s old baby blanket I could see six feet enter the room. “Missy?” Mom said again. And then, “Well, I have no idea where she went, girls.”

  “Just tell her we’re going to the lake today. We’re going tomorrow, too. We want her to come.”

  “I’ll do that. I know she’d love it.”

  Wrong. I wouldn’t love it. I imagined them both in the bright swimsuits they bought new for camp, leaping off the diving board, laughing with new friends, just like they described in their letters.

  “She’s been having a hard time lately,” Mom said quietly.

  “We know.” That was Constance’s voice. “My mom explained things.”

  Oh, great. Now everyone was talking about me.

  “I know she’ll want you both to be at the wedding.”

  Wrong again!

  “My mom told us about that, too,” said Constance. “We were so surprised.”

  Allie added, “Missy didn’t even write to us about it. And now she’s not calling us back or anything.”

  “You know, this wedding isn’t easy for her. Maybe that’s why she’s not calling.”

  “But we always call one another back!”

  “I know,” Mom said. “But a lot has happened. She even lost her glasses. She was wearing them when she fell. I’m sure someone just threw them away.”

  “What?”

  “Those funny glasses you girls always wear. The ones you got at the movies.”

  “Oh, those. We don’t wear them anymore.” Allie’s voice. Allison. With a little laugh, of course.

  Get out! I wanted to shout. Get out! This is my room and I want you all out!

  As though they heard me, six feet turned and left my room. I watched the spot where they had been, more empty than ever. I heard the door shut and moments later, chatter down the driveway as Constance and Allie rode away on their bikes.

  How easy it should be, to crawl out from under my bed and run to catch up with them. It used to be so easy, anyway. So why wasn’t it anymore? What had happened? What was happening? Why was I so frozen? Was I under some sort of weird spell?

  I stayed like that, frozen in my Intruder spot, until Claude’s little feet wandered into the room. I watched them come straight for the bed. A moment later, his big head appeared underneath. “Missy?” he whispered, his eyes wide. He sucked on his fingers and stared at the spot where my one eye peeked out of his old baby blanket.

  I yanked the blanket off my face. I couldn’t hide from Claude. “Yes?”

  “Come out.”

  I thought for a moment. “Did Mom tell you I was here?”

  He nodded.

  “Okay,” I said. And I rolled out.

  CHAPTER 43

  “GET YOUR BATHING SUIT,” MOM SAID. “I’M DROPPING you off at the lake today.”

  “What? No!”

  Patrick looked up from his breakfast cereal. “Will you drop me off, too?”

  “Of course,” Mom said. “Although I’m impressed with how you’ve been riding your bike every day. That’s a long ride!”

  Patrick flexed his calf muscles. “Look,” he said. “From all the hills.”

  I bent forward and squinted at his legs. “I don’t see anything,” I said. “Not one thing. And anyway, I’m not going. I don’t feel well. I believe I do have a concussion.”

  “You don’t have a concussion. You never did. You don’t feel well because you’ve been sitting on that couch, underneath a quilt, watching too much TV. The doctor said you are fine, and you are now going to get out and enjoy the summer. Your friends will both be there, so finish your breakfast and grab your suit and towel.” I knew the look on Mom’s face meant there was no way out.

  The last time my friends and I were there, the summer before, I had introduced them to the little store and we pooled our money to buy a party-size bag of potato chips and a gigantic root beer. I took them to the fishing dock, the one where my dad taught me to cast a line. I remember we put on our 3-D glasses and dangled our arms over the side of the dock and stared deep into the lake. Then we pushed our Spectacular Buttons and studied the teenagers across the water.

  Thinking about all that, on the drive out to the lake, I started to feel a twinge of excitement about seeing my friends. It was the lake, after all. Next to the blueberry field, it was the greatest place on earth.

  • • •

  They were sitting on the very end of the swimming dock, and when they saw me they jumped up and sprinted all the way to shore. “Missy!” they cried together, their bare feet slapping against slippery wood. Pat-pat-pat-pat-pat.

  And then, hug-hug-hug-hug-hug.

  I hugged them back, just as hard as they were hugging me, and then we jumped and jumped and jumped. Every other thing—every terrible and wonderful and impossible and mysterious thing—disappeared the moment my two best friends threw their arms around me and shrieked my actual true name. Missy,
Missy, Missy, Missy, Missy.

  “Missy! Where have you been?” Allie was the first to pull back from the hug and scrutinize. “We have been calling you every day!”

  Constance kept her arm around my shoulders and said, “She’s here now, A. It doesn’t matter.”

  “A?” I said.

  “That’s what they called me at camp. I think I’m going to keep it.” And then the two of them burst out laughing at the exact same time.

  “Oh my gosh,” Constance said. “The other Allison was so mad!”

  “What?” I said.

  “I know. Remember how she was all, whatever! with the apple?”

  “And then her face whenever you got called first because of alphabetization?” They cracked up again. “Oh, Missy, you should have seen it!”

  I nodded and made my mouth smile, but what I wanted was to go back to that first moment, the running-down-the-dock moment and the tight huddle when there was no one else in the world but the three-of-us-forever moment.

  They led me back down the slippery dock, to the end, where I noticed, for the first time, three other girls. “Everyone,” Constance announced proudly, “this is Missy!”

  “Hi, Missy,” the other three girls said. Then they smiled at me, waiting.

  While Allie pointed out introductions—“Mia, Natalie, Jasmine”—I said hi three times. Hi, Hi, Hi. After that, though, no one knew what to do.

  “We were all in the same cabin together,” Constance explained.

  “Oh, that’s so great,” I said.

  Constance and Allie plopped back down, making a tight little circle with one space left for me. I was still holding my bag with my towel and sunscreen and some berry-picking money. As I stood there, I felt my swimsuit shrink up or my body expand, or both at the same time. I tried to remember how long I’d had it—at least two years? I was suddenly a fleshy giant, wearing one piece of faded blue fabric that rode up high in the back and low in the front. I was sticking out everywhere! How did I not notice it before?

  I sat down in their circle and pulled my legs in tight, trying to hide my chest that, for the first time ever, made me feel embarrassed. There was just too much body going on! When did that happen?

  The other girls, including my friends, were all wearing two-piece suits, brightly colored and cheerful looking. “What?” I said, when I realized that all eyes were on me, waiting for some kind of response to a question I hadn’t heard.

  Mia or Natalie or Jasmine repeated the question, “Are you going to come to camp with us next year? You should!”

  “Maybe,” I said, shrugging. Which was the wrong thing to do because when I moved, even a tiny bit, my suit pulled tighter, revealing even more of me. I hunched over and said again, “Maybe.”

  Constance said, “Missy, tell us all about your summer. My mom told us some things.” She turned to the group. “Missy’s dad is getting married.”

  Allie added, “Missy is maid of honor.”

  The three other girls made quick chipmunk-like noises, causing my already jumbled brain to get even more confused.

  “What are you going to wear?” Mia or Natalie or Jasmine asked.

  “Um, I have a dress,” I said.

  “What’s it like?”

  “Um, it has skulls,” I said.

  There was a moment of silence and then everyone laughed. “She is funny,” one of the girls said. “Just like you guys said.”

  “No, but really. What does it look like?”

  I glanced across the water, to the dock in the middle where all the teenagers were goofing around. “You guys want to go swimming?” I could just make out Patrick, pushing another guy into the water. Then a girl pushed in Patrick. I couldn’t tell if it was Shauna.

  “Out to the teenager dock?”

  “No,” I said quickly. “Not there. We could go to the logs and try to balance.”

  And just like that we were all in the water, swimming and splashing our way to the logs and things didn’t feel so bad anymore.

  The line of logs were chained together and made a boundary between the lifeguarded swimming area and the rest of the lake. They were fun because they spun around and were slippery, so we had log-balancing contests like the lumberjacks did in olden times.

  We scrambled to climb on the logs and straightened to standing, balanced and slipped, splashed into the water and then, laughing our heads off, scrambled up to do it all again. I didn’t even mind my swimsuit so much when we were playing like that.

  The other girls were nice and laughed about everything. They went to the other middle school in town but told me we would all hang out. They had made a pact with Constance and Allie. CFF. Cabin Friends Forever. “You, too, of course,” they said to me.

  “Great,” I said. I told them I’d be right back, that I had to use the bathroom. Then I dove down deep and swam for the dock.

  CHAPTER 44

  OUT BEHIND THE LITTLE STORE, I FOUND A SECRET hiding place. Wrapped in a towel, sitting on a smooth stump of a tree, I closed my eyes and listened to the sounds all around me: the echoing shouts of kids swimming; the wind rustling the leaves; the screen door banging whenever anyone walked into the store; voices through the open window asking for worms and sunscreen and sandwiches. I had meant to swim back out to them, I really had, but once I was on land, wrapped in my towel, I felt better. Safer. And that’s where I wanted to stay.

  So that’s where Constance and Allie found me, sitting on the stump, listening to birds. “Missy! What? We’ve been looking for you everywhere!”

  “Why didn’t you come back, Missy?”

  At first, I couldn’t speak. I looked at their bare feet covered in dirt and grass and pine needles and even campfire soot, making me know that they really had looked everywhere for me. Their toenails, peeking through all that grime, were painted the same sparkly pink. “I don’t think we’re friends anymore,” I said finally.

  “Of course we’re friends,” Allie said.

  “Best friends,” said Constance.

  “You two are best friends. And now you have other best friends.” I took in a deep shaky breath. “You don’t even know what I’ve been doing this summer.”

  “Because you haven’t told us!” said Allie. “We know some things, from your mom and Constance’s mom. We know you fainted.”

  “We know you baked a pie,” Constance said. “I kept the letter. I’m going to try to bake one, too.”

  My pie. My pie seemed like from a different summer.

  “You probably made new friends, too,” Allie said. “But that doesn’t change things between us.”

  “Everything is changed between us.” I stared at twenty pink toes. “Everything is different. Remember when you were leaving for camp? Remember the thing about our 3-D glasses?”

  The toes did not move.

  “Well, did you even bring them to camp? Did you wear them? Because I did. I wore them and I saw things. Amazing things.”

  I stopped. I sounded stupid and I knew it.

  “Missy.” Constance plopped down in front of me, right in the dirt. Allie plopped right next to her. Their cute suits would get dirty. “No, we didn’t bring our glasses, but that doesn’t mean we’re not friends.”

  My throat was so tight I couldn’t speak. What made people friends, anyway? Had Moose and I been friends? Bev?

  Constance said, “Remember when we built the time travel machine and we were sure it would work?”

  I smiled.

  “And remember when we ran away?” Allie said. “And we tried to be the Boxcar Children?”

  I laughed.

  “Do we still do those things?”

  “No,” I said.

  “So that’s the point. We change what we do but we’re still friends. Right? Okay?”

  I nodded. “Right. Okay.”

  They tried
to drag me back to the lake, but I lied and said my mom was on her way. “Next time,” I said. “Next time I’ll stay longer. I still have a concussion.”

  So they left me there but first, through the open store window, I heard them in the store, deciding on a party-size bag of potato chips and a gigantic root beer. I heard Allie say, “What is even up with her?”

  And Constance said something back, but I couldn’t make out what it was.

  What was up with me was this: When they’d asked about the things we used to do, the games we used to play, my real answer, the one inside my head, had been different from the smiling one I’d given them.

  What’s so wrong about building a time machine?

  What’s so wrong about playing Boxcar Children?

  What’s so wrong about wearing 3-D glasses with the lenses popped out?

  What’s so wrong about keeping things the same forever?

  Those were my real answers. The answers I couldn’t say out loud to my so-called best friends.

  CHAPTER 45

  “I THINK I’LL WEAR THIS COUCH TO THE WEDDING,” I announced to my mother, the day before the big day. “Or at least this quilt. It’s very pretty.”

  “Get up and take a shower,” she said.

  “I can’t.” I pointed to the TV. “The bad guys just rode into town.”

  Mom was folding laundry. She stacked huge piles of towels and socks and shirts on the back of the couch. When she ran out of space, she piled washcloths and sheets on top of my legs. “Constance and Allie called again,” she said. “They want to see you. They suggested a movie this time.”

  “Because the lake was so fun?”

  My mom sighed. “Okay, Missy. Do you want to talk about things? Do you want to talk about tomorrow?”

  “No,” I said.

  “You will get up. You will wash your hair. You will be on time. This is important.”

  “I know,” I said. “It’s very important. That’s why I’m resting up today.”