It couldn’t be true, could it? She couldn’t have been transported to the cave and back again. And in between she hadn’t been tied and blindfolded while some unknown people nearby talked in a strange foreign language, right? Turning away, she went to the mirror above her dresser and stared long and hard at her own face. It looked normal. No sign of a blindfold. Her pale brown hair was a tousled mess, but it often was, so that didn’t prove anything.
She had gone back to her desk and was starting to pick up the pen when she suddenly noticed something that made her catch her breath in a sharp gasp. Right there, clearly visible around both of her wrists, were circles of rough, reddened skin. And that wasn’t all. On her right arm, halfway between the shoulder and elbow, there was a large red scratch. A scratch that definitely hadn’t been there until…until, struggling to free her hands, she had fallen painfully on her right side. Still rubbing the tender place on her arm, Audrey sat down at her desk and reached out slowly and uncertainly to pick up the bronze pen.
CHAPTER 17
AS SHE REACHED FOR THE PEN, AUDREY was not intending to write anything. In fact, at that particular moment she was seriously thinking she might never write with it again. She was only feeling a need to hold it, as if just the touch of it on her fingers might somehow help her to learn its secret. But now, holding it gingerly in both hands and thinking back over the recent past, she began to feel, or imagine she was feeling, a living thing. A thing that didn’t move so much as quiver, or perhaps tingle with a kind of deep inner force.
Suddenly opening her desk and shoving the pen inside, Audrey quickly and firmly closed the drawer, and then sat still, staring into space. Staring, but not really thinking, at least not in any very productive way, until the door to her room suddenly opened. Audrey whirled around to see that it was only Beowulf.
What a relief! Throwing her arms around his warm, doggy-smelling body, Audrey wrestled him to the floor. It was a few minutes later, while she was still lying with her cheek on Beowulf ’s well-padded rib cage, that she remembered that she had promised to call Lizzie. To call and ask Lizzie Morales if she wanted to come over and keep her company while her parents were in town.
On her way to the telephone in the kitchen Audrey was thinking Lizzie probably wouldn’t come. After all, it was Saturday and it was quite likely that she’d already made other plans. Or maybe she’d be too busy working on one of her caricatures. Audrey sighed, thinking about all the things John Abbott had said about Lizzie’s caricatures. Things like “amazingly original” and “surprisingly sophisticated.”
She sighed again, wondering if her dad would think any of her stories were all that original or sophisticated—that is, if she ever decided to let him read them. As she dialed, she was still wondering what he might say.
But then the phone was answered by one of Lizzie’s brothers, who yelled, “Hey, Liz! It’s for you,” so loudly that it jarred everything else right out of Audrey’s head, at least for the moment. By the time she said, “Hi, Lizzie. Could you come over today?” she was simply hoping the answer would be yes. And it was.
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Lizzie said. And when Audrey told her she didn’t think that was possible, Lizzie said, “Maybe not by bus, but I think it will be about that long by Harley-Davidson. I’ll be coming by motorcycle.” When Audrey asked what on earth she was talking about, Lizzie explained that one of her brothers had one. “Mario has a new motorcycle, and I just happen to have something on Mario,” she whispered. “Something I’ll promise to be very quiet about, if he’ll just give me a ride now and then when I really need one.”
The threat must have worked because Audrey barely had time to change into a long-sleeved shirt to hide her wounded wrists before a motorcycle roared to a stop in front of the Abbott house. A few seconds later there was a knock on the door.
The first thing they did after Lizzie’s arrival—that is, the first thing after Lizzie bounced around Beowulf on all fours, copying his usual welcoming ceremony—was to have lunch. When Audrey asked Lizzie if she’d like to eat, Lizzie said, “Would I! What a great idea. I’m starving.”
Audrey wanted to ask why she was starving, but she couldn’t think of a polite way to do it. For instance, you couldn’t just ask somebody if her family was too poor to buy enough food. But then, as if she were reading Audrey’s mind, Lizzie said, “On Saturday mornings anybody with five brothers has to move fast or starve, and today I overslept.” She grinned at Audrey. “So, what are we having?”
While they were eating the tuna sandwiches, they talked mostly about their families. A little about Audrey’s parents, where they were and why, but mostly about Lizzie’s family. Which was fine with Audrey. Lizzie’s crazy stories about her brothers were almost interesting enough to keep Audrey’s mind off the bronze pen and what it might, or might not, have caused to happen.
Lizzie had just finished telling Audrey about how Juan, her youngest brother, had been caught borrowing other people’s clothes without permission and had been sentenced to doing the laundry for a whole week. To get even, he’d tied dozens of dripping-wet socks into extremely tight knots so that when they’d been through the dryer, they were stiff as cement. And then Alberto got even by throwing all of Juan’s shoes up on top of the roof. Lizzie had gotten about that far when suddenly, without meaning to or thinking ahead, Audrey found herself saying, “I could use that. In a funny story, I mean. Okay?”
“For a story?” Lizzie asked. “Do you write stories?” She grinned and nodded. “Oh, sure, you wrote that dragon thing for little kids. But I mean, do you do other stuff?” And then, not even waiting for Audrey to answer, she went on, “Sure you do! I should have guessed.”
It took a moment for Audrey to stop biting her tongue, but then, under the influence of Lizzie’s obvious enthusiasm, she confessed. “Yes. I write. I’ve been doing it most of my life, but I usually don’t like to talk about it.”
“Oh yeah? Why not?”
Audrey sighed. Sighed again, then shrugged. “I don’t know. Except that most people think it’s kind of a stupid thing to plan on. You know. Like planning to be Miss America or a famous movie star, or like that.”
Lizzie nodded thoughtfully. “No,” she said. “It’s not like that. At least it’s not if you do it because—because it’s just what you do. Like drawing is just what I do.”
Audrey nodded—slowly. She liked the part about it being just what you do. That part was true. But the other part was why. Why was it “just what you do?” She was wondering if drawing was what Lizzie did because it got her a lot of praise and attention. “Would you go on drawing if—,” she began, but Lizzie got there ahead of her.
“You mean, would I draw if no one ever saw what I did, or if they saw it and thought it was the pits?” She paused, and then before Audrey could answer, she went on. “Sure I would. I would if I liked it. Do you like what you write?”
Audrey was saying, “Yes, I do. Mostly I do…” when Lizzie pushed back her chair and stood up.
“Okay. Let’s see it.”
Audrey sat still. “See what?” she said. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I want to see some of your stuff,” Lizzie said.
On their way down the hall, with Beowulf padding along behind them, Audrey was still shaking her head and wondering why she was doing this. She went on shaking her head internally while she took the novel notebook out of its hiding place, at the same time wondering if she hadn’t been unconsciously hoping this would happen when she’d asked Lizzie if she could use her brothers’ socks in a story someday.
CHAPTER 18
AS LIZZIE SAT DOWN AT THE DESK AND started leafing through the secret notebook, Audrey suddenly reached over and slammed it shut.
“Why?” Lizzie said.
“You have to promise me something first.”
“Okay. Like what?” Lizzie asked.
“That you won’t tell anyone. That you won’t tell my parents or anyone at school about my writing.”<
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Lizzie grinned. “Well, sure,” she said. “I promise. See, I’m raising my right hand and swearing.” She leaned over and grabbed one of Beowulf ’s paws and held it up. “See? Beowulf is swearing too, aren’t you, you great big gorgeous thing?”
Beowulf looked so pleased with himself, wagging his tail and grinning, that for a moment Audrey thought of telling Lizzie about the time he’d actually said a few things. But she didn’t. Instead, she quickly turned away and went over to sit on the bed while Lizzie took her time turning the pages of the notebook, stopping to make comments every few minutes. Comments like, “Hey, I like this about the weird sneaky things the gorgeous flower does to people.” And a little later, “I like the dog telling on the sneaky cat. Funneee stuff!” She was still reading the last few pages of the mystery about the girl detective who could talk to animals when there was the sound of a car in the driveway.
With the novel notebook safely back in its hiding place, Audrey and Lizzie were waiting at the front door when Audrey’s parents came in. John Abbott introduced Lizzie to Hannah before he headed for his room to rest, and the other three went to the kitchen for apple juice and cookies.
Lizzie and Hannah got along fine. Audrey had been pretty sure they would, but you never knew these days with Hannah. Sometimes when she was extra tired or worried, she could find fault with almost anything or anyone. But today she was okay, and she laughed, almost out loud, when Audrey got Lizzie to tell her about Juan and the knotted socks.
So that was that. But before Lizzie headed for home, she said, “I’ll be back next Saturday.” And when Audrey said her dad’s treatment was only every two weeks, so her folks would be at home, Lizzie said it didn’t matter. “I won’t tell them they have a talented author for a daughter, if that’s what you’re worrying about,” she whispered.
So the week passed like all other weeks—at least like the weeks since Lizzie came to Greendale Junior High—with Audrey and Lizzie sitting together at lunch and during art class and getting lots of attention because everyone kept coming over to see what Lizzie was drawing.
And then it was Saturday again, and this time Lizzie arrived by bus, carrying her artwork briefcase. The first part of the visit was taken up by Lizzie showing Audrey’s mom all the stuff she had already shown her father, and Hannah was almost as enthusiastic as John had been. And then when John Abbott went to his room to rest and Hannah went out to water the garden, Audrey and Lizzie went to Audrey’s room.
This time they both sat on the floor. Lizzie returned to the story about the girl detective while Audrey once again went through Lizzie’s briefcase. It was the first time she had been able to look at the pictures by herself with no one else there to interrupt her reactions. Except that every once in a while Lizzie stopped long enough to make comments about what she had just read.
At one point Lizzie said, “Hey, this part is great,” and when Audrey went over to see what she was talking about, she saw that Lizzie was reading the page where she’d used the bronze pen to write about the girl detective and the talking animals.
“What part do you mean?” she asked. “The story or the handwriting?”
Lizzie laughed and said, “Both. Writing with that pen makes your handwriting a lot easier to read, that’s for sure, but what I meant was, right here the whole story starts to make you feel like you can’t wait to see where it’s going. Particularly when the animals start talking. You know what I mean?”
“Yes,” Audrey agreed. “I guess I do. I guess the part about the animals turned out to be very…”
She paused and Lizzie said, “Turned out to be what?”
But Audrey only shrugged and said, “The most important part, I guess,” and went back to looking through the caricatures of famous people.
When Lizzie got to the place in the notebook where the title of the picture book was written in pencil at the top of one page, she said, “Hey, here’s our story.” She flipped to the next page and back again. “Where’s the rest of it?”
Audrey explained how she’d written the rest of Debby’s Dragon in the little booklet she’d made. And once again she thought about saying more. About telling Lizzie something about how she herself, as a little kid, had a pretend baby dragon. And then possibly go on to tell her what happened that night after she’d written the dragon story.
She didn’t, though. Actually, one reason she didn’t was because Lizzie had started to rave about how their book was such a fantastic primary-grade story and how everybody who saw it thought it was good enough to be published. “It really is a neat story,” she said, and then grinned and added, “And the illustrations aren’t bad either.”
Next came the long essay Audrey had started writing just last Saturday about the cave and the pirates. Not fiction this time. Just a careful account of what the cave was like and what she had done there. Audrey watched as Lizzie read it through carefully and then turned back and read it again. After the second time she sat there staring at the page for a while before she looked at Audrey and said, “This is all true, isn’t it? There really is a cave. And the part about the pirate game—that’s true too.”
Audrey found herself nodding.
“These twins…” Lizzie glanced down at the page. “These Mayberrys. They were, like, real people?”
“They still are,” Audrey said. “Only they live in Arizona now. They used to live up the street. Number one twenty-four, where the Feltons live now.”
“Wow,” Lizzie said. “So the Mayberrys moved away, and that was the end of the game. No more pirates, huh? Too bad.” She thought for a minute, nodding her head and squinting her eyes, before she said, “What happened then? I mean, you stopped right here where you’re saying something about one time when it got too scary.”
Too scary? Audrey caught her breath—and then laughed. “Oh, that. I was just going to write about when we were being the pirates’ victims and James Mayberry tied me up so tight that it hurt, and it scared me. But he untied me when Patricia told him to.”
Lizzie nodded. “And so that was all there was to it?”
“Well…“Audrey turned her eyes away from Lizzie’s eager gaze before she shrugged and said, “Yes, that was all.”
Lizzie’s slow nod and curled lower lip might have been saying she didn’t believe it. After a long pause she went on, “I want to see it. The cave. Right now. Okay?”
Audrey started to argue. She started by saying that she’d promised not to go there again, but that didn’t help at all. In fact, it just seemed to make Lizzie even more determined. “Oh yeah?” she said. “Why? Why did you have to promise that?” And before Audrey had time to even think about how to answer, Lizzie asked, “Couldn’t we just go for a walk and wind up going there?” She was grinning. “You know. Kinda by accident?”
“I don’t think so,” Audrey said. “It takes almost half an hour just to get there, even if you’re a good climber. And almost as long to come back. No. We’d have to be gone too long, unless…” Audrey paused, thinking. Thinking about an intriguing possibility.
“Unless what?” Lizzie urged. “Tell me. Unless what?”
Audrey blinked, shook her head, and then, moving as if in a trance, she picked up the notebook, went to her desk, opened the top drawer, and took out the bronze pen. Then she sat down and opened the notebook to a blank page. Lizzie was hanging over her, trying to see what she was doing.
“Hey, I get it,” Lizzie said. “You’re going to write that we want to go there. You’re going to say something like, ‘Lizzie Morales and I want to go to the cave.’ Yeah! Write that.”
The pen moved smoothly and easily across the page, so easily that it almost seemed to be moving under its own power while Audrey wrote:
Lizzie Morales and I want to pay a very, very short visit to the cave on Wild Oaks Hill.
She stopped writing, put down the pen, and sat still, waiting to see if something, anything at all, would happen. Waited as a minute went by, and another minute, and two or three more.
Then Lizzie’s hand was on her shoulder, shaking her and demanding, “Why isn’t something happening? Who did you write that to?”
Grinning ruefully, Audrey said, “I don’t know. Nobody, I guess. It was just a crazy idea.”
For a while Lizzie went on staring first at Audrey, then at what she had written on the paper before she shrugged, grinned, and said, “Well, I guess whoever it was for didn’t get the message. Don’t worry about it. Nobody listens to me, either.” She turned away and, after stooping to give Beowulf a quick pat, wandered over to the shelves and began to examine Audrey’s dragon collection.
Afterward Audrey remembered that she was still sitting at her desk, looking at her notebook, when she was once again enclosed in, surrounded by, a dense cloud. A cloud that brushed feathery fingers across her face and arms, forcing her eyes to close and filling her ears with a chorus of chirping, twittering sounds. The cloud lifted her up and away and then, very quickly, put her down on solid ground. On solid ground that she recognized, as soon she was able to open her eyes, as the rocky floor of the Wild Oaks cave.
Audrey jumped to her feet instantly, her eyes darting fearfully out toward the place just beyond the entrance, where the pirates had appeared. No pirates. Only a busy fluttering of small blackbirds, in and out of the dangling curtain of vine. Greatly relieved, she turned back to see another familiar sight. A row of owlish eyes were staring down at her from the far wall. And up above? Yes, the bats were there too, just as before, forming a lumpy, squeaky carpet across the roof of the cave. In the dim light it was hard to tell if there was anything way back on the ledge except the lumpy pile of rugs and blankets. But suddenly something was there. Emerging from the darkness at the back of the cave, it moved forward until…until Audrey was able to see that it was only the white duck.
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