Last Meeting of the Gorilla Club

by Sara Nickerson

  His cousin had just made the most amazing game-winning interception and the band was playing “Louie Louie” and he and his friends were dancing, when he saw her. Down against the railing. In her sparkly shirt. Pointing at Josh Duncan in his bright red raincoat.

  Lucas groaned.

  The cheer squad was in a pyramid by the time he’d stepped over legs and pushed past shoulders. His friends, he was sure, hadn’t noticed that he’d slipped away. He would meet up with them later, at Dairy Queen. First he would give the kid the stupid note so that everything could go back to normal.

  Maxie Moon was nowhere in sight, but that didn’t matter. Lucas reached the railing and touched the kid on the shoulder. “Excuse me—” he started, but Josh Duncan spun around with the most panicked look on a face that Lucas had ever seen.

  “Sorry—” Lucas said.

  “My book!” Josh Duncan pointed over the railing.

  Lucas leaned over and saw a small book lying on the track. He felt bad for the kid. “Here,” he said. “Follow me.” He led Josh through the crowd, weaving around bodies and pushing against the oncoming mass of people. It made him think about how salmon battled to swim upstream, to spawn in the same place they had hatched. It was a Marvelous Mystery for sure.

  “Almost there,” he called, and glanced back to make sure the kid was still right behind him. Then he ran down the length of the backside of the stadium, past overflowing garbage cans and the little kids playing football with an invisible ball.

  A security guard stood between the back of the stadium and the entrance to the field. “He dropped his book,” Lucas explained. The guard nodded and moved aside.

  It could have been fun, Lucas thought, as his feet hit the springy track. With the lights all around and half the crowd still in the stands, it could have been fun. But Maxie Moon was at the railing again, looking down at him, making sure he did what he had promised to do.

  As Josh Duncan ran to retrieve the book, Lucas reached into his pocket and took out the note. He would hand it to him and say, “Ignore this. Don’t do what it says. I just have to hand it to you. It’s like—a dare. For me. Don’t even read it.”

  That’s how he’d do it.

  And then maybe he’d invite the kid to Dairy Queen.

  Josh Duncan had picked up the book but was just standing there, slumped, like something was wrong. Lucas walked over with the note in his hand.

  “There was money,” Josh said. “In the book. I need to find it.” He handed Lucas the book and started searching the track.

  Lucas looked down, first at the book of poems, and then around the ground. He spotted a fluttery piece of paper, about to blow onto the field. “There!” he called, and pointed.

  Josh ran after it clumsily and Lucas remembered the first time he’d seen the kid, running between the buildings in the same red raincoat but with an inexplicable shadow.

  He shivered.

  And then he did it. Something sneaky. Something that wasn’t part of the plan.

  Josh ran back with a wide-open grin. He stopped in front of Lucas and looked down at his feet. “Thankyousomuch!”

  “No problem.” The way Lucas handed Josh the book of poems was as smooth as a perfectly executed play. If they’d been playing football, it would have led to a touchdown.

  When he turned and walked away there were two things he would regret almost instantly:

  He didn’t invite Josh Duncan to Dairy Queen.

  He slipped the note into the book of poetry.

  TWO SHADOWS

  Josh crossed the playfield and went straight to the spot where his mom had arranged to pick him up. The moon, so bright earlier in the night, was now tucked behind the clouds. Groups of kids were all around, talking and laughing, and still excited about the game. Like Josh, many of them were waiting for rides. But they were waiting for rides together. So he stood there, waiting for his mom, and all that darkness and dampness and aloneness made him feel like he was, once again, lost at sea without an anchor.

  Then his anchor appeared. Josh felt him before he saw him. He looked around and saw a shadow. Two shadows? “Hey!” he said. “Where have you been?”

  “What do you mean?” Big Brother acted surprised.

  Josh shook his head. This was all so different from when he was younger and the only thing they fought about was whether to build a Lego space station or medieval fortress.

  “I thought I saw you. At the game. Up in the stands. But you were with someone. And then you were gone.”

  “Great game, wasn’t it? Could you believe that ending?”

  Josh nodded. In all that had just happened, with the book and Lucas Hernandez and Great-Aunt Evelyn, he’d nearly forgotten the magical moment, when the ball was flying, and he was part of the crowd. “Yeah,” he said. “It was great.”

  “And you did it—you went to your very first football game! Did you have fun?”

  “I guess. But I blew it again.”

  “What did you blow? What happened?”

  Josh didn’t want to explain how Lucas Hernandez had been so nice, so helpful. And then, when Josh couldn’t even talk to him, well—no wonder the kid wanted to get away from him so fast.

  “What happened?” Big Brother asked again.

  Josh erupted. “Why can’t I talk like a normal person? Why do I get so nervous?”

  “Hey, hey, hey,” Big Brother said softly. “That’s not how I see it at all.”

  “Well then, you aren’t—” Josh stopped himself. He didn’t even know, really, what he was about to say. He knew he wanted to say something hurtful. Something to put Big Brother in his place and to get him to shut his Big Brother mouth.

  What he didn’t want was a pep talk. He didn’t want someone who wasn’t even part of the world telling him how to think and feel and act in the world.

  Big Brother waited a moment. Then he said, “I’ll tell you what I saw tonight. I saw a brave kid. The bravest. I saw how you showed up. Alone. How you put yourself out there. And I was proud of you. So proud.”

  Josh knew that Big Brother meant it. But he had his own truth. “When Lucas Hernandez ran away like that—”

  “You thought that was about you?”

  “Well, yeah. Of course.”

  “Do you want some big brotherly advice?”

  “You’re going to give it to me, whether I want it or not.”

  “You don’t always know what’s going on with a person. You might think it’s all about you. But maybe it’s about them. Maybe, maybe . . .”

  “Maybe you need to go lie down in a dirt hole again.” The terrible words were out before Josh could stop them. And he didn’t mean them, not at all. The moment they left his mouth he wanted to take them back. He wanted to say he was sorry, so sorry, and that he never wanted Big Brother to go away again. Ever.

  All those words wanted to come out, but his mouth would not open to let them. In the silence, Josh heard noises around him. They’d been there all along, the talking and laughing of friends. He glanced over. The shadow of Big Brother was there, but it didn’t feel like it.

  “Maybe you need to talk to Mom,” Big Brother said finally, quietly.

  Josh wanted to say how sorry he was, but the words didn’t come. He saw the headlights of his mom’s car, and her worried face in the lights of the parking lot, seeking him out.

  “See you around, Bro,” his big brother said, slipping off into the night.

  When Josh opened the car door, his mother looked past him. He heard her catch her breath. For a moment it seemed as though she was seeing something.

  “Mom?”

  Her eyes blinked. She shook her head. “The stadium looks so pretty like that.”

  She said it softly, almost sadly. But when Josh slid into the front seat and she asked, “How was the game?” her voice was back to normal
.

  “It was fine.” Josh rested his forehead on the cold glass window. “We won.”

  He watched the shadow of Big Brother walk back across the field. Next to him was another shadow. There were two shadows walking side by side, into the night.

  He remembered what Big Brother had said. You don’t always know what’s going on with a person. You might think it’s all about you. But maybe it’s about them.

  “I’m sorry,” Josh whispered, even though it felt like it was too late.

  “What?” his mother asked sharply.

  “I said, we won.” Then the car turned the corner and the two shadows were out of sight.

  MISTAKES

  The thing about mistakes, Lucas told himself, was you often had a chance to fix them. That’s what his mom always said. And like in Mr. K’s class, when you messed up on a test, you could do corrections. Some mistakes you couldn’t fix, as Lucas knew all too well. Some were permanent. It was a hard fact to live with.

  Lucas was still feeling bad about his latest mistake with the new kid. He was in bed but he couldn’t sleep from thinking about it. Or maybe it was because he’d eaten a DQ Blizzard after his large chocolate-dipped cone. He rolled over. His stomach hurt and his head hurt. The head was from Josh Duncan. How he’d slipped the note into his book, without explanation or warning. Then he left him there, all alone out on the track. But most of all, his head was worried about what might happen the next day. Saturday. If Josh Duncan found the note.

  How often does a kid open a book of poetry? That was the big question. But the fact that he was reading it at a football game—a Panthers game!—made Lucas think there was a good chance he would open the book and find it. And then what? Would he follow the note’s instructions?

  Maybe he wouldn’t realize the note was intended for him. Lucas almost talked himself into believing that. But if he did actually follow the map and go to the house? It wouldn’t be Lucas’s fault. Not—at—all.

  That was the other thing about mistakes. You could talk yourself out of thinking you made one.

  SEISMIC

  When Josh woke early Saturday morning, he pulled the covers over his head and tried to go back to sleep. But the bright sun coming through the window wouldn’t let him. Downstairs, his mom was at the kitchen counter, hunched over the newspaper with a cup of coffee. She straightened when Josh walked in. “So! What are your weekend plans?”

  “Homework,” Josh said. “What are yours?”

  She motioned to the boxes. She scratched her wrist.

  Josh ate his breakfast and went outside. The ground was still wet from the night before, and the sun made everything sparkle. He popped his head back in and told his mom he was going for a bike ride. “Not too far,” she said.

  He took out his bike and rode it around the circular drive. He was hungry again, but he didn’t want to go back in and see his mom staring at boxes and old photographs. The weekend seemed too long already.

  What would Big Brother tell him to do? When the answer came to him, he turned off the circular drive and headed for the main road.

  He could ride anywhere. He had five dollars in his backpack, left over from the money his mom had given him for the football game, and he could pedal the short distance into town and get something to eat. By himself.

  He knew he had Big Brother to thank for his newfound independence, and it gave him an ache, deep in his chest, to think about the terrible things he said after the football game. He tried his best to push the conversation out of his mind, along with the image of the two shadows walking off into the night.

  The Last Stop was open, and the sign still said corn dogs, two for one. Josh turned in and leaned his bike against the side of the building. When he opened the door, he heard the bell tinkle and remembered the first time, when he’d run away from school. It felt so long ago, but it wasn’t really. Not in regular time, anyway. But in a different kind of time, it was something like years. Did the invisible crack make that happen, too? Make time change into something else?

  The man at the counter greeted him, and Josh greeted him back. That small exchange made him think about all the rules that were part of living in the world. He would walk into a store and pick up something and give the person behind the counter green paper or shiny coins, and then he could leave.

  This is what Josh was thinking as he set his PayDay on the counter and asked the man for a corn dog. They were extra brown, probably left over from the night before.

  “Two for one,” the man said.

  “Okay,” Josh said. “I’ll take two.” He glanced down the counter at the bundles of wood, the Zippo lighters, and the sign that advertised worms. He remembered that first day, when he’d dreamed of running away to live on the mountain. It made him think of something, but he didn’t know exactly what.

  He tucked the PayDay in his backpack but held both corn dogs in one hand, by the warm sticks, and he walked out and sat on the curb to eat them. Even though it was a convenience store parking lot and he was sitting next to an overflowing garbage can, the air smelled like it had been washed clean with rainwater and pine needles. A breeze swept across a puddle of water near his feet, and he saw a rainbow shimmer in the middle of it. The corn dogs were good—crunchy and sweet on the outside and steamy in the middle.

  On the way home, belly full of one corn dog too many, Josh realized what it was—the thing he was trying to understand when he was looking at the bundles of wood, the Zippo lighters, and the worm sign.

  The world was shifting beneath him. It was a fact. Seismic events were happening at the very core of the earth—things he couldn’t always feel or see but he knew they were there.

  The thing he was trying to think of in the store—it was that he was shifting, too. He wasn’t the same kid who had run away from his first day of school. He was now a kid who rode his bike and went to high school football games and ordered convenience store corn dogs when he was hungry. Those were big changes and Big Brother had made them happen. Josh knew that. He also knew something big was shifting in their relationship. He couldn’t explain it because he didn’t understand it. And it wasn’t like an earthquake, something he could feel. It was more that he could see the aftereffects. The jumble of ruins.

  He found his mom in the living room surrounded by photos. Her face was blotchy and red. “Are you hungry?” she asked, wiping her eyes.

  Josh told her he’d gone to the store. She raised her eyebrows, like she had something to say, but nothing came out.

  “I’m going upstairs,” Josh said. “Homework.”

  “I almost forgot—your dad called. I told him you went to the game last night. He wants you to call him.”

  Josh had an okay talk with his dad. At the end, though, his dad said a bunch of things like “Hang in” and “Good job” and “Go get ’em.” Josh could tell he was all choked up with genuine fatherly happiness, which made him feel like even more of a big awful liar.

  He took out some Lego but it wasn’t fun. It was barely past noon and the day was dragging on. It was so boring that he looked forward to doing his homework.

  He opened his backpack and took out the books from the old library. When he saw the Robert Frost poems, he thought about the night before. He’d been trying so hard not to think about it, but there it was—right before him.

  Great-Aunt Evelyn.

  Lucas Hernandez.

  The fact that he would never make a friend.

  He opened the book to see her shaky inscription again: To my wonderful nephew, Jackie. Happy Birthday. With Buckets of Love from Great-Aunt Evelyn.

  A piece of paper fell out. He unfolded it. It was a note. The world shifted again.

  THE NOTE

  Gorilla Club

  Saturday at Sundown

  Follow the Map

  Find Your Way In

  Josh couldn’t make sense of w
hat he was reading. He remembered the girl who had said the words Gorilla Club. Of course he remembered her. She’d tapped her toes and told him about Dead Melanie’s bench—that Melanie had been run over while crossing the street in the middle of the day. She’d held up her hand and announced, “First meeting of the Gorilla Club.” Josh remembered it all.

  But it wasn’t real. She wasn’t part of the world that he was a part of. Except—there was a note. Paper and pen. Things that were of this world.

  Gorilla Club. Find your way in.

  The note made it real.

  THE HOUSE IN THE WOODS

  It used to be called the Cascalenda house, which was the name of the immigrant family from Italy who had cleared the bit of land and built a home with their own timber and hands. Years later, when the developers began to arrive with contracts and checkbooks, the Cascalendas were the one family in the area that held out. They held on to their land.

  Back when they first moved to this remote forest, they grew food and raised animals—chickens and rabbits and pigs. They got jobs with the nearby timber company. The large family house was passed down to a new generation, and then another. One of the Cascalenda daughters got married and changed her last name to her husband’s last name, which was Moon. All around them, houses and local schools were built. Even when the name on the mailbox was Moon, some people still thought of it as the old Cascalenda house.

  Until the terrible thing happened and it became known simply as the House in the Woods.

  The Moons had one child, a girl, who was the Apple of Everyone’s Eye. That’s what they said, all the time. “Maxie Moon, you are the apple of our eye.” She never knew what that meant but she knew it was good. She imagined one giant and adoring eye, directed at her at all times.