Tumble & Blue

by Cassie Beasley

  “You were supposed to be onstage half an hour ago,” said Blue.

  Maximal kept talking over him. “So if you want me to sign your books or give you a photo op or something, now’s the time.”

  Tumble looked down at her bag. This wasn’t right. This was all wrong. “No,” she said quietly. “No, I’m fine.”

  “Let’s get you two back to your seats!” It was Lucy the Starlet, hurrying toward them.

  “I’m fine,” Tumble said again. “Completely fine.”

  Blue bent to pick up the backpack for her. “Tumble,” he said. “We need to go back to the gym.”

  She frowned at him, but when he pointed toward Lucy, she turned obediently and followed the Starlet out of the room.

  “You know it’s not really a book for children,” Maximal was saying as they left.

  Blue slammed the door behind them.

  ■ ■ ■

  Lucy talked too fast all the way back to the gym. “I’ve always thought that you couldn’t be a hero at all if you didn’t have something to struggle against. So if you’re having a hard time, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe you’re training yourself up for something big and tough without even knowing it!”

  “Uh-huh,” Tumble mumbled. “Right.”

  “And . . . uh . . .” said Lucy, looking at Blue as if she was expecting him to step in. “You know . . . even wanting to help other people is pretty heroic. Most people are kind of selfish. So you’re already a hero. In my books.”

  But Lucy’s books weren’t the ones that mattered.

  As the Starlet’s hand reached for the door to the gym, Tumble stopped moving. “I need some fresh air.”

  “Tumble?” said Blue.

  She shook her head. “I need to go. I don’t—I don’t want my front row seat. Give it to somebody else.”

  “Are you—?”

  She was already walking fast in the other direction, shoulders tucked in, head bent.

  Definitely not ready for anything rough or tumble, thought Blue.

  “Oh,” said Lucy, watching her go. She lifted one hand to her silver vest as though she’d been stabbed in the heart.

  “Your boss is an idiot,” said Blue. “And I don’t think he should be anyone’s hero.”

  Lucy sagged against the door. “I’m so done with this job,” she said. “I wanted to do something great, something fun and important! And instead everything’s just crummy.”

  Blue knew what that was like.

  THIRTY-NINE

  A HAPPY ENDING

  Blue found Tumble sitting on a bench under an oak tree outside the school. Even from a distance, he could tell who it was by the slump to her shape. Twigs and dried acorn caps crunched under his feet as he approached, but she didn’t look up.

  “Granny Eve will be out soon,” he said. “I’m sure she’ll figure out that we’re not there.”

  “Okay.”

  Blue decided it was best not to notice if her voice was a little soupy.

  He sat down beside her and handed her a fistful of money. “Lucy gave me a refund and let me keep the flashlight. She said it was the least she could do.”

  Tumble shoved the dollars into her pocket. “Great,” she muttered. “I’m going to need to buy a new book to read.”

  Blue wondered what you were supposed to say to someone who’d just found out their hero was a fraud. Maybe there wasn’t anything. Even if his dad showed up right now and apologized for everything he’d done, Blue would never feel quite the same way about him.

  “I guess you think I’m pretty dumb, don’t you?” said Tumble. “Crazy Lily Wilson with her crazy ideas about being a hero.”

  “I think Maximal Star is a selfish moron,” said Blue.

  “Yeah, but what does that make me?”

  “It makes you an optimist.” Blue hesitated. “Am I supposed to call you Lily now?”

  She kicked an acorn cap. “I don’t know,” she said. “I wanted to be Tumble because Tumble could be a hero. And Lily was just some girl.”

  “I bet you weren’t ever just some girl,” said Blue. “Do you want to know my favorite thing about Tumble?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Tumble always believes there’s a way to fix things. It’s maybe the most impressive thing about her,” he said. “Even when everyone else thinks something is impossible, Tumble’s there saying, ‘Maybe not. We have to try.’”

  “How can that be your favorite thing about me? I’ve only ever made things worse. I almost roasted myself. I let gerbils attack Ida. I got Millie Flat’s heart broken. And unless Howard develops a sudden passion for swamp cakes, I may have ruined his life. Everyone will know he’s been faking all this time, and he’s going to be . . . the alligator is going to . . . it’s so horrible.”

  She took a deep breath. “And on top of all that we didn’t convince Ma Myrtle of anything, and there’s only one day left before she chooses the Montgomery who gets to go into the swamp. What could we possibly do to fix it all in one day?”

  Blue shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not very good at optimism.”

  Tumble fell quiet.

  Blue looked around for something to comment on, but all he saw was one of the Starlets heading toward the tour bus with a clipboard.

  “I guess you had the right idea days ago,” he said at last, trying to make his voice light. “Someone really should go after that alligator and give it a kick in the tail.”

  Tumble huffed. “It would serve it right, cursing people for no good reason.”

  Blue nudged her with his shoulder. “You probably really would kick Munch if you met him. I’d be too scared that he’d come up with some worse fate for me.”

  Finally, Tumble smiled. “Maybe I would,” she said. “But I think I’d rather ask him to uncurse both of us.”

  “You think that would work?”

  “Well, it should be easier than giving us some great and wonderful fate, right? Just . . . ask him to undo all of it.”

  She looked up into the tree branches. The sky was dim overhead, but not yet dark. “The moon’s supposed to be full tonight, right?”

  “Yes,” said Blue. “At least all of the relatives will be sleeping instead of running around with telescopes.”

  “Ma Myrtle’s not even going to live long enough to see the red sickle moon.”

  Blue nodded. It made him sad. Ma Myrtle was difficult, but he couldn’t imagine life at the Montgomery house without her.

  “Maybe she’s wrong about everything,” he said. “Or maybe she’s just playing a trick on all of us. Maybe she’ll live to be one hundred and spend her days laughing at everyone who fell for her prank.”

  “I’d like that,” said Tumble. “That would be a happy ending.”

  It wouldn’t really, Blue thought. So many things would still be wrong. But it was a very optimistic thing to say, a very Tumble thing to say, and he knew better than to argue with that.

  Humans—always getting the story wrong in your own favor.

  That monster Munch. That evil beast. Cursing children, eating them even. How could he? Why would he? What, oh what, shall we do?

  Making it all about me. When the boogeyman has always been you.

  Almira stabbed Walcott. Did I mention?

  It was decades after we parted ways. She slipped the dagger in between the fifth and sixth rib, just shy of the heart. Why would she? How could she?

  Don’t you already know?

  Her son was born with such a terrible fate. Tumble’s fate, as coincidence would have it. Disaster struck the boy again and again, and Almira felt it every time as a blow to her own conscience.

  Get rid of Montgomery, she thought. As I should have that night. Fix it once and for all.

  Another curiosity of the human imagination—

  this ide
a that you can un-break something. Piece

  the fragments of shell together and put the egg back in its nest if you like. What’s inside will never fly.

  Walcott lived. Of course. Both of them lived great, long lives, as they’d wanted. Healthy lives. Wealthy lives.

  They were given exactly what they chose for themselves on that night, two hundred years ago to the day, when they crossed the Okefenokee to meet me under the impossible moon.

  FORTY

  IMPOSSIBLE MOON

  The light was wrong on Tumble’s face.

  She was trying to sleep in her new bedroom, and like before, she was lying awake. She wanted to go out to the RV. She needed to.

  But Tumble had decided that if she couldn’t get anything else right lately, she could manage this one thing. She was going to spend the night in this bed, and then when it was over she would know that she had at least tried to do what her parents wanted. One night. She could give them that much.

  Tumble lay there, hating the house more and more as the hours ticked by. Instead of letting her sleep, the house forced her to think . . . about Jason and Maximal Star and the Montgomerys. About how wrong she’d been at every turn this summer.

  She was busy prodding these thoughts until they were tender, so she didn’t notice right away that the light had changed. It was pouring in through the window, spilling across her sheets, staining the white walls of the bedroom pink.

  Pink?

  It hadn’t been earlier. With no curtains in the house, it was impossible not to notice the brightness when the moon was full. As it had been when Eve Montgomery drove her and Blue home that evening. As it had been when she climbed into bed not long after.

  Tumble frowned, not yet curious enough to go look outside. Slowly, the pale pink light grew darker and darker, until the cream-colored quilt spread across the foot of the bed looked like it had been soaked in blood.

  The box springs shrieked as Tumble rolled over. The rug under her bare feet was soft.

  She went to the window and blinked out, realization settling over her like fog.

  The whole night had gone that deep, dim bloody color. And the moon . . . she had to press her face against the glass and tilt her head to find it in the night sky.

  The moon wasn’t full anymore.

  Tumble had traced the circle of it against the Thunderbird’s window as Eve drove them home. It wasn’t a circle now. She stared at it, not quite believing, but . . . hoping.

  It was a red, red moon. It was a sharp, sharp sickle.

  It was a chance when she’d been certain they’d run out of them.

  Am I dreaming? she thought.

  At that moment, a flash of white caught her eye. She squinted. Someone was coming up the dirt road toward the Wilsons’ driveway. She might not have noticed him through the trees, but he was running with a twinklingly bright flashlight. The beam bounced up and down with the motion of his hand.

  What do you know? thought Tumble. It really does look like a shooting star.

  Maybe even the kind you could wish on.

  She threw on her clothes. She grabbed her daisy backpack and filled it with everything she had collected over months and months of heroism training. Compass. Maps. Water bottles. Matches.

  Who cared if Maximal Star wasn’t what he’d claimed to be? Some of his advice had to be good, and Tumble could use it for good. She would. She had to try.

  She found Blue in the yard, tapping on the RV’s door and shining his flashlight at the window.

  When he spotted her he said, “It’s impossible! I was having a nightmare, and when I woke up . . . But all of the relatives are asleep. None of them even suspect . . .”

  And Tumble said, “We’ll need a boat.”

  FORTY-ONE

  THIEVES

  They couldn’t stop looking up. The moon was sharp as a blade, and it hung over them, so very red.

  “It looks like a smile,” said Blue.

  “Maybe a cruel one,” said Tumble.

  She tripped over a tree root, and Blue grabbed the back of her backpack to steady her.

  “My hero,” Tumble muttered.

  “Not for long,” Blue said. “We’re going to do like you said. We’re going to tell Munch we don’t need a great fate, we’re going to ask him to uncurse us, and that’ll be that.”

  The road through the woods to Goat’s trailer was longer on foot, but it wasn’t a hard trek. The frog song grew louder as they walked.

  “I can’t quite believe this is happening,” said Tumble. “When I saw the red light—”

  “I know,” said Blue. “I was wide awake, but for a few seconds I thought it was a dream.”

  “Is it . . .” Tumble tried to think through what she wanted to say. “Does this all seem too easy? How can it be just me and you awake? How can it be tonight, right when we need it more than ever? After everything—”

  “I think it was always going to be tonight,” Blue said. “I realized when I saw the moon. There’s a carving in Howard’s bedroom, of Walcott pointing up at a circle. I think it’s supposed to be a hint about the full moon turning into the sickle.”

  “So Ma Myrtle lied to everyone?”

  “Maybe she doesn’t know? Or she’s got her own plans and the Revue is just a way to have fun and make sure the relatives don’t leave before she dies.”

  Tumble was glad Myrtle Montgomery wasn’t her great-grandmother.

  A couple of minutes before they reached the trailer, they turned off the flashlight. “It’s wrong, isn’t it?” Tumble said, whispering despite the fact that Goat couldn’t possibly hear them from inside. “To steal from him?”

  Blue didn’t answer right away. “But everything is wrong,” he murmured finally. “It’s wrong for Granny Eve to lose people she loves. It’s wrong that Howard has to lie to everybody so that they won’t be afraid for him.”

  “And it’s wrong that you can’t win,” said Tumble. “Everybody should be able to win sometimes.”

  “It’s wrong that your heroing always backfires,” said Blue. “If you weren’t cursed, you could be a better hero than Maximal Star ever was.”

  Tumble didn’t know if she believed that. But the idea that she would never get to try to be that hero, to make up for everything . . . that was the worst.

  When they stepped out of the trees and into Goat’s yard, it didn’t take them long to spot the problem.

  “Where’s the canoe?” said Tumble. “It’s supposed to be on the bank.”

  They searched the creek’s sandy bank and checked the shed that held Goat’s freezer, but the canoe was gone.

  They stood on the bank, uncertain. This was supposed to be the easy part of their plan.

  “I think . . .” Tumble hesitated. Maybe the canoe was somewhere obvious, and they’d just missed it? She squinted around, hoping to find it propped against a tree or lying near Beast’s Dogloo. “I think I can work the jon boat’s motor.”

  “You can?” Blue sounded impressed.

  “It can’t be that hard.”

  ■ ■ ■

  It took them a while to figure the boat out. Tumble found a long pole, and Blue took an old life jacket off of one of the posts on Goat’s dock.

  “This is better anyway,” said Blue. “We’d wear ourselves out if we had to paddle into the swamp. Unless you can’t remember how to get the motor started?”

  “I can do it.”

  “Okay.” Blue looked around for some way to help. “I can untie it. And switch on that light at the front.”

  “Good,” said Tumble, bending over to continue her examination of the motor. “It might take us a minute to get going. It’ll be loud. What if Goat hears?”

  Blue swallowed. It wasn’t Goat that worried him. The black water of the creek ran for miles, all the way into the swamp. And they didn’t know th
e first thing about boats. Or navigating.

  But if they didn’t find the alligator . . .

  Tumble must have been thinking the same thing. She said, “I guess we’ve tried everything else.”

  “Right.”

  They looked up at the moon.

  “Should I steer?” said Blue.

  Tumble shrugged. “Do you know how?”

  FORTY-TWO

  SPLASH

  Blue did not know how to steer a boat.

  Neither did Tumble.

  Turning the motor was confusing. Left and right were backward, and even with the light mounted on the front, they nearly ran aground three times before they were out of sight of Goat’s trailer.

  Tumble wasn’t sure she had angled the motor correctly. The nose of the jon boat seemed to be too far out of the water. She didn’t know if that was her fault. Even if it was, she didn’t know how to fix it.

  “At least we’re going forward!” Blue said over the engine’s growl.

  Tumble sat on the bench in front of him, holding the long pole and wearing the life jacket he had found. The jacket was dirty, and the straps were fraying. Tumble hoped it would still float in an emergency.

  “You do know how to swim, don’t you?” she asked Blue.

  “Of course,” said Blue. “Wait. You can swim, too, can’t you?”

  Tumble tried not to be annoyed at the sudden horror in his voice. He was only imagining all of the different ways she could die in a swamp, which was perfectly reasonable.

  “Yes,” said Tumble. “I was just wondering if I should give you the jacket.”

  “No,” Blue said hastily. “No, no. You should definitely keep it. It looks good on you.”

  Other than the jacket and the pole, Tumble’s backpack and the flashlight were their only supplies. Tumble was glad she had put the bug spray in the pack. Even with it on, they were both swatting a lot.

  In places, the route ahead was so narrow and overgrown with vegetation that they thought for sure the boat wouldn’t make it. Once, Tumble spied part of a fallen tree sticking up out of the water just in time for Blue to pull up the outboard. They slid over the tree, and thin limbs screeched against the bottom of the boat.