They arranged Howard so that his head dangled over the front of the canoe’s middle seat and his legs over the back. He looked like a lumpy wet blanket that had been hung out to dry.
Tumble climbed into the front of the boat, and then, with a strong push from behind, Blue slid its nose out into the water.
“Careful,” said Tumble. She held on to the sides of the canoe and tried to balance while Blue placed his foot cautiously over the rear seat.
Blue’s bark paddle was too delicate to help them off the bank, so the two of them had to scoot back and forth in their seats to slowly jostle the canoe away from Munch’s shore and into the dark water. Ripples undulated outward from the hull to mar the still surface.
It was so quiet now, Tumble realized. Even the frogs were silent as she with her broken paddle and Blue with his piece of bark sent the canoe skimming slowly west.
She looked over her shoulder. Munch’s island seemed lonely without its golden resident on the bank.
“We did it better than they did,” said Tumble.
“Almira and Walcott?” Blue thought about it. He and Tumble didn’t know what they had done. If the choice was what mattered, then did the fact that they had made two different ones change things? Or was the great fate Blue’s now, hiding somewhere under his skin?
All he knew for sure was that they hadn’t betrayed themselves, and they hadn’t betrayed each other.
“Yes, we did,” he said. “We did it way better than those two.”
He dug his makeshift paddle into the water. Once, twice. Then, for the second time that night, up was down.
Down was up.
The whole canoe plunged underwater, and Tumble and Blue held on tight.
When it was over, they bobbed, wet and sputtering, in the creek. They were only yards away from the pale sandy bank beside Goat Flat’s dock.
Blue stopped flailing when he realized his feet reached the bottom. He stood, holding on to the overturned canoe with one hand to keep it from drifting away on the current. When he looked around, he saw Tumble. She was already tugging Howard to shore by the straps of the life jacket.
A minute later, she and Blue were pulling the canoe out of the water.
“Do you feel any more powerful?” she asked.
Blue set Goat’s broken paddle beside the canoe, then he lifted his hand and squinted at it. The place where Tumble had pierced him with the needle was sore, but there wasn’t much to see. Especially not in the grayness of oncoming morning. The blood had washed off, and it was just a pinprick of a scab now.
“Not powerful,” he said. “But different.”
Tumble leaned toward him. “Lucky?” she asked hopefully.
“I don’t know about that,” said Blue. “I feel . . . like no matter what happens next, we’re already through the hardest part. I don’t think it’s fate I’m feeling—good or bad. It’s just me. I feel better about me.”
Tumble tilted her head. “I get it,” she said finally. “I feel like I’m stronger because of tonight. I didn’t need Maximal Star when it came down to it. I made my own decisions.”
“You gave up the fate,” Blue said quietly.
“And you tried to give it to me.” She bent in half to check Howard’s pulse again. “It’s just what friends do.”
Blue insisted that Tumble let him and Howard confess to stealing Goat’s canoe and wrecking his jon boat.
“That’s not fair!” she protested. “I’ll go with you! I’ll help you explain.”
“It’s not about what’s fair. It’s about what’s best.” Blue rubbed his sore hand. “You already did a lot for me tonight, and this is something I can do for you.”
“But—”
“You need to talk to your mom and dad,” said Blue. “It’s time to tell them you know the truth. And that will be a lot harder to do if they’re yelling at you.”
He’s right, thought Tumble. But still . . . she couldn’t let someone else accept her punishment for her.
“It’s not like Howard and I will be in more trouble without you,” he pointed out. “And at least my family won’t think we’ve lost our minds, chasing after an alligator in the middle of the night.”
It was hard to argue with that. Tumble took Blue’s flashlight and set out for home on her own.
Blue waited until she had disappeared into the trees. Then, his one wet sock squishing with every step, he headed for Goat’s trailer. He had to knock a few times before Goat, wearing just an undershirt and boxers, answered the door.
“Blue?” He yawned. “What—?”
Blue didn’t know what he looked like, but he guessed from the way Goat’s eyes suddenly goggled that he looked like a boy who’d just crawled out of the swamp.
“I broke your boat,” he said. He was too drained to feel afraid of Goat’s reaction. “The jon boat, I mean. Howard’s down by the canoe. We went into the swamp. It was a Montgomery thing. We didn’t mean—”
“Howard?” Goat asked, looking around for Blue’s cousin.
“He won’t wake up.”
Goat pushed past Blue and ran toward the creek.
Several minutes later, when Eve Montgomery’s Thunderbird soared out of the trees with its headlights blazing, he still hadn’t asked Blue a single question about the missing boat.
“Munch wasn’t exactly an alligator,” Blue tried to explain to his grandmother. “And I gave the fate up, but then I got stabbed with it anyway. I’m not sure what that means.”
Howard was lying behind them in the backseat of the car, finally awake. “Alligators,” he groaned. “Alligators everywhere. It was the worst.”
Eve gripped the steering wheel as if she wanted to wring the Thunderbird’s neck.
Apparently, Ma Myrtle had told someone everything she knew.
She’d told Eve a few days ago and revealed that the whole Grand Revue was a ruse. Like Blue and his cousins, Ma Myrtle had wanted her daughter to have the change of fate. She had planned everything to make sure the relatives were too busy and exhausted to guess the red moon’s secret.
But, as she’d told Blue that morning in the garden, Eve didn’t want a great fate. She didn’t trust the magic, and she didn’t trust the alligator. And so she had been playing along until the night passed in the hopes that no one would make the trip into the swamp and risk another disaster like the one Walcott and Almira had wrought.
“All of this deceit and insanity and croquet mallets flying out windows!” She was breathing so hard through her nose that Blue thought she sounded like a dragon about to snort flame. “And then you two, my own grandchildren, go tearing off into the Okefenokee by yourselves! You could have died!”
“Sorry,” said Blue.
“Incredibly sorry,” said Howard.
“I’m putting you both in bed the second we get home,” their grandmother snapped. “And I’ll glue you to the sheets to keep you there if I have to. Don’t think I won’t!”
Tumble’s parents were awake by the time she finished her shower. She could hear the gurgle of the coffeepot through the house’s thin walls.
She examined herself in the bathroom mirror. Her face was paler than it should have been, but her starry blue bathrobe covered most of the scratches on her arms and legs. One of her wrists ached, but it wasn’t swollen.
She picked a clump of moss off the top of the shower drain, stuffed it into a paper cup for camouflage, and then tucked it into the trash can. It would be hard to explain random bits of swamp vegetation on top of everything else.
She put antiseptic on her scratches. She brushed out her wet hair.
Too soon, everything was done. Tumble didn’t have any more excuses left.
She padded into the kitchen. It smelled like coffee. There was a place set for her at the table. A glass of orange juice, toast, and a boiled egg.
“Morning,
sweetie,” said her dad. “Ready for the big day? I’m looking forward to the poetry contest myself. Do you think they’ll only let Montgomerys enter?”
“I got the toaster working while you were at the Maximal Star speech yesterday,” her mom said, gesturing to Tumble’s plate with her coffee mug. “How about that?”
Tumble sat down. It had been a whole lifetime ago that she’d met Maximal Star. She drank her juice in three quick gulps, then wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her robe. The fluorescent light droned overhead.
Tumble took a deep breath. She could have held it for seventy-nine seconds, but she didn’t.
“Why didn’t you tell me Jason was a hero?” she asked. “Why didn’t you tell me that he died saving my life?”
By eleven o’clock that morning, most of Murky Branch had turned out for the Grand Revue.
The sun shone in a cloudless sky, and for once, it wasn’t unbearably hot. There was a buffet brunch on the lawn, courtesy of the Flats, who had closed their restaurant for the day so that every member of the family could defend their honor in the eating contest.
With the exception of Millie. She sat outside of Howard’s bedroom door for hours, holding a brand-new box of MoonPies in her lap and snapping at anyone who made too much noise going up and down the stairs.
Blue found her there when he came down from his attic after a too-brief sleep.
“What if he doesn’t wake up in time for the competition?” Millie asked. “Mrs. Eve said he needed to rest, but it’s been so long—”
“He hit his head last night,” said Blue. “Maybe he shouldn’t be doing something that strenuous anyway.”
Millie’s eyes widened. “He hit his head? He can’t compete if he’s injured!”
“It wouldn’t be fair,” Blue agreed.
“But I told Daddy that Howard was going to give him a run for his money.”
“It’ll work out,” said Blue.
“How do you know?”
He shrugged. “I’m giving optimism a try.”
He really was.
That was why he stopped in the front entryway before heading out to join the festivities. The answering machine, miraculously undamaged after weeks of Montgomery mayhem, was on a small table beside the staircase.
It was blinking red with a new message.
Blue pressed the button.
Even though he’d been hoping, he was still surprised when his dad’s voice came over the line. He sounded less casual than usual.
“This is Alan. Things are taking longer than I thought.” Breathing. “But I’m getting everything lined up for another season of racing.” A nervous cough. “I was thinking maybe Blue could stay with you on into the fall.”
Blue closed his eyes.
“If he wants.”
Blue waited for the disappointment to come. It did.
But part of him was glad that he would be here with Tumble and his cousins when school started.
“Tell him . . . of course he can call if he needs anything.”
Blue had told him what that was already. But he was starting to realize that what he needed was something his dad didn’t have to give.
The answering machine beebeeped.
That was the end of it.
And Blue had a Grand Revue to attend.
■ ■ ■
Outside, things were in full swing.
Blue found a group of kids and the Okra Lane Seniors in the middle of a round of musical chairs. There were layer cakes for prizes, set up on a table in the center of the circle. The music stopped and everyone scrambled to reach a chair. Mrs. Lane was left on the outside of the ring.
“And I wanted one of Goat’s Italian cream cakes so badly I could taste it,” she said with a sigh as she walked over to stand with Blue. “Have you seen your great-grandmother? We came to visit her, but I can’t seem to find her.”
“I’m sure she’ll be here soon,” Blue said.
He wasn’t, actually. Ma Myrtle had finally decided to make time for the Montgomery who mattered most. She and Eve had left in the Thunderbird as soon as Blue’s grandmother had finished helping Howard up to his room.
Blue hoped that wherever they were, they were eating food Granny Eve hadn’t cooked and watching people who weren’t related to them put on a show.
He searched the crowd for Goat and eventually found him in the backyard cheering for the twins, who were passing a baton back and forth in the relay race.
Jenna and Ida didn’t know yet that the red sickle moon had come and gone, and they were still trying to stay ahead of the other Montgomerys however they could.
Goat told Blue that the two of them had dominated at ice-cube carving, but that they had suffered a crushing defeat during the butter churning speed round.
“Three-legged race is next,” he said. “You’d think they would have an advantage in that one.”
“I’m so sorry about your boat,” said Blue. “It was wrong of me to take it. I’ll pay you back somehow. I’ll clean a thousand fish for you if you want.”
Goat shook his head. “I’m just glad y’all are all right. Your granny already wrote me a check for the boat. And for the broken paddle—can’t imagine what you boys did to it. But it’s her you’ll need to pay back.”
Blue nodded. He owed Granny Eve for so much more than that.
It wasn’t long before Goat wandered off to check on the other Flats, but Blue wasn’t alone for long. Tumble appeared at his elbow as if his thoughts had summoned her.
She was wearing a gray T-shirt without a trace of Maximal Star anywhere on it.
“I just got here with my dad. He’s already trying to take control of the poetry contest over by the chicken coop,” said Tumble. She rolled her eyes. “The lady who’s judging told him she doesn’t believe in off-rhyme.”
“Did you get a chance to sleep?”
Tumble shook her head. “We’ve been too busy talking.”
They watched the twins finish the relay and cheered loudly when they came in second place behind two cousins from New Zealand. The victors were given a trophy that Blue recognized at once.
“That’s the ballerina from my attic!”
Ida, who was stumbling past on her way to one of the watercoolers, paused. “Granny Eve said it was time to recycle those old trophies,” she said. “She said that you’d need the space if you wanted to keep living in the attic after everyone leaves. Jenna and I won matching tiaras earlier.”
“Twenty minutes until entries are due for the three-legged race!” Marisol, the cousin who was prone to car accidents, was dressed in referee’s stripes and leaning on one crutch while she bellowed into a megaphone. “No latecomers!”
When the invitations for the Grand Revue had first gone out, Blue had briefly imagined that his dad might show up. He had thought about how perfect it would be if he made it in time for the three-legged race.
Opposites. Back when they still thought that would work, Blue had fantasized about crossing the finish line with his dad. Arm in arm. Both of them winners.
Knowing it wasn’t going to be like that, at least not anytime soon, hurt. But not so much that Blue couldn’t stand it.
“Do you . . . want to enter?” Tumble asked him. “Together?”
Blue rubbed the spot where the needle had gone into his hand. “I’m not sure that much has changed,” he warned her.
“I’ll enter us anyway,” she said. “We have to have changed something. You can’t go to so much trouble and come out with nothing. You just can’t.”
Optimism, Blue thought as he watched his friend march off.
He reminded himself that he’d made it to the Murky Branch sign faster than he ever had before. Just the other night. It wasn’t twelve minutes, but Blue wasn’t his dad. And he didn’t want to be.
Maybe he and Tumble had broke
n a curse. Or two. Maybe they’d done something bigger than that. But even if they’d only wasted a great fate, it had been their decisions that mattered, and Blue thought they had made good ones. It was time to find out what happened next.
He hurried back to the house to get a new pair of running shoes.
Howard’s were floating around somewhere in the heart of the Okefenokee Swamp.
Monica Wilson was late to arrive at the Grand Revue.
She’d needed time to herself after the talk they’d had at the breakfast table that morning. Her Jason would have been so proud, she thought, of the girl his little sister had become.
She spotted her daughter and Blue taking their positions in the starting lineup for the three-legged race. She hurried over to cheer Lily on.
A small crowd had gathered to watch the race. When Monica tried to work her way to the front of it, she bumped into someone and almost lost her balance. How she had failed to see the man, she couldn’t imagine. He was head and shoulders taller than every other person in sight.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t paying attention.”
At least, she reasoned, she must not have been.
Nobody who was paying attention could have missed this fellow. He was wearing a strange suit made of scaled gold leather, and he had on a pair of those contact lenses with the slit pupils that she had seen before on Halloween. It was a wonder everyone in the crowd wasn’t staring at him.
“Are you a relative?” Monica asked.
“Friend of the family,” said the man, giving her a thin-lipped smile that never showed his teeth. He had a sleek, dark voice.
“Oh, us too!” said Mrs. Wilson. “That’s my daughter about to start the race.”
She pointed at Lily and Blue.
“Charming girl, I’m sure,” he said.
The referee blew her whistle, and the racers hobbled off. Lily was laughing as she and Blue staggered forward.
“They’re taking the lead!” Monica cried. “Go, Lily! You can do it!”
Tumble & Blue Page 21