Applewhites at Wit's End

by Stephanie S. Tolan

  “It could be the camera,” she said. “A light leak or something.”

  Harley shook his head. “I’ve been taking pictures with this camera for a year, and I haven’t ever had this happen before.”

  “Did you notice it on the camera screen right after you took the picture?”

  Harley shook his head again. “The screen’s too small to see something like this. Anyway, it was dark. That’s why I took it in the first place. I wasn’t even trying to take a picture; I just needed the light from the flash.”

  “Check out the other pictures.”

  He closed that photo and clicked on another of the thumbnails on the screen. This one was a dead dragonfly caught in a spiderweb. It had been taken on the front porch of the Lodge. There were no splotches in this picture.

  “There,” Harley said. “I told you it wasn’t the camera.”

  “It isn’t the computer, either, then. Try another.”

  Harley clicked on another thumbnail. “No! No, no, no!” he said as the photo filled the screen.

  This was one of the photos he’d taken of Samantha’s Elf Net. It took E.D. a minute to see what he was pointing at. A large bluish-pinkish sphere seemed to be floating a little above it, faint against the silvery siding of the woodshop. It was considerably bigger than the ones in the other picture.

  “That wasn’t there when I took the picture!”

  He clicked then on the photo he’d taken in the dining tent at lunch when everybody was going ballistic over Destiny’s and Ginger’s hair. Destiny and Ginger were standing together, grinning into the camera. There were clusters of balls of light around their heads—all with mandala centers. There were also two misty white ones down near Ginger’s green-sequined flip-flops and a small, very bright thing that was more of a cylinder than a ball. It looked as if it had been caught moving—a line of white stretched out behind a bright circle in the front.

  “I gather you didn’t see anything like those when you took that picture, either.”

  “You were there! There was nothing!”

  E.D. found herself literally scratching her head. “Did you take them all with a flash?”

  Harley shrugged. “The first one. And this one. I guess the Elf Net one could be one I used the flash for. Lucille wanted me to try different kinds of lighting.”

  “So maybe the flash lit up dust particles in the air. You know how you can see dust in the air when sunlight comes through a window? Dust you can’t see otherwise?”

  Harley pointed at the one that seemed to be moving. “How fast can a speck of dust move? Do you have any idea how fast dust would have to be going to make that long a streak in the split second of a flash?”

  “Pretty fast.”

  “Yeah. Pretty darn fast!”

  “Aunt Lucille ought to see this,” E.D. said. She unclipped her walkie-talkie and called her. “Can you come to the office?”

  “Tell her 9-1-1,” Harley said.

  “It isn’t an emergency,” E.D. said. “The photos aren’t going anywhere.” He pointed at the screen where he had called up the second photo he’d taken in the dining tent at lunch. The picture was filled with balls of light. It looked like a swarm, all sizes and intensities, so thick they almost obliterated the images of Destiny and Ginger. What were those things?

  “9-1-1!” Harley repeated.

  “9-1-1!” E.D. added. “Lucille to the office, please, 9-1-1.” She looked at the last photo again. “The dining tent could be very dusty,” she said. But these balls of light just didn’t look like dust. And if they were, how come they weren’t in the picture he’d taken in the same place just a moment before?

  By the time Lucille arrived, pink and breathless, a first aid kit in her hand, with Archie and Zedediah behind her, Harley had the theater workshop photo on the screen again.

  “Who’s hurt?” she asked.

  Harley didn’t answer. He just pointed to the balls of light in the photo.

  “Ooooooh, Harley!” Lucille exclaimed, dropping the first aid kit on the floor and hurrying to peer at the computer screen. “Orbs! You’ve caught orbs! I’ve never had them. Not once!”

  “What are orbs?” Harley asked.

  “Dust,” Zedediah said. “An optical anomaly. The barn’s a dusty place.”

  “So says the skeptic,” Lucille said. “Nobody knows for sure. I’ve got a book about orbs, and I think the author’s right. I think they’re spirits. Friendly spirits!”

  “Dust particles,” Zedediah said. “Causing a flare in the flash.”

  “Could be water molecules,” Archie said. “Humid as it is here, it could be water molecules catching the flash.”

  “For artists, the two of you are sadly lacking in imagination. I think they’re conscious beings from other dimensions. Like the nature spirits that help me garden.” Lucille smiled hugely. “I love that they’ve showed up at Eureka! The book’s author says they’re drawn to light and joy. It means we’re doing something right! Are there any in your other photos?”

  Harley began showing the other pictures, and E.D. decided to take the schedules up to her room and work on them there. She was not fond of things she couldn’t understand. Even less fond of things nobody could understand.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Bringing Light

  I long to go out fishing

  On a midnight sea of stars,

  To net one constellation

  And catch the fire of Mars.

  I’d bring them gently back to Earth

  And offer them to you

  To chase the shadows from your heart

  Whenever you are blue—

  To chase the shadows from your heart

  And light your world anew.

  You’d feel their crystal brilliance

  And know that they were there

  Forever when the nights seemed dark

  And your heart was full of care.

  Forever when the nights grow dark

  May you remember me

  And feel the light I wished to bring

  From a far-off midnight sea.

  Your BFF, Ginger

  Jake, on his way to the theater workshop, read the page he’d found stuck into his camp bag after dinner. And read it again.

  “What are you reading?” Harley, with two cameras around his neck instead of one, had come up behind him.

  “Something Ginger wrote.”

  “Pretty radical, that girl! Can you imagine what her parents’ll say when she gets home without hair? Is that the lyrics for another song?”

  Jake nodded. “Working with Lucille is really making a difference.”

  Harley laughed. “In more ways than one. She says she found the hair clippers in the bathroom at Wisteria when she was there for Poetry and smuggled them out in her bag. Can I see what she wrote?”

  Jake gave the page to Harley, who read it as they walked. When he’d finished reading, Harley stopped. Jake went on a few steps and then looked back. Harley was staring off into the middle distance. “What?” Harley didn’t answer. He didn’t even seem to have heard. “Earth to Harley, Earth to Harley!”

  Harley shook himself a bit, as if he really had come back from some other place. “This is weird. I’m hearing music in my head.”

  “Like when you get a song stuck in your mind?”

  “No. Nothing I ever heard before.” He read the page again. “I think it’s the tune for Ginger’s song. Like it was just there in my head waiting for the words. Wow! Would it be okay if I kept this for a while?”

  Jake shrugged. “I don’t see why not. She’s been wanting to find a composer. Maybe you’re it.”

  Footsteps came thundering down the path behind them, and David pushed his way between them. “He’s what? What’s this?” He snatched the paper from Harley’s hand.

  Jake snatched it back. “None of your business.”

  “Touchy, touchy!” David looked at Harley. “How come the extra camera?”

  Harley shrugged. “It’s an exp
eriment. Lucille wants me to take pictures of the workshop tonight with both cameras to see which one works better.”

  “Photographing people now, huh? What’d you do, run out of corpses?”

  David went on ahead, and Jake gave Ginger’s lyrics back to Harley. “Everybody’s favorite camper,” he said when he thought David was out of earshot.

  “And God’s gift to the theater,” Harley said.

  “Yeah, well, we’ll see how he does with improv,” Jake said. “He won’t have anybody else’s words to rely on.”

  Harley folded the paper and slipped it into his pocket. “Improv’s sorta scary.”

  Q joined them. “It’s my favorite thing of all! Except dancing.”

  Inside, Randolph told them to find seats. But there were only five chairs on the stage. Cinnamon and Ginger got there first, Samantha and E.D. joined them, and David and Q had a brief shoving match to see who would get the last chair. David won and stuck his foot out to trip Q. Q jumped nimbly over it.

  “The people in the chairs will do the first exercise,” Randolph said. “Jake, Q, and Harley, come sit down here in the house.”

  “Lucille asked me to take some pictures,” Harley said. “Would that be okay?”

  Randolph thought for a moment. “We’ll make it part of the exercise. Okay, listen up! This is improvisation. That means you invent it all—words, actions, interactions—as you go along. We’ll do an exercise about emotion. The setup is a party. Samantha, you’ll be the host. The others will be the guests. Here’s how it works. The stage is your living room, and wherever you choose to see it, there’s a front door. The doorbell rings—I’ll say ding dong—and you go to answer it. Whoever is at the door comes in expressing an emotion as vividly as possible.”

  “Do you want us to talk?” David asked.

  “Sometimes words help, sometimes they don’t—it’s up to you. So the first person—that’ll be you, Cinnamon—comes in with an emotion; and Samantha, as the host, you need to pick up the emotion, whatever it is. The two of you will then create a scene using that emotion. Then the doorbell will ring again and a second guest—that’ll be you, Ginger—will come in. You also come in expressing a vivid emotion, but a different one. The other two ‘catch it’ from you, and you all create a scene with this second emotion. The doorbell rings, and so it goes. Each new person brings a new emotion, and the others pick it up and run with it. After Ginger it’s David, after David it’s E.D. Got that?”

  Everyone on the chairs nodded. “Now one more twist,” Randolph said. “Harley, you’ll take some pictures during the party; and when the flash goes, everybody will revert to the previous emotion until the next flash. So—let’s say there’s been anger and then grief. When the flash goes, whoever’s at the party has to go immediately from grief back to anger. Give them a little time with that, Harley, then take another picture. At that flash, everybody goes back to grief. Don’t take too many, Harley, and don’t take them too fast. Give the scenes a chance to develop before you switch them.”

  Jake was glad he wasn’t in the first group. It was fun watching. When the doorbell rang and Samantha opened the imaginary door, Cinnamon stormed in, swearing like Paulie about some fool who’d cut her off in traffic.

  It took Samantha a moment to catch the emotion, but then she yelled, “That creep! I hate when that happens! Some fool did that to me just the other day, and I crashed right into his bumper.”

  “Serves him right!” Cinnamon said. “And I was going to bring a cake for the party, but the stupid bakery got the order wrong… .” The two girls ranted on till Randolph interrupted with “Ding dong.”

  Ginger came in laughing. She said nothing, just laughed steadily harder till she was nearly hysterical. Jake found himself chuckling even though she hadn’t explained what she was laughing about. She never did use words—just kept on laughing until the others were laughing with her. By then the laughter was real. Everybody—both onstage and off—was laughing when Harley’s flash went off. Ginger immediately stopped laughing and shouted at Harley for taking a picture when she wasn’t ready. The others joined in, Cinnamon once more cursing like Paulie on a roll.

  David brought fear in with him, claiming to be running from a clutch of zombies. That gave everybody a chance to scream and shriek and run around.

  When it was E.D.’s turn, though, she came in looking as if she’d just lost her last friend in the world. “My dog!” she wailed. “Someone just ran over my dog! I got him as a puppy from the pound. The poor little thing had been beaten half to death. He was so little and so scared he couldn’t even eat. I had to feed him by hand, a bite at a time. That was five years ago, and he’s been with me practically every minute ever since. He slept on my feet every night. And now he’s gone! He’s gone! What’ll I do?”

  Amazing, Jake thought. What had happened to E.D. the robot? He had a sudden, horrible image of Winston lying in the road. It was as if a sharp stone were lodged in his throat as he thought of Winston never again throwing himself onto his chest as he lay in bed.

  Cinnamon had actually started to cry now. “Just like the possum,” she choked out the words. “The beautiful possum, dead in the road! Murdered!”

  Harley’s timing was perfect, Jake thought. Just as Cinnamon hollered murdered, he took a picture and everyone had to go back to fear.

  After the workshop, as they all headed back to the cottages, David kept shouting about the zombies coming out of the woods till everybody was screaming and running from the imaginary horrors chasing them. Archie came out with a flashlight to see what catastrophe was going on, and Lucille and Sybil decreed there should be a campfire with s’mores to get them focused on something cheerier before bedtime. As the campers went to find sticks for toasting marshmallows, there were several more zombie scares and at least two sightings of vampires. It was amazing, Jake thought, how scary running in the dark could be. The more you ran, especially if someone was screaming nearby, the more certain you were that something was chasing you. At one point E.D. jumped out at him from behind a tree brandishing a marshmallow stick, and he practically jumped out of his skin.

  “Scared you!”

  “Startled me is all,” he said.

  Q appeared and pointed over Jake’s shoulder with a look of horror on his face. “Aaaaah!” he screamed.

  When both Jake and E.D. turned to look, Q yelled “Gotcha!” and ran off.

  “That improv thing was really fun, wasn’t it?” E.D. said.

  Jake nodded. “And you think you aren’t creative!”

  E.D. shrugged. “Maybe I’m just a really good liar!”

  “Maybe that’s one definition of creative.”

  “Jake, Jake!” Ginger came running up with two marshmallow sticks. She gave him one of them, and E.D. went off to get a marshmallow. “Did you read my new lyrics yet? Did you? Did you?”

  “I did. I think they’re really good. And guess what—Harley thinks he has the music for them. Could be he’s the composer you’re looking for.”

  Ginger ran a hand through her raggedy Mohawk. “Lyrics by Ginger Boniface, music by Harley Schobert?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “Maybe his parents would record it!” She handed him the other marshmallow stick. “Where is he?”

  “Out there somewhere chasing werewolves,” Jake said, pointing off into the woods.

  Without another word, Jake’s pet stalker took off to find Harley.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  The staff meeting where everybody finally talked about her father’s failure to get the state’s approval for the creation of Eureka!—and his subsequent cover-up—had not been quite as bad as E.D. had expected. Jake’s idea to have everybody think for a while first might have worked.

  In spite of the shouting and recriminations and character assassination with which the discussion had begun, the family had come around surprisingly fast to a somewhat grudging willingness to face the crisis together. Lucille had decided that the orbs that were showin
g up in Harley’s photographs were benevolent spirits who had come specifically to support their work, so she kept reminding everyone that there were cosmic forces on their side and there was absolutely nothing to worry about. She also shared Harley’s idea about distraction and delay.

  Once they’d quit criticizing Randolph for not setting things up properly with the state in the first place, no one in the family turned out to be any more willing than he was to accept North Carolina’s right to interfere with or regulate what they were doing. They quickly settled on thwarting that interference any way they could. “We need to keep this whole thing quiet, though,” Randolph said. “We don’t want the campers’ parents to get wind of it.”

  “But we have to tell the campers,” E.D. had insisted. “Otherwise, it’s still a cover-up. And cover-ups are always a bad idea. If we really believe in a creative community, we have to tell them what’s up.”

  Lucille agreed. “We have an opportunity here to model a creative, collaborative approach to handling a crisis. We must share all this with the campers first thing tomorrow morning and then listen to what they come up with. I guarantee you they’ll have ideas. After all, who’s better at distraction and delay than kids? Creativity. Individuality. Cooperation. Isn’t that the whole point of the camp?”

  Even Randolph had agreed to this, on the condition that Lucille would do the talking and he didn’t have to be there.

  “I’ll tell them about it after yoga, when everyone’s fresh and energized,” Lucille promised. “You’ll see—their ideas will at least be worth listening to.”

  So E.D. had gone to yoga and struggled her way through it, hoping David wasn’t watching as she kept tipping out of tree pose and had to bend her knees to touch the ground after waterfall. It wasn’t until the final pose, when Jake, Destiny, and Winston came around the corner of the barn, that she realized she could have just shown up at the end to hear what Lucille would say and how the campers would take it. Winston flopped down in the shade of a sweet gum tree and lay with his head on his paws, watching. Jake and Destiny did the corpse posture (the only one E.D. did really well) with everyone else at the end, Destiny talking all the time about how fun it was to lie down and play dead when all the time you knew you were going to sit up afterward instead of getting “buried under the dirt with flowers on you.”