Suen Qiu wept.
“Well, what happened after that?” Joey blurted when Theo had been silent for a moment.
“That’s all I know,” Theo said. He held up the piece of driftwood and added, “But this is the very branch that held the great lychee.”
Then Theo gave me five dollars for bringing the driftwood and told us he needed a rest but we were welcome to come see him again any time. He said I should bring my mom and dad to meet him soon, too.
On our walk back to the cabins I thought Joey would ask for half of the money, but when he spoke it was only to say, “You think that story was true?”
“It sure sounded true,” I said.
“I wonder what happened to Suen Qiu after the lychee busted open.”
“I dunno.”
“What do you think he should have done with it?” Joey said.
“He should have shared. For sure.”
Neither of us said anything else the rest of the way back to the cabins. When we got there, I stopped at the canteen for change and gave Joey half of the five dollars.
...
I was at the table having breakfast with Mom and Dad a few mornings later when a knock came at our door. I ran to open it, thinking it would be Joey, as usual, but it was the woman who’d come to welcome us the day we first got there.
“Good morning!” she said. “It’s me, Monica Stillwater—in case you’ve forgotten. I stopped by for a minute the other day? Anyway, I thought I’d pop over and bring you some muffins, fresh out of the oven.”
“They smell great!” Dad said, crossing the room to the door. He took the paper plate of muffins she was holding and held them up for a closer sniff. “Mmm, hmm. I can tell already that they’re delicious. Can you smell these over there, June?”
“Yes,” Mom said. “They do smell good.”
“They’re my own recipe—apple spice muffins,” Monica told us. “I get a lot of compliments on them—not to toot my own horn.” She giggled at that and then kind of stood there.
“Would you like to come in and have a cup of coffee with us? While we dig into these wonderful muffins?” my dad asked.
Mom looked startled and not too happy, but she pushed those things off her face and smiled as Monica hurried over to the table.
“Are you sure I’m not imposing?” Monica asked as she nestled herself onto a chair. “I surely didn’t meant to intrude—why, it looks like you’re right in the middle of your breakfast!”
“It’s fine,” Mom said. “Anyway, I’ll be setting up my easel and painting later, so this is really the only time I’d have for a visit today.”
“You’re an artist?” Monica’s eyes got rounder. “I’ve always wanted to paint, you know? I even signed up for lessons once, but then other things came up so I couldn’t go.”
Mom didn’t say anything to that but I could tell she was annoyed. She doesn’t like it when people talk as if anyone at all can paint. She says if you’re not born with the gift, you’re not a true artist.
“So, you and your husband come here every summer,” Dad said. “Is it just the two of you?”
“Yep. Just me and Keith,” Monica said. “He spends his days on the water but I like my feet on solid ground, if you know what I mean. Say, maybe you and the little guy here would like to go out in the boat with Keith sometime.”
Dad said that would be great and I could tell he meant it. I thought so, too, but Joey came along just then so I didn’t find out if it was actually going to happen. Sometimes people say we should do this or that when they don’t really mean it. Or, if they do mean it, they must forget because they never do it.
I’d hardly made it down our cabin steps when Mom appeared in the doorway. It seemed she had to say the same thing every time I went out the door.
“Remember, you can go to the shore but stay out of the water.”
“Don’t worry, we’re going in the woods today!” Joey announced, like it was all decided.
“Well, don’t go too far,” Mom said. “Make sure you can still see the cabins or other houses from wherever you are.”
We said we would and Mom disappeared back into the cabin. The second she did, Joey grabbed my arm and gave me a tug. “Come on,” he said in a loud whisper. “Let’s get outta here before your mom starts worrying about bears and wolves.”
I ran with him and we darted into the woods. I noticed that the trees were bare a long ways up, which made me wonder out loud why there were no leaves on the lower part.
“There’s a spell on them that only lets them grow leaves at the top,” Joey said, looking around and up. “That’s because this forest is home to the moss people.”
“No, it’s not,” I said.
“How do you know?”
“There’s no such thing,” I answered.
“Yeah? Well, I guess you didn’t see the strange-looking animals in that big open field on the way in here.”
That got my attention all right. I knew exactly what he was talking about. We’d seen what looked like a shrunken donkey and some kind of creature with a bizarre hump on its shoulder among an assortment of goats and cows. I’d asked Dad about the one with the hump but I don’t think he knew. He said finding out could be a great summer project for me.
I looked around nervously.
“It’s safe in here most of the time,” Joey said. “Unless you do something the moss people don’t like. If you get the moss people mad, they put one of their spells on you.”
“Oh, sure,” I said. I made a kind of laughing sound. “And what do their spells do?”
“One spell makes you grow big, ugly lumps on you, like some of those animals in the field. You can tell which ones bothered the moss people just by looking at them. But that’s not the worst spell. The worst spell turns you into a moss person.”
Of course, I didn’t believe moss people existed. I’m not gullible that way, not like my EX-friend Billy would have been. After we’d been tromping around for a while, I forgot all about them.
Until, suddenly, Joey disappeared.
The first thing I did was call his name a few times. I stood very still, listening carefully. I could hear lots of woods sounds, rustling and crackling and snapping and such, but there was no answer from Joey.
“I know you’re hiding, Joey!” I said, good and loud. My voice wasn’t quite as steady as I wanted it to be.
Suddenly, all the noises in the forest seemed to be creeping closer. I felt something prickle against my neck, which made me jump. I might have kind of yelped a bit too. I turned slowly, looking all around me. If Joey was somewhere nearby, I sure didn’t see him.
Ka-THUMP, Ka-THUMP, Ka-THUMP. That’s how loud I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. And then I realized the worst thing of all. I didn’t know the way back. We’d lost sight of the cabins a while ago but I hadn’t worried about it. Joey had seemed to know where he was going.
But now, Joey was gone and I was lost and some of the sounds around me didn’t seem so harmless anymore. Not too far away a branch snapped, as though it had been stepped on.
Someone—or something—was coming. I wasn’t thinking about moss people or anything dumb like that. Not seriously. But I remembered that Joey had mentioned bears and wolves when we first started out.
What if this wasn’t a joke? What if something had gotten him, and now it was after me, too? I called his name again.
No answer. Another snap. Then another.
“Joey, if that’s you, this isn’t funny.”
The next sound was more like a thump. That’s when I knew for sure.
Something was coming—and it was coming to get me.
My legs were trembling but somehow I forced them to move and once they got going they worked all right. I ran and ran, crashing through the ferns and bushes, darting around trees, racing away from whatever dark, terrible thing was after me. I ran until my legs turned rubbery and my chest felt like it was going to burst.
When I stopped it was more to catch my bre
ath than anything else. I dropped to my knees, gulping air. That was when I found out I hadn’t been fast enough.
Fingers of moss were touching my face. I felt them reaching for my throat.
The moss people were real!
My hands jerked up, ready to fight back even though I knew it was probably hopeless. I clawed desperately at the fingers clutching my throat and, to my surprise, they let go. Not only did they let go—I saw that I was holding long, frail moss fingers in my hands. They hung there—limp, green strands that didn’t seem to be attached to anything.
It took a minute for my brain to figure out what was going on. Once it did, I would have laughed except it was embarrassing to think about how terrified I’d been.
The “fingers” that had been about to choke me weren’t fingers at all. They were thin, loose wisps of some kind of dry moss. Now that I’d calmed myself, I saw that it was drooping down from a big cluster growing on the side of a tree.
I felt pretty foolish, even though nobody had
seen me. Then I got mad at Joey. It was his dumb story about moss people that had started everything. Plus there was that disappearing act he pulled. I bet he was watching the whole time I was calling for him. Now, he was probably somewhere killing himself laughing about the way I’d bolted.
That made me wonder again where he’d gone. I decided I didn’t care. I’d find my way back to the cabins by myself. That would teach him.
And then I had a better idea. I hauled down big hunks of the moss and got busy. In a few minutes there was moss threaded in my hair, hanging down across my face, coming out my ears and sticking out the sleeves of my t-shirt and shorts. I rubbed some dirt on my face and arms too. A few minutes later, as I moved carefully through the woods, I saw some red berries. I squeezed a few and dabbed the red juice on my neck and forehead and dribbled some from the corners of my mouth, down my chin. I sure would have liked to see how it all looked.
My mad dash through the woods had broken ferns and other plants, and my shoes had dug up clumps of soft earth and dried nettles. I decided to follow the trail I’d made, retracing my steps—first to the last place I’d seen Joey, and then back toward the cabins. With any luck, I’d meet up with Joey.
It was probably ten minutes later when I heard Joey coming through the woods. He was calling, “Adam,” over and over, but not very loud. When you’re alone, the woods can feel pretty scary and the sound of his voice told me he was getting more and more nervous.
I stopped walking and stood very, very still, looking hard for any sign of movement. I waited until I could just barely see him in the distance. Taking a couple of steps to the left made it easy for me to keep him in sight while I was hidden by bushes.
Then, I groaned, but I was careful not to do it too loud. That would make it too obvious. It would be better if Joey had to strain a bit to hear it.
He stopped moving. I could tell by the way he tipped his head a bit that he was listening. He called my name a couple more times. When there was no answer he started to move in my direction again. He was walking real slow, looking around, and I saw him wipe his forehead with the back of his hand a couple of times.
I waited until he was a stone’s throw away and then I started making strained breathing sounds. Joey stopped moving again. I could see by his expression that he was trying hard to talk himself out of being terrified. He took a deep breath and inched a few steps closer but he was moving about as fast as a snail.
As soon as I figured he was close enough, I whispered, “Heeeeelp meeee.” Joey’s eyes nearly bugged out.
It was time to move. I lumbered forward with my arms out a few inches from my sides. I made gurgling sounds and then rasped out another, “Heeeelp meee, Jooo-eeey.”
For a couple of seconds, Joey was frozen in place. His face turned mushroom-white and his eyes practically bulged out of his skull. A strangled sound came out of him and after a bit of effort it turned into the kind of scream a nine-year-old girl might let out if you dropped a snake down the back of her shirt.
I took another slow step toward him and that snapped him into action. He turned and started to run—except, in his panic, he ran smack into a tree. You’d have thought he was made of rubber the way he bounced off it and landed on the ground.
“Please!” he yelled. “Please, don’t hurt me.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you, Joey,” I said. “And you should probably stop slamming yourself into trees.”
I hardly got the words out when the laughter I’d been holding in came bursting out. I laughed so hard that I bent over at the waist and then ended up sinking to the ground. While I gasped for breath, I saw Joey pulling himself up and glaring at me. I figured he’d be mad but he surprised me by breaking into a grin.
“You got me good,” he said, his smile growing. “I never woulda thought you had it in you.”
“And I never woulda thought you could screech like a girl,” I said.
Joey laughed at that. Then he tossed a handful of nettles at me and stood up, brushing himself off. “You look disgusting,” he said admiringly.
“I wouldn’t mind seeing it for myself,” I told him, “but this moss is itching something awful.” I started yanking it out of my clothes and hair.
“Even without the moss you look pretty gross,” Joey said. “Is your mom going to freak out when she sees you?”
“I doubt it,” I told him. “My mom mostly cares about safety stuff. She doesn’t usually get mad at me for getting dirty.”
Joey didn’t look convinced. “Well, it’s not just dirt,” he said. “You look like you’re bleeding, too.”
I’d forgotten about the berries!
“Oh, yeah. Maybe I should clean up before I go home,” I said.
“You can do it at my place,” Joey offered.
We decided to head out of the woods. Joey said his throat was dryer than heck and he could go for a nice, cold drink of water. Hearing that made me realize that my throat was dryer than heck, too. After that, every minute that went by made me more and more thirsty.
Joey insisted he knew where to go at first but after a while he dropped the act and admitted he had no idea where we were. At least, that’s how I took it when he said, “Let’s hope we can make it back to civilization before the sun goes down.”
“Are we lost? Honest?” I asked.
“Maybe a little, but not really,” he said. “If we have to, one of us can climb a tree to see which way the water is.”
I didn’t worry much after that, and it turned out that we weren’t too far from the cabins anyway. Once they were in sight, we stopped to figure out how to sneak past my cabin to get to Joey’s. We crouched and skulked in around trees and cars without being spotted.
“We did it,” Joey said, letting out a big breath once we’d dashed the last couple of yards into his cabin. “I thought for sure the enemy would have us in their sights, but we outsmarted them.”
“The enemy?” came a voice from behind us.
We turned to see Lisa, sitting at the table, eating a sandwich. Her eyes widened when she saw me. Then, she shook her head and said, “Go wash your face, you’re grossing me out.”
She might be pretty but she sure knew how to take the fun out of things.
Monica Stillwater was driving my mom clean out of her mind. At least, that’s what Mom told Dad as I was finishing my lunch one day.
“That woman cannot take a hint,” Mom said. I couldn’t see her face from where I was sitting, but the way her words were coming out told me her teeth were clamped together. I mostly see her do that when she’s talking about tourists who don’t know the first thing about art.
“They’re only here for a few more days, June,” Dad said. “Try not to let it get to you.”
“Seriously, Doug? Don’t let it get to me? She’s been here practically every morning since we got here.”
“I know, dear,” Dad said. Of course he knew. How could he not know? He was right there with us at breakfast every day
that Monica Stillwater knocked at the door. I don’t think he really minded. Monica always brought something with her. Muffins, biscuits, cinnamon rolls, croissants, cornbread—it was never the same thing twice. Everything she made was delicious and Dad never stopped at one helping.
“She knows we have no choice but to ask her in,” Mom said. “Not when she’s standing there with her infernal baking. She’s using baked goods to force herself on us!”
“At least it’s only in the mornings,” Dad said. And he was right, except for that very moment when a sound outside the door made us all turn to look.
And there was Monica Stillwater. Her face was about the colour of the berries I’d used for fake blood that day in the woods.
Dad took a few giant steps and pulled the door open. “Monica?” he said, like he wasn’t quite sure.
Monica didn’t look at any of us. Her voice sounded choked when she spoke.
“I just came by to ask if you and Adam were free tomorrow, Doug. Keith said it would be a good day for the two of you to go along with him on the boat.”
“Honest?” I blurted, before I had time to think.
“Yes, honest.” Monica gave me a sad smile. “Is nine o’clock all right?” she asked Dad.
“Yes, nine is fine,” Dad said. “Great. But, I, uh, that is, I think I should explain—”
“No, please don’t,” Monica said. Then she hurried down the steps and away.
“How was I supposed to know she was there?” Mom said. She plunked herself into the wooden rocking chair and folded her arms in front of her. Her easel was in that corner and the canvas perched on it had the beginning of a painting that hadn’t seen much progress in the time we’d been at Schooner Point. Mom glanced at it and started to cry.
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