by Beth Vrabel
I pulled back my hand but she squeezed her grip.
She poked the hollow in the middle of my palm, muttering something under her breath. “The spirits are speaking to me!” I yanked my hand back as the woods around us erupted in a chorus of calls from birds roosting in the trees. All at once, they took to the sky like a polka-dotted black cloud. Kit’s eyes widened to perfect circles. She tilted her head to the side, as if hearing a conversation even though all I heard were birds.
“I don’t want to know—”
“The spirits say,” Kit interrupted in a high, quaking voice, and, I swear, all the birds quieted at once, “that you are destined for greatness beyond the confines of a park summer camp!”
I laughed. “Do the voices tell you how I’m supposed to get out of it?”
Kit squinted, shifting my hand toward the last bits of sunlight. “Ahh…,” she drawled out the word. “It says here your days would be better spent with a new friend, one… oh, I see it… who is destined to be your best friend.”
Brad’s face popped into my head for just a second, but then all I saw was Kit as she kept reading my palm. “It says here that you’ll figure out a way to spend summer days living your life the way it was meant—no, I say, decreed! With me!”
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” I laughed. “Because I’m pretty sure Mom decreed I spend summer at camp.”
“The fates disagree,” Kit said. She tilted her face to the sky as a single blackbird soared. “Don’t you agree?” she called up to it. The crow screeched. “See?” Kit smiled back at me as if the bird answered any remaining doubt.
Kit still cradled my hand. I realized my palm was sweaty and gross. But Kit’s grip tightened again before I could pull it away. “I’m not finished with my reading.”
“I don’t want to know my future.”
“Silence!” Kit said in a spooky voice. The crow called out again, as if it, too, was scolding me. Kit’s finger traced the line that ran from below my thumb to my pointer finger. Her touch was super light but somehow it stung like a bug bite anyway. “This is your lifeline,” she murmured. She squinted at it. “It’s—”
My phone buzzed again, making both of us jump. “Okay, okay!” I said to the phone as much as to Kit. “I’ve got to go.” I slipped off the rock and shoved my phone in my back pocket.
“See you in the morning!” Kit said as I pulled on my shoes and socks at the shore.
“Maybe,” I hedged. I turned around to face her, still perched on the rock. She looked as pink and gold as the setting sun.
“Definitely!” she called. “It’s destiny! You can’t fight destiny.”
Patrick stood by the door, arms crossed, as I rushed through. He sighed and I’m sure he was rolling his eyes, but I dodged pass him. “It’s seven fifty-eight!” he stormed.
“I know!” I shouted back. “I was having fun, all right?” I snatched the meds and my nebulizer from the counter and darted back to my room.
Patrick didn’t say anything else or follow me. I shimmied into the vest and plugged it in, turning on the nebulizer. I held the phone on my lap, waiting for Mom’s inevitable phone call. Five minutes later, the nebulizer mostly zapped, my phone buzzed with an incoming FaceTime call from Mom.
“Caleb?” she asked. I saw her eyes swiping across the background, taking in that I was, in fact, doing my routine. She smiled, her lips shiny with gloss again.
“Hi, Mom,” I said. Like her, I was taking in the background more than her face. The lighting was dim, even though people rushed around her. I realized they were all wearing white shirts and aprons. “Are you in a restaurant kitchen?”
Mom’s cheeks turned a darker pink. “I’m outside of the kitchen, not in it.”
I didn’t point out that dental hygienist meetings are generally not held in restaurants. “Having fun?” I asked instead.
Mom’s smile stretched and her blush spread. “Yes,” she said quietly.
I knew she was watching my face for some sort of reaction. But the truth was, I didn’t feel anything. I just ran my thumbnail against the lifeline on my palm, back and forth.
CHAPTER SIX
Mom stumbled into my room just before five in the morning, tying her bathrobe around her waist midyawn. “I got a late start,” she said without opening her eyes. “I’m going to need you to get rolling, Caleb.”
“No problem!” I grinned when she finally looked at me and saw I already was dressed. I had on the Wednesday camp T-shirt (electric pink) with my favorite Captain America T-shirt hidden underneath for a boost of courage. I buckled my vest and set up the nebulizer, snapping the pieces into place.
“When—how…” Mom’s eyes were wide and her mouth gaped a little.
“I got up early. Set my alarm.” I flipped the switch to turn on the nebulizer and popped it in my mouth. I pressed play on the remote and pretended this wasn’t a big deal.
“Oh,” Mom said, smiling now. “Great.”
By the time Mom got out of her shower, I was ready to go.
“Do you have your meds packed?” Mom asked. I held up the pill box for her to inspect. She nodded, that little smile still on her face. “What about your lunch?”
“In my backpack with two ice packs. I also grabbed sunscreen and bug spray.”
Instead of heading to the door, Mom pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and gestured for me to sit. She sank into the one beside me. Across from us, Patrick curled over his cereal bowl. He had another hour to go before his internship started.
“What is this about?” Mom asked.
“What?” I crossed my arms and smiled. “You’re always after me to be more independent. So, I’m doing it.”
Mom folded her hands on the table. “Does this have anything to do with my… project… last night?”
“Oh, your date?” I asked. Patrick choked on his Cheerios. Guess Perfect Patrick hadn’t noticed Mom’s lip gloss.
Mom’s face flushed as she nodded. “Yes, my date.” Patrick coughed again.
“Nope,” I said, still smiling. “It’s me, being independent.”
Mom’s eyes studied my face for a full minute. “What do you want?”
“Nothing,” I said.
Mom just stared.
“As part of being independent, I’m going to walk to camp from now on,” I said. “It’s less than a mile away, and Dr. Edwards said exercise is good for me. I’ll leave when you do and I’ll walk home every afternoon at three.”
Mom crossed her arms. “By yourself?”
“Yes.”
Patrick’s spoon hovered midway between the bowl and his mouth. Mom pushed out her bottom lip and nodded.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Patrick asked. “Maybe you should ask Ava to—”
I fought to keep my voice light, even though Patrick was a total jerkface for butting his stupid self into a conversation that had nothing to do with him. “I’ll have my cell phone on me the whole day. Mom can check on me whenever she wants.”
Mom stood, cutting off whatever nosy stupid thing Patrick would’ve said next. “I’m proud of you,” she said, and ran her fingertips through my hair.
I was proud of myself, too, for convincing her. I walked with Mom to the end of the driveway. I kept going down the sidewalk long after her car disappeared around the corner, counting on Patrick to be spying from the front window.
About three blocks away from home, I doubled back, darting through the dewy grass in an old couple’s backyard to the edge of the woods. I walked just inside the tree line so I wouldn’t get lost until I was back at my house. Crouching down, I surveyed the scene, eyes narrowed on our windows, making sure Patrick wasn’t peeking out. The curtains didn’t move. I took a deep breath and turned my back to the house toward Mermaid Rock.
I figured I’d be alone for a while, waiting for Kit to wake up and head outside. I mean, who willingly woke up at seven in the morning on a summer day? But there she was, sitting on the rock. She had a thick blanket wra
pped around her body. Her knees were pulled up so that her chin rested on top of them, and she stared out over the water.
“Kit?” She didn’t look up when I called her name. For a moment, I thought she was asleep. “I knew you’d be here.” Kit shifted over to make room on the rock while I took off my shoes and socks at the water’s edge. When she did, I saw she was wearing the same red-paint-splotched clothes as the night before.
“Did you sleep here?” I asked.
Kit shrugged. “I like the stars.”
“You slept on this rock?” I asked. Now that I was closer to her, I saw dark circles under her eyes, merging with the bruise across her cheek. “Your mom let you do that?”
And here I was proud that my mom allowed me to walk a few blocks on my own.
Kit groaned. “You are so obsessed with rules all the time!” She shifted so her knees were under her body. Leaning forward, she grabbed my face and held it in place so her crystal eyes were just a few inches from mine. “Do what you want,” she said in the same drawn-out, spooky voice she used for telling my future. Her breath was stale and warm across my cheek.
“Do what you want,” I repeated. I smiled, feeling my cheeks chunk up because of her hold on my face.
“You look ridiculous,” she said. “I think it’s got to be the first time you’ve ever looked fat.”
“I do what I want,” I repeated, and grinned even wider until she cracked up.
Kit knelt across from me, two lines of blackish mud smeared under her eyes. The pebbly dirt beside the stream cut into my knees, but I held firm to my position.
“Are you ready,” she growled, “for… war?”
With battle cries erupting from our chests, we unleashed our armies!
Seven gray and red crawfish, pinchers snapping, left Kit’s grip. Mine was an army of one—a fat, clammy-skinned toad. I needed both hands to hold him and when I pulled back my fingers, Fred (that was the toad’s name) let loose his first weapon. He peed all over my hands, which dripped down over the crawfish. Then, super slowly, he hopped from my hands to land with a lazy plop in the middle of the crawfish. All seven of them turned at once and shot toward the water.
“Huh,” Kit said after a pause.
I rinsed my hands in the water. “I’m getting hungry. Want to have some lunch?” Catching the crawfish and the toad, plus turning the woods into a kingdom at war, had taken hours. I had skipped eating a snack earlier, too caught up in building our armies. Mom would’ve been so mad. Mom will never know, I reminded myself. I do what I want. Besides, Kit had been here all night and hadn’t even had breakfast yet. I felt stupid whining about not having had anything to eat for a couple hours.
Kit shrugged. “Sure.” But she didn’t move from the rock.
“Should we go back to your place?” I prodded. “I mean, I packed my lunch since Mom thinks I’m at camp…”
After a long pause, Kit replied, “Sure.”
She skipped ahead on the trail to her house. I tried to keep up, but she disappeared in the forest ahead while I halted to put on my shoes.
“Kit!” I called when I couldn’t spot her. “Kit?” I called out every few feet, but she was gone, swallowed up by the woods. Even the blackbird that always seemed to be around, soaring over wherever Kit was, had disappeared.
My stomach rumbled and I knew it wasn’t just because I was hungry. “Kit?” I called, a little quieter. Maybe she had run ahead because she was done hanging out for the day. Maybe she wanted to have lunch at her house alone.
Maybe she didn’t want me to be at her house.
“Cah!” The crow landed on the tree branch above me. Its screech made me jump.
“Be quiet, bird,” I whispered.
“Cah!” it called, louder than before.
Just then I heard rustling, crashing, through the branches ahead of me. From the side of the woods burst a bear!
Not really. It was just Kit. But for a second, I really had thought it was a bear barreling toward me. It was like her imagination was a virus I caught or something.
She held up a box of cereal—the sugary kind that tastes like cinnamon toast that most moms say no to but my mom’s all about getting me to eat as much as possible. “Lunch!” Kit said, shaking the box.
“You’re having cereal for lunch?”
“Yeah, why not? Who says cereal has to be a morning only thing? I love cereal!”
“Me too,” I said. “Do you want to grab milk or anything?”
“Nah, straight from the box is fine for me.” Kit pushed past me back toward the stream. Her hand was already buried in the box, grabbing handfuls at a time.
“Why’d you run ahead like that? Did you not want me to be at your house?”
Kit didn’t turn around. “It’s too nice to be inside.”
I pushed down a briar branch with my leg and stepped over it. “It wasn’t that you don’t want me at your house, then?”
“Why are you so nosy?” Kit’s voice was hard.
“Is your mom home?” I blurted.
“She’s sleeping, okay?” Kit threw her hand in the air like I was such a pain in the butt. A few pieces of cereal flew out of her grip and landed off the path. The blackbird swooped down and scooped up a morsel, screeched, and took off again.
“It’s just, your mom’s never been home before. I thought maybe—”
Kit turned around, and it was so sudden I ran right into her. “It’s not like you’re so eager to introduce me to your parents.” Her eyes were narrowed to icy slits.
I bit my lip. She was right. I didn’t want Mom to know Kit. I dropped Kit’s steady glare. If Mom knew about Kit, she’d want to meet her mom. She’d want to invite them over for dinner, or she’d make some sort of basket full of stuff she bought at the bakery and wrapped in her own plastic wrap and “just pop over.” She’d see the peeling paint and blood-red porch and she’d miss the turret and the blackbird. She’d ask too many questions and her forehead would crinkle like a dozen frowns over her eyes.
I closed my eyes, picturing it all. How would Kit’s mom see me? Her kid is shiny and brave, like a balloon just before bursting. She climbs trees and shakes off the fall. She sings and birds answer. How would her mom see me? She wouldn’t. She’d see someone boring and plain, skinny and flat. Her forehead probably wouldn’t frown, but her eyes—I bet they’re the same ice blue as Kit’s—would glaze over to something, anything, more interesting.
“I just think it’d be cooler if we could just be friends, you know,” Kit said a little softer.
We made our way back to the rock to eat our lunches. Kit whistled to the blackbird and it soared over us. She threw a piece of her cereal to it, but the bird didn’t catch the food. The blackbird waited for the cereal to drop and then seized it. “Soon it’ll eat from my hand,” Kit promised.
I was glad she was in front of me and didn’t see me shudder. Something about the bird scared me.
Finally, back on our rock, Kit sat cross-legged to eat the cereal. I unzipped my backpack to get out my huge lunch box and Creon tablets. I added a layer of potato chips to my ham sandwich, licking a bit of mayo that crept from the side.
As I bit down, I realized I didn’t hear Kit’s steady crunching of cereal. “Um, you want some?” I asked around the sandwich.
Her eyebrow popped up. “Do you think you have enough?”
“Har har,” I said. “What do you want? I’ve got carrots and guacamole, a couple granola bars—the good ones, with peanut butter and chocolate—apple slices with cinnamon, and”—I paused to root to the bottom of the bag—“some Oreos.”
Kit shook the box of cereal. “No, I’m good.”
But when I made a big deal out of being stuffed, she tore into the cookies and apples. She ate the fruit all the way to the peel, which she left in a circle on the rock with a few pieces of cereal in the middle for the bird.
“That bird, it’s starting to follow you around,” I said. “Do you know what you’re going to do when you catch it?”
“Oh, yeah?” I didn’t mean to sound sarcastic but saw the flash of hurt on her face. I worked on making my own face blank and open, like hers. I leaned in. “What did you discover from… the great seer of the unknown?”
Kit smiled again and I breathed out. “Our abilities come from the fay.”
“The what?”
“Fay, silly!” Kit turned back to her crow offering. “It’s missing something,” she said to herself. She bent and picked a shiny stone from beside Mermaid Rock. After wiping it dry on her shirt, she placed the ruby-red rock in the middle of the fruit and cereal ring. “That’s better.”
“What is the fay?” I asked. My cheeks were probably the same color as the apple peels. I hate not knowing what everyone else does.
Kit faced me, but her eyes trailed along the treetops like she was looking for a spy. Her voice lowered. “The fay are fairies,” she whispered.
“Like Tinker Bell?”
“No, elves and pixies, brownies and kelpies, wisps and wraiths.” She leaned into me as she whispered, her breath sour-sweet from the cereal, her hair tickling my face. “Watch out!” she suddenly gasped and pointed behind me. I twisted my head to see the crow swooping above. It landed on a branch across from us, fluffing its feathers and letting its mouth gape with unspoken threats.
Against my ear, Kit whispered, “I think he’s a scout for the queen, Titania. She knows I’m a descendent of one of her daughters. The bird is probably Puck in disguise.”
There were moments when Kit created these new made-up worlds—of mermaids and sailors, fay queens and scouts—when I was too stiff. Nothing but a body, skin and bone, that refused to see anything but what was in front of me, even as she stood there knit entirely of imagination.