by Nikki Loftin
“I didn’t even ask if you wanted to draw it.” Annie pushed her sketchbook toward me. “Do you draw?”
“No, I stink at art.”
“Well, what are you good at? Playing music?”
I wanted to laugh. I shook my head.
“I know,” Annie said suddenly. “You write.”
I couldn’t help it, I shivered. “Not anymore.”
“Why not?” Annie put her sketchpad away, but she was watching my face, waiting. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” I lied, remembering the last thing I’d written. The thing that had made my mom and dad go nuts, that had turned my life upside down.
All of our lives.
Time to change the subject again. I pointed to the armadillo. “Do you think its mother is looking for it?” I peered into the darker shadows of the trees nearer the stream. A shadow, small and low to the ground, moved restlessly there. “She is,” I answered my own question. “We’d better let it go back.” I took Annie’s hand again, and we both stepped away, watching as the baby disappeared in the shade.
“Thank you,” I whispered to the valley, soft enough that Annie wouldn’t hear. I didn’t want her thinking I was as crazy as the Colonel’s wife.
Although I was starting to wonder myself.
We walked slowly across the meadow. There was some sort of path I’d missed before, in between the trees ahead, with great looping grapevines hanging from them. I could see clusters of unripe grapes decorating the vines. Annie seemed to know everything, so I asked her when they would be ripe. “I don’t know,” she answered, running one hand along a vine as thick as her wrist, testing it to see if it would hold her weight. It did.
She found a loop low enough to sit on and sat down, using the vine as a swing. “Push me.”
I had to laugh. She’d sounded just like Carlie when she would yell, “Peep!” and hold out her arms for me to pick her up. Maybe girls learned how to do that princess voice when they were a month old or something. “Your wish is my command.”
Annie smiled and said, “That’s right, all my wishes must come true. And if you push me long enough, maybe I’ll make one of yours come true, too. But don’t count on it, serf.”
I pushed her for a while, high enough that the grapevines protested and slipped a little. “So, Peter Stone,” she said, hopping off. “If you could make one wish, what would you wish for?”
I answered without thinking. It was the one thing I’d been wishing for years. Especially since I’d discovered the valley, since I had felt what real quiet was like. “I wish I could just be alone. Like, feel the peace and quiet. For a long time. Not have to share it with anyone. Not have to worry about anyone ruining it.” Not ever have to go home, I didn’t say. Of course, I was thinking about my family, how they wouldn’t get it—wouldn’t understand the beauty in the quiet. Never would, I figured.
But Annie didn’t know that.
As soon as the words were out of my mouth and I saw her face, I realized what I’d said. “Wait,” I tried, “I didn’t mean you. I meant other people. My sister, and—hey, don’t leave!” Too late.
“Your wish is my command,” she threw back over her shoulder as she hurried away. “I won’t bother you anymore, Stone Boy.” I could hear tears in her voice. I kicked the ground, and a bee zipped up out of nowhere and stung me on the hand.
“Ouch!” I yelled, pulling the stinger out and squeezing the sting. “I’m sorry,” I called again, just short of a yell. “You don’t have to leave!”
She was already gone. By the time I’d crossed the meadow, gotten stung by another bee, and started back up the hill, I knew there was no hope.
I couldn’t catch her, and no matter how fast I ran, I couldn’t outpace the cloud of angry gnats that followed me.
Their sharp bites made me feel on the outside just like I felt inside. All chewed up.
I was such a jerk. The valley seemed to think so, too. I tripped twenty times on the way back, rocks that seemed perfectly stable slipping at the last second. My knees and hands were scraped bloody by the time I got to the top.
Of course, then I realized I’d climbed the wrong hill. My house wasn’t over the rise on this one. Instead, there was another house smack dab in front of me, a strange triangular-shaped one, painted red with white trim.
And this one also had an old woman standing at the front door, holding a shotgun. Pointing it at me.
Chapter 11
“This is private property, boy,” the woman said, soft but clear. I didn’t look at her face; I was too concerned with the gun. “My property.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” I managed, though how I didn’t know. My mouth was drier than cotton. “I think I’m lost.”
“You’ve been down in the valley, haven’t you?” She laughed. “The valley threw you out. You’re pretty beat up. That’ll teach you to trespass on my land. You’re lucky it didn’t pierce your ears—or something else—with porcupine quills.” Uh-oh. This must be the Colonel’s wife, I thought. The crazy one.
She looked crazy enough, dressed in a pair of old overalls and a long-sleeved shirt, with her black-and-gray hair stuck in a bun on the top of her head and held by what appeared to be a dirty stick. She walked closer, feet clomping in big, mud-stained brown men’s boots, and lowered the gun. “I thought you were one of them boys that’s been killing birds over there. But you’re new. Where do you live?”
“Um.” I looked around. “On one of the hills?” I managed. I didn’t even know my address. “There’s this fence made out of railroad ties.”
“Oh, the old Carlson place! I wondered who’d been suckered into renting that pile of junk lumber.”
“My mom and dad,” I said. “Maxine and Joshua Stone.” I paused, wondering if I could ask her to put the gun away.
“Do you hunt, boy?”
Why was she asking this? Then I thought about the gunshots Annie and I had heard. Maybe it had been the Colonel’s wife shooting, after all. Maybe she’d been out hunting . . . but for what? “No,” I answered.
“Own a gun?”
“No,” I repeated, backing away slowly. “I’ve never actually shot one.” And I didn’t want to see a demonstration either.
She wasn’t letting me get away that easy, and she matched my backward steps with slow, steady paces toward me. “Ever shot a bird before in your life? Or killed one? Ever drowned a kitten or dropped a puppy in a creek?”
“No,” I said, my stomach twisting. She was crazy. “That’s horrible! Why are you asking me this?”
She clicked something—not the trigger, thank goodness; the safety?—and slung the gun over one shoulder. “Well, you’re all bit up from my valley. You did something to earn those bee stings.”
Oh. “I said something to Annie I shouldn’t have.”
“The little cancer girl?” The Colonel’s wife gave me a beady glare. “You like being mean to sick girls, is that it?”
“No!” I sputtered. “No, I don’t. I was trying to tell her what I loved about the valley, how it was magi—how it was special,” I substituted. Magic sounded crazy. But from the gleam in her eye, the Colonel’s wife knew what I’d been about to say. “I was trying to tell her why I liked going in the valley . . . and she took it wrong. I need to find her and apologize.”
“Well, any kid who can see the valley’s . . . specialness can’t be all bad, bee stings or no,” she said at last. She clomped away toward the house and motioned for me to follow. “Kid, you’re a good ways from home. And it’s almost as far to that camp Annie’s going to. Get in my go-kart, and I’ll take you home. You can chase after the girl tomorrow. If I know girls—and I do, having been one back in the Stone Age—she won’t listen to any of your stories until at least Tuesday. Give her time to cool off.”
The Colonel’s wife was going to take me home. I felt simultaneously relieved and terrif
ied.
I knew I shouldn’t get in a car with a stranger. And this woman was certainly strange. But it wasn’t a car, as I saw a few minutes later. It was the most amazing monster go-kart I’d ever seen. And it was getting late. My parents were going to kill me, and I had no idea at all how to find my house. I had to trust someone.
She handed me a helmet to match hers—both of them painted black with red and orange flames—and told me to “strap in.” I buckled up and hung on to the foam-wrapped side bar where the door should have been attached.
I held on for my life. Whether she was really crazy or not, the woman drove like a maniac for sure. Over the wind and the roar of the engine—it sounded like forty leaf blowers all working at the same time—I heard her yell, “Yee-haw!” just in time to take an enormous downhill. My stomach dropped to my feet—it was as scary and fast as any roller coaster I’d ever been on.
A corner was coming up, a sharp one. We were going way too fast. For a second, I wondered if she was trying to kill me, if we were going to crash. But she slammed on the brakes at the last second, fishtailing just a little bit on some gravel near the edge of the road, and then gunned it again on the next uphill.
After a few minutes, I forgot to be scared. This was the most fun I’d had since . . . well, possibly ever.
“There’s cancer girl’s camp,” I heard over the rush of the wind. The Colonel’s wife was pointing across a smaller valley at a red-painted barn surrounded by a few goat-shed-looking things. Were those the cabins? There was a muddy-edged lake—more like a pond—with a fishing boat tied to a stake at one end. Definitely not a swimming hole. And there weren’t any horses or gardens or . . . anything, from what I could see.
It wasn’t what I had expected for a Make-A-Wish camp. In fact, it sort of . . . stunk. That was the best they could do for a bunch of kids dying of cancer?
“Your house is just over there,” the Colonel’s wife shouted. She pulled up to the top of the hill and cut the engine. “See it?”
It was there, the roof barely visible over the oak trees in front of it. “Yes, I see it,” I said, wondering why she’d stopped.
“Well, get out and get going then,” she said. “I’ve got a beef with some other boys that live two more hills over. Bird killers. Heard them shooting earlier. If I hurry, I can catch them before they get back home.” She grinned and reached behind her, placing her shotgun on the seat I vacated.
I barely had a second to pitch my helmet into the cart before she peeled out, kicking up little bits of gravel and a cloud of exhaust and dust.
After she had gone, and the motor’s roar had faded into the distance, I realized just how quiet the valley had been. On this side of the hill, I could hear lots of manmade sounds: a lawn mower, music playing from a radio station . . . my mom calling my name with a side of panic and a whole helping of mad-as-heck.
Uh-oh. I ran for the house, wishing once more that I was in the valley, surrounded by wind, birds, the rustling of leaves, and Annie’s laughter.
Chapter 12
I was grounded for the rest of my life, Mom said. She sent me to my room for the evening. But then loudmouth Laura reminded Mom that was where I liked to be most, so she changed her mind, making me stay in the living room with the family.
The living room was the noisiest part of the house. Carlie had a set of wooden blocks she was using to clack together while Dad watched Die Hard at full volume. Mom was slamming around drawers on her filing cabinets in the corner of the room she’d decided to use for an office, and Laura had staked out the phone. How she could even hear what her friend was saying with all the noise was beyond me.
I had a headache, of course. And that reminded me of Annie. Her headaches must have been much worse. And I had made her feel awful. How could I apologize? Even though I knew where the camp was now, I couldn’t get there since Mom would be watching me like a hawk.
I didn’t understand why she cared about me being gone. I hadn’t gotten hurt. And it wasn’t like she had told me she’d planned some big family brunch in Austin. If I’d known she’d made plans that included me, I wouldn’t have run off.
Probably.
I sighed and rubbed at the headache acupressure spot again. Even if I could get to Annie, I wasn’t sure how to tell her I was sorry. She had looked so upset. Crying, I thought. I had made a Make-A-Wish girl cry. It didn’t get much more awful than that.
I sort of deserved the headache.
The next day, I got more than I deserved: Carlie Stone, cutting two teeth, for nine hours while Mom went to work.
“Laura,” I repeated at the bathroom door. “Would you please come out? I have to get a spare diaper for Carlie.” My repeated attempts to dislodge Laura from the bathroom all morning so that I could use it had gone unanswered. I’d ended up using a bush outside, much to Carlie’s delight. Of course, the possibility of outdoor peeing had made her so excited that she’d refused to wear a diaper since. Now she’d started shredding them the second I put them on her.
“I said just a minute,” Laura yelled.
“It’s been an hour and a half!” I surprised myself by raising my voice. Surprised my dad, too, it turned out.
“Wow, was that you, Peter?” He fake-punched me on the arm as he walked down the hall, carrying an old amplifier he’d bought for Laura at a garage sale a few months before, so she could play while he drummed. “Try not to burst my eardrums.”
I glared at his back. That amp was one of the reasons we’d been evicted, I thought. I should have cut through the cord when Dad first brought it home. It would have saved me a lot of trouble.
“Peep!” Carlie had escaped from her playpen—her new trick for the day—and was standing at my side, buck naked.
“Carlie, really? Five diapers? I’m just gonna use a pillowcase.”
I had a thought: Laura’s pillowcase would do.
I had worked it halfway off her pillow when I heard Dad call out my name. “Peter? You’ve got company.”
Company? Annie! I dropped the pillow, wrapped the pillowcase around Carlie and tucked her under one arm, then ran to the front of the house. The front door was wide open, and Dad was right outside, talking to someone.
It wasn’t Annie, though. I could hear male voices. Boys?
“Here ya go, Carlie,” I whispered, plunking her down in the playpen and handing her a few graham crackers. She wasn’t supposed to eat them outside of the high chair—Mom said they turned into cookie cement when she chewed them up—but I didn’t have a diaper for her, and I wasn’t going to meet strangers at the door holding a naked baby.
When I got to the door, I was even more glad I’d left Carlie behind.
Because the two kids right outside were holding a dead turkey vulture. They were the bird killers.
I didn’t know what to think—besides gross. The kid holding the dead bird by its feet was taller than me, tall enough that the head of the bird just brushed the dirt as he held it. He looked older, too, maybe fourteen. The other kid was ten, maybe eleven, but he had a hard glint in his eye that I’d seen in some kids in San Antonio. Like he might want to punch me in the stomach to see what I’d had for breakfast. Definitely not a normal ten-year-old.
The guys looked me over, and I saw the older kid try to hide a smile. That was when I realized I was still holding Carlie’s most recent torn-up diaper. I tossed it back through the doorway and stepped out into the sunshine.
“Hey, Peter,” Dad said, oblivious to the looks the guys were giving me—and him. “These two boys live just down the road a mile or so. I met their parents at the gas station when your mom and I checked the place out the first time. Remember I told you about them? Why don’t you go play with them for a while?”
The younger kid laughed once and repeated, “Yeah, come play with us.”
“I’m grounded,” I reminded Dad in an undertone. I didn’t even mention th
e giant dead bird the older kid was swinging back and forth, its reddish-pink head smearing the dust with blood.
“Well, you’re ungrounded now,” Dad said, reaching behind my back to shove me out the door. I tripped over the stoop and almost fell forward onto one of the kids. “They invited you over to their house. What your mother doesn’t know won’t hurt her. Just be back by lunch.”
He shut the door before I could even come up with an excuse other than “These boys look like trouble,” which was what I was thinking.
“So, you’re Peter,” the younger one said. “I’m Jake.”
“I’m Doug,” the other one said, swinging the vulture a little harder now, toward me. The head of the poor thing brushed my knee. I could tell Doug was waiting to see what I would do. If I would freak out. I just shrugged and stepped to the side so the vulture wouldn’t crack me in the stomach on the next swing.
“You like to hunt?” Jake asked, stepping with me. I started walking down the driveway, but not too fast. Jake pulled something out of his pocket—a Twizzler—and stuck it in his mouth so it hung out like a cigarette.
“I don’t have a gun,” I said. “Do you?”
“How’d you think we killed this buzzard?” Doug asked. He talked slowly, like he had to think over each word before it came out. “With our hands?” Then they both laughed.
“Let’s try that next time,” Jake said. He looked at me, waiting for me to speak.
“I’d like to see that,” I lied. I couldn’t imagine looking at a bird and thinking, I’d like to kill that. Birds just seemed . . . too fragile, and beautiful. Not that I would ever tell these boys, or anyone, I felt that way.
“What kind of guns you got?” I said instead.
“Pellet rifles,” Jake said. “Dad took our .22 away after the cat.” He darted that glance at me again, the one that dared me to say something.
The cat? I wasn’t even going to ask. We kept walking, down the road and toward a street where I thought I’d seen some sort of mobile home. “So, you’re supposed to be grounded,” Jake said, kicking at a rock. “Your parents just what? Take away your TV and stuff?”