by Nikki Loftin
I don’t know how long I’d worked, but I was sweating buckets. The sun was halfway up the sky, and I was wishing my mom had just lectured me to death two nights before, since at least then I wouldn’t have to do unpaid, backbreaking labor for a crazy old lady all weekend, when a shadow fell over me.
“Guess I should have warned you about that poison ivy,” a voice said.
“Wha—”
Mrs. Empson was standing over me, wearing an enormous broad-brimmed hat that blocked out the light so effectively I couldn’t see her face. But I could hear in her voice she was laughing at me.
I looked down. The vines in my hands didn’t look like the others—but were they really poison ivy? I counted the glossy green leaves on each stem. Three. Oh, crud. And I’d been holding them in my bare arms.
I dropped the bundle. “I gotta go wash this off,” I said. I knew it shouldn’t itch already, but the thought of how much of this stuff I’d been handling made me want to scratch myself bloody.
“Nah,” she said. “You’re done here anyhow, just about. You go down to Pretty Pool and wash your arms off. You won’t get any rash at all.”
“Pretty Pool?” I shouldered the final bag I’d cut and walked slowly alongside Mrs. Empson as we headed for her house. I was surprised at how close we were to finished—I’d done a lot of work.
“Well, I’m not sure what you and Annie—that’s her name, right?—are calling it. Everybody who finds it names it something else, I reckon. When the Colonel passed and I started spending more and more time in the valley, I found it. Found out a few things about it over time. Suspect you will, too.”
The smile that flitted across her lips faster than a damselfly was as mysterious as anything I’d seen in the valley. Like she knew a wonderful secret.
“Just promise you’ll stay quiet. The valley don’t like too much noise. I don’t want to hear you caterwaulin’ around down there. Sound travels, you know.”
“I promise,” I said. I didn’t tell her I’d already promised the valley the very same thing. I didn’t want her thinking I was as crazy as she was.
“Hmph,” she grunted, like she could read my thoughts. “Smart aleck.” She dumped her bag and mine in a pile near a barrel that looked like it had been used to burn a hundred years’ worth of trash.
I scratched at my arms. “Pretty Pool,” I whispered. I thought Annie’s words—effervescent or serendipity—had been good. But the simplicity of Pretty Pool . . . it was right.
“So, you think if I wash my arms off there, I won’t get poison ivy?”
She shrugged. “You never know. The valley takes care of its own. Now you help me cut these last few grapes, and I’ll let you run off for the next couple of hours. I think your little friend’s been waiting for you.”
“Annie?” I wanted to run down now. “But . . . I’m grounded. Mom and Dad will kill me if they found out I went back there.”
“What, you gonna tell ’em?” She stopped at a large wicker basket and reached for her cutters. “Humph. I got a little overzealous here. Cut a few too many already. I’ll just let you carry the basket up to the house, and then you trot on off.”
“Okay,” I said. She’d been cutting grapes? All the ones I’d seen had been green, nowhere near ripe.
I peeked into the basket. Crazy for sure. She’d cut green grapes. They weren’t any good for eating, I knew that. I guess she could do what she wanted with them, they were on her property. Or her fence line, at least. But it seemed like a waste.
“You think loud, boy,” she said, breaking the silence. “Don’t talk much, but you’re always thinking, aren’t you?”
After a second, I nodded. We’d reached the house. I wanted to step inside but glanced at my feet. “My boots are too muddy,” I said.
She shrugged. “Leave ’em here. I’ll wash ’em for you while you visit with Annie.”
“But I need shoes,” I started, then let my sentence trail off.
She was looking at me like she was going to slap some sense into me. “No you don’t,” she said. “You never ran barefoot down the valley? Try it. I promise. If you’re what I think, then you won’t get a single splinter.”
Okay, weird. No matter what she said, I wasn’t going to take off my boots and go running across miles of cactus, thorn vines, and snakes with no shoes on. Sure, I’d taken them off at the pool before, but only on the flat rocks. Only a truly crazy person would think of running down the hill barefoot. But I was polite enough not to say so.
What had she meant about me, “if you’re what I think”?
What did she think I was?
She opened the kitchen door, a solid wood rectangle that looked like it had been made a hundred years before. The kitchen was a wreck—green grapes, glass jars, and pots and pans everywhere. I didn’t say anything, but I wondered if a woman this old and . . . well, not sane . . . should be living alone.
“I like being alone,” she said, even though I hadn’t spoken out loud. “I like being able to decide what I want to do, when I want to do it.” Her voice got crabby. “I like being able to be my own self and not have to apologize to anyone for how I am, who I am.” She pulled off her hat and gave me a sideways glance. “You know that feeling?”
At first, I couldn’t answer. Maybe she wasn’t nuts; maybe she was psychic. She had just described the exact way I’d felt for . . . well, almost my whole life. “Yes,” I finally said. “I do know.”
“Run away, boy,” Mrs. Empson whispered. I looked up, startled.
She cleared her throat, winked, and said, “Run off, down to the valley. I’m done with you. Come back in a couple hours, I’ll get you a sandwich and drive you back home. Now skedaddle!”
She didn’t have to tell me again. I skedaddled.
Annie wasn’t at Pretty Pool, but I stopped long enough to dip my hands and arms in. At the last second, I splashed my face, too. It felt good, even though I wasn’t at all sure it would do anything for the poison ivy I’d been handling all morning.
I was at the flower meadow in minutes. When I came through the last of the oaks, I saw someone standing with her back to me—totally still—but this girl had white, fluffy hair. Angel-soft hair, in a cloud.
When I got closer, I realized it was Annie. Her hands were fisted at her sides, full of . . . dandelion stems?
And that’s what was in her hair. Thousands of pieces of dandelion fluff. Maybe tens of thousands.
“Annie?” I said, after I walked around to her front and saw her eyes were open. She was standing totally still, smiling as wide as I’d ever seen, but tears were shining in her eyes.
“Look at me,” she said and giggled. “I’m art.”
She was art, sort of. Transformed, anyway.
“Did you do this?” I asked. It must have taken her a while to get all those pieces of fluff in her hair.
“No,” she whispered, still holding her position, not even moving her head. “I didn’t.” What? I didn’t understand. Had someone else been down here with her?
“Then who . . . ”
“No one,” she breathed.
“How?” How had she been transformed into . . . a human-sized, enormous dandelion?
“Tell me,” she said. “I don’t have a mirror. Are there as many as I think?”
“Yes,” I said, walking around her to appreciate just how thick the fluff was on her head. It almost completely hid her red hair. “But seriously—how?”
She giggled again. “I must be a wish girl after all. I was blowing on dandelions.” She lifted one of her hands carefully. “And I was wishing someone would show up to make art with me. And then I closed my eyes—the wind was so soft. And I felt this start. It’s been doing it for an hour, I think. I lost track.”
I nodded, understanding. Wishes had a way of coming true in this valley.
“Can you get my camera
and take a picture of me? I want to see it,” she whispered. I reached down to her side and pulled her camera out of her bag and snapped a dozen pictures from all angles.
“Well, now what?” I said. “It looks like our art for the day is done.”
“Pretty much,” she said. “I have some other ideas, though. We can talk about them later. Help me blow the fluff off, okay?” She shook her head, and a hundred pieces of fluff floated down onto her shoulders and arms.
“Blow it?” I said, smiling, too. “Like you’re a giant dandelion?”
She nodded. “And don’t forget to make a wish.”
She closed her eyes and held still as I leaned close and took a huge breath. “I wish,” I said out loud—but she cut me off.
“No,” she said. “Don’t tell. It won’t come true.”
“Okay.” So I made the wish in my mind.
I could hear the leaves of the trees around us start to shake and move. I took another breath, and just as I let it out, an enormous gust of wind joined me and sent the fluff that had been gathered in her hair sailing into the air in one giant burst of white, like snow.
“Wow,” Annie breathed, watching the white seeds climb higher and higher into the sky. She reached up and started picking out the remaining fluffs—there were a lot—and scattered them at her feet.
“So, this valley,” she said after a while. “It really is magic, isn’t it?”
“I think so.” I told her what the Colonel’s wife had said about going barefoot and washing in Pretty Pool.
“Pretty Pool?” Annie scoffed. “What sort of a name is that?”
“Well, it’s simple,” I said. “But I sort of like it.”
“Hmph. Pretty Pool. Not Evanescent or Lugubrious or Sempiternal . . . Pretty.” She shook her head. “Plebian. But . . . fine, Pretty Pool it is. Let’s go back up there. I want to swim.”
“Swim?” I swallowed hard. I didn’t have a swimsuit. What was she thinking?
“Might still have some of that poison ivy on ya,” she teased, running ahead. “Last one there has to go in with shoes on!”
Was Annie faster than me? Normally, maybe not, but she was that day. I ran as hard as I could, but I swear the hill itself had set out to slow me down, catching my boots and toes and sending me sprawling. Though, come to think of it, even when I fell into what I could have sworn was a patch of cacti, I didn’t come up with any spines.
It was the most fun I’d had in days, but Annie had to go too soon. Her mom was in Wimberley for the weekend again, staying at a nearby bed-and-breakfast. “I’ll come out tomorrow afternoon,” she said. “Probably late. Let’s aim for four. And bring a shovel if you can.”
I didn’t bother to ask. Whatever Annie had in mind, I was sure it would be meaningful and transformative. Art. And if it wasn’t? I had a feeling art would happen in the valley whether we made it or not.
I told Mrs. Empson not to worry about driving me home. I was feeling so full of energy after my dip in Pretty Pool, I didn’t mind the walk. Plus I figured I needed to dry off before my parents saw me. “I said I’d get you back safe and sound,” Mrs. Empson said, pressing a sandwich into my hand. “Don’t make a liar out of me. You go straight to your house. Don’t stop for nothing.”
“I won’t,” I promised.
But I had to stop when I met Doug and Jake, at least long enough for them to beat the crud out of me.
Chapter 20
They caught me completely by surprise. I was walking slowly, since I knew I needed to dry off. When I came up the hill to my house, right before the top, I saw them sitting on the railroad-tie fence. I had a feeling they’d been waiting a while.
“Hey, Petey,” Jake said. “Come here. We got to talk.”
“Okay.” I stepped closer, then paused. Jake didn’t look good. His hair was all messed up, and he had red marks on the side of his face. Doug seemed okay, but when he walked toward me, he was limping a little.
“What happened to you guys?” I asked. It looked like they’d been in a wreck. Maybe they’d tried to go down into the valley again, and the valley had fought back, harder this time. I sort of hoped so. Maybe they’d met a mountain lion.
“You did,” Doug said. “You happened, Pete.”
“What?” I took a step back.
Doug’s words were hard and clear. “Why’d you tell?”
“Tell?” I didn’t get it. What did they think I’d done?
“I thought you were gonna be our friend.” The words sounded like they hurt. The side of his mouth had a small crack and a little dried blood there.
Jake held up a hand to stop his brother talking. “Let me handle this, Dougie.” He stepped right up to me, looking into my face. This close I could see that his eyes were red, too. “You told your parents about us using the .22,” Jake said softly. “They came over this morning to our house. Told our dad they were worried about us having guns like that on our own. We got in trouble.”
“Big trouble,” Doug added.
It dawned on me that they meant they’d gotten a beating. Whoa. And I thought my parents were bad. But I said, “Guys, I didn’t tell my parents anything.”
“Lying won’t make this any easier on you, Petey.” Jake’s voice was low and mean. I took a step back.
“No, I mean it. It wasn’t me. I haven’t even talked to my parents in days. . . . ” My voice broke. Laura. “My sister,” I whispered. “Laura. I’m gonna kill her.”
I didn’t get a chance to explain what had happened—that I’d mentioned it to Laura, and she’d obviously been the one to tell—because Doug had me by the back collar of my shirt. He might talk slowly, but he moved as fast as a striking snake.
“Here’s the deal, Petey,” Jake said. “Doug likes you. He thinks maybe you don’t know how to treat your friends, you coming from San Antonio and all. So we’re gonna give you one more chance. We’re gonna beat you now.”
Beating me was giving me a chance? How was that a chance?
Before I could ask, Doug explained, “But not your face.”
Oh. “That’s my chance?” I started looking around, wondering where I could run, if I could make it. Even if I sprinted faster than I ever had, they were too close. I was hemmed in by the fence and the thorny brush on the sides of the road. I’d never make it out of there.
Jake shrugged. “Yeah, not your face. That’s your chance—to not tell this time. So we beat you, then you’re gonna go home. And keep your trap shut.”
“Why?” I wasn’t asking why I should keep quiet. I was asking why they wanted to beat me up, but they didn’t get it.
“Because if you tell on us, and anybody—anybody—gets word that we did it, next time we won’t be so nice. Next time we’ll really teach you a lesson. Or maybe we’ll teach your little friend one.”
“My little friend?”
“Yeah, the girl. We saw you with her,” Doug said. “We followed her back to camp.”
Annie. Oh, no.
“She’s all alone in that cabin,” Jake said. “We can pay her a visit if you don’t listen. But I bet you’re going to listen.”
And with that, he punched me as hard in the gut as he could. It felt like he ruptured something inside. I tried to run, but Doug’s hand twisted on my collar, and he punched me, too. He might as well have been using a baseball bat—he was that strong. After a few more hits, he let me go, and I fell. I curled into a ball on the asphalt, feeling kicks and punches rain down on me for the next few seconds, trying to protect my head.
I knew how to do it, how to keep my face clear. I’d had plenty of practice.
It almost felt like déjà vu. And if it hadn’t hurt so bad, I would have laughed, remembering.
After school, every day, the guys in my sixth-grade class had decided to give me lessons. Private tutoring in how to take a punch to the kidney. Or a kick to the gut. I pr
actically had a college degree in it.
They had made fun of me while they beat me up, I remembered. Called me a wimp, a coward, and worse. They’d wanted me to fight back, practically begged me to.
Dad had begged me to as well, once he suspected what was happening. “Fight back, Peter.” I could hear his voice now. “You have to prove yourself, just once. Once you do, it’ll stop. That’s the way it works.” Prove myself. To the boys, he’d meant. But also to him.
So I’d tried. Just once, a slap more than a punch. It had been a match to gasoline. The guys had taken it as permission to keep on hitting, never stop. I hadn’t known they could hit even harder. I remembered the sick crack, the searing pain of one of my ribs breaking that last month in my old neighborhood. Something else had broken in me that day, something deeper.
At least Doug and Jake didn’t call me names while they hurt me. I guess they knew sound traveled in the country. Or they were just more efficient at their job.
When it was over, I looked up. They were already gone, walking away like they’d forgotten I was there. Like nothing had just happened. I put a hand up to my mouth—a trickle of blood had started, I guess from when I’d bitten my tongue. But they’d kept their word: They hadn’t hit my face.
I sat there crying for a while. Then I got up, slowly, hurting all over, and hobbled home.
Mom was doing the bills at the kitchen table and saw me come in. “How was your day?” she asked. Her eyebrows went up. “You look awful.”
I stared at her for a minute. Thought about telling her. But I knew what she would do. She’d go ballistic, make a scene. Flashback to San Antonio, when she’d finally learned what was happening.
She’d tell their parents. Then I’d pay the price, like I had back then. The beatings only got worse when parents came into it.
And now, I had someone besides myself to protect. Annie. And Laura, or even Carlie—I wasn’t sure who Doug and Jake would stop at. I had a feeling they would think all the girls were fair game.