Where's Burgess?

by Laurie Elmquist

  “Wait!” calls Mom.

  But I’m already down the bank and yanking off my boots. The water is cool on my feet, and the rocks are slimy. I look for a brown frog. There are fish, and I even think I see something move, but it’s an old rotting stick.

  Hazel walks in too. “Burgess,” she calls, “where are you?”

  Even Mom, who can’t swim and doesn’t like cold water, comes into the creek. She’s wearing those river shoes with rubber soles. She has a pole for balance. It’s quiet in the creek except for my sister’s voice, growing fainter as she walks downstream. “Yoo-hoo, frog! Yoo-hoooo, Burgess!”

  “It’s nice here,” says Mom. “I can see why you like it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s a good place for a frog.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Even if we find him, would you want to take him back home?” she asks. “He did go to a lot of work to get here. What with the ferry and all. And the hitchhiking.”

  I know what she is saying, but I don’t like letting go of him. It feels like there’s a hole in my heart that will never fill. He was the last thing Dad gave me before he left. I should have taken better care of Burgess. I’d put him in a bucket when I was outside cleaning his tank. When I turned around, he was gone.

  I climb out of the creek. It’s no use. I’m never going to find him.

  Mom follows me, and we both sit down in the grass on the bank. There are daisies in the grass, and I pick one and yank off its head. Stupid daisies.

  Mom puts her arm around me and squeezes. “Sometimes we don’t get to keep things forever.”

  “I miss him.”

  “Even things we love very, very much.”

  I nod. My mouth feels too tight to speak, and I’m afraid the words will come out all squeaky.

  “But it’s not so bad, just us three, right?” she says.

  I swallow hard. “It was better with Burgess, but yeah, it’s not so bad.”

  Hazel is waiting on the bridge. “Are we ever going to get out of here?” she calls.

  “I think we’re ready,” says Mom, getting up and pulling me with her.

  Back at the harbor, we park with all the other cars and trucks waiting for the ferry to arrive. In the pickup in front of us, a guy is giving his dog a drink of water. It’s a huge St. Bernard with a slobbery tongue.

  “It says we have Wi-Fi here. Can I check my phone?” Hazel scrolls through all the messages she’s missed while we we’ve been off the grid. She goes on the Internet. Then she squeals. “There’s your poster,” she says. “Look.”

  It’s Burgess’s bulging eyes and outspread arms.

  “He’s trending,” she says. “He’s been retweeted 1,739 times.”

  “It doesn’t matter now,” I say.

  “But it means people care,” says my mom. “That’s something.”

  I lean back in my seat and stare out the window. Maybe she’s right. Burgess was only a small brown frog, but he made an impression on people.

  “There’s a song,” says my sister. “Some guy is singing about your frog.”

  “I know,” I say.

  “That’s you,” she says, then shows Mom the video. “There’s Reece!”

  Mom takes the phone. “It certainly is.” We all listen to the song a few times. It’s catchy, and my sister says the guitar player has nice hair.

  “Next weekend we should go to Vancouver,” I say.

  Hazel puts her phone away. “We could visit Dad.”

  “If he’s not fighting fires,” says Mom.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  The ferry arrives, bumping against the dock. People start their cars. Mom starts the bus and it backfires, but this time no one scowls. As we drive onto the ferry, Hazel sticks her head out and yells, “Goodbye, Salt Spring!”

  The boat nudges out into the bay, the water pushing outward in ripples that expand and disappear.

  “Goodbye,” I say.

  Chapter Seven

  Aaron’s been riding the stationary bike every day after school. Mom says it’s time we pushed him out of the nest. She is taking us to a paved bike trail where Aaron won’t get mowed down by cars. Everyone rides this trail, even five-yearolds, so I think he’ll be okay.

  Mom unloads our bikes off the back of the bus. “So you want me to ride up ahead? Is that the plan?”

  “Yes,” says Aaron.

  He doesn’t want any adults around. He thinks all adults are as strict as his dad, although I tell him Mom is one of the good ones. Plus, he’s eaten dinner a few times at our house now, so you’d think he’d be okay around her. But he’s not. He gets jittery.

  “We’ll be fine,” I say.

  “I’ll be just up ahead,” she says. “Keep an eye out for cougars, and if you see one, make a lot of noise—”

  “We got the lecture at school,” says Aaron.

  Sometimes he’s rude. He doesn’t mean to be. I’ve told him adults like a softer tone, and they don’t like being interrupted. I’ve learned to count silently in my head while adults are talking. It gives my face a look like I’m listening, which I am, but not with all my brain.

  “We’ll watch out for everything,” I tell her.

  Mom pecks me on the cheek, and I let her. Then she pedals off. She waves, and I wave back.

  “You want to stop for lunch?” asks Aaron.

  We haven’t even started yet, but I don’t mind. I’m kind of hungry anyway. We have egg-salad sandwiches in our packs. I can smell them. Mom makes the best sandwiches—about two inches thick.

  We push our bikes to a place off to the side of the trail that has trees and a grassy spot that looks over the water. The sandwiches are still cool from the fridge. Aaron stuffs it in his mouth and chews like he hasn’t eaten in days. He swallows hard and smiles. “This is the life,” he says.

  “Yeah,” I say, watching families cycle by.

  A little girl with orange hair slows her bike and stares. Her dad is all spandexed-out like Spider-Man. “Eyes ahead, eyes ahead,” he calls out. She pedals fast to keep up with him.

  I turn to Aaron. “Does your dad ride?”

  “Nah,” he says.

  “So why does he want you to?”

  He looks down at his feet. “He says it’s embarrassing to have a kid who can’t ride a bike. Says everyone can do it.”

  A text comes in from Mom. Where are you guys?

  I text her back. Eating lunch.

  “You ready?” I ask, getting to my feet. There’s no one on the trail around us.

  Aaron’s face looks white. “It’s do or die.”

  “Do you want me to follow behind you?”

  “No,” he says. “I don’t want anyone watching me.”

  “Do you have the theme song in your head?”

  “Yup,” he says, looking determined just like Rocky.

  I get on my bike and shove ahead, pedaling. I don’t look back. I give him his space. I count in my head backward from ten and then forward. He hasn’t called out. I haven’t heard a crash or anything.

  Then I hear it. A whoosh and whizz and Aaron’s beside me. I look over, but he’s looking straight ahead. His smile is like one of those skull smiles, overly big, showing all the gums. A scared smile. But he hasn’t fallen over. He’s going fast, and I pedal hard to keep up with him.

  He still doesn’t look over, but he speaks. “You’re right,” he says. “If I pedal hard, I don’t fall.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  We’re coming up to a family. They’re walking with a stroller and a wiener dog on a long leash.

  “From behind!” I yell.

  They move to the right just in time for Aaron to go whizzing by.

  “It’s his first time,” I yell to them.

  Aaron laughs like a madman. His blue bathrobe flaps behind him. He swerves and pedals like his life depends on it. Do or die. But he doesn’t fall off. “Reece, do you see?” he yells. “Do you see me? I’m riding a bike.”

  I feel something shift in my
chest like a lump. For the first time since losing Burgess, I feel really good. I realize I haven’t thought about my lost frog in a few days. Aaron’s up ahead. He waves to Mom, who has been waiting for us at the side of the trail.

  “Look,” he calls out to her. “I can do it.”

  “Bravo,” she says, getting on her bike.

  And we cycle down the trail, the three of us.

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to acknowledge the support of my husband, Clay Elmquist, who was with me on Salt Spring Island when we saw a poster tacked to the ferry terminal message board. LOST FROG. Answers to Burgess. He said, “That would make a good story.” Sometimes that’s all a writer needs.

  Thanks to my parents, Ernest and Judith Abel, for giving me Isaac Lake, Ontario, an amazing place to grow a writer’s imagination. A big thanks to Jack and his I Love Monkeys song (Yes, I do!) that inspired Reece's song about his lost frog.

  Thanks to my editors, Amy Collins and Liz Kemp, who championed the book and provided their editorial expertise, and to everyone at Orca Book Publishers. Special thanks to David Parkins for his drawings of Reece Hansen and Burgess the frog.

  Laurie Elmquist holds an MA in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Windsor in Ontario. She enjoys writing for kids, and is the author of Beach Baby, Forest Baby and Where’s Burgess?, which was inspired by a Lost Frog poster she saw on a camping trip. Laurie teaches at Camosun College in Victoria, British Columbia, and is an online instructor at the University of Calgary in Alberta. For more information, visit www.laurieelmquist.com.