He moved closer, eyes watering, the heat washing over him in waves. He wouldn’t go, he couldn’t. The flames would devour him alive, and then . . .
“Trust me. Go now!”
He couldn’t. He wouldn’t leave.
And yet, as if he had no control over it, he took another step forward. Then another. With each step, the heat singed his skin. Pain radiated up his bare arms, his face. He was burning.
Sam dropped to his knees at the base of the tree, reaching up into the flames. This was it. He was going to die here, alone, a failure. Stuck in a world of perpetual darkness. His skin bubbled, and each of the bubbles burst and shriveled, turning to ash as he sat and watched. This was it. It was over.
He sank back, and that was when he saw a hand reach through from the other side. It couldn’t be—it wasn’t possible—but he recognized the chipped purple nail polish.
He grasped the hand, ignoring the flames eating away at his skin, and then, as suddenly as before, he was flying. Vines slashed his face and spiderwebs filled his mouth, but he kept flying, and the whole way he was crying and screaming out for Pa and then, with a splash, he hit the ground and found himself flat on his back in the middle of a mud puddle.
“Sam!” He blinked, head throbbing, skin burning, and suddenly Edie was there, hugging him tight. “What happened? Where have you been?”
He felt his face and hands and arms, searching for signs of fire, of scorched and bubbling skin, but it was like none of it had ever happened. The world came back into focus. He looked up at the angry gray sky and saw that, apart from a light mist, the rain had stopped.
“How did you . . . ?” Sam started, his throat hoarse. He wanted to yell at Edie because she’d brought him back, but here she was, and he wanted her to keep hugging him and he wanted Pa and he wanted everything to be true all at once, but now he knew it couldn’t be. Edie let him go and sat back on the grass.
“I started to walk home, but I was worried about you.” She looked at him, then looked away, then looked at him again. He had this strange tingling in his chest, and he didn’t know what it meant, but maybe it felt okay.
He could tell she wanted to ask him a million questions, like why he kept running off and how he’d gotten trapped in a tree that clearly wasn’t big enough to fit him, but instead she just sat there, and he sat there, and they didn’t say anything, but it was the comfortable kind of silence, like when he was out fishing with Pa.
They watched some birds splash in a nearby puddle for a while, and it was strange, because Sam had lost everything he’d ever cared about, but part of him felt like smiling. A small part, but still.
“Thanks for coming to get me.”
“No problem. Rescuing people from man-eating trees is kind of my specialty.”
“Really?”
“It’s a new specialty. You may or may not be the first.”
“Right.” He smiled, even though he didn’t want to smile, and they watched as the clouds parted and the sun stained the sky a pale shade of purple. “Sorry about the science fair. I didn’t mean what I said before. Any of it.”
“It’s okay. I figured you were probably going through some stuff. I should have given you more space.”
“Nah, I was a jerk.”
“Maybe a little.” Now Edie smiled, a half smile, kind of like Pa’s, and then she went back to watching the sky. They sat there until the next round of rain came in, and it was the kind that came in sudden and fast. The kind where the sky opened and dropped a solid curtain of raindrops, each as big as your fist.
“Run!” Edie shouted, and she didn’t need to tell him twice. They ran. And despite everything that had happened, leaving Pa behind, his bruised body, his burning skin, it turned into a race. Edie won for a while, and then Sam pushed ahead and, by the time they made their way inside, Edie inching out the win, they were both laughing. It didn’t even matter that their shoes squeaked and that they both slipped at the same time on the wet tile.
“I see you made it back,” Mr. Redding said, helping Edie and then Sam off the ground.
They went to his classroom to wait for Aunt Jo, and Mr. Redding made them powdered hot cocoa with tiny marshmallows, which wasn’t Orange Crush, but was still pretty good. They sipped their drinks and looked out the window and watched the rain wash away all the dirt and dust.
“Will I see you two after school tomorrow?” Mr. Redding said, a curious expression on his face.
Sam glanced at Edie, who winked. Sam said, “Looks like.” And even though his heart was aching, even though every ounce of him would have gone with Pa if he could have, it was nice. A strange calm had settled over him, like the feeling he’d gotten at the end of the hundred-yard dash. And even though he’d lost, even though every bit of his energy hadn’t been enough, he was still here, and maybe that was something.
Aunt Jo arrived in a bright green poncho that made her look like a giant praying mantis. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, look at you two. I thought you were building planes, not taking swimming lessons.” Edie looked at Sam, who shrugged.
“We tried to do a test flight,” Edie said. “Bad timing.”
“And you being under the weather.” Aunt Jo shook her head at Edie. “Come on, you little hellions. Let’s get you warmed up. Mr. Redding, these two cause you any trouble?” She chatted a while with Mr. Redding before they all headed out. “How about we stop by Gina’s Diner on the way home?” Aunt Jo said as they squeaked their way down the hall. “I heard she’s serving her famous lava cake this week.”
“Lava cake?” Sam said.
“It’s pretty amazing,” Edie said. They got ready to run to Baby Girl, Edie and Sam using their backpacks as umbrellas. “It’s a red velvet cake with bubbly melted fudge inside, and it spills out when you cut into it just like real lava, so you have to eat it really fast.”
“What do you say?” Aunt Jo said, looking over at Sam and wiggling her eyebrows.
This was it. The doorway was closed, and Pa was gone, and he wanted to go home, but Aunt Jo kept looking at him, waiting, and Edie looked over at him too, and he had that weird tingling in his chest, and he wasn’t hungry, but he opened the door, letting in a gust of wind and rain and said, “Sounds good. Who wants to race?”
They picked up lava cake and fried catfish with a side of pickles for Edie, and they ate on Aunt Jo’s couch watching Young Frankenstein, which was Edie’s favorite movie. Edie’s mom came to pick her up around nine, and even though Sam didn’t see her, he heard her and Aunt Jo talking for a long time out on the porch.
When they were gone, he went upstairs and lay down on his bed, watching the shadowy maple branches dance outside his window. It was raining again, and even though he could hear the raindrops pattering against the glass, he could also feel the quiet. A new kind of quiet that settled on his chest, pressing him down into the mattress. The walls closed in around him, like the sides of an invisible coffin, and despite Edie and the lava cake and Aunt Jo, he’d never felt so alone.
That Saturday, Aunt Jo offered to take him fishing, and he wanted to say no, but then Edie was coming, too, and he just sort of went along with it. Aunt Jo knew a lot about fishing, just like Pa. She spent the ride down to the lake telling them about her favorite lures and about the time Pa had hooked a giant catfish and it had dragged him halfway across Sardis Lake. Sam had heard that story before too, but not the part about Pa getting pulled from the boat and coming up with his pants around his ankles.
Another detail Pa had neglected to tell him.
They parked by this huge concrete dam and walked on down to the lake. The beach was made of weeds and rocks and mostly dead grass, not a single speck of sand.
“Ain’t she a sight?” Aunt Jo said, peering out at the muddy lake, and Sam didn’t answer, because he was too busy eyeing all the trash that people had left on the so-called beach: beer cans, a half-empty Coke bottle, a used diaper, a pack of hot dogs with the pink juice still floating in the bottom.
Even with the du
mpy beach, fishing wasn’t all that bad. Edie had never fished before, and so Sam showed her how to bait her hook and cast her reel, and she caught the first fish, a spotted bass weighing in at just over five pounds.
“Guess you had a good teacher,” Sam said, and Edie punched his arm, harder than necessary, but it still made him laugh.
After a few more hours of sweating and waiting, without the faintest hint of shade, Sam was ready to call it quits, but Aunt Jo said to give it a few more minutes. Sam hadn’t caught anything worth keeping yet, and his head ached. He closed his eyes and imagined he was back home, drifting down Ol’ Tired Eyes, Pa at his side, the muggy heat broken up by long stretches of shade.
That was when he felt the first tug. It was a big tug, too, and so he sat up straighter and tugged right back. Hard, but not hard enough to break the line.
“That’s it. Slow and steady,” Aunt Jo said, searching the still water for any sign of movement. “Told you it’d be worth the wait.”
Sam reeled in his line nice and easy, the tension building, until soon he was on his feet.
“You got yourself a fighter,” Aunt Jo said, and she was right, because just then Sam’s rod jerked, the force of it dragging him to the edge of the boat. “Hold on!” Aunt Jo said, grabbing at the back of his shirt, but it was too late. His rod jerked again, and the next thing he knew he was plunging into the muddy water.
He made the mistake of opening his mouth, and the dirty water rushed in. Arms flailing, he sank deeper into the cloudy depths, and he might have drowned if that same tug hadn’t come again, this time pulling on his wrist, and he realized that he’d forgotten to let go of his rod. That fish, if it really was a fish, dragged him to the surface, where he sputtered and choked and he tried to call out, but there was no time.
WHAM!
With the strength of a dozen sharks, that fish wrenched him into midair and, just like that, he was flying. Not really flying, but it felt like flying, and soon he was skidding across the water just like a dragonfly, zipping and zooming, the spray cooling his sunburned skin, his legs flopping out behind him like a fishtail, only with jeans and boots instead of scales. His brain shouted at his hands to let go of the rod, but he didn’t, and so he kept right on zooming. Up ahead, he could just make out a mammoth shape the size of a whale cutting a path through the water, but he knew it couldn’t be a whale, which could only mean one thing . . . it must be a catfish! A huge catfish, and that would mean that maybe Pa had been telling the truth about getting dragged across Sardis Lake all those years ago.
“Yahoo!” Sam bellowed, still skidding across the waves, a spray of dirty water battering his face.
The creature picked up speed, and now Sam was really flapping and flying, touching down every once in a while, but mostly keeping airborne. “Whoopee!” he shouted, his voice carrying on the wind, stretching out into one long, jubilant howl.
Then the line broke, and Sam lost his grip on the rod, but he didn’t stop right away. He kept on skidding over the surface of the water, then the skid turned into a roll, and finally he came to a stop on a patch of sandy beach.
Mud might have been a better word, but it was fine and grainy like sand, and as he sat up and looked down at his feet—now bare except for one soggy sock—he saw that he was stepping on a seashell. He picked it up and cleaned out the center and felt around the edges, but didn’t find a single crack.
A perfect seashell on a perfect beach, hidden on the world’s ugliest lake.
He sat there for a while, watching the water lap at his toes, and he was thinking about everything that had happened, and about Pa’s stories, and how maybe it didn’t matter so much which parts were true and which were made up. He closed his eyes and pictured how Pa’s face would light up if he ever got the chance to tell him about what had just happened. Even though it made him sad, because Pa was gone and probably no one else would believe him, it made him happy too.
He’d been mad at Pa for not always telling him the truth, but maybe he’d been missing the point. Stories were about what had happened, sure, but they were also about what you wanted to believe, and about the parts of your life you wanted to pass on. Maybe Pa hadn’t told him about Mama for a reason, because he didn’t want Sam to feel guilty. It wasn’t because Pa didn’t care enough to tell him the truth. Maybe it was just the opposite.
Aunt Jo showed up after a while, and Edie was the first to jump from the boat. “Oh my god, what happened? Are you okay?”
Sam considered telling her the true story, about being dragged across the lake by a giant catfish, but instead he just smiled. “Here, I found this on the beach.” He handed her the shell, and her cheeks turned pink, and then, once Aunt Jo was finished fussing over his scrapes and bruises, they laid out a blanket on the mud that almost looked like sand and had themselves a picnic.
It was a Tuesday around Halloween, about five months after losing Pa, when Sam was called into Mr. Redding’s office during lunch. Or, to be more accurate, Principal Redding’s office, since he’d recently been promoted. “A funny thing happened today in the teacher’s lounge,” Mr. Redding said, stroking the tips of his mustache. “Mrs. Lee says she found a bullfrog in her mailbox, and we’ve had reports of lizards popping up in faculty lunches. Now, you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Mr. West?”
Mr. Redding’s eyes sparkled behind his thick glasses.
“No, sir. Can’t say that I do.”
“You may remember a story I told you once about your pa and one ornery possum. That’s a pretty big coincidence, wouldn’t you say? One might even suggest that the two incidents appear connected.”
Sam bit back a smile, especially because he’d caught sight of a small green lizard making its way up the edge of Mr. Redding’s desk.
“In all seriousness, I’m glad to see that you’re settling in here, I really am. But we have rules for a reason.” Mr. Redding sighed, giving his chin a scratch. Sam noticed that he was no longer wearing the gold ring he’d had on last year. Instead it hung from a chain around his neck.
“Is that your wife?” Sam said, looking at a picture of a younger Mr. Redding with a kind-looking woman with wild gray curls.
“That is indeed. She passed away a few years ago now. Beverly was her name.” He felt the spot on his finger where the ring had been. “She was a teacher here for thirty-two years, and a huge fan of practical jokes.” His face split with laughter and his eyes were no longer there with Sam but in another place. “She once lined all the cushions in our house with bubble wrap, under the covers, and every time I sat down I . . .” He had to pause for breath, he was trying so hard not to laugh. “I couldn’t figure out why all the cushions kept popping, until I unzipped the covers and looked inside. I ended up calling the police to report a home invader, and that finally got her to confess.” Tears squeezed from the sides of his eyes as he gave way to a low, rumbling laugh, and then the laugh turned into a cough, and then it was quiet.
Sam shifted in his chair.
Mr. Redding sat up straighter. “Well, seeing as there’s no proof that you had anything to do with the recent incident, I guess you’re free to go.” He studied Sam’s face, and Sam did his best to look innocent. “But I should warn you, Mr. West, that if we have any more unwanted visitors in this school, you may not be so lucky. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Sam said, trying not to look at the lizard that was now squeezing its way into Mr. Redding’s briefcase.
Winter brought ice storms and one good day of snow. Sam was glad to get past it all, especially Thanksgiving and Christmas, and finally make it into spring. It was late March when Sam headed down to the kitchen and stuffed a six-pack of Orange Crush into his backpack along with the De Havilland Mosquito bomber, now freshly painted and glued, with a propeller made from 3D-printed plastic.
“I’ll be back in an hour,” he called to Aunt Jo, who was slicing up chocolate cake in the kitchen.
“Don’t forget, I need you here at six sharp,” Aunt Jo said.
Sam could smell the freshly cut cake, and he didn’t even mind that he had to set up chairs and do a million dishes in exchange for a slice.
Sam met Edie at the corner, and they rode their bikes toward school. They’d bought the bikes from their science fair winnings, along with a new sound system for Aunt Jo and some new clothes for Edie’s mom, who had just gotten a job answering phones at a real-estate office downtown.
When the asphalt turned to gravel, they rode on the grass instead, past the school and up the small hill leading to the tree. Bright green leaves had sprouted from its branches a while back, even before the end of winter. The hollow that had once been a scary, gaping mouth now looked like two puckered lips. It had closed up little by little, ever since the day Sam had started the fire. The fire that, by the way, hadn’t left a single scorch mark.
Instead, the tree had come alive, and Edie had made a wind chime out of spoons and old soda cans and hung it from the lowest branch. They sat by the tree, the sunlight peeking through the branches, and they each opened up a can of warm Orange Crush. Edie drank first, then Sam, and then Sam opened a third can and poured it on the dry Oklahoma dirt.
He never saw any dragonflies after that spring when he’d said goodbye to Pa. Or any sign of that mangy old cat. Once, he saw a silver glint peeking out at him from beneath a bush, but it turned out to only be a quarter.
“Ready to race?” Edie said, eyes twinkling in the sunlight. “My glider is so going to beat your Mosquito.”
“You wish.”
They chugged their sodas as fast as they could, until bubbles spilled out of their noses. Then Edie laughed and Sam laughed too, and he leaned in close, so close he could smell the sweet Orange Crush on Edie’s lips, and the wind rustled the maple leaves overhead, and he kept right on leaning.
Acknowledgments
A huge thank-you to everyone who keeps me going. To all the writers, artists, and creators who have inspired me along the way. To my agent, Brianne Johnson, who always has my back and has the coolest, witchiest apartment in the entire universe. To everyone at HarperCollins and Temple Hill for helping this project come to life. And, finally, to all the dreamers who create with wild abandon. Thank you!
The Secret Life of Sam Page 18