Lions & Liars

by Kate Beasley

  The two wooden steps that led to the porch were so rotten that each one sagged under his weight when he climbed. He stood in front of the door for a moment, listening hard, every sense on high alert, expecting Eric to materialize at any moment. Eric, in his too-tight shorts and his sunglasses, because Frederick got the feeling that Eric wore his sunglasses all the time, even in the dark, probably because he didn’t have eyes. Because he was a cyborg.

  “What are you waiting for?” Specs whispered from where the others stood.

  Frederick shook himself out of his daydream. Then he took a deep breath, grabbed the doorknob, and turned.

  Nothing happened. Frederick jostled the doorknob and tried turning it again, but it was locked tight.

  He twisted to whisper over his shoulder. “Now what?” He had never broken into anywhere before, and now that he had tried the front door, he was out of ideas.

  Nosebleed, Specs, the Professor, and Ant Bite all climbed onto the porch.

  “Did you think it would just be unlocked?” Specs asked.

  “Yes,” Frederick said, nodding.

  He had. He had thought that he would open the door and go into Eric’s office and use the phone, and that would be a wrong thing to do because the campers weren’t allowed in there. He hadn’t thought they would actually have to break into the place, like Mission Impossible–type stuff. Maybe he should’ve brought along the spy book after all. Maybe he could’ve gotten some pointers.

  The others held a furious, whispered conversation, most of which Frederick missed because he had leaned against the cabin wall and fallen into a doze while he was still standing.

  “We can pop the hinges out,” Ant Bite said in a determined voice that cut through Frederick’s slumber. Ant Bite was pointing at the edge of the door.

  Frederick and the others turned to look at the hinges at the top and bottom. Frederick had never really noticed door hinges before. Were they on all doors? He guessed they must be.

  “How are we gonna do that?” Nosebleed asked, rubbing the side of his head and gazing at the hinges in bewilderment, like he’d never noticed them either.

  “A screwdriver and a hammer.” Ant Bite shrugged.

  “Have you got a screwdriver and a hammer?” Specs asked.

  Ant Bite shrugged again.

  “Exactly,” Specs said.

  “Well then, you’ve got to break the glass if you want to get in there,” Ant Bite said, gesturing at the window beside the door. Through the window Frederick could see a desk with stacks of paper, all arranged in perfect piles, and on the corner of the desk, a big, old-fashioned telephone.

  “If they find out you did it, they’ll kick you out for sure,” Nosebleed warned. “They’ll call the police.”

  “They wouldn’t call the police. And they aren’t going to find out,” Specs insisted. “None of us are gonna tell.”

  Annoyance flashed through Frederick.

  None of us are gonna tell translated into Somebody for sure is going to tell. And then the person who got told on always said, You promised you wouldn’t tell. And the person who told was all like, No, I didn’t.

  “Can’t we … I don’t know,” Frederick said. “Can’t we pick the lock?”

  “Can you pick a lock?” Nosebleed asked hopefully.

  “No,” said Frederick.

  “Then no,” Nosebleed said, shaking his head.

  “Break it,” Specs said.

  Frederick hesitated.

  “It’s just a piece of glass,” Specs urged.

  Nosebleed, Ant Bite, and the Professor didn’t say anything, but their silence roared in Frederick’s ears.

  Frederick had never broken a window before. He’d never broken anything on purpose. He’d broken stuff by accident plenty of times. But breaking Eric’s office window would be different. It would be mean. And wrong.

  Frederick might have been a flea. He might have been a flounder and a ding-a-ling. But he wasn’t a bad person. Not yet. But maybe it was unavoidable. Maybe someone who screwed up as much as he did was bound to screw up at being a good person, too. The thought made Frederick sad. He didn’t want to become a bad person. He wasn’t going to let that happen, he decided. At least, not tonight.

  He turned away from the window and climbed down the sagging steps to the ground.

  “So you’re not going to do it after all,” Specs said from the porch. “I knew you wouldn’t.” There was triumph in his voice.

  Even though the day had been hot, the air was cool now that the sun had set. Frederick tucked his fists in his armpits and squeezed his arms tight around himself. “I didn’t say I wasn’t doing it,” he said.

  And then without really thinking about it, he started walking through the parking lot toward the two-lane road that led away from camp. After the first few steps, he began walking with more purpose. If he didn’t go back to the cabin, then Specs couldn’t say he had given up yet. He was just taking a break.

  “What are you doing?” Nosebleed called after him.

  “I’m taking a break!” Frederick called with some anger.

  “Shh!” the others all shushed from the porch.

  Behind him he heard the Professor swear softly, and then he heard the slapping of footsteps as the others ran to catch up with him.

  11

  The Constellation Fleaus Tinyus

  The lights from camp had shrunk to no more than twinkles in the trees behind them, and they were still walking down the dark road.

  “What are we doing out here, Dash?” the Professor asked—not for the first time.

  “We’re walking!” Frederick answered loudly.

  “Shh!” Nosebleed, Specs, the Professor, and Ant Bite shushed him.

  They walked in silence for a while.

  “Why don’t we go back to camp now?” Nosebleed suggested, a plaintive whine in his voice.

  “I don’t want to go back to camp,” Frederick insisted. “I want to walk.”

  At first, Frederick had started walking because he was trying to get away from Eric’s cabin and delay the moment when the others realized once and for all that Dash (or Frederick) wasn’t the fearless cool guy that he’d pretended to be.

  But as the night air filled his lungs, his feet had fallen into a rhythm, and the high-pitched chirring of the cicadas and the squelching bellows of the bullfrogs had gotten so loud and frequent that it melded into a single night sound, lulling Frederick into a trancelike state. It was like, as long as he was walking, he didn’t have to think about any of his problems. He didn’t have to worry about Eric or about how his mom was probably going to be mad at him for getting lost or how when he went back to his regular life he was still going to be the same old flea-like Frederick. He wished he could keep walking forever, but eventually, his legs slowed like a windup toy grinding to a halt, and he stopped.

  The others walked a few steps before they realized he wasn’t moving anymore.

  “We’re going back now?” Nosebleed squeaked.

  “My legs are tired,” Frederick announced, and he sat down right there on the pavement, stretched his legs straight in front of him, and lay back, letting his arms flop at his sides.

  The pavement radiated heat that was left over from the sun, and the warmth soaked into Frederick’s spine. The back of one hand rested against the painted yellow line. His chest rose and fell steadily. Above him, the sky was littered with more stars than he’d ever seen before.

  Frederick had never lain in the middle of a road. “This is weirdly comfortable,” he said.

  One of the boys sighed. Then somebody was sitting down beside Frederick and stretching out.

  “Should we be lying in the middle of a road?” Nosebleed asked when all five of them were sprawled out across the asphalt like accident victims.

  Nobody answered.

  “What are we going to do if a car comes?” Nosebleed said more insistently.

  “Get up?” the Professor suggested. “Move out of the way?”

  “We’d
see the headlights before it got here,” Ant Bite said.

  They were silent for a few moments.

  “I wish I was in my bed,” Nosebleed said in a small voice.

  “I wish I never had to go to school again.” The Professor sighed.

  “I wish I could make the Iron Man suit,” Ant Bite said. “Like, for real, and then I’d fly wherever I wanted to go.”

  “That’s stupid,” Specs said.

  “No, it isn’t,” Ant Bite snapped.

  Then Frederick said, “I wish I was on a cruise.”

  “A cruise.” Specs snorted. “What do you know about a cruise?”

  “I’ve been on lots of cruises,” Frederick said. “I would go down the waterslide ten times,” he said. “And then I would go up to the bar and get a strawberry daiquiri.”

  His eyelids fell shut as he imagined it. The sun, giant and blazing in the sky. Steel-drum music so energetic that you could almost see the shiny sounds bouncing off the deck. The smell of coconut oil sunscreen. A frozen drink and a brain-freeze headache.

  “And the chocolate fountain at the midnight buffet,” Frederick murmured.

  “There’s no such thing as a chocolate fountain,” Specs said.

  “Yes, there is,” said Nosebleed. “When my sister got married, there was a chocolate fountain at the reception.”

  “So…” Specs’s voice was frustrated. “So do they drain the water and put the chocolate in? Do they clean it first?”

  “It’s not a real fountain. It’s small,” Nosebleed explained. “Like a little fountain that sits on a table, and it’s just for chocolate.”

  “’S’not what a cruise is, though,” Frederick said, his words slurring together. “The daiquiris and fountains and beach…’s’all good. But what a cruise really is … is a chance to get away. Get away from all your problems.”

  The boys were quiet for a long time.

  “Swear on your mom’s life there’s a chocolate fountain,” Specs demanded.

  Frederick sighed. Normally, he refused to swear anything on his mom’s life because if it turned out that he was making a mistake, he didn’t want to have accidentally killed her. But in this case, Frederick—even in his confused, sleep-drunk state—knew what he was talking about.

  He lifted one heavy arm and let his hand plop down over his heart like he was reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. “I swear to you on my mother’s life,” he said, “there are chocolate fountains.”

  A moment of silence followed this pronouncement.

  “You know what I did to get sent to Omigoshee?” the Professor said suddenly.

  “What?” Frederick asked.

  “I didn’t try out for the middle school football team.” The Professor’s voice was quiet, not traveling farther than the five of them as he spoke.

  Frederick wondered how not trying out for football was bad enough to get you sent to Camp Omigoshee. He had assumed that the boys who were sent to disciplinary camp had done something really, really bad.

  The Professor went on. “I had a growth spurt at the end of last school year. Seven inches in three months. I ate so many bologna sandwiches. And the coach at school—he kept telling me I’ve got to join the team, I’ve got to try out.

  “‘Don’t just think of yourself,’” the Professor said in a gruff growl, like he was imitating the coach. “‘Think of what you can do for your school.’” Then he sighed. “But I don’t want to be on the team. I like to watch football and I like to read. That’s it. So I never put my name on the sign-up sheet and didn’t go to the first tryout. The next thing I know, the guidance counselor sends a letter to my parents about how I won’t participate at school because I have a bad attitude and maybe I should go to this camp…” His voice trailed off.

  “What did your parents do?” Ant Bite asked. “I mean, they took your side, right?”

  “No. They sent me here, didn’t they?” the Professor said. He didn’t sound angry, just resigned.

  “Do you guys want to know what I did to get sent here?” Specs asked eagerly.

  “No,” Frederick and Ant Bite said together.

  “Not really,” the Professor said.

  “I want to know,” Nosebleed’s voice called.

  “I broke somebody’s glasses,” Specs said, and then paused.

  Frederick sighed.

  “I broke my teacher’s glasses,” Specs said with a note of awe in his voice, like he couldn’t believe it himself.

  Nobody said anything for a while.

  “Did you hear what I said?” Specs demanded.

  The Professor grunted. “How do we know you’re not just saying that?” he asked. “You may just want us to think you’re tough.”

  “I did do it!” Specs insisted. “How do we know you’re not just saying all that stuff about football, huh?”

  “We should do it,” Ant Bite said suddenly. “We should go on a cruise.”

  “Us?” Frederick said, and his first thought was that there was no way any of them would ever go anywhere together. But then, to his surprise, he found that he could easily imagine being on a cruise with Nosebleed, the Professor, Ant Bite, and even Specs. They were all in lounge chairs with strawberry daiquiris. All careening down the waterslide. If Frederick had imagined going on a cruise with the boys from Group Thirteen earlier in the day, he would’ve been terrified. But now, with all of them sprawled out on the asphalt, he wasn’t afraid at all. Today had actually been kind of fun. While he had been climbing the rope or swimming or arguing with Specs, it hadn’t felt particularly fun. But looking back on it, he realized that it had been. Even arguing with Specs. Frederick had felt like he was a part of something, like he belonged.

  “Yeah,” Frederick said. “That’d be great.”

  “Let’s go, then,” Ant Bite said. “Let’s go now.”

  “We’d get in trouble,” Nosebleed said. “We’re not supposed to leave camp. We’re not even supposed to be out here.”

  “It’d be worth it,” the Professor said at once. “To get to go on a cruise, it’d be worth it.”

  “The counselors would send out a search party for us,” Nosebleed said. “Call our families and tell ’em we were missing.”

  “We could slash their tires,” Ant Bite suggested quickly.

  “And smash the telephone,” Specs added. “If Dash wasn’t too scared.”

  “I’m not scared,” Frederick protested groggily.

  “And then they couldn’t follow us or tell on us,” Ant Bite finished.

  Frederick opened his eyes and let his head fall sideways so he could look at the younger boy. Ant Bite’s eyes were closed. And for the first time since Frederick had met him, he looked happy. Happy at the thought of slashing tires, but still … it was nice.

  “How will we get there, though?” Specs asked.

  Frederick pointed his face toward the stars again and closed his eyes. “Take Interstate 16 until you get to 95. Then go south all the way to Port Verde Shoals.”

  “Are we really going to do it?” Nosebleed asked.

  “I’m not scared,” Specs said.

  “Let’s do it,” the Professor said. “Let’s do it for real.”

  Frederick didn’t know how long Group Thirteen lay in the road beneath the glittering stars, soaking up the heat from the pavement and imagining every detail of their dream vacation. He just knew that at some point that night, the others got up, and Nosebleed and the Professor, being the biggest, hauled him to his feet and draped his arms over their shoulders, and they staggered back to their cabin and to a peaceful slumber.

  12

  A Failure to Communicate

  Frederick’s mom was huge. Way, way too big. Or maybe Frederick was too small. Yeah, that was it. He was the size of an actual flea, and his mom was coming at him, her gigantic feet making the earth shudder beneath him.

  “Mom?” Frederick said.

  She was shaking a can of Raid, the metal ball inside it clacking against the container.

  “Mom! Do
n’t spray me!” Frederick shouted. “It’s me! Frederick!”

  But she didn’t hear him.

  “Everything’s ready,” Ant Bite’s voice said. “You’ve got to wake up.”

  “No!” Frederick yelled, and the walls of his nightmare collapsed like a house of cards.

  Then someone was shaking his shoulder, and he opened his eyes to see that daylight filled the cabin, and Ant Bite actually was standing over him and speaking.

  “’Kay.” Frederick yawned hugely. “Wake up,” he repeated, and on autopilot, his body pushed itself up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He groaned as he straightened out his stiff back … and arms … and legs. The mattress was almost as uncomfortable as sleeping in the bottom of Mr. Mincey’s boat.

  “We slashed the tires on all the trucks,” Ant Bite said.

  “Mugh?” Frederick moaned through another yawn.

  “And cut the phone line,” Ant Bite said.

  “Gosh, that must’ve been hard work,” Frederick said with admiration, and then he crashed backward on the bed and fell asleep again.

  “Hey.” Ant Bite snapped his fingers in front of Frederick’s face. “Are you awake?”

  “Nuh-uh,” Frederick said. He wasn’t awake. He’d gone from one nightmare to a different one where Ant Bite was admitting to committing some terrible crime. That was so stressful, Frederick thought.

  “Wake up,” Ant Bite said. “Do you hear me? We’ve got everything ready to go.”

  Frederick was slowly realizing that he was not asleep and this was not a dream. Ant Bite—the real Ant Bite and not dream Ant Bite—had just told him that they’d slashed the tires and cut the phone line.

  Frederick clutched a handful of his thin sheet. Then he opened his eyes and waited for Ant Bite to come into focus.

  “You cut the phone line,” Frederick said from the safety of his mattress.

  Ant Bite nodded.

  “And you slashed the tires,” Frederick said.

  “And we broke into Eric’s office and got some supplies.” Ant Bite nodded again.

  “But why?” Frederick said. “Why would you do that?”