Lions & Liars

by Kate Beasley

  Frederick turned his head this way and that, looking for Ant Bite, trying to spot a flash of white T-shirt or a glimpse of dark hair against all the brown and green. Ant Bite couldn’t have gotten too far. He had been walking, whereas Frederick was running, so Frederick was bound to catch him soon.

  He would find Ant Bite and warn him about the hurricane. Ant Bite would probably still be mad at him, but Frederick would just have to live with that. They would come back to camp together and be okay. That was all that mattered.

  There were no paths through the woods, but Frederick’s feet seemed to instinctively find a route by avoiding the thickest brambles and tightest clusters of scrub.

  But when the brambles and scrub got thicker and thicker, Frederick slowed to a walk, panting. The giant red jersey stuck to his sweaty back like Saran Wrap to a pudding.

  “Ant Bite!” Frederick called.

  He stopped walking so that the crunch of leaves under his shoes cut off. Frederick listened so hard he felt like his ears were twitching. The chirps, peeps, and squawks of dozens of birds grew louder and louder as he listened. The roar of wind in the pine tops, the buzz of insects. But no answering call from Ant Bite.

  Frederick cupped his hands around his mouth and tipped his head back. “Ant Bite!”

  The birds went on with their own conversations, as if Frederick, shouting down below them, didn’t matter.

  He started walking again, swatting at a gnat that was flying around his head.

  A tree root caught the toe of Frederick’s shoe, and he had to hop several steps to keep his balance. He regained his footing and steadied himself, looking back at the dumb root that had tripped him. When he looked up again, something had changed. The woods seemed different … less friendly.

  What if Ant Bite hadn’t come this way? He might’ve gone a little more that way, Frederick thought, looking to the left. Or a little more that way. He looked right. Or maybe he’d gotten farther than Frederick had guessed. He might be a mile ahead of Frederick.

  How much time did he have before the counselors left without him? Slowly, Frederick looked back in the direction of the camp.

  The trees that he had walked past stretched strangely into the distance, like a camera zooming out. Everything looked different from this angle. Was camp really that way?

  Frederick needed to go back. He needed to go back before he couldn’t find his way back. But without wanting to, he remembered how Ant Bite had helped him win at dodgeball and everything he’d said after, and Frederick winced. Somebody like you … The words echoed in his mind.

  The gnat that had been orbiting his head was now trying to drink the fluid off the surface of his eye.

  “Argh!” he growled at the empty woods, and slapped at the gnat.

  He turned back around and stomped after Ant Bite again. Or … at least, he started stomping in the direction he hoped Ant Bite had gone.

  “Ant Bite!” he yelled, and he heard a creaky, squeaky note in his voice. He clenched and unclenched his hands as he walked. His foot crunched a pinecone.

  Rough pine bark was everywhere he turned. Frustration and fear made his vision shaky, and his breath was so loud in his own ears that he worried if Ant Bite did call out to him, he wouldn’t be able to hear it.

  Crunch, crunch, crunch went the leaves. Whoosh-whish went Frederick’s breath. After a while, he began to imagine that he heard voices, wheedling their way through the noise in his own head. Great, he thought, I’m hearing voices now.

  Frederick slowed down. He did hear voices.

  “Ant Bite?” he said, and he picked up his pace, jogging toward the sound.

  As the voices got louder, the trees began to thin, and suddenly, Frederick jogged out of the forest and found himself at the bottom of a ditch on a roadside. The blacktop was high, over his head, and a steep bank of grass rose between him and the pavement. He’d never realized, riding in the car, how tall highways could be compared to the land around them.

  He heard banging and then a man’s voice called out, “Make sure those bolts are secure!”

  Relief flooded Frederick. They were adult voices. They could help him. Maybe they’d even seen Ant Bite! He climbed up the hill and onto the highway and looked left and right.

  Frederick did a double take.

  To the right, far off, several tractor-trailer trucks were wrecked, lying on their sides, having skidded off the road and into the trees. “Whoa,” Frederick whispered. He moved closer.

  Tires were suspended in the air. Metal cabs were crushed like Coke cans. Glass frosted the road, glittering in the sun.

  It looked like something out of a movie … well, Frederick amended, a movie like Transformers. Not one like The Secret Garden or Winnie the Pooh.

  He moved cautiously toward the trucks.

  “Is anybody hurt?” a woman yelled.

  “We’re all good here!” a man answered.

  As Frederick got closer, he saw men and women moving around the trucks, climbing up on the overturned trailers, and calling out to one another. None of them had noticed Frederick yet.

  He paused, trying to take in the scene. A logo on one of the trucks said JACKSONVILLE ZOO AND GARDENS. Glo had said the Jacksonville Zoo was evacuating, Frederick remembered.

  He was about to call out to them when an explosion of squawks from one of the trailers made him jump. The squawks died down, and then rose again. It sounded like an entire flock of birds was trying to get out of the trailer.

  “There are nails in the road!” a man shouted. He tore the baseball cap off his head and scraped a heavy work boot against the asphalt. “Someone’s put nails in the road!” He slapped his baseball cap against the side of his thigh.

  “Hey!” a woman shouted. “He’s out! The male’s gone!”

  The man swore and tugged his cap securely back on his head.

  “Get the tranq!” the woman called.

  “Okay, everybody listen up,” the man shouted. “We’ve got to get him back! Mitch! You got the tracker?”

  “Yeah!” a man shouted.

  Frederick lifted a hand, opening his mouth.

  “This way!” Mitch said.

  “Hey!” Frederick called.

  The men and women jogged down the road, away from Frederick.

  “Wait!” he called, running after them. They were shouting to one another, and maybe they didn’t hear him, or maybe they thought he was one of them, running and shouting. Whatever the reason, they didn’t slow down.

  “Wait!” Frederick yelled again, his feet pounding the pavement. He ran after them until his lungs burned. Then he kept walking down the middle of the road, watching the zookeepers get smaller and smaller until, when they were far ahead, they turned off the road and disappeared into the woods. And Frederick was alone again. He walked along the empty road.

  On either side of the road, pine trees tossed in the wind. The trunks swayed. Clouds grew thick in the sky. Frederick was trying not to notice these things. Instead, he was trying to think about how hurricanes were slow moving. His traitorous brain reminded him that he’d once thought the Omigoshee River was slow moving. He tried to think about how the hurricane was probably way out in the ocean, so he had plenty of time. He tried to think that he was going to find Ant Bite really soon. He tried to think about how any minute now he would hear the growl of the diesel truck and how Glo’s eyes would bug out as she yelled at him for running off. He tried to think about how hungry he was. This last one was easy because he hadn’t eaten anything all day, and he would’ve, for real, given away his entire college savings account for some of Miss Betty’s pancakes right then.

  Frederick walked to the edge of the road and half climbed, half slid down the ditch. He went to the first tree he came to and sat down, leaning back against the rough trunk. The wind lifted the hair off his forehead.

  The chances of someone in a search party finding him … in time … were probably, like, one in a hundred thousand. He imagined Raj’s voice saying, It wouldn’t be
an even number like that. It would probably be, like, one in three hundred eighty-two thousand and five.

  “Shoot,” Frederick muttered, banging the back of his head against the pine trunk.

  His eyes watered, and so what? Nobody would know. He might as well cry.

  But what if, a voice in his head insisted, someone from the search party walked up at the exact moment he was crying? He would wipe his eyes as fast as he could, but it would be obvious that he’d been crying because his eyes would be puffy and red. They would know. And he would know that they knew.

  He pushed himself off the ground and started to walk off the crying feeling.

  As he walked, it did seem like he was leaving his tears behind, but every step brought him closer and closer to the fact that he had been wrong. He had been wrong at the dodgeball game and after the dodgeball game, too. The others had helped him win, and he hadn’t said thank you. Ant Bite and Specs and the Professor had wanted to go on a cruise, and he hadn’t even listened to them. He’d been mean to Ant Bite. He’d been a bad person.

  He’d known that for a while now. He’d known it even before he left camp to go after Ant Bite. He’d been trying to not know it, because every time he thought about it, shame squeezed his heart.

  The fact was that he had acted like Joel and Raj. Maybe even worse. He’d acted the way he’d always hated. He hadn’t meant to. Not exactly. It’d just happened. But he knew that that didn’t make it all right.

  Frederick was going to have to find a way to fix it. He would fix it, and then he would feel better, and he would never do it again. He just hoped he could fix it.

  “God?” Frederick said out loud. “I know that last time this didn’t work, but maybe that’s because you were saving up because you knew that I’d need an even bigger favor later. That was really great of you.” Frederick wanted God to know that he didn’t have any hard feelings about the whole not-helping-him-when-he-was-in-the-river thing. “But I was just hoping that … if you don’t mind too much … you could maybe get me out of here?” He paused. “And Ant Bite, too,” he added. “And soon. Soon would be good. I mean, whenever you want is fine, and help me to make it right with Ant Bite and the others, okay? Okay, I’ll be ready to get out of here in five, four, three … two…” Frederick swallowed. “One.”

  There was nothing. No sound of a person coming to help him. No sign of Ant Bite. Frederick was alone.

  Then the wind shifted the clouds, and the sky brightened. A column of sunlight lanced through the gloom. Frederick’s eyes, drawn to the sunbeam, followed it down, and there, standing in front of him, framed by brilliant light, was a strange and graceful animal. It reminded Frederick of a deer. It had a dusty-colored coat with white stripes. Its horns were tall and spiraled gently upward. The animal held its head proudly. Its ears flicked, and it turned its neck to regard Frederick with startled, wet eyes.

  “Wow,” Frederick breathed. The deer must’ve been the animal that had escaped from the truck, the one all the zookeepers were looking for.

  Frederick didn’t move for fear of scaring the animal away. The ears flicked again, and its tongue stretched out and touched its nose. Other than these tiny, sudden movements, it stood perfectly still while all around it the woods tossed and swayed in the wind. Frederick had the sense that he and the deer were in a bubble and that inside it, time had stopped. He could live in this moment forever, and nothing could touch him. He didn’t need to feel ashamed of anything or afraid of anything.

  Then there was motion behind the deer. Frederick looked and saw an enormous lion placing its front paw soundlessly on the ground. Its golden eyes were fixed on the deer.

  Frederick gasped just as the lion unfurled like silk and launched itself at the beautiful animal. The deer made a sudden bleating sound as the lion’s jaws closed on its hindquarters. The deer’s front legs scrabbled at the ground like it was trying to run even as the lion dragged it back.

  Frederick’s mouth opened to scream, but his lungs were deflated, and the only sound that came out was a weak eeeee, like air leaking from a tire.

  Then someone was running out of the woods toward him. Frederick eeee-ed with more energy.

  “Run!” Ant Bite yelled, dragging at Frederick’s arm. “Run!”

  Frederick didn’t need telling twice. Well, Ant Bite had just told him twice, so he had needed telling twice. But he didn’t need telling a third time.

  He ran, pumping his arms, keeping pace with Ant Bite, and he would’ve left Ant Bite in the dust if he could’ve, but the smaller boy was running flatout, too.

  “That’s a li— a li—” Frederick choked out as he ran.

  “I know it’s a lion!” Ant Bite yelled. “Run!”

  18

  The Letter

  Frederick ran. Ant Bite was beside him. The brambles and the tree roots and the scrubby bushes didn’t matter anymore. Frederick flew through and over every obstacle in his path.

  Sweat poured off his face. His chest burned, and in the spaces between his heartbeats, he imagined teeth closing on his ankle and jerking him backward.

  Pain stabbed through Frederick’s ribs, and he staggered. He grabbed a tree to keep himself on his feet and looked over his shoulder, thinking he’d been attacked, before he realized the woods were empty behind him. It was just a stitch.

  “Come on. Come on,” Ant Bite panted. He had pulled up a few feet ahead of Frederick. He was clutching his knees, breathing hard. He leaned forward and spit and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Come on,” he said again.

  Frederick nodded, pushed himself off the tree, and followed Ant Bite.

  They staggered through the woods in what Frederick hoped was the direction of camp.

  “It was a boy lion,” Ant Bite said after a few minutes.

  Frederick blinked. Had it been a boy lion? Did it matter? He didn’t think it mattered.

  “It had a mane.” Ant Bite patted both sides of his neck, where the lion’s mane had been. Then he settled his hands back onto the strap of the shoulder bag slung diagonally across his body.

  Frederick didn’t say anything.

  “It’s good I saw you,” Ant Bite said in a remarkably calm voice for someone who’d just seen a full-grown lion killing a beautiful animal. “I saved your life.”

  Again, Frederick said nothing. He was grateful that Ant Bite had run up when he had. But he didn’t trust himself to open his mouth to say thanks, just in case that eee sound came out again. He guessed that seeing a lion attack made people react differently, because Ant Bite kept up a stream of commentary.

  He told Frederick about weird trees he’d seen on his way to the road. He told him he hadn’t been scared to be in the woods alone, but he’d gotten bored without anyone to talk to. He told Frederick about how he’d planned to make it to Interstate 95 and hitch rides from drivers heading south. And how he was excited to go on a cruise, even if he was by himself.

  “I only decided to come back when the weather started getting scary.” Ant Bite looked up at the heavy sky and the trees bending in the wind. As he spoke, a pinecone dropped between the two of them, making Frederick jump.

  “This looks pretty bad,” Ant Bite said.

  When Frederick finally spoke, his voice was raspy and strange. “It’s a hurricane. There’s a hurricane coming,” he said. “Glo told us just after you left.”

  Ant Bite looked at him. “Like a hurricane hurricane?”

  Frederick nodded.

  “Huh,” Ant Bite said.

  “I came out here to warn you,” Frederick said, and then he stopped himself from saying any more. He didn’t want to upset Ant Bite by telling him they were lost in the woods and everyone else had been making plans to leave a couple of hours ago.

  “Thanks,” Ant Bite said. “Thanks for coming out here to warn me.”

  “You’re welcome,” Frederick said in a strangely formal way.

  They were both quiet for a moment.

  “Who’s Glo?” Ant Bite asked.
r />   “She’s a counselor at camp. She showed up right after you left. Oh.” Frederick remembered. “I … uh … I’ve got to tell you something.” He shifted his shoulders. “Glo brought the real Dash Blackwood to camp. I’m not Dash. I was just pretending to be Dash because … because I wanted to stay at camp. But my name is Frederick Frederickson.” He paused to take a breath and realized how bizarre all of that sounded.

  “I know,” Ant Bite said.

  “What I mean is—” Frederick began. “Wait. You do?”

  “Yeah,” Ant Bite said. “I mean, I didn’t know you were Frederick Whoever, but I knew you weren’t Dash.”

  “How?” Frederick asked.

  “Because I’ve met the real Dash before.” Ant Bite kept his eyes on the path ahead, stepping high over fallen limbs. “We went to the same school before he got expelled for trying to run over kindergarteners with the floor polisher.”

  “Oh,” Frederick said.

  They walked in silence for a moment.

  “It’s a Category Five,” Frederick blurted. “The hurricane that’s going to hit is a Category Five. That’s the biggest category there is.”

  “Whoa,” Ant Bite said.

  Frederick nodded. “Glo says it’s so bad they’re going to make a movie. Like a disaster movie, and everyone else is evacuating. They even evacuated the Jacksonville Zoo, which is why … the lion.” He bobbed his head.

  Frederick expected Ant Bite to be shaken by this news, but the younger boy just held on to the bag’s strap and let out a small “Wow.”

  Ant Bite didn’t seem too worried about the hurricane. Now that the lion was far behind them, he was walking steadily through the woods, like this was a nature hike. Watching him step over tree roots and kick pinecones out of the path made Frederick feel less anxious about the whole thing.