Lions & Liars

by Kate Beasley

  “Yeah,” said Ant Bite. “I bet they’re telling each other now, ‘I hope Ant Bite and Frederick aren’t too worried.’”

  Without discussing it, they both went back to the table where they’d eaten their sandwiches. Instead of sitting in the chairs, though, they sat cross-legged on the floor. They scooted under the table and listened to the rain getting heavier and heavier as the minutes passed.

  Earlier that afternoon, while Frederick and Ant Bite had been sitting on the porch waiting for Benjamin, it hadn’t really been raining. It had been misting. Then, while they were eating their sandwiches, it had started drizzling. When the limb had taken out the electricity, it had been raining. After another hour or so, it was just getting ridiculous.

  The rain was coming in horizontally and hitting one entire wall of the main building like bullets.

  Of course, Frederick had never heard bullets hitting a building in real life, but he was sure that it would sound like this. He thought that Ant Bite must be thinking the same thing, because he kept turning the flashlight on and pointing it around the room through all the table legs. Frederick thought he was checking to see if there were little holes in the walls where the rain had punched through.

  Ant Bite turned off the light, muttering, “Don’t want to kill the batteries.”

  What felt like thirty seconds later, he turned it back on to scan the room again. Frederick was about to tell Ant Bite to cut it out and give him the flashlight when Ant Bite yelled, “Hey, what’s that?” and crawled out from under the table.

  Frederick hurried after him, banging the top of his head. He was rubbing his skull as he walked toward the spot where Ant Bite stood, pointing the light down at the floor.

  “What’s…” Frederick’s voice trailed off.

  Water had rolled under the double doors and was spreading across the smooth floor.

  Obviously, it wasn’t good to have water in the building. The water was supposed to stay outside. But on the bright side, Frederick thought, it was just water. Water would just get them wet; it wouldn’t hurt them. He turned to Ant Bite, about to say something to that effect, but Ant Bite was backing away from the puddle like it was lava.

  “We’re going to drown,” Ant Bite said, looking at the oozing line.

  “No, we’re not,” Frederick said, thinking this was a major overreaction. “It’s, like, a centimeter of water.” He stepped into the shallow puddle to demonstrate how he was completely unharmed. He was just standing on some wet linoleum. It didn’t even come up over the soles of his shoes.

  “Yeah, but it’s going to keep coming and fill the whole room.” Ant Bite’s voice was panicky.

  “It’s not going to fill the whole room,” Frederick said. “That would be impossible.

  “Listen,” he continued in a reasonable voice when Ant Bite was quiet for too long. “When the water gets to here”—he grabbed the barrel of the flashlight in Ant Bite’s hand and pointed the beam at a black scuff mark on the floor, a spot that was almost in the middle of the room—“that’s when we’ll need to worry.” He had to speak loudly to be heard over the bullet rain and the wind.

  “Okay?” Frederick said.

  Ant Bite didn’t answer.

  * * *

  “When the water gets up to here,” Frederick said, and made a line with his finger on the wall, “then we’ll need to be worried.”

  It was late. Just after midnight, according to the clock on the wall. The wind and rain had died down a bit, Frederick thought, but the water level continued to inch up. An ankle-deep layer of water now covered the entire floor and was rising slowly.

  For the last several hours he had kept revising his estimate of when they would need to worry. When it gets to this Band-Aid stuck on the floor, that’s when we’re in trouble. When it gets to the other wall, THEN we’ll have a problem.

  Now, he sloshed back to where Ant Bite sat on top of a table. The other boy had gotten quieter and quieter until finally he was completely silent, and whenever Frederick turned on the flashlight to check the water level, Ant Bite stared at him with big eyes and didn’t even remind him about the danger of killing the batteries. Frederick was starting to get freaked out—more by Ant Bite’s silence than by the water. Ant Bite hadn’t been scared of anything. Not rope climbing, not Eric, not Specs, not the idea of breaking into Eric’s cabin or even running away from camp. But now he was scared.

  Frederick pushed himself up on the table and let his legs swing down, the toes of his shoes touching the water. A boom came from somewhere outside. Limbs had been falling all night. Maybe even trees.

  “We have to do something,” Ant Bite said suddenly. He snatched up the flashlight Frederick had set down and hopped off the table.

  The howling of the wind changed pitch then, and the building shuddered.

  “What do you suggest?” Frederick asked, spreading his hands to indicate the flooded room, the lack of electricity, the lack of adults and trucks, the lack of telephones and can openers.

  “We have to get out of here,” Ant Bite said in a determined voice.

  “Benjamin’s letter said to stay in the main building,” Frederick reminded him.

  “Benjamin could be dead!” Ant Bite said, and started toward the front doors.

  “Benjamin’s not dead!” Of course he wasn’t dead! Because that was impossible, because … Frederick thought of Benjamin, bouncing up to the food tent, a lanyard swinging from his fist. He thought of him looming over Frederick as he lay on the ground after falling from the bell. He thought of the counselor pulling at his own sleeve to observe the bird poo that had landed on him. “This is a hurricane! You can’t go outside during a hurricane.” Frederick waded through the darkness, following Ant Bite and the skittering light in his hand, trying to reach him before—

  Ant Bite opened one of the doors, and the wind got ten times louder and gusted into the main room, hitting Frederick so hard that it knocked him back a step.

  “Close the door!” Frederick said, grabbing the edge of the door with both hands and trying to force it shut.

  But Ant Bite stepped into the opening between the inside and the outside.

  “We have to stay inside!” Frederick yelled.

  “What’s that?” Ant Bite yelled over the wind. He was holding the flashlight in both hands.

  “I don’t see anything!” Frederick said. He didn’t. Everything was dark and wet and wet and dark outside. But as he continued to look, he did see the weak light flashing off something white. It was small and hard to make out, but Frederick slowly realized what he was looking at.

  A hundred feet in the distance, wedged between some pine trees, was Mr. Mincey’s boat. The boat had been down at the river, Frederick knew. He grabbed the barrel of the light in Ant Bite’s hands and moved it over the camp and realized that the river was everywhere. It had risen and spread into the woods. The boat must have floated up and gotten stuck in the trees.

  “That’s my friend—my friend Joel’s boat,” Frederick said. “Well, it’s his dad’s boat.”

  “We should go get in it!” Ant Bite said. He pulled the light away from Frederick and pointed it back at the streak of white in the darkness. “A boat would float no matter how high the water got.”

  Frederick was shaking his head. Everywhere the light touched, wind was whipping water into froth. The roof shuddered over their heads.

  “No,” he said to Ant Bite. “That’s too dangerous. Limbs could fall on us. Like the transformer fell. We could fall out of the boat.”

  “We’ll drown if we stay here!” Ant Bite shouted.

  “No, we won’t,” Frederick said. “We’ll—we’ll stay on the tables, and if the water gets higher than the tables—which probably won’t happen—then we’ll go outside and get on the roof.”

  “How will we get on the roof?” Ant Bite demanded.

  “We’ll swim,” Frederick said. “Or we’ll find something that floats.”

  “I can’t swim,” Ant Bite said.

/>   “You can’t swim,” Frederick said back to him, not understanding. Then he remembered Ant Bite wearing the life vest when the campers did their swimming rotation. “Oh, brother,” he muttered.

  It was a serious problem, but it seemed so ridiculous to Frederick. And so annoying. He knew he wasn’t being rational, but really, how could Ant Bite be so unprepared? It was like he had shown up for a cinnamon-roll-eating contest and announced that he was allergic to cinnamon. They were in the middle of a hurricane! With water everywhere! Being able to swim would’ve been really useful!

  “Okay.” Frederick tried to think of what they ought to do. He hadn’t seen any life vests in the pantry. Maybe he could teach Ant Bite to float.

  “We need to get in the boat,” Ant Bite said before Frederick could come up with anything. He gripped the door frame and rocked back and forth on his feet, like he was getting ready to throw himself off a diving board. “Before the water gets any higher.”

  “No!” Frederick said. Every nerve in his body was screaming at him to go back inside and wait for Benjamin and the search party.

  “I’m not staying here!” Ant Bite said. He looked toward Frederick.

  Frederick couldn’t make out his face in the darkness. Then Ant Bite started down the stairs of the porch, stepping deeper into the water.

  Frederick held on to the door, indecision tearing him in two. Ant Bite was already disappearing into the darkness. If Frederick was going to go with him, he needed to leave right now. He didn’t move. He couldn’t. It was a terrible idea to go out in the storm. He had to stay inside, where at least he had a roof over his head.

  But when he looked back at the dark and empty main room, Frederick didn’t feel safe there. He felt alone. It seemed like no matter what he did, he always ended up alone. Falling branches hit the roof, making him flinch. Frederick realized he had made a mistake.

  He didn’t want to be alone. If you were with somebody else—if you had a friend—then even if terrible things were happening, at least there was somebody there to make you feel braver. It was hard to be brave by yourself.

  “Hey!”

  Frederick spun around. The flashlight beam arced across the porch as Ant Bite grabbed the doorway. He’d come back. “Listen,” he said to Frederick. “I’m not leaving without you.”

  Frederick’s heart unclenched.

  “But I really think we need to go!” Ant Bite went on.

  The light that Frederick had felt in his chest earlier was back again. This time he didn’t try to stop it. He took a deep breath.

  “Hey!” Ant Bite waved his fingers in front of Frederick’s face. “Are you okay?”

  Frederick shook his head, bringing himself back to where he was—the open doorway of the main cabin, his hair dripping rainwater in his eyes, and the hurricane raging around him.

  “Yeah!” he answered. “I’m great! Let’s go!” Frederick realized he was beaming. He could feel the grin on his face, and he knew that that was probably not the most appropriate reaction to have in the middle of a natural disaster, but he couldn’t help it because it felt so good to have Ant Bite back. Even though he’d only been gone for about twenty seconds.

  “Uh…” Ant Bite was looking at him with raised eyebrows. He didn’t seem to share Frederick’s sudden happiness.

  Frederick laughed at Ant Bite’s confused expression and stepped to the edge of the porch, calling over his shoulder, “It’s just a little wind! We’ll be fine!”

  21

  Teeth of the Storm

  Frederick waded forward, his arm linked with Ant Bite’s. About four seconds after they had gotten off the front porch, the happy, glowy feeling in his chest had been replaced by a please-don’t-let-me-die feeling.

  The two boys bowed their heads together and hunched their shoulders against the wind. The water rose up to Frederick’s knees, and even higher on Ant Bite. A current pulled at Frederick’s legs, and the wind blasted against him. He put his foot down, and the ground seemed to fall away from him. He staggered, barely staying upright. With the next step, he staggered again. The water was getting deeper. Through his panic and fear, he slowly realized what this meant.

  They were going downhill. Downhill was not good in a flood. He was about to shout a warning, but he felt a tug as Ant Bite’s arm unhooked from his. Then Ant Bite was falling.

  Frederick yelled and grabbed. The only part of Ant Bite he could reach was his face. Teeth closed hard on one of Frederick’s fingers.

  “Aaah!” Frederick shouted. The wind carried his yell into the night. He had a grip on one ear and Ant Bite’s jaw, and he dragged Ant Bite up by these handles.

  Ant Bite got his feet under him. He pushed Frederick’s hand away from his mouth, grabbing Frederick’s arm to steady himself.

  The flashlight, which Ant Bite had been holding, was gone.

  “You’re okay!” Frederick said.

  Rain ran down his face. He held on to Ant Bite and thought about bending down to see if he could find the flashlight. It must be on the ground nearby. The current wouldn’t have carried it too far. Then he heard a sound.

  He looked around. A dark shape seemed to be sweeping through the woods between them and the main building. Frederick didn’t—

  Boom. A swell of water reached Frederick’s armpits. The ground shook, and shock waves rippled through Frederick’s body like he was a giant tuning fork.

  He reached out one shaking hand, and his fingertips brushed across papery bark. One of the towering pine trees had fallen, landing six inches from where Frederick and Ant Bite were huddled.

  Boom. The sound came from farther away. Then again. Boom. Trees were falling all around them.

  For a moment, Frederick was frozen. Then he grabbed a fistful of Ant Bite’s T-shirt. “Run!” he shouted over the storm. “Run! Run! Run!”

  They ran, holding on to each other’s arms, pushing through the water, dragging each other forward.

  They reached the boat faster than should’ve been possible. The boat dipped and scraped against the trees as Ant Bite reached up, gripped the edge of the hull, and then scrambled up and over.

  Frederick held on to the edge of the boat. He couldn’t climb as well as Ant Bite. The side of the boat was a vertical wall that was slick with water, and the wind was trying to tear him away from it. He pulled himself up but fell back at once, his arms giving out.

  Frederick adjusted his feet. If he could just get a good jump off the ground. Or if he had something to climb up on.

  “Come on!” Ant Bite yelled. “Don’t let go!”

  Both of these were things Frederick had already thought of.

  He braced his foot against one of the trees the boat was caught in and pushed off. He got almost high enough to see into the boat, and then he fell back into the water. Frederick shouted in frustration. His heart hammered.

  Ant Bite leaned back to balance the boat and gripped Frederick’s arms, yelling through his teeth.

  Frederick heaved himself up with all his strength.

  Ant Bite’s hands scrabbled frantically, pulling the back of the jersey. Then he grabbed the belt loop on the back of Frederick’s shorts and yanked, hauling Frederick up with more strength than he could possibly possess in his thin arms. Frederick inched up the side of the boat, and his shorts inched up his backside.

  “Okay, stop!” Frederick yelled. “STOP!”

  But Ant Bite didn’t stop. He kept pulling on Frederick’s shorts, until Frederick splashed into the boat, panting and shaking.

  He gasped in relief, but that feeling lasted only a second.

  In his scramble to get in the boat, Frederick had dislodged it from where it was wedged in the trees. Now the wind was pushing them across the water, sending them ricocheting off tree trunks. Each crash jarred Frederick’s body. He clung to the seat to brace himself.

  “The boat’s full of water!” Ant Bite yelled.

  It was true. Frederick hadn’t noticed it immediately because he was so soaked that it almost did
n’t matter, but he was kneeling in the bottom of the boat, in a pool of water.

  He turned his face to Ant Bite, not able to see his expression in the dark. “That’s because it’s raining in it!” he yelled. And it was obvious to him, now, that this would be a problem.

  Frederick looked down at the water around his legs.

  “Scoop!” Ant Bite yelled. “Scoop! Scoop!” And he cupped his hands together and flung water out of the boat.

  For a moment, Frederick didn’t move. With a sinking feeling he watched Ant Bite working against the rain, splashing water out of the runaway boat. Then he frantically started scooping water with his hands and flinging it over the side.

  22

  The Stupid Ending

  Eventually, Frederick and Ant Bite were too exhausted to do anything but hold on to the sides of the boat as the wind knocked them into trees and hurled sticks and leaves and water at them. Pine needles stung Frederick’s arms and face as they hit him.

  Gradually the rain stopped. The wind became a breeze and then a breath and then stilled completely as early light stained the forest around them.

  Frederick had been wrong before about a little water not being too bad. After being wet for so long, he was shivering and shriveled. He and Ant Bite balanced on the boat’s metal bench seats and propped their feet on the sides to keep them out of the water. The pinky finger on Frederick’s right hand was bloody and aching from where Ant Bite had bitten it.

  As the sun rose, they saw that they were floating through a world of water. It stretched in every direction. Everywhere, trees had fallen to the ground or snapped in half. Giant limbs speared the earth and rose out of the water. Their boat was dented and had deep scratches in the hull. It looked like it had been attacked by a pack of velociraptors.

  “Isn’t it a beautiful day?” Ant Bite said, smiling upward and closing his eyes against the sunlight. He looked like he’d been run through a washing machine, but he seemed cheerful. As if in agreement, a bird over their heads began to chirp.

  “That was,” Frederick said, “the worst idea anyone ever had. Ever.”