Double the Danger and Zero Zucchini

by Betsy Uhrig

  We were? That sounded good to me.

  I was smiling back at her now. Not because of the money, although that was fine too. I was happy because the book was going forward again. Because my old-man sayings would be useful. Because now I had to find a weir and get a good look at it.

  Then I replayed the conversation in my head and asked, “Can you finish a whole book in a few months?”

  “I’m going to have to,” she said. “Babies are notoriously bad at sitting around and waiting for you to finish a chapter before you feed them. But I write fast and I’m super motivated. It shouldn’t be a problem.

  “The first thing I need from you,” Caroline concluded, standing up, “is a list of whatever fabulous fantasies you’ve been reading.”

  Uh-oh.

  “I’ve got a lot of catching up to do!” she said.

  47

  ALVIN AND I SPENT MOST OF the evening at Caroline and Lulu’s crawling around the floors to see if we got rug burns and how many breakables we could find at baby level. Alvin went above and beyond by chewing on an electrical cord, but he wasn’t shocked. Just yelled at by both aunts and both parents.

  There was a very short break for dinner, after which Lulu made us get back to work. Caroline was right about her—she was determined. She rewarded our hard work by letting us each put a hand on her stomach to feel the baby kicking. It felt more like someone was flicking her from the inside, in my opinion, but I guess if your feet are the size of a pinky finger, your kicking is going to feel more like flicking.

  “That’s our cousin in there,” said Alvin. He got down close to Lulu’s stomach and suddenly yelled, “Hellooooo, Cousin!”

  “Never do that again,” said Lulu.

  When we got home that night, I texted Javier and Marta the news that the book had risen from the dead, but we didn’t really discuss it until Monday at lunch. Even Javier didn’t know what a weir was, so that felt good. Then we got down to the real business.

  “How am I going to tell Caroline what books I’ve been reading when I haven’t been reading any?”

  “That’s easy,” said Marta. “We leave a note for the ghost, ask what books it’s been reading.”

  “We don’t need to do that,” said Javier as he carefully removed walnut chunks from a brownie. “We can go back to the basement and look in the boxes.”

  “Oh, goody,” said Marta. “Let’s make the process as dull as possible.”

  It wasn’t that I hadn’t thought of going through the books in the basement. I had. The problem was:

  “But those are books for adults. Caroline is writing for kids, and she wants to know what kids’ books I’ve been reading.”

  “Couldn’t you tell her you’ve been reading adult books?”

  “I’m way out on a limb with kids’ books already,” I said. “I don’t think I could convincingly claim that I’ve been reading those big fat adult books.”

  “You know what you have to do,” said Javier. “You just don’t want to do it.”

  “What?” asked Marta. “What does he have to do? What doesn’t he want to do?”

  But I knew.

  “The library,” I said. “I have to go to the library.”

  “Oh, it’s worse than that, my friend,” said Javier with real pleasure. He sat back in his chair, pointing his moth-eaten brownie at me as he spoke. “You have to ask the librarian to recommend some fantasies. And then you have to sit down. And then you have to read them.”

  He laughed long and hard, and what was left of his brownie fell on the floor.

  48

  I PUT OFF THAT TRIP TO the library for days. I kept telling myself I had too much to do after school, but I was mostly lying to myself about that. Finally, on Saturday, I ran out of excuses, so I laced on the old sneakers and ran to the main branch.

  It’s not like I’d never been there before. I knew the way. I just hadn’t spent as much time there as, say, Alvin had. I went in the late afternoon, hoping there wouldn’t be a bunch of tiny kids having story hour or whatever they did in the children’s room in their waist-high gangs.

  The children’s librarian was sitting at her desk. She was a get-right-to-the point type of person—that was obvious from her no-nonsense glasses. And she knew her stuff. She was always recommending books for Alvin that he immediately devoured in his sharklike way.

  “Alex Harmon,” she said when I’d arrived at her desk. “I knew you would come.”

  So that was odd, right? It sounded like the kind of thing you’d hear from someone wearing a burlap robe with a hood that hid most of her face. In reality, she was wearing normal clothes, though her sweater looked handmade.

  She stared at me patiently. She didn’t blink. Her hands were folded in front of her on the desk. They were the calmest, least fidgety hands I’d ever seen.

  I felt like I’d arrived at some mystical person’s cave after a dangerous trek up a steep mountain. I was surprised she didn’t serve me some weird tea made from roots. She did have some normal-looking tea of her own, but she didn’t offer me any.

  “How did you know I would come?” I asked when the staring had gotten uncomfortable. “I didn’t even know I was coming till this morning.”

  “I’ve been expecting you,” she said.

  Which was not an answer to my question.

  I was starting to think maybe I’d go to the branch library, when she added, “You’re ready, aren’t you?”

  “For what?” I fought the urge to back away from her slowly and then make a run for it by zigzagging through the picture-book section. I’d have to hurdle over the dad sitting on the floor cushion with his toddler and a book, but I was fast—I could make it.

  The librarian smiled. But it was more a smile of satisfaction than cheerfulness. She looked like a predator that has spotted its prey limping across the grassland, wearing thick glasses and a sweater vest.

  “What is it you seek?” she asked.

  49

  “I’M, UH, SEEKING SOME BOOKS,” I said to the librarian. I realized I was speaking in the soothing voice my mom used with her high-strung pet-sitting clients. But it didn’t seem to work on librarians.

  Her smile disappeared. One of her eyebrows rose while the other remained where it was. This is harder to do than it looks, I learned later in front of the bathroom mirror.

  “Some fantasy books,” I added quickly. “Whatever is good, whatever kids my age like. That’s the kind of book I need.”

  The eyebrow moved back into position. I let out a silent sigh.

  “I think I can give you some guidance with that.” She stood up. “Come.”

  Still sort of robe-and-sandals-in-a-remote-cave, wasn’t it? Where was her long, knobby staff? I followed her into J Fiction.

  “We don’t shelve science fiction and fantasy separately in the children’s room, but I can make a few suggestions to get you started,” she said as we entered the closest fiction aisle.

  I was relieved to be in more standard-librarian territory here. At least she hadn’t told me I had to answer three questions or battle the Beast of the J Fiction section.

  “Three questions first,” she said, not one second after I’d had this thought.

  “Okay,” I squeaked. At least she hadn’t threatened me with some sort of abyss if I got any of the questions wrong. Though an abyss seemed like a good idea for one of Gerald’s trials, come to think of it. I wished I had one of those stubby library pencils and a scrap of paper to write that down.

  “First, child or adult protagonist?” she asked me.

  I didn’t know what a protagonist was. It sounded kind of painful. “Uh, child?” Gerald was a child, and so was I, so I figured that was a safe choice.

  She nodded. I’d passed the first question.

  “Second, future Earth or alternate world or something in between?”

  At least I got the general idea about this one. “Alternate world,” I said.

  She nodded again. One more question to go. I had actually br
oken a sweat at this point. I reminded myself that the children’s room didn’t have an abyss. Alvin would have fallen into it if it did.

  “Third, humorous or serious?”

  This one I wasn’t sure about. Was Gerald in the Warlock’s Weir meant to be funny or serious? It seemed fairly serious so far, what with the evil warlock and the grampa trapped in a vortex. But then there were Snarko and the Daredevil. They were funny, especially when they argued. What sealed it was the knowledge that I was going to have to read these books.

  “Funny,” I said. “Funny would be good.”

  50

  YOU MIGHT HAVE RECOGNIZED SOME ASPECTS of Gerald’s climb up the Mountain of Mists to seek the wisdom of the Lost Librarian in the previous scene. If you’ve read Book 2, that is (and sorry about the spoiler if you haven’t). But we were still a long way from the Mountain of Mists when I ran down the library steps that afternoon.

  I looked back, once I’d made it partway down the sidewalk, just to make sure a great winged reptile hadn’t launched itself from the library roof to come after me, talons spread and jaws wide open. A pair of sparrows on a window ledge chirped at me, but they didn’t even bother to fly away as I passed.

  I skirted a nearby manhole cover, in case the Beast of J Fiction actually lived in the abyss and this manhole was its preferred exit. I found a safe-looking bench and sat for a minute to look at the books.

  The librarian had given me three of them, and they were not thin. I wasn’t dreading reading them, exactly, but it felt like I had added several more loads of homework to my weekend tonnage.

  When I got home, I decided to get it over with. I poured myself a tall glass of lemonade and lay on my bed with the shortest of the three books. I figured I would read the flap, maybe the first chapter, and skim the rest if I got bored. This was basically how I tackled any book assignment.

  The flap was fine. Told me what I was getting into without giving the whole plot away. (There’s nothing more annoying than “But then a sudden tragedy…” in book descriptions. It forces you to spend the whole time waiting for someone—or someone’s pet—to die.)

  The first chapter was only three pages long, which I appreciated. It ended with a cliff-hanger involving some creepiness and danger. Which proved that my instincts about how to start a book were right. I kept reading. And it kept being interesting and also got funny when the sidekick kicked in.

  I managed to read four chapters before my right leg got twitchy and I had to go for a run. As I ran, I compared what I’d been reading to Caroline’s book. Gerald in the Warlock’s Weir wasn’t quite as funny as this one, but it was just as exciting. And I might have been biased, but I thought Caroline’s sidekicks had more personality.

  I came back from my run seriously planning to keep reading. I took a seat and picked up the book. But then I saw my phone lying on the bed. I hadn’t checked my messages since before my run. What if someone had been trying to reach me? What if someone had posted something hilarious?

  I picked up the phone and started scrolling. There was nothing interesting there. But now the idea of reading a book wasn’t that appealing. I sat down at my computer and settled in for some Forehead-level Pimple Patrol.

  51

  I DID FINALLY FINISH THE FIRST of the books the librarian had recommended. And I read the flaps of the others. Then it was time to return them.

  I sent Caroline an e-mail with the names of the books. I felt bad that I hadn’t read more than one of them, but in my defense, I’d had a lot of homework during that time, and I didn’t feel like recreational reading on top of that.

  She wrote back almost immediately.

  Thank you soooo much for these!! I will run out and buy them right away. I’m so glad to have you advising me, Alex. You are definitely getting a big shout-out in the acknowledgments when this book is published. Which it looks like it might be!! The agent said she would ‘love to represent it’ if the ending lives up to the beginning. Still lots of work to do, but your book recommendations are going to be a huge help, along with the fabulous imaginative details you’ve been providing.

  This was all great for Caroline. But it left me in an uncomfortable position. First, she was convinced I was some kind of imaginative genius, when I wasn’t. And second, now she thought I’d read all these books and could give her advice on hers. I was digging myself deeper and deeper into this pit of—not lies, exactly, but something close. Something definitely worse than simple misunderstandings.

  Caroline had the wrong idea about me, and I was doing nothing to correct that. The fact was, I was having fun working on this book, and I didn’t want her to stop asking for my ideas. And she would stop if she realized what I actually had to offer. Which was close to nothing at all.

  I looked around at the pit I had dug myself into. And I made a decision: I wouldn’t dig anymore if I could help it, but I wasn’t ready to emerge from the pit shouting the truth about myself either. That could wait until Caroline was done. Then I would tell her everything. And she could decide if she still wanted to put my name in the acknowledgments. Whatever they were.

  52

  I WAS STANDING KNEE-DEEP IN A cold stream. I was wearing tall rain boots (borrowed from my mother—yes, embarrassing), but water had long since filled them, so now they were acting as extra-gravity boots. I was holding a large rock in two hands. I had already dropped a similar large rock on my left foot, so I was cradling this one as if it were explosive.

  Javier was standing on the bank of the stream, filming me and smirking at me at the same time. Marta was next to him, yelling instructions at both of us. Her elbow was supposedly healed, but her mother still wouldn’t let her use that arm.

  The stream was small—maybe four feet across—but it made up for size with its coldness. It was also surprisingly deep.

  “You can’t leave any spaces between the rocks!” Marta yelled.

  “They’re rocks,” I yelled back, “not bricks. There are going to be spaces.”

  “It’s not going to work if the water can go between them.”

  “It’s not going to work if I come over there and bash your toe with this—”

  But I couldn’t finish my threat, because now I was losing my footing on the streambed and flailing around for balance while holding a large rock. The rock fell, splashing me in all the places I wasn’t already soaked.

  “I’m going to get pneumonia,” I yelled.

  “You can’t get pneumonia from being cold,” said Javier. “That’s a myth.”

  “I can get angry from being cold,” I said.

  “This was your idea!”

  It was. I was the one who had decided we needed to know what a weir looked like. And after a bunch of googling, I had given up on finding one nearby. Then I’d had a brain wave. I googled “how to build a weir.” And here we were. Two of us warm and dry on the bank of the stream in the woods behind the library, and one of us chilled and soaked and toting boulders, trying to pile them high enough to cause the water level to rise and then spill over.

  I had moved seven rocks into place, and was realizing that I needed about seventy more, when I tripped over a submerged branch and fell. I banged my tailbone hard on one of my weir rocks, then rolled off it and into the water.

  53

  JAVIER PROBABLY KNEW EXACTLY HOW LONG a person could survive in cold stream water, but I didn’t. Maybe it was minutes. Maybe it was seconds. I was certain it wasn’t hours. I thrashed around in the stream, trying to get my hands under me so I could kneel and then stand up. Everything in the stream was slippery—either hard and slippery and impossible to get a grip on or soft and slippery and too icky to get a grip on.

  Finally, I got my hands beneath my chest, only to have them slide sideways, leaving me facedown in the water. Which felt even colder now that my head was under as well. I can swim fine, but swimming wasn’t going to help here—there wasn’t enough water to float in. But somehow there was enough to drown in. Go figure.

  Have you ever
heard the expression “It’s better than a poke with a sharp stick”? Maybe only my dad uses it. Well, drowning in two feet of water was definitely worse than a poke with a sharp stick. Until I was being poked with a sharp stick in addition to drowning. Which was definitely worse than either one alone.

  I grabbed the stick and felt it yank me sideways, which is when I realized that this was not a random stick—it was someone’s idea of rescuing me. My hands were so cold, it was hard to hang on, but I did, and I was pulled to the side of the stream, where I lay beached, coughing and shivering.

  “Are you okay?” Marta asked.

  “Yes,” I managed as I crawled onto the bank. “But I might puke.”

  Marta backed right off. She was a domino puker—if one person started it, she was bound to be next.

  I coughed for a while without puking. Then I sat up and peeled off my wet sweatshirt. Javier handed me his without a word, and I used it to dry off as best I could, then put it on.

  “Should’ve brought towels,” I said through clacking teeth.

  “Who knew you’d be going for a swim?” said Javier.

  I emptied the water out of my mom’s boots, put them back on, and stood up. “I guess that’s enough research for today.”

  Marta was holding the sharp stick upright beside her like a spear. Had she really pulled me out of the stream with one arm? There was something not quite human about that girl. She pointed the stick at me and said, “You didn’t finish your weir.”

  Javier reached over and guided the business end of the stick toward the ground. “I think we have what we need,” he said.

  54

  IT WAS A SUNNY DAY, SO I dried off quickly as we walked toward my house from the stream and its feeble attempt at a sloppily built weir. As I warmed up, though, I realized how badly I’d hurt my tailbone on the rock when I fell. I was walking like an old man, and that meant I wouldn’t be running anytime soon.