Drizzle (21 page)

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Authors: Kathleen Van Cleve

BOOK: Drizzle
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“No way.”
“He was Polly’s great-great-grandfather Leonardo,” announces Billy Mills, who I didn’t even know was listening.
“How do you know?” I ask.
“My mom has taken me here since I was little. I read it in the Archives.”
Never in a million years would I think that a class-mate of mine would be interested in Peabody history.
“We are so totally coming to the Transplanting,” Charlie says. He’s walked over with the other guys. “It’s gonna rock. I can’t believe I haven’t been here before.”
I quickly scan the farm and my classmates; the plants don’t look especially horrible, at least from this distance, and the pretty blue sky does make it seem that the farm may not be on its last legs. My classmates seem genuinely nice. I feel myself start to relax.
Then someone behind Charlie announces, “There isn’t going to be a Transplanting.”
Jongy.
“True story,” she says. “Sad but true.”
“There will be a Transplanting,” I say through gritted teeth.
Jongy’s eyes flicker across the fields. “With dead plants? By the way, Polly. How did you like the article today?”
Everyone falls silent.
“Mom exaggerates a little, sorry about that.” She smiles meanly at me.
“You should go home,” says someone in a voice just a bit louder than a whisper.
I whirl around with the rest of my class. I’m shocked to see that it’s Basford. His hair is wet and stuck to his forehead, and he carries a bag full of gardening gloves. He’s at least a full ruler’s length taller than Jongy. She glares at him and I can see how he’s temporarily baffled her. Me too, for that matter. Up to now, Basford seems like someone who likes to watch from the sidelines.
“What do you know, beanpole?” she snaps.
Basford blinks again. “I know that you’re a bully,” he says in a low, quiet voice. Everyone stares, not just me. None of us have ever seen anyone but Owen stand up to Jongy. He glances around quickly, as if casting a net around the castle. “Why do you even want to be here? You should go home.”
“You can’t make me,” Jongy immediately sneers.
Then I do the weirdest thing ever.
I giggle
. I can’t help it. I just keep remembering Jongy at the spelling bee, taunting the teacher with the same words. I stop pretty fast, but I’ve triggered something in all of my classmates: Everyone seems to be holding back laughter, even Basford.
“What are you laughing at?” she asks, embarrassed.
“You should carry a tape recorder around and hear what you say,” Basford tells her. “You wouldn’t believe how much you sound like a really mean person. You can’t really want to be like that.”
Jongy’s mouth is open but no words are coming out. I realize that she’s having her own private battle right now. She doesn’t know what to do, or what to say.
I look over at Basford to say thanks, but he’s already changed the subject. “So, Mrs. Peabody asked me to give each of you one of these . . .” He opens the bag of gloves.
Just then, Mom walks out of the castle and stands on a wooden box.
“Welcome!” She sounds so cheery that you would never guess how angry she is. “We’re so glad you’re here, helping with this important crop.”
I catch eyes with Basford. He nods. I mouth the word “thanks.” He gives me a small smile, then returns to handing out the gloves.
I’m ready to pick up my hand shovel when Beatrice sneaks up behind me. “Go get Freddy,” she commands. “He should wake up. It’s eleven thirty already.”
As I walk toward the castle, Dawn Dobransky calls my name.
“What’s all that?” She points to the mist. The funny thing is, it doesn’t look like a mist right now. Some kind of reflective miracle has happened—the mist and the water underneath it have combined to make it seem like there’s one flat, beautiful plate of blue-green glass lying on top of our lake, shot through with all different kinds of sparkling colors. At first glance, it takes my breath away. At second glance, I feel that familiar anxiety press up against my chest.
“I have no idea,” I tell her, as honest as I’ve ever been.
I walk inside to find Freddy. He isn’t in the playroom. I jog up the steps, calling his name. I check the kitchen in case he did wake up, and then I climb the circular stairs to his room. He actually has
two
rooms, one for where he sleeps, and another that leads to the rope bridge platform.
I knock on his bedroom door, but I still don’t hear anything. Slowly, I push the door open.
“Hey—everyone’s waiting for you.”As usual, the room is a pigsty, though strangely, the windows are closed. It’s stuffy. “Freddy?” I look around again. There’s something pacing me, making my breath quicken with each step. “Stop it, Polly,” I tell myself. “Don’t be crazy.”
I reach the other side of his room, the side with the platform, just as I hear someone yell from the crowd outside.
“FREDDY!” It sounds like Basford. Basford
yelling
at the top of his lungs.
I run over and yank open the door to the platform.
My brother, Freddy, is on the bridge, holding on to the rope railing. He looks ghostly, white. His knees are buckling.
From below, more people start to scream.We’re
really
high in the air. It’s hard not to be scared.
Somehow I stay calm. “Freddy,” I say.
He tries to smile. “I wanted . . .”
I step toward Freddy as carefully as I can. I talk to him like he’s a baby instead of my older brother.
“You should come inside,” I tell him. Someone has quieted the crowd underneath us. I don’t dare look at them. I just focus on Freddy. His eyes are glassy, his eyelids fluttering. I glance at his hands. They’re still wrapped around the railing, holding tight. Good. That’s good.
“I guess you wanted fresh air,” I continue. “Makes sense. Fresh air is better than inside air. Your room reeks. You should really open a window.”
“Poll.” Freddy’s voice is weak, but I can hear him better now that I’m closer. “You’re babbling.”
“I know.” The bridge sways and Freddy’s right hand clutches the top rope as his left clutches the left side. His left foot slips through the side. I suddenly think that even though nothing may drown in the lake, something—or
someone
—may get really, really hurt. What if there’s a rock?
“Freddy, just hold on,” I tell him. I make sure I keep my voice soft, quiet. I’m only two steps away. “Just hold on.”
He looks over the railing, sees everyone. He tries to smile again, but he’s too weak. “I heard them,” he says, “but I’ve been having these headaches.” His eyes flutter. “I didn’t want to say anything, I thought they would go away.”
I thrust out my hand. His eyes are shutting.
“FREDDY!”
He opens his eyes. He stares at me and very slowly takes one of his hands off of the rope railing and reaches for me. I take his hand, holding on as tightly as I can. I hear a sigh from the crowd below.
“Don’t worry, Freddy. I’ve got you now.”
Freddy manages a pale smile, but then his face changes and a confused, fearful look crosses his eyes. I stare back as I see his foot slip through the side of the rope railing, and while I hold his hand tighter, somehow I know we’re going to fall, and we do, falling, falling, falling, forty feet down, in front of the shocked eyes of our classmates, our friends, our family, down down down into our own enchanted lake.
SAME DAY, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 19
 
Nobody’s Okay
 
The water breaks our fall. I heard about it later, how when the two of us tumbled off the bridge people held their breath, waiting to hear the smack of us colliding with the water’s surface. But that didn’t happen. The water kind of opened up, hugging us as we plunged into it. I don’t remember the fall at all. What I remember is waking up in the water, instantly wide-awake, like after a bad dream. Freddy was passed out next to me, so I immediately put my arm around his neck and swam upward as fast as I could, kicking with all the strength that my puny little body had. If I had been thinking more clearly, I would have remembered that he couldn’t drown. But at that second, I just wanted us out of the water.
When we broke through the surface, the first person I saw was Owen. He had swum over to us holding a huge inflatable orange bubble attached to a long rope. Mom and Beatrice and about a thousand kids pulled us to shore.
I’m not sure what happened next. My teeth were chattering and I think Beatrice put a blanket around me and Mom hugged me and Basford pulled me aside. There was an ambulance that took Freddy and Mom and Chico to the hospital. Beatrice carried me up to my bed after a doctor said I was okay. Mr. Horvat put everyone into the school buses and went back to St. Xavier’s.
When I wake up, it’s Patricia and Basford who wait by the side of my bed.
“Is he okay?” I ask.
“Stable,” Patricia answers. I blink.
“Wait,” I say. “What happened to you?”
She’s wearing a black eye patch across her left eye.
“I fell.”
“When?”
“I was running to you guys, in the lake. I tripped and fell on top of a watering can. Fifteen stitches.” She pulls the patch away. Her eye’s a mess: yellow, swollen, black stitches sticking out.
“Eww.”
“Thanks.You look fabulous yourself.” She stands up. “I have to call Mom to tell her you’re okay. I’ll be right back.”
After she leaves, I turn to Basford. He looks at me anxiously and then stands up, pushing his hair off his face.
“I didn’t really say thanks before,” I tell him. “When you stood up to Jongy.”
For a second, Basford just stares at me.
“I don’t like how this makes me feel,” he finally says.
“What?”
“You. Freddy. The farm. You’re all hurt and I can’t do anything about it.” He crosses his arms tightly over his chest.
“That’s only because we don’t know what’s wrong. You’ll help when we figure it out.”
Basford shakes his head. “Why do you always do that?”
“Do what?”
“You can’t always make things better. It doesn’t work like that. Sometimes people can’t help. Sometimes things can’t be fixed.”
I realize we’re not talking about me, or Freddy, or the farm anymore. Basford’s thinking about his mom.
“I’m not saying you can
always
make things better. But you have to try.”
“Sometimes trying makes you feel worse.” Basford stares at me for a second more, then he turns around and walks out of my room, leaving me alone. I don’t call after him because I know that if my mother died, I’d be the biggest wreck in the world.
But I still think you have to try.
In a few seconds, Patricia comes back. “I told Mom you’re awake and that you look okay.” She stops. “Are you okay?”
“I think so.”
“Wiggle your toes.”
I wiggle them.
“Okay,” she says. “You’re fine. I saw that on a show once. If you can wiggle your toes, you’re not paralyzed. You don’t have any brain swelling, do you?”
“I don’t think so. How can you tell?”
She studies me. “I think you’d know.”
She sits back in her chair and I stay with my head against the pillow. Neither of us talks for a long while.
“Did Mom say anything more about Freddy?”
“He’s stable. Resting comfortably. Sounds like they have no idea what’s going on.”
“Where’s Dad?”
“At the hospital.” She stops. “I have something to tell you and I’m supposed to say that you shouldn’t feel responsible.”
I sit up higher in the bed.
“Dunbar pulled their funding,” she says. “They would have done it no matter what. The article didn’t help, but they had made their decision before then. Dad wanted to make sure I told you that.”
We fall into silence, then she turns and looks at herself on a small wall mirror. “Sam’s probably going to think I look like a dork,” she says.
“You?”
She faces me with the eye patch. “I do look like a dork.”
I shake my head. “Nope, you don’t. You even look good with that.” I pause, thinking about something. “You always say you don’t believe in magic. That’s magic, though. You could go through a paper shredder, and you’d still look good.” She stares at me with a weird expression. “I’m not complimenting you,” I tell her. “I’m just stating a fact. I bet we could make a scientific theory out of it.”
Patricia gives me the smallest hint of a smile. “Hypothesis,” I continue. “Patricia always looks good. Testing: Have her trip on a watering can. Conclusion: She still looks good. Hypothesis proved.”
She moves back to her chair. “I still can’t believe you told Jennifer Jong about the sale,” she says.

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