Out on a Limb (8 page)

I turned to start my run back to home territory. Devo stood in front of me. Why was he doing that? I was on his team. He was going to wreck my victory. He was going to get me tagged. Because suddenly there were kids all around. I stepped to the left. Devo blocked my way. Then he just stared. He stared, deciding what he wanted to do with me. “Excuse me,” he said, pointing to the black hoodie, “but we need that for our game.” He said this very politely. He said it too politely, as if he was making fun of the whole idea of politeness. And what was he suggesting? That I was
stealing
the hoodie?

The game seemed to have stopped. Everybody was just standing around us watching. I held out the hoodie.A slow second later, Devo lifted his hand to take it. I knew I should just say that I wanted to join the game. But I could not say it. I turned and walked up the hill. Holding the black hoodie, Devo headed down the hill and everyone else came straggling from the bushes after him. One of the girls trailed the yellow sweatshirt that was Devo’s team flag. “Okay,” Devo yelled. “Let’s try this again.”

I’d had all the joining in that I could stand. I wanted to be alone. Not that I hadn’t been alone when I was trying to talk to Kendra. Not that I hadn’t been alone when I was trying to play Capture the Flag. But I wanted to be alone in private. I went to the washroom and sat in a stall, reading the manufacturer’s directions for dispensing toilet paper. I left the stall and went to the sink, looking in the mirror at the face that no one, it turned out, loved at first sight. I washed my hands for something to do. In only four more minutes, recess would be over. I was making a tower of lather in the palm of my hand when another girl came into the empty washroom and stood at the sink next to me.

She brushed her hair in the mirror. “Hi!” she said brightly.

“Hi,” I said, amazed to have found a friendly person.

“How are you
doing
,” the girl asked, and from the warmth in her voice, I could tell that she really cared.

“Pretty good,” I said. “Well, sort of nervous, actually. It’s my first day at this school, and I don’t know anybody, and you’re actually the very first person—”

“Hold on,” the girl said. “I can’t hear you. I’m in a washroom and there’s someone talking right beside me. Just a sec, okay Natalie?”

The girl turned toward me, and that’s when I saw the cell phone mouthpiece curved around her cheek. Her warmth had been for someone else. She had not been talking to me at all. “Were you talking to me?” she asked.

“Nope,” I said. “Just talking to myself again.” I faked another smile.

NOTEBOOK: #10

NAME: Rosamund McGrady

SUBJECT: Breaking and Entering

My first afternoon at Windward, I counted up all the instructional days in the school year. One hundred and ninety. One hundred and eighty-nine to go, I told myself after the first day. One hundred and eighty-eight to go. One hundred and eighty-seven.

It was hard to leave the treehouse in the mornings. Before school I’d eat my breakfast out on our porch, in the gauzy sunlight that slanted through the oak tree. I’d breathe in the special September damp earth smell. I’d inspect the perfectly perfect spider webs in the branches, sagging with jewels of dew. I was homesick for the treehouse before I’d even left it. When it was time to go to school my spirits dropped like backpacks in a dumbwaiter.

Miss Rankle was a crabby teacher, but class time wasn’t what bothered me. Recess and lunch were what I hated. What made them really bad is that they were supposed to be fun. Things that are supposed to be fun and are not are a lot worse than things that are well known to be awful. When things are supposed to be fun, you feel like a big loser for not enjoying them. I spent my recesses and lunches sitting outside against the brick wall, reading about cryptography. I’d stopped trying to join in, so no one bothered being mean. My classmates left me completely alone.

Tilley could be a pain sometimes, just like every little sister. But at the end of each school day, I was always glad to see her waiting for me in front of Sir Combover with her little pink trail bike and her dinosaur helmet. I was glad to ride through the woods away from the world of school. When we got to the ramp I’d pedal so hard that my bike became airborne. My spirits would lift along with my bike. As I coasted down the ramp into the grounds of Grand Oak Manor, I felt that I was back in my own little world.

There was only one thing that stopped me from feeling truly at home on the grounds, and that was Great-great-aunt Lydia’s new fence. The fence was complete by then, and delivering its unfriendly messages constantly.
Keep Out. Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted. Private Property. Beware. Guard Dog on Duty .Warning
. It was insulting, that fence. One September day as we rode our bikes across the plank bridge, we saw a new sign. It showed a stick person being thrown backward by a lightning bolt.

“Hey, a new sign,” Tilley said, catching up to me on the meadow side of the stream. “What does it say?”

“Danger: Electric Fence,” I read. “Now that I do not believe. That fence is so not electric.”

“It might be.”

“It isn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s wood, for one thing, and wood isn’t a conductor. I’ll show you.” I veered off toward the fence.

“Rosie, don’t,” Tilley cried as I reached it. “I don’t want you to be like that stick man!”

“I won’t be. See?” I leaned from my bike and laid my hand flat against the fence. “Not electric. This fence is lying to us.”

“Like the guard dog’s a lie too, right?”

“Probably.” A gate in the fence left a crack the width of the hinges. I got off my bike to peer for guard dogs. When I put my eye to the crack, all I could see was a narrow vertical stripe of the Manor garden, and the Manor itself beyond. “No guard dog that I can see.” I rattled the gate but, just as I expected, it was locked on the inside. Tilley and I walked around the fence looking for other cracks and open knotholes. “That carpenter guy did a bad job,” Tilley said. “Look, he didn’t hammer the nails right.” It was true. There was one place in the fence where nails stuck out two whole inches. Tilley and I wiggled them with our fingers until they were practically falling out. I managed to pull one out completely. “So,” I said, dropping the nail into Tilley’s hand. “Great-great-aunt Lydia’s fence isn’t as great as she thinks it is.” We got back on our bikes and rode across the meadow to the treehouse.

Two afternoons later, Tilley and I were sitting on the treehouse porch eating honey sandwiches. Tilley was a mess of honey drips. She stood up and started for the washbasin, but stopped suddenly. “Rosie,” she said. “It’s that car!”

I jumped up beside her. Through the screen of oak leaves I glimpsed Great-great-aunt Lydia’s Bentley driving slowly out the stable door. At the speed of a parade float it bumped along the drive to the curly iron gates in the stone wall that separated the grounds from Bellemonde Drive. The curly iron gates magically opened for the Bentley. Or, it looked magical, but obviously Great-great-aunt Lydia had had them retrofitted with automatic openers. The Bentley paused while the gates opened, then disappeared onto Bellemonde Drive.

“Great-great-aunt Lydia’s gone.” I turned toward Tilley. “The Manor’s empty. We can explore.”

I hurried down to the shed, grabbed our hammer and rode my bike across the meadow. Stopping at the loose board, I began prying out nails. It was what Miss Rankle would call ironic. Before there was a fence to keep us out, I’d never considered trespassing into Great-great-aunt Lydia’s garden, but the fence had somehow dared me to get inside. I left just one nail to hold the board in place. I swung the board on the single nail and a gap opened in the fence. I stuck my head inside.

“It’s big enough,” I said. “Good.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t go in,” said Tilley, who had caught up to me.

“Why not?”

“Great-great-aunt Lydia will do that thing to us. The thing she does to trespassers.”

“Prosecute us? No she won’t. That’s just another lie, like the electric fence and the guard dog.” I put one foot over the hedge, swiveled my hips sideways, and followed with my other foot. I was inside. It was weird. Before the fence had been built I’d stood about a foot away from where I was now standing, looking right at this very spot. But this familiar spot felt thrillingly different, now that I was inside. I was violating Great-great-aunt Lydia’s space.

“Come on Tilley,” I said, all bad influence. Tilley slipped through the fence behind me, and we stood looking at the paths that wound through the garden. There were half a dozen to choose from.

“Pick a path,” I said, and we began to explore. The path was soft and mossy, but somehow our footsteps sounded exaggerated, like what a rabbit must hear. We wound our way between shrubs and came to a little fountain. Water spouted from the mouth of a man’s stone face, into a stone basin. It did not seem pleasant, for something to gush so forcefully from a person’s mouth. We continued down the forking paths.

We came to a pond, which we’d never seen properly from outside the hedge. The pond water was as dark as anti-matter. At first it seemed empty, but then enormous golden carp rose from the depths. They watched Tilley and me from the surface, and opened their gaping mouths as if getting ready to swallow us whole. They were prehistorically huge.

“These fish are man-eaters,” I told Tilley.

“Are not,” she said.

“Are too.” I threw in a chunk of leftover granola bar, and from the way those fish thrashed, it seemed that it might be true.

“Let’s go, Rosie,” Tilley said, pulling on the cuff of my fleece jacket.

“Okay,” I said, because it was hard not to be creeped out by those fish. We followed another path to a tree that had been all perfectly trimmed into the shape of a deer, with antlers and everything.

“This used to be a real deer,” I said.

“Did not,” Tilley said.

“Did too. It was a real deer, until Great-great-aunt Lydia put an evil spell on it.”

“She did not.”

“She did!” I thought of something, and got the torn blue strip out of my wallet. “‘Ives. It Turns. Possessed A. Treehouse I. It Turns O.You Are Who. It Turns Ou.’” I quoted. “You know what this is about Tilley? It’s about a spell, where you turn three times. It’s about the spell that made the deer
possessed
.”

“That is so not true. I saw the gardener clipping it.” “It is true,” I said. I didn’t believe what I was saying, but this dark view of Great-great-aunt Lydia suited my mood. “Then why does it say ‘treehouse’, and ‘you are who’” challenged Tilley.

“It’s saying we in the treehouse are next.” I took the coded letter out of my wallet and waved it. “And this isn’t a code at all. It’s the words of the spell. If someone chants this while circling a creature three times, the creature turns into something else. For all eternity.”

“Does not.”

“It does!” I began to circle Tilley, reading from the coded letter in a creepy voice. “ID ID NO! TE VERTHIN KAPA! IROFSCIS! SORSCO!”

“Rosie!” Tilley smiled a bit to show that she knew I was teasing.

“ULDDO SOMU! CHHARM IHA! VETOLE AVETH!”

“Rosie, stop it!”

“ISBLO!” I cried, circling. “ODYHO!”

“Don’t!” Tilley screamed, and she ran for the gap in the fence, leaving me alone in the Manor garden. I looked around. Up in one of Great-great-aunt Lydia’s trees was an owl. His head turned weirdly, almost a complete turn, as if it was a jar lid or something. The owl glared. I decided not to explore any further. There was no way of knowing when Great-great-aunt Lydia might return in her Bentley.

“You’re mean,” Tilley said as I crouched through the gap in the fence.

“You knew I was teasing,” I said, swinging the board shut behind me.

“You scared me on purpose.”

“You were scared of being turned into a
tree
? And you’re the child of
scientists
?”

Tilley’s eyeballs got wet and shiny. “You’re
really
mean,” she said. As she marched across the meadow, I felt a bit bad. I
had
known she was scared, and as an older sibling I had a responsibility not to abuse my power. I followed her to the treehouse and made her hot chocolate on the camping stove, and read her a chapter of Harry Potter, and she went right back to being happy with me.

The next day after school I noticed that Great-great-aunt Lydia’s fence didn’t bug me anymore. I figured it was because we had committed the breaking and entering. The fence insulted us, but we had insulted it right back.

That Thursday afternoon when I arrived at Sir Combover Elementary, Tilley was holding hands with a cute little blonde girl. “I’m invited to Eveline’s,” Tilley announced.

“I don’t know if you’re allowed,” I said.

“Phone and ask.” Tilley pointed to the cell phone that I borrowed from Dad on school days. I flipped it open and called Mom at the university. Of course Tilley could go to Eveline’s, Mom said; she and Dad would pick her up on their way home.

“You can go,” I reported and they hopped around all happy. I got back on my bike and rode home alone.

Tilley started going to Eveline’s almost every day after school. It felt weird to be at the treehouse by myself. After being by myself at school all day, I didn’t like it much. Sometimes I did my homework. Sometimes I worked on decoding Great-great-aunt Lydia’s letter. I tried all the words from the torn blue strip as key words. I wrote out one possible alphabet after another, starting them with ‘turns’ and ‘forgive’ and ‘bones’ and ‘ground’ and ‘someday’. Sometimes, when I sat alone with my pen and paper, the great volume of silence and stillness and time was too much. Then I’d practice bicycle jumps off the ramp over Great-great-aunt Lydia’s stone wall. Or I’d go jump onto the rope swing and my feelings would rush out of my body. Then, when I was tired of everything else, I’d just sit on the porch and watch the oak leaves spiral down to the meadow until Mom and Dad and Tilley finally came home.

At our nightly campfires, Mom asked motherly questions.