The Penderwicks at Point Mouette (5 page)

Skye dragged the golf bag out of the trunk and slung it over her shoulder. It was just as heavy as it was unwanted, but Skye stood up straight and strong, determined not to let Dexter, Mrs. T-D, or golf bags—or even the loss of her precious list—wreck their vacation. Jeffrey was here now, and they were going to have the time of their lives.

B
ATTY’S BEDROOM WAS SO TINY
that the narrow bed and small bureau filled it up. There wasn’t even space for a closet—just a row of hooks on the wall, too high for Batty to reach. She didn’t mind that the room was small, and she especially didn’t mind about no closet. You never know what scary monsters might be hiding in the closets of strange houses.

Earlier, Aunt Claire had helped her unpack and put her clothes into the bureau. Now—almost bedtime—Batty had to do the next, most important part of moving in, which was to figure out what to do if a monster managed to appear, even without a closet to come from. Rosalind always helped her with this part. Rosalind knew all about monsters, and how to keep
away from them. But Rosalind was far away in New Jersey, and Batty was on her own. Just thinking about being on her own made her want to hide under the covers, but she couldn’t, not without first working out about the monsters.

So how
would
she get away from one? She looked out the window. There were the birch trees and, past them, a patch of red that was the house where Hoover the dog lived. Batty was impressed with Hoover. It wasn’t everyone who could knock Skye into the ocean. But back to monsters. Batty supposed that if she had to, she could jump out the window. It wasn’t far to the ground. She’d have to figure out how to take out the screen, though, and she’d never done anything like that in her whole life. Maybe she could convince Hound to tear a hole in the screen big enough for her to crawl through.

“If a monster comes, will you wreck the screen for me?” she asked Hound.

Hound didn’t answer. He was too busy chewing a hunk of seaweed he’d sneaked into the house. Batty sighed. If he wouldn’t help her with the screen, there was only one place in the room to hide: under the bed. Of course there could always be a monster down there. Seaweed or no seaweed, Hound had to help after all. So Batty pulled him at one end and pushed him at the other until about half of him was beneath the bed.

“Any monsters?” she asked him. “No?”

Now it was safe for her to wriggle in after him and squash herself against the wall. It was clean under there except for something large and plastic, which turned out to be the big duck that Iantha had given her for Maine. The duck, flat now because it had no air in it, must have been put there by Hound. He loved hiding things under beds.

Batty heard the door open, and Skye came into the room—Batty recognized her black sneakers—and started questioning the part of Hound that was sticking out.

“Are you eating seaweed, you silly dog? And where is Batty? Good grief, I’ve lost her already.”

Usually, Batty would have stayed hidden, but there was an unfamiliar note in Skye’s voice, as though she
minded
that Batty was lost.

“I’m down here.”

Skye’s face swam into view, looking relieved, and disappeared again. “It’s time to get into your pajamas.”

“I’ve already put them on.” Batty was proud of this. She was even prouder for having already washed her face and brushed her teeth.

Skye’s face came back. “So you did. Well, you still need to brush your teeth.”

“I did that, too.”

“Oh.” Skye stood up again. After a moment, the
bed sagged over Batty, which meant that Skye had sat on it. “Batty, do you happen to know which vitamins you take?”

“The ones in the yellow bottle.”

“Right. And do you know what would make you blow up?”

This felt like a trick question to Batty. She’d never been blown up and didn’t like thinking about it. She hoped it wasn’t something that happened a lot in Maine.

“Why?” she asked.

“No reason,” said Skye. “Oh, hi, Jeffrey. She’s under the bed.”

Now Jeffrey’s face appeared, but Batty was already squirming out into the open. She’d hoped that Jeffrey would be part of her good-night routine, and now here he was.

“Hey, goofball,” he said. “Hiding from monsters?”

She beamed up at him, her favorite boy in the world. “Are you going to tell me a bedtime story?”

“Jane has one all ready for you. Maybe tomorrow night, okay?”

“Okay.” Batty hopped onto the bed and slid under the covers.

“I hope you sleep well,” said Skye, self-consciously patting the part of the pillow that Batty didn’t have her head on. “Jane will be here in a minute.”

Jeffrey said good night; then Skye pulled him out
the door and the room was quiet again. Through the open window, Batty could hear the gentle murmur of waves breaking on the rocks. She could also hear a squishy chewing noise. That was Hound and his seaweed. Squish. Squish. Batty found it soothing. She snuggled in among her stuffed animals—Funty and several others, including Ellie, the small green elephant, Funty’s special friend. Ellie had been a good-bye present from Ben, but Batty was certain her father had really bought her. Her father always knew just what stuffed animals Batty liked the best. He’d promised to bring another new one home from England, and Batty was pretty sure it would be a tiger.

While she was experimenting with good tiger names—Gibson, or maybe Chip—Jane arrived. Batty hoped that she had a cozy story ready. Sometimes Jane’s stories could be too exciting for bedtime.

Jane perched on a corner of the bed and began: “Once there was a beautiful maiden named Sabrina Starr.”

“This is about love, isn’t it?” Batty had learned to spot Jane’s romantic stories coming on—“beautiful” was one hint and “maiden” was another.

“Yes. I’m working on ideas for my next book. You’re my trial audience.”

Batty gave up on getting a cozy story, or even an exciting one. However, she’d been Jane’s trial audience before, and was always proud to do it. She waited for Jane to go on, but Jane just sat there, twiddling
with her hair. After too much of this, Batty tapped Jane on the arm.

“I’d better begin again,” said Jane. “Once there was a beautiful maiden named Sabrina Starr who had never been in love.”

The hair twiddling started up again, but Batty wasn’t going to wait so long this time. “Then what?” she asked.

“That’s all I have so far. What do you think?”

“It’s okay,” answered Batty carefully. This seemed as much a trick question as the one about blowing up. “But not very long.”

“I know. I just can’t figure out how to start this book.”

Batty was trying to be patient, but this was disappointing. Rosalind would never have told her a story with only a beginning and no middle or end. But no, she wasn’t going to think about Rosalind, because if she did, she would cry. And she wasn’t going to cry in front of Jane, or in front of Skye, especially not Skye. Not once, not for the whole time she was in Maine. So she yawned instead, then remembered the present that Iantha had given her for Maine. It was a real book with chapters, and Batty had already learned to read the two names in the title—one was Ivy and the other was Bean. She had high hopes of learning to read even more of the words one of these days.

“Since your book is still so short,” she said to Jane,
“maybe you could read
Ivy + Bean
to me. It doesn’t have love in it, though.”

“I don’t need love in everything,” said Jane.

Batty didn’t believe her, but Jane read her the first chapter of the book anyway, and it was an excellent chapter, and she also taught Batty to read one new word:
girl
. Then Jane drifted away, once again pondering Sabrina Starr, and there was only Aunt Claire left to say good night.

“I brought you a night-light,” she said when she came in a few minutes later.

“It’s a pig!” Batty was fond of pigs, and this one was wearing sunglasses, which was even better.

When Aunt Claire plugged it into a socket on the wall, the pig gave out a pink glow that was sure to discourage even the boldest monster.

“How’s that? Good?” Aunt Claire sat on the bed and surveyed the stuffed animals. “You have a new friend.”

“Ellie,” said Batty, gently pulling the green elephant’s trunk. “Ben gave her to me.”

“Ben has excellent taste for a toddler.”

“Yes.”

“You miss him, don’t you?”

“
Yes!
”

“I do, too.”

Batty stowed Ellie carefully beside the pillow. “Do you think Ben misses me?”

“Are you kidding? I
know
Ben misses you. And so do your dad, Iantha, and Rosalind. Everyone misses you—Asimov, Tommy, the whole neighborhood. I’ll bet even the president of the United States misses you.”

“I never met the president.”

“Which just shows how special you are, that someone you’ve never met would miss you anyway.”

Batty tried to puzzle this out, but it made her sleepy. “I guess so,” she answered, her eyelids drooping.

“Trust your aunt,” said Aunt Claire, kissing Batty first on one cheek, then on the other. “Good night, honey bug. Sleep well, and call me if you need anything.”

Then she was gone, and Batty and Hound were alone again. Batty waved good night to the new pig and told Hound to come be with her. Being a true and loyal friend, he abandoned his seaweed and jumped onto the bed, and before Batty could remember how far she was from home and from Rosalind, she was fast asleep and dreaming about tigers.

Being woken up in the middle of the night can be scary, especially when you’re in a strange place and when what wakes you sounds like a train going through your room. It took Batty only seconds to realize that of course the thunderous rumbling was Hound’s snoring, but it took her longer to remember
that she was in Maine, and that the odd, looming shadows cast by the pig night-light didn’t come from monsters but from her own animals sitting atop the bureau. It wasn’t their fault, Batty knew. It was probably her own for bringing so many of them with her to Maine. Skye had wanted her to leave everyone but Funty and Ellie behind, but Daddy had said she’d need as much comfort as she could get. Daddy hadn’t known Batty was listening when he told Skye this, and she hadn’t meant to, but she’d just happened to be under the kitchen table playing cavemen with Ben when he’d said it.

Oh, Ben! Who would play cavemen with him when he wasn’t with Batty? Did people even play cavemen in England? England was a great mystery to her, almost as much as New Jersey. Aunt Claire had tried to explain it all, and had even taped postcards onto the refrigerator here at Birches—down low so that Batty would be able to see them without standing on a chair. It would be nice to look at those postcards right now, thought Batty, but it was a long way to the refrigerator in the dark, and she didn’t know if she had the courage to go. So she closed her eyes and tried to picture them. The New Jersey one showed a wide beach full of umbrellas, and the England one—she couldn’t remember what the England postcard looked like. Now she just had to go look at it. But not without Hound. She poked at him until he
got the idea and jumped off the bed to await further instructions. Batty slid down after him and saw that underneath her door was a strip of light, which meant that Aunt Claire had left a lamp on out there, just in case someone desperately needed to go look at postcards. Batty squared her shoulders. Aunt Claire had expected this to happen, so there was nothing to be frightened of.

With Hound beside her, she tiptoed out into the living room and was startled to see a little girl and a big dog just outside the sliding glass doors, staring back at her. Ghosts? No, silly, Batty told herself. Maybe Ben would think they were ghosts, but Batty was much too big for that. It was just her and Hound reflected in the sliding glass doors.

Hound was already on his way to the small kitchen. Now that he’d been dragged out of bed, he’d check for spilled food, since the seaweed hadn’t been very filling. Batty followed him, ignoring the dark corners of the living room. She cared about only one thing now—seeing the all-important postcards. She made it to the refrigerator, and there they were. First she looked at the England postcard. It showed a tall red bus going over a stone bridge, and across the top was a word that Batty spelled out for Hound.

“O-X-F-O-R-D,” she said. “That’s where Daddy is with Iantha and Ben. Iantha told me about the red buses.”

There was no answer from Hound, because his nose was jammed under the stove, continuing his search for food. Batty turned to the shiny New Jersey postcard, with its wide white beach and blue ocean. It was looking at the New Jersey ocean that gave Batty her idea. If a shell could float all the way from the Maine ocean to the New Jersey ocean—and Jane had said so—a letter could, too. Batty would float Rosalind a letter, and she would do it right now to give the letter time to reach New Jersey by tomorrow. She needed only her drawing pad and markers, and they were over there on that bookshelf. In a moment, Batty had the pad open on the floor, and all the markers spread out, ready for letter writing. She had so many things to tell Rosalind—about how much she missed her, and about Jeffrey and Hoover and the shadows on her bedroom wall—that she hardly knew how to begin. And, too, there was that problem with spelling. She did know how to spell her sister’s name, though, so she started there. In big blue letters, she wrote ROSALIND, and although she’d gotten too close to the edge and had to make the N and D small, she was very proud of what she’d done so far.