The Water and the Wild (5 page)

“Oh. Right! Yeah, sorry, I am.”

There was the shuffling of feet, the creaking of door hinges, a momentary burst of pub shouts, and then nothing but the muffled sounds from inside the break room. By now, Lottie had worked up enough courage to peek through the folds of the coats. She immediately wished that she hadn't. A body was sprawled out on the table in the middle of the room, and its bloody arm hung just a few feet from Lottie's nose. Meanwhile, a boy was crouched by the cupboards, pulling out an armful of white towels. The body on the table coughed.

“Thanks, doctor,” said the voice of the body, and it sounded like it belonged to a boy no older than Lottie.

Despite the phlegm and pain in the voice, Lottie could swear that the injured boy sounded like he was making a
joke
. Apparently she was right, because two laughs followed, one soft and wary, the other strangled. Lottie shirked back into the coats as the other boy passed by and turned on the tap.

“I thought we were goners for sure,” he said. “Just think, a few seconds later, and we would've been trapped inside that tree for all eternity.”

“I think,” said the voice from the table, “that was the general idea.”

“You mean, you don't think it was an accident?”

“I don't know, but Father sure won't.”

“So, you think it was worth it?” The faucet turned off, and the boy-doctor returned to the table.

“She's safe. That's what matters.”

“And Ada can take care of the rest.”

“If anyone can, Ada can.”

The boys laughed again. Then there was a sharp wheeze of breath, the kind Lottie had made growing up
when Mrs. Yates had pitilessly cleaned up her scrapes with rubbing alcohol.

“Sorry, mate. I know it hurts.”

“Stop flavoring, Fife. You can just tell me how bad it is.”

“Your arm's pretty mangled, but nothing's broken. It'll look nasty more than anything else.”

“Right.” A pause. “Thanks. I know you didn't have to get yourself involved in this.”

“Don't be an idiot. Someone's got to clean up after you. Now shut up. I've got to disinfect it, and all I've got is this stinging human stuff. Just remember, no touching. I don't want any new tattoos tonight.”

There was the sound of wet towel hitting skin, followed by a scream from the boy on the table. Lottie clutched her stomach, woozy from the smell of antiseptic and blood. The injured boy let out another shriek. Lottie felt herself getting sick again—horribly sick. She couldn't stay crouched in the coat closet any longer. Anything, even the risk of getting caught as an eavesdropper, was better than puking all over Eliot's green sneakers.

Lottie counted to one—two—three, then leapt up, sprang from the coats, and pushed out through the break room door. She ran, ignoring a shout from behind her.
Out in the pub, the injured boy's screams were swallowed up in the blare of the baseball game and the yells of drunken men. She burst out the front door and into the blisteringly cold rain. It was still three blocks to Thirsby Square. Lottie looked at her wristwatch, which she was relieved to find had survived the accident. It was past eight o'clock, her curfew, and Mrs. Yates would be irate if she found Lottie's bedroom empty.

Lottie passed under a maple tree and shivered. To be so close to death, and for someone to pull her out of the way! Now that Lottie had time to think about it, this was the only explanation for why she hadn't been smushed in Skelderidge Park: someone must have yanked her away from that falling tree. Then, that someone had just—disappeared. Lottie tugged up the sleeve of her periwinkle coat and looked again at the handprint on her arm. The sting had gone away, but just looking at the mark, she felt sick. Lottie decided that she was never going to wander into a pub ever again. She felt worse now than she had when she had first gone inside.

Lottie opened the wrought iron gate of the boardinghouse at Thirsby Square. But she didn't go inside. Not yet. Instead, Lottie crawled under the shelter of her
green apple tree. She ran her fingers lovingly down its sturdy trunk, then stooped at its roots. The ground was runny with mud, and Lottie's fingers went slick as she dug up her copper box. She sat down on the root notch and opened the lid, though only by a crack, so as to shield the box's contents from the rain. She breathed deeply, and quite suddenly the cold and the rain couldn't reach her at all. When Lottie opened her copper box, the world outside—with its Pen Bloomfields and Mrs. Yateses and incurable illnesses and falling trees—bled away like watercolors under the tap.

When her box was open, Lottie could pretend that it was the magic of the letter-writer that was real, not the rules at Kemble School.

Lottie peered inside at the worn photograph of her parents, and her heart squeezed up her breath in a painful hitch. Unbidden, Mr. Kidd's recitation from English class winked in her mind:

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

“CHARLOTTE!”

Lottie slammed her box shut and whipped around. Mrs. Yates stood on the front porch, her arms folded.

“What
are
you doing? Get in this house at once!”

Lottie shoved her copper box back beneath the tree root. She tripped up the front porch, face burning. Mrs. Yates would ground her for this. She would keep her inside for the weekend. She wouldn't let Lottie visit the Barmy Badger, not even to apologize to Eliot.

“I—I—” Lottie began.

But Mrs. Yates held up a hand to silence her. “You're grounded.”

“I'm wet,” Lottie replied stupidly.

Looking over Mrs. Yates' shoulder, Lottie noticed that they were not alone. A man dressed in a fancy pinstriped suit was sitting in the parlor.

“This is Mr. Grissom, Charlotte,” said Mrs. Yates, waving Lottie into the parlor. “He's that nice prospective boarder for our third floor that I was telling you about.”

The only thing that Lottie could remember Mrs. Yates telling her about a prospective boarder had been that morning, when she'd warned Lottie to stay out of sight. There was no chance of that now, though, as Lottie was as in sight as she could possibly be.

“Hello,” the man said, inclining his head toward Lottie. “You must be the little lady of the house.”

Lottie frowned. She did not like the way that the man looked at her, as though she were five years younger than she really was.

“I'm not a lady,” corrected Lottie. “I'm just Lottie.”

“You
are
wet,” said Mrs. Yates, who had apparently not believed Lottie until now. “Careful, child! Don't drip on the Oriental.”

Lottie edged away from the ugly, puce-colored rug so that she could more conveniently drip on the bare floor.

“Now, Charlotte, what happened?” Mrs. Yates said. “I was just explaining to Mr. Grissom that I have a strictly enforced curfew for all guests, no exceptions.” She turned to Mr. Grissom. “This
usually
doesn't happen.”

“I got attacked by a tree,” Lottie explained in what she thought was a very calm, adult manner. “It crushed my bike, but I escaped. Someone pulled me out of the way just in time.”

Mr. Grissom made a gurgling sound, and Lottie wondered if he was choking. Finally he said, “That's quite an imagination the young lady has.”

“Excuse us, Mr. Grissom,” said Mrs. Yates, grabbing Lottie's arm and dragging her out of the parlor.

“You're lying,” hissed Mrs. Yates just as soon as they were out of earshot of the man. “Here I am, trying to make a good impression, and you waltz in, a flagrant liar and a curfew breaker! Now tell me what really happened.”

“I just
did
tell you,” said Lottie, trying to pull free from Mrs. Yates' pincer grasp. “A tree attacked!”

“That's as silly as your notions about goblins and magical boxes,” Mrs. Yates said. “Don't think that ridiculous story is going to save you from punishment. I've a guest to entertain, and you may not look up to an explanation now, but believe me, I'll expect one in the morning. In the meantime, you're absolutely forbidden from setting one foot outside this house without my express permission.”

With that, Mrs. Yates sent Lottie straight upstairs without dinner. The lack of food was all the same to Lottie, who was exhausted and had no appetite after puking up five fish sticks' worth of lunch in Skelderidge Park. But to be grounded the whole weekend through? She
had
to see Eliot. She had to apologize. If there were only two, maybe three weeks left, every day counted.

She would just have to go back tonight.

Mrs. Yates would be busy with Mr. Grissom downstairs. All Lottie had to do was sneak out the kitchen door.
It would be a long run back to the Barmy Badger, but she knew all the best shortcuts. It was a risk, and it might mean a punishment of a whole
year
full of grounded weekends. But tomorrow Mrs. Yates might lock Lottie's door, as she'd done many times before. Tonight, Lottie still had a chance.

Lottie barreled into her bedroom. She grabbed an umbrella from under her bed. Then she tossed off her periwinkle coat and threw open her closet to find a dry shirt and shorts good for running.

What she found instead was a girl.

THE GIRL BLINKED ONCE
. “You have the strangest taste in clothing,” she said.

Lottie stumbled backward. In the dimness, she could only just make out the outline of the girl emerging from the closet. She was approaching Lottie softly (impossibly softly!) with arms raised as though to show she was harmless. Lottie fumbled with the switch of a nearby lamp. In a
snap,
soft light filled the room. When Lottie's eyes adjusted, they met a pair of blazing blue ones.

“How did you get in here?”

“The window,” chirped the girl.

Lottie looked at the window that Mrs. Yates had slammed shut that morning.

“The window's closed.”

“Not anymore, it isn't,” said the girl, who walked to the window and flung it open. She turned around, leaning against the ledge and letting out a noisy yawn. “Shall we go?”

“Get
out
, would you?” Lottie said, her face growing hot. “What do you mean by barging in here?” She paused and frowned. “And go where?”

Then Lottie realized something. “Are you wearing my clothes?”

The girl flung a scarf,
Lottie's scarf,
over her shoulder with flourish. “What a silly question to ask at a time like this!”

Lottie had had too long a day for this. She glared. “Are you going to leave on your own, or should I give you a nice shove out that window?”

The girl clung fiercely onto the ledge. “Don't even think about it! I've come here for you, Lottie Fiske, and I don't mean to leave without you.”

Lottie opened her mouth, then shut it, then opened it again. “How do you know my name?”

“Oh, I know a lot more than that,” the girl said. Her eyes twinkled in a way that made Lottie want to pop her in the nose.

“Like what, exactly?” Lottie asked instead.

The girl tugged off Lottie's scarf and tossed it back toward the closet. “Such an ugly shade of green,” she remarked to herself. “Like a rotten avocado.”

Then she held out a slip of paper. “Here.”

Lottie snatched the paper out of the girl's hand. In familiarly bad handwriting, it read:

This is better.

Lottie read the note three times. Then she looked up. “
You're
the letter-writer?”

“Me?” The girl snorted. “Of course not. It's from my father.”

Lottie held the paper up. “What does this even mean?
What's
better?”

“I don't know,” the girl said thoughtfully. “Me, I guess. You're supposed to come back with me.”

“Why,” said Lottie, “would I go anywhere with you?”

“Look,” said the girl, taking a step closer to Lottie. “You believe in magic, don't you?”

Lottie did, but she did not want to say that aloud. She only admitted that to herself when she was under her green apple tree and her copper box was open. She nodded cautiously.

“Well, what if I told you that my father, the greatest healer on the island, is making a medicine that will cure anything?”

Lottie frowned. “That's not magic. That's science.”

“I thought you said you believed in magic.”

“I believe in magic within reason,” amended Lottie.

“Magic within reason wouldn't be magic,” said the girl. “Now, are you coming or not?”

“Out the window?” asked Lottie.

“Yes,” the girl said seriously.

It had to be a dream, Lottie thought. She must have already passed out on her bed hours before this, only to dream up a girl in her closet with all the answers to her problems.
Well!
she thought,
Isn't it better? Isn't anything better than waiting for two, maybe three weeks to go by?