Drizzle (28 page)

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Authors: Kathleen Van Cleve

BOOK: Drizzle
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“You?”
“I mean us,” I say. “You can’t give up yet. The Giant Rhubarb will be okay. We’ll make money from that, right? And what about your medicine? Somebody else may want it, won’t they?”
No one answers. They all stare at me with hooded, sad eyes.
“Why are we giving up?”
“Because,” Mom says, spinning me around to look at her. “Because Freddy’s getting worse.” She puts both of her hands on my shoulder and looks me in the eye.
“How much worse?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “We’re all going there after breakfast. Go comb your hair.”
“But—”
“Not another word.”
Dad must have worked some special arrangement at the hospital, because they let all of us in at one time. I head down the hallway to the general patients’ rooms, but Beatrice steers me down a different corridor.
“He’s in Critical Care,” Patricia whispers.
Everything inside me is loose, rattling around, frozen icicles broken off from the eaves, clattering together on the black pavement. We reach two wide doors, opening in the center. Dad presses a card against a black panel. The doors swing open, and we follow Dad into the unit. I don’t dare look to my left or right, not to the nurses or the patients. There are too many beeps and drips and whispers.
We swarm around Freddy’s bed. He has more tubes than before, and there’s a little monitor hooked up with red and blue lines and numbers. He’s asleep.
Dad glances at the numbers. I let everyone else crowd around the railings. “He’s resting comfortably,” says Dr. Jackson, who stands in the corner of the room, a gray metal medical chart in his hand.
I will do anything I can to get Freddy the best medical help that exists. Do you understand that? I will get the best experts, the best everything.
Aunt Edith still has not called back.
“He’s stable?” Mom asks, her voice quaking.
“For now,” Dr. Jackson says.
Mom and Dad are going to stay all day, but the rest of us can only stay in his room for about fifteen minutes. So when Basford and Patricia have stepped away from Freddy’s bedside, I move closer. His hands are white now, almost clear. His freckles look like someone flicked orange paint dots on a piece of white paper.
“The farm looks pretty bad,” I say very softly. When I stop talking all I hear are the blips and beeps of all the machines. I bite my bottom lip to stop it from quivering. “I wish you’d get out of this thing, Freddy. It’s time. I’m not a chicken anymore.”
I lean over to make sure I can hear him breathe. “You said you were fine.” I blink. “So be fine. Get
fine!!!
”
Nothing.
“Please.”
I kiss Freddy’s forehead and make the sign of the cross, as I do with Harry’s root. Then I walk out of the room, down the hallway, and outside, by the pickup truck.
This is how desperation must feel. If I saw Aunt Edith right now, I’d stomp her like a bug. I’d scream and holler and force her to show me how to make clouds so that they stick, so that they don’t move away, so that they arrive on time and rain and make our farm healthy,
make Freddy healthy.
What am I missing?
How could she do this to us?
How could she do this to me?
SAME DAY, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27
 
Despair
 
It’s late when we get home from the hospital. Mom and Dad stayed by Freddy’s side, but Beatrice decided we had to go on a bunch of silly errands before we drove home. It was obvious she was trying to keep our minds off of Freddy, but we didn’t complain. We went shopping for socks, stopped at a park, and ate dinner at a hot dog stand. Then she brought us to church. There wasn’t a service. She said she thought it seemed like a good idea, and we agreed. The whole time I was there I prayed for some sign, some answer to our problems. I was praying so hard that I didn’t even notice when Beatrice tapped on my shoulder to leave.
When we finally get home, Beatrice asks us if we want anything to eat—a fresh strawberry rhubarb pie, a chocolate rhubarb cookie—but I think it is obvious that we are all so filled with sadness that we couldn’t fit anything else inside. Everyone goes into their rooms and shuts the door. But I’m only in my room for a moment, long enough to grab my book light. I figured out where I needed to go in that last second in the church.
Enid’s turret.
I race up the stairs as fast as I can. As soon as I cross the threshold of Enid’s room, I wait for something to move. But it’s completely silent, completely still. The ivy is coiled up all around me and I don’t see one cricket. Not even Lester.
They’re here. I know it. They’re watching me to see if I get this right. I stand in front of the window, the one where Aunt Edith yanked down the curtain rod. I look down at my feet, placed around strands of ivy. It’s completely still—not even the slightest twitch of a leaf.
I wait for help—for one of the bugs to emerge, to write the answer that will save
everything
in the air.
Outside, the sun is setting and it’s getting hard to see. I walk around the room, stepping carefully to try to avoid touching the ivy, or trampling on a book. I go round and round, searching for something, waiting for someone.
“Please? Someone? Something? Help!” I know my voice sounds desperate. But the lack of rain must have sucked out the life of this turret too. I’m failing. I’ve failed.
I want to cry but I don’t—I’m so far beyond crying. I’ve lost. I never once thought that it would really end, not even in the slugsand. But here, right now, it feels like it’s completely over, that all hope has been drained from me, from Freddy, from our farm.
Aunt Edith is going to win. The farm is going to die. Freddy is going to die.
I look out the window.The sky is that perfect blue and purple color of twilight, lit up by a sparkling white crescent moon. The moon casts a crooked slant of light across the farm, slashing over the Giant Rhubarb, the mist-covered lake, even the Dark House. The moonlight bounces on the top of the shed; it shines directly on the Silo.
We will lose it all. I won’t have my home. My family won’t have its farm, which it’s had for all these years. I try to imagine what it would be like. As usual, my mind searches out a place for hope: Maybe it won’t be so bad? Maybe it’s okay to lose a family business? Everyone dies anyway, just like Charlotte the spider said in
Charlotte’s Web
. There will be some point when none of this exists.
The Silo seems to glare at me, underneath the silver ray of the moon, as if it knows my thoughts are wandering in this direction. I realize I’m being a coward—these are the wanderings of someone who isn’t trying. Someone who is giving up.
I can see Grandmom’s bench from the window. And Aunt Edith’s Giant Rhubarb plant, Teddy, standing straight up next to the bench, just like the night Aunt Edith was there.
My breath catches. Teddy’s standing straight up? I squint, leaning out over the windowsill. Teddy’s completely upright, his leaves facing the Silo.
The Silo.
I never did make it to the Silo. I made it to the slugs. The slugsand. I made it to Grandmom’s bench.
But I never did make it to the Silo.
I glance directly down, at the field of regular rhubarb nearest to the castle. Something catches my eye. The regular rhubarb is sluggish, of course, but the plants look odd, misplaced. Their leaves seem pushed to one side. Like they’re bowing or pointing at something.
From my perch on the window seat, I scan the fields. The plants are all like this. All of them. My whole body seems to freeze up.
The Silo. The plants are pointing to the Silo.
At the very moment it all begins to tie together, bugs swarm the room. Lester bounds into view, along with some of his cricket friends. The ivy lifts up, forming a tangled arch over my head. The stinkbugs show up. Some fireflies and mosquitoes and bumblebees too. Even one or two black wasps fly around the room, whizzing by my head.
Polly Peabody, the girl who hates bugs, here amidst her friends.
I develop a new scientific theory.
Hypothesis:
The secret to keeping the clouds on the farm will be found in the Silo.
Testing:
Go to the Silo.
Conclusion:
Rain. I hope.
 
“The final secret,” I murmur as the ivy begins to move. I walk underneath it as it winds me to the doorway, the bugs following me in a procession to the door. Right before I walk out the door, I turn back around.
“I can do this, right?” I ask, my voice shaky.
Spark bobs up and down. Lester nods his big black head. The rest of the bugs flutter and buzz and hover, which I think means that they’re all saying the same thing.
“Thanks,” I tell them, and I leave.
SAME DAY, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27
 
Trust Thyself
 
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Very quietly, I push open the door of the turret. I clench my fist closed and walk silently down the stairs. When I get closer to the first floor, I hear something, a soft murmur. I tiptoe to the bottom steps and then peek around the wall.
Beatrice is standing in the living room. She’s got her head covered by her hands. Chico sits on the sofa, looking straight ahead, like an old dog with flappy skin around his neck.
“Come on out, Polly,” Beatrice says. “I know you’re there.”
I walk down the last two steps. She waits for me across the room, her hands on her hips. She doesn’t look angry. She looks like she’s been expecting me.
“You think you can go outside every night and I wouldn’t know about it?”
I stare at her. The truth is I haven’t been thinking much about Beatrice. “Sorry.”
She smiles, but then she turns her face quickly around, avoiding my gaze. Chico doesn’t move.
“Beatrice?” I say. “Are you okay?”
She lifts her head up slowly. I step closer to her and see that her cheek is stained with tears.
“What is it?”
“You should be asleep,” she says. “Most eleven-year-olds sleep at night.”
“What is it?” I ask again.
“Sit,” Beatrice orders. I do as she says and she follows, sitting down next to me. She closes her eyes tightly, her fingers laced together as if she can’t unlatch them or else risk some kind of collapse.
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” Beatrice says.
“Tell me what?”
“Freddy,” she says. Her voice breaks. I look over at Chico again, who has now tilted his head down, holding it in his large hands.
“What about him?” I ignore the shooting pains in my hand, the trembling in my knees.
Beatrice turns to face me. “Your mother just called.” She closes her eyes. “He’s in a coma.” Her eyes flash. “They don’t know why. We just have to pray.”
She puts her arm around me and pulls me to her side. I feel myself swallowing, as if I’m gulping down these horrible words, taking them out of our shared space.
Beatrice pats my shoulder, but I barely can feel it. Am I too late? Freddy has to hold on. He
must.
“Is he—” I’m not even sure what my question is. Is he dead? Is he going to die right this second?
“I don’t know anything else, sweetie,” Beatrice says. “Maybe you should try to get some sleep?” She’s treating me like a child, which I understand.
But I don’t feel like a child right now.
I pull back from Beatrice, who gives me a surprised look. Then I propel myself off of the couch and stand in front of her.
“What are you—”
“I have to go and do something,” I tell her. “Something important.”
“Polly, not tonight . . .”
“I’ll be back before you know it.” I give her the most reassuring smile I can muster. “And honestly.You want me to do this.” I pause. “I promise you that.”
Chico moves to stand up. “
Voy contigo
,” he says.
“No,” I tell him. “You can’t come.”
Chico looks over to Beatrice for her decision. She looks from him to me and back again. Finally she motions for Chico to sit down.
“I just got a feeling,” she says, looking at me.
“Thanks, Beatrice,” I say as I kiss her on the forehead. “I’ve got one too.”
SAME DAY, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27
 
The Silo
 
Outside, I take a deep breath and look up to the sky. The moon is crescent shaped, so it’s both starlit and moonlit. Still, it isn’t bright enough for me to completely find my way around the farm. I turn on my book light and shine it over to my left, by the dying chocolate rhubarb field.

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