Out on a Limb (14 page)

“Almost midnight girls,” Paige said, sticking her head around Bridget’s door. “Lights out, I think.” While Bridget used her bathroom I flipped through the photo album that was open on her bedside table. It started when Bridget was a baby, looking just like millions of other babies. In the following pages her Bridget-ness emerged. There was a picture of Bridget on the beach, holding hands with another little girl .The other little girl was Kendra. Kendra appeared over and over on the following pages, as she and Bridget gradually turned into their present-day selves. Kendra and Bridget in early Halloween costumes; Kendra and Bridget on a dock; Kendra and Bridget with Easter baskets; Kendra and Bridget on Santa’s knee. Finally, there were four poses of Kendra and Bridget making faces in one of those curtained booths at the shopping mall.

When Bridget and I got into her bed and switched off the lava lamp, we rated the Halloween costumes we’d seen. Devo got ten out of ten points for visual impact, but he was penalized eight points for having bought his costume ready made. This gave him a final score of two out of ten. Only a fraction of my mind was on costume ratings,because I was about to tell Bridget about the treehouse. I had actually written a rough draft of my speech in a notebook, and I had rehearsed it out loud alone in the treehouse. Now I was about to actually deliver it. It would be hard to start, but if I stayed focused, all of a sudden I’d just do it. It would be like the first time on the rope swing. Before I knew it, it would be over.

“Kendra I’d give maybe three points for neatness,” Bridget was saying, “but zero for imagination. I mean, a witch? That’s lame.”

“Bridget,” I asked. “What happened with you and Kendra?”

“What happened? Well, I’m mad at her. I dumped her.” “I know that, but why?”

“Because she’s a liar,” Bridget said. “That’s why.” “Yeah.” I paused. “So, what did she lie about?”

“All that stuff about
Clean Getaway
,” Bridget said. “And her big acting debut. That was all such a bunch of lies.” “How do you know?”

“The Smithereens,” Bridget said. “They said that the whole time they were on holiday in L.A., she just hung around the set of
Out of Nowhere
until she finally got to be in one single solitary crowd scene. An unpaid extra. And the Smithereens said when you watch the crowd scene you can’t even pick her out.
Clean Getaway
isn’t even a real movie.”

“Who are the Smithereens?”

“Her brothers and sisters. The other five Smith kids,” Bridget said. “Yeah, Kendra totally lied to me. That’s why I dumped her.”

I would have been delighted to say that it was completely, horribly, sinfully, unforgivably terrible of Kendra to lie, if only I wasn’t just about to tell Bridget that I had lied myself.

“So, did you tell Kendra what the Smithereens said?” I asked.“

Yes. And she tried to say she hadn’t lied at all, it was all a misunderstanding, it was all just me getting the wrong idea or something. Which is a total insult to my intelligence. It made me even madder.”

“Wow. So. Why do you figure she said all that stuff?” I asked.

“To show off. Her specialty.”

“Hmm.”“ What?” Bridget asked.

“Well. I don’t know. Just—whatever you liked about Kendra before all the showbiz lies, don’t you still like that stuff about her?” I definitely did not want to talk Bridget into being friends with Kendra again, but I had to find out the answer.

Bridget thought. “Not really. No. Like, when somebody lies and you find out, every single thing they say seems like a lie after that. And you look at them, and all of a sudden they seem all creepy. Like they’ve murdered your friend and taken over the body or something. I don’t know, it’s just—creepy.”

I exhaled slowly. Omigosh, that was close! My confession had been right on the tip of my tongue! A few more seconds and it would have been out in the sound waves! Thank goodness I had found out, just in the nick of time, that I could never, ever, ever tell Bridget that I had lied about where I lived.

We talked about other things. After awhile Bridget was mumbling, and then she was asleep. I stayed awake beside her, listening to the screech of fireworks, and then to the silence of the long night.

I was tired the next morning when we had our breakfast of Mars Bars, cheese puffs and orange juice. I was even more tired later, riding back to the treehouse with my Halloween loot in my backpack. When I climbed the ladder I saw there was nobody home. A note from Mom and Dad said they were picking Tilley up at Eveline’s.

I climbed to my bunk. I flopped there and stared out my porthole, watching the very last of the oak leaves fly slowly away. My thoughts kept going around and around in my mind, coming back exactly the same again and again. Bridget hated liars. Because she hated liars, I could never tell her the truth, because the truth was that I’d lied. Because I’d lied, I would have to keep on lying. Lying was the way to make sure Bridget liked me, because Bridget hated liars. Something seemed very wrong with this logic, yet no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t come up with another strategy for keeping Bridget as a friend.

NOTEBOOK: #18

NAME: Rosamund McGrady

SUBJECT: Pitch Black

By November it was pouring rain
almost everyday. Going to school without my rain gear was impossible, but so was wearing it around Kendra and gang. My solution was to wear it on the long ride through the woods and take it off when I got near the sidewalk. “Okay Tilley,” I said, braking my bike near the end of the path. “We’ll lock our bikes here. Take off your cape and we’ll put them in this hollow tree.”

“How come we’re taking off our capes?”

“Cause we’re superheroes.”

“But superheroes wear capes.”

“Not all the time they don’t. Think about it. Real superheroes have human identities too. And when they’re in their human identities, they’re actually really careful to be all capeless and normal.”

“Like Superman,” Tilley considered.

“Like Superman,” I agreed.

Tilley nodded thoughtfully and took off her cape. “Aren’t we gonna get wet?” she asked as I finished locking up our bikes.

“I brought umbrellas,” I said. “For our human identities.”

Tilley smiled secretively as she accepted her umbrella. At the end of the path we peered through the criss-cross of twigs to the sidewalk. “Pop out when nobody’s coming?” Tilley asked.

“Exactly,” I said, and Tilley leapt onto the sidewalk as though it were the far side of a crevasse. I put up the umbrellas and we walked the rest of the way to our schools, arriving pretty much dry.

Most days I went to Bridget’s after school. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out Great-great-aunt Lydia’s coded letter. One afternoon Bridget said, “Maybe this isn’t written in a code at all. Maybe it’s written in a secret language. That could explain why all the words have vowels in the right places.”

“But it’s almost like the language is English,” I said. “‘NO’ and ‘USE’ and ‘SOB’ and ‘TIN’ are actual English words. And there’s more if you count wrong spellings. ‘CHHARM’ and ‘EATTEN.’ So how can English be part of a secret language?”

“Could it be some kind of ancient English,” Bridget suggested.

“The Oxford English Dictionary has ancient English,” I said.

We got the OED out of Paige’s office and looked up the words one by one.

“‘ID’ means unconscious impulses,” Bridget announced. “Urges that you don’t even know that you have.”

“So it
is
English,” I said. “And‘NO’ means no, obviously.”

“‘TE’ is a chemical symbol for the element tellurium.”

“What would that mean in a sentence though? The unconscious urge to avoid that element?”

“I don’t know,” Bridget said. “And ‘VERTHIN’ isn’t an English word. Shoot. The dictionary goes straight from ‘vertex’ to ‘vertical’.”

I flipped the dictionary’s pages. “‘KAPA’s not exactly a word,” I reported, “but if you spell it with two ‘P’s it’s the tenth letter of the Greek alphabet.”

We were looking up ‘IROFSCIS’ when Paige came in. “Twenty minutes ’til your piano lesson Bridget,” she said. “Rosie, I’ll drive you home.”

“Oh, no, that’s okay. It’s not raining that hard. I’ll walk. I love to walk,” I said. “I find raindrops on my face so refreshing.”

“I know, Rosie,” Paige said. “But I can’t let you do that. It’s dark out.” I looked out the window and discovered she was right. Daylight savings had ended, and at five o’clock, it was dark as midnight.

“Oh, darkness doesn’t bother me,” I said. “I like darkness. I love darkness. I adore it.”

“But Rosie—”

“And I hate causing carbon emissions. And I need the exercise. And the meditation time,” I said.

“I know you do. But it’s pitch black out and it’s not safe for you to walk. I’m driving you.” Paige’s voice was firm.

Could I excuse myself and climb out the bathroom window or something? No, I thought. That would make a bad impression. “Okay,” I said slowly. Slowly I put on my fleece jacket and slowly I walked to the garage, trying to think of some way out of this. Sitting beside Bridget in the back seat of the minivan, I felt as desperate as a kidnap victim. The automatic garage door rolled itself away and we drove into the pouring rain. My mind was flapping like the windshield wipers, but I couldn’t think of any way out of that minivan that Paige would agree to. And so, a few minutes later, we pulled onto Bellemonde Drive.

“This is good,” I said, a block before Great-great-aunt Lydia’s. “You can let me off here.”

“Which house is yours?” Bridget asked.

“It’s just on the next block,” I said. “But this is fine, really. I’ll get out here.”

“No, I’ll bring you,” Paige said, and she drove on. On that whole next block Great-great-aunt Lydia’s was the only house.

“This one?” Paige asked as Grand Oak Manor filled up the minivan windows.

“Mm-hm,” I answered.

“
This
is your house?” Paige asked, staring out the window. “WOW,” said Bridget. “COOL! It’s like a castle! Those towers are
awesome
! LUCKY!!!”

I couldn’t wait to get out of there. “Thank you for the ride,” I said, wrenching open the minivan door. “Thank you for having me.” I slid the door shut. After a few steps I turned and waved to signal that they should go. They waved back, but Paige did a “shoo along” thing with her fingers. I knew what this meant. It meant they were going to wait until I was at the door.

I stood outside the curly iron gate of Grand Oak Manor. The lighted Manor windows glared down at me. Rain wet my scalp and dribbled under my collar as I rattled in the dark at the gate’s catch. I hoped Paige would lose patience and drive off, but she didn’t. When I swung the creaking gate inward, the minivan was still there. I walked through the rain up the Manor walkway, slowly, to give myself time to think of all that could go wrong. But soon I’d spent the distance of the walkway. I was at the bottom of the Manor’s big stone steps. I had no choice but to climb them. As I reached the porch a light came on. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Then I realized that a motion detector, not a person, had turned it on. I waved at the minivan again, expecting Paige to drive off now that I was safely on a well-lit porch. She didn’t. I waved harder, but the minivan still didn’t move. With horror, I realized that Paige was going to wait until I was actually
in the house.

What was I going to do? If I just stood there, Paige would come out of the minivan to see what was wrong. That could bring her face to face with Great-great-aunt Lydia. To make Paige and Bridget go away, I somehow had to get inside. I put my hand to the door knocker, which was shaped like a woman’s face. The door knocker had snaky metal hair and looked unfriendly. With no idea what would happen next, I knocked three loud knocks. A long silence gave me time to panic. I heard movement. The door swung open, and there, a foot away, was Great-great-aunt Lydia. People were shorter in the olden days, and my face was level with hers. It was a wrinkled, unsmiling face with staring dull eyes. Her veiny hand clutched the door.
She’s about to slam it on me
, I thought. I couldn’t let that happen. I stepped over the threshold and threw my arms around her.

“Great-great-aunt Lydia,” I said, because it felt too weird to say nothing. “It’s me, your great-great-niece, Rosamund.” I felt her move. I wondered if she might try to overpower me, and I hugged her harder. She felt squishy, and sort of loose in her skin, like a giant bag of prunes. She had a complicated smell that I couldn’t quite identify. It was sort of like the inside of old suitcases, sort of like lavender.

From the corner of my eye I saw the minivan pull away. When the tail lights were gone I whirled away from Great-great-aunt Lydia and ran down the steps. It felt weird, though, to run away from a person I had just hugged. I turned around. Great-great-aunt Lydia was still there, lit up by the porch light. Her embroidered cardigan was damp from my hug. She stared at me hard.

“Goodbye,” I said.

“Rosamund.” She spoke in a strange voice. I fled before she could say or do anything to me. I ran past the deer-shaped tree and the man-eating-fish pond, toward the gap in the fence that would return me to the treehouse.

NOTEBOOK: #19

NAME: Rosamund McGrady

SUBJECT: Excuses

“
That’s quite a house you live in
,” Paige said the next day at Bridget’s. “Grand Oak Manor! I looked it up in
Our Architectural History
.” She put a plate of brownies on the table.

“Grand Oak Manor is in a book? Really?” I asked. “You didn’t know?” Paige asked. “I thought you’d have a copy on your coffee table.”

“Huh?” Bridget’s brownie stopped midway to her mouth. “That place we dropped you off is Grand Oak Manor? Grand Oak Manor is your house? I thought it was your great-aunt whatzername who lived at Grand Oak Manor. Lydia Florence Augustine. The one your family had the big fight with.”

“Ummm.” I couldn’t help sighing, realizing I had to lie again. “No. Actually, no. Great-great-aunt Lydia doesn’t live there.”