Some Kind of Happiness (11 page)

He laughs, slams the door, and disappears.

“What'll we do?” Gretchen whispers. “We can't go in there, not with the Baileys inside!”

A dry summer wind sweeps across the field toward the house. I have to follow it. When the Everwood speaks, only fools choose not to listen.

“Yes, we can,” I say. “And we will. Right now.”

I
START WALKING TOWARD THE
house before I can change my mind.

The Everwood may be calling me, but I am not an idiot. Going after an enemy on his home turf is a huge risk.

“Are you crazy?” Gretchen runs after me.

“No.”

“Well, I'm not going in there. You'll have to go by yourself!”

“Fine.”

Up close, the house looks even worse. A huge hole where the roof is missing opens up one half of the building to the sky. Dark stains cover the house like bruises. Black wooden beams stick out of collapsed walls, and the windows are either smashed or missing.

There must have been a fire here.

The summer wind blows past me again, and I imagine it is the heat of flames. It shouldn't make sense to shiver when you're hot.

“This place gives me the creeps.” Gretchen pokes through the grass with her foot. “Look at all this trash. God, it's like the house threw up or something. Empty bottles, clothes,
toys . . .
ugh
!” Gretchen kicks away a one-eyed doll wearing a faded red dress. “Get away, you freaky little monster.”

“Oh,
wow
, would you look at this awesome medal?” a voice calls out from inside the house.

Gretchen and I both stare up at the second floor, where a tanned hand dangles Kennedy's MVP medal out a window.

“It sure is
shiny
,” the voice continues. A boy's head pops out, grinning down at us. It's the boy who brought us here, his bangs dark and wild. He slips the medal around his neck. “I think I'll keep it! What do you think, Cole?”

Another, older boy looks out the window. “I think you should keep that, and I'll . . . keep
this
.” Cole waves around Gretchen's stuffed dolphin, Echo, and kisses its nose. “Oh, what a cutie-wutie wittle dolphin!”

“Stop touching him, you gross . . .
toe fungus
!” Gretchen shrieks.

“Come and stop me,” Cole suggests, which makes the other boy crack up. They disappear back inside.

“I am literally going to knock their heads off,” Gretchen growls. She finds a stick and whacks the house with it. Faded green paint flakes off and blows away. “Either that or call the cops. They are so getting arrested. Do you have your phone? Hey! Where are you going?”

I follow the trail of garbage behind the house. The backyard is a mess: overgrown trees, grass that comes up to my waist, piles of broken bricks and rotting wood. An old, rusty pickup truck sits off to the side, weeds grown up around its tires.

In the corner, back where the woods start up again, is a giant oak tree with curved branches that hang so low you could walk right up and sit on them.

I crawl inside the tree's canopy. Above me the world is green and cool. The grass here is thin; it must not get enough sunlight. I place my hand on a nearby branch. The rough bark feels familiar, like this tree and I are old friends.

“Fin?” Gretchen barrels into the tree after me. “Do we have a plan here or what? Kennedy will flip if we don't get back soon.”

“Hold on a second,” I say.

“Why? What's going on?”

I do not know how to tell her about the hot wind whispering to me, or the fact that I think I have fallen in love with a tree.

“Nothing's going on—” My foot catches on a dip in the ground, and I fall.

“Fin? You okay?”

I do not answer her. I am staring at the small, gray shape sticking up out of the dirt in front of me. It is so covered with moss and leaves and mud that I can't see much of it.

Even so, I know it is a gravestone.

There are three of them.

“Holy . . . Are you kidding me?” Gretchen squats beside me. “Are those what I think they are?”

She reaches out to touch the nearest one. I slap her hand away.

“Hey! What was that for?”

“Don't touch them.”

“Why not?”

The truth is, I want very much to touch them. I want to scrub off that moss and mud and find out who they belong to. But the quiet of this place beneath the tree suddenly seems like it might be a sign. “Maybe they don't want to be touched.”

Gretchen inches away from the gravestones. “You mean, like . . . ghosts?”

“Maybe.” I get up and march toward the house. “I'd like to know a little bit about them before I stick my nose into their business, is all I'm saying.”

I creep up the back steps, making sure the wood is steady before I put my weight on it, and knock on the door. The wall beside it gapes open, but it feels wrong to step inside without asking.

A piece of paper slides out from beneath the door. It says,
If you want your stuff, you'll have to steal it back.

I shove the paper back into the house. “We're not stealing anything. We want to talk to you. It's important.”

After a minute the door swings open. Three boys stand there. The medium-sized one passes a Slinky back and forth between his hands, his eyes narrowed.

“State your business,” he says.

“My name is Finley Hart, and this is my cousin Gretchen—”

Gretchen nudges me. “What are you doing?”

“I'm Jack,” says the medium-sized boy. Then he points to the oldest boy. “That's Cole. And the little one's Bennett.”

Bennett waves cheerfully at us. Cole grabs his hand and stops him.

“You're trespassing,” Jack says.

“You stole our stuff,” I reply.

He shrugs. “Doesn't give you the right to trespass.”

“We want it back.”

“What if we don't give it back?”

“Then we'll call the cops,” Gretchen snaps.

Bennett's eyes go wide. “Cole!”

“No one's calling the cops,” Cole says. “And even if you did, they don't care about stuff like that.”

Jack is watching me. I stare right back at him. I am not afraid of pirates.

“You'll give us our stuff back,” I say. “You don't look dishonorable.”

In fact they do, but flattery might be our best bet in this situation.

“Ha!” Cole grins. “Sure we do. We're
Baileys
. Didn't your grandparents warn you about us?”

“Actually, they did,” says Gretchen.

“Yeah? And what did they say?”

I don't want Gretchen to make things worse, so I interrupt. “Did you know there are gravestones under that tree in the back?”

“Yeah,” says Jack. “Why do you care?”

“Whose are they?”

He shrugs. “Don't know.”

“Well, didn't you ever try to look?”

“Nah. Don't care.”

“Can I clean them off?”

Gretchen tugs on my sleeve. “Fin, let's just go.”

“Why do you care about them?” Jack asks me.

“Because it's disrespectful to leave them dirty,” I say. “People are supposed to take care of the dead.”

No one says anything. Jack pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket—my list of favorite words—and carefully smooths out the wrinkles.

“Is this yours?” he asks me.

I could snatch it away from him and run, but I stay put. “Yes.”

He reads over the list. “
Sinister. Footfall.
There are a lot of words here.”

“I've worked hard on them. I love words.”

Jack scratches the back of his head, messing up his hair. He disappears and comes back with our box.

“Jack!” hisses Cole. “What are you doing, man? Come on.”

“You can have this back,” says Jack, “but only if you clean up the gravestones.”

I think about that. “We can't do it today. We have to get home.”

“Then when you come back to clean, you can have your stuff.”

Gretchen looks ready to bite him. “Why can't
you
clean them off?”

Jack grins. “Because Cole's scared of ghosts and doesn't want to ‘curse our family.' ”

“Shut up, Jack!” Cole pushes him, his face turning red. “I just hate cleaning. It's pointless.”

I hold out my hand. “It's a deal.”

Gretchen protests,
“Finley . . .”

“Deal.” Jack shakes my hand. His fingers are gritty with dirt.

Gretchen grumbles at me as we start across the field toward home. The Everwood wind blows against my sweaty skin, cooling me off. I have an idea and turn around. The part of the house with the roof missing looks like a jagged rib cage.

“Jack?” I call out.

Jack comes out onto the front porch. “Yeah?”

“Does the house have a name?”

“Not really. Why?”

“We should call it the Bone House.” I pause. “You know, because of the graves.”

He nods. “Yeah. I like that.”

“We'll come back as soon as we can.”

“Okay. Sorry about all this. I was bored. I wasn't trying to be mean. It's usually the same old stuff around here, you know?”

“I guess.”

“And hey, Finley?”

“Yeah?”

He shoves his hands in his pockets. “Don't worry about your words. I'll keep them safe.”

I don't say thank you. It seems strange to say thank you to someone who has stolen from you. But I think about Jack's voice all the way home, and how he held my list in his hands like he knew it was a piece of my own heart.

HE ORPHAN GIRL'S SLEEP TURNED
restless and fitful
.

Dreams plagued her night hours and followed her into waking—dreams about the Bone House, the Wasteland, the three small graves.

To clear her head, she took long walks through the forest, without her friends, and on these walks she saw strange shapes on the edge of her vision: Birds and bats. Long, snakelike vines. Tall, thin, faceless figures. Whenever the orphan girl turned to face these shapes, they disappeared, and all she could see were the Everwood trees, green and gray and fading.

One day, however, the figure she saw did not fade.

She turned, and there it was: a shadow in the shape of a man in flowing robes. The shape shimmered as if the orphan girl were viewing it through water.

“Who are you?” the orphan girl demanded.

“I am the wizard,” said the shadow.

“What wizard?”

“The only one.”

The orphan girl took a careful step away. “Why do you look so strange?”

“Because,” answered the wizard, “I am no longer here.”

A tendril of fear rolled down the orphan girl's spine. “You're a ghost.”

The wizard inclined his head.

“Are you here to haunt me?” the orphan girl asked.

“I don't think so.”

“Then why are you here?”

The wizard shrugged, his shoulders rippling. “You woke me up.”

“The graves,” the orphan girl whispered. “Are you in one of the graves?”

“I was. Now there is only dust and bits of bone.”

“Was the Bone House yours?”

The wizard was quiet for a long time. Then he said quietly, “Once. Long ago.”

“And the others? The other two graves?”

“Wizards,” said the wizard mournfully, “always live in threes, for they are burdened with terrible secrets.”

“What secrets?” The orphan girl tried to touch his arm, but it was like drawing her hand through icy water. “Do you know what's happening to the Everwood? Why are the trees dying? What are those howls at night?”