“Don’t worry, Polly. It would take an act of God for me to agree to this.” He gives me a kind smile. “I’ve got it under control.”
Which would be fine, except he’s echoing Aunt Edith’s words.
Instead, I think of Beatrice.
The bugs know what they’re doing
.
When we finally leave Dad’s meeting I run to my room. I pull out
Self Reliance
and the skeleton key. It’s still laced through Enid’s necklace.
WATER. NATURA NIHIL FIT IN FRUSTRA. +/-
Water. No rain on the farm.
Self-Reliance
. The two-headed spiders. I pick up the key, the gold necklace running through my fingers. It’s all here, in front of me. What am I missing?
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10
Slugsand
It all clicked last night when I was staring out my window seat,
avoiding
the Dark House.
Natura nihil fit in frustra
.
Nature does nothing in vain.
Spark wouldn’t spell SILO unless it was important that I go there. I’m kicking myself for ignoring him before, but I guess I was just so scared of the idea that I pushed it far away in my thoughts. Not that I was thinking about anything better. In fact, yesterday was a complete loss. I overslept, wore mismatched socks, and forgot my homework. School was a nightmare. Jongy and Joe Josephs tag-teamed me with dumb jokes about the farm:
Hey, Polly, want to give up any of your umbrellas?
And also:
What do you call a farm that doesn’t grow anything? The Peabody Money Well! Ha ha.
I managed to keep my head down for most of it, finishing up
Self-Reliance
. So far, my favorite line is “
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
I’ve decided that’s what Jongy’s obsession with me is: a foolish consistency, which makes her (either) little-minded or a hobgoblin (whatever that is) or possibly both. The only time I laugh all day is when I imagine calling Jongy a “hobgoblin” to her face.
At least Freddy seems to be better. Dad said his blood tests were inconclusive, but they think he may have anemia. Apparently, that just means he has to eat more spinach. He’s sleeping with his soccer ball these days because he’s so upset about missing practice. Freddy’s convinced he’s 100 percent healthy. I’m not.
It’s not even seven o’clock in the morning, yet the sun is already beating down on our fields. It physically hurts me to see how the lack of rain is affecting our farm. It’s been seventeen days, and many of the plants seem to be swaying under the weight of their leaves. The rhubarb stalks are weak, unable to hold themselves up.
Mom mentioned the mist to me yesterday. Out of the blue, she asked me if I had seen the beautiful green fog that was spreading over our lake. I said yes and that it worried me. But Mom’s not bothered by it at all; she just thinks it’s pretty. Actually, I think the farm and Freddy take up all the worrying space in Mom’s mind. By comparison, the mist is nothing.
I wonder what Aunt Edith is doing. Does she think of me at all? Does she know that at this very second, I’m heading to the Silo? Would she care?
No. I want to think that she would, but I think—at night, when I can’t sleep, when I can’t even read because I’m too upset—that Aunt Edith didn’t care about me as much as I thought she did. Or maybe I’m just delusional, like Patricia thinks. Maybe the whole idea that I matter to Aunt Edith is wrongheaded. Maybe I’m just wrong about everything.
I cross the lower bridge, the one made of bronze, across the south end of the lake. There’s a dirt path that leads to the door of the shed, but I think the slugsand crisscrosses it at a certain point. I have no idea where the slugsand actually is. I’ve worn my heaviest boots just in case.
The Dark House is about a football field’s length away. To my left is the lake, sparkling and blue, as always. The mist hasn’t reached all the way over here yet. I see Grandmom’s bench, about fifty yards from where I stand. Teddy, Aunt Edith’s Giant Rhubarb plant, remains upright, so far unaffected.
I take another step. I’m walking right on the edge of the dirt path, keeping my eyes trained straight ahead, determined to stay focused on my mission. I find myself holding my breath as I stare at the Silo, but I don’t move my head. I just march along, one step after another. I’m so focused that I almost completely miss
three black wasps
zooming straight at me like some sick air force squadron. They swoop by my head and I duck, but they switch directions fast and whoosh back, aiming for my chest. I jump out of their way as fast as I can, darting to one side of the dirt road.
My right foot doesn’t land on the ground. It lands, instead, on a soft patch. A
really
soft patch. A pang of terror starts at my skull and crashes down through every bit of me as my other foot sinks,
sinks
, into the slush, the gunk, the
slugs.
Cheese and crackers.
I’m in the slugsand
.
The slugs are like snakes. Like pieces of fat wet spaghetti, black and deep purple and dark brown, flashes of yellow, moving, slithering, oily, disgusting.
A scream is stuck in my throat, tangled in the vision of the slugs. They’re
everywhere.
Everywhere I move. I’m stepping in their muck, like the worst kind of pond scum—my boots squish as I force myself to move my legs, move over just a bit to the right, to the dirt road, where I can pull myself up.
Each time I move, my boot plunges deeper into the slush. The slugs are above my socks and on my legs, sliming my skin. They’re on my legs. They’re on my ankles. I’m going to vomit, I’m going to drown here, I’m going to die with slugs all over me.
But I can’t do that. I can’t die in the slugsand. Even though the slugs are winning. They are 110 percent, Victory-Dancing winning. They reach my knees. My left hand scrapes the top of them and the sickening gushy feeling wallops me.
No. I will not die of slugs. Who dies of slugs?
I close my eyes and raise my hands above my head, like I’m going to swan dive into the lake. One, two, three—
please please please.
And then I do it. I
dive
into the dirt road. My fingers touch the ground. I can’t believe it. Using my elbows, I lift myself out of the slugsand, and end up staring straight at Beatrice—not six inches from my eyes.
“Sweet Lord, Polly!” she hollers. I don’t know when she got here—I can’t even think. There are still slugs, slugs everywhere. Crawling, sliming. I can’t talk. It’s like the slugs have paralyzed me, cutting off any sense of my feet and fingers and body. Beatrice yanks off my boots and lifts me up, as if I’m no heavier than a bag of sugar. I keep my eyes closed as she carries me all the way back to the castle, all the way up the stairs, all the way to the bathtub.
I hear my siblings and Basford, shocked, as Beatrice holds me, gripping me tight. I hear Mom saying thank you to Beatrice, and I hear the door close.
Mom has her arm around me. She whispers in my ear.
“You’ll be fine, we’ll just clean you off, that’s it, my sweet Polly, you’ll be as good as new.”
Mom draws the bath and she slowly removes my clothes. She places me into the bathtub, gently pulling off slugs one after the other, putting them in a brown paper shopping bag.
“You’ll be fine,” she keeps saying, “you’ll be fine.”
I hear her, but I don’t answer. Instead, I slide under the warm water and lean my head against the back of the tub.
“Keep them closed, baby. Keep your eyes closed.”
I let Mom clean me, like I’m a little girl. When she’s finished, I lift my arms out of the water, resting them on the ledge, and look down at my legs, still stained with slug slush. Mom squints, picking a tiny purple slug off of my foot. She dangles it in front of me before she puts it in the bag.
“What were you doing out there?”
I stare at my hands, on either side of the bathtub, instead of looking at Mom. Did Spark want this to happen? Is he on my side? “I decided today was the day I was going to see what all the fuss was about.”
Mom pulls the washcloth over my face, smoothing it over my forehead, my cheeks, my chin. As she takes the washcloth away, my eyes meet hers. “You’re growing up,” she says quietly.
“I’m scared,” I tell her. “I miss Aunt Edith.” I look up at her quickly, feeling guilty. “I’m sorry. I know I should hate her.”
Mom smiles. “No sweetheart, of course you shouldn’t.”
“You don’t like her.”
Mom laughs. “Not always. And not recently. No.”
“I just think that if she were around, this wouldn’t happen.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s like as soon as she didn’t get her way, she made it stop raining.”
Mom lets out an easy laugh. “Oh sweetie, your aunt can do many things. Making it rain isn’t one of them.” But then Mom gives me a curious look. “She isn’t around?”
“No,” I tell her. “She took a private plane somewhere. Jongy thinks she’s in Antarctica.”
Mom soaks up more water in the washcloth. “Well, she never really fell in love with this place.”
“How come?”
Mom starts scrubbing my other leg. “Think about it. She worked very, very hard to get to where she was. There is probably one percent of the population who can truly make a difference in this world. Your aunt was one of those people. She called the shots. She was important.” Mom pauses. “If it’s easier for a woman to achieve something in this world, it’s because of people like your aunt Edith.”
She continues. “Imagine having to come back here, to her childhood home, on a farm, making deals about trucking and rhubarb quantities after talking about ideas and philosophies and knowing people listened to you. If your dad wasn’t such a goof, he could have run the farm after Grandmom, but he’s always so focused on his research. Edith was kind of stuck, forced to return.” Mom shakes her head. “When I’m being charitable, I feel sorry for her. I think it’s very hard to come back to the place where you were a child, giving up everything you’ve done in some other, more exciting place. It must make her feel like she took a step backward.” She chuckles sadly. “When I don’t feel charitable, I think she’s a power-hungry, charmless, selfish tyrant. How about that?”
I don’t answer Mom because I’m picturing Aunt Edith growing up here. I didn’t know until this second that I assumed her childhood was exactly like mine—that she loved the farm as I did, that she thought the exact same way as I do. But it wasn’t. It was totally different.
She doesn’t love the farm like I do. She doesn’t think like I do. I’ve been wrong about so much.
Now I feel the tears.
“It’s the slugs,” I say, lying.
“It’s okay sweetheart,” Mom says. “You can cry.”
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12
Money
I didn’t have to go to school yesterday. Mom said I was still recovering from the slugs. But she forced me out the door today. I don’t know why I couldn’t have just taken the whole weekend off. I don’t feel like learning anything, anyway. I just want it to rain. And I want Harry to grow. And I want that stupid mist to disappear.
Someone grabs my arm. “I know something you don’t know.” It’s Jongy.
“Let go,” I grumble, trying to pull my arm away.
“No really. You’ll want to know this.”
“I really don’t.”
“Are you sure?” She smiles. “You don’t care about Dunbar?”
For a second, I can’t even remember who or what Dunbar is. Then I remember the name on Dad’s folder during that dinner with Aunt Edith. I flick my eyes up at Jongy, who waits for me, grinning, one hand twirling her curly brown hair.
“What?”
“My father’s on the board of directors there. He’s not happy about the way things are going. They’re going to drop your dad’s funding.” I feel my jaw sag. “I’m just telling you this for your own good. You’ve gotta start speaking up, Polly. You’re way too passive.”
“But . . .” I sputter, frustrated. “The irrigation system just started working . . .” This is true. Just last night, Dad and Chico rigged a pump by the lake that sprayed water over the Giant Rhubarb. We were all so happy we ran around the field as if we were playing under sprinklers.
She lets out a big, mean laugh. “Come on, Polly. Your farm’s going to be completely dead any second now. Everyone knows that.”
“I told you, we’re irrigating.”
“Great,” she scoffs. “Then there’s nothing to worry about.” She dabs lip gloss along the lines of her big mouth. “I’m really just trying to be your friend.”
Right. And I want more slugs to crawl up my legs.
“I have to go to class,” I say, and turn away from her.
“Maybe St. X. will let you stay when you don’t have any money.”
“We have money,” I mutter. “We have lots of money.”