Aunt Edith shakes her head and speaks normally. “She was wrong, Polly. She was so wrong. For someone like you, who has me guiding your way—you can do anything, Polly! You really can!” She speaks so urgently that it propels her up, off the bench, to stand in front of me. “But you can’t do it here.”
“What if I want to stay here later, when I’m an adult?”
“The girl I know will grow up and understand she needs to get out into the world. That staying here is the same as surrendering to mediocrity. That keeping her gifts hidden is cowardice. That not fighting for oneself is unacceptable.” She pauses, staring me right in the eye. “It isn’t. It will never be.”
I don’t say what I’m thinking, which is that I don’t have any idea what I’m going to do, but I think it’s entirely possible I can do all those things right here.
“What are you going to do if Dad won’t sell it?”
“He’ll sell it.”
“I don’t think so,” I tell her. “I’ve never seen him so stubborn about anything.”
“Dunbar just pulled their money. Now what is he going to do?”
“How do you know that? It just happened.”
Aunt Edith doesn’t answer. A horrible understanding cuts across my mind, silver scissors slicing open the curtain to a bright and awful room I didn’t know was there.
No. It can’t be.
“Did you do it?”
Aunt Edith turns her head away, toward the Dark House. This can’t be true.
“Aunt Edith, did you tell Dunbar to take the funding away?”
She looks back at me. “Polly, the farm is dying. I didn’t have to say much.”
“But—”
She cuts me off. “Your father refused an astoundingly good offer. He would have been very well compensated to do his research wherever he wanted.”
“But he’s your brother—”
“He told me no.” She pulls back her shoulders and suddenly, she seems as if she’s sixteen feet tall. “I cannot accept that, not from someone who I’ve helped for so long and for whom I’ve given up so much. Do any of you realize that without me you would have none of this—no research, no private school, no
books
?” She’s breathing hard. “I’ll destroy this farm if I don’t get what I want.”
“What?” There is no way she said what I think she said.
“You heard me, Polly.”
Doesn’t she realize what she’s saying?
“But what about Freddy?”
“Freddy?”
“Freddy’s sick because the farm is dying, because there’s no rain!”
“Oh, Polly.” She gives me a sad look, like I’m the one who’s ill. “Freddy isn’t sick because it isn’t raining.”
“Yes he is,” I say obstinately. “The only other time it didn’t rain was when he was born. And now—now it hasn’t rained in almost four weeks and he’s gotten so sick . . .” My voice trails off, because I don’t want to say out loud that Freddy might
die
.
“No, no, no. Polly, you’re wrong about this. Freddy’s sick because, well, Freddy’s sick. Now look at me.”
I do. I stare right at her bright, intense eyes.
“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.” She reaches out and puts her hand on my shoulder. “But there is no connection between Freddy and the rain. I’m sure of it.”
“If you destroy the farm, Freddy will keep getting worse.”
I say this quickly, without thinking, but as I hear the words, I’m sure they’re true.
Aunt Edith swallows and snaps her hand off my shoulder. When she turns to me, she’s very serious.
“I love you and your siblings and your family as much as I am capable of loving.” She looks pained, and I feel my heart rip again, another piece fluttering to the ground.
“You cannot solve this, Polly. I know you think you can. But you can’t.” She takes a deep breath, composing herself. “You should tell your father that everything will only get worse if he continues to refuse Alessandra’s offer.”
“I won’t tell him that.”
Aunt Edith looks over to the lake, and I fall back against the bench. “I love you like my own child.” Her voice breaks a little. “You will choose your parents. I suppose that is the right thing to do.” She turns around. “I hope you never regret it.”
Her face seems more resolved now and I suddenly have the feeling that a door is closing—no, a door is
slamming shut
.
I jump up from the bench. “Aunt Edith, don’t do—whatever you’re planning on doing. Please.”
She bends down and hugs me as if it’s the last time she’ll ever see me.
“Good-bye Polly,” she says.
“But—”
“Say good-bye Aunt Edith,” she instructs.
“But—” Tears gather in the corners of my eyes.
Aunt Edith’s smiles at me, a thin, lovely smile. “Say it.” Tears fall down her cheek too.
“Good-bye, Aunt Edith,” I hear myself say, softly, sadly. “Good-bye.”
SAME DAY, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20
A Green Slug
For a long time after Aunt Edith leaves, I sit on the bench. No book light, no moonlight, just me in the dark, staring at the lake.
Like the farm, I feel dry. Hollow, even, as if my blood has drained out of my body like the water is draining out of the lake.
I love Aunt Edith. But she shouldn’t have tried to sell the farm. And she shouldn’t get so mad just because someone told her she couldn’t do what she wanted. And she definitely, definitely should not have told Dunbar about the farm so that Dad would lose his funding.
And there’s something else. She’s wrong.
I
am
going to solve this. I’m going to save Freddy and I’m going to make the farm live again. I am going to figure out how to make Freddy better.
I’m the biggest worrier in the world. Sometimes incredibly horrible thoughts enter my mind and rip apart my heart. But even with all that, I can still hope that something good will happen. It’s not even a choice for me: It’s something that I actually
have
to do. I have to believe that something good can always happen.
In other words, I believe in magic.
I shift around and examine Grandmom’s bench. It’s wooden, not fancy. Slats held together by black iron side rails. I take my hand out of my pocket. Why does my crooked finger hurt so much? Honestly, Owen’s out of his mind. How can he tell me this finger is a good luck charm? I flex my fingers back and forth, trying to fling off the pain. But I forget that I’m holding my book light, and it flies from my fingertips and lands in front of me.
In the slugsand in front of me.
There’s no way I’m going to get it. I’d have to put my hand back in there. I’d have to touch more slugs.
But I can’t see anything without it. For the first time tonight, with the Dark House at my back, I shudder. I have to get back to the castle and I can’t do it in the dark.
I glance down at the muck. The book light is moving, courtesy of the disgusting spaghetti slugs, writhing and churning in the muck. Each time the slugs move, the book light flashes its narrow beam of light on more slimy creatures: big, small, yellow, gold, purple, and green.
Wait.
Green? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a green slug.
I peer closer. The book light turns again, the slugs twisting it so that it shines directly on something solid, something shiny, something that
isn’t
moving.
I jump off the bench. My crooked finger burns, so I plunge my left hand into the slugsand, closing it around the shiny thing and lifting it out of the mire.
I unclasp my hand. A disgusting black slug covers half my palm. I fling the slug away.
There it is.
My emerald ring
.
Another electric jolt goes through my right hand as I stare. The gold band, the green stone, the engraving.
For my dear wise Polly. Love, Grandmom.
I close my eyes, remembering. My ring fell off when she died four years ago. And now it’s here. The book light turns again, shining light on more slugs. I take a deep breath and now reach into the muck with my opposite hand, the one that’s in great, extreme pain. As my fingers circle around the black coiled neck of the light, my hand feels as if it’s on fire. The slushy, watery slugsand oozes over my wrist, my fingers, sickening me. I grasp the light and pull at it, hard, but it doesn’t come. I tug some more, but it seems like the slugs are also gripping on to it, lacing my light to their bodies, pulling the light into the muck. It’s an insane tug-of-war.
I crouch down, clutching the light as tightly as I can even though it means that now my hand is fully covered by the muck. Just as I am ready to yank the light away from the slugs, something stops me. Something I can’t explain.
In the air above my hand, my
burning
hand, a thin column of white smoke rises from the muck.
My eyes open wider and I look down. The slugs are getting scorched and the watery mud around it is hot.
Hot
. With one massive tug, I yank the book light up, shining it over the muck. The vapor instantly dissolves. My finger burns.
What just happened? What
was
that?
“Polly Peabody!” A sharp voice slices through the air. “Polly Peabody, is that you?!”
SAME DAY, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20
Third Graders
It’s Beatrice. She looks at me as if she doesn’t know if she should scream or take me into her arms.
“What are you doing out here, with your hand in that muck?”
I don’t know what to say, so instead, I pluck off two slugs that have attached themselves to my book light. When I fling them away, as far as I can toss, Beatrice flinches, grabbing on to the back of the bench, like she’s in pain.
“Don’t do that!” she mutters.
“Do what?” I move toward her, my arm around her shoulders. “Are you okay?”
She shakes her head like I’m some kind of nincompoop. “I asked you not to hurt them,” she says.
“I didn’t hurt them. I just—”
“Threw them so they landed smack on the ground, like a rock hitting a pavement.What’s wrong with you?”
“It’s a
slug
.”
“It’s a bug,” she clarifies. “And you can’t throw bugs around, because if you do, it feels like lightning strikes me clear from my head to my toes.”
I stare at her dumbly. I don’t understand.
“When a bug on this farm is killed, I get hurt. Okay? Even when a bug is hurt, I feel it.”
“
What?”
“You heard me, Polly. And don’t go telling everyone my secret, okay? It’s not something I talk about around town.”
“I can’t throw around bugs?” I sputter.
“No. You can’t. Killing them is worse. That hurts so much that sometimes I have to cram a dishtowel in my mouth to keep from screaming.” She lifts her hands off of the bench.
“You get hurt every time a bug dies? For real?”
“For real.”
“Why?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. It used to affect my parents too. They lived on a sugarcane farm. Always said it was because we liked to be outside so much, it became a part of us.”
She’s solving a puzzle that I didn’t even know existed. “That’s why you came out that night—when I fell in the slugsand. Right?”
Beatrice nods. “Felt like a million needles puncturing me, all at the same time.”
“Does anyone know?”
“No. Well, your grandmom did. But no one else. That’s the point of a secret; it doesn’t help anything to be let out to the world. No one should know.”
There’s one more slug on the book light. I pick it up and carefully place it on the ground, never letting my eyes leave Beatrice’s. A small smile sneaks across her face.
“Perfect,” she says softly. “Thanks.” She puts her hands on her hips. “Now, what in the world possessed you to come out here at this hour?”
I think about the correct answer. “Grandmom,” I finally say. “But someone else was here already.”
Beatrice nods. “Edith?”
“How’d you know?”
“I remember the date of your grandmother’s death as well as anyone. What did she want?”
For a second, I stare at Teddy, the Giant Rhubarb plant, who has now flopped over, like a dead green tree. I was right about Aunt Edith’s force field. It was literally holding Teddy up.
Just like it usually holds me. I cross my arms tightly around my chest. “She said good-bye,” I say very quietly. When the words hit the air, I think my heart is breaking.