I’m glad that it’s so dark outside. This black night is perfect for the way I feel when I think about Aunt Edith: confused, alone, and sad.
“I’m sorry, Polly,” Beatrice says simply.
“She told Dunbar the farm was dying. That’s why they’re not giving Dad any more money.”
Beatrice nods, like she isn’t surprised.
“And then she said she’d destroy the farm if Dad doesn’t change his mind about the sale.” I take a step toward Beatrice. “That’s what people do in third grade.”
Beatrice smiles at me. “Adults act like third graders all the time, Polly.” She glances over at the lake, and then turns back.
“Let me tell you a story. One time at Christmas, Edith bought her mother this gold necklace from a fancy city jeweler. She was about your age, and had saved up a bunch of money to buy her something expensive. But your grandmother never liked presents like that. The only jewelry she ever wore was that emerald ring, and that’s only because it came from her mother. She’d rather Edith make her something or work with her at the farm. So your grandmother told her that she would have been better off saving her money for a rainy day and learning more about the farm.”
Beatrice shakes her head. “Edith was furious. But even more than that, she was hurt. Not that she’d ever admit it. She took the necklace back, got the money, and bought herself a fancy pen with gold trim and used it for all her assignments at school. I think it was the start of all her writing.”
Beatrice leans back against the bench. “God knows, I loved your grandmom. But she made mistakes. She could have stopped trying to make Edith her little replica. She could have recognized all that was special about Edith. But she didn’t. No one was surprised when Edith left.
“But parents are just people. Tall third graders. It’s hard to find balance between your own stuff and your children—and the whole time you just watch as they grow up and you have to accept that they’re a whole different person than you are. It’s hard.” She smiles. “You plant watermelons, out grows broccoli.”
“I’ll never forgive her,” I say stubbornly.
“Never use the word
never
,” Beatrice says. “It always bites you in the bottom when you least expect it.”
Beatrice pushes herself up to the edge of the bench. “You have to get to bed.”
“No,” I say instantly. I suddenly remember the weird stream of vapor that appeared when I put my hand in the muck. “I need to stay here.”
Beatrice gives me one of her nonnegotiable stares. “Not a chance.”
“But—”
“Whatever you’re looking for isn’t going anywhere.”
“I’m not looking for anything. I just
found
something.”
She stands up. “What’d you find?”
“This.” I flash my emerald ring.
“Where’d you find that?”
“Over there,” I say. “In the muck.”
Beatrice smiles. “You know, your grandmom lost her ring once too. When she was just a kid. She’d gone swimming and it fell off in the lake. Sound familiar?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Beatrice ignores me.“Then she found it right around here, about ten years later when she turned eighteen. Afterward, she told me the stone needed to roll around, soak up the dirt and the lake. Go back to its roots.”
“What roots?”
“What are emeralds but stones, Polly? What are stones but minerals squished together in the earth? Don’t they teach you anything in that fancy school?”
My head is swimming. “But why?”
Beatrice puts her thick arm around my waist.
“You have the answers,” she says. Beatrice pushes me down the path to the dirt road. As she walks, she points to my head. “The answers are all in here.” Then she points to my heart. “And in here. You gotta think first, and then make sense out of it. Then you can figure out what to do.”
“But I think I just figured out—” I stop. I’m not sure what to even tell Beatrice. That I saw a vapor rise from the muck?
“Not tonight, Polly,” Beatrice says. “I promised your mom I’d take care of you while she’s at the hospital. You can’t fall off the bridge and see Edith and think it’s all going to be solved in one second. Doesn’t happen that way.”
We walk the rest of the way without talking. I glance at my ring, noticing for the first time that it’s not a perfect circle—that it’s cut more like a stop sign, with eight gleaming green sides. Did it gain some power in the muck? Why didn’t Grandmom tell me about this? Is Patricia’s ring going to fall in the lake too?
The good news is that the farther I get from the bench, the less my finger hurts. I glimpse Beatrice’s face as we walk; her lips are pressed together tightly, but she’s smiling.
“What is it?” I ask as we reach the castle.
“Just thinking about secrets,” she says. “Know what I mean?”
“I won’t say a word,” I tell her.
“You’re a lot like your grandmom.”
I reach out then, touching Beatrice’s soft arm above her elbow. “I
am
going to save our farm,” I tell her, looking her in the eye. I don’t say this like a crybaby or a showoff. I’m just telling her a fact, like George Washington was the first president. Still, I wait for Beatrice to tell me that I’m wrong, that I’m too young, or too scared.
But she doesn’t do that. “I hope so,” she tells me. “I really, really do.”
SAME DAY, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20
Genetics
I’m completely disoriented when Patricia throws off my covers and tells me that we’re late.
“Late?”
“To visit Freddy at the hospital,” she says. “Come on!”
It’s only eight o’clock in the morning. I’ve been asleep for maybe three hours. Still, I jump out of bed and grab clothes. Later, when I climb into the car, Patricia notices my ring.
“Hey! Where’d you find that?”
“Near the lake,” I say.
“I
knew
you’d find it,” Mom exclaims from the front seat. “Maybe it’s an omen. A good omen, for once.”
When we get to the hospital, Mom has an appointment with one of Freddy’s doctors. She tells us where to go, and Patricia and I walk slowly to his room, both of us eager to see Freddy but scared to see him too.
“Here it is,” Patricia says when we reach the outside of Freddy’s hospital room. “I’m going to call Sam first. Then I’ll be right in.”
“Did he think you looked like a dork?” Patricia’s eye patch doesn’t make her look odd. It makes her look even
more
beautiful.
“He said I reminded him of a pirate.” She reddens. “A
sexy
pirate.”
This may be the first time I’ve ever seen Patricia blush.
She sees me smiling at her and scowls, which makes me smile even more. “Take this,” she says, grabbing a brush from her bag.
I’m still grinning as I yank the brush through my hair. She’s already dialing the number when I give it back to her, and she puts it back into her bag without looking.
When I face the hospital room again, my smile fades. I haven’t seen Freddy since they put him in the ambulance yesterday. I push open the door.
Freddy is asleep in a hospital bed with steel railings. The sheets are white, and there’s a blanket pulled up to his neck. It is pretty warm outside, but Freddy is shivering. Although, if I’m to be honest, this is the least of his problems. One side of his head has been shaved, and he has an oxygen mask on his face.
“Hi,” I say. His eyes are closed.
How did all of this happen so fast?
Dad reads from a notebook, checking something with a thick manual he holds in his other hand. His hair stands at an odd angle from the rest of his head, like he pulled it to the right and left it there. A man stands next to him.
“Hi, Dad,” I say.
Dad looks up and tries to smile. “Hi, Pol. This is Emory Jackson, Freddy’s doctor.”
Dr. Jackson is really handsome. I don’t usually notice this kind of stuff, but he’s tall and has thick, dark, wavy hair and a really nice smile.
“Hello,” he says.
“Hi. How’s he doing?”
“I think he’s . . .”
“Hey Pol,” Freddy whispers.
I turn to my brother and for a brief instant, I see him as he was just two weeks ago, assuring me it was going to rain.
I hadn’t realized he was awake. His eyes are barely cracked open. I can only look at him for a moment before I shift my glance to the big windows on the side of his bed. There are huge sycamore trees outside of his room.
“Hi,” I say to Freddy, still looking at the window.
“Scared?” he whispers.
“No,” I answer immediately.
I hear Freddy laugh, a weaker laugh from how he usually sounds, and I turn. “I look like a shaved-head weakling, right?”
I try to look at him scientifically. “Yes,” I say. “And you’re gray.”
He laughs again, that weak, watered-down laugh. “Like Dad?”
“No, your face. Your face is gray.”
“They’re not giving me any mirrors.”
“Well, I’ll tell you the truth,” I say.
He smiles weakly and flutters his eyes closed. I gasp, but in a second he opens them again. “Slow down, Polly. It’s not that bad. I’m just tired.”
“Right. Tired people always have all these tubes and oxygen.” I look back at Dad, who’s completely focused on his books. “Why did they shave your head?”
“Something about my brain.” He says this pretty matter-of-factly, but his eyes look serious. “They’re going to do some more tests.”
“They don’t have any idea? Why has it happened so fast? It’s been crazy fast, right?”
“No answers,” Freddy says. “Dad keeps giving me Vitamin E pills, like that’s gonna do anything.”
“Maybe he should squeeze some on your brain,” I say.
“He would if he could,” Freddy said.
His eyes are the same, still bright blue and shiny, and I force myself not to concentrate on his gray skin, his white lips, the eerie way you can see blue veins crawl across the sides of his forehead.
Dr. Jackson leaves the room as Dad walks up to the bedside.
“Are you okay, Polly?” He’s looking at me strangely.
“I’m fine,” I tell him.
He holds me out at arm’s length, looking at my eyes, my appearance. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, why? Don’t I look okay?” I’m getting nervous.
“It’s the hair,” Freddy whispers.
“That’s it!” Dad grins. “You brushed your hair.”
“Not funny,” I tell them.
Just then my mom walks into the room. She goes straight to Freddy and kisses him, as if he’s not gray and lying there like a long, thick slab of stone, but like he’s the little boy from the baby pictures, all fat and happy.
“Still cold?” she asks him.
“I’m okay,” says Freddy. “Tired.”
“Polly’s been chattering away?” Mom turns to me.
“No,” Freddy says. “She’s been telling me how good I look.”
Mom reaches over and grabs Freddy’s hand from under the sheet.
“You look fine,” she says. Mom grips his hand as if there isn’t any tube at all, that he’s just another seventeen-year-old boy who is holding hands with his mother.
We watch Freddy as he falls asleep.
Despite Aunt Edith’s assurances last night, I still have to ask my parents the question I can’t get out of my head. I lean over to make sure that Freddy’s asleep so that he doesn’t hear my question.
“Do you think that the reason Freddy’s sick is because it isn’t raining?”
A sad smile creeps over Dad’s face. “Oh, honey, I understand why you think that. But no. It’s just a terrible coincidence. Whatever Freddy has, my guess is that he’s had it for a long time.”
“A long time?”
“It’s what I was afraid of before, when it seemed like it was just anemia.” Dad pauses. “I think it’s genetic.”
“Genetic.”
“My dad had a genetic mutation that can cause the nervous system to start to fail. A common symptom is anemia.”
“Granddad fell off a horse,” I say.
“Yes, but he fell because his nervous system was giving out.”
“This is good news!” Granddad didn’t die until he was an old man.
“No,” Dad says gravely. “No, it isn’t good news, Polly. If Freddy does have my father’s disease, he’s going to be sick until some kind of remedy is found. Also, the fact that he’s contracting it at an earlier age is . . . troubling.”
“What I meant is that if all Freddy has is a genetic disease, if it doesn’t have anything to do with the rain, it would be a good thing. He could live for a long time.”