Night Mare (2 page)

2

Lucky

“Ellie, what rhymes with fish?” Dad asks. He looks up from his laptop, which sits on our dining room table.

Colt and my brother, Ethan, are sitting with me on one side of the table. Dad and his work junk are taking up the other side. Dad pretends our dining room is his office, unless we're eating in here.

“Lots of words rhyme with
fish
, Dad,” I say.

“Anything remotely helpful or whatnot?” he asks, raking his hair with his fingers. The brown waves spread out all over his head. Dad looks like he's been dropped from a tornado. On his head. He only gets like this when he's stuck and in need of rhymes. My dad writes jingles for the Jingle Bells Ad Agency. If he doesn't come up with great ideas, his bosses might fire him. One of Dad's bosses is Colt's mom.

“What's the ad campaign, Mr. James?” Colt asks.

Dad slumps in his chair. He's pretty short, so slumping puts him at about our level. “It's the Fantastic Fish Food campaign. I had a funny jingle about flying fish and whatnot. But no, they want a rhyming jingle.” He turns to me. I'm the ace rhymer in the family. “So, Ellie?”

“Fish,”
I repeat. I reach for a pen and knock over two cans of dog food. My mom talked Colt and Ethan and me into helping her with her Doggone Drive. We glue pictures of missing dogs on cans and pass them out in the neighborhood. I pick up the tipped cans and start rhyming: “
Fish
,
dish
,
wish
,
squish
—”

The table jiggles. “Munch, easy,” Colt says.

Ethan reaches under the table to pet his dog. Munch is the size of a miniature horse. And he's still growing. When he wags his tail, it feels like an earthquake.

I try again. “
Fish
is a harder rhyme than I thought, Dad.”

“Tell me about it.” He rests his head on the table.

“Okay.” In my mind, I race through all possible
fish
rhymes. Nothing sounds worthy of a jingle. “Maybe we could go with fishy. Then we could use squishy and splishy, like splishy-splashy. Oooh! How about swishy? Like a horse's tail going swishy?” I always try to squeeze in at least one horse rhyme, no matter what the jingle.

Dad smacks his forehead on the table.

Ethan sets down the dog food can he's working on. He signs,
Isn't Mom at a fish protest today?

Colt laughs. “I thought you said fish protest,” he says, signing it too.

We don't laugh.

“Seriously?” Colt says. “Your mother is protesting fish?”

“I tried to talk her out of it,” Dad says.

Colt glances around the table at Ethan and me. “You guys have to admit that's a little weird, right? Your dad's advertising for fish, and your mom's protesting them?”

“She's not protesting fish,” I explain. “She's protesting
for
fish.”

Colt already knows that my mom loves all animals. She's a professional volunteer. She works at a cat farm, a dog barn, a worm ranch, and lots of other places. “Have you ever seen the fish in that fake pond in front of the fish market?”

“I've never seen fish in that pond,” Colt says.

“That's because the water is so scummy. Mom says the fish are dying. That's why she's protesting.”

Munch barks. A second later the front door bangs open. My mom swirls into the dining room on roller skates, the antique kind that clamp to her shoes. One of the best things about my mom is that she never just walks into a place like regular people do. She bursts in like the sun.

“Hi, honey!” Dad sits up straight. He reminds me of Lance, a boy in my class. Whenever Ashley Harper walks by Lance, he brightens up like Christmas. Dad's that way every time he sees Mom.

Mom kisses Dad's head. Then she rounds the table and kisses all of our heads, even Colt's. “I'm so hungry I could eat the south end of a northbound skunk!” she declares.

My mother is wearing pastel-pink and blue painter pants and a T-shirt with just about every other color on it. She tie-dyed the shirt herself.

“What's with the old-fashioned skates, Mrs. James?” Colt asks. “My sister likes to roller-skate. But she's got shoe skates. You know—all in one, with wheels on the boots.”

Colt's sister, Sierra, moved to St. Louis with their dad when Colt's parents got a divorce. He hardly ever mentions her.

“Ah,” Mom says, fingering a metal key on a string she wears around her neck. “But does your sister get to wear one of these?”

Colt squints at the old silver skate key. “You got me there. No key for Sierra.”

“And there you have it.” Mom plunks her orange patent leather handbag on the table and drops into the chair next to Dad. She crosses one leg over the other and starts unlocking her skates. “I'm tired as a squashed bug on a tractor tire.” As if she just now noticed our handiwork, she picks up one of the dog food cans Ethan has finished. A collie named Lucky is on the can, along with a phone number. “Great job! These are pretty as a pumpkin! I'll pass them out tomorrow. We'll find Lucky before you know it.” Mom winks at me.

I wink back. I think Lucky is lucky to have my mom on the case.

3

Surprises

How did the fish protest go, Mom?
Ethan asks.

“I'm as forgetful as a frog in love!” Mom grabs her orange purse and pulls out a plastic sack of murky water and sets it on the table. “There you go, Ethan. Surprise!”

Ethan takes the bag. He peers into it, and his mouth drops open.

I lean over and stare into the bag too. “Mom, there are fish in there!” The bag smells like pond scum.

“I was only able to rescue three of the poor things. And I have to warn you, Ethan. Those fish are sick as an alligator in a shoe store. But I thought if anyone could nurse them back to health, it's Ethan James.”

Colt and I search the attic until we come up with the little aquarium Dad bought me two years ago.

“Remember when your dad won that goldfish for you at the county fair?” Colt asks. “He had to throw quarters onto a plate, right?”

I nod. “Mom said we could have bought a boat with the quarters it took to win that fish. And the poor thing didn't even last one day.”

Colt helps Ethan set up the tank while I bring in pitchers of water to fill it.

“What will you name them?” Colt asks Ethan.

Ethan shrugs. He sets the plastic bag of fish into the tank water. That way the fish can get used to their new home before leaving the old murky water.

“What kind of fish are they?” Colt asks.

“Goldfish,” Mom answers. She hands Ethan a small can of fish food.

“Goldfish?” I stare into the fish tank. All three fish are gray and shriveled up. “They don't look gold. They look charcoal. Like somebody had a fish fry . . . and they were the guests of honor.”

That's it!
Ethan signs. His fingers move at lightning speed.
They do look burned. So I think I'll name them Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

“What did you say?” Colt squints at Ethan's fingers.

Ethan finger-spells the names again.

“I have no idea what you're spelling, Ethan,” Colt complains.

“Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego,” I say. I'm glad I can say it instead of spelling it. Ethan's only in second grade, but he's a better speller than I am.

Colt scrunches his eyebrows. “I still don't get it. Who are Shad and Me-whatever and Bednego?”

Colt's mother doesn't take him to church. Neither does his dad when he goes to St. Louis to see him. Every time we've asked Colt to go to church with us, his mom says he can't.

I explain as much as I can remember from Sunday school about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. “They were three Old Testament guys who were captured by a mean king. The king tried to make them pray to an idol instead of to God. When they wouldn't, the king threw them into the lions' den.”

Ethan shakes his head.
Daniel got thrown into the lions' den. Daniel's friends
—Ethan nods to the fish—
were thrown into the fiery furnace.

“I get it,” Colt says. He presses his nose against the fish tank. “These fish do look like they've been through the fire, all right.” He looks back to Ethan. “Did they die? The Bible guys, I mean?”

Ethan grins and shakes his head again.
They prayed, and God rescued them. They didn't even smell like smoke when they got out of the furnace.
Ethan strokes the tank as if he's petting his new fish.

Before Colt has to go home, we go to Ethan's room to check our blogs. Ethan and I share a computer. Last month I had the computer in my room. This month it's in Ethan's room. My brother's room screams “Baseball!” He pitches for his baseball team, and he has pictures of famous pitchers covering one wall. His throw rug is a big, fluffy baseball. And his bed is covered with a Kansas City Royals blanket.

Colt takes Ethan's desk chair and checks the
Starring Larissa
blog. “Man, Larissa and her mom have added a ton of stuff since this morning.”

“I still can't believe you let Larissa get away with that blog name, Colt.”

He ignores me and keeps squinting at the screen.

While I'm waiting on Colt, I take out my blog folder and thumb through some of the recipes. Winnie the Horse Gentler gave me a great idea for a treat you don't have to cook. I'm going to change the recipe a little and call it Molasses Monster Munch. But my favorite recipe is for Oat and Apple Bars. Cassie and I made two dozen of them. Dream would have eaten every last bar if we'd have let her.

Colt groans. “Ellie, you better read this.”

“A blog starring Larissa? No thanks. I get enough Larissa at school.”

“I'm serious, Ellie. Get over here.”

Something in Colt's voice makes me walk over to the computer. The first thing I see is an old picture of my horse. The dirty, scraggly pinto in that photo hardly looks like Dream. Her ribs are sticking out, and her ears are flat back.

“Leave it to Larissa to post the worst possible picture of Dream,” I say. “But so what? I'm not going to let her get to me.” I turn my back on the screen.

“I'm not talking about the picture,” Colt says. “Or her version of the story.” He frowns at me. “I'm talking about the comments, Ellie.”

“What comments?” I don't like the way my stomach feels, like it's tangled inside.

“Well, there are a bunch of dumb comments after the story. Somebody wrote that he didn't think the picture was real because the horse looks like a scarecrow. Somebody else tried to make a joke about ‘backyard horses' being ‘backward horses.'”

Whenever anybody says something mean about Dream, it turns me into a cross between a bucking bronco and a wild mustang. But Dream doesn't even look like that picture now. “Colt, who cares what strangers have to say about an old picture?”

But Colt isn't finished. He's still staring at the screen, still shaking his head. “It's this last comment, Ellie. You better read it.”

“You read it.” What could somebody say that hasn't been said already?

“Okay.” Colt glances at me one more time. Then he reads the comment. “It says: ‘Hey! The horse in that picture—that's my horse!'”

4

No Comment!

I stare at the computer screen. My fingers grip the chair so I don't fall down. The words blur together:
Hey! The horse in that picture—that's my horse!

“Are you okay, Ellie?” Colt asks.

I can't answer him. I can't take my gaze off the final two words in the comment:
my horse!

Before I realize what I'm doing, I'm screaming, “No!” Then I shout even louder, “Mom! Dad! Mom! Dad!”

My parents thunder up the stairs and into Ethan's room.

“Ellie?” Dad says. “What on earth . . . ?”

Mom strides to the computer in two steps. “I'll be a mummy's mummy if you didn't scare ten years off my life. What's so catawampus that you had to ruin a perfectly good rerun of
Saved by the Bel
l
?”

“Ellie read something on Larissa's blog and freaked out,” Colt explains.

“The freaked-out part we got,” Mom says.

“What's on the blog?” Dad asks. “Aren't you doing a blog with Cassandra?”

“Read it.” My voice sounds like I'm under murky water. A dying fish. That's how I feel—like I'm drowning in pond scum. I can hardly move. Mom and Dad have to crowd in to get a better look at the computer screen.

“Is that Dream?” Dad asks, pointing to the old picture. “I almost forgot how sickly your horse was before we got her.” He scrolls up a little. “Is that Larissa's horse?”

I glance at the photo. Larissa is holding a trophy. Next to her is her American saddle horse, Custer's Darling Delight.

“The one on the right is Larissa's horse,” Colt informs Dad. “The one on the left is Larissa.”

Mom chuckles. “Well, that Larissa has a way with words, all right. She got the story wrong. But it's kind of funny. You shouldn't take it so personally, Ellie.”

“It's not the story we're worried about,” Colt explains. “It's the comments. The last comment.”

I watch Mom's eyes narrow as she reads.

“I'll be a blue-nosed gopher,” she mutters.

Dad is reading through the comments too. His eyebrows shoot up and down like the wings of a bird trying to take off. “It has to be a joke or whatnot,” he finally says.

“Do you think so, Mr. James?” Colt asks.

“Must be,” Dad answers.

Mom slaps Dad on the back. “You are the smartest man I know, Lenny James! Of course it's a joke. A very bad joke.” Mom looks totally relieved.

I want to believe them.
I
want to feel relieved. “But what if it's not a joke?” I demand. “What if whoever had Dream before she showed up at the cat farm really did recognize her from Larissa's blog?”

My mind flashes back to the day when I saw the shaggy pinto from my classroom window. Nobody else saw her there. And by the time Colt and I walked home from school, he almost had me believing the horse was all in my imagination. Then Mom came home from volunteering at the cat farm and announced she'd lost a stray spotted horse. And that was the beginning of my dream come true.

Mom puts her arm around me. She has to bend in half to look me in the eyes. “Sugar, whoever had that poor horse before you got her wouldn't likely be admitting it.” She points toward the picture on the screen. “Who would confess to starving a horse like that? Why, I'd arrest him myself for being cruel to animals. He'd be hog-tied and strung up in a court of law.”

“Your mom's got a point, Ellie,” Colt says.

“She always does,” Dad agrees.

“Hey!” Colt scoots his chair up to Ethan's desk again. “I'm going to comment on the comment.”

“Can you do that?” Dad asks.

“This is my blog too,” Colt says. “I got teamed with Larissa for the blog project.”

“And you call it
Starring Larissa
?” Mom asks.

Colt types, and the rest of us read his comment as he goes along:
Oh yeah? This is NOT your horse. And even if you did own this horse once, you better not admit it. They put people in jail for starving horses.

“There!” Colt leans back in the chair and clicks the button to post it. Only Colt's comment doesn't show up. Instead, he gets a message back that says, “Thank you for your comment. All comments must be approved by Larissa. Have a nice day!”

“That stinks!” Colt shouts.

It's at that moment when I get it. “Yes! I should have thought of that right off. It's Larissa!”

“What do you mean, honey?” Dad asks.

“That comment! Don't you get it? I'll bet you anything Larissa is the one writing all the comments on her site.” I can picture her sitting at home making up every word. “
She's
the one calling Dream a scarecrow. She's the one making fun of backyard horses. And she's the one trying to stir up trouble by claiming
my
horse is really
her
horse.”

“Well, I'll be a four-toed fiddler,” Mom mutters.

“I guess,” Colt says. “I know she and her mother were worried that nobody would see the blog. Larissa really wanted people to write comments.”

“See? I'm right!” I'd love to send Larissa a few comments of my own right now.

“So when she didn't get any comments, she must have decided to write them herself,” Colt says, like he's thinking aloud.

Dad sighs and backs away from the computer. “If this crisis is over, then I guess I'd better get back to my own crisis. Fish rhymes.”

“I'll help,” Mom offers, even though she once tried to rhyme
bowling
with
sewing
. That jingle almost got Dad fired.

After Colt leaves, I fill Ethan in on Larissa's blog. He makes me find the website so he can read it for himself. When he's done, he signs,
Are you sure Larissa wrote that comment?

I make a fist and wave it up and down at him, signing,
Yes!
But I wish he hadn't asked.

Ethan shakes his head.
That's awfully mean, even for Larissa. You'd better take the computer to your room so you can keep an eye on her blog.

After we move the computer into my room, Ethan and I check on Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They're still alive, but they're not swimming much.

By the time I'm ready for bed, I'm pretty tired. I open my bedroom window and call, “Dream!” Stars are just starting to light up the sky.

In seconds I hear my horse's hoof beats and know she's trotting toward me. Dream appears at the edge of the yard, tossing her head. Her white mane floats across her neck. Dream doesn't stop until she's at my window.

When Dad and I fenced in our backyard, we decided one side of the fence would be our house. That's why my bedroom window opens up into Dream's pasture—our yard.

Dream nickers and sticks her head in through the window so I can pet her. I sit on the window ledge, and my horse stretches her neck until her head rests in my lap. When I scratch her jaw, her eyes droop shut.

“You're mine, Dream. All mine.”

I usually say my going-to-bed prayers when I'm in bed. But I'm so wound up from Larissa's blog that I decide I'll say my prayers with Dream tonight. “God, thanks for helping Dream and me find each other.” I thank God for Ethan and Mom and Dad and Colt and Cassie and everybody else I can think of. Only not Larissa.

“Dream,” I whisper when I'm done talking to God, “you and I have a lot to be thankful for, including that trail ride tomorrow.”

I kiss Dream good night and watch her trot off in the starlight. Then I curl up in bed and try to sleep. Only I'm so excited about the trail ride, sleep stays away for a long, long time.

Just when I start drifting off, I jerk myself awake because I'm starting to have a nightmare. In my dream, Larissa is taking
my
horse and handing her over to some stranger.

And then I can see Ethan's hands signing,
That's awfully mean, even for Larissa.