Caleb and Kit

by Beth Vrabel

  “Come on, Caleb! I’m going to miss the bus!” Patrick yelled.

  I added the book to my bag.

  At the edge of the park, I turned from Patrick. “Bye.” It was the first word either of us had spoken on the whole walk.

  “Do you know where to go?” Patrick asked.

  Cars were pulling into the park but there weren’t a lot of kids around. Up by the pavilion, Shelly sat on the grass, scowling at everyone. I glanced back at Patrick, who now had that same little smirk on his face. “Yes.” I sighed. “Just go.”

  “Right,” Patrick said. He grinned. “Looks like she’s waiting for you.”

  Sure enough, Shelly now stood, staring right at us.

  “Good-bye,” I snapped.

  Patrick snorted and kept walking. I headed up the small hill with the shortest possible steps, praying Ava wouldn’t look up from her clipboard where she checked in campers. When Patrick finally turned the corner, I sprinted back down the hill and into the woods on the far side of the park. I looked over my shoulder once. Shelly watched me for a moment and then drifted back down to a seated position.

  When I got to Mermaid Rock, Kit was kneeling on top of it, running the edge of a thin, small rock along the side of the boulder. “We have a mission,” she said without looking up.

  “What?” I dumped my bag and bark shield, kicked off my shoes at the side of the stream, and headed toward her. “What kind of mission?”

  Kit nudged another long narrow rock my way with her bare foot.

  “Are we skipping stones?” I asked, tossing the rock up and catching it in my hand.

  “Sharpen it,” Kit said as she scraped the edge of her own rock against the boulder.

  When I didn’t move right away, she sighed and took the rock back from my hand, sharpening it herself.

  “What’s going on, Kit?” I glanced around. The same cereal box that she ate from the week before lay on its side at the creek’s edge. The open end was facing me; it was empty. Kit was wearing the same dress she had worn on Thursday, dried mud staining the bottom and fresh dirt caking the front. “Are you okay? I mean, how was your birthday?”

  “Fine,” she said, scraping the stone harder against the rock.

  “I thought you said you went on a shopping spree or something.”

  Kit didn’t look up. “No.”

  “What—”

  “No time to talk about unnecessary topics! I’ve been up for a couple hours, scouting the perimeter for signs of a fay invasion.”

  “Oh! This is part of the game. Right!” I grinned, but that was wiped clean a second later by Kit’s hard glare. For the first time since I had arrived, she stopped sharpening the stone. “I mean, right. Perimeter. Fay.”

  Kit shoved her hair back from where it plastered against her sweaty forehead. “Go get your shield,” she ordered and hopped into the stream. “We’ll need it for the rescue mission. Your sandwich, too.”

  “Rescue?” I knew just which stones to leap onto now and so was back with the shield in just a couple seconds. Instead of picking out just my sandwich, I grabbed my whole backpack. “Who are we rescuing?”

  Kit pushed one of the stones into my hand. Her eyes were hard and her face set. “Let’s go.”

  “Who are we rescuing?” I asked again. The rock was heavy in my hand. For some reason, I had this crazy urge to throw it into the stream and go back to camp. I kept thinking of Shelly, watching me as I left and not saying a word. What if I just went back?

  “Someone in trouble,” Kit finally answered. “One of us.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “You know how we’re destined to be best friends?” Kit said as we made our way through the woods. She moved deliberately, even though there wasn’t a trail to follow, and I rushed to keep up. “How I read it on your palm?”

  My hand squeezed the rock, the sharpened edges cutting into my hand. “Yeah, what about it?”

  “Well, I had the same feeling, the same down-to-my-roots feeling on Friday,” Kit said. She glanced back at me, her eyes like shiny blue marbles in her face. It was her storytelling face, only I didn’t know who she was telling this one to, me or her. “So I did some exploring, and I found her.”

  “I thought you spent all day Friday with your mom.”

  Kit flicked her wrist at the air between us like my words were flies and continued like I hadn’t spoken at all. “I’ve checked on her every day since—a couple times a day—and I know we’re supposed to help her, Caleb. We’ve got to help her!”

  “Help who? A kid? And from what?”

  “She’s not a kid, but she needs help. They have her tied up all the time. All day long, she’s outside on a rope. She didn’t even have water for hours yesterday!”

  “Are you serious?” My mouth went dry. “How—how are we supposed to save someone with sharp rocks? Shouldn’t we call the police?” I twisted a little to feel my phone’s reassuring pressure against my hip, where it was tucked into my pocket. My chest rumbled, and I coughed into my elbow. The air was thick and soupy, like sludge moving in and out of my nose. Soon it’d rain. I turned toward the woods and coughed when Kit swung back toward the course we were on.

  Kit stormed forward the moment I spit into the trees. Okay, I told myself. Maybe this is part of the game. Just a story. I figured we were about a half mile or less from Mermaid Rock, on Kit’s side of the stream. At the edge of where the woods opened to an unfamiliar lawn, Kit ducked low and beckoned for me to do the same. Her face was only a few inches from mine.

  When she spoke, her words were so low yet rushed that they were like gnats nipping at my cheeks. Strands of her dark hair had slipped from her ponytail and whirled around her face, tickling my nose. Her eyes were huge, big enough to block the cough I should’ve let loose, the knot screaming danger in my throat, and the craziness of what she was saying. “I’ve read about a girl, descended from fay like me, who was transformed into a dog when her beauty and strength offended a fairy. The fairy had never been threatened by a mortal before that day. To look at a picture of the girl, you wouldn’t have thought anything was special about her. But when you were near her, you just knew. It was like—”

  “—like she was the sun,” I finished.

  “Right!” Kit smiled, and I could finally take a breath. “I think this is that dog. That’s why the owners keep her tied up. That’s why they can’t control her. She needs to be set free to break the curse and be who she’s meant to be!”

  “Oh,” I said, nodding and trying hard to stop from smiling. Relief flooded through me. This was just part of the game. “We’re talking about a dog. Right. Cool.”

  Kit’s marble eyes blinked once. Twice. “No. We’re talking about a person trapped in the body of a dog. We’re going to save her.” I tried not to squint my eyes as she spoke, her hissed words flying at my face. Kit huffed out of her nose, her nostrils flaring. “Are you going to help or not?”

  “Just cut the rope so she can run away?” I swallowed, nodded, and, following Kit’s example, army crawled closer to the edge of the lawn. And then, as I looked over the lawn, all that relief? Whoosh. Gone. Replaced with heavy bricks of full-out no-way-let’s-go-home fear.

  Because this wasn’t just any dog. In fact, I could sort of see why Kit thought there was a girl trapped in it. A girl could’ve literally been trapped inside the beast. This was a wolf. Seriously! I was pretty sure it was a wolf. She was mostly black with patches of brown around her face and chest, but maybe some of the brown was from the dirt surrounding her. I wondered if she had dug up all the grass with her endless pacing back and forth at the edge of her rope. The air was humid enough for her fur to smell damp and rotten. Her leash was way too short, only about twenty feet long, when she alone stretched about six if you counted the tail (which I did—it looked more like a furry sword than a tail). I held the flimsy bark shield against my chest, even though I knew it didn’t stand a chance against the dog’s huge, sharp teeth.

  “I’ve been bringing her food,”
Kit whispered in my ear, “so she knows we’re trustworthy.”

  “Did you bring any today?” I asked.

  Kit shook her head. “I ran out of cereal last night.”

  “I don’t think she’s the cereal type.”

  “I know,” Kit whispered, “but it’s all I had.”

  “Okay,” I said, pushing away the question of why Kit only had cereal. I had to focus on getting her to let go of this stupid idea without being the one who looked stupid. “I’m pretty sure dogs don’t like tuna fish. And that’s all I have in my sandwich.” I, however, loved tuna fish. “Let’s go back. I’ll have Mom pack peanut butter or something tomorrow, and we can work out the details of her rescue.”

  Kit shook her head. “No, she’s waited long enough.”

  The dog turned then, like she heard us. She probably had. I gasped when I saw her eyes—the same crystal blue as Kit’s.

  “I know, right?” Kit smiled. She had read my thoughts just like a seer of the unknown.

  “I think I’m allergic to dogs,” I whispered.

  Here’s the thing: I’m not exactly an animal person. I mean, I don’t have anything against them really. I just never was one to want to hang out with them. Never wanted to be a vegetarian, or a veterinarian for that matter. Something about claws and teeth, I guessed. I gulped. “Did you know that wolves have a bite pressure of about twelve hundred pounds? A naturalist came to school for an assembly once and told us about it.”

  “Yeah, the same guy must’ve come to my school,” she whispered back. “That means the rope must be pretty thick or she would’ve gnawed through it already. Good thing I sharpened the rocks.”

  Someone in the house coughed, the noise drifting from an open window. “Someone’s home, Kit. We’re going to get caught.” Or mauled.

  “They never come outside,” Kit answered. “Once in a while they yell at her to be quiet, but they’ve never come out. Look!” Kit pointed to two stainless-steel bowls by the back porch. “Her bowl is empty again.” The dog snapped at a fly, catching it by jumping (not even kidding here) straight into the air a foot or two.

  I bit my lip. “Kit, I don’t really like dogs all that much.”

  “Okay,” Kit said, as if I hadn’t spoken at all, “here’s the plan: I’ll distract her by giving her pieces of the sandwich. You crawl around behind and cut the rope.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then she’s free.” Kit grinned. “And we run.”

  “I’m not a fast runner. I’m slowest in my grade. And I’m not all that great at cutting, either. Mom cuts up my steak for me.” I realized I was stringing excuses into a necklace of shame, but there was no way I was going to creep close enough to cut that rope. If I were that close, I’d be close enough to not worry about giving up my tuna fish sandwich for lunch. I’d be lunch.

  “Okay.” Kit bit off the word, her teeth clenched. “I’ll do it. You distract her.” Before I could come up with any more excuses, she crawled forward. I said a curse word in my head and hurriedly unzipped my backpack, pulling out the sandwich. The dog spotted Kit first, the fur on her back rising and her lips curling over her massive teeth. A low growl rumbled from her, and I doubled over, coughing in response. Somehow it worked. Now those dog’s icy eyes—the same color as Kit’s—narrowed on me.

  Even though my knees shook and I wasn’t entirely sure I wasn’t going to pee myself any second, I stood. “Hey there, um, fairy girl,” I singsonged in a high-pitched whisper. “Do you like seafood?”

  I unwrapped the sandwich from the wax paper Mom had covered it in. The dog’s fur settled across her back as she licked her lips and lunged at the edge of her rope toward me, entirely focused on the sandwich. Kit flashed me a thumbs-up and scurried forward. I ripped off a piece of the sandwich and tossed it to the dog. But my stupid shaking arms couldn’t throw and it ended up landing with a soft plop of mayo and tuna a foot in front of her. She lunged and growled and strained against the rope, not noticing at all that Kit was now sawing at the other end of it with the edge of her sharpened rock.

  I ripped off another piece, bits of tuna fish flying over my shoes, and threw farther this time. Too far. The dog hopped back and gulped the bite in a second flat, making all the tension in the rope go so slack. Come on! Kit mouthed at me as she hacked on the slackened rope. It had just been starting to fray, but without the dog’s straining, she was barely making an impact. And, I realized, with a rush of panic that made my stomach jump up and knot around my heart, the dog was on to her. It turned toward Kit, with a scary low growl, and crouched low like it was going to lunge at her.

  “Doggy!” I yelped. “Here, doggy! More tuna fish!” My stupid fingers couldn’t pull at the sandwich right; I ended up flinging about half of it toward the dog, again landing just outside her length of leash. She turned from Kit immediately and strained toward the hunk of food. I noticed then the pull of her ribs against her fur. Kit was right—the dog was desperate. She stretched her nuzzle, her long tongue lapping against the food. She could almost get it, her tongue reaching just the edges. “Good doggy,” I murmured as my heart thumped my stomach back down to its rightful place. “Good doggy.”

  Kit, her dark hair splattered against her sweaty forehead and fingers white where they clasped the rock, had managed to cut halfway through the rope.

  The dog lunged again, making the metal spoke that held down the rope strain. This time she managed to get the first clump of sandwich and downed it fast. Then two things happened at once: first, the rope frayed where Kit had been hacking at it so just a few nylon threads held it in place; and, second, the dog licked its chops, eyes on the only remaining tiny clump of tuna fish. And that sandwich was in my hand.

  The dog pulled just as Kit was poised for the final hack on the rope. I stilled, totally frozen in place, fear gripping me so tightly I couldn’t loosen my grip on the bit of soggy sandwich. “Stop!” The word seemed to rip out of me, just the way I was sure my heart was about to be torn from my body the moment that last thread of nylon tore.

  But then I realized that I wasn’t the one who screamed. An older man—probably close to my grandpa’s age—stood in the doorway, his mouth stretched midscream. He stumbled down the stairs, but he moved slowly, not helped by his bulging stomach and tree trunk legs.

  Time felt like a bubble for a second, stretching out, out, out but snapping back and disappearing in an instant. Kit jumped to her feet, the rope sliced through. The dog surged forward, all teeth and growls and claws. I fell backward, straight onto my tailbone, still holding the bit of sandwich. The old man lumbered toward us, cursing and screaming.

  And the dog, the dog! She plowed over to me in two long strides, her terrifying mouth stretched wide. Without even the slightest pause, her snout closed over my hand and she pulled the sandwich out of it. Her teeth scraped along my skin but didn’t bite or even close around it. All she wanted was the sandwich.

  In a flash she was gone, swallowed up by the woods.

  And there was Kit, scooping me under the elbow and yanking me up. “Go, Caleb! Run! Run!”

  I scrambled to my feet, twisting and rising to my knees with a painful slam first and then lurching forward before even standing to follow the wolf dog into the woods, the old man’s bellows echoing off the trees around us.

  “We can’t go straight back to Mermaid Rock,” Kit yelled over her shoulder as we barreled ahead. “The old man might follow our tracks.”

  “I don’t hear him at all.” I stopped, gasping, and held on to my knees for a second. My lungs were filled with fire and felt so tight that I couldn’t even cough.

  “Don’t stop!” Kit grabbed my arm and yanked me ahead. “He’s following! I know it!”

  Both of us jumped a second later when we heard thrashing in the woods behind us.

  I forced my legs to move, but a few feet later, I had to stop again. “I can’t, Kit!” I gasped. “I have to stop.” I rubbed at my chest with my knuckles. Sweat poured down my spine. “I need to res
t.” Kit’s eyes flashed around the woods behind me and then locked on mine. Again, I felt like she saw more than I ever explained about why I couldn’t run as long as her and coughed all the time, and she didn’t question it.

  “Okay,” she said. “Just a little farther. We can hide over there.” She pointed to an old barn, half of it sunken into the ground, on the border of the tree line. She slipped her arm under my shoulder, and together we made our way to the dilapidated building. At the edge of the woods, Kit stepped in front of me, looking for signs that anyone was nearby. An old white farmhouse stood in the distance, but it didn’t look like anyone had actually farmed there for decades. She waved me forward, and we slipped through a gap in the barn wood. I tried to concentrate only on breathing in and out. How much of this tightness in my chest was panic? How much was CF?

  The dry barn air smelled like old bread. Dust floated like hazy clouds with any slight movement in the air. Slanted sunshine peeked through cracks in the barn roof. The roof caved in on one side of the barn, over stalls where I guessed horses once lived. Crates toppled over one another in the corners and in the loft. I sat down next to them, my back against the side of the barn, counting as I breathed out one, two, three and in onetwothree. When I could stretch the exhales and inhales to a count of five (five is fine), I realized Kit had scrambled up to the loft.

  “Kit!” I jumped to my feet, even though my knees still wobbled. “What are you doing?”

  Her head popped over the side of the loft and she smiled down at me. She seemed too bright in the gauzy light of the barn. “I found something!” Kit eased down the side of the loft, slipping so her bare toes found the top of the crate pile. I rushed over to catch her, sure she’d fall as she pulled down a small box. But she didn’t. It was stupid of me to think she would; Kit could do anything. And then a flash of her bruised face from when she said she fell out of the tree came back to me and I held out my arms just in case.