Skeleton Tree

by Kim Ventrella

  Stanly balled up his hands and something inside his head ignited. He wished Miren would do what he said just once, instead of whining and wasting his time and making life harder than it had to be. Why couldn’t she just listen?

  He took a deep breath. If he wasn’t careful, his anger would unleash a fire so hot he would burn to a crisp, like that time Ms. Francine tried to grill. But then Miren started to laugh. She laughed and laughed, and the sound grated on Stanly’s nerves. In his head, Slurpy munched up all of his bad thoughts, but he must not have munched fast enough, because something terrible happened.

  Stanly screamed. He didn’t say anything; he just screamed, so loud the back of his throat started to itch.

  “What did you do to her?” Mom swooped around the corner, eyes wide. Miren, of course, had started crying. Stanly tried to answer, but his throat was sore from all the screaming. Also, he didn’t know what to say. He’d never screamed like that before in his whole life. For once, he was glad Dad wasn’t there to see him scream like that.

  “Go clean up your shoes, Stanly,” said Mom. The side of her mouth pinched like she was trying hard not to scream herself. “We’ll talk about this when I get home … I’m really disappointed in you.”

  Stanly didn’t talk to anyone all morning once he got to school, not even when Mr. Erickson asked him to help with Halloween decorations for the class party. At lunch, he sat at a corner table by himself. Screaming had gotten out most of his anger, but some of it was still there, bubbling beneath the surface like one of Ms. Francine’s stinky pots of borsch.

  “What are you doing way over here?” said Jaxon, plopping his tray down next to Stanly. “Yuck, there’s a bug in my macaroni.”

  Stanly peeked out from under his tangly hair. “That’s just a speck.”

  Jaxon picked out the speck with his fork. “I can’t eat this now.” He wiped the speck on a napkin, folded up the napkin into a tiny ball, and walked it to the trash can.

  “Just eat it.” Stanly could tell he sounded really angry about the speck for no reason, but he couldn’t help it. Jaxon could make a problem out of anything. Like that time they were late to art class because Jaxon was convinced he’d left his locker open, even though he’d already checked it five times. Stanly bet Jaxon had never had a real problem in his entire life.

  Jaxon pushed the tray toward Stanly. A tiny shudder ran through his body, like the thought of eating macaroni with a speck in it was the worst thing in the world. “No way. You take it. I’m not hungry anymore.”

  “You are so … ” Something hard caught in Stanly’s throat. He tried to swallow it, but it kept coming back up.

  “What?” Jaxon said, sounding hurt.

  “Nothing.”

  “Just say it. I’m so what?”

  Inside his head, Slurpy pummeled a slimeball to smithereens, and the gooey green bits splattered all over Stanly’s brain. At least that was what it felt like. He was sick of always biting his tongue. He was angry, and for once he wanted to say exactly what he thought.

  “Crazy! Happy? You’re so crazy! It was just a stupid speck.”

  Jaxon left his tray and went to sit with Zander and Ian. All the anger drained out of Stanly, and he couldn’t believe he’d said that horrible thing. Jaxon was different, but he couldn’t help it. And he was also Stanly’s best friend. So what if he worried too much about macaroni specks?

  He should go over and apologize, but he had no idea what to say. Plus, Zander and Ian would probably laugh at him and call him a loser, and then he’d never be able to show his face in the cafeteria again.

  Instead, he stared out the window, all the time imagining how the day might have gone if Dad had been back. He could have brushed Miren’s teeth, so Stanly’s shoes wouldn’t be ruined. Dad could have driven him to school and maybe even taken him out to McDonald’s for lunch. Cheeseburgers and ice cream sundaes, Stanly’s favorite.

  Too bad Dad was fifteen hundred miles away in California.

  By the time fourth period rolled around, Stanly had stubbed his toe on a locker door, gotten two warnings in English class, and slipped in a puddle of water outside the boys’ bathroom.

  Okay, it wasn’t water.

  Slurpy did his best to guzzle down all of his problems, but he could only eat so much. Things were starting to get out of hand.

  Jaxon and Stanly had fourth period social studies together. Stanly tried to sit in the back by the pencil sharpener, because he still didn’t know how to make things better with Jaxon, but Ms. Waite made him go to his assigned seat.

  “Hey,” Jaxon said, looking kind of sheepish.

  “Hey,” Stanly said. “Um … ”

  “Sorry about lunch,” said Jaxon, before Stanly could get any more words out. “I know I act kind of crazy sometimes.” Jaxon fiddled with his Darby Brothers’ wristwatch. “Thanks for being my friend, Stanly.”

  The worst thing was, Stanly could tell Jaxon really meant it. And he didn’t even care if Zac or Cooper or whiny Melissa heard him. Stanly was the one who should be apologizing.

  “Oh … um, okay.” Sometimes it felt like someone had snipped the cord that connected Stanly’s brain to his mouth. Maybe Slurpy had gotten carried away with all his crunching. “So … do you wanna come over after school?”

  “Mr. Stanwright, do you have something you’d like to share with the class?” said Ms. Waite.

  Stanly zipped his lips, but a few minutes later he slid something from his back pocket and passed it to Jaxon. It was the ad for the Young Discoverer’s Prize. At the bottom, written in green gel pen, were the words, “You don’t need to say thank you.”

  On the bus ride home, Stanly told Jaxon more about the Young Discoverer’s Prize, and Jaxon, eager to help, told Stanly about the Darby Brothers’ top ten rules for solving mysteries. Even though it was really boring, Stanly never once interrupted.

  When he finished, Stanly blurted out the thing he’d been waiting to say to Jaxon all day. “It grew,” Stanly said. “You can see its knuckles now, and a thumb. It’s definitely not a dinosaur. And yesterday, when it was raining … ” Stanly took a deep breath. “… it moved.” Once the words were out of his mouth, Stanly was surprised to find his hands were shaking.

  Jaxon let his copy of the Darby Brothers’ Official Mystery Handbook fall open in his lap.

  “What do you mean it moved?”

  “It twitched. Like, I don’t know, it didn’t want me to go inside or something.” As he said it, invisible fireworks crackled on the back of his tongue. Like talking about the bone out loud made it more real or something.

  “Okay, now who’s the one acting crazy?” Jaxon said. Stanly deserved that. “You’re forgetting about rule number seven: Never let your imagination get the better of you.”

  “It wasn’t my imagination,” Stanly said.

  “Bones don’t grow, not when they’re already in the ground. That’s a fact.” Jaxon loved facts, even more than he loved video games or the Darby Brothers’ mysteries. It was one of the qualities that made him a good detective.

  “It might be weird, but it’s still a fact,” Stanly said. “You’ll see.”

  The bus dropped them off at the end of the street next to the rusty fire hydrant.

  “This is called a hoe,” Ms. Francine was saying to Miren when they came into the kitchen. “And this is a spade.” She set it next to Miren’s other garden tools on the table. “I used one of these in Kyrgyzstan, to dig up potatoes from the side of the mountain. But we had to watch out for goats. They would come along and gobble up all of our hard work.”

  Miren laughed. The sound grated in Stanly’s ears. He looked down at his brand-new sneakers. They used to be red, but now they were splattered all over with dried glitter toothpaste.

  “Come on, Jaxon, let’s go outside.” He tried to slip out the back door, but Miren was too fast.

  “Hey!” She spun around in her chair. “Where do you think you’re going, Bony-Butt? I’ve got all my tools, and you promised I coul
d dig, remember, so wait up!”

  Stanly banged his forehead lightly on the screen door. Maybe, if he closed his eyes and wished hard enough, Miren would disappear.

  “What is that doing here?” Miren scowled up at Jaxon, hands on her hips.

  “That is my friend,” said Stanly. “And don’t pretend like you don’t know his name. He’s only been here like a thousand times.”

  “I’m your assistant, you said so, not Jaxon with an x, which is a dumb way to spell a name, by the way. You’d better let me come dig with you, or else.”

  “Or else what?” Stanly said, hot liquid bubbling up his throat. “Or you’ll ruin another pair of my shoes?”

  “Play nice, my little goats.” Ms. Francine clicked her tongue at them. “Why so upset? The sun is out, the breeze is cool … and … ” She pressed a finger to her temple. “… ah yes, if I’m not mistaken, this secret of yours, it’s still growing.”

  Miren punched the air and ran off toward Mom’s room. “I’ve gotta get something, don’t leave without me. I’m warning you, Stanly!”

  Jaxon shook his head. “Darby Brothers’ rule number six: Always think before you act.”

  “Who are these Darby Brothers? Friends of yours?” said Ms. Francine.

  Stanly left Jaxon to explain while he went to his room to get his tools. A lump filled his throat as he opened the rusty metal box. It still smelled like his dad. Dusty books and motor oil and cinnamon chewing gum. He found a ratty pack in the top drawer and took out a stick. The gum was so old it snapped when he tried to bend it.

  He shoved the pack to the bottom of the box. He took out a pick and a trowel and closed the lid. Maybe he didn’t need the whole box after all. Besides, if Mom came home and saw it out in the yard, she’d get a sad look on her face, and he didn’t need to see that. He stuck some paintbrushes from Uncle Morris’s paint set in his pocket and ran back to the kitchen.

  “Come on, grab that gardening stuff,” he told Jaxon. “Where’s Miren anyway? She better not be outside already. I don’t want her messing everything up.”

  Ms. Francine didn’t answer. She was too busy frowning at Jaxon. “How do these little boys know so much about solving mysteries anyway?”

  “They’re not little boys.” Jaxon threw up his hands. “The Darby Brothers are twelve, like us.”

  “Ah,” said Ms. Francine, “then they are old men.”

  “ ‘All you need to be a good detective is curiosity and attention to detail,’ ” Jaxon quoted. “Come on, Stanly, let’s go.”

  The boys gathered up the gardening stuff and let the back door slam behind them. The broken gutter shuddered with the sudden impact, belching a wad of moldy leaves onto the cracked birdbath. Miren was not in the backyard. Where could she be?

  “Some people ask too many questions,” Jaxon said when they were sure Ms. Francine couldn’t hear.

  Stanly bit back a smile. He stopped dead when he saw the bone.

  Five knobby fingers reached up toward the sky. Like someone buried alive trying to claw free. Only this someone hadn’t been alive for a very long time.

  “Bones don’t grow,” Jaxon said for the third time, chewing his nails. “They just don’t.”

  Stanly took out one of his paintbrushes and dusted dirt from the fingers. It reminded him of the trip to Merrell State Park, when he and Dad had discovered a real dinosaur tooth together.

  “This is going to be perfect for the Young Discoverer’s Prize,” Stanly said.

  “Oh yeah, I still have your paper, by the way.” Jaxon handed Stanly the ad for the contest. Stanly couldn’t help but notice his hand was shaking.

  “Hey, what’s up? You look like you’re going to barf.”

  “There has to be an explanation,” Jaxon said. “Maybe it’s tree roots. You know, pushing up from underneath, making it look like the bones are growing.”

  “There aren’t any trees.” Just the crumbly shed and a few shrubs that reminded Stanly of globby hairballs, like the kind Mrs. Anderson’s cat was always coughing up on the front lawn.

  “It could be groundwater? Or microearthquakes. The ground shifts all the time, you know?” Jaxon leaned an inch closer. “It’s not moving, by the way.”

  “Just wait.” A shivery finger traced a circle around Stanly’s brain, kind of like before, when the bone first grew. He couldn’t explain it, but he knew it would happen again. Even if it seemed impossible. Even if, maybe, he didn’t want it to.

  They waited … and waited. Once, it looked like the hand moved, but even Stanly had to admit it was probably the wind.

  “Let’s just start digging,” said Stanly. “The important thing is to get the bones out where we can see them.”

  He jabbed the trowel into the ground a few feet away from the hand. He didn’t want to risk cracking any of the bones. The spade clanked and bounced back, like he had hit metal instead of soft mud.

  “That’s not normal,” Jaxon said. He tugged on his ear, like he’d just gone swimming and it was clogged with water. “Here, let me try.”

  Jaxon dragged Miren’s tiny rake across the dirt, not looking at all happy to be that close to the bones. The metal spokes skipped over the surface like nails scratching a chalkboard. Jaxon dropped the rake and started counting the fingers on his right hand over and over under his breath. “This is so, seriously, not normal.”

  “Relax,” Stanly said. “I’ve got an idea.” He raised the pick over his head and aimed at a spot a foot or so away from the bones.

  He was about to strike when Miren rushed outside, carrying something in her hands. Her Stripy Pony flip-flops slapped the pavement as she ran.

  “Stanly, wait! I’m going to take a picture—” The flip-flops got all tangled up on her feet, and the next thing Stanly knew, she splatted face-first on the ground. Stanly’s Polaroid camera flew from her hands and hit Mom’s frog statue with a sickening crunch.

  “No!” Stanly ran to pick up the camera, and it fell into three separate pieces in his hands. “Miren, why do you have to ruin everything?”

  The words tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop them. In his head, Slurpy ballooned to the size of a planet. All of Stanly’s pent-up rage whirled around inside him, sizzling, sulphuric gases, billowing up and out, until finally … Slurpy exploded, sending pink brain goop everywhere.

  Miren wailed and pawed at her bloody knees. Stanly squeezed his eyes shut. He just wanted her to be quiet; was that too much to ask? But now, with Slurpy gone, all of the anger he’d been eating up seeped into Stanly’s body. It slithered into his veins and sent heat waves radiating down his spine. He had to let it out somehow, so he said what he was really thinking: “Miren, sometimes I wish you didn’t even exist.”

  Miren stopped crying. She glared up at him and, almost too quiet to hear, said, “I hate you.”

  The words settled like cold stones in the bottom of Stanly’s stomach. Ms. Francine ran outside, scooped Miren into her arms, and took her into the kitchen, but Stanly hardly noticed. She didn’t yell at him, but a few minutes later she brought out a tray with two glasses of peppery lemonade and asked a question that made him feel even worse than what Miren had said. “You do what you want, little Stanly. Ms. Francine is not your mother. But let me ask you this. What is worse? A broken camera, or a broken little sister?”

  Stanly wanted to say a broken camera, but he got the point. The weird lemonade left a slimy coating inside his throat. His brain still felt like it was made of gloppy zombie guts, and he kind of wanted to throw up.

  “Maybe you should go say you’re sorry,” Jaxon said. He backed away from Stanly when he said it, like he was scared of him.

  Stanly sighed so hard he thought his lungs might collapse. He didn’t answer for a long time, but deep down he knew Jaxon was right. Even if Miren was super annoying and had probably screwed up his chances of winning the Young Discoverer’s Prize. How could he take the winning picture without a camera?

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said.

>   On his way to her room, he passed the picture of him pushing Miren in her stroller outside the tiger enclosure at the zoo. Little did he know back then that having a sister would be kind of like adopting a baby tiger. They both started out cute and cuddly, until they grew teeth and claws and began destroying everything.

  Stanly found Miren scrunched up under her Stripy Pony covers. He looked around to make sure Ms. Francine wasn’t listening. It was one thing to apologize; it was another thing to admit to Ms. Francine that he was wrong.

  “I’m sorry I got mad, okay?” The words stuck in his throat, but he was glad once he’d gotten them out.

  Miren twitched under the blankets but didn’t answer. “I mean, you did break my camera … ” Stanly waited, and waited. When Miren didn’t say anything, he groaned. “Fine, I just thought I’d say I’m sorry. If you don’t wanna come out and dig with us, that’s up to you.”

  “You mean I can be your assistant again?” Miren shot out of the covers. “Your real, official assistant?”

  “I guess.” Stanly was already starting to regret his decision to apologize.

  “Yes!” Miren slid out of bed and then stopped. “Stanly?”

  “What?”

  “Do you really wish I didn’t exist?”

  Stanly looked at Miren, with her scraggly hair and too-thin arms. He remembered back when she was three how she always wanted to arm wrestle, and how he always let her win no matter what. Even when she called him stupid names like Bony-Butt. And he remembered that day at the zoo, when she cried because one of the elephants had a hurt leg, and how he was the only one who could make her feel better. “No, I didn’t mean it.”

  “Okay.” Miren hopped down and spanked Stanly’s butt. “Then I guess I don’t hate you, either. Last one outside’s a rotten nobody!”

  Egg, Stanly thought but didn’t say. Miren raced outside, her breath coming out all wheezy. “Give me that!”

  She snatched the pick from Jaxon’s hands and swung it into the dirt. Stanly cringed, sure she was going to ruin his discovery.