But when I’m hiding, I use the other hiders’ noise as cover. Part of my strategy. You can slip in anywhere if you’re quiet and careful. And here’s a tip. The very best hiding spot is within a few feet of the person who’s It. I know it sounds crazy. But it’s not. That spot is pure gold. But you have to hide while they’re still counting—during the count, from one to maybe thirty, while the others are making their finding-hiding-spots noise.
It takes guts. There’s a whole count from thirty to one hundred, seventy double beats, when the noise of the others has died away. By then you have to have found your hiding spot and stay absolutely still. That’s when you actually hear your heartbeat whooshing. And your breathing sounds way too loud. You start telling yourself that It will rip off that blindfold, look you right in the eye and the game will be over. But so far, so good. The strategy hasn’t failed me yet.
I shake it up, of course. I mean, you can’t hide right near It every single time. Obviously. And even though my sister, Tess, says it’s practically cheating, it’s not. It’s not against the rules.
The only rules of our hide-and-seek club are:
1. No leaving the yards or the back alley on our street
2. No going inside
3. No breaking into anywhere or locking gates behind you
4. No moving spots once you’ve hidden
5. No cheating on the count to one hundred
6. No cell phones
We don’t play the kind of hide-and-seek where you have to race whoever’s It back to home base when they find you. All that yelling “Home free!” and the wild sprinting, the scuffling, the collisions—that’s all for children. I’m glad we don’t play that way. It is undignified for teenagers. Plus, Tess, Cam and Dylan would outrun me every time.
Our game is based on skill, not just speed.
Tess is still annoyed about that one time I lay against the bottom of the fence she was leaning on. The fence was home base, and she was blindfolded and counting to one hundred. I crawled in while the boys were sprinting down the alley. And I stretched out right in front of her, practically at her feet. My only cover was a few long, prickly weeds. I turned my face to the fence and waited. That was a gamble. That one tested my nerve. I wouldn’t have done it with Cam or Dylan. I don’t know them so well.
But I’ve watched Tess be It so many times. I’ve watched her for years. She follows a pattern. She’s impatient. She does the count leaning against the fence, like most of us do. We usually start in the same spot, at the fence right by the Reillys’ garage. I don’t know why we picked that spot, but it’s where the game always starts.
When Tess does the count, she gets more and more restless as it goes on. She hates having to be still. She can’t wait to hunt. She’s a natural It. Like Cam. Both action people. Runners. They suck at hiding, by the way.
By eighty, eighty-five, you can see she’s just dying to seek. At ninety-five she’s already turning away from the fence. At ninety-eight she’s grabbing the bandanna. And at one hundred she yells, “Ready or not, here I come!” She yanks off the bandanna, tosses it aside and starts running.
Anyway, that one time, Tess never saw me lying there right at her feet. She turned and ran, exactly like I predicted, looking to either side of her. But never behind her. I was the last one found, lying there in the alley right where she started, against the fence, right out in the open. The hide-and-seek club, all four of us, laughed a lot at that one. Well, it took Tess a little while to laugh. First she whined about the spot being unfair, against the rules, just plain stupid. But she joined in eventually.
I think that might have been the day when everyone started to respect me as a full member of the club. Maybe that’s when they saw me as me, Emily, not just as Tess’s little sister, the fourteen-year-old (almost fifteen) in a group of sixteen-year-olds.
They already knew I was small and freakishly flexible. They knew I could hide in places they never could. Some of the places have become legendary in the hide-and-seek club. The spare tire. The potato sack. The window well. The overturned wheelbarrow.
What they didn’t know was that I also have guts.
Good thing too.
I was going to need them.
orca soundings
For more information on all the books in the Orca Soundings series, please visit orcabook.com.
Watch Out Page 6
