The Penderwicks at Point Mouette

  Hound didn’t answer. He was too busy chewing a hunk of seaweed he’d sneaked into the house. Batty sighed. If he wouldn’t help her with the screen, there was only one place in the room to hide: under the bed. Of course there could always be a monster down there. Seaweed or no seaweed, Hound had to help after all. So Batty pulled him at one end and pushed him at the other until about half of him was beneath the bed.

  “Any monsters?” she asked him. “No?”

  Now it was safe for her to wriggle in after him and squash herself against the wall. It was clean under there except for something large and plastic, which turned out to be the big duck that Iantha had given her for Maine. The duck, flat now because it had no air in it, must have been put there by Hound. He loved hiding things under beds.

  Batty heard the door open, and Skye came into the room—Batty recognized her black sneakers—and started questioning the part of Hound that was sticking out.

  “Are you eating seaweed, you silly dog? And where is Batty? Good grief, I’ve lost her already.”

  Usually, Batty would have stayed hidden, but there was an unfamiliar note in Skye’s voice, as though she minded that Batty was lost.

  “I’m down here.”

  Skye’s face swam into view, looking relieved, and disappeared again. “It’s time to get into your pajamas.”

  “I’ve already put them on.” Batty was proud of this. She was even prouder for having already washed her face and brushed her teeth.

  Skye’s face came back. “So you did. Well, you still need to brush your teeth.”

  “I did that, too.”

  “Oh.” Skye stood up again. After a moment, the bed sagged over Batty, which meant that Skye had sat on it. “Batty, do you happen to know which vitamins you take?”

  “The ones in the yellow bottle.”

  “Right. And do you know what would make you blow up?”

  This felt like a trick question to Batty. She’d never been blown up and didn’t like thinking about it. She hoped it wasn’t something that happened a lot in Maine.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “No reason,” said Skye. “Oh, hi, Jeffrey. She’s under the bed.”

  Now Jeffrey’s face appeared, but Batty was already squirming out into the open. She’d hoped that Jeffrey would be part of her good-night routine, and now here he was.

  “Hey, goofball,” he said. “Hiding from monsters?”

  She beamed up at him, her favorite boy in the world. “Are you going to tell me a bedtime story?”

  “Jane has one all ready for you. Maybe tomorrow night, okay?”

  “Okay.” Batty hopped onto the bed and slid under the covers.

  “I hope you sleep well,” said Skye, self-consciously patting the part of the pillow that Batty didn’t have her head on. “Jane will be here in a minute.”

  Jeffrey said good night; then Skye pulled him out the door and the room was quiet again. Through the open window, Batty could hear the gentle murmur of waves breaking on the rocks. She could also hear a squishy chewing noise. That was Hound and his seaweed. Squish. Squish. Batty found it soothing. She snuggled in among her stuffed animals—Funty and several others, including Ellie, the small green elephant, Funty’s special friend. Ellie had been a good-bye present from Ben, but Batty was certain her father had really bought her. Her father always knew just what stuffed animals Batty liked the best. He’d promised to bring another new one home from England, and Batty was pretty sure it would be a tiger.

  While she was experimenting with good tiger names—Gibson, or maybe Chip—Jane arrived. Batty hoped that she had a cozy story ready. Sometimes Jane’s stories could be too exciting for bedtime.

  Jane perched on a corner of the bed and began: “Once there was a beautiful maiden named Sabrina Starr.”

  “This is about love, isn’t it?” Batty had learned to spot Jane’s romantic stories coming on—“beautiful” was one hint and “maiden” was another.

  “Yes. I’m working on ideas for my next book. You’re my trial audience.”

  Batty gave up on getting a cozy story, or even an exciting one. However, she’d been Jane’s trial audience before, and was always proud to do it. She waited for Jane to go on, but Jane just sat there, twiddling with her hair. After too much of this, Batty tapped Jane on the arm.

  “I’d better begin again,” said Jane. “Once there was a beautiful maiden named Sabrina Starr who had never been in love.”

  The hair twiddling started up again, but Batty wasn’t going to wait so long this time. “Then what?” she asked.

  “That’s all I have so far. What do you think?”

  “It’s okay,” answered Batty carefully. This seemed as much a trick question as the one about blowing up. “But not very long.”

  “I know. I just can’t figure out how to start this book.”

  Batty was trying to be patient, but this was disappointing. Rosalind would never have told her a story with only a beginning and no middle or end. But no, she wasn’t going to think about Rosalind, because if she did, she would cry. And she wasn’t going to cry in front of Jane, or in front of Skye, especially not Skye. Not once, not for the whole time she was in Maine. So she yawned instead, then remembered the present that Iantha had given her for Maine. It was a real book with chapters, and Batty had already learned to read the two names in the title—one was Ivy and the other was Bean. She had high hopes of learning to read even more of the words one of these days.

  “Since your book is still so short,” she said to Jane, “maybe you could read Ivy + Bean to me. It doesn’t have love in it, though.”

  “I don’t need love in everything,” said Jane.

  Batty didn’t believe her, but Jane read her the first chapter of the book anyway, and it was an excellent chapter, and she also taught Batty to read one new word: girl. Then Jane drifted away, once again pondering Sabrina Starr, and there was only Aunt Claire left to say good night.

  “I brought you a night-light,” she said when she came in a few minutes later.

  “It’s a pig!” Batty was fond of pigs, and this one was wearing sunglasses, which was even better.

  When Aunt Claire plugged it into a socket on the wall, the pig gave out a pink glow that was sure to discourage even the boldest monster.

  “How’s that? Good?” Aunt Claire sat on the bed and surveyed the stuffed animals. “You have a new friend.”

  “Ellie,” said Batty, gently pulling the green elephant’s trunk. “Ben gave her to me.”

  “Ben has excellent taste for a toddler.”

  “Yes.”

  “You miss him, don’t you?”

  “Yes!”

  “I do, too.”

  Batty stowed Ellie carefully beside the pillow. “Do you think Ben misses me?”

  “Are you kidding? I know Ben misses you. And so do your dad, Iantha, and Rosalind. Everyone misses you—Asimov, Tommy, the whole neighborhood. I’ll bet even the president of the United States misses you.”

  “I never met the president.”

  “Which just shows how special you are, that someone you’ve never met would miss you anyway.”

  Batty tried to puzzle this out, but it made her sleepy. “I guess so,” she answered, her eyelids drooping.

  “Trust your aunt,” said Aunt Claire, kissing Batty first on one cheek, then on the other. “Good night, honey bug. Sleep well, and call me if you need anything.”

  Then she was gone, and Batty and Hound were alone again. Batty waved good night to the new pig and told Hound to come be with her. Being a true and loyal friend, he abandoned his seaweed and jumped onto the bed, and before Batty could remember how far she was from home and from Rosalind, she was fast asleep and dreaming about tigers.

  Being woken up in the middle of the night can be scary, especially when you’re in a strange place and when what wakes you sounds like a train going through your room. It took Batty only seconds to realize that of course the thunderous rumbling was Hound’s snoring, but it took her lon
ger to remember that she was in Maine, and that the odd, looming shadows cast by the pig night-light didn’t come from monsters but from her own animals sitting atop the bureau. It wasn’t their fault, Batty knew. It was probably her own for bringing so many of them with her to Maine. Skye had wanted her to leave everyone but Funty and Ellie behind, but Daddy had said she’d need as much comfort as she could get. Daddy hadn’t known Batty was listening when he told Skye this, and she hadn’t meant to, but she’d just happened to be under the kitchen table playing cavemen with Ben when he’d said it.

  Oh, Ben! Who would play cavemen with him when he wasn’t with Batty? Did people even play cavemen in England? England was a great mystery to her, almost as much as New Jersey. Aunt Claire had tried to explain it all, and had even taped postcards onto the refrigerator here at Birches—down low so that Batty would be able to see them without standing on a chair. It would be nice to look at those postcards right now, thought Batty, but it was a long way to the refrigerator in the dark, and she didn’t know if she had the courage to go. So she closed her eyes and tried to picture them. The New Jersey one showed a wide beach full of umbrellas, and the England one—she couldn’t remember what the England postcard looked like. Now she just had to go look at it. But not without Hound. She poked at him until he got the idea and jumped off the bed to await further instructions. Batty slid down after him and saw that underneath her door was a strip of light, which meant that Aunt Claire had left a lamp on out there, just in case someone desperately needed to go look at postcards. Batty squared her shoulders. Aunt Claire had expected this to happen, so there was nothing to be frightened of.

  With Hound beside her, she tiptoed out into the living room and was startled to see a little girl and a big dog just outside the sliding glass doors, staring back at her. Ghosts? No, silly, Batty told herself. Maybe Ben would think they were ghosts, but Batty was much too big for that. It was just her and Hound reflected in the sliding glass doors.

  Hound was already on his way to the small kitchen. Now that he’d been dragged out of bed, he’d check for spilled food, since the seaweed hadn’t been very filling. Batty followed him, ignoring the dark corners of the living room. She cared about only one thing now—seeing the all-important postcards. She made it to the refrigerator, and there they were. First she looked at the England postcard. It showed a tall red bus going over a stone bridge, and across the top was a word that Batty spelled out for Hound.

  “O-X-F-O-R-D,” she said. “That’s where Daddy is with Iantha and Ben. Iantha told me about the red buses.”

  There was no answer from Hound, because his nose was jammed under the stove, continuing his search for food. Batty turned to the shiny New Jersey postcard, with its wide white beach and blue ocean. It was looking at the New Jersey ocean that gave Batty her idea. If a shell could float all the way from the Maine ocean to the New Jersey ocean—and Jane had said so—a letter could, too. Batty would float Rosalind a letter, and she would do it right now to give the letter time to reach New Jersey by tomorrow. She needed only her drawing pad and markers, and they were over there on that bookshelf. In a moment, Batty had the pad open on the floor, and all the markers spread out, ready for letter writing. She had so many things to tell Rosalind—about how much she missed her, and about Jeffrey and Hoover and the shadows on her bedroom wall—that she hardly knew how to begin. And, too, there was that problem with spelling. She did know how to spell her sister’s name, though, so she started there. In big blue letters, she wrote ROSALIND, and although she’d gotten too close to the edge and had to make the N and D small, she was very proud of what she’d done so far.

  She thought for a while, trying to figure out how to spell miss, as in I miss you, but when she couldn’t work out whether it was mis or miss or something else altogether, she used a gold marker to write LOVE instead. Then, since somehow she’d managed to fill up most of the paper, she finished off with BATTY in red letters. Rosalind would know what she meant. She always did.

  And now came the hard part—throwing the letter into the ocean. Batty pushed open the heavy sliding door, shoving with all her strength, then stepped out into the night. How dark it was outside, and how much louder the ocean sounded all of a sudden! Clutching her letter, Batty crept to the edge of the deck but could go no further. Not without Hound, who had stayed inside, and not, she realized now, without the orange life jacket. Rosalind had made it clear that Batty would drown without that life jacket, but now she was too tired to go back for it. She wasn’t going to be able to send her letter and Rosalind would never know how much Batty missed her.

  Out there on the cold deck, Batty started to cry, and once she started she couldn’t seem to stop, even when Hound gave up on the stove and came outside to find her. He licked her face, but she sobbed on and on and thought she might sob forever, or at least until breakfast. But she didn’t have to wait that long, because Hound, finding that he couldn’t soothe her, wisely went looking for the one person who could, and soon he came back with Jeffrey, who sat down beside Batty and put his arm around her, and that was wonderful. She told him everything, about the shadows and the postcards and how she needed to throw the letter into the ocean, and he didn’t laugh at her or even smile, and then he offered to throw her letter into the ocean for her, which he did, just like the hero she’d known him to be since the very first day she met him.

  “There,” he said, coming back to her on the deck. “Letter launched.”

  “And you won’t tell Skye and Jane, right?”

  “Penderwick family honor.” He inspected her for traces of further crying. “Do you feel better now? A little bit? Wait—I know what else we can do. Stay here.”

  Jeffrey disappeared back into the house, but before Batty had time to get scared all over again, he was back with his clarinet case and a small silvery something that he handed to Batty.

  “It’s a harmonica. If you like, you can keep it, and I’ll teach you how to play. Think how surprised Rosalind will be when you play a song for her.”

  Batty turned the harmonica over and over and let Hound sniff it. She’d seen one before, and had even blown on it, but no one had ever offered to teach her a real song. Penderwicks didn’t play songs on instruments. Rosalind and Skye had both tried music lessons when they were younger, and they’d been so miserably bad at them that Jane hadn’t bothered.

  “I don’t know,” she said, though she longed to try. Jeffrey was right—how surprised Rosalind would be, and Daddy and Iantha, too. And Ben, why, she could teach Ben everything Jeffrey taught her. “Well, maybe.”

  “Good. Now blow into it.”

  She blew and heard music coming out. She blew some more, then sucked in instead of blowing out, and although this was a mistake, music still came out, and it hadn’t been a mistake after all. Batty was astonished, and Hound, who had suffered through the older sisters’ struggles with music, was even more so.

  “Teach me more,” she said. “Please.”

  And right there, with the rushing, crashing waves for accompaniment, Batty had her first-ever music lesson. Jeffrey showed her how to make her mouth smaller to keep from playing lots of notes all at once, and talked a little about the difference between blowing in and out—though Batty didn’t get all that right away—and when she had a little more confidence, he started teaching her a song. He played one note at a time on his clarinet, then waited for her to find that same note on her harmonica before he went on to the next. They did that for six whole notes, and then together they played the six notes all in a row, and Batty couldn’t have been happier if she’d had an entire orchestra behind her.

  “Again?” she asked.

  “We need to go back to sleep, but I can show you more tomorrow.”

  “Yes, please.” She stood up and took his hand. “Maybe I’ll be a musician when I grow up, just like you.”

  “I’d like that,” Jeffrey said, and took her and Hound inside and put them safely back to bed.

  CHAPTER FIVE

&nbs
p; An Accident

  EVEN WITH HER HEAD UNDER THE PILLOW, Jane could hear the harmonica. She knew what time it was, and there was no reason for anyone to be playing a harmonica at eight o’clock in the morning. Unless Jeffrey was having an uncontrolled urge to play music, any music. But whoever was playing seemed to be playing the same notes over and over, and Jeffrey wouldn’t torture people like that, especially not this early. It couldn’t be Skye, because she was still asleep in the cot next to Jane’s, and Aunt Claire had never shown interest in harmonicas or any other musical instruments. Which left only one possibility.

  Jane came out from under her pillow and shook Skye. “You’d better go see what Batty’s doing. I think she’s got hold of a harmonica.”

  “Impossible,” mumbled Skye.

  “Improbable, but not impossible. Go find out. You’re the OAP.” Jane went back under her pillow, trying to block not only the harmonica but the thumps and crashes of Skye getting out of bed. Jane needed quiet, because she was working on her book. This was her favorite time to think about writing—while she was still in bed, no longer asleep but not quite awake, or as she put it when she thought about writing her autobiography, while she floated between dreams and reality. She was trying to come up with a good second sentence. She was almost sure she wanted to keep Once there was a beautiful maiden named Sabrina Starr who had never been in love as her first sentence. But where to go from there? Last night she’d come up with several possibilities, full of words like yearn and destiny, but this morning they all sounded ridiculous.

  Now it was Skye shaking her. Jane’s pillow fell to the floor.

  “What?” she asked crossly. If this morning was any indication, she wasn’t going to get much writing done in Maine.

  “You were right,” said Skye. “Batty does have a harmonica. She says that Jeffrey gave it to her in the middle of the night, that he’s teaching her to play, and from what I can tell, he’s teaching her to play ‘Taps.’ Aunt Claire’s in there with her, looking very patient. Do you think there could have been a rule against musical instruments on my list?”