Bob Read online

  This is what I see:

  Driveway: one brown truck, one white car with a thick blue stripe down the side. The white car is very dirty. White is not a sensible color in hot, dusty environments.

  Front lawn: a folding table with a round-shaped bald man in a folding chair behind it. The man wears a blue outfit with a badge on his chest and is handing a map to a lady and two boys a few years younger than Livy, both in shorts and round hats that are too big for them.

  The man in blue is a policeman. Why is a policeman sitting outside Sarah’s house? He is not selling lemonade. I shrink farther back into the bush and peek out between the reeds. I don’t want to be spotted by the long arm of the law.

  When I am certain there is no one else around, I sneak up the driveway, being sure to keep on the far side of the parked cars. The policeman doesn’t even look up from his notebook. I’m THAT good.

  I keep going around the side of the house, past the chickens in their coop. They cluck and eye me suspiciously. I am unliked by chickens everywhere. They don’t seem convinced that I am one of them. In my current sorry state, I don’t blame them.

  The fields of Sarah’s house are in even worse condition than Gran’s. Most of the ground is bare, with only a few wilted sunflowers here and there.

  I hurry past a sad-looking cow who is too busy flicking flies away from her ears to pay me any attention. Their kitchen door is where ours is, so I expect it to be unlocked, like ours is. But when I reach up to turn the knob, I discover my luck has run out. Then I notice the square cut out of the bottom of the door. A thin plastic flap hangs in front with a picture of a dog bone printed on it. I am going to have to crawl through a door clearly made for a dog. This is not one of my finer moments. I am glad Livy is not here to watch.

  I suck in my belly and wiggle headfirst through the hole and onto the hard kitchen floor. At least there’s no dog snarling down at me. I use the shiny surface of the oven to adjust my chicken outfit and to dust off the worst of the patches of dirt I’ve brought in with me.

  The kitchen looks like someone left in a big hurry. Cabinets hang open and a half-eaten meal sits out on the table. I can hear the policeman outside talking on the phone, so there’s no time to spare. Still, I do manage to finish a cheese sandwich that only had one bite taken out of it. Keeping up one’s strength is very important when on a mission like this, and I will need enough energy to make it back to our house.

  May as well take the ham slice, too.

  I wash down the ham with a glass of milk as I bound up the stairs two at a time. I find Sarah’s room easily because of the red sweatshirt in the middle of the floor. Also, it says SARAH’S ROOM in multicolored letters on the door. I open drawers and push aside the clothes hanging in her wardrobe, spotting other books, but not the right one. I feel slightly guilty for invading her privacy, but this wouldn’t be necessary if she’d just returned the book when she was finished with it.

  I sit on the floor and lean against the back of the bed and think. If it’s not here, then where? I stare out into the hallway, and my eyes wander across the hall to Sarah’s little brother’s room. I jump up.

  Danny!

  He had a book with him that day at the well! I wasn’t paying close attention at the time, but there were definitely a collection of drawings decorating the cover. And it was a big book, just like the one in the photograph! He could have taken it from Sarah’s room, or maybe Sarah had meant to return it to Livy and he found it.

  Or I could be totally wrong and it was a different book with him at Gran’s well and Sarah lost the fairy-tale book years ago or returned it to the public library by mistake. Gran did that once. I heard her on the phone trying to get it back.

  His room is even messier than his sister’s. Frankly, I’m surprised their mother lets them get away with this. I repeat the lifting and opening and looking under things. Then I glance up at the wall above the bed and see something that stops me in my tracks.

  It’s a painting of a well, like the one in Gran’s yard, only this one has a trickling creek running past it and a weird tree beside it, and it’s made of brick instead of stone. I climb on the bed and stand in front of the picture to get a better look. The paint is still slightly wet in places.

  Other than the wonky tree, I can’t see anything too special about the painting. But just as I’m about to hop off to continue my search for the book, I spot a detail that makes me lean so close to the painting that my nose comes away with a dab of blue sky on it.

  On the far side of the well, something is climbing out. Something with four long, green fingers that grip the side of the brick wall.

  A shiver and a kind of numb feeling begins in my face and extends down to my toes when I spot the small words painted across the bottom of the well.

  PLEASE HELP US, WELL DWELLER!

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  LIVY

  Gran and I have a rule for the bush (which is what Australians call the woods): We have to be close enough to see each other. We’re walking along a dirt path that she tells me used to be a creek bed. She tells me to watch where I put my feet. She doesn’t say so, but I’m pretty sure it’s because of snakes. I have a whistle in my jeans pocket “just in case we get separated,” and also to blow once in a while in case Danny can hear it.

  I also have a system Gran doesn’t know anything about. My black pawn is in the same pocket as my whistle. So every time I blow the whistle, I feel the pawn and think, Bob. I can’t stand the thought of forgetting him again.

  “Do you think Danny’s okay?” I ask Gran.

  She nods. “Danny’s an explorer. He knows the bush around here. It’s been his nature to wander ever since he could walk upright. The problem is that he isn’t so great about keeping track of the time. Blow that whistle again, will you?”

  I blow my whistle as hard as I can.

  We listen, in case Danny is calling back to us. Nothing.

  “Was my mom like that too when she was little? A wanderer?”

  Gran shook her head. “She wasn’t much of a bush wanderer. More of a traveler, if you know what I mean. Good head on her shoulders from the beginning. A pleasure to spend time with. I just wish I got to spend more of mine with her. And with you.”

  Gran is alone, too. I don’t know why I never thought of it before. I think of the last five years, and Gran and Bob living in the same house all that time. I can’t decide if it’s nice or just really sad.

  “Why don’t you move to America? You could live at our house! I’m sure Mom and Dad wouldn’t mind.”

  Gran nods. “They’ve offered. Problem is, I love it here.” She raises her arms and kind of waves at the trees. “I love the place and I love the people.”

  So maybe it’s not sad that Gran lives alone. Maybe it’s a choice.

  “But what if it never rains again here?” I ask her.

  She makes a quick face—like a face she might make if I were blowing that whistle right in her ear. Then she says, “I guess I’ll have to take that question one day at a time.”

  I’m not sure what to say to that. Because what if it really never rains here again? Gran catches my hand and we swing our arms back and forth together. It feels good. Then she says, “So you’re feeling okay about staying over tonight?”

  Mom has obviously told her about my sleepover problems. “Yeah. I think so.” I wait. No stomachache. Small twinge-y feeling, but no stomachache.

  She squeezes my hand. “Good. You know what your mom used to do when she couldn’t sleep? She put a book under her pillow.”

  “She never told me that.”

  Gran smiles. “She said it helped her dream.”

  I picture that: Mom, my age, in the four-poster bed, dreaming. It feels good.

  “Blow that whistle again,” Gran says.

  I blow. We listen. No Danny.

  Then Gran says, “You were quite a wanderer yourself when you were here last.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you!” she says. “You kn
ow it was just you and me for a few days last time you came, right? Your mom was away seeing friends, just like she is now. Well, one morning I come downstairs at six a.m. and there you are sitting at the breakfast table in your pajamas, big innocent smile on your face. You had even set the table! Knife, fork, and cup for you; knife, fork, and cup for me. Only problem was that your pajamas looked like you’d been out in the bush all night in the rain—leaves and dirt and anything else you can think of that you might find on the ground. Everywhere. Your pockets were full of it. And you were wet.”

  I have a pretty good idea which morning this was. “Gran, how do you think I got wet?”

  She shakes her head. “Livy, to this day I have no earthly idea how you got wet, and believe me when I say I’ve put serious thought into it. I thought, maybe the pig trough? But no, that gate was latched, way up high. I checked. The whole episode scared the heck out of me, actually. After that I started waking myself up at four a.m. to watch the doors.”

  “Wow,” I say. “That’s weird.” It probably wouldn’t be a big comfort to her to know that I’m ninety-nine percent sure I fell into her well.

  Gran says, “Blow that whistle again, Livy.”

  I blow. We listen. No Danny.

  “Gran, do you remember a book with a mermaid on the cover? And—some other stuff?”

  We’re walking uphill now, and she’s breathing hard. “Your big book, you mean?”

  “What do you mean, my big book?”

  “That’s what you called it—your big book. I think it was called The Big Book of Fairy Tales. Something like that. It was your mother’s, when she was a girl. I used to read it to her, but you never let me read it to you.” She smiles.

  “Why not?”

  “You said you liked to make your own stories. You couldn’t read a word, but you looked at that book a lot. I guess you liked the pictures.”

  “What kind of pictures?”

  “Well, mermaids, like you said.” She’s still a little bit out of breath.

  “Anything else?”

  “Oh, sure. Elves, maybe? Fairies? I’m sorry, sweetie. I haven’t seen that one in a while.” Gran’s distracted, looking at her ripped paper-tablecloth map. “We should turn left soon. There’s a big rock about a quarter mile ahead. We’ll turn right after that.”

  We walk on. The hill gets steeper. I scan the woods. No Danny. I climb up on a fallen tree trunk and turn around in a circle, looking. I blow my whistle, two toots. I hear a few answer-whistles from the other searchers—two toots. But no Danny. I’m about to climb down when I see a flash of orange. A very familiar shade of orange. Bob! I glance around—where did he go?

  I squeeze my pawn. Scan, turn, scan—

  Then I see it—one skinny green arm, waving at me, semi-desperately. He’s right beside the path a little way ahead of us. But Gran is slowing down.

  “Gran. Let’s keep going.”

  “Actually, my dear, I think I need to sit down for a few minutes.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  BOB

  “Did anyone else just see a chicken shimmy down that drainpipe?” one of the big-hatted boys had shouted. “It had something rolled up under its wing!”

  “Maybe it was a wombat,” his friend (or brother) had suggested.

  “This was no wombat!”

  The woman with them swatted them on the heads and said not to tell tales.

  It was epic.

  I wait for Livy to join me behind the tree. “Wait till you hear what I’ve learned!” I say when she finally arrives, huffing and puffing. She puts up a give me a minute finger. Then she takes out a whistle and blows hard into it. Twice.

  I put my hands over my ears. “Ouch! Finely tuned sense of sound, remember?”

  “Sorry. I have to blow it every two minutes.” We hear two more whistle blows, close by but less painful. Livy smiles. “That’s Gran. She’s resting.” She twists around, likely making sure we’re alone, before asking, “What are you doing here, Bob?”

  “After you left me without saying anything even though you know I’m sensitive about that…” I pause as she reaches out to pat me on the head, a gesture I choose to interpret as an apology. Then I continue. “I decided to make myself useful.” I take a deep breath and try to untangle all my thoughts before continuing. “I remembered that Sarah had taken the book from your mom’s shelf and I went to get it back. And look!” I hold up the picture I took off the wall. The painting is a little smudged by my nose pressing against it, but only a little. “Look at that hand!”

  She grabs it. “Where did you get this?”

  “From over Danny’s bed. He must have made it after reading the story!”

  She leans in so close her nose comes away with a spot of blue, too!

  “And what do you think well dweller means? I still haven’t gotten up to the Ws in my dictionary yet.”

  When she looks at me her eyes are shining. “Bob, I don’t think it’s in the dictionary. But this is it! The final clue we were looking for! You came out of Gran’s well. You did! Rufus fell in, and I fell in, and you were there to save us!”

  I frown. “But I don’t feel like I came from a well. And visiting it yesterday didn’t bring back any memories.”

  “I know, but maybe that’s part of how your magic protects you or something.”

  “Protects me by making me forget where I came from? What kind of second-rate magic is that?”

  “It’s not the best,” Livy agrees. “I bet the book would tell us more.”

  “Yes! Let’s go ask Danny where it is.”

  She frowns. “No one is sure where Danny is right now. I should have told you that right away. That’s why Gran took me. There’s a big search on for him.”

  That would explain all the commotion and the policeman! “What are we waiting for then? Let’s go find him!”

  “I know! I’m trying!” She turns back to the painting. “Maybe we could use this painting as a map. He could be at this very well right now! Look, there’s a weird tree near it like this.” She holds out her arms and makes them all crooked and tilts her head. “And there’s a creek bed leading up to it, too, just like the one we’re standing on.”

  I look down. The dirt-filled creek is only about an inch or two lower than the ground on either side of it. We’d been using it like a path through the trees. “Livy, if neither of us passed the tree on our way here, it has to still be up ahead.”

  We take off running along the path, heading deeper and deeper into the bush. Livy continues blowing that awful whistle every two minutes, making me jump even though I know it’s coming. Gran’s responses are getting fainter as we get farther away. We’ll have to find the well soon or else go back before Gran gets too worried and people start searching for us.

  We step over broken twigs and bits of bark and I’m glad my feet are thick. Seedpods keep cracking and making us jump, thinking it’s the sound of a fire starting. Finally we stumble into a small clearing and Livy grabs my arm and points. “It’s the weird tree!”

  She’s right! And behind the tree, almost completely hidden by its long, oddly shaped branches and surprisingly green leaves, is a large brick well. My heart thumps with anticipation.

  The first thing that I notice as we approach is the complete lack of a green hand gripping the edge of the well, or signs of any hands at all—green or Danny-sized. My shoulders sag. Were we wrong about everything? Was the drawing just a picture Danny made when he was bored?

  She shuffles one way around the well, and I go the other. At the same time, we shout, “Danny!”

  Because here he is, leaning against the back of the well, the missing book open on his lap. He sees us and points to a cardboard box on the ground beside him.

  “No one came to take it.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  LIVY

  When Danny stands up, I grab his hand like he might run somewhere. “Are you okay? A lot of people are looking for you.”

  The well seems to smother my words
. It feels different from Gran’s well. Like this might be the deepest, quietest place in the world. I step up to the well wall and peer into the murky darkness.

  “Again?” Danny pulls his hand away. “I know my way home.”

  Then I notice Bob, who seems torn between the box on the ground and the book in Danny’s hand.

  The book in his hand! He’s holding the book with Bob on the cover!

  “I think there might be a cupcake inside that box,” Bob whispers to me.

  But I’m a lot more interested in the book.

  “Can I see the story?” I ask Danny. He knows the one I mean. He hands over the book.

  “It’s not true anyway,” Danny says as I read down the table of contents. “There are only two wells around here. The one in your gran’s yard and this abandoned one. I’ve waited and waited at both of them, and they never come. It’s all a lie.”

  The story titled “The Well Dwellers” is only two pages long. I hold the book open, and Bob jumps in front of me.

  I skim: Well dwellers possess a secret and powerful magic. They can make things grow. They live all over the world in secret—

  “Bob,” I say, “move your head—I can’t see!”

  Danny is staring. “Your chicken is named Bob?”

  Oops.

  Bob isn’t even trying to act like a chicken. He sticks out one long green finger and points. Then he starts to screech.

  Or I thought he was screeching, at first. After a while I figure out that he’s actually talking. He’s saying, “Meeeeeee! Meeeeeeeee!”

  And he’s touching the picture on the page. It’s definitely a picture of Bob.

  Same green head.

  Same green arms.

  Same green body.

  Same crooked smile.

  Standing right next to a well. It’s not this exact well. But it’s not that different, either.

  “Bob!” I shout. “That’s YOU. Maybe this well is a passageway. Maybe it leads to your home.”