The Hole in the Wall - Lisa Rowe Fraustino [18]
“Oh, sure, don’t worry about it,” she said with a casual swipe of her hand. “Stanley is the most generous man in the world. He’d give anyone the shirt off his back.”
I was starting to appreciate the side of Boots Odum that hadn’t flooded our basement or made Grum steal my bedroom. Happily I reached down the tight neck of my inside-out T-shirt to drop the art rock into my pocket. And I’d just swallowed my first handful of M&M’s—the chocolate kind—when the rock started to wiggle around like it was looking for a way out.
For real.
I screamed and flew out of there before Barbie could finish digging her nails into her orange.
The Shish caught up with me at the top of Kettle Ridge. I was staring off toward the Hole in the Wall, wishing I’d gone there instead of to Odum’s, catching my breath, and wondering if I’d just gone crazy. Do sane people think rocks can move?
She must have been pumping the pedals hard. She’d worked up a dripping sweat, and I could barely understand her as she huffed and puffed her words. “What’s wrong, Seb? Why’d you take off so fast?” She was worried about me.
What could I tell her? The truth was too embarrassing. How could I have ever thought a rock was wiggling around in my pocket? It had felt like it was throbbing against my heart. But any ding-a-ling could figure out that it was really the other way around. I’d never felt so stupid in my life. And a lot of the time I feel pretty stupid.
“I have a stomachache,” I said. Which was the truth. But I was trying not to think of that.
“Then why did you grab your chest like you were having a coronary before you took off?”
Before I said any more I wanted to see what that weird rock was up to now. During the wild ride, I’d rolled it into my sock to get it off my chest. When I loosened the material, the pebble fell to the asphalt and spun in loops. It made a wind-chime sound that flashed my memory straight back under Miss Beverly’s chandelier. Crazy!
As the pebble fell still and silent, I looked to see if Barbie had seen and heard it too. Her bike stood leaning against an oak. She herself had ducked behind the tree. All I could see of her was half her face with one enormous surprised eye. She was scared.
I knelt to pick up the pebble.
“Leave that thing alone, Seb! There’s something wrong. It might hurt you.”
“Sheesh, take it easy. It’s just a rock. Hey, when I was fiddling with it at Miss Beverly’s, did you see anything strange?”
“You mean, like, besides you waving that thing around with your eyes crossed?”
“No colors?”
“You mean the colors from the chandelier?”
Oh, right. I hadn’t thought of that. The light was made of stained glass. Maybe staring into that had made my eyes go kaleidoscope. Had I imagined the whole thing after all? I wanted to find out.
The sun was an orange ball hanging low over the western hills. I held the pebble up so it was encircled by orange light and flopped it around in a figure eight. Well, I found out, all right. Instantly the pebble went blinky again. In fact, the more I flopped it, the more excited it got, swirling with bright colors in arcs like a butterfly’s wings flying toward me, and making that soft wind-chime music. It was so beautiful, I could barely breathe past the lump in my throat.
The next thing I knew, the music in my ears morphed into a wild shriek. Aaaaargh! Barbie. She’d come running up behind me to give my hand a hard smack. The rock went flying into the dead oak leaves beside the road and sat there looking gray, forlorn, and kickable.
“Hey!” I said, running to its rescue.
Barbie raced after me and tackled me to the ground. My hand reached the pebble first, and the moment I touched it, the thing started winking colors again. Then Barbie jammed her hand under my arm to tickle me. Me and Barbie probably had our first knock-down drag-out in the womb. She was born knowing all my weak spots. I doubled over groan-laughing, and she grabbed the pebble away.