The Hole in the Wall - Lisa Rowe Fraustino [56]
“Oh my God, Sebby! You know what this means?” She turned me around to face her. I’d never seen her so big-eyed. “You’re petrified!”
“I was just thinking the same thing about you.” Heh heh.
“Stop joking. I’m serious. I mean your back, Seb. It’s turned to stone, like the chickens. And, yes, it scares me!”
Okay, her idea made sense, sort of, if the paint on my back was made of that stuff that petrified the eggs. Except . . . “Wait. Celery was cured in the cavern, and my cookie dough chunks came up. So why is the stuff still in my back?”
By now rain had started to sprinkle outside. We stepped deeper into the cave. Barbie shook her head. “I don’t know. But we do know who might.” She pointed in the direction of the ORC Onion.
“Boots Odum. Yeah. Maybe I should go show him my new tattoo! What do you bet he gives me lots of money?”
“No, Seb. You’re gonna show this to Ma. Let her deal with him. Your life may be at stake! Do you want to wind up like Miss Beverly’s poodle?”
Just then a bolt of lightning flashed outside the cave, and thunder crashed directly overhead, opening the clouds up. A sheet of rain came pouring down like a waterfall in front of the doorway, spouting inside the cave.
“We’re getting flash flooded!” I said. “No way can we bike across the gore in this. I’ll close the place up so we can stay dry until the storm passes over. You can light the candles.” I got matches out of a coffee can and tossed them to her.
“Fine,” Barbie said. “But as soon as the rain stops, we’re going home and telling Ma everything. Got it?”
“Oh, all right,” I said. I was pretty scared, to tell the truth. Grum would take that lightning bolt as a message from God. And it was His day. I figured I’d better pay attention.
Once I’d locked the plywood into its grooves, the rain drummed pleasantly against it, leaving us dry and cozy in the candlelight. I turned around, wiping my hands on my back pockets, and started laughing.
“Look, Barbie!”
Her book bag was jiggling. The first hen wriggled and started pecking her way out like a baby bird coming out of an egg. Barbie crawled over and loosened the strings so the others could free themselves. We laughed as the chickens came flying out of the two packs like popcorn.
Before long, the little cave was stage to a troupe of dancing chickens. But the last one still lay like a rock in the bottom of the wicker pack. I took the hen out and waved my hand back and forth before her eyes. They didn’t move.
“Aw,” said Barbie. “That’s so sad.”
I dug around in my snack stockpile and found some stale pretzels to toss to the chickens, but they jumped away like I was throwing hot coals at them. “Fine, more for me,” I said, popped a pretzel in my mouth, and chomped down.
“Aaahhh!” That pretzel was harder than Ma’s rock cookies. Or maybe it just felt that way to my four hundred new teeth.
I held a pretzel out to Barbie. “Sorry, they’re a little stale,” I said.
“No, thanks, I’m not hungry. How can you eat at a time like this? Aren’t you scared?”
“Gee, no, Shish. I’m looking forward to my future as a human mood rock. Maybe I’ll join the circus.”
Yeah, I was scared. But I didn’t want to talk about it. Or even think about it. So I pulled a bunch of blankets out of the garbage bags where I stored them and spread them out on the floor to make a mattress. “Hey, Barbie, you feel like scratching my back again?” I asked, trying to sound like I was doing her a big favor.
She scrunched her nose. “That tattoo gives me the creeps. I don’t want to touch it.”
“C’mon, you touched it before and it didn’t kill you. It itches!”
“Oh, all right. But you have to keep your T-shirt on. Lie on your stomach.”
She sat on the backs of my legs and gave my back a hard massage that felt so warm and good, I was almost asleep when the mudslide hit.
It was already noisy outside with all the thunder and pounding rain, but this was a different loud noise—a giant cracking and rolling that started above us, surrounded us, and vibrated through the ground. The candles flickered. The chickens took to the air squawking,