Connect the Stars (22 page)

Louis grabbed Daphne and swung her onto his back.

“Dive, everybody!” cried Kate.

We did. And shot the curling flood wave like we were riding a breaker at the beach.

The last thing I remember was the sight of my friends sliding down the front of the swell, like it was a roller at the shore, if the roller were fifteen feet high and spiked with flood debris. But just when it seemed like we might all actually make it to safety upstream from the flooded canyon, an undertow grabbed me.

The current of the Rio Grande still flowed beneath the water pouring from Gage Cut, and it had sucked me down. And might pull me, I realized, a hundred miles, to Langtry,
Texas. Two hundred, to Del Rio. Maybe eight hundred, to the Atlantic Ocean. And that was longer than I could hold my breath. I fought toward the surface, but I couldn't be sure where the surface was, and besides, the Rio Grande was stronger than I was.

So I went down. Everything faded into a kind of dream. I imagined I was turning into a fish, and would soon have gills, and be able to breathe water, which seemed strange, and hard to believe, but then, what choice did I have? As I was about to draw my first and last lungful of water, I dreamed that a pair of hands appeared in the murk and grabbed me by my hair. They were big hands. Strong hands. I dreamed that one of the hands let go of me and started paddling—I could see the froth it made under the water, but the other hand kept a firm grip on my hair. In the dream, it really hurt. When my head broke the surface, I started to think maybe I wasn't dreaming after all. My hair still hurt. I heard Louis shout, “Hold on to my shirt. I'll pull you in.”

“This is not a dream?” I called back.

“Nope,” Louis replied, and started swimming.

All I remember from there to the shore was that even though Louis seemed to be cruising through the water like an aircraft carrier, he barely made a splash. He didn't move his arms fast, or kick much. He didn't even breathe very
often. But every time he took a stroke, he grabbed a giant handful of water and shot ahead. He could've taught that Splashview lifeguard a thing or two.

Soon I found myself sitting on the sand. The surface of the river slid slowly away from my toes, dropping back into the riverbed where it belonged. The last of the flood trickled out of Gage Cut, a quarter mile downstream.

“Louis!” gasped Audrey in amazement.

“He saved all of us, didn't he?” I asked when I could talk.

Kate, Daphne, and Audrey nodded. Randolph made some kind of grunt that sounded appreciative.

“He pulled you in last,” Kate added.

“Well, I'm sure he got to me as soon as he could,” I said diplomatically.

“Where did the hero stuff come from, Louis?” asked Kate. “No offense, but how can someone who can't deal with a haircut and has to wear elastic waistbands swim like that?”

“The one thing I
can
stand is water,” Louis said. “I'm no Michael Phelps, but I'm pretty good.”

“No kidding,” said Audrey.

We were sitting on a sandy bank tucked under the cliff at the river's edge.

The rain slowed. It stopped. Above us, as the pitch-black
storm cloud scuttled away, I saw blue sky peek over the river bluff. Amazing. The sun hadn't even set yet.

We'd made it. We were safe. Once we'd caught our collective breath, the Fearless Four would put our heads together and figure out how to find our way back to el Viaje a la Confianza and, from there, sooner or later, to civilization. But for now, I just wanted to take the moment to appreciate being alive. “You've got to be kidding,” I said.

“About what?” asked Audrey.

I pointed. Half buried in the sand was—

“A wheelbarrow,” Audrey said.

“The red one. From the farm at the other end of the canyon. It must've washed down here in the flood,” I surmised.

“It's glazed with rainwater,” Kate observed.

“Unfortunately, still no chickens,” said Louis.

“That's okay,” I said.

“Are
you
okay?” asked Audrey. “You nearly drowned.”

“I'm perfect,” I answered.

“Me too,” replied Audrey, Louis, and Kate all at once. And then we fell into silence, which was also perfect.

I remembered the question Mrs. Dunaway had asked after the Quiz Bowl Catastrophe—I felt like she'd asked it in another lifetime, and like she'd asked another me: How much depends upon a red wheelbarrow?

In a flash, I realized everything that'd happened on el Viaje a la Confianza had been leading me to the answer. I finally understood what William Carlos Williams meant: things aren't always just plain things. They aren't simply objects and facts and details you can memorize. His wheelbarrow was more than just paint and iron and wooden handles and a rubber tire, because sometimes what you experience adds up something bigger, brighter, more important than yourself, and once in a while something becomes so much yours, you know you'll carry it with you always.

A shiny wheelbarrow.

A rinsed-clean sky with friends gathered under it.

We'd all get up soon and make our way back to camp, but this moment would last forever. And how much depended on it? Everything.

In the meantime, in the sunlight after the storm, the red wheelbarrow from the abandoned farm looked beautiful. As beautiful as I felt. “I get it, Mrs. Dunaway,” I murmured. “I really do.”

Daphne stared up the river, the way she'd probably been staring for two days, hoping for a kayak to appear. “I waited,” she murmured. “I almost drowned.”

“It's not your fault if you wait and your dad doesn't come,” Randolph said to comfort her. “Believe me. I know.”

Daphne turned to me. “I almost killed all of you,” she said.

I thought about the lie Daphne had believed for so long about her dad. I also thought about the truth she would have to face now. The shattered look in her eyes made me think she'd already started to see it. Out of everything that'd happened, this felt like the worst thing of all. Because nobody could fix it.

I knew that President Barack Obama, President Bill Clinton, and Olympic medalist Michael Phelps grew up without their fathers. And after age eleven, George Washington didn't have one either.

I also knew that telling Daphne these facts wouldn't change a thing. Sometimes facts help. But they can't tell the whole story. Sometimes, facts are no help at all.

“He never came,” said Daphne.

“But we did,” Audrey answered.

“But you don't even like me,” said Daphne.

“It's not that we don't like you,” I began. Audrey turned her head and gave me a look.

“Okay,” I said, sighing. “We haven't liked you all that much so far.”

“But you came anyway,” said Daphne.

I shrugged. “Yeah, we came anyway.”

Then Daphne smiled and said, “Thanks.”

After we got ourselves together, and dried our socks, and filled our bottles, and dropped in the water-purifying pills, we hiked back to camp through the remnants of the flood, just a few harmless trickles in the bottom of Gage Cut. The rock slide had been blasted to oblivion. Not even a shard of gravel remained on that trail. It was as clean as a whistle.

We crossed the desert as darkness grew deeper and deeper around us, and then receded again, as the moon rose and soon shone so brilliantly, we could see one anothers' faces, sharp and white.

Nobody talked. Not because we were unhappy. It was the opposite. We felt like we'd won a victory that would last a long time.

Above us, as we hiked, the stars of the Milky Way brightened until they joined into a solid streak of light, and finally Audrey spoke the only words of the night. She stopped in the trail, barely half a mile from camp, and turned her face toward the blazing sky. “Look,” she whispered, pointing at the Milky Way. “They're all one star.”

In camp the next morning, we explained as much as we could to the rangers Enod and Kevin had fetched. We didn't
lie, although I admit we did leave some things out. We told them that Daphne had taken off on her own, and because Jare got hurt, the five of us had gone to save her. We didn't see Jare again, because he'd already been airlifted to a hospital in El Paso, but none of the rangers mentioned that Jare was being charged with kidnapping, so we figured he must have done some leaving out of his own. Even so, it was pretty clear that he'd have to find another line of work. Stick a fork in el Viaje a la Confianza. It was done.

When we got back to the camp headquarters, some of the parents were already there. Daphne's dad was nowhere to be found, but there was a woman waiting for Daphne who must've been her mother, because, except for her regular brown hair and regular mom clothes, she looked exactly like her. You could tell from the woman's eyes that she'd spent at least an entire plane ride crying, but when she saw Daphne, her face lit up like a skyful of stars, and when Daphne ran over to her and hugged her, Audrey, Kate, Louis, Randolph, and I watched as she hung on just the way we'd all held on to Louis when he was saving us from drowning.

A few days after I flew home, Hardy Gillooly and I went to hang out at Splashview Pool so I could tell him about
the whole thing. When I was finished, I also told Hardy I wanted to start a wilderness club at school.

“Good idea,” said Hardy. “I'll join up. And next year? Why don't we just skip Quiz Masters?” He was trying to be nice. To let me off the hook after last spring.

I told him no. I wanted to start a wilderness club, but I still wanted to do Quiz Masters. Because being captain of the Quiz Masters team was still part of who I was, and now that el Viaje a la Confianza had taught me how important it is to trust your friends, I knew I could do a much better job.

“What if there's another, um—” began Hardy.

“Catastrophe?” I asked. “So what? I'm still doing it.”

Hardy looked a little doubtful.

“I'm doing it
anyway
!” I said.

“Anyway?” repeated Hardy.

I said, “When my friend Audrey visits, we'll tell you all about the anyway. You're gonna like Audrey.”

Greenwood, Delaware

JANIE'S PARENTS WERE GETTING A divorce. By the time she told me this, I'd already figured it out. It takes a long time to fly from Texas to the Philadelphia airport, which was the closest one to my house in Delaware, but I needed every minute because, while I was a natural at knowing when people were lying, I was brand-new at understanding the reasons they might have for doing it.

All the dots were there for my connecting: Janie's quietness; her absences from school; her undone homework; her tired, February-looking face; the flowerpots her dad had left unfilled; the stolen bracelet; how when her mother stood in the doorway with her arm around Janie and lied to me, her words had said she'd picked the bracelet out of a catalog for Janie to buy, but her voice and eyes had said
something more like
Audrey, please just let this drop, I'm begging you.

As soon as the plane wheels hit the tarmac in Philly, I was texting Janie, asking her to meet me the following day in the woods between our neighborhood and the school, which I knew was a good place to be alone but thought would be an even better place to talk to your best friend for the first time in much too long, the perfect place to tell the truth, the perfect place to say “I'm sorry.” Because I was so sorry.

I started this way: “When it comes to friendship, the anyway is the whole point.” And I hoped harder than I'd ever hoped for anything before that Janie would agree.

She did.

Later, we went back to Janie's house, and I told her about my unsuperpower because she was my best friend and I trusted her. Besides, if I was ever going to accept it as just another part of myself, like Aaron had suggested, I was going to need all the help I could get, especially at school.

Afterward, the two of us boxed up the bracelet and sent it back, and even though I told her she didn't have to, Janie wrote a note to Lyza explaining what had really happened, all of it. The day before she'd stolen the bracelet, her dad had moved out of their house and into an apartment.

All I could think was that I hadn't seen my mom smile in so long. That's no excuse, though, for what I did to you and to Audrey, and I've felt terrible about it ever since. Whatever the consequences will be, I'm ready to take them.

She did take them too—two days later, when Lyza and her mom showed up at her front door. Lyza's mom brought a casserole. Lyza brought Boo-Dog on a leash and asked Janie if she wanted to go for a walk. They picked me up along the way.

Yes, good people can lie and still be good people. But when they tell the truth, it gives all of us the chance to be amazing.

The minute I got home from that walk, I texted Aaron, Louis, and Kate to tell them about it because without them, it never would have happened.

Aaron, Kate, Louis, and I agreed: the hardest part of camp wasn't almost drowning in a flash flood. It wasn't brutal heat or desperate thirst, cactus spines, bats, or hailstones. It wasn't late-night crying or gluey oatmeal or being chased by a giant, possibly homicidal ex-football player or body-slammed by Randolph. It wasn't even getting a millipede down your shirt, although Louis said that was a close second. No, in the end, the hardest part was saying good-bye.

Of the Fearless Four, I was the first to leave for the airport, and as I was saying good-bye to each of my friends in turn, I laughed through my tears and said, “Sheesh, this is like the end of
The Wizard of Oz
.”

I didn't just mean the tears and the hugs and the going home. I meant, also, that we were all leaving with gifts, ones we'd given each other, not medals or diplomas or watches shaped like hearts like in the movie, but new ways of being who we were. Although I guess they weren't really new; they'd been there all along, but we'd needed each other in order to see them.

When I got to Aaron, he smiled and said, “Did you notice how I didn't even mention that the Cowardly Lion's costume was made from real lion pelts or that the Tin Man's oil was actually chocolate sauce?”

Aaron Archer, I think I'll miss you most of all.

“Don't forget! My house in three weeks!” said Louis. “That'll give me plenty of time to install the trapeze and get really good at it.”

It had turned out that we all lived within a couple of hours of each other, and even though “a couple of hours” wasn't the same as “a few tents away,” we would take it. I'm pretty sure that Louis was joking about the trapeze. But I'm not positive.

When we'd gotten to camp, we'd been Louis the
Scared, Kate the Sad, Aaron the Memory Boy, and Audrey the Hermit. We left it Louis the Brave, Kate the Protector, Aaron the Kind, and Audrey the—well, by the time I got home, I was so many Audreys: the Confused, the Understanding, the Liar, the Loyal, the Trusting, the Friend. I'd gone from being a human polygraph test to just plain human.

And all of this in just two and a half weeks. Next summer, at whatever camp we decide on, we'll have the whole six.

Just imagine what could happen.