I Owe You One

I Owe You One

N
ATALIE
H
YDE

ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

Text copyright © 2011 Natalie Hyde

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Hyde, Natalie, 1963-
I owe you one / Natalie Hyde.

(Orca young readers)

Issued also in electronic format.
ISBN 978-1-55469-414-3

I. Title. II. Series: Orca young readers
PS8615.Y33I17 2011     JC813'.6      C2011-903478-6

First published in the United States, 2011
Library of Congress Control Number
: 2011929253

Summary
: After an old lady rescues him from drowning, Wes considers how to honor his dead father's wishes while repaying what his friend Zach calls a life debt.

Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed this book on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council
^®
.

Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

Cover artwork by Peter Ferguson
Author photo by Brad Scott

www.orcabook.com
Printed and bound in Canada.

14  13  12  11  •  4  3  2   1

For Nathan, who loves a good explosion

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Inch by inch, I leaned farther out over the swollen spring creek. My left hand clutched a slippery tree trunk while my right hand reached for my favorite ballcap. It was dangling at the very tip of a narrow limb hanging over the water, and it looked like the wind would rip it off and send it down the surging creek at any moment.

My mom would kill me if she knew I was this close to the flooding creek, but I was desperate.

I heard footsteps crunching on the gravel path. My heart pounded. I was about to be caught doing the dumbest thing I had ever done. Well, maybe not the dumbest. There was that whole slime-mold experiment last summer. We couldn't use our bathtub for a month.

I made one last grab for my hat.

You know, everything really does warp into slow motion when you are heading for disaster. And I certainly was. The May rains that had turned the normally quiet creek into a raging torrent had also turned the bank into a greasy chute heading straight for the water. As I lunged for my cap, I lost my balance. My feet jerked out from under me and I landed—
splat!
—in the mud and began sliding headfirst down the slippery bank. Just before my face hit the water, my right hand grabbed a root and I whipped around, almost dislocating my shoulder.

And there I lay, half in and half out of the icy spring runoff while the angry current pulled at my legs. I held on to that gnarled root with a mighty grip. My other hand groped in the leaves and mud for a way to haul myself out of there.

“Help!” I yelled into the wind. “Is anyone out there?”

I was saved from certain death by Mrs. Minton (who's got to be at least eighty) and her old wooden cane. She was hanging on to a tree with all her strength. I could see her mouth opening and closing, but between the rushing of the water and the pounding of the blood in my ears, I couldn't hear what she was saying.

I consider myself pretty strong for an eleven-year-old, but it took every ounce of energy I had to put one hand over the other on that cane and pull myself out of the creek. It didn't help that the cane was covered with little metal souvenir crests from Mrs. Minton's trips to Europe. Every time my hand moved up the cane, the crests cut into my flesh.

Standing on the muddy bank, shaking with the cold, my hands bleeding, I didn't know which was worse: the trouble I would be in from my mom, or the teasing I was going to get from Zach for being rescued by an old lady and her cane. It was a tough call.

“Wesley James Morgan,” she said, “are you trying to get yourself killed?”

Old people and your parents are the only ones allowed to get away with calling you by your whole name. I hate the name Wesley. No one—I mean no one—calls me Wesley. It's Wes. Always Wes.

“N-n-no,” I said, my teeth chattering uncontrollably. “I was t-t-trying t-to get m-m-my hat b-b-back.”

“You kids!” she said, smiling and wrapping me in her heavy crocheted shawl. “Never seeing danger. I was just like that.” It was a real granny shawl, multicolored, with purple and pink fringe. If any of my friends had walked by right then and seen me in that shawl, I probably would have jumped back in the creek.

I watched in disbelief as she used the tip of her cane to snag my hat and present it to me with a shake of her head. “I bet your mother would be none too happy to hear her only son was almost washed away for the sake of a baseball cap.”

The chattering was worse now that the wind was turning my soaking wet clothes to ice, so I didn't try to reply. No use explaining to her that my dad had bought me the hat on our last vacation together.

“Well, it was providential that I decided to go for a walk today, despite what the wind does to my hair.”

“Are you g-g-going to t-t-tell my m-m-mom what happ-p-pened?”

Mrs. Minton thought for a moment. “I guess if the Fates had wanted you to get into trouble with your mother, they would have sent her to walk your dog instead of giving me the idea of getting some fresh air. Come along, Wesley. You can dry off at my house.”

So that's how I came to be sitting in Mrs. Minton's living room, covered in two afghans, my feet stuffed into huge furry moose slippers, sipping steaming hot chocolate while she threw most of my clothes in her dryer. Some things I left on even though they were wet.

I had never been in Mrs. Minton's house before, and it was nothing like I expected. No flowered couches, cats or cabinets full of teacups. Instead, every available inch of space—the walls, the fireplace mantel, all the tables—was covered with photographs. These weren't your average family pictures of smiling babies and graduations though. In one picture a group of women in yellow crash helmets stood on a rocky shore, holding up their paddles in front of enormous rapids. Other photos showed a parachutist's feet hitting the ground, a young woman hugging a koala, smiling men in red parkas on a snowy mountain. There was an old brownish photo of a downhill skier with no helmet. She was caught mid-flight, bright-eyed, her curly hair streaming out behind her. Mrs. Minton's house was full of people having adventures.

I tried to picture Mrs. Minton having an adventure. I couldn't.

“Are these people your family?” I asked.

Mrs. Minton smiled. “They are.” She set a plate of shortbread down in front of me and pointed to the pictures. “This is my nephew Bill parachuting in France. And that's my granddaughter Rachel with the koala in Australia. She's on the national ski team now, you know. She has her first big race as a team member this July in Chile.”

“In the summer?”

“It will be winter in the southern hemisphere, Wesley.”

“Oh.” My eyes shot back to the picture of the skier with the curly hair. Mrs. Minton followed my eyes.

“You'd never guess that only thirteen seconds after this picture was taken, I would take a spill and blow out my knee, would you?”

“That's
you
?” I tried really hard to believe that the daring, wild woman in the picture was old Mrs. Minton.

She laughed. “I wasn't born this old, you know. And once I get my hip replacement, I might just strap on a pair of skis for old times' sake.”

I couldn't tell if she was joking or not.

“Did you win any races?” I asked.

“I had my moments, but I was never as good as Rachel. Her mother had her skiing before she could walk.” Mrs. Minton laughed a little as she passed me a picture of a tiny girl on two stubby skis. She was stuffed into a snowsuit so puffy that she looked like a pink marshmallow with legs. I smiled as I handed the picture back and pointed to another one on the mantel.

“Who are those men on the mountain?” I asked.

“That's my father and three of his friends at Base Camp One on Mount Everest.”

Mount Everest! I would have jumped up to take a closer look, but I was pinned down by the afghans. Why couldn't I have been rescued by a mountaineer with cool equipment?

“I think I'd better get going before my mom wonders what happened to me,” I said.

Mrs. Minton nodded. “Let me grab your things. They should be pretty dry now.”

She came back with my clothes, and I shuffled to the bathroom to change.

Dressed again, I hurried to the front door.

“Um, thanks,” I said, looking at the floor, one hand on the doorknob. “For saving my life and all that.”