Sara, Book 1 (4 page)
Wow!
Sara murmured as she spotted the Petersons’ big red barn. She could barely believe her eyes. In what had seemed to Sara like only a minute or two, she had floated over five miles through pastures and farmland. But Sara didn’t mind the long walk home one bit. With delicious enthusiasm for life, Sara walked and skipped her way home.
As soon as she could get out of them, she put her dirty, wet clothes in the washing machine and hurriedly ran a nice warm bath.
No point in giving Mother one more thing to worry about,
she had thought.
This won’t make her feel safer.
Sara lay back in the warm water, smiling, as all sorts of leaves and dirt and river bugs washed out of her curly brown hair, knowing, with certainty, that her mother was wrong.
Sara knew that she would never drown.
“S
ara, wait up!” Sara stopped in the center of the intersection and waited as her little brother ran at top speed toward her.
“Ya gotta come, Sara, it’s real neat!”
I’ll bet it is,
Sara thought, pondering the last several “real neat” things Jason had sprung on her. There was the barn rat he’d trapped in his own self-made trap, that “really was alive last time I looked,” Jason had promised. Twice, he’d caught Sara off guard and had tricked her into peering into his school bag, only to find some innocent little bird or mouse that had fallen prey to Jason and his grungy little friends, excited and eager to use their new Christmas BB guns.
What is it with boys?
Sara pondered, waiting, as Jason, tired, had now slowed to a walk, seeing that Sara was actually waiting for him.
How can they actually take pleasure in hurting poor, defenseless little animals? I’d like to catch them in a trap and see how they like it,
Sara thought.
I remember when his pranks were less gory and even funny, sometimes, but Jason just seems to get meaner and meaner.
Sara stood in the middle of the quiet country road waiting for her brother to catch up to her. She suppressed a smile as she remembered the clever hoax Jason had carried out by laying his head down on his desk, hiding his shiny rubber vomit, and then looking up with his big brown eyes, exposing his sickening prize when his teacher stood over him. Mrs. Johnson had rushed out of the room to get the janitor to deal with the mess, but when she came back, Jason announced that he had taken care of it, and Mrs. Johnson was so relieved that she didn’t even ask any questions. Jason was excused to go home.
Sara was stunned at how gullible Mrs. Johnson had been, not even wondering how this vomit, which appeared fresh and runny, managed to stand in such a neat little puddle on a desk with a fairly significant slope. But then, Mrs. Johnson hadn’t yet had as much experience with Jason as Sara had, and, she admitted, he got to her more than once, in her more naive days, but no more. Sara was on to her brother.
“Sara!” Jason shouted, winded and excited.
Sara stepped back, “Jason, you don’t have to yell, I’m only two feet away from you.”
“Sorry.” Jason gulped as he tried to catch his breath. “You gotta come! Solomon’s back!”
“Who’s Solomon?” Sara questioned, regretting her question as soon as it was blurted out; she didn’t want to show one bit of interest in whatever Jason was babbling about.
“Solomon! You know,
Solomon.
The giant bird on Thacker’s Trail!”
“I never heard of a giant bird on Thacker’s Trail,” Sara offered, mustering as much of a sound of boredom as she could on such short notice. “Jason, I’m not interested in any more of your stupid birds.”
“This bird isn’t stupid, Sara, it’s gigantic! You should see it. Billy said it’s bigger than his father’s car. Sara, you have to come, please.”
“Jason, a bird cannot be bigger than a car.”
“Yes, it can! You can ask Billy’s dad! He was driving home one day, and he said he saw a shadow so big he thought it was an airplane passing over him. It covered the whole car. But it wasn’t an airplane, Sara, it was Solomon!”
Sara had to admit that Jason’s enthusiasm for Solomon was getting to her a bit.
“I’ll go some other time, Jason. I have to get home.”
“Oh, Sara, please come! Solomon might not be here again. You have to come, Sara, you have to!”
Jason’s persistence was beginning to worry Sara. He wasn’t usually so intense. Ordinarily, when he felt Sara’s strong will kicking in, he’d just give up and lay low and wait for another opportunity to catch her more off guard. He’d learned, from much experience, that the more he pressed his sister to do something that she didn’t want to do, the more impossible Sara became. But there was something different here. Jason seemed compelled in a way that Sara hadn’t seen before, and so, to Jason’s tremendous surprise and delight, Sara gave in.
“Oh, all right, Jason. Where is this giant bird?”
“His name is Solomon.”
“How do you know his name?”
“Billy’s dad named him. He says he’s an owl. And owls are wise. So his name should be Solomon.”
Sara picked up her pace to try to keep up with Jason.
He’s really excited about this bird,
Sara thought.
This is weird.
“He’s in here, somewhere,” Jason said. “He lives in here.”
Sara was often amused at Jason’s assumed confidence, when Sara knew that he knew that he really didn’t know what he was talking about. But, more often than not, Sara would play along, pretending that she didn’t notice. It was easier that way.
They looked into the sparsely leafed thicket, now covered with snow. They walked along a badly decaying fence row, following a narrow path in the snow, carved out by a lone dog that had apparently run along not long before them. . . .
Sara almost never walked this path in the winter. It was out of the way of her usual walk between school and home. This was, however, a place where Sara had spent countless blissful summer hours. Sara walked along, noting all the familiar nooks and crannies, feeling good about revisiting her old path.
Best thing about this path,
Sara thought,
is that I had it mostly to myself. No cars passing, no neighbors. This is a quiet path. I should walk here more often.
“Solomon!” Jason’s voice rang out, startling Sara. She hadn’t expected him to shout.
“Jason, don’t yell at Solomon. If he is in here, he won’t be if you keep that up.”
“He is in here, Sara. I told you, he lives in here. And if he woulda left, we woulda seen him. He’s really big, Sara, really!”
Sara and Jason walked deeper and deeper into the thicket, ducking under a rusty wire, which was one of the last remnants of this rickety old fence. They walked along slowly, feeling their way carefully, not certain what might be buried in this knee-deep snow.
“Jason, I’m getting cold.”
“Just a little more, Sara. Please?”
It was more from her own curiosity than from Jason’s prodding, but Sara agreed. “Okay, Jason, five more minutes!” Sara shrieked as she stepped, waist-high, into an irrigation ditch camouflaged by the snow. The cold, wet snow came right up under Sara’s coat and blouse and touched right up against her bare skin. “Okay, Jason, that’s it! I’m going home!”
Jason was disappointed that they didn’t find Solomon, but Sara’s irritation had distracted him from that. There wasn’t much that pleased Jason more than his sister’s irritation. Jason laughed heartily as Sara shook the cold wet snow out from under her clothing.
“Oh, you think that’s funny, don’t you, Jason? You probably made this whole Solomon thing up just to get me wet and mad!”
Jason laughed as he ran out ahead of Sara. As much as he enjoyed her irritation, he had wisely learned to keep a safe distance. “No, Sara, Solomon is real. You’ll see.”
“Yeah, right!” Sara snapped back at Jason.
But for some reason, Sara knew that Jason was right.
S
ara couldn’t remember a time that it was easy for her to concentrate on what was going on in the classroom.
School is truly the most boring place on earth,
she had concluded long ago. But this day, without exception, was the hardest that Sara had ever experienced. She couldn’t keep her mind on what the teacher was saying. Her mind kept drifting back to the thicket. And as soon as the last bell rang, Sara stuffed her book bag into her locker and went directly there.
“I’m probably crazy,” Sara murmured to herself, as she walked deeper and deeper into the thicket, making her own trail in the deep snow as she moved along. “I’m looking for a silly bird that’s probably not even real. Well, if I don’t see him right away, I’m leaving. I don’t want Jason to know that I’m here, or that I’m even interested in this bird.”
Sara stopped to listen. It was so still that she could hear her own breathing. She couldn’t see one other living creature. Not a bird, not a squirrel. Nothing. In fact, if it were not for the tracks that Sara and Jason and the lone dog had left there yesterday, Sara might have thought she was, indeed, the only one alive on the planet.
This was truly a beautiful winter day. The sun had been shining brightly all afternoon, and the top crust of the snow was shiny and wet as it was slowly melting. Everything was glistening. Ordinarily, a day like this would make Sara’s heart sing. What could be better than to be off, all alone, thinking her own thoughts on a beautiful day like this? But Sara felt irritated. She had hoped that Solomon would be easy to find. Somehow, thinking about the thicket and the possibility of spotting this mysterious bird had piqued Sara’s interest, but now, standing here alone, knee-deep in snow, Sara began to feel foolish. “Where is this bird? Oh, forget it! I’m going home!”
In her frustration, Sara stood in the middle of the thicket, feeling angry and overwhelmed and somewhat confused. She started backtracking out of the thicket, the way she had come in, but then stopped to consider if it would be faster to cross through the pasture that she so often used as a shortcut during the summer months.
I’m sure the river is frozen over by now. Maybe I can cross it here somewhere where it’s narrow,
Sara thought, as she ducked under the single wire fence.
Sara was surprised by how disoriented she was here in the winter. She had passed through this pasture hundreds of times. This was the pasture where her uncle kept his horse during the summer months, but everything looked very different with all of her familiar landmarks buried beneath the snow. The river was completely iced over here, and was covered by several inches of snow. Sara stopped, trying to remember where the narrowest point was. And then she felt the ice giving way beneath her feet—and before she knew it, she was flat on her back on the very tentative ice with cold water quickly soaking through her clothes. Sara flashed back to the amazing ride this river had given her before, and, for a moment, she felt real panic, imagining a repeat of that ride, but in this freezing cold water, being carried downstream to a frozen death.
Have you forgotten that you cannot drown?
A kind voice spoke from somewhere over Sara’s head.
“Who’s there?” Sara asked, looking all around, staring up into the bare trees, squinting from the glare of the sun that was glistening and reflecting off of the snow-covered everything around her.
Whoever you are, why don’t you help me out of here?
Sara thought, as she lay on the cracking ice, frightened that any movement might cause the ice to give way beneath her.