Bob Read online

  This is what I see:

  Driveway: one brown truck, one white car with a thick blue stripe down the side. The white car is very dirty. White is not a sensible color in hot, dusty environments.

  Front lawn: a folding table with a round-shaped bald man in a folding chair behind it. The man wears a blue outfit with a badge on his chest and is handing a map to a lady and two boys a few years younger than Livy, both in shorts and round hats that are too big for them.

  The man in blue is a policeman. Why is a policeman sitting outside Sarah’s house? He is not selling lemonade. I shrink farther back into the bush and peek out between the reeds. I don’t want to be spotted by the long arm of the law.

  When I am certain there is no one else around, I sneak up the driveway, being sure to keep on the far side of the parked cars. The policeman doesn’t even look up from his notebook. I’m THAT good.

  I keep going around the side of the house, past the chickens in their coop. They cluck and eye me suspiciously. I am unliked by chickens everywhere. They don’t seem convinced that I am one of them. In my current sorry state, I don’t blame them.

  The fields of Sarah’s house are in even worse condition than Gran’s. Most of the ground is bare, with only a few wilted sunflowers here and there.

  I hurry past a sad-looking cow who is too busy flicking flies away from her ears to pay me any attention. Their kitchen door is where ours is, so I expect it to be unlocked, like ours is. But when I reach up to turn the knob, I discover my luck has run out. Then I notice the square cut out of the bottom of the door. A thin plastic flap hangs in front with a picture of a dog bone printed on it. I am going to have to crawl through a door clearly made for a dog. This is not one of my finer moments. I am glad Livy is not here to watch.

  I suck in my belly and wiggle headfirst through the hole and onto the hard kitchen floor. At least there’s no dog snarling down at me. I use the shiny surface of the oven to adjust my chicken outfit and to dust off the worst of the patches of dirt I’ve brought in with me.

  The kitchen looks like someone left in a big hurry. Cabinets hang open and a half-eaten meal sits out on the table. I can hear the policeman outside talking on the phone, so there’s no time to spare. Still, I do manage to finish a cheese sandwich that only had one bite taken out of it. Keeping up one’s strength is very important when on a mission like this, and I will need enough energy to make it back to our house.

  May as well take the ham slice, too.

  I wash down the ham with a glass of milk as I bound up the stairs two at a time. I find Sarah’s room easily because of the red sweatshirt in the middle of the floor. Also, it says SARAH’S ROOM in multicolored letters on the door. I open drawers and push aside the clothes hanging in her wardrobe, spotting other books, but not the right one. I feel slightly guilty for invading her privacy, but this wouldn’t be necessary if she’d just returned the book when she was finished with it.

  I sit on the floor and lean against the back of the bed and think. If it’s not here, then where? I stare out into the hallway, and my eyes wander across the hall to Sarah’s little brother’s room. I jump up.

  Danny!

  He had a book with him that day at the well! I wasn’t paying close attention at the time, but there were definitely a collection of drawings decorating the cover. And it was a big book, just like the one in the photograph! He could have taken it from Sarah’s room, or maybe Sarah had meant to return it to Livy and he found it.

  Or I could be totally wrong and it was a different book with him at Gran’s well and Sarah lost the fairy-tale book years ago or returned it to the public library by mistake. Gran did that once. I heard her on the phone trying to get it back.

  His room is even messier than his sister’s. Frankly, I’m surprised their mother lets them get away with this. I repeat the lifting and opening and looking under things. Then I glance up at the wall above the bed and see something that stops me in my tracks.

  It’s a painting of a well, like the one in Gran’s yard, only this one has a trickling creek running past it and a weird tree beside it, and it’s made of brick instead of stone. I climb on the bed and stand in front of the picture to get a better look. The paint is still slightly wet in places.

  Other than the wonky tree, I can’t see anything too special about the painting. But just as I’m about to hop off to continue my search for the book, I spot a detail that makes me lean so close to the painting that my nose comes away with a dab of blue sky on it.

  On the far side of the well, something is climbing out. Something with four long, green fingers that grip the side of the brick wall.

  A shiver and a kind of numb feeling begins in my face and extends down to my toes when I spot the small words painted across the bottom of the well.

  PLEASE HELP US, WELL DWELLER!

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  LIVY

  Gran and I have a rule for the bush (which is what Australians call the woods): We have to be close enough to see each other. We’re walking along a dirt path that she tells me used to be a creek bed. She tells me to watch where I put my feet. She doesn’t say so, but I’m pretty sure it’s because of snakes. I have a whistle in my jeans pocket “just in case we get separated,” and also to blow once in a while in case Danny can hear it.

  I also have a system Gran doesn’t know anything about. My black pawn is in the same pocket as my whistle. So every time I blow the whistle, I feel the pawn and think, Bob. I can’t stand the thought of forgetting him again.

  “Do you think Danny’s okay?” I ask Gran.

  She nods. “Danny’s an explorer. He knows the bush around here. It’s been his nature to wander ever since he could walk upright. The problem is that he isn’t so great about keeping track of the time. Blow that whistle again, will you?”

  I blow my whistle as hard as I can.

  We listen, in case Danny is calling back to us. Nothing.

  “Was my mom like that too when she was little? A wanderer?”

  Gran shook her head. “She wasn’t much of a bush wanderer. More of a traveler, if you know what I mean. Good head on her shoulders from the beginning. A pleasure to spend time with. I just wish I got to spend more of mine with her. And with you.”

  Gran is alone, too. I don’t know why I never thought of it before. I think of the last five years, and Gran and Bob living in the same house all that time. I can’t decide if it’s nice or just really sad.

  “Why don’t you move to America? You could live at our house! I’m sure Mom and Dad wouldn’t mind.”

  Gran nods. “They’ve offered. Problem is, I love it here.” She raises her arms and kind of waves at the trees. “I love the place and I love the people.”

  So maybe it’s not sad that Gran lives alone. Maybe it’s a choice.

  “But what if it never rains again here?” I ask her.

  She makes a quick face—like a face she might make if I were blowing that whistle right in her ear. Then she says, “I guess I’ll have to take that question one day at a time.”

  I’m not sure what to say to that. Because what if it really never rains here again? Gran catches my hand and we swing our arms back and forth together. It feels good. Then she says, “So you’re feeling okay about staying over tonight?”

  Mom has obviously told her about my sleepover problems. “Yeah. I think so.” I wait. No stomachache. Small twinge-y feeling, but no stomachache.

  She squeezes my hand. “Good. You know what your mom used to do when she couldn’t sleep? She put a book under her pillow.”

  “She never told me that.”

  Gran smiles. “She said it helped her dream.”

  I picture that: Mom, my age, in the four-poster bed, dreaming. It feels good.

  “Blow that whistle again,” Gran says.

  I blow. We listen. No Danny.

  Then Gran says, “You were quite a wanderer yourself when you were here last.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you!” she says. “You kn