Applewhites at Wit's End (12 page)

Chapter Twenty-four

“A
re we going to do some
solo
work today, O Great Emperor of Singing?” David said as he came into the dance studio. “I don't see how all this ‘sing-along' stuff is worth my time. It's not like I'm planning to join a
chorus
.”

Jake turned from the table where the music system was set up. Q had come in behind David and was heading for a chair. “Q? You have any thoughts about that?”

“Sure! One, harmony. Can't learn harmony by singing alone all the time. Two, you ever been in a musical?”

David sniffed. “Sure. We did
Guys and Dolls
at school last year.”

“Then you've already sung with a chorus! Musicals are ensembles just like the rest of theater. You can't just be like those dudes on television, showing off their style all the time
.
”

David turned a chair around and straddled it. “Nothing wrong with the ‘dudes on television'! My vocal coach says—”

Jake broke in. “We can do solos today if everybody wants to.”

Samantha had come in and taken a seat. “I do a terrific ‘Over the Rainbow.' Do we have the music for it?”

Cinnamon stuck her head in the door. “Anybody know where Destiny is? He usually meets me at the dining tent, but he wasn't there.”

“Last I saw him was breakfast,” Q said.

“He was with your sister after yoga,” David said.

“
She's
not here either!” Jake realized he ought to have noticed this a whole lot sooner. Ginger was always the first person to show up for his workshop. Most of the time she brought him a present of some kind. Or a snack for Winston.

Jake picked up his walkie-talkie. “Anybody know where Destiny is? Or Ginger?”

After a moment Cordelia responded. “Not in Dogwood Cottage.”

“Not in the art studio,” Hal answered.

“They're not by the woodshop, either,” E.D. reported.

“Better send a search party,” Archie said through a crackle of static.

Jake had just begun to consider whether he should go ahead with the workshop and let the rest of the staff look for Ginger and Destiny when he heard Destiny's voice in the distance. He was singing a song he'd learned at the last workshop when they were doing the music from
West Side Story.
After a moment Ginger's voice joined in, both of them singing at the top of their lungs about how pretty they felt as they came steadily closer.

“Ta-dah!” Ginger said as she came bursting in through the door. In one hand she carried her canvas bag. In the other she held Lucille's hair clippers, which she waved triumphantly in the air. Both sides of her head were shaved, a little patchily, all the way to the scalp. Down the center of her skull ran a raggedy-looking strip of carroty frizz.

Destiny followed her in and Jake groaned. Now, for sure, he thought, Sybil was going to kill him. All that was left of Destiny's thick white-blond hair was a narrow stripe of buzz cut. “My Mohawk gotted a little short,” he said. “Ginger's hand slipped. But she says it's okay cuz it'll grow right back.”

Chapter Twenty-five

T
he good thing about Destiny and Ginger having new and grotesquely bad haircuts, E.D. thought, was that it distracted her family from the power of the government of North Carolina to swoop in and destroy their lives. Everybody knew about it now, but as far as she knew, nobody had started in on her father yet.

She had come into the camp office thinking of going online to see if she could check whether the warning messages were official state regulations or counterfeits. It had come to her suddenly that Mrs. Montrose might have invented the whole thing just to freak out the man who had traumatized her daughter. There might be no such department and no such rules. But Harley was already at the computer when she came in, uploading the photographs from his camera. Even now they were flashing on the screen for a split second, one after another.

She would figure out tomorrow's schedule instead and get online later. She settled at the desk and spread copies of the previous day's schedules out so that she could see who had done which Community Service chores. She could just imagine the cry that would go up if she accidentally assigned anyone to bathroom cleaning two days in a row. It was bad enough when Q noticed that David had not yet had to clean bathrooms a single time. Nobody had bought her protest that it had been an oversight. She would give David the job tomorrow and prove that she hadn't been playing favorites.

“No!” Harley said now from the computer.
“No!”

“What?” she asked.

“There's something wrong with this computer.”

“It's old!” she said. She was used to the machine's sudden fits and sulks. She got up and went over to see if there was anything she could do. “Is the cursor being slow again?”

The photo on the screen was one Harley must have taken in the theater workshop she'd missed. The campers were scattered around the stage in various awkward poses.

“Look! Just look! Right above their heads.”

E.D. looked more closely. In the air above the campers' heads she could see four perfectly circular splotches of different sizes and slightly different colors. Like pale balls of colored light. “What are those?” she asked.

“I don't know what they are. I've never seen anything like them. There must be something wrong with the computer.”

She touched one on the screen. Nothing.

“They aren't on the monitor,” Harley said, “they're
in the picture
!”

“Maybe they're waterdrops. Could some water have gotten into your camera somehow? Or onto the lens?”

“No way.”

“What happens if you zoom in on them?”

Harley zoomed in on the largest splotch. There was a kind of pattern in the middle of it, like one of Aunt Lucille's meditation mandalas. It had a bluish fringe around the edge that reminded E.D. of the way children draw points around the sun to show that it's shining. Whatever this was, it was a part of the photo, all right. The more he zoomed in, the fuzzier and more pixilated it got, but there was no way to tell what it was. He zoomed in on the others, one at a time. The two smaller ones were just plain white and hazy, with no patterns in the middle; both of the larger ones—a pinkish one and one with a tinge of gold—had the mandalas and the bluish fringe. They were quite pretty really.

“It
could
be the camera,” she said. “A light leak or something.”

Harley shook his head. “I've been taking pictures with this camera for a year, and I haven't ever had this happen before.”

“Did you notice it on the camera screen right after you took the picture?”

Harley shook his head again. “The screen's too small to see something like this. Anyway, it was dark. That's why I took it in the first place. I wasn't even trying to take a picture; I just needed the light from the flash.”

“Check out the other pictures.”

He closed that photo and clicked on another of the thumbnails on the screen. This one was a dead dragonfly caught in a spiderweb. It had been taken on the front porch of the Lodge. There were no splotches in this picture.

“There,” Harley said. “I told you it wasn't the camera.”

“It isn't the computer, either, then. Try another.”

Harley clicked on another thumbnail. “No! No, no, no!” he said as the photo filled the screen.

This was one of the photos he'd taken of Samantha's Elf Net. It took E.D. a minute to see what he was pointing at. A large bluish-pinkish sphere seemed to be floating a little above it, faint against the silvery siding of the woodshop. It was considerably bigger than the ones in the other picture.

“That wasn't there when I took the picture!”

He clicked then on the photo he'd taken in the dining tent at lunch when everybody was going ballistic over Destiny's and Ginger's hair. Destiny and Ginger were standing together, grinning into the camera. There were clusters of balls of light around their heads—all with mandala centers. There were also two misty white ones down near Ginger's green-sequined flip-flops and a small, very bright thing that was more of a cylinder than a ball. It looked as if it had been caught moving—a line of white stretched out behind a bright circle in the front.

“I gather you didn't see anything like those when you took that picture, either.”

“You were there! There was
nothing
!”

E.D. found herself literally scratching her head. “Did you take them all with a flash?”

Harley shrugged. “The first one. And this one. I guess the Elf Net one could be one I used the flash for. Lucille wanted me to try different kinds of lighting.”

“So maybe the flash lit up dust particles in the air. You know how you can see dust in the air when sunlight comes through a window? Dust you can't see otherwise?”

Harley pointed at the one that seemed to be moving. “How fast can a speck of dust move? Do you have any idea how fast dust would have to be going to make that long a streak in the split second of a flash?”

“Pretty fast.”

“Yeah. Pretty darn fast!”

“Aunt Lucille ought to see this,” E.D. said. She unclipped her walkie-talkie and called her. “Can you come to the office?”

“Tell her 9-1-1,” Harley said.

“It isn't an emergency,” E.D. said. “The photos aren't going anywhere.” He pointed at the screen where he had called up the second photo he'd taken in the dining tent at lunch. The picture was filled with balls of light. It looked like a swarm, all sizes and intensities, so thick they almost obliterated the images of Destiny and Ginger.
What were those things?

“9-1-1!” Harley repeated.

“9-1-1!” E.D. added. “Lucille to the office, please, 9-1-1.” She looked at the last photo again. “The dining tent could be very dusty,” she said. But these balls of light just didn't look like dust. And if they were, how come they weren't in the picture he'd taken in the same place just a moment before?

By the time Lucille arrived, pink and breathless, a first aid kit in her hand, with Archie and Zedediah behind her, Harley had the theater workshop photo on the screen again.

“Who's hurt?” she asked.

Harley didn't answer. He just pointed to the balls of light in the photo.

“Ooooooh, Harley!” Lucille exclaimed, dropping the first aid kit on the floor and hurrying to peer at the computer screen. “Orbs! You've caught
orbs
! I've never had them. Not once!”

“What are orbs?” Harley asked.

“Dust,” Zedediah said. “An optical anomaly. The barn's a dusty place.”

“So says the skeptic,” Lucille said. “Nobody knows for sure. I've got a book about orbs, and I think the author's right. I think they're spirits.
Friendly spirits!
”

“Dust particles,” Zedediah said. “Causing a flare in the flash.”

“Could be water molecules,” Archie said. “Humid as it is here, it could be water molecules catching the flash.”

“For artists, the two of you are sadly lacking in imagination. I think they're c
onscious beings from other dimensions.
Like the nature spirits that help me garden.” Lucille smiled hugely. “I love that they've showed up at
Eureka!
The book's author says they're drawn to light and joy. It means we're doing something right! Are there any in your other photos?”

Harley began showing the other pictures, and E.D. decided to take the schedules up to her room and work on them there. She was not fond of things she couldn't understand. Even less fond of things nobody could understand.

Chapter Twenty-six

Bringing Light

I long to go out fishing

On a midnight sea of stars,

To net one constellation

And catch the fire of Mars.

I'd bring them gently back to Earth

And offer them to you

To chase the shadows from your heart

Whenever you are blue—

To chase the shadows from your heart

And light your world anew.

You'd feel their crystal brilliance

And know that they were there

Forever when the nights seemed dark

And your heart was full of care.

Forever when the nights grow dark

May you remember me

And feel the light I wished to bring

From a far-off midnight sea.

Your BFF, Ginger

Jake, on his way to the theater workshop, read the page he'd found stuck into his camp bag after dinner. And read it again.

“What are you reading?” Harley, with two cameras around his neck instead of one, had come up behind him.

“Something Ginger wrote.”

“Pretty radical, that girl! Can you imagine what her parents'll say when she gets home without hair? Is that the lyrics for another song?”

Jake nodded. “Working with Lucille is really making a difference.”

Harley laughed. “In more ways than one. She says she found the hair clippers in the bathroom at Wisteria when she was there for Poetry and smuggled them out in her bag. Can I see what she wrote?”

Jake gave the page to Harley, who read it as they walked. When he'd finished reading, Harley stopped. Jake went on a few steps and then looked back. Harley was staring off into the middle distance. “What?” Harley didn't answer. He didn't even seem to have heard. “Earth to Harley, Earth to Harley!”

Harley shook himself a bit, as if he really had come back from some other place. “This is weird. I'm hearing music in my head.”

“Like when you get a song stuck in your mind?”

“No. Nothing I ever heard before.” He read the page again. “
I think it's the tune for Ginger's song
. Like it was just there in my head waiting for the words. Wow! Would it be okay if I kept this for a while?”

Jake shrugged. “I don't see why not. She's been wanting to find a composer. Maybe you're it.”

Footsteps came thundering down the path behind them, and David pushed his way between them. “He's what? What's this?” He snatched the paper from Harley's hand.

Jake snatched it back. “None of your business.”

“Touchy, touchy!” David looked at Harley. “How come the extra camera?”

Harley shrugged. “It's an experiment. Lucille wants me to take pictures of the workshop tonight with both cameras to see which one works better.”

“Photographing people now, huh? What'd you do, run out of corpses?”

David went on ahead, and Jake gave Ginger's lyrics back to Harley. “Everybody's favorite camper,” he said when he thought David was out of earshot.

“And God's gift to the theater,” Harley said.

“Yeah, well, we'll see how he does with improv,” Jake said. “He won't have anybody else's words to rely on.”

Harley folded the paper and slipped it into his pocket. “Improv's sorta scary.”

Q joined them. “It's my favorite thing of all! Except dancing.”

Inside, Randolph told them to find seats. But there were only five chairs on the stage. Cinnamon and Ginger got there first, Samantha and E.D. joined them, and David and Q had a brief shoving match to see who would get the last chair. David won and stuck his foot out to trip Q. Q jumped nimbly over it.

“The people in the chairs will do the first exercise,” Randolph said. “Jake, Q, and Harley, come sit down here in the house.”

“Lucille asked me to take some pictures,” Harley said. “Would that be okay?”

Randolph thought for a moment. “We'll make it part of the exercise. Okay, listen up! This is improvisation. That means you invent it all—words, actions, interactions—as you go along. We'll do an exercise about
emotion
. The setup is a party. Samantha, you'll be the host. The others will be the guests. Here's how it works. The stage is your living room, and wherever you choose to see it, there's a front door. The doorbell rings—I'll say
ding dong
—and you go to answer it. Whoever is at the door comes in expressing an emotion as vividly as possible.”

“Do you want us to talk?” David asked.

“Sometimes words help, sometimes they don't—it's up to you. So the first person—that'll be you, Cinnamon—comes in with an emotion; and Samantha, as the host, you need to pick up the emotion, whatever it is. The two of you will then create a scene using that emotion. Then the doorbell will ring again and a second guest—that'll be you, Ginger—will come in. You also come in expressing a vivid emotion, but a different one. The other two ‘catch it' from you, and you all create a scene with this second emotion. The doorbell rings, and so it goes. Each new person brings a new emotion, and the others pick it up and run with it. After Ginger it's David, after David it's E.D. Got that?”

Everyone on the chairs nodded. “Now one more twist,” Randolph said. “Harley, you'll take some pictures during the party; and when the flash goes, everybody will revert to the previous emotion until the next flash. So—let's say there's been anger and then grief. When the flash goes, whoever's at the party has to go immediately from grief back to anger. Give them a little time with that, Harley, then take another picture. At that flash, everybody goes back to grief. Don't take too many, Harley, and don't take them too fast. Give the scenes a chance to develop before you switch them.”

Jake was glad he wasn't in the first group. It was fun watching. When the doorbell rang and Samantha opened the imaginary door, Cinnamon stormed in, swearing like Paulie about some fool who'd cut her off in traffic.

It took Samantha a moment to catch the emotion, but then she yelled, “That creep! I hate when that happens! Some fool did that to me just the other day, and I crashed right into his bumper.”

“Serves him right!” Cinnamon said. “And I was going to bring a cake for the party, but the stupid bakery got the order wrong. . . .” The two girls ranted on till Randolph interrupted with
“Ding dong.”

Ginger came in laughing. She said nothing, just laughed steadily harder till she was nearly hysterical. Jake found himself chuckling even though she hadn't explained what she was laughing about. She never did use words—just kept on laughing until the others were laughing with her. By then the laughter was real. Everybody—both onstage and off—was laughing when Harley's flash went off. Ginger immediately stopped laughing and shouted at Harley for taking a picture when she wasn't ready. The others joined in, Cinnamon once more cursing like Paulie on a roll.

David brought fear in with him, claiming to be running from a clutch of zombies. That gave everybody a chance to scream and shriek and run around.

When it was E.D.'s turn, though, she came in looking as if she'd just lost her last friend in the world. “My dog!” she wailed. “Someone just ran over my dog! I got him as a puppy from the pound. The poor little thing had been beaten half to death. He was so little and so scared he couldn't even eat. I had to feed him by hand, a bite at a time. That was five years ago, and he's been with me practically every minute ever since. He slept on my feet every night. And now he's gone! He's gone! What'll I do?”

Amazing,
Jake thought. What had happened to E.D. the robot? He had a sudden, horrible image of Winston lying in the road. It was as if a sharp stone were lodged in his throat as he thought of Winston never again throwing himself onto his chest as he lay in bed.

Cinnamon had actually started to cry now. “Just like the possum,” she choked out the words. “The beautiful possum, dead in the road! Murdered!”

Harley's timing was perfect, Jake thought. Just as Cinnamon hollered
murdered
, he took a picture and everyone had to go back to fear.

After the workshop, as they all headed back to the cottages, David kept shouting about the zombies coming out of the woods till everybody was screaming and running from the imaginary horrors chasing them. Archie came out with a flashlight to see what catastrophe was going on, and Lucille and Sybil decreed there should be a campfire with s'mores to get them focused on something cheerier before bedtime. As the campers went to find sticks for toasting marshmallows, there were several more zombie scares and at least two sightings of vampires. It was amazing, Jake thought, how scary running in the dark could be. The more you ran, especially if someone was screaming nearby, the more certain you were that something was chasing you. At one point E.D. jumped out at him from behind a tree brandishing a marshmallow stick, and he practically jumped out of his skin.

“Scared you!”

“Startled me is all,” he said.

Q appeared and pointed over Jake's shoulder with a look of horror on his face.
“Aaaaah!”
he screamed.

When both Jake and E.D. turned to look, Q yelled “Gotcha!” and ran off.

“That improv thing was really fun, wasn't it?” E.D. said.

Jake nodded. “And you think you aren't creative!”

E.D. shrugged. “Maybe I'm just a really good liar!”

“Maybe that's one definition of creative.”

“Jake, Jake!” Ginger came running up with two marshmallow sticks. She gave him one of them, and E.D. went off to get a marshmallow. “Did you read my new lyrics yet? Did you? Did you?”

“I did. I think they're really good. And guess what—Harley thinks he has the music for them. Could be he's the composer you're looking for.”

Ginger ran a hand through her raggedy Mohawk. “Lyrics by Ginger Boniface, music by Harley Schobert?”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Maybe his parents would record it!” She handed him the other marshmallow stick. “Where is he?”

“Out there somewhere chasing werewolves,” Jake said, pointing off into the woods.

Without another word, Jake's pet stalker took off to find Harley.