Driftwood Read online

  Valerie Sherrard

  ALSO BY VALERIE SHERRARD

  Picture Books

  Miss Wondergem’s Dreadfully Dreadful Pie

  There’s A GOLDFISH In My Shoe

  There’s A COW Under My Bed

  Middle Grade Novels

  The Glory Wind

  Tumbleweed Skies

  Young Adult Novels

  Counting Back from Nine

  Testify

  Accomplice

  Watcher

  Speechless

  Sarah’s Legacy

  Sam’s Light

  Kate

  &

  The Shelby Belgarden Mystery Series

  For Christie Harkin

  with gratitude and affection

  Billy Lafferty stood at my front door with his hands shoved into the pockets of his saggy jeans. His shoulders slumped forward and his round, red face was glum. You never have to guess what kind of mood Billy is in.

  “I can’t go,” he said.

  It took me a few seconds to get what he was telling me. And that still didn’t stop me from asking, “What do you mean, you can’t go?”

  “To the cottage. With you guys. My mom changed her mind.” Billy scuffed his shoe against the worn cement on the step.

  “But she said you could.”

  Billy shrugged. “Yeah, but now she says I can’t.”

  “She can’t change her mind like that,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “’Cause it’s not fair.”

  Another shrug. Billy isn’t much of a fighter. But this was way too important for him to just give up that way.

  We’d been planning this for months, ever since April, when my dad told me that our family was going to do something different on our summer holidays. Most years, we spend a couple of weeks visiting relatives in Bobcaygeon, Ontario. So Dad’s announcement was quite a surprise.

  “This year, we’re going to vacation right here in New Brunswick,” Dad told me. “And not just for a few weeks, either. For the whole summer!”

  “I need a change,” Mom explained. “Lately, I haven’t been able to paint. An artist’s spirit needs room to breathe and grow.”

  “Your mother’s work is important,” Dad said. He tells me that a lot.

  My mom paints the bridge. The covered bridge, that is. We live in Hartland, home of the world’s longest covered bridge. People come from all over to see it, and lots of them buy my mom’s paintings. The bridge in the summer, winter, spring, and fall. At sunrise, sunset, daylight, or under the pale glow of the moon. Whatever scene or season you want, my mom will have it.

  “I’ve always been able to capture the life of the bridge,” Mom said. “Everyone says so—you two know that. But not lately. It’s become nothing but a structure. People aren’t going to pay for that. If that’s all they want, they can take a picture.”

  None of that mattered to me. I waited impatiently for Dad to tell me more about our plans.

  Finally, he got to the point. “So, we’re renting a cottage for two whole months!”

  “A cottage? Where?”

  Dad typed some words on his laptop and showed me where it was on a map of the province. “We’ll be going to Miramichi, to a place called Schooner Point. Do you know what a schooner is, Adam?”

  “A boat?”

  “Not just any boat!” he said. There was a pause, then he turned to my mom.

  “June, that’s a schooner on our dime, isn’t it?”

  “It’s the Bluenose,” she answered.

  “I know it’s the Bluenose,” he said. “Everyone knows that.”

  He turned back to me. “Now, I’m no expert on boats, son, but I do believe the Bluenose was a schooner. In fact, you can make a little project out of that this summer, while we’re at the cottage. Find out all about schooners.”

  “Okay,” I said. I knew it would be long forgotten before we ever got there. Dad gives me ‘projects’ all the time and then never thinks of them again. That suits me just fine.

  “Oh, and there’s one more thing,” Dad said. “About our vacation, that is. Do you want to tell him, June, or will I?”

  Mom smiled and said, “You go ahead, dear.”

  “Your mother and I talked it over and we decided that you can invite a friend to come with you.”

  Now that was what I called awesome news. I was happy enough about going to a cottage, but taking a friend with me would make it perfect. Billy was my first, and really my only pick, and when he asked his mom she said he could come—though not for the whole summer. Dad promised to take him home partway through, and it was all set.

  Until, that is, Billy, landed on my step the day before we were leaving, to say he couldn’t come after all.

  “Maybe my mom can talk your mom back into it,” I said.

  “Nope,” Billy said gloomily. “Her mind’s made up. Might as well not even get your mom to try. It’ll just get my mom mad.”

  My mother took the news as a personal insult. “What does she think we’re going to do, put Billy on a raft and set him adrift?” she grumbled to my dad.

  “Less work for you, anyway,” Dad said.

  “I don’t see how you figure that. What on earth is Adam going to do with himself without a friend along? He’ll be under my feet all day.” She glanced at me, sitting at the table. “You know what I mean, Adam. I’m just worried that you’ll be bored.”

  “I was counting on Billy coming,” I said. “I don’t know why his mom’s so mean.”

  “Well, I’m going to go ahead and give her a call. What harm can it do?”

  I hung around to see if I could tell from Mom’s side of the conversation whether or not Billy’s mom might budge. It didn’t take long before I realized something was wrong. Mom confirmed it when she got off the phone.

  “Mrs. Lafferty didn’t say Billy couldn’t go,” she told me. “It was his decision.”

  I took off out the door and ran all the way to Billy’s house. He was sitting under a big oak tree in their front yard. His mutt Bailey was lying beside him.

  Billy saw me coming and he didn’t look one bit happy about it.

  “What’s the big idea?” I said, tearing into his yard.

  “Bailey’s sick,” he said without looking at me. “I can’t leave him.”

  “That dog is always sick. He gets better every time!”

  “Yeah, but the vet said this could be serious.”

  I’d heard that one a few times before, and said so to Billy. Bailey lifted his head a couple of inches and gave me a mournful look, but I knew his tricks. In a day or two, he’d be running around like nothing had ever been wrong with him.

  “Anyway, your mom can take care of him,” I said.

  “He needs me. No one else takes care of him the way he likes.”

  I argued with him until it was plain he wasn’t going to budge. Looking at him sitting there with that dumb hound of his made me madder than I’ve ever been.

  “I should have asked someone else,” I yelled. “Someone who isn’t a big fat liar like you.”

  “I didn’t want to lie, I had to,” Billy claimed. “’Cause you always get so mad.”

  “Why wouldn’t I get mad for a dirty trick like this?”

  “I’m not trying to do a dirty trick,” Billy said. His face was as red as a fire truck. “I just can’t leave Bailey. Not when he’s so sick.”

  I stood there glowering while Billy hunched forward and stared at the grass. After a minute he lifted his head and said, “Maybe I can come after Bailey gets better.”

  “No. You can’t. You can’t come then and you can’t come ever. You know why? ’Cause you ruin everything. I know I’ve told you this before, but this time I mean it a hundred percent. I am done being your friend.”
r />   I let that sink in and, just to make sure he got the message, I added, “Done, Billy. And I won’t be changing my mind—not after this.”

  Billy shrugged like he didn’t care, but I could see from the way his mouth was working that he was practically crying.

  I didn’t feel like seeing that, so I turned around and went home.

  The drive to Schooner Point took about three and a half hours, which gave me plenty of time to think about how Billy had betrayed me. Over a dog. A scruffy, smelly dog, with a bunch of gunk around his eyes.

  When we finally got there, I saw that our rental was an actual log cabin, one of a group of ten. We were assigned number 10. It was at the back corner of the cluster of buildings, and it was the coolest place I’d ever seen. My mom called it rustic, and said that it was just the right sort of place for the artist in her to come back to life.

  “That’s the spirit,” Dad said. “Those old creative juices will be flowing in no time.” Mom frowned a bit, but mostly she was looking around. So was I.

  There are woods in behind the cabins, and a huge lake across the road. After the long drive, my feet were ready to take off and really check the place out. I was about to head to the shore when Dad stopped me.

  “Adam, you can carry in anything that’s not too heavy,” he said.

  Unloading the car took a while, mostly because Mom had a system. We had to sort everything according to some code she had marked on the boxes. Since she made up the codes, we had to ask about every single thing we brought in. Half the time she couldn’t remember right away and then she stood there talking to herself until it came to her.

  “You couldn’t just label them with room names like anyone else?” Dad asked at one point.

  Mom rolled her eyes. “You wouldn’t understand, Doug,” she said. “Creative people see things differently.”

  We were about halfway through the task of unloading when a woman appeared at the door. She rapped on the doorframe and stepped inside before anyone could say a word.

  “Hi folks! Welcome to this little spot of heaven. I’m Monica Stillwater. Looks like we’ll be neighbours for the next few weeks. This your first time here? Third time for me and my husband, Keith, and I can tell you, you’re going to love it.”

  Dad smiled and reached his hand out to shake our visitor’s. “Nice to meet you, Monica,” he said. “We’re Doug and June Orser and this is our son Adam.”

  Mom smiled too, but only a little. “I’m afraid you’ve caught us in the middle of getting settled in.”

  “No problem,” Monica said. “I’ll let you get back to it. Just wanted to be neighbourly and say hello. You be sure to drop over once you’re unpacked and we can all get acquainted. We’re two cabins down on your left.”

  Mom gave another small smile.

  “Well, now, there’s a friendly woman,” Dad said after Monica had left. “Maybe you two will hit it off.”

  “She seems a bit pushy, if you ask me,” Mom said. She peered at the box I’d just brought from the trunk. “DWCL,” she read from the label. “Hmm. Just give me a minute and I’ll tell you where that goes.”

  “Well, Adam, the roof rack is all unloaded and there’s not that much in the trunk,” Dad said, coming in with a suitcase a minute later. “I can handle it from here if you want to take a look around.”

  “Don’t go far, though,” Mom said. “And stay away from the water.”

  “I know, Mom,” I said, hurrying out the door. She must have lectured me about not going in the water by myself about a million times before we even left home.

  Outside, I made my way past a cluster of trees between the cabin and a dirt road that separated the cabins from the water. I crossed over and stood along the top of the bank, surprised at how wide open the water seemed. It was grey and cold- looking and straight ahead there was a place where it stretched on and on with no land in sight.

  Something else that was different from what I’d imagined was the shore. It looked nothing like what I’d pictured. Instead of a wide, sandy beach, there was a stretch of wet sand and stones. The bank leading down to the water was covered with big, grey rocks.

  As soon as I was sure I couldn’t be seen from our cabin, I tugged off my shoes and put them on the ground. Then I made my way down across the rocks to the water’s edge. I wasn’t going in or anything, I just wanted to test the water and walk on the sand without shoes.

  I was wiggling my toes in the water when something came flying through the air and landed near me with a big splash. My mouth dropped open when I saw that it was one of my shoes. I stared at it as it bobbed for a second and then sank out of sight.

  My brain hardly had time to take this in before a voice called out from behind me.

  “What’s the big idea, leaving your stinky old shoes around to smell up the place?”

  I turned and saw a kid around my age standing halfway down the bank. He was holding up the other shoe, and before I could say anything, it followed the first one through the air and into the water.

  “Hey!” I said. At that, the kid turned and ran back up over the bank and out of sight.

  I rolled my jeans up to the knee and waded slowly out to where the first shoe had landed. The waves were lapping close to my rolled-up pants, but I was pretty sure I could stay dry if I was careful. I got the first shoe and was almost to the second one when something swam by and brushed against my ankle. Of course, it didn’t actually scare me but I jumped a bit because I hadn’t been expecting it. My right foot came down on a slippery-smooth stone and shot out from under me. I grabbed at the air, which didn’t help at all.

  The next splash I heard was my butt hitting the water! I scrambled back to my feet as fast as I could, grabbed the other shoe, and made my way back to the shore.

  Plunking down on a large rock, I dumped water out of the shoes and put them on the ground beside me. I wondered how long they would take to dry. Not that it really mattered. My clothes were soaked and I was going to have to explain how I got wet to my mom.

  A movement behind me caught my attention while I was thinking this through. When I turned, I saw a face peeking at me from between two trees. It was the kid who’d thrown my shoes in the water.

  “Hi,” he said.

  I didn’t answer as I swivelled my head back to face the water again. But, besides being a jerk who throws people’s shoes in the river, it seemed like he couldn’t take a hint. He came closer, taking a step forward and pausing—I suppose to see if I was going to go after him. He probably figured he had a good chance to outrun me if I did. After all, he was wearing shoes.

  I ignored him right until he sat down a couple of feet away.

  “You’re wet,” he said.

  I glared at him.

  “I guess you fell in the water, huh?” he said.

  “Thanks to you,” I snapped. “Why’d you throw my shoes in?”

  “I dunno.” He hung his head down, like he was sorry, though I doubted it. “My mom said I had to go talk to you.”

  “So you threw my shoes in the water?”

  “Yeah.” He shook his head like he couldn’t quite figure it out. He wasn’t the only one.

  “Well, now I’m going to get in trouble, and I might get grounded to the cabin or something,” I said.

  “Just on account of you’re wet?”

  “My mom doesn’t want me in the water by myself,” I told him, even though it was embarrassing to admit. “She’s going to freak out.”

  “Maybe you could dry off before you go back. Then she won’t know.”

  I leaned over and squeezed the rolled-up part of my jeans. Water dribbled down through my fingers. “They’re soaking wet,” I said. “They’ll take forever to dry.”

  “My sister dries things really fast sometimes,” he said. “We could ask her what to do.”

  I didn’t see what it could hurt, so I shrugged, stood up and followed him across the road, through a cluster of trees and across the grassy lawn to his cabin. Number three.
/>   “My name is Joey,” he said, as we reached the door.

  “I’m Adam,” I told him.

  “Sorry I threw your shoes in the water.”

  “It’s okay.”

  We went in. Joey’s mother made this big fuss that he’d “found himself a little friend.” Poor guy. No wonder he went around throwing strangers’ shoes in the river.

  “Where’s Lisa?” he asked when she’d stopped gushing.

  “In her room, on the phone with Jean-Guy, as usual,” his mom answered.

  Joey headed toward a closed door, knocked and yelled that he was coming in. A girl’s voice yelled back that he’d better not but a few seconds later the door swung open.

  Lisa looked about sixteen. She was real pretty, even though she was frowning as she said, “What do you want?”

  “Adam needs his clothes dried,” Joey said. He jerked a thumb backwards toward me.

  Lisa’s pink mouth went into some strange shapes while she stood there trying to figure out what Joey was talking about. She could see that my clothes were wet, which must have helped the message get through.

  “Take ‘em off,” she said to me.

  I stared in horror, which made her laugh.

  “What’s the matter? You all shy or something?” When I didn’t answer, she laughed again and then said, “Oh, for goodness sakes! Just go put on something of Joey’s for a few minutes.”

  I did as I was told and brought the soaked jeans and shirt back to her. By then, she had a big bath towel laid out flat on the floor. She wrung my clothes out by hand over the sink and then spread them on the towel, folded it in half, and rolled it up lengthwise. After that, she walked back and forth on top of it a couple of times.

  “This good enough?” she asked, passing them back to me, “or do you need ’em completely dry right now? You can blow-dry them with my hair dryer if you want, but it’ll take a while. It would be faster if you just put them back on and went outside. They’ll dry in the air in no time now that most of the water is out.”

  I told her, “Thanks a lot.” Sort of. The words that actually came out were kind of muffled and croaky. Lisa tousled my hair and laughed and told us to get lost.