The Speed of Souls Page 10

  Barking coming from the water?

  I follow the barking, then stop and look out through the railings. Lying in a pile, on a huge piece of floating wood, are a pack of black dogs. (Only their legs look weird. They are flat and pointy.)

  A few of the big black dogs bark. One of the dogs pushes another of the dogs off the floating wood and into the water. The dog flips over in the water and dives. He’s like a fish.

  A black fish dog.

  I get as close to the railing as I can and I shout, “Hey, do you guys know where the Lake is?”

  One of them looks at me and barks.

  But I don’t understand him.

  I must not speak fish dog.

  ~

  I don’t have any more luck scavenging. I’m chased by a couple more humans until finally finding my way back under the pier. Night comes and with it a chill from the rain and a light wind. The sand is cold and my body shakes. My tiny teeth chatter. I hear Cassie’s voice in my head, “You have to move, Hugo. You have to find somewhere warm.”

  Okay, Cassie.

  I will.

  I slink out from under the pier. I’m still starving and I want to go look for more food at the shops, but I know finding somewhere warm is more important.

  The streets are mostly empty. I scamper for a few blocks away from the lake. It’s still raining and the streetlights reflect off the large puddles of water in the street. I walk between a row of buildings onto a brick walkway. I think it’s called an “alley.” This is where Cassie spent most of her time on the Street. Going from alley to alley.

  Scavenging.

  Surviving.

  I continue down the alley. There’s a large dumpster. Like the one on our street. A big green rectangle. I sniff at the bottom. I can smell food inside. I try to jump onto the dumpster, but it’s too high and I slip down and land in a puddle. Something scurries near me. I nose around in a crack between the bricks looking for whatever it is, but it’s hiding from me. I suppose no matter how small you are, there’s always something smaller.

  I scamper through the wet alley, then to another. And another. Looking for anywhere that could be warm. But everything is wet. Wet and cold.

  Like me.

  Another alley. Then I see something. Actually, I see a lot of somethings. I know from when Jerry would take Cassie and me hiking, that people live in them sometimes.

  Tents.

  Most of the tents are dark, but a few have light coming from inside them. I know there are humans inside the tents. I can smell them. But I don’t care. I need somewhere warm.

  I come to the first tent and give it a few scratches. My paws slide off the side of the slick tent, barely making a sound. I wait, scratch again. Nothing happens.

  I move onto the next tent.

  Scratch, scratch, scratch.

  There’s a weird sound and then a flap in the tent opens. A she-human sticks her head out and says, “Wha—Oh, hello.”

  I dart through the opening and out of the rain.

  “Well, come in, why don’t you?” the she-human says with a laugh.

  I never thought I’d be so happy to see inside.

  I shake the water off me.

  “Ahh,” the she-human says with a laugh. Then she picks me up. “Let me help you out, little guy.”

  She sits me in her lap, then pats me down with something until I am mostly dry. Then she says, “Are you hungry?”

  Yes!

  I’m starving.

  I hear a crinkling sound and then she says, “I bet you’ll like beef jerky.”

  I love beef jerky!

  She feeds me a few strips. I gobble them down. The fry was okay, but this, this is amazing!

  I paw at her face and she feeds me one more. She offers me another one after that and I want to eat it so badly, but my stupid tiny little stomach is about to burst.

  “What’s your name?” she asks, holding me up to her face.

  Hugo.

  I lick her chin.

  Her face is rough. Rough like Jerry’s. She has long hair like a she-human and her face looks like a she-human, but her face is rough like Jerry’s.

  I sniff.

  And she smells like a Jerry-human.

  I would give this more thought, but I’m too tired.

  “Oh, sleepy kitten,” she-Jerry says. “Let’s make you a bed.”

  She wraps me in something, something that smells like her, then cradles me to her stomach.

  I am warm.

  Chapter 11

  “SUMMER OF 1991”

  Cassie

  I feel a thump on my head and open my eyes. Jerry’s feet squirm next to my face. Jerry moves around a lot when he sleeps and sometimes he accidentally hits me in the head. (I could easily sleep somewhere else, on the carpet, on my dog bed, or near Jerry’s head, but I usually fall asleep licking Jerry’s feet.) Jerry’s feet settle and I give them a few licks, then I hop down from the bed. I reach my front legs forward, lean my head back, and stretch.

  Then I shake it out.

  I pad out of the bedroom and to the big silver water bowl. I take a long drink. I hear birds chirping which means it’s early. Too early for Jerry. Jerry doesn’t like to get up until the birds are all chirped out.

  I’m heading back to the bedroom when I stop and sniff.

  Sniff, sniff, sniff.

  I run to the window and look outside. Everything is wet.

  It rained!

  Why did it take me so long to smell the rain? I have this big nose that’s supposed to detect the rain.

  You let me down, nose!

  I run into the bedroom and jump on Jerry.

  The worms, Jerry! We have to save the worms!

  Jerry

  I’m under attack.

  I cover my face and yell, “Cassie! Get off!”

  She doesn’t get off of me.

  “What’s going on?” I shout, thinking perhaps we’re under attack by drones, or the house is on fire, or there is a raccoon in the house. Then I smell it. A powerful, unmistakable, dewy smell.

  Rain.

  “No, no, no, no,” I say. “I’m not doing Worm Patrol right now.”

  At the sound of the word Worm, Cassie bites at my bed comforter, yanking it off of me.

  I scramble for my cell phone on the night table and check the time.

  6:53 a.m.

  Cassie nuzzles her cold nose into my back, trying to roll me off the bed. “It’s seven in the morning, Cassie. There aren’t even people on the bike path right now.”

  Worm Patrol started last summer.

  While South Lake Tahoe does get a considerable amount of precipitation, the vast majority of that comes in October through April and it comes in the form of snow. During the summer months, especially July and August, it rarely rains, which is one of the reasons Tahoe is such a popular tourist getaway.

  The previous summer, after a rare rainstorm blew through, the sun came out and I took Hugo and Cassie for a walk on the bike path. On this particular day, after this particular rainstorm, the bike path was permeated with worms seeking refuge from the soaked and oxygen-deprived soil. (I Googled “Why worms come out after a rainstorm,” and evidently, this is why.) Sadly, many of these worms had been flattened, cut in half, dismembered, and trounced upon by the heavy summer bike path traffic—a combination of beachgoers, runners, skateboarders, bikers, and those four-wheel monstrosity “family” bicycles.

  Cassie wouldn’t stop whining, then she began frantically picking up all the surviving worms in her teeth and transporting them back to the surrounding dirt. It’s one of those things that makes your heart melt the first time you see it, but isn’t as much fun the one-hundredth time and definitely no fun at 7:00 a.m.

  “The worms will be fine for another few hours,” I tell Cassie. “Please, can we go later?”

  I was up until three in the morning surfing the internet, looking for inspiration for a book idea, and the t
hought of putting on clothes and scouring the bike path for an hour sounds as enjoyable as catching a toenail on the door jamb.

  Cassie sticks her face in mine, her huge amber eyes open wide as if to say, “Don’t you care about the worms?”

  I let out a long sigh. “Okay, okay, I’m getting up.”

  ~

  Ten minutes later, we’re walking down the bike path. Luckily, the path runs in front of a McDonald’s and I’m able to grab a coffee and two Egg McMuffins.

  While I chow down and the coffee slowly wakes me, cell by cell, Cassie moves down the bike path, scanning the bike path for lumbricus terrestris. Each time she comes upon an earthworm, she gently scoops the worm up between her teeth and carries it to the dirt or grass and plops him down. Then it’s onto the next worm.

  Two miles and seventeen worms later, the bike path ends. By this point, it’s closing in on 8:00 a.m. and the first of the joggers and the beachgoers are beginning to stir. Normally, we would turn around and walk home, but this is my first time awake before noon in over four months and I don’t want to waste it.

  I turn to Cassie and ask, “How about a little run?”

  Cassie falls into a light trot next to me and we run, walk, run, walk (Cassie is so happy to be running that she doesn’t worry about the worms) down the sidewalk until the bike path resumes. We follow the bike path behind a residential area and to thick woods. Just beyond the woods, it opens up to a wide green valley.

  Cassie knows where we’re headed and I follow her through a trampled down section of grass. After a few minutes, we find a small patch of forest two hundred feet square that is covered in pine needles and fallen logs.

  I’ve spent more hours in this small patch of forest than I can count. Both when I was a child and many times over the course of the past three years. But I haven’t been back since Hugo died. Though this has less to do with Hugo’s death and more to do with death in general.

  I reach down and scoop up a handful of dirt. The soil is still soft from the rain. It will be a good day. A good day to dig a hole.

  ~

  “You’re late, Bear,” Morgan said. She always called me Bear. First it was Jer. Then Jer Bear. Then just Bear.

  “Sorry,” I shouted, dropping my red BMX into the dirt. “It took seven hours to drive here this time and then my mom made me put all my clothes in the dresser before I left.”

  Morgan rolled her green eyes, then pushed herself up from the giant log—Lincoln Log—she was sitting on.

  She was wearing her usual jean shorts and a red tank top, which was a couple of shades darker than her hair. She was an inch taller than when I last saw her over Spring break.

  “Did you bring your stuff?” she asked.

  I pulled my backpack off and gave it a few pats. “Yeah, right here.”

  Morgan smiled, revealing the small gap between her two front teeth, then rushed toward me and enveloped me in a giant hug.

  I felt my cheeks redden.

  Morgan was eleven, a year older than me, and she’d just finished 6th grade. We’d been inseparable since my parents first bought the house in South Lake Tahoe five years earlier.

  Morgan lived three houses down from us. She was an only child and the day we first arrived—the summer after I finished kindergarten—she was drawing on the sidewalk with chalk. She asked if I wanted to draw with her. Of course I did. Especially since my brother Mark was thirteen (eight years older than me) and never wanted to hang out.

  For the next five years, every day for the three months of summer, the two weeks in winter, and the week for Spring Break, I spent with Morgan. Though I had friends back home in Oregon—a few, not a lot—Morgan was my best friend.

  At the beginning of the past school year, Morgan’s 6th grade class made a time capsule. Everyone brought one thing to put in the capsule (preferably from the pop culture of the time) and each of them wrote a short essay about what they thought middle school would be like. Then at the end of 8th grade, they would dig up the time capsule and look at all their stuff.

  But Morgan said it was too hard to pick just one thing to put in the time capsule and that three years didn’t seem like a very long time.

  All the stuff they put in the capsule would still be popular in three years, wouldn’t it?

  So during winter break earlier that year, Morgan broached the idea that we make a time capsule of our own. That way we could put in as much stuff as we wanted and we could dig it up whenever we wanted. In five years. In ten years. In twenty years.

  After releasing me from her hug, I leaned down and picked up my backpack. I unzipped the front compartment and pulled out two sandwiches wrapped in tin foil. I handed one to Morgan and said, “My mom says hi.”

  Morgan took the sandwich, tore away the tinfoil, then crammed a huge bite of peanut butter and grape jelly into her mouth. We both sat on Lincoln Log and ate our sandwiches and drank our Capri Suns. When we were done with the sandwiches, Megan dipped her hand into her backpack and pulled out a foil package of her own.

  I knew what was inside.

  Cookies.

  For the last three years, since Morgan’s mother taught her how to bake, I’d been Morgan’s guinea pig for her creations. Brownies, doughnuts, cakes, pies, and especially, cookies. Most of them were pretty good, but others, like her chocolate chip and Skittles cookies, were not.

  Morgan unwrapped the foil and handed me a cookie. It looked just like an oatmeal raisin cookie but it was twice as fat.

  “Go ahead,” Morgan coaxed. “Try it.”

  I took a bite and it was amazing. It tasted just like a Little Debbie Oatmeal Crème Pie.

  “It’s amazing,” I mumbled, crumbs cascading down from my mouth.

  “Yay!” Morgan said, clapping her hands together a few times. “They are oatmeal raisin and cream cheese.”

  I ate a second cookie and then it was time to get to work.

  ~

  “What do you think?” Morgan asked, showing me the box. Morgan had spent the last few weeks perfecting our time capsule.

  It was a box that a pair of her mom’s cowboy boots had come in. It was two feet square and eight inches tall. Morgan had reinforced the walls of the box with two rolls of duct tape. (Morgan was always fixing things with duct tape, a skill passed down from her father.)

  “I think it will work just fine,” I tell her.

  She pulled a full roll of duct tape from her backpack and said, “When we finish putting all our stuff in, I’ll tape it up so it’s airtight. We don’t want any water leaking in.”

  We spent the next half an hour taking things out of our backpacks one-by-one and putting them in the box. The highlights were:

  Me: A stack of Garbage Pail Kids (Barfin Barbara on the top).

  Morgan: A stuffed animal (Gizmo from Gremlins).

  Me: A copy of Where the Red Fern Grows.

  Morgan: A G.I. Joe.

  Me: A crumpled $2 bill.

  Morgan: A copy of The Hobbit.

  Me: A Viewfinder with a Scooby Doo disc.

  Morgan: A Gameboy cartridge, Skate or Die (broken).

  Me: A baggy with one of my molars (that I lost the week before).

  Morgan: A recipe for chocolate chip and Skittles cookies.

  Once we put everything in, Morgan set about taping the box closed and I scouted the area for a good place to dig a hole. After fifteen back-breaking minutes, I found a decent spot and had a hole dug six inches deep.

  Morgan looked at my meager work with a laugh and said, “Bear, you might be the slowest digger in the entire world.”

  We traded off digging for the next hour until we had a large hole about three feet deep.

  Morgan went and retrieved the box from behind the log and dropped it next to the hole. There was so much tape on the box, I figured it would last for an eternity. Also, Morgan had made an executive decision. On top of the box, written in heavy permanent black marker on the thick rows of duct tape was:
TO BE OPENED ON 6/18/2001.

  Ten years.

  ~

  Morgan and I spent the next five weeks doing what we always did: camping in her backyard, staying up late to watch Saturday Night Live, playing Monopoly, making S’mores, reading comic books, playing Gameboy, going to the lake, setting up a Dessert Stand so Megan could sell her cakes and cookies, and of course, riding our bikes to our secret spot in the woods.

  The last week of July, I came down with the flu. It was terrible. I had to stay in bed for three days. Morgan came to visit me a few times, and she let me borrow her Gameboy (as long as I disinfected it once I was better).

  That Sunday, I was just starting to feel better. I wanted to go to the lake with Morgan and her parents, but my mom wouldn’t let me. She said I needed to rest for a few more days. I was bummed, but within the next hour, I would throw up the Cinnamon Toast Crunch I ate for breakfast.

  A few hours later, there was a knock at the door, then my mother shouted, “Oh, no!”

  I jumped out of bed and ran to the window. The neighbors from across the street, the Winstons, were standing on the front porch. Mrs. Winston and my mom were holding each other and crying as Mr. Winston looked on awkwardly.

  I’d never seen my mother so upset.

  Where was my dad?

  Something must have happened to my dad!

  I ran downstairs, out the front door and screamed, “What happened? Where’s Dad?”

  My mom turned. She was sobbing. “It’s not your father,” she choked out. “It’s Morgan.”

  “What happened to her?” I screamed. “Is she okay?”

  My mom cradled my head and said, “No, honey, she’s not.”