Lemons Read online

  Like I can’t read his stupid hat for myself.

  “Is that a joke?” I snort, and a little skim milk comes out of my nose.

  “Nope.” Tobin Sky pops up and sticks his hand in the front pocket of his khaki shorts. “I’m the official investigator of any and all sightings here in Willow Creek.” He pulls a small crumpled piece of paper out and hands it to me. “My card,” he says in a very official-sounding way.

  I inspect it.

  BIGFOOT DETECTIVES INC.

  Handling all your Bigfoot needs since 1974

  Tobin Sky: 555-0906

  “All your Bigfoot needs?” I read out loud.

  “That’s right. And, ah, actually…” He points at the card in my hand. “I’m going to need that back when you’re done with it.” He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his pointer finger. “It’s my only one.”

  I think I’ve moved to Jupiter.

  Maybe Mars.

  It’s not just that there’s a wooden statue of a Bigfoot in the center of town. Or that there’s an actual resident Bigfoot hunter running around with a single business card stuffed in his pocket. To top it all off, the old man even owns a shop out on Highway 299 called Bigfoot Souvenirs and More.

  Which I find out is where he goes after breakfast every day but Sunday.

  After this morning’s bowl of bird food, we watch him from the front porch as he backs an old maroon station wagon named Jake out of the driveway and putters down Seventh Street.

  “What’s with this town?” I ask Tobin after the car takes a left at the stop sign and disappears around the corner.

  “What do you mean?”

  “All this Bigfoot hullabaloo.”

  He looks at me again, this time with his eyebrows wrinkled together.

  “It’s not hullabaloo,” he says real serious-like. “It’s true. Haven’t you heard of the footage they got out this way eight years back?”

  I shake my head.

  “The Patterson-Gimlin film?”

  “Nope.” I examine my peeling nail polish like I couldn’t care less.

  Which I couldn’t.

  “They filmed a Bigfoot over at Bluff Creek on October twentieth, 1967,” Tobin says, taking a seat on the yellow porch swing.

  I look up. “You mean…it’s really true?”

  “Of course it is. You think I’m making this up?” he says, like I’m the crazy one. “And since that time, there have been hundreds of sightings all over. But no one else has caught one on film…until now.” He holds up his camera to show me. “I’m going to be the very next one to do it. Patterson, Gimlin, and Sky. I’ll be on the Channel Four News and everything.”

  I watch him huff hot air on the lens and wipe it with the bottom of his red T-shirt. Then he squints through the viewfinder, pointing it in all different directions.

  Left, then right.

  Right, then left.

  Up, then down.

  He huffs more air and wipes again.

  I go back to my fingernails.

  After I finish scraping all the polish off my pinky, I look at him again. “So, can I ask you a question?”

  He doesn’t say anything, like he’s too busy concentrating on his lens to even bother with me.

  “If they’re really real, why is it so hard to find them?” I ask anyway.

  “Who?” He looks up.

  “Who do you think? The Bigfeet.”

  “Foot,” Tobin corrects.

  “What?”

  “You don’t say feet. It’s foot. Bigfoot. Singular, not plural.”

  I roll my eyes.

  “Bigfoot,” I say. “Why is it so hard to find them? What are they hiding from?”

  He puts the camera down and stares straight ahead, chewing on his bottom lip.

  “People,” he finally says, and starts squinting through the viewfinder again. Except this time he points the thing right at me.

  “Why do they hide from people?” I ask the lens.

  Tobin lowers the camera into his lap and focuses on his dark blue sneakers. “ ’Cause people can hurt you.”

  I don’t say anything.

  We sit on the swing in silence as he continues to huff and wipe. When he seems content that the lens is the way he wants it, he turns to me again.

  “Want to see something?”

  I shrug. “I guess.”

  “First, you’ll have to take an oath of ultimate secrecy,” he warns me.

  “For what?”

  “Can’t say. You have to swear ultimate secrecy for eternity or longer before I can disclose any further top secret information. Can you do that?”

  “What’s longer than eternity?”

  “What?”

  “Eternity is the longest. There’s nothing longer than that.”

  He sighs a blast of air in my direction.

  “Can you promise you won’t blab or not?”

  “This is the Bigfoot Detectives Inc. Headquarters,” Tobin tells me over his shoulder, wiggling a key in the lock of Charlie’s crumbling garage out back.

  “I promised eternal secrecy for this?” I ask. “It’s a garage. And barely even that. It’s one Big Bad Wolf’s blow away from being a pile of boards.”

  “That’s just my cover.” The key turns. “Outside it may look like your typical garage, but inside is a highly technical, totally confidential cryptozoological operation.”

  I give the place the once-over. There are shingles missing on the roof, and the white paint is peeling. I think it might even be leaning to the left a little.

  Tobin turns to face me before he opens the door. “Ultimate secrecy,” he repeats. “You promised.”

  “It was like five minutes ago—you don’t think I remember?”

  Tobin pushes the door open and a stifling, ripe stench slaps me in the face. An aromatic blend of baking garbage from the overflowing cans, gasoline from the lawn mower, and a bag of lawn fertilizer leaned up in one corner.

  I hold my nose as he pulls a battered string hanging from the rafters. A single stark bulb shines down on a wooden desk in the back corner. It has a torn-up old copy of Grant’s Atlas of Anatomy under one leg to keep it from wobbling. On the desk are one green phone, some kind of tape recorder, a rusty lamp, and a carved wooden sign with shaky letters on it.

  BIGFOOT DETECTIVES INC.

  TOBIN SKY, FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT

  “This is your high-tech operation?” I pick up the wooden sign and study it.

  “Charlie made me that for my birthday last year,” Tobin informs me.

  I set it back down.

  He straightens it.

  “What’s that?” I point to the tape recorder next to the phone.

  “That’s an old answering machine from Charlie’s office. Now that he’s retired, he lets me use it. You know, so I don’t miss any important sightings when I’m out on another call.”

  “Oh,” I say. “So, who else is in this Inc. of yours?”

  “What do you mean?” He slips the camera strap over his head and places the camera carefully on the desk.

  “Inc.,” I say again. “It stands for incorporated, right? More than one person? Who else is in your Inc.?”

  “There isn’t anyone else,” he tells me, shuffling through a yellow legal pad filled with scribbles. “I don’t need other people.”

  “So, you’re saying it’s just you, then?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then it’s not really an Inc. It’s just you.”

  He looks at me.

  “I guess.” He shrugs. “I mean, unless…well…”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” He shuffles more papers in his yellow pad.

  “No, what were you going to say?”

  “I suppose…I mean, I guess I could use an assistant to help out…you know, summers can get busy with calls about sightings, encounters, and stuff like that. And of course there will be expeditions.”

  “So, you’re saying you want me to be your Inc.?”

&
nbsp; “Yeah, I mean, you know…only if you want to…you could…if you want.”

  I think about it.

  “I guess I can be your Inc.,” I tell him. “At least while I’m here.”

  Tobin stops shuffling his papers and looks at me over his glasses. “You’re leaving?”

  “That’s the plan,” I tell him, picking up a battered spiral notebook with the words LOGGED SIGHTINGS scribbled on the front of it. “I’m going home.”

  “When?” He takes the notebook from my hand and puts it back on the desk in the same place I found it.

  “That’s still a work in progress,” I say, looking around the garage. “But one thing I know for sure is that I don’t belong here.”

  “If we’re going to make you the official new assistant here at Bigfoot Detectives Inc., you’ll need a new-employee orientation.”

  “Orientation to what, the mousetraps or those old fishing poles in the corner?” I look around again. “What else is there to know?”

  “Well, for starters, you’ll need to take the Bigfoot Detectives Inc. oath. Raise your right hand and repeat after me.”

  “I already promised the whole ultimate secrecy thing. Is this really necessary?”

  He raises his right hand and waits for me to do the same.

  I do, but only after I give him my very best eye roll.

  “I, Lemonade Liberty Witt, promise not to blab any top secret Bigfoot-related matters…,” Tobin says.

  I repeat it.

  “To any source, including all newspaper and TV reporters, corporate spies, and any and all naysayers, while employed at Bigfoot Detectives Inc., for eternity or longer.”

  “Give me a break.”

  “Say it.” He peers at me over his wire-rims.

  I say it.

  “Good. Okay, now let me give you an orientation to the business.” He taps his finger on his chin. “Let’s see…well…this is where I keep the stapler.” Tobin picks it up from on top of the desk to show me, then sets it back down.

  Like I don’t have eyes.

  “The stapler remover.” He holds that up too and then sets it back down next to the stapler.

  “Okay, let me stop you there, because I can see where this is going,” I say. “I thought this would be more about the meat and potatoes of the whole technical operation you’ve got happening here.”

  “We just had cereal,” he says, looking at me funny.

  “What? No. The Bigfoot stuff. I mean, what do you do, really?”

  “I’m getting to that,” Tobin says. “First things first. The message pad…” He holds up a pad that has the word MESSAGES printed across the top and places it back on the desk.

  “Are you kidding me?” I put my hands on my hips.

  “These are all very important things to know,” he explains. “What if a call comes in and I’m not here, and you don’t know where the message pad is?”

  “You mean this pad on top of the desk with the word messages on it?” I grab it.

  “Well, sure, you know where it is now.” He takes it from my hand. “And…ah, that’s not really supposed to be moved unless there’s an actual message.” He puts it back in its spot.

  “Is this a girl thing?” I ask. “Because I can do anything you can do. Just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean the only thing I need to know is where the stapler is. I can do more than staple and unstaple.”

  “I know it,” he says. “The magnetic paper clip tray.” He holds it up for me to see.

  I groan.

  “What?”

  “If I’m going to be a partner here, you need to tell me the stories. What you do. You know, like the real Bigfoot-type things that people call you about.”

  “Partner?” His eyebrows go up. “Who said partner? I don’t remember saying anything about partner. I am the founder and president of Bigfoot Detectives Inc. Read the sign.” He picks up the crudely carved wooden sign from the desk and points to it. “You will be my assistant. Assistant. I thought I made that perfectly clear.”

  “Maybe I want to be partner? Witt-Sky Bigfoot Detectives Inc. has a nice ring to it.”

  “Well, first of all, it would be Sky-Witt if anything, and, secondly, the only way I would ever make someone partner would be if it was someone who I knew was planning on staying for a real long time.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “You said you’re leaving, right?” he asks. “Isn’t that what you said?”

  I think about it again and then pick up the stapler and a bunch of loose papers and staple them all together.

  “Assistant it is,” I say.

  “Oh, ah, actually…” Tobin reaches for the papers in my hand. “Those aren’t supposed to be stapled—”

  The green phone jingles and Tobin dives for it, answering on the first ring. The papers go flying.

  “Hello? Bigfoot Detectives Inc. This is Tobin Sky, lead detective. What Bigfoot concern may we help you with today?”

  He grabs a pencil from a Styrofoam cup on the desk and begins to scribble furiously on his yellow legal pad.

  “Uh-huh…uh-huh…,” he says between pauses. “Interesting…Of course we can come right away….Yes, ma’am….Thank you for calling, Mrs. Dickerson….Good-bye.”

  He hangs up the phone and looks at me over his glasses with a big goofy smile on his face. He waves the yellow legal pad in the air.

  “Your very first Bigfoot sighting! Are you ready?”

  “Ready for what?”

  “Only to change your life forever!” he says, tightening the chin strap on his safari hat.

  I think about it.

  “I guess,” I say.

  “There’s been another sighting at Mrs. Dickerson’s, and she needs us out there right away to lift some possible prints. You got a bike?”

  I shake my head.

  “That’s okay. I’ll give you a buck.”

  “A what?”

  “You can ride on the handlebars.”

  “Uh, I have two words for you,” I say. “They are no and way.”

  He doesn’t even hear me.

  “Let’s go!” he hollers with excitement, grabbing the handle of a black leather case and scrambling out the door.

  I can’t feel my fingers, and my butt is dead asleep. I’m sure I’ve heard somewhere that these are the first signs of a heart attack.

  Or maybe it was a stroke.

  I’m white-knuckling the handlebars of Tobin’s fire-engine-red bike, my butt smooshed between the tall silver bars and my legs outstretched in front of me while he drives like a lightning bolt through town. Houses and storefronts blend into the landscape in one gigantic blur on our way to Mrs. Dickerson’s. Once we’re past the tiny town, there are just lots and lots of vile-smelling grassy pastures filled with chewing cows that stare as we whiz by them.

  And that’s what I see when my eyes are open.

  On the metal platform over the back wheel are Tobin’s yellow legal pad and the mysterious black case he grabbed on his way out. They’re strapped tight with a roll of twine he used from a shelf in Charlie’s garage.

  “That’s Charlie’s store! See it?” He points. “That wooden cabin with the green door!”

  I peek open one eye.

  “Both hands! Both hands!” I holler back at him, gripping even tighter and closing my eyes again.

  Tobin takes a sharp right down a bumpy dirt road. We bounce and bumble over rocks and dips in the road until the vibration makes my lips itch. I scratch them with my teeth and silently repeat the parts of the Our Father prayer that I can remember from church. Mama and I only made it to church at Christmas and Easter, and sometimes Good Friday.

  All I can remember is something about bread and trespassing, which doesn’t really seem to fit this situation.

  “See that little blue house up there on that hill?” Tobin says, pointing again. “That’s Mrs. Dickerson’s place.”

  I peek another eye open, but when I open my mouth to scream at him again about keeping his hands on the
handlebars, nothing comes out. That’s because something flies in instead. I cough and choke, but whatever it is takes a sharp left at a tonsil and dive-bombs down my throat, lodging in a kidney. Or maybe it’s my liver.

  I gag and try to spit, except when I do, it just splashes back at me, hitting me in the cheek.

  “I just ate a bug!” I cry. “I swallowed the entire body of an insect! What’s it going to do to me?”

  “Oh, they can’t hurt you,” Tobin tells me. “Charlie says aphids are a good source of protein.”

  “Protein!” I gag again. “And what’s an aphid, anyway?”

  “Aphids are a group of various soft-bodied insects.”

  All the sticks and seeds and bark from this morning stand at attention, ready for their encore.

  “I can feel it burrowing into my gallbladder!”

  “It is not,” Tobin says.

  I think I hear him laughing, but my eyes are still closed, so I can’t be absolutely sure.

  I open them again when Tobin turns another corner and slows down. He pedals up the dirt drive of a small blue house with six windows on the front of it, three along the top and three along the bottom. There is a white flower box stuck to the bottom of every window, each one filled with bright red roses. And there’s a round table on the front porch with a yellow tablecloth blowing in the breeze. The table is set with a vase of even more roses, china teacups with the saucers underneath, and a plate stacked high with fresh-baked cookies.

  I know they’re fresh-baked because I can smell the smell of baking cookies seeping out of the screen door.

  Tobin stops the bike and holds it steady while I de-wedge my butt out from between his handlebars. My legs are noodles, and it feels like a million pins are poking me in my lower regions. I stomp my feet to wake everything up and use the sleeve of my T-shirt to wipe the boomeranged spit off my right cheek. I’m already full of dust and bug spit and it’s only nine o’clock. The bath from this morning lasted me all of five minutes.

  Charlie didn’t have any bubbles, either. I had to use a big green bar of Irish Spring soap and a plain blue washcloth. I told him Mama gets me Mr. Bubble and a puffy pink sponge for my baths, but he didn’t say one word.