Lemons Read online

  “Some even gray,” Tobin adds.

  “That’s right,” Charlie says. “And they smell real strong, too, like a skunk. They’re bipedal creatures all the time, just like humans, whereas bears generally walk on all fours and only sometimes stand up on their hind legs.”

  “And Bigfoot has the facial features of a human.” Tobin looks at me, his wire-rims slipped all the way down to the tip of his nose. “Half human, half primate.”

  “And opposable thumbs like us.” Charlie wiggles his thumbs. “Instead of paws like bears.”

  I look through the magnifying glass again. Real close this time, with my nose almost pressed against the picture.

  “Ever think it could be someone in a suit, just trying to mess with you?” I ask.

  “No!” Tobin blurts out. “See, there you go again! There she goes again!” He waves his arms at Charlie.

  “What?” I say, confused. “What did I say?”

  “Always with the complaining.” Tobin begins gathering up the photos in a huff.

  “I’m not complaining,” I say, then turn to Charlie. “I’m not. I’m just asking a question. Could it be somebody in a suit? How can it be scientific if you don’t consider every possibility?”

  “Don’t you think I would know the difference?” Tobin snaps at me. “I’m a professional, you know. Read the sign.” He points to his stupid hat.

  “I think anyone could be fooled if the conditions were right and it was far enough away. Plus, there’s a big difference between seeing something in real life and looking at grainy pictures,” I say. “But this is all you’ve got. Geez, why are you getting so upset?”

  “She’s right,” Charlie tells Tobin. “We have to ask all kinds of questions and not just assume. And yes, Lem, to answer your question, some have doubted the original film that Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin shot out this way. Asking the same question. Could it be a fake? Could they or someone else have fooled us all with a costume of some sort?”

  “Do you think they did that?”

  “No!” Tobin snaps again. “It’s real. I know it. Charlie knows it too. He’s even seen one with his own eyes. Tell her, Charlie. Tell her they’re real.”

  I turn to Charlie.

  For a minute I wonder if Mama ever saw a Bigfoot. She never talked about it, but I’m finding out a lot of things about Mama here that I never knew about.

  “You’ve actually seen one?” I ask Charlie.

  Charlie sighs a long breath and puts his glasses in his shirt pocket. “That’s right.” He leans back on his stool, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “When?”

  “It was one night about five years ago now. I was driving out on this highway here. It was dark and foggy with just a bit of drizzle coming down, which means all I could see was the few feet in front of the car that my headlights lit up. I was driving real slow…real slow. And then in a flash of a second he was there. Right there in front of me.”

  “Really?” I breathe.

  “Yes, really,” Tobin says. “Let him tell the story, why don’t you?”

  “The first thing I saw was the eye shine,” Charlie goes on. “Bright red eye shine gleaming in my headlights. And then he was standing there.”

  “Out in front of the car?”

  “That’s right,” Tobin interrupts again. “Nothing hullabaloo about that, is there?”

  I turn back to Charlie. “Did you hit him?”

  Charlie swallows and shakes his head slowly.

  “No, thank God. I stomped my boot on the brake pedal, fast as I could. He stood there staring at me through the windshield, and I couldn’t move. It was like he put a spell on me or something.” Charlie stares off into the distance. “We just sat a moment, looking at each other. Like neither of us knew what to do.”

  “Then what happened?” I ask.

  “Then…he was gone. As fast as he came.” Charlie puts his chin in his hand and leans an elbow on the counter. “At first, I wondered if it could have been something else. Anything else. The fog was so thick…” Then Charlie looks right into me. “But I know it wasn’t. It was a Bigfoot. A real live Bigfoot.”

  “Wow,” I whisper. “Were you scared?”

  Charlie doesn’t say anything for a real long time, like he’s thinking hard about my question.

  “Funny thing is, I wasn’t,” he finally tells me. “We looked each other square in the eye for that split second, and I knew in that moment…he was more scared of me than I was of him.”

  “How could that be?” I ask. “The thing’s a beast. A monster.”

  “Wrong again!” Tobin says, his voice quivering a little. “Just ’cause you don’t understand them doesn’t make them beasts or monsters!”

  I put my hands on my hips and give him a long, hard glare.

  “What is your problem?” I demand.

  “Excuse me,” the man calls from the back of the store, standing next to the big wooden Bigfoot statue. “Can we get a picture with the beast?”

  Tobin just hits his forehead with his palm and shakes his head.

  “What time is it now?” Tobin asks, tapping his Bigfoot watch and holding it to his ear. He’s sitting at Charlie’s kitchen table finishing a blue yarn ball in the puzzle.

  It’s finally Thursday.

  “Five minutes past the last time you asked me,” I tell him, giving the boiling Oscar Mayers another good stir at the stove.

  I didn’t think Tobin was actually going to make it to this day. The day that the film from the Fotomat is supposed to be ready. He’s only talked about it every single second of every single day.

  “Didn’t he say he was going to close a few minutes early to pick up the film from the Fotomat? Where is he already?” Tobin shakes his wrist this time, like that’s going to make the Bigfoot arms move faster.

  “He’ll be here when he gets here. Check the Tater Tots. They should be light brown.”

  He ignores me while he searches for all the puzzle pieces with blue in them. I grab the quilted oven mitt myself.

  “Did you hear that?” The kitchen chair scrapes on the floor, and he jumps up from the table, darting out of the room. The screen door slams.

  I open the oven and pull out the pan of Tater Tots. They are a Tater Tot masterpiece, superbly browned with the perfect amount of crispness.

  The screen door slams again.

  “False alarm,” Tobin announces, sitting back down and adjusting his chin strap.

  I found out that he only takes the hat off for bed and baths. I also found out his mother is a nurse at St. Joseph’s Hospital all the way in Blue Lake and only has Sundays off, which is why he’s always at Charlie’s house. I still don’t know about his dad.

  Tobin never talks about him.

  “Where is he?” Tobin says, tapping his watch again.

  “It’s only five-fifteen,” I tell him. “Didn’t you two synchronize to seventeen hundred thirty-five hours?” I roll my eyes.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, it’s not seventeen hundred thirty-five hours yet.”

  Which I also learned is really 5:35 in military time, but I only learned that because Tobin typed up a military time conversion chart for me.

  Tobin sighs loudly and goes back to his puzzle. I pull three plates out of the cupboard and three forks from the drawer and fold three paper towels from the roll to set the table around him. At exactly 5:33, we hear Jake, Charlie’s old station wagon, grumble up the driveway, and all I see is Tobin vapors and airborne puzzle pieces.

  The screen door slams again.

  “Did you get it? Did you get it?” Tobin demands from out on the front porch.

  “Got it!” Charlie calls back to him. “Help me with this first.”

  I give the hot dogs one final stir in the pot, then turn the stove off and head out to meet them. When I get to the screen door, I see Charlie and Tobin pulling a bike out of the back end of Jake.

  “What…what’s that?” I ask, slowly pushing the door open.

&nb
sp; Charlie carries the bike up the porch steps and sets it down in front of me.

  “Can’t get around on handlebars all summer,” he tells me.

  I stare at it.

  It’s beautiful. Possibly the most beautiful bike I’ve ever seen. The most beautiful bike that’s ever been.

  I point to myself. “It’s for me?”

  I can’t stop staring at it. It’s a light pink with a pink-and-green-striped banana seat and a brown wicker basket in the front. Perfect for the kitten Mama had promised me for my eleventh birthday.

  I look up at Charlie. He’s smiling real big. An actual, real smile with teeth and everything.

  I smile back at him.

  Then he nods like we’ve said all we need to say and pulls open the screen door, disappearing inside. Tobin comes up the steps, examining the movie roll over his wire-rims.

  “Isn’t it the most beautiful bike you’ve ever seen?” I breathe.

  “What are you going on about a bike for when this is the moment that might go down in Bigfoot history? No! United States of America history! World history! This”—Tobin holds the film canister in my face and starts dancing a jig—“is it! Patterson, Gimlin, and Sky!” He sings as he dances. “Patterson, Gimlin, and Sky! Channel Four News, here I come!”

  “What’s the big deal with being on the news?” I ask.

  “Because it means something if it’s on the news. It’s significant. It’s important. It matters, and everyone will know it. Everyone will know me and know that I matter too. Me, Tobin Sky.”

  “Who says you don’t matter now?” I ask him.

  He stops dancing and stares at me.

  “Hey,” Charlie calls from inside. “What smells so good in here?”

  Charlie eats three hot dogs with two helpings of Tater Tots. I eat two hot dogs with three helpings of Tater Tots. Tobin takes one bite of his hot dog and doesn’t make a dent in his Tots, and then complains the whole time that we’re the world’s slowest eaters.

  “I can’t believe we’re just sitting here eating boiled hot dogs when cryptozoological history is about to be made,” he gripes. “When are we going to watch the movie already?”

  “How can you blame me for savoring my food when these gourmet hot dogs and Tots are the best I’ve had?” Charlie says to me. “What’s your secret?”

  “Well.” I wipe my mouth with the paper towel. “I stir the hot dogs while they boil.”

  “Ahh!” He leans back in his chair. “Well, you’ve got the touch, there’s no denying that.”

  I reach for another spoonful of Tots. Tobin puts his hand on top of mine.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” he says.

  “Okay,” Charlie says, pushing his chair back from the table. “Let’s get that movie laced up.”

  “Finally!” Tobin jumps up from his seat like a jack-in-the-box and runs out of the room.

  Five minutes later, Charlie is sitting on a kitchen chair squinting through his glasses in front of the projector, trying to thread the film, while Tobin stands over him, giving him directions.

  “In through there, yep…that’s right, now in that way…right there…yep.” Tobin points.

  “I think he probably already knows how to do it,” I say.

  Tobin doesn’t even hear me.

  “Up that way, uh-huh,” he goes on.

  The projector kind of looks like an upside-down bicycle with two wheels. The film is wound up on the first wheel and snakes through tunnels and around knobs all through the machine until it comes out the back and winds up on the empty rear reel.

  When they’re finally ready, Tobin and I settle in on the living room sofa, which is covered in a big green leafy pattern, while Charlie closes the matching drapes over the front window.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Charlie announces. “Thank you for attending the Bigfoot Detectives first official Bigfoot screening. Is everyone ready to make history?”

  “Ready!” we call back at the same time.

  “Lights!”

  He flicks the switch on the wall.

  “Camera!”

  The projector starts to clickity-clack as it pulls the movie through its tunnels and around its knobs.

  “Action!” Tobin yells.

  We wait, watching the wall in front of us where the light of the projector shines. First there are only gray squiggly lines bouncing, then a white square, and then a countdown. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

  Then the first image pops up.

  It’s a blurry forest.

  A jumping blurry forest.

  It feels a little like being on Tobin’s handlebars with one eye closed in the dark. There are grainy trees, fuzzy bushes, and shadowy shapes. Tobin moves to the very edge of the couch, leaning closer to the images that bump and bumble against the wall.

  “I’m running here,” he explains. “That’s why it’s so jumpy.”

  “You can’t see anything with you running like that,” I tell him.

  “Keep watching,” he says, his eyes wide, searching every inch of each frame. “I stop when I get close to him.”

  After a while, it feels like I’m on a roller-coaster ride that’s much too long, and I start to wish I hadn’t eaten that last hot dog or that last helping of Tots.

  “There!” Tobin points, bouncing up from his seat. “I saw him duck down there, behind that tree! That tree there! See it? Can you see him? He’s right there.”

  Tobin’s standing now, pointing to dark, hazy shapes bouncing against the wall.

  “It’s so dark,” I say, leaning forward. “It looks like a tree stump to me.”

  “Are you blind? It’s not a stump! He’s there!” He points again. “Right between those two trees. Don’t you see him?”

  “Do you?” I ask.

  He squints hard at the wall.

  “Yes! He’s there. Right there! Wait, no…he’s there, right there! That dark shape behind this pine here. Wait…”

  The projector chugs for a few more seconds. Then the film flies loose off the back reel, making a clicking sound. Charlie turns off the projector and flicks the light switch back on.

  “I’m sorry, Tobin,” Charlie says. “It was just too dark to say for sure what it was.”

  Tobin drops back down on the couch like a wet sack.

  “Nothing.” He sulks with his chin on his chest. “The Miller pictures were better than these.”

  I want to tell him, “Look who’s complaining now.”

  I want to tell him, “Look who doesn’t know how to make lemonade now.”

  But I don’t.

  “What we need to do is a real expedition.” Tobin turns to me. “What do you say?”

  “An expedition?” I ask.

  “Yeah, we’ll plan a camping trip out in the middle of the woods and stay there until we find something.”

  Did he say the middle of the woods? The woods where a real live woolly monster is supposedly living? Where there are bugs and snakes and bears and poison ivy and other generally disgusting and itchy and scary things?

  When he talked expedition before, I guess I figured he meant a tent in Charlie’s backyard. He didn’t say anything about the woods.

  Tobin is staring at me, waiting for my answer.

  “I—I—”

  I want to ask him where we’ll sleep. What we’ll eat. How we’re supposed to go to the bathroom.

  Instead, I think of the redheaded girl in the round frame hidden under my mattress.

  The spitting image. Mrs. Dickerson said so. She’s me, and I’m her. Somewhere inside me. Even if she’s lost right now under molten lava that spews without warning.

  “Ah…okay, I guess,” I say.

  “Now how’s that for making lemonade?” I want to ask him.

  But I don’t.

  Because I’m still worrying about where I’m going to go to the bathroom out in the middle of the woods.

  “So, you’re the famous Lemonade Liberty Witt that Tobin has been going on about,” says Tobin’s mom, sti
cking out a hand for me to shake.

  I grab it. It’s skinny with a big diamond ring on it. Her fingernails have sparkly pink polish on them.

  “I’m Debbie Sky.” She smiles at me.

  She looks just like Tobin.

  “Hello, Mrs.—” I start.

  She stops me. “Oh, please, call me Debbie.”

  I try to smile back at her, but today my lips just don’t feel like it.

  Charlie and Debbie are sipping coffee on the yellow porch swing at Charlie’s place. Tobin and I have just come back from investigating a new sighting at Mrs. Dickerson’s.

  Another false alarm.

  Sunday is the only day that Charlie doesn’t open the store and the only day that Debbie doesn’t work her normal seven a.m. to seven p.m. shift at the hospital. And it’s the only day that they have morning coffee on the big wraparound porch.

  She’s pretty.

  She has on faded Levi’s with holes in the knees and a purple T-shirt. She has long blond curls tied up high in a ponytail, and she’s wearing pale blue eye shadow and soft pink lipstick. She’s barefoot, with the same sparkly pink polish on her toes that she has on her nails.

  “It’s so nice to meet you, Lemonade,” she says. “I’m so sorry to hear about your mother, honey.”

  I look down at my feet and swallow away the lump.

  “Mom,” Tobin says. “Did you and Charlie decide about the expedition yet?”

  “Tobin,” Debbie says. “We are talking about something else right now.” Then she turns to me again. “We were friends, you know. Me and your mom.”

  “No,” I say, swallowing again. “I didn’t know that.”

  “In high school. We worked together at Moon Shadow’s, the ice cream shop in town…and went to see Elvis in concert in the city when we were eighteen…”

  I think about Sunshine’s on the Bay. Mama loved ice cream.

  Elizabeth Lilly Witt.

  “Unfortunately, we lost touch when she moved away,” Debbie is saying.

  Tobin is shifting his feet.

  “Mrs. Dickerson said I should give these to you.” I hold out the bag of cookies toward Charlie and Debbie.

  “Oh, boy,” Charlie says. “Her gingersnaps are the best in town.”