Chapter 16 Baz
BAZ
Restless dreams, mostly of Arden, kept Baz up half the night.
His sleeping bag felt cold. The empty grocery store he’d been sleeping in was cold.
Arden’s cozy cabin would have been much nicer.
Lexie would probably have kicked him halfway down Main Street if he had mentioned it to her, and then she’d have asked him why he wasn’t there now.
Because I know she’ll run if I push too hard.
She had clearly already done it once. He still didn’t know what she was running from, and he hoped to coax her into opening up about it.
It was like handling a skittish calf back on his uncle’s ranch—easy to push too hard and chase it away. If he chased Arden away, he could all too easily picture himself spending the next ten years searching the world for her. This was worth taking the time to do it right.
But he still wished he’d asked to come in last night.
When he finally gave up on sleep and got up, he found that the storm had blown itself out in the night, leaving behind a gorgeous, freshly washed world.
The sky was robin’s-egg blue, with thin wisps of mare’s tails streaming across it.
The trees and grass were a brighter and more vivid green than before, even if the wildflowers had their heads knocked down by the storm, and the street was nothing but side-to-side mud.
Munching on a granola bar for breakfast, he made his way along the boardwalk to Lexie’s place to check on Fern.
Lexie was up in spite of the early hour, sitting in pajamas by the stove and poking sticks into it to try to heat water for coffee.
She looked up to acknowledge him when he knocked softly and then tiptoed inside.
“You could just use the camp stove,” he whispered to her. They had brought a couple of small camping stoves that used cans of solid fuel.
“More fun this way,” Lexie whispered back. “Also, have you tried to get water to boil on those things? I think we need a gas hookup in this town.”
“Or a propane stove, at least.”
Fern was asleep in her nest of sleeping bags, bright hair spilling out. Her color looked good, and she was breathing deeply and evenly.
“I woke up a couple of times in the night to check on her,” Lexie whispered. “She was sleeping fine. I’m just going to let her sleep for now. You want coffee?”
“Sure. Actually, I could take a cup to Arden.”
“I’m sure that’s your only reason for wanting to see Arden,” Lexie said with a smirk.
But she gave him two of the chipped, mismatched mugs that they were all using now, one with pink and yellow flowers on the side, and the other a heavy stoneware cup with a blue band around the rim.
Both were filled with steaming coffee. He pocketed a couple of cream and sugar packets and went to see how Arden had weathered the last of the storm.
Arden’s side street was even muddier than the main street, and he gave up on keeping his feet dry—he’d just dried his boots out, too; at this rate he really should’ve brought rain boots—and slogged muddily to her door.
His heart lurched to see that it was slightly open.
He knocked and, getting no answer, peeked inside with a soft “Hello?”
Arden was nowhere in sight. Her sleeping bag was neatly fixed, and there were fresh flowers in one of the cups on the windowsill. She was around, he reassured himself. Not kidnapped, not gone. Planning on coming back soon. But where was she?
After what happened to Fern, he didn’t like the idea of anyone wandering around by themselves, least of all Arden. He also guessed she wouldn’t appreciate being told not to.
Carrying the cups of coffee, sipping on his own, he walked over to see how the stream had come through the flood.
It was still louder than usual, but not the deep roar of yesterday.
The water had receded back into its usual course, leaving behind a wide swath of muddy, flattened meadow on both sides.
Baz had a sudden premonition of where Arden might be.
Wading through grass and brush still wet from the rain, his dry jeans were soon as wet as his boots. But he was right. He glimpsed her through the trees, a small bright figure in her flowered rain poncho. She was at the wishing well, bent down to do something at its base.
“Hello!” he called, and Arden straightened up quickly. As Baz got closer, he saw that she had been pulling the toys out of the weeds and setting them in a row on the edge of the well.
“Good morning,” she said, smiling a fresh bright smile that lit him up from the soles of his feet to the top of his head.
“Good, uh, good morning. I brought you coffee. It might be cold now.”
“Oh, how lovely.” She took the flowered cup from him, wrapped it in her muddy hands, and inhaled, then sipped. “Well, it’s still a little warm. And full of lovely, lovely caffeine.”
“What are you doing out here?” Baz asked. Then he realized that had come out slightly accusing. “I mean, I went by your cabin and you weren’t there, so I wondered.”
Arden lowered her face to the coffee smell, inhaled deeply, and drank again. “Oh, I woke up early and decided to walk around a little. I just wanted to see this place again and find out what it looked like when I could see it properly. Fern and I were talking about it a little last night.”
It was still too overgrown to really get a good look. Behind the well, the stream churned high and muddy against its banks.
“You know, if you want to see what it looks like with some of this mess cleared off, I bet we can find tools,” he said. “Dunno if you feel like doing that before breakfast, though.”
Arden grinned another of those brilliant, infectious smiles. “I’m really not that hungry yet. I’d love to.”
From the well, it turned out that it was more or less a straight line through the woods to the back of the old grocery store. Once they beat down a path rather than having to push through the bushes under the trees, it would be a nice little walk. Right now it was still overgrown and wet.
“I thought I wouldn’t need the poncho, but I’m glad I put it on,” Arden remarked as they emerged in the field of wildflowers behind the old store.
“Come on into my house,” Baz offered. “I guess you’ve already been in it once, but now you can see it when it’s not full of goats.”
Arden looked around curiously while he got some tools together.
From the grocery store and the outbuildings behind it, he turned up a variety of things: a rake, a couple of differently shaped axes, a hand saw, a pair of rusty shears.
There was also a strange tool that looked a bit like a saw blade on a long handle.
Baz had no idea what it was for, but it would probably work for brush clearing, and might even be meant for that in the first place.
From his pack, he provided a couple of pairs of work gloves.
They were huge on Arden, but would help prevent more of the blackberry scratches that already marred the backs of her hands.
“We’re really doing this?” she asked, picking up an axe.
“Unless you have a better idea. There’s a chainsaw around here somewhere, but I think it’s over at Lexie or Declan’s place.”
Arden hefted the axe. “Honestly, I’m looking forward to this. It feels like a great way to work up an appetite.”
It was a great way to get covered with sap, chips of wood, and scratches.
But it was also rewarding work. They ripped out blackberry canes, cleared brush, and piled the spoils of their labor in a heap at the edge of the woods.
Slowly the old well began to emerge from the overgrowth that had covered it.
It looked much like Baz remembered, a stone base with a roof made of overlapping split-wood shakes and a winding handle for the well bucket, which no longer seemed to be there.
The well had been capped off at some point, so there was nothing inside the stone well casing except more brush growing on heavy, moss-covered boards reinforced with rusted iron bands.
Honestly, that was a relief; at least one thing they didn’t have to worry about was someone falling down the well.
Just to be sure, Baz reached inside with an axe handle and tapped on the boards.
“Aren’t you supposed to throw a penny down a wishing well?” Arden asked.
“We used to leave the toys instead.”
He wondered if it had been Fern’s idea. In spite of being among the youngest and smallest of the kids in their clique, Fern had often been the one who came up with new games and ideas for the rest of the group.
Baz had been the one who told them what to do—generally alternating with Lexie—and Declan and Maida were the contrary ones who argued with the others.
But Fern had been the one who told them how things were, and they listened to her, even when they were all very young.
Arden leaned on the edge of the well, looking inside. “Should we make a wish anyway?”
Baz wasn’t sure why that idea made his stomach knot up a little. “I don’t know if we should,” he said. “I feel like wishes made here have power, somehow.”
“Maybe that’s all the more reason to,” Arden said. She was covered in scratches and bits of leaves; she’d removed her poncho in the morning’s growing heat, and her shirt was sticking to her with sweat. Her hair was frizzed.
She looked amazing.
If he could make a wish in that moment, he knew exactly what he’d wish for. Every warm, lovely, luscious inch of her.
And that was what he was afraid of. What did it mean, if wishes were real, if you could cement a person to you with a careless request to whoever or whatever commanded the power of the wishing well?
He suddenly remembered another thing Fern had said.
It dropped into his mind like a coin into a well, a stray recollection from back when they had played the wishing well game.
They had come here once after a rain, and he remembered Fern clutching his hand and telling him they should be careful, the well was more powerful when the water was high.
If that’s real, then this would definitely be the time to make a wish that you really want to come true, he thought. Or not to make a wish. I don’t know if I want to mess around with something like that. Not right now.
“I don’t think we should,” he repeated.
Arden frowned, but to his relief, she didn’t try to argue. “Okay,” she said, and looked ruefully at her sap-sticky hands. “What do you think about getting cleaned up and having breakfast?”
“That sounds great.”
They were picking up the tools when Lexie came thrashing and crashing through the brush. “Oh wow, you really did find it! But that’s not what I came to say. Baz, your parents are here, and they want to talk to you.”