The Secrets of Tree Taylor Read online

  “Better do your rain dance,” Sarah said.

  I’d always danced, mostly when nobody was looking. But my rain dance was different.

  Legend had it that it all began on a perfectly clear day in fourth grade. My class was headed outside for recess, but Sarah and I wanted to play dodgeball in the gym. So out of the blue, I announced that I’d do a rain dance so we could stay in. And there, in the hallway, with my whole class looking on, I launched into my first-ever rain dance. I whooped and spun and twirled. All of a sudden, thunder boomed and the skies opened. We got indoor recess.

  But I had to sit it out because I’d danced in the hallway.

  D.J., pool manager extraordinaire, paraded into the basket room, clipboard in hand, whistle around his neck, his big bare feet slapping the damp cement floor. Reddish blond hair curled along his forearms and legs and burst like a hairy sun across his bare chest. His permanent sunburn made him the color of cherry Kool-Aid. As always, a dab of zinc oxide accented his nose, bright white under his dark shades.

  D.J. had graduated with Jack. His folks wanted him to go to the teachers college in Maryville, but he took the manager’s job at the pool instead. “Did I hear someone say ‘rain dance’?” he bellowed.

  “My idea,” Sarah said.

  “And a fine idea it was, young Sarah.” He turned to me. “What say ye, fair Tree?”

  I spotted one promising cloud, wispy and white but low to the ground. I stuck out my finger and registered a breeze out of the southeast. “I do see a rain dance in my future.”

  “Right on, Tree Man!” D.J. exclaimed.

  D.J. always closed the pool at the first hint of lightning, and often at the first raindrop. If the weather cleared, he’d reopen … unless it was close to closing time. Then we’d go home early.

  I looked around the pool, hoping not to see any drop-off kids, the ones whose parents wouldn’t show up until the last possible minute. But there they were—three boys, ages six to nine, huddled on towels.

  “A lot of good rain will do us,” I muttered. “The Cozad boys are here. Their mother won’t pick them up, even if I dance up a thunderstorm.”

  “Somebody ought to tell her we’re not babysitters,” Sarah complained.

  * * *

  The afternoon dragged on. With school out, the pool had become the town hangout. And babysitting service.

  And dating service.

  I’d been trying hard not to look at Wanda and Ray. But I couldn’t help myself. Their towels were touching.

  “Man!” Sarah exclaimed, and I was afraid she’d caught me staring at Wanda and Ray. But I was wrong. She had just come back from her break. “Have you heard the rumors flying around? Two seventh-grade girls claim they know for a fact that the Kinney shooting was a hunting accident.”

  “Right. What was he hunting in that house? Cockroaches?”

  “Then there’s Mikey Mouse.” That was her name for Michael the Lifeguard, who could be pretty Mickey Mouse when it came to pool rules.

  “What’s Michael know about it?”

  “Nothing,” Sarah said. “But he thinks he does. Mikey says he heard that Mr. Kinney died in the ambulance.”

  “That’s crazy!”

  She shrugged. “Don’t shoot the messenger. At least I’m out there interviewing people.”

  She was right. I grabbed my notebook from my basket. “My turn!”

  Sarah handed me a pencil and gave me a little shove. “Go! I’ve got the baskets covered. Investigate. Interrogate. Initiate.”

  I loved my best-friend-who-was-a-girl. Sarah would have been behind me if I’d told her I’d decided to fly to the moon.

  I headed poolside and moved in the opposite direction from Wanda and Ray. Two of Jack’s friends let out howls of laughter as they made their way to the pool.

  Only the whistle blew right then and Lifeguard Laura shouted, “Everybody out! Swimmers’ break!”

  The taller of Jack’s friends swore.

  I couldn’t blame him. D.J. claimed that getting swimmers out of the pool at the top of every hour was a safety thing. I didn’t buy it. Like if somebody drowned at the bottom of the pool, this would be our chance to see him? But the Cameron swimming pool guards did the same thing.

  It took all of my courage to walk up to Jack’s classmate, Ben, even though most of Jack’s friends liked me okay.

  Ben’s basketball-sized head didn’t fit his hockey-stick body. He had to keep hiking up his paisley trunks. He squinted down at me. “Hey, Tree. What’s happening? Jack around?”

  I shook my head. “But I wanted to ask you what you thought about the Kinney shooting?”

  “That was pretty crazy,” Ben said.

  I think he was about to say more, when the not-Ben guy butted in. “Look at her!”

  Lifeguard Laura stepped to the edge of the pool, first making sure all eyes were aimed her way. She raised her arms and executed a perfect surface dive, rolling over to do the backstroke the length of the empty pool. That little exhibition was, I believed, the real reason lifeguards whistled swimmers out every hour.

  8

  Twistin’ and Turnin’

  “See you, Tree. Tell Jack hey for me.” Ben and his buddy took off to join Laura’s admirers, who flocked around her lifeguard stand like pigeons waiting for popcorn.

  I tried interviewing more people. One kid said Mr. Kinney took a bullet to the gut. Another claimed he shot himself in the foot and doctors had to cut off his leg.

  Then I spotted Penny Atkinson sitting on a striped towel off in the far corner of the pool deck. I didn’t know her very well, which was weird since we only had forty-nine kids in our grade. Maybe since she’d moved to Hamilton in the fifth grade, she was still the new girl. The rest of us had been born here. People moved out of Hamilton, Missouri. They almost never moved in.

  “Hey, Penny!”

  She jumped like I’d startled her. “Hi, Tree.”

  Neither of us said anything. That’s what happened every time I tried to talk to Penny—nothing but awkward silence. Penny was the kind of girl nobody noticed—here or at school. She never got into trouble. She turned in her work on time, and her work never got noticed, either. When she did talk in class, you got the feeling she was trying out speech and kind of surprised by the sound of her own words.

  Small talk wouldn’t cut it. Not with Penny. I whipped out my notebook. “I’m asking people what they know about Mr. and Mrs. Kinney.”

  Silence.

  I stared down at her penny-red hair, her bangs so long they hid half her face. “Don’t you have anything to say about them?” The question came out sharper than it should have. But I was tired of people not helping with my investigation.

  Penny didn’t look away. “Okay. I saw Mr. and Mrs. Kinney together. More than once.”

  I was so surprised she’d said anything that I didn’t know what to ask next. I squatted so she didn’t have to stare into the sun. “Now we’re getting somewhere. So you saw them together. What were they doing?”

  “Whatever Mr. Kinney wanted.” Penny’s lips grinned, but her eyes didn’t.

  Her answer threw me, but I recovered. “Yeah? Anything else?”

  “Well, I guess I won’t be seeing Mr. and Mrs. Kinney together for a while.” She paused, and I thought she might be finished. “So I guess Mrs. Kinney can do whatever Mrs. Kinney wants for a change.”

  I wrote it down. Word for word. “Thanks, Penny.”

  She nodded, and I went back to being a basketgirl.

  Most people’s stories about the Kinneys sounded like gossip. But not Penny’s. I suspected she had a whole blizzard of things she could have said and she’d only offered me a snowflake.

  For my supper break, I bought a frozen Milky Way from the snack bar and took my seat on one of the picnic tables outside. Across the gravel road sat Hamilton High, an L-shaped brick building with room for 350 students, grades seven through twelve. J. C. Penney, born and raised in Hamilton, had donated the cash for our new school. I’d b
e headed back there in early August, the price we paid for getting out in early May.

  Supper over, I trudged back to the basket room and was reaching for an empty basket when Sam Cooke broke through the radio with “Twistin’ the Night Away.”

  Without thinking, I launched into my own version of Chubby Checker’s twist. I loved twisting, but it had gotten old fast … until I made it my own.

  “Turn it up, D.J.!” Sarah shouted.

  I couldn’t help myself. I twisted low, kicked off my flip-flops, and twirled, all without losing the beat.

  D.J. let out a whoop. “Lay it on me, Tree!”

  I grinned but kept my eyes shut. I wasn’t sure why that helped, but it always did.

  In every other part of life, I felt lame in front of people. I couldn’t sing in the choir—Eileen had inherited Mom’s singing voice. My knees shook when I had to say the least little thing in school.

  But dancing was different. When I was dancing, I was different.

  The music ended. I opened my eyes and found Sarah staring at me.

  She shook her head slowly. “Tree, you need to get yourself on American Bandstand.”

  “Was that a rain dance?” Laura the Lifeguard demanded, not smiling. I suppose you could call her pretty, but Eileen was twice as pretty. Maybe three times. And Eileen smiled. Not at me especially, but she smiled. Laura’s permed hair framed hazel eyes and a tiny nose. But her face wasn’t what most guys looked at. Unlike Wanda, Laura didn’t have to stick out her chest.

  She frowned at me. “Well? Was that a rain dance?”

  “Why? You want to close early? Got a big date?” With Butch, my sister’s creep of a boyfriend?

  She sneered in a way that made me check to see if I had Milky Way smudges on my chin.

  I resisted twisting to “Peppermint Twist.” But when I heard the first note of Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock,” it was all over. “Come on, Sarah!” I begged, grabbing her hands and stepping out. “I can’t dance by myself.”

  Sarah stood like a statue while I rock-’n’-rolled out of control.

  “Cutting in here.”

  Jack.

  I hadn’t heard him come in. Jack Adams was the best dancer I knew … although he claimed I was the best. We’d danced together so many times that we could sense each other’s moves.

  Jack grabbed my hands, and we started with classic steps—right foot forward, right foot back, left foot back, left foot forward—and moved into bridges and back-turns, sidearms and wraps. He spun me dizzy, and then we both spun until the music stopped.

  “Man,” Sarah said. “You guys are good.”

  “Far-out rockin’ great!” D.J. shouted.

  “I’d second that,” said a thin voice from the poolside counter. A white-haired woman, whose face resembled a shriveled potato, handed in her basket. “I used to cut a rug myself in my day.”

  “It’s the best, isn’t it?” I said, still a little out of breath.

  “It is indeed, dear.” She smiled, then walked to the corner of the pool, where the railing was.

  I watched her until she made it safely into the pool’s shallow end.

  Jack snatched a basket and started off toward the locker room.

  I headed him off. “Jack—wait up.”

  “I’m all danced out, Tree.”

  I put my hand on the empty basket so he couldn’t leave. “You heard about Mr. Kinney, right?”

  “Not you too, Tree.” He sighed. “It’s all I heard about today. And that includes the twelve phone calls from Donna.” Jack only called his mother Donna when she wasn’t around.

  “I’m not looking for gossip.”

  “Right. You just want to write about it so you can get on the school paper. Ask Donna for details. I’m sure she’s got more than anybody.” He started off again.

  “Jack, please? I need to know what you know about Mr. and Mrs. Kinney.”

  This time he came back and gave me his full attention. “Okay. I don’t know him at all. But I like Mrs. Kinney. She stops by the IGA and asks me to cut her meat exactly the way her husband likes it.”

  I could tell he had something else to say. I waited.

  Jack sighed. “I don’t know, but I’ve always gotten the feeling things wouldn’t go so well for her if she brought the wrong cut of meat home.”

  9

  Rain Dancing

  “Jack Adams!” Laura the Lifeguard had apparently given up her post in favor of personally welcoming Jack to the Hamilton pool.

  Jack studied my face. “You good, Tree?”

  “Yeah. I’m okay.”

  Laura wouldn’t leave Jack alone. Maybe being a leech was how she kept Butch in her clutches. That, and what went on in that bedroom scene right after The Saint broke for a shaving-cream commercial.

  With Laura trotting after him, Jack jogged to the high diving board. Lifeguard Mike blew his whistle, but Jack waved as if the whistle were a friendly hello.

  I watched Jack climb the ladder to the high dive. I’d gone off the high board only once. Nothing had prepared me for the fact that water, a liquid, could hurt like a solid.

  Jack raised his arms exactly like Laura did before her exhibition dives. Then he shot into the air like he meant to dive. Only instead of flipping over, he came down feet first. But it wasn’t a jump, either. He grabbed one knee and hit the water with the force of a cannon.

  It had to hurt like hades. But, man, was it worth it! Jack’s cannonball shot up a spray of water that rained down on the unsuspecting Laura. She sputtered and screamed like she’d never been wet before.

  Jack climbed out and jogged off. Mike tried to blow his whistle, but he was laughing too hard.

  A smattering of applause accompanied Jack as he disappeared into the locker room.

  Around seven, the pool emptied. Not a swimmer in sight … except for the Cozad boys, wrapped up in towels. I didn’t know if they were protecting themselves from the evening breeze or from third-degree sunburn.

  I used the lull to catch up on D.J.’s copy of last week’s Hamiltonian. Two articles surprised me—one criticizing the school board and the other reporting on the rise in auto accidents in Caldwell County. Randy must have written both articles. Old Mr. Ridings would have thought they were too negative.

  “Can you believe this?” Sarah whispered. “Mrs. Cozad’s here. Maybe we can get off early after all.”

  “You’re kidding,” I whispered back. We still had ninety minutes till closing.

  But no sooner had the boys left than the stragglers arrived, a handful of people who actually liked to swim. I waited poolside and tried to interview a couple of them, but they were too serious about swimming laps.

  This was turning out to be the longest day in the history of history.

  “Time for a rain dance,” I whispered to Sarah.

  I didn’t need music for my rain dance. In fact, the song playing now—“Sherry” by the mellow Four Seasons—made my job harder. The only way to dance to that song was to “non-dance.” That’s what Jack and I called the way most kids faked slow dances at sock hops after ball games. They leaned on each other and swayed. Non-dancing.

  I did the best I could.

  About a half hour later, D.J. burst into the basket room. “Tree, did you do your rain dance?”

  “I did,” I admitted.

  “Freaks me out every time. I knew I felt a raindrop!”

  “No lie, D.J.?” To tell the truth, my rain dances only worked half the time. Plus, I only did them when there was a good possibility of rain … unless I was desperate, like tonight.

  Sarah and I left the basket room to stand with D.J. and watch the pool turn into a tiny ocean of dots as raindrops plunked the surface.

  The last of the swimmers hoisted themselves out of the pool.

  “Let’s split while the splittin’s good!” Sarah shouted.

  I lifted my face to the sky and let the rain splash me. We’d only be closing twenty minutes early, but it felt like a snow day.
/>   Then, as suddenly as it had started, the rain stopped.

  “Dance again, Tree!” Sarah commanded.

  Before I could, D.J. muttered, “What a drag. Lifeguards! Get back here.”

  They’d both abandoned their lifeguard chairs. Laura was halfway to the locker room.

  “Why?” Michael whined. “Who’s going to come swimming with only fifteen minutes left to closing?”

  For once, I had to agree with Michael.

  D.J. was staring out toward the street.

  I looked where he was looking. Mrs. Cozad’s beater pickup cruised across the lot and up to the sidewalk. Her boys, their towels still wrapped around their shoulders, were piled into the back like bales of hay.

  “Out!” she shouted to the boys. Then she marched her ducklings up to the pool ticket window and flashed her family pass.

  We all followed D.J. through the basket room to the ticket counter.

  D.J. placed both palms on the counter. “Can I help you?”

  “My boys want to swim some more,” Mrs. Cozad said.

  D.J. glanced at the skinny boys staring at their feet and shivering. “Sorry, Mrs. Cozad. We’re closing.”

  “You can’t close! They got fifteen minutes of swimming left.” She glanced at her watch. “And I’ve got to be somewheres.”

  “We’re closing,” D.J. repeated.

  “It’s not raining!” she snapped.

  D.J. didn’t lose his cool. “Threat of lightning.”

  “I didn’t see any lightning.”

  “That’s why we have trained lifeguards,” D.J. said evenly.

  “Shoot. I’ll be back in ten minutes. You can keep them out of the pool if it makes you feel any better.”

  D.J. lowered his voice. “Take your kids home, Connie.”

  The Cozad boys sprang to life. Their little bony faces broke into grins, showing yellow teeth. The oldest boy ran barefoot to the truck and hopped in back. The others followed.

  Mrs. Cozad glared at D.J. Her eyes had tiny red lines in them. Without a word, she wheeled around and stomped back to the truck, slamming the door after her. When she floored the gas, her boys had to grab the sides of the truck to keep from falling out.