PIXIE
When the police finally came, it was Dean who was led away for questioning.
It was a Sunday night. The wind was blowing the Douglas firs sideways, and the eagles were air-surfing the gusts above the bluff.
In our living room, the sofas and chairs had been pushed aside and cushions placed at sharp edges on the floor. By the fireplace. Around the coffee table.
Lawford was practicing his takedowns. On me.
When he was done throwing me around, he expected me to Taser him. That's because he was taking a Criminal Justice course after school at the police academy on the mainland, for kids who were interested in going into law enforcement. Next week he was going to have to resist a takedown and get Tasered for real, and he was really excited about it.
Which would be weird if you didn't know my family.
The doorbell rang.
Splat! Lawford threw me. My head smacked the area rug, and my legs purled over the sofa.
I heard Mom answer the door. "Hey, Rupe. What brings you out? I was just making chili for the boys. Can you come in for a bite?"
As soon as I got to my feet, Lawford had me in a choke hold, so I flipped him and went to see what Mr. Shepherd was doing at our house on a Sunday night. He should be gone by now. He and his family were weekenders. He owned all the land below our bluff, which included the lagoon and the bay. They let us walk around in it but made it clear it was his.
It was strange they were here. Especially since I knew Henry's dad earlier had to take a helicopter back to Medina because he'd forgotten that he had a meeting with the Kid Trying to Save Africa with Electricity. Why had he come back, just to get on the ferry?
It didn't make sense. Something was going on.
I joined Mom at the front door.
Mr. Shepherd was standing there in a thin Windbreaker. His hood was up over his bald head, which, even in this weather, he had to slather with SPF 50 because it was already covered with precarcinomas.
Next to him was Sheriff Lundquist, which was odd. I tried to think if we'd done anything more illegal than trespassing.
I'd done something wrong earlier, but at the time I hadn't been sure of the right thing to do. I only knew it wasn't what was requested of me. Besides, I'd fixed it, right? I'd brought him home.
"What's happened?" I said.
Mr. Shepherd said, "It's Grant, Pix. We can't find him."
Again, I didn't understand the need for the law. Grant came here all the time on Sunday afternoons in an elaborate game of hide-and-seek, and Mr. Shepherd always came here threatening to fence our property and spoil our view if we didn't hand him over right now. I didn't blame Mr. Shepherd for being frustrated. We knew Grant probably didn't want to face the school week. The kid was obviously ADD, and we guessed his grades were in the toilet. We felt sorry for him and played along, even knowing that it was an inconvenience—the Shepherds always had a ferry to catch and things to do.
But we didn't have Grant that particular Sunday night.
Mr. Shepherd was calm and businesslike in his demeanor.
Which is how I knew this Grant thing was serious.
Behind them, in our driveway, Henry's sister, Meredith, stood looking embarrassed, and Henry himself skulked beneath his hoodie. He hid the black eye he said he'd gotten when someone on his crew team accidentally smacked him in the face with an oar.
"You mean Grant's not with you guys?" Lawford said.
My brothers lined up next to me. After all, we played basketball on the same team. We were quick to box people out—too quick, in this case. But I didn't realize that until later.
Mr. Shepherd said, "What kind of dumb-ass question is that? If he were, we wouldn't be here."
Mom turned and glared at us. She packed a lot of expression into that glare. You have to when you're a single mother and the smallest of your five children (me) towers over you at six feet two and three-quarter inches. "Well? What are you hoodlums waiting for? Get your gear. Go find him." She smacked Frank with a kitchen towel.
"It's not as easy as that, Louise," Mr. Shepherd said. "Last time we saw Grant, he was out in the rowboat."
One of us had the foresight to turn down Sinatra singing about having the world on a string.
I felt blood sluice through my veins. Something was definitely wrong.
Mom stared at Mr. Shepherd. "In this wind? What a stupid thing to do."
"He probably wanted to pull up the crab traps." I examined my fingernails. They were hard and jagged, like something that attached itself to hulls and had to be scraped off with carving tools and Tabasco sauce.
"He wasn't alone," Mr. Shepherd said. "Henry here says he saw one of yours with him."
Mom whipped around and fixed us all with a glare. Not one of us dared look her in the eye. She was a foot shorter than her children but in some ways taller than the rest of us put together.
"Which one?" she growled. She looked at us, but she was talking to Mr. Shepherd. "Which one of you took a ten-year-old child in a boat with wind like this?"
"We don't know," Mr. Shepherd said. "It was dark. The only thing Henry knows for sure was that it wasn't Pixie." Mr. Shepherd nodded at me.
Next to Mr. Shepherd, Sheriff Lundquist chewed his gum ferociously.
In my defense, I was stupid, and my brothers and I didn't know any better.
It was a reflex.
Twelve years of school. That added up to twelve suspensions, forty-six detentions. But not one expulsion, and not one of us ever—and I mean ever—took the blame for the crime he or she committed. Instead, we assigned blame based on a rotation chart taped to the back of the bunk room door.
Whose turn was it to be in trouble?
I mean, what's the point of being a quintuplet if you can't skunk people into thinking you're not yourself? It was just a little harmless fun. Besides, we gave back to the community in so many ways. Cutting up and removing downed trees so Island Electric could fix snapped power lines. Applying tourniquets to victims of motorcycle accidents; sometimes even holding their hands as they died so the last face they saw would be a friendly one saying, "Good thing you're tough."
Until that weekend, we thought that we'd done it all and seen it all and that our identity pranks were completely harmless.
Dean stepped forward. "It was me. Like Pixie said, Mr. Shepherd, Grant wanted to check his crab traps. So I took him out. The traps were empty, so I dropped him off in front of your house. He was on his way up the walk, and I rolled the rowboat to the garage. Grant was wet but fine."
"Yeah, see, that's the thing—the boat isn't in the garage," Mr. Shepherd replied. "Henry saw you take Grant out, but he didn't see you come back."
At times like this, people say, accusations hang in the air.
But nothing ever hangs in the air in Useless Bay. Everything roars and rages and whistles through open doors.
"Maybe you should come with me to headquarters … uh …" Sheriff Lundquist searched our faces. He searched his memory. He'd lived down the road from us all our lives and still couldn't tell us apart.
"Dean," Dean said.
"Dean. Right. We'll ask you some questions and get to the bottom of this. Since you're a minor, your mom will need to come, too."
"This is ridiculous," Mom said, and threw her kitchen towel at Mr. Shepherd. "I don't know what you're accusing my child of, but you should know better. They'd never let anything happen to Grant."
"Maybe not intentionally," Mr. Shepherd said. "But these are a reckless bunch of boys, Louise."
Mom looked as though she wanted to scratch his eyeballs out.
Dean held her back. "It's okay, Mom. The sooner we figure out what happened, the sooner we get Grant back, right? Isn't that what's most important?"
She looked like she was going to hiss like our gas range, which dated from 1973. "Fine. I'll get my coat." She turned around. "I had better not hear that the rest of you have been sitting on your asses while we're out. Spread out. One of you go with Meredith."
"I will." Sammy said.
"Pix, you go with Henry. Take the dog with you." And turning off "That's Amore" from her Rat Pack greatest hits, Mom went off with Dean into the night.
At least Dean was saved the indignity of having to get into the back of the police cruiser, but he did have to make the walk of shame to the minivan so Mom could drive him to the Island County sheriff's department, where he'd be questioned like a delinquent.
I took Dean's jacket and boots out to the front porch for Henry, since he wouldn't come in. He threw his useless Windbreaker on the driveway and yanked the oilskin jacket and waders from me.
I also brought my emergency kit. We had five of them—one for each of us. They had flashlights and bandages and Swiss army knives and flares and walkietalkies and EpiPens, even though it wasn't strictly legal for us to carry them in Washington State. Allergic people were supposed to carry their own, but Frank once had to perform a tracheotomy on a kid who didn't know he couldn't eat shellfish. "Never again," Frank vowed. "That kid lost his pulse way too fast."
I took the flashlight out of the emergency kit and flicked it on. Henry and I walked to the trailhead, Patience galumphing, leading the way.
I knew Henry was in bad shape because he was picking at the scars on his hands again. He did that only when he was really worked up about something.
"Don't worry," I said. "Grant'll turn up."
"Jesus Christ, will you give it a rest, Pix?" he said. "I saw you."
He snatched the flashlight from me and walked ahead.
I watched the back of his head until he was so far away from me all I could see was the beam the flashlight threw in front of him, jumping over the Scotch broom.
I had no idea what was happening. Henry was one of the few people who could tell the five of us apart. Even in a storm. In the dark. At a distance. He would've looked for the ponytail.
Why was Henry lying for me?
We both knew it wasn't Dean who took Grant out in the rowboat.
It was also true that Grant had said he'd wanted to check the crab traps. But when we got there, I realized something worse was going on from the way he was acting. Grant had barely spoken and appeared to be shivering, even though it wasn't cold outside.
What had him so worked up, I still had no idea.
And neither, from the looks of things, did Henry.
