Iris was listening carefully, biting her lip. It might have been Vi’s imagination, but she looked interested, excited even.
“So, do you want to join? You can come with us to the movies. The drive-in opens up in June. We take our bikes. You can ride on mine with me.” Vi let herself imagine it—this girl on the back of the banana seat of her red Schwinn, her arms wrapped around Vi’s waist while Vi pumped the pedals, taking them all the way into town.
The girl nodded, yes, yes, yes. And then—Vi knew she wasn’t imagining this—Iris gave the flicker of a smile.
Vi smiled back. “Good,” she said. “Want to see our monster book?”
Iris nodded again. Sure, sure, sure.
“We’ve got a secret clubhouse. I’m gonna show you, because you’re a member now, but you can’t show anyone else, ever. Not even Gran, okay?”
The warning was silly, really. Vi was sure Gran knew about the clubhouse. Eric told Gran everything—the kid couldn’t keep a secret. Even when he swore he wouldn’t tell something, he always went and blabbed.
Iris nodded again.
“Okay,” Vi said.
She opened the front door to holler the secret Monster Club call. She cupped her hands around her mouth, tilted her head back, began a low howl that got louder in pitch: “A-woooo!” she cried, blasting it out, then letting it fade. She’d practiced her howl. She’d gotten good at it. But Eric was better. He howled back to signal he’d heard. In five seconds, she heard his feet pounding down the stairs.
“The monster call is like a fire alarm,” she said to Iris. “You hear it and you come running. You have to get yourself to the clubhouse as fast as you can, no matter what.”
Iris nodded.
Eric was on the porch now, eyes wide. His hair was wild, uncombed, and he wore a yellow-black-and-white-striped T-shirt that reminded Vi of a caterpillar—of the monarchs that they found in the milkweed sometimes.
“Iris is joining the club,” Vi told him. “We’re going to the clubhouse to show her the book.”
Eric didn’t ask any questions, he just jumped off the porch and started leading the way around the side of the house, across the backyard with its neatly trimmed grass （thanks to Old Mac, who mowed it once a week）， past the old rabbit hutch and woodshed, past the juniper bushes Gran had planted for her gin, and into the woods.
“How’s Ginger?” Vi asked. That’s what he’d decided to name the injured baby bunny.
“She’s good. Doesn’t seem to even notice the stitches. But you can tell it hurts—she walks and hops kinda lopsided.”
During dinner last night, Gran had said he could keep the rabbit until it was healed and big enough to let go.
“Wild things don’t belong in cages,” Gran reminded him when he started to argue. She only ever let Eric keep the animals who couldn’t go back to being wild: the ones with messed-up legs, or missing eyes, or broken wings, or the creatures who’d been in captivity so long they’d forgotten how to be wild.
Eric, Iris, and Vi traveled along the well-worn path that took them through the trees, down a hill. It was cooler in the woods. The air smelled green and loamy. Birches and maples and poplars provided a dense canopy, shading out the sun.
They walked for five minutes, heading toward the creek. They heard it before they saw it… the quiet burbling of water over rocks and sand. It was full of minnows, crayfish, and bugs that walked around on the surface in the still places: water striders. The banks were lined with ferns, thick carpets of moss, a few patches of skunk cabbage that stank when you broke off a leaf. Vi loved coming back here. The air was different; everything felt more alive. And it was theirs and theirs alone.
The clubhouse waited on the other side of the creek. They had to hop across slippery rocks to get to the simple shack, about eight feet by ten feet. They didn’t know who’d built it or why, but they’d never asked Gran or anyone at the Inn about it—it had been their secret since they’d discovered it two years ago. The whole building was a little off-kilter, leaning slightly to the left. The boards were warped and faded, rotten in places. Little by little, Vi and Eric had been fixing it up. They’d sneak into the big barn over at the Inn where Old Mac kept lumber, shingles, scraps of plywood, nails, and screws. Taking a little at a time so he wouldn’t notice, they’d already replaced a rotten spot in the floor and fixed a hole in the roof.