Haunted Organic (2014 Watty Award Winner)

Seven: Plucked (Part 1)

Josie looked over at her, she was zipping up her pack. There was no doubt in her face at all. Emerald was sure.

Josie was not sure at all.

He was not the type of kid to save missing toddlers, or break into buildings, or risk going to jail while news vans camped outside his house. He didn't take big risks.

He didn't, for instance, stand up for Little Berty Fockerson, a pudgy kindergartner who was always getting picked on at the beach, usually by Grotty Greg.

Grotty and his friends sometimes took Berty's boogie board and threw it out into the ocean, or played "Monkey in the Middle" with his sand toys. Sometimes they kicked down his sand castles. All the while his bikini-wearing babysitter ignored the whole scene and kept on flirting with her lifeguard boyfriend.

Josie would watch Berty sitting on the sand, silently crying to himself on many afternoons. He wanted to grab Berty's board out of the water, hand it to him, and tell him he was okay, that it sucked to be the butt of the world's joke, that he understood.

But he never did. Mostly because he was sure that if he got involved, Grotty would focus his attention on him.

No, better to just stay out of it.

Josie would dig his toes in the sand, put on his dark sunglasses, put in his ear buds and turn up the The Jezabels so high it drowned out the waves and Berty and the big bad world.

And now, he was crouched behind a lime tree hoping he didn't get thrown in jail. This was not what he wanted to be doing. And it was as if Emerald read his mind.

"Look, you gotta buck up here, Giraffe Boy. It's not just about you and whether you are branded a child killer. It's about Trinket. And my mother. And its about all the children that are going to be fish food if Bangkok keeps going," she stood up.

"Anyway, we don't have a choice," she said.

"You can't just let life happen to you, sometimes you have to happen to life."

She started out from the tree.

"Well, you coming'?"

And that's when Josie found his feet moving, although his head was still behind him, somewhere in that lime tree. And he was watching himself move from car to car, bush to bush and then the two of them crouching low and scrambling across the street. He saw himself get to his lawn and run as fast as he could, disappearing into the pitch black of the alley.

A light went on in the van. He heard people moving around.

"Quick! We gotta get outta here," Emerald whispered and took her crow bar and wedged it between the sill and the window of the Organic Food Store. She half expected she wouldn't be able to force it open. It probably hadn't been opened in years, but as soon as she pushed on the bar, the window sprang open.

She stood back surprised.

"They're waiting for us," Josie said.

He didn't mean to say it, it kind of gurgled out of him, but he knew as surely as he knew anything, whatever was in the Organic Food Store wanted him to come in.

Emerald shot him a panicked look.

He cupped his hand and Emerald stepped into it. He pushed Emerald up into the window. She worked herself up over the sill and hit the floor inside with a thud.

"Who's out there?" Someone grumbled, as they poked their head out of the news van and moved a beacon of light from a torch around the yard.

"Josie jumped up, grabbed the sill and hoisted himself up into the window.