I Owe You One Read online

  I Owe You One

  NATALIE HYDE

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Text copyright © 2011 Natalie Hyde

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Hyde, Natalie, 1963-

  I owe you one / Natalie Hyde.

  (Orca young readers)

  Issued also in electronic format.

  ISBN 978-1-55469-414-3

  I. Title. II. Series: Orca young readers

  PS8615.Y33I17 2011 JC813’.6 C2011-903478-6

  First published in the United States, 2011

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2011929253

  Summary: After an old lady rescues him from drowning, Wes considers how to honor his dead father’s wishes while repaying what his friend Zach calls a life debt.

  Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed this book on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council®.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover artwork by Peter Ferguson

  Author photo by Brad Scott

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO Box 5626, Stn. B PO Box 468

  Victoria, BC Canada Custer, WA USA

  V8R 6S4 98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  14 13 12 11 • 4 3 2 1

  For Nathan, who loves a good explosion

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Inch by inch, I leaned farther out over the swollen spring creek. My left hand clutched a slippery tree trunk while my right hand reached for my favorite ballcap. It was dangling at the very tip of a narrow limb hanging over the water, and it looked like the wind would rip it off and send it down the surging creek at any moment.

  My mom would kill me if she knew I was this close to the flooding creek, but I was desperate.

  I heard footsteps crunching on the gravel path. My heart pounded. I was about to be caught doing the dumbest thing I had ever done. Well, maybe not the dumbest. There was that whole slime-mold experiment last summer. We couldn’t use our bathtub for a month.

  I made one last grab for my hat.

  You know, everything really does warp into slow motion when you are heading for disaster. And I certainly was. The May rains that had turned the normally quiet creek into a raging torrent had also turned the bank into a greasy chute heading straight for the water. As I lunged for my cap, I lost my balance. My feet jerked out from under me and I landed— splat!—in the mud and began sliding headfirst down the slippery bank. Just before my face hit the water, my right hand grabbed a root and I whipped around, almost dislocating my shoulder.

  And there I lay, half in and half out of the icy spring runoff while the angry current pulled at my legs. I held on to that gnarled root with a mighty grip. My other hand groped in the leaves and mud for a way to haul myself out of there.

  “Help!” I yelled into the wind. “Is anyone out there?”

  I was saved from certain death by Mrs. Minton (who’s got to be at least eighty) and her old wooden cane. She was hanging on to a tree with all her strength. I could see her mouth opening and closing, but between the rushing of the water and the pounding of the blood in my ears, I couldn’t hear what she was saying.

  I consider myself pretty strong for an eleven-year-old, but it took every ounce of energy I had to put one hand over the other on that cane and pull myself out of the creek. It didn’t help that the cane was covered with little metal souvenir crests from Mrs. Minton’s trips to Europe. Every time my hand moved up the cane, the crests cut into my flesh.

  Standing on the muddy bank, shaking with the cold, my hands bleeding, I didn’t know which was worse: the trouble I would be in from my mom, or the teasing I was going to get from Zach for being rescued by an old lady and her cane. It was a tough call.

  “Wesley James Morgan,” she said, “are you trying to get yourself killed?”

  Old people and your parents are the only ones allowed to get away with calling you by your whole name. I hate the name Wesley. No one—I mean no one—calls me Wesley. It’s Wes. Always Wes.

  “N-n-no,” I said, my teeth chattering uncontrollably. “I was t-t-trying t-to get m-m-my hat b-b-back.”

  “You kids!” she said, smiling and wrapping me in her heavy crocheted shawl. “Never seeing danger. I was just like that.” It was a real granny shawl, multicolored, with purple and pink fringe. If any of my friends had walked by right then and seen me in that shawl, I probably would have jumped back in the creek.

  I watched in disbelief as she used the tip of her cane to snag my hat and present it to me with a shake of her head. “I bet your mother would be none too happy to hear her only son was almost washed away for the sake of a baseball cap.”

  The chattering was worse now that the wind was turning my soaking wet clothes to ice, so I didn’t try to reply. No use explaining to her that my dad had bought me the hat on our last vacation together.

  “Well, it was providential that I decided to go for a walk today, despite what the wind does to my hair.”

  “Are you g-g-going to t-t-tell my m-m-mom what happ-p-pened?”

  Mrs. Minton thought for a moment. “I guess if the Fates had wanted you to get into trouble with your mother, they would have sent her to walk your dog instead of giving me the idea of getting some fresh air. Come along, Wesley. You can dry off at my house.”

  So that’s how I came to be sitting in Mrs. Minton’s living room, covered in two afghans, my feet stuffed into huge furry moose slippers, sipping steaming hot chocolate while she threw most of my clothes in her dryer. Some things I left on even though they were wet.

  I had never been in Mrs. Minton’s house before, and it was nothing like I expected. No flowered couches, cats or cabinets full of teacups. Instead, every available inch of space—the walls, the fireplace mantel, all the tables—was covered with photographs. These weren’t your average family pictures of smiling babies and graduations though. In one picture a group of women in yellow crash helmets stood on a rocky shore, holding up their paddles in front of enormous rapids. Other photos showed a parachutist’s feet hitting the ground, a young woman hugging a koala, smiling men in red parkas on a snowy mountain. There was an old brownish photo of a downhill skier with no helmet. She was caught mid-flight, bright-eyed, her curly hair streaming out behind her. Mrs. Minton’s house was full of people having adventures.

  I tried to picture Mrs. Minton having an adventure. I couldn’t.

  “Are these people your family?” I asked.

  Mrs. Minton smiled. “They are.” She set a plate of shortbread down in front of me and pointed to the pictures. “This is my nephew B
ill parachuting in France. And that’s my granddaughter Rachel with the koala in Australia. She’s on the national ski team now, you know. She has her first big race as a team member this July in Chile.”

  “In the summer?”

  “It will be winter in the southern hemisphere, Wesley.”

  “Oh.” My eyes shot back to the picture of the skier with the curly hair. Mrs. Minton followed my eyes.

  “You’d never guess that only thirteen seconds after this picture was taken, I would take a spill and blow out my knee, would you?”

  “That’s you?” I tried really hard to believe that the daring, wild woman in the picture was old Mrs. Minton.

  She laughed. “I wasn’t born this old, you know. And once I get my hip replacement, I might just strap on a pair of skis for old times’ sake.”

  I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not.

  “Did you win any races?” I asked.

  “I had my moments, but I was never as good as Rachel. Her mother had her skiing before she could walk.” Mrs. Minton laughed a little as she passed me a picture of a tiny girl on two stubby skis. She was stuffed into a snowsuit so puffy that she looked like a pink marshmallow with legs. I smiled as I handed the picture back and pointed to another one on the mantel.

  “Who are those men on the mountain?” I asked.

  “That’s my father and three of his friends at Base Camp One on Mount Everest.”

  Mount Everest! I would have jumped up to take a closer look, but I was pinned down by the afghans. Why couldn’t I have been rescued by a mountaineer with cool equipment?

  “I think I’d better get going before my mom wonders what happened to me,” I said.

  Mrs. Minton nodded. “Let me grab your things. They should be pretty dry now.”

  She came back with my clothes, and I shuffled to the bathroom to change.

  Dressed again, I hurried to the front door.

  “Um, thanks,” I said, looking at the floor, one hand on the doorknob. “For saving my life and all that.”

  She paused before asking, “What made you risk your life for a ballcap anyway? Don’t you kids have dozens of those things?”

  “My dad gave it to me,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

  There was a long silence as my words hung in the air. “I was really sorry to hear about his passing, Wesley,” she finally said. “Such a good man.”

  I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I just nodded.

  “Well, just promise me you’ll stay away from that creek until it settles down. There’s no telling when I’ll feel up to another walk.”

  I looked up just in time to see Mrs. Minton smile. I try not to look at old people when they smile. There’s nothing worse than seeing their false teeth slip, so I was relieved to see that Mrs. Minton seemed to still have all her original teeth. And it wasn’t just a little grin. It made her whole face light up, and it made me smile too.

  I thanked her again and slipped out the front door, terrified that someone would see me. I jogged down her front path, trying to get out of the danger zone. I almost made it. I was just closing her gate when my best friend Zach came around the corner.

  “Hey, Wes!” he called. “Where’ve you been? I’ve been looking for you for half an hour.” He looked down at my hand, which was still on the gate, and back up at my face.

  “Uh, I was just…” For a split second I considered telling him a new and improved version of my adventure. In it I was the hero who risked his life to save old Mrs. Minton, whose cane got tangled in the bushes. Weak and confused, she was about to slip down the muddy bank to a certain death. While valiantly holding on to her, a freak gust of wind blew me into the roaring creek and I was nearly swept away. Coming up for one last gasp of air, my life flashed before my eyes, and I managed to grab a branch, haul myself out and drag her away from the bank to safety too.

  Unfortunately I am a terrible liar. My dad used to say I should never play poker because my face was so easy to read. He always knew right away who had taken the last slice of pizza from the fridge or that I had been given a blue slip for not having my homework done.

  And Zach was the last person I could fool. We’d been friends since we were old enough to throw sand in each other’s faces in the sandbox. I was going to have to tell him everything.

  I got off easy. Zach only laughed once. The thought of me under Mrs. Minton’s afghans wearing only my underwear and some fuzzy moose slippers was too much for him.

  Chapter 2

  Two weeks later, I was pretty sure that Zach had forgotten the whole rescue thing with Mrs. Minton. I could turn my attention to more important matters.

  “How steep do you think it is?” I asked Zach as I rode my bicycle through the old gate that he held open for me.

  “It’s like a wall! Straight up!”

  “Remind me again why we’re going across— umpfh—Mr. Delany’s empty field—ouch—on our bikes?”

  “You want—ow—to try it out, don’t you?”

  At the rate we were going, our bikes would be wrecked before we got to the hill. But Zach was right. I did want to try it out. The land around Six Roads, the little town where we lived, was basically limestone cliffs and trees. Not exactly the ideal place for dirt biking. To locate a hill that wasn’t just a pile of rocks was a major find. The perfect thing for when I finally got my 250cc Hummer dirt bike.

  “How’d you find it?” I asked.

  “Some professor is interested in the old Indian copper mine my dad found when he—ouch—was doing survey work. He asked Dad to show him the location, and I went with them. While they were— umpfh—crawling around looking for the entrance, I climbed up the cliff and had a look around. This hill has been hiding in the corner of Delany’s land all the time!”

  “Are we—ow—almost there?”

  Zach stopped his bike to let me catch up. I was glad he did. My teeth were aching from going over all the ruts, and I was sweating. I was glad I hadn’t worn my jacket.

  “It’s just over there,” he said, pointing to a stand of trees that was fenced off from the huge field.

  It took a few more minutes of tooth-rattling riding to get there.

  “We just need to take down a couple of these rails so we can get our bikes in,” Zach said. “There’s a sort of path through the trees.”

  I looked around, feeling a little nervous. It was an unwritten rule in the country that you never damaged fences.

  “There aren’t any animals in this field, are there?” It was a huge pasture, and I couldn’t see the far end of it around the trees.

  Zach shook his head. “I didn’t see anything in here the other day when I checked it out. Besides, the Delanys don’t have cattle.”

  “Are you sure they won’t mind us riding on their property?”

  Zach sighed. “Why are you such a wimp today?”

  I didn’t want to tell him that one close call on my life per month was my limit. And I didn’t need to get into any trouble with my mom. I was pretty sure she had figured out what had happened at the creek a couple of weeks ago. She had looked suspiciously at my clothes and sniffed them with this funny look on her face.

  “Okay, but this better be good.” Together we wrestled the rails off and laid them on the ground. We pushed our bikes through, and Zach hopped on his.

  “Shouldn’t we replace these rails?” I asked.

  “Nah. Then we’d just have to do it all over again when we leave.”

  I listened for a moment. There was no movement. No sound of a stampede. Zach was right. The field was empty.

  The path wound between a few scraggly pine trees. Within a few seconds, it became obvious why the woodlot was fenced off. The land dipped down into a gully that was swampland. I skidded to a stop.

  “How are we supposed to get through that?”

  Zach pointed to a couple of boards straddling some stones poking out of the swamp. They made a rickety sort of boardwalk through the narrowest part, and he stood on the pedals as he b
ounced across.

  I was going to tell Zach to forget it, but then I saw it. On the other side of the swamp, the land leveled and then swooped up into an impressive tower of dirt. The sides were steep and the top was flat. It looked just like the hills in motocross races I had watched on tv.

  I rolled down to the swamp and inched my way across the boards to where Zach was waiting.

  Bushes and rocks made it hard to get up any speed before attacking the hill, but we managed to get about halfway up before getting off and pushing our bikes up the rest of the way. It would be better on my Hummer. I could just rev up the engine and conquer the hill.

  “You were right, Zach. This hill is awesome,” I said as we rested at the top.

  “I told you. And just think—” Zach stopped talking as we both heard a sound. A sound that didn’t belong in an empty field.

  We looked at each other in horror.

  “You didn’t just hear a neigh, did you?” I asked, hoping I had imagined it.

  “Uh, maybe?”

  The blood drained from my face as I turned my bike and headed back down the hill. If I had dared to take a hand off my handlebars, I would have smacked myself on the forehead. How could I have forgotten that the Delanys kept horses? They were so proud of their trotters or pacers or whatever they called them.

  We had to get back to the fence and fix it. Fast. Before the horses got in.

  I was almost back to the boardwalk across the swamp when my heart sank. We were too late. One of the horses was not only inside the fenced-off area, it was in the swamp. It was struggling to pull its legs out of the mud, and the whites of its eyes were showing as it tossed its head and neighed.

  Zach panicked. Maybe because he realized this was all his fault. “What is it doing in there?!” he screeched.

  “Well, it’s not line dancing,” I yelled back, my panic turning to anger as I realized I was going to be in it as deep as the horse if my mother or the Delanys found out.

  Our screams scared the horse, and it struggled even more and sank even deeper into the mud.

  A couple more horses were at the top of the rise, ready to head for the swamp.