Iris just stared. She hadn’t taken off her orange knit hat, and Vi could only imagine how uncomfortable she must be. Vi could see the sweat forming on her forehead, which was white and shiny and perfectly smooth like marble. The hat was filthy, stained with grease and God knew what else. Vi was surprised that Gran let her wear it all the time, even to dinner last night, which was just plain crazy because Gran had all these strict rules about dinner: always at six in the dining room, show up in clean clothes, hair combed, hands and face washed. Best manners. Please and thank you and no elbows on the table, not ever. And everyone needed to be a member of the clean-plate club, or no leaving the table.
But Gran had said nothing, just let Iris wear the grimy thing. And because Iris didn’t talk, she didn’t have to say please or thank you, or the other big part of dinner, which was telling a story about your day. When you told your story, you got extra praise for using a new vocabulary word you’d learned. Gran was big on vocabulary and on the idea that they should always be challenging their minds. Last night, Vi had used the word abhorrent: “I think Old Mac shooting the rabbits that get into the garden is abhorrent and completely unnecessary.”
“It’s a monster club,” Vi told Iris now. “We talk about monsters. We go to see monster movies at the drive-in on Saturday nights in the summer. We go on monster hunts. And we’re writing a book. The Book of Monsters. We’re putting everything we know about them into it, and Eric’s drawing the illustrations.”
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.
“Welcome to the monster clubhouse,” Vi said, holding the door open.
She let Iris go in first, and noticed that her breathing seemed to change, get a little faster. She was excited; Vi could feel the thrum of energy coming off her.
“It’s great, isn’t it? And it’s all ours. No one knows about this,” she said, looking right at Eric. “Right, Eric?”
He nodded, looking Vi in the eye. Maybe he hadn’t told Gran after all, which would be a miracle.
The clubhouse was framed with two-by-fours and sided with wide boards. There was a door and two windows, the windows too warped and swollen to open anymore. They had a card table and two folding metal chairs set up in the middle, an old broom in the corner that they used to sweep up dirt and leaves that found their way in. Moss was growing on the windowsills and up on the roof. To Vi, it was like a fairy cottage, a magic house where anything could happen. Maybe it wasn’t even real for anyone but them; it only appeared when they came into the woods looking for it.
“We’ll have to get another chair,” Vi said, “now that there are three of us.”
“There are a whole bunch in the barn at the Inn,” Eric said. He pointed to the chair he usually sat in. “Iris, you can use mine.” He smiled, his cheeks coloring. “If you want, I mean.”
Against one wall was a set of wooden shelves that held some provisions—peanut butter, crackers, a canteen full of water—along with all of their monster-hunting equipment: a pair of sturdy leather gloves, a compass, a magnifying glass, a flashlight, binoculars, a Swiss Army knife, wooden stakes (in case they encountered a vampire), and a small backpack to carry it all.
Eric pulled down the pack and started showing Iris their gear. “I bring my camera when we go monster hunting,” he added. “I’ve got a Polaroid. I’ve also got Gran’s old Instamatic, but you have to wait to get your film developed with that. This Christmas, I’m gonna ask for a real camera. A 35-millimeter Nikon. That’s what real wildlife photographers use. Like the ones who shoot for National Geographic. Gran says I can put a darkroom in the hall closet and learn to develop my own film.”