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“Right,” said Phil. “Sure. Trust you.” After Brian and Coco hadn’t said anything for a few minutes, Phil added, “Why aren’t you guys freaking out more? There’s a giant water snake trying to eat us, we’re stuck in a tree, and there was a guy just there who wanted to axe us, and you think he might be a ghost, and this is awful.”
Brian and Coco looked at each other. “Not our first time?” offered Coco after a moment, a little helplessly.
Brian peered again down through the branches. It was already harder to make out the edges of the silvery creature in the gloom. What were they going to do?
“Okay,” Phil said. “When we get out of this, you promise to tell me everything. No more secrets. I’m on the team now, right?” He was clearly trying to sound determined, but he mostly just sounded worried.
“Yeah,” said Brian to Phil. “You’re with us in the snake tree. On the team. No more secrets.”
“Great,” said Phil. “So I can ask again: now what?”
“I don’t know,” said Brian testily. “How am I supposed to know? You know more about snakes than I do.”
“Dude, you know more about weird stuff than I do, so—”
“This isn’t helping,” interrupted Coco. She was lying flat on the branch above them, feet and hands hooked around the limb like a cat. “We have to figure out something soon. We can’t let Ollie or my mom come into the woods to look for us.”
“Right,” said Brian. He thought. “Um, do you think it’s scared of fire?”
His friends both looked at him doubtfully. “Why do you ask?” said Phil.
“Well, if fire scares it away,” said Brian, “then Ollie and her dad and Coco’s mom are pretty safe on the beach. Unless their fire goes out. And maybe,” he added, feeling inspired, “we can light up some pine cones and drop them, and maybe drop a few of these fishhooks too. That would scare it maybe? Give us a chance to get away?”
“Pine cones?” Phil said. “It’s built like—like a boat-sized snake!”
“What if we dropped them down its throat?” said Brian.
“But it only opens its mouth when it’s mad or about to eat something . . .” Coco trailed off. “You can’t be serious.” She looked between Brian and Phil. “Right,” she said. “You are serious. You want to make the snake mad.”
Brian said, “Got a better idea?”
Neither of them did.
“Okay, If we need bait, then I’ll be bait,” Coco said, after Brian had outlined his plan. “I don’t think pine cones will make it mad enough. What if I go down and get the firewood? I think Phil dropped his bundle pretty close to the tree. We could drop chunks of firewood on it. Or would the axe help? Didn’t you grab the axe?” She squinted into the darkness.
“I dropped it,” said Brian. “Running for our lives and all. Also climbing to the ground would be way too dangerous. Let’s start just by throwing fishhooks. And burning pine cones.” Their tree, like the others, had hooks tied into its branches. Someone’s early warning system, Brian thought. What had happened to them? He hoped that the skeleton lying in the cabin hadn’t put up the fishhooks. That wasn’t a good sign for their chances.
Coco and Brian had begun clambering around the tree, passing his pocketknife between them and collecting some of the biggest fishhooks. The big ones were bigger than Coco’s face.
Brian had put a few of the biggest hooks over his arm, trying not to poke himself. He was glad he wasn’t afraid of heights. Coco was standing on the branch above them. “Coco, it was my idea,” he called up to her. “I’ll be bait.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Coco. “I’m way better at climbing than you, and I can’t throw. Either I’m bait, or I don’t help at all.”
Phil gave her a puzzled look. Brian could understand why. No one at school saw Coco like this. In school, Coco was small and clumsy a
nd kind of squeaky. She wasn’t the best at PE or anything. She liked to draw. She liked things that sparkled. She tripped over her own feet a lot. She always looked a little like a flower fairy.
She still did now, but it was the less-nice kind of flower fairy. The kind that maybe lived in a toadstool and defended the forest from invaders. Her pinkish hair straggled down her back, and she pushed strands of it off her face. Her eyes were narrow, her sparkly sneakers confident on the branch.
Phil said, with an anxious croak, “If you guys are sure about this—I’ll throw. If you light stuff on fire, Brian.”
Brian bit his lip and then he nodded. Logically, it was the best division of tasks. Coco, who was the smallest and the best climber, would be bait. Brian, who was good at making fires, would light up the missiles. And Phil, who was the pitcher for the middle school baseball team, would do the throwing.
But he felt cold and sick and scared. It wasn’t that great a plan. But what choice did they have? Coco climbed a few feet down. “Hey!” she yelled. “Hey, Lurky! Look up here!”
A huge filmy eye opened below them, shiny in the gloom. Brian stuck a rusted fishhook through a pine cone, getting ready to touch a flaming match to it and . . .
Somewhere in the woods, the axe man started singing. A new song this time. Brian turned his head involuntarily to listen.
