First 5 Pages March Workshop - Pagel-Hogan

Name: Elizabeth Pagel-Hogan

Genre: Middle Grade Contemporary

Title: Dare Club

I gripped the tree branch with all of my strength, but I couldn’t hold on much longer. 

“Hang on, Tony!” cried my best friend Inky. 

I closed my eyes. My arms pulled out of my shoulder sockets. I gritted my teeth as the rough bark scratched my palms. 

“I’m slipping!” I gasped. “I can’t hold on much longer!”

“I’ve almost got it!” Inky said. “Just one more second!”

I tried to hold on as his hand whipped around the page. He glanced at me, then back at his sketchbook, then back at me, then back to the sketchbook.

“Argh!” I cried. My fingers were numb, I couldn’t hold the branch any longer. I fell, and hit the ground almost instantly. I had only been dangling about a foot in the air. We were in the woods behind Inky’s house working on his new comic book story. I was helping Inky out and holding on to the branch so he could realistically draw a character in his new comic dangling in midair over a cliff. 

Inky was sitting on a log still sketching like crazy in his sketchbook that never left his side. Inky only drew with ink pens, never pencils, so his fingers and hands were always covered in black ink. He read somewhere that real artists never erased mistakes, they just worked them into their drawing. 

I flexed my numb fingers and grimaced as they itched and tingled. The rough bark had scratched off the day-old scabs I had gotten from falling - instead of stepping- out of my mom’s van. I brushed the constellation of bright red blood dots off my palms onto my shorts. My mom wouldn’t notice a little more blood. She told me once I kept the stain remover company in business all by myself. 

“Did you get it?” I asked Inky. 

He leaned back so I could see the page over his shoulder. 

I saw a guy hanging from a tree branch, a serious look of determination in his eye, the muscles in his arms bulging.

“Wow, who is that guy?” I asked.

“That’s you!” Inky grinned. “At least, it’s based on you.” 

“No way, dude.”

Once again Inky’s skills blew my mind. The guy on the paper did not look like some clumsy, scabby kid. The guy on the paper looked strong and brave. And cool. If I looked like the guy on the paper I would have no trouble starting middle school in two weeks. 

“What did I do wrong?” Inky held the sketchbook out at arm’s length and squinted at it through his glasses. 

“Nothing, as usual. It’s amazing,” I patted his shoulder. “I just wish I looked like that in real life.” 

Inky was the best artist in our elementary school. I was sure he was going to be the best artist in sixth grade, maybe even the entire middle school. But he was so shy about his drawings, I was the only one who knew how good he really was. Sometimes I felt like I was Robin to his Batman, keeping his talent a secret. If Robin was a total klutz, that is. 

 The scab on my elbow itched and reminded me of my plan. 

“Only two more weeks,” I reminded Inky. 

“That’s plenty of time,” Inky said.   

I hoped it was. It had to be. Only two more weeks and I could start middle school scab-free and get rid of that stupid nickname from elementary school. 

Trying not to get scabs ruined the summer. I wanted to climb trees. I wanted to use my new skateboard. I wanted to backflip off the diving board and play flashlight tag in the dark and even camp out with Inky in his backyard. But every one of those was sure to end up with klutzy me earning a brand new reddish-brown bumpy, itchy scab.

I looked at my palms again. They stung. Would these heal in two weeks? Even though I had stopped doing anything fun, or basically stopped, I still got scabs. When one got better, I tripped, or fell, or bumped into something and a whole new scab started. Not a great look for the start of middle school.

“Are you almost done?” I said.  

“Almost,” Inky said without looking up. 

It was late in the afternoon and even in the cool of the woods sweat rolled down my back. I was ready to head back to the air conditioning. I wished there was a breeze. But the woods were completely still. As soon as I noticed that, I realized there was something different about the woods. There was no sound at all. No birds, no insects. 

I shifted from foot to foot and stared into the trees. The woods weren’t a really big forest or wilderness but once you’re a little ways in you can’t see any houses. Basically it was a large area of trees and bushes but there was a ravine with a creek winding along the bottom. Down there were some cool boulders that were fun to climb on, but you had to be really careful about poison ivy. And no matter how careful I was, I usually ended up with a new set of scrapes, bruises and a really itchy rash. Whenever Inky and I played in his woods we usually went to a small clearing with some fallen logs. Other kids went there, too, because once we found the cold black ashes of a campfire and a bunch of crushed, empty beer cans there. We didn’t tell Inky’s mom about that. 

We were alone in the clearing, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone or something was nearby. 

And then I heard a sound that filled my stomach with piranhas. 

“Oh no,” I said. “Hide!”

I shoved Inky backward off the log and dragged him behind the trunk of a giant tree.  

“Tony!” Inky said. “Watch out!”

I scanned the woods. I couldn’t see them but I could hear them.

“You bent the page,” he said. Typical Inky. He wasn’t worried about the coming danger, but if anything happened to his sketchbook the world would end.

“Shh!” I whispered. “Sorry!”

“And you made me owe me another apology for making me wreck my drawing,” he frowned.

“Sorry sorry,” I whispered. Then I clamped my hand over his mouth and pointed. He followed my finger with his eyes just as a group of kids came down the trail. His eyes widened. They were kids we knew, from elementary school, but they were the last kids I wanted to see on summer vacation. 

It was Gunther and his gang.  

Gunther had a chipped tooth and his own smartphone. He had a group of cronies who followed him around like the mosquitos in the summer and were just as irritating. They were always whispering to each other and shoving people out of the way. Seeing Gunther and his gang of bodyguards was not how I planned to end my summer. I hoped he had been abducted by aliens or recruited for science experiments at the bottom of the ocean. 

I knew when sixth grade started I’d have to face him but I didn’t expect to face him here. 

We flattened our backs against the tree and I held my breath as they neared the clearing.