I'd probably gotten a whole hour's sleep by the time the Central Monhegan Power Company's generator started up again. And I'd have slept through that easily if Dad, while trying to turn his Wagner off, hadn't turned the CD player's volume dial the wrong way and cranked it up to the maximum.
My second awakening of the morning was quieter, although no less nerve-racking. I woke up realizing that I needed to go to the bathroom. Luckily, before I leapt off the sofa, I noticed a small, warm weight lying on top of me. Spike.
Because I'd once rescued him from dire peril, Spike had decided I was the one person in the world he liked, other than Mrs. Waterston. Unfortunately, since his memory was as bad as his temper, Spike periodically forgot who Mrs. Waterston and I were. Which made him more dangerous to us than to the people he didn't like. At least they could keep their distance. He was always trying to climb into our laps to be petted, which brought us within easy chewing distance when he suddenly decided to mistake us for the dreaded mail carrier.
Mrs. Waterston took this a lot more philosophically than I did. Why couldn't Michael's mother have adopted a cat, for heaven's sake, instead of an overbred nine-pound dust mop?
I knew from experience that Spike was a lot more likely to bite you if you woke him up suddenly than if you let him wake up at his own pace. And you learned to give him a wide berth for the first hour or two, until he'd had his walk and his breakfast.
I lay there, growing increasingly uncomfortable as Spike slumbered, unbelievably loud snores issuing from his tiny pushed-in nose. Finally, around dawn, he heard Aunt Phoebe rattling pans in the kitchen and ran off to see if it was raining food in there.
"You look tired," Michael said over breakfast.
"'The Ride of the Valkyries' is not my idea of a lullaby," I said, frowning at Dad. "It's a wonder I have any hearing left, as loud as that damned thing was."
"Remarkable speakers, aren't they?" Dad said.
"Hurry up with breakfast," I whispered to Michael. "We need to talk."
"Okay," Michael said--a little too loudly, for he found he'd agreed to a second helping of Mrs. Fenniman's undercooked grits.
"Well, the damned storm's stalled again," Mrs. Fenniman announced.
"Is the ferry running?" Rob asked.
"I said stalled, not gone away," Mrs. Fenniman replied. "Just close enough to keep the ferry from running, but not close enough to bother us much. Not yet anyway. Looks like we'll have good weather for another day."
I glanced out at the gray sky and the faint but steady drizzle. Yes, this would be Mrs. Fenniman's idea of good weather.
Michael and I managed to escape the house without anyone else tagging along, although Dad insisted that we each shoulder a backpack filled with several pounds of survival gear that we might need if we got lost for a few weeks. And Aunt Phoebe gave us a long list of errands she wanted us to run down in the village.
"You'd think the village was in Siberia," I complained as we finally escaped down the lane. "It's not as if it would take them ten minutes to walk down here themselves."
"If it keeps them happy," Michael said. He looked a lot more rested than I felt, and when he shook the water out of his hair, he resembled a hunk from a commercial for deodorant soap. I could feel my hair, initially frizzy from the damp, being matted down by the rain; no doubt I'd soon resemble a drowned rat.
"How did you sleep?" I asked.
"Your brother snores," he said.
"So does Spike."
"Spike doesn't talk in his sleep."
"Did Rob say anything interesting?"
"No, and if I hear another word about Lawyers from Hell…"
"I'm really sorry," I said. "It's all my fault; I should never have suggested coming here."
"Let's make a deal," Michael said. "I won't blame you for anything that goes wrong if you promise to stop apologizing for bringing me here. After all, if my damned car hadn't had those two flats, we might have spotted them before boarding the ferry the day before yesterday, and we could have changed our plans and found a bed-and-breakfast on the mainland."
"It's a deal," I said.
"So let's go down to the grocery store and see if they still have any of the things your aunt wants."
"We should probably hit both grocery stores," I said as we squelched down the road.
"Both grocery stores? How can an island this small possibly support two grocery stores?"
"The two of them together are smaller than a Seven-Eleven back home. And they serve slightly different clientele. There's the upscale grocery store--in that salmon pink building with the turquoise trim," I said, pointing down the road. "Caters more to the artists and the summer people; probably does a lot less business this time of year. Sells Brie and whole-grain bread from an organic bakery on the mainland. Nice selection of wines. The place that looks like a bait shop is the other grocery. More like a general store, really. Bologna and Wonder Bread, and a good variety of beers. They do a lot more steady year-round business, I should think."