Chapter 4: The Clubhouse

  Scene 1: Paddle Out to the Blind

  The sun hadn’t climbed all the way up the sky yet, but the mist was already starting to lift from the bayou like breath off a secret.

  Two jon boats cut slowly through the still water, leaving soft ripples behind them that melted into lily pads and reflections of cypress trunks. The air was thick with birdsong and the faint buzz of dragonflies, and every so often a heron would lift off in slow, lazy flight like it had nowhere in particular to be.

  Josie Mae sat at the front of the lead boat, a paddle across her knees and her eyes locked on the winding trail of water ahead. Her red hair was tucked up under a Braves cap she’d stolen from her older cousin, and her boots—already damp—rested against the edge of the hull. She knew this stretch of swamp better than most folks knew their own driveways. But today, it felt new. Like it was holdin’ its breath for something.

  Behind her, Bo rowed with his usual mix of muscle and complaints.

  “Why is it,” he huffed, “that the person who plans these trips never ends up paddlin’?”

  “Because leadership is about delegation,” Josie replied without looking back.

  Cricket, perched on the back bench like a swamp queen, added, “Also, Josie’s aim with a paddle is deadly, and nobody wants to be on the wrong end of it.”

  In the second boat, Lila Rae had a rolled-up map case clutched tight to her chest, while Kenji manned the small electric trolling motor he’d salvaged from a broken RC boat and wired to a car battery with nothing but duct tape and determination.

  Tadpole, quiet as always, scanned the trees, watching for signs. He had a gut sense of direction, like a compass that ran on stories instead of magnets.

  “There,” Josie said finally, pointing to a break in the reeds ahead. “See that low spit of land? That’s where it is.”

  The boats slid into the clearing, brushing aside cattails and water hyacinth until the old duck blind came into view.

  It was exactly as they’d left it… and worse.

  The blind sat on stilts, half-sunken into the muck, the tin roof peeled back like an open sardine can. One wall leaned precariously to the left, and a family of frogs had taken up residence in what used to be the storage bench.

  “Home sweet home,” Bo muttered, pulling the boat ashore with a grunt.

  Cricket was already climbing out, boots sinking into the damp ground. “I call the dry corner!”

  “If there is one,” Kenji added, hauling the car battery like it weighed more than his backpack.

  Lila Rae stepped onto the small platform and peeked inside. “Floor’s mostly there. We’ll need to clear it, patch the roof, and maybe reinforce the sides.”

  Josie looked around at the rotten boards and vines curling through the floorboards. She grinned. “Good bones.”

  Bo gave her a look. “It’s got frog bones.”

  “Then it’s halfway sacred,” Tadpole murmured, kneeling beside the front post and brushing away a tangle of moss.

  Kenji tapped a beam with a wrench. “We’ll need fresh wood. Maybe salvage from my uncle’s shed. And I can rig up some lights—solar, if we hang a panel in the trees.”

  “We’ll split the jobs,” Josie said, hands on her hips. “Bo, Kenji—you two on repairs. Lila Rae, you’re our map-keeper. Document everything. Tadpole scouts the perimeter. Cricket... find the best place to hang a hammock.”

  Cricket saluted. “Finally, a job I was born for.”

  The frogs croaked louder now, disturbed but not angry. The swamp moved gently around them, a world just out of time.

  As Josie stepped into the blind and looked out across the water, something in her chest swelled—not fear, not nerves. Something bigger. Like she’d reached the edge of a map no one else could read.

  “This is it,” she said quietly. “Our base. Our start.”

  And the swamp, as if in reply, sent a ripple across the still water… right toward the bend.

  Scene 2: Patchin’ It Up

  The duck blind creaked and groaned like an old man waking from a long nap as Bo and Kenji got to work with a hammer, a socket wrench, and an alarming amount of duct tape.

  Bo stood on a milk crate—one that had definitely seen better days—trying to nail a warped board back onto the frame. Sweat poured down his back, and his shirt stuck to him like syrup on hot pancakes.

  “Why does this roof hate me?” he muttered, smacking a nail sideways and promptly barking his thumb.

  “Because you hit it like it owes you money,” Kenji replied without looking up from a tangle of wires. He had the remains of a solar-powered garden light cracked open on the floor beside him, its insides scattered like breadcrumbs across a milk crate.

  Josie watched from the entryway, holding a coil of rope and smiling despite herself. “It hated you last summer too, if I recall.”

  “Last summer it didn’t leak like a busted pirogue,” Bo grumbled. “And I still say we coulda found a new clubhouse. One without frogs.”

  Cricket—currently sitting in the dry corner, her “assigned hammock planning station”—cupped a tiny green tree frog in her hands. “First of all, these frogs have been here. We’re the guests. Second, I have named this one ‘Captain Ribbit.’ He says you’re being dramatic.”

  Bo pointed his hammer at her. “That frog is judging me.”

  “Captain Ribbit judges everyone,” she replied solemnly, setting him gently on a mossy shelf.

  Outside, Tadpole worked quietly along the edge of the blind, reinforcing the stilts with extra planks salvaged from Kenji’s stash. Lila Rae was dusting off the old crate they used as a table and writing “COMMAND CENTER” across it in black marker.

  Kenji wiped his forehead and stood, holding up a small blinking light panel. “Solar rig’s ready. Should get a couple hours of power in the evening if we mount it on that high branch.”

  Bo, still struggling with his board, grunted. “Cool. We can all read spooky ghost maps under mood lighting.”

  Josie stepped up beside him and took the hammer. With one clean swing, she drove the nail straight in.

  Bo stared at her.

  Josie handed him the hammer. “It’s about finesse, not force.”

  He muttered something under his breath about “finesse is overrated.”

  By midday, the roof had been patched with a mixture of tin, tarp, and stubborn determination. The broken corner was reinforced with lattice from an old crab trap. The inside was swept clean, the floor dry, the benches cleared, and the frogs relocated gently to their own “side of the clubhouse”—marked by Cricket with a line of shells and the phrase “No Bo Zone.”

  When it was done, the kids stepped back and looked at what they’d made.

  It still leaned a little.

  It still smelled faintly of mildew and frog.

  But it stood solid.

  And it was theirs.

  Josie stood in the doorway, arms crossed, the rope slung over one shoulder like a bandolier. The morning’s work had left her grime-smudged and glowing.

  “This,” she said, voice proud and sure, “is now base camp.”

  Cricket gave a whoop and flopped into the hammock she’d rigged between two corner beams. “I hereby christen this glorious mess ‘The Swamp Fortress of Fun and Possibly Danger.’”

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  Lila Rae lifted a brow. “That’s a little long for a plaque.”

  Bo plopped down on the bench with a groan. “Can we vote on a name before she gets us stuck with that forever?”

  Tadpole gave the roof a final knock. “It’ll hold.”

  Kenji nodded. “Long enough for whatever comes next.”

  Josie just smiled and looked out across the water, where the shimmer had once been and where the mystery waited still.

  They had shelter.

  They had each other.

  And now, they had a place to plan.

  Scene 3: Roles and Responsibilities

  The sun slanted low through the patched tin roof, casting thin stripes of light across the floorboards like the swamp itself was peeking in to see what all the fuss was about.

  Inside the duck blind—now swept, patched, and proudly lopsided—the kids sat in a loose circle on the floor. Empty peanut butter jars, cracker crumbs, and half-drunk bottles of root beer littered the old crate in the center they’d dubbed the “command table.” Captain Ribbit sat perched on a coil of rope nearby, quietly overseeing the proceedings with amphibian gravitas.

  Josie leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, her eyes bright and serious. “Alright. If we’re doin’ this for real, we need to organize. Make it official.”

  “You mean like chores?” Bo groaned, flopping back against the wall.

  “More like specialties,” Josie corrected. “Everyone’s got a job.”

  Lila Rae flipped open her notebook. “I already made a list.”

  “Of course you did,” Kenji said.

  She read from the page like a professor giving a lecture. “We need a leader, a navigator, a tech and supplies officer, a scout, muscle, and someone to keep us from gettin’ too serious.”

  Cricket raised her hand. “Dibs on that last one.”

  “Obviously,” Josie grinned.

  Bo straightened a little. “Hold up. ‘Muscle’ doesn’t mean I carry all the heavy stuff, right?”

  “Actually,” Lila Rae said, “it definitely means that.”

  Bo sighed. “Fine. But I want snack duty too. Nobody makes better biscuit runs than me.”

  Tadpole, quiet as ever, nodded once. “Scout works.”

  Kenji shrugged. “I’ll take tech. I already brought the tools. And I’ve got that waterproof map case.”

  Lila Rae smiled. “Then I’m cartographer and logkeeper. I’ll write everything down and track every step.”

  Cricket grinned. “And I’m… morale, distraction, and spontaneous genius.”

  “You’re the chaos element,” Kenji said.

  Cricket beamed. “That too.”

  “And I guess that makes me the leader,” Josie said, not as a boast, just a truth they all already knew.

  Bo raised his bottle. “To Commander Josie.”

  “General,” she corrected with a smirk. “Commander sounds too polite.”

  They all laughed.

  Lila Rae scribbled the list into her journal, then tore out a page and pinned it to the inside wall of the blind with a rusty nail. The paper fluttered in the breeze like a tiny flag.

  The names were written in bold, curly letters:

  The Mudpuppy Patrol – Official Roles

  ? General: Josie Mae Dupree

  ? Scout: Tadpole “Preacher” Jones

  ? Mapkeeper: Lila Rae Nguyen

  ? Tech & Gear: Kenji Nguyen

  ? Muscle & Snacks: Bo Carter

  ? Spirit & Lookout: Cricket Morales

  Outside, the swamp sang softly—birds, frogs, and the faint whisper of wind through the reeds.

  Inside, the kids sat a little straighter. Smiled a little bigger.

  This wasn’t just a clubhouse now.

  It was headquarters.

  Scene 4: The Mudpuppy Patrol

  The afternoon sun settled soft and golden over the swamp, filtering through the patched tin roof in warm stripes that danced across the duck blind’s newly cleaned floor. The frogs had quieted for the time being, and even the bugs seemed to hush for the moment, as if they knew something important was about to happen.

  Josie was sitting cross-legged near the entrance, twisting a piece of bark into a loose spiral, when she spotted it—small, wiggly, and determined.

  “Hey, y’all,” she said, nodding toward the floor by her boot. “Look at this little fella.”

  The others leaned in.

  A stubby-legged salamander—mud-brown with feathery red gills like tiny flames—ambled across the floorboards, completely unbothered by its audience. It had a wide mouth and bright, unblinking eyes. Slow but sure, it crawled toward the patch of sunlight without a care in the world.

  Kenji adjusted his glasses. “That’s a mudpuppy.”

  Bo blinked. “A what now?”

  “Mudpuppy,” Kenji repeated. “Type of salamander. Lives in the muck, doesn’t grow up, breathes through those little frilly gills. Weird little legend in biology circles. Kind of... stubborn. Resilient.”

  “Lives in the mud, refuses to grow up, and don’t care what anyone thinks?” Cricket grinned. “I think we’ve found our mascot.”

  Tadpole gave a small nod. “Fittin’.”

  Josie reached gently and let the mudpuppy crawl up onto a piece of damp bark. It sat there, blinking slowly, like it was already part of the club.

  “Maybe that’s what we call ourselves,” she said. “The Mudpuppy Patrol.”

  Bo laughed. “You serious? We’re namin’ ourselves after a swamp lizard?”

  “It’s not a lizard,” Kenji said. “And I like it.”

  Lila Rae tapped her pencil against her notebook thoughtfully. “Mudpuppies are tough. Small. Kinda strange. But they survive where other creatures can’t. And they stick together.”

  “And they don’t need nobody’s permission to exist,” Josie added with a smirk.

  Cricket threw her arms wide. “I second it! Long live the Mudpuppy Patrol!”

  Bo rolled his eyes, but even he couldn’t hide the grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Fine. But I’m not wearin’ a costume.”

  Josie looked around at her crew—mud-smeared, mosquito-bitten, sun-flushed, and happy.

  “Alright, then,” she said, standing up and holding the bark like a badge. “It’s official. We’re the Mudpuppy Patrol.”

  Kenji pulled out a scrap of cardboard and quickly sketched a rough emblem—a little salamander with big gills and a crooked grin—then pinned it to the inside wall of the blind beside the roles list.

  Lila Rae drew a line beneath it with her marker and wrote:

  “No mystery too murky, no swamp too deep.”

  Cricket clapped her hands once. “And we need a secret knock. Three taps, pause, two taps, frog croak.”

  Bo groaned. “You cannot expect me to croak.”

  “Captain Ribbit expects it,” she said solemnly, pointing to the frog still watching from the corner.

  Outside, a crow called from the trees. Somewhere in the distance, water lapped softly against a hidden shore. But inside the duck blind, six kids stood tall—not just as friends, but as something more.

  They had a name.

  They had a mission.

  And as far as they were concerned, the whole world had just shifted in their favor.

  Scene 5: The Map on the Wall

  Golden light poured through the patched tin roof in warm, broken beams, catching on dust motes and glinting off the small nails Bo had just hammered into the back wall of the duck blind. The floor creaked under the group’s weight as they gathered around Lila Rae, who was smoothing the wrinkled parchment out with gentle fingers.

  The map—folded and unfolded more times than anyone could count—was finally going up.

  Kenji held the corners while Lila Rae tacked it down carefully. “Don’t stretch it,” she warned. “This paper’s older than any of us. Maybe all of us put together.”

  “Probably smells like it too,” Bo muttered, wrinkling his nose. “Got that 'buried under a haunted truck' aroma.”

  Cricket leaned closer, her nose nearly touching the map. “I think it smells like secrets and adventure.”

  Josie stood back, arms crossed, watching it go up like a flag. The symbols and lines, once scattered and strange, now had context—memories attached to them. She could see each place they’d marked in her mind: the shimmer near the back fence, the rusted truck, Duke’s bait shop, the edge of Pelican Bend where the bridge-that-wasn’t used to be.

  Lila Rae uncapped her red marker and made the first mark—a tiny X near the bottom-left corner.

  “That’s the shimmer spot,” she said. “Day one.”

  Kenji took the marker and added another. “Truck and tin box. Day two.”

  Cricket reached for it but accidentally knocked over a can of root beer. “Oops.”

  Bo caught it mid-roll. “See? That’s why we can’t have nice things.”

  Tadpole, silent as ever, stepped forward and pointed to a thin, crooked line etched along the northern edge.

  “There,” he said. “That’s the trail past the carving. The one that leads toward where the bridge used to be.”

  Lila Rae drew a dotted line from the truck to that edge, adding a small question mark beside it.

  Josie stepped forward and took the marker next. She stared at the map for a moment, then drew a bold circle around the cluster of marks they’d made.

  “Right here,” she said. “This is where it starts.”

  Bo raised a brow. “Starts? I thought we already started.”

  Josie smiled, slow and sure. “We did. But now it’s real. This map—it’s not just someone else’s story anymore. It’s ours now.”

  Lila Rae pinned a strip of wax paper over the top to protect it, then stood back. “Looks official.”

  Kenji dug into his backpack and pulled out a flashlight. “We hang this right above it,” he said, clipping it to a nail. “We got light for late-night planning.”

  Cricket stood with her arms out dramatically. “Behold—the great tapestry of truth and mystery!”

  Bo rolled his eyes. “Behold—Cricket bein’ dramatic. Again.”

  “Jealousy doesn’t suit you,” she shot back.

  Tadpole, arms crossed, just said, “It suits nobody.”

  Everyone laughed.

  The map fluttered lightly in the breeze from the porch, its lines now framed in beams of setting sunlight.

  Josie stepped back, hands on her hips, a quiet kind of pride rising in her chest. The clubhouse was real. The map was up. The team was ready.

  They weren’t just following someone else’s clues anymore.

  They were chasing their own.

  Scene 6: What’s Up Around That Bend

  Twilight settled soft and slow over the bayou, painting the water in shades of peach, copper, and purple. The air was thick with frogsong, and somewhere out near the bend, a barred owl called once—long and low, like the woods were yawning.

  The Mudpuppy Patrol stood just outside their newly christened clubhouse, shoulder to shoulder on the narrow platform, gazing out over the water. The last golden light shimmered through the cypress trees, turning the moss into long threads of fire.

  Josie stood at the edge, arms folded over her chest, the map case tucked under one arm. Her eyes tracked the line where the trail disappeared into shadow, where the shimmer had once hovered. She wasn’t grinning now. Her face was set—not angry, not afraid. Just steady. Sure.

  “We’ve got a name,” she said softly. “We’ve got a place. We’ve got each other.”

  Bo shifted next to her, chewing the last bite of a granola bar. “And a map that leads to somethin’ weird.”

  Josie nodded. “Yeah. And we’re gonna find it.”

  Lila Rae clutched her notebook like a field report. “Even if it’s just a legend?”

  Josie turned to face them all, red curls glowing like a torch in the dying light. “Even if it’s nothin’. Even if it’s somethin’. Even if it’s trouble.”

  Kenji leaned on the railing beside her. “And if it’s dangerous?”

  Josie looked back at the bend.

  “Then we do it smart,” she said. “We go as far as we can. We keep each other safe. But we don’t stop. Not ‘til we find out what’s up around that bend.”

  The frogs croaked louder, almost like they were agreeing.

  Cricket gave a small salute, a goofy grin breaking across her face. “To the bend.”

  Tadpole nodded once. “To the truth.”

  Bo rolled his eyes but smiled anyway. “To makin’ sure y’all don’t get eaten by a ghost gator.”

  Lila Rae reached out and hooked her pinky through Josie’s.

  One by one, the others did the same until the whole crew was linked together in a ragged, sweaty, sunburnt, and perfect line.

  The Mudpuppy Patrol.

  Bound by a shimmer.

  By a mystery.

  And by a promise whispered into the fading light of the bayou.

  Josie looked at them all, then back at the shadowed trail.

  “We’re gonna find it,” she said again. “Whatever it is.”

  And in the hush that followed, even the swamp seemed to listen.