“Well?” I demand.
“Mmmmm,” he finally says. “There’s something not quite right about it.”
Dax stops strumming.
I stop breathing.
My heart stops beating.
“Pardon me?” I say.
“It’s…it’s…missin’ somethin’.”
“Missing something?” I repeat.
What is he even talking about?
“What’s it missing?” I ask.
“Emmm…pop,” he says, and goes back to typing.
I put my hands on my hips.
“Excuuuuse me? I wrote my tail off in that article. It’s popping all over the place. Did you read the whole thing? I mean, the part about Roy Mackal and his research about the Mokele-mbembe? It took me hours to learn all of that. I wrote about the real possibility of an actual living dinosaur in the Republic of Congo today. I’m sorry, but that’s cryptozoology gold right there.”
“Ummm, yeah, well…my mam and da always say, Reach for the stars,” he tells me, his fingers paused over the keyboard. “An’ I think ye havena reached quite far enough. So I think ye need to keep workin’ on it.”
“Oh,” I scoff. “Your parents tell you that?”
I hear Dax blow air out his mouth behind me.
“That’s exactly right,” Hammy Bean tells me. “They say, Hammy Bean, nothing can stop ye, so you reach for the stars, son.”
I can feel my face burning and my brain steaming.
“That’s what they say?”
“Aye, and I think ye only reached as far as…say, the ozone layer, but it needs to go higher.” He leans forward and starts typing again. “Think Venus or Mars.”
I stand there like a steaming pot, watching his blurry fingers while fast and furious letters spew out of the speaker with each key he presses.
“Venus, huh?” I say. “I think you’re just crabby because you haven’t found any evidence and you’re taking it out on me.”
“Nae!” he snaps. “Maybe ye just think ye can do anythin’ an’ maybe ye canna.”
“Well, who made you the king of good writing?”
Hammy Bean stops typing, Dax stands up and swings Ole Roy around to his back and I stand seething.
“I’m the editor in chief of the Nessie Juggernaut,” Hammy Bean informs me.
“Yeah…well, you’re not the boss of me.”
“Ah, actually…I am,” he says. “That title makes me the boss. Ye work for me, remember? An’ if ye want to be a writer like ye say ye do, you have to learn to take criticism.”
“Criticism?”
“That’s right. I’m afraid that sometimes the truth hurts.”
“Sooooo, I’m going to take off,” Dax says, stuffing his hands in his jeans pockets and heading toward the door.
“The truth?” I say as Dax’s feet echo down the hall and then the stairs. “Let’s talk about the truth if you’re such a big fan of it.”
The red Tibby Manor door slams below us.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Hammy Bean wants to know.
“It means your mom and dad are not Scottish royalty,” I say. “Nor are they missionaries in the Congo. They don’t work for Doctors Without Borders or even as earthquake relief volunteers in Haiti or some other far-off place.”
Hammy Bean slams the laptop closed with a scowl. “What do ye know aboot it?”
“Everyone knows,” I tell him. “You want people to look at you like you’re some amazing scientist, but you tell ridiculous stories that no one even believes. Do you know what that makes you?”
He doesn’t say anything.
“A liar, that’s what,” I inform him.
I stand there staring at him.
Tears well at the bottom of my eyes first.
And then his.
Hammy Bean wipes at them with the back of his hand and stands up straight, putting two palms flat on the wooden desk. “My mam an’ da are good people doin’ good things in the world!” he shouts at me. “And I can prove it too. Now on yer bike, mate.”
“What?”
“Git oot.”
“Fine by me,” I say, turning on my Nike heels and stomping out of the room.
Even more tears come before I hit the last stone step in front of Tibby Manor.
Dax and Ole Roy are waiting for me on the curb.
I wipe the tears from my face with Dax’s jean jacket sleeve and keep on walking while he scurries to catch up to me.
“So what happened?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I snap.
“Something happened or you wouldn’t be crying.”
I wipe at the steady stream. “I’m not crying.”
“Well, you should tell your face that,” he says.
I stop and look at him. “I told him, okay? I told him.”
Dax sighs big and looks up to the graying clouds, shaking his head.
“I told him he’s a liar and everyone knows it too and if he wants to have friends here he’d better stop it.”
Dax’s eyes meet mine. “Mmm, not cool,” he says.
“Someone had to have the tidbits to say it,” I say. “You sulked out of there like a big, fat, hairy chicken.”
“Yeah, but why did you do it?” he demands.
“Because,” I say. “He shouldn’t be running around here lying to everyone under the sun. It’s not right and someone needed to tell him so.”
“That’s not why,” Dax says.
“Yeah, it is,” I insist, wiping my nose across the sleeve of his jacket and leaving a big wet streak.
“But you didn’t go in there planning to say that,” he says.
“Fine then, you tell me why, since you’re the king of knowing everything about anything.”
“Because you were getting back at him for ripping on your writing.”
“No.” I shake my head. “That’s not it. He should be telling the truth.”
“He did,” Dax says. “He told you your article stank.”
“It didn’t stink,” I insist. “You stink.”
He raises his eyebrows at me. “That’s random.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve been meaning to tell you,” I say. “You smell like…boiled noodles and you say groovy way too much to be normal.”
“Feel better?”
“No,” I snap, starting back down Bunioch Brae.
“You know, for someone who claims to know the power of words, you’ve got some learning to do about them,” he calls after me.
I stop again, turning to face him.
“What is with you and that stupid guitar, anyway? If you love it so much, why don’t you just go and marry it already?” I tell him.
Then I pull his stupid jean jacket off my shoulders and throw it at him.
We both stare at it lying in the middle of the road.
“You know I’m right,” he tells me. “You may not like it, but you know it’s true.”
“You think you’re so smart!” I yell back. “But you aren’t. You’re just a fathead with a weird hippie vibe and a know-it-all New Yorker attitude who thinks the world revolves around you and no one else.”
He gives me his stupid one-lip grin. “Yeah, but I’m right too.”
“Yeah…well…just so you know, someone real important dies in book seven—”
“Hold it right there,” he says, his one lipper slowly disappearing and his seaweeds narrowing. “There is nothing lower than an unsolicited spoiler and you know it.”
Back at the abbey, I race up the heavenly steps toward flat 402 and slam the front door with all the might I can muster.
“Scotland bites it!” I call out, flopping my worn-out body down on the red velvet couch with my Nikes still on.
Mom is sitting at the coffee ta
ble in front of her laptop, her legs tucked under her. She stops typing, looks up at me and takes her glasses off.
“Shoes,” she says.
I kick them off and they land on the wooden floor with two loud thumps.
“Now,” she says. “Can you calmly tell me what’s going on?”
The tears start up again. “I really don’t think so,” I say. “It’s too horrible.”
She gives me a sympathetic smile. “Try.”
“Mom, there’s no way I can stay here until September. No way. In fact, I’d like to leave by sundown if possible.”
I pull myself up from the couch and stomp in my socks to my room to start packing.
She shows up in the doorway while I’m pulling my suitcase from the closet. “How about we take a breath,” she says in that voice.
I point a finger at her. “Don’t therapize me!” I tell her, unzipping my suitcase and shoving a sweatshirt inside it. “This is an emergency. Code Black. DEFCON One. I need out of this place, pronto.”
She sits down on the bed next to my suitcase, watching me pack my underwear.
“I would just like to talk with you, and I think we can accomplish that with no one shouting,” she says. “Let’s take a breath together.” She covers my hand with hers.
And it’s that hand on mine that makes the floodgates open and so many tears start to fall that I can hardly breathe. My whole body feels tired and I let it collapse on the bed next to her. Streams of wet, sloppy tears slide down my cheeks and around my chin, inside my ears and down my neck.
“Take a deep breath for me,” she says.
“I don’t want to breathe,” my throat chokes out at her. “I just want a plane ticket home. Why aren’t you listening to me?”
Her arms are warm and safe as she strokes my hair and rocks me just a little. Right this minute, I wish I could be a baby again, when things weren’t so hard and Mom could fix absolutely everything. Now when I make the mess, I have to clean it up and I have no idea how to do that.
Especially not after this mess.
“Talk to me,” she whispers into my hair. “Maybe I can help.”
I hide my face in her arm. “Not this time,” I tell her. “I did something horrible.”
“Try me,” she says. “You can tell me anything.”
“You’ll hate me,” I tell her. “Maybe even disown me. Leave me to fend for myself, a pirate on the high seas.”
“I promise there’s nothing you could ever do or say that would make me hate you. I might not like what you did, but we all make mistakes. Maybe if you trust me, we can talk it out and come up with a solution together.”
I pull away from her and wipe my nose across my forearm, but she lets it go just like she did with the shoe pile by the couch.
I stand facing her. “Okay, but I don’t want you to look at me when I tell you,” I say.
She raises her eyebrows. “What would you like me to do?”
“Turn around,” I say. “It’ll be easier to tell you if you’re not looking at me.”
“Okay.” She turns her gaze toward the two skinny stained-glass windows filled with faces. More eyes staring at me.
Judging me.
“I—I…I told Hammy Bean that…I know he’s been lying this whole time…lying about his parents.”
“Okay,” she says to the window.
“I mean, I told him.”
She turns to face me then. “I don’t understand.”
“Hammy Bean has been lying to everyone about his parents,” I tell her.
“They aren’t missionaries in the Congo?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “Or the Scottish royalty.”
“Well, sure, there’s been no Scottish royalty since—”
“I know, I know. 1745.”
“So where are they?” she asks.
“Euna Begbie told me they take drugs and Mamo Honey took Hammy Bean away to keep him safe and raise him right. They live in London and Hammy Bean doesn’t even know them.”
“Oh no,” Mom breathes out, putting her hand on her heart.
“And I told him I know all about it. I told him he’s a liar and that everyone else knows it too.”
She raises her eyebrows again. “I see,” she says.
I stare at her. “You hate me now, right?” I ask her.
“Of course not,” she says. “Come back over here and sit.”
I sit back down on the bed and we face each other, both of us cross-legged. Me with my chin in my hand and my elbow on my knee.
“I yelled it at him,” I say. “I didn’t even say it nice. I said it mean because he was mean to me about my writing for the podcast.”
“Mmm,” she says. “What did he say about it?”
I throw my hands out. “He said it had no pop,” I tell her. “Can you believe that one? No pop. Me? I’m all about the pop. I ooze pop. Pop is everything to me,” I scoff again. “No pop,” I grumble.
“I can see why that upset you,” she says.
“That’s just a big, fat lie. He doesn’t have pop. Him. And he’s no Ron either, I’ll tell you that. As far as my lake monster story goes, he’s out. Why aren’t you making the call to book my flight?”
“So he gave you some criticism on your writing and you got mad and said some things that you wish now you hadn’t.”
“In a nutshell,” I say. “But worse, you know, because I said those things to him about his mom and dad. Not to mention, I told Dax he smelled like boiled noodles and then threw his jacket down on Bunioch Brae.” I bury my head again. “It’s too bad to fix. I want to go home, please. Britney B would never say I didn’t have pop. Never.”
“Okay,” she says. “Your feelings are hurt.”
I nod.
“And there are words that have been said and you can’t take them back.”
“And if you really loved me, you’d book that ticket.”
“I suppose leaving is one option.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. “Could you book me a window seat?”
“I didn’t finish,” she says.
I drop my chin in my hand.
“Even though it may be an option, I don’t know if running away from the problem is the best idea.”
I throw my hands out. “Mom, a Ferris wheel story isn’t going to cut it this time,” I tell her.
“I agree,” she says. “But do you really think leaving on a plane in the dead of night is going to fix it?”
“Yes. I really think it will.”
“Mmmm,” she says, pausing for a long while. “Words have been said that have hurt someone. Will being home in your room or going to Parisi on Italian Wednesdays or sleeping over at Britney B’s really change that?”
I sigh. “I s’pose not.”
“This is the night that Mamo Honey has her class in Inverness, and Hammy Bean is supposed to come over for dinner, right? What if you talked to him and told him how you feel about what happened? And maybe even apologized for words that hurt him.”
I sigh. “No way. I can’t talk to him about it.”
“And why is that?”
“Simple,” I say. “I don’t have the tidbits for it. Plus, I think I’d be much better at pretending it didn’t happen. You know, sweep it under the rug.”
“Is that what we do in our family?”
I sigh again. “No.”
“You’ve been finding tidbits left and right this summer, so I’m pretty sure you’ll find them for this too. Maybe you just need a day, but they’re in there. I’m sure of it.”
“You may be right about everything else, but I really think you’re wrong about that one,” I tell her. “All I feel is tired out and limp and droopy.”
“Everyone makes mistakes, especially with our words, but the best thing we can do is
to go back and at least try to clean them up the best we can.”
“Fine,” I tell her. “I’ll look for my Hammy Bean tidbits. But I’m warning you right now, I really don’t think they’re in there.”
At six o’clock Hammy Bean doesn’t show up for dinner. At six-thirty I call him on channel five.
“Come in, Captain Green Bean, do you read? Over.”
Silence.
I try him on channel seventeen.
“Denver to Captain Green Bean. Over.”
Silence.
“Dax,” I call then. “Are you there? Over?”
Nothing.
They’re freezing me out.
They hate me and there are no words that will fix this mess. Mom doesn’t get it. I wish she’d booked that ticket when I asked her to.
We wait to eat until six forty-five and then me and Mom eat our grilled cheese while Dad goes to Tibby Manor to see if Hammy Bean is there, even though no one answers when we call on the phone. Each bite of gooey cheese makes me feel like I’m choking on the words I said to Hammy Bean earlier in the day.
When Dad comes home to tell us that no one answered the door at Tibby Manor either, Mom leaves a message on Mamo Honey’s cell phone.
“Maybe Hammy Bean ended up going with her to class,” Mom says.
After dinner, Mamo Honey calls back to tell us that Hammy Bean went to Farquar’s Famous Fish for dinner with Dax. Mom and Dad feel a whole lot better, but I can’t help but wonder what those boys are saying about me.
By nine o’clock I’m in my flowered nightgown on the red velvet couch cuddled up between Mom and Dad as he reads chapter sixteen, “Through the Trapdoor,” of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. With Dad reading and doing all his different voices, it makes me forget for a few minutes everything that’s happening. Especially when he does his Voldemort, which makes actual goose bumps pop out on my arms every single time.
Spending time right in between Mom and Dad, which is my most favorite place in life to be, makes me feel even worse about what I’ve said to Hammy Bean because I forget sometimes that I have the very best parents in the world and not everyone has that. I lay my head against Dad’s arm and hold Mom’s hand while we listen to Dad do voices.
The phone rings right after the grandfather clock in the hall announces that it’s fifteen acorns past nine.
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