“AHOY, Applewhites!” a voice boomed. Bill Bones, E.D. thought. Motorcycles. No wonder that sound had been familiar.
Jake had just swung his feet over the edge of the couch, and Archie, in his pajama bottoms, was making his way down the aisle from the bedroom when the pounding started on Brunhilda’s door. “Open up! Open up!” Bill Bones yelled. “The prodigal has returned!”
It was supposed to be prodigal son, not father, E.D. thought as Bill pulled open the door and Randolph dragged himself up the steps, bent over, with one hand on his back. His hair was sticking out all around a motorcycle helmet that didn’t fit very well, and his face was a grimace of pain. “Never!” he said. “Never again, not even if my life, not even if the fate of the entire world depends on it, will I put my rear end down on a motorcycle, no matter who is driving it.” He shoved Jake over and sank down onto the couch, groaning. Behind him came Zedediah, looking only slightly less miserable than Randolph.
From outside came Bill Bones’s voice, as two motorcycles started up again. “Betty and me are off to Portland! We both enjoyed all the drama! Let us know, Z, if you’re ever in mind of another adventure! Ride ’em, cowboy!”
Zedediah waved and the motorcycles roared away. “Well,” he said then. “It seems we missed the ending of this Expedition altogether. Tell us about it.”
Randolph shook his head. “That can wait. I need some aspirin, some sleep, and some food, in that order.”
“Breakfast starts at nine,” E.D. said.
“Where’s everyone else?” Zedediah asked.
“In a cabin over that way,” Archie said, gesturing toward the other end of the parking lot. “You do know we lost, right?”
“I might not have come back if we hadn’t,” Zedediah said. “Can you even imagine trying to duplicate the Creative Academy around the country under the direction of the Rutherfords—and their television team?”
“I’m sorry about the Pageant Wagon,” E.D. said to her father, who had taken off his helmet and was sitting now with his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands.
He looked up and, surprisingly, smiled, his eyes becoming suddenly bright and awake. “It’s all good! Wait till you hear my news. It’s the only thing that kept me alive on that ghastly, bug-shot, wind-ravaged, backbreaking ride from Arizona. By the way, sleeping in a bag on the bare ground is one other thing I will never, never, never do again. There is no cowboy in me!”
Zedediah sat gingerly down in Brunhilda’s driver’s seat. “Death and rebirth,” he said. “My cowboy’s dead. It remains to be seen what will be reborn.”
“I have some ideas about that,” Archie said.
Neither Randolph nor Zedediah turned up for breakfast. A few of the other losing expeditions had already started home, but the Rutherfords came to the dining room to announce that there was no rush to leave. Mrs. Rutherford also pointed out, much to E.D.’s dismay, that every video that had been sent in from every expedition was now the property of the Rutherford Foundation, and there was a television series in the works that would make good use of the material. “Does that mean they own my tutorials?” E.D. asked her mother, who was the family’s expert on copyright.
“Only what got to them before Melody took over, and the bits from the one you and Jake made yesterday.”
Archie received a text from Lucille midmorning, saying she had decided to stay in Sedona for a two-week shamanic poetry workshop. There was a photo attached, and E.D. barely recognized her aunt. She was wearing embroidered jeans, fringed moccasins, and a batik T-shirt decorated with a multicolored spiral design, and had strung wooden beads on strands of her hair. There were feathers stuck in among the beads. And she was holding a round, skin-covered drum with a bald eagle painted on it.
“This, too, shall pass,” Archie said.
The Organics were staying on at the center for several weeks to plan for franchising their academy. Free-range education, Michaela was saying to anyone she managed to corner, was going to change the face of childhood in America. The baby pod no longer appeared to be a part of her body. E.D. saw Tyler at one point, the baby pod slung over his shoulder, walking one of the white stone paths with a guy from the Da Vinci School.
Whether the Organics would change the face of childhood or not, they had in some mysterious way changed Destiny, E.D. thought. Every single time she caught sight of him that morning, he was surrounded by a small herd of French Fries. “I gots friends now!” he explained when the family gathered in the dining room for lunch. “Even the girl ones.”
Randolph had commandeered a large round table in the corner for the Creative Academy Expeditionary Force, as he had started calling them. When everyone was there except, of course, Melody—E.D. fervently hoped she would never have to lay eyes on that girl again—he tapped a spoon against his glass for attention.
“The Pageant Wagon may be no more,” he said, “but I am pleased to announce that its spirit lives on! You may remember my meeting with George in Memphis?” Sybil groaned. “I sent him the best of the videos of Our American Cousin.” E.D. glanced at Jake, who was looking fixedly down at the tablecloth. “He has shared it with other theater people around the country and they are so taken with the whole ‘pencil sketch’ concept that they all want me to direct readings for them. And they’re asking to have Cordelia come along to design costumes and window-blind sets. It will be my Pageant Wagon tour—without the wagon!”
“But what about my ballet?” Cordelia asked.
“You can work on it in your spare time. We have reservations to fly to Seattle tomorrow.”
“As it happens,” Sybil said then, “I am flying out tomorrow as well.”
“What? Where?” Randolph said.
“Home,” Sybil said. “Petunia Possum, Detective has been—” There was a long silence, while she closed her eyes and swallowed hard. “It has been rejected.”
“Does that mean I don’t gets to draw a possum for the cover?” Destiny asked.
“Sadly, it does,” she said, patting Destiny’s hand. “My editor has suggested that writing for children is not my greatest strength, and she wants me to go straight home and start on a new Petunia Grantham novel.”
“But she’s dead!” Randolph reminded her. “You refused to resurrect her before, even to save your family from starvation.”
“The sign of a great mind is the ability to change it,” Sybil said. “It appears that the publicity of the Expedition has raised a clamor for a new volume, and who am I to deny my fans?”
Jake caught E.D.’s eye. While they were working on their version of the final video, they’d talked about what they hoped would happen next, and agreed that what they wanted most of all was to travel back across the country, stopping wherever anyone wanted to stop and “mining the territory” for interesting possibilities.
She nodded at him now. “The Great Dismal Swamp,” she said. Everyone stared at her uncomprehendingly. “We didn’t get to go there after Haddock Point,” E.D. said. “I want to go! Jake and I think we should do our own Expedition, from this coast to the other one, just the way we want to, seeing what we want to see, stopping where we want to stop, and learning whatever there is to learn along the way.”
“Sounds good to me,” Zedediah said.
“Me, too,” Archie agreed. “I’ve been thinking you and I should go back to the Metal Museum and find out about building ourselves a smithy at Wit’s End. Metalworking may be the wave of our future.”
“Rebirth!” Zedediah said.
“Lucille can join us along the way, after her workshop,” Archie pointed out.
Randolph raised his coffee mug. “The Education Expedition is dead. Long live the Education Expedition!” They all cheered.
Hal cleared his throat then. “Would it be okay if Trudy went with us?” he asked. “Only as far as Indiana . . .”
“Trudy?” Randolph asked. “Who’s Trudy?”
Hal blushed. “My girlfriend. She’s sixteen. She’s a mime. And a computer geek.”
“Will wonders never cease?” Archie whispered.
“Well? Can she?”
“If it’s all right with her family,” Zedediah said, “I don’t see why not.”
Hal pumped his fist in the air.
“If Trudy goes, can my friends go too?” Destiny asked.
“No,” Sybil said. “Your friends have to stay here with the Organics.”
Destiny let out a shriek and burst into tears. He flung himself down, beating on the floor with his fists and his feet. “I wanna have friends with me!” he yelled. “Or I wanna stay here with them.”
At that moment Melody appeared, her backpack over one shoulder. Everyone stared at her in stunned silence, except Destiny, who kept wailing. “I thought I should come and say good-bye,” she said at last. “I’m off to LA. What’s with the squirt?”
“I wants to have my friends go in the bus with us and they all say I can’t! I’m never gonna have friends never ever never!”
Melody stood for a moment, looking from one Applewhite adult to another. “Haven’t you people ever heard of kindergarten?” she asked.
And so it was, E.D. thought later, that Melody’s last interaction with the Applewhite family made a permanent change in Destiny’s life.
Jake, she noticed, as Melody turned to go, simply raised one hand and waved. But after she left, he walked out onto the balcony to watch them pull away.
It was time, she thought, to start figuring out what it meant to have an almost-brother. She got up and went out on the balcony with him.
“I never asked,” she said after Hector Montana’s SUV disappeared over the hill. “How’d that go? With Melody, at the dance?”
“Weirdly fine, I think,” said Jake.
E.D. nodded. “I think she’ll really like it in LA.”
“How’d it go with Tyler Organic?” Jake asked.
“Weirdly fine,” said E.D., grinning. “I told him I thought we should just be friends. He was okay with it! To be honest, he seemed almost relieved!”
Jake smiled and brushed his hair out of his eyes. “Just friends, huh?” he asked, and nudged E.D.’s shoulder. “That seems to be kind of a habit with you.”
E.D. laughed. “Yep,” she said. “Kind of a habit.”
“Well,” said Jake, sticking his hands into his pockets and squinting off across the valley the way Zedediah might have stared across the prairie in his cowboy days. “Friends are good.”
“Yep,” said E.D. “Friends are good.”
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About the Authors
Photo by Charlie Tolan
STEPHANIE S. TOLAN is the author of more than twenty-five books for young readers, including Listen!, which won the Christopher Award and the ASPCA Henry Bergh Award. Her New York Times bestselling novel Surviving the Applewhites received a Newbery Honor and was named a Smithsonian Notable Book for Children, an American Library Association Notable Children’s Book, and an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults. Tolan lives in the Hudson River Valley of Upstate New York. You can visit her online at www.stephanietolan.com.
R. J. TOLAN is a first-time author (thanks, Mom!) but a longtime mentor of writers, as co–artistic director of Youngblood, the company of early-career playwrights at Ensemble Studio Theatre. As the son of a theatrical director/producer and an author, R. J. has now managed to follow in the footsteps of both his parents. He lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, with his wife, Lisa, and their sons, Max and Charlie.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Books by Stephanie S. Tolan
GRANDPA—AND ME
THE LIBERATION OF TANSY WARNER
THE LAST OF EDEN
NO SAFE HARBORS
THE GREAT SKINNER STRIKE
THE GREAT SKINNER ENTERPRISE
THE GREAT SKINNER GETAWAY
THE GREAT SKINNER HOMESTEAD
MARCY HOOPER AND THE GREATEST TREASURE IN THE WORLD
A TIME TO FLY FREE
THE WITCH OF MAPLE PARK
PRIDE OF THE PEACOCK
BARTHOLOMEW’S BLESSING
SOPHIE AND THE SIDEWALK MAN
SAVE HALLOWEEN!
ORDINARY MIRACLES
PLAGUE YEAR
A GOOD COURAGE
WHO’S THERE?
THE FACE IN THE MIRROR
WELCOME TO THE ARK
FLIGHT OF THE RAVEN
LISTEN!
WISHWORKS, INC.
SURVIVING THE APPLEWHITES
APPLEWHITES AT WIT’S END
Credits
Cover art and lettering by Brett Helquist
Cover design by Heather Daugherty
Copyright
APPLEWHITES COAST TO COAST. Copyright © 2017 by Stephanie S. Tolan and R. J. Tolan. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
* * *
ISBN 978-0-06-213320-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-06-213321-2 (library bdg.)
EPub Edition © September 2017 ISBN 9780062133243
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FIRST EDITION
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