by Jake Burt
A fresh wave of sweaty shame rolled up my neck and across my cheeks. I shook my head. His eyebrows lifted, then knotted in anger. I looked at the floor. The rug was turtle shaped.
“Ahh. Here we are,” Ms. Carrillo said, holding a stack of file folders in one hand and keeping her glasses steady with the other as she read. “Yes. The … oh, what do you all call it? The Double-Barreled Monkey Bar Backflip?”
“Of Doom,” Devin added.
“Yes,” Ms. Carrillo agreed. “That’s the one.”
She sat down at her desk, clearing a few other papers away. Then she tossed one of the folders down emphatically in the empty space.
“Jenny Tapale, 1988. Three broken fingers.”
She slapped the second one on top.
“Xavier Rodriguez, 1994. Dislocated left shoulder.”
Three more followed, one after the other.
“Mark Newendeis, 2003. Fractured fibula. LaToya Norris, same year. Seven stitches in her lower lip. Erin Marks, 2008. Broken jaw, four lost teeth.”
Ms. Carrillo stood up, pressing her hands to the stack of files. She leaned toward us, leveling that laser-beam gaze. “See where I’m going with this, boys?”
Devin nodded quickly, like most kids would. She was expecting the quick nod.
My teeth just chattered.
“Devin, you got lucky. Absurdly, ridiculously, inconceivably lucky. Don’t get me wrong—I’m glad you didn’t get hurt. But in some ways, you pulling this stunt off is worse than if you’d been the newest addition to that stack. It’s important to me, boys, that you understand why. That’s the goal here; I’m not going to punish you. Heck, I’m even going to give you your phone back, Devin…”
He scooted forward in his chair.
“At the end of the day.”
He slumped back down.
“But first I want to hear it from both of you. Can you think of a reason why old Ms. Carrillo might be concerned about what you’ve done? You tell me that, and I’ll let you go with a warning. A stern one, no doubt, but a warning.”
I glanced desperately at Devin, hoping he’d answer for us. Before he could, though, she said, “Addison, you first. You were the one trying to film the thing.”
I had failed as a watchman. I had failed as a cameraman. This was my third failure. It wasn’t even like I didn’t know the answer. I did. It was right there, all big in my brain. I squirmed in my seat. I felt the sweat in my socks.
Say it!
NOPE.
“Hmm. I see,” Ms. Carrillo said. “Perhaps you two do need a bit more of a consequence, so that—”
“It’s a bad example!” Devin blurted. “I get it, Ms. Carrillo, and Addi…” He scowled at me but continued. “He gets it, too. Because I pulled it off, other kids might try it. Then they’ll get hurt, and you don’t want to see more kids added to that pile.”
Ms. Carrillo sat down at her desk again. “That’s right, Devin. Lord, if this school didn’t always have two dozen other things to pay for, I’d have had those monkey bars ripped out a decade ago. As it stands, I’d like your help making sure nobody else tries what you did. That means not talking about your success. That means warning other kids to put the idea out of their minds. And that means never, ever doing it again.”
Devin agreed, and he tugged me out of there by the arm. I slumped down against a couple of lockers, not even caring that the handles scraped my back. Then I pulled up into as tight a ball as I could, and I tried to calm down.
A while back, Mom and Dad took me to a doctor. She was the one who told us about exposures, and she recommended some ways to help when I froze. Most of them didn’t work, but there was one that kind of did. She called it “countdown to countdown,” or something. I just called it “thawing.” With eyes closed and teeth grinding, I took myself through the tiny steps.
Count to five!
NOPE!
Count to four.
NOPE.
Count to three?
Okay.
One, two, three … Breathe.
When I could open my eyes, I searched for Devin, but he had already marched off. That was all right; I wasn’t in any condition to talk to him, even though I owed him an apology.
A big one.
CHAPTER FIVE
DEBTS AND TRESPASSES
I spotted Devin’s sneakers sticking out from between the hospital’s soda machine and the one that sold prewrapped sandwiches. There couldn’t have been more than a foot and a half of space in there, but he had wedged in good. He had always liked tucking himself into tiny little places.
“Devin?”
“Go…”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“… away.”
I peeked into the crack. He was staring down at his phone, his face as scrunched as he was. I gave his sneaker a little nudge with mine.
“Hey, look. I’m sorry. I know I let you down. But it was a dangerous thing to do anyway, and I figure we got lucky—”
“It was my only plan, Addi! I’m back to square one! And I’ve lost all this time, thanks to you. I should have, like, a thousand followers and ten thousand views by now. Would, too, if I had that video. But I’m stuck on zero!”
“Followers? Views?”
The screen of his phone illuminated his face as he looked up. “Yes. Followers. Views. You know, Twitter? YouTube?”
I wasn’t sure if the anger I saw in his eyes was better than not seeing his eyes at all. Still, he was talking to me. That was progress, right?
“You have a Twitter account? Don’t you need to be, like, sixteen or something for that?”
“Thirteen, and I’m almost there, so I figured I could create one. By the time anyone does anything about it, I’d be the right age anyway.”
“Why do you need a Twitter account?”
“Helps you advertise,” he mumbled.
I waited for more of an explanation, but he just stared at his phone. I sighed. “Look, I’m sorry. I owe you big-time.…”
“Damn right you do.”
“But your mom told me to kick your butt if you didn’t get back to the waiting room. We’re about to find out how your dad is doing.”
Devin scrunched farther in, until his back pressed up against the wall. “You’ll tell me how it goes? I’ve got more work to do here.”
I shook my head. “I’m not joking, and neither was your mom. She actually told me to give you a kick in the pants if you didn’t come.”
“Good luck getting that big old foot back here, then. I ain’t coming. ’Specially not with you.”
He was right. I couldn’t fit back there. But I had long arms, so …
“Hey! Leggo my foot, Addi!”
I tugged until he started sliding out of his little nook. He dropped the phone in his lap and reached back to grab the corners of the vending machines. With his other foot, he kicked at my hands. It hurt, but I didn’t let go. At least, not until a nurse came out to see what the commotion was.
“What in God’s name are you two doing?” the woman demanded. She was tapping her foot impatiently, and her huge pouf of black hair bounced in time. I let go; the lady might have been smaller than me, but her arms were crossed, and they were thick. Devin’s great-grandma had arms like that. They were the arms of a woman you don’t mess with.
“Um, I…”
I froze, is what. Bunch of NOPES battling in my brain. Devin used the opportunity to wriggle around in his hidey-hole. His head popped out like a gopher with glasses.
“I dropped my phone, miss!” he declared. “I went in to fish it out from under the Coke machine, and my buddy was reeling me back. See? Got it!”
He held up his phone as he slipped free and stood. The nurse muttered for a second, but Devin gave her that crooked, killer smile of his, and she started laughing.
“Well, now that you’ve got it, stay out of there. There’s wires and plugs, and I’m not so sure the janitors clean back there.”
“Yes, miss,” Devin said. As she
walked away, Devin elbowed me. “And you owe me again.”
Once I had thawed, I kicked him in the butt.
“Hey!”
“Your mom’s orders,” I said, holding my hands up and stepping back.
“Funny. I’m still not coming.”
I grumbled, “You have to. It’s your dad, Devin! Not to mention the rest of your family, and mine. We’ve got to be there.”
I grabbed at the phone, but he jerked it away too quickly. I said, “Seriously, dude.”
He said, “Yeah, seriously,” and looked up at me. He was teary-eyed.
“Whoa,” I murmured.
“Addi, you’re telling me that you’d want to be there if you were me? If your family was cursed like mine was? I can’t go in there. Not with him hooked up to all those machines, all that expensive equipment.”
“I thought you said you didn’t believe in the Curse.”
Devin waved his hand around, indicating the wings of the hospital.
“Yeah, well, maybe now I’m not so sure.”
CHAPTER SIX
THE VELMA FAMILY CURSE
It did make sense, I suppose—not that his family was actually cursed, but why Devin might talk about it that way. His family history was a little strange. Even my mom and dad spoke about it sometimes; Mom called it uncanny. Dad used the word creepy.
I thought they were both right.
For the past five generations, the men in the Velma family had passed away young. Like, really young. Devin’s grandpa died when he was thirty-one years old. His great-grandpa made it to thirty-three, but his great-great-grandpa only lasted to twenty-eight. Apparently, there were even more early deaths going further back, and all for different reasons. That’s why Devin wasn’t surprised when he found out his dad had had a heart attack at age thirty-nine. He was upset, sure, but not surprised.
It was his great-great-grandmother’s idea to call it a curse, and once she started, the rest of the grandmas did, too. They were maybe the wildest part of all this: while the Velma men died young, their wives lived on. I didn’t know any other kids at school who even had great-grandmas, let alone great-great ones. And for all of them to live in the same house? Let’s just say Devin was lucky not to show up for homeroom every day with his cheeks pinched Santa Claus red. And he never, ever came to school with his shirt untucked. It’s probably why he got so good at talking his way out of stuff—lots of people to practice on.
First there was Devin’s mom. She was thirty-eight, super-smart, and worked for Devin’s dad’s company as their accountant. Anything on your math homework you needed help with, she was your go-to. Devin’s grandma was fifty-seven. She was the cook of the family, and boy, could she cook. Owned a restaurant for a while. Devin called her G. That was helpful, since there was also Double-G and Triple-G in the house, too. Double-G was seventy-nine, and Triple-G was ninety-six. Of all of them, I liked Triple-G the best, because she told the funniest stories, cared the least when we snuck candy before dinner, and could do all kinds of amazing tricks and practical jokes with her dentures. She also cussed the loudest at the TV when the Rams stank up the joint.
It was Triple-G who came to find us, the rubber tip of her cane squeaking as she twisted it on the tiled hospital floor.
“There y’are!” she huffed. “Your daddy’s been out of surgery for ten minutes and hasn’t seen his little man. Go on. Get back there and hold his hand or something.”
“He’s … he’s okay?” Devin asked. His words nearly got lost in his smile, it was so big.
“Yep. Curse doesn’t have him yet.”
Devin shoved his phone into his pocket and rushed down the hall. As I watched him go, I held my hand back to see if Triple-G wanted help to the recovery wing. Quick as ever, she whipped out her false teeth and put them on my palm. When I screamed and dropped them, she laughed so loud the nurse came out again.
“Got you, boy!” Triple-G said, her words surprisingly clear for a ninety-six-year-old with her teeth on the floor.
I picked up her dentures, ran them under the nearby drinking fountain for a second, and watched as she popped them back in. I couldn’t help but smile. Triple-G was awesome like that.
And, along with my parents, she was one of the few grown-ups who didn’t make me freeze.
“So Mr. Velma didn’t have another heart attack?” I asked when she took my hand for real.
“Nah. There’s something wrong with his ticker, though. You should’ve seen him, Addison. He was pastier than a vampire, and his feet swelled up like cantaloupes. I thought the darn things were gonna pop, maybe spray us all with pus ’n’ toe jam.”
“That’s really, really gross, Triple-G.”
She cackled in reply and poked my foot with her cane. “Yep! Try getting that one out of your head anytime soon, boy!”
Normally, she’d have had me; it’d take me days to get the image of a vampire melon with toes out of my head. But as I led Triple-G down the hallway, all my other worries crowded in. I had witnessed my best friend do the Backflip of Doom. We’d been taken to the principal’s office. I had frozen. Twice.
It had been an exhausting day, and it wasn’t even dinnertime yet.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MR. VELMA
It turned out that we were each only allowed a few minutes in Mr. Velma’s room—doctor’s orders. Devin, my dad, and my mom had already been in and returned to the waiting room, as had G and Double-G. Triple-G and I were the last ones to visit. Still, Mr. Velma smiled broadly when he saw me, and he held up a little plastic controller in his hand.
“See me squeezing this, Addison?” he said. “That’s me hugging you. Thank you for coming, and for chasing down my son. I hear it took some effort to get him in here.”
Mr. Velma was a hugger; I think that’s part of the reason his furniture company did so well. If you bought a couch or a bed frame or a TV stand from Mr. Velma, it came with a hug, free of charge. Not being able to wrap his arms around everyone was probably harder for him than the actual surgery.
“No worries,” I managed. Unable to help myself, I stole a quick glance at his feet. Fortunately, they were under a blanket.
“Well, it means a lot. And you’ve already been in here longer than that son of mine. What’s gotten into him?”
I wish I knew, I thought. Instead, I muttered, “The Curse?”
“Curse nothing!” Mr. Velma laughed. “Bad genetics, maybe. But I ask you, Addison: Am I dead?”
I smiled. “No, sir.”
“Precisely. If anything, this proves there is no Curse!”
“Oh, there’s a Curse, all right,” Triple-G said. “But it isn’t on you lot. More like it’s on the Velma women, cursed to eternal widowhood! I can still remember the day my husband died, all wheezy and hacking with the flu.”
I lowered my eyes and took Triple-G’s hand again. “I’m sorry.”
She shrugged, her dark, wrinkled neck pulling in like a startled earthworm. “Don’t be. Wasn’t the flu that killed him; it was trying to paint the house while he was sick. Coughed so hard he fell right off the roof. Dummy.”
Mr. Velma laughed again, even though it clearly hurt. “Oh, Great-Great-Grandmother … it might be a curse to you, but it is more like our blessing! We Velma men are everlasting, because we marry strong women with minds like steel traps. We shall never be forgotten—you lot won’t let us!”
“You bet your one good ventricle we won’t,” Triple-G stated.
“Addison,” Mr. Velma said more softly. “Have they told you what’s happening with me yet?”
I shook my head.
“Two weeks ago, right after my heart attack, the doctors said there was a chance I might have more complications. Congestive heart failure, it’s called.”
When he saw my eyes widen, Mr. Velma held up a hand.
“That look—it’s the same one my son gave me. It’s not as bad as it sounds. My heart hasn’t failed.”
Triple-G’s knuckles cracked as she squeezed her hands tigh
t on the knob of her cane. “It’s bad, though. Don’t sugarcoat it.”
Mr. Velma sighed. “She’s right. It means that my heart is having trouble beating on its own. I started feeling the symptoms yesterday, and today’s procedure confirmed it.”
“Can they fix it?” I asked.
“They can, but it’s another major surgery, and they’ll have to put a defibrillator and a pacemaker in. Life isn’t going to be the same as it was.”
“That’s assuming you can even afford it,” Triple-G grumbled.
Mr. Velma ignored her.
“I talked to Devin. He didn’t say much, but I can tell he’s worried. Addison, you’ll keep an eye on him? Find him, make sure he’s okay?”
“Yes, sir,” I promised. Mr. Velma’s news explained a lot, but I had more questions for Devin anyway—about his plan, and about how I could make today up to him. It was time for some answers.
CHAPTER EIGHT
DEVIN’S PLAN
Devin was slouched in the corner of the waiting room, his feet propped on the back of one chair, his head and shoulders on the seat of another. He was frowning at his phone, grumbling, “C’mon … c’mon!”
I swatted his feet, and he nearly fell down. As I twisted the chair to sit next to him, he shoved my shoulder.
“Addi! Can’t you see I’m concentrating?”
“Don’t care. Twitter isn’t as important as your dad. He wants me to make sure you’re okay. You get how ridiculous that is? Guy is in the hospital for the second time in two weeks, and he has to ask if you’re okay?”
“Yeah, well, this isn’t working like I thought it would.”
He sat up and looked around like a seagull getting ready to swipe something. His mom and mine were across the room, hunched over some insurance paperwork, and my dad was keeping Double-G company by playing cribbage with her. If Devin whispered, there was no way they’d be able to hear him.