Cody and the Heart of a Champion
Page 6
Cody started to swing. Slowly at first, then a little faster. MewMew purred. Spencer stopped sniffling. In the ruffly bush beside the porch, a bird sang a song of joy. In the distance, another one did an echo. That was bird for “It was a long, hard winter, but hooray! Spring has come to us again!”
Mr. and Mrs. Pickett were packing up the moving van. Everyone was helping. GG. Mom. Dad. Wyatt. Mr. Meen. Molly and Maxie.
MewMew’s job was to jump in and out of the boxes and suitcases.
“She’s the inspector,” said GG. She poured them all more lemonade. Moving was hard work, and everyone was hot and thirsty. By now, it was hard to remember a little thing called winter.
Cody carefully carried out a box marked DISHES.
“Cody, you are such an enormous help.” Mrs. Pickett smiled. Her barfing days were over. By now, you could tell there was a baby in there, all right.
After a while, Cody sat on the swing for a rest. She looked around. That was when she noticed that Spencer had disappeared.
Thump-thump. The porch floor vibrated under her feet. She jumped down the steps and crawled into the museum. Spencer was writing on a piece of poster board.
“What are you doing?”
He held up a wait-a-minute finger.
Cody sat on the rug and looked around. They never got a chance to make the gift shop or café. They never even got a chance to give the museum a name. Now, she realized, Spencer would pack it up and take it with him.
Cody tucked her knees under her chin. She folded herself up tight. She was a seed in the ground. One that would never get to bloom.
Spencer kept writing. He was making every single letter perfect-perfect.
“What is so important?” she asked.
Up went that annoying finger again.
Cody kicked off her flip-flops. She wriggled her bare toes in the warm dirt. Overhead, footsteps went back and forth. Maxie sang “100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” till Molly told her she had to stop. Wyatt’s phone did its bidda-la-beep, and he gave a mush-brained laugh.
“Spencer, I cannot wait one more second.”
At last he turned around. “Can you help me hang this up?”
“I hate to tell you”— Cody did a breath —“but it’s time to pack up, not hang up.”
He showed her the poster board. Every letter was a different color. Every letter was perfect-perfect. It said:
Cody read it. She read it again.
“Wait,” she said. “That’s what kind of museum
it is?”
Spencer nodded. “The museum of you and me.”
Cody looked around at the many wonderful exhibits. It was true.
“I didn’t want you to be sad after I moved,” he said. “So I made it for you.”
In this life, sometimes you feel so many different feelings at once, your heart can’t tell what is going on.
Together, they hung up the sign near the museum entrance. Sitting side by side, they gazed around at the exhibits.
“We did a lot of cool stuff,” Spencer said.
“I know,” Cody said. “And we’ll do lots more.”
The Museum of Friends! She prickled all over with happiness. Her head. Her heart. Her belly. Even her feet.
Wait. That wasn’t happiness prickling her toes.
Ants! A long parade of them. They marched over the rug and skedaddled across her toes.
“Look,” she cried. “Museum ants!”
Overhead, footsteps crisscrossed the porch. Cody and Spencer heard steel-toed boots, designer sandals, track shoes, and high-tops. They listened to voices laughing and talking and grunting.
“Where did that Spencer go?” they heard his mother ask.
“And that Cody,” her mother added. “Where are those two, anyway?”
Spencer and Cody grinned but didn’t make a sound. Soon they’d crawl back out. Soon they’d join everyone up there in the bright, busy, blooming world.
But not yet. For now, they wanted to think about all the stuff they’d done together. And all the stuff they’d still do. They wanted to think about the things that had changed. And the things that never, ever, as long as they lived, would.
So they stayed a little longer. Just the two of them. And the ants.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2018 by Tricia Springstubb
Illustrations copyright © 2018 by Eliza Wheeler
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
First electronic edition 2018
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number pending
The illustrations in this book were done in ink and watercolor.
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