Was he the friend who gave you advice about the airline thing?
“Well, yes.”
Later, we sat at the dinner table, and Mom and Grandpa ate plain buttered pasta while I drank what felt like my millionth fruit smoothie. Nobody talked. The forks made a racket and you could hear every slurp of the straw. If Hank Williams had been in the room, I bet you could have heard the crunch of lettuce between his jaws.
I studied the two of them. They held their forks the exact same way. They spun the pasta around their forks three times. They unfolded their napkins the exact same way. They probably kept their secrets about illnesses the same way, too.
Now, because I didn’t know if either of them talked to each other about cancer or dating, I decided to make the dinner conversation a little more interesting.
So I passed a note to Grandpa: Mom’s going on a date with the Texas Boot.
“Can’t be worse than Mr. Medieval,” Grandpa said, shoveling a forkful of pasta into his mouth.
I’d forgotten all about Mr. Medieval.
Mr. Medieval was a jousting trainer for the Medieval Times restaurant, and if you think I’m a nerd with facts, well, at least I spread around the topics a bit. Mr. Medieval was a two-topic guy: jousting and himself.
You, lad, may call me Sir Mike, he’d said when we went to see his show. And then he kept referring to himself in the third person. Sir Mike thinks that you would make a good serf. Sir Mike has reserved seats for you at the seven thirty showing. Sir Mike will show the lady to her table. Sir Mike would like to challenge you to a duel.
And I always thought, Sir Mike should lose our phone number.
Eventually, he did.
“Oh, Wayne, your dad called. He can’t make it this weekend.”
That made three weekends in a row. I guess Grandpa scared him off good. Or maybe he was still mad that I hadn’t gone with him to see about our case. I still hadn’t asked Mom what all that was about.
Dinner ended with lots of ice cream and no more talk about Mom dating.
I’m going to the park.
“Take your phone,” Mom said.
I grabbed my skateboard and set out down Cedar Drive. The sky was full of heavy gray-blue clouds. A storm was coming. You could smell it in the air. I got to the park and walked to a clearing where there weren’t any trees to obstruct my view of the sky. I lay down and watched the sky. The planes crossing. The flashes of light. The sound of distant thunder mixed with the metal-whistling sound of planes slicing the air. The jets—a stream of fast-moving air. I’d gotten to know all their sounds now. I could support a plane for sixty seconds over the park before it disappeared behind the tall cottonwood trees. I prayed the storm would do nothing but rain. The planes would all arrive safe. Happy.
Tonight, 14A was a Chinese exchange student who listened to music.
Another plane carried an entire family to California, where they were going to see the ocean for the first time.
The last plane was just like my old school bus. Carl the bus driver was now Carl the pilot. The rows of seats were filled with kids from Beatty. The plane headed toward the water tower. So I raced home on my skateboard and watched it fly on. I got inside the house just before the rain hit.
Later, I went to bed, my head all mixed up. I called Mr. Darcy into my room and talked to him in an inaudible whisper. I’d been getting good at just mouthing words to Mr. Darcy.
You know what makes you forget to remember the girl of your dreams or beat-up faces or unfound flags?
Mr. Darcy had no answer.
The fact that your grandfather might be sick just when you were starting to get used to him being around, that’s what. Just when you were counting on him being there.
Just makes you want to give life a high five, doesn’t it?
Or a punch in the face.
Why? Why? Why?
Hours later, I couldn’t sleep. The rain had come and gone. So I decided to sneak outside for a run.
I told myself I’m still a sort-of boyfriend because Sandy thinks I believed her little sister sent that text. And she doesn’t know I’m starting to make vowel sounds in Dr. P’s office. And Grandpa? He’s just doing research. Mom’s going out with the Texas Boot and I’ve got leads on the missing American flag. It’s just out there waiting for me to find it, and as soon as I do, everything will be fine.
Everything was fine.
Everything was probably fine.
I grabbed my Adidas from the space next to the front door.
“Couldn’t sleep, either, huh?” It was Grandpa and I was busted.
I shook my head.
“You take your phone when you go running, don’t you?” He knew.
I nodded.
“Good. Safer that way. Stay alert.”
There was no topic I could scribble. No notepad to scribble it on.
“Hey, now that I think about it, mind if I run with you?”
I smiled. Absolutely!
“Okay, let me get my shoes on.”
We got outside and he stretched a little.
Grandpa set out running in the direction of the bus stop, and I trailed behind him. Across the street, the big white Christmas snowman was still out in my neighbors’ front yard. Only it was flat and deflated and weighed down with rainwater. I remembered that decoration. Back in December, when it was inflated, it had two outstretched arms and looked like it wanted to hug you. Now it merely looked like it had surrendered, fallen forward, and melted. And it made me wonder what my neighbors were waiting for and why they couldn’t just put the stupid snowman away.
“Step up your pace, Kovok!”
I put my hands up in the air. I tried to communicate Where? What?
“We’re running until I get tired, and I’m not tired yet.”
Good, I told myself. Don’t get tired. Keep running. Sick people don’t run, do they? Healthy people run. Grandpa is healthy. Very healthy.
I prayed that was a fact, not just a wish.
DATA
Wind-speed performance:
Zero miles per hour = still air and no movement
1–3 miles per hour = leaves rustle, minimal kite movement
4–7 miles per hour = wind felt on face, flags flap gently
8–12 miles per hour = wind felt on face
17–21 miles per hour = small trees sway
22–27 miles per hour = tree branches move, wires whistle, land kites
28–33 miles per hour = strong winds, whole trees in motion
48–55 miles per hour = trees uprooted, structural damage likely
Wind speed on date of crash: 50-plus miles per hour
Question: If a 4-pound cotton object with the dimensions 5 feet by 9.5 feet goes aloft at 30,000 feet, flying 500 miles per hour, does it have the power to land at a distance greater than 17 miles from the crash site?
Hypothesis: A kite-like object weighing four pounds has greater wind surface and less downdraft than the typical suitcase; therefore, it would travel farther eastward.
CHAPTER 18
It was a week later and I was at Denny’s house, using his computer for some stealth searching. He sang, “Maybe you should let it go. Small flag. Large space. It’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Stop worrying about it. Order a new flag, maybe? Liz Delaney isn’t going to write you back.”
You would think that Denny’s cool singing voice would soften the blow, somehow. But it stuck in my mind like a bad commercial jingle. Reality doesn’t sound any better in song form.
True story.
He still kept singing.
“Liz Delaney isn’t going to write you back. It’s like a needle in a haystack.”
I was beginning to believe only Mr. Darcy truly understood me.
Did you know a family received an army soldier’s medals thirty years after they went missing?
Denny motioned for me to keep writing.
He was a Green Beret in Vietnam and had earned a ton of medals. And they were to be returned to
his family after his funeral, but there was some confusion and they went missing for a long time. Then his family got the call and they were delivered. Thirty years later.
“So you’re saying it’s possible that lost things can be found?” Denny whispered.
Exactly!
I told him about my research on the Columbia space shuttle and how debris was still being found.
“So you will find the flag, then, or someone like Liz Delaney will find it? Or some other mystery person?” Denny asked.
Yes.
“It’s a good theory,” Denny said.
It’s a great theory.
“I wish I had your problems, Wayne on a plane,” Denny whispered. He suddenly looked depressed.
What?
“I wish I could be on a search for something lost, but I can’t,” Denny sang, pacing around his room as he did. “I, Dennis Rosenblatt, have to read out loud in front of an entire synagogue. Out loud!”
Sorry.
“Yeah. Be sure to get a front-row seat. It’s going to be hilarious,” he whispered.
“Okay, boys, ready for dinner?” It was Mrs. Rosenblatt at the door to Denny’s room, smiling, wearing an apron that read KISS THE COOK. Mrs. Rosenblatt was nice. So nice that last week she had to do that mom thing and try to touch my beat-up face and I had to recoil and write Hurts on my notepad. The truth? My face didn’t hurt as much.
“Mashed potatoes for you, Wayne,” Mrs. Rosenblatt said. “As soon as you are all healed, I’m going to make you an ambitious sandwich that you will never forget. Roast chicken. Swiss cheese. Tomatoes. Lettuce. The works. Don’t I make the best sandwiches, Denny?”
“Yes,” Denny said. “The best sandwich ever.”
If there were a contest for torturing someone’s taste buds, the Rosenblatts would win.
Still, she gave me a nice bowl of delicious mashed potatoes. That eased the agony of not being able to eat the best sandwich ever.
So I sat at the Rosenblatt family dinner table while everyone passed around dishes of delicious food. Denny had a loud house. There were at least five conversations going on at once among Denny, his father, his smiling mother, his aunt Sheila, and his little brother and sister. Especially Mrs. Rosenblatt. The way she talked made up for any nontalkers at the table.
“Denny, set the table, kids, don’t climb on that, did you see that article about food preservatives, Sheila, I can’t shop there anymore, put the dishes in the dishwasher, no, I never said it was broken, I said it just doesn’t work, there’s a difference.”
I watched them pass their plates while Denny’s mother told everyone what to do and asked him about fifteen times if he’d practiced his reading.
“Let the boy eat,” Denny’s dad said.
“We are so proud of Denny,” Mrs. Rosenblatt said. “Wayne, he is going to wear his great-grandfather’s prayer shawl that all the Rosenblatt men have worn for their bar mitzvahs. Did you know that?”
Nope, didn’t know that.
And did I know that Denny needed to practice reading his Torah portion?
And did I know that after Denny got up in front of everyone, and the service was completed, he would be considered a man?
“We can’t wait to hear him read,” Mrs. Rosenblatt said.
Denny got real interested in his meat loaf, and why wouldn’t he? Everyone was focused on how nice it would be to hear him read out loud.
Out loud!
Man, what was his family thinking? It seemed obvious to me that a kid like Denny would be too terrified to read a grocery list to a crowd, much less ancient Hebrew. Didn’t the Rosenblatts see the elephant in their dining room?
Denny turned to me, took my pad of paper, and sent me an SOS signal using Morse code.
…- - -…
And I wrote back, Did you know that people are wrong when they say the distress signal SOS stands for Save Our Ship? It doesn’t stand for anything. S-O-S was created in 1906 because it had nine keystrokes—three dots, three dashes, three dots—and was the easiest Morse code combination to transmit.
Sandy Showalter’s middle name was Olivia.
It’s ironic that the girl who plagued me would have the initials SOS.
Ironic with a capital I.
I should have known better than to crush on a girl with those initials.
Denny wrote: You’re a nerd!
I know!
Just when you think you’ve got a messed-up situation and more questions than answers, you sit at a big wooden table with a bunch of hungry, talking Rosenblatts and realize that Denny Rosenblatt would, in fact, love to trade places with someone searching for a red, white, and blue cloth rather than face the fear of reading in front of a hundred people. So over a meat loaf dinner, I realized something.
I was plagued.
But Denny was plagued, too.
Maybe we all were.
CHAPTER 19
Did you know that rats are strong enough to bite through a toenail?
Rats.
Stinking rats. They can wiggle into a space as small as a quarter, so look around your house and make sure you don’t have any rat crevices or long toenails. It’s a good thing we all don’t live in New York City, where there’re supposed to be two million stinking rats. Or in Africa, where the Gambian pouched rat grows up to fifteen pounds.
Even I could be grossed out by that fact.
I might be grossed out by that fact.
Okay, I was officially grossed out by that fact.
A fifteen-pound rat that can bite through a toenail is gross.
But you know what? It made me calm down to think of Sandy being grossed out by that fact, too. I used to love causing girls to do that pinched-up, gross-out face in fifth grade. A solid gross fact is the best girl repellent in the universe.
True story.
Okay, so, rats. Rats like to eat dog food. We kept Mr. Darcy’s dog food in the garage in a large plastic container. Last week, some stinking rat chewed a hole in the bucket, and Grandpa went ballistic because, you know, that meant a rat dared to be within a one-mile radius of the Car.
“Wayne, you have rat traps around here?”
No, sir.
The next day, a big box of rat traps appeared on our kitchen counter.
“Would you mind setting these up after school and getting this problem taken care of?”
Sure.
I would be useful. How hard could it be?
As soon as Grandpa drove me home from school, he got sick from his mystery illness that made him barf up burgers and the sandwich from Mrs. Rosenblatt (yes, she sent one home with me anyway). So I set up two rat traps, which is an easy enough task if you research “Rat Traps + Best Results” online. You put peanut butter on the lever and a nugget of dog food on the trap just to attract the rat. Then you leave the trap up next to a wall because, like all rodents, rats like to travel along a wall line.
I set the trap along the garage wall and another one on the outside wall next to the patio. I figured getting the stinking rat coming or going was a good plan. Then I went to my room to do boring reading homework from my new school.
Later, I went to the kitchen to make a smoothie, and that was when I heard it.
Snap! Pop! Ka-BANG!
And I thought, Man, I nailed that stinking rat already. See if he messes with Mr. Darcy’s food again! High five, Wayne Kovok! Grandpa’s going to love this.
Well, it wasn’t the rat.
Nope. Not a rat.
It was a blue jay.
A blue jay. A blue jay with one leg, bleeding bird blood all over the patio. And it will sound weird, but I thought of Sandy sitting there in language arts class talking about some stupid poem I couldn’t figure out, her long, smooth hair moving back and forth because she was so excited about whatever it was we were supposed to be learning. And I envied her for being that way. (I only got that worked up about a subject if it was science or Texas history.) The poem Sandy went crazy for had used the word bewildered, which is not a word you
hear every day. In fact, I’d never heard it before, and it stuck in my brain.
I guess I liked the word all right, but I never understood what it was to actually be bewildered.
Until the stupid blue jay nabbed the dog-food nugget and got stuck in the trap. Man, that made me feel all kinds of bewildered. I didn’t know what to do, and I just stood there and thought about my options while the blue jay stood on one leg and bled and waited for me to make a decision. It stared at me, tried to yoga balance, and poof! Lights-out! It flopped over dead.
I felt lower than a gopher hole.
“What in tarnation is this?” Grandpa said.
I shrugged. I wasn’t going to write the whole Greek tragedy on my notepad.
Boy Murders Bird and Vows Rat Revenge.
“You killed a bird with a rat trap?” Grandpa laughed, then punched me on the shoulder. Hard. “A bird? I’ve never even heard of that.”
I hadn’t ever heard of this happening, either. My neck went red from embarrassment. Just when I thought I could relax around him, not feel useless every ten seconds, this had to happen.
I made a mental note to ask Mom when he was going to move back home. Being useless around Grandpa was exhausting.
I went inside to get a bag and put the blue jay in it and carried it out to the trash. And Grandpa stood planted on the patio, still having a great laugh and shouting into the trees, “You birds better whistle and watch out. Wayne here’s got it in for you.”
The bird blood had sunk into the patio, and it took some doing with bleach to get it out. I wasn’t going to have any evidence lying around for me to remember or for the old man to relive my humiliation.
And then he said, “Wait until I tell Reed about this. Ha!”
I froze. The world froze.
His smile vanished. Our eyes locked, and I wondered which way Grandpa was going to go. Left or right. The all-riled-up, patriotic-and-have-a-memorial-moment Grandpa. Or the deflated, I just now remembered that my hero son is gone Grandpa.
He had the second kind of moment.
Everything went to fuzz. Slow minus the motion.
His hand wobbled, and he dropped his coffee mug. It shattered and splattered all over the patio where I’d been cleaning up the bird. Only it wasn’t coffee, I could tell, because it smelled sweet like tea. The fumes of bleach and sadness and tea nearly flattened me.
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