Tumble & Blue
Page 4
Her eyebrows pulled together, and she pursed her lips.
“Like games and sports. That’s my curse.”
“Your . . . curse?” she said.
“Yes,” Blue said impatiently. “That’s mine. If you want to be specific, I lose competitions of skill. Ma Myrtle’s never going to pick me, so you’re wasting your time if you’re spying on me because you think I might beat you. I can’t beat anyone.”
Tumble stood there with her head tilted for so long that Blue was suddenly worried he’d misread the situation.
“What’s your fate? I mean . . . do you have a good one or a bad one?”
What if she hadn’t been spying on him at all? Or . . . oh no. What if she had one of the really bad fates, so bad that she didn’t even want to talk about it? And Blue had just asked.
“Hey,” he said, “you don’t have to tell me. I didn’t mean to be a jerk.”
She didn’t answer.
“And you can stay in my attic if you want!” he added hastily. “I mean, since you just got here and the rooms are all gone. I can sleep in Granny Eve’s car or something. It’ll be fine.”
That snapped her out of it. Tumble shook her head. “Why would I want to sleep in your attic? I’m from next door.”
Blue’s brain sputtered as he realized his mistake. The pajamas. Him screaming. Right in front of the gray house.
And he’d just . . .
This girl was . . .
“I mean, I don’t like my new room much, so maybe your attic would be better, but I’ve always got the RV and—”
“You’re not a Montgomery.”
“I’m Tumble Wilson,” Tumble said, reaching out for a handshake. “Nice to meet you.”
Blue grasped her hand with fingers that felt so clumsy he might as well have been wearing mittens.
“You’re normal,” he said weakly.
Tumble pistoned his hand up and down. “I prefer,” she said, “to think of myself as potentially extraordinary.”
SEVEN
HOW TO HERO EVERY DAY
The Wilson family’s RV should have been filled with morning sounds when Tumble made it back home. The coffeepot gurgling in the kitchen area, the tiny shower hissing, and maybe Tumble’s dad singing one of his jingles while he washed his hair.
Right now he was writing one for a company that made coconut shampoo. They’d sent so many free samples that the family had been using it to clean everything from their socks to the RV’s tires.
Tumble set her first aid kit on the foot of her sofa bed and flopped down on top of her fuzzy blue blanket. Then she closed her eyes and sniffed the air. The RV smelled exactly right. Like a sunscreen factory had exploded all over the place.
But it wasn’t right. Not even when Tumble tried to hum the latest version of the jingle to herself.
The Wilsons had arrived at their new house the day before. The trip across the country had been made longer by their infallible GPS failing to recognize Murky Branch’s existence.
Who could blame it, though? According to the town sign, three hundred and forty-two people lived here. How was Tumble supposed to be a hero in a place that was almost not a place at all?
Of course, that was exactly what her parents were counting on.
“Uh-oh!” the GPS had said over and over in its determined, friendly voice. “It looks like you’ve gone off the map!”
Tumble thought that was an omen. Her parents thought it was quaint.
They thought the house was quaint, too. And the town welcome sign. And even their elderly landlord, Mr. Ralph Patty, who had been waiting on their new front porch to hand over the keys. He’d wanted to apologize in person for the fact that the house had no curtains. Apparently, his bonkers dog had destroyed them, along with every last doily and dust ruffle in the place.
When Mr. Patty left (to live with family in Orlando), the Wilsons had spent the whole afternoon unloading the RV and moving in. Tumble had been given her own bedroom for the first time in her life, and her parents had made a big deal about how exciting it was to have so much space to spread out in. They kept pointing out that Tumble’s room had a view of the woods, and that she could decorate it herself.
“Posters of Maximal Star everywhere if you want!” her mother had offered.
Considering her mother’s feelings about Maximal Star, it was proof that she knew just how thoroughly she had ruined Tumble’s life.
But Tumble had smiled. She had nodded. At the end of the day, she had gone to her new room with its new view, and she had even let her parents tuck her in like they had when she was little.
Only she couldn’t sleep in the strange house, in the giant room with its thin quilt and its springy, shrieky bed. After growing up in RVs, all of the extra space felt echoing and empty. Her parents, sleeping down the hall, must have been snoring softly as usual, but Tumble couldn’t hear them.
Sneaking out to sleep in the RV had seemed like the obvious solution. Her sofa bed was snug, and her fuzzy blanket was soft. But without her parents and their noisy morning routine, it wasn’t quite home.
Tumble swallowed down something suspiciously lump-like in her throat. She reminded herself that Maximal Star wouldn’t get all weepy over the fact that he had to sleep in a different bed. Geez, Louise, she thought in her sternest mental voice. Get a grip.
She racked her brain for a quote and found one. Staying upbeat will vanquish defeat. That was from the author’s note in How to Hero Every Day.
Tumble sighed. “Thanks, Maximal,” she whispered to the empty RV.
Her parents had taken her life and given it a good hard shake, but that didn’t mean Tumble was going to fall to pieces. Heroing was an everyday business after all. And despite all odds Tumble had found someone who needed her on her very first day in Murky Branch.
Blue Montgomery. He was the solution to her problem. After her last rescue had ended . . . dramatically, Tumble’s parents had decided she needed stability. Peacefulness. A town so small it would surely bore the heroism right out of her.
They wouldn’t be happy to know that they had moved her next door to a strange screaming boy who thought he was honest-to-goodness cursed. Tumble was feeling pretty lucky for the first time in ages.
She took a deep breath, held it, and started to count seconds. This was her current self-improvement exercise, and she made a point of doing it every morning. One day she might see someone drowning, she figured, and if she could hold her breath for two straight minutes, she would absolutely-for-sure be able to save them. Probably.
It might take years, but according to Maximal Star, you had to prepare for these situations well in advance.
Sixty-five, sixty-six, sixty-seven!
Tumble’s lungs felt like someone was trying to empty them with a vacuum hose, so she finally gave up and took another breath. Sixty-seven seconds was pretty good. It was two more seconds than yesterday, twenty more seconds than two weeks ago, and over halfway to her goal.
Sixty-seven seconds made her feel confident enough to head into the house. The RV was already getting uncomfortably hot.
The sofa bed creaked when Tumble stood, and it went poppa-poppa-clang-thwooong when she folded it up and slammed it into place. Because she hadn’t made the bed first, her blanket sprouted from the edges. She thought about taking the blanket with her, into the air-conditioned house, where she would be sleeping that night.
Definitely she would be sleeping there, because she wasn’t a baby for goodness’ sake.
Of course, she could also wait and come back for the blanket later. If she got cold. She poked it down into the cracks and covered the sofa with its puffy white cushions.
If her dad was where he was supposed to be, in the RV, drying his wet hair with a towel, he would say, “Hey, look at that! Instant living room!”
And Tumble would roll her eyes, because honestly, her da
d needed some new jokes.
And her mother would peer blearily at them both and grunt over her cup of coffee.
And . . .
Tumble shook her head at herself. She had found someone to help. That was what mattered.
She crossed the yard, noticing that it was more weeds than grass really, and who was going to take care of that? Her mother knew a lot about engines and suspensions and mechanical stuff, and her dad knew all about coconut shampoo and iambic pentameter. Tumble didn’t think either of them knew the first thing about growing a lawn. That’s the kind of problem you should consider before moving into a house.
And who was going to keep those shiny green bushes at the corner of the house alive? Were they roses? Tumble didn’t know what rosebushes looked like if there were no flowers. She hopped up the two steps onto the porch and noticed a hummingbird feeder hanging from the rafters. It was empty. Who was going to figure out what to feed the hummingbirds?
The whole situation was frustrating. Tumble’s parents had made this horrible mistake, and she knew it was a little bit her fault for almost dying during her last rescue, but there was nothing else she could have done.
Her archenemy Susan had been shoving that third grader around at the top of the off-limits old bleachers. And Tumble had intervened just in time. And the third grader hadn’t broken her silly head open, and it all would have been totally and completely excellent if the bleacher Tumble had chosen to stand on hadn’t been rotten.
She pushed away the memory of hanging from the crumbling boards, all of that empty space underneath her.
Heroes take risks, not days off.
The screen door squealed as she opened it.
“I’m still on duty,” Tumble said to herself as she stepped inside. “Even when I’m off the map.”
EIGHT
TWELVE X’S
Mr. Patty’s house had swallowed Tumble’s whole life, and it still looked emptier than it should have. Their landlord had left the beds and a few pieces of mismatched furniture behind, but there were no decorations, unless you counted hunting-dog-of-the-month wall calendars.
Tumble didn’t.
“Lily?” her mother called. “Are you awake?”
Tumble headed into the kitchen. The fluorescent light on the ceiling buzzed and flickered. The floor was green linoleum, dingy with age or grime, and there was only one small window with an empty curtain rod.
Thanks to the curtain-eating dog, Tumble guessed.
Her mother, bent in half over the counter, was unscrewing an outlet cover. Their coffeepot, usually steaming before the sun had risen, stood unplugged beside her.
“Is the outlet broken?” Tumble asked.
“Not for long,” her mother said. The plastic cover hit the countertop with a clatter. “Did you like your new room?”
So, they hadn’t even noticed she was gone.
It would have been obvious in the RV if they’d woken up and she was out of bed. Tumble guessed that was another thing that was different about living in a house. She wondered why she’d gone to the trouble of leaving a note on her pillow if nobody had bothered to read it.
“Not really. I kind of missed my sofa bed.”
“Mr. Patty’s mattresses aren’t the best.” Her mother was shining a flashlight at the outlet now. “We can get you a new one.”
“No, no. It’ll be fine.”
New mattresses were an investment, weren’t they? That was like saying they were going to be in the house for long enough to need . . . well, a mattress. Tumble could hold out until her parents came to their senses.
“Are you sure? We don’t want you missing out on sleep.”
“I’m positive.”
Tumble heard the sound of a shower cutting on and then a yelp from the back of the house.
“Oh, hon!” her mother shouted. “The hot and cold water knobs are backward! Sorry!”
After a moment, the familiar sound of Tumble’s dad singing the coconut shampoo song drifted into the kitchen.
“Even the water is messed up?” said Tumble. “Isn’t that kind of—”
“These are just quirks,” her mother interrupted. “Older houses have lots of quirks. That’s part of their charm.”
Tumble wanted to snort, but she had decided to be mature about all of this.
“Well, quirks are a little inconvenient, aren’t they?” she said in her most mature voice. “Like, there weren’t a lot of them in the RV, and we’ve always done just fine with—”
“How about a muffin for breakfast?” Tumble’s mother interrupted, sliding off the counter.
“I have to have protein.”
Protein built muscle. Muscle was important in case you passed by the scene of a train accident and had to lift wreckage to free the victims. If only . . .
Her mother pursed her lips. “We don’t have any eggs.”
“That’s okay.” Tumble had made sure to keep track of the Maximal Star Proper Protein Powder yesterday. Her dad had buried it in a cabinet behind a stack of plates and the hand mixer.
Tumble was onto him.
She beelined for the right cabinet and grabbed the canister. She dumped two heaping scoopfuls of it into the special shaker, which had been buried in a different cupboard behind the very last row of drinking glasses, and turned to the fridge for milk.
“Lily—”
“Call me Tumble, please.”
There was a pause, and then a short, sharp sigh. “Fine. Tumble, I really think a muffin, or maybe a yogurt cup—”
“Hey, that’s an idea,” said Tumble. She wove her arm around an ancient jar of mayonnaise that Mr. Patty had left to grab a strawberry yogurt. “I can add this in, and it’ll be like a strawberry milk shake.”
Tumble plopped the yogurt into her shaker and slapped the lid closed. She shook it as hard as she could because it might possibly count as an extra arm workout if she put enough effort into it.
“I think I’ll go meet the neighbors later today,” Tumble said as she shook. “I saw a boy running past this morning.”
Her mother looked pleased, as Tumble had known she would. “That’s a wonderful idea, sweetheart! Make some new friends. Settle in.”
“Right.”
“You could wear that dress I bought you last month.”
“Mom, no,” Tumble groaned. “It’s all long and floofy.”
“I think it would make a good impression.”
Tumble didn’t wear dresses, or anything that might trip her up in an emergency situation, if she could help it. She especially did not wear dresses that had layers of frothy yellow lace and ruffles hanging down the back.
“It’s too hot,” said Tumble. “Besides, the neighbor kids might . . . want to play. Outside. And then I’ll get all sweaty and nasty in it.”
Her mother made disappointed sounds and head-shaking motions and motherly frowns of disapproval, but Tumble managed to slurp down her protein shake and escape from the kitchen without agreeing to wear the awful dress.
She found a better outfit in her new closet. She would wear her second favorite Maximal Star T-shirt, jean shorts, and practical sneakers.
The right equipment for every eventuality. Chapter Two.
Tumble crumpled the note she’d left on the pillow the night before. She didn’t have a trash can yet, so she threw it into an empty corner. It bounced off the wall and rolled toward the center of the floor.
It looked out of place there, all by itself.
Tumble flopped back onto the bed, wincing at the shriek and the bounce. Then she dug her hand into her pocket and pulled out a plastic snack bag. It was still securely zipped. Inside the bag was a golf pencil, a picture she’d printed off a library computer in Seattle nearly a year before, and, most importantly, a pink eraser.
She glanced toward the door to make sure it was shut befor
e she took out the picture. Her brother—Jason Wilson. She wondered if she would have called him Jason, or if they would have had special nicknames for each other. Jace and Lils, maybe. Jay. JJ.
She wondered a lot of things like that.
In the photograph, her brother was wearing his football jersey. Two dark stripes were painted under his eyes, and the pads beneath his jersey made him look big as a mountain.
Tumble turned the photo over. Even though she’d taped the edges of the paper, it was getting ragged. Probably from all of the erasing.
The back of the picture had once been covered with x’s. Tumble hadn’t been too particular about the number. She’d only known that she had to fill the space with them.
Every heroic deed meant she could erase one.
Big things, like saving that third grader on the bleachers, meant she could erase more than one. She’d taken off six for that, even though it had gone wrong at the end. Except for stopping that shoplifter in Texas, it was her biggest success so far.
Tumble had twelve x’s left. When the back of the picture was blank, she would feel . . . like she was supposed to feel.
Different, she thought. Better. Braver.
Maybe she would even feel brave enough to tell her parents she knew the truth. They didn’t have to lie to her anymore.
Twelve x’s isn’t so many. Twelve x’s is doable.
But the doing of it might take forever in a place like Murky Branch.
NINE
STARTER NAMES
By three o’clock that afternoon, Tumble stood at the end of the weed-choked driveway. Her mother was busy working on what seemed to be an issue with the house’s plumbing, and Tumble had realized that it was time for her to go if she didn’t want to be roped into helping.
Heroism didn’t apply to problems with pipes. She was sure of it.
It was hot and sticky humid outside. She looked around to get her bearings, but the closest thing to a signpost was the dented, galvanized mailbox at the end of the drive. 401 R. PATTY was stenciled on the side in black paint.