Tumble opened it. There was nothing inside but pale dust from the road.
The only person who ever sent Tumble mail was her Grandpa Laffy. He signed a birthday card for her every year. She would be twelve in eight months, and there was no way she’d be here that long.
“You’re just going to have to get used to being empty,” she told the mailbox.
The ditches were narrow and filled with spiny weeds and briars. They left scratches thin as paper cuts all over Tumble’s ankles as she walked until she gave up on proper highway safety and decided to use the middle of the sandy road. Pine trees stood at attention on either side of her. The ground underneath them was covered in a layer of fallen brown needles. And in the shade of the trees, bushes with giant fronds rattled as if creatures were hiding just out of sight.
Palmettos, thought Tumble. That was what her mother had called them. Her mother, who used to visit her grandmother in this place when she was a little girl. Tumble couldn’t imagine it.
It wasn’t that her mother didn’t like nature. She did. But she liked what Tumble thought of as organized nature. She liked parks and campgrounds and lakes not too far from cities—the kinds of places where you spent the morning taking pictures of squirrels and then went to the gift shop that afternoon to buy coffee mugs and snow globes.
Tumble was pretty sure there was no such thing as a Murky Branch snow globe.
A few minutes after she had set out, the Montgomery house appeared around the curve. If not for the trees, Tumble would have had a good view of it from her bedroom window.
Mr. Patty had mentioned visitors from out of town, but Tumble hadn’t realized just how many cars and trucks would be parked in the yard. She also hadn’t pictured something so big. It looked more like a haunted bed-and-breakfast than a home.
Tumble tilted her head and crossed her eyes and decided that the humongous old place wasn’t ugly. Just different. And she liked different.
In Chapter Four of How to Hero Every Day, Maximal Star talked about how important it was for a hero to differentiate herself from the average person: “People should know from the moment they meet a hero that he is someone special. He is here to help, and help is here.”
It was good, Maximal said, to have some way of telling people that you wouldn’t stand for evil of any kind. Like, for example, if your name was Maximal Star. That would let people know that you weren’t going to sit around if bad things were happening.
Tumble had picked Tumble because it was a good starter name.
She didn’t think it would be right for a beginner to choose a name like Maximal; people might get the wrong idea about your abilities. But Tumble was perfect, especially because she had come up with a good Heroic Introduction to go with it.
“I’m Tumble Wilson,” Tumble said as she stared at the house. “And I’m ready no matter how rough-and-tumble the situation gets.”
Sometimes—a lot of the time—people laughed when Tumble used her introduction. But she liked to think of it as practice. A hero couldn’t afford to be embarrassed about doing the right thing, and anyway, the people who laughed the loudest were the ones she knew to watch out for. They’d be the ones knocking younger kids around or writing rude messages on bathroom stalls.
Blue wouldn’t be one of those, she thought. He’d be friendly.
She considered walking right up to the front door and asking for him, but he had run off looking so mortified and flustered earlier that she was worried he might refuse to see her.
Anyway, there was an entire chapter devoted to reconnaissance in How to Hero Every Day. Tumble would assess her assets, observe the obstacles, and perceive the path to success.
When she was finished, Murky Branch wouldn’t know what had hit it.
TEN
NORMAL PEOPLE
Blue finally managed to get his hands on the old-fashioned wall phone in the kitchen when Ma Myrtle summoned the Montgomerys out onto the porch that afternoon. Everyone went except for Blue and his grandmother, who was trying to nap after staying up all night to deal with some late arrivals from Brazil.
Blue’s fingers automatically punched in the first few digits of the hotel’s number before he remembered. His dad would be on the road by now, following his old racing buddies, talking to people about getting back behind the wheel. That had been his plan the last time Blue had heard it anyway.
He dialed his dad’s cell phone instead and waited. It rang over and over until finally the voice mail picked up. “Hello!” said a younger Blue’s chipper voice. “You’ve reached Alan Montgomery. Please leave a message. He’ll get back to you almost as fast as he drives.”
Blue was getting tired of hearing himself make that joke.
“There you are,” Howard said, stepping into the kitchen as Blue hung the phone back on the wall. “Come outside. Ida’s terrible at spying and none of them will say anything in front of me or Jenna.”
“Your doorknob almost killed me.”
“It’s low voltage,” Howard said without a hint of shame. “Anyway, spying’s not so bad. Greg’s made sandwiches.”
“Who?”
“The guy from California who starts fires?” Howard shrugged. “Apparently he’s big on cold cuts, and he’s decided that the way to a brand-new fate is through Ma Myrtle’s stomach.”
“I can’t believe you’re leaving food behind.”
“I’m noble like that. Sacrificing myself for the greater good and all.”
Blue thought about it. “You got into another argument with Ma Myrtle, didn’t you?”
Howard opened the fridge then slammed the door when he saw it was empty. “No. But I was about to.”
He ran a hand through his bangs. “She started in on the whole ‘upholding the family honor by eating everything in sight’ thing again. I thought it would be better to leave.”
Because he didn’t want to ruin their chances, Blue knew. Because he didn’t want to mess it up for Granny Eve.
“I can’t believe she’s doing this,” Blue said. “Granny Eve is her daughter.”
Howard leaned back against the counter. “I can’t believe Granny Eve hasn’t put a stop to it,” he replied. “Or at least kicked all of these buzzards out and told them to find motels. She would have usually. But I think this death-date business has thrown her into a tailspin.” He made a vague twirling gesture with one hand.
“She seems okay,” Blue said. “Mostly.”
“Yeah, but she’s Granny Eve.” Howard frowned at a fridge magnet from Flat’s Restaurant. “She’s supposed to be more than okay.”
■ ■ ■
Blue ate half of a cucumber cream-cheese sandwich and tried to listen to three conversations at once.
Some of the relatives had crammed themselves around Ma Myrtle’s spot on the porch swing. The others were left to stew around the edges and plot.
As soon as people realized who Blue was, he turned invisible. “That’s the loser boy,” they whispered. “Don’t worry about him.”
One of the Brazilian cousins had helped him get to the sandwich tray, and Ernestine, the college girl with electrical problems, had waved at him before she went back to strumming a ukulele at Ma Myrtle’s feet. Blue added those two to his very short mental list of Montgomerys who weren’t terrible and decided not to eavesdrop on them.
Instead, he focused on the singing toddler’s mother, the car accident lady, and a foul-smelling uncle who was painting Ma Myrtle’s portrait.
The toddler was standing next to Ma Myrtle, singing a twangy song about duck hunting. He was all chubby cheeks and smiles, and he was doing a little dance that involved tapping the heels of his cowboy boots against the porch boards and spinning. His name was Chet, and everyone agreed he was a threat.
“I didn’t expect it to be a little kid who ruined it all,” the car accident woman was grumbling. Her leg was trapped in a
medical boot, and she had stitches running across her forehead. “If Ma Myrtle says darling or angelic one more time, I’m going to swat Chelsea with my crutches.”
Chelsea was the toddler’s mother. Blue didn’t know what her fate was, so it couldn’t have been spectacularly good or bad. But she was spectacularly annoying. She was sure that, any day now, Ma Myrtle would be telling her how to find the alligator under the red moon.
“It’s all for Chet’s sake you know,” she was saying to a cousin with a handlebar mustache. “He’s the youngest one here, so he has the most to gain from a new fate. It only makes sense!”
“And the rest of us can just get lost and die miserable, is that it?” Mustache snorted. “Your kid already has a great life ahead of him with that talent. Why don’t you just keep riding his coattails all the way back to Nashville and let the rest of us have a chance?”
“Exactly what I was thinking!” said a thin woman with an accent Blue didn’t recognize.
Cousin Chelsea sniffed and tried to flip her poofy hair over her shoulder disdainfully, but she’d applied so much hairspray that her hairdo only crunched at the impact.
“Excuse me!” she said. She flounced off and started shoving and jostling her way through the crowd around Ma Myrtle.
“Good riddance,” said Mustache.
“She’s a harpy,” the stinky painter muttered. He had moved his easel to the porch steps. The stench was his curse; painting was just a hobby he was hoping would be enough to win Ma Myrtle over. Like the fire starter with his trays of sandwiches and Ernestine with her ukulele.
Blue had eaten the last bite of cucumber cream cheese, but he didn’t feel like fighting his way across the porch to get another one. Besides, listening to the bitter words and angry mutters all around him had ruined his appetite.
I won’t be like these people, he promised himself. No matter what, I won’t.
He stepped over to the edge of the porch, trying to ignore the chaos for a few seconds. It was a hot, bright day, and Granny Eve’s yard blazed with different shades of green. The grass was long, except for the trails made by the relatives’ cars and trucks driving through it. Someone was drying their laundry on the side of the chicken coop.
Motion caught Blue’s eye and he glanced above the coop. One of the pecan tree’s limbs was shaking. He squinted through the leaves and saw a flash of yellow fabric.
Someone was up there. In the tree. Spying on the Montgomerys, just like Blue was.
Blue scanned all the people on the porch, wondering who was missing. He didn’t know every single face in the house, but a quick head count gave him the right number. So it was someone who’d just gotten here. Or . . .
A new suspicion gnawed at Blue. He stared as hard as he could up into the tree, but all he saw was that scrap of yellow and the edge of a shoe.
Smart people, thought Blue, stay away when you tell them you’re cursed. Normal people think you’ve lost your marbles.
The alligator carved onto the column nearest him seemed to be smiling through its crooked teeth.
Normal doesn’t belong, it reminded Blue. Not in this place.
ELEVEN
FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES
Tumble’s hand was starting to cramp from bracing herself against the limb near her head, and her ankles ached from balancing for so long. But giving into discomfort wasn’t an option. Maximal Star had once crawled through a tunnel for three miles with broken ribs to save a trapped miner.
Climbing the big tree would have been impossible, but Tumble had assessed her assets and used the hutch in the empty chicken coop to get aloft. And it was worth it. More than that!
She’d been hoping to get information that would help her help Blue, but what she’d gotten was even better. Here was a whole family who needed a hero! Blue’s delusions were genetic. The Montgomerys, at least most of them, thought they were honest to goodness cursed.
It had taken Tumble a while to be sure that they were all one family, but after listening for over an hour, she was certain of that much. They didn’t look alike, and at least one of them spoke mostly Portuguese, but they all addressed each other as Cousin or Aunt or Great-Great-Uncle.
Tumble had soon realized that the center of everything was a tiny, ancient woman named Ma Myrtle. She was sitting on the porch swing, wearing a sundress and a straw hat with a wide brim perched on top of her long white hair. She was plucking finger sandwiches from a plastic tray that a scrawny, bearded guy was holding out to her.
As Tumble listened in on the noisier members of the family, a picture of what was going on started to build itself in her head. Some ancestor of theirs had found something a long time ago in the swamp that had made him rich enough to build this monster of a house. But they thought he’d also cursed them in the process. And there was a lot of talk about the moon and the occasional mention, in high nervous tones, of a golden alligator.
Tumble had worked hard to piece this all together into a story that made sense. She had finally decided that the legend must be about an ancient Montgomery finding a cursed alligator statue in the Okefenokee, then melting it down for the money.
Not bad, as far as adventure stories went. Tumble would have added a few explosions and a swamp witch if she were making it up. But maybe the original maker-upper had thought that would be too much.
Pleased that she had figured the puzzle out, Tumble turned her attention back to the porch to see that a woman with poofy hair was misting Ma Myrtle with a squirt bottle full of ice water to keep her cool.
When the little singing boy stopped, the old woman applauded and every eye turned toward her. “Wonderful!” she said. Tumble could only make out every other word or so when Ma Myrtle spoke. “I do have . . . and an ear . . . musical arts.”
The poofy-haired lady looked like she might burst from excitement. She lifted her squirt bottle higher and started spritzing wildly.
“My Chet is such a talent!” she said loudly enough for everyone, including Tumble, to hear. Spritz, spritz. “Everyone in Nashville says it!” Spritz, spritz, spritz.
Wait a second. Where did he go?
Blue had vanished while Tumble was figuring out the whole thing. Oh no. An experienced hero never took her eyes off the person she was trying to help.
She leaned forward, trying to get a good angle to see the entire porch.
“It’s rude to eavesdrop on people.”
Startled to hear the voice coming from over her head, Tumble whirled. She wobbled and lost her balance. She had just a second to see Blue Montgomery lying across the limb above her, his broken arm dangling and his blond hair full of leaves, then her shoes slipped.
■ ■ ■
Blue’s arm shot out toward Tumble, and her scrabbling fingers grasped his cast just in time.
He yelped. The arm was almost healed, but it still hurt to have a girl hanging off it.
“Sorry,” he gasped, holding tightly on to his limb to brace against her weight. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Not true. He had absolutely meant to scare her, but only a little bit. Only enough to make her go away and make himself feel better about the fact that she’d overheard his freak-out that morning.
Tumble clutched his cast with both hands as she maneuvered herself back toward the tree’s trunk. She was breathing hard.
“Just like the bleachers,” she panted. “So far down.”
Her face had gone white, and her eyes were popping. Since Blue had last seen her, her short hair had been brushed and pulled back into a tiny sprout of a ponytail.
“Are you okay?” Blue asked when she didn’t let go of his cast.
“Ha!” said Tumble. She swallowed. “I’m fine. I almost fell off something a few weeks back, too. Some bleachers at my old school. What are the chances, right?”
Great. Blue had thought it was pretty sneaky and smart to c
limb up the tree without her noticing. Now he felt guilty.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Tumble said, finally dropping his arm. “Just me being clumsy.”
And now he felt worse. “You were spying on us.”
Tumble nodded. “Only because I wanted to get to know you better.”
Blue frowned. “Why?”
“So we can be friends of course! We got off to a weird start this morning, but I just moved here. And from what I overheard, it sounds like you just moved here, too? So . . .”
Excitement at the idea of befriending him seemed to have put her nerves out of her mind. She was even bouncing a little on the balls of her feet, making the limb underneath her tremble.
Reminding Blue that he had almost scared her out of a tree. “Uh . . . okay.” He wondered how bad this idea was. “But you should know that the situation is kind of unusual around here.”
Tumble grinned at him as if to say she ate unusual for breakfast.
I loathe interruptions to the natural order of things, but I think I will indulge myself. We’ll meet after all, you and I, and I don’t care to endure your mistaken impressions.
I am no statue.
I am not a prize to be won.
And despite Tumble Wilson’s wild imaginings, I do not melt.
Hello, I suppose. You can’t have my name. It’s not for your kind.
You can call me what the Montgomerys do.
Call me Munch.
TWELVE
A HEROIC PLAN OF ACTION
Ever since she’d gotten serious about heroism, trouble had a strange effect on Tumble. On the one hand, she didn’t want anyone to be in dire straits, but on the other, dire straits meant that she could do something to help. And that sent a giddy, guilty jolt of energy through her.
The Montgomerys were the best of both worlds. They weren’t actually in danger, but most of them thought they were. Blue had explained a few things. Fate and weird moons and magic alligators—Tumble had never heard anything like it outside of fairy tales.
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