“Come to Laffy’s RV Kingdom today!” the announcer’s voice boomed.
“And you’ll be ruling the roads tomorrow,” Tumble and her parents said. They were perfectly in time with the announcer.
“Grandpa Laffy really needs to get a new commercial,” said Tumble, turning back to help Eve with the remote. “He should have you write a jingle for it, Dad.”
“Grandpa Laffy?” Ma Myrtle said.
“It’s this button, Mrs. Eve,” said Tumble, pointing.
But Eve’s fingers had stopped moving. She was staring at Tumble, then at Ma Myrtle, and then back again. Her head was moving so quickly that she looked like she was trying to work a cramp out of her neck.
“Grandpa Laffy?!” Ma Myrtle said, much more shrilly this time. “That’s old Deirdre LaFayette’s boy!”
“Oh!” Tumble’s mother sounded delighted. “Did you know my grandmother?”
“Ma Myrtle,” said Goat, standing up, “are you all right?”
Ma Myrtle was clutching the front of her blouse in both of her wrinkled hands. “LaFayettes! LaFayettes are among us! That’s how it all goes wrong!”
“Mama!” Eve said sharply. “Don’t be ugly.”
“Bedevilment!” wailed Ma Myrtle, falling back into the cushions. “Ill fortune in my final days!”
Tumble felt someone tugging on the sleeve of her shirt, and she turned to see Blue, his wide eyes matching her own.
“What’s going on?” she said.
He shook his head. “I don’t exactly—”
Eve stood. “Mama, we are not going to do this here in front of these nice people!”
Tumble’s parents were staring at Ma Myrtle with alarm. “Is she okay?” Tumble’s father asked.
Eve smiled at them. “Don’t worry, please. Ma Myrtle is just a little excitable. A little histrionic.”
“Does she need—”
“To go,” Eve said, pulling her mother onto her feet by one arm. “She’ll feel better when she gets back to the house. She’s enjoying the company of our . . . beloved relations.”
Ma Myrtle and Eve glared at each other for a tense moment. Then Ma Myrtle snatched her arm away, and with a last dark look at the Wilsons, she marched out of the room.
By the time the door slammed, Eve was already smoothing things over. “Her health, you know. And she doesn’t quite know how to deal with everything that’s happening right now. . . .”
Tumble’s mother was nodding sympathetically, but Tumble still felt completely baffled.
“What’s wrong with LaFayettes?” she whispered to Blue. “Grandpa Laffy’s just as friendly as anyone.”
He stood and stretched. “I’m going to make sure Ma Myrtle’s not too upset,” he said, but he dropped his arms and made a follow-me gesture behind his back.
Tumble trailed behind him into the kitchen and out onto Goat’s front steps. It was still drizzling outside but not as badly as it had been. Ma Myrtle was already back in the car.
“What on earth was that about?”
Blue’s face scrunched. “You remember the story I told you? About my family, and the golden alligator? Munch?”
Tumble snorted. “It’s kind of hard to forget something like that.”
“Well, I should have told you more.” He frowned down at his arm. It looked pale and thin without its cast on it. “I should have told you the other half of the story.”
There’s more? thought Tumble. How much stranger could the Montgomerys get?
“What’s the other half?”
“The LaFayettes are,” said Blue, looking back up at her. “You are.”
How very human of Blue to forget Almira.
Her likeness was carved into the wood over their front door, but the Montgomerys preferred to treat her as a side character. When the story was passed down, she was little more than an explanation.
A woman named LaFayette had ruined it all under the red moon, they said. She was why everything had gone sideways.
A partial truth. The worst kind of lie because it slides so smoothly down the gullet.
Here is what actually happened that night. Swallow with care. You’ll find my version has had none of its sharp edges removed.
Red everywhere.
Overhead, dripping from the sickle moon. Under-foot, staining the leaves. Sparkling on the surface of the black water.
Red filled the whites of Walcott’s eyes. It dried in the curved spaces beneath Almira’s fingernails.
The sounds were almost animal. Crack of bone.
Shriek and thud. And that old, familiar smell on the air, mingling with the blood.
“Do you know what humans smell like?” I said, when the battle paused. “Under the skin, behind the veins?”
Greed.
Their faces, twisted with exhaustion and pain, were growing brighter. The red was falling away from the moon.
“Do continue,” I said. “You’re almost out of time.”
They stood facing each other, chests lifting and lowering, until finally Walcott spoke in that mosquito-whine of a voice.
“We’ll kill each other at this rate. Is that what you want, you dark thing?”
A question only a human would ask. Under the red moon, I do not want. I am.
“Can’t we split it?” Almira said suddenly, wiping red from her mouth. “You could break it in two.”
A bad idea.
I told them. I explained, oh so clearly, what a broken fate would mean for the Montgomerys and LaFayettes who came after them.
“But would we have what we want?” Walcott asked. He spat a tooth on the ground. “Would we have the luck?”
Yes. They would.
“Well! That’s it then. That’s all I care about,” said Walcott.
And Almira agreed.
So for the first time in history, I broke a great fate in half. And I knew how it would sink its claws into human after human, on down through the years, all the way to Tumble and to Blue. Every death, every hurt, every broken arm and stitched shin—I knew on that very night.
And you’re wrong. I’m not the monster.
All I am is true.
TWENTY-ONE
FATE FREE
Tumble burrowed deeper under her fuzzy blanket and tried to remember everything Maximal Star had ever said about feeling like a hero.
Nothing. Nothing at all.
Apparently, he had never had a crisis of confidence before. Or maybe he hadn’t written about it.
Tumble latched on to this idea and refused to let go. All heroes probably had doubts sometimes, she told herself. If she ever met Maximal Star, she would mention that he ought to write about the parts in between the daring rescues. The parts where you felt like a big-time faker and a failure.
The other half of the story.
Tumble didn’t want to be the other half of the Montgomerys’ story. She had already been feeling a little—just a tad—overwhelmed by the idea of helping Blue deal with his fate.
She didn’t want one of her own to contend with, too.
Blue didn’t understand why she was upset. “You’ve got one of the good ones,” he’d whispered to her while Mrs. Eve was saying good-bye to her parents. “Tumble, your heroing stuff—that’s your talent. You really are a hero.”
And he’d looked at her so hopefully.
It was the best thing anyone had ever said to Tumble. She’d been waiting all this time for someone to think she could save them. So why couldn’t she sleep?
Maybe it was the RV. Maybe it was just that the coconut shampoo smell was starting to fade.
Tumble did her breathing exercise. She counted her seconds over and over. But when the sunlight started to filter through the pleated shades, she hadn’t gotten even a minute of sleep.
Laffy Motors and Maximal Star had failed
her on the very same night.
Laffy Motors. Tumble’s grandpa was an RV king. Was that all because of some talent? And her mother. What about Monica LaFayette Wilson? She was normal. No curses. No magical gifts.
Maybe it wears off, Tumble thought.
The idea made her sit right up in bed.
It. Wore. Off.
Of course it did! It had been two hundred years. Tumble had heard Ma Myrtle bragging about Montgomerys from the past who had so many powerful and terrible fates. But now they had people in the family like that Ernestine girl, who almost wasn’t cursed at all. She made lights flicker. What kind of a dreadful burden was that?
Maybe Almira LaFayette had gotten a smaller dose of whatever strange magic went on in the swamp that night. Maybe Tumble and her mother were fate free. And even if they weren’t, they must have such small talents that they hadn’t even noticed them.
Tumble was probably great at painting with her toes, or playing the glockenspiel, or something else she’d never tried.
Fate free! That’s me.
She hoped Blue was awake. She had to tell him that she was only a regular hero. Not a destined one. And she was still in training, after all. He needed to understand that.
Tumble raced out of the RV and into the house to get dressed, but when she reached the hallway, she was assaulted by a chokingly sour smell. And when her bare feet touched the hall carpet, it squished.
“Eeew!” Cold water oozed up around her toes.
She shoved the RV keys into the pocket of her pajama shorts and tiptoed as fast as she could to her parents’ room. “Mom. Daddy. You guys! The carpet has gone funky.”
Her father fumbled for the switch on the reading lamp by the bed. He clicked it on, and in the yellow light, Tumble saw his face cringe as he rolled out of bed and his feet hit the floor.
“Wow, that’s no way to wake up.”
“And it reeks,” said Tumble. “What are we going to do?”
■ ■ ■
Instead of having breakfast, they spent the morning pulling up the mildewing carpet.
“Yuuuuuck,” Tumble said as she scooped handfuls of squishy, drippy carpet backing into a plastic bucket. “Why can’t we go back to the RV? This house is a dump.”
Her mother was on her hands and knees at the other end of the hall with her own plastic bucket. “Lily, I swear if you mention the RV one more time before your dad gets back from the hardware store—”
So Tumble didn’t mention it, but she thought about it. She thought about how the RV didn’t have carpet. The RV didn’t leak. The RV smelled like leather seats and coconut shampoo. And her parents were making her live in this house, which was probably a biohazard now, when the RV was parked right outside.
Tumble was working herself into a state over the wrongness and insanity of her whole life, throwing chunks of rotten carpet at the overflowing bucket with increasing rage, when Blue’s voice came from the front of the house.
“Hello? Is anybody here?”
They’d left the door open, trying to air out the stench.
Tumble’s mother looked up. “Fine,” she said, wiping her frustrated, sweaty face on the collar of her T-shirt. “Fine. Go with him and don’t come back until your attitude’s improved.”
Tumble didn’t need telling twice. She abandoned her bucket and raced to the screen door.
Blue was standing on the other side of it, his nose wrinkling. “Something smells weird.”
“We’ve flooded,” said Tumble. She joined him on the porch. “And I don’t have any superpowers. I’ll explain it all on the way to your house.”
TWENTY-TWO
OPPOSITES
To Blue’s delight, Tumble became a regular at the Montgomery house as May turned into June.
She still wouldn’t admit to having a fate of her own, but Blue knew better. Even if Tumble’s talent wasn’t heroism, there would be something else. Sometimes it took a while for people to figure their fates out. It had taken his grandmother decades.
In the meantime, Tumble had called a temporary halt to their attempts to turn him into a winner. She wanted to work out a truly foolproof plan this time.
“It’s no good if you die trying to beat fate. You’ve damaged an eye and a leg already.” She set her jaw. “Next time, nobody’s getting hurt.”
“‘Caution keeps away casualties’?” said Blue.
“You’re reading the book!” Tumble whooped and punched his shoulder. “That’s from Chapter One!”
Blue wasn’t sure how much further he could stand to go in How to Hero Every Day. Even though Maximal Star’s advice seemed okay, his stories were a little too amazing. But he wasn’t about to tell Tumble that.
While they waited for the foolproof plan to come out of hiding, the two of them kept a close eye on the other Montgomerys, timed themselves running up and down the road, and tried to make the attic more livable.
One morning, Tumble found a vent hidden under one of the boxes, and when they opened it, cool wind blew their hair out of their faces.
“Air-conditioning!” said Tumble.
Shifting yet another mountain of cardboard revealed a carving. It was on the wall opposite the window, and they had to crouch under the low roof to get a good look at it. It was smaller than the one over the front door of the house, and instead of two people shaking hands, it showed only Almira LaFayette.
Her face was harsh, with a sharp triangle for a nose. She was standing in a patch of reeds. The word FOLLOW was carved into them. Two crescent moons had been cut into the wood, one above her head and another beneath the reeds. Almira was pointing at the bottom one.
“That’s weird,” said Blue. “Why is it just her?”
“Why are there two moons?” Tumble traced the carving with her finger.
Hidden in the attic, the image felt like a clue.
Just not one they needed. Some of the other Montgomerys had already guessed that following the red sickle moon was part of the trick—like chasing a rainbow to a pot of gold at the end. But Ma Myrtle swore there was more to it than that, so the battle for her approval was still on.
Telescopes dotted the backyard now, courtesy of relatives who were hoping to spot the faintest hint of crimson on the moon.
“Waning crescent moons for three more days,” Blue told Tumble. He’d gotten very good at reading the lunar calendars scattered throughout the house. “Then the new moon, then waxing crescents for a few more days. And then no more crescent moons until the very end of the month. After . . .”
“After Ma Myrtle’s gone,” said Tumble.
Blue nodded.
“You do think Ma Myrtle will tell someone how to get the new fate, don’t you? Before she dies?”
“I think so,” Blue said. “She’s not evil . . . just . . . she’ll draw it out, I think. To make sure none of them ever forget about her.”
They would certainly never do that. As her death date approached, Ma Myrtle refused to slow down. There were late-night dancing contests. There were bake-offs instead of breakfasts. She’d even woken the whole house up once for a midnight poetry slam.
That afternoon, when she called all of the relatives out onto the porch to entertain her, Tumble and Blue took advantage of the rare chance to sit at the kitchen table without half a dozen Montgomerys surrounding them. They talked about ways to break Blue’s fate, writing wild idea after wild idea down in the notebook Tumble had started to carry in her emergency backpack.
When Eve came in to get started on supper, she poured them each a glass of iced tea.
“Do y’all need a snack?” she asked, pulling a leftover Coca-Cola ham out of the refrigerator. “You can help yourselves to anything. I’m sending the twins to the grocery store again tomorrow.”
The telephone rang.
Eve set the ham on the counter and stepped over to pluck
the phone off the wall. “Hello?”
A second later, her free hand went to her hip. “Well!” she said. “Look who’s decided to make time for the rest of us!”
Blue jumped up so quickly that his chair would have overturned if Tumble hadn’t caught it.
His dad. It had to be. He had left so many messages, and his dad couldn’t be that busy watching the races. He reached for the phone.
Eve used her elbow to nudge him back an inch so that she wouldn’t be talking into his hair. “Yes, he’s here,” she said. “Yes, well enough, all things considered. But Alan, the way you’ve been behaving—”
“Dad!” Blue said loudly. “Hi, Dad! I’m right here.”
Eve shot him a quelling look that did nothing to quell him. He was an instant away from trying to make another grab for the phone when she sighed and handed it to him.
“Dad,” said Blue. “Hey!”
“Hi there, Skeeter.” It sounded almost like his dad was calling him from a swimming pool. Blue could hear splashing in the background. And lots of voices. “Sorry I haven’t called in a few days. Just busy with things over here.”
“What things?”
“Racing. All of it. You know.”
Blue didn’t. Not really. But at least they were talking. “I got my cast off.”
“Hey!” said his dad. “I forgot that was coming up. Way to go! How’s the arm?”
“Good. It’s nice that it doesn’t itch anymore.”
“Glad to hear it. You’ll be back to your old self in no time.”
Blue knew he didn’t mean anything by it, but still . . . His old self? His not-good-enough self?
“About that,” he said. “I think you’ll be pretty surprised when you come to pick me up.”
Twelve minutes, Blue thought. He ran to the sign every morning. He was getting faster, and usually Tumble kept him company. “I’ve made friends with the girl from next door—”
“Hi, Blue’s dad!” Tumble shouted toward the phone.
Tumble & Blue Page 9