The door didn’t open any wider. The man behind it said nothing.
“I’m … I’m Sunday. Sunday Fowler. My family and I moved here for the summer. We’re fixing up the library.”
I thought I saw one bushy eyebrow rise ever so slightly. Still no answer.
“I thought you might like some cookies and—”
“Go away. I don’t buy cookies from anyone.”
“What? I wasn’t—”
“I said, GO. Away. Get off my property.” His voice was low, gravelly, and dripping with meanness.
“But—I just wanted to—”
“I said, get off my property! Now. If you don’t—” The door opened wider, and Mr. Folger’s voice grew louder. He took a step forward and held his cane in one hand. I watched in horror as he reached for it with the other hand, but didn’t wait a second longer. My legs carried me off that porch and down the walkway, cookies flying off the plate. “Run, Jude,” I yelled. “Run for your life!”
The only thing I heard over my own panting was, “I better not see you on my property again! Ever!”
Jude and I stopped when we reached the neatly clipped lawn of the library. I sank to the ground, trying to catch my breath. It sounded like Jude was about to have a heart attack right then and there.
“I told you,” he said between gulps of air. “I told you he was nasty.”
“You were right.” I thought of Ben Folger’s face, snarled up and mean as a badger, and cringed. Maybe befriending a hermit wasn’t such a good idea.
“You could’ve gotten yourself killed, you know that?”
“Yeah, I know.” I looked toward my house, the kitchen glowing warm and cheery. Dinner had started by now.
Jude must’ve been thinking the same thing.
“I gotta go, Sunday. My mom’ll be wondering where I am and then she’ll have Wally out looking for me.”
I nodded. “See you tomorrow.”
“See ya.”
He disappeared into the gathering dark. It took another minute for my heart to slow back down.
Butters met me at the door, barking and wagging and slobbering. Mom’s high-pitched laughter pealed from the dining room. That was good. At least she wasn’t stewing quietly because I was late. I might as well come in on a high note. I found everyone digging into beans, rice, and tortillas.
“Sorry I’m late,” I said, starting to take my seat next to Bo. Mom stopped me.
“Oh, Sunday. Before you sit down, could you grab the other jug of milk in the refrigerator for me?”
I forced a smile onto my face. “Sure.” Mom and Dad always seemed to remember my name when they wanted me to do something for them.
She unscrewed the cap and poured Henry another glass. “So where were you?”
“I told you I was going out for a bit.”
“Yes, but I rang the triangle. Didn’t you hear it?”
I felt my cheeks fill with heat. “Yeah, but I was right in the middle of doing something.”
Dad passed me the tortillas. “And what was that?”
“I was taking some cookies over to the man who lives in that house across the field.”
CJ’s fork dropped onto his plate with a loud clank. “You went over there? You know that guy’s crazy, don’t you? He eats raw animals and has a sword inside his cane, and the curse—”
“CJ,” Mom said.
“But it’s true. I met a kid named Parker today and he knows all about Old Man Folger. He said that when anything’s thrown over the hedge—”
Mom sighed and set her glass down on the table with a loud thud. “I said stop.”
CJ sulked and mumbled a quiet “—it disappears.”
“He’s probably just a lonely old man who doesn’t want kids prowling around his property and bothering him. I think that was very kind of you, Sunday, even if you were late for dinner.”
Across the table, Emma and May looked at each other and rolled their eyes.
“Guess what I did, Sunday,” Bo said. He scooped a pile of rice and beans onto his fork but it plopped back onto his plate before reaching his mouth.
Henry broke in, spewing bits of rice onto the table. “We made paper airplanes and then … and then we set them on fire,” Henry said. “They went whoosh!”
Mom’s fork dropped to her plate with a tinny clank. “You what?”
CJ knocked Henry hard with his elbow.
“Ouch! Mom, CJ hit me.”
“Sunday,” Emma said, “could you pass the rice? You’re hogging it all.”
“Henry,” Bo whined, “I was gonna tell Sunday, and then you cut in.”
“Did not.”
“Did too.”
“Boys, stop,” Dad warned.
“Can someone take me driving tonight?” May asked. “I think I should get used to driving in the dark.”
“Just a second, May.” Mom’s stare was fixed on CJ. “What is this about fire?”
CJ, both cheeks stuffed, shrugged. “Nothing,” he mumbled. “We were just playing around.”
Mom took a sip of her water. “Playing around? After dinner, you will scrub every toilet until all thought of playing around with fire is removed from your mind.”
“Ah, Mom,” CJ whined, “I won’t do it again.”
Henry wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “CJ, does that mean we can’t try and melt some of my army guys tonight like you promised?”
Mom closed her eyes. “I think you need to start on the toilets now, CJ.”
My brother picked up his plate and slumped off to the kitchen. “It was just an idea. It’s not like I actually—”
“Go!”
And that pretty much signaled the end of dinner. After we all cleaned up, I took my ice cream sandwich out on the porch and sat on the steps. The night was warm, the crickets were starting up their songs, and, one by one, the fireflies blinked in the dark. I licked a drip of ice cream and looked out over the field toward Ben Folger’s house. A single light shone out from an upstairs window.
I popped the last piece of soft chocolate cookie and vanilla ice cream in my mouth and stood up. At almost the same time, the light in the window flicked off.
I wondered how to befriend someone like Ben Folger.
And if I even should.
Though I had The Life and Death of Birds waiting on my nightstand, I found myself completely sucked into the manuscript, reading until my eyes burned.
Just as I was about to flip off the light, Bo turned the doorknob and came into my room.
“Can I sleep in your room, Sunday?” he asked.
“Sure.” I flung back the covers, and he tucked in next to me.
“Tell me more of that story,” he said through a yawn.
I yawned, too, and flicked off the lamp. “I’ll try my best to remember it all, okay?”
“Okay.”
“You know how I told you that the girl, Lilly, and the boy, Mark, became friends?”
“Yeah. But you never said how.”
“Well, her dad gave her some money to buy food at the store. But when she got there, she saw a pen and tablet of paper that she wanted so bad she could hardly stand it.”
“Like the time I needed to buy that orange car at the toy store, so I cried and cried and cried.”
“Sort of. Anyway, she loved to write poems and write about her day and she thought it would be wonderful to write it all down on that pretty ivory-colored paper with that black-ink pen. So she bought a few of the supplies her dad wanted and spent the rest on that pen and paper. Then she went home.”
“Uh-oh, did her dad get mad?”
“Oh, yeah. He was so mad he started throwing stuff and saying all kinds of terrible things. But then who should show up but Mark. He knocked on the door and said that Lilly had forgotten her other bag of groceries. She must have dropped her list because everything they needed was inside the brown paper bag.”
“So he told a lie?” Bo sounded amazed.
“Yeah, I guess he did. But he did it because he
wanted to help her. Protect her in a way.”
“Then what happened?”
“They were best friends. Eventually she moved in with her aunt and uncle because her dad went to jail.”
“I’m glad.”
“Me, too. She told him how she wanted to be something big when she grew up. Something that would take her away from their little town. Mark said he’d like to stay right where he was and have a family and a dog and maybe work in a bookstore.
“They stuck together for the most part. Mark was quiet and didn’t have too many friends. Everyone loved Lilly, but she liked spending most of her time with Mark. In the fall, they went to the same school and things were pretty much the same. They did everything together. Then one winter, Mark got really sick.”
“Did he throw up?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure. Probably. Anyway, he got really sick and went to the hospital. Every night, Lilly would write a story for him. Sometimes they were short little stories, and other times she would write longer ones, adding a bit to them every day. Then, after school, she would walk to the hospital and sit in his room and read to him.”
“Would you write me a story every day if I was in the hospital?”
I didn’t like thinking of Bo in the hospital. “I’m not a good writer. But I’d come and read to you every day.”
“Okay.”
“Finally Mark got better and went home. And you know what the very first thing that they did together was?”
“They ate ice cream?”
“Nope. They went down to the creek where they first met and talked and talked and talked.”
“I would’ve had ice cream.”
“Yeah.” I couldn’t consider Jude my best friend since I hadn’t known him that long, but I thought it would be exciting to meet somewhere and talk. Maybe we’d eat ice cream, too, though it would probably be organic and taste like gerbil food.
Bo yawned, then nudged me a little with his shoulder. “Then what happened?”
I answered his yawn and closed my eyes. “Why don’t I tell you the rest another time?”
Bo didn’t object, and within seconds the room was filled with his gentle breaths. I thought back on the chapter, smiling to myself as I remembered the last sentence: “But no matter what happened throughout each and every day, whether they fought like siblings or spent the day in laughter, Lilly always awoke the next morning with a single yellow daisy sitting on her windowsill.”
FOR THE next few days, Jude and I worked a little at the library each morning, helping stain or sand or sweep or wipe something down. In the afternoons, we talked to people in town to see if they could’ve written the manuscript. We had zero luck. The barber had never set foot in the library, the real estate agent didn’t have enough time for reading or writing, and the two teachers we met said that they loved to read and would love to have an author come to their school if we knew of any.
It was time to think of other options.
“Hey,” Jude said one afternoon. “Why don’t we try and bake a huge chocolate chip cookie—one big enough to be written about in the newspaper?”
It wound up burning to a crispy black circle and setting off the fire alarm. Another time, I tried to jump rope for an entire afternoon. I had to quit after fifteen minutes to stop CJ from spray-painting his initials on the side of the garage. But the old house across the field kept grabbing at my attention, and as time passed, I thought how silly I was to run away.
Ben Folger was the answer, and Jude was just going to have to be okay with that.
The next morning I looked out the window and found Jude sitting on the porch with Henry. A plate of donuts sat between them. Butters wagged her tail, watching for crumbs. “What time did you get up?” I called down.
Jude jumped at the sound of my voice and looked up. “Oh, hey, Sunday! Your dad got donuts.”
Henry held up fingers covered in chocolate. “Look!”
“I see,” I said. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
I slipped on my shorts and a T-shirt, then jammed my feet into my sneakers and grabbed my backpack, a notebook, and a pen that I hoped worked.
I was going to do some snooping about Ben Folger. Maybe he was in the newspaper a long time ago or someone in town knew more about him.
Downstairs, I caught Bo carefully eating the frosting off of every single donut. Mom looked up from her computer and smacked his hand gently as he reached for another. “No way, mister. You decapitate another one and you’ll find yourself eating a plateful of broccoli for lunch. Your dad must have been out of his mind to think that two dozen donuts were a good idea.”
Bo slumped down, crossed his arms, and stuck out his lip in a pitiful pout. When Mom wasn’t looking, I handed him half of a donut and winked. He grinned and scrunched up his face, trying to wink back, though it was more of an exaggerated squint. I picked out a chocolate-covered donut that only had a single finger swipe through the top and joined Henry and Jude on the porch.
“Hey.”
Jude licked off his fingers. “Hey.”
“I didn’t think that donuts were on the food pyramid,” I said.
Jude shrugged and took the last bite of donut that Henry held out to him. “Sure they are. Under breads and sugars. I’m just helping make the pyramid complete.”
I dropped my backpack and sat down. The morning was crisp and clear with only a few clouds floating across the blue sky. Two squirrels taunted Butters from their post on a nearby branch.
Henry crawled onto Jude’s lap and leaned his head against his shoulder. Jude looked at me and smiled like he’d just won the lottery and had his picture in the New York Times. Henry must not have slept well if he was already tired. That, or the sugar just hadn’t kicked in.
“Pony ride!” Henry yelled, suddenly sitting up straight and clapping his hands.
And … cue sugar craziness.
Jude got his legs moving, and Henry bounced up and down on his knee.
“Now he’s never gonna leave you alone,” I said, taking a bite of my donut. The chocolate was melting between my fingers and I licked away the sweet stickiness.
“I don’t mind.”
I shrugged. “Is your mom at work already?”
“Yeah.” Bounce, bounce, bounce. “She goes into the bank early on Mondays. Wally dropped me off a little bit ago.”
“And how was that?”
Jude shrugged and continued to bounce my giggling brother. “Same as always. Trying to be my best friend.”
“You could give him a chance, you know.”
He stopped and glared at me. “Yeah, maybe when you start liking your family.”
“Sunday likes us,” Henry said, and nudged Jude to continue. “Keep bouncing.”
Jude started back up again. I decided to drop the subject. It wasn’t worth it. Being completely forgotten by your family was way different. “Hey, do you know where there’s a computer I can use? I want to look up something on the Internet.”
Jude’s leg stopped bouncing, and he set Henry on the ground. “You don’t have one here?”
“We do, but it’s my mom’s and she’s using it right now. At the library we might get stuck stacking books or sweeping and I want to do more investigating.”
Jude got up and brushed off his shorts. “We can go to my house then.”
“Can I come? Can I come? Can I come?” Henry jumped up and down in front of us.
“Not right now, Henry,” I said. “We have to do something by ourselves. But we’ll be back later, okay?’
He plopped himself down on the stairs and stuck out his lower lip. Butters sat herself conveniently next to his cheek, licking at his face and hands.
Jude bent down. “Hey, Henry? Why don’t we go inside and get another donut? How does that sound?”
Henry looked up, brown eyes sparkling. “Okay.” He stood and grabbed for Jude’s hand.
“Hurry up,” I called after him.
Mom came to the door with Bo trailing behind her, a
circle of chocolate around his mouth. “Emma, where are you going?”
“That’s Sunday, Mommy,” Bo said, and laughed.
“Sorry, Sunday. Where are you going, sweetie?”
“Just over to Jude’s house for a bit. Is that all right?”
Bo pushed through the door. “I’ll come, too.”
“No,” I said a little too loudly. It was nice having Bo as my shadow some of the time, but not right now, not when I was trying to learn more about Ben Folger.
He frowned and his eyes filled with tears. “Please, Sunday? Please? I won’t get in the way.”
“Maybe next time, okay?”
Mom picked him up and gave him one of her squeezer hugs, the sort that takes the breath right out of you. He laughed. “Besides,” she said, “I need you here to help me today.” She winked at me. “Just be home for dinner.”
Jude came back out on the porch with another donut in his hand. This one had the entire top eaten off of it, but he didn’t seem to mind. He smiled and followed me down the stairs. “I guess Emma isn’t up yet.”
I walked faster, jealousy nipping at my heels. “Nope. She sleeps most of the day. She’s almost like a zombie and looks like one when she wakes up. It’s pretty gross.”
JUDE’S house was on the other side of Main Street. It was painted bright white, and a small fence circled a yard that was cleaner than any of our rooms. The inside was even neater. There were no magazines, paper airplanes, toys, tools, peanut butter smears, or bits of dried browned apple left on the end table. I kept my hands to my sides like I was on a field trip to a museum.
“My mom likes it clean, and when Wally’s around he picks up around the house, too.”
“That’s nice of him.”
“Yeah, but now it’s too clean.”
I followed him down a hallway. Jude’s room was slightly better. His bed was crisply made, like a hotel bed, and there wasn’t anything on his floor. The books on the bookshelf were like soldiers all in a row, and the mirror had no fingerprints or dog-nose smudges. But there was a shirt hung over the frame of his bed and a poster of a surfer careening down a wave, loose on one corner.
A Summer of Sundays Page 8