by Jane Kurtz
One afternoon Cousin Caroline put my hand on the bump of fat behind an emu’s hips. “You’re feeling Omega three, six, and nine,” she said. “Emu oil.”
“What good is emu oil?”
“It’s healthy to eat. Healthy for pets. Healthy for your skin.” She sounded worried, though.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
“Just thinking about fireworks. Last Fourth of July the emus ran for hours. I don’t want good, healthy birds running off all their fat.”
“Could we get them headphones?” I looked into the emu’s oval yellow eye. “A soundproof shed?”
She laughed. “Keep thinking.”
When we had time off, Morgan and I caught crawdads and frogs. The same-sames in Colorado only had a park where we collected material for the tiger salamander habitat. Ha-ha, I thought. I have an amazing pond.
I was unsame as could be.
In my brain, Jericho sat pretzel legged, beaming. “I’m helping save a farm,” I told her.
She was proud of me.
Now I knew how to listen for a rattlesnake warning: tick-tick-tick, whirr. I also knew snakes couldn’t help it that people walked around in their habitat.
The only thing I didn’t like was the Saturday when Simon came out to the farm again while his grandma got eggs. While he and Morgan went off to the tree house, I sat on the porch and called Mom.
“Any big wishes for your birthday?” Mom asked me.
“Colorado.”
She laughed. “Anything else?”
“You,” I said. “And Isabella.”
“We wouldn’t miss it.”
All I needed was in Colorado. I crossed my fingers and wished on stars and an abandoned horseshoe. No praying, though. I’d told God, “Forget it.” I’d handle things on my own. And I was never going to give up hope.
CHAPTER 38
S Is for Scurvy
When my birthday week finally came, every time the phone rang, I knew it was Dad or Mom saying I should pack my bag for a plane ride. Instead, it was mostly people wanting eggs to make cakes for graduation parties.
“We should have a graduation party,” Morgan said to her mom. “I’ll do a big presentation of my book.” She waved a page back and forth. “We could invite Simon.”
“Simon?” I said. “No way.”
“I feel sorry for him. Don’t you?”
How could I feel sorry for someone who had treated me like lettuce slime?
Morgan got out her markers. “S is for scurvy,” she told her mom. “But I’m stuck on X. All I can think of is smallpox, and that’s cheating.” She blocked my view with a book.
“Can I borrow your markers?” I asked.
“You’re doing math,” she pointed out. “Math doesn’t have to be colorful.”
“When someone’s birthday is in two days, everything should be colorful.” I looked at Cousin Caroline. “Did you know Gwendolyn collected all the wooden eggs into her nest?”
Cousin Caroline opened a pea pod, tossed up a pea, and caught it in her mouth.
“How did she do it?” I asked. “With her beak?”
She chewed. “Or her feet? I wish I knew.”
Morgan frowned. “It’s hard to concentrate when people are discussing chickens.”
Some people shut up. Others are stubborn. “Why would emus be scared of fireworks?” I asked. “Fireworks aren’t a natural predator of emus.”
Cousin Caroline loved talking about the emus. “They hiss as a danger signal. Maybe they think the hissing of firecrackers is some big emu in the sky warning them of danger.” She ran her thumb down the middle of a pod, making the peas pop into a bowl. “I don’t think they mind the bangs. They never mind my tractor.”
I thought of the emus running with their hearts pounding.
“Silly birds,” Cousin Caroline said affectionately. “The only danger for them around here is brain worm.”
I was about to ask about brain worm, but Morgan interrupted with a pencil chomp. “Do you have any good ideas for X?” she asked her mom.
“Wax,” I said. “King and queen statues in the wax museum.”
Morgan gathered her things and banged out the door. I went to the window and rubbed a blister on my palm as she ran across the yard and into the trees.
It was time for me to give up hope about ever being invited to her tree house. Time to give up hope about being in Colorado for my birthday, too. If I were there, Jericho and I would be trying on birthday hats. The only party hats around here were for chicks.
By the time I got up the next day, Morgan was nowhere to be seen, and I gathered eggs by myself.
Who cared? Tomorrow I would have Mom and Isabella. Morgan could spend Saturdays with anyone. It didn’t matter to me.
All day I tried not to be sad.
That night Cousin Caroline served a special last-day-of-school supper: emu egg omelets with peas and cucumbers in sour cream and homemade bread and cattail shoots and fried squash blossoms that were thin and slippery and tasted like squash perfume. “Where’s Morgan?” I asked.
“She has a commitment,” Cousin Caroline said.
My stomach had a terrible ache for three reasons I could think of.
1. Of all my stubborn ancestors, Dad had to be the most stubborn.
2. I was starting to forget the details of my perfect Colorado room.
3. No one here cared about my birthday. Especially not Morgan.
Four if you counted Midnight H. Cat.
After supper, we sat in the living room labeling emu eggs. Last fall Cousin Caroline had let one of the male emu sit on some eggs and hatch them out, but he’d almost murdered one of the females to protect the babies. “Next time,” she said, “I’ll try an incubator. I’m gathering all the eggs to decide which ones to incubate and which ones to sell. Farmers’ market, here we come!”
Holding that football of an emu egg in my hands was like holding the dark green ocean. I was wondering what Oakwood would be like if Grandma had been born in California beside the ocean when a car pulled up. I looked out the window.
Dad! Why?
Cousin Caroline went out to greet him, and I plastered my quivering ear to a crack in the door. “Rain will perk everything up,” Dad said.
In the yard Bob-Silver started barking. “Yes,” Caroline said, amused. “That’s a squirrel. You like squirrels, don’t you?”
I imagined myself accidentally sealed up and feeling my way through a pyramid . . . warmer . . . warmer . . . and then I heard my name. “I need to tell her how sorry I am,” Dad said.
I flung the door open. “Sorry about what?”
“Hello, Anna.” Dad held out his arms. “Lightning damaged airport equipment in Colorado—and about a hundred airplanes. Mom considered renting a car, but the storm front is on the move.”
Lightning? Mom and Isabella wouldn’t even be here for my birthday?
Outrageous!
How was so much bad luck even possible?
Was God punishing me?
Why? Because of the call? Because I didn’t try hard enough?
Dad took a step. His face was in shadow.
Nothing he said could possibly make this any better. I only had one tenth birthday, and it was ruined forever.
Squish squash smoosh splat.
CHAPTER 39
Tree House Disaster
Safety Notebook Questions that Have No Answers
1. Why did the Great Dane get my favorite doll, Miranda, when a doll I didn’t care about was right there?
2. Why do chicks have to die before they grow up to be chickens?
3. Why would a tornado hit one farm and skip over another?
4. Why does lightning even exist?
5. Where did all the angels go?
For one long minute, I wanted to run to Dad and ask him everything. But how could I? He only cared about one thing now—the Oakwood church. I shoved back into the house and down the basement stairs, wishing I were a species that could give a karate kick
with both feet.
Downstairs I paced, with my hands in strangling fists. Cousin Caroline’s voice called, “Anna?” Footsteps. “Want to come upstairs? Want to have a Saturday evening soak in the bathtub?”
“I . . .” My fireworks heart was banging. “I’m not even going to church tomorrow.” I bumped against a pile of cans that clanked on the concrete floor. “God can be so mean.”
Footsteps all the way to the bottom. “Is God in charge of specific weather, do you think?” Cousin Caroline asked.
Who else? Why else did we say, “Holy, holy, holy God of power and might?” Had Dad prayed for Mom and Isabella and my birthday? How did God keep score?
“You might feel better in the morning,” Cousin Caroline said.
Her footsteps went back up, and I flopped flat on the bed, thinking about all the questions that had no answers at all.
Birthday morning I went upstairs all draggy shoes. If Mom were here, she’d be making me heart-shaped whole wheat pancakes. Cousin Caroline handed me an egg sandwich. “I’ve got to dash. Why don’t you come, too?”
“Great-aunt Lydia doesn’t go to church,” I said. “So I don’t have to.”
“Hurry then,” Cousin Caroline said. “I’ll walk you over. She’s expecting you.”
When we got to the azalea bush, I climbed the ramp, and Cousin Caroline headed back. The sky was a gray sheet, and the wind was starting up. What would Dad think when he looked down and saw an empty space where I was supposed to be? What would God think?
“Serves you right!” I said out loud. I marched down the ramp and right to the tree house tree.
For a few seconds I stood there listening. The leaves made a shh noise.
Samson probably felt this way as he wrapped his big muscle arms around a pillar and got ready to pull the building down around him and all his enemies.
I started climbing.
When I got to the top, I wobbled, but I managed to open the door. I stepped inside. A gust of wind puffed the door wide open. I jerked it closed.
Projects were everywhere: crocheted rugs and painted eggs. Angles had been drawn on the walls with pluses and equal signs. A queen with a ruffled collar stared all haughty from the wall as if to say, “What are you doing here?” Beside her, I saw a photo. Two girls with their arms around each other. Morgan had written “My grandma and Anna’s grandma” on it.
On the floor were bookmaking supplies. I picked up a page: “S is for scurvy, which plagued Henry the Eighth, causing great boils to erupt on his legs.”
And another.
Q is for the queens of Henry the Eighth, whose heads went a rolling across the wood stage.
In a corner, I spotted an album open to a photo of young Morgan grinning with missing teeth, stretching out her arms to catch a kid on the rope swing. The writing said “Simon at the sleepover.”
Beside that one was a guy with a pole over his shoulder. “Dad and I went fishing every day.” Morgan had drawn hearts around the edges.
I turned the page. Morgan’s mom and dad in cop uniforms and TJ in his harness. So her dad was a cop, too. What had he thought when Cousin Caroline decided to be a farmer?
I flipped to the end. I picked up the album to look closer. Morgan’s dad. In a different uniform.
A prison uniform?
Outside the house the leaves started fluttering wildly. I crawled over and eased the door open and poked my head and shoulders out.
Rain clicked like dog toenails on the roof. The tree house quivered.
I pulled my head in too fast and whomped the top of it. “Ouch!” I shouted, and let go. The door sprang back open. Thunder crashed, way too close, and wind and rain whooshed inside. I scuttled backward into the corner. Duck and cover!
After a minute or so I forced my eyes open. What I saw was awful. A flapping door. Wet pages blowing against the walls and probably outside.
Thunder cracked like God’s loud voice saying, “What are you doing?”
I scrambled out onto the ladder, slipped down through the wet branches, and raced for the old farmhouse through buckets of rain and smells of wet earth. I burst into the kitchen and practically dived for Great-aunt Lydia and buried my head in her lap. “Why does Kansas have such loud thunder?”
“Thunder.” Great-aunt Lydia rubbed my wet head. “That needn’t bother a big girl like you. Where have you been?”
I moaned. What was I going to tell Morgan? “I’m mad at God now,” I said. “Like you . . .”
A car horn honked, making us both jump. Cousin Caroline shouted, “Anna?” We heard her footsteps pounding up the ramp. The door opened. “I was sent to get you—right now.”
“Ach, jammer.” Great-aunt Lydia clicked her tongue. “The poor child needs dry clothes.”
CHAPTER 40
Surprise
Cousin Caroline hustled me out—where the rainburst had turned to drizzles—and back to her house. “What on earth?” she said, but she didn’t wait for an answer. “Run. Get changed. I’ll grab a towel and wait in the car.”
I clattered downstairs. Was Dad waiting on the steps of the church like Samson with his arms around the pillars, hair bristling everywhere, eyes blazing?
Nah. Dad didn’t have hair—or muscles—like that.
Had everyone who came into the sanctuary stared at my empty spot? Had Dad talked about me in his sermon? I made sure my whistle was around my neck and ran upstairs and out to the car. I was in deep, deep trouble.
Cousin Caroline drove fast as I worked to towel-dry my hair. “Is . . . um.” I couldn’t think what to ask.
“You’ll see.” She was an ex-cop after all.
“Did you hear anything about Mom?”
She nodded. “They’ll be on a flight tomorrow morning.”
I crossed my arms. “There sure are a lot of disasters in the world.”
She nodded. “Search-and-rescue people say you never know what it’ll be. Soon as you prepare for one thing, something else comes along.”
That was massively unfair. It was.
What about people who thought nothing at all was coming and didn’t get prepared? What about all the people of Pompeii baking bread until fwoomp? Volcano ash covered them.
Turkeys thought life was all crunchy grain and sweet water and then wham. Thanksgiving.
“There’s a comb in the glove compartment,” Cousin Caroline said.
I jerked at the tangles in my hair. My brain felt tangled, too.
The church lot was still full of cars. Everyone was waiting to frown at me in unison? Cousin Caroline parked, and I opened the car door.
Suddenly Dad was right there, and I said, “I—” but he turned me around and put his hand over my eyes and walked me along. Scuff. Scuff. Was Dad going to execute me?
“Whoa,” I told myself. “Maintain cool.” He zipped his hand away.
Great-aunt Dorcas was standing by long tables in the middle of the churchyard, tying a plastic hat on. Chairs had balloons floating from them. Someone I didn’t know was trotting up the basement steps with a trayful of watermelon.
The next moment people popped from behind trees. “Surprise!” they shouted. “Happy birthday!”
Dad squished me in a hug. “Late to your own party?”
Morgan ran up. “I decorated all evening and before Sunday School.” She panted. “You didn’t even come to church. Eat quick so it doesn’t rain on the balloons.”
While she decorated, I was ruining her things.
Good thing the angel with the stick to whack evildoers with was on the other side of the church. I was anything but pure of heart.
“Start the potluck off, young lady,” Mae’s mom said, handing me a plate.
The fourth-grade Sunday School boys crowded around. “You have a whistle,” said Chad.
Another boy shoved him. “I think she might know that.”
I actually laughed.
He did, too. “I’m Noah,” he said. “In case you forgot.”
Great-aunt Ruth came, pushing G
reat-aunt Lydia in her wheelchair. “Should you be out in this weather?” Dad asked.
“I guess eighty-one means I think for myself.” Great-aunt Lydia winked at me.
Everyone ate fast. Slurpee ran up to show off her new screaming monkey. Kylee and Mae plopped down. Mae said, “You’re going to have a Lavender Festival in June? Can we help?”
Morgan looked at me. “What do you think?”
I could almost forget what Morgan would say once she saw the tree house.
Almost.
A church door opened, and Dad carried out a cake with fat chocolate frosting like a lawn of sugar. “Want a piece?” Morgan called.
I turned. Who was she talking to? Simon! Lurking around the hedge. Luckily, when he saw me looking, he ran off.
“Let’s sing,” Dad called.
“Hang on,” I said. Simon was at my party and Midnight H. Cat wasn’t? I grabbed Morgan’s arm. “Will you help me?”
We got to the house in about nothing flat. The cat carrier was right where I’d last seen it, and my cat was purring on the bed. “She used to follow Jericho and me around the block all the time,” I told Morgan. “It’s just for a few minutes anyway.”
We hustled back holding the cat carrier between us. “Put her right by my chair,” I said. “It’s her first birthday party experience.”
“Now, let’s sing,” Dad said.
The last notes were barely out before Great-aunt Ruth called, “You kids eat your cake fast and help us clean up—before this sky lets loose.”
I took a nibble and made um-um noises to Midnight H. Cat. Yummy! Mom would have used carrots and sunflower seeds as main ingredients.
By the time I was scraping the crumbs off the plate, the wind was rattling the branches of the hedge. Noah and Chad started lugging a garbage barrel over to a table. A gust swirled paper plates and napkins across the yard.
People grabbed big dishes and leftover food and began to filter away, calling, “Happy birthday,” and, “See you!”
I knelt on a chair and stared into Midnight H. Cat’s eyes. She didn’t have a real birthday—not one I knew anyway. “You can share mine, though,” I whispered.