Me and Sam-Sam Handle the Apocalypse

by Susan Vaught

  “Aunt Gus has her own room,” Springer explained. “In the back, on the sun porch that faces the forest.”

  “Does it have windows?” I asked. “Because Charlie farts so bad it’ll fog up the whole house.”

  Ms. Regal laughed. “Yes. It has windows. But she promised not to smoke inside.”

  “Yeah.” Dad sighed. “About that—I might end up owing you for fumigation and repainting.”

  “School’s out for a few weeks,” Springer said. “I’ll watch her and chase her outside.”

  “She’ll beat you with her shoe,” I warned. “Just check the closets. If she finds a store open to buy stuff, she’ll try to hide it in the closet.”

  “Got it,” said Ms. Regal, looking as stern as Mom could get.

  As soon as I finished eating, I felt sleepy again, but when I complained, Dad said, “I think that’s normal, honey. We’ve been through a lot lately. Go on back to sleep, and I’ll bring Sam to you when Gus gets back with them.”

  He didn’t have to offer twice, and I was out before I could even count to ten.

  • • •

  I didn’t sleep all of Wednesday morning, but I kept taking naps across the day.

  It was during one of those that I heard Dad say, “Gus is still sleeping, and Jesse’s been up and down. She was amazing when it happened, though, Camila. You should have seen her.”

  “I’m so happy she has a friend,” Mom said. “And so glad she believed in herself about solving that theft.”

  I smiled in my half-awake stupor, glad Dad was letting her know we were okay, even if we didn’t have a house.

  “I should have trusted her sooner,” Dad said. “I know she’s older, and smart—”

  “And strong,” Mom reminded him.

  “And strong,” Dad agreed. “Those kids who’ve been bullying her, they’ll be in alternative school for a while. Not sure what’s happening with the one who stole the funds, but she’ll probably have to stay on that track a bit longer.”

  “I hope it helps them,” Mom said. “Something needs to, before I have to go all war-zone on their little butts.”

  I laughed into my pillow.

  My mom, army to the core.

  She yawned. “Twenty-two hours, plus four on the drive. A record.”

  Dad’s laughter made me feel relaxed and normal. I loved hearing my parents’ voices and pretending Mom wasn’t oceans away from us.

  “You need to sleep almost as much as Jesse does, Cam,” Dad said.

  “Later,” Mom told him.

  “I need to walk over to the school and what’s left of my classroom,” Dad said . . .

  And then I fell back to sleep, and . . .

  Sam wiggled against my face, his tail brushing my nose.

  “Well, if it isn’t Private Sleepyhead.” Mom’s voice. “And the little war dog of fury. I hear you’re straight-up SAR now, Sam.”

  SAR. The military abbreviation for search and rescue. I felt so proud. I rolled over in my bed to take the pad from Dad—

  But instead—

  Dark brown eyes gazed down at me. Eyes from that picture in my room that was probably lost forever, of Uncle Jesse and—

  And—

  She smelled like cucumber-melon lotion and cinnamon gum.

  She smelled like . . .

  “Mom,” I whispered, so stunned I couldn’t even move. I hadn’t seen her in person in more than a year. Four hundred sixty-three days. That was 11,118 hours.

  I didn’t get to the seconds in my head before she asked, “Hug?”

  “Yes!” And then I was in Mom’s arms, and she hugged me so tightly, and my brain didn’t itch, and Sam licked our cheeks and noses and ears.

  “I’m so proud of you,” she whispered into my ear. “Your uncle Jesse would be so proud of you, too. Way to carry that name, my perfect daughter. Way to do it proud.”

  I held on to her, and loved her voice, and the way she smelled, and her. My mom. Right here. With me.

  When Mom finally let me go, I saw tears in her eyes. “Standing up to bullies, dog training, making friends, surviving a tornado, search and rescue—oh, and let’s not forget catching a thief and clearing your father—impressive work, Private Broadview. I might have to give you a promotion.”

  “Can I be a general?”

  Mom laughed. “Let’s go with private first class for now. We’ll talk about general after you bring down a crime syndicate with a pack of rabid detective Chihuahuas, okay?”

  “Nah.” I shook my head and hugged Sam-Sam. “I prefer Pomeranians.”

  Mom petted Sam’s head. “But they’re so . . . fluffy.”

  Sam stretched up and slurped her nose.

  “They don’t stink as bad as bulldogs,” I said as she wiped off the dog drool.

  “Well,” Mom said. “I guess that’s something.”

  I chewed my lip for a second, then made myself ask, “So how long can you stay?”

  She stroked my hair, pushing strands behind my right ear. “I got three weeks. So not bad.”

  “Not bad at all!” I said, even though I wished it could be three months or three years, or maybe forever.

  “Soon,” she told me. “I’ve only got a year left on this tour. Then we can make decisions.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  But in my heart, I knew Mom was a soldier, and if the army still needed her—well. We’d have to see. But I couldn’t imagine asking Mom to be anything other than what she was best at being. I shifted Sam-Sam upward and kissed the top of his head. There were bomb-sniffers and SAR dogs, and everything in between. My mom, she was a bomb-sniffer. And that was that.

  When she went back this time, and if she decided to stay in the army next year, I’d find a way to be okay with Dad and Aunt Gus and Sam and Charlie and Springer—oh.

  “Is the sun still up?” I asked Mom, glancing at the windows—but the curtains were all pulled. “Is it still raining?”

  “Yes,” Mom said. “And no, I don’t think so. Why?”

  “Will you help Springer and me with something?” I asked as I climbed out of the bed. “It’s important.”

  Mom got to her feet, then slowly came to attention. “Absolutely, PFC Broadview. Lead the way.”

  • • •

  “I wasn’t sure it would still be here,” Springer said. “The tornado’s track was just a little ways off the main path.”

  Mom whistled. “Not in the best shape, but it held up pretty well.”

  Mr. Regal unloaded the few salvaged scraps of board he’d brought off his shoulder, tilted his head, then felt around the roof line of the clubhouse as I put Sam down with a pile of chew toys. “This is pretty well done, Jesse. How did you know to build it like this?”

  “YouTube has videos for everything,” I told him, feeling pretty awesome that Mom was here in Avery and not in Iraq, that she was at my clubhouse, and that Springer’s dad was with us, too, still acting proud of Springer and making him so happy.

  “YouTube.” Mom laughed. “Okay. Brave new world, right? Everything’s online.”

  “It is,” Springer agreed. “But I probably would have broken my thumbs trying it, videos or not.”

  “You and me both,” Mom said.

  “Nonsense,” Mr. Regal said. “I can show you both how to wield hammers like pros. No broken fingers, I promise.”

  And true to his word, he did.

  For a few hours, Mr. Regal directed us on where to patch and prop, and he taught Mom and Springer both how to hammer. Mom remained impressed that I already knew how to do it without smashing anything important.

  After we finished, we used blown-down branches to camouflage it again, so it couldn’t be seen from the path. Then I went inside and got the tote we needed to put on the finishing touches.

  Since we couldn’t get to any stores to buy paint, and there probably wouldn’t have been any paint even if we had, I passed out the nail polish. We got busy, Mom at the top, Springer on one side, Mr. Regal on the other side, and me at the
bottom.

  It took a while to cover up the original door sign, but as the sky started to go orange with the sun setting, we finished. I put up the polish box and got Sam out of the clubhouse, and Mom and Mr. Regal and Springer and Sam-Sam and I stood back and examined our work.

  Instead of JESSE’S PLACE. STAY OUT AND STAY ALIVE, the door now carried the following message, in lots of different nail polish colors:

  OBWIG-DA HEADQUARTERS

  STAY OUT IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE INVESTIGATED

  A little less bloody, maybe, but impressive.

  Mom had even added THIS MEANS YOU! on the top right corner, with the outline of an eagle head, staring with one eye, like she wore on her sleeve.

  Mr. Regal had hung the door properly, with hinges and everything. He nodded like he approved, and said, “Better. Even if I have no idea what most of that means.”

  “OBWIG,” Mom said, shaking her head. “I still think that’s a strange word, guys. And now it’s OBWIG-DA?”

  Springer and I looked at each other, and for the first time ever in my life, I felt like I was the one who got to talk to somebody without saying anything out loud.

  As I scratched Sam’s head to keep him happy, Springer lifted his finger to the painted word on the clubhouse door, and he touched each letter as he said, “Observant but Weird in a Good Way Detective Agency. That’s what it’s always been, only now we’ve really earned the detective agency part, so we wanted to add it.”

  Mom tilted her head like Sam did when he was listening hard to something. “Shouldn’t it be OBWIGW-DA?”

  “Don’t go overboard, Mom,” I said.

  Mr. Regal stuck his thumbs in his tool belt, and then he nodded. “OBWIG-DA. Yep. That works. And you did earn it.”

  Springer beamed.

  Mom gave me a thumbs-up, then said, “Okay, troops. Gustine will be awake, and Ms. Regal doesn’t need to deal with her and that bulldog all by herself. Plus, Derrick will be coming home from his trek to the out-of-town stores for groceries. We better get back.”

  She motioned to us, then headed out, toward the main path, marching at a pretty good clip. Mr. Regal followed her. Springer and I hurried along behind, with me keeping Sam in my arms to avoid any early-evening squirrel-chasing nightmares.

  As he jogged along beside me, Springer whispered, “I like your mom.”

  “Me too,” I whispered back.

  “She’s scary,” he admitted. “But fun. Kinda like you.”

  And that made me happier than just about anything anyone had ever said to me.

  This whole having a friend thing, I decided I could get used to it, and maybe even like it almost as much as having such a wonderful fuzzy war dog of fury, with all his fluffy SAR talents and happy nose-licking.

  “OBWIG-DA,” I said as Sam-Sam polished my nose one more time.

  Springer smiled at me, and he answered just like I hoped he would, with “OBWIG-DA. OBWIG-DA forever!”

  Author’s Note

  Neurodiversity: Brains and the way brains work and the thoughts brains think can be as different as people themselves. There is no “normal brain.” And how boring the world would be if all brains worked exactly the same way!

  Neurotypical: A lot of people do have some things in common, and society values some abilities and traits more than others. This changes over time, and different places and different cultures may choose different skills to teach and train. People who have these skills will be considered “neurotypical.”

  Neurodivergent: Some people have fewer things in common with other people, or have skills that aren’t the ones most of society thinks are important.

  Since the late 1800s doctors have been attempting to describe and classify developmental issues and find names for all the ways people can be neurodivergent. In the 1940s the diagnoses of “Early Infantile Autism” and “Asperger’s syndrome” came into being, and in 1964, doctors began to understand that people with these diagnoses might have differences in their nervous systems. In 2013 terminology shifted to “Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD),” an acknowledgment that people who are neurodivergent are individuals, with unique experiences and challenges.

  The problem with all of these concepts is that they assume a “standard normal” that everyone should meet. Many people diagnosed with ASD do not view being neurodivergent as a disorder or a disease or anything else that might need a cure. It is not simple or easy to live in a world designed for neurotypical folks, but being neurodivergent is part of who they are as people. It is part of who we are as people, and many of us prefer to find our own ways of dealing with a world that invests in ableism, and often pulls for everyone to be more similar than we can be.

  I asked author Mike Jung, who is neurodivergent, if he has ever written characters who are not neurotypical. He answered:

  You know what, none of the main characters in my first three books are neurodivergent, which is partly because I didn’t truly know I’m autistic until I’d finished writing them. That’s going to change, though. In October 2018 my essay about being autistic appeared in Kelly Jensen’s nonfiction anthology (Don’t) Call Me Crazy (Algonquin, 10/18). In October 2019 my short story about an autistic boy who practices aikido will appear in the We Need Diverse Books anthology The Hero Next Door (Crown, 10/19). And I’ve started writing what will be my fourth novel, which has no title yet, but is about a family of superheroes that includes an autistic child and an autistic parent. Autistic characters as heroes, am I right?

  I asked author JB Redmond (my son, and coauthor in the Oathbreaker books) how he experiences being neurodivergent, and he described these experiences:

  I don’t remember being diagnosed with autism, but I know I had that tag when I was little. I remember playing with keys. They relaxed me. The way the light moved on the metal helped me focus, and I liked the jingling sound, and how they felt when they moved in my hands. When I was older, I held figurines from Star Trek like I used to hold keys. I literally wore the faces and arms off of them, squeezing, then tapping them in my hands. Finally, when I was a teenager, I found Slinkys. I have one with me all the time. When I hold them, I feel relaxed and like myself. When I don’t have one I feel nervous, and like my hands need them, and like I’ll lose my mind if I don’t have one soon. Sometimes my hands actually hurt to hold a Slinky. My moms used to not let me take them into restaurants or doctor’s appointments or movie theaters, and I didn’t want to, because of “how it would look.” But a few years ago, we realized I should do what made me feel best, and most like myself. Now I take them everywhere. I just try to move them quietly in theaters so other people can hear the films. There are a lot of things I don’t eat or drink because I can’t stand how they feel in my mouth, and I can’t make myself swallow them, and if I try they actually make me throw up. I can’t stand being in bright, noisy places for too long. I feel like my brain will melt. I don’t mind leaving home and doing stuff—but usually I am glad to get back. I’m happy with my world and the routine I made for myself—as long as there’s a Slinky!

  As for me, I have this to say:

  Jesse is not my first neurodivergent character, but she is my first character who identifies as having Autism Spectrum Disorder. I tried to honor some of my own experiences through her, which feels like a big personal step. People and feelings were always puzzles to me, things I knew I needed to understand, but just didn’t. I had to learn the details of people, and that’s probably why I became a psychologist. It was the only way I could deeply study what I needed to know, what my own mind didn’t naturally tell me, and still does not. My thinking tends to be straightforward and without nuance, and that’s probably why I became a writer—to learn the intricacy of human beings and life.

  Mike is finding his way and his place in the world. JB is finding his, and I am finding mine. We’re learning to move away from the suffocation of how we “should” be, and into the freedom of who we are. So if you are neurodivergent, know that you have authors writing for you, and characters an
d stories waiting to speak to you. I believe that more and more, we will be able to make spaces for ourselves, and be heard, and be who we are, and be how we are.

  Stay safe, and find calm-happy where you can. It gets better. It really does get better.

  —s v

  About the Author

  SUSAN VAUGHT is the author of the Edgar Award–winning novel Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy. It was a Junior Library Guild Selection, a Bank Street Best Book, and the Horn Book called it “compelling, offbeat, and fearless.” Things Too Huge to Fix by Saying Sorry was called “a provocative, sensitive, and oh-so-timely read” by Kirkus in a starred review. Susan’s many books for teens include Trigger, which received three starred reviews and was an ALA Best Books for Young Adults. She works as a neuropsychologist at a state psychiatric facility, specializing in helping people with severe and persistent mental illness, intellectual disability, and traumatic brain injury. She lives on a farm with her family in rural western Kentucky.

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  ALSO BY SUSAN VAUGHT

  Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy

  Things Too Huge to Fix by Saying Sorry

  Super Max and the Mystery of Thornwood’s Revenge

  SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Susan Vaught

  Jacket illustration copyright © 2019 by Victor Beuren

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.