by Betsy Uhrig
I hurried through the house, hoping the centipede family and the ghost were outdoors enjoying some fresh air.
I sat down at the kitchen table and wrote a long note for the ghost. I didn’t have any more book for it to read, so I explained the situation as best I could. I even used the term “emotional sense,” though I’m not sure I used it one hundred percent correctly. At the end of the explanation, I wrote:
“Is there any way Grampa can sacrifice himself for Gerald and get out of the picture without dying?”
I didn’t add, Both my grampas are dead, and I don’t want to lose this one too. But I was thinking about that as I ran home. Gerald’s grampa was a great guy, at least according to Caroline’s flashbacks. I didn’t want him to die. And there was a lot of Nate in him. Stuff I’d suggested myself. Now I felt like I’d put Nate in danger somehow, which was ridiculous, but there you go.
I went back to the Old Weintraub Place the next afternoon and the next, hoping the ghost had come up with a way to save Grampa. But the paper was just as I’d left it both times. On the third day with no response, I gave up and took the note home. I was afraid Marta would drop by and see it, and then I’d have to explain not only why I didn’t want Grampa to die, but also why I hadn’t involved her and Javier in this.
And then I got the dreaded e-mail from Caroline:
“DONE!!!!” was all it said. But it was enough.
I printed out the end of the book and added it to the stack on my desk without looking at any of the words. And I left it there. I didn’t even want to touch it. I felt like it would give me a bad shock or burn me if I did. This was way worse than being a reluctant reader. Now I was a terrified one.
90
WHICH BRINGS ME BACK TO LUNCH and Szechuan-noodle-chicken-nugget-grape casserole (not recommended, by the way—no amount of salt could have saved it). We’d moved on to dessert, which was date bars, probably frozen since the first time they were offered and no one wanted them, back in the fall.
Javier had finished pulling the date bits out of his bar and was now working on the walnuts. Soon he was left with a pile of freezer-burned rubble that he had no intention of eating.
“Send the ending of the book as soon as it’s done,” he said to me. “I’m not allowed electronics at the beach, so I need time to print it out before we leave.”
“You can’t rush these things,” I said, which was true, but not in the way they probably thought I meant it.
“Yesh, you can,” said Marta, chewing on Javier’s rubble. “Want me to call ’er up? I’ll call ’er up and tell ’er to get a move on.”
“You can’t threaten someone into finishing a book,” said Javier.
“Of course I can,” said Marta with a grim determination that made me kind of fear for my aunt.
“What are you going to do?” asked Javier. “Poke her with an old TV antenna?”
“I’ll do what I have to do,” Marta said. “Plus, we need to bring the ghost a copy. It deserves to know how the book ends.”
“You’re not still going over there?” said Javier.
“Not much lately,” Marta admitted. “I’ve been busy rehabbing the elbow.”
“Is that how you got that giant scrape on it?”
“Dud.”
I let them argue while I considered my options. Marta was right. The ghost, not to mention Javier and Marta, deserved to know how the book ended. None of them would mind Grampa’s death as much as I did. They didn’t have all my grandfather baggage. It probably would make emotional sense to them. I had to send the ending to Javier and Marta. That much was clear.
And if I really didn’t want to read the Grampa-dying part, I could ask them where it was and skip it, right? I happen to know that my dad used to skip parts of books he read to me when I was little. He confessed recently that he basically rewrote the ending to one of my favorite books while he was reading it to me because the kid in it found out the tooth fairy was his parents, and he didn’t think I was ready for that.
If I could isolate the bad part of the book the way Javier did unwanted lunch ingredients, I could read around it. At least then I’d know how the story ended and be able to fix any last boring parts.
My other option, of course, was to just suck it up and read the whole ending.
91
AS I RAN HOME FROM SCHOOL that day, burping up an unpleasant combination of lunch flavors, I thought hard about my options. And I decided that I had to trust Caroline. I had to trust that even if she had written something that would make me sad, she was a good enough writer to make it worth reading anyway.
So when I got home, I sat down at my desk and opened the stack of pages to the new section. Which was when I understood how much I had left to go. I put the stack aside and opened my laptop. I figured I should send the ending to Javier and Marta first, since reading it myself was going to take some time. I gave them strict instructions not to tell me anything about the ending until I had finished. “NO SPOILERS!” I wrote. “NO MATTER WHAT.”
Then, being totally honest here, since the laptop was open anyway, I spent some time on the Internet. The kid who balanced fruit on his face had moved on to balancing his face on fruit, which kept me busy for a while.
Then I took a deep breath, gritted my teeth, and started in on the book. I read the battle chapters, which were only sort of new to me, since I knew how it all went down. And I have to say, modesty aside, that the battle made the book way more exciting. Then I read about Gerald and Snarko and the Daredevil finding the weir and figuring out a strategy for getting Grampa out of the vortex.
And then it was time for dinner.
After dinner I went back to the book, bracing myself once again. But Grampa wasn’t in the next chapter at all. It was called “The Feast of the Forest,” and it was about this big dinner Gerald had with all his allies and buddies in the woods before he attempted to rescue Grampa. It was a funny chapter, with lots of weird guests and weirder food, but Caroline had made some obvious mistakes with the seating arrangements.
I got out my Red Pen of Reseating and drew up a diagram to make sure that no one with spikes was seated too close to someone who was blob based. And that those with tentacles had enough elbow room. And I had to rewrite the bit where someone with no limbs was using a knife and fork. Obviously, Caroline had been rushing when she put that in.
Then I decided I should try to cook some of the dishes she was describing. Just to make sure they worked. It was the same as trying the stunts, only a lot easier.
The tartberry tea was quite good (I substituted raspberries, since tartberries are fictional as far as I know). The butter buns were a little on the dry side, but that was my fault for leaving them in the oven too long. The swamp stew, on the other hand, was awful. Even my dad wouldn’t take another bite, and we called him the human garbage disposal, with good reason.
So it took me a few days to get through the Feast of the Forest. Which, yes, was mainly about stalling and not much about recipe accuracy. But if Caroline wanted things to make emotional sense, shouldn’t they also make food sense? There was no way even a bunch of backwoods swamp dwellers were going to serve that rancid stew at a feast and get away with it.
The next chapter was called “River Rescue,” and here, at long last, Gerald and Snarko and the Daredevil sneaked into the weir and tricked the warlock and finally, finally rescued Grampa. Who was in good spirits, considering. The reunion was touching, and victory felt good after all Gerald’s—and my!—trials and struggles. Now they just had to get out of the weir and go home. Right? That’s all they had to do.
Unfortunately, the chapter after that was titled “Self-Sacrifice.”
Crud.
I restacked the pages, squared them neatly, and put them away for another time. School wasn’t quite over. There was still homework to do. I don’t think I’d ever been more grateful for a bunch of math problems in my life.
92
THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOL CAME and went. Javier left for a w
eek at the beach with his family, and Marta started circus camp, which, she said, was the closest she could get to literary-stunt-double camp. Neither of them had said a word to me about the book’s ending.
I usually went to soccer camp during summer days, mainly to keep me out of Mom’s hair while she worked, but this summer I was trying something new. I had a job at the senior center, working the front desk. Nate had set it up for me when I’d pointed out that no one was ever at the front desk. He said they had been waiting for the right volunteer, and thanks for stepping up, Albert.
So there I was at the senior center late one afternoon a few days into summer, enjoying a fresh chocolate-chip cookie and getting valuable work experience, when a text arrived from my mother.
Come home now! it said.
She must have known that my reaction would be to break out in a worried sweat, because another text followed right away. Nothing wrong.
I said good-bye to the seniors and rode my bike home.
Mom was already in the car when I got there. “Lu’s water broke,” she said through the open window. “And Caroline’s at work with no car. So I’m taking Lu to the hospital. Dad’s on his way home, but it might take him a while. Keep an eye on Alvin until Dad gets here, okay? Thanks!” And she waved and drove away.
Mom was taking Lulu to the hospital because she’d broken her water? Had she dropped a glass of water and cut herself on a shard? Dropped a water bottle on her toe and crushed it? But wouldn’t my mom have said she’d broken her toe in that case? I put my bike in the garage and went into the house. Whatever it was, Mom was dealing with it.
I wandered around the house for a while, luxuriating in the feeling of being in charge. Then I went upstairs to see what Alvin was doing.
What he wasn’t doing was lying on his bed reading. Which seemed strange. Where else would he be? The obvious answer was in my room, messing around in my stuff while he had the chance. I charged in, ready for combat. But he wasn’t there either.
I called his name a few times. No answer.
I looked out the window at the backyard, but I didn’t expect him to be outdoors, and he wasn’t. The basement? The garage?
I checked both before I came to the conclusion I’d been avoiding. Alvin wasn’t here.
93
ALVIN NEVER WENT ANYWHERE WHEN HE didn’t have to. And he wasn’t allowed to wander the neighborhood by himself—he was eight and had a history of getting into trouble in his own room. So where had he gone without permission while Mom was getting ready to drive Lulu to the hospital?
I looked all over the house one more time, because I’ve been known to panic, thinking that something—like my phone or my backpack or last night’s homework—was missing when it wasn’t. But my brother was definitely missing.
I checked his room for clues. Maybe one of his experiments required something he’d had to leave the house to get. But there was no sign he’d been working on anything in there. There wasn’t even a book on his bed.
Then I checked my room. Maybe he’d broken something and sneaked out of the house to avoid my wrath. But Alvin wasn’t afraid enough of my wrath to leave the house. I knew that.
I was getting ready to give up and call Dad, when I saw what I’d been looking for. A clue. A subtle orange clue.
Caroline’s book was on my desk. It looked almost exactly the way I’d left it when I stopped reading a few days ago. But not quite. There were two stacks of paper, one large and one small. The small stack had the chapter “Self-Sacrifice” on top, still staring at me threateningly. But there was one difference. The first page of that chapter had orange fingerprints on it. They weren’t my fingerprints. I wasn’t the one who ate Cheetos compulsively whenever he read anything.
He might as well have left a neon-orange sign that said ALVIN WAS HERE.
Alvin had been reading Caroline’s book, and now he was gone.
I sat down hard on the desk chair and thought about what that meant. Then I remembered my promise to him when we’d borrowed his Legos. That he could do the next stunt. I’d thought there were no more stunts, but I didn’t know that for sure, because I hadn’t finished the book. I flipped to the last page. Sure enough: more Cheeto prints. He’d read all the way to the end.
I could only assume that he’d found a stunt in there and seen his opportunity to try it when Mom got the call from Lu.
And the only way I could find out what the stunt was, and have any idea where Alvin might be now, was to read.
94
THE FORMERLY RELUCTANT READER WAS NOW the wincing, cringing, rushing reader as I tore through the chapter I’d been avoiding. Maybe it was like ripping off a bandage and going fast made it easier, but I got through Grampa’s death scene without even sniffling.
The warlock caught up with Gerald and Grampa at Grampa’s house and basically tossed them into the slipstream, sending them back to their own world. Then he destroyed the slipstream, stranding them there. And funnily enough, the only way they could return to the alternate world was by using a hidden slipstream that Grampa had set up—in a storm drain. So my idea about Gerald the frog falling into a storm drain from way in the beginning got in there after all. Even though I’d never mentioned it to Caroline. Great minds really do think alike.
Gerald and Grampa managed to slide into the storm drain slipstream and get back to the alternate world for one last showdown with the warlock. And Grampa threw himself between Gerald and the warlock when the warlock sent a killing spell Gerald’s way, and it hit Grampa instead.
Bad, right? Heroic, but bad. I would definitely have been sad if I’d stopped to think about it. But as soon as I got to the end of the chapter, I realized what Alvin was up to.
I don’t know how familiar you are with the storm drains of your neighborhood, but Alvin and I knew the ones around us well. We’d always enjoyed throwing pebbles into them and hearing the pebbles plop into the dark water below. Most storm drains are set so close to the curb that there’s no way a grandfather or even a boy could slip into one of them. I’m sure that’s by design. No one wants people randomly falling into storm drains all over the place.
So on the face of it, Caroline’s last stunt was impossible. No storm drain was going to fit Gerald and Grampa. Using it for a slipstream substitute didn’t make sense. I knew this, and I’m guessing Alvin knew it too.
Except there was one storm drain that maybe—maybe—was big enough. The one by the soccer field between here and Javier’s house. The curb was really high there, and the grate was low. There was a sizable gap. And if I had been reading that chapter and wondering if Caroline’s idea might actually work, that’s where I would have gone to check it out.
I didn’t wait around to leave Dad a note or make any other rational decisions about how to proceed. I slammed the front door and started to run.
95
I DON’T USUALLY RUN FOR SPEED. But I made it to the soccer field in what I’m sure was record time, and I was winded when I got within sight of the storm drain. I stopped to catch my breath and scan the area. There wasn’t a single person on the field or the jogging track that circled it. The sky was cloudy, and it was starting to rain those big fat warning drops that mean you are about to get drenched.
At first it didn’t seem like anyone was hanging around the storm drain, taking measurements or whatever. But that’s because I was looking for a person standing by the storm drain. Not sitting on it. Not sort of lying on it. Which was what Alvin was doing. I could see him now that I was focused at curb level. He was lying on the storm-drain grate, and he was waving at me.
I ran over there, ready to let him have it about wandering off and not telling Mom and lying on a filthy grate. After that, I was planning to get into being in my room when I wasn’t home, reading a book I had told him not to read, and getting his Cheeto prints all over the place.
But when I got close enough to him to begin the yelling, I couldn’t do it. He was covered with grime, both of his legs were partway down the storm
drain, and—most important—he was obviously stuck.
Crud.
“Thank goodness you’re here,” he said, sitting up as best he could. “I got my legs partly in, but now I can’t get them out. See?” He pointed at his legs in case I needed a visual aid. “I’m thinking Grampa is going to have to concoct a slimy substance of some kind. That might enable Gerald to slide in here. Although I’m sure Grampa would never fit. Unless he has super-skinny legs. Does Grampa have super-skinny legs? I don’t think that’s been mentioned, if so. You didn’t happen to bring anything slimy with you? Some butter or olive oil? Or soap. Soap might work as well. Liquid soap would be best.”
I stood over him with my hands on my hips. “I ran out of the house to come find you. I didn’t stop to bring any soap with me. Although you could use it. Look at you—you’re filthy!” And, for the record, I sounded exactly like our mom as I said all this.
Alvin shrugged. “You promised me I could do the next stunt. Remember?”
“Yes, I remember,” I said. “But I didn’t say anything about doing it alone. Did you see me doing any of the other stunts alone? You didn’t. And why is that? Because it’s a stupid, dangerous, dumb, idiotic, stupid thing to do!”
“You said stupid twice.”
96
I CLENCHED MY FISTS TO KEEP from yanking Alvin out of the storm drain by his ears, leaving his lower legs behind if necessary. I took a calming breath, blew it out, and then crouched to see what I had to do to remove him. Surely it was simply a matter of advanced physics. Too bad we didn’t get to advanced physics until high school.
“I think if you turn your legs sideways, then—” I began.
“I already tried that,” said Alvin. “I’ve tried everything. I think we’re going to need the Jaws of Life. You know—the tool they use to get people out of crumpled-up cars. I think that’s the required implement in this situation.”