I told my brother to take the hat off, but he acted like the hat made him deaf on top of blind. Cody always overdoes things. When our grandfather taught him pig latin, I was “En-bay” for weeks. Now it was the hat.
After he smacked into Ms. Dupree’s recycling bin, I kept a hand on his shoulder.
“Hey, Ben? You know whose hat this is?” He did a skip-step to keep up. “It’s Uncle Paul’s, the one who disappeared!”
In Cody’s head I bet our uncle disappeared in a puff of smoke. “Uncle Paul didn’t disappear. He’s traveling.”
“He’s only sent one postcard since I was three years old. That’s pretty disappeared.”
Yeah, it was. Sometimes I still missed my uncle. He was way cooler than his older brother, my dad. I steered my own brother away from the curb. “I’d like to pull an Uncle Paul sometime. Travel around. See things.”
“Can I come?”
“No.” I gave his shoulder a squeeze. “But don’t worry. I’ll send you more than one postcard.”
“How many?”
“Two.”
Cody twisted toward me. “Two?”
“You’re kidding?”
Since he couldn’t see my face, I gave his shoulder another squeeze.
“Does one squeeze mean yes?”
I squeezed again.
“So, one is yes, and two is no. And three can be maybe?”
There’s a reason I call Cody my little “bother.” I gave his shoulder three hard squeezes, then changed the subject. “Hey, that was pretty sweet the way you made those shots. You could you see the hoop, right?”
“No way.”
I pushed up on the hat brim. As soon as his eyes came into view he smiled, showing off his half-grown-in big front teeth—he really believes the tooth fairy is keeping the ones he lost in a “special place.”
“Whoa!” Cody slapped the sunflower Mom painted on our mailbox. “We’re already home!” He flapped the mailbox door open and shut.
“You didn’t even check.”
“Of course not. It’s Sunday.”
“Then why’d you open the box?”
“For luck.”
“That’s how you made those hoops, right? Luck?”
Cody blinked up at me. “I dunno. I’ve only ever made a few baskets in my whole entire life. Today, without even looking, I just let go of the ball and—swish!” He stared at his hands. “When I held it, there was this…like…tingle.”
Oh boy, here we go. “Tingle?”
“You know…sort of a…magic tingle.” Cody opened and closed his hands, staring at them.
I crossed my arms. “A magic tingle?”
“Yes, a magic tingle!” Cody nodded so hard, the hat slid back over his eyes.
I walked away. “I’m going in for lunch.” He could find his own way up the driveway, or maybe the hat would tingle him in the right direction.
“Why couldn’t it be magic?” he shouted.
I sighed and walked back. “Magic is a little-kid thing, Cody.” I took the hat off his head. “Time to get over it. You’re about to turn seven.”
But with my uncle’s hat in my hands I felt a different kind of tingle. With his hat in my hands I started remembering him. No poof of smoke, but Uncle Paul had disappeared. One day he was here, sleeping in the room where Cody slept now; the next day he was gone.
“Say, Ben, is seven years old when you forget magic is real?” Even Cody’s freckles seemed to be staring up at me.
“No. Seven is when you figure out that it never was real.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t feel bad. It’s kind of a good thing that magic is fake. Even in stories it’s only nice at first. It always messes up the person who has it.”
“Nuh-uh! Not Cinderella! Cinderella married the prince!”
“And they lived boringly ever after.”
Cody blinked up at me. “But the hat gave me powers!”
“Like the powers you had the time you tied your blanket around your shoulders and ‘flew’ off the top of the monkey bars?” I didn’t mention the broken collarbone. I’d tried the flying thing myself on the swings with Cass, both of us jumping when our swings hit the top. I got scraped up bad and her swing smacked her in the back of the head. Every kid has powers, until they try to use them.
“That was different. The blanket wasn’t magic.”
“Get real, Cody. ‘Magic’ only works in those comic books you like.”
“I’m telling you, just be glad hat magic isn’t real. If it was, and you messed up? You could destroy the planet.” I jogged across the yard. “Come on, Cody, let’s eat.”
“Gimme back my magic hat!”
I loped up the porch steps and winged the hat at him, didn’t even aim. Still, it landed on his head.
“See?” he whooped, pushing it back. “The hat likes me. It came right to me! Good old hat.”
“Hats don’t like people, and hitting that hoop was luck, not magic. You can wear the hat, but you’re still gonna have a normal, boring summer—and your head’s gonna sweat.”
Cody took the hat off and stared down at it. “I know you’re magic,” he mumbled. “But if I mess up, don’t destroy the planet, okay?”