Ben
I woke up to the sound of Mom singing in the kitchen. “‘Almost heaven, West Virginia…’” Everything was great in her world.
Pulling on my jeans, I looked out the window. It had rained all night with lots of thunder and lightning, but now the sun was out and birds were chirping, all happy. As I slouched down the stairs Dad started to whistle.
“Could you all quit it with the cheerfulness?” I said as I walked in the kitchen. “It’s too early.”
Dad raised his eyebrows. “Good morning to you too, Bud.” Mom kept right on singing about West Virginia while she worked on her sudoku.
“Forgot your shirt,” said Cody, looking up from his boring bowl of cereal. “And I can see your drawers.”
When I didn’t smile, he got it. This was not the day to mess with me.
As he dipped up another spoonful of soggy cereal, I thought about our walk home from Nowhere yesterday, how he kept insisting that the hat said Uncle Paul had burned the house down. “Maybe not on purpose,” he said. “But he did it.”
So, basically, my brother was getting his information from a hat, my girlfriend wasn’t speaking to me, and my best friend couldn’t keep his mouth shut. And it was still the first week of summer vacation, so it was just possible things would get worse.
Cody sat there watching me, the jiggles going up his legs. Then he got this weak smile. “It’s seven minus one,” he said quietly.
“So?”
Mom quit singing and looked up from her sudoku. “Happy day-before-your-birthday, Cody.” Then she glared at me.
“Is there going to be a cake?” Cody asked.
“Of course. I ordered you a special surprise cake from Publix.”
My brother hooked his sneaker toes behind the chair rung and leaned toward her. “Shaped like a what?”
She leaned toward him too. “Shaped like a surprise.”
“It’s not a train, is it?”
“That was your last birthday.” She glanced at the hat on the table. “Something you’ve gotten interested in lately.”
Cody looked at it too. “Will it have gray icing?”
Mom stopped with her coffee cup halfway to her mouth. “Did Ben tell you?”
I held up both hands. “Hey, don’t look at me! I’m the only one who can keep a secret around here.”
Cody bounced his heels again. “The hat told me.”
Mom picked up her pencil, but stopped. “Are your pants on fire, young man?”
Cody actually looked down to check before he said no.
I snagged a bowl of hummus from the refrigerator and a bag of pitas from the pantry.
I set the bowl down on the table, hard. Mom glanced at the wobbling bowl like she was going to say something, then over at the clock on the stove. “I’d better get ready for work.”
“The hat cake was your mom’s idea,” Dad said quietly as she went up the stairs. “Personally, I liked last year’s train a whole lot better.”
“Let’s just say I’m not a big fan of the hat.”
“Me either.” I fell into a chair and dug a pita into the hummus. “His imagination’s been going weird places ever since he found it—weirder than usual, I mean.”
Dad rested his arms on the table. “Why are you in such a good mood, Ben?”
I shrugged, then stared at Cody, warning him to keep his mouth shut. “Couldn’t sleep. That was some storm we had last night.”
“What storm?” Cody spun in his chair and stared out the window. A big shiny puddle sat in the low spot on the driveway.
Dad rolled his shoulders. “Guys? I’m not going to work today. I’m headed over to G-mom and G-dad’s, to do an oil change, eat cookies, and swim in their pool. Who wants to ride along?”
“Me!” Cody’s hand shot up. “I’ll go!”
I shoved another bite of hummus and pita in my mouth.
“How about you, Ben?”
I grunted a no.
“Seriously, what’s up with you today?” Dad asked.
Cody leaned toward Dad. “Girlfriend trouble.”
I kicked him under the table.
“Girlfriend trouble?”
Why did Dad have to say everything so loud? The last thing I needed was Mom to get into the act.
“Sorry to hear that, Ben. You want to talk?”
“No.”
“Sometimes it helps to get a little advice from an old pro.”
“An old pro? Dad, you married your one and only girlfriend.”
He tipped his chair back and folded his hands over his stomach. “Yup. My record is perfect. No girlfriend trouble ever.”
“You should come with us,” Cody said to me.
“Yeah,” said Dad. “Moping around won’t do you any good.”
“I’m not moping! I’ll read or something.”
“Suit yourself.” Dad nodded at my brother. “More cookies for us,” he whispered. “Plus, we can work on our awesome cannonballs.”
Dad got up from the table and stretched, his rising shirt showing off his hairy belly—something to look forward to if I take after him. “Put on your swimsuit, Cody. Meet me back in this kitchen in five and we’ll hit the road. I’d appreciate it if the hat stayed here.”
“Check,” said Detective Dobbs, and he trotted up the stairs.
Dad looked at me like he was about to launch into a lecture. Instead he stood and pushed his chair in. “Feel free to change your mind.”
I was still eating hummus when Cody slapped down the stairs in his red swim trunks and flippers. “Do you really need to wear the flippers in the car?” I asked.
“They’re not for the car.” Cody banged out the door.
When Dad came in wearing his trunks, I pointed out the window. “This is the kind of stuff I put up with every day. I think I deserve a raise.”
But Dad just smiled at Cody stomping the water out of the puddle. “At least he’s not wearing the hat.”
Just like that, I was brother free, but still stuck in park. I glanced down at my bare chest. I’d put on a shirt and then think of something to do. I took the stairs two at a time, but slowed when I came to Cody’s open door. The hat hung on the bedpost, the postcard still jammed under the band.
I walked in, lifted my uncle’s hat off the post, and dropped it on my head. It landed covering one eye but I nudged it up, then glanced at myself in the mirror over his dresser. “Not bad.” I walked toward myself, checking the hat out. It wasn’t sitting quite right, so I pinched the crown, lifted it, and put it on again. I ran the brim between my fingers. “Pretty sharp.” It fit me way better than it fit Cody.
Bet Cass would like the way I looked in it. If Cass was speaking to me.
I took the hat off, about to hang it back up, when I saw the package on the dresser—a birthday present for Cody. I was amazed Cody hadn’t torn into it. Then I noticed it was from Aunt Sandy. That explained it.
Leaned up against the box was an envelope. I set the hat down on the package and picked up the white envelope. It was muddy, the stamp crooked. No return address, but the postmark, which was smudged and smeared, said “Wichita, KA.”
Who did Cody know in Wichita? And who, other than me, would threaten him with monkeys flying out of his butt?
I looked up, considering. There, reflected in the mirror, was the monkey-butt threat and the back of the postcard that stuck up from the hatband. The writing was the same.
I saw my eyes go wide in the mirror. The birthday card was from Uncle Paul, and he was in Wichita.
My hands started to shake. It wasn’t addressed to me, and Cody would open it tomorrow. For him it would be no big deal, just one more happy birthday. For me? Maybe it would explain things, things that still bugged me three years after they happened. When Uncle Paul lived with us, he and I were together all the time. Like Cody tags along after me, I tagged along after Uncle Paul. While he was here it was like I had an older brother. Then he left—“disappeared,” if you listen to Cody.
Looking back, “disappeared” is really what it felt like.
“Hang in there, Shotgun!” on a postcard didn’t make up for it. I’d explain all that to Cody when I told him I’d opened it. I thought he’d be okay with it. And if he wasn’t, I’d remind him why Cass wasn’t speaking to me.
I took a deep breath, opened the flap, and slid the card out.
A sad-eyed puppy stared back at me. “FOR A BIG BOY ON HIS SIXTH BIRTHDAY.” That’d get Cody—it kind of got me too. Even though Cody was named after him, Uncle Paul didn’t know how old he was.
I opened the card, prepared to be disappointed by seeing just a signature, but inside was a long note.
When I looked up from the note, my eyes in the mirror looked spooked—like Cody had looked spooked pretty much all the time since finding the hat.
Shotgun. Nobody called me that but Uncle Paul.
The note said he’d be right here if we lived anywhere else. And then there was that comment about disasters ruining your day. Maybe Cody was right about Uncle Paul. Maybe he had burned that house down. “By accident,” I muttered. But that was the excuse you give when you hit a line drive through somebody’s front window. When three people die, who cares if it’s an accident?
I thought about accidents, about how they could take you by surprise, but how sometimes you could see them coming. Like G-dad always says about Cody, he’s an accident waiting to happen.
Seemed like lately things had been blindsiding me—like the truth about Nowhere leaking back to Cass. I could have prevented that disaster by telling her the truth up front.
Yup, do nothing about an accident waiting to happen, and eventually it does. Suddenly I thought about the Sword of Damocles branch hanging over the roof of Nowhere. If I kept on thinking about it and doing nothing, it would fall on the roof, and why let it happen when I could prevent it?
Taking one last look in the mirror, I straightened the hat. “Come on, Super Hat. Let’s go avert a disaster.”