I spent the rest of the morning scrubbing bug guts off The Roast and imagining what it was going to be like to spend weeks trapped in a RV with my dad instead of waiting at home for Mom. What if I spent the whole summer living in that box, missing her miserably, having to be a meatseller’s assistant to the man who refused to even try and get her back?

As I stooped to pry one last gluey moth wing from a taillight, Syd wandered up behind us.

“Looking good, Uncle Douglas!” he said, giving the motor home a slow fwoooeeet-fwoo whistle. “Wish I could buy this thing. I’d totally live in it.”

“Sorry, Syd. She’s not for sale,” said my dad.

“How come you’re home so early?” I asked Syd, sounding only a tenth as happy to see him as I felt.

“Because I asked my English teacher if vegetarians had to speak Fig Latin instead of Pig Latin,” he explained.

“And then the whole class talked Pig Latin and wouldn’t quit. I told her I was eally-ray orry-say, but I still got sent home.

“Yikes!” said Syd when he saw my eyes. “What’s up with your face? You got peanut butter smeared on there?”

“Butt a stump, Syd.”

I must have looked all sorts of miserable.

“Whoa. Are you okay?” he mouthed.

“No!” I mouthed back, motioning him over to the storm cellar. While my dad admired the transformation The Roast had undergone, from dull-stained beige to shiny-stained beige, Syd and I raced to the shelter, where we sat on the edge and swung our legs down into the opening.

“Why’s he still working on that thing?” asked Syd.

“Because he’s taking me on a trip.”

“A trip? To where?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Wherever they need steaks other than Florida, I guess.”

“For how long?”

“Could be weeks, Dad says.”

“So why are you so ajorly-may ummed-bay?” Syd sounded confused. “You’ve always wanted to see new places, right?”

“Yeah, but I wanted to see them in a Mom way, all heroic and exciting and stuff,” I told him. “Not all funky and junky like that.”

We looked back over our shoulders just in time to see my dad trying to re-aim The Roast’s cross-eyed headlights.

“I kind of see your point,” said Syd.

“And not just that,” I said, “but Dad’s been talking about Mom like she just poofed into the air, and now he wants us to go spend every moment together pretending there was nothing we could do to stop her from going.”

When Dad turned and made his way toward Uncle Clay’s porch, Syd and I bypassed the steps and leapt all the way down into the dim shelter, where the family’s fortune-size worries filled jars all around us. Syd pulled the doors shut over us and tugged a dangling lightbulb on.

“Did you tell him you don’t want to go?” he asked.

“Yeah, but he said we’re leaving in three days no matter what.”

I drew circles on the dusty floor with my finger.

“How’re you going to work on your big wall doodling in that crusty RV?” he said.

“Noodling,” I said, rubbing the circles gone. “And don’t worry. There’s not going to be anything permanent worth drawing in my future anyway.”

Syd and I both looked to the lightbulb and watched till it quit its swinging.

“So what did Aunt Toodi say to you on the phone?” he said.

His question put a lump in my throat the size of a hush puppy.

“That this is only an in-between,” I said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I need to find a way to tell my mom to c-o-m-e b-a-c-k other than dropping eight Scrabble letters into an envelope.”

“Excuse me?”

“It means that I just need to talk to her again. To convince her to come on back.”

“Yeah right,” said Syd. “You couldn’t convince a wad of gum to stick to your shoe. Besides, I’d be mad too if I were Uncle Douglas. My mom said Aunt Toodi really did a number on you guys.”

“Well, she didn’t mean to,” I said. “She’s just gotten a little carried away with her job is all. And she’s going to come back when those kids get their own new mom and don’t need her anymore.”

“Whatevs,” he said. “Do you really believe that?”

I hated the way I had to pause to check if I did believe that.

“It’s not about what I believe, Syd. It’s about what I know. She’s my mom, and I know my mom loves me too much to stay gone.”

Syd picked at a callus on his palm. I wanted to shake him by the shoulders.

“Besides, there’s an end to every rescue, you know.”

I was beginning to think I needed to airbrush There’s an end to every rescue on the back of the tank top. Folks around here sure needed some reminding.

Uncle Clay’s wheelchair made squeaks above the cellar as he rolled out to greet my dad. I scooted close and looked Syd right in the face.

“Syd, it is crucial that I be home when she comes back,” I said. “If I’m not here, she just might leave again.”

“All right, all right,” said Syd, his big knobby giraffe knees bumping my little ones as we both sat crisscross on the shelter floor. “Then what we need to do is come up with a rategy-stay.”

“A what?”

“A strategy. For getting you out of this trip,” he said. “All we’ve got to do is think up a good excuse for you not to go.”

From above, there came some garbly mumbling. I could have sworn Uncle Clay said the word strategy too.

“They must have heard us,” whispered Syd. “Keep it down.”

I studied the shelves, trying to read just one of the folded messages inside a jar, while Syd worked up a thinking sweat. The lightbulb over his head made him look like a shadowy mad scientist. I could tell what he was thinking. What would Fearless Fenwick do? And boy, was I ever right.

“I’ve got it!” he said, packing a yell into a whisper. “How do you feel about Fake Tetanus?”

“Fake Tetanus?”

All I knew about tetanus was that Mean Maritucker Mentz down the street got it once from stepping on a nail and couldn’t shake a fist or call anyone a dweemus for a whole week because of her twitchy arms and her lockjaw.

“It’s easy,” he said. “All you need is a fake injury and some ketchup for blood.”

“Syd, I’ll try to put this in a way you’ll appreciate,” I said. “That idea is totally ridic. Besides, didn’t Maritucker have to get a shot for her tetanus?”

“Yeah. I think she did.”

“And didn’t she say the needle was big as a toilet paper tube?” I said.

Syd just stood there and burped. After that, we spent practically the whole day ping-ponging plans, writing each and every one down, and then crossing the stupid ones out.

Hide in the storm cellar for a month

Volunteer to go to summer school

Fake leprosy (Syd’s idea, of course.)

Catch a bus to Wherever, Florida

When Aunt Jo opened the cellar door to hand us down a tray of sandwiches, Syd crumpled up the evidence of our scheming and tossed it over his shoulder.

“Take what you want and pass it back up,” she said. “I gotta feed the menfolk too.”

On the corner of the tray was a little manicure kit.

“What’s that doing on there?” asked Syd.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Aunt Jo said. “Uncle Douglas said they needed it.”

While Syd picked potato chips from his back teeth, I stood on the ladder to take one more look at The Roast. The late afternoon sun sent a gleam of inspiration right into my eyes.

“I’ve got an idea!” I said, thinking about Mom’s flat tire and how Dad should have left it that way.

“What?” Syd squeezed in beside me on the ladder.

“There’s no spare tire on the back of The Roast,” I said.

“What?”

I pointed Syd’s head toward a big chunk of broken Yoo-hoo bottle in our backyard.

“See that broken bottle?” I explained. “Just to delay the trip a while, what if I—”

“Syd Nordenhauer!” called Aunt Jo. “Come on in and do your homework, boy.”

“Wrengthapalooza,” said Syd. “I gotta go.”

“It’s okay,” I told him. “I’ve got to go too. You just be here right after school tomorrow.”

I climbed out of the shelter behind Syd. Once we’d parted ways, I watched the tops of Dad’s and Uncle Clay’s heads through The Roast’s little side windows to make sure they weren’t looking out. I could see Uncle Clay wheeling around wearing a top hat and my dad laughing at him.

When the coast was clear, I grabbed a stick and picked up the neck of the Yoo-hoo bottle with the tip of it. Then I crept up to The Roast and placed the broken neck ever so gently, jagged edge up, underneath the right front tire. I’d never felt so criminal as I did squatting there waiting for my chance to bolt unseen to the house. I could totally hear Dad and Uncle Clay talking loud and clear inside the RV.

“This is really great stuff,” said Uncle Clay. “I wish we could have done this when we were kids.”

“Yeah, she’s going to wig when she sees all this,” said Dad.

“We Nordenhauers do have immeasurable power,” said Uncle Clay.

“And immeasurable potential,” said Dad.

Overwhelmed by a prickly mix of guilt and curiosity, I wriggled the stick back into the neck of the broken bottle and flung it far as I could out from under that tire.

The dads silenced their talking when the bottle clanked against a rock, and I darted in a stooped position to my house, replaying their words and wondering who exactly it was that was going to wig when she saw what. I spent the rest of the night wishing that the immeasurable Nordenhauer power they’d spoken of included long-distance eavesdropping skills.