“EVERYBODY PUT ON your best clothes,” Dad said. He had just told us he was offered a high-paying job with a big construction company in Cocoa Beach, Florida. “We’re going out to dinner and you can order off the expensive side of the menu.”

“All right!” Pete yelled.

Betsy was suspicious.

“Don’t give me that look,” Dad said, turning toward her. “I talked with the boss today and it’s in the bag.”

“I didn’t say a word,” she said with indifference. “It’s just that seeing is believing.”

Mom gave him a kiss. She was three months pregnant and touched her belly with both hands when she leaned forward. “Don’t mind her,” Mom said. “It’s a stage she’s passing through.” Then she gave Betsy a “straighten-up” glare.

“My ship came in,” Dad said, shaking his head. “I’ve been waiting a long time, and now it’s arrived.”

“What about the dinner I cooked?” asked Betsy. She sounded hurt. She had made lima-bean soup. His favorite. “Cat-box soup” is what I called it. The smell of it nearly gagged me.

“We’ll eat it tomorrow,” he said while doing a smooth shadow dance around the living room. “Everybody knows soup is better the second day.” Suddenly, he clapped his hands together. “Hey, let’s go! I’m the dad and you are a family on the move.” He smiled his big smile. The one I had seen when things worked out the way he said they would.

I ran up the hall and into my room. I put on a dark shirt, because I’m a slob when I eat Italian food. Once I wore a good white shirt and Mom made me wear a napkin tucked into my shirt collar with the ends gathered up over my shoulders. I looked like I was sitting in a baby chair with a bib on.

We went to the Venice Restaurant. It was decorated with murals of gondolas and churches and beautiful houses along a wide canal. Fort Lauderdale is known as the Venice of Florida because of our canals. But it did not look anything like the Venice I’d seen in books. Dad ordered a bottle of Chianti even before we sat down. Mom raised her eyebrows.

“This is a celebration,” he announced.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” she said.

“I won’t have to work two jobs anymore. In the evening I can come home, drink a cold beer, and read the paper with my feet up.”

The wine arrived. The bottle was wrapped in straw like the ones we used at home for candle holders. “Glasses for everyone,” Dad said to the waiter.

“None for me,” Mom cut in. “I’ll have a ginger ale.”

Across the street, the old people lined up for dinner at Morrison’s Cafeteria. They all looked wealthier than we were, so why were they eating there? All the food looked like lawn clippings with hard-boiled eggs and sliced beets mixed in.

Dad poured a little wine in each of our glasses, then raised his to the ceiling. “Cheers,” he said brightly. He looked happy and hopeful. “To the future.”

We all clinked glasses. The warm wine tasted like grape juice and gasoline.

“Tell us about your new job?” Betsy asked.

“As soon as I know more, I’ll tell you,” Dad said and poured himself another glass of wine.

“Then tell us more about Cocoa Beach,” she said.

“It’s a growing town. With Cape Kennedy aiming for Mars, now there are a lot of jobs. The schools are good because there are so many government brats in them. There’s a good hospital for Mom. The beaches are great, and housing is cheap. What else can I say? The place is a paradise. Oh, and I thought we could all drive up there some day this week and look around.”

“Great,” said Mom, “I’ll make some housing appointments.”

“Houses are shootin’ up like mushrooms,” he said, “and at good prices.”

Betsy and I exchanged glances. If we went up during the week, it meant getting out of school for one day, maybe two. We were almost at the end of the school year. Betsy had been saying her teachers were worn down and showing science movies all day long. Mrs. Marshall still had us going in circles. We were on our tenth copybook, and when we weren’t occupied with that, we were filling in the blanks on a mimeographed lesson plan she passed out. I could tell that she was sick of us; we were sick of her months ago.

The waitress came and we ordered. Once the food arrived, we didn’t keep up the conversation. I was staring out into the future. What would it be like? I’ll be going from elementary school to junior high. From having a few friends to having no friends again. From being a home renter to being an owner. Plus, there will be a new baby in the family. We already had lived in nine different houses. This was my fifth school out of six grades. Was this going to be a fresh start? Or was this only another beginning without an end, like all the others?

“Jack,” Mom said to me, “pay attention to what you are doing.”

I looked down at my dinner. I had twirled nearly the entire plate of spaghetti into a large knot around my fork.

“Maybe we should learn some table manners,” Betsy said, “before we move into a new neighborhood, so that people don’t think we were raised in a cave.”

“Sorry.”

Betsy shook her head. I knew she wanted us to make a good impression when we arrived. I agreed with her. I just had a hard time doing it.

On the way home everything looked different to me. The neighborhood had changed. Suddenly, it seemed so temporary, like the fake cowboy towns built for making movies. The flat fronts of the houses were all that seemed real. If I could look behind them, I was sure I’d find the walls propped up with two-by-fours.

When we pulled up into our driveway, I ran to the front door and was relieved when the door opened and I was able to step inside and make it back to my bedroom. I looked at my bed and chest of drawers. I opened my closet. I reached under my mattress and touched my diary. Everything was exactly where I had left it. I knew it couldn’t be any other way. But I felt different. Something in me had been flattened. The real me had already moved out of town, and the fake me was left behind.

Dad didn’t want to go to Cocoa Beach over the weekend. He had tickets to the Jackie Gleason Golf Tournament in Fort Lauderdale. I didn’t mind playing golf, but watching other people play was boring. Dad once took me to caddy for him. I dragged his clubs across eighteen miles of desert under a blistering sun. On every hole I asked if I could buy a Coke. He never took me again.

Some of the kids in the neighborhood talked about applying to be professional caddies at the tournament, but I didn’t have enough experience. I walked over to the Pagodas’ side yard with Pete. Frankie and Suzie were squirting lighter fluid down an ants’ hole and setting it on fire. It looked like a tiny volcano erupting, and the lines of angry ants scattered like fleeing villagers. Frankie had a rubber model of Godzilla that he chased the ants with. He crushed one and screamed, “Oh no! Godzilla has flattened the emperor’s son!”

“The Japanese Army is fighting back,” cried Suzie. She squirted fluid on Godzilla and set him on fire. “Godzilla is on fire,” she yelled, “and he’s melting.”

When Godzilla had turned into a glob of bubbling rubber, they lost interest in the game. “Hey,” I said. “I have a great idea for our own golf tournament.”

“We’re not allowed to play golf,” Suzie said.

“Why?” asked Pete.

“We were blasting tee shots down the hallway and one of the balls smashed against the fish tank and it exploded and all the water and fish went all over the dining room and my dad went ballistic and said we could never play again.”

“But we’ll play outside,” I explained.

“We can’t do that, either,” said Frankie. “Before we blew out the fish tank, I smashed the windshield on the station wagon, and he went ape.”

I couldn’t believe I had discovered something that they were not allowed to do. And that it was golf!

“Do you guys want to go swimming in the pool?” Suzie asked. “We poured a bottle of dish soap in, so it’s real bubbly.”

I could see trouble. “I don’t think so,” I said to Pete and shook my head. “Are you sure you won’t play?” I asked again.

“We can’t even if we could,” said Frankie. “We’re driving up to West Virginia to pick Gary up from camp.”

“From prison!” Suzie blurted out.

“Mom said to say camp,” Frankie said, and he punched her arm.

“I’ll pour lighter fluid on you,” she cried.

I grabbed the lighter fluid from her hand. “Stop it,” I said and threw it to the other side of the yard. “Come on, Pete.”

We walked back home. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll have a two-person tournament. We aren’t gonna see any of these people again, anyway.” We sat down on my bedroom floor with a big sheet of paper and a Magic Marker. “Here’s the plan. We make our own golf course in the neighborhood. And it has to be tough. Like, we have to put a hole in all the most difficult yards.”

“Okay.”

I drew the neighborhood houses and wrote in the names of the people who lived in them. “You pick first.”

“The Metrics’,” he said. “Michelle gave me a chocolate, and after I ate it, she told me it was dog candy.”

I put an X on their yard. I picked the Rooks’ because of Gary’s nasty mom. Pete picked the Diehls’ because their mean Doberman pinscher was on a chain. I picked the Peabos’ because Mr. Peabo drank too much and when he got sick Mrs. Peabo kicked him out of the house and he crawled around on the lawn and vomited all over. “Just think if your ball lands in a puddle of puke,” I said and made a stinky face.

Pete picked the Irwins’ because they had friends who belonged to a mean motorcycle gang. I picked the Gibbonses’ because Mrs. Gibbons had yelled at me for throwing a rock at her mailbox. Pete picked the Pagodas’ because Gary was coming home. I picked the cranky old couple, the “crazies,” because they always yelled out their window at us if we cut through their yard. We didn’t know their real name. “And we’ll put the last hole at our house,” I said, “because Dad will go berserk if he knows we are doing this.”

Pete looked nervous.

“Don’t worry,” I whispered. “We’re going to do all of this when Dad’s asleep.”

“What about alligators?”

“I’ll handle them. What we need is equipment.” I wrote up a list: coffee cans, tennis balls, golf clubs, orange spray paint, a flashlight, and a trophy. “We better use tennis balls instead of golf balls. We don’t want to break anyone’s windows.”

I sent Pete to find coffee cans, while I went down to the Salvation Army Thrift Store. It was my favorite store because everything was so inexpensive. Plus, they had stuff that wasn’t for sale in any other store. I wished Mom would let me decorate my room with the great old stuff they had. I wanted the matching lamps made out of carved Mexican dancers. They had old brass beds that were tarnished, or painted in the last century. Some of the furniture was futuristic-looking, as though it came out of the Jetsons cartoons. I really wanted the old dark furniture that had carved panels of men and women and animals and plants. They also had really old Spanish-style furniture that was half chewed by termites and so old-looking that Christopher Columbus might have brought it over. Plus, I knew some of it had secret panels. I rapped on all the spots I thought might open up and reveal a hidden treasure. But I only woke up a lot of termites.

I went over to the trophy case and picked out a huge golf trophy, and a smaller one for second place. It didn’t bother me that a Mr. Justman had won the first one in 1947 and a Mrs. Lower had won hers in 1968. They were a dollar each.

When I returned home and showed them to Pete, he got excited. “I’m gonna win first prize,” he said.

“Did you get the coffee cans?” I asked.

“I forgot,” he said.

“What about the flashlight?”

He forgot that, too. “What have you been doing?” I asked.

“Watching the golf tournament on TV,” he said. “I’m learning how to do it.”

“Great idea,” I said. “Maybe we’ll see Dad in the crowd.”

I sat down and stared intently at the gallery of people on the television. All those golf fans dressed in bright pink and lime green and pure white made my eyes hurt.

“Jack,” Mom said when she came into the room. “Do you know what your father would say to you if he could see you watching him?”

I thought about it for a second. “No.”

“He’d say, ‘Didn’t I tell you to mow the lawn today?’”

I groaned. “I’ll get right to it.”

On Sunday, we didn’t have all our golf course built. We spray-painted the tennis balls and the insides of the coffee cans bright orange so we could see them at night. We scrounged through Dad’s workbench until we found two batteries for my flashlight. Pete and I picked out a golf club from Dad’s golf bag and practiced in the back yard. We put a can over on its side and tried to putt the balls into it. We took about ten shots each just to get across the back yard and into the can. “We’ll practice this week,” I said to Pete, “and next weekend we’ll have the tournament.”

“Great,” he said. “When we move to Cocoa Beach, Dad said I could take golf lessons and join a golf club.”

“Wow.” I sighed. I was hoping for piano lessons. We hadn’t been able to afford it, which upset me because I had a suspicion that I could be a great piano player if only I had the chance. I was the only kid I knew who asked his parents for piano lessons. All the kids who took them hated them and made fun of their teachers. I used to want to trade places with those kids and live their lives. But now I wouldn’t have to feel like I wanted out of our family just because I wanted things we couldn’t normally afford. Now I could have everything I wanted. I sat down on the grass and stared out into space. It felt good just to think that things were really getting better in the rich land of Cocoa Beach.

•

On Monday, I waited until after school to give my note to Mrs. Marshall. “Are you moving up to Cocoa Beach?” she asked after carefully examining my mother’s handwriting.

“Yes,” I replied. “My dad has a new job.”

“I have a sister who teaches up there,” she said.

“I’d be pleased to meet her,” I muttered, thinking the opposite.

“I’ll send her a letter telling her to expect you in the fall,” she stated.

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied. She had me trapped.

“And one more thing. Don’t bring that diary into her classroom. You might spread a disease with all the dead things you keep in it.”

I smiled. “Yes, ma’am.”

When I got home, Mom was resting across the couch with her feet propped up on pillows.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She whistled. “It’s just hot out, and I’m feeling a little dreamy over Cocoa Beach. We’re definitely going to get central air-conditioning in the new house.” She looked around the room as though she was weighing in her mind what possessions should be thrown away and what things we would keep for the future. She looked at the terrazzo floor. “And we’re getting wall-to-wall carpeting. And a dishwasher, and a washer and dryer that are in the house, and a nursery room for the baby.”

Everyone was thinking about the future. It was the latest craze.

“Hey,” she said, “you’d better stick around the house. Your dad’s getting off work early and might need help packing the car.”

“I’ll be in the back yard,” I said and stood up to run.

“After you put on your play clothes.”

Having more money isn’t going to change everything, I thought. Pete was in my bedroom looking over the golf map. “You ready to practice?” I asked.

“Ready whenever you are,” he said. “I’ll meet you out back.”

We hadn’t been practicing long when Dad drove up the driveway in a new Cadillac the color of tomato soup. “Now, don’t get worked up,” he explained to Mom when he saw her face. “It’s a rental.”

“Does it have a tape player?” Betsy asked. Music was becoming her entire life.

“Yep,” he said cheerfully, “and you can use it.”

That caught her by surprise. Usually, she had to argue with him if she wanted the radio on her station. “Don’t trick me,” she warned, “or I’ll make you give me driving lessons.”

“I hope you took out enough insurance on this,” Mom said.

“You better believe it.” He whistled. “These things cost a fortune.”

“I have an idea,” Mom announced. “Let’s get a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. It’s too hot to cook.”

I agreed. It was my week to wash the dishes, and every night Betsy had been burning the pots. I’d had to use a meat mallet to beat the blackened lima-bean crust off the soup pot.

“And we can eat in the car with the air conditioner on,” she added.

“All aboard,” called Dad. We jumped in and he backed out of the driveway, swung around in the street, and roared down the road. It felt so good to be sitting on the plush leather seats of the Cadillac, with the cold air blowing over my face and hair. I wished everyone in the neighborhood was standing by the side of the road when we passed. I’d wave to them as if I were the Pope, and they’d wave back, thinking: There goes the luckiest kid in the world.

After dinner, we stopped at a bookstore. Mom wanted to buy some magazines to get ideas on how to decorate the new house.

“Everyone gets to pick out a book,” Dad instructed.

We had left the house so quickly that I hadn’t put my shoes on. “I don’t think they’ll let me in,” I said to him.

“Nonsense. Those rules are for people who aren’t buying. We’re paying customers, son. You can do as you please.”

I’m living in a whole new world, I thought. Things are changing so quickly. Last week, Dad would have said, “Rules are rules. You’ll have to wait in the car.”

In the morning, we made the four-hour drive up route Al A to Cocoa Beach. Normally, we left for every trip while it was still dark, and we always packed food at home. But not this time. When we arrived in Cocoa Beach, it looked like every other Florida boom town. Everything was new, except for a few ancient Spanish-style buildings that were crumbling and furry with black mildew. Most of the other cars had license plates from different states. It was as if all the families with the same dream had ended up in the same town. “A lot of jobs opening up here,” Dad said. “A lot of money to be made.”

We ate lunch at Denny’s, and Mom called the real-estate agent from a pay phone.

“Let’s go,” she said gleefully when she returned. “It’s house-hunting time.”

We met the first agent on John Glenn Way. It was a new housing development. The streets were named after the astronauts, and the avenues had names like Blastoff and Orbit. It was weird, but I liked it. I was hoping that the houses might be shaped like rockets and space stations, but they were pretty ordinary, except that they were new.

The agent walked us through each room of one house and explained all the features.

“We need five bedrooms,” Mom informed her. “I don’t want the kids to have to share rooms.”

Pete shot me a happy look. I gave him the thumbs-up. If anyone would have to share a room, it would be me and Pete.

“Then I’ll show you the deluxe model,” the agent said with a smile.

We marched across the street. Deluxe did mean the best. There was a screened-in swimming pool and patio, with a small guest room separate from the main house. The kitchen was huge and had every appliance built in and up to date. There were five big bedrooms, two living rooms, and a formal dining room for entertaining. I overheard Mom say to Betsy that she’d need a maid to keep the house clean.

What kind of job did Dad get, I wondered. Maybe he will be building some secret rocket hangars for the space program. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t told us what he is really going to be doing.

We looked at a few more houses. One was on Shepard Place, and the other on Lunar Park. But after we saw the deluxe model, everything else looked too small.

It was getting late in the day. “Should we start back?” Mom asked.

“Let’s drive by your new office,” Betsy suggested.

“It’s too far out of the way,” Dad replied. “Why don’t we stay at a motel? We can all take a swim and get some hamburgers and rest up for the drive home tomorrow.”

Someone had switched our old dad with this new dad. A few months ago, he drove for thirty hours straight to Pennsylvania without a nap. Now he needed a full night’s sleep to drive four hours. I wondered if I might get a bigger allowance.

The next morning, we were back home before noon. Dad dropped us off and drove the Cadillac to the rental office. He returned with his work truck full of empty liquor boxes. We stacked them up in the living room.

“I don’t want you packing up all your clothes just yet,” Mom instructed. “I do want you to pack everything you won’t need in the next two weeks. That’s when we move.”

“We’ll miss the last week of school,” Betsy said sneakily.

“That’s your bonus for helping me out,” Mom replied. “Now get a wiggle-on.”

I knew we wouldn’t be packing unless we were really leaving. I was sorting through my closet when Betsy knocked on my door.

“What do you think is going on?” she whispered.

“My guess is that he has a great top-secret job with the government. Just like he said.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t know,” she said suspiciously. “Something smells rotten to me.”

“But Mom seems to think it’s okay.”

“Mom is the one who got me worried. She doesn’t know where the money is coming from, and Dad won’t give her a straight answer.”

“Well, ask him yourself,” I suggested.

“I did. And he won’t give me a straight answer, either.”

I wanted everything to be as Dad said it was. It frightened me to think that he didn’t have a great new job and that we weren’t going to have a deluxe new house and a new car and new lives. “I think it’s all okay,” I said hopefully. “Dad wouldn’t do something like this if he didn’t think it was real.”

“Oh, grow up,” she groaned. “Why is he making such a mystery out of this?” She left with a sneer.

I don’t know, I thought. Maybe he’s been sworn to secrecy by the government.

On Saturday morning, Dad drove up to Cocoa Beach to check on his new job. Mom let Pete and me camp out in the back yard. Once we’d pitched his tent, we gathered up our equipment and made our final golf-tournament plans. With Dad out of the way, we didn’t have to worry about him checking up on us. At midnight, we were ready.

The first hole was a par eight from our front yard, across and down the street, along the side of the Rooks’ house. “I’ll dig a hole and put the can in the back corner of their lawn.”

“I’ll put one in the Gibbonses’ side yard,” Pete said. “Par five.”

We marked the planned hole locations on our maps. “Let’s go,” I whispered. We picked up our grocery bags of supplies and took off. The night was very quiet. A half-moon lit up the neighborhood, but we wore dark clothes and knew how to be sneaky from playing army games. I dashed across Gary’s yard and with my spade dug a hole and inserted the can. I met Pete in the Gibbonses’ yard. We continued on to the Peabos’. Pete crisscrossed over to the Irwins’ and the Metrics’. I did the Diehls’ and the “crazies,” and we met at the Pagodas’, then buried the last can in front of our tent. “Did you have any trouble?” I asked.

“None,” he said. “Everybody’s asleep.”

“Then let the games begin,” I whispered.

I teed off. My ball hopped across the Veluccis’ front lawn and stopped by the street. Pete had been practicing. He lofted his ball over mine and onto a neutral front lawn.

As I was about to play my second shot, we saw car lights heading our way. “Hit the dirt,” I said.

We ducked down. The car turned and made for our street, then turned again at our corner. The passenger door swung open and a man fell out, rolled across the road, and stopped in front of where we were lying on the grass. The car kept going.

“It’s Mr. Peabo,” Pete whispered.

I reached out and shook his arm. He groaned. “Mr. Peabo,” I said. “Mr. Peabo, speak to me.”

He groaned some more. The car stopped and began to back up. Mrs. Peabo was driving. “Run,” I cried. “She’s lost it!” We jumped up and retreated behind a hedge.

“Lloyd,” Mrs. Peabo said angrily as she got out of the car. “Get up! You’re drunk.”

He worked himself up onto his hands and knees. She opened his door and began to push him from behind. “Now move it,” she growled, “before the whole world sees you.” Then she kicked him in the butt. “You’re nothing but a worthless drunk,” she said and pushed him again. Slowly, like a sloth, he crawled forward and folded himself into the car. She slammed the door, then got into her side and drove up the street and into their driveway.

“Wow,” Pete said. “He was drunk.”

“Pickled.” I whistled.

“Should we do something?” he asked.

“Let’s just leave it alone,” I said. “That’s the beauty of moving. You don’t have to get involved. Just pull up your tent stakes and move away like the nomads.”

We continued the game. Pete scored a five on the first hole, and I scored a twelve. He beat me by a stroke on the Gibbonses’ hole. We decided to skip the Peabos’ house because Mr. Peabo was still stuck in his car and moaning. Pete beat me on the Irwins’ and the Metrics’. I beat him on the Diehls’. We tied on the “crazies.” From there, we had to fire a shot over the canal and into the Pagodas’ back yard. It was about fifty feet across. I hit mine as hard as I could. It passed over the canal and landed out of sight. Pete topped his ball and it hit with a splash.

“Don’t wake up the alligators,” I cautioned.

We each carried a spare ball. His second shot reached the bank and bounced back into the water.

“Hand me your extra ball,” he said.

“If this one goes in the water, you lose,” I said, “and I get the big trophy.” But he hit it squarely and it hopped across their side lawn. We crouched down and walked along the bank of the canal.

I knew there was no way I could beat Pete. While I’d been busy packing boxes, he’d been quietly practicing behind my back. I’d figured I could beat him at everything, but I was wrong. He was beginning to grow up.

We made our way around the end of the canal, then back down to the Pagodas’. We searched for the tennis balls but couldn’t find them. “I’m going to turn on the flashlight,” I whispered and pressed the button.

“Hey! What are you thieves doing sneaking around my yard?” hollered a voice from up in the trees.

I jumped back and froze. Pete turned and ran.

“Hey, come back here,” the voice angrily demanded. It was Gary Pagoda. He was sitting in our tree fort, smoking a cigarette. “If you run, I’ll make it worse on you,” he threatened and threw a tennis ball at my head. He missed.

I didn’t know what he’d do if he caught us. I didn’t know what he had been taught in prison. I began to back away.

“You stay put,” he ordered and jumped out of the tree. A cloud of gray smoke popped out of his mouth when he hit the ground. I took off. Pete was already out of sight.

“I said get back here!” he barked and threw the other ball at me. He missed again.

I didn’t slow down as I jumped the hedge.

“I may not get my hands on you this second,” he threatened, “but don’t turn your back on me. I got a big knife and I’ll get you when you’re not lookin’.”

I dove through the front entrance of the tent. Pete was panting. “We … can’t … stay out here,” I gasped. “He’s gonna slit our throats in our sleep.”

“Let’s get inside,” Pete said. “You first.”

I threw myself out of the tent and crawled on all fours to the back door. Pete followed me, running with the big trophy held over his shoulder like a baseball bat. I yanked open the sliding glass door and let Pete in, then slammed it shut and locked it behind me. “Lock the front door,” I ordered.

“Agghhhh!” he shouted and dropped the trophy. The little golfer broke off and skipped across the floor. “Gary stole a car and is coming up the driveway!” I spun around.

“What’s that racket?” Mom called out from her bedroom.

The car door slammed. Somebody walked up to the door and turned the knob. “Don’t you dare come in,” I shouted. “I’ll call the police.” I turned to Pete. “Dial 911,” I ordered.

The door swung open. Pete yelped loudly. I dropped down into a karate crouch.

“What are you boys up to?” It was Dad, and he was angry.

“We thought you were Gary Pagoda,” I babbled. I took a seat and tried to catch my breath. Mom wandered down the hall in her housecoat. Betsy followed.

“What are you talking about? And what the hell are you boys doing up this late at night?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I chattered. “I’m so glad we’re moving,” I said between breaths. “I don’t like living here anymore. Everyone is too weird.”

“Why are you back?” asked Mom. “Is something wrong?”

Dad sat down on the couch and exhaled loudly. “Well,” he said and leaned forward with his hands on his knees, “the bad news is that we’re not moving to Cocoa Beach.”

“What?” I shouted.

“Just slow down,” Mom said.

“I knew it.” Betsy crossed her arms. “This has all been too good to be true.”

“Don’t be so harsh,” Mom said to Betsy. Then she turned to Dad and sat next to him. “Tell us what happened,” she said evenly.

Dad took a deep breath. “They didn’t get the military contract they expected,” he explained. “So they won’t be building the new airport and don’t need to hire me. It just fell through, nothing more to it than that. I shouldn’t have believed it until I saw the first paycheck.”

“I thought you had already signed a contract,” Mom said.

“Not yet,” muttered Dad. “We only shook hands on it.” He looked out at all of us. I felt the small beginning of a pain in my chest that wanted to grow.

Dad stood up and passed between us. “Let this be a lesson to you,” he advised. “Never do business on a handshake. You’ll get screwed every time.”

“No kidding,” Betsy mumbled.

I turned and went back to my room. I threw myself across the bed like something that had been tossed away. The future looked like more of the past. I imagined Johnny Foil flying his airplane and how good he must have felt, looping through the air, until suddenly he collided with the film plane and crashed to the ground in a ball of flames. Gary Pagoda can’t kill me now, I thought, I’m already dead.

It took me a long time to calm down and begin to imagine how disappointed Dad must feel. Then Mom and Betsy and Pete. Feeling this terrible for losing something that we didn’t even own yet was hard to understand. It wasn’t like losing money out of my pocket. It was more invisible, like losing hope.

In the morning, we all walked around the house like zombies, with red, worn-out eyes. Mom and Dad looked through the “Houses for Rent” section of the newspaper. After they circled a few ads and made a few telephone calls, they climbed into the truck to inspect the houses. When they returned, Mom seemed relieved. “Well, we found a nice house,” she announced.

“Where?” Betsy asked. The location determined our next school.

“On Eighth Street, in old Fort Lauderdale,” she said. “I always loved it down there because the trees are so old.”

“That means I go to Sunrise Junior High,” I blurted out. It was a school filled with kids like Gary Pagoda.

“I’ll be going to Fort Lauderdale High,” Betsy said happily. “If I had to go to Plantation High, I’d run away and join a convent.”

“Why?” Mom asked.

“It’s a suburb full of morons,” Betsy said.

“Actually, we looked at a house out there today,” Mom said and plopped down in a chair. “We didn’t like the people we’d be renting from. They had a beer keg next to the television, and they owned a pit bull.”

“Those dogs are killers,” I said, kneeling down and pulling her shoes off. Her feet were swollen.

Betsy ran into her room to use the telephone so she could tell her friends that she’d still be in town.

“Where will I go?” Pete asked.

“There is a school down the street,” Mom said, fixing his hair with her fingers. “You can come home and eat lunch with me and the baby each day.”

While Mom took her nap, Pete and I took down the tent. Frankie Pagoda came running over when he saw us.

“You guys won’t believe this,” he blurted out. “Gary stole our car last night and he’s just been caught in Georgia.”

“We saw him last night,” I said. “We passed through your yard and he tried to kill us.”

“Yeah, he showed me his knife.”

Mr. Pagoda called for him. “Gotta go,” Frankie said. “We’re picking him up again.”

I wished they would leave Gary in jail until we moved away.

After dinner, Mom was hot. “Let’s take a drive along the beach,” she suggested. “That always cools me down.”

“Sure,” said Dad. “Jack, Pete, you boys put the lawn chairs in the back of the pickup, so your Mom can sit back there and get a breeze.”

I loved setting up house in the back of the truck. We loaded up the lawn furniture and filled a small cooler with ice and a jug of lemonade. We brought plastic cups and pillows. “Ready,” we shouted.

“Let’s go by the new house,” Betsy said.

It wasn’t far away. It was an old Spanish-style house with a red tile roof. Some people were still living in it, so we couldn’t go inside. There were two tall palm trees in the front yard. They seemed to be a hundred feet high. I looked up at them. At that moment, the wind blew and a heavy brown coconut broke away and fell onto the sandy yard with a thud.

“We better have the coconuts cut out of the trees,” Mom said. “They could hit one of the kids and really hurt them.”

“Nay,” Dad replied. “They’re so hardheaded, the coconut’ll just bounce off.”

I could already see my first chore. Plus, the lawn was worse than where we now lived. There were so few tufts of grass that mowing the lawn will create a sandstorm. I’ll have to wear a turban on my head. The hedges hadn’t been clipped and had grown up over the windows. And I knew Mom would make me scrub the mildew out of the cracks in the ancient stucco walls.

We drove along the beach and cooled down with the sea breeze, then turned up Broward Boulevard. We were almost home when Dad turned into the drive-in theater and pulled over. “Look,” he said excitedly and pointed up at the theater sign. “The Sound of Music is finally gone!”

“Yeah,” I shouted. “Planet of the Apes is playing!”

“I wanna see it,” Pete shouted.

Dad paid and we entered. We found a good spot in the middle and he parked the truck backward, with the lawn furniture facing the giant movie screen. Everyone took their seats and I poured out cups of lemonade. A Bugs Bunny cartoon was playing. Bugs glued Elmer Fudd’s shoes to the floor, then pulled his nose until it stretched far enough down the street to tie it in a bow around a blacksmith’s anvil. Then Bugs let it go. The anvil blasted up the street and hit Elmer square in the face and drove him through a barn. But after Elmer pulled his face out of the hole in his head, he was back on his feet, and once again he was chasing that rabbit down the street.