No one who had lived in Blue Creek for the past century had ever summoned the guts to go inside the Purdy House, maybe with the apparent exception of four people who only lasted three quarters of an hour there.
And now Bahar—my best friend’s cousin, someone who was nice to me when she didn’t have to be, someone who I kind of “liked”42—was for all we knew hopelessly trapped inside the most haunted house in Blue Creek, and possibly all of Texas, for that matter.
Knowing this, how were Karim and I ever supposed to concentrate on an intellectually uninteresting dinner of corn dogs and potato puffs?43
To make matters worse, my little brother, Dylan, who was almost four years old, had somehow gotten it into his uncivilized head that mayonnaise was the same thing as whipped cream, and was going through what Mom called a “phase” where he put mayonnaise44 on everything, which included potato puffs and corn dogs. So all this ended up making Karim nervous, scared, sad, nostalgic, and heartbroken.
And that’s a lot of powerful competitors playing tug-of-war with the neuron ropes inside the head of a twelve-year-old boy. Besides, how nostalgic could anyone who’s only lived twelve years actually be?
Throughout dinner, Karim kept his head down in order to avoid making eye contact with Dylan’s bottle of mayonnaise.
It was probably too soon, I thought.
“Is something the matter, Karim?” Mom asked.
So, of course Karim answered with a spontaneous practicing-to-be-a-teenager lie. “No, Mrs. Abernathy. I’m fine. It’s just Tuesdays are my usual days for doing yoga, and since I skipped it today on account of reading and studying all day with Sam, I figured I’d do some during dinner. This is the Loser of the War of Jenkins’s Ear45 pose.”
And then Karim sunk his chin a bit lower, inhaled deeply, and added, “It’s reformist yoga.”
Dad perked up like a pressure cooker full of popping corn.
“Hey! I wonder if Kenny or James Jenkins are related to the ear?”
“No, Dad,” I said. “No.”
Karim stayed with his head down. If he kept this up, I figured he was probably about to start chanting or something in about ten seconds.
And Dad continued, “Everyone does yoga these days. Maybe after dinner you could show me some slick moves, Karim!”
I didn’t know where my dad got his ideas from. Half the time I questioned whether it was even possible that we were related.
I pointed out, “You can’t do yoga in a kilt, Dad. Not even reformist yoga.”
My father liked wearing the official kilt of Clan Abernathy.
“Heh-heh. I guess you’re right, Sam,” he said. Then Dad put his chin down just like Karim did, assuming the Loser of the War of Jenkins’s Ear pose from reformist yoga, and asked, “What am I supposed to feel?”
Embarrassment, I wanted to say.
“Besides, Karim and I promised we’d go visit Bahar after dinner. She’s babysitting, and we didn’t want her to be alone. She gets scared sometimes,” I said.
Karim suddenly broke out of his Loser of the War of Jenkins’s Ear pose. His head shot up and he stared at me with an expression that in reformist yoga would probably be called a You’re Crazy If You Think You’ll Ever Get Me Inside a Haunted House pose.
42. Let me be clear: not in the same way that Karim fell so easily into his very serious type of “like” that made me nervous to even think about because it involved such things as holding hands in public and voluntarily kissing people who are not your parents, like Hayley Garcia or Brenden Saltarello.
43. This meal was NOT my idea.
44. From a squeeze bottle, unfortunately.
45. This was an actual war, fought in the 1700s over someone’s actual severed ear.