Everyone in Blue Creek assumed the Purdy House was still just as vacant—and just as haunted—as it had been for more than a century.
But the Blanks had lived in the old house for nearly a week. They had been seen around town looking for shop space for their dead-stuffed-animal emporium, as well as at Lily Putt’s Indoor-Outdoor Miniature Golf Complex eating Little Charlie’s Haunted Burgers and getting quadruple bogeys63 on the llama hole, but it was like they might as well have been invisible to anyone in town except for me, Bahar, and Karim.
I didn’t get it.
Maybe they really were some kind of Monster People.
Dad was mad at me for accepting the catering job from them. He told me no son of an Abernathy would ever step foot inside the Purdy House, and said he was going to talk to Mom about it. But I didn’t really believe him since talking to Mom meant that he’d probably have to confront his past, which would most likely involve an explanation about the whole Linda Swineshead thread to his story.
It was Friday, and there was so much going on in my brain. I had to go shopping and get things ready for the dinner at the Blanks’ (because no matter what Dad said, turning down a chef job was off the table), I still needed to return Princess Snugglewarm versus the Charm School Dropouts to the library, and James Jenkins would be coming this weekend to spend the last few moments of freedom and summer vacation with me.
There was so much here, and so much I’d be saying good-bye to.
And that included Blue Creek, too, so the insomniac spiders on trampolines in my stomach had been bouncing around like a million off-balance washing machines. I tried to stay calm by focusing on unsweetened iced tea with Bahar at Colonel Jenkins’ Diner, because that was coming on Saturday too.
Like I said, I had an awful lot to think about.
In the morning, Mom drove me and Karim to the grocery store so I could pick up the ingredients for the Boris-and-his-parents-and-Bahar dinner. Karim complained after half an hour because I was taking too long, walking up and down the aisles and trying to conjure up recipes, but everything I thought about making seemed to whisper to me, Boris is going to hate that, and he will make you feel awful for trying to serve it to him. I finally decided to do a chicken-tarragon potpie with an upside-down blood orange cake for dessert.
Everyone likes chicken potpies, right? Maybe even Boris, I thought.
But it was when we were driving back home after dropping Princess Snugglewarm off at the library64 that Mom made a random Mom comment that nearly gave me a panic attack.
To be honest, it did give me a panic attack.
She said this: “Linda called me this morning and said she’d be dropping James off tomorrow afternoon at about four, so make sure you’re back from whatever you have planned for your last Saturday in Blue Creek.”
Linda?
And last Saturday? Surely Mom had miscalculated. I still had two more Saturdays, or so I thought. Mom had to be wrong.
“Linda?” I said.
“Oh! Ha ha. Mrs. Jenkins. You know, James’s mom. Linda.”
I’d never known that James’s mom’s first name was Linda.
But I’d heard or read the name “Linda” at least a hundred times in the last day or so, and it was starting to traumatize me. Still, “Linda” was a common name, right? There had to be at least four or five Lindas who’d lived in Blue Creek.
And were approximately my dad’s age.
Right?
I glanced back at Karim, who was sitting alone in the backseat with the groceries. His expression showed that he was thinking the same thing I was, and sure enough, Karim, never at a loss for words or saltiness, said, “You’d think she’d change back to her maiden name after how long the Jenkinses have been divorced.”
“I think she wanted to,” Mom said. “But it’s so hard to get used to. I mean, calling her ‘Linda Swineshead’ again after all these years. So you boys better mind yourselves and be nice if she stays for a bit. Be sure to ask her if she wants you to call her ‘Miss Swineshead.’ I bet she’d like that. It’s the polite thing to do—the Texas thing to do.”
This was almost too much to bear.
James Jenkins’s mother used to be my dad’s girlfriend.
And naturally Karim, who was working on getting evicted from my room, and possibly walking home along the side of the highway, continued: “Hmm… Linda Swineshead. That name sounds familiar.”
I whirled around and gave my friend an I’m going to kick you out and make you go back to live next door to the Purdy House with your sunburned nudist parents look, which I knew he understood.
Mom said, “Does it?”
Karim, as cool as ice, said, “Yeah. There’s a character in one of the books Sam and I are reading for his summer work named ‘Linda Cowspleen,’ who’s a junior high history teacher with a time travel machine, and she sends all her worst students back to ancient Greece to do battle with that one guy with the octopus growing out of his face.”
“Ooh! That sounds good! I never read that one!” Mom said.
“You should ask Sam about it when we get to the end,” Karim added. “It’s a real page-turner!”
And I wanted to shout at Karim, There is NOT that one guy with an octopus growing out of his face—not anywhere in the collected literary accomplishments of mankind!
But instead I said this: “Mom? You said this would be my last Saturday in Blue Creek. I thought we weren’t leaving for another week after that. Right? We’re not leaving that soon, are we?”
Mom reached across and patted my knee the way you’d pat the head of a small dog who was scared of fireworks or something.
“Well, James’s mother is going to be in Albuquerque with her sister, so we said we’d drive him along with us to New Mexico. We thought you’d enjoy having a friend along for part of the trip so it wouldn’t be so scary for you. Dad says we should leave on Monday. Won’t that be fun?”
No, I thought, it would not be fun to leave more than an entire week early. Not fun at all.
And now the spiders were trying to climb up through my neck.
Karim added, “You mean Miss Swineshead is going to be in Albuquerque. Right, Mrs. Abernathy?”
I had never punched anyone in my life, but I really wanted to sock Karim at that point.
I said, “I think you’d better pull the car over, Mom. I feel like I’m going to be sick.”
63. That’s a really bad score.
64. Also, I might add, just seeing books was making me feel guilty for not getting my summer reading done. Or started. And I knew there was going to be a blurry-eyed marathon of page-turning coming up for me very soon.