SNEAKY’S SNORING IS like thunder trapped in a blender. No matter how tight I squeeze the pillow around my head, it’s still loud.
I heard you should nudge a snoring person, and that’ll make them stop. I kick Sneaky, like, three times, and it doesn’t work!
The room is dark, but it’s that half dark/half light that means it’s about 7:06, way too early to be awake after staying up till 3 a.m.
Sneak turns over, farts, and keeps snoring, and that’s when I know I won’t be getting any more zzz’s. I pull the pillow off my head and sit up. Sneaky’s room is small, and he shares it with his big brother, Antwan, who’s pretty much a jerk. But it beats being stuck in that smoky motel room. If it was up to me, I’d probably live with Sneaky, instead of just spending the weekend with him, which I had to beg Mama to do.
I reach for my backpack and pull out my daddy’s gold notebook, which I’ve been reading, like, every day since I found it when we still lived in our apartment. I keep his notebook next to mine in my backpack. Guess I’m thinking his words might jump over to my notebook if I keep them close to each other. Unlike me, Daddy filled his notebook from beginning to end with his thoughts about things, but mostly with stories called “The Beans and Rice Chronicles of Isaiah Dunn.” In the stories, a ten-year-old kid superhero named Isaiah Dunn goes on tons of secret missions and gets his power from bowls of beans and rice. When I first found Daddy’s notebook, I thought it was cool that he wrote about me as a superhero. I wish all the beans and rice Mama’s been making would give me some type of superpower in real life.
I count sixty-four pages left to read in Daddy’s notebook, which seems like a lot, but if I keep reading every day, I’ll be done in no time. That makes me read extra slow. I don’t wanna think about what will happen when I get to the end. Daddy should’ve written “Isaiah Dunn and the Never-Ending Tale,” where the notebook has magic powers to keep the story going forever. In the story I’m reading now, Isaiah Dunn races against the clock to find a clue hidden in a box of cereal at the grocery store.
The grocery store part makes me think about Mama, and I stop reading. I wonder what she’s doing right now, and if Charlie is with her. I think Charlie hates being in the motel as much as I do, and I feel a little guilty for leaving her alone for the weekend. I’m thinking maybe if we get enough money, we can find a real nice place to live, and then Mama would feel better. I know I would.
I flip to the page in Daddy’s notebook where he wrote about fears. He wrote that when you name a fear, it becomes defeatable, and he put down some of his fears. Some of them are funny, like “octopuses” and “fire hydrants” and “wasps.” Others are scary, like “wolves” and “burglars” and “our car going off a bridge into deep water.” I’m scared of daddy long-leg spiders, tsunamis, and sometimes dogs. I write those down next to Daddy’s list. Then I add: eating beans and rice every day, not being able to write poems, and having to live at Smoky Inn forever. My last fear is the worst one. Losing Mama, too.
I reach down to the bottom of my backpack for my stash of money, which I keep in one of Daddy’s old socks. I empty the sock out and count all the change and dollar bills: $19.78. Nowhere near enough to get us a sweet apartment.
I keep reading, hoping that maybe I’ll find a money-making idea from the story, but my eyes get super heavy, and the next thing I know, Sneaky’s nudging me.
“Yo, wake up, Mr. Librarian!” He smirks.
The room’s completely light now, and my neck is sore from how I fell asleep.
“Okay, Sir Snores,” I say back. I put Daddy’s notebook in my backpack before Sneaky can clown me for what I’m reading. He’d definitely clown me for my book of poems.
“Whatever,” Sneaky says. “I don’t snore.”
I shake my head. No use arguing with him. If I had a phone, I’d just record him or something.
“You hungry?” Sneaky asks, reaching for his PlayStation controller. He’d play for hours without even thinking about breakfast, but not me.
“Yeah,” I say, and my stomach rumbles automatically. Sneaky’s mom actually makes real breakfast, like, every day, and I’m catching a whiff of goodness right now! I beat Sneaky to the kitchen, and when I get there, I see a stack of pancakes on the table—golden brown, not burnt and lumpy like the ones Mama makes at Smoky Inn. Right next to the pancakes is a plate of perfectly crispy bacon, and Sneaky’s mom is scrambling eggs at the stove. Everything smells so good, my stomach rumbles again.
Sneaky’s mom takes one look at us and makes a face.
“Uh-uh,” she says. “Y’all can take your stank-breath, crusty faces to the bathroom before you sit at my table.”
“Ma, c’mon!” whines Sneaky, walking closer to her.
“Sneaky, don’t play with me!” she says, holding a hand in front of her nose, like he smells so bad it might mess up her face. “And, Isaiah, you not a guest; you know the drill.”
I don’t stick around complaining, just go to the bathroom and get my toothbrush from where I always keep it, in the second drawer on the right. I brush, use mouthwash, and wash my face with a cloth that smells just like the Laundromat on Michigan Avenue.
“That’s better,” Sneaky’s mom says when I come back to the kitchen. “Go ’head and fix a plate.”
By the time Sneaky wanders back in, I already have butter and syrup on the pancakes.
“So what are you guys doing today?” asks Sneaky’s mom, like she always does at breakfast. Me and Sneaky lock eyes, and we both talk at the same time.
“We gotta clean up the room,” Sneaky says.
“And maybe go to the park,” I add.
“Plus, ’Saiah’s gonna test me on my spelling words,” Sneaky says.
See, we learned real quick that if we don’t have a plan, and just shrug and say “I dunno” when Sneaky’s mom asks what we’re doing, then she’ll have us sweeping, scrubbing walls, wiping down the windows, and other weird chores.
“Um-hmm.” Sneaky’s mom gives us a look like she kinda believes us, kinda doesn’t. “Well, y’all can pick up a few things for me from the store when you go out, okay, Sneaky?”
“Uh-huh.” Sneaky’s mouth is full of pancake, so I add, “We can do that, no problem.”
“Thank you, Isaiah.” Sneaky’s mom pats my arm. “Somebody knows the right way to answer a question around here.”
She stands, thumps Sneaky on the head, and walks out of the kitchen with her food.
“Make sure y’all wash your plates!” she calls.
“Dude, we gotta bounce before she makes us do laundry or something,” Sneaky says, taking his plate to the sink. I grab another pancake and pour syrup over it. No way am I passing up seconds.
Once we’re done washing our plates, we head to Sneaky’s room to clean up, but we end up playing Madden NFL on his PlayStation instead.
“Taste the turf!” Sneaky yells when he sacks my quarterback, and it wakes Antwan up.
“Yo, shut up!” Antwan growls, throwing a pillow that hits both of us in the face. Sneaky throws the pillow back, and turns the volume down on the TV.
But when Sneaky’s running back fumbles a few minutes later, and I scoop the ball up and run for a touchdown, I forget all about Antwan and jump up screaming. Problem is, Antwan jumps up, too, and his eyes are a scary red.
“Didn’t I tell y’all to shut up?” he says, adding in a few cuss words this time. I sit back down, feeling a little nervous. Antwan turned into a different kind of dude once he started high school this year, and Sneaky’s mom is always fussing with him about who he hangs out with and how he treats Sneaky.
“Yo, Sneaky, you and yo’ punk friend need to get outta here.”
Antwan glares at us. The room is small enough to smell Antwan’s funky breath. A year ago, me and Sneaky would’ve clowned him about it. But right now, Sneaky just sucks his teeth and turns the PlayStation off.
“Whatever,” he says to his brother, then to me, “Yo, Isaiah, let’s go to the park, and let this dummy clean the room.”
I pull on a T-shirt, lace up my sneakers, and we get out of there before Antwan thinks too hard about that last sentence.