CHAPTER 3: THE BEGINNING OF SUMMER

“What’s wrong?” my mom asked as I sat at the table eating breakfast. After yesterday, it was hard to even PRETEND to be happy. I tried.

“Nothing. I’m fine,” I told her with a forced smile.

“Come on, Marc. What’s bothering you?” That is the thing with my mom. She understands enough to know that I’m not happy, but even if I told her what was wrong, what could she do about it? She couldn’t make me stronger. She couldn’t make Kenny Williamson leave me alone. So what is the point in telling her what was wrong? If I did, she would say something like, “Well, that boy is just jealous because you are smarter than he is,” or “You’ll get stronger when you get a little older,” or “Don’t worry about what other people say, because I know how very special you are.”

While I know that my mom means well here, the fact of the matter is Kenny Williamson is not jealous of me. It doesn’t matter if I get stronger when I’m older, I’m weak now!!!!! And of course my mom thinks I’m special—she’s my MOM! So seriously, there was no point in telling my mom what was really wrong.

“I’m just going to miss my friends over the summer,” I told her.

“Awwwwww,” she answered. “Well, we can make sure you get to play with them a lot this summer.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I told her, hoping that she would just leave me alone. My mom is really nice, but she works a ton and is always at her office, and a lot of the time it seems she just doesn’t really understand me. That’s okay. I know she is trying to be nice. My dad is nice, too, but he is gone most of the time, traveling for his job and stuff.

“I’ll tell you what,” she added, “your uncle Jake arrives in about an hour. Do you want to come pick him up with me?”

“YES!” I shouted. I had forgotten the exact day that Uncle Jake was supposed to get here, but now I remembered it was today! “Yes! That’s great.”

“Okay, then,” she said. “Clear the table and we’ll head out.”

After I cleaned up the table, we got into the car and headed to the airport. I was excited about Uncle Jake coming, but I was also kinda nervous. He’s a Navy SEAL—an official tough guy. And not tough like the guys in the movies that just act tough—Uncle Jake is the real deal. So, even though he probably won’t want to hang around with me much, at least I will get to see him a little.

At the airport, we parked the car and headed to the terminal to pick him up.

I stood there looking through the glass at the passengers coming down the hallway. There were families, businessmen, college students, and a bunch of other regular-looking people arriving and walking from their planes. Then I saw him. He was walking at a steady pace, right toward us.

He seemed to know where he was going. He had a very serious look on his face. He looked STRONG. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, and his arms were big! While all the other people seemed to be thinking about themselves, Uncle Jake was slowly looking around, scanning the whole area. Then he saw my mom and me. His head locked on our position. We waved.

Suddenly, his serious face cracked, he let out a big smile, and he waved back to us. AWESOME! He walked through the door and came over to us. He hugged my mom and said, “How ya doin’, big sister?” which was funny because he was A LOT bigger than she was. Then he looked at me, held out his hand, and said, “Little man?” I shook his hand. His hand was different. It was big and strong and rough—it felt like leather more than skin. “Is that all ya got?” he said.

“What?” I replied, not entirely sure what he was talking about.

“That handshake. Is that as hard as you can squeeze?”

I squeezed harder.

“Better,” said Uncle Jake. “We’ll work on that.”

“Okay,” I replied. COOL! We were going to work on that. That means we were going to work together. So I guess we will do some stuff together! We made our way over to the baggage claim so Uncle Jake could get his bags. He had one green army backpack on and another camouf lage duffel bag. He threw the duffel bag at the ground in front of me.

“You carry that—it will make you stronger,” he said with a smile on his face.

“No problem,” I told him, happy to be able to carry a really cool-looking army bag. I picked it up—it was heavy—and put it over my shoulder. We started to walk back to the car.

This was AWESOME. Uncle Jake is tough—but he isn’t just tough. He is also cool and NICE.

This is going to be the best summer ever.