chapter 18

HENRY

Henry sat at the top of the driveway and threw a rubber ball for Brae, who raced down the hill chasing it. How could Mom have done that? How could he have let it happen? How could the marble be gone?

Before that night on the mountain, Henry and Wayne had rules for exchanging the marble. They weren’t official or anything. They weren’t written down and hung up in their bedrooms. But they were rules that they just knew, and they seemed to work.

The marble worked.

Henry’s football team rarely lost a game, and when they did it was because of Nopie and his stupid butterfingers. Apple pie fingers. And Wayne’s soccer and baseball teams never lost. There was something about accepting the marble, and then holding it, feeling its smooth circle go round and round and round that inspired a sense of invincibility in Henry. He didn’t even have to think about feeling invincible. It wasn’t a thought. It just was. It was hope and bravery and confidence all rolled together just like he rolled the marble in his hand.

It was true that he found the marble the day he and Mom moved into their house. After he had picked his room, he found it on the windowsill. And it was also true that he met Wayne that same afternoon. Everyone knew those parts of the story. What they didn’t know was the first part. The part about Henry getting up early in the morning, that morning he and Mom moved, and Henry feeling so heavy with sadness that he laid himself down in the driveway in front of the car and wouldn’t get up. Not for breakfast, his last scrambled-egg breakfast in the only house he had ever known, not to play in the tree house his father had built, and not even when Mom finally got into the car and turned it on. She had to lift him up kicking and screaming, hold him back against the seat of the car with her elbow while she wrestled with his seat belt. She surprised him with a bag of cheese puffs for the ride, but even his favorite food didn’t make him feel better.

Henry remembered believing it was the end of the world. What did he know? He was only four years old. He also remembered grabbing onto one idea and squeezing it until it was blue. If there was a sign at the new house, then he knew he would live beyond that last day in the old brown house.

So he had walked upstairs, picked his new room, and there it had been. Right on the windowsill.

The marble.

And now it was gone.

The thought made Henry want to lie down again, this time in front of the car or pickup or eighteen-wheeler or whatever had driven off with the marble. He lay down in his driveway instead, beside Brae, who was chewing on the rubber ball.

“What am I going to do?” he asked Brae. Brae leaned in to sniff Henry’s nose. “Do you smell an idea?” said Henry, rubbing Brae under the chin. “ ’Cause I don’t feel anything cooking in here—” He tapped the side of his head. Cooking made Henry think of Nopie and his stupid apple pie, and he said, “Stupid!” out loud and then he said, “Oh, not you, Brae! Never you! You’re the smartest dog-cow I know—” He sat up, took the ball, put his hands inside his sweatshirt pocket. “Which hand?” he said. Brae sniffed Henry again, this time around his pocket, and nudged Henry’s left hand. “Right!” Henry said. “You’re right every time!” He threw the ball again and watched Brae as he raced down the driveway.

Suddenly, his brain was racing too.

Suddenly, his brain was an oven and he was cooking up an idea fast.

If Brae could chase a ball, why couldn’t Henry chase a marble?

The marble was in New Orleans.

Jake was going to New Orleans.

Henry could hitch a ride with Jake and find his marble.

This was a triple-decker cake of an idea!

Brae loped back up the driveway and dropped the ball at Henry’s feet. He licked Henry. “Do I taste sweet, Brae?” said Henry. “Cake sweet?”

And right there at the top of the driveway, under Mount Mansfield, Henry felt the heat of a tiny bit of hope.

“I’ll ask Mom if I can go,” said Henry. “She’ll let me go.” He paused. “No, she won’t. Shoot.” He paused again. The heat-spark flickered dramatically. Hope, no hope, hope, no hope. “What am I going to do, Brae? I need to get that marble. But how? What would Wayne do?” Brae stared into Henry’s eyes. “You’ve got the answer, don’t you? What is it?” Henry stood up fast, almost knocking Brae in the nose. “Right! He’d sneak onto the truck! That’s what he’d do. And that’s what I’m gonna do.” He took a deep breath. “Who am I kidding? I can’t sneak onto Jake’s truck.” He looked into Brae’s eyes again. “Okay, yeah, you’re right. I’m just going to have to talk to Jake. I’m going to have to get Jake to convince Mom that I can go.”

With that, Henry turned up the heat on his cake, on his triple-decker, perfect cake of an idea.