“Don’t you understand? He needs this, Amy.”
“But for the whole month, Jonathan?”
“What else has he been doing with his summer so far? School’s been out for a week, and he does nothing but sit around. A change like this will make all the difference.”
I was lying in bed, reading the latest Revengenators comic book on my tablet, when I heard my parents start to argue about me again. It was strange how they assumed I couldn’t hear them, as if closing my bedroom door at night meant I had suddenly gone deaf.
“Martin is fine,” said my mom.
My father snorted, the same noise he made when a politician was interviewed on the news or when an umpire made a bad call. “I’m not changing my mind, Amy. Everything’s already settled.”
What was already settled? What was he talking about? Dad was always making decisions without telling Mom or me ahead of time, but this sounded more serious than usual.
The kitchen grew quiet. I glanced at the clock on my nightstand and saw that it was ten o’clock. The time my parents move down into the basement family room so Dad can watch those crime shows filled with blood and guts, while Mom knits on the couch and drinks wine with lots of ice cubes.
The air conditioning kicked in as I turned off my lamp, feeling totally confused. What was Dad planning? I picked up my laser pen, which I kept hidden under a fuzzy green pillow. I sleep with three pillows—a regular one for my head, a little striped cushion to hug while I sleep, and then the fuzzy green pillow, which I use to hide Lego accessories and my miniature Rubick’s Cube and interesting things I find but feel like I shouldn’t show anyone. Especially not my father.
I shined the bright laser pen at my bookcase where I had assembled the village of Martinville over a year ago. The town was getting so big I was considering relocating it to the top of my bureau.
When I turned nine years old, Dad had given me his prized childhood collection of brownish-greenish soldiers, which he’d inherited from his father, my grampy. Dad assumed I would set up battle scenes and construct forts to blow up and conquer, like he had done with his little brother, Jason, when they were kids. The problem was my father had been a kid a really long time ago and no one did that stuff anymore. Besides, I didn’t have a brother or a sister to boss around like Dad did. It was just my parents and me.
So for a long time I left the box to gather dust on a shelf in my closet. Until one day Mom told me that it hurt Dad’s feelings that I never even tried to play with the old brownish-greenish soldiers. She suggested I come up with some creative game or project to include them, which would make Dad happy.
That’s when I decided to redesign them with markers and make them ordinary people so I could play “town” instead of “war.” Except that didn’t seem to make my dad happy at all.
“What did Martin do to Grampy’s soldiers?!” I heard him holler one night down in the kitchen after I had gone to bed. There’d been silence after that, which meant Mom had probably poured Dad a glass of beer and pushed him toward the basement stairs to watch his crime shows.
“Good night, Baby Tim, Mayor Niceman, and Miss Puffy,” I whispered in the direction of the bookcase.
Every evening I chose three different townspeople to wish good night.
“I’m sure we’ll all get to the bottom of whatever’s going on. So there’s no need to worry. Happy dreams, everyone.”
The day was officially over after I lowered the laser pen beam from the ceiling, past the town, down to the floor . . . as if I had made the real sun set over Martinville.
Everyone was safe, at least until tomorrow.