Novelization by Tinker Lindsay

Based on the book by Eckhart Tolle and Robert S. Friedman

Screenplay by Donald Martin, Sara B. Cooper, and Barnet Bain

Directed by Barnet Bain

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.

Arthur Schopenhauer

You are not your mind.

Eckhart Tolle

Milton’s Secret points to the possibility of living in a different state of consciousness, one that no longer generates unnecessary suffering for yourself and for others. That state is embodied by the main character, the grandfather, beautifully played by Donald Sutherland. A great teaching in the movie is to just be very much aware of how the main character of the grandfather…how he lives, how he deals with situations, how he interacts with people. So by identifying with a conscious character in the movie, you yourself become more conscious than you otherwise would be. So enjoy, and it is my hope that as you watch you are able to join the character of the grandfather, and eventually, the other characters, in a state of presence.

- Eckhart Tolle (Vancouver BC, July 2016)

PRAISE FOR MILTON’S SECRET

“A rare gem that allows us to consider the function of film in our society more deeply.”

- Psychology Today

“Translucent Cinema like Milton’s Secret, American Beauty, and many others as well, show us where real change and evolution happens: within our own consciousness. We are invited to see the world through different eyes, instead of first trying to change the world itself. As a result, we are not just entertained: we are woken up.”

- Huffington Post

“Bain’s film functions as a delivery system for Tolle’s spiritual philosophy, and might have been the New Age equivalent of a stilted faith-based drama if not for its smart, nuanced performances.”

- LA Weekly

“You’re going to want to see this movie because it’s going to build an awareness of an important mission of culture. It’s going to move you, it’s going to open your heart, it’s going to speak to things like forgiveness and love and compassion. This is a must see movie!”

- Jack Canfield (Co-Author of Chicken Soup for the Soul)

“This is a movie to inspire people who are going through real challenges in their life, how to find hope and the power of love in our lives. It’s an amazing movie.”

- John Gray (Author of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus)

MILTON’S SECRET LINKS

OFFICIAL MOVIE WEBSITE:
www.miltonssecret.com

MILTON’S SECRET EDUCATIONAL GUIDE:
http://mindfulworld.com/education/

ESCAPE PLANET FEAR (ON-LINE COURSE BY ECKHART TOLLE):
http://mindfulworld.com/escape-planet-fear/

PRESENCE IN THE FAMILY (ON-LINE COURSE BY ECKHART TOLLE):
http://mindfulworld.com/presence-in-the-family/

Milton’s Secret
© 2016 Mindful World Investments Inc.

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Supplementary material available at:
www.miltonssecret.com

ISBN: 978-1-48-358897-1

Novelization by Tinker Lindsay
Based on the book Milton’s Secret by Eckhart Tolle and Robert S. Friedman
Screenplay by Donald Martin, Sara B. Cooper, and Barnet Bain
Directed by Barnet Bain

CONTENTS

Praise for Milton's Secret

Milton's Secret Links

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four- Report from Planet Fear #1

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight- Report from Planet Fear #2

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve- Report from Planet Fear #3

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen- Report from Planet Fear #4

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty- Report from Planet Fear #5

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four- Report from Planet Fear #6

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight- Report from Planet Fear #7

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two- Report from Planet Fear #8

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six- Report from Planet Fear #9

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty- Final Report from Planet Fear

Milton Secret Links

Acknowledgments

Chapter One

I elbow Timmy. “Ready…,” I say.

We’ve picked out some primo rocks if I do say so myself—small enough to fit in our palms, big enough to land hard without doing too much damage.

I draw back my right arm, my fist clenched around a stone. Timmy does the same.

“Set…”

Timmy shoots me a nervous look, like he might be having second thoughts. I hold his eyes until he’s steady and on board again. I’ve known Timothy Klenhard practically my entire life. He’s a good guy and super smart but lately he’s gotten a little twitchy, like he’s not sure if being smart counts for much anymore. He wants everyone to start calling him Tim. He thinks that will, you know…

“Now!” I say.

I let loose first, then Timmy. Our rocks whup against Balloon Man’s torso, snapping back his inflated cranium and chest. He recovers just in time for another volley.

Whup! Whup!

“Awesome,” Timmy says.

We take a moment to refill our pockets.

Even when he’s not under attack, Sancassett High’s latest attempt at a football mascot exhibits some certifiably crazy arm action. Back, forth, up, down—Balloon Man never stops moving. Plus, he’s huge. His wingspan must be eight feet across, not that you can tell with all that flapping going on.

Flapping’s the wrong word. Too babyish.

Wait, it’s on the tip of my tongue...

Flail, that’s it. (flail: flāl/ verb 1. wave or swing or cause to wave or swing wildly: Midterm Vocabulary Test, word #8.)

Ms. Ferguson would be so proud.

Someone from the high school, a coach probably, tethered Balloon Man next to the athletic field a few weeks ago and stuck a hose up his butt. Then they turned on the blower to make him dance, and he’s been dancing ever since.

I guess they want to start winning football games sometime this century.

FIGHT!

FIGHT!

FIGHT!

is the vertical message displayed on Balloon Man’s neon orange front. But if you ask me,

FIGHT!

FIGHT!

FIGHT!

is much closer to the truth.

“I can’t believe she’s making us do it,” I say. Thwup!

“I know. It sucks so bad.” Thwup!

Timmy and I are equally annoyed about the three-minute speech that Ms. Ferguson dumped in our laps today, in addition to our regular homework. The speech that we have to give in one week. On Parents’ Day. (Which also happens to be my birthday. But whatever.) We rode our bikes straight here after school, to “Work off some steam,” as my grandfather likes to say.

What am I going to talk about, what if my voice cracks, I lose my place, I lose my MIND?

Thwup.

We bombard our target until we are out of artillery.

The sweat feels good. I catch my breath. My brain finally takes a break, too, but not for long, chatterbox Timmy makes sure of that. Or maybe that’s just how my mind is these days—twitchy, like him.

“So, yeah, I called to ask him to pay for the ticket so I could visit,” Timmy says. His voice is casual, but I know better. I don’t need to ask who he is—Timmy’s dad left his mom a few years ago to start a new family, and ever since, Mr. Klenhard has stayed at the top of Timmy’s Stuff to Feel Bad About list. Maybe that’s about to change.

“That’s great, Timmy. Things are looking up,” I say.

“Tim,” he shoots back. “And hardly. The step-dork answered. Said Dad wasn’t home and did I want to leave a message?”

So things aren’t looking up, they’re looking the same. “That sucks,” I offer.

“Tell me about it. What was I supposed to say? His ‘old son’ says hi? I was like, ‘Don’t bother.’ I hate them all.”

How does divorce start, anyway? Is it a spontaneous chemical reaction, and therefore random? Or is it the direct result of the combination of certain elements, like, say, running out of money and being worried all the time?

Does it start when you walk in on your parents at breakfast and they immediately stop talking but their eyes shift back and forth, up and down, anyplace but where you are?

I yank my attention back to my friend. He’s kicking at the dirt now. He turned twelve a few months ago, right about the same time he stopped answering to “Timmy.” In the old days I’d just start a wrestling match and let him win and then he’d cheer up and we’d be done with it. Only we’re not little kids anymore and roughhousing isn’t the way to go anymore and I have no idea what to do.

“What about your mom? Won’t she pay for the ticket?”

“The Catering Queen? Fat chance. She leaves the room every time I mention his name.” Timmy’s mom cooks for everyone in town but Timmy.

Tim.

I switch gears. “Reload,” I say, and move to the dirt path where we dropped our bikes. After a moment he joins me. We scour the ground for more ammo.

WANHHH! I jump a mile at the sharp blare. It comes out of nowhere and my heart is literally landing punches on my ribcage. I track the sound. Some old guy in blue coveralls is glaring at us from across the athletic field. He raises his air horn for another blast.

I grab my backpack, mount my bike, and start pedaling. I don’t have to check on Timmy, I know he’s right behind me.

We may not be the cool kids in class, but we have each other’s backs.

Here is some data about me: My name is Milton Adams. I am eleven years, eleven months, and three weeks old, though lately I feel like I’m closer to a thousand. In case you haven’t guessed, I live in the town of Sancassett, home of the perennially losing football team of Sancassett High. Not that winning is necessarily great either. The last time they got a trophy, my neighbor Mr. Crane was the star quarterback, and look at how things turned out for him.

Here is some data about Sancassett: It’s a nice, normal town, smack in the middle of anywhere. Population? Up and down. Per capita income? Up and down. Future prospects? Seriously up and down. For example, last month on Main Street, two stores had Grand Openings, but three others held Out of Business sales.

It’s pretty quiet in Sancassett, except when it isn’t. Based on honking horns, traffic’s getting worse, or maybe drivers are just getting more pissed off. My dad, for instance. The malls are mostly full of kids window-shopping for stuff they can’t buy. Me, for instance. What else? More people are moving out than moving in, at least according to my mother. She should know—she’s the one desperately trying to sell all those empty houses.

People think our town is a place where nothing happens, but they’ve got it all wrong. The grownups here are busy busy busy all the time. Busy being adults. Busy obsessing about everything.

Busy flailing.

All of which means kids like Timmy and me are pretty much left alone to fend for ourselves. That’s okay. I know what I’m supposed to be doing.

I have a plan how to do it, too.

Chapter Two

I key in the numbers on the lockbox. My stomach grinds, as usual, but every time it bothers me a little less. I hope that’s a good thing.

We’ve left our bikes nearby, resting them against the chain link fence surrounding this overgrown plot of land. A “Lot For Sale” real estate sign stuck in the dirt features the big beaming face of my mother, which would freak me out even if I weren’t breaking in. This used to be a kids’ park or something—there’s a rusty set of metal swings and the remains of some kind of merry-go-round in the corner. But we’re not interested in swings or merry-go-rounds. We’re interested in the wooden clubhouse that goes with them.

“How does your mom get these codes again?” Every Friday afternoon Tim asks the same question, in the same nervous voice. And I always give the same casual answer, like breaking into an abandoned building is no biggie.

“It’s a real estate thing.” All my fingers feel like thumbs, and I have to start over.

“True or false. Parents are our stand-ins for God,” Timmy says.

I key in the last number before I answer, “Somebody’s spending way too much time on the Internet.”

Timmy shrugs, rolling up a small rope of black licorice and popping it into his mouth.

Click.

I take a little bow and push open the door.

Timmy goes in first. Behind him, dust motes rise and swirl in the thick shaft of sunlight like dancing atoms. Someone taped brown paper over all the windows, probably to discourage burglars, so it’s always dark in here. I click on my flashlight and scan the inside. Broken easels are still stacked against one wall and a single bag of ancient golf clubs still guards the corner. I run my light over the cracked ceiling and find the two empty fixtures, plus a couple of sprinkler heads that look equally useless.

No one’s been here but us.

“Candles,” I say, shutting the door behind me, but Timmy’s already on it. Pretty soon the room is flickering from a bunch of lit candle stubs stuck in jars. Timmy arranges them in a circle around us. I check to make sure none of the taped window coverings have ripped or fallen down. Don’t want anyone snooping, not when real alchemy is about to happen.

It’s going to work this time. It has to.

Timmy sets up the Coleman camping stove while I pull this week’s ingredients from my backpack. Last to come out is my notebook. Ms. Ferguson loves to say that any scientist worthy of the name understands that they learn as much from their failures as from their successes.

After seventeen failures, I must be a genius.

I open the notebook and read out loud: “Alchemical Transmutation. Experiment Number Eighteen.”

Everyone knows about Isaac Newton the scientist. How he discovered the presence of gravity after repeated observations of external phenomena: in other words, after watching lots of things fall. But what I happen to know is that Sir Isaac Newton, smartest man maybe ever, also spent years and years trying to turn base metals into gold. Maybe he even succeeded. All his notebooks and formulas burned in a fire, so we’ll never know for sure.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, if Newton thought it was possible to make gold, who’s to say it’s not? He was way smarter than anyone else, Anna, Timmy, and me included. And even though most of his actual data was destroyed, there’s enough information about alchemy floating around the Internet to help other scientists interested in the same thing.

I’ve listed the seven alchemical steps of transformation on the inside of my notebook, for easy reference, and I flip back to take a look.

Step 1. Calcination. This is maybe my favorite, because it’s all about breaking things down, even burning stuff into ash. Which is just cool, you know?

Step 2. Dissolution. This process is all about stirring the pot. Swirling everything around until it’s really mixed up.

Step 3. Separation. This part requires taking a break, letting things settle a little, so you can figure out what to keep and what to throw out.

Step 4. Conjunction. Now you recombine the remaining ingredients and try to figure out what they add up to. It’s like having a new vision, a new way forward.

Step 5. Fermentation. More rooting out of stuff you don’t need here, as far as I can figure out, but not the obvious junk. This is where you need a real magician’s help.

Step 6. Distillation. Okay, now you have to take the mixture that’s left and let it cook, evaporate, condense, refine, and start the process again. If you get this far, you’re pretty golden. Pun intended.

Step 7. Coagulation. Everything crystallizes and comes together to form a final and perfect result. Pure gold.

Timmy and I haven’t gotten close to that yet, but today will be different, I’m sure.

Timmy holds a match to the butane burner and it ignites with a satisfying hiss. The flame is bright blue—it’s a molecular thing. I hand over the notebook. We sit for a moment in solemn silence. This is my favorite time—that sweet spot when everything I need to make me okay is dangling just in front of me, not quite in my grasp, but really close.

I squat by the tiny column of blue fire. The room is pretty much empty, but someone before us must have busted inside the old-fashioned way, because shards of glass carpet the floor. Miniature sapphire-colored flames flicker all around us, jagged reflections in the broken glass. They start to creep me out, and I shiver.

I move to sit cross-legged, small wooden bowl in my lap, marble mashing tool in my right hand. Timmy “borrowed” them from his mother’s kitchen when we started this whole thing, to help us blend our ingredients. They’re called a mortar and pestle, officially. The wooden mortar still reeks of stale garlic and something else gross.

I already have a base mixture of flour, butter, and salt, and I pound it hard with the pestle, breaking down the ingredients into doughy pebbles. Timmy watches, his serious expression mirroring my own. We both have our reasons for wanting this to work.

“Calcination successful. Fire,” I say. He hands me the pepper mill. We’ve filled it with bright red peppercorns this time—Timmy found them on a website for gourmet spices his mom likes to use, which is kind of genius.

I twist the top of the mill back and forth, and a shower of scarlet flakes speckles the powdery mound. I peer at the mixture, and pick out a few flakes that look too big.

“Water.”

Timmy dips the end of an eyedropper into a plastic water bottle. Water is water, but we’re going with room temperature this time. Cold and hot both didn’t seem to work. Scientific process of elimination, they call this.

“Did you write that down?” I ask. “That the water is room temperature?”

“Dude,” Timmy says. “Give me some credit.”

I squeeze eight drops into the mix and stir until the water dissolves.

“Dissolution successful. Earth.”

This one is challenging. Real earth, as in dirt, was a bust. So was sand, baby powder, pencil shavings and cement mix. So this time we’re trying to be a little more creative. Timmy hands over a small baggie of what looks like cocoa powder, but in fact is…

“…‘Natural Earth Foundation’ from the makeup drawer of one Betsy Hall, formerly known as Mrs. James Klenhard.” Timmy uses his announcer voice, as if he’s hosting a game show introducing a contestant. So I do the same.

“Commencing the separation process,” I intone. I add the makeup powder to the mortar bowl and let everything sit. Sure enough, some of the pepper flakes didn’t mix, so I pick them out.

“Conjunction,” I announce, and mush the doughy mixture together, this time using my hands. I throw in the final key ingredient, a handful of iron filings, give the mixture three or four more pounds with the pestle, and then I dump everything into the small glass container balanced on top of the Coleman stove. Time to add the heat.

“Fermentation,” I intone. “We are changing base metal into gold. Ladies and gentlemen, this is real magic.”

Timmy snorts, which makes me mad, since he started the whole voice thing in the first place. “You’re messed up,” I say.

“Of course I’m messed up. I’m the smartest kid in the class. It’s a real burden.”

I’d punch his arm, but I have to keep stirring. I’m waiting for distillation to happen, but the gluey mound is staying stubbornly solid. “Second smartest,” I say. “Don’t forget Anna. Anyway, who cares? If it’s good enough for the greatest scientist who ever lived…”

“Isaac Newton,” Timmy breaks in, as if I didn’t know already.

“Sir Isaac Newton, the Alchemist,” I reply. Now I’m the one who sounds like a know-it-all, but he’s really starting to annoy me.

“Gimme some air,” I tell Timmy.

“What’s the magic word, Miltie?” He’s switched to a high falsetto, his classic “mother” voice.

“Gimme some air please, jerk-off,” I mother-voice back. We both crack up.

Timmy snaps open our final tool, a silk fan from my mom’s collection. Its ribbed segments are covered with thick brush strokes. At first they seem random, but if you relax your eyes and don’t try too hard, you can see they actually add up to a picture of birds sitting on a tree branch. It’s pretty cool.

“Commence coagulation,” I say.

Timmy waves the fan over the glass pot. To our amazement, the iron filings actually spark and ignite.

“Transmutation begins,” I whisper, as the mixture flames up.

“It’s really happening,” Tim says.

My heart rat-a-tats.

The fire sputters out.

I lean in to take a look, Timmy right next to me, so close I can smell the licorice on his breath.

What I see isn’t gold. What I see is a black blob of nothing, which is exactly what the disappointment in my mouth tastes like.

We pack up in silence. Last to go into the backpack is my black notebook, another line of ink slashing through another epic fail.

Timmy doesn’t talk until we’re almost at his turnoff. He pedals up beside me.

“So, do you think she’s got a boyfriend?” Timmy’s currently obsessed with Ms. Ferguson, lame assignments or not. He claims he likes her for her mind.

“Ms. Ferguson? Dude, we’ve talked about this. There are leagues, and then there are leagues. She’s way out of yours.”

“Maybe now. But one day…”

“You are completely out of your mind.”

“Come on. She’s brilliant.”

I snort. “Yeah. That’s why.”

“Okay, well, she’s also hot, right?”

I make a face. “She’s our teacher!”

I pull ahead. But as I think about it, or I should say as I stop thinking about it so hard, I remember how it feels when Ms. Ferguson leans over my shoulder to check on an equation. How she smells like some kind of flower. How the hair on her arm is sort of downy (down·y ˈdounē/ adjective, covered with fine soft hair or feathers: Midterm Vocabulary Test, word #11) but the skin and muscle part is strong and smooth. And for a split second, just like those brush marks turning into birds, I get it. She is totally hot. I’m about to admit as much to Timmy when he wheels next to me again, his freckles bright red.

“You’re one to talk. You don’t even have a league. Unless it’s the dork league, same as Anna,” Timmy says.

“Shut up,” I reply, stung.

“You shut up,” Timmy says.

We drag our toes until our bikes roll to a stop. We glare at each other even though I don’t know how this stupid fight even started. Probably when Alchemy Experiment #18 turned into the blob from hell. Gotta blame somebody, right? Better that then let the fear take hold.

Anyway, Anna’s not a dork, she just likes to read, I mean read for fun, read all the time. She’s smarter than both of us put together, probably because she’s usually got her nose buried in some book or other. She doesn’t talk like anyone else I know, not that my sudden desire to up my vocabulary game has anything to do with Anna, and her long blonde hair, and the brain that comes with it, or anything.

“See you tomorrow?” Timmy’s voice is uncertain.

I shrug. I’m still mad and I don’t even care why anymore.

“I’m outta here,” I say.

I push it, and I’m flying big-time as I start down our block. I check the front lawn of the Cranes’ house. They’ve got this dog named Brutus, a Rottweiler—an actual attack dog; I looked it up online—with a huge head and drooling jaws. He looks like he could eat me and everyone I know alive. I’m not kidding. They keep him chained up, but still.

Sure enough, Brutus leaps to his feet and starts yanking hard against his chain. He’s barking and slobbering, no doubt planning what limb he’s going to start with for his Milton-happy-meal.

The front door flies open. I look over, expecting to see Mrs. Crane yapping at the dog to stop yapping. But Carter from my class comes flying out, shouting at the top of his lungs. And not in a good way. He bolts right past me onto the street, him yelling, Brutus barking, and now Carter’s mom finally shows up in the doorway. Her face is red as a beet.

“Get back in here this instant! You hear me, Carter? Just wait until your father gets home!”

“Shut up shut up shut up!” Carter screams, and now I can see that he’s crying. Carter Crane. Crying.

He’s got to be at least fourteen.

I lower my eyes and hunch my shoulders, trying to make myself inconspicuous, like you’re supposed to do with an angry rhino. Hopefully Carter doesn’t know that I saw. Even a charter member of the dork league knows that would not be a good thing.

It’s not that I’m scared of Carter, exactly. It’s just that I can tell how badly he wants to stay under the radar. Like he’s hoping nobody will notice that he’s been held back twice, and his voice has changed, and he still has a hard time with homework, and he hates sports, and all of it is totally uncool with his father the trophy-winning quarterback.

Who I am scared of.

Carter’s still running flat out. As I watch, he disappears around the corner. I realize I’ve been holding my breath. I let some oxygen out, but there’s this sour feeling left in my gut.

Chapter Three

My house is like everything else about my family: it looks much better on the outside than it actually is. The front is all modern and sleek and cool, and on the rare occasion when both my parents are home there’s a cherry red Fiat and a silver Mercedes E-Class sedan in the carport. You look at my home and you might think rich people live here. But walk around to the back and you get a different story. No one’s touched the backyard in years, and the weeds have taken over. It’s dying, is what I’m trying to say.

The Fiat is already here. Uh oh. I dump the bike next to my mother’s car and head inside, the acid lump in my belly migrating to my throat.

She’s in the kitchen.

I scoop up my cat, Snuggles, and hold him against my chest. The tightness eases a little.

“Hola, madre,” I say. You’re home early.” And then I can’t help it I have to ask because even if the news is bad, better to know the bad than think the worst. “Something wrong?”

My mom’s name is Jane Adams. A simple name for such a complicated person. Technically, she’s got a really pretty face, even I can see that, but these days her jaw’s so tight that when she smiles I’m worried her cheeks are going to shatter. She’s not smiling now. She’s texting on her iPhone and shoving frozen lasagna into the microwave and hammering the “on” button and muttering, “I thought we fixed this piece of junk can’t one thing go right today?” until finally she notices I’m here. And that fake smile she pastes on her face is worse than no smile at all.

“Sorry. Microwave seems to be broken,” she says.

“You wore it out, Mom.” I put Snuggles down.

Her eyes soften, and she’s back to the Mom I almost remember.

“I guess I did, didn’t I,” she says. She shrugs one shoulder. “You know what? Screw it. Let’s splurge and get takeout. They loved the house today. In fact, ‘Honey, this is the one’ were the husband’s exact words. So even if our good friend Ben refuses to give us a second line of credit on our house because god forbid he cut us a break when we’ve only been with his bank for ten years, well, hey, that doesn’t mean he won’t refinance their loan, does it? Tomorrow’s another day, right?”

“Right.” I’ve heard this line before, but now’s not the time to remind her.

Mom tags my arm. “You’re it!” She bolts to the other side of the kitchen.

Seriously? Freeze tag? But I can see she needs to feel like everything’s copacetic (co·pa·cet·ic, .kō;pəˈsetik/ adjective 1. in excellent order: Midterm Vocabulary Test word #47), so I play along. I take off after her. Snuggles watches with one eye. He’s the only sane one here.

I chase Mom around the center island. This is so lame. But then I kind of get into it. I put my pedal to the metal and catch up and tag her.

“Gotcha!”

Mom freezes, and her crazy smile-that-isn’t-an-actual-smile freezes along with her. She makes her eyes go wide at me and cheats by slightly waggling her eyebrows, like she’s signaling me. Crap. I’m supposed to say something. What am I supposed to say?

Mom prompts me through gritted teeth. “You are now…”

I don’t believe this. I pull the old phrase out of my past. “You are now a prisoner of my magic,” I say.

“And…” she squeezes out, grin still frozen.

“…and there is no resistance to be had.” I wish I could loosen up a little, but I can’t. She’s acting so bizarre. And anyway, what am I, five years old again?

Mom’s phone beeps, putting me out of my misery.

She reads the text, and everything sags.

“What?” I ask.

But she’s silent. She moves her head to stare out the window.

It’s hard to describe what happens to my body when Mom goes blank like this, but it’s kind of like I’m in outer space and my lifeline to the mother ship has been cut in two and I’m drowning in thin air. “I can make dinner,” I say, “or go get something on my bike, or…”

Mom comes to. “No,” she says. “I’ll call your dad to stop for takeout.” She looks exhausted, like all the oxygen has been sucked out of her, too.

“Mom?”

She doesn’t move.

“It will get better.”

She shrugs. “It’s fine. Life.”

She zombie dead-walks out of the kitchen, thumbing the screen and lifting her phone to her ear. I don’t want to listen, but I have to. I move to the doorway.

“This is Jane Adams. Is Ben there? Yes it’s important, it’s extremely important.” She’s a fighter, my mom, but she’s fighting a losing battle these days.

Tag, I’m it.

True or False? Having dinner together as a family at least five times a week helps kids get into college. (Timmy’s not the only one spending too much time online.) That’s the hypothesis and studies suggest it’s true, but I have a different opinion, based on an in-depth study of one such family. That is to say, mine. My conclusion? Too many family dinners will send a kid straight to the loony bin.

We’re sitting around the dining-room table as usual, one big happy household of five: Mom, Dad, me, plus their two smart-phones. Dad uncorks a bottle of wine with a phup. He rotates the bottle in his hand and studies the label like it holds the secret of the universe or something. I crane my head to see what it says. Something-or-other Nova.

Nova-like a new star. Cool.

“What’s a Pine-not Noyer?” I ask.

Dad chuckles. “Pinot Noir,” he says. “French for delicious.”

Mom’s voice is tight. “See, now, I thought it was French for investment.”

Dad doesn’t take the bait. “A silent auction item to raise money for my son’s school?” He winks at me across the table. “No better investment than that, I say.” He pours himself a glass. “Anyway, why can’t a man enjoy a glass of wine in his own home?”

“A glass of cheap chardonnay, yes. A man could also take his case of very expensive Terra Nova Pinot Noir and sell it on eBay instead of drinking it.”

I hate it when my parents start talking about each other in the third person.

Mom passes around the fried chicken for seconds. She emptied the cardboard bucket of crusty thighs and wings onto a serving platter before dinner, but it doesn’t help. The pooled grease has alchemically coagulated into a white pasty pond. Nobody wants more.

“Your mother is right,” Dad says. “It’s best to be conservative.”

Mom starts to relax and the corners of her mouth relax. But Dad blows it.

“But sometimes…” He tops up his glass. “Sometimes you just have to take risks and enjoy life! That’s why I love what I do. Hold your nose and jump! That’s what the stock market is all about.”

Mom’s smile thins into a straight line. Dad buries his nose in the big glass balloon of wine and inhales.

“Mmm. Earthy.”

My ears perk up. “Earthy?”

“Soil. Rainfall. Sunlight. Fermented grapes. Blended together into bottled perfection.” He takes a mouthful and kind of swirls it around before swallowing it. “Alchemy,” he says, meeting my eyes over the glass.

Okay. So that’s weird. I didn’t even think he knew the word. I tuck the coincidence away to reexamine later. Right now I have more important things on my mind.

“So, I have to do a three minute presentation. For Parents’ Day next Friday? And I kind of still need to pick a subject,” is what I say. Here’s what I don’t say: I’m totally screwed. I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m going to be laughed off the stage.

And here’s how much good it does.

“It’s not a crisis, Jane,” Dad tells Mom, like he’s been continuing some other conversation in his mind. “It’s a worry. I’m a positive guy, okay? If we have to, we’ll take a loan from the retirement fund. It’ll work out.”

I try to catch Dad’s eye. Did he even hear me?

“Sure. Why not,” Mom says. “We’ll never be able to retire anyway.”

Dad’s phone buzzes and he snatches it up.

“Bill Adams,” he says. As he stands, he straightens his shoulders. He picks up his goblet of wine and hurries into the living room, like he can’t wait to get out of here.

Mom watches him leave. She pours herself a big glass of wine. She takes a sip, but she’s not tasting alchemy. She’s not tasting anything at all. Her mind is a million miles away. After a moment, her eyes shift. They finally land on me and she focuses, as if she’s just realized I’m there.

“I’m sorry, honey. What were you saying?”

My head hurts and my stomach is killing me, I want to scream, but all I do is shrug.

Back upstairs, I pull out my notebook and leaf through the pages of Transmutation Experiments. My head throbs even worse. I throw the notebook into the corner.

Fact: Observing external phenomena is totally useless when your internal state is one of chaos.

When your body is nothing but a big whirling ball of fear.

I mean, how do you collect data on that?

Report from Planet Fear #1

Hello. This is Milton Adams, reporting in on the Adams Family Solar System: Intergalactic View.

Planet Dad: Stuck in orbit around a distant past when atmospheric conditions were clear and bright, or so his memory tells him.

Planet Mom: Circling the future, where things have to be better than they are now. I mean, they just have to be, right?

Me: I live on Planet Fear. As planets go, this one sucks. There’s nothing but catastrophe and chaos wherever I look. Dust storms. Flying debris. School reports due in seven days.

The surrounding ozone layer swirls with buzz saw thoughts and hatchet feelings and has a stratospheric overlay of cosmic dread—the certainty that something epically bad is about to happen.

But the worst thing about Planet Fear is I’m all alone here, I’m the only one on it, which means it’s up to me to fix what’s broken and everything’s broken and I have no idea what I’m doing.

Someone forgot to include the manual.

Chapter Five

Fact: According to my last check-up, I am in the 56th percentile for height and 12th percentile for weight compared to most boys my age. Translation? I’m not nearly tall enough and I’m skinny as a rail.

Fact: My ridiculously out-of-control curls are genetically impossible, given my mother’s sleek helmet and my father’s gelled and streaked bone-straight spikes. On the other hand, my eyes are the same color as theirs, so I’m not a total mutant.

Fact: Last time I counted—that would be this morning—I still have only three hairs down there and when I answer Mom’s work phone her real estate clients still think I’m her daughter.

Fact: Timmy’s right. I’m a total class-A dork.

I squinch up my face, and whip my head back and forth a few times. Sometimes that shuts my brain up. But it only manages to encourage the dude who lives in the back of my skull, the one full of insults, to escalate from verbal abuse to the bullwhip. Crack! Get to work! Crack! Three-minute speech is due in T minus seven days! Crack! Code Red! Code Red! Code Red!

I grab my laptop and start to scroll trending headlines:

Fattest boy in the world dies from malnutrition…The new discovery that will disrupt life as we know it…Toddler shoots mother while she’s driving…Milton Adams discovered with his brain on fire from toxic combustion…

There has to be a way to stop this.

I pull up Google. My hands hover over the keyboard. The cursor blinks blinks blinks…I type:

“I can’t stop blinking…”

I backspace and start over.

“…can’t stop thinking…thinking…it’s driving me nuts…” I press search.

Oh great. Thousands of links line up, all of them with key words like depression and anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders. Also a metric buttload of pharmaceutical companies.

So which is it?

I decide to go with anxiety.

More lame links, but one catches my eye, because even though the name is ridic—Evan Lee Joy, really?— it comes with a vimeo paused on the image of a guy who is everything I’m not. His smile is the real deal. Plus, he’s tall, fit, and pretty good-looking, but not in a douchie way, more like a guy who loves to surf and doesn’t mind wearing a wetsuit even though he doesn’t lift weights. He looks comfortable in his own skin, is what I mean. Ms. Ferguson’s league of comfortable, you know?

He looks calm.

I start the vimeo.

“What’s going on in your head right now?” Evan Lee Joy asks. “A lot of noise and confusion?”

Uh, yeah, duh…thus the Google subject line. Still, this gets my attention.

“Slow yourself down,” Evan Lee says. “Slooowwww. All that racing around. Worrying. Feeling anxious. Put that in a paper bag, set it aside, and feel the groooove of life…”

Okay, so maybe he’s a douche after all.

My bedroom door opens and I slam the laptop shut.

It’s Dad, ignoring the Please Knock sign, as usual.

“Hey,” he says. He walks over to my bed and ruffles my hair before I can stop him. Then he holds out his hands palms up and tips them, as if weighing two equal things.

“Surf the web, evening stroll. Evening stroll, surf the web.” He cocks his head. I know what he’s doing. He’s trying to make up for that fact that dinner was such a freak fest. On the other hand, there’s probably ice cream at the other end of the stroll.

“Fine,” I say.

Chapter Six

We head up the street toward Oak Drive. Behind us, Brutus starts with his mad barking.

“I almost hit him earlier,” Dad says.

“You almost hit Brutus?”

“With my car, I mean. He broke away from his chain and ran into the middle of the street right as I was driving past their house. I braked so hard I almost dumped the entire bucket of fried chicken.”

I glance sideways at him. “Were you on the phone?”

“Hands-free, buddy. You know me better than that.”

“So what happened?”

“Frank Crane happened. He came flying out and collared Brutus with one hand while he shook his fist at me with the other.” Dad’s face tightens. “He actually had the gall to suggest it was my fault. That I was driving over the speed limit for a residential area.”

I don’t say anything.

“What a dick,” Dad says, and now I know he’s still upset, because that’s a word he’s not supposed to use around me.

We found Luz’s food truck in its usual spot, by the edge of the pocket park where Oak Drive dead-ends. Luz has owned and operated The Nowhere Cup since before I was born. Mom and Dad used to roll me here in my baby stroller and Luz would climb out of the truck and feed me tiny bites of ice cream with one of those child-sized flat wooden spoons. Chococadabra. You have to taste it to believe it.

Today, Luz is wearing a bright yellow t-shirt. She’s stuck a flower that’s the same color as her shirt in a plastic cup of water and set it on the truck’s counter, next to the cash register. For some reason, this makes my eyes really happy. She leans out the serving window as we walk up.

“You’re late,” Luz says. “I was starting to think you were cheating on me.” Her skin is pale and her long thick hair is red—not Timmy red, darker and shinier. Her eyes are green and full of light. She arches her eyebrows. “Like my last two boyfriends.”

“Just a bit of a crazy time,” Dad says. Luz kind of shrugs at that, as if she’s thinking, When is it not crazy for you?

Luz always sets up a couple of round tables near her truck, tall ones with metal stools as seats. I slide onto one of the stools. My feet still don’t quite touch the ground and it makes me feel like a little kid. Usually I like the feeling, but not tonight.

Luz hangs over the counter and passes Dad a heaping bowl of ice cream and a normal-sized teaspoon.

“Voila. Chococadabra!”

Dad places the bowl in front of me. I stare at the scooped swirls of vanilla and chocolate studded with nuts and bits of fudge.

I’m not feeling the ice cream, either.

Luz is still leaning forward on her elbows looking at us. She cocks her head.

“Bad day, huh?”

I open my mouth to answer, but Dad gets there first.

“Out of control,” he says.

Luz meets my eyes. Her warmth reaches through my skin, all the way inside, and I can tell she gets it, gets everything. I feel better, suddenly.

“I’m hearing that,” she says. “Loud and clear.” She gives me a quick smile and ducks back inside the truck.

I take a bite of ice cream. A few drips land on my chin. Naturally, this is the moment Anna chooses to show up with her mother. I swipe my chin with my wrist, praying that I got it all.

Anna’s wearing earbuds but when she spots me she gives me a little wave. I want to wave back but my brain locks up so I study my phone instead, swiping and swiping the screen with my thumb as if I have hundreds of unread texts.

Dad’s phone buzzes.

“Bill Adams,” he says, all business. He holds a finger up to me. I hate it when he does that, almost as much as when he ruffles my hair. He hops off the stool and strides away, working his jaw.

Anna has moved up to the counter. Good. I’d rather watch her than listen to my father trading his stupid stocks and bonds any day of the week. She has a paperback book tucked in her back pocket. I strain to see the title. The Hitchiker’s Guide…

“Hey, Milly Willy,” I hear in my ear, and I jump.

Shit. It’s Carter.

He grabs my wrist. His fingers dig in so hard I can almost feel the capillaries bursting.

“Carter! Ow!”

“Make a fuss, perv, and it’ll hurt so bad you won’t believe shit can hurt like that.”

The wiseass in me wants to tell him to “Speak English, why don’t you” but the survivor in me knows better. I look around for help, but Dad’s way far away, pacing and gesturing with his back to me. If he’s my stand-in for God, all I can say is he’s doing a lousy job. Luz is not an option either, not with Anna and her mother right there, chatting away.

Carter yanks me off the stool. He twists my arm behind my back and kind of shove-walks me to the rear of the food truck. This is not looking good for ol’ Milton.

He spins me around to face him, still keeping my arm in a death grip. He has four inches and at least twenty pounds on me, so he has to lean down to get in my face.

“Did you tell anyone what you saw today?”

Was that only today? No wonder I feel like I’m a thousand years old.

I shake my head no.

“Did you? Anybody?” He wrenches my arm higher behind my back. Tears spring into my eyes even though I’m totally not crying.

“No! No one!” I gasp, praying that he doesn’t notice what’s going on with my tear ducts. That’s all I need.

“You mention one word and you’re dead. Understand?”

I nod, but he’s still not done. He gives my arm another upward yank. Who knew a shoulder blade could burn like this?

The back window of the truck slides open. Luz leans out and Carter finally lets go of my arm. It drops to a normal position and I rub the shoulder with my opposite hand. The fiery pain subsides.

Luz’s eyes flash. “Party’s over, boys. Clear out, now, Carter. Nothin’ good going on here.”

Carter saunters off. I realize my hands are shaking. I shove them inside my pockets.

Luz sends me a fierce look. “If you need me to go after that smartass…This truck can move when it’s gotta, and so can I.”

I shake my head. I’m too embarrassed to say a word.

Luz shifts her attention to someone behind me.

“Chai’s ready up front, sweetie.”

Oh, no. I turn around, and sure enough, there’s Anna, and she’s not wearing her earbuds anymore. Please don’t let her have heard this whole thing. Please please please…

“Hey, Milton,” she says. “What’s up?”

She didn’t hear. I feel as if I’ve dodged the biggest bullet in the world. Make that a cannonball.

“Nothing much,” I say. “Why?”

“No reason,” she says back. “Just, hi.”

I concentrate on not rubbing my shoulder again.

She shrugs and smiles. “Or, ‘bye. Whatever.”

She leaves me, and what with being scared shitless and the bruised wrist and aching shoulder, and the legs all loose but whether from fear or excitement I don’t even know, I’m just one big pile of crazy right now. I feel like I’ve just been broken into pieces and set on fire and suddenly I know what the name for this is.

Calcination.

I sneak a quick look around the corner of the food truck. Carter’s gone. I feel safe enough to go back to the table.

My ice cream is completely melted. The marshmallow bits look like floating bird turds.

Anna’s blowing on the steam curling out of her cup. She’s got her earbuds back in. Whatever she’s listening to is making her hips swivel back and forth, back and forth.

Dad walks straight past me and Anna and her mother until he’s in front of the serving window again, his phone still glued to his ear. “How’s that latte coming?” he asks Luz.

Seriously? I mean, it’s sitting on the counter. Right there, right in front of him.

I’d laugh if it weren’t so pathetic.

Chapter Seven

Fact: My chest is concave.

I’ve got Steal My Sunshine blasting out of my speakers, not the original by Len, that would be lame, but this crazy new remix I downloaded. It’s basically all I listen to. I’m trying to do that swaying thing Anna has perfected.

My reflection in the full-length mirror is not boosting my confidence. For one thing, I keep getting out of rhythm. For another, my boxers are slipping because my hips are so bony there’s nothing to hold them up. Snuggles is sitting on the floor with his eyes all narrow like, Really, that’s the best you got?

My bedroom door opens and Mom sticks her head inside. What part of “Please Knock” is so hard for my parents to understand?

“Mom! I’m practically naked here!” I pause the song and start searching for my pajama bottoms. I was just wearing them. They have to be somewhere nearby.

“Calm down,” she says. “Nobody’s looking.”

I give up. They’ve vaporized. I move onto the bed and arrange the top sheet so it covers my boxers.

“Lunch money for tomorrow, kiddo, in case I forget.” Mom counts out four ones. She sets them on my desk, next to my backpack. Socko, my old sock puppet, is draped over the desk lamp and he stares hungrily at the cash with his one remaining button eye.

“You still want to go with us to meet your grandfather? It means getting up at the crack of dawn.”

“I’m sure,” I say. Like I’d miss that.

Mom picks up Socko and wriggles her hand inside.

Here we go again.

“Good night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite,” Mom squeaks in her Socko voice, her fingers and thumb making a movable jaw.

I roll onto my side. I hear Mom sigh but it serves her right.

“Good night, honey,” she says at the door, her voice soft but heavy.

She and Dad barely talked to each other all weekend, much less talked to me. I could have gone over to Timmy’s, but I didn’t feel like it, so Saturday was grim. Then Mom had another open house today, but if anything good had come of it she’d have told us.

My other puppet, Merlin, is wedged in the crack between my bed and the wall. I grab him and shove him onto my right hand. I raise and turn my forearm so that Merlin’s facing her. I work the mouth.

“Hey, Mom?” I don’t look at her, that’s Merlin’s job. “What’s up with you and Dad?”

Silence.

I flip onto my back and sit up. Mom is just standing there in the dark. My heart jitters and jerks.

“Mom?”

“I love you. Dad loves you. Everything’s fine.” Which is not exactly an answer.

She walks out of the bedroom, closing the door behind her.

I stare at Merlin. Merlin stares at me.

I tug Merlin’s pointed purple cap downward until it completely covers his face.

“See? Everything’s fine,” I say. “In excellent order. Everything’s just frigging copacetic.”

Snuggles lands on the edge of the bed and starts to lick his paws.

Mom’s voice starts up next door. “What a day,” I think I hear. She must be in the bathroom—we share a wall. Next I hear Dad’s rumbling reply, a question. I scramble out of bed and climb onto the top of the bookshelf. It wobbles a little but I spread my feet wider and the shelf steadies. I press my ear against the wall.

“I said What. A. Day,” I hear. Mom doesn’t raise her voice when she’s irritated. She just Pronounces. Her. Words. More. Clearly. “What a week, for that matter.”

“Join the club,” Dad answers.

“Top of my class. Great firm. Somebody explain it to me.” I hear the toilet flush.

“The market will swing back. We’ll be good.”

“Please don’t keep saying that, Bill. We’re not good.”

“What do you want me to say? Fine. I’ll turn in the lease on the Mercedes tomorrow. I can walk to work; it’s just a, what, a forty-five-minute deal.”

Mom’s voice gets fainter. She must have walked out of the bathroom. “Do you always have to jump to extremes?”

What does she want him to do, I wonder.

“What do you want me to do?” Dad asks.

“I just want you to listen,” Mom says. “Can’t you just listen to me?”

A pause. Then:

“Do you think he knows?” my mom asks.

“I don’t see how. We’ve been pretty careful.”

The shelf starts to wobble and a couple of books land on the floor with a thump. Snuggles jumps off the bed and scoots underneath it, proper earthquake procedure.

“Milton?” Dad’s voice. “What’s going on in there?”

“I’m good!” I call out. “I’m in bed! I’m sleeping!”

Everything goes radio silent and I’m about to climb down when Mom asks Dad one more question. “Are we going to have to sell the house?”

I press my ear harder against the wall.

“Can we please just go one day without you asking me that?” Dad says.

The top shelf buckles. I’m riding it like a skateboard but it’s a lost cause. The whole case tips over and I go flying, along with books, stuffed animals, a globe of the earth, framed pictures, and my one athletic award ever, a small gold baseball player holding a bat. Don’t get too excited. Everyone on the T-ball team got one just for showing up.

I land hard on my butt in the middle of the mess and stay there, surrounded by Milton debris and waiting for the inevitable. But for whatever reason Mom and Dad don’t call out to me again. I’m relieved, but also pissed. I mean, I could be lying here with a broken neck.

A picture frame is digging into my already-sore shoulder blade. I move to a sitting position and pick it up. It’s my old Winnie-the-Pooh frame and the top of Winnie’s head now has a jagged crack in it.

“Milton? You okay?” I was wrong, Mom is checking up on me. And that makes me mad, too.

“I’m fine,” I say to the door. “It’s nothing. Some books fell.”

After a moment, she goes away.

I study the photograph. The three of us are sitting on the stoop in front of our house, when I’m maybe three. Snuggles is just a kitten and I’m holding him on my lap and we all look incredibly happy. I set the frame down.

I check the floor for broken glass and me for broken bones. Negative on both counts.

There’s a weird kind of buzzing sound happening inside my skull though. Maybe I have a concussion. I feel my head for lumps, but like I said I landed right on my butt, and I’m pretty sure you can’t get a concussion from that.

The buzzing gets louder, like everything in my brain is getting stirred so hard it starts to dissolve. Stirring feelings. Swirling thoughts.

Step 2. Dissolution.

I move to my desk and grab my laptop. Snuggles sneaks out from under the bed. He glares at the mess, his tail flicking.

“Don’t worry. I’ll clean it up tomorrow,” I say.

I find Evan Lee Joy’s vimeo and replay the beginning. I slooowwww myself down. Put the buzz-saw humming in my brain into a paper bag and set it aside, where it doesn’t stop but it’s definitely muted, so that’s an improvement. But I’m not sure exactly how to feel the groooove of my life.

“Allow your fears to blow away,” Evan Lee Joy says next. “Just like smoke. Take your attention away from your thinking and become aware of your breath. The air flows in and out…in and out…just feel yourself breathing.”

I close my eyes. The buzzing’s still there but pretty soon this other thing starts happening—like now there’s a little space around the buzz, if that makes any sense. And the more I focus on my breath going in and out, the more space there is.

It’s completely illogical, but if it means I’m getting the grooooove of my life going, who gives a crap?

Report from Planet Fear #2

I didn’t always live on Planet Fear, but the signs I might end up there were obvious from the get-go. For instance:

• When I was four I wore a blue cape for almost an entire year, day and night, because I was sure it made me invisible.

• I told my Kindergarten teacher I was adopted.

• The first time I saw my own reflection, I pointed to it, and then I cried. (I don’t remember this but my mother swears it’s true.)

• Once, in the middle of a big thunderstorm, I asked God to prove He existed by stopping the rain. And the rain stopped. Just for a moment, but it stopped. This was years ago. But I’ve never forgotten how weird that moment of complete silence felt. It still freaks me out.

• After I started talking, I talked to everything. Trees. Rocks. My food. The sky. Of course Grandpa Howard still does that and he’s as far from Planet Fear you can possibly be. Light years away.

Here’s the thing: Life on Planet Fear is one big constant worry about “enough.” Am I getting enough? Am I doing enough? Am I good enough?

Grandpa Howard? He is enough.

Chapter Nine

I love it. Dad’s acting like a total maniac. I straddled the empty SmartCarte and hooked my elbows over the back push bar as a joke, and now he’s wheeling me through the baggage claim area at top speed. People are laughing at us except for one lady. She looks like she’s swallowed a lemon whole but everyone else, Mom included, is getting a total charge out of us rampaging to the right carousel.

This is the effect Grandpa Howard has on our atmosphere, even before he’s re-entered it.

We get there just as the first passengers arrive from the gate. They shuffle to the carousel, all hobbling and puffy-eyed like they’ve just been through World War Z or something. Which is funny when you think about it, because Grandpa Howard’s a for-real war veteran but now he strolls up looking totally rested, not to mention pretty spiffed out.

In a Grandpa Howard sort of way.

“Oh God,” Mom says. “Bill, is Dad wearing sandals?”

I check.

Yup. Hawaiian shirt, faded jeans, and sandals. The shirt-of-the-day is bright blue with pink flamingos and he’s got a camouflage backpack slung over one shoulder. His snow-white beard and shoulder-length hair kind of ripple as if there’s a permanent breeze blowing on him, and he’s got this brightness in his eyes. He doesn’t walk so much as flow, and what with the long hair and sandals he gives off a total hippie vibe at first. But pretty soon you notice how his back is ramrod straight and his handshake is knuckle-crunching strong and he always looks you straight in the eye. That would be the soldier part of him. (The way he makes his bed is another dead giveaway—perfectly square corners and blankets so tight you can bounce a coin on them.)

I glance at Mom. She’s opening and closing her fists, but her eyes are wet. Happy wet, I mean.

I make a beeline for my grandfather and I wrap my arms around his middle and he cups the back of my head with one strong palm.

“Jane, honey. You look wonderful,” Grandpa says over my head. He moves me to one side but keeps an arm slung around my shoulders.

“Thanks, Dad,” Mom says, her cheeks turning the same color as the flamingos.

He gives my shoulder a squeeze. “And you, Milton Adams, you are amazing.”

“Amazing that I woke up at five in the morning.”

Grandpa Howard’s laugh is hearty, kind of a yo-ho-ho sound like a pirate would make. He takes me by the shoulders and holds me out in front of him so he can look me up and down. I try not to wince. My wing is still sore from the Carter incident.

“Look at the size of this guy!” he says to my parents. “Boo-yah!”

According to my grandfather, “Boo-yah” is an army veteran’s way of saying “Whoa.”

“I think it’s all that ice cream,” Dad jokes, winking at me, and I’m irritated at him all over again. 56th percentile, I want to say. Everyone, just calm down.

“Chococadabra, right, Milton?” Grandpa is eyeing me and half-smiling, as if he knows exactly what I’m thinking.

It’s so weird. When Mom, or Dad, talks about how tall I’m getting, or tries to hug me, or teases me about stuff, I want to punch something. But Grandpa Howard can say and do the exact same things and I want to climb into his pocket and just live there for the rest of my life.

Dad slaps my grandfather on the back. “Speaking of amazing…You’re in great shape, Stu. What’ve you been doing, lifting weights?”

“Zumba lessons,” Grandpa says, and gets a kind of sly look on his face. “Among other things.”

I bust up laughing.

“You go, Grandpa,” I say, but I can see Mom’s shoulders heading for her ears, and the closed fists are back. Two minutes into the visit, and he’s already starting to bug her. Ooh-rah.

The SmarteCarte turns out to be unnecessary because Grandpa Howard’s bags decided to take a side trip to somewhere else. We finally figure that out after watching the empty carousel spin round and round for, oh, at least twenty-five minutes. Mom and Dad pepper my grandfather with questions, although I notice Zumba doesn’t come up again.

Finally, Mom heaves a big sigh and marches over to confront the nearest official-looking airline guy. Dad’s right behind her. Her arms start flapping and Dad’s shaking his finger.

I pretend I don’t know them.

My grandfather seems mesmerized by the rotating bag-less carousel. Finally, a buzzer goes off, and it rolls to a stop. So that’s that.

“Excited about your birthday?” Grandpa says, still looking straight ahead.

“I guess. Yeah.”

“So how do you feel about your life so far?”

I shoot him a sideways look. You never know if he’s joking or not. “Excuse me?”

My parents are totally losing it.

“How is this even possible?” Mom bleats, her voice high and tight.

“Are you telling us you people lost his bags on a nonstop flight?” Dad chimes in.

Grandpa Howard walks over to them. I’m right on his heels. This, I want to see.

“It’s all right, Bill.” Grandpa Howard rests a hand on Dad’s arm. “I’m fine. I don’t need them right now.”

“That’s not the point!” Dad is steamed. “They screwed up!”

The thing is, Grandpa Howard’s the one who should be steamed, but he isn’t even mildly irritated.

“Here you go,” he says to the baggage attendant. He pulls two claim tickets out of his back pocket and passes them over, and the guy looks relieved that at least somebody’s willing to move on to a solution. My grandfather beams at him as if the airline official’s his long-lost best friend or something.

“And here’s the address where I’m staying.” Grandpa Howard scribbles onto the back of a bright pink business card and presses it into the guy’s hand. I catch the word Zumba on the front of the card.

“Thank you so much, sir. Can you describe your luggage, sir?” the agent asks.

“They’re duffel bags,” Grandpa Howard replies. “They look like bags. With duffels.”

Next, Grandpa Howard pats Dad on the shoulder. “See? Problem solved.”

Dad maybe isn’t so ready to let the argument go, but what can he do?

“Okay, then!” Grandpa Howard’s grin includes all of us. “Anyone else ready for some chow?” He wheels around and heads for the exit and we follow behind him. I’m half surprised the agent doesn’t fall in line behind us. That’s just how it is with my grandfather. Everyone wants to be adopted by him.

Well, everyone but his actual daughter.

Chapter Ten

We find a random coffee shop right outside the airport. Grandpa Howard and I order blueberry pancakes, and not the short stack either, the whole shebang, as he tells the waitress. Mom wants an egg-white omelet and an English muffin. Then Dad asks for a small bowl of oatmeal, no milk, which is so bizarre until he explains about his total cholesterol, which he just found out is over three hundred when it’s supposed to be under two hundred but what does his doctor expect with all the stress he’s under and anyway why can’t he just take a pill like everybody else?

Talk about a blueberry pancake buzz-kill.

When the waitress has cleared our plates, I’m figuring we’re outta there, but Grandpa Howard asks her for some hot water in a teapot. Mom rolls her eyes at Dad. He shrugs. Then they both whip out their phones and start reading and returning texts.

“Here you go, hon,” the waitress says, and sets a small metal teapot next to Grandpa Howard.

“I appreciate it. Thank you.”

He slides a rolled tube of red cloth from his backpack and spreads out the material in front of him, smoothing it straight. There’s Chinese lettering on the cloth; at least I think it’s Chinese. Asian, anyway. A small cup comes next, same color red. More like a little bowl, actually; there’s no handle. He sets it on the cloth. Finally, he pulls out a little perforated metal ball with its own little chain and a baggie of loose green leaves that look suspiciously like weed.

I discard that hypothesis. Even for Grandpa Howard that would be too crazy. Right?

He pries opens the ball, tamps one side full with three big pinches of leaves, and snaps the ball together again. He sets it aside. Everything is slow and deliberate, like he’s moving at half speed. Now he lifts the pot, moves it over to the cup, fills the cup with hot water, moves the pot away and sets it down, picks the cup back up, and swirls the hot water around. I can feel my mother starting to freak out right about now.

He dunks the ball into his cup a few times, moves it to the teapot and submerges it, and leaves it in there hanging by its chain.

He empties the hot water from his cup into his water glass.

“Do you do anything normally, Grandpa Howard?” I ask.

“Work out your body, see results. Work out your beauty, see results,” he replies.

Dad decides to translate. “That means, ‘No,’ son.”

Meanwhile, Mom’s working out some worry, as usual. She’s been doing it ever since we sat down, saying things to Grandpa Howard like, “How are you doing, really?” and “Everything okay with your new place?” and “I worry when you don’t call,” and now she comes out with, “So. Five years, Dad. It’s a long time since Mom passed away.”

“This is true,” Grandpa Howard says.

I can sense how careful Mom’s being with her words and my pancakes start to churn. “What I’m trying to say is, well, you’ve always been so cautious about money and things…”

“I’m still cautious. I took the red-eye, no?” Grandpa Howard half-winks at me. “Not that I wouldn’t anyway. It’s not only cheaper, it’s a lot more beautiful flying through the night.”

“Dad, I’m being serious. I’m worried about you.”

His eyes soften. “I can see that, Jane. I just don’t know why. What exactly do you want me to do that you think I’m not already doing?”

There’s that question again: what do you want me to do? Mom must get that a lot.

She shakes her head. “You know…make sure you’ve got proper insurance, for one. And, I don’t know, get your living will set up? Set your affairs in order? You’re not getting any younger, and, you know, some of your choices lately have been…”

“I mean come on, Stuart. Zumba lessons?” My father has jumped in, but I don’t know if it’s because he wants to, or because Mom wants him to. Either way, it kind of sucks.

Grandpa Howard turns to look at Dad now. I want to say something, defend him and his Zumba and his tea ball and Hawaiian shirts but he doesn’t need me to. He’s calm and his eyes are kind.

“What if something happens? What if you’re alone and you have a fall?” Dad’s voice is strained, and that’s how I know he’s actually worried, too.

Grandpa Howard pats himself down. “Nothing falling right now,” he says.

Mom and Dad share one of those “I give up” looks. Grandpa finally pours the steeped tea into his cup. It’s light green, the color of new grass. He raises the cup with both hands to his face and buries his nose in it. He inhales, just like Dad did with the wine.

“Is it earthy?” I ask.

He passes over the cup and I take a big, long whiff. Which I immediately regret doing. “Earthy” would have been fine. “Dead-fishy”? Not so much. I search for a more polite way to describe the scent.

“It smells like seaweed,” I say, returning the cup before he gets any ideas about sharing.

He takes a sip and closes his eyes, his face melting with pleasure like the tea is totally delicious. Don’t ask me.

“Here you go.” The waitress drops the check on the table. Grandpa Howard opens his eyes and reaches for it.

“No!” Mom says.

Grandpa Howard looks confused. “Please, why don’t you let me?” Mom glares at Dad, her eyes like daggers.

Dad takes the check, even though I can tell he doesn’t know what the big deal is either. “No. Our treat, Stuart. You’re our guest.”

The silence that follows is full of a weird tension, and the buzzing starts up in my head again. Faint, but there.

“In that case, I accept.” Grandpa Howard rolls up the red cloth and tucks it into his backpack, along with the cup. He snaps open the silver ball and uses a spoon to scrape the wet tea leaves into a paper napkin, folds the napkin into a little packet, and wraps that up in another paper napkin which he adds to his pack. “So, Milton. What do you want for your big day?” he asks.

“A way out,” I mutter, too low for anyone to hear.

Things aren’t any better when we get home. First of all, Brutus busts loose from his chain yet again as we drive past the Cranes’ house. He runs alongside our car, barking so hard I’m surprised his throat isn’t bleeding.

“That damn dog,” Dad says.

“Ignore him,” Mom says.

Grandpa Howard lowers his window and sticks his head out. All the way out.

“Grandpa, don’t!”

He pats my leg.

“Woof! Woof! Woof!” he barks at Brutus. “Ruff! Ruff! Woof! Ruff! Woof!” Brutus stops dead and stares at my grandfather, as shocked as I am. I’m just praying Carter isn’t anywhere close by. We turn into our carport.

Grandpa Howard’s duffel bags are by the front door.

“See, Bill?” Grandpa Howard says. “Nothing to worry about,” and the tips of my father’s ears turn pink.

I glance across at the Cranes’ house. Brutus hasn’t moved a whisker. He may never get over this.

As Mom and Dad carry the duffel bags inside, Timmy rides up, which is just icing on the cake because it reminds me this is a school day. I’ve had such a strange morning I’d kind of persuaded myself it was still the weekend.

I realize how much I don’t want to go to school. How much I do want to be here with Grandpa Howard. I glance over at him. He’s walked to the edge of the house. He’s frowning a little, looking at the visible corner of the backyard. The ground is bare and cracked and a couple of last year’s sunflower stems are sticking out all bent over and dead-looking.

“Hey, Mr. Howard,” Timmy says, and my grandfather’s concerned expression eases as he turns.

“Timmy Klenhard, is that you?” Grandpa Howard shakes his head in awe. “You’re sprouting like a ragweed!” I know Grandpa doesn’t mean to, but he hurts my feelings a little. I’m not sure what I’m sprouting like, but it’s not a ragweed, that’s for sure.

“Ragweed,” Timmy says, drawing himself upright. “That’s me.”

“Grandpa Howard, just so you realize, the name is ‘Tim’ now,” I put in, my voice a little sarcastic. “Because, you know…”

But Grandpa Howard ignores my tone. His expression is serious, his voice solid. “Oh, yes. I do know.”

Tim is confused. “How do you know…?”

“Because when I was a child I spoke as a child and felt as a child and understood as a child. But when I grew up it was time to put away childish things…”

Tim looks at me like, Dude, is your grandfather Dumbledore, or what?

Welcome to my world, I want to reply as Grandpa Howard adds, “Corinthians, Thirteen,” and then I realize I’ve heard these words before, at church, but still this is the first time I’ve actually heard them, you know?

Mom comes outside with my school backpack. “Got your lunch money?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say. Sometimes I think if it weren’t for lunch money, we might never talk at all.

As I climb onto my bike, I get hit with a brainstorm. Time to put away one more childish thing. No more calling my grandfather Grandpa Howard. From now on it’s…

“See you later, G-Pop.”

He raises one arm high and straight, like a magic wand.

Chapter Eleven

We hit our seats just as the final bell rings. It’s Monday morning chaos, as usual. I check the front row. Anna’s long blonde hair snakes down her back in a complicated braid, the strands kind of woven inside out. Timmy’s desk is right behind mine—we’re in the two middle rows. I realize I forgot to tell him about my grandfather’s bizarro tea ceremony. As I turn to get his attention, a couple of finger-things happen at once: Carter, slouched in the back row, raises his middle one at me just as Ms. Ferguson, up front, lets loose a fierce, ear-piercing whistle with two of hers. The silence is instantaneous.

I snap face-forward.

“So,” Ms. Ferguson says. “Any questions about your Parents’ Day speeches?”

No hands. Either everyone else has already finished theirs, or (one can only hope) they are as freaked out as I am and don’t want anyone to know. Anna is thumb-typing furiously on her smartphone. Ms. Ferguson glides close. I wish I could warn Anna—poke her or nudge her—but I’m too many desk-lengths away to help out.

“Doing some research, Anna?” Ms. Ferguson’s voice is frosty. Anna shoves her phone into her backpack.

“Sorry,” Anna says.

Ms. Ferguson raises her voice. “Pay attention to both content and presentation. You will be getting graded.”

I groan, but at least I’m not the only one doing it.

“My recommendation? Put your electronic devices to good use. Record your speeches. Watch them, more than once. That way you can make changes and adjust the timing.”

That way you can measure exactly how big an ass you are making out of yourself.

Ms. Ferguson strolls by my desk. I can’t help it, my nostrils flare as I breathe in her flowery scent. She keeps walking and I turn to catch Timmy’s eye, but instead I catch Carter’s—he’s staring straight at me, his glare boring into me like a drill. He mouths a word that lands like a rock in my stomach: Dead.

I wheel around. And then it starts again, at the base of my skull.

That buzz.

Focus, Milton. Focus on picking a topic.

Okay. Maybe I can talk about Merlin.

Yeah, if you were still in Kindergarten. Baby baby baaaay-beeee.

Fine. How about the third law of thermodynamics?

Nerd alert! Nerd Alert!

I’ve got it. “Why Ms. Ferguson is the Best Teacher Ever.” It’s genius. Think about it, she can’t flunk me no matter what.

You’re kidding, right? Talk about sucking up…

“Does anyone know the secret to public speaking?” Ms. Ferguson’s voice cuts through the swarm of stinging bees that has invaded my brain.

“Projectile vomiting?” Timmy asks, but my head hurts too much to laugh.

“The secret is to speak the truth,” Ms. Ferguson says, ignoring the snorts and giggles in the room. “Straight from the heart.”

I think about Grandpa Howard’s face when he was pouring the tea. Tea ceremonies, maybe?

“We don’t know about truth, Ms. Ferguson. All we know is emojis and Instagram!” Timmy is really pushing things. Probably not the best way to win her, I want to point out.

“You know it when you feel it, Tim,” she says, and moves on to the back row. Carter Crane territory.

Tea ceremonies. Right. They’d howl me off the stage.

I sneak another look. Carter’s slouched so low in his chair he might as well be lying on the floor.

“Carter? Have you chosen a topic?”

Carter shakes his head. He won’t look at her.

“How about climate change?” Ms. Ferguson suggests.

As if.

“Hate that topic,” Carter mutters.

“Okay. How about recycling?”

“Hate that, too.”

“Okay, well, is there any topic you don’t hate?” I can’t believe she’s being so patient with this dicktard.

“Hate ‘em all,” Carter says, his voice rising to the level of sneer.

“Good. Then that will be your topic. ‘Why I Hate Everything.’”

Nailed you, I think.

Carter fixes me in his sights and suddenly I don’t feel so superior because face it, I’m right at the top of his list.

Report from Planet Fear #3

Even though I’m the only one living on Planet Fear, it’s loud and raucous and overrun with voices almost all the time.

There’s the whispering voice that tells me I’m too stupid to live and the bragging voice that thinks I’m way smarter than everyone else.

The responsible voice that says it’s all up to me, and the whiny voice that wishes I didn’t have to do a single thing ever again.

The scornful voice that reminds me I’m too small to matter and the sneaky voice that’s so busy pretending I don’t even know when I’ve left the truth behind.

The voice that insists no one will ever love me, and the voice that urges me not to care since who needs anyone else anyway?

The voice that wishes I could stay a baby and the one that can’t wait to be a grown-up so I can escape.

Blaming voices. Resentful voices. Fearful voices. Judging voices.

No wonder I can’t think straight.

Q: When are the voices quiet?

A: Sometimes when I’m asleep.

Q: What about when you’re awake?

A: It’s okay when I’m concentrating on something I love doing like looking through my telescope or riding my bike. Or when I listen to Steal My Sunshine or hold Snuggles on my lap and he purrs so loud his fur vibrates. But lately? Lately even when I’m doing things I love, things that used to turn the volume way down, the voices are winning.

Why do you think I’m so scared up here?

Chapter Thirteen

“Holy crap. Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Timmy asks.

I am. Ms. Ferguson is blowing the minds of two ninth graders who were just showing off big-time on the climbing structure. She’s moved right next to them and is doing chin-ups on the monkey bars. She’s already ripped off ten or fifteen and she isn’t even breaking a sweat.

It occurs to me our teacher may actually be nuts, but so what? I really like her. I’m humming “Steal My Sunshine” under my breath, in a pretty good mood.

Anna slips onto the bench next to Timmy and me. She’s holding her paperback in one hand, and this time I see the word Galaxy.

I wish I could talk to her.

I’ve just started eating my sandwich but I set it aside on the picnic table. Why invite random food detritus? (de·tri·tus dəˈtrīdəs/noun: 1. waste or debris of any kind. 2. organic matter produced by the decomposition of organisms: Midterm Vocabulary Test word #78).

“Check this out. I mean, if you want to,” Anna says. I think she’s going to hand over her book but instead she passes me her iPhone, playlist pulled up. “You can’t go your whole life with just one song.”

“I don’t have just…” But she’s right. Steal My Sunshine is the only song I like, which is borderline retarded even if it is the remix. “Okay,” I say.

I scroll down her list. Seriously retro. Arctic Monkeys. Barenaked Ladies. Beatles (lots). Then I see a weird one. Spanish, maybe. “Bolero?” I click on the song. It starts really quiet, with just this drumbeat: danh da-da-da danh da-da-da danh danh, danh da-da-da danh da-da-da danh danh danh danh and then this slinky horn sound kind of snakes through the beats. My head starts nodding along. So does Timmy’s.

“Maurice Ravel,” Anna says. “Do you know that rock and roll incorporates the same beat as sexual intercourse? That’s why Ravel’s Bolero is the one piece of classical music that is known and admired by teenagers worldwide.” She beams at me. Is this some kind of test?

“Uh.”

Timmy’s look screams “Awkkkkwarddd.”

Anna’s phone flies out of my hand. It lands on the wood chips underneath, the horns still wailing.

Carter, again. His eyes dare me to react.

“Hey,” I say. “Cut it out.”

“Watcha gonna do about it, Milly Willy?”

Anna dives for her phone and straightens up, her eyes flashing. She mutes the music. “What the hell? You’re such a jerk!”

Carter wheels on her. “Stay out of this, princess.”

I can tell Anna doesn’t want to back down so I move in between them. “Carter! Dude! That wasn’t even my phone!”

“Milly wanna do something? What’s little Milly Willy want to do?”

A red mist kind of passes over my eyes but before I can shove him he’s got me by the shoulders and he hooks the back of one of my legs with his knee and pushes and I’m down on the ground with Carter’s snarling face inches from mine. I see Timmy over Carter’s shoulder, freeze-tag frozen. Like totally paralyzed.

“Somebody!” Anna shouts. “Get a teacher! You!” and this skinny Goth kid—Ace we call him but that’s not his actual name—is lurking a few yards away. He comes to, like, Oh! you mean me? and then takes off running to get help and if the ground could swallow me up whole right now I’d be the happiest almost twelve-year-old alive.

“Fight! Fight!” I hear all around me. More and more kids show up like, Hey this is great! Nothing like this ever happens at our school, and Carter leans harder on my chest and shoulders, both knees on my ribs and I’m struggling, but I’m only in the 56th percentile for height and 12th percentile for weight and Carter’s like off the charts for both. Plus he’s totally lost his shit.

Anna grabs one of Carter’s arms and pulls. “What are you doing? Stop it! What are you doing to him?”

Carter swats her away like she’s a little bug or something and gets even more in my face.

“Welcome to my lunch club, asshole.”

“What?” His lunch club?

He forces my head to one side and presses down on the side of my face and now gravel and chips of wood are cutting into my cheek. “Here are the rules, Milly Willy,” he breathes into my ear, elbow against my throat. “One: Your lunch money. Every day, got it? Two: Your password and account number for your PlayStation. And three, if you even think about telling anyone, you’ll wind up a zombie, the freaking walking dead.”

Black spots start to dance across my vision. “I can’t breathe. You’re crushing me!” I croak. “He’s crushing me!”

At the last possible moment, Carter stands up. I gulp air. He pulls out his phone and points it at me.

“C’mon. Gimme a smile, Milly Willy.”

I guess he wants to record my humiliation for his report. That way he can watch it more than once. Make changes and adjust the timing.

I struggle to my feet, gravel still stuck to my cheek. My eyes sting, but no way am I going to cry, not if I have to gouge out my eyeballs and bite my tongue in two.

As bad as my nightmares are these days, this is worse.

“What?” Carter sneers. “Gonna cry now? Gonna willy in your pants?”

I hate him so much.

“What’s your problem?” I ask, and my words are lame and weak and I wish I could erase them. I wish I could erase me.

Carter reaches back with one leg to kick my shin and I don’t even try to get out of the way, I could care less, when Ms. Ferguson rushes up and grips both his arms. She’s got twenty-pushups-a-day guns and he winces and I’m glad she’s hurt him. I hope she hurts him even more.

Why couldn’t he just stay invisible?

“To the principal’s office, Mr. Crane. Now.”

“It was just a joke,” Carter says, but even he knows that won’t fly so he plays the ADD card. “I’ve got learning disabilities. I have no self-control,” he whines. “What can I say? I’m sorry.”

Ms. Ferguson jerks her thumb in the direction of the school office. I can’t look at Anna, and Timmy can’t look at me. As Carter slinks away, he throws me a look over his shoulder. “See you later, neighbor,” he says, and it’s genius, because of course I realize I can’t stop this from happening, I’m never going to be able to stop this from happening, not at school, not at home, not anywhere, because he knows where I live and I know where he lives and nowhere is safe.

Planet Fear isn’t in outer space anymore, it’s here it’s here it’s right here.

Chapter Fourteen

There’s still forty minutes left to lunch hour. I’m not supposed to leave the school campus but I really don’t give a rat’s ass. I get on my bike and I just take off. Who knows? Maybe I’ll never come back.

I start to pedal home but the thought of maybe running into Carter in case he gets suspended for the day sends me in the opposite direction, past the high school’s football field.

Balloon Man looks as frantic as ever, and I give him the finger as I wheel past.

I’m pedaling pretty randomly, trying to outrun the roar that’s filling my skull. It’s amplified from electric pencil sharpener to blender to full-on leaf-blower. As I round Sycamore Avenue I see a familiar red Fiat parked next to an Open House sign, and there’s my mom’s picture, smiling away. A white balloon tied to the mailbox droops inches from the ground, like it’s exhausted. The string lies in a sad tangle on the fresh-mowed lawn.

The front door is slightly ajar.

I lean my bike against the signpost and sneak inside.

The house smells like fresh-baked cookies. My empty stomach grumbles. I hear my mother’s voice in a room off the front hallway, talking to someone else, a man.

Grandpa Howard.

I inch over to the arched opening, keeping my body flat against the wall. They’re sitting across from each other at a fancy kitchen island that looks brand new. Mom has high heels and bright red lipstick on, and her white shirt is buttoned all the way up to her chin. Grandpa Howard has changed into another Hawaiian shirt. Purple palm trees. He removes a brochure from a neat stack on the island, set next to a platter of baby carrots and celery sticks and a bowl of dip. I don’t see the cookies anywhere.

“Does there have to be something wrong for me to come and see my daughter at work?” He looks around the butter yellow kitchen and I duck out of sight. “I do love a good Open House. All that fresh paint and cut grass and optimism. Still, it’s ironic, isn’t it? People never seem to fix things the way they want them until they’re about to vacate the premises. Any takers?”

“It’s a broker’s open, Dad. The second one. Not that anyone’s noticed either way.”

“Not a good turnout, eh?”

Mom says nothing.

I move closer to the doorway, just as Grandpa Howard takes a carrot and dips it.

“Dad…” but Mom doesn’t sound mad, just resigned.

“What? Can’t let a good carrot go to waste.”

The oven dings and she pulls out a tray of chocolate chip cookies.

“Now we’re talking,” Grandpa Howard says.

Mom starts transferring the cookies to a plate. “This one couple did fall in love with this place. If only their credit wasn’t a complete mess.” She shakes her head. “You know what happens when a listing sits on the market for longer than two weeks?”

Uh, let me guess. You’re screwed?

“You’re afraid you won’t move it.” Grandpa Howard’s voice is gentle, but it’s not a question, it’s a statement of fact.

“Well…yes. And Bill and I…Well, with this economy…” Her voice gets kind of thick. My grandfather pulls a red bandanna from his jeans pocket and gives it to my mother and she pats her eyes. That stupid gunk she puts on her eyelashes when she’s trying too hard smears underneath so she looks like she hasn’t slept in a year.

“This is so stupid,” Mom says. “I don’t know why I’m so emotional…” She hands the bandanna back. “I sure didn’t get it from you.”

Grandfather Howard kind of rears back, but his voice is twinkling. “What. You’re saying I wasn’t a sensitive father?”

‘Yes sir! No, sir! Captain Howard, sir!”

Grandpa Howard takes a cookie and bites into it. My mouth is watering, but I know if I let them know I’m here they’ll stop talking about anything important. It’s just the way it is. He chews for a while before he swallows. “Delish,” he says.

Mom shakes her head, like it’s no use.

Grandpa Howard finishes the cookie. He touches my mom’s arm. “Maybe it’s time to let some of these old stories go, Jane. Discard what’s toxic. I can’t change the past. And neither can you.”

Separation, I think. Step 3.

“That’s too bad.” Her voice hardens. “As a kid, I couldn’t even get a look from you. And now you’re all peace, and all you need is love, and…and, tea ceremonies.”

Grandpa’s voice is low, but I can still hear the sadness. I feel sad too, suddenly. “It’s complicated,” he says.

There’s a kitchen clock on the wall over the stove. Already quarter to. Shit. I back out of the house, jump on my bike, and pump like a lunatic so I don’t get a tardiness demerit.

I time it perfectly, actually, and I make it to my seat just as the second bell goes off. This way I don’t have to talk to anybody. It’s English now, and Ms. Ferguson is writing the name Rudyard Kipling on the blackboard.

“‘If you can dream and not make dreams your master,’” she recites, “‘If you can think, and not make thoughts your aim...’”

Talk about hitting a kid where it hurts.

“Notice Kipling does not speak of heroic deeds here, or money, or fame. So what is he trying to say in this poem? Somebody? Anybody?”

No way am I going anywhere near this poem. But Anna wades in, fearless, as usual. “He needs professional guidance. He’s written a poem called ‘If.’ He’s introducing a hypothetical situation. He’s in a mood.”

“Excellent, Anna, if overwrought. Let’s go on. ‘If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs…’”

Carter’s desk is empty, but even the absence of Carter sets off a high-pitched whine, a dentist-drill this time, and it blankets Ms. Ferguson’s voice with a shrill stream of static.

All about you are losing losing losing theirs keep your head keep your… I close my eyes and Balloon Man is there thrashing and flailing his limbs against the rim of my skull and Ms. Ferguson says, “Let’s look at the first stanza,” and my phone buzzes and when I look down it’s me Milton Adams gravel pocking my cheek, red-rimmed eyes full of…oh shit you can actually see the tears and Carter’s voice, C’mon Milly Willy give me a smile. What? Gonna cry? Gonna willy in your pants?

“Milton, what do you think that means?”

I look up to find Ms. Ferguson pinning me with her eyes.

“I…What?”

“What do you think Kipling means by the first stanza of his poem?”

“I…” I swallow. Try again. “I’m sorry. I lost my train of thought.”

“Well, if something comes to you, please feel free to enlighten us.” You gonna willy in your

I am never going to survive this. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never.

Chapter Fifteen

I dump my bike on the front lawn. The carport is empty. Good.

Grandpa Howard is out back, on his knees like he’s praying except he’s got some kind of badass jungle knife in one hand and he’s holding dead weeds tight in the other fist as he hacks away. He’s set up two small speakers on the outside windowsill and some freakish song about a “hurdy gurdy man” is blasting through them.

I’m so not in the mood.

I grab a stale bran muffin from the breadbox in the kitchen and head downstairs to the cellar as I stuff it down. There are a ton of crates and cardboard boxes, and my old car seat, and Dad’s unicycle that he never rode, and I’m shoving things out of my way because I can see what I need pushed against the back next to a pair of snowshoes.

It’s a weight machine and it’s going to save my life.

I barely move it an inch off the wall, which is not such a good start, but I finally angle one side far enough to use it, the bottom of the frame squealing and scraping against the cement floor. I mount the metal saddle and grasp the crossbar with my hands. I don’t know how much the barbells weigh, but they look manageable. I lift with everything I’ve got. Nothing. I try harder, my eyes bulging, but it’s no use. I rest my forehead against the iron bar. The metal feels cool against my skin.

“It’s official,” Grandpa Howard says. “Me and Brutus. We have a bond.”

I lift my head. He’s standing at the bottom of the cellar stairs. “Brutus is psycho, G-Pop,” I say.

“We’re tight now. We found out we both prefer to pee on the grass.”

You’re psycho, I think, but then I take it back. If I don’t like my grandfather, there’s literally no point.

He walks over and puts his hand on my scraped cheek, his touch so butterfly light I can barely feel it.

“Hurt much?”

“I fell off my bike.” It just pops out but as a lie it’s not bad.

“I could put something on it.”

“I’m fine,” I say.

Grandfather Howard backs off, but he doesn’t leave. The hum starts up again and I want to punch something. Hard.

“Try taking a breath, Milton.”

“I am breathing. I breathe all the time.” I suck in a big lungful and blow it out as hard as I can and my lips flutter like a horse. “There, see? Jeeze.”

The buzz gets louder.

I jump off the weight machine and push past him and clatter up the cellar stairs, and now I’m grabbing my head because it’s gotten so bad, and I keep going up up upstairs and I don’t knock, I just run into my bedroom and slam the door behind me.

I fall back onto my bed.

Bzzzzzz.

Make it stop make it stop

take your attention away from your thinking

become aware of your

breath

your breath the air flows in and out

in and

out

and bre

ath

ing

The sound is so slight. A tap-tap and that’s it. But then I hear it again: tap-tap. It’s definitely a knock.

“Okay,” I say but I don’t open my eyes.

The door opens and then closes. The mattress shifts next to me.

“Anything you want to discuss?” Grandfather Howard. He came.

I shake my head.

“Well, I have something to say, so bear with me. Even if you remember nothing else I’ve ever told you, try to remember this, okay? Feelings? They’re just like houseguests, Milton. They all leave eventually. The ones you hate, the ones you love, the ones you have no opinion on. Houseguests come, and then they go.”

As I think this over, he stands up. “Even me,” he says.

I open my eyes. “Dad says you’re a train wreck waiting to happen. He thinks something bad happened to you when you were at war, and that’s why you’re so strange and why you make stuff up all the time. Weird stuff that can’t possibly be true.”

Grandpa Howard’s eyes narrow and he flinches a little like the words have landed somewhere sore. Then he kind of covers it all up. “A skeptic in the family? Why is this the first I’m hearing of it?”

He sits next to me on the bed and holds out his palms. They are crisscrossed with fine spider web strands. He lines up his two wrists and slowly rolls his palms upright until they’re pressed together all the way to the fingertips, like he’s praying.

“See how one set of fingers is shorter than the other?”

I nod.

“You try,” he says.

I don’t have nearly as many lines on my inner wrists, but I match up two faint ones and press my hands into the same prayer position. I’m suspicious now, because somehow he’s made it so we both look ready to start in with the Lord’s Prayer and I’m not sure how I feel about that.

But as usual my grandfather has something unexpected in mind.

“How about yours? One set of fingers shorter than the other?”

I nod my head. My right hand is definitely the runty one.

“Lift up that hand.”

I check again. My right hand is still shorter, so I raise it.

“Now, close your eyes.”

“G-Pop, this is…”

“Humor me, okay?”

I close my eyes.

“Okay. Good. Now smile.”

Seriously?

I force a smile and it lands kind of halfway between Mom’s freeze-tag deal and her real one.

“Now repeat after me, ‘My fingers are growing longer and longer.’ “

“My fingers…”

“Sorry, I mean repeat it in your head, not out loud. ‘My fingers are growing longer and longer. Longer and longer and still longer.’”

Ooooh-kayyy. My fingers are growing longer and longer and longer and still longer.

“Did you do it?”

I nod.

“Good. Time to compare hands again.”

I open my eyes and set up my palms, same as before. Only this time the fingers on my right hand are longer, I mean way longer, than my left’s.

“How did you do that. G-Pop?”

“Nothing to do with me,” Grandpa Howard says.

Right.

Grandpa Howard claps me on my back, his eyes twinkling. “Be skeptical, Milton. It’s a good thing.” He stands up, but he’s still not finished. “But be skeptical of your skepticism.”

I stay on my bed. What does that mean, to be skeptical of your skepticism? I mean, if you’re willing to doubt everything you know, then there’s never any end to what might be true, or false for that matter. But then I think about science. The scientific method. You observe stuff, sure, and test the results, and you may even come up with an explanation, but then you have to test that, too. It’s an ongoing process, is what I’m saying, and you have to keep an open mind if you’re going to get anywhere. You have to be skeptical of your skepticism.

You have to leave room for alchemy.

My parents must have both just gotten home. I hear them walking up the stairs talking. They pass my door and go directly into their bedroom. I jump out of bed and push my chair to the wall—the bookcase is still overturned in the middle of a big mess. I no longer consider this eavesdropping, by the way, I consider it collecting more data.

“The problem is, what he thinks is open-mindedness is really just being gullible,” my mom says.

“I don’t know, Jane. I’m torn.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”

Are they talking about me?

“Hey,” Dad says, “who wouldn’t want to be with a bunch of happy free-thinkers who drum in circles, hug nonstop, and get naked just for the hell of it?”

Okay, so clearly not me. There’s only one other candidate, first name G, last name Pop.

“Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little. But c’mon, honey. Full-moon skinny-dipping? Is that so bad?”

“Well now you’re just scaring me. What’s next? Crystals? Feng shui? Don’t get me started. They’re all a bunch of spoiled new age hippies with trust funds.”

What the heck is fang shooey? I’ll look it up later.

Dad’s voice is rising. “Your father is a combat-decorated retired Force Recon, Jane, hardly a…”

“So now you’re defending him?” Uh oh, she’s getting upset again. “No fair. You can’t do that.” There’s a long gap. Then, “I don’t feel like being reasonable today, Bill.” Mom’s voice is wobbly now, not angry. “I feel like hiding away.”

I climb down from the chair. This kind of data isn’t helpful to me, not unless rue is the hoped-for result. (Rue/roō/ noun: archaic. A feeling of sorrow; repentance; regret. #29)

I get back into bed and fall into a dream.

We’re riding bikes along our street, both my parents, and me. I’m on my old red trike, but it’s big, like for a kid my age. Mom’s bike has training wheels. Dad’s is normal.

Another bicycle glides up next to us. There’s a woman on it. Luz. Semi-Luz, actually. Her top half is normal but her bottom half is shaped like a serpent’s tail, or a scorpion’s. I don’t understand how she can be moving so fast. With no legs there’s nothing for her to pedal with.

The end of her tail curls up and over to Dad and touches him on the shoulder. My father kind of slides off his bike and rolls onto the ground.

He’s not moving.

Next, she touches her tail to Mom and now she’s down and motionless, just like Dad.

Before she can reach me, I roll off my tricycle and lie on my back and play dead, my eyes squeezed shut.

“Open your eyes,” she says.

No way.

“Open your eyes, Milton. It’s time for a new way of seeing.”

I open them. The Semi-Luz smiles, and I don’t feel quite as scared. She leans over and kisses me on the cheek. She gets back on her bike and starts to glide away.

“What about Mom and Dad?” I call after her. She doesn’t say anything. “WHAT ABOUT MOM AND DAD?”

“I’m sorry,” her voice floats back. “That’s not my job.”

I jolt awake. I feel really weird and excited, but also a little sad. What did the dream-Luz say?

It’s time for a new way of seeing.

And it hits me. Step 4 in the alchemical process of transformation: Conjunction—reuniting the separated parts into a new way of seeing.

My heart is still thump-a-thumping and now Brutus starts going ballistic in the Cranes’ front yard. I jump out of bed and move to the window. I push it open and lean out, just a little. Mr. Crane has twisted Carter’s arm painfully high behind his back as he forces him up the walkway to their house.

Carter’s expression is flat and unmoving, like stone.

So now I know where Carter learned his shove-walking technique. I wish I could unsee these things but I can’t, any more than Carter can un-feel them.

And that makes me sad, too.

Report from Planet Fear #4

Here’s what I now know:

Planet Fear doesn’t have a temperature because Planet Fear knows for a fact that hot can lead to burning and cold can make you freeze.

Planet Fear is colorless but if it had a color it would be gray.

On Planet Fear you’re never fully awake and never completely asleep.

Planet Fear is silent as in dead still as in absent of sound waves, high or low. Or it was. Now it’s more like a voiceless scream.

Planet Fear refuses to show its true face.

(Maybe it never had a face to begin with.)

Chapter Seventeen

Another night. Another family dinner.

Report now due in T minus four days.

The bite of lettuce is slimy. I chew and swallow as fast as I can and use my fork to push the rest to one side so it looks like I’ve eaten more than I have.

Phup. Another cork exits another bottle of expensive red wine.

“I mean the guy admits the broker is his cousin. So I say: he’s family! He’s just telling you what you want to hear. I’m telling you the truth.”

I spear a cherry tomato and shove it in my mouth.

“So he hangs up on me.”

My teeth chomp down on the skin and the insides squirt into my mouth, tiny seeds and more sliminess and I swallow without tasting a thing.

Across the table, I see my grandfather pluck a dead fly out of his rice dish with his fingers. Oh my god. He’s going to actually do it, he’s going to eat a dead fly. He’s completely lost his mind.

Should I tell him?

He chews and chews and chews and I’m totally about to heave as he finally swallows and then he picks up another one and I realize…

It’s a raisin.

Mom put raisins in the rice.

Dad lifts up the salad bowl. “More?” he says, to no one in particular, and no one in particular answers.

I’m not about to stop watching my grandfather because even if it is just a raisin he’s taking, like, ten years to eat each one and I can’t figure out why.

So I do my own test.

I study my untouched mound of rice. I count five raisins and maybe seven slivers of almond, which is why I didn’t eat any in the first place because the whole idea of raisins and almonds in rice doesn’t make sense. I decide on the best candidate, as in the plumpest, and place it in my mouth.

I poke and explore the wrinkles with my tongue. How does a grape get so wrinkled, anyway? Is it sun damage? A lifetime of anxiety? I maneuver the raisin to one side, so that it’s balanced on my right molar. I lower my jaw and slowly slowly slowly squeeze my teeth together.

Whoa.

The flavor is kind of smoky but also fruity and if I wasn’t such a skeptic I’d swear it was the most raisin-y raisin I ever tasted. Like this is the first time I comprehend what a raisin is. I mush it with my tongue against the roof of my mouth and the rubbery wrinkled bullet dissolves into little shreds of juicy skin and the taste gets mellower and blander but it’s still delicious.

Crazy, right?

A ringtone interrupts my raisin euphoria. It’s definitely not Mom’s or Dad’s phone because first of all it’s in the other room and second of all When the Saints Go Marching In is not the first choice of ambitious brokers, whether they’re broking real estate or stocks.

That’s called a play on words.

My brain fills in the lyrics. We used to sing this at summer camp: Oh when the saints! Go marching in!

“Dad?” Mom asks, but he’s busy chewing raisin number three and at the rate he’s going he’ll still be sitting here when the rest of us come downstairs for breakfast.

When the Saints. Go. March. Ing. In.

“Aren’t you going to answer that?” Dad asks. He’s all jittery now and his hand half-reaches for his iPhone like he’s jonesing for a data fix himself and he doesn’t even know he’s having withdrawal symptoms.

Grandpa Howard swallows his raisin. “We’re having dinner,” he says.

“Oh, for…” Mom jumps up from the table and stiff-walks into the other room.

Oh Lord I want to be in that number…

“Stuart Howard’s phone!” Mom’s voice is so bright I’m surprised she doesn’t light up the living room. “Oh.” The dimmer goes on, big-time. “One moment please.”

She comes back in, holding the phone away from her body like it’s toxic or something. “It’s someone called Dusty.”

My grandfather abandons his raisins without a backward glance. He’s got a shit-eating grin on his face, which makes me hypothesize that Dusty isn’t a guy.

Mom lands in her chair with a thunk and starts chewing on a thumbnail.

“What’s with your face?” Dad suddenly asks me. “You run into a wall or something?”

I touch my cheek. It’s gotten all hot and puffy.

“You look like that guy from that movie,” he adds.

I don’t say anything. Does he want me to read his mind?

“Hellboy!” And Dad busts up laughing. He’s so pleased with himself.

“Bill.” Mom’s not laughing, far from it. “Dusty is a woman. I think she’s his…You know. I could tell.”

“So?” Dad asks, and I hate him a little less because of it.

Grandfather Howard ambles back inside. He looks like he’s just had a double scoop of chococadabra, with sprinkles. Mom gives him the stink eye, and Dad and I are staring, too, we can’t help it. This is news.

“Let me guess. You thought I fell down in there,” he jokes.

“Who is Dusty?” Mom’s jaw is clamped and she kind of forces the words through the tight wall of teeth.

“My girlfriend,” Grandpa Howard says, his voice all soft and swoony.

“Excuse me?” Mom heard him. She just doesn’t want to believe him.

“I met her in Zumba class. Actually, to be precise, she’s my instructor. A real sweetie.” My grandfather tips back in his chair and hooks his hands behind his head. His elbows jut out like happy wrinkled wings. “She teaches me Zumba, and I’m teaching her how to ride my hog. It’s called bartering our services.”

“Oh good God.” Mom moves up the scale from unhappy to horrified.

I jump in. “It’s a motorcycle, Mom. It’s not a hog-hog.”

“I know what it is, Milton.” She pivots back to Grandpa Howard. “What exactly are you trying to prove?”

“You’re upset.” He seems surprised.

Is Grandfather Howard really that ignorant about my mother? But then I think about how Mom and Dad are so unbelievably clueless about me right now and I start to feel bad for him.

“You’re eighty years old, you’re a grandfather, not a, a twenty-year-old! Honestly, Dad. It’s embarrassing!”

My vision goes all misty red again and before I know it I’m yelling. “Why are you always on his case? It’s not like you actually care! All you care about is yourself!”

“Milton!” Dad gives his head a little shake. “Don’t talk to your mother that way.” And now it’s Dad’s phone that buzzes. He glances at the screen. “I’ve got to take this. But then, young man, we’re going to have a little talk.” He picks up the phone with one hand.

Don’t do it, Dad. Don’t point your…

He raises his other hand and he does it, he lifts that one stupid finger in the air and shakes it at me.

“Are you serious?” My breath is coming out in short gasps and the words catch in my throat like they’re covered in sharp hooks. “What is wrong with you? What the hell is wrong with all of you?”

I can’t sit there one more instant. I slam back my chair and it falls over but I don’t care…I can’t…I have to get out of here…

I run outside.

Chapter Eighteen

I’m halfway down the block by the time Dad catches up to me. I can’t even look at him I’m still so mad inside. He doesn’t say anything and neither do I, and it’s not until we turn the corner on the block that I cool off enough to think about Mom’s face when I said she didn’t care about anyone but herself.

Even if it had been true, it would have been really mean. But I know the problem isn’t that Mom doesn’t care, it’s that she cares too much—cares in the wrong way. I stop walking, and so does Dad.

“I’m really sorry about what I said to Mom at dinner,” I force out.

“I know,” Dad says. “I know you didn’t mean it.”

I open my mouth to start with the “but” part, and close it again. That never works with apologies. “No,” I say. “I didn’t.”

“Make sure you tell her, okay?”

“Okay.”

“The thing is…,” Dad looks down and kicks at the sidewalk. “I can’t afford to lose this guy. I mean, I’ve got this client that…”

“DAD!”

He’s shocked and so am I but I can’t stand one more minute of this. “Seriously? This sucks!” I say.

“What…?”

“You. This. My life right now. Everything. I mean, I know it’s my job to fix this and I’m trying to come up with solutions but…”

“Milton, what are you talking about?”

“How would you know? You never listen, Dad. Never ever ever.”

Dad jerks, like he’s taken a direct hit. Good. Maybe I got his attention, not that it matters because any minute now his phone is going to go off and that finger is going to point and…

“Dad? Can you just, can you turn your cell off? Please?”

And he does it. I’m shocked. I didn’t think he would.

“I’m all yours,” Dad says. “Talk to me.”

But Carter’s face kind of slips in between me and my father, with that snarl and those mean dead eyes. I settle for a half-measure of the truth. “I can’t,” I say. “If Carter finds out I’ve told he’s going to obliterate me.”

Dad’s body stiffens. “Did that little punk do something to you?”

My face flames and I realize I can’t. I can’t tell Dad. It’s just too embarrassing. Milly Willy is not the kind of son my father would want to hang out with. Make that any father. If he and Mom do split up…

“Milton, look at me.”

I raise my head.

“Did he do something to you?”

I swear I don’t say another word but it’s like the minute Dad looks in my eyes he can see the entire video that Carter took, a horror movie starring Milly Willy, start to finish.

“Milton, you can’t let him get away with this. You’ve got to fight back, son. It’s the only way.”

Fight back with what? I want to say. Look at me.

He drapes an arm over my shoulder and walks me home, but I can tell he’s rolling everything around in his head. He pauses by the Cranes’ house, and my mouth goes dry. But then he keeps going as his hand tightens on my shoulder, the stiff one, and it still hurts a little but I could care less. I just feel hopeless.

I don’t know what I wanted my father to say, but it wasn’t that.

Chapter Nineteen

I tell Mom I’m sorry, and she tells me she loves me, and then I go straight to my bedroom. Snuggles isn’t on my bed, or under it, or in the closet. Maybe he’s in the back yard. Sometimes he hangs out there and watches for fireflies. He likes to swat at them, though if he ever actually caught one I’m not sure he’d know what to do with it.

My phone pings. It’s a text.

Hey. Anna here.

So that’s new.

…

…

hey, I text back.

r u okay

Crap. She’s seen the YouTube video.

…

…

I put the phone on my bed.

I move to the hall window overlooking the backyard. It’s almost dark but I can tell my grandfather has done a butt load of weeding and clearing out detritus.

I count four big piles of dead leaves and a mound of pulled-up weeds and branches and he’s used little sticks and string to measure different sections of the ground into squares. Bags of potting soil, and fertilizer, and coils of thin rubber tubing, and every size and shape of pot, and even a chubby stone Buddha are scattered all over the yard. A pair of wooden structures made up of criss-crossed wooden slats leans against the wall between our yard and the Cranes’.

It’s not a garden yet but you can definitely see the potential for one. He must have worked all day.

I remember what he told Mom earlier today. How people don’t fix things the way they want them until they’re about to vacate the premises.

Snuggles is lying on the top of the wall. His tail flicks back and forth. He’s watching something. I shift my eyes.

Across the yard, Grandpa Howard is seated at the rusty wrought iron table on a rusty wrought iron chair. His back is straight as a board. The red cloth is spread out in front of him again plus Mom’s teakettle plus the red cup and the tea ball-and-chain.

He looks up, and at first I think he sees me but his eyes are aimed at the porch. He pulls a second red cup from his knapsack and holds it up with both hands as if in offering.

Mom steps out of the shadows.

She sits down next to my grandfather. He refills his cup. He fills hers. He lifts his cup and swirls it around in his hands, buries his nose for a long sniff, takes a sip.

After what feels like forever Mom picks up her cup and does the same. Maybe it’s some kind of farewell ceremony.

In my bedroom, my phone is ringing. I wait until the ringtone stops before I go back to my room.

This time it’s Timmy and he’s left a message.

The urge to know what he wants overcomes the urge to never talk to him again as long as I live.

“Dude, where art thou? Experiment number nineteen, remember? Bro, answer your phone.” I can hear him breathing. Then “You’re not still mad at me, are you?”

What do you think, Einstein? You left me for dead out there. I may never stop being mad at you.

I shouldn’t look, I know I shouldn’t, but sometimes it’s better to know your enemy, right? I pull up the latest version of Carter-torture, a YouTube video titled Milly Willy Rides Again. Eight hundred and twelve views now, up more than a hundred from the last time I checked.

You read about this stuff and how it makes kids kill themselves and you think, come on it’s bad but is it kill-yourself bad?

It’s kill-yourself bad.

The comments are just salt on the wound (not that I’ve ever salted one; talk about a stupid idea). Most of them are old and I’ve already read them like twenty-five times. LOL; Milly Willy what a crybaby; Milton the Moron; LMAO; and the ever-original LOSER. They’re all anonymous posters, naturally, which should make them easier to dismiss but somehow doesn’t, because, I mean, they could be anyone. They could be Timmy, for all I know.

The last comment is new and isn’t a comment at all: someone’s posted a link, HOW TO STOP A BULLY DEAD IN HIS TRACKS.

I click on it, and am connected to another YouTube video. It’s grainy and out of focus and the image is all jumpy and off-kilter, like the guy holding the camera is half-crocked. A pimply kid in shorts so baggy they’re practically around his ankles and his baseball cap on backwards stares at the camera, his expression defiant.

“Yo. Wanna stop a bully? Here’s the only move you need to know.”

Another kid walks into view, much bigger but with the same basic gangbanger look only he’s got tats all over his arms and neck. He shoves Skinny Dude.

I flinch.

Big Dude puts his hands on his hips and makes his elbows sharp and flaps them like he’s doing the chicken dance and starts clucking, bawk, bak bak bak bak, bawk.

The image changes to someone holding a machine gun, bullets blasting out in a stream RAT A TAT TAT A TAT TAT and now it’s back to Big Dude and he’s on the ground staggering falling rolling around on the ground screaming…

not

helping

not

HELPING

Report from Planet Fear #5

Voices. Voices coming at me from everywhere.

You gotta fight back, son

LOSER

Now we are bringing awareness taking attention away

GONNA WILLY IN YOUR PANTS MILLY WILL-

When a thought arises gently, let it

fight back fight back fight fight fight

CRYBABY

dude are you mad at me mad at me?

go back to the breath turn your attention back to your

in

out

in

out

in

gotta

fight back

Chapter Twenty-one

“Hey.”

My eyes fly open. It’s Mom. Mellow Mom, not Tense Mom.

“What are you doing, sweetie?”

I close the lid on my computer as if I’ve been looking at the screen, not astral traveling or whatever the heck that was.

“Listen. Your dad told me what’s been going on. Scary.”

“Scary that Dad can’t keep a secret for more than five minutes.”

She leans against the edge of my desk. “Look, Milton. You’re almost twelve. Maybe you think you have to handle the hard stuff all by yourself, but you don’t.”

Does Mom think I’m stupid? Does she actually believe that I don’t know what’s going on with her and Dad? “Like you need another bad thing to worry about,” I say.

Her eyes blink with surprise, but somebody around here has to tell it like it is.

“Anyway,” I go on, “I don’t know what you think you can do about it.”

She spreads out her arms. “Sit? Talk?”

“Talking doesn’t help anything, Mom. Talking just makes it worse.”

The weight of this lands on my chest because it’s true, I don’t want to talk to her anymore, I don’t want to talk to anyone.

Mom’s eyes are hurt but I don’t care. I can’t care.

“Milton, your dad and I love you so much. And sometimes we get caught up in other things but…but you come first. Always. You know that, right?’

And she’s saying the exact words I’ve been wishing she would say. She’s trying, she’s actually trying, but they just bounce off me like there’s an invisible force field around me and nothing is ever going to get through again. My heart is inviolable. (in·vi·o·la·ble inˈvīələbəl/adjective: never to be broken, infringed, or dishonored. #87)

I get in bed and roll to face the wall.

“You don’t have to be alone, Milton. We’ll figure it out, okay? Together.”

I can barely muster the energy to nod.

“Okay, well…Good night,” she says. No Socko serenade and I’m grateful for that at least.

She backs out of my room. The door clicks closed.

I’m almost asleep when I hear shouting from the Cranes’ house.

“Idiot!”

“Leave me alone, bitch! Both of you just back off or you’ll wish you had!”

A door slams. A car peels out of the driveway.

My phone pings. It’s another text from Anna. did you get my other text? r u okay? thinking about u.

And that’s when I start to get really, really scared because this is Anna texting me and I don’t feel anything. Not one single thing.

When I was a little kid I used to climb out of my toddler bed and pad to the top of the stairs and poke my head through the banister so I could listen to Mom and Dad talk. Half the time I couldn’t even hear the words, just the low back-and-forth of voices and the occasional laugh, but I knew they were happy, and that meant I was, too.

I inch open the door and tiptoe to the top of the stairs. There’s a sliver of light under my grandfather’s doorsill but as I watch it blinks off. I hunker by the banister and rest my forehead against the wooden spindles. Dishes clink in the kitchen. Mom must be loading the dishwasher. Their voices float up, fragmented pieces of words, like ash from a bonfire.

“…failed him,” I hear Mom say.

“...haven’t…”

“…worried. No…”

“…you blame me for…”

“not…fault…”

And then, clear as a bell from Dad, “…that dick next door...”

I’ve heard enough.

When I was little, my dreams were full of laughter.

Chapter Twenty-two

It’s T minus three days and I still don’t have a topic and I can’t find Snuggles anywhere. He wasn’t curled up on his usual spot at the end of my mattress when I woke. I got on all fours and looked underneath the bed but all I saw were a couple of balled-up socks and a giant clot of cat fur and dust. He’s not in the closet and he’s not under the desk. My door is shut but that hasn’t stopped Snuggles in the past. He has this way of flipping his paw and hooking the bottom edge and magically easing the door open. Like Houdini or something.

“Snuggs?” I walk into the hallway. “Where are you, boy?” I trot downstairs, still in my pajamas, and check out the living room. Sometimes in the mornings I’ll find him sprawled out in a patch of sunlight on the carpet. No sunlight. No cat.

“Snuggles!” I don’t know why, but I’m getting a bad feeling about this. The kitchen is cat-less, so I move to the back yard. That’s the last place I saw him.

He’s not on the wall. Not on the leaf piles. Not under the wrought iron table.

I check behind the trashcans by the side of the house. Then I look inside the trashcans.

I’m starting to freak out.

“Where are you? Stop being a brat, cat!”

I run to the front yard and that’s when I hear a sound that freezes my insides. It’s coming from under the porch—not exactly a meow, more like a moan. I drop to my knees and peer through a crack between the porch step and the underbelly of the house. My eyes adjust. He’s there, lying on his side. His eyes are closed. His right ear is torn and bleeding and his left paw is stained dark red. Patches of fur are missing and the skin underneath is pink and raw. He looks dead. But then I hear another faint moan and one eye barely opens. A slit.

“Mom! DAD!” I trip and scramble onto the porch and I’m screaming and banging on the front door. “MOM!”

Dad leans out the upstairs window, “What the hell?” and Mom rushes outside tying her bathrobe and now here comes Grandpa Howard I forgot he was even here and I’m sobbing so hard I can hardly get a word out.

“Snu-snuggles.” I point.

Grandpa Howard squats and squints. “Damn it!” he says. He jumps up, and positions himself to the right of the step, and I realize there’s a big gap there, that must be how Snuggles crawled under the house to begin with. Whatever my grandfather does, it works, because pretty soon he’s sitting on the front stoop with his arms full of wounded cat. He presses his fingers against Snuggles’ throat, the under part of his neck that’s especially soft and fluffy, and when I scratch Snuggles there he purrs and purrs. But Snuggles doesn’t make a sound, and he’s barely breathing.

“Is he going to die?” My voice cracks and snot is running out of my nose but I could care less.

Grandpa Howard’s voice is rough but his eyes soften. “One day.” He clears his throat. “Not this day.”

And I do. I believe him.

Dad runs outside.

“Bill! Get a towel,” Mom crying, too, and Dad ducks back inside.

Mom strokes Snuggles with the palm of her hand, smoothing his fur where it’s snarled and tufted.

“It’s their horrible dog. It’s Brutus. I know he did it.” My eyes spill over again but this time the tears are hot, and my face is hot, and I want to kill somebody. I want to kill Carter. Grandpa Howard reaches out to me with his free arm, but I back away.

Dad hurries outside with a damp dishtowel. He kneels next to Snuggles and dabs at the blood.

“I’ll call that vet, the one who makes house calls,” Mom says and hurries back inside.

“At least five hundred bucks,” Dad says under his breath but he doesn’t stop her.

The vet shows up a half hour later and I hold Snuggles still as he cleans up the scratches and bandages the wounded paw. The doctor pokes and prods and moves all four legs and checks everything else out. Snuggles seems to know this is for his own good because he doesn’t hiss or swat or yowl or bite, and he doesn’t try to run away, not even when the veterinarian gives him a shot. What a cat.

As Mom writes the vet a check, I reposition myself on the sofa with my legs crossed and Snuggles fast asleep on my lap. I feel like I can breathe again.

Mom comes back into the living room from the kitchen, holding her phone. “I told the school office we had a family emergency,” she says. “You’re staying home today.”

“I hate them,” I answer.

“Who…?”

“All of them. They’re a family of total dicks.”

Mom opens her mouth. Closes it again.

My grandfather appears at the screen door to the backyard. His hands are covered in dirt.

“Anyone interested in some Vitamin D? It can be quite rejuvenating.”

I carry Snuggles outside and sure enough he perks up right away. I find an oval of sunshine and lay him on it. He rolls to one side and stretches out all four legs and his claws kind of pop out, at least on the three paws that aren’t bandaged. His eyelids close and after a moment he starts to purr.

Grandfather Howard has taken off his sandals. His toes are long and tan and the two big ones kind of stick up in the air. He lies on his back under the sycamore tree in the corner of the yard. Mom and Dad planted it when I was born-well, planted a little Charlie Brown version, but now it’s big enough to throw a little shade.

I plop down next to my purring cat.

“I don’t get it, G-Pop. How can Snuggles be so happy after getting chewed to a pulp?”

My grandfather’s eyes are closed. “I have lived with many Zen masters,” he says. “All of them cats.”

I wait. There’s bound to be more coming.

“Unlike most people, Mr. Snuggles here is able to let go of what happened last night. Nor is he worrying about what might happen tomorrow, or next week, or even ten minutes from now. He’s right here, right now. And right now there’s sunshine on his fur and a breeze ruffling his whiskers and he’s in the company of someone he loves very much.”

I think about this.

“Is that what you do?”

Sunshine and shadows dance across his eyelids as if the leaves decided to splatter them with darkness and light.

“Sometimes,” he says. “Like now. I’m not in the future. I’m not in the past. I’m just here. Right here with you.”

A cloud moves across the sky and blots out the sun. My grandfather’s face and body are blanketed in shadows.

“Want to try?” he asks. I wish he wouldn’t keep doing that, making everything a kind of test.

“Can’t I just be…” I reach for a word that isn’t snarky, even though that’s how I’m feeling, and I realize he’s already given it to me, “…skeptical?”

He sits up and looks over at me. He’s not smiling. “How’s that working out for you?”

I shrug. My hand reaches for Snuggles. His fur is warm. He purrs even louder.

“Some time ago, Milton, it’s been a while, but I knew this boy. And he figured out how to purr.”

I know this game but I don’t want to play. I want answers.

“How do you do it?” I ask.

“I’m not telling you.”

“But what if I want to know?”

“Well, that’s a good thing,” he answers. He closes his eyes. That’s all I’m getting from him.

“Okay,” I say. Okay.

I grab up a handful of soil and sniff it. It smells like…it smells like dirt, doofus.

I try again. I lie on my back, like my grandfather did earlier. A couple more clouds are drifting across the sky, big puffs of cotton. I lower my eyelids and the sun turns their insides rosy. I can hear a bird peckpeckpecking and then

it happens.

Just for an instant but it happens.

I’m right here.

It’s right now.

Boom. Nailed it.

Purrrrrrr.

Chapter Twenty-three

My grandfather and I are on a roll, vegetation-wise. He wheels the flatbed cart up and down the rows and I hunt, which means I let my eyes go blurry and listen, until a particular plant or flower kind of sings to me. Then I stop and point out a bright purple bloom, or a potted plant with fern-like leaves, or a hanging basket of bushy green loaded with tiny orange-and-white explosions like miniature fireworks, and he lifts the flat onto the cart. The bottom of the cart is already covered and it looks like one big multicolored carpet of flowers, but if you look closely you can see that every flat is divided into sections, each one with its own little plant or blossom.

Grandpa Howard is humming to himself. It seems like a good time to ask.

“G-Pop, Mom says you’re a war hero.”

“Boo-yah!” he booms out, and I jump. But I keep going.

“So you had to kill people?”

And wham. His face just slams shut like a trapdoor. I feel pretty bad. I’ve never seen him close down like that. Talk about inviolable.

“That was a messed-up thing to say,” I say. “Sorry.”

The words winch him open him a crack. He takes a deep breath. “It’s okay,” he says after a moment. “Everything is okay. You haven’t done anything wrong.” But I’m not so sure.

There’s a wooden bench at the end of the aisle, set in the midst of some stone garden statues, and a little fountain that’s actually working. Grandpa Howard parks the cart in front of the statues. St. Francis stands in his monk’s robe with his arms spread wide, a little bird perched on his shoulder. Two cement-gray Buddhas sit cross-legged, one with a single finger in the air like Dad, another with his palms cupped in his lap. A concrete squirrel on top of a spear-shaped post holds an oversized acorn shell split in half and filled with water—a shallow dish for birds to drink from or take splash-baths in.

My grandfather lowers onto the bench and gestures for me to join him. The sound of the gurgling water is peaceful. The sun is beating down on us. He fishes his red bandanna out of a back pocket, dunks the cloth into the fountain, and holds it dripping against his forehead. He dips it a second time, wrings the excess water out and hands the hankie over to me. Up close I see a Harley-Davidson skull insignia, and an eagle with its wings spread, and it’s totally fierce. I press the damp coolness against my cheeks. I start to pass the kerchief back but he shakes his head.

“Keep it,” he says.

I start to tuck it into my back pocket but I don’t want a wet spot on my jeans, and anyway no one will see it that way, so I knot the hankie around my neck like a triangular bib, skull facing front.

We sit in silence until finally for some reason he decides to return to my stupid question.

“I was stationed on the front line for over a year. So the answer is yes.” Grandpa Howard’s voice is low but steady. “I thought I was killing out of necessity but really I killed out of fear. That’s what happens when you pit frightened soldiers against frightened soldiers. Someone dies in terror at the hand of someone else terrified of dying.”

My grandfather’s face is painful to look at right now. The skin around his eyes has crumpled like tissue paper.

I catch myself staring so I lower my gaze, I feel sick hearing this, I can’t help it, I do. I mean, I’d thought about what it probably meant for him to be a soldier in a time of war, but that’s different from actually knowing that he…, you know.

He stares at the back of his hands, palm-down on his knees. The skin is splotched and his ropy blue veins bulge. “I don’t expect you to understand, Milton. I do expect you to try.” And now he turns.

His eyes are so old. So wounded.

“Grandpa,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

His head bobs up and down, like he knows I am, but it doesn’t change how hard this is because that’s not for me to change.

“Taking a life? Causing a hurt like that to another person? It steals a piece of you,” he says. “A piece you can never get back. It’s a lot to accept. A lot to forgive in yourself.” He pats my leg. “But it’s like we were talking about this morning. Without forgiveness, all you can do is stay stuck. You’re letting the past decide who you are in the present.”

“Did you? Forgive yourself?”

He pushes himself to his feet. “I’m a work in progress, Milton.” He pulls me to my feet and envelops me in a long, strong hug. When he finally lets go, I’m smiling because I have an idea.

He cocks his head. “What?”

“You’ll find out,” I say. “But only if you buy me an ice cream first.”

Luz loves that we arrive pulling a wagon full of flowers. It’s right up her alley, as Mom would say.

“I remember when you were that wagon’s payload, Milton,” she says, as she hands over my cone. “Your mom and dad would wheel you right up to this very window. Special delivery.”

She looked over my shoulder.

“Is that Stuart? Look at that beard!”

I turn, and my grandfather is pointing his phone at the empty sky, taking pictures.

Luz cups her hands around her mouth. “Sir? Sir? I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” she says, and laughs to herself.

Her head disappears. Then the side door opens, and she steps outside. I almost never see her whole body. I thought she was much taller. Today, she’s wearing a long patterned dress that looks like it used to be a bedspread.

I get an idea. I pluck a purple bloom off of one of the plants and give it to her. “Why thank you, sir,” she says, and she sticks it behind one ear. It looks really great, and I get this tingly feeling inside.

She walks over to Grandpa Howard. I leave the wagon and follow behind.

“You’re taking pictures of nothing,” she says.

“Not nothing,” my grandfather answers. “No thing.”

“That’s what I said,” Luz teases. “Nada.”

“Ahhh,” he says, “but no thing is not nothing. No thing is something.”

“And something is some thing. But I see nothing up there.”

“Bingo,” Grandpa Howard says. “And I see light pervading the vastness of clear sky.”

Are they both on crack?

“It’s good to see you, Stuart,” Luz says.

“Do I know you?” my grandfather answers, and his face is so blank that for a moment even I wonder if he’s lost it.

Luz keeps smiling at him, but he doesn’t smile back. It’s like a staring contest, and he totally wins when she shoots me a worried look.

“Aha!” Grandpa Howard says, pointing at her.

“You rat!” she says, and they both start to laugh.

I have no idea what’s going on, but I have my own major concern. I mean, my cone is dripping big-time.

Two hours later I’m blasting with the Augur which is completely radical and my current favorite weapon of choice, because Auger bullets not only move through walls but come out even stronger on the other side.

How badass is that?

“This is how you rack up points,” I say, without taking my eyes off the PlayStation screen. Eat shit, Carter, I think. You’re never getting my password.

My grandfather hoists a Backlash grenade, but he must have confused it with the Hedgehog, because instead of taking out an enemy cluster, he’s created a force shield, before he can actually use it.

“I stink at this,” he grumbles.

“No shit, Sherlock,” I say as I launch a LAARCH and demolish a cluster of deadly Stalkers with one clean shot.

“We come on the sloop John B., my grandfather and me,” my grandfather sings under his breath. He passes the Titan and finds a Dragon in the aisle with all the mines. He snags it, but he has no idea how to charge up the flame-thrower, which makes it about as useful as a spitball. Against the Chimera, an uncharged Dragon is worse than a joke and he loses another round, but my grandfather keeps whistling the song between his teeth. He may be getting hammered but he’s having a fine time. “Well I feel so broke up, I want to go home.”

I’ve been so busy checking out his moves, I’ve lost my rhythm completely, but I find I don’t really care. I can’t believe my grandfather is playing Resistance with me.

He shoots me a questioning side-glance, like, what?

“I’m glad you’re here,” I say.

The doorbell rings. Grandpa Howard leaves the battlefield to me.

“Tim,” I hear him say, his voice neutral.

“How’s Snuggles, Grandpa Howard?” And I wonder who told Timmy about my cat.

“Snuggles is A-okay. He’s a survivor, alive and loving life.”

It must have been my grandfather. What’s his game this time?

I decide to go back to my own.

I pick up dual rifles and scan a wall up ahead. I wait for the red crosshairs that tell me more Chimera are hiding on the other side, so I can let rip.

My grandfather and Timmy walk into the living room, but I don’t lift my head, and I don’t turn around. I’m singing away. “Drinking all night, got into a fight…”

“Milton.”

“Well I feel so broke up…”

“Milton!”

I take my time before turning. “Oh. Hey.”

Timmy’s looking at the floor and his hair hangs like a curtain of sandy red fringe over his eyes. He can never get it to swoop back, not even with gel. “Ferguson’s saying we have to submit our speech topics by tomorrow. No exceptions.”

“So?”

Timmy scuffs at the carpet. “Wanna do some research?”

I open my mouth to say “No” but my grandfather gets there first with the ultimate Sapper: “Sounds like a plan to me.”

And here I thought he sucked at ambushes.

Timmy and I ride in silence all the way to the library. Inside, I slam my notebook on an empty table and a few heads lift and turn. I find the Military History section and pace along the aisle. My conversation with Grandpa Howard has me thinking maybe my topic should have something to do with war.

“Hey.” Timmy is right behind me. His voice is almost a whisper. “So, I get why you stood me up. I should have helped. I should have done something, at least. You’re my best friend.”

I chest tightens. I swallow hard.

“Peace?” he asks.

I think about what my grandfather said about forgiveness.

I nod. Peace.

“Actually,” Timmy says, “You’re kind of my only friend.”

“Shut up.” I elbow him in the ribs, but lightly. “You have, like, a hundred Facebook friends.”

But I know what he means. They’re no more real as friends than the Chimera is real as an enemy.

I should know.

I scan titles, and finally grab a book about the American Civil War—Fields of Fury, it’s called. Timmy and I sit across from each other at the table. He must have been thinking along the same lines about virtual friends because he picks up right where my mind left off.

“That’s the problem with real friends. When they leave your life, it hurts way more than being un-friended.”

I realize something. To me, we were just taking a break while I cooled off but Timmy’s been thinking I was gone forever. And I know why. “Just because your dad left doesn’t mean everyone is going to leave,” I say, and my grandfather’s words hit me a second time. “You can’t let your past define what’s happening now.”

“Gee, thanks, Oprah,” Timmy says.

I open my book and Timmy opens his. It looks like his has a pizza on the front cover. I crane my head to read the title. “Pizza, A Global History.”

“So, your topic is…”

“Shut up. I decided to talk about something I know.”

A fat textbook sails by me, missing my head by maybe an inch.

“What the..?”

Carter leans around a computer screen one table over. He’s sucking on a straw jabbed into a juice-in-a-box and his eyes are narrow slits and my stomach is suddenly on tumble-dry.

Did he follow us here?

“Hey, Milly Willy. How’s it hanging?”

“Don’t call me that,” I say.

Shhh I hear from another part of the library.

Timmy pushes to his feet, his face dead white under all the freckles.

“Sit. Down. Klenhard.” Carter’s voice is a sledgehammer and Timmy’s knees buckle. “Me and Milly Willy, we have an agreement, right? Only Milly seems to have forgotten.”

“Carter…” I beg.

Shhh!

I look around for the source. Why don’t they actually help us, instead of just shushing us?

“Now you owe me a hundred bucks,” Carter hisses.

“That’s crazy! I don’t have a hundred bucks!” I’m whispering, too, but the panic is coming through loud and clear. Carter steps close and grabs my shirt. He bunches the material with one hand and yanks upward so everything rides up high, high enough to expose my skinny six-packless stomach.

You gotta fight back, son.

I ball both hands into fists. Great. Now what?

“Oooh. Ouch. Milly Willy gonna hit me? I’m so scared.”

Keeping me close with his right hand, Carter uses his left to squeeze his juice-in-a-box over my head. At least it’s not grape, my crazy brain thinks, as a gush of apple juice drips down the front of my face and the back of my neck.

“One hundred dollars tomorrow. Or next time, you’ll really be sorry.”

And I think he’s finally done, but with kids like Carter, it’s never, ever over. He glances at Timmy. “Tell him,” Carter says.

Timmy shakes his head.

Carter’s face contorts and I can almost feel the hate-flame he’s throwing even though it’s aimed at Timmy this time. “Tell. Him.”

Timmy’s voice flutters with fear. He can barely look at me. “You…” He swallows. “You heard the man.”

Carter finally lets go. I pull my grandfather’s bandanna out of my back pocket and swipe at my burning eyes, because it turns out apple juice stings. I realize my mistake the minute Carter zeroes in on the Harley insignia.

“Wicked,” he says and snatches it away.

“Hey!”

He jabs a finger in my face, which is all it takes, of course. I back down because he’s won; that’s what bullies do, they win, and I’m the biggest loser I know.

I’m mortified. (Mor·ti·fyˈmôrdəˌfī/verb; past participle: mortified 1. cause (someone) to feel embarrassed, ashamed, or humiliated. #62)

“Tomorrow,” Carter repeats and walks off with my bandanna swinging in his hand.

I want to scream or kick something. I want to tip over the entire library.

“I must be the worst friend in the entire world,” I hear Timmy say.

I don’t even bother to answer as I walk away, because what’s the point?

I grab my bike and soon I’m pedaling so hard my calves are screaming, and the asphalt whizzes by like a concrete ribbon. I hate him I hate him I hate him so much I wish he would…

SCREEECH!!!

I swerve right, my leg drags, my bike skids, and I come so close to face-planting onto the pavement it isn’t even funny.

A gold Volvo station wagon with smoked glass windows is angled across the intersection. I smell scorched rubber. The left front window slides down and a mom-type sitting at the wheel stares at me like she’s completely freaked out, and then I hear a little kid start bawling in the back seat.

I give the driver a weak wave. She shakes her head slowly back and forth. The smoky glass glides up again cutting off her death-stare and the sound of her baby’s wails.

The car drives off but I don’t move for a long time.

Report from Planet Fear #6

Fear is a dark magnetic force.

Fear is a useless survival mechanism.

Fear is contagious.

Fear makes you want to run but also keeps you stuck in one place.

Fear hides behind a mask of I could care less.

Fear rhymes with sneer and jeer and leer.

Here’s what I deduce from my observations: If you feed your fear, it grows. If you attack your fear, it grows. If you hide your fear, it grows.

I therefore assume the only way to stop fear from growing is to ignore it. Which is fine, unless you live on Planet Fear, in which case will somebody please tell me how to do that?

Chapter Twenty-five

Mom and Dad are both home early. I wheel my bike up the side alley and lean it against the trash cans and slip inside the back door, making sure the screen doesn’t bang behind me. My mother’s purse is where she always puts it, on the side of the kitchen counter next to the key dish. There’s a zipper, but she never uses it, and the slouchy black leather gapes open like a big invitation. My fingers feel around for her wallet and it’s right there right at the top. I pull it out even though my mind is pretending I’m not doing this I’m not stealing money from my mother.

But I am.

Or I would, except she’s got maybe four dollars in there, plus a few coins, so that’s not going to work.

They’re in the living room talking. As I sneak past I hear Mom saying, “What? I can’t be concerned about this Dusty person?”

“Jane, my loving Dusty doesn’t have to threaten you.”

“Love? Are you kidding me? Open your eyes! She doesn’t care about you! You’re an elderly widower with a military pension. Talk about a target!”

I book it upstairs and slip into my bedroom and lock the door behind me because bullies are everywhere, even inside your own home.

Chapter Twenty-six

My fingers are starting to cramp. I set the pen aside. I’m lying on my stomach on the bed, my notebook open in front of me. I thought I was going to concoct another transmutation recipe or maybe, you know, write my report that is due the day after tomorrow. But you know those cartoons where there’s a tiny angel on one shoulder and a devil with horns on the other?

The devil took over my pen, is all I’m saying.

Pneumonia. Swine flu. Hoof and mouth disease. Whatever that thing is when a tick from a deer bites you and you’re in bed for ten years. Or mono, maybe. But not from kissing, mono just because. I promise, make that I swear, cross my heart hope to die double pinkie swear, if Carter gets a bad case of mono I will stop surfing inappropriate sites or eavesdropping on Mom and Dad or

My doorknob turns, but only a smidgen because I locked it.

“Milton? Son?”

I close my notebook and roll off the bed. I spent almost an hour putting the bookcase back together and refilling its shelves before Hellboy took the reins, so at least my room doesn’t look like a tornado hit it anymore.

I turn the knob and the button-lock pops open.

“What’s up with the door?” Dad asks. He’s holding a half full goblet of red wine.

“Trying to concentrate. I’m working on my report,” I lie. I am an expert at mendacity these days. (men·dac·i·ty menˈdasədē/ noun: untruthfulness. #39)

I move to my desk, where the sum total of this evening’s work sits on my computer screen. A title: The War Between The States. I lower the screen.

“Your grandfather is worried about you.” Dad moves inside. His front teeth are stained red, like a vampire’s.

“That’s impossible,” I say. “Worry is in the future. G-Pop only deals in the present.” I don’t even care if Dad hears the snark in my voice; in fact I hope he does. Fight back my ass.

“What’re you talking about?” Dad says, and that’s when I realize he’s on his way to wasted. Which is just…

“The now, Dad. This moment. The one you’re drinking your way through.”

“Hey. I’m having one glass of wine before dinner, okay?”

“Right. And Carter Crane is my best friend.”

That gets Dad’s attention. He focuses his eyes on me. “Is that jerk still bothering you?”

“Forget it. It’s nothing.”

Dad kneels in front of me. “Did he hurt you again?” His breath is all sour and fruity.

My eyes prickle like I’m going to cry. I bite the inside of my mouth, but it’s too late. He saw.

“That little…” Dad’s neck turns rashy red. “Did you take my advice?”

I barely shake my head. Dad jumps up and slips on Socko, and as he stumbles backwards he spills red wine all over his shirt.

“God damn it!”

He kicks Socko and my puppet sails across the room. “Can’t you at least pick up after yourself, Milton?”

Which is so unfair, you know?

But then Dad catches sight of himself in my full-length mirror, all stained with wine and pissed off, and it’s as if he’s seeing himself through my eyes. He slumps, and again I feel glad, because he should know. He should know what he’s like when he’s loaded.

He takes a seat on the edge of my bed. “Nobody deserves to be bullied, Milton.”

I look at him all hunched over, and for a moment I know what he’ll look like when he’s as old as Grandpa. I don’t know what to do with this feeling. It’s a new one.

But then the anger comes roaring back, and I turn to face the computer screen.

“This place reeks of alcohol,” I say.

Dad leaves without another word, and I stare at my title, “The War Between The States,” blinking hard until the letters are no longer blurry.

Chapter Twenty-seven

It’s no use. I might as well give up.

Dinner tonight was silent. Correction: I was silent and so was Dad. He was “in a mood,” as Mom likes to say, which meant he was mostly drinking wine, and meanwhile she kept harping at Grandpa about Dusty this and Dusty that, and some Zumba lawsuit Dusty was fighting, and how it must have been Dusty’s fault. Like someone falling down in her exercise class makes Dusty a criminal. Grandpa was holding his own even though I could tell it was upsetting him. But then Mom tried to suck me into the argument, so I excused myself and came back up here to try again with this stupid report, and I’ve been staring at a blinking cursor ever since.

I’m going to get an F on my eff-ing twelfth birthday.

I move to the bed and flop onto my back, bringing Socko with me because Snuggles seems to have decided that Grandpa Howard is his new best friend.

Once Mom gave up on the Dusty-bashing, she switched to G-Pop bashing. “Milton, did I ever tell you that your grandfather insisted on singing Sloop John B to me and your grandmother before he shipped out on tour?” She aimed the question at me, but her eyes were pinned on him.

“Good song.” Grandpa kept his voice even. “Old-school.”

I guess, like me, he was hoping against hope this was going to be a happy memory.

“God, I hated that,” Mom said, her laugh brittle.

“Awww, no,” he said, but Mom kept going.

“As soon as you were gone, she’d sing it to herself, only she’d change the words, did you know that? ‘Show Stuart the wayyyy to sail home’...”

“I guess I did know that,” Grandpa said. “But Jane…”

“Don’t ‘but Jane’ me! It was…We had to…You were never, ever there!”

“I remember that, too,” he said, “and I’m sorry.” But I guess he wasn’t sorry enough because Mom just kind of snorted at him and poured herself more wine, and that’s when I left.

I stare at the corner of the ceiling, where the paint is starting to bubble. So Grandpa Howard was never there for her. Big deal.

Like father, like daughter.

I roll onto my stomach.

Is that how it works? Everyone just passes bad parenting along, like the baton in one long, endless relay race? Will I do that to my own kid if I ever have one?

What kind of sad trick is that?

I reach for my phone and pull up Anna’s last text.

“r u okay? thinking about you.”

“That would be negative,” I say out loud and a light buzz starts up deep in the base of my skull.

But the sound is dwarfed by loud shouts from next door.

Mr. Crane again, yelling at someone who’s yelling back.

Oh no. Dad?

I leap out of bed and run to the window.

Dad’s pounding both fists on the front door. “Wanna talk to you!”

“Do you have any fucking idea what time it is?”

“Open the goddamned door!”

“The hell I will!”

Dad runs to their side door and yanks it open. A dark shape barrels out, almost knocking Dad over.

“Hey! Don’t let the dog GRAB THE DOG!” but it’s too late, Brutus torpedoes down the street like a big slobbering weapon of mass destruction.

My father lunges forward, right into Mr. Crane’s fat fist. Dad collapses to his knees, his hands covering his face, as Mr. Crane pushes past and hauls ass down the road after Brutus. He’s wearing these ridiculous striped pajamas and it would be laughable except it so isn’t.

I turn away from my window, but not before I see Carter peeking out of his own bedroom window, his face, like mine, as pale and still as the moon.

Report from Planet Fear #7

Planet Fear’s main source of energy is worry. Up here you eat worry for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and even when you’re sure you can’t fit another bite in your stomach, not until you’ve digested what’s already there, guess what? More shows up on your plate.

A body stuffed with worry is always hunched over, hands curled into a pair of fists.

Think about that.

Two fists.

No accepting anything. No allowing anything. No embracing anything.

No waving hello.

No taking someone else’s hand.

No swimming through circumstances.

No reaching for the stars.

No yes.

Nothing but sharp knuckles and a tight clench.

On Planet Fear worry can’t breathe, but it’s still alive.

Oh, yes.

It’s very much alive and kicking.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Mom is out in the backyard, still in her bathrobe. Even from up here I can see that her eyes are puffy and red, like she’s been crying all night. She clasps a full mug of coffee with both hands, but she isn’t drinking any. I crack open the window.

The wind chimes tinkle. Mom cocks her head, as if hoping to hear a hidden message in their random tones.

I move to the wall and press my ear against the smooth, cool surface. The faintest of snores reaches through the barricade.

I’ll have to move fast. The sun is pouring into my window, which means it’s also pouring into my parents’ room.

Dad’s asleep way far over on his side. He’s lying on top of the covers, which is weird until I realize he’s still in his work clothes from yesterday. I step around the end of the bed and crouch to get a closer look.

His left eye is swollen shut, the skin underneath bruised purple and green.

So I didn’t dream it.

I back out. Across the hall, Grandpa Howard’s door is slightly open and his voice rumbles low and warm from inside his room. He chuckles, a deep rich sound full of affection. He must be talking to her.

Dusty.

I move to the edge of his doorway. I am becoming quite the spy these days, but how else am I going to find out what’s what?

“…so glad you like it. You’re the only one I can show it to.”

Silence.

“No, she’s pretty unhappy with me right now.”

Silence.

“Oh, well, it’s a long story. The same long story as always, you’ve heard it before. Doesn’t really bear repeating.”

Silence.

“Yup, I took it last night with my phone, after the brouhaha finally settled down. I call it Light Pervading Vastness of Clear Sky.”

Silence.

“Well, I don’t know about a visual Haiku, but…”

Silence.

“I miss you too, baby.”

I wish. I wish.

Mom crying.

Dad wounded.

Grandpa Howard misunderstood.

Well I feel so broke up, I wanna go home.

Time to change the story.

Chapter Thirty

Mom’s dressed for work when I finally clatter into the kitchen. I’m running late because I got an idea for a new formula and I had to do a little research before writing down the steps and ingredients.

Transmutation Experiment #19, here I come.

She’s sitting at the kitchen table, her back to me. Her hair looks stringy. No wonder she didn’t call upstairs for me to get a move on. It’s bill day. The telltale pile of unopened envelopes is stacked next to her laptop, and her shoulders have migrated to the North Pole.

“Hola, madre.”

She doesn’t look around. She’s opened the calculator app on her iPhone and a Quicken spreadsheet looms large on her screen.

Dad rushes into the kitchen. He’s late, too.

His eye appears miraculously healed, until I realize he’s smeared a bunch of Mom’s makeup over the shiner so instead of purple and green the swelling just looks weirdly tan. He catches me staring, and slips on his sunglasses.

“Client meeting,” he says. “I’ll catch you guys later,” and he’s gone.

Mom picks up her letter opener and slits the first envelope flap. She slides out what’s inside and squints at it.

Sighs.

“Is Dad all right?”

Mom doesn’t answer.

I want to go, I’m super late, but I also want to say something.

“Mom?”

“What is it, Milton?”

“I was thinking. Maybe this summer, I can get a job. Help out around here.”

“That could be fun,” she says, but she’s distracted, I can tell, because otherwise she would know fun isn’t really the point.

Anyway, after today, maybe I won’t need a job.

On my way out I snag the corkscrew and a bottle of Terra Nova from the wine rack in the living room.

I feel different. Lighter inside, like I’m getting rid of some things, but not actual objects. More like old ideas. It’s a subtle form of shedding.

Fermentation. Step 5.

I stuff the bottle of wine and the corkscrew into my backpack. I’m slinging the heavy pack over my shoulders, about to climb on my bike, when Mom runs outside.

She grabs my shoulders hard, and I brace myself. She must have discovered the missing wine.

“Listen up,” she says. “I’m right here, okay? You have me. You’ll always have me.”

I’m so confused.

She pulls me into a tight hug. “I take care of you, not the other way around. At least, not until I’m in diapers. Got it?”

What is she talking about? Diapers?

“I’m late for school,” is all I can manage. She watches me ride off, her face disconsolate. (dis·con·so·lateˌdisˈkäns(ə)lət/ adjective: without consolation or comfort; unhappy. #55)

The heavy bottle of wine bumps between my shoulder blades the whole way to school.

Ms. Ferguson is quoting yet another dead white guy as I hustle into the classroom, and even though he’s not a scientist, for once I know who it is. Although no way am I going to admit that to this crowd like a total jerk-off. Might as well have a bulls-eye on my chest like that moose with the bummer of a birthmark in the Far Side cartoon.

“‘Wonder is the beginning of wisdom,’” Ms. Ferguson repeats in her ‘pay-attention-this-is-important’ voice. “Who said that?”

Socrates.

Carter’s chair is empty.

“Someone from a long time ago,” she hints.

“Britney Spears,” Timmy offers and somebody snickers.

Socrates.

“A famous philosopher. Anyone?”

Screw it. “Socrates,” I say from the back of the room.

“That’s right, Milton.” She glances at the wall clock. “You’re late.”

“Sorry, Ms. Ferguson.”

“Feeling better?”

I turn and stare pointedly at Carter’s empty desk. “Yes, thank you. Much better.”

“Take your seat,” she says, her voice a little sharp though I have no idea why. I thought she was on my side. I move to my desk and sit.

She walks to the blackboard and writes SOCRATES in big letters, underlining it so hard her piece of chalk breaks. She turns to face us.

“Socrates was admired for his remarkable self-control. But self-control was not the same thing as self-denial or austerity.”

Everyone else’s faces must have been as blank as mine.

“Austerity,” Mrs. Ferguson snapped. “Look it up. It’ll be on your vocabulary final.”

She was in a rotten mood today.

My phone vibrates in my pocket. Timmy half-turns his head and raises his eyebrows to let me know the text is from him.

I slip the phone out of my pocket and check the screen, holding it low in my lap.

carter suspended

Before I even know how I feel about this, a second text follows.

gonna give him the $$$$?

That I know the answer to.

No way I text back, and wait for his reply.

…

…

fierce.

Ms. Ferguson’s two-fingered whistle stabs my right eardrum and I almost lose my shit because she’s standing right next to me. I shove the phone under the desk. The last thing I need is for her to confiscate it.

I hold my breath until she starts to move away again. I know she saw I was texting. Maybe she’s cutting me some slack after all.

“Socrates also said, ‘To find yourself, think for yourself.’ Keep that in mind as you finalize tomorrow’s reports.”

Too bad Ms. Ferguson isn’t twenty-five years older. She and G-Pop would make a good pair. They both talk like fortune cookies.

Timmy and I ride over to the high school sports field for lunch. Balloon Man is still there, arms flailing.

I haven’t decided whether or not to include Timmy in today’s experiment, but he almost feels like my friend again.

I brought my Swiss Army knife with me this morning. I use the blade to carve a sharp point on the end of a branch. The shavings fall into little curls of wood.

“My dad called last night,” Timmy says. “He’s moving to New York. For good.”

“New York? Wow.”

What would that be like, to have your dad so far away? What if I’m right? What if they’re getting divorced? Who will take care of me? Mom says she’ll always be there for me, but what does that really mean? I’m pretty sure Timmy’s father thought that about Timmy when he was born.

“You know what’s so stupid?” Timmy’s using his I-don’t-care voice but we both know better. “When I first told my father about Parents’ Day he actually said he’d try to make it. And I actually believed him.” He hurls the last bite of sandwich onto the field. “Maybe it’s for the best. I don’t know about you, but I am definitely going to fail tomorrow. After that, it won’t matter, because my mother is going to kill me.”

I don’t tell Timmy that I finally started writing something last night, after Dad got his black eye and I couldn’t sleep. First of all, I don’t want to make him feel bad. And second of all, I may not even be able to use it. I felt like I was high or something, as if I was in a tunnel writing, with my fingers flying, and my brain on some kind of shut-down.

The point is, I probably just wrote a load of crap.

“We could run away, Milton. To Fargo. She’d never think of looking for us there. Who goes to Fargo, right?”

If they get divorced and we lose the house, maybe they’ll send me to live with Grandpa Howard and Dusty. Does Dusty even like kids? Will I have to learn Zumba? Where will I sleep? Who will be my friends? What about Snuggles?

Bzzzzz.

Balloon-man looks like he’s trying to signal me a message.

“Worrying isn’t going to change things,” I try on Timmy, though I’m talking to myself, too.

“Yeah, right. Like it didn’t change what time you got to school this morning.”

He’s not wrong. I make my decision then and there.

“Meet me at the clubhouse after dinner,” I say.

“Time for number nineteen?”

“Time for number nineteen.”

“Far out.”

We high-five.

Chapter Thirty-one

I prop my bike against the side of the house and poke my head around back. Dad and Grandpa Howard are having a man-to-man heart-to-heart, it looks like, complete with pizza on paper plates and two bottles of beer.

My grandfather’s been to the nursery again. Two more flats—one of bright pink flowers and another of plants with little yellow blooms. He’s also hole-punched hollow cavities all over the yard, either that or the gophers had a rave last night.

In the kitchen, a couple of pizza boxes are stacked on the counter. I grab a slice of lukewarm pepperoni and wander outside to join them. I’m a man, almost.

They stop talking.

“Hey,” I say.

“So, Stuart. You’re toolin’ around on a Harley now. Is that for real, or what?” Dad’s voice is all hearty and fake.

They’re all hiding something from me, I just don’t know what. Or how bad it is.

Grandpa Howard pulls up something on his phone. He aims the screen at Dad and I wonder if it’s the clouds and light and vastness doing whatever is was they were doing in his haiku photograph.

But no.

“Hello,” Dad says. “Is it just me, or is Dusty smokin’ hot?” He moves his face closer to the phone screen. “Is that the Eiffel Tower? You took your hog to Paris? Where did you stay?”

“Right next door. Eighty-two bucks a night at Caesar’s Palace.” G-Pop clinks his beer bottle against Dad’s. “Merci beaucoup, Vegas!”

Dad smiles back at my grandfather, but his eyes aren’t glad. They’re full of longing. “Look at you. Free as a bird.”

“Yup. And I’m supposed to be the crackpot in the family.” My grandfather winks at me. “Right, Milton?”

Dad’s makeup is gone and the purple bruise has darkened so that his black eye is finally black.

“Does it hurt?” I motion to his eye.

“Score one for the bully,” Dad says. Which is not exactly an answer. He returns his attention to my grandfather. “Probably the first win for good old number twenty-three since his knee gave out.”

Grandfather Howard’s voice is gentle. “Jane’s worried about you, Bill,” he says.

“Yeah, well, that is what we do.”

My grandfather just gives him a long look. Like, not good enough.

Time to get another slice of pizza. I don’t need to hear any more.

“Sorry, I’m acting like a jerk,” Dad says behind me, and I pause to listen. “Look, Stuart. My business is about to be sued. The market is almost definitely heading down. And now, this. Basically I don’t know what to do. And I don’t do ‘not knowing what to do.’ Sometimes I think giving up would be a relief.”

“There’s more than one way to surrender, believe me,” my grandfather replies, and suddenly my brain just ignites. The heat grows and spreads and spills over my entire body like lava.

Not me. I’m just figuring out how to fight back.

I skip the second slice of pizza. I’m not hungry anymore. I have one leg over my bike when Mr. Crane walks past me on the sidewalk, Brutus snarling and pulling on the end of the leash.

“It’s all about the tail,” I hear behind me. Grandfather Howard steps out of the side alley. He’s holding a rawhide bone.

Mr. Crane stops abruptly.

“With some dogs, you just look at them and their tails go: Life is good! Life is good! Life is good! Don’t even need a reason. Others…”

“You talking to me?” Mr. Crane says, and my stomach tightens at his tone.

“I used to watch you play football,” Grandpa says.

“Want an autograph?”

“No, but thank you for offering, Frank,” my grandfather answers, as if taking the question seriously, and that catches Mr. Crane by surprise. Brutus tugs on the leash. Mr. Crane yanks. Brutus yelps.

“That knee injury. Must have hurt,” my grandfather says.

“Big time. Killed my career.”

“I’m glad you’re doing fine now.”

Mr. Crane again looks startled, as if he’s never even considered that as a possibility.

“Can I give this to your dog?” Grandpa asks. “I picked it up from the butcher on my way home from the nursery this afternoon. You have a great one in this town, did you know that? I bought some primroses. My late wife used to say a garden is not a garden without primroses. Also found some beautiful yellow anemones. They’re perennials, you know. Means they’ll come back every year. I like that. Every year, rain or shine.”

My grandfather sails the bone into the Cranes’ front yard, pats Brutus on the head, and leaves. Brutus drops to his stomach, bone between his paws, and starts gnawing and chewing.

I check out his stubby tail. It’s only the one time, but a definite back-and-forth wag happens.

Score one for the oppo-bully.

Meanwhile, my brain is chewing on its own rawhide bone.

What is the this Dad can’t handle, what is the this?

Report from Planet Fear #8

Here’s what I know about pain.

Pain isn’t just a concept on Planet Fear. It’s an actual entity, and like any other entity, it will do whatever is necessary to stay alive.

It’s Darwinian, okay? Call it survival of the thinnest-skinned.

But pain can’t survive without constant attention. And the way pain gets your attention is by sneaking around and hiding and lying and stealing and eavesdropping and especially by shape-shifting—using other bad feelings as fronts. That way you can’t identify what you’re actually feeling as pain until it’s too late.

Fronts like:

Anger.

Hatred.

Jealousy.

Grief.

Drama.

Dread.

It’s like reaching into a box of fishhooks—you can never pull out just one, and the pain is always waiting, stuck on the end of every barb. Once you’ve swallowed the pain-bait, it’s game on. Inflict, or be inflicted. Hurt, or be hurt.

Well, guess what? I’m done being the victim.

Screw you, pain.

And while I’m at it, screw you, Planet Fear.

Chapter Thirty-three

“How do you know?” Timmy says behind me.

“I just do, okay?”

The lock box clicks and we’re inside. I sneeze from the dust.

Timmy does his usual candle-lighting and setting-up deal while I fish my black notebook out of my pack.

“But how…”

“Because we have to succeed this time, all right?” I pull out the bottle of Terra Nova wine and set it on the ground with a flourish.

“Whoa,” Timmy says.

“Exactly.”

I hand over my silver baby spoon.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Make it into silver powder. Use the grinder,” I say.

He gets to work, winching an old-fashioned meat grinder tight onto the card table. It’s cast iron, and totally cool. His mom let us take it last year when she got her industrial-sized Cuisinart. She was going to donate the grinder to Goodwill, but we begged.

“We’re going to make gold. We’re going to make so much gold you can visit your father wherever he is, whenever you want.”

Me, too, if it comes to that.

Timmy is slowly turning the handle of the meat grinder. What comes out the other end isn’t silver dust, exactly. More like silver turds, but whatever.

“How long is Carter suspended for?” I ask.

“Just today, I think.”

“I’ll bet he wishes it was for two days. Maybe I should have tackled you in class this morning.”

“Nah. She’d just make us do the reports first, and then we’d get suspended.”

Timmy drops a few pellets into my palm. “I heard that Carter got a black eye once fighting off a security guard who was trying to stop him from shoplifting.”

I shoot Timmy a look, but there’s no way he could know anything about last night. “Lot of black eyes going around,” I say.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I’ve been thinking more about this topic. “Carter’s dad is a jerk, okay? He screams at him all the time and calls him names. Maybe even hits him. So…”

“So, what goes around, comes around?”

I don’t answer him.

“What? Suddenly I’m supposed to feel sorry for Carter?” Timmy asks.

I can’t wrap my head around the right response. I don’t know the answer myself. I open my notebook to the latest formula and pass it over to Timmy.

“Let’s make our lives golden, Tim. Let’s do this.”

I use the corkscrew to open the wine bottle. I’m not very smooth and some of the cork crumbles but eventually I half-pull, half-dig the thing out. I hold the bottle to my nose and sniff, and yes, it’s earthy and smells of something ripe, just like the little baggie of topsoil I snagged from Grandpa Howard’s garden reclamation project.

We are super-set with earth elements this time around.

Timmy ignites the blue flame on the Coleman stove and I set the glass pot on top.

“Commence with Transmutation Experiment Number Nineteen,” I say.

“Number Nineteen commences,” Timmy echoes. He reads aloud from my notebook.

“One sterling silver baby spoon, ground into…ummm…” he looks over at me. “It says powder, but..”

“Ground into pellets,” I say, and dump the silver into the beaker.

“Ground into pellets.”

I pick up the measuring cup.

“One cup of mud,” Timmy says.

“Moistened topsoil,” I correct him. “Includes the water factor.”

“Sorry. Moistened topsoil.”

I empty the contents of the cup into the pot, scraping around with my finger to pick up excess dirt. If this were cookie dough, I’d lick it off.

“Two tablespoons of plant food. Thank you, Grandpa Howard.”

“Thank you, G-Pop.” I measure them in.

“A touch of fire.”

I add a pinch of paprika.

Timmy looks up at me. “It says we need vine-oh here. What’s that?”

I hold up the bottle of wine. “Vino. Wine. Terra Nova Pinot Noir.” I pour a couple of inches worth into the mixture and set the bottle aside.

Timmy snatches up the bottle and takes a long swig.

“I suppose you think that’s really hysterical,” I say. “Act your age.”

“This is my age!” Timmy’s eyes gleam. “I’m almost a teenager, and you’re almost, almost a teenager. We’re only young once!”

He’s such a doofus but he still makes me laugh and when he passes over the bottle I only hesitate for a second before gulping some down. The inside of my mouth goes a little numb, but the inside of my belly likes it just fine.

Distillation. Step 6.

I take another big swallow and my whole body heats up.

I grab a wooden spoon and stir the pot. The wine-soaked, fertilized topsoil isn’t doing much of anything yet.

“What about the air element?” Timmy asks.

Of course. I feel around in my backpack, then look through it, then empty the whole thing onto the card table. I sift through candy wrappers and blunt pencils and shake out the old t-shirt stained with oil I use on my bike when the gear chain slips. “Shit. I don’t have the fan.”

Timmy is rummaging inside his own pack. He pulls out a spray can of deodorant. “How about this?”

I start to laugh.

“Hey. I’m starting to have pit hair, okay? And pit hair equals B.O. I like to be prepared.”

“I’m not so sure about using that,” I say.

“It’s aerosol. Aero equals air.” He reads the label. “‘Dry Gold Protection.’ If that’s not a sign, what is?”

Something about spray cans and fire is tickling at the back of my brain but before I can say another word he aims it at the coffee pot and presses.

Flamethrower I think and for a split second it’s totally amazing but then the orange column of fire leaps onto the candy wrappers and my oily t-shirt and crawls its way across the floor to the papered-up windows and everything starts burning burning.

“Holy crap! Holy crap!” Timmy yells but he’s not moving.

“Water! Get the water!” I shout but a plastic water bottle isn’t going to cut it and there are tongues of hungry fire wherever I look. One of the wooden easels starts to burn.

I grab Timmy and drag him toward the door, flames are licking, tasting, gobbling, and my throat is hot, and somehow even the door handle is hot, and whoosh the sprinklers go off, but fire is still popping up everywhere. I wrench open the door and haul Timmy outside with me.

His face is streaked with tears and so is mine.

I hear sirens. The windows to the old clubhouse are flickering and alive, and now smoke has joined the flames and the water douses the fire, the earth, the air, the water, the fire, calcinations, dissolution, separation, conjunction, fermentation, distillation but no gold. Never any gold. Something wooden collapses with a splintered moan.

What have I done? What have I done?

Chapter Thirty-four

When Timmy and I were kids, we loved nothing better than sirens screaming past our houses. The stream of sound meant emergency vehicles were doing their jobs, and boy did we dig that. We’d beg our parents to drive us to the source of the wailing sirens, but usually they wouldn’t. Later, when we were older, we’d hop on our bikes and ride. I mean, come on: a bright red fire truck, complete with six uniformed and rubber-booted firemen aiming water-spewing hoses at a burning warehouse? Paradise! Add to that fire engine a couple of police cars, cops milling around, lights flashing, radios crackling and blaring, and you had two ecstatic kids.

Sitting on the curb soaking wet, waiting for your parents to pick you up when you’re the cause of the emergency?

Not so ecstatic.

The Catering Queen arrives first. She parks her Passat about three feet from the curb, jumps out, and wrenches open the hatchback trunk. Her high heels click across the pavement, and she’s wearing a fancy black dress like she’s been on a hot date or something. She won’t look at me, just hauls Timmy to his feet. The silvery space blanket wrapped around his shoulders floats to the ground, like he’s shed a layer of metallic skin.

“In the car. Now.” Her lips are two slashes of red.

Timmy scurries to his bike and wheels it to the car. He has to fold the front tire to make the frame fit inside.

She doesn’t move or help. She watches him struggle.

I’d apologize, but I hardly recognize her with her vampire mouth and short black dress and stilettos, and now that she’s divorced I don’t know what to call her anymore, except maybe the Catering Queen, and I’m not that stupid. She glances at me once before she joins Timmy, one quick death-stare, like she knows this is all my fault.

“You trying to give me a heart attack, or what?” she barks at Timmy as she slams the hatch closed. She click-clicks to the driver’s side, slides behind the steering wheel, and bangs that door shut, too. Timmy sends me a silent good-bye and ducks inside the passenger door. He doesn’t slam anything. As they drive off, her jaw is moving up and down, up and down, like there aren’t enough hours in the day or vocabulary words in the dictionary to tell him how upset she is.

Mom and Dad walk out of the warehouse with police officer number four. Mom is holding what’s left of my notebook.

So my parents have been here for who knows how long, and they didn’t even tell me.

The cop is frowning and my father is nodding and I wonder if the cop thinks their juvenile delinquent son is how Dad got his black eye.

I pull the foil blanket tighter around my shoulders.

What if I’m kicked out of school what if I go to prison what if they go to prison what if what if what if

Why didn’t I stop Timmy? How could I have been so stupid?

What if we hadn’t gotten out?

An arm touches my shoulder. Mom. All my muscles clench, my stomach, my jaw, my fists—that way the anger and disappointment won’t hurt as much. I lift my head.

But her eyes. They’re not mad, not at all.

I don’t understand.

She joins me on the curb and we sit shoulder to shoulder. She starts leafing through my waterlogged notebook and Dad is still outside the warehouse with the cop, frowning and nodding, frowning and nodding.

“You wanted to make gold?” Mom asks me.

I nod. It sounds so dumb when she says it.

“Because you thought we needed the money?”

Because we do need the money I want to say but now my throat squeezes shut, and hot blobby tears spill over, and that’s just perfect isn’t it? I’m going to be twelve tomorrow and I’m bawling like a big baby.

“You were trying to save the family.” Mom’s voice is so gentle and so soft and now I’m frigging sobbing.

She puts her arm around me, and I’m getting snot on her sweater, and she doesn’t even notice. Or if she does, she doesn’t mind.

“I wanted to do something,” I say into her shoulder all muffled, and she grips me even tighter, and that makes me cry harder.

“I know. I know,” she says, and she rubs my back like she did when I was little and I had a fever. “It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”

And somehow I do, I believe her.

“Come on,” she says. She stands up and holds out her hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

I unclench my fist. I take her hand.

Chapter Thirty-five

“So, are we clear on this, Milton?” My father’s stern voice hasn’t wavered, not for an hour.

“We’re clear,” I say.

“You are never, ever going to experiment with fire like that again?” Mom chimes in. She’s been alternately lecturing, and crying. I think I must have really scared her.

“I promise.”

Grandfather Howard hasn’t said a word, but his ramrod-straight back and unsmiling face tells me this is no joke to him, and he’s disappointed in me, too.

“I’m so, so sorry,” I say.

“I know you are, Milton. And now you have all summer to make it right.” Dad’s voice finally warms up.

Instead of grounding me for life, or sending me to juvenile hall, my father has worked out an arrangement with the police for me to spend the summer volunteering for the fire department. Not as an actual firefighter—you have to be at least eighteen for that—but washing their trucks and making coffee runs, stuff like that.

I suppose Timmy and I are lucky that clubhouse was already doomed (in real estate terms, they call it “condemned”) so no one is getting sued or anything. Whoever buys the lot will just knock down what’s left of it.

But still. We could have died. Dad’s lecture and Mom’s tears and Grandpa Howard’s stern face helped hammer that in, but here’s the thing. I was there. I saw how fast that fire was moving.

A yawn takes over my face, so big it makes my eyes water. I start to get up from the sofa.

“Wait,” Dad says. “Your mother and I have something else we want to talk about with you.”

My stomach tumbles like an elevator after somebody snapped the cable. I knew it I knew it I knew it. Now my heart starts flipping out—it’s like a wild bird is trying to escape from my chest.

Dad kneels in front of me, and takes my hands in his. I can’t look at him, so I stare at our linked hands.

He takes a big breath. Here it comes.

“I’m sorry, son,” Dad says.

I wait for the rest of the sentence, the part where he tells me it’s not my fault, that these things just happen, that they’ll both never stop loving me.

But, nothing.

I raise my eyes. He looks like he expects me to say something back, so I rewind. I’m sorry, son.

“Uh, what for?” is the best I can manage.

“Well, it’s a long list.”

This just feels weird. But Dad keeps going. I can barely take the words in.

“I’m sorry for being gone all the time. For making you worry about things no kid should worry about. For talking on my phone more than I talk to you.”

I’m catching flies, I’m so shocked. He’s actually saying these words. I close my mouth.

Dad clears his throat. “I’m sorry for making you question whether or not your mother and I are going to stay together.”

Which is not exactly an answer.

And so I turn to Mom, and ask her directly.

“Are you? Are you and Dad getting a divorce?”

And my heart’s going ba-da-bump ba-da-bump ba-da-bump.

Mom walks over to Dad and holds out her hand. Dad stands up and takes her hand, the same question in his eyes. She leans her head against his shoulder, and he puts his arm around her shoulders, and then she says, “No, absolutely not,” and the bird stuck in my ribs takes flight.

They’re not getting a divorce.

I flop back onto the sofa cushions. And now here comes Grandfather Howard, and he’s still not smiling.

“We’re not done here,” he says. He kneels in front of me, too.

“Done with what?” I say.

“With apologies,” he says. “I’m sorry, Milton.”

“But, what did you do?” I’m honestly mystified.

“I sent you off to the library with Tim.”

“You just wanted us to make up,” I say, because he’s G-Pop, you know? Plus it’s true.

“I interfered,” he says. “Which is another way of not seeing you at all.”

I’m going to have to unpack this riddle later, but that’s always the way with Grandpa Howard. Anyway, Mom kind of comes to attention at this, like a pointer dog, which does make me wonder if the message is for her, too.

Mom has pulled an LP from their record collection. She slips it out and wipes off the dust with her sweater sleeve. She puts it on the turntable and reaches out her hand to me.

Oh, brother.

Darlin’ you send me. I know you send me. Darling you send me. Honest you do, honest you do, honest you do…

“This is called a dip,” Mom says and whoosh I’m staring at the ceiling. I start laughing as she lurches me upright and whips me around. I glimpse my grandfather’s face and he’s smiling at my mom. He looks really happy.

I know, I know, I know, you send me, I know you send me, whoa, you you you you send me, honest you do.

Dad cuts in, thank God, and they finish with a curtsey and a bow to each other.

Dad licks his thumb and rubs under Mom’s eye, which is gross.

“You’re amazing, and you’re beautiful,” he says. “Even with your mascara running.”

“Says the man who looks better in my makeup than I do.”

“In that case, I’ll wear it more often.”

“High five,” Grandpa Howard says into my ear. I turn. He’s holding up one hand, and I slap it with mine. I leave our palms pressed together. His fingers are much longer than mine, and luckily even wishing won’t make that change.

I’m suddenly, totally exhausted. “May I pleased be excused?” I ask the room, and Mom and Dad laugh and give me the thumbs-up, okay sign.

I go upstairs, but tired as I am, I’m not ready for sleep yet. Too much has happened, you know?

I open my bedroom window. The night sky is covered with stars, I’m talking drenched, like somebody slung a full bucket of them across the darkness. When my grandfather moves beside me, somehow I’m not surprised. I was hoping, is what I’m trying to say.

Also, I took down the Please Knock sign.

“Lot of stars tonight,” he says.

“Uh huh.”

“Your fellow alchemist Mr. Newton spent some time staring at them.”

“Uh huh.”

“Not to mention Merlin. Now there was another dedicated magician.”

I stifle a yawn. My grandfather turns down my covers and pats the mattress. I can’t believe how tired I am. I crawl into bed.

“Do you believe in it, Grandpa? Magic?”

“Don’t have to,” he says. “I’ve seen it in action. Just today, in fact, I’ve personally witnessed the successful transmutation of one Milton Adams.”

I push onto one elbow. “But I failed. Big time. Today was a total disaster.”

“Maybe. Or maybe you’ve been using the wrong ingredients, and looking for the wrong result. Filling your beaker with fear and anger, hoping for quick results, and maybe even revenge. So yes, the experiment failed. But not completely.” He stood up. “End of the day, you brought us all together in a way we’d never been before.”

He leans over and kisses me goodnight.

“That’s alchemy,” he says.

Snuggles lands at the foot of my bed.

“You want the door open or closed?” The hall light frames Grandpa Howard’s hair and beard and they glow like he’s radioactive.

“Closed,” I say.

And I’m asleep.

THUNK.

At first I assume Snuggles must have jumped onto the floor, but I find his warm furry body with my foot.

Something heavy definitely landed hard on something else.

I switch on the bedside lamp and right away I spot Grandpa Howard’s Harley bandanna up against my bedroom door. It’s knotted into a hobo’s pouch.

I cross the room. I pick it up. I can feel something heavy and round inside.

I untie the cloth.

A jagged rock falls out, the size and shape of a grapefruit, but much more lethal. Then I notice some writing on the bandanna.

I hold it up with both hands. LIKE FATHER LIKE SON is Magic Markered in black.

I turn the bandanna over.

LOSERS

I set the stone on the desk next to my laptop, and close and lock my window. I bury the bandanna deep under the covers, so deep no one can find us.

I’m eating at the dinner table, Mom, Dad, even Snuggles, he’s on the actual table stealing food straight off Mom’s plate. She’s texting so she doesn’t care.

Which is just…

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

Mom doesn’t react. Neither does Dad.

“Uh, guys? Hello…the door?”

No one, nothing, they can’t hear me. This is getting ridiculous.

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

“Fine,” I say, and go to the door.

Breathe in, breathe out, hear behind me. Then, “Say it. SAY IT!”
the air flows in the air flows out, darlin’ you send me, honest you do
I open the door.

Carter he’s ten feet tall he opens his mouth the words are stretched like taffy

It’ssss yourrrr funerallll.

I duck between his legs run out of the house sprint down Oak Drive. Carter’s behind me. Normal Carter, not giant Carter. I hop a fence, dodge a For Sale sign, hi Mom, weave through a rose garden, there’s Luz and her food truck. Why is it called Nowhere-Cup?

Why is she hanging up a black wreath?

Luz?

She looks over and shakes her head, I’m gonna miss you, buddy

Why? Where am I going?

She nods behind me I turn Brutus he’s huge his stubby tail now long and skinny and it curls into a tight wheel then uncurls as he crouches and leaps.

Carter behind. Brutus in front. Trapped stuck danger major malfunction it’s my funeral I’m gonna miss me…

My cheeks are wet. Is it raining?

Am I awake? Am I asleep? Where am I?

Report from Planet Fear #9

Stage six: Process of distillation now occurring on Planet Fear.

Evaporation of dark clouds of pain leading to re-condensing in the form of healing tears.

Feel the hurt. Feel the fear. Feel the loss of your old way of being. Hurt and fear and loss are your friends.

Brutus is your friend.

Carter is your friend.

Elevate.

Lower.

Elevate.

Lower.

Chapter Thirty-seven

Wanhhh!

My eyes fly open. Mom’s holding a green foil party blower against her lips.

Wanhhh!

The paper tube uncoils and then coils up tight. Just like Brutus’s nightmare tail in my dream, but with all the danger removed.

“Rise and shine, birthday boy!”

I struggle upright, as she jams a green foil birthday hat on my head, snapping the elastic under my chin.

“Ow!” I say but under my breath, because really I’m not hurt, I just haven’t entirely woken up.

Mom hands over a bowl of ice cream with a lit birthday candle stuck mid-mound.

“Birthday breakfast! Chococadabra! Make a wish!”

“Mom, calm down,” I say, smiling a little.

A triangle of Harley bandanna peeks from between the sheets and I touch the cotton corner for luck. I close my eyes and wish.

I open them and blow out the candle.

“Woo-hoo!” Mom says. “High five!”

She sticks up one hand. I slap it. Maybe now she’ll settle down.

“Yeah! That’s what I’m talking about!”

Or not.

“Mom, stop being so weird. You’re acting like Grandpa. On steroids.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she says and dives toward me and if I hadn’t moved my head her kiss would have landed right on my mouth.

Which is just gross.

I use the bandanna to wipe my cheek and mouth.

“Thanks for the ice cream, and everything, Mom.”

“You are very welcome. Now, eat your ice cream before it melts, Mr. Twelve Years Old. See you downstairs in a few minutes. School day.” Finally, she leaves.

Like I’d forget today is a school day.

It’s your funeral

Down in the kitchen, my grandfather is doing something with a needle and thread to a big hole in the toe of his sock.

“Hey, G-Pop.”

“Twelve years old. Wowser.”

I’m gonna miss ya, buddy

He reaches behind his chair. “I have something for you.”

He pulls out a glass beaker, a real one, maybe a foot tall and totally professional-looking with blue markings and a curved spout.

“This is a Berzelius beaker, Milton. Berzelius was a Swedish physician. He believed in the secret presence of a mysterious life force. Vitalism, he called it. And he chose this configuration of beaker—twice as tall as it is wide—for the process of titration. Do you know what titration is?”

I shake my head.

“Using the known to determine the unknown.” He catches my eye. “For the time being, only use it for real alchemy, okay?”

Okay.” My fingers are itching to hold my present.

“Good.” And finally he places the beaker in my hands. “This will serve you well for a long time if you pay proper attention to it.”

The glass is heavy and smooth and cool to the touch. “Grandpa.” I rotate the column of glass and mystery. “This is so…”

“The alchemist’s first tool. I bought it off a real wizard.”

“Right. Why do I think you’re not telling me the whole truth?”

“Don’t believe everything you think.”

And that completes his gift: One genuine G-pop fortune cookie phrase to kick off my thirteenth year of existence.

Dad hustles into the kitchen. His shiner has faded to puke yellow but otherwise he’s looking pretty sharp in a blue suit and red tie.

“Happy birthday, kiddo.”

He tries to ruffle up my hair but I duck out of reach.

“Nope. Done with the hair thing, okay Dad?” The words sail out of my mouth instead of staying latched to my brain like a burr.

“Roger that,” he says, like it’s no big deal, and I can’t believe how easy it was to ask for what I wanted.

Huh. Already, today seems different, but is it the occasion or is it me?

Dad’s face changes, he almost looks embarrassed or something. “So, hey. I’ll see you later. Parents’ Day, right?”

I gape at him. “You’re kidding. You’re coming?”

“Of course I’m coming,” he answers, his face getting a little red. “You’re my man. I want to cheer you on.”

He starts for my hair again but changes direction mid-reach and winds up half fist-bumping half getting tangled with my fingers, which is totally awkward but still a major improvement.

“I’m proud of you.” His voice is gruff. He clears his throat. “I…”

I jump in, before he gets too worked up. “Thanks, Dad, see you later.”

He flutters his fingers over his shoulder as he leaves.

Mom pads barefoot into the kitchen. She’s wearing leggings and one of Dad’s old t-shirts, her slunge-day clothes she calls them. She hasn’t had a slunge day in maybe two years.

“You’re not going to work today?” I ask.

“Nah,” she says.

“But what about that house?”

“Oh, well, I persuaded the sellers to lower the price. Doesn’t mean it’ll move. You know, no guarantees. But nothing to do but wait at this point.”

Grandpa Howard looks up from his sock.

“You don’t seem too upset.”

“I’m not, actually. Right now I’m okay-ish. No idea why but…”

“No need to know why,” he says, predictably. “Just be okay.”

“Well, that’s the plan.” She pours herself a mug of coffee and picks up a magazine from the counter. “You know what? I believe I’m going to go upstairs and have myself a long, hot bath.” And she does a wheelie straight out of the kitchen.

Just to be clear, I’m not entirely buying this new family reality, in fact part of me thinks I’ve just somehow slipped into an alternate universe.

On the other hand, the Berzelius beaker is real, and I did make a wish on a heap of Chococadabra, and even though it hasn’t come true yet, things seem to have shifted.

I’ll go with remaining skeptical of my skepticism.

I wrap the beaker in a dish towel and tuck it inside my backpack from two years ago. My other one is toast, and this one unfortunately has Dumbledore on the back but so what? No way am I leaving this beaker behind.

I climb on my bike. My goal today is to channel Evan Lee Joy as much as possible. Call it emergency stress management. I figure it’s that, or run a severe risk of publicly pissing in my pants in T minus eight hours.

I start off by practicing breathing in and out as I pump the pedals all the way to school. It actually works. As I dismount and lock my bike, I realize I haven’t thought about standing on the stage and totally fucking up one single ti…

oops.

Okay, nobody said this stuff wasn’t tricky.

Mr. Crane’s Escalade rolls up in front of school and instantly sucks away all my good feelings like some black, sheet-metal Dementor. The passenger door opens and spits out Carter and I scurry behind the nearest hedge.

So much for feeling the groove of life.

But once I’m back there, I like it. I mean, I’m still hiding in a hedge at school and Carter’s still waiting by the door, so it’s not that anything’s changed.

But it’s different.

Because in this exact moment I’m not out there. I’m here. And Carter’s not here, he’s out there.

See what I mean?

I close my eyes. The sunlight sews patches of gold to the inside of my lids. A breeze brushes against my cheeks, as if the wind is whispering.

breathe in

breathe out

birdsong so distinct

the thwup thwup thwup of a rotating sprinkler spraying a lawn breathe in

out

leaves rustling

in

you’re a loser

wind

feels sweet

in

out

is that anna laughing is she laughing at me

in

out

real magic

proud of you son

space

peace

heart

heart

i’ve been waiting for you to notice me

heart

I open my eyes. A fluttering sound lifts my eyes. A huge flock of birds, hundreds of them, swoop and swirl as one, carving a third dimension into the flat blue of the sky.

Synchrony.

Synergy.

Alchemy.

Chapter Thirty-eight

The Catering Queen is front and center, taking a selfie.

I part the red velvet stage curtains another two or three inches.

The auditorium is maybe two-thirds full, and it’s only four-thirty. Parents I don’t know nod to other parents I don’t know, as they save seats with empty coats and unread programs. The room is filling up fast.

The lining of my stomach sours, like something has decided to curdle in there. (de·com·pen·sa·tion \(.)dē-.käm-pən-.sā-shən, -.pen-\ noun: loss of physiological or psychological ability to function. #108)

I force myself to execute a careful visual sweep. No Mr. Klenhard anywhere, which sucks for Timmy even though he’s come to expect that particular disappointment. No Mom or Dad yet either, or Grandfather Howard for that matter, but I’m not worried. Nothing starts until five.

Anna’s mom is sitting toward the back texting, and a man I assume is Anna’s father even though he looks a little young to be a dad takes the empty seat next to her mother. He drapes his arm around her shoulder and kisses her cheek. She puts away her phone and leans into him like he’s her favorite form of shelter.

Next the Cranes make an entrance—Mr. Crane charging a path through the crowded middle aisle, shoulders down, head lowered, legs churning; all he’s missing is the football and Mrs. Crane slip-streaming behind, pulled along by his draft. He stops short to shake someone’s hand and she bumps into his back. The look he shoots her way makes my stomach hurt even more and I release my grip on the curtains. The gap softly closes.

Backstage it’s madness, the terror so thick you could slice it into bite-sized pieces. Anna paces back and forth rehearsing. I bet she doesn’t even know her lips are moving. The Goth kid stares into space, gnawing on his thumb. Timmy bursts through the stage door, a dark half-moon decorating each armpit. I wave him over to a corner I’ve claimed. I sit with my back against the wall, the beaker wedged between my knees.

“I’m so over Ferguson and her lame-ass ideas,” Timmy says. He goes all falsetto, “‘It doesn’t matter just as long as you speak from the heart,” and reverts back to his normal voice. “I hate her, and I hate my topic even more. The History of Pizza? Who even cares? Not to mention the research alone has totally put me off cheese. Jesus it’s hot in here.” He pulls at the front of his shirt collar and suddenly notices the two growing sweat crescents. “Oh, that’s perfect, that’s just awesome.” He lifts his elbows and ducks and swivels for a quick whiff of each pit.

The acid in my belly comes to a boil. Random dots of black swirl in front of my eyes and I think they’re gnats but there aren’t any gnats in here, that’s just...

I lurch to my feet and shove the beaker into Timmy’s arms.

“Watch this for me?” I ask but I don’t wait for his answer because this is getting dire, I’m either about to die or about to pass out. Moments later, I am leaning over the sink splashing cold water on my face, and that eases the dizziness but I still feel woozy. I back away and fold over. I place my hands on my bent knees and lower my head. Water drips from my face and lands on the floor in splats. I suck in gulps of air and the pinpoints of darkness recede.

That’s when I hear loud retching from inside one of the stalls. Someone is booting big-time and my mouth pools with saliva, and for a moment I’m so close to barfing I can’t even...

It’s Carter. He stumbles out of the stall and his skin is a color no skin should be, not unless you’re a gekko. At first he doesn’t see me. Then our gazes lock. His eyes are goggles of pain.

He’s swallowed the fear-bait.

I look deeper, and the flat black of his pupils shape-shift into other forms:

Humiliation.

Helplessness.

Shame.

I am not alone on Planet Fear. Not now, not in this moment. Maybe not ever.

And my own terror kind of pops, just like a soap bubble, and I’m okay. I’m safe, right here, right now, and this truth is like my own best shelter and I lean into it.

Real Carter’s face morphs again as a door slams shut and he’s back to the old Carter. Bully Carter. He collars me and rams me against the tiled wall and balls up one fist.

But I’m not afraid. I’m just here. And even though he’s wearing his bully mask I can see straight past it to Real Carter, and the longer I hold his eyes, the better I can see that Real Carter is marooned on the same planet in the same solar system as mine. That he’s just as terrified as I am.

“What are you looking at?” he snarls, his fist raised but frozen.

Myself. Us.

“Answer me!”

“You’re as scared as I am,” I say. “Scared to death to walk on that stage.”

“Go to hell!” Carter snatches his fingers from my collar as if he can’t bear to touch any part of me, but he doesn’t hit me, and he doesn’t leave, and again I glimpse something frightened behind his glare, and hear something desperate beneath his growl.

I don’t blink.

He spins away and stalks out of the bathroom, banging the door behind him.

My heart is banging too, out of control, just like when I almost got hit by that car, just like when I was waiting for Mom and Dad to tell me they were getting a divorce

But they’re not getting a divorce…

And I didn’t get hit then…

And I didn’t get hit now…

A blast of relief jets through my body. So I do what Grandfather Howard says, I use the voltage to titrate my dread into something else, something pure and trustworthy and invincible. Something that understands.

Step 7. Coagulation. Everything crystallizes, comes into focus, and my mind is as clear and sharp as a diamond.

I reach into my back pocket and pull out my crumpled report and a stubby pencil. I start to scribble and cross out, and I realize it’s probably too late, but even that’s okay.

“Milton?” I hear Timmy calling. “Milton, where are you?”

“In here,” I answer.

Timmy pushes into the bathroom ass first, which makes no sense until he turns and I realize he’s cradling my beaker against his chest, keeping it safe like I asked. He really is one of the good guys. “Are you okay, Milton? Was that Carter I saw leaving?”

I nod.

“Bro, seriously,” he says, “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” He cocks his head, like he senses something’s different but he can’t tell what. “You sure you’re all right?”

“That would be affirmative,” I say.

“Good. Because you’re up first. As in right now,” and he shoves the beaker into my arms.

I hear applause as we scurry down the hallway to the stage door. I ease it open and we step inside. They’ve opened the velvet curtains and the platform is bathed in light. Ms. Ferguson crosses to the podium. She’s wearing heels and a black skirt that hugs her butt and her calf muscles ripple as she walks. Some kid wolf-whistles but the sound dies under her laser-glare.

She taps the mic. PUMPH PUMPH PUMPH. “Can everyone hear me okay?”

Lots of yesses and some more scattered clapping.

“Thank you for coming.” Ms. Ferguson shades her eyes. “Looks like we have a full house. How great is that?” More applause, and from the sound of it the crowd isn’t just big it’s gi-normous and my knees turn to butter.

in breath

out breath

hands holding a beaker of glass

feet resting on the hard floor

heart beating beating beating

heart

heart

i have been waiting for you

“So, we’re going to experience something special now,” Ms. Ferguson says. “But first, I dare all of you to silence your devices for the next sixty minutes. I know, I know, it’s a lot to ask. But our speakers will deeply appreciate the effort. Also, please hold your applause until the very end of the program.”

A couple of lame-o’s clap at that.

I peek around the pleated curtains. Mom and Dad are about four rows back on the left-hand side, Grandpa Howard on Dad’s right, his hair a bright puff of silver. Screens blink off. People tuck their devices away.

heart

heart

i am here

“Our first talk is by Milton Adams.”

Timmy touches my elbow. “Dude, I’ll go. Seriously, let me tell Ferguson. We can switch the order.”

“No,” I say.

“Milton’s subject is: The War Between the States.”

I turn to Timmy. “This is it. This is my time.”

left foot

right foot

left

right

one foot in front of the other

For a second I panic because there isn’t enough room for the beaker to fit on the podium, but of course there is if I just move the bottle of water to the floor.

I position my magician’s tool on one side of the flat wooden surface. It blazes like a column of white fire. I raise my head and the footlights blind me at first, but I blink and blink, and the murky sea of darkness gradually takes on forms and shapes.

Dad taking Mom’s hand in his. My grandfather smiling up at me; what is he wearing? Are the fat flowers on his Hawaiian shirt actually glowing in the dark?

So many others. People I don’t know. People who don’t know me.

Strangers.

palms wet

throat dry

hard to swallow

Milton there’s water

I step away from the podium and grab the water bottle and unscrew the top and take a long sip. The water tastes like liquid power.

Somebody coughs. Somebody else catcalls and somebody else goes shush!

I place my crumpled report on the podium and smooth out the wrinkles.

start

“‘The War Between the States’ is over,” I read, and my voice kind of cracks and a couple of people laugh. Off stage, Timmy shakes his head. He looks like he’s going to boot all over his low tops and that strikes me as funny, which helps. Weirdly.

“I learned that this week.”

And now an older kid hoots and his buddy blows a raspberry; they are both total tools, the same ninth-graders Ms. Ferguson showed up on the monkey bars, and she marches to the edge of the stage and hisses, You really really want me to come down from here? and not just those two, but the whole room goes completely silent. If Ms. Ferguson doesn’t know about Resistance, she should. She’d rock that game.

I somehow find the two jerk-offs in the darkened amphitheater. Their bodies are stiff and their eyes challenge me to tell them something they don’t already know. “See, that’s the war I’m talking about,” I say, and watch the words land. “The one we’re all in.”

Ms. Ferguson returns to the side of the stage, and now I see Timmy bury his head in his hands, like he knows I’m about to be pulverized.

But I keep going.

“We put each other down all the time. Argue with each other. Hold grudges. Say awful things about people behind their backs.” I’m not even checking my notes. “It’s a big, big war, and everybody’s walking around wounded.”

I tap my chest.

“I got wounded.”

Carter materializes at the edge of the stage next to the velvet column of curtains. He’s listening, I think.

“It hurts, you know? It really…it hur…” and I kind of hiccup over the word as the reality of that absolute truth kicks in.

inhale

exhale

Ms. Ferguson makes a small gesture. I look over at her.

“It’s okay,” she mouths, motioning me toward her. “You can stop.”

“I’m not finished,” I tell her, and turn back to the audience. As if on their own, my hands move to make a shield over my heart, one on top of the other, and it feels so good I leave them there, and my heart smiles.

i have been waiting for you for so long

“So, yeah. There was a civil war raging right inside me.” And my breath slows. Three minutes seems like all the time in the world.

inhale

exhale

in

out

“And then my grandfather came to visit. Grandfather Howard. G-Pop, to me. He’s a soldier. And he taught me how to stop the war. But not with a gun.” I hold up my beaker. “With this.” The air swims a little this is so surreal, I am actually doing this but not doing it at the same time…

yes

you are here

it is now

this is happening

“Imagine that you’re a beaker. And whatever you choose to put inside you, that’s who you are. If you fill your beaker with fear and hate and jealousy, if you pour in all your regret about the past or worry about the future, well then guess what? It’s pretty much guaranteed you’ll end up miserable.” I let that sink in. It’s as if I’m suspended overhead watching Milton Adams give this speech, but also I’m the Milton Adams giving it. And the watcher notices that I’m kind of getting the hang of this timing thing, even though I never did manage to record myself giving the speech, because I never actually finished the report until five minutes before I was standing/floating up here.

“But if you fill your beaker with love, and appreciation? With, um, with noticing what’s going on inside? If you don’t let fear be the boss of you, miracles can happen. Wars can end.”

The double-Milton thing stops happening and I’m back inside my regular body. I check out my family. Mom’s crying, of course, but even Dad’s eyes are shiny, and as for Grandpa Howard, he’s flat out beaming, and the light in his eyes surrounds me with an electric force field of understanding and something else, something new.

Respect.

“That’s the secret,” I say. “I can change.” I stick my right hand in the beaker and kind of swoosh my fingers around. “I can take the space inside me and no matter what it’s filled with, I can turn it into gold. And once I do that…the war is over. My grandfather calls this alchemy.”

I lean toward the ocean of upturned faces.

“So, what does this mean?”

I look for Timmy and my brain stumbles

why is he holding up his phone

is he recording this

why is he recording me

what if

And then I think, Why not? Why the heck not?

I focus on the audience again. “I think it means that my best friend…” I gesture offstage to Timmy, “and my parents…” yup, still holding hands, “and my neighbors…” and I do the hardest thing so far, I seek out Mr. Crane, meet his eyes with mine, and remind myself that maybe even he gets scared sometimes, and I manage a small smile, and then his head nods the tiniest bit, just like Brutus and his stubby-tailed almost-wag, although maybe it’s a trick of the light, “all of them…all of us, can change. That’s the secret. We’re all alchemists. We all can change.”

And now other heads are definitely bobbing up and down and someone honks their nose so hard it sounds like a moose call, and I glance down at my paper one last time but there’s nothing left to say.

I look over at Ms. Ferguson. “Now I’m finished,” I tell her, and I hope that’s not true in the wrong way.

The room is silent. I take my beaker and leave the stage. I’m freaking out a little, until I remember everyone was ordered not to clap. As I pass Ms. Ferguson she wraps her arms around me and does her best impression of a boa constrictor. Timmy is still filming me or I’d be bulging my eyes and sticking my tongue out at him, over her shoulder.

“Straight from the heart,” she says into my ear.

She releases me and heads for the podium. I move to Timmy. “Dude,” I say. “I think she broke a rib.”

He waves his phone at me. “I am so posting your speech on YouTube.” His eyes widen at something behind me. He lowers his voice. “Check it out.”

Carter is clutching his report, but you can still see that his hands are shaking like you wouldn’t believe. His Adam’s apple looks like it’s gotten stuck in his windpipe.

“And now Carter Crane will be giving his talk, titled ‘Why I Hate Everything.’”

“I can’t believe he took her seriously,” Timmy whispers.

I can.

Carter takes forever to reach the podium.

you can do it

one step in front of the other

He hunches over the mic. His chin is glued to his chest.

“Why…” he kind of croaks.

“Louder!” someone calls out. “Can’t hear you!”

“Why I hh…hhate ev…everything.” He forces out the words, but they’re broken up, as if they’ve cracked under the pressure it took to squeeze them out.

Carter finally raises his head. His entire body glazes over, and I follow his eyes, and there’s Mr. Crane. He’s forgotten all about alchemy. He lowers his head like a battering ram, crosses his arms, and glares at his only son.

The exact opposite of Mom and Dad and Grandpa Howard. The twinge in my heart is a sharp surprise.

Carter has been freeze-tagged. Only the lump in his throat struggles to move up and down, up and down.

My body breaks out in a sweat. Fear is coming off Carter in waves and like a sine cosine function my own falls in line.

Carter opens his mouth. Nothing comes out. He’s like a hooked fish in a bucket, eyes panicked, gawp-gawping.

“Who’s a zombie now?” I hear from the audience. “Bully gonna cry? Bully gonna wet his pants?” some guy shouts, and the old Milton wanted this, exactly this, more than anything, but the new Milton feels sick to my stomach.

Mr. Crane stands up and turns. “Hey! You got a problem, mister?” but he can’t find the heckler anywhere. “You wanna take this outside?”

Mrs. Crane pulls Mr. Crane’s arm. “Stop it, Frank,” she says. “You’re not helping.” Mr. Crane mumbles something, but he sits down.

Carter is grasping the two sides of the podium, and his knuckles are white ridges of tension and bone.

He opens his mouth again.

Nothing.

“You can do this, Carter.” I’m surprised that I’ve said this out loud, and so is he.

He turns and stares at me, eyes wide, skin tight enough to snap, can’t blink can’t think drowning

major malfuction major malfunction

breathe

“Breathe.” My mouth forms the feather of a word and I float it across the dark stretch of weightless space that separates us. “Carter, breathe.”

He gasps, a single harsh gulp of air. Sweat beads on his forehead. Still no sound escapes.

I place the palm of my left hand on my stomach and take a deep breath in and out, keeping Carter in my sights. I nod at him.

you can do this

breathe

His ribcage expands and his muscles relax. He discards the protective body shield. A puff of color returns to his cheeks.

yes

go on

titrate

For the second time tonight, magic happens.

“Why I Hate Everything.” Voice stronger, eyes still locked onto mine. “I don’t.” Carter faces the audience and shrugs. “I don’t really hate everything. But some things I just can’t stand.”

Exactly.

“My alarm clock going off…on a weekend…before I realize that I could have slept in.”

Yeah. Me, too.

I check out the audience, and I’m not the only one relating.

“Getting up to speak in front of a ka-zillion people…”

And now I’m not the only one smiling either.

“…wondering what happens if I sweat so much I slide right off the damn stage? Thank you very much, but I’ll pass. How about doing anything for the first time, when I don’t know the rules? I seriously, seriously hate that.”

He’s got this. He’s all right.

I’m all right, too. That’s how this stuff works.

Chapter Thirty-nine

“How about a second ice cream,” Grandpa Howard says. We’re standing in the school parking lot, after the last presentation.

“Great idea,” Mom says. “Take my car; I’ll drive home with Bill.”

“Really?” I ask.

“Absolutely. It’s a banner day,” she says. I look around for Timmy, to see if he wants to come too, but he’s gone.

His History of Pizza talk was awesome, by the way. Who knew that the first pizza came from ancient Greece, just like Plato and Socrates?

My grandfather and I have The Nowhere Cup to ourselves. I was half-hoping I’d see Anna there, but oh, well. Luz doles me out a huge scoop, and I get to blow out another candle and double-down on my wish, and it’s never tasted so good.

Luz joins us at the table.

“I’ve known this boy my whole life, Stuart,” she says to Grandpa Howard.

“Lucky for him, “Grandpa Howard says.

“Cuts both ways,” She says. She turns to me, and her eyes and skin are glowing. From the inside, I mean. I stare.

‘What,” Luz says.

“Nothing. It’s just, you’re kind of…lit up.” Then I look around, and it’s as if everything is shinier than before. The trees. The red rose on the counter. My bowl of ice cream. Even me. Like we’ve all been washed until we sparkle. My skin starts to tingle.

“Somebody’s figured out how to purr,” Grandpa Howard says.

It lasts until almost the last bite. I think I’m going to try purring more often.

Grandpa Howard parks the Fiat next to Dad’s car. No Brutus, I notice. I start heading for the kitchen door, but Grandpa Howard calls after me.

“I want to show you something,” he says. “Out back.”

I follow him down the side alley, and step into a wonderland.

“SURPRISE!” I hear. And I start purring like crazy, because everybody’s there, and it’s maybe the best surprise ever.

Plus, mystery solved. All those sudden silences? The secret looks? The “Do you think he knows?” and the fixing up the back yard?

They weren’t planning a divorce. They were planning a surprise party.

And it turns out, Grandfather Howard is Merlin, there’s no longer any doubt. While I was scribbling down my speech in the bathroom he was waving his magic wand, and now our back yard is epic, it’s better than Disneyland, better than Starship Enterprise, better than Oz, better than Narnia, better than the Aurora Borealis, better than a bottomless bowl of Chococadabra.

Small white paper bags line a twisting stone path and they flicker as if they’re filled with fireflies. Orange and pink and purple flowers everywhere, tangled vines with yellow trumpets, pink spotted ferns, staked plants dotted with baby tomatoes like tiny Christmas balls. An old-fashioned bathtub is occupied by a bush carved into the shape of a corkscrew, and a stone Buddha meditates in one corner. There’s even a wishing well at the far end of the wall…because wishes, right?

And friends, everywhere. Timmy, Anna, just about my entire class.

Mom steps outside with a gigantic cake, and my class sings Happy Birthday first, and then For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow. I close my eyes and make the same wish I made before, only this final time I have to blow out twelve candles, plus one to grow on, and I get it in one. It’s worth a try, I’ve still got a few hours left. But even if I don’t get my wish this is already my favorite birthday by far.

The music starts up and a bunch of classmates start dancing, not boy-girl dancing but more like a single bio-system made up of different swaying and reconfiguring parts. Anna’s right smack in the middle. She’s having a blast out there.

I focus on the song. Like she said, I need to know more than one. This man is just talking at first, his nasal voice blasting out of the speakers, asking all these questions about houses and highways.

The undulating protoplasm of kids forms and re-forms.

I like this song. I find myself nodding in time, as bodies connect and reconnect, creating different configurations.

The singer wonders if he’s right. He wonders if he’s wrong.

My classmates keep shape-shifting. Reinventing. Little geysers, like arm-streamers, shoot upward.

Anna splits off and whirls to my side. “Talking Heads,” she says, her voice loud over the chorus. “It’s my playlist. Obviously.”

“I like it.”

She gives me a thumbs-up and spins back to rejoin the mother-organism, and part of me wants to follow her, but part of me still isn’t sure she wants me to.

The song ends and Timmy’s voice cuts through the silence. “…so suddenly there’s the FedEx guy and I’m speechless,” he says.

I turn around.

No way.

He’s with that Goth guy in our class, Brian, I think he’s called, but our secret name for him is Ace, on account of all the hardware he’s pierced his body with. He’s always scared the living shit out of us.

Now Timmy’s saying, “Turns out Norris, that’s my dad’s girlfriend, sent me an Xbox One.”

“Serious?” Ace has a brand new semi-circle of metal dangling from the cartilage between his nostrils, like one of those nose rings they use to control bulls.

“Three-sixty serious,” Timmy says. He’s trying a little too hard, if you ask me. “It was a total guilt gift, but hey.” Timmy shifts his weight to the balls of his feet, as if he’s on a high dive deciding whether or not to leap. “So, Brian. You play?”

“Totally.”

Timmy inches closer to the edge of the diving board. And then he does it. He jumps. “You want to come over and try it sometime?”

Freefall.

Brian almost smiles. “Totally,” he says, and Timmy almost smiles back, and Brian looks away like he’s bored. But all three of us know the score.

I tug Timmy over. “Is it just me, or are you actually making an in-the-flesh friend?”

“Dude,” Timmy says, keeping his voice as low as mine. “You inspired me. I’m like,” and he makes his voice all Twilight Zone, “You have now escaped Planet Fear, doo-dit doo-doo, doo-dit doo-doo…”

He and Brian walk off together and I’m mostly really glad for both of them. I’m twelve now, I can be mature about such things.

My eyes wander around the wonderland, illuminated by strings of glowing lanterns. I’m half-ready to find Anna but I get distracted by something across the yard, attached to the wall that separates our garden from Carter’s. It’s the size and shape of a pie pan, and it pulls me like a magnet.

Maybe it is a magnet.

But no, up close I can see it’s a tin plate about six inches across. I quickly de-code the scrawl of black cursive on its face:

That would be G-Pop, and it makes total sense he’s mounted the signed plate because this garden is, in fact, a work of art and he is, in fact, the artist. Underneath his signature he’s added something else and as soon as I read it I crack up because instead of a date he’s written: .

He’s already gone to bed. I saw his lights blink out a while ago or I’d tell him how perfect everything is.

How almost perfect.

“Fun party.” Dad moves next to me and it’s the first time I’ve seen him since I blew out the candles a couple of hours ago and doubled down on my wish. He hands me a paper plate with a rectangle of multicolored birthday cake on it. I’ve already had two pieces, but that was ages ago. He’s got his slab of cake. I plop onto the grass and Dad kind of hitches at his jeans so he can sit cross-legged next to me.

“What a turn-out,” Dad says. “The whole gang.”

“Everyone but Carter,” I say. I feel kind of weird about it, but I also feel very glad.

“Yeah. About that. I went over there, while you were getting ice cream. Just to make sure he knew he was welcome.”

“You did?” My entire body tenses. Why would my father do this? Didn’t he hear a word Grandpa Howard said about interfering? I turn to look at him. “What happened?”

“Not much. I told him I enjoyed Carter’s talk. He grunted. I stuck out my hand. He stared at it for a minute, and finally gave it the limpest shake imaginable. I asked about Carter coming over. He said they were on their way to the mall, which might or might not have been true.”

My muscles relax. “Yeah, well, good luck finding Carter something he doesn’t hate,” I say. And we share a quiet laugh.

As for me, now that I get Carter, get where he’s coming from, the good news is I don’t have to hate him. But I also don’t need him to be my new best friend, you know? Baby steps, is all I’m saying.

“Where’s your grandpa?” Dad says.

“Tired. My grandpa is tired.”

“Nah. I don’t believe it.”

“Believe it,” I say. I nudge Dad’s shoulder with mine. “Thanks for being cool tonight.”

“Who me? Invisible. I’m not even here.”

We smile together in our private corner of Now. Then we dig into our cake.

“So, I was wondering,” Dad says, after polishing off the last bite. “You want to bring your beaker down to my office? I thought we might fill it up with stock picks and see what happens.”

“Sounds good.” I haven’t been invited to Dad’s office since I was about three years old. Another minor miracle.

Mom steps into the yard with a fresh pitcher of homemade lemonade. She’s got her hair pulled back in a ponytail and she looks like a teenager. “Mom’s happy.”

“Well, among other things, her house may have sold.”

I pivot to face Dad.

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. She let go of that last little bit of control and poof! Offer, counter-offer, loan awaiting approval.”

“I can’t believe she didn’t say anything.”

“This is your night, kiddo.”

I hear a familiar drum riff. Distant. Irresistible. Danh da-da-da danh da-da-da danh-danh, danh da-da-da danh da-da-da danh-danh-danh-danh. Next comes the hypnotic call of the flute.

“Bolero,” I explain to Dad. “Maurice Ravel.” He eyeballs me like I’ve just sprouted antennae. I decide not to mention the other bit, the reason teenagers like Bolero so much.

“Okay. That’s enough bonding,” Dad says, and pushes to his feet.

“You’ve got grass on your butt.”

“Not a good look for me.” He brushes at it blindly. “All better?”

“All better.”

He picks up our paper plates and saunters across the yard, dodging dancers until he reaches Mom. He sets down the plates and pulls her into his arms and starts to slow dance to the building sound, both of them moving their hips like...

Nope, not going there.

A dancer peels off from the group, it’s Anna again, and she’s heading my way. I scramble upright, running my tongue over my teeth to mop off any stray smears of icing.

“Hey, Milton. How are you doing?”

This time, I’m prepared. “I’m copacetic,” I say. “You?”

Her eyes widen. I’m pretty sure she’s impressed. “So, I meant to thank you earlier,” she says.

“What for?”

“For the invite.” She scuffs at the grass. She’s wearing sandals and her toes are bright blue. She doesn’t say anything else for a moment, and neither do I, but she does eventually peek over at me. Then her eyes return to the lawn.

Scuff. Scuff.

“I was kind of surprised you asked me, actually.”

“Actually, it was my parents. They invited the whole class,” I say, and want to kick myself.

“Right, it was a surprise party. Silly me.”

“But I would have. Asked you, I mean.”

Anna gives her head a shake, and her blonde braid swings. “See, that’s what I mean, Milton! You’re so confusing.”

“What?” I say.

“You know,” she says.

But I don’t, and no way am I going to guess.

“Sometimes I think you think I’m interesting,” she says, “and other times I feel like you are avoiding me, okay?” Scuff. Scuff.

Which is just

because

I mean as if

breathe breathe breathe breathe breathe

“Okay. Well. I guess I can just keep talking for both of us,” she says.

Anna’s wearing a white t-shirt with a rose stenciled on one shoulder, and a short denim skirt, really short, and her knees have these little dimples.

Since when do knees have dimples?

breathe

“Earth to Milton? Feel free to jump in at any point. Or if you want, I can just leave…”

Which finally cattle-prods my brain into responding, even if the response that comes out is beyond ridiculous. “I’m talking to you! I’m talking to you right now!” I love talking to you, Anna, I wish I could talk to you all the time.

I take her hand.

“Ohmygod!” she bursts out, and punches me on the shoulder with her other hand, not hard but still it shocks me.

“Wha..?”

“I got it so wrong. I mean all this year, I’ve been thinking you didn’t like me!”

And then Anna does it, she does it, she kisses me on the lips, and hers are pillows of softness, and then she just kind of skips away, and now everything is perfect.

Score one for the Chococadabra-triple-wishing birthday boy.

At that exact moment my grandfather’s bedroom light flicks on, and I take it as an excellent sign for the future.

“G-Pop?” I say to the door. Unlike others I won’t mention, I always knock, with or without written permission.

“Enter.”

He’s packing, which makes no sense because A) It’s almost midnight and B) He’s not…

“I thought you weren’t leaving until Sunday!”

“Dusty called earlier. She got some time off, so I’m meeting her in Flagstaff tomorrow. Going to show her the Grand Canyon.”

Plug pulled, just like that. All those good feelings? Down the drain.

“Hey, come here,” he says, but I don’t want to. “Sit.” He pats the bed covers, which are rumpled from sleeping or napping or whatever he was doing before he decided to choose Dusty over me. “Please, Milton?”

I don’t exactly sprint across the room, but eventually I reach his bed and sit, my lungs wrapped tight in a brand new bandage of sadness.

“I don’t want you to leave,” I say, and just admitting that loosens the binding one or two loops.

He nods, like he knows.

“Everything’s better when you’re here.” Another layer unwraps, and my chest is free to breathe again.

in

out

in

out

“Attaboy,” I hear my grandfather say.

in

out

“Before I forget. Today. Up on that stage. You knocked my socks off, Milton Adams.”

“Yeah?” What I want to say is, Why are you leaving? Still, when I test the idea, it doesn’t hurt quite as much as before.

“You hit it out of the park.”

“So you thought it was good?”

“Isaac Newton good.”

“Thanks.”

“You can keep doing it, you know.”

If he thinks I’m going to make public speaking a habit he’s nuts, only dweebs join debate club, I mean I might as well have a bulls-eye on my chest like that moose with the bummer of a birthmark in the Far Side car…

alert alert

old idea taking hold

more data required

“What do you mean, Grandpa? Doing what?”

“Letting your heart make sense of what your mind can’t figure out.”

Oh.

“That’s what all the best magicians do. Heroes, too, by the way.”

He rests a warm palm on my knee. The blue crisscross of raised veins on the back of his hand forms a topographic map—a terrain I want to know by heart.

Grandpa notices the red bandanna in my front shirt pocket. I tucked it inside there this morning. He starts to pull it out.

“Don’t,” I say because he gave it to me and now it’s ruined. But then I change my mind. I pull it out myself and unfold it and show him the message.

Both sides.

LIKE FATHER LIKE SON

LOSERS

“Well, he got it half right,” Grandpa Howard says. He meets my eyes. “I’m sorry you had to go through all of that.”

“I was really scared,” I say. And realize that I was, and I probably will be again sometime, but right now I’m not. Not scared. Not a loser. I’m Milton, and I’m fine.

It’s not like I’m melting into the now exactly, but close. And the pool of sweet feeling in my chest rises and spreads like warm maple syrup across my face and I realize I am, I’m purring again.

G-Pop rolls the bandanna into a tight log and ties it around my neck, bandito-style. “Doesn’t matter where you are, or who you’re with, Milton. You know the secret. Got it?”

I throw my arms around his neck. We hug hard, and I can feel the steady backbeat of his heart ka-dunking inside his crazy-ass Hawaiian shirt.

Final Report from Planet Fear

Update: Planet Dad has spun out of the gravitational pull of the past and successfully arrived back on earth. People, he is actually home before dark, so he can tend to his new little plot of earth in the back yard. He’s planted radish seeds, which let’s face it nobody likes to eat but according to him anyone can grow. Also, he’s carved four shots off his golf game.

Planet Mom has returned from the orbital path of the future and appears to be acclimating pretty well although she still can’t go too long without checking her phone. It might take a while, is all I’m saying.

Me? I’m in rigorous training, like any astronaut. I’ve locked lips with Anna two more times with no noticeable negative side-affects. I’ve tamed the beast that was Brutus so that he actually thumped his tail at me the other day. Only once, but still, it was definitive. I probably catch myself getting upset a hundred times a day. But here’s the thing, I’ve collected enough data to know it’s just my mind telling me tales, trying to change the past, or control the future. I add my heart to the mix and titrate. And the story changes.

That way, I don’t have to stay up here.

Atmospheric conditions are clear, all systems are go. Prepare for take off.

Ready.

Set.

Now

MILTON’S SECRET LINKS

OFFICIAL MOVIE WEBSITE:
www.miltonssecret.com

MILTON’S SECRET EDUCATIONAL GUIDE:
http://mindfulworld.com/education/

ESCAPE PLANET FEAR (ON-LINE COURSE BY ECKHART TOLLE):
http://mindfulworld.com/escape-planet-fear/

PRESENCE IN THE FAMILY (ON-LINE COURSE BY ECKHART TOLLE):
http://mindfulworld.com/presence-in-the-family/

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

DEEPEST GRATITUDE AND THANK YOU TO:

Tinker Lindsay for writing this novel, Eckhart Tolle and Robert Friedman for your original story and inspiration, Barnet Bain for your stewardship and vision to create such a beautiful film, Donald Martin, Sara B. Cooper, and Barnet Bain for writing the screenplay, Sean Buckley, Fred Fuchs, Stephen Huszar, and Ryan Lockwood for producing the film, Flo Selfman, Clara Kamara, and Farzana Jaffer Jeraj for your editing feedback.

A VERY SPECIAL THANK YOU TO:

Constance Kellough, Howard Kellough, Chistopher Krywulak, Stephen Reid, Barbara K. Reid, Robert Kamieniecki, Theresa Kamieniecki, Lisa Jadis, Celia Gomes, David Graziano, Parvez Tyab, Riaz Tyab, Stefanie Prpick-Boss, Stephen Prpick-Boss, Christopher Francis, Susheela Kundargi, Allan P. Markin, Andy McCreath, Christian Darbyshire, Liz Mackiewicz and all our Crowdfunders who co-created with us.

FILM PRODUCTION THANK YOU TO:

Entertainment One, Momentum Pictures, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Buck Productions, Riverside Entertainment, Hulo Films Inc., Telefilm, OMDC, Buck Holdings, Mindful World Investments Inc., Donald Sutherland, Michelle Rodriguez, Mia Kirshner, David Sutcliffe, William Ainscough, Percy Hynes White, Hays Wellford, Ella Ballentine and the entire cast and crew of Milton’s Secret.