Wrong Way Summer

by Heidi Lang

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained from the Library of Congress.

  ISBN 978-1-4197-3693-3

  eISBN 978-1-68335-640-0

  Text copyright © 2020 Heidi Lang

  Book design by Siobhán Gallagher

  Published in 2020 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

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  For my cousin Christy Buncic, the original “Claire-bear”

  and one of the best people I know

  Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

  —Old Irish Proverb

  CHAPTER 1

  Claire no longer believed her dad. Oh, she used to. No matter how wildly inventive his story, there was a time when she always fell for it. Like when she was six, and he’d convinced her there was a spaceship buried in their backyard. She’d dug for hours in the hot sun, dug until her fingers were more blister than skin. And when her shovel had scraped against metal buried deep beneath the soil, she’d been so sure she was about to discover a real UFO. Until she’d dug a little further and realized it was only their sewer. She’d thrown down her shovel in disgust, while her dad laughed and said, “Nice job, Claire-bear. I needed to check on that.”

  The next year, he’d told her that their downstairs was haunted, and she’d avoided it for months, terrified of the banging and scraping noises that came echoing through the floor. Until the day she’d decided that seven was too old to be scared of ghosts, and she’d forced herself to creep silently down, one careful step at a time. Instead of a poltergeist, she’d caught her dad converting a section of the basement into a new bedroom for her. “So you won’t have to share a room with your brother much longer,” he’d explained, followed by a grand, arms-out-wide gesture, his fingers wiggling. “Surprise!”

  After that, Claire should have known better, but at eight, she still believed in the troll kingdom that lurked beneath their world, and the cunning and vicious king who ruled over the other trolls with a moss-covered fist. “You hear that?” her dad would say whenever the pipes in the house gurgled. “That’s one of King Mossofras’s snipes traveling back to its master.” He loved telling stories like that, stories about the snipes who spied, and the trolls who prowled, and the magic hidden just below the surface. But his favorite troll story to tell was the one about Claire’s mother, and how he had rescued her from King Mossofras and his Kingdom Below long before Claire was born.

  “That crafty old king was a master of riddles, but we tricked him,” her dad would say. “Or . . . we thought we did. Turns out you can’t trick the troll king forever.” He claimed that after Claire’s brother, Patrick, was born, when Claire was four years old, the king had stolen their mother back. And when Claire was six, and seven, and even eight, that story had made perfect sense. But she’d always assumed her mother would come back someday, reappearing in their lives like a fairy-tale princess. So by nine—even though she still hopped out of the tub first before pulling the drain so the snipes couldn’t grab her with their rubbery arms—she wasn’t as satisfied with her dad’s explanation about her mom anymore.

  She began asking her dad where her mom really was, until finally he admitted her mom had once again escaped the troll kingdom, this time without his help. “She’s a pilot now on the world’s fastest jet,” he’d said, adding that it was so fast it could travel from one side of the world to the next in a heartbeat. Claire barely remembered her mother, but in her imagination, she pictured the woman from the wedding photo her dad kept framed in the living room, only instead of a white dress and tiara, she wore goggles and a leather jacket, and she saw the whole world beneath her as one giant bluish-white blur. But eventually Claire got tired of that story, too, and began asking again and again, until her dad’s story changed.

  Now her mother was a curse breaker, working deep beneath the catacombs of Paris. Or a scientist at a crayon factory, trying to invent a new color. Or, finally, a secret agent, deep undercover in the wilds of the African Sahara. “She’s just infiltrated a pride of lions,” he had said, dropping his voice and leaning in close, like he was sharing classified information. And Claire had realized that it didn’t matter where her mother actually was; her dad was never going to tell her. Maybe he didn’t know, either. So, at ten, she tried another question: “Why doesn’t she ever call?”

  Instead of launching immediately into an answer like he usually did, her dad had hesitated. For one second, Claire felt like she was six years old again, her shovel scraping at the dirt, about to uncover some truth hidden beneath. But then her dad had smiled and said it was because her mom had been trapped in an invisible box by a troupe of mimes. “Can’t talk, you see,” he’d explained, shaking his head. It was then Claire knew that if she wanted the truth, she’d need to find it herself.

  So the next year, when she was eleven, that’s exactly what she did.

  And after that, she never trusted another one of her dad’s stories.

  The problem was that sometimes, when he sounded like he must be lying, he wasn’t.

  Like right now.

  “You’re not serious,” Claire said.

  “I’m never serious,” her dad said. “Except right now.” And he gave her the smile.

  People claimed that smiles were contagious, but her dad’s smile didn’t so much spread as steamroll everyone around it until they either joined in on the fun or got out of the way. Claire had learned there was no reasoning with a smile like that. Still, she tried.

  “Dad, we can’t move into a van.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because it’s . . . it’s just . . . it’s . . .” Claire floundered. This was the problem with her dad’s ideas. His stories. His everything. He acted like it would be perfectly reasonable to, say, climb a tree in order to touch the moon. Then, the next thing you knew, you were reaching for the stars. Which was all well and good until those branches broke beneath you.

  And Claire was tired of falling. “No,” she said. “Just, no.”

  “Ooh, cool van, Dad!” Her brother, Patrick, skidded to a halt next to them, skinny arms pinwheeling. Like their dad, Patrick always seemed to have too much energy for his small body to contain. With his curly white-blond hair and those huge blue eyes, he looked like a little cherub. Claire had darker blond hair that hung limp and straight to her shoulders, and when she smiled, which wasn’t often, she didn’t have the dimples her brother and father had, and no one felt the need to join in or move out of the way.

  “Dad thinks we’re going to live in that,” she told Patrick.

  “What, in the van?” Patrick turned his wide eyes on her. “All three of us?”

  “Hashtag vanlife, eh?” her dad said.

  “Dad, for the last time, you don’t say hashtag,” Claire said. “And you know those videos and pictures are highly staged, right? No one is
really that comfortable in a van.”

  “What? Staged? On the internet?” Her dad widened his own blue eyes, his glasses magnifying them until they were painful to look at. “If you can’t trust the internet, what can you trust?”

  “Ha ha, so funny. So very funny.”

  “I thought so.” He grinned.

  Claire shook her head, focusing again on the huge white monstrosity lurking in their driveway. Practically dwarfing their small house. What was her dad thinking, getting a van like that, threatening to pack them into it? And . . . wait a second. She frowned at the van, studying the fancy emblem on the back. It looked expensive. Oh, it wasn’t new; she could see a little bit of rust around the wheel wells and along the dent in the side panel. And there were a few other dents near the top where someone had obviously backed it into a spot too low for it. But still. Her dad couldn’t afford something like this.

  He patted the side of the van affectionately. “She’s a beaut, isn’t she?”

  “Where did you get it?” Claire asked.

  “Her.”

  “That’s not a person, Dad. It’s an object.”

  “She is much more than an object, my dear child. My poor, confused offspring. She is a vehicle of adventure.”

  Claire’s stomach dropped. Whenever her dad used the a-word, she knew they were in trouble. It meant he was invested. It meant he had plans.

  “Where did you get her, Dad?” Patrick asked. Eagerness practically radiated off of him in waves. He’d picked up on the a-word, too, only he didn’t seem to realize that any adventure of their father’s would be no good for either of them. Claire fought the urge to either pat her innocent little brother on his curly head or throttle him, because really? He should know better by now.

  “Ah, that’s an interesting story.” Her dad leaned back against the van and crossed his arms. “Would you believe me if I said—”

  “No,” Claire said shortly.

  He raised his eyebrows. “I haven’t even started yet.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Any time you say, ‘That’s an interesting story,’ I know it’s just that. A story.”

  “So young and so cynical,” he sighed.

  “And whose fault is that?”

  “I’d believe you, Dad,” Patrick chimed in. He hopped from foot to foot. “You can tell me.”

  Their dad grinned. “Well, you know our old family legend?”

  “Which one?” Claire asked. “The one about your grandfather and his deal with the troll king? Or your sister and how she discovered the fifth dimension? Or—”

  “None of those. I’m talking older than us, older than my sister. Older, even, than my grandfather. No, my grandfather’s . . . grandfather, in fact. Good ole Wrong Way Jacobus.”

  “Wrong Way Jacobus?” Patrick stopped hopping. “Was that really his name?”

  “Well, it became his name, son. Because of what he did.”

  “And what did he do?” Patrick asked.

  “Ah, now that is an even more interesting story.”

  Claire groaned. Clearly her dad wasn’t in the mood to give them real answers. But for some reason, she stayed. Not because she cared about her dad’s newest ridiculous story. But just . . . because.

  Their dad beamed at them and began his tale.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Before he was ‘Wrong Way,’ your great-grandfather—”

  “Don’t you mean great-great-great-grandfather?” Claire interrupted. “I mean, if he’s your grandfather’s grandfather, then—”

  “Are you telling this story, or am I?”

  “I’m just trying to keep it accurate.” Claire shook her head. “Which is like trying to towel off in a monsoon.”

  “Ooh, good one, Claire,” Patrick whispered.

  “Hmm.” Their dad made his thinking face, forehead scrunched, mouth puckered like he was sucking on something. “That was pretty good, actually.”

  Claire tried not to feel proud, but her lips curled upward ever so slightly before she could stop them.

  “So. Your great-great-great-grandfather, before the events of this tale, was named Edgar Jacobus. He lived in a tiny, picturesque village in France, where he spent his days working in a bakery, and where it’s said he had invented a crust so hard, people built houses out of it. But only if they wanted a house that could last forever.

  “In fact, that was the only kind of bread he could make. Still, Edgar was happy in his village and at his job. He never thought of leaving, although some nights he lay awake in his narrow bed tucked in his narrow room and wondered . . .”

  “Wondered what, Dad?” Patrick asked, rapt, and Claire knew her brother had slipped beneath their father’s spell.

  Their dad’s smile was wistful. “That most persistent, eternal question: what else is there?” He shifted his weight, the van creaking behind him. “And then one day, the owner of the bakery, who was Edgar’s very own uncle, and your great-great-great-great-uncle—I’m sure Claire will correct me if I’m wrong on that—”

  But Claire was lost now, too, the story forming inside her mind, the way her dad’s stories always seemed to, the words reaching deep inside her, reaching that place she kept trying to leave behind.

  “Well, he pulled Edgar aside, and everything changed . . .”

  “Edgar, my dear, dear boy. You are my sister’s only son, and I love you as if you were my own child. In fact, I love you more than all the grapes in my vineyard, and you know how I love those grapes.”

  “I know,” Edgar said. He stood taller.

  “And I love you more than the entire flock of sheep in my beautiful fields, and you know how I love those sheep. And those fields.”

  “I know.” Edgar puffed out his chest.

  “But, I do not love you more than this bakery, and unfortunately, you are terrible for business.”

  Edgar deflated. “What? Terrible?”

  “Oh, my dear boy, you have no idea. I’ve thought of sacking you so many times. So many times! But greater still than my love for you is my fear of my sister.”

  “But, terrible?” Edgar couldn’t believe it. “People come from miles away for my bread!”

  “Only when they are in need of weapons. Or building supplies. Never for eating.”

  “But—”

  “Poor Madam Lamar cracked two teeth! And she’s the third one this week. No, my dear boy, I can’t have you in my shop. Not for another moment. It has become impossible.” His expression had grown harder than any bread, even one of Edgar’s own creations, and Edgar knew there would be no moving him.

  So, armed only with two baguettes and a spare pair of clothes, Edgar left. He allowed himself one last look at his tiny cottage, tucked behind the bakery. The fields around it weren’t quite as green as he’d always thought, the sheep not as fluffy, and some of the grapes were shriveled and dry.

  When he turned away, he felt a weight lifting from his shoulders. If he stayed, he knew what his life would be. Day in and day out, unchanging. But out there, anything could be waiting for him.

  Including the answer to that persistent, eternal question.

  So he said good-bye in his heart to the life he’d known, and set out on the open road, never to return. And thus began the very first Jacobus Grand Adventure.

  Claire blinked. Her dad had gone quiet. Had been quiet, in fact, for a good minute, his eyes fixed on their small house. For the first time, Claire noticed the shadows pooling under those eyes, the way the lines in his face seemed deeper, like someone had traced them with a thick black pen. He looked . . . old. Old and tired.

  “Dad?” she asked.

  He glanced down at her and smiled. “Claire-bear?”

  Her dad was just fine. Claire scowled.

  “Watch it,” he warned, “or your face will freeze like that. Then we’d be forced to track down a witch to fix you back up, and they’re hard to find. Impossible, even.” He leaned down. “You’ve seen your aunt Jan’s face.”

  Yep, definitely fine. “That’s me
an,” Claire said. “No wonder she doesn’t like to visit us anymore.” Claire couldn’t remember the last time her aunt had come out to see them.

  Her dad winced. “Yes. Well. She’s a busy woman.”

  “What about the rest of Wrong Way’s story?” Patrick asked. “Where did he go?”

  “I’m saving the rest for later.”

  “Aww,” Patrick whined.

  Their dad pushed away from the van and ruffled Patrick’s curls. “It’ll be a story for the road, eh? Now, who wants to help me fix this baby up? The sooner she’s ready, the sooner we can hit that dusty horizon.”

  “Ugh, count me out.” Claire turned away, then hesitated. Her dad never liked to give the whole story at once, and not just when he was spinning a wild tale. She realized there was also a lot he hadn’t explained about this new venture of his. “Dad . . .” she said slowly, carefully, “where are we going in the van?”

  “Wherever the road takes us!” He grinned.

  “Okay. Not helpful.” Claire sighed. “Can you at least tell me how long we’ll be in the van, then? I had plans with Ronnie this summer.”

  His grin slipped. “Er, yes. Well. Actually, that’s something I wanted to talk to you about.” He looked at Patrick, then back at Claire. “Both of you.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Ronnie picked up on the first ring. “Claire! What’s—”

  “My dad bought a van there’s no way he could afford and it’s probably stolen and now he wants us to live in it,” Claire said in a rush.

  Silence.

  “Hello?” Claire pressed the phone harder into her ear. “Did you hear me? Why aren’t you talking?”

  “I was giving your words a little bit of space. You know, since you didn’t.”

  “Ronnie! This is no time for space!” Claire ground her teeth.

  “There’s always time for space,” Ronnie said in that slow, deep drawl of hers, like she had all the time in the world and nothing could rush her. When Claire met Ronnie back in kindergarten, she’d fallen in love with that voice. It had reminded Claire of the rolling waves of nearby Lake Huron, patient and endless, and she’d decided then and there that Ronnie would be her best friend forever.