Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe

by Jo Watson Hackl

  This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 by Jo Watson Hackl

  Cover art and interior illustrations copyright © 2018 by Gilbert Ford

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to Harvard University Press for permission to reprint lines from “A winged spark doth soar about” from The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition, edited by Ralph W. Franklin, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, copyright © 1998, 1999 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1951, 1955 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © renewed 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1914, 1918, 1919, 1924, 1929, 1930, 1932, 1935, 1937, 1942 by Martha Dickinson Bianchi. Copyright © 1952, 1957, 1958, 1963, 1965 by Mary L. Hampson.

  Photos on this page are from the author’s personal collection, used by permission.

  Visit us on the Web! rhcbooks.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Hackl, Jo., author.

  Title: Smack dab in the middle of maybe / by Jo Hackl.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Random House, [2018] | Summary: “When Cricket’s aunt Belinda accidentally forgets her in the grocery store, Cricket decides to run away once and for all. But Cricket has to stay close by because even though her mama hasn’t been in touch since she disappeared, she’ll surely come back. And Cricket has to be there when she does. Because she needs answers”—Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016018105 | ISBN 978-0-399-55738-5 (hardcover) | ISBN 978-0-399-55739-2 (hardcover library binding) | ISBN 978-0-399-55740-8 (ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Mothers and daughters—Fiction. | Runaways—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.H15 Sm 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9780399557408

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v5.3.1

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: February Firehouse Jubilee Fish Fry

  Chapter 2: Fresh Meat

  Chapter 3: The Other Side

  Chapter 4: A Hundred and Fifty Years of Dark

  Chapter 5: No Matter What

  Chapter 6: The Bird Room

  Chapter 7: Electric Doogaloo

  Chapter 8: Woods Time

  Chapter 9: Thick Dark

  Chapter 10: Hope Is the Thing with Feathers

  Chapter 11: Clue-Sprouts

  Chapter 12: A Wing and a Prayer

  Chapter 13: Critters

  Chapter 14: Glorious Lint

  Chapter 15: Clear as a Mud Puddle

  Chapter 16: Looking Like a Rabbit

  Chapter 17: Unraveling the Knot

  Chapter 18: Wrong Walls

  Chapter 19: Spiderwebs

  Chapter 20: Clue-Searching Weather

  Chapter 21: Percy

  Chapter 22: The Mama Bird

  Chapter 23: Gone

  Chapter 24: Riddles

  Chapter 25: Star

  Chapter 26: A Deal

  Chapter 27: Something Weird

  Chapter 28: Mama’s Tanager

  Chapter 29: Some Walls Aren’t for Everyone

  Chapter 30: Questions

  Chapter 31: Just More Colorful

  Chapter 32: Behold Your World

  Chapter 33: The Answer to Everything

  Chapter 34: Dead End

  Chapter 35: Constellation

  Chapter 36: Dirt

  Chapter 37: The Stokes School

  Chapter 38: The Magic Hour

  Chapter 39: Valentine’s Chocolates

  Chapter 40: Sunsets

  Chapter 41: Star to Star

  Chapter 42: Grave Robbing

  Chapter 43: A Thousand Miles

  Chapter 44: Mama Day

  Chapter 45: Possibilities

  Chapter 46: It’s a Miracle

  Chapter 47: Friends

  Chapter 48: Multitudes

  Author’s Note

  Additional Resources

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  TO MY FAMILY, WHOSE LOVE, FAITH, AND SUPPORT MAKE EVERYTHING POSSIBLE

  Turns out, it’s easier than you might think to sneak out of town smuggling a live cricket, three pocketfuls of jerky, and two bags of half-paid-for merchandise from Thelma’s Cash ’n’ Carry grocery store.

  The hard part was getting up the guts to go.

  It happened like this: There I was in Thelma’s produce section, running my fingers up and down a bundle of collards. Collards never did make for good eating, but I was wondering if maybe they were some kind of sign that it was time for me to skedaddle. Collards always reminded me of Mama. She used to make me drawing paper out of collards, sumac seeds, dryer lint, and newspaper Daddy chopped up in his wood chipper. She plunked things in her paper the way other people stuck things in scrapbooks. Thread from the hem of her wedding dress, a four-leaf clover, Daddy’s first gray hair. Mama’s paper held so much life, it made my drawings pop right off the page.

  That was the kind of mama and daddy I used to have.

  I was ruffling up those collards, mourning my daddy and scheming on how to sneak away to win back Mama. Not that I had much time for scheming. Aunt Belinda, Little Quinn, Jackson, and Clay were the next aisle over. My cousins were working hard at plowing down every last tower of cans in that store. Aunt Belinda, she was working hard at keeping some distance between her cart and those crashes.

  Me, I was supposed to be finding Aunt Belinda some hot sauce. She hadn’t even started her potato salad or her red velvet cake, and already folks were busy unsnapping folding chairs, setting up for the fry. As in the February Firehouse Jubilee Fish Fry and Red Velvet Cake Cook-Off—the place where Aunt Belinda said she was finally going to land herself a new husband to take the place of Daddy’s no-account brother. She already had her sights set on the new fireman, the one with the king-cab truck.

  “Get your head out of the clouds, Cricket.” Aunt Belinda knocked my hand off the collards. So much for signs. “Make yourself useful. I need that hot sauce. And call Aunt Fig and find out whether her cake recipe calls for buttermilk or sweet milk.” She handed me her cell phone.

  It came alive with the sound of “Love Me Like You Mean It.”

  Aunt Belinda grabbed back the
phone. “WOKT Country is my favorite radio station,” she chirped.

  I rolled my eyes. Soon as Aunt Belinda got named a finalist for the Dollywood Trivia Trip of a Lifetime, she’d started answering her phone that way so she’d win if WOKT called.

  Aunt Belinda ducked her chin and shuffled two steps back. “Can’t talk now. This coming Wednesday. Got it.”

  She rambled through her purse, found the Post-it note with her to-do list, and scratched down two lines. Slapping the note on top of her purse, she looked at my bangs, not meeting my eyes. “Pecans are your favorite, right?” She threw a big bag in her cart, the expensive kind, not store brand.

  My neck hairs went prickly.

  With money too tight even for dollar-store art supplies, why was Aunt Belinda buying me things all of a sudden? Did she want me to do some more blind-date babysitting? I poked at the bag. “Who was that on the phone?”

  Aunt Belinda just stared at the rutabagas, sucking her cheeks in like she was working on a mint. Finally, she yanked a tube of Wanda’s Classy Lady Peach Passion lipstick out of her purse and jerked it across her lips. “Never you mind. Now get me that hot sauce. Pronto.”

  My cousins swarmed up and started prying the bottom okra can out of the pyramid display.

  Aunt Belinda spun her cart around, and the sticky note flew off her purse.

  “Hey, you dropped…,” I yelled after her, but she was already speeding toward the meat section.

  I left the note right where it was. The sooner I found the hot sauce, the sooner we could all get out of the store.

  But before I even got past the Duke’s mayonnaise, I spotted her—a little brown cricket stuck in a spiderweb on the baseboard.

  The poor thing was trapped even worse than me. She was trying to wiggle out and was tangling herself up worse. The spider skittered close.

  I snatched that cricket loose.

  Not fast enough.

  I saved her from the spider, but Little Quinn swooped in like a duck on a June bug. “Look, Clay, Cricket’s done found herself a cricket. Maybe they’re related.”

  Twisting away, I studied the bug in my hand. It was probably her and her kin who’d been making music in our backyard all last summer.

  After a minute, she figured out I wasn’t going to hurt her none. Her antennae relaxed, and she took a tiny step on legs as thin as embroidery thread. She looked like she was listening for something. Was she hoping for the sound of someone out there calling, calling, calling, and waiting for her to answer back?

  Maybe I did have more in common with that bug than just a name.

  The cricket turned her warm brown eyes on me and cocked her head. I swear she saw inside me and asked the same exact question I’d been asking myself for days: Just how far will you go to get your mama back?

  Before I could even think about answering, Little Quinn pulled a firecracker out of his pocket and dug for the matches. “Hand her over.” He sounded bored. It was just another blowing-things-up Saturday.

  I kicked him in the shin, not hard enough to leave a bruise he could point at, just enough to get him out of the way. Pulling the cricket in tight, I shot for the door.

  But Aunt Belinda wheeled up and pointed at me with a Trans Am–red fingernail. “Put that nasty thing down and find me that hot sauce.” She plopped a loaf of white bread in her cart and cut her eyes toward the store clock, its hands almost at noon. “You know they’re shutting up early for the fry.”

  “Just a minute. I need to…”

  Aunt Belinda tilted her face toward the greasy ceiling tiles. “Lord, please save me from selfish children.” Then her voice turned into the one she used when she was trying to get her boys to bed. “Just help me out this one time, Cricket. For the fry. Will you do that much?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I sighed, trying to get out of hearing, for the umpteenth time, all the things Aunt Belinda used to do to help out her family when she was twelve.

  My cousins swaggered closer, blocking the way to the door. I had to get the cricket out if she was going to make it.

  “Gotta go.” I swerved toward the bathroom.

  The back lights were already off, and I fumbled for the bathroom switch. One tiny window glowed on the rear wall, the glass painted in the same overcooked butter-bean color as the rest of the store. A slice of light showed through the bottom, though, where the window was pushed out. Just big enough for the cricket.

  That was the good news. The bad news was, the window was too high to reach. A tall trash can stood next to the door. I waltzed it side to side over to the window, holding my breath against the smell of dirty diapers, Comet, and wet brown paper towels.

  “Cricket, I hope you’re grateful,” I whispered.

  She wasn’t.

  Soon as I opened my fingers to check on her, she sprang onto the lightbulb over the mirror.

  I wriggled my way onto a sink, prayed the whole thing wouldn’t fall off the wall, and tried to coax her loose before she got burned.

  Instead, she catapulted onto the top of a stall. Balancing on a lopsided toilet seat, I lunged after her. Aunt Belinda was going to kill me for taking so long.

  By the time I finally caught her, we’d visited all four toilets once and some two times.

  I was out of breath and really, really needed to wash my hands.

  But I’ll say one thing for that cricket—she had a mind of her own. “Names carry a power,” Daddy always said. Right then and there, I picked out a good one for her—Charlene. Mama’s middle name.

  Hoisting myself onto the trash can rim, I pushed the window open wider and started to let Charlene out. But instead of clean air, I got slapped with the smell of fresh-poured asphalt from the side parking lot. Charlene would get stuck in the tar. I’d have to take her out the front. I eased the bathroom door open.

  The store was dark, too dark.

  It was too quiet.

  It was too empty.

  It took me about a minute to figure out that the only living creatures in the store were me and that cricket.

  She stared at me with those question eyes of hers, waiting on me to make the next move.

  A red neon sign over the meat counter crackled on and off. FRESH MEAT. FRESH MEAT.

  Maybe Aunt Belinda’s waiting in the car.

  But the parking lot was empty, too.

  I got a carsick feeling.

  This was low-down, even for Aunt Belinda. How could she leave me before I had a chance to leave her?

  What made me even madder was, I should have had the good sense to see the whole thing coming. I could just picture Aunt Belinda leading the bag boy out to her Mustang, my cousins wrestling all the while. I could see Aunt Belinda cranking up Lucinda Williams and flooring it for the dirt road off the highway. She probably wouldn’t think one thought about me until it was time to unload the car and start me peeling potatoes. By then, she’d be eighteen miles away, with nothing but one long dust cloud between her and Thelma’s.

  Something crackled under my foot.

  Aunt Belinda’s grimy Post-it list.

  Hot sauce, potatoes, milk, red food coloring

  Make red velvet cake and potato salad

  GAG—Wed. 3:30

  Cricket pack

  My carsick feeling shifted into fifth gear.

  GAG. My nickname for Great-Aunt Genevieve. What had Aunt Belinda said on the phone? “This coming Wednesday.” Those words rolled through my body, fast as a marble through one of those runs me and Mama used to build when I was little.

  Every syllable struck me at some fresh, sharp angle.

  Clang. GAG wasn’t my great-aunt, no matter what she claimed. More like my second cousin twice removed. She hadn’t bothered to show up for Daddy’s funeral, but she’d sent word right quick she’d be happy to take in me and my Social Security check.

&nb
sp; Clang. GAG lived in a trailer park ten miles outside of town. In Kentucky. If Aunt Belinda sent me off to live with her, I’d never make it back in time for Mama.

  Clang. I had to get away and hide out until Mama came back. But where?

  Clang. Since Keisha moved to Mobile, there wasn’t anybody I could stay with. Even if you’re not in and out of homeschool all the time, best friends aren’t exactly easy to come by. I couldn’t hide out in town. Someone would recognize me and send me back to Aunt Belinda. And Aunt Belinda would send me to GAG.

  Clang. Aunt Belinda had rented out our old house. There was nowhere to go.

  The marble went into free fall, landing with a thud at the base of my spine.

  My breath started to get away from me. I was about to miss my chance to see Mama. Then the idea came: Daddy’s woods.

  The woods smack dab in the middle of nowhere. Nobody around for miles.

  The woods not far from where Mama would be. And those very woods might be holding the one thing I needed to get Mama to stay for good.

  I looked down at that tuckered-out cricket.

  Is she the sign I’ve been looking for?

  I still hadn’t answered her. Just how far will you go to get your mama back?

  I couldn’t stop Mama from leaving, and I couldn’t stop Daddy from dying, but I could sure do something now. Grandma always said crickets bring luck. Maybe my luck is changing.

  Daddy’d taught me about the woods. Okay, not everything. But Daddy and Granddaddy used to swear by the power of Woods Time. Would it work for me, too?