I tried to ask him about going digging for thunder eggs, but my jaw felt stuck. “I don’t know,” I said.
“How about Friday?” he said. “I’ve got some hematite for you.”
Hematite. I’d been wanting a sample for myself. I would ask him my question in person.
“So I’ll see you then?” he asked.
“Okay.” I hung up and turned to Khal. “I’m going back to his house. You’ve got to cover for me.”
On Friday, Mom dropped me off at Khalfani’s, as she had all week. My fingers were so sweaty, they slipped off the latch when I tried to get out of the car. Good thing I had on that deodorant, and that Mom hadn’t asked me what we were planning to do today. I didn’t want to have to break yom chi again. She told me she’d see me at two-thirty.
Khalfani let me in. Mrs. Jones and Dori were in the kitchen making pancakes. “We’ll eat in a few minutes, boys,” Mrs. Jones said.
“In a few minutes, boys.” Dori was like a large parrot—with braids.
We ran upstairs and went over the plan. We would ask if we could go to the library. Mrs. Jones never said no to that—she was a teacher. Then Khal would ride me to the bus stop on his bike. He would go to Frye’s Electronics and play video games on their display consoles until 1:47, when my return bus would show up. Then we’d pedal back to his house, in plenty of time before Mom arrived.
If Mrs. Jones asked about lunch, we’d say we had money and that we’d go to Wendy’s for ninety-nine-cent hamburgers.
We ate our pancakes and Mrs. Jones’s fantastic fried plantains. Thankfully, Khalfani did all the talking. He could’ve fooled the latest and greatest polygraph machine. He was as cool as a frosted mug of root beer. I felt a little guilty knowing I was making him an accomplice, but then I remembered all the times he’d gotten me into trouble and it didn’t bother me so much.
We took off on Khal’s bike. I gripped the back of the seat and Khal stood to pedal. My backpack hung off my shoulders. We wobbled for the first few seconds, but I used my legs to help us balance and we were sailing in no time.
On the bus, I glanced at my watch a lot. If it took five minutes to walk from the bus stop to Ed’s, I needed to make sure I left Ed’s no later than 12:55 to catch my bus back.
I timed myself walking to Ed’s. It actually only took four minutes, but I would still leave by 12:55. Maybe 12:50, to play it safe.
The truck was standing in the driveway. I climbed the steps and rang the doorbell. The dog barked. I waited, but Ed didn’t come. I rang the bell again. P.J. whined and pawed the door, but Ed still didn’t come.
My heart beat harder in my chest. Would Ed leave the dog alone inside? The truck was here. Why wasn’t he coming to the door?
I walked to the end of the porch and peered through the window just beyond the railing, but the green curtains were closed, solid as a wall of split pea soup.
What if he had fallen and couldn’t get up? Or worse, what if he’d had a heart attack and was—I couldn’t even think it. I saw Grampa Clem lying in his coffin. One day he was reclining in his armchair, joking with me about Gladys’s cooking, and then—gone.
“You bring that magnifying glass?”
I jumped. Ed stood at the foot of the porch stairs holding a bag of groceries.
“You’re not dead!” I forced back the hot liquid that had sprung to the surface of my eyes.
“Not as far as I know.” He stepped onto the porch and opened the screen door. I rushed forward and held it for him.
“I just thought—when you didn’t come to the door…”
“I do go out occasionally.” He unlocked the door and pushed it open. P.J.’s tail wagged hard as he wound around Ed’s legs. “Okay, calm down, I’ll get your bacon going in a minute.” P.J. barked at me. “Yeah, he can have some, too.” Ed led the way to the kitchen. “We like bacon around here.”
“Is that why your house smells?”
Ed’s eyes got small and his lips looked like a fissure in a rock. Then one side of his mouth turned up in a half smile and his forehead wasn’t bunchy anymore and he laughed his sharp laugh, like a pick hitting a stone face. “Ha!”
I looked at his eyes to see what his soul might be doing while his mouth curved up in that smile. Grampa Clem said some people can smile on the outside while inside they’re disliking you plenty—but I didn’t see anything like that in Ed’s eyes. In fact, his eyes looked like polished stones. The dullness from the first time I’d shown up at his house had been replaced by a sparkly shine.
He put bacon strips in a pan. “How about a fried egg sandwich?”
“My mom makes those.”
“Who do you think taught her?”
I was still full from the pancakes and plantains, but I could eat a fried egg sandwich anytime, even thirty seconds after Thanksgiving dinner.
“Come on over.” He pulled out a carton of eggs. “We’ll do a geology lesson while we’re at it.”
A geology lesson! I stood next to him.
He held up an egg. “This is the Earth.”
“The Earth is round.”
“If you’re going to be a scientist, you’ve got to remember one thing.” He tapped my forehead with his finger, like a bird beak pecking on me. “‘Imagination is more important than knowledge.’ Albert Einstein.”
He knocked the egg on the edge of the frying pan. Small jagged lines appeared in the shell. “The Earth is like a cracked egg. It mostly holds together, but when the pieces move”—he hit the egg again and yellow goo started to ooze out—“magma escapes. When the magma hardens, it forms rock.”
He split the shell with his thumbs. The clear liquid hit the pan and started to turn white. He did one more. I kept waiting for him to break the yellow part like my mom does so it would mix with the white, but he didn’t. The yolk sat untouched, in a perfect yellow circle in the center of each egg.
Time to move forward with my experiment. “Why didn’t you let my mom see Grandma DeBose after I was born?” If my hoped-for hypothesis was correct, Ed would now give me his good reason. I would ask him about hunting thunder eggs and the rock club meeting later.
He opened a wooden box on the counter. The door slid up like on a garage. He pulled out a bag of bread and put two pieces in his toaster. “Have you learned about tectonic theory yet?”
Wait. Keep observing. The reason could still come.
“Scientists think that all the continents used to be one big landmass. They call it Pangaea.”
Why wasn’t Ed answering my question?
“But the Earth’s crust is in pieces, like the cracked egg, and the pieces are floating around. As the pieces moved, the continents got farther apart.” Ed flipped the eggs. They sputtered and sizzled as if they were angry. “Continental drift,” he said.
“Won’t they run into each other again at some point?”
“Probably. But we’ll be long gone by then. It took them forty-five hundred million years to get where they are now.” He put two more pieces of bread in the toaster. “Whole oceans apart,” he said under his breath.
After the toast was done, he spread mayonnaise on it and slid an egg onto one side of each sandwich. He put bacon on our plates and gave a piece to P.J. We sat at the table and ate in silence. I could hear Ed’s sandwich rolling around his mouth, getting mixed with saliva. He swallowed.
“You ever heard the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer?” he asked.
I shook my head, chewing slowly. If Ed had a good reason, he sure wasn’t making it very easy for me to find it out.
“J. Robert Oppenheimer designed the atomic bomb. Brilliant man. A true genius.” He tore off a piece of bacon with his teeth. “When Oppenheimer was five, his father took him to Germany to meet his grandfather, and his grandfather gave him a collection of rocks.”
My ears tuned in when I heard that.
“When the little boy returned to the United States, he kept learning about rocks. He even wrote to geologists at universities to ask them questions and tel
l them about his discoveries.”
“I never thought of doing that,” I said.
“Well, you still could. The boy’s letters were so advanced, the geologists assumed he was an expert and they invited him to come speak at one of their meetings.”
“How old was he?”
“Twelve.”
That was only a little older than me! I chewed faster.
“When he showed up at their meeting, they were shocked, of course. He had to stand on a box to deliver his speech.” Ed threw P.J. another piece of bacon. “What Oppenheimer liked about rocks were the crystals, their structure. How did rocks come to be as they were?” Ed looked at his plate as if he were examining its crystal structure. “How did things get this way?” His forehead looked like dry clay, full of deep cracks.
“Why did he make a bomb?” I asked. “Bombs kill people.”
Ed’s blue eyes looked cloudy again. “It’s like I said before. People are complicated.”
A knock came from the other room. I jumped in my chair. P.J. barked like crazy.
“Calm down, now. It’s just the door.” I wasn’t sure if Ed’s words were meant for P.J. or me, but I couldn’t help my jumpiness. What if Mom had somehow found out? I stood in the kitchen and peeked around the wall.
A black man stepped inside. “I got a good feeling about today,” he said, slapping his hands together.
“You say the same thing every week. And I win every time.”
“Not true. There was that one time—February 16, 2001.”
They both laughed. Why did the man keep coming back if he always lost? And what did he lose at?
He saw me then. “Well, hello there,” he said. “I didn’t realize Ed had company already.”
“Hi,” I said.
Ed looked over at me. “This is Brendan.” He looked toward the man again. “My grandson.”
My eyes widened at the same time the black man’s narrowed. “Your grandson?”
An electric current traveled through my body. Ed had called me his grandson!
“This is Levi Henderson,” Ed said. “We play chess every other Friday.”
Mr. Henderson held out his hand and we shook.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ed’s grandson.” He turned to Ed. “I didn’t know—”
“Enough stalling. The board is calling.” Ed walked toward the chess set in front of the bookshelves. “You started last time.”
“Oh, no. You’re not pulling that one on me again.”
“You did!”
“Brendan, would you tell your granddaddy here that he’s going senile?”
“I’m sharp as cheddar cheese, and you started last time.”
“Did you know your grandpa doesn’t just collect fossils? He is one. Can’t even remember what happened two weeks ago.”
“Brendan, think of a number between one and ten,” Ed said.
I picked three.
Mr. Henderson picked four and Ed picked five.
“It was three,” I said. Ed grumbled. Mr. Henderson roared. They pulled up their chairs while I dragged one from the kitchen. P.J. plopped on the floor by Ed’s feet.
Mr. Henderson sat on the side of the board with the white pieces. “Look who gets to be white!”
“Is being white better?” I asked. I didn’t know anything about chess, but I was definitely looking forward to learning.
“Some people think so.” He winked at me. I suddenly felt like I was sitting there with my two grandpas. Grampa Clem used to wink at me like that, too.
“White goes first,” Mr. Henderson said. “That menas the White player always has an adventage.”
“Not much of an advantage, if black plays it right,” Ed said. “And I know how to play it right. Now, let’s get this show on the road.” His hands rubbing together sounded like sandpaper on wood.
Mr. Henderson moved one of the short white pieces in the front row forward.
Ed picked up a piece that looked like a horse head and jumped it over his front row.
“You don’t have to move the front ones first?” I asked.
“I like to get my knights out fast, because as I always say—”
“‘A knight on the rim is grim.’” Mr. Henderson finished Ed’s sentence. “Your granddad hasn’t taught you about chess?” He moved another piece.
My eyes flicked to Ed, then back to the board.
“The boy’s into science—got my interest in minerals.” Ed moved one of the short ones forward, then stood. “Speaking of which—” He left the room and came back.
He dropped a black chunk into my hand. “Here’s your hematite.”
I held the mineral between my fingers and twisted it around to see every side. This one looked different than Morgan’s kidney ore. It had sharp edges instead of round ones and it sparkled.
Looking at the hematite made me think about the meeting. Now was my chance. “Why didn’t you tell the people at the rock club I was your grandson?”
Mr. Henderson glanced at me, then stared at Ed. He crossed his arms and raised one eyebrow.
Ed considered the board. He moved the piece that wore a pointy crown. “I guess I’m still getting used to the idea. You’re my only one, you know.”
I nodded. Uncle Chris didn’t have any kids.
I wasn’t sure what I thought about Ed’s answer, but I didn’t have time to think about it because my questions about chess started piling up. What was a rook and why did it look like the tower on a castle? Were some pieces more valuable than others? And how did Ed and Mr. Henderson know what piece to move when?
After a while, only a few pieces were left because every time one piece landed on another piece’s square, the second piece was “captured” and taken off the board.
“Check and mate!” Ed hollered.
Mr. Henderson rubbed his cheek, scowling at the board.
Ed grinned. “So, you feeling like a glutton for punishment? Ready to go again?”
Mr. Henderson leaned forward and opened his eyes wide. “You’re going down,” he said.
After he won the second game, Ed brought us lemonade and crackers with pineapple cream cheese spread on top to celebrate his victory.
Watching the third game, I secretly rooted for Mr. Henderson. And I tried to make sense of how Ed had responded to my questions. He hadn’t answered my first one, and I wasn’t sure if he’d answered the second. He was still hiding something; he wasn’t practicing complete yom chi.
Mr. Henderson won this time, although Ed kept saying it was best two out of three, so he was still Overall Champion of the Day.
The whole time they played, I hadn’t looked at my watch once or even thought about the bus. When I finally glanced at my wrist, I popped out of my chair and grabbed my bag from the kitchen. “I’ve got to go!” I yelled.
“Hold your horses. What’s going on?” Ed asked.
“My mom’s picking me up at two-thirty and I missed my bus!”
“Better give the boy a ride,” Mr. Henderson said. “I’ll close up shop.”
Ed looked like he’d seen a ghost. “Uh…”
Mr. Henderson nudged Ed’s shoulder. “What are you waiting for? You want the boy to get in trouble?”
Ed stumbled to the table under the picture of him and Grandma DeBose with Mom and Uncle Chris. He picked up his keys, then we got into the truck and sped toward Tacoma.
I had to take deep breaths the whole way to avoid losing my guk gi—self-control. Especially down below. The pancakes, egg sandwich and pineapple cream cheese had reached my large intestine.
I told Ed I needed to go to the bus stop, where Khalfani should be waiting. It was just 1:45.
As we got nearer, I could see Khal’s round head. He was balancing on his bike, holding on to the pole.
Ed pulled up to the curb and I started to get out.
“Tell your friend to put his bike in the back. I’ll drive you.”
I glanced at my watch. We would make it in time on Khal’s bike, but getting a ride
seemed better. “Okay.”
I opened the door.
“Man, you should have seen me playing NBA Slam ’N’ Jam. I was awesome!” Khalfani said. “How come you’re not on the bus?”
“Missed it.” We got the bike into the truck and climbed back into the cab. Khal directed Ed to his house.
When we got there, Ed stopped across the street. I had been checking my watch the whole way. 2:04. Plenty of time. Hopefully Mrs. Jones wouldn’t see us getting out of the truck. Khal hopped out and went to the back.
“Big place.” Ed peered out his window.
“Thanks for the ride,” I said, stepping onto the sidewalk. This was my chance. If I was going to ask, I had to do it now. “Could we go on an expedition sometime? For thunder eggs?”
The corners of Ed’s lips pulled down. “Don’t see why not.”
“Great!” I thought for a moment. “How will I know when?”
“We’ll figure something out.” He hesitated. “But let’s not tell your mom.”
“I haven’t told her anything.” I swung the door shut and patted the side of the truck. The truck I had driven.
When I looked up, Mom’s red car was zooming toward us. I started to duck, but she’d already seen me. Our eyes met.
It was too late.
CHAPTER 15
The brakes screeched. The door flew open. She stormed toward us. “What are you doing with him?”
I started to stutter an answer—I didn’t know what, just something, anything—but she was glaring at Ed.
His window was open, but if he said anything, I couldn’t hear it.
“Brendan, get in my car. Now.”
“He didn’t do anything,” I said.
Mom turned her laser eyes on me. Her neck and face had turned bright pink. The Momometer was about to burst. “I’ll be the judge of that. Now do what I said.”
Khalfani stood near the back of the truck, looking scared. “See you later,” he whispered, then jumped on his bike and zoomed across the street. He dropped the bike on the front lawn and slipped inside his house. I looked both ways about ten times and could have crossed ten times, too, but stalling is one of my secret skills.
“What is going on?” she yelled.
I thought I heard Ed say, “He found me, Kate,” but I couldn’t tell because the motor sounded like it was choking, and so did Ed. I shuffled toward Mom’s car with my backpack over one shoulder.
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