I looked through the glass. Two sides of a cut-open rock sat in a cloud of cotton. It looked like a small brain sliced open to show the insides. One half was almost a mirror image of the other, but not quite.
I opened the lid and picked up one half of the rock. I turned it over in my hand. “It’s the thunder egg we got!” I held it up for Mom, Dad and Gladys to see. “They know,” I said to Ed. “That we went, I mean.”
“Oh.” He kept his eyes on the rock. “Actually, it’s not a thunder egg.”
My shoulders slumped. “It’s not?”
“It’s agate. The rare Ellensburg Blue. Probably worth a couple hundred bucks.”
“Whoa,” Dad said.
Two hundred dollars? I’d never had that much money before, but I knew I would never sell this beauty—not even for a new bike.
I set it back in its place. Sitting next to each other, the two halves looked almost like a heart. In the center of the heart, black speckles like lead shavings made the shape of a cow’s head. A clump of pinkish white crystals grew in a hole on the left side. Bluish stone filled in the rest, sometimes dark, sometimes light, like ocean water surrounding and connecting everything it touched.
“It’s much better than the solid chunk I’ve got at home,” Ed said. “I think the mix of black moss agate and white quartz with the blue makes it even more special.” He winked at me. “What do you think?”
I picked up one of the halves and handed it to him. “I think you should keep half and I should keep half.”
He put his arm around me and patted my shoulder. “No, no, this one’s yours. I bet we can find us some more, though.” I glanced at Mom. Her lips looked like a shut-tight oyster. Ed spoke again. “Did you know the only other place where rock like the Ellensburg Blue has been found is in Africa?”
I shook my head.
“Not surprising,” Gladys said. “It’s a land of greatness.”
Mom crossed her arms. “What if something had happened to him? We would have had no idea where he was.” If only she knew how close we’d come to something bad happening. I hadn’t told her that part.
“You’re right,” Ed said. “It was irresponsible of me. Hopefully in the future we’ll go with your approval.” He looked at Dad. “And yours, too, of course. You’ve got one heck of a son.”
“Yes, we do,” Dad said.
“He’s a heck of a grandson, too,” Gladys chimed in.
Mom exhaled loudly, but at least she hadn’t said we could never go digging together. Seeing Ed and the rock we’d found, I knew I’d want to go with him again. “Don’t forget the card, Bren,” Mom said.
I tore open the envelope. On the front, a stork carried a baby by a blanket in its beak. WELCOME, BABY BOY, it said. I felt my forehead wrinkle. A baby card?
I opened it. It was signed “Love, Grandma.”
“Your grandma never had a chance…” Ed looked at his hands. “She loved you very much, even though she never met you.” He cleared his throat.
I stood and handed the card to Mom. When she opened it, she sucked in her breath. Her eyes watered.
“I have something to share with you, too.” I ran to my room, set the box on my bed and opened my desk drawer. I pulled out the library book I’d been reading the night before. My eye landed on the fortune from Mom’s office. “The one who forgives ends the argument.” I’d only applied it to Mom and Ed, but suddenly I realized it could also apply to me.
Back in the living room, I flipped pages, scanning the words. I felt everyone’s eyes on me. Finally, I found the sentence I was looking for. I read it out loud. “‘Rocks, as with most other things in nature, are seldom exactly one thing or the other…granite and basalt in varying amounts make up a group of other rocks with in-between colors….’”
I closed the book and stared at the cover. It was called City Rocks, City Blocks and the Moon. I’d picked it because of the “moon” part. I still hoped to figure out how to get a moon rock of my own.
“I’m an in-between color,” I said, “and I belong to both.” Dad, Mom, Gladys—and Ed DeBose. “Both black and white people.”
I looked Ed in the eye. “And I forgive you for what you did. And what you thought.”
Mom made a sound like air rushing out of a balloon.
Ed stared at the carpet, his elbows on his knees.
“I was wrong, Kate,” he said, finally, looking up at her. “I shouldn’t have kept you from your mother. Sam, I’m sorry for how I treated you, as well.” Then he gazed at me. His azurite-colored eyes looked like overflowing pools. Tears spilled out and ran down both cheeks like streams trickling down a mountainside.
“And you,” he said, “I missed seeing you grow up.” He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes and nose. “What a fool I’ve been.”
I sank onto the love seat. “I’m not all grown up,” I said, and then I was hugging him, smelling his clothes that smelled just like Mom’s clean laundry. “Grandpa…” I said it quietly, but I knew he heard me, because he squeezed back.
“Mom?” I asked. “Can he have dinner with us?”
Mom glanced at Dad. He nodded. She blew air out of her nose. “Would you like to join us?” She motioned toward the table.
Ed stuffed his handkerchief into his back pocket. “Well…I mean, are you sure?”
My heart beat like a hummingbird’s.
“I guess, well, if you’re offering,” Ed said. “I’ve never been one to turn down a good meal.”
Mom warmed up the food while Dad found a chair and set it next to mine. I got out an extra plate and silverware.
“So Brendan tells me detectives and geologists are a lot alike,” I heard Dad say.
Gladys poured Ed some of her Mountain Dew. “Your daughter only buys sugar-free,” she said as she headed to the table. “Better get used to it.”
Then we all sat down and ate together.
Later, in bed, I opened my Book of Big Questions. I read again the question I hadn’t been able to answer: “What makes white people be mean to black people?”
I didn’t think I knew the full answer, but it seemed to me that in Grandpa DeBose’s case, at least, it’d had something to do with a bad kind of pride, and maybe fear. Fear of what was different and of things he didn’t know about. I was glad that when I didn’t know something, I tried to learn more about it.
Like with dust and wondering where it came from. I remembered what I had learned. People create dust. And in a way, people are dust. We all eventually die—at least a part of us does. Maybe it was that dusty part that caused us to be mean and not very accepting at times.
But people could also change. Grandpa DeBose had changed.
I flipped back a couple of pages and found the reason I had opened the book in the first place. I checked off the question “What am I?”
Here is What I Found Out: I am a scientist, a mineral collector, a sometimes noble Tae Kwon Do warrior, a friend, a son, a grandson, someone who belongs to both black and white people, a mixture like a rock, my color but, much more, myself—Brendan Samuel Buckley.
Some More Things I Found Out About Rocks and Minerals
By Brendan S. Buckley
• Up to 100,000 tons of rock fall to Earth from space each year! The largest meteorite in the world lies in the ground in Africa and weighs more than 60 tons.
• A lot of dust is finely ground rock and mineral particles. Sixty percent of the earth’s airborne dust comes from Africa’s Sahara Desert, and some of it even reaches the U.S. The soil in my backyard might contain grains of dust from halfway around the world!
• More than 3500 different minerals have been discovered, but fewer than twelve minerals make up 97 percent of all rocks.
• Humans can’t make minerals. And minerals are not alive. They are not plants or animals.
• Each mineral has one kind of molecule repeated over and over in a pattern (which is another reason Grandpa DeBose likes them—they’re orderly).
• We us
e and even eat minerals every day: Pencil lead is the mineral graphite; table salt is halite; school chalk is gypsum; the little white M on M&M candies is made of two minerals, rutile and ilmenite, which also turn toothpaste and paint white. And they are in the white filling of Oreos.
• Muscovite is used to make glitter and to decorate Christmas trees with fake snow.
• Quartz (number 7 on the Mohs Scale of Mineral Hardness) is used in sandpaper, soap, radios, watches, TVs and computers.
• Sulfur is used in matches, fireworks and medicine.
• Without bauxite, we wouldn’t have soft drink cans or aluminum bats.
• An ounce of gold can be hammered thin enough to cover a football field, or rolled into a wire long enough to stretch 50 miles.
• If you strike the mineral pyrite against flint or iron, it produces sparks. For centuries, people used pyrite to make fire. Pyrite is also called fool’s gold because it sparkles like gold.
• President Abraham Lincoln was a rock hound, too. A museum in Iowa has a cigar box marked “Collection of rocks made by A. Lincoln” with his signature on the lid.
• The largest rock and mineral collection is in the Natural History Museum in London. It has 350,000 minerals and 100,000 rocks! I sure hope I can go there one day.
If you’d like to become a rock hound like me, you can call, write or visit your state capital, where there’s a department called the U.S. Geological Survey (it’s sometimes called a Natural History Survey or Bureau of Mines, depending on the state). This office can give you a map of rock and mineral collecting sites in your state. You can also write to or visit the geology department of your local college or university for more information.
And here’s a great Web site for kids who are interested in rocks and minerals: http://library.thinkquest.org/J002289/index.htm.
I hope you like collecting and learning about rocks and minerals as much as I do!
Some Interesting Facts About Tae Kwon Do
By Brendan S. Buckley
• In case you don’t know, Tae Kwon Do is pronounced “tie kwon dough.”
• Tae Kwon Do is a martial art form that started in Korea more than a thousand years ago, although it wasn’t called Tae Kwon Do until 1950.
• It is especially known for its fast, high and spinning kicks (which is what I like most about it).
• In Korean, Tae Kwon Do means “the way of hand and foot,” or “the art of kicking and punching.”
• Becoming a black belt will probably take you two to five years, if you train two to three times a week. (I’ve been doing Tae Kwon Do for two years, and I hope to earn my black belt in one more year.)
• Tae Kwon Do became an Olympic sport in 2000.
• The first Tae Kwon Do students were soldiers and police officers (like my dad).
• Tae Kwon Do teaches you to respect your elders, family, friends and teachers, and never to take another life unjustly. You should also always finish what you start—which is why I had to find out the truth about Grandpa DeBose, but I learned that I shouldn’t have disobeyed my parents to do it.
• The forms (or hyungs) that we practice in Tae Kwon Do are patterns of defending and attacking movements performed against imaginary opponents. Each level has a different form that you have to memorize and master before you can get your next belt.
• The first form, called chon-ji, means “heaven and earth” and represents the creation of the world, or the very beginning. That’s why you learn it first.
• The second form, called dan-gun, is named after the man who founded Korea in 2333 BC, although Master Rickman says he’s more of a legend than a real person.
• In the break test (or kyepka), you use your foot, hand, elbow, knee or head to break a wooden board, although some people also break bricks, tiles and even baseball bats! We do the kyepka because it requires concentration, focus, speed and accuracy. It’s also a good way to learn that our bodies are strong weapons and we should be careful when we’re sparring with our partner!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am eternally indebted to the many people who’ve encouraged me to pursue the significant calling of being a writer, starting with my parents, who’ve believed in me beyond what I’ve given them credit for. To author Kevin McColley and my advisors at Vermont College, Jane Resh Thomas, Louise Hawes and Sharon Darrow: The pieces of stories you helped me to write didn’t end up in this book, but they got me to this point and hopefully will appear in others! To Norma Fox Mazer and Marion Dane Bauer, thank you for sharing so generously the invaluable gift of your experience. To my writing buddies, Nicole Schreiber, Lisa Bose and Joelle Ziemian, and my best buddy, Fina Arnold, as well as my current writers’ group, thanks for reading various versions of this work, for the many fine ideas and insights and for cheering me on along the way.
A huge heartfelt thank-you to the best mentor anyone could wish for, Carolyn Coman, for giving so much. You prompted me to dig deep and find the dedication to make big changes, the discipline to value little details, and the determination to listen for my true voice. I greatly appreciate my agent, Regina Brooks, for her enthusiasm about my work and her zeal in everything she undertakes, and my editor, Michelle Poploff, for vitalizing Brendan’s story with her kid-friendly vision.
On a practical note, thank you to fifth-degree black belt Josh Henkel for checking my portrayal of Tae Kwon Do, and to Ed Lehman of the Washington State Mineral Council, who led me on my first rock expedition as I researched this book, and who, in one of those fantastic coincidences that occur when you write a novel, just happened to share Brendan’s grandpa’s first name.
Above all, much love and gratitude to my husband, Matt, for asking two of the Biggest Questions I’ll ever be asked in my life, and to my daughter, Skye, for waiting to come until Mommy could finish this book. I love living my story with the two of you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sundee T. Frazier says: “When I first wrote this book, Brendan’s grandpa didn’t show up until the very end. Little did I know that the discovery of Grandpa DeBose was actually where Brendan’s story began…but as Brendan says about asking questions, writing often leads to surprises, and it always leads to asking more questions.”
Like Brendan Buckley, Sundee T. Frazier is proud to come from both black and white people. She is the author of Check All That Apply: Finding Wholeness as a Multiracial Person, and she especially wants to see young people grow up feeling good about their heritage and identities. Raised in Washington State, where she currently lives and has hunted for rocks and minerals of her own, she’s also lived in California, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and she completed her MFA in writing for children and young adults at Vermont College. She lives in the Seattle area with her husband and their daughter, and you can read more about her published work at www.sundeefrazier.com. This is her first book for children.
Published by Delacorte Press
an imprint of Random House Children’s Books
a division of Random House, Inc.
New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2007 by Sundee T. Frazier
All rights reserved.
Delacorte Press and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.randomhouse.com/kids
Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Frazier, Sundee Tucker.
Brendan Buckley’s universe and everything in it / Sundee Frazier.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Brendan Buckley, a biracial ten-year-old, applies his scientific problem-solving ability and newfound interest in rocks and minerals to connect with his white grandfather, the president of P
uyallup Rock Club, and to learn why he and Brendan’s mother are estranged.
[1. Grandfathers—Fiction. 2. Racially mixed people—Fiction. 3. Minerals—Collection and preservation—Fiction. 4. Rocks—Collection and preservation—Fiction. 5. Tae kwon do—Fiction. 6. Family life—Washington (State)—Fiction. 7. Puyallup (Wash.)—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.F8715Bre 2007
[Fic]—dc22
2006034041
eISBN: 978-0-375-89057-4
v3.0
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