He handed it back to me.
“‘Go to jail, go directly to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars.’” I put the card back at the bottom of the pile. “Good. At least now I won’t have to remind you to roll the dice for a couple turns.”
“Take three turns!” He doubled his slump. “Take four! Build yourself a motel.”
“That’s hotel.” I rolled a seven and picked up my race car. “And don’t just park there on Chance. Put your sorry self in Jail!”
He shoved the boot, which lay on its side, onto Jail.
I made my move all right. I bought Ventnor Avenue, then rolled again and bought myself a second railroad.
“I saw you this morning,” he said, his bangs falling over his eyes. “With Leroy.”
“You did? Why didn’t you say hi?”
“You were moving pretty fast and you looked…busy.”
“So…we were just getting some exercise.”
“So…do you like him?”
“Leroy?” I rolled the dice and raced my car to Free Parking, then shrugged. “I like him to shoot hoops with.”
He shook his bangs out of his eyes. “Not that kind of like.”
I let the dice drop onto the board. “It sure is hot in here.”
His eyes widened like he didn’t know where that came from, but he went along, probably glad I changed the subject. “It’s always hot in here.”
“Seems hotter today,” I said.
“Yeah. Today it’s like a preview of hell.”
“You shouldn’t joke about stuff like that.”
He shrugged. “It’s my job to joke.”
I pushed to my feet. “I’m going home. I need a glass of sweet tea.” He could come along and play an in-tune piano if he wanted to, but he had to ask. I was tired of telling him to make a move.
I ambled to the door, waiting for him to say something about how he could use a glass of sweet tea too, but the door banged shut behind me without even a goodbye.
“See ya!” I yelled up to Cass on the roof.
“Jemmie?” she called after me. “I need your help finishing the dress!”
“It’s coming along fine!” I yelled back. I was out of there.
“Hey! Where’re you going?” Cody had a rusty horseshoe in one hand. His monument looked like it was about to topple.
“Somewhere else.”
I jogged a little ways, then slowed to a walk. It was too hot to run, and I didn’t want to run anyway.
I heard the out-of-tune piano plinking in the garage. Big was playing something minor and sad, but whose fault was that? All he had to say was, “A glass of sweet tea sounds good. Got one for me too?”
Leroy sure didn’t have any trouble asking for things. He asked all the time.
Suddenly, I was glad this was our “last summer.”
I thought about all the kids I hadn’t met yet, and I liked them already.
Cody
Cody watched Jemmie leave. Cass next. Now Justin was walking over like he wanted to look at the monument—then he’d probably leave too. Everyone was drizzling out, but Cody could hear Ben banging on something inside. That meant Ben wouldn’t drizzle out and neither would he. They’d be hot by themselves together.
Partway over to the monument, Justin bent down and scooped something up. “Hey, Cody, wanna add this?” And there it was again. The burned-up doll head. Cody stuck it between a bucket and a mixing bowl where it was hard to see.
Justin flopped down at the edge of the concrete foundation. Maybe he wasn’t leaving after all. Cody hoped not.
“Hey, Justin. Look what I found.” He picked up a blackened spoon and crawled over to Justin. “Look how the handle is a loop.”
“It’s a baby spoon,” Justin said.
“And see? It’s got something written on it.” Cody rubbed it with his thumb. “Starts with an L. Looks like it says…Lucky.”
“Lucky?” Justin squinted at the writing, then he closed his eyes. “That’s Lucy.”
“Lucky Lucy.” Cody sat back on his heels. “Was she in the article about the fire?”
“Yeah, she was.” Justin blew out his breath and looked away. “I’m beginning to think…maybe you shouldn’t be messing with this.”
Cody shrugged. “Why not? It’s like digging for dinosaurs at home, only here I find things.” He crawled back over to the pile and grabbed a necklace he’d hung from a bench curlicue. “You think this was Lucy’s too?” The heart on the chain spun as he carried it over.
Justin flinched. “Geez, would you put that down?”
“Why?” The chain slid off his finger and the heart plunked onto Justin’s knee.
Justin swatted it away. “Would you quit messing with this stuff, Cody? I’m serious.”
“But why?”
Justin stared off toward the garage like he was listening to the hammer, then he turned back and got real close to Cody. “Because…” he whispered. “Lucy didn’t make it out of the fire. She died.” Just then the hammer stopped. “Oh crap! Ben’s gonna kill me.”
As the hammering started again, Cody turned toward his monument, wide-eyed. “Lucy…died?”
“And she wasn’t the only one.”
“How…” Cody gulped. “How many people got killed?”
“Three. Lucy and both her parents.”
“What about Ike?”
“Ike?” Justin dragged his hand down his hot, red face. “Ike? Oh yeah, the dog. The article didn’t mention any dog.”
“But Ben said they all got out.” Cody’s voice felt shaky.
“He didn’t want to give you nightmares. And he didn’t want to give this place up.”
Cody knew right away that was the real reason.
“Besides, even if we never came back it wouldn’t change anything.”
“But…everyone died,” Cody said, staring at his sooty hands.
“Not everyone. There was a kid named Coleman. He got out.”
Cody startled. The peeing dog! For a few seconds he just sat, breathing through his mouth. “Can I ask you a question?”
“You can ask, but that’s all I know, and Ben is going to kill me for telling you.”
“If your name was Coleman, what do you think people would call you for a nickname?”
Justin looked surprised. “Why ask that?”
“Just wondering.”
“I dunno.” Justin shoved his legs out straight, digging grooves in the damp leaves with his heels. “Cole? Yeah, probably Cole.”
Cody nodded once. “Thought so.”
“You are one weird little dude, Cody.” Justin glanced again at the garage. “And I am so dead.”
“No you’re not.” Cody put on the hat, balancing it on his ears. “Detective Dobbs won’t tell Ben. That’s why there’s a ‘private’ in ‘private eye.’”
Justin looked sort of relieved, but not all the way. “I know you’ll try, but sometimes your mouth engages before your brain.”
“I’m not gonna tell him, for really.” Cody turned and looked at his monument, then rubbed his sooty hands on his shorts. “All this stuff belongs to dead people.”
Justin looked too. “You know, most monuments are to dead people, so maybe building this one’s okay. It’s like you’re honoring them.”
Cody picked up the necklace that lay on the slab by its thin chain. He was about to hang it back on a bench curlicue when he glanced at the hat and knew—as if the hat had told him—he should take the necklace with him. He hesitated. What if he got caught breaking the rule about not taking stuff from Nowhere? But Justin was staring at the ground between his sneakers. Looking at the hat again, Cody took a deep breath, and even though he didn’t want to mess with anything from the fire ever again, he shoved the necklace into the pocket of his shorts.
He and Justin both jumped when a door closed. “Hot enough for you guys?” Ben was standing in front of the garage, his T-shirt soaked with sweat.
“Hot enough times two,” Cody yelled back.
“What are you waiting for, an invitation? Let’s get us some lunch.”
“Reprieve,” Justin muttered under his breath as Ben walked away into the trees. “Remember, Dobbs.” He zipped his fingers across his lips—and Cody zipped back.
Afraid he’d blab, Cody didn’t engage his mouth all the way home. After lunch, he figured they’d all head back to the garage in the woods. He didn’t want to, now that he knew the ghosts he’d felt as tingles were real. But Ben didn’t mention going to Nowhere. Justin didn’t either. Instead, the two of them started playing video games. For once Cody didn’t try to pester his way into the game.
He had more important things to do. Detective work.
Like he had earlier that day, he pulled a chair over to the shelf with the photo albums on it. He climbed up and grabbed the same album, the one with the peeing dog trick in it. He walked it to the kitchen table and set it down next to the hat.
This time he started at the beginning.
“Baby pictures…” He looked through a few pages. “Bare butts in the tub. Gross!”
He kept going and found Dad, a chubby kid in cutoff jean shorts with his skinny little brother on his shoulders. Cody picked up the album for a better look. Uncle Paul had a cartoon Band-Aid on his knee. “Tweety Bird,” he said.
Cody flipped through lots of Christmases—Uncle Paul sitting on a bike with a big bow on the handlebars. G-mom and G-dad sitting next to the tree, smiling. It took a second to recognize G-dad with hair.
He came to where Uncle Paul was in Little League, then, taller and older, in Babe Ruth league. And finally Cody was back to the photos Dad had looked at with him.
He turned to the next page and sucked in his breath. He looked closer. So close he almost put his nose on the yellowed photo.
He pulled back. Blinked. Looked again. He got a magnifier out of the jar on Mom’s desk, but the picture stayed the same. His neck prickled, like the ghosts from the fire were there in the room with him. He slid a hand into his pocket and touched the necklace.
He had to do something, show someone, ask someone what to do. But who?
Not Ben, for sure. Justin? Maybe, but he didn’t seem to know what was right and wrong unless Ben told him. Mom and Dad would know, but he wasn’t allowed to even think about this stuff around them.
He needed to ask someone what to do. He thought of Cass. Even though Ben could sometimes talk her into things, she knew what was right and what was wrong.
He slid the album into his old school pack and grabbed the hat. “Going to Cass’s.”
Ben didn’t even glance up from the screen. “Tell her to send you home when she gets tired of you—and don’t go throwing sand at Missy.”
Cody’s pack felt extra heavy as he trudged over to the Bodines’.
Jemmie
Long as you two are just sitting around,” Nana Grace said, “you might as well make yourselves useful.”
“Useful” meant shelling peas for supper.
Easiest way to shell peas according to my grandmother is to put a mess of them in your lap and plunk the shelled peas into a pot between your feet. But to have a lap to put the peas in, you have to wear a skirt. Since Cass and me were wearing shorts, Nana tied a flowered apron around each of us.
We were sitting side by side on the porch swing shelling peas when Cody and the hat walked toward us across the lawn. The school pack hanging off his skinny shoulders looked heavy.
Cass plinked a couple of peas in the pot and called out, “Hey, Cody!”
“Hi.” For Cody, who usually crowed his hellos, this one was awful quiet. “I was going to see you at your house but you weren’t there,” he told Cass.
“No, I’m here.”
“Got something to show you.” He climbed the porch stairs and carefully set the hat on the top step. His bony knees hit the floor and he slid a big old photo album out of his pack. He hugged it to his chest and looked back and forth between us.
“So show us,” I said. Not that I was interested in old pictures, but I was pretty tired of shelling peas.
Cass slid over, making a space between us on the porch swing for Cody.
He sat and opened the album to page one and began showing us pictures of his dad and his missing uncle as little kids. Cass said how cute Cody’s dad was, his brother too.
I yawned. Family pictures were about as interesting as shelling peas. Then I noticed how Cody seemed to be getting more nervous each time he turned the page. “This is Uncle Paul and his best friend, Coleman. Cole for short. Cole was a couple of years older.”
The boys in the pictures were having a good old time, riding bikes and swimming.
Cass pointed out a picture of the boys doing a double-jump off the tower at Wakulla Springs. “We do that!”
“Every chance we get,” I said. “Wish we were there right now.”
Cody turned the page again. “Notice anything about this picture?” He prodded a photo of the same two guys and a girl sitting on a bench.
I couldn’t figure out what he wanted us to notice. “They’re getting older,” I said.
Cass held back her hair. “About our age. The girl looks sort of like Cole.”
I checked it out. Her hair was brown and wavy like his. Their smiles made their eyes crinkle in the same way. I noticed that the girl was skinny like Cass.
“That’s Cole’s sister, Lucy.” Cody’s voice was hushed.
Cass shoved the swing gently with her toes. “She looks like a Lucy.” The swing stopped as Cass bent over the page. “Is she holding hands with your uncle?”
Cody nodded. “Yup.”
Didn’t look like it to me. I brought my face so close I could smell the musty page. “You sure?”
“They are, for really. I checked with my mom’s magnifier.”
“Like a real detective, huh?”
He sat up straight. “I am a real detective.”
“I guess Lucy was your uncle’s girlfriend.” I could hear the smile in Cass’s voice—she was really into the boyfriend-girlfriend thing. “I like her necklace.”
“Want to see it?” Cody dug in the pocket of his shorts. The chain came out first, hooked on his finger, then the heart. The chain was a smoky gray, the sparkle in the middle of the heart dulled.
“How come you have it?” Cass asked.
“Found it in the leaves by my monument.”
Cass and I stared at each other, then back at the necklace.
“It was their house that burned down?” Cass glanced at the photo and her eyes widened. “Oh my gosh, the bench!” She put her finger on the twisted metal curlicues in the picture.
We’d all seen the ends of that bench. They weren’t green anymore. They were charred black, and they were holding up Cody’s monument.
“Good thing they all got out of the fire,” Cass said. “I wonder if Cole and his sister are still in Pittsburgh.”
Cody sat between us like a stone. He didn’t move, he didn’t breathe. I put my feet down flat, stopping the swing. “What is it, Cody? Spill.”
“Something I’m not supposed to tell. I promised Justin.”
“A promise to Big doesn’t count.” I was joking, but that was all Cody needed.
“Lucy’s dead!” he blurted. “She didn’t get out. And…and…neither did their parents. Only Cole was okay ‘cause he wasn’t in the house during the fire.”
“But…but the guys found it in the newspaper article.” Cass sounded confused. “Ben said everyone got out. Even the dog.”
I wasn’t confused, but I kept my mouth shut. Let Cody do the explaining.
“Ben didn’t exactly tell the truth.” He fidgeted. “He…sort of…lied.”
“He wouldn’t lie to me,” Cass said. But I could tell from her voice that she wasn’t so sure.
“He did, this one time. He figured it wouldn’t hurt anything. Like he says, everybody would still be dead whether we were there or not.”
Cass stood up, knocking over her pot of peas. Some roll
ed along the cracks between the floorboards.
“Where are you going?” Cody squeaked.
“To talk to Ben.”
“No!” He grabbed her hand and hung on. “Please, Cass, don’t. The guys’ll kill me.” Still holding her arm, he went limp. She walked a couple of steps, dragging him. “If you tell them, I’ll be dead too.”
Any other time it would have been funny, but Cass was shook up bad. If there were rules for being a boyfriend, Ben had broken a big one. Maybe the big one.
Cass sat back down, real slow. Then she slumped over, picked up the edge of her flowery apron, and cried into it.
Friday
(Seven Minus Two)
Cass
Lou Anne hovered over my bed. “Are you ever getting up?” She was still in her nightgown, but she’d already done her hair—I knew because I’d listened to the dryer run while I pretended to be asleep. “Come on, Cass! You can’t lie around all day.”
I pulled the pillow over my head. I always get up way before my sister, usually right about when Mama and Daddy leave for work—but I didn’t want to get up now or ever. I listened to my sister scuff down the stairs and hoped she’d leave me alone.
Ben let me make Lucy’s dress, even said it looked nice when I slipped it on over my shirt and jeans. He knew that the girl who started sewing that dress had burned to death, but he didn’t tell me. He’d let me put that dress on, and I couldn’t even talk to him about it or I’d get Cody in trouble.
Lou Anne’s slippers shushed back up the steps. “Cass?” Her voice was soft, maybe being nice, maybe just trying not to wake up Missy in the next room. “Brought you something.”
When I opened my eyes, she was holding out a bowl of Lucky Charms. “Here.”
I sat up in bed and took the bowl.
“Now tell me what’s wrong. Something about Benji, I bet.”
“How do you know it’s about Ben?” Ben hated to be called Benji.
She fluffed her hair. “What else would it be about?”
Lou Anne thinks everything is about hair or guys—and she knew I didn’t care about hair. She sat down on the very edge of her bed opposite me. “So…talk. Maybe I can help.”
Some Kind of Magic Page 12
