by Betsy Uhrig
For Dad
1
MY NAME IS ALEX HARMON. Unless you actually know me, I’m sure you’ve never heard of me. Because I’m not famous in any way. And I wouldn’t want to be. In fact, I’d rather dive into the back of a garbage truck with my mouth open than be famous.
Part of this is because I’m not naturally outgoing, but part of it is because I know someone who is famous and have seen a small sliver of what it’s like. The mail volume alone is staggering. Did you know people still write letters on paper? Those really pile up.
The famous person I know is R. R. Knight. I bet you’ve heard of R. R. Knight. You can’t even go to the grocery store without bumping into a cardboard display full of R. R. Knight books: Gerald in the Warlock’s Weir and the new one, Gerald in the Grotto of the Gargoyles. Maybe you waited in line at midnight for Gerald in the Grotto of the Gargoyles (and if you did, I salute you). Even if you hardly ever read books, you’ve probably read at least one of the Gerald books. Which is why their author is so famous.
But let me ask you this: How old is R. R. Knight? What color hair does R. R. Knight have? Is R. R. Knight a dog person or a cat person?
You might think R. R. Knight looks like your cool uncle: tall, with a little beard. Maybe a hat of some kind. But that’s just a picture you have in your head. The kid sitting next to you on the bus right now would probably disagree. She might say that R. R. Knight looks like her fun grandmother: short, with gray hair and those glasses with no frames that you can still tell are glasses.
And let me ask you this: What does R. R. stand for? You don’t know, do you? And your teachers don’t know. Even the librarian at the main branch doesn’t know.
Well, you say, no one knows what R. L. or J. R. R. stand for either. To which I can reply, after a few minutes of googling: Robert Lawrence and John Ronald Reuel (and why don’t we see kids named Reuel anymore?).
Now try it for R. R. Anything? Anything at all? Nope. Nothing. No names, no photos—with or without hats or glasses—no birthdate, no hometown, no family. Only books.
Curious? I would be too. Who is this “famously reclusive author” (says Wikipedia) loved by even the most reluctant readers?
That’s what I’m here to tell you. It’s a long story, though not nearly as long as Gerald in the Grotto of the Gargoyles—that thing should come with a handle. I’m here to give you the background that people have been asking for about the mysterious R. R. Knight. But don’t worry—this isn’t in any way a biography. That would be impossible. Because R. R. Knight doesn’t exist.
2
“GERALD RAN UP THE FRONT STEPS to his grandfather’s house.”
That’s how it begins, right? Those are the opening words of Gerald in the Warlock’s Weir, Book 1 in the series. You first read them after it was published, of course. I, on the other hand, read them about a year earlier, when I was twelve. Before, technically, the book was even written.
It was a Saturday afternoon in the middle of that blank, gray stretch of winter that seems to go on forever. I was up in my room, minding my own business. My mother and her sister, my aunt Caroline, were in the kitchen. I could hear them talking, but I certainly wasn’t paying any attention to what they were talking about. Until I heard a familiar phrase waft up from below like a bad smell. And that phrase was “reluctant reader.”
No one ever said it when they thought I would hear, but I knew it referred to me. I heard it in second grade, as I waited outside my classroom while my parents talked to my teacher. I heard it again in fourth grade, when my teacher was speaking to the school librarian during our class’s library time. I heard it from my father, talking to the children’s book expert at our local bookstore. And here it was again, this time from my mother.
Now that I knew they were talking about me, I tuned in.
“Then he’d be perfect,” said Caroline. “He’s exactly what I need. Just let me ask him, okay? If he says no, I promise I won’t bring it up again.”
If this sounds like my mother and my aunt were plotting to use me as a guinea pig in an unpleasant experiment, it’s because that’s exactly what they were doing.
“Alex,” my mom called, “can you come down here? Aunt Caroline wants to ask you for a favor.”
If this were fiction and not my actual life, I would have taken the opportunity to climb out my bedroom window and run away for a wild adventure. But it was a long drop from my window. And besides, Aunt Caroline wasn’t a mad scientist. She worked in an office. She wasn’t going to hook me up to a machine and switch my personality with an actual guinea pig’s.
As I walked slowly down the stairs, I decided that Aunt Caroline wanted to use me as a test for her childproofing. Caroline and her wife, my aunt Lulu, were having a baby in a few months. But they were carrying on like they were expecting a visit from really judgmental royalty. The paint in the baby’s room had to be the perfect shade of “early-twilight blue.” The carpet had been changed out twice for not being “plush” enough. And they were childproofing as if they expected their infant to leap out of their arms and start guzzling the poisons under the kitchen sink within seconds of its arrival in their home.
Some of these excessive precautions might have had to do with my little brother, Alvin. There was some history there.
I arrived in the kitchen, resigned to crawling around Caroline and Lulu’s house trying to poison, strangle, and electrocute myself. But that wasn’t the favor at all. It wasn’t nearly as fun.
Caroline wanted me to read a book.
3
AUNT CAROLINE HAD WRITTEN A BOOK for kids my age and needed a “test reader,” she said.
The stack of paper on the kitchen table was on the small side. At least she’d had the courtesy to write a short book. But still. Not only was it a book—it was a book that someone I knew had written. How could that be any good?
“Why don’t you have Alvin read it?” I asked. “He’ll read anything.”
Alvin was eight and the opposite of a reluctant reader. He was what parents and teachers and librarians called a “voracious reader.” Which sounded much cooler than it is. It sounded as if Alvin swam around like a shark, pulling struggling books down into the depths and devouring them whole. In reality, he sat on his bed for hours at a time, almost motionless, reading and popping the occasional Cheeto into his mouth.
“That’s the point,” said Caroline. “We thought you’d be better, since you’re… harder to please.”
“You mean a reluctant reader.”
“Not at all!” said Caroline.
“Because I’m not. I just have a bunch of other stuff I’d rather be doing.”
“Which is the definition of ‘reluctant,’ ” my mother said.
It isn’t. But I didn’t know that at the time.
The fact was, I preferred doing things that didn’t involve so much sitting still and paying attention. Like running—anytime, anywhere. On the soccer field, down the sidewalk, in the halls at school when I could get away with it. And if I was going to sit still and pay attention, I preferred watching a movie or a TV show or a video online to reading. I was also a pretty good cook. So at least I was well rounded, even if I wasn’t well read.
I still hadn’t touched Caroline’s book or even gotten too close to it.
“I was hoping to have someone who doesn’t necessarily love reading try it to see if it holds their interest,” said Caroline. She sighed and fiddled with the end of her ponytail. “Here’s the thing. A couple of my friends have read it, and Lu read it, and they say it’s great—really well written and touching and sweet.”
That didn’t sound like a book I’d want to read, but I was no judge—I didn’t want to read
most books.
“But Lu has a friend who’s a literary agent,” Caroline continued, twisting her hair around her finger so tight, the fingertip started to turn red. “You know—the people who sell books to publishers? And she read it as a favor to Lu. And…” Another sigh. “She had a different take on it.”
“What did she say?” I asked.
My mother looked up from her mug of tea. Apparently, she’d been too polite to ask what the agent had said, but she was clearly curious.
“She said the writing was strong, but…” Caroline shifted in her chair and freed her finger from her ponytail. “But that a book for kids your age can’t just be well written. She said it needs to compete with screens—‘including the ones in windows,’ as she put it.”
Ouch, I thought.
“So it can’t be boring,” I said out loud.
“Right. It can’t be boring. And I’m hoping you’d be willing to tell me if any of it is boring.”
“Seriously? You want me to read it and point out the boring parts?” That was kind of how I read everything—in my head, at least.
“Seriously. Take a pen and circle the boring parts. I’ll even pay you.”
“Caroline!” said my mother. “You don’t need to pay your nephew to do you a simple favor.”
“Ten bucks,” said Caroline to me. “Be brutal.”
“You got it.” I grabbed the stack of paper and headed upstairs.
4
THE FIRST THING I READ WAS Caroline’s name and address. So far so good. Then the title: Gerald Visits Grampa. Which was not terribly encouraging. Because I’m sure you will agree that that title made it sound like a picture book, not a book for kids my age, which was what Caroline had said it was.
I kept going, though. Ten bucks, right? Ten very easy bucks. And there was that first sentence about Gerald arriving at his grandfather’s house.
Well, mystery solved, you’re thinking. R. R. Knight is the aunt of a kid named Alex Harmon—Caroline something. That’s that, then. On to something else, maybe a screen of some kind.
Not so fast. My aunt Caroline is not R. R. Knight. If she were, then R. R. Knight would just be a pen name—like Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel) or Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson). It’s more complicated than that. So I’m afraid you’re going to have to keep reading.
Which is what I did. I read about Gerald’s entry into his grandfather’s house. It became clear over the next few sentences that Gerald was, for some reason, a frog. Gerald was a frog who behaved in all ways like a human. So why was he a frog? I got a red pen out of my desk and wrote in the margin the way my teachers did on my papers: “Why a frog?”
Which felt good. For once I was the wielder of the all-questioning, all-criticizing Red Pen of Doom. I kept reading, enjoying my power.
And, well, Gerald was indeed visiting his grandfather (who was also a frog, so at least it was consistent). But I was only on page 3, and now the stack of paper was starting to look pretty thick, and there seemed to be a lot of words left to go between me and my ten dollars.
Gerald’s grandfather was a grump, it turned out. But then Gerald offered to help him in the garden and… I’ll spare you the details. Because by page 10, I had to admit that I was losing interest. I couldn’t take my red pen and circle the boring parts because—I feel bad saying it even now, but it’s true—Gerald Visits Grampa was boring. It didn’t have boring parts—it was a boring whole. It didn’t have any interesting parts.
My right leg jiggled the way it does when I’m getting restless. I started skimming, thinking that maybe Gerald would get sucked down a storm drain and Grampa would rescue him. Or—better—Grampa could get sucked down a storm drain and Gerald could rescue him. That didn’t happen. And if it had, I realized, frogs swim really well anyway. I skimmed faster, in bigger chunks of pages. Then I flipped to the last page, even though the suspense wasn’t exactly killing me.
In the end, in case you’re curious, Gerald and Grampa won a blue ribbon for the biggest zucchini at the county fair. Which was nice for them. Not so great for the reluctant reader, though, who really needed more action to stay interested.
So now I was in a bad position. It felt as if I had a nasty book report hanging over my head. Only, the book’s author and the person I was writing the report for were both my aunt.
5
I DECIDED TO GO FOR A RUN. That would give me a chance to think and also put some distance between me and Caroline and her book. I changed into my cold-weather running clothes and went downstairs.
“You can’t possibly be done already,” my mother said as I passed the kitchen.
“Ah, no—of course I’m not done,” I said. “Just going for a run, then I’ll get right back to it.”
“You don’t need to rush,” said Caroline. “Take your time.” I could see her fight with herself for a few seconds and then lose. “How are you liking it so far?” she couldn’t stop herself from asking.
I had almost made it out the door. So close. So close. But here I was, being asked the question I was trying to literally run away from. And here’s what I did (never do this, by the way): I gave my aunt a huge cheesy grin and a thumbs-up. I’m embarrassed even picturing how I must have looked.
As I was closing the door behind me, I heard Caroline say, “He’s really into the whole running thing, isn’t he?”
“Yup,” my mom said. “Everywhere he goes. It’s kind of strange, actually, but have you seen his little calf muscles? They’re so—”
I took off.
I didn’t have a destination in mind at first. But as I ran, I realized I was headed for Javier’s house. My friend Javier lived a fifteen-minute run away, which would give me at least half an hour to decide what to tell Caroline. Plus, he had a lot of relatives, so he might have some advice on dealing with one who had written a book.
Before I could get to Javier’s, though, I needed to make it past Marcello. Marcello was the neighbors’ tiny rat-dog, who escaped his house every time anyone opened a door. Sure enough, he sprang out in front of me on the sidewalk, hysterically yapping the yap version of “You shall not pass.” I didn’t pass. As usual, I stepped over him, and he chased me until someone shook the treat jar on his front porch.
That obstacle overcome, I went on my way.
Javier lived in a big Victorian house on a street with lots of similar houses. Two doors down from him was the Old Weintraub Place, as my mother called it. It had been empty since Mrs. Weintraub moved away to live with her daughter a few years ago. It hadn’t started out creepy, but it was getting there now, and I tended to run faster passing it. Today I stopped instead.
Because it occurred to me how much more interesting Caroline’s book would be if Gerald’s grandfather’s house was slightly creepy, like this one. Maybe the porch could be creaky, like the Weintraub porch looked. Maybe there could be cobwebs like the Weintraub cobwebs. Maybe there could even be a feeling of danger as Gerald waited for his grandfather to come to the door.
I turned around and ran back the way I’d come. I didn’t want this idea for some creepiness and danger to slip away before I could suggest it to Caroline. I only hoped that Javier hadn’t seen me get almost to his house and then run away. He’d think I was losing my mind.
6
R u losing yr mind? THE TEXT FROM JAVIER SAID when I got home. Why did you run away from my house?
Long story, I wrote back. Relative stuff.
Say no more, Javier wrote.
He used baffling expressions like “say no more” a lot—I had no idea where they came from. If he used one often enough, I eventually started using it too. At some point we were both going to sound like characters in a PBS drama. Except no—our friend Marta would never let us get away with that. We were safe as long as she was around to ridicule us.
I changed out of my sweaty clothes, grabbed Caroline’s pages, and made another note in the margin below “Why a frog?” This one said: “Some creepiness and a feeling of danger would be good.�
� Then I headed downstairs with the book.
Caroline and my mom were still at the kitchen table. I honestly don’t know how adults can sit for so long.
“I have an idea,” I said.
“About the book?” asked Caroline. She pulled her ponytail in front of her and started twirling the end around her finger.
My mom flashed me a look that said, Warning! Trouble ahead. Warning!
It was possible, I could see now, that Caroline might not be totally happy with my having an idea about her book. But if she didn’t want outside input, she shouldn’t have offered me ten bucks to supply it.
“I was thinking,” I said, “that you might want a feeling of danger at the beginning. To keep people’s interest.”
“Danger?” said Caroline. “In a children’s book?”
I nodded. “To add some suspense, you know?”
“Um, sure,” said Caroline. “Okay. Something to draw them in.”
She let go of her hair, which I took as a good sign.
“Right. I was thinking Gerald could get to the house and it could be sort of creepy. Maybe the porch is creaky, and there are cobwebs.”
“Doesn’t that imply some poor housekeeping on Grampa’s part?” my mom asked unhelpfully. She’s kind of a stickler about cleanliness.
Caroline knew this and ignored her. “And that would make you keep reading?” she asked me.
“Yeah,” I said. “Though you need to keep it going past the first page. Maybe Gerald could knock and there’s no answer. So he tries the door, and it’s not locked, and he goes inside. And it’s kind of gloomy in there and he can’t find his grampa.” I was starting to enjoy this. Writing a book wasn’t hard at all.
“Right!” said Caroline. “Then Grampa can come up from the basement or something, startle him a bit. That would be fun.”
“Kind of too soon, though, isn’t it?” I said. “For the whole danger thing to end?”
