by Betsy Uhrig
I nodded again. In my experience, if someone is chewing you out—and she was, though she was being super polite about it—it’s best to let it roll over you. Don’t even try to defend yourself until they’re done.
“When I gave you the book to read,” Caroline said, “I wasn’t thinking you would be discussing it with other people.”
I felt like my stomach was taking a fast elevator down into my knees. I know that’s not anatomically possible—would it divide and each half go to a different knee? But that’s the only way to describe that sinking sensation I get when someone is criticizing me and I’m realizing that they’re right.
It hadn’t occurred to me when I let my friends read the book that Caroline might not want them to. Which is weird, because it had occurred to me when Alvin wanted to read it. I guess I just thought of my friends as extensions of me—if I could read something, they could too.
That’s what I told Caroline. Pretty much in those exact words.
She sighed when I’d stopped talking. I stared up at her, doing what I hoped was a good imitation of Alvin’s puppy eyes, though I wasn’t sure it worked without the glasses. She didn’t seem to notice.
“I get it,” she said at last. “And if you’d asked me if they could read it, I probably would have said yes. After all, the whole reason I want to publish this book is so kids can read it, right?”
“Right,” I said. Writing a book that you didn’t want anyone to read seemed kind of selfish, actually. Why keep it to yourself when someone else might like it?
“Maybe I don’t want anyone—besides you and Lulu, of course, and my agent—reading it before it’s done. Seeing it in its underpants, if you know what I mean.”
I pictured her poor not-finished book, shivering and embarrassed in its tighty whities. “I’m sorry,” I said. “The seniors haven’t read it. Only Javier and Marta.” I didn’t mention the ghostwriter. How could I? “They both really like it,” I added.
Caroline clasped her hands like a little kid getting a surprise gift. She cocked her head. “They do?” she said. “They said that?”
“Yup. They said it.”
Caroline’s face was twitching. It took me a moment to understand that she was doing the thing where you try not to smile but you can’t help it, and the trying not to only makes the resulting smile even bigger. Then she put her arm around me and squeezed me so hard, I let out a little cough.
84
BACK INSIDE THE PING-PONG ROOM, AFTER the formal introductions, Caroline stalked around the table, surveying the battle scene.
“So you’re the Absolute Authority,” said Nate, backing out of her way. “Come to save the day.”
Caroline laughed. “No, no,” she said. “I am in no way the Authority. I am just the lowly author, and I’m barely in control of this situation. My characters are constantly surprising me. Kind of like my nephew.”
“Albert is a great kid,” said Nate, poking me in the ribs with the pool cue.
Caroline laughed again. “No argument there.” She halted near the middle of the table, where Gerald’s army was being clobbered in stop-motion. “I see the problem here,” she said. “And there’s no way out?”
“No natural way,” said Nate. “They’re simply outnumbered.”
“Well then, something unnatural is required,” said Caroline. “But Gerald can’t contact the Absolute Authority himself. That’s already been established.”
“We were thinking that Vern could get a message to a blackraven,” said Javier.
“He could indeed,” said Caroline. “That’s an excellent idea. Vern owes Gerald his life. And that way his kindness toward Vern leads directly to Gerald’s victory. I love that!”
“Plus, Gerald doesn’t have to do the asking himself,” I said. “So he’s still the hero.”
“Gerald would be a hero even if he did ask for help,” said Caroline. “Even heroes need to ask for help sometimes.” She pulled her purse off the table and set the scattered darkriders back on their feet. Or hooves. I was pretty sure they had hooves. “But it makes sense for Vern to take the initiative. He can fly, so he can see from above what’s going on, how desperate the situation is.”
“He’s got an actual bird’s-eye view,” said Javier.
“Exactly.” Caroline studied the ceiling and tapped her chin with a shiny blue fingernail for a while. “So Vern will go for help….” She fished around in her purse and, for the first time ever, came up empty. “Does anyone have a sheet of paper? And some tape?” she asked.
Ellen got them from the craft room.
Caroline rolled and taped until she had an object that looked like a snow cone without the flavored ice in it. “And he will come back with this.” She held it out to me, and I took it.
“What is it?” I asked. Origami was not one of my aunt’s skills.
“It’s a sigh cone,” she said. “Get it? S-i-g-h c-o-n-e.”
“Not cyclone?”
“Nope, but close. Go ahead, sigh into it.”
85
I SIGHED INTO THE SIGH CONE. Nothing magical happened, in case you were wondering. Some warm breath came out the other end. That was it.
“If this were a real sigh cone, and you were Gerald,” said Caroline, “you would have blown the wall over there way past the parking lot. And us with it.”
“Cool,” said Marta. “Can I try it?”
“It doesn’t really do anything,” I told her.
“I’ll be the judge of that.” Marta didn’t sigh into it—she blew directly at my face.
I got a big faceful of Marta’s cookie breath, but I did not crash through the side of the building, leaving an Alex-shaped hole in the bricks.
And yes, Marta did seem disappointed.
“You can’t blow into a sigh cone,” said Caroline. “It has to be a sigh. Of genuine distress. The more distressed you are, the bigger the wind that comes out of it.”
“You just came up with all that?” I asked.
Caroline shrugged.
“Gerald’s going to blow those goblin legions to kingdom come!” said Nate happily.
“Exactly!” said Caroline.
Kingdom come, I was thinking. Good one.
Caroline raised an eyebrow at me and nodded ever so slightly. I knew she was thinking the same thing.
“So what are those little cardboard strips?” Caroline asked, pointing at the table.
“Stretchers,” I said. “For the wounded. The medics run in and take out anyone who’s hurt.” I demonstrated.
“We’re seeing a lot of limb amputations,” said Ellen without looking up from the tiny mint-green mittens she was crocheting. “A few heads as well, naturally. And a large number of stab wounds.”
“Yikes,” said Caroline. She turned to Javier. “So you’ve recorded all the action so far? And I’ll be able to write the battle based on your video?”
He nodded.
Caroline made a circuit around the table. The rest of us watched.
“I’m sold,” she said at last. “This book needed an epic battle and now it will have one. Thank you all so much for doing this. I am astounded. Just… astounded.”
Marta dived in for a hug that looked more like a football tackle. “You won’t regret this,” she kept saying.
“I’m sure I won’t,” said Caroline when she was free of Marta’s grasp. “But let’s stop the mayhem, shall we? Alex, you can do the honors. But since this isn’t a real sigh cone, you’re going to have to do more than sigh.”
“Got it.”
I took the cone and got as close to Gerald as I could. And then I blew those goblins to kingdom come.
86
I DIDN’T REALLY BLOW ANYTHING TO kingdom come. I blew some Legos and Playmobil creatures a few inches across the table, and that was only the smaller ones. I puffed until I felt dizzy, then Marta took over. When she got winded, Nate used the pool cue to push whole platoons away from Gerald, which was a lot more efficient.
Eventually, we managed
to blow and sweep the opposing armies off the sides of the table, and victory was declared. Javier stopped recording, and everyone cheered.
Nate put the pool cue away and the net back on the Ping-Pong table as Marta, Javier, and I returned the armies to their crates. And if you’re thinking Alvin didn’t have them organized in very specific ways that we had to carefully re-create, then you haven’t been paying attention to my nonexaggerated descriptions of my brother. Marta and Javier argued throughout the process about correct placement, and I kept having to set them straight about Alvin’s preferences.
Nate told Caroline to come back any time she needed help with military strategy, and Ellen offered consultations on spear and sword wounds as well. The Rotten Rebellion and Hovering Hospital chapters in Book 2 are proof that Caroline took them up on their offers.
And Book 1’s full moon rising over the Pathless Plains, revealing the trouble Gerald’s forces are in right before Vern takes off to find a blackraven? That’s based on Henry’s face looming over the Ping-Pong table, which Caroline noticed when she watched the video and thought was hilarious.
Caroline drove Marta, Javier, me, and the crates home. She dropped Marta off first, then Javier.
As soon as we were alone in the car, she said to me: “Those two are Snarko and the Daredevil, aren’t they?”
I had no idea what to say. I mean, of course they were, but was I supposed to confirm it?
“You don’t have to say anything,” said Caroline after I’d fiddled with my seat-belt strap for a while. “Your adorable little uncomfortable face tells me everything.” She drove on for a while, then added: “They do know, right?”
I nodded, even though she was looking straight ahead and wouldn’t see it.
“And they don’t mind?”
“No,” I said. “They’re flattered. Although…”
“Although what?” said Caroline.
“Let’s say the book gets made into a movie,” I began.
“Yeah, right,” said Caroline, snorting in an un-grown-up way that made me like her even more than I already did. “Let’s say that, just for kicks.”
“They’d probably have strong opinions about who plays them.”
87
IT WAS GETTING DOWN TO THE last days of school, when no one’s head was in the game anymore but we were still going through the motions. Something to do with the legally required number of school days per year, blah blah blah. Even the teachers were phoning it in.
“So when is the book going to be finished?” Marta asked at one of the last lunch periods of the year.
The cafeteria was trying to off-load the leftovers before shutting down for the summer, and some mutant mishmashes were being served. Today we were eating what appeared to be Szechuan noodles with chopped-up chicken nuggets. Some halved grapes floated around in there as well.
“Yeah,” said Javier, removing the grape bits from his noodles one by one. “The rest of it went so fast. Shouldn’t it be done by now? I want to take it on vacation.”
Javier’s family always left for the beach as soon as school ended, so time was running out.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe writing the ending is harder than the rest.”
For all I knew that was usually true, but it wasn’t in Caroline’s case. The book was done. It was sitting on my desk, waiting for me to comment on the last chapters. It had been there for days. I just couldn’t bring myself to read it.
* * *
A few weeks after we’d finished filming the battle, I arrived home to find Caroline in the kitchen with my mother.
“Alex,” she said when I came in to get a glass of water. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Okay,” I said. “Why?”
“I’m almost done with the book,” she said.
She didn’t seem as excited as she should have been, in my opinion. I sometimes danced an actual jig when I finished a five-page report, and she was about to finish a three-hundred-and-something-page book.
“That’s great,” I said.
“I know,” she said. “It’s really great.” She smoothed her hair out of her face even though it wasn’t in it. “Can we talk alone?”
“Sure,” I said, and headed out, leaving her and my mom to talk about whatever she had on her mind.
“No, Alex, wait,” Caroline said. “I meant with you. Can you and I talk?”
I looked at my mom, who shrugged and stood up. “I’ve got some paperwork I should attend to,” she said.
“I have something I need to tell you, and it’s hard,” said Caroline when Mom was gone.
Oh no. She was going back to Gerald Visits Grampa again, wasn’t she? The battle had been too violent for her after all.
“What is it?” I asked, bracing myself for zucchini and wondering if the book was far enough along that Javier, Marta, and I could finish it ourselves. Maybe with some help from Nate and Ellen. And the ghostwriter—the ghostwriter could finish it up….
“I’m almost done with the book, as I said,” Caroline told me. “And I’ve had to make a tough decision.”
I was really hoping she was being overdramatic and that this had something to do with changing fonts. Although I preferred Times New Roman.
“What is it?” I asked again.
Why didn’t she spit it out instead of tormenting me like this? Just because she was a writer didn’t mean she could annoy her relatives with cliff-hangers any time she wanted.
She was full-on braiding her hair. A bad sign.
“Was it the battle?” I suggested. “Too violent? ’Cause we can tone it down. I think Ellen got carried away with—”
It looked like Caroline was going for Princess Leia buns at this point, but she let go of her tangle of hair and heaved a big sigh and said, “I have to kill Grampa.”
88
“WHAT?” WAS ALL I COULD MANAGE.
Caroline blinked and looked upward, as if doing that would hold in any tears that might have been developing. It wouldn’t. We all know this.
“I don’t see any way around it,” she said. “I really think I’m going to have to kill Grampa. Nothing else makes emotional sense.”
I had no idea what “emotional sense” was and I didn’t care. “You can’t kill Grampa!” I said. “Gerald has to rescue him. If Gerald doesn’t rescue him, none of it was worth doing, and he can’t rescue him if he’s dead.”
I sat back, resting my case. She couldn’t argue with this logic.
“Gerald already rescued Grampa from the vortex,” she assured me. “That part is done. The quest has been fulfilled. But now that it’s been fulfilled, Grampa has to sacrifice himself for Gerald so Gerald can take over as potion master. Gerald has to stay in the alternate world and lead the rebuilding after the warlock’s defeat. That’s the whole premise of Book Two. And he can’t do that with Grampa hanging around.”
Book 2? Where did Book 2 come from? She wasn’t even all the way done with Book 1 yet, and now she was on to Book 2?
Caroline was sniffling and rooting around in her purse for a tissue. She found a linty one at the bottom. She was so much like my mom, who had a whole geological layer of linty tissues in the depths of her purse. I hoped people didn’t think Alvin and I were as alike as Caroline and Mom were.
Caroline dabbed at her nose. “You know,” she said, “the whole reason I started writing Gerald Visits Grampa was because I missed Dad. Lulu and I were just beginning to think about having a baby, and I was wishing he could have been around for it. I wanted to write a book about a kid and a grandfather. For him.”
She was outright crying now, which was making me want to cry too. Marta was a domino puker, and it turned out I was a domino crier.
“I’m sorry,” I said, wondering if she had another linty tissue in there.
Caroline looked at me with wet eyes. “Sorry about what?” she said. “None of this is your fault.”
“Yes, it is,” I said. “It’s totally my fault. You wrote a nice book about a kid and a g
randfather, where the grandfather lived happily ever after with his blue-ribbon zucchini, and I came along and made it into something different, and now Grampa’s going to die. I shouldn’t have butted in.”
Caroline laughed a big teary, snotty laugh, which was both a relief and gross. “My nice book about a kid and his grandfather would be in a drawer somewhere right now if you hadn’t butted in,” she said. “That book was going nowhere.” She blew her nose, thankfully. “And it’s still a book about a kid and a grandfather. At its heart, that’s what it is. I wish it could have a totally happy ending. But sometimes you can’t get what you want, right?”
Wrong! If there was ever a time you could get what you wanted, wasn’t it in a book you yourself were writing? If you could invent Violent Violets and sigh cones, couldn’t you write your way out of a needless death?
“Let me think about it, okay?” I said. “Maybe I can think of a way to make it work where Grampa doesn’t have to die. Can I try?”
Caroline grabbed both my hands across the table. Which I didn’t love, especially because her damp tissue was balled up in her hand. But I allowed it.
“Of course,” she said. “If anyone can come up with an alternative, you can. But I’m going to keep going in the meantime. I want to get this book done before the baby comes. Which is soon.”
I nodded. “I’ll let you know if I come up with something,” I said.
I knew full well I wasn’t going to be able to think of anything that made “emotional sense.” But I knew someone who might. After all, if anyone could bring Grampa back from the dead, wasn’t it a ghost?
89
I DIDN’T WASTE ANY TIME. I went up to my room and ripped a piece of paper out of my history notebook, which had plenty of blanks left in it. I folded it up and put it in my day pack, and then I ran to the Old Weintraub Place.
It was spookier coming here by myself, I realized when I’d gotten inside. I thought about going over to get Javier, but I didn’t trust myself not to choke up when I tried to explain the whole Grampa situation to him. This was best handled alone—and quickly.
