“Look,” Miles said. “I found this in my closet.” He dragged something into the middle of my bedroom. Outside, the wind blew and the sky had gone dark. A thunderstorm was moving in.
It was a box of old board games.
“Remember,” I said, “you may play these games, but they will always be Wainwright board games.”
We spread the games out on the floor. Outside the trees went crazy. The storm was almost here.
“Your room is noisy,” Miles said.
“I know,” I said. “It’s the trees.”
“You could ask Mom to trade rooms,” Miles said.
But he knew I wouldn’t do that. He knew I wouldn’t ask Mom for anything I didn’t really, really need. We both tried to be good for her and she tried to be patient with us. Sometimes I thought of the three of us as pencils with the erasers scrubbed down to the end, and the next swipe across the paper would tear through the page and make a scree sound across the desk.
It turned out most of the games were missing parts. But there was a very old version of Life that had everything in it. We played a few rounds before we got bored.
“Is there anything else in your closet?” I asked Miles.
“A box of old dolls,” Miles said. “They’re all broken up. Arms and legs sticking out. Eyes that won’t close anymore.”
“Are you serious?”
“No,” he said. “There’s only a box of old clothes. Like dress-up clothes. And some shoes. The shoes are gross. They’re all curly.”
“Show me,” I said.
He was right. The shoes were disgusting. They looked like elf shoes, twisted up and pointy. And the dress-up clothes smelled musty. They all seemed like they were from our parents’ era, except one shiny blue dress that was fancier than the rest and probably older. It had fur on the cuffs and the collar. I couldn’t tell if the fur was real or fake. I hung that dress up in Miles’s closet so it wouldn’t be so wrinkled. It was kind of pretty.
“Want to walk to the gas station and get a Fireball?” Miles asked when I was done.
Miles was into Fireballs, the huge red kind that you get at convenience stores. Tears ran down his face while he ate them because he couldn’t stand how hot they were but he wanted to suck all the way through one without stopping by the end of the summer. Since the house was in the middle of town, we didn’t have to walk far to get to a gas station, which meant that Miles had learned quickly about every kind of cheap candy, like Lemonheads and Necco Wafers and gum shredded to look like tobacco. My mom wouldn’t let him get the gum, or the candy cigarettes.
I liked Lemonheads best. They were so sour they made my nose sweat.
“It’s raining,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Miles said. “The rain will feel good.”
I decided to stay put.
I stayed put a lot, ever since last summer. My mom worried about it because she thought it meant that I was afraid to go out, because of what happened to my dad and Ben.
I walked over and opened the window. Even with the wind. Even with the rain. I felt like I might as well let all that sound surround me. I curled up on the bed and waited to see if the house would look at me again.
The black thing came back. This time, in the daylight, I could see what it was.
It was a bird.
It was a vulture.
I had never seen one up close but I recognized it from movies. Or TV. I wasn’t sure how I knew, but I did.
It looked at me. It probably wasn’t used to anyone living in my room, because no one had for a while. It watched me and the house watched me.
If the vulture wanted, it could fly right inside.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I whispered.
It cocked its ugly red head.
It knew I lied.
6.
After the rain cleared up, my uncle Nick brought over an old bike that someone at his work was giving away. “I thought you kids might like it.”
“We keep saying how dumb we were to leave our bikes at home,” I told him. “Thanks.”
“I stopped by Sports & More and got a helmet too. I knew your mom would want you to have one.”
“Good call,” I said. “Would you like a Fireball?” Miles had brought some back, and I had one lodged in my cheek. I almost drooled.
“Absolutely not,” Nick said. He said it in a nice way though. “I didn’t even know they still made those.” He leaned the bike against the porch. “Where’s your mom?”
“Out back,” I said. “Working on the deck.” My mom planned to build a deck while we were here. She’d never done anything like that before.
“I’ll go say hi to her,” he said.
“Will you tell her I went on a ride?”
“Sure. Where are you going?”
“I don’t know,” I said. That was true and also a lie. The minute I’d seen the bike I’d known what I would do, even though I didn’t know where I would go.
I had decided to follow Nerd-on-a-Bike.
7.