When Sumac emerges, it’s with her sheets and pillows wrapped up in her rainbow-striped duvet, a bad limp, and a story that’s nearly true. When asked what happened to her foot, she’s going to say she hurt it moving all her stuff because of having to sacrifice her room to the new grandfather.
She manages to open the first baby gate, but shutting it — without getting sheets caught in the hinges — is the problem. She hobbles up to the second floor and blows crossly up at the mobile of the solar system, making Jupiter bang into Saturn. Not a peep from the moms’ room, or the dads’. No sound from behind the sign in Brian’s scrawl, with half the letters backward:
Sumac’s foot still hurts. But she stops limping, because there’s no point unless someone’s there to see.
A terrible thumping up on the landing. Sumac heaves her bedding over the next gate, then climbs over, trampling the sheets with her dusty sandals.
“Why are you pogoing?” she asks her red-faced oldest brother.
“This is just” — thunk — “a brief interval” — thunk, thunk — “in my strawberry training.”
“Your what?”
Sic pulls the plastic strawberry kitchen timer out of his pocket. “It’s a thing.” Thunk, thunk, thunk, he goes on his pogo stick. “Brainwork for twenty minutes, recap for two, then take a four-minute break and get your pulse up.”
Today’s silkscreened T-shirt says Bad Spellers of the World, Untie! “But why are you pogoing inside?” Sumac asks.
“Because it’s disgustingly hot out there.”
PapaDum puts his head out of the Loud Lounge. “Son, you’re going to smash the floor.”
“It’s a calculated risk, and I’ve calculated that it’s unlikely,” Sic assures him. “These boards have stood up to a lot of punishment since 1884.”
Oak squeals, so PapaDum disappears back inside without a word to Sumac about her trailing roll of bedding. She sniffs, rage building up again.
“What about you, what are you up to?” Sic asks.
At last, someone’s asking. “Well, I was studying Sumerian —”
Most people would laugh or not believe her, but her brother nods. “I went on an Elvish kick when I was nine. What can you say so far?”
“Mostly insults.” Sumac puts on a gravelly voice: “Nuzu egalla bacar! That’s a proverb that means Ignoramuses are numerous in the palace.”
Sic sniggers. “I like it! A laid-back way of calling the people you live with idiots.”
“Yeah,” says Sumac, “like, as it happens, right now, all the parents are being —”
And she’s about to tell the whole story about being forced practically at gunpoint to move out of her own lovely blue-sky-room-since-she-was-born, but the strawberry in Sic’s hand buzzes, and he swings the pogo stick over his shoulder like a battle-weary soldier with his rifle and heads back to his room.
“What’s your next strawberry?” she asks.
“Regulatory, Warning, Temporary Conditions, and Information and Direction Signs.”
Sumac frowns in puzzlement. And only figures it out after he’s disappeared behind the door marked Sic Planet, which has a funny cartoon Catalpa did for him of the earth looking nauseous. In spite of the dads and moms quashing the idea last night, Sic must be learning to drive.
She wonders if Sumerians put up clay signs to direct cart traffic through the cities of Uruk or Ur.
She needs somebody else to gripe to. The door of the Wood Cabin hangs open. (It’s wallpapered to look like bare boards — a visual pun on her brother’s name.) Wood’s probably in the Ravine, with Diamond on a leash so she won’t chase or trample anything.
The door to Catalpa’s Turret — painted to trick the eye into thinking that it’s ancient iron — is shut too. Oh yeah, Catalpa’s off feeding and playing with her guide dogs in training. She even cleans out their kennels, which she says is yuck but not as much as diapers. Catalpa hates volunteering unless it involves animals, so if it wasn’t for the dogs she’d probably be spending all of July flat on her bed rereading her Tamora Pierce and Suzanne Collins novels.
Nobody’s here to be interested in why Sumac’s toiling up to the attic under a gigantic ball of bedding.
Up to the attic she goes. Grumps’s possessions are out of Spare Oom already — his cases standing zipped up on the landing — but the room’s still cramped, crammed with boxes of the Lotterys’ junk. A dark curtain blocks out one miserable window. A rowing machine leans against one wall, metal arms out to grab Sumac. The ceiling slants right over the bed, so she’ll probably bang her head on it when she sits up in the night all confused about where she is. (Then she’ll need to stumble down to the third floor for the toilet, in the dark, with a concussion, probably, as well as her broken toe.) This is more of a bat roost than a bedroom. How can the parents, how dare they —