“You know me well,” says PapaDum in his father’s accent, waggling his head.
When you’re halfway up a coconut tree, you’ve done half the work but you don’t have half the coconut yet. So yeah, Sumac supposes, it would be a waste to slither down again….
“Got to rush.” PopCorn stands up too. “I’m running Parent Break around the corner in twenty minutes.” (That means parents get two hours off while PopCorn’s doing his charming Pied Piper thing at the kids’ center, but he jokes that it’s called that because it’s for parents who are about to break.) “Who wants to teach tinies how to make sparkle lanterns?”
None of the other Lotterys seem to be in the mood for volunteering today.
“I’m working toward breaking the world record for most jumps,” says Sic, brandishing his pogo stick, “which, as you’ll all recall, is two hundred and six thousand, eight hundred and sixty-four, in twenty hours, thirteen minutes.”
Sumac seizes the moment. “I know a funny joke about jumping.”
“Dude, it kills it when you start like that,” says Wood. “Makes us all tense.”
“Yeah,” Sic tells her, “why don’t you just slide it into conversation, and if by some miracle we laugh, then hey, score!”
Sumac scowls. “Do you want to hear my joke or not?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?” groans Catalpa.
“Full marks for persistence, anyway,” says PapaDum.
“Here goes.” Sumac clears her throat. “What dog can jump higher than a building?”
“Hm,” CardaMom starts, “what dog —”
“Any dog,” says Aspen in a bored robot voice, “because buildings can’t jump.”
“I could tell jokes just fine if you’d stop stealing my punch lines,” roars Sumac.
Sic gives her a sympathetic grin before heading out.
“Don’t forget your helmet,” MaxiMum calls.
He shakes his head. “Forecast says the temperature’s due to spike today, especially with the humidity, and my head’s going to melt if I squish my ’fro into a helmet. Sixteen’s old enough to make a reasoned decision not to look like a dork.”
“The stuff you do with your goofy friends,” says Wood, “unicycling, parkour, fountaineering — you realize none of them are actual sports?”
“Yeah,” says Catalpa, “they’re just attention seeking. You guys look like such dorks, with or without helmets, none of you will ever have a girlfriend.”
“Right,” says Sic, “whereas spending your summer scooping doggy doo makes you irresistible!”
CardaMom stacks plates in the dishwasher. “If growing up in this house hasn’t taught you all not to care whether you look cool or not, then I’m going to give up and send you all to school.”
“Ha ha ha,” says Sic, doing a ghost train sound effect. “The same hollow threat you’ve been making for sixteen years.”
They’re all just chattering away as usual, thinks Sumac, looking at her grandfather, who’s got his head down over his tea. As if Grumps is an accident in the highway, and the safest thing is to drive on by.
*
Wednesday’s Garbage Night, and they only get home when the sun’s going down, with a good haul in Oak’s bike chariot: a mannequin’s hand and three polystyrene heads that could be great for making puppets, some only slightly scratched frames, lots of floppy roses to dry into petal confetti, a VHS player and a smoke alarm and a coffeemaker to take apart and study, two feather boas, and a fancy birdcage Sharp-Eye Sumac spotted, which might be a hundred years old. “Though really the very best,” she tells CardaMom on the stairs, “was when we saw a skunk with five babies coming up the alley, waving their tails.”
“Fantastic,” says CardaMom, in a whisper because Oak (in his sleep sack) is conked out on her, his hair all slick with sweat.
Sumac goes up on tiptoes to kiss her brother’s ear — the left, more-sticky-out one that’s always slightly creased.
“MaxiMum and I are going in the Hot Tub once I’ve put this fellow down,” whispers CardaMom. “Could you knock on your grandfather’s door and check he’s taken his evening pills?”
Why me? is what Sumac wants to ask, but she knows the answer: She’s the guide dog. Which was a huge ask, and they shouldn’t have asked it in the first place, and she shouldn’t have failed-to-say-no except that she didn’t want her parents to stop thinking of her as such a mature, helpful, rational being.
“Here, Sumac,” says MaxiMum, coming out of the moms’ room with a tube. “I picked up more of his eyebrow cream.”
So Sumac goes downstairs and makes herself tap on the door. It still has a tiny hole from the nail that held up the Sumac’s Room sign. But the kids have started to call it the Grumpery (though there’s no sign saying so, obviously).
A grunt from the other side. Sumac can’t tell if it means come in or go away. She taps again. Is that tobacco she’s smelling?
The door swoops open.