What’s wee with long legs? Not a spider, obviously. “Greyhound?” suggests Sumac.
“No,” he says, scornful. “Sneaky, like. Stealing eggs. Sto, stee, steasel. Weasel,” he almost shouts. “A wolverine’s a kind of weasel.” Tapping it on the muzzle.
“Can I hang up the next one?” asks Wood.
“You can not,” says Grumps.
“We’re all used to power tools from the age of, like, eight,” Wood points out.
“Mm, I gather you pick up a couple of practical things along with all the Mesopotamian nonsense.”
Sumac’s lips tighten.
Grumps fits a nail into the next hook, fingers fumbling slightly, and hammers it into the wall with three clean taps. He pulls a skull with elaborate curly horns out of the next box and fits it on the hook. “One of the famous mountain sheep of Faro.”
What kind of monster slaughters sheep for a hobby, thinks Sumac? He’s turning her lovely room into a tomb.
“I’m really psyched to go hunting sometime,” says Wood, lifting up a caribou head. “But the folks are all wary of anything more than a Nerf gun….”
“Your father’s not a bad shot.”
“PopCorn?” says Sumac, appalled.
“You’re kidding,” says Wood.
“This was back before anyone was vegetarian,” Grumps adds with scorn.
“Hey, you want to come batting with us this evening?” asks Wood.
“I was more of a footie player in my time.”
“No, not baseball — bat watching. In High Park, around sunset.” And Wood goes off on how the Urban Bat Project crowdsources data by training teens like him as rangers, blah blah blah blah blah, and what’s really getting on Sumac’s nerves is how buddy-buddy her brother’s being with the enemy all of a sudden. She’s been waiting for the right moment to ask Wood to help with her secret plan to get Grumps out of Camelottery, but now it looks like she’s too late.
Nuzu egalla bacar, she recites in her head. Ignoramuses are horribly numerous in this palace.
Even when the Lotterys do their usual summer things, these days, Sumac enjoys them about 75 percent less because of Grumps pooh-poohing them. At the Chinatown Festival, for instance, he sits on a bench (“too hard”) doing a crossword (“too easy”) and picking at his chicken cashew nut (“too spicy”) instead of coming along on a produce hunt. (The kids’ triple challenge is to find and buy a golden dragon fruit, an ice cream fruit — called that because when it’s chilled it tastes kind of like bubble gum — and a spiky, stinky durian.) Grumps barely even glances up to watch the thirty-meter dragon dance by in the parade. What would it take to please him?
On Monday half the family are going to Toytally Awesome to buy presents for Oak’s birthday. Brian’s allowed to wear her fire truck as long as she leaves it outside the store so she won’t knock stuff down with it. “I drive it to toy store and park outside,” she says.
“What I meant, obviously,” says CardaMom.
They’re waiting on the doorstep for Sic, who can’t find socks that don’t match. “He always has to have odd socks,” Sumac explains to Grumps, because that’s something else he might find weirdy. “And Aspen turns her underwear inside out, and —”
“Shut up,” Aspen roars, pink-faced. “It’s so the label won’t rub.”
Today Aspen’s T-shirt is both backward and inside out, Sumac notices. “And Catalpa will only wear gothy punky black stuff,” she goes on, “and Brian always picks boy clothes, of course. Did you see CardaMom’s ribbon dress when she was going to the Gala Gathering the other evening, and her beaded collar?”
“What are you all of a sudden,” sneers Catalpa, “some tween fashion blogger?”
MaxiMum is giving Sumac a curious look.
“Come on, Sic,” calls PopCorn. “I may only have another forty years to live!”
Aspen puts her head into the Hall of Mirrors and shrieks, “Put one of your socks inside out so it’ll be a different texture!”
Finally Sic thumps down the stairs and vaults over the last baby gate, one sock inside out.
“Why can’t you just wear sandals?” asks PopCorn, wriggling his own hairy toes.
Pulling on his sneakers, Sic shakes his head. “Don’t go there, old man. If I have to start explaining the philosophy behind my threads —”
“Can we just get out of here?” asks MaxiMum.
More delay two blocks down the street, because CardaMom can’t pass someone who’s begging without getting into a long conversation as well as giving them a twenty-dollar bill.
“So Mrs. Zhao thought I was far too young to be using a heat gun on her window,” Sic remarks, “but by the time I put the glass in, she seemed to be warming to me. She had the impression all we do is pogo and goof off, so I briefed her on the advanced trig course I’m taking. Know what’s in those boxes she’s always cramming into the Poop Cube?”
“Mangoes,” guesses Aspen randomly.
“Counterfeit money,” says Sumac.
“Personalized dolls,” Sic tells them.