Snap: Sic, leaning across the table, has shut the laptop. The wall goes blank.
A screech from Grumps’s chair as he shoves it back. He gives Sumac a baleful stare, then turns it on the whole family. “Believe me, ye couldn’t long to see the back of me more than I long to see the back of ye!”
He crashes out into the Hall of Mirrors. Then they hear the door of the Grumpery slam behind him.
CardaMom breaks the awful hush: “Sumac, how could you?”
Her voice comes out in a squeak. “I was only trying to help.”
“I find that hard to believe,” says MaxiMum.
Sumac struggles to keep the tears in her eye sockets.
“Did you not realize how much it would hurt his feelings?” asks PapaDum.
“Yeah,” says Catalpa, “how would you feel if we stuck you in some institution just because you’re über irritating?”
“I only thought” — Sumac gasps for breath — “if I could find him a home that’s almost like a real one, somewhere he’d prefer to live than Camelottery, without all the things that bug him so much, without all of us — because he doesn’t want to stay here —”
She looks from face to face. None of them can deny that.
“But maybe he wants us to want him to stay,” says PopCorn in a voice so flat that it doesn’t sound like his.
It was cruel, what Sumac did: She can suddenly see that now. How can she have spent all week preparing her presentation and not noticed the mean-mindedness of it? What kind of a blundering idiot is she?
Now her tears spill down, and she flees from the room as if she’s three instead of nine.
*
When various parents come up to the attic to knock at Sumac’s door, she shouts, “Go away,” and buries her sticky face under the pillow again.
Sic doesn’t ask permission, he just walks in. “Poor duck,” he says, and sits down on her butt.
Sumac wiggles to shake him off.
“Oh, what a lovely cushion,” he says, adjusting his weight. “A little bony, maybe … could do with some reupholstering … a bit more duck down …”
“Reupholster yourself,” she says, her voice muffledly.
He bounces up and down.
She groans but doesn’t mind, oddly enough. When you’re this miserable, having a heavy weight press you flat feels right.
“Seriously, Smackeroo,” says her brother. “Have you figured out why everyone got so mad at you?”
Sumac cringes. “I know I know I know, I was stupid and horrible, I don’t need to hear it all over again!” She twists sideways till Sic tips off her.
He’s shaking his head. “Wouldn’t we all heave a massive, collective sigh of relief if the dude volunteered to move to some spa-type retirement villa?”
She blinks at him.
“What you got in trouble for was saying it out loud.”
“Yeah, well, I wish I hadn’t.”
“You think MaxiMum’s enjoying having to talk him into cutting his dinosaurish toenails? Even CardaMom, with her blind spot about family —”
Sumac is confused. “Blind spot like in a car?”
“Right, the bit you can’t see clearly: She’s all about family. And PapaDum can’t stand the guy — probably hopes he’ll snuff it in his sleep one of these hot nights.”
“You’re sick, Sic.” She’s grinning behind her hand.
He shrugs and fluffs out his Afro. “I’ve been mulling it over, and the thing of it is, it’s … payback time!”
Sometimes when her brother talks like one of his video games, Sumac has no idea what he means. “Payback for what?”
“PopCorn had scaly eczema and projectile vomiting till he was two, remember?”
“He’s probably exaggerating,” says Sumac.
“Well, of course, doesn’t he always? But still. If your folks get you to eighteen in one piece, you owe them something,” says Sic. “So PopCorn has to be loyal to his dad, and we’re loyal to PopCorn: links in a chain.”
The kind that keeps a prisoner shackled to a wall, Sumac thinks.
“Anyway, cheer up, fellow mutt. It’s all good.”
“No it’s not,” she tells him.
“It’s Oak’s birthday tomorrow. Let the wild rumpus start!” Sic quotes.
“Yeah,” says Sumac, but not feeling it.
Sumac remembers Oak’s first birthday, when they dressed him up as an acorn in that velvety brown costume with the matching cap and invited everyone from his physiotherapist and his and Brian’s caseworker, to all the relations within driving distance, and even the babies from his music games class … though Oak did fall asleep over his bottle before most of them arrived.
No party this year. The parents say things are busy enough at the moment, which Sumac knows is a euphemism for Grumps. Since her mortifying presentation on old folks’ homes yesterday, she’s avoided everybody’s eyes, but especially his.
She taps on the door of the Asp Pit, which has a picture of a huge snake with Aspen’s grinning face.
Aspen’s lying on her back in the sea of Legos that flows from wall to wall with her legs hooked over her elbows, talking to some small, complicated flying machine she’s making. “What?”