From Ant to Eagle(6)

Sammy could be so suffocating. All I wanted to do was sit and think. I had been trying to devise a plan to find out more about the mysterious girl from church and now he was interrupting my thoughts.

He walked slowly across the living room watching me carefully, like I were some rabid dog that might jump up and bite him at any second. When he made it to the chair opposite me he sat down and pretended to look at a magazine from the table beside him. I knew as well as he did that he couldn’t read it and every so often I’d catch him casting stupid looks my way as if he wanted to tell me something.

“Aleta Alvarado,” he finally said, his secret bursting from inside as he put the magazine down.

“What?”

“The girl at church today. Her name is Aleta Alvarado. And her sister’s name is Raquel. They just moved here.”

Sometimes Sammy’s intuition amazed me. It was like he had a wire straight to my brain and could read my thoughts. How had he known I’d been thinking about her?

“Uh…what…where did you hear that?” I asked.

“Mom told me.”

I thought for a moment.

“How did Mom know?”

“Someone in town told her. They moved into Mr. Wilson’s old house.”

I knew the one he meant. It had been empty since Mr. Wilson died. We didn’t know him well but we had gone to his funeral. It was really boring and the only good part would’ve been to see the dead body but he had been cremated. The house was on Thornton Road, only a fifteen-minute bike ride away.

In the end, I did play cards with Sammy. I thought maybe it would help pass the time as I waited for the rain to stop. I cheated and won, as always, but that never seemed to bother Sammy. He’d grown up losing and by now he was used to it. He just seemed happy enough identifying when he could and couldn’t play a card and when he remembered what each meant.

“Two of spades,” he’d say. “Pick up two.”

I’d put on a look of feigned disappointment, pick up two from the pile, then play the three other twos I’d swiped from the discard pile. “Pick up eight.”

“Ah, darn,” he’d say, not really disheartened. “Lucky you had those.” It never occurred to him that all the twos had been played already and that there was no way I could’ve gotten them without cheating.

Periodically, I’d look outside to see if the rain had let up, only to find the lawn still covered in ripples. As dusk set in, I forced myself to realize it wasn’t in the cards, so to speak, for me to make my way over to Thornton Road that night.

Tomorrow, I thought. Tomorrow I’ll go.

During the summer, our bedtime was later and poorly enforced. It was easy to stay up late playing cards or games or whatever else we felt like. That night we were in bed and reading well before our usual time. I read a few chapters out loud from Say Cheese and Die! using my best scary-ghost voice at the parts I thought would be most likely to give Sammy nightmares. When Sammy was asleep I lay in bed, eyes closed, listening to his even breathing, wishing I was asleep too. I never was good at falling asleep, especially when I was excited about something.





CHAPTER 5

THE NEXT MORNING I WOKE TO SUN FLOODING THROUGH OUR bedroom window. I’d removed the quilt the night before; I’d wanted an early start on the day.

“Hey, Sammy, you up?”

“Yeah, it’s too bright in here. Why’d you take the blanket off the window?”

“It’s not a blanket, it’s a quilt. And I dunno, thought maybe we could go for a bike ride today.”

“Can we go later? Dad said we could make chocolate chip cookies this morning.”

Sammy and Dad loved to bake: cookies, muffins, pound cake, tortes, cupcakes—you name it, they made it. I didn’t share their sweet tooth. Which was probably why I was skinny and Sammy was, well, chubby.

I glanced at the clock on the dresser—7:25. I was being too anxious. We’d probably ride by her house and she wouldn’t even be up yet. I rested my head back on the pillow and stared at the ceiling.

“Yeah, okay, we’ll wait a little bit, I guess.”

After breakfast, I went out front and shot the ball around while Sammy and Dad made their cookies.

“Three seconds left on the clock, Huxbury is down by one, Calvin Sinclair has the ball. Three…two…” I hurled the ball into the air, flicking my wrist at the end with perfect form. “One…eeeehhhhhhh!” The ball caressed the nylon of the net and fell on the gravel of the driveway. I’d run through this situation countless times, sometimes ending well, sometimes with the depressing clang of the ball hitting the rim or backboard and bouncing away.

“Yay!” Sammy cheered.

I hadn’t noticed him standing in the front doorway of the house.

“Thanks,” I said unenthusiastically, trying to make it seem like it was no big deal. “You ready to go?”

“Yeah. Where are we going? Are we riding to meet the new people?”

Again, Sammy’s intuition startled me.

“Sure. If you want we could ride that way.”

“Yeah, then I can bring them some cookies!”

Perfect! A plan for stopping by and I could say it was Sammy’s idea!

Just then, Mom popped through the door behind Sammy. Her hair looked messy as if she had just woken up. “What are you boys up to today?”