Brendan Buckley's Universe and Everything in It (5 page)

I swallowed, trying to get the meteorite down.

The door opened a crack and the dog’s head appeared behind the screen. It wasn’t a big dog. Just medium. White with large brown patches that made it hard to tell if it was a white dog with brown spots or a brown dog with white spots.

A large hand, also covered with brown spots, grabbed the dog’s collar. I remembered those hands. The dog strained forward, still barking. I felt like I was under a spell—I couldn’t get myself to look up at the person at the other end of that hand. Khalfani poked me from behind.

“Uh, hello,” I said. The rest of my prepared introduction wouldn’t come out.

“Sorry, boys. Not today.” His voice was rough, like unpolished granite.

I looked up just in time to see the door close.

I stared at the crisscross pattern of the screen until my eyes blurred. Didn’t he even remember me from the other day?

“Was that him?” Khalfani asked.

I nodded.

“What’d he do that for?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re not going to let him shut the door in your face, are you?” Khalfani reached for the doorbell.

I grabbed his arm. “Wait.” I pushed the bell. The chime rang again, but there was no more barking. Finally, the door opened.

“Look, kid, didn’t you see the sign on my door? I’m not buying anything.” The creases in his forehead ran in straight lines, like the grooves in Dad’s old records.

“We’re not selling anything,” I said.

I looked into his pool-water blue eyes. Grampa Clem told me always to look into people’s eyes. It was the only way to know the soul of a person, he said. The old man’s eyes were the color of the mineral azurite, but duller. “I was at the mall,” I said. “At the rock show.”

Ed DeBose peered through the screen as if he was trying to recognize me. “The double-refracting calcite?”

I nodded.

“Yeah, I remember now. Where’d you go in such a hurry?”

What should I tell him? That my grandma dragged me off because she knew he was the grandpa we never talked about?

He pushed the door open. “Come inside.”

CHAPTER 7

Ed DeBose’s walls were as white and smooth as eggshells. I could practically see my reflection in the polished wood floors. Across the room hung a large framed picture of four people.

I stared at it, hard.

There, in front, smiled Mom. She had braces on her teeth, and her hair hung down past her shoulders, but it was Mom. A woman I guessed was Grandma DeBose sat next to her, and behind Grandma DeBose stood Mom’s older brother, wearing a suit and tie.

The other person in the picture stood in front of me, just a little more pink and a lot more creased. Grandpa DeBose.

The dog sniffed my hand. “What’s his name?” I asked, stroking his head.

“P.J.—Patches Junior.”

“So there was a Patches Senior?”

“Had to put him down years back. Got rabies from a raccoon.”

Mom had told me that story. It was why she never wanted to have another dog.

“Was that your grandma at the mall?”

I nodded. Had he recognized her? Did he know he was my grandpa? It sure didn’t seem like it.

“What crazy bug crawled under her skin?”

I shrugged, then stared at the picture, frozen like a petrified tree trunk.

Ed DeBose looked in the direction of the portrait, then back at me. The skin between his eyes crinkled. “You must really want that calcite to track down where I live.”

I nodded again.

He moved toward the wall and a display case on the left. He flipped a switch and the case glowed. It was full of amazing-looking rocks, just like the ones I’d seen in my library books. The specimens glistened in the light.

Khalfani elbowed me. “Aren’t you going to tell him?” he whispered.

“Not yet,” I mouthed back. If Khal opened his big mouth…I stepped closer to take a look. One rock in particular caught my attention. It sat in the center of the case under a spotlight—sliced in half and set on a stand so you could see the inside. It was perfectly blue, like the sky after rain. I thought I could even see a rainbow running through it, like the surface of oil on a sunny day. “What is that one?” I asked, pointing.

I could see Ed’s pink face in the glass. “Ellensburg Blue. Not for sale. Only agate considered a precious stone by the Smithsonian Institute.”

Ellensburg Blue.
I hadn’t heard of that one before. I wondered how I could get some.

“Everyone argues about what color makes for the best grade. What I’ve got there is the highest quality you can get—as pure as I’ve ever seen.” Ed DeBose opened a drawer under the display and ran his finger over several white-lidded boxes until he found what he wanted. “You’re lucky I still got it.” He opened the box and held it so we could see the mineral.

My heart thudded. My arms felt like they might drop from their sockets. “Do you know who I am?” My voice sounded like a squeak.

“I said I remembered you.” He held it out for me. “You still want it, don’t you?”

“Yes.” I started to unzip my backpack for my wallet. Khalfani elbowed me again. I glared at him.

He glared back. “If you don’t tell him, I will.”

“What’s going on here?” Ed asked.

I stared at the picture of Mom again. “That’s”—I pointed at her—“my mom.”

Ed’s head swiveled on his neck, slowly, back and forth. He narrowed his eyes at the picture, then at me. At me, then at the picture. “You mean to say…,” he said, “you’re…”

“Brendan, sir. Brendan Buckley.” I couldn’t get the words
your grandson
out, so I left it at that.

“Hmm.” He rubbed his chin. “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. I thought that grandma of yours looked sorta familiar. Of course, it’s been over ten years….”

Ed DeBose pulled on his ear. “How the heck did you find me?”

“The Internet, sir,” I said.

Khalfani held up the printed map.

“I’m on the Internet?” Ed asked.

“Everyone’s on the Internet,” Khal said, as if Ed should have known this.

Ed dropped the calcite back in the box and closed it in the drawer. I guessed he didn’t want me to have it now. I felt a twinge in my heart, as if it’d been pinched by tweezers.

The room suddenly seemed stuffy. I glanced toward the closed drawer. Ed cleared his throat.

“Do you have anything to drink?” Khalfani asked. I was glad, because my mouth was as dry as chalk.

“Got some of that instant lemonade,” Ed said. “You drink that?” We nodded and followed him into the kitchen. The walls were as yellow as sulfur and the air smelled like bacon.

I watched Ed as he poured our drinks. His skin looked like it had spent a lot of time in the sun. His neck was as wrinkled as his forehead. Gladys said white people were always “worshiping the Sun God.” White people, she said, looked up at the sun and thought,
Give me a tan, but don’t make me black!
When I was little, I didn’t know what that meant. I do now.

We sat at the table and drank our lemonade. Ed put a bowl of grapes in the center. He sat, popped in a grape and rolled it around his mouth, watching us closely, as if waiting for us to spill. He chomped on the grape. I heard the skin split and the seeds crunch between his teeth.

Khalfani gulped down the last of his lemonade and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Ed looked straight at me. “So what’s that mom of yours up to?”

I shrugged. “She works part-time—Monday, Wednesday, Friday. At a place for ladies who are having babies and need help.”

“Sounds like your mom.” He ran his hand up and down the sweaty sides of his glass.

“Brendan’s dad is a cop,” Khalfani said. “Mine’s just a boring estate lawyer.”

“That so?” Ed said to me.

“He’s a detective, actually,” I said.

“Been promoted, eh?”

“I guess.” It sounded like Ed had already known what Dad did.

Ed stared at me. I felt like a bug under my own microscope. “Sorry about the ears,” he said.

The skin on my face tingled. I touched my big ears. They stuck out a little from my squared-off head. Just like Ed DeBose’s ears.

He opened his mouth to eat another grape. His small bottom teeth crowded together like barnacles on a rock. They looked real. Gladys’s dentures stood tall and straight like soldiers at attention.

The basalt rock in my pocket dug into my hip. “I’d like to know more…” Ed’s eyes narrowed. “About minerals, I mean.” Flecks in the table shone like mica. I kept my eyes down. “Could you teach me?”

Finally, I looked up. Ed blinked a few times, then pushed back from the table and left the room. I sat for a moment, wondering if I should follow him. I grabbed my backpack from the floor. Khal scrambled to catch up.

Ed turned from the drawer in the display case with his fist extended. “Here.” He dropped the piece of calcite into my palm. “For your collection,” he said.

“You’re giving it to me?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks!” I squeezed it in my hand.

He gave me the box, then looked again at the wall and the family picture. “Katherine had a collection when she was a girl.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Didn’t last long, though. Minerals weren’t interesting, she said.
People
were interesting.” He turned back to us. “If you ask me, people are a pain in the neck. Way too complicated.” He gazed at his collection. “Minerals, on the other hand…”

“Why do you keep talking about minerals? Aren’t those just rocks?” Khalfani asked.

“They’re totally different,” I said. This was my chance to show Ed something I knew. “Minerals make up rocks. Rocks are a mixture of different minerals.” When I’d read that the night before, it had made me think about the first time I got called mixed. I told Grampa Clem about it and he said, “Everyone’s mixed with something, son. Don’t you never feel shame ’bout who you are.”

“I see you know some already,” Ed said.

My insides felt light, full of helium.

“Minerals are pure substances,” Ed continued. “They have a structure that can be summed up by a simple chemical formula. For example, quartz—” He opened his display case and reached for a specimen.

“S-i-oh-two!” I said. The soles of my feet buzzed.

“That’s right.” Ed held up a piece of rose quartz. I recognized it from the field guide.

I’d gotten two answers right already! I smiled so hard, I could see my cheeks.

Ed, however, wasn’t smiling. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a white rag, like a tiny security blanket, and wiped his forehead. “Of course I’d be
able
to teach you. And I’m sure you’d make a fine student.”

The electrical storm went off in my body as I thought about the questions I already had for Ed. I unzipped my backpack to get my notebook.

“But what about your mother?” Ed’s face turned so red, I thought if I touched him, my finger would sizzle.

I suddenly remembered I needed to call her—in less than fifteen minutes. “Maybe you could talk to her,” I said.

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.” Beads of sweat popped out on Ed’s face. He wiped his upper lip with the cloth.

The top of my head tingled. A twitch jiggled my eyelid. I had so many questions to ask—about more than just rocks—but I couldn’t press him to answer them all right now. I didn’t know how he would respond. This was my grandfather, but he was an unknown species to me. I took a deep breath. The electrical storm died. Things had suddenly turned gray and rainy.

Khalfani pulled on my arm. “We gotta go,” he said. “My stepmom’s going to start wondering where we are.”

One final spark zapped my brain. “Do you have a pick I could borrow?” I’d read about this tool in the books. Every serious rock collector had a prospector’s pick. And if I borrowed one from Ed, I’d have to bring it back.

Ed disappeared down the hallway and around a corner. His footsteps faded down a set of stairs. He came back with a black bundle in his hands. He unrolled it. In the center lay a pick, a chisel and a pair of goggles! The tools were a little rusty, but that just made them look like the real deal. He tied the bundle again and handed it to me. “Make sure you bring these back, now.”

I thought maybe he looked at me like we shared a secret. “I’ll be careful with them,” I said. “Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

As I passed him on the way out the door, I could smell his clothes. They smelled the same way ours did right after Mom did laundry.

Khalfani and I ran down the street. I held the roll in the crooks of my arms, close to my chest. I thought about where I would hide the things in my room so Mom wouldn’t find them. Why didn’t she like Ed DeBose? I just didn’t get it. He didn’t seem so bad.

At a gas station near the bus stop, I called Mom. Yes, I was fine. Okay, I’d be home by three. She asked me why there was so much car noise in the background. I told her we were out riding our bikes, which was true, or at least would be as soon as we got back to the bushes where we’d hidden them.

On the bus, I kept thinking about Mom and Ed DeBose. He was her dad. He didn’t live that far from us. But they never saw each other. She never talked to him. And he’d never talked to us.

I didn’t talk to my dad once for a night. I was mad at him for missing my baseball game, because I hit the winning run. But the next day he came into my room and told me about a little girl they had found drowned near the Narrows Bridge and said that was why he had missed my game. Then I felt bad for not talking to him. I hugged him the hardest I ever had.

Maybe Ed DeBose had done something like my dad missing my game, and Mom had gotten mad at him, but Ed never told her his good reason. It was a solid hypothesis. One thing I knew: Ed DeBose expected me to come back, and I would. For sure.

CHAPTER 8

“I gotta pee,” Khalfani said, hopping from one foot to the other.

We were in my basement, supposedly practicing the
joong-gun
form for our current level. Whenever Khal and I get together to practice, it always turns into sparring. But
dare ee on
—sparring—is one of the four disciplines of Tae Kwon Do, along with forms (
hyungs
), self-defense (
hosinsul
) and the break test (
kyepka
), so we figure it should still count for something.

“You always have to go pee,” I said, crouched in a horse stance. Even with my knees bent, I stood taller than Khal. Our height difference sometimes made sparring tough. Like when I would try to go for his chest and end up almost kicking his head.

“So? Everyone’s got to go sometime.”

“But you have to go more.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He punched with his left fist. “Well, maybe I got a better metabolism than everyone else.”

Khal
was
wiry—the kind of kid who could eat two hundred and fifty gallons of fudge ripple and still be just as skinny. I blocked him with my forearm. “Maybe you got a smaller bladder.”

He punched with his right fist. “Who you saying got a smaller bladder?”

I blocked him with my other forearm. “You.”

He put his arms down. “Well, you got a square head, Frankenstein.” I was Frankenstein for Halloween this year. Mom painted my face green. I didn’t need a mask because my head
is
kind of blocky.

“Well, you got a round one, Lightbulb.”

“I don’t got a smaller bladder.” Kick.

“You could.” Block. “Nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I
don’t
got a smaller bladder. And if you say it again, I’ll pee on you.” He raised his bent leg like a dog in front of a hydrant.

“That’s not a Tae Kwon Do stance,” I said.

He grinned.

Khal knew better than to do what he was threatening. I’d get him with my lethal
edan ap cha gee
—jumping front kick. “I know how we could find out.” My scalp had started to tingle as soon as I’d realized we were dancing around a question without an answer.

He put his hand on his hip and scrunched one eye at me. “Find out what?”

“How big your bladder is.”

Khal’s nostrils flared out like he thought I was a crazy man. I didn’t let his look stop me, though.

I went through the door from the basement to the garage and pulled two pop bottles out of the recycling bin. Mom was at the store, so we could conduct our experiment without unnecessary questioning.

I handed an empty two-liter to Khalfani. “First, you’ve got to hold it as long as you can.”

He shook the Mountain Dew bottle. “How’s holding this going to tell you how big my bladder is?”

“No, hold your pee. You can’t go until you think you’re going to explode. If you go before then, we won’t get an accurate measurement.”

He looked at my bottle, then smiled at me. “You’ll
never
out-pee me. I’m going to win.”

Khalfani always turned everything into a competition, but I didn’t care about that. I wanted answers.

We dropped the bottles and ran upstairs to drink water. We each gulped down a full juice pitcher, then Khal went for another one. After that, he ran around the house—into and out of every room, except for the bathroom, probably because it would have been too tempting.

I just stood in the living room and watched him jog around. He made faces as if he were pulling a train with his teeth.

After a while, I started to feel a burning sensation. I jumped up and down a few times in case that might help my bladder fill up faster or make more room or something. By this time, Khalfani was rolling around on the floor, clutching his stomach and moaning, “Ohhh…ohhh…” He beat the ground with his fists. “Ohhh…ohhh…”

Watching him flail like a fish, I started to laugh. I tried not to, because it made me have to go, but I couldn’t help it. I laughed so hard, I peed a little in my pants. I limped to the kitchen and made myself drink another half pitcher.

I sat at the top of the stairs and pinched my legs together. I bounced my feet up and down. I cracked every one of my knuckles and both wrists. I leaned back on my elbows to make more room down there.

“Ohhh…ohhh…”
Pound. Pound.

I could feel the pressure in my gut. The burning traveled all the way to my knees. I gritted my teeth and squeezed my legs together.

The garage door creaked and groaned.
Mom!
I tiptoed as fast as I could to the basement.

“Wait up!” Khalfani yelled.

We hid in the room where we’d been sparring. The door from the garage opened. “Bren, come help me with the groceries!” Mom called.

“Shoot,” I whispered. I pinched my legs as tight as I could and waddled to the garage like a penguin.

Mom handed me a bag. “Where’s Khalfani?” she asked.

“In the other room. Practicing some moves.” I smiled, remembering Khal rolling around on the floor. Those were
some
moves.

I took the stairs carefully. One trip and I would lose control—and not of the bag of groceries.

Mom came into the kitchen behind me. “Do you know how those bottles ended up on the garage floor?” she asked, setting her bags on the counter.

I raised my eyebrows and shrugged, trying to look as uninvolved in anything having to do with two-liters as possible.

“Put them back in the bin for me, would you, sweetie?”

“Okay,” I said, already halfway down the stairs.

I could feel liquid rising into my throat. My gut hurt so bad, I wondered if it was possible to fill your bladder to the point that it could actually burst.

I reached the bottom of the stairs. Khalfani exploded past me, screaming like someone running straight into enemy fire. I rushed into the garage behind him.

Khalfani didn’t seem to care that the garage door was open and anyone walking by would see him, zipper down, peeing into a Mountain Dew bottle. I pressed the garage door button, hoping Mom was too busy unloading groceries to investigate the yelling. The door rumbled closed.

“Ahhh…” Khalfani sighed. The inside of his bottle steamed up.

I pulled down my shorts and fumbled with the cap. Aiming into a hole the size of a quarter wasn’t too easy, nor was controlling the pee that wanted to gush out of me like a flooded river bursting a dam, but somehow I got it to work. The quickly filling bottle warmed under my hands.

When I had squeezed out the last possible drop, I capped the bottle and set it next to Khalfani’s.

“Ha!” he shouted. His bottle was half full. Mine was only about a third full.

“You drank more than me,” I said. It was a variable I hadn’t considered in setting up the experiment.

“That’s not my fault. You should have drank more.”

I didn’t consider the results conclusive, but I was impressed with the initial findings. One liter for an eleven-year-old’s bladder seemed pretty big to me.

“You know what this tells us, right?” I said. “You don’t really need to go as often as you say you do.”

“Maybe so.” He straddled his bike and pushed the garage door button. “But I’ve also got a bigger bladder than you.” He smiled. “Now let’s go to the park like we said we were going to.”

“First let’s take these bottles and water my mom’s flowers.” I sloshed the liquid around the two-liter. That had been in my bladder.
Cool.

Khalfani grinned big. I’d known he’d like my idea.

I enjoyed bouncing up the stairs without pain. I jogged to my room and dug out Ed’s tools from where I’d hid them, in a box of winter clothes in my closet. I shoved the black bundle into my backpack and slung the bag over my shoulders.

On my way out, I let Mom know we were going to the park. Then Khalfani and I poured the results of our experiment into Mom’s flowerbed and raced off, feeling a whole lot lighter.

At the park, we ditched our helmets and backpacks by a tree. Khalfani wanted to ride down the slide on his bike. While he wrestled the bike to the top of the playground fortress, I sat on mine and practiced balancing without the kickstand.

Khal rocked back and forth at the top of the slide, then flew over the edge, pedaling fast. At the bottom he caught air, just like a motocross racer doing a jump. His mouth opened in a big O. I watched, hoping to see a bug fly in.

His back wheel touched down. The front tire flipped up. Khalfani thudded to the ground and the bike crashed on top of him.

I jumped off my bike and ran over.

His eyes were squeezed shut. He moaned.

“Are you hurt?” I stooped, expecting to see blood. What if he’d broken his back?

His crescent moon smile appeared. “Got ya!” He pushed the bike off and rolled onto his side, but not very fast. “Was that awesome, or what?”

“Yeah, until the end. Khalfani, meet gravity. Gravity, Khalfani.” I held out my hand and pulled him up.

“Your turn,” he said.

“I’ve got a better idea. The stream.”

Khalfani suddenly moved as if he hadn’t just back-flopped onto a bunch of wood chips.

I ran to my helmet and pulled it on. I threw my pack over my shoulder. Khal just left his things where they were and took off. We always raced to the water. We zoomed over the footbridge—Khal almost hit an old lady—and skidded down the bank to the water’s edge.

I dropped my pack and yanked off my shoes and socks. I would’ve beaten him, but a rock embankment at the base of the bridge caught my eye. Khalfani splashed into the water. “You’re slower than a dial-up connection!” he yelled.

“Just a sec.” I pulled the tools from my pack and took the prospector’s pick and chisel over to the tan rock. Opposite from the pointy end of the pick was a blunt, square face that could be used to hammer against the chisel.

The rock face glistened with water and the slight green sheen of moss. I used the chisel and hammered away until a chunk came loose in my hand. I’d take it home and identify it with the field guide.

“Hurry up. My feet are turning to ice cubes.” Khalfani stood shin-deep in the water, holding himself and shivering.

I set the tools and sample on top of my pack and ran into the stream, doing a spinning kick when I got near Khal. “Shower time!” I yelled.

“You want a piece of me?” He raised his hands and wiggled his fingers.

We kicked into the air around each other’s heads and bodies, trying to make the other one lose balance and fall in. It was our usual contest when we got in the stream. This time, though, the bumpy rocks under my feet begged me to stop and look at them. Maybe pick a few up.

“Time out,” I said, breathing hard. I put my hands on my knees and peered into the water.

“I’m just getting started!” Khalfani bounced around with his fists up. He jabbed a few times.

“Stand still. You’re stirring up the water.”

“What are you looking for? You don’t wear contacts.” He came over and looked down.

“Rocks.” I reached in and pulled out a flat black stone with jagged edges. I was pretty sure I’d seen one like it in the field guide. Slate? I held it up, then dropped it into my pocket.

“Hey, kids, what’re you doing? Trying to catch guppies for show-and-tell?”

Laughter. Older boys’ voices.

I looked over my shoulder. Four white boys stood on the bank watching us. One of them picked up my bike and sat on it. White cords hung from his ears and disappeared under his Slim Shady T-shirt. His head bobbed in time to his music.

The tallest one stood with his arms crossed over his puffed-out chest. He wore a white tank top. “Or are you fishing with your hands, like the natives?”

“We’re not fishing,” Khalfani said through a clenched jaw.

My feet felt like frozen pieces of meat, but my face was burning hot.

A boy with shaggy blond hair spoke. “They’re not going to catch anything in that nasty water except a foot fungus.”

The tall boy smiled at him. “You know that from personal experience, Marty?”

The blond boy scowled.

The fourth boy, who had been standing to the side grinning, stepped up to the water. “I know how to make it nastier.” He snorted long and hard and spit a huge loogie into the water. “Some seasoning for your fish!”

They all laughed then.

I stood still, not daring to move or to look away, but not knowing what to do, either. They were bigger than us. A lot bigger. And they had our bikes. But tenet number five told me I couldn’t just jump out of the stream and run away.
Baekjul boolgool.
Indomitable spirit. A Tae Kwon Do warrior should never be dominated or have his spirit broken by another.

The boy who had spit glanced at the ground. “What’s this?” he asked. My backpack.
The tools.
He grabbed the pick and held it up. “This looks dangerous. We better keep it so the little boys don’t hurt themselves.” He tossed it to the boy with shaggy hair.

I charged out of the stream. “Give it back!”

Shaggy-Hair Boy smiled and threw the pick to Tank Top Boy. “Monkey in the middle!” Shaggy called. He made chimp sounds and pushed out his ears. Was he making fun of my ears?

I rushed toward my pick, but the tall boy held it over his head. I jumped at it and bumped into him. He shoved me and I fell hard, wincing from the sharp rocks that stabbed my palms.