Crenshaw

 

Begin Reading

Table of Contents

About the Author

Copyright Page

 

Thank you for buying this

Feiwel and Friends ebook.

 

To receive special offers, bonus content,

and info on new releases and other great reads,

sign up for our newsletters.

 

Or visit us online at

us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

 

For email updates on the author, click
here
.

 

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way.
Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author's copyright, please notify the publisher at:
us.macmillanusa.com/piracy
.

 

for Jake

 

Dr. Sanderson:

“Think carefully, Dowd. Didn't you know somebody, sometime, someplace by the name of Harvey? Didn't you ever know anybody by that name?”

 

Elwood P. Dowd:

“No, no, not one, Doctor. Maybe that's why I always had such hopes for it.”

 

—MARY CHASE,
Harvey
(1944)

 

PART ONE

A door is to open

—
A HOLE IS TO DIG:
A FIRST BOOK OF FIRST DEFINITIONS,

written by Ruth Krauss and illustrated by Maurice Sendak

 

1

I noticed several
weird things about the surfboarding cat.

Thing number one: He was a surfboarding cat.

Thing number two: He was wearing a T-shirt. It said
CATS RULE, DOGS DROOL
.

Thing number three: He was holding a closed umbrella, like he was worried about getting wet. Which, when you think about it, is kind of
not
the point of surfing.

Thing number four: No one else on the beach seemed to see him.

He'd grabbed a good wave, and his ride was smooth. But as the cat neared shore, he made the mistake of opening his umbrella. A gust of wind yanked him into the sky. He missed a seagull by seconds.

Even the gull didn't seem to notice him.

The cat floated over me like a furry balloon. I looked straight up. He looked straight down. He waved.

His coat was black and white, penguin style. He looked like he was heading somewhere fancy in a hairy tuxedo.

He also looked awfully familiar.

“Crenshaw,” I whispered.

I glanced around me. I saw sand-castle builders and Frisbee tossers and crab chasers. But I didn't see anyone looking at the floating, umbrella-toting surfer cat in the sky.

I squeezed my eyes shut and counted to ten. Slowly.

Ten seconds seemed like the right amount of time for me to stop being crazy.

I felt a little dizzy. But that happens sometimes when I'm hungry. I hadn't eaten since breakfast.

When I opened my eyes, I sighed with relief. The cat was gone. The sky was endless and empty.

Whap.
Inches from my toes, the umbrella landed in the sand like a giant dart.

It was red and yellow plastic, decorated with pictures of tiny smiling mice. On the handle, printed in crayon, were the words
THIS BUMBERSHOOT BELONGS TO CRENSHAW.

I closed my eyes again. I counted to ten. I opened my eyes, and the umbrella—or the bumbershoot, or whatever it was—had vanished. Just like the cat.

It was late June, nice and warm, but I shivered.

I felt the way you do the instant before you leap into the deep end of a pool.

You're on your way to somewhere else. You're not there yet. But you know there's no turning back.

 

2

Here's the thing:
I am not an imaginary friend kind of guy.

Seriously. This fall I go into fifth grade. At my age, it's not good to have a reputation for being crazy.

I like facts. Always have. True stuff. Two-plus-two-equals-four facts. Brussels-sprouts-taste-like-dirty-gym-socks facts.

Okay, maybe that second one's just an opinion. And anyway, I've never eaten a dirty gym sock so I could be wrong.

Facts are important to scientists, which is what I want to be when I grow up. Nature facts are my favorite kind. Especially the ones that make people say
No way.

Like the fact that a cheetah can run seventy miles per hour.

Or the fact that a headless cockroach can survive for more than two weeks.

Or the fact that when a horned toad gets mad it shoots blood from its eyes.

I want to be an animal scientist. I'm not sure what kind. Right now I really like bats. I also like cheetahs and cats and dogs and snakes and rats and manatees. So those are some options.

I like dinosaurs, too, except for them all being dead. For a while, my friend Marisol and I both wanted to be paleontologists and search for dinosaur fossils. She used to bury chicken bone leftovers in her sandbox for digging practice.

Marisol and I started a dog-walking service this summer. It's called See Spot Walk. Sometimes when we're walking dogs, we'll trade nature facts. Yesterday she told me that a bat can eat 1,200 mosquitoes in an hour.

Facts are so much better than stories. You can't see a story. You can't hold it in your hand and measure it.

You can't hold a manatee in your hand either. But still. Stories are lies, when you get right down to it. And I don't like being lied to.

I've never been much into make-believe stuff. When I was a kid, I didn't dress up like Batman or talk to stuffed animals or worry about monsters under my bed.

My parents say, when I was in pre-K, I marched around telling everybody I was the mayor of Earth. But that was just for a couple of days.

Sure, I had my Crenshaw phase. But lots of kids have an imaginary friend.

Once my parents took me to see the Easter Bunny at the mall. We stood on fake grass next to a giant fake egg in a giant fake basket. When it was my turn to pose with the bunny, I took one look at his paw and yanked it right off.

A man's hand was inside. It had a gold wedding ring and tufts of blondish hair.

“This man is not a rabbit!” I shouted. A little girl started bawling.

The mall manager made us leave. I did not get the free basket with candy eggs or a photo with the fake rabbit.

That was the first time I realized people don't always like to hear the truth.

 

3

After the Easter
Bunny incident, my parents started to worry.

Except for my two days as mayor of Earth, I didn't seem to have much of an imagination. They thought maybe I was too grown-up. Too serious.

My dad wondered if he should have read me more fairy tales.

My mom wondered if she should have let me watch so many nature shows where animals eat each other.

They asked my grandma for advice. They wanted to know if I was acting too adult for my age.

She said not to worry.

No matter how adult I seemed, she told them, I would definitely grow out of it when I became a teenager.

 

4

A few hours
after my Crenshaw sighting at the beach, he appeared again.

No surfboard this time. No umbrella.

No body, either.

Still. I knew he was there.

It was about six in the evening. My sister, Robin, and I were playing cerealball in the living room of our apartment. Cerealball is a good trick for when you're hungry and there's nothing much to eat till morning. We invented it when our stomachs were grumbling to each other.
Wow, I would love a piece of pepperoni pizza
, my stomach would growl. And then hers would grumble,
Yeah, or maybe a Ritz cracker with peanut butter.

Robin loves Ritzes.

Cerealball is easy to play. All you need are a few Cheerios or even a little piece of bread all torn up. M&M's would be good too, if your mom isn't around to say no sugar. But unless it's right after Halloween you probably don't have any.

In my family those guys go really fast.

First you pick a target to throw at. A bowl or cup works fine. Don't use a wastebasket, because that might have germs. Sometimes I use Robin's T-ball cap. Although that's probably pretty gross, too.

For a five-year-old, that girl can really sweat.

What you do is throw your one piece of cereal and try to make a basket. The rule is you can't eat that piece until you score. Make sure your target's far away or you'll finish your food too fast.

The trick is that you take so long to hit the target, you forget about being hungry. For a while, anyway.

I like to use Cheerios and Robin likes Frosted Flakes. But you can't be picky when the cupboard is bare. My mom says that sometimes.

If you run out of cereal and your stomach's still growling, you can always try chewing a piece of gum to distract yourself. Stuck behind your ear is a good hiding place if you want to use your gum again. Even if the flavor is gone your teeth get a workout.

Crenshaw showed up—at least he
seemed
to show up—while we were busy throwing my dad's bran cereal into Robin's cap. It was my turn to throw, and I got a direct hit. When I went to take out the cereal piece, I found four purple jelly beans instead.

I love purple jelly beans.

I stared a long time at those things. “Where did the jelly beans come from?” I finally asked.

Robin grabbed the cap. I started to pull it away, but then I changed my mind. Robin is small, but you don't want to mess with her.

She bites.

“It's magic!” she said. She started dividing up the jelly beans. “One for me, one for you, two for me—”

“Seriously, Robin. Stop kidding around. Where?”

Robin gobbled down two jelly beans. “Shlp tchzzzn muh,” she said, which I figured meant “stop teasing me” in candy-mouth.

Aretha, our big Labrador mutt, rushed over to check things out. “No candy for you,” Robin said. “You are a dog so you eat dog food, young lady.”

But Aretha didn't seem interested in the candy. She was sniffing the air, ears cocked toward the front door, as if we had a guest approaching.

“Mom,” I yelled, “did you buy some jelly beans?”

“Sure,” she called back from the kitchen. “They're to go with the caviar.”

“I'm serious,” I said, picking up my two pieces.

“Just eat Dad's cereal, Jackson. You'll poop for a week,” she answered.

A second later she appeared in the doorway, a dish towel in her hands. “Are you guys still hungry?” She sighed. “I've got a little mac and cheese left over from dinner. And there's half an apple you could share.”

“I'm fine,” I said quickly. Back in the old days, when we always had food in the house, I would whine if we were out of my favorite stuff. But lately we'd been running out of everything, and I had the feeling my parents felt lousy about it.