Authors: Mavis Jukes
“Can you believe people used to homestead places like this? Squatters’ rights,” his dad said.
He squatted down and pointed his camera right at a bumblebee that was bouncing and bumbling from
flower to flower like a fat black and yellow ball. He zoomed in and clicked. The bumblebee zoomed up. And chased him into some mucky goop by a spring.
“You okay, Dad?” Carson called.
He was fine. Muddy pants, wet shoes. So what.
They strolled along the fence line behind the automotive repair shop where the Porsche was waiting to be fixed, now parked inside and all by itself except for a pack rat Carson spotted through the window. The pack rat was hiding behind an empty metal paint can—holding on to the edge and peering at them with beady black eyes and twitching its whiskers.
Carson didn’t mind pack rats, but his dad wasn’t a fan. He stared through the dusty pane, shook his head, and sighed deeply. “Wow. I didn’t sign up for this.”
Carson and his dad uploaded some landscape photos, a portrait of the gnome, and a close-up of the bumblebee onto the laptop and emailed them to Carson’s grandma and grandpa, Case, Gavin, and Carson’s Montessori teacher, Ms. Juli.
On the last evening, they each sat in front of a pile of Mabel’s too-red spaghetti, which tasted like
noodles dunked in ketchup. Carson sat by the window, where he could slyly part the checkered curtain to keep his sharp eye on the motel room, where Genevieve was sleeping.
His dad twirled some spaghetti in a spoon and grumbled, “I’ve had a bellyful of the scenic route, Carson.” He sucked in one very long noodle.
“There’s sauce on your chin, Dad.”
“Thanks, son.” He went on to say that he had once heard of a pack rat that nested in the engine compartment of a Porsche Speedster. “So before any fuzzy, flea-ridden, beady-eyed, bucktoothed rodent takes up residence in the Porsche,” he told Carson, “I want to get us the heck outta Dodge!”
He stabbed the salad: iceberg lettuce with a big blob of bottled ranch dressing on top. He told Carson that, although he owned one of the greatest pairs of cowboy boots ever made by Dan Post, when it came to home on the range, home on the ranch, dude ranches, ranchettes, ranch dressing, or ranch anything else—no thanks. Home on the front porch of the sunny two-story house he had rented in El Cerrito—yes please, and the sooner the better.
“I thought you said you were giving those cowboy boots away because they pinch your toes,” Carson told his dad.
“They do, but I couldn’t part with them.”
Carson took a bite of the garlic roll. Yum! He liked squishy white rolls, but his dad was critical of too-soft bread. His dad wasn’t officially a restaurant critic, but he was a certified foodie. He had a blog:
Gourmet Grub
.
Mabel came around with a pot full of coffee the color of tea and asked how everything was, and Carson and his dad both said great! So she brought them a complimentary dessert: soggy corn flakes and granulated sugar on baked apple slices with whipped cream on top that she blasted out of a can. Carson liked it!
“How many stars would you give this place?” he whispered.
Carson’s dad made a zero sign by touching his thumb to his pointing finger and peering at Carson through the circle. “But don’t tell Mabel. She’s a peach!”
He got up and dropped a few quarters in the jukebox and stared down at the selections. When his first
song began to play, he stood with his hands on the jukebox, bopping to the music and jutting his chin in and out.
The next morning the part arrived. A tall mechanic with bright blue eyes and a bushy orange beard as big as a bird’s nest installed the rebuilt fuel pump.
Off they went! Carson’s dad shifted through the gears. To Carson, there was no place he’d rather be than driving with his dad through wide-open spaces—fast and low to the ground.
Except maybe heading back to Pasadena to plan a birthday barbecue with his family and friends.
Many hours later, Carson’s dad announced, “Okay, son. We’re almost home.”
They drove down a two-lane highway, past a billboard for Atlas Speedway that said
DEMOLITION DERBY
and had a big picture of a bashed-up car splattered with mud. They came to the
WELCOME TO EL CERRITO
PLEASE DRIVE CAREFULLY
sign, and drove carefully through the center of town. Then they turned into a residential neighborhood full of tree-lined streets that crossed each other.
“Get ready. We’re really close now.”
A moment later, they turned into the driveway of their spacious, gracious rented home, which had a big front porch and a garden full of flowering bushes.
Carson’s dad shut off the engine and turned to Carson. “Like it?”
Was he kidding?
Carson loved it!
As much as he could have, under the circumstances of being the New Kid, with no friends in town.
The first thing Genevieve wanted to do after her suitcase was unpacked was to investigate her new surroundings while holding a tennis ball in her mouth.
So, off they all went to Green Gulch Regional Park.
Green Gulch Regional Park wasn’t a city park with trimmed bushes and pink cement paths and a fountain with a bronze dolphin spitting water in it, like the park in Pasadena. It was a wilder park.
At the northern entrance, there was a group campground in a meadow. A trail wound up through the redwoods, ending at a small amphitheater. They sat in on a talk about predatory birds, given by an
enthusiastic park ranger wearing a green uniform and a brown flat-brimmed Smokey Bear hat with dents in the crown.
A hawk screeched from the treetop.
Carson’s dad had to warn Genevieve, in a whisper: “No barking, stop it, I mean it!” several times.
When a flock of crows flew overhead, Genevieve went on High Bird Alert, and they decided to excuse themselves completely.
The southern entrance to the park was within walking distance of Carson’s house and involved a large pond. Carson and his dad decided it would be wise to leave Genevieve at home to explore her new, spacious fenced backyard while they walked over to get acquainted with the ducks.
Five or six people sat in folding chairs staring at plastic fishing floats floating on the surface of the water. “Grandpa and Grandma would like to fish here, wouldn’t they, Dad?”
“Yup.”
“I’m really going to miss seeing them on my birthday.”
“I will, too. But we’ll see them soon afterward.”
That cheered Carson up.
They walked to the other side and cheerily fed the ducks Cheerios—just a few. It wasn’t exactly duck food, but judging by waddle speed and quack volume, they liked it a lot. So did the crows, who dipped down, landed, squawked, flapped their wings, marched around, stuck their tongues out at each other, and greedily gobbled up every O they could beat the ducks to.
Carson was quite the animal lover. But crows weren’t exactly at the top of his list.
He did like horses. And he wanted to learn to ride one. Beyond the pond, past the public tennis courts, there was a corral and a big barn with a sign that said
RED BARN STABLES: TRAIL RIDES AND WESTERN RIDING LESSONS. WELCOME, Y’ALL!
“Hmmm. I have an idea,” his dad said. “How about for your birthday, we go on a trail ride! And you can bring a new friend! And your new friend can bring a parent to supervise.”
Carson said, “If I don’t have a new friend in time for my birthday, maybe just I could go and you could supervise me.”
His dad put his arm around Carson’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, son. You’ll have a new friend in time.”
Suddenly, without any warning, Carson’s heart sank like a stone. He couldn’t imagine a birthday without his grandma and grandpa.
“You okay, Carson?”
“Sure I am, Dad.”
As okay as he could be, under the circumstances of being about to become the lonesomest cowboy in Green Gulch Park.
On his first day of school, his dad took out his phone and photoed Carson standing in front of a sign that said
VALLEY OAK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
with a bucktoothed squirrel holding an acorn carved into the wood.
Carson managed a smile.
In some ways, Valley Oak was a little bit different from Rainbow Ridge Montessori, but in most ways it was, well, completely and totally, utterly 100 percent different.
At Rainbow Ridge, kids wore clothes to school, like T-shirts and shorts or sweatshirts and jeans.
At Valley Oak, kids wore uniforms to school, like white shirts and tan pants or white shirts and tan pants. Or white shirts and tan skirts or white shirts and tan skirts. And various other garments and accessories with a Valley Oak logo embroidered on them: either a squirrel or an acorn. Carson opted for the acorn logo. He had a whole new set of clothes, and all were carefully marked
Carson B
. on the labels with a fine-tip permanent marker.
He had a brand-new white shirt and tan pants, a brand-new white shirt and tan pants, a brand-new Valley Oak zip-up hoodie with a silhouette of an acorn on the front, a brand-new Valley Oak jacket with a silhouette of an acorn on the sleeve, and a brand-new Valley Oak backpack with a silhouette of an acorn on the flap in the back.
Carson didn’t have a brand-new Valley Oak beanie with a silhouette of an acorn on the side. Carson didn’t wear hats with green pom-poms that looked like pesto piled on top.
Carson had to carry his brand-new acorn backpack back and forth to school, packed with homework and papers for his dad to sign and send back.
He would have liked a brand-new Valley Oak friend, who would one day become his good ol’ Valley Oak old friend.
He hoped to be invited to play with one of the kids after school, but he hadn’t.
Not yet.
He felt like the New Kid that he actually was. And he felt like he was on the outside of a circle, looking in.
Friends like Case and Gavin, well, you can’t make those overnight.
Carson knew that.
The principal, Ms. Pierson, had placed Carson in Mr. Skip Lipman’s class. Mr. Lipman seemed to be a good guy. And Carson saw right away that he and Carson’s dad had certain similarities; for starters, they both liked quizzes. And Mr. Lipman liked props! Whenever there was a classroom guessing game of any sort, Mr. Lipman put on his woolen tweed detective’s cap, with a brim in the front and a brim in the back. He strolled around like Sherlock Holmes, his hands clasped behind his back.
In Mr. Lipman’s class, there were no rules.
Only life skills, like respect, responsibility, integrity,
compassion, loyalty, friendship, and the others. And guidelines, which were rules in disguise.
Mr. Lipman made sure the kids shared the responsibilities of the classroom, and he had deputies to help him. He also had Shape It Up to Shipshape for ten minutes every afternoon, so he wouldn’t get stuck with cleaning up after a bunch of kids at the end of every day.
There were many, many guidelines. In fact, there were more guidelines than Carson could keep straight.
Guidelines for this, guidelines for that.
There were even guidelines for school celebrations, and they were posted on the wall: limit drinks with added sugar; limit overly sweet, too-sugary birthday treats.
The guidelines were reasonable enough; Carson liked making healthy food choices. At Montessori school, a nutritious lunch and snack were provided for the students every day, which often included fresh produce from the garden.
But at Montessori, birthday days were different. The birthday kid walked around carrying a globe while the parent told stories about the kid’s life, like
how old Carson was when he was adopted by his dad. When he first took the training wheels off his bicycle, and his first home run playing T-ball.
Then came the birthday cake, and all bets were off.
Every year, Carson’s grandma baked Carson’s all-time favorite: her famous You Gotta Be Kidding Me! Chocolate Calamity Cake. It was made of three layers of fudgy chocolate cake, with creamy chocolate icing between every layer and piled on top, and it had
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CARSON
written across the top.
Everyone had a small piece.
Keyword: small.
Carson had no clue as to what he and his dad might do about a classroom birthday celebration at Valley Oak, but at least he had something to go on: there had already been one, Nancy’s. Actually, it was Nancy’s Faux Birthday celebration, with “faux” pronounced like “pho,” rhyming with “toe,” and basically meaning phony.
Nancy’s For-Real Birthday was over the summer. In cases such as Nancy’s, a Faux Birthday was celebrated in the classroom sometime before school was out.
For Nancy’s Faux Birthday, her mom had provided
the Ultimate Not-Too-Gooey Faux-Birthday Birthday Treat. It even had a theme: endangered species, which they were studying in science.
First, Nancy’s mom set up shop. She wiped off the counters with disinfecting wipes and fanned them dry.
Nancy had voiced one small request: that no one sing “Happy Faux Birthday,” because she hated the “Happy Birthday” song.
Instead, she asked that everyone sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” and sing “Oakland A’s” after the “root root root” part.
Weston Walker screamed “Giants!” instead.
Mr. Lipman wrote
Weston Walker
on the board.
Nancy’s mom then asked everybody to wash their hands carefully and line up.
There were two endangered choices: endangered choice number one was a generous scoop of vanilla frozen yogurt in a white bowl with two red grapes for eyes, a big, round purple grape for a nose, and shredded coconut piled on either side of the grape for whiskers.
Endangered choice number two was a scoop of chocolate frozen yogurt with two purple grapes for eyes, a shiny, wrinkled pitted prune stuck in the
middle for the nose, and some shredded coconut for whiskers.
Carson went for the vanilla polar bear. He liked chocolate sea otters but wasn’t a prune fan.
Nancy’s mom had also brought individual recyclable packets of 100 percent cranberry juice with straws attached in germ-free plastic sleeves.