Savvy (22 page)

“… give up,”
said a faint, faint voice inside my head.

I opened my eyes. Samson’s hand rested lightly on Poppa’s shoulder.

“ … don’t … give up.”
The voice came again, a little louder now.

I looked at Samson. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen my little brother cry before, he’d always hidden everything away so well, but he was crying now, making neither a sob nor a sound. The biggest, quietest tears slid down Samson’s face to fall and fall like Fish’s rain onto Poppa’s chest.

Maybe it was Samson, or my words or my wish … or a miracle. Or maybe it was the same for Poppa as it had been for my brother’s dead pet turtle, maybe nature was only doing what nature does and it was simply Poppa’s time to start healing and waking up. We could never really know. Even with a savvy, some things always stay a mystery.

“… don’t give up.”

Miss Mermaid shivered and swished her tail ever so slightly, as though the effort was almost too great.

“I don’t … give up.”
The voice in my head was louder yet.

“Poppa!” I shouted, certain now that it wasn’t just me hoping. The voice came from Poppa and Miss Mermaid. “Poppa, that’s right! You don’t give up! Can you hear me, Poppa? It’s me, Mibs!”

Rocket put his hands on my shoulders and tried to quiet me, but I shook him off. Grandpa rose up out of his chair with a stern look.

“Poppa! Can you hear me? Don’t give up!” I shouted again.

“Mibs, stop yelling,” said Rocket. “This is a hospital.”

“He can hear me, Rocket! I know he can. And I can hear him.”

“Mibs, Poppa’s not even conscious.” Rocket raised his own voice now, sounding tired and vexed. But I ignored him and kept yelling into Poppa’s ear.

“Mibs!” shouted Rocket, trying again to pull me away from Poppa.

Without warning, all of Poppa’s buzzing, whirring, shushing machines and monitors went berserk. Lights flashed and alarms sounded. Sparks popped from the equipment and the up-and-down rhythm of the line on Poppa’s heart monitor went flat with a single terrifying tone.

Rocket turned completely white. A horrified look contorted his face and he began to back out of the room, bumping into Fish and Momma, who had heard all of the commotion and come running. They were followed in by the nurse in the rainbow scrubs.

“Everyone needs to clear this room immediately,” said the nurse.

“No!” I shouted. “Poppa needs me! I can hear him!”

“Mibs, please—” said Momma.

I couldn’t let them make me leave. I had to stay and listen to Poppa. I had to let him know it was time for him to wake up and that I would be there when he did. I lowered my voice and leaned right up to Poppa’s ear again, holding on tight to his bed and ignoring everyone who tried to pull me away.

“You are my good, sweet poppa and it’s time for you to wake up and come home. It’s time for you to come home and build us that porch swing so that we can sit and think and watch the clouds roll by together. Then I can tell you all about buses and kisses and voices and everything that happened while you were asleep. Don’t give up, Poppa. Don’t give up!”

More nurses flooded the room and an orderly tried unsuccessfully to pry my fingers loose from Poppa’s bed while a doctor pushed his way through the crowd to check Poppa’s heart.

“Mibs?”

“Yes! Poppa! I’m here.” I squeezed Poppa’s hand. He could hear me. Poppa knew I was there.

“Mibs?”

“I can hear you, Poppa. It’s Mibs. It’s your little—”

I stopped myself before I could finish saying
little girl
. I didn’t feel like a little girl anymore. I wasn’t one.

“It’s Mibs, Poppa. I’m here.”

Poppa’s fingers twitched and his eyes fluttered open, making the doctor smile and Momma cry out. Rocket choked on his own tears and Fish whooped and hollered. Feeling Samson’s hand in mine, I knew—sure as sure as sure—that everything—
everything
—was going to turn out just fine.

I
t took Poppa a long, long time to get strong enough to come home to us in Kansaska-Nebransas. Even then, things never did get quite back to the way they’d been before the accident. When something like that comes along, whether it’s an accident or a savvy or a very first kiss, life takes a turn and you can’t step back. All you can do is keep moving forward and remember what you’ve learned.

The day I turned fourteen was bright and sunny, a day with nothing more special or important about it than me getting older. Spring was rolling round again and Momma was in the kitchen making my cake. It was the cake I’d wanted so badly exactly one year ago, the cake with the pink and yellow frosting and the perfect sugar roses, the cake that didn’t seem quite so very important to me anymore, compared to other things.

Poppa and I were sitting outside on the porch, rocking away on our very own porch swing—the one that Rocket, Fish, Samson, and I had helped Poppa build the previous autumn, even though us kids had undertaken most of it on account of Poppa’s head still not always working right. But having a porch swing all our own was something that none of us would give up on either, and we were glad to do it.

Our swing wasn’t the World’s Largest like the one up in Hebron, nor was it the World’s Prettiest. It wasn’t even close. But sitting there with Poppa, just thinking and listening as we watched the clouds roll by, I knew our swing was the World’s Best. Ours was a real porch swing with a real porch to go with it, and a whole house full of love to hold it up.

Grandpa Bomba slept in a large wicker chair on the other end of the porch, dreaming of the days when he still had the strength to move mountains, and Fish was sitting on the steps nearby, listening to Gypsy talk to herself as she picked dandelions in the yard with her feet bare and all her clothes on inside out. Fish kept a close eye on our little sister, hollering at her every time she tried to put one of the dandelions in her mouth.

“Cut it out, Gypsy,” Fish said, as our sister held a yellow flower to her tongue teasingly. “If you put one more of those weeds in your mouth I’m taking you inside.”

“Tell Fish to give us a little push …”
said a voice inside my head. Miss Mermaid swished her tail as I glanced down at Poppa’s arm. When I looked up at Poppa’s face, he was rubbing his knuckles against his jaw, smiling. He recognized me that day. That was good.

After coming home from Salina Hope Hospital, Poppa couldn’t always remember what day of the week it was or whether or not he liked blueberries in his pancakes. He couldn’t recall if we lived in Nebraska or in Kansas and didn’t understand that we lived in both, or how that had come to be. On the really bad days he couldn’t find the right words for newspaper or coffee or jam or sorry.

But on the good days, the best days—like that spring day on the porch with the smell of baking cakes drifting out to us through the window—Poppa was just Poppa, with no hair on his head to cover up the scars from the accident, but as good and sweet as ever.

“Hey, Fish,” I called out. “Poppa and I need a push.”

Fish turned his attention away from Gypsy and her dandelions. He screwed up his face for a second and sent a gust of wind that rocked the porch swing hard beneath me and Poppa, almost tipping us right off.

“Whoa! Not so hard!” I laughed.

“Sorry,” said Fish with a mischievous grin, giving us another push of wind, a little gentler this time.

With a creak and a bang of the screen door, Momma stepped out onto the porch, her apron perfectly clean, and her cheeks pink from working in the kitchen. She looked around at all of us.

“Where’s—?”

“Samson’s upstairs,” I told her. “He’s helping Rocket pack.”

“Knowing Samson, he’s probably packed himself right into one of Rocket’s suitcases,” muttered Fish. “No one will find him until Rocket gets up to Uncle Autry’s.”

Eighteen and free to make his own way, Rocket was catching a bus for Wyoming the very next morning, on his way to spend the summer, or longer, with Momma’s brother and his family in a place even closer to the middle of nowhere than Kansaska-Nebransas. On Uncle Autry’s ranch, it wouldn’t matter how many sparks Rocket unleashed. There was no one around for miles to notice, or care.

Momma and Grandpa had tried to convince Rocket that he was doing fine, that he could scumble his sparks as well as anyone could expect of a young man and that with a bit more work and a few more years he’d have no worries at all. But Rocket had never been quite the same after that day at Salina Hope Hospital one year before. He’d lost his swagger and his bluster. Not once since then had Rocket bragged about his savvy or teased me about my own. He had watched Fish take control of his storms with brotherly pride and quiet envy, but Wyoming would give him the wide-open spaces to work outside and sleep under the stars, giving him room to feel less burdened by his electric savvy.

“How are we going to make the station wagon work without you?” I’d asked Rocket when he’d announced that Uncle Autry had invited him to come and stay.

Rocket had chuckled and popped a few playful sparks. “I s’pose Poppa will have to break down and buy that old tin-can of a clunker a new battery,” he said.

It was going to be strange not having Rocket around, especially now that Fish could scumble well enough to start high school in Hebron in the fall. Soon I’d be the only one growing moss in pickle jars and painting pictures with Momma and having school at home. My savvy couldn’t harm other people or cause any damage, but Momma and I decided on homeschool anyway, just to be sure.

“A year or two to gain your strength and learn how to scumble your savvy certainly won’t hurt you, Mibs,” Momma had said. “After that you’ll be ready to take on the world.”

Momma didn’t realize that I’d already taken on the world and won. I’d grown used to all the voices inside of my head and knew which ones to pay attention to and which ones to ignore. The same went for all the voices outside of my head, and this newfound strength must have shown like a mark on my skin, for the next time I ran into Ashley Bing and Emma Flint up in Hebron, those girls kept their mouths shut, without even an echo of a “Missy-pissy” thrown my way.

“Is that boy of yours coming over for the party?”
Miss Mermaid asked, breaking into my thoughts about Rocket’s departure.

“Yes, Poppa,” I answered. “Will’s coming over after lunch.”

It turned out that neither God nor Miss Rosemary had held my wrong choices against me for too long after all of us kids ran off in that big pink bus. We Beaumonts were back to attending church services with Pastor Meeks and his family, and Will and Bobbi were now regular visitors in Kansaska-Nebransas.

“And that girl … ?”
Miss Mermaid cut into my thoughts again.

“Bobbi’s coming over too, Poppa,” I answered with a laugh. “She wants to say good-bye to Rocket before he leaves.”

“Hmph,” Poppa humphed out loud, and Miss Mermaid snapped her tail. Poppa always pretended that he wasn’t fond of Will and Bobbi. I supposed he didn’t want to see us kids growing up all around him. But because of Miss Mermaid and because of my savvy, I always heard what Poppa was thinking and I knew that he was glad that we’d made friends—friends who knew all about our family’s extra-special know-how and liked us all the same.

With Rocket moving away and Samson and Gypsy still years away from their own most important birthdays, things looked as though they might settle down and stay peaceful for a time. But I knew a secret—a secret that I wasn’t supposed to know yet—a secret that might make things get interesting again by winter.

Just because Momma was perfect, that didn’t mean she couldn’t forget things sometimes. So when she was on the phone with Miss Rosemary earlier in the week, getting the perfect recipe for marshmallow pie, and all she could find was a pen but no paper, Momma forgot about ink and savvies and feelings and listening and she wrote that recipe right onto the back of her hand. She wrote it in pretty red ink. Pretty,
noisy,
red ink.

That was how I found out that Momma was thinking she might be pregnant and that a new little Beaumont was on its way. But that day on the porch swing, that day with its sunshine and its perfect cake, that wasn’t a day for spoiling secrets, so I kept my mouth shut and rocked, rocked, rocked in the swing with Poppa.

If only my savvy worked in reverse, I thought again— and not for the last time. If only I could draw a smiling sun on the back of my hand, then everyone around me could know exactly how I felt, exactly how happy I was at that perfect moment.

For just then, things were quiet, and they’d stay quiet for a good long time. At least as good and long as it took Samson to turn thirteen …

And who could guess what might happen then?

W
ith loving, heartfelt gratitude to Rick and Shirley for being my safe harbor in every big storm; to Michelle for the sustenance of books and listening and scallion pancakes; and to Sean, for always reading, always writing, and never letting me forget to “find down tiny.”

Special thanks to Lauri Hornik, Regina Castillo, to the Dial/Puffin design team, and to all of the extraordinary people at Penguin Young Readers Group; to Deborah Kovacs, Micheal Flaherty, and the wonderful group at Walden Media; and to Brandon Dorman for his incredible artistry and gorgeous storms of color. Additional thanks to Sarah Hughes at Puffin in the U.K., and to all of the other editors around the world who have welcomed
Savvy
(and to Maja Nikolic and Elena Santogade at Writers House, for helping to put the book into the hands of those editors), as well as to Kassie Evashevski at
UTA
, for her work on the West Coast.

Finally, for their ridiculously amazing extra-special know-how, and their nonstop support and good humor, I extend my ardent appreciation and unequivocal admiration to my agent, Daniel Lazar at Writers House, who I am convinced never sleeps, and to my editor-extraordinaire, Alisha Niehaus, who always knows when to hold my hand and when to give me a good strong push.