Scumble (6 page)

“What d'ya mean,
last days
?” Fedora demanded, yanking off her helmet.

“Grandpa's grown so frail, honey,” Mom explained, using her thumb to wipe jelly from the down-turned corners of my sister's mouth. “Grandpa's been living with Aunt Jenny and her family ever since Grandma died. But he decided long ago that he wants to be at the ranch when he passes on.”

“Passes on?” Fe's eyebrows drew together.

“Before he dies, Fedora,” Mom told her gently.

Sitting alone in the glade, I swallowed hard, knowing how dead
I
was going to be when Mom learned I'd lost Grandpa and Grandma's wedding jar. Not just Mom.
Everyone
would be mad. How could I stick to the rule to keep quiet when I'd let slip one of the few savvy objects that made so much noise?

A mosquito buzzed in my ear. Fireflies lit all around me, despite being rare in Wyoming. Grumpy with the bugs, I pulled myself to my feet, betting Uncle Autry had sent them to check on me.

The evening sky held a lingering glow bright enough for me to see the pages of Sarah Jane's notebook where she'd dropped it. I picked up the notebook and jammed it in my pocket, leaving no trace of our wedding-crasher behind. Stomping my feet, I followed Autry's trail of fireflies, careful to leave a wide berth between me and the Bug House as I passed it. Knocking the door off the conservatory and setting free a hundred thousand bugs would only make my lousy day one hundred thousand times worse. It was bad enough when my zipper blasted into tiny, metal XYZ pieces halfway down the path and I found my good Sunday church pants down around my ankles.

 

With dirt staining the front of my shirt and my necktie tied around my middle to keep my pants up, I stood outside the barn's open doors, staring in. Streamers hung from every rafter in thick, rainbow-colored webs. There was a dance floor in the center of the room, and folding chairs and tables filled the rest of the space. The evening air was cool, yet I was drenched in sweat. I was angry, but something else was wrong. My skin itched like mad. There was a jackhammer inside my head. My stomach twisted into nauseating knots.

Gypsy danced near the newlyweds. Her fluff-headed cheer set my teeth on edge. Watching her spin and twirl in a one-person jitterbug made my stomach churn worse. But as she chatted and laughed to the empty space in front of her, I realized that she must be dancing with the ghostly, invisible Samson.

For the first time ever, I envied Samson Beaumont. If I were invisible, Mom wouldn't know that I'd ruined my clothes skidding to catch the falling jar. I wouldn't have to be Ledge the not-so-supersonic runner, or Ledge the have-to-be perfect kid all the time. I could be anyone I wanted to be, because nobody would be watching.

People talked and laughed over the music rising from the back of the barn, where Grandma Dollop's jars took up two entire tables to themselves. Stacked higher than the three-tiered wedding cake nearby, the jars stood in towering spires. Marisol and Mesquite were already cutting and serving cake, shouting “Incoming!” as they levitated pieces across the room. Each plate bobbed in front of one of the guests until he or she took it with a laugh and a salute to the twins.

A festive stream of spiraling blue sparks hissed past me like a firecracker, nearly making me jump out of my skin. I spotted Rocket leaning against a beam nearby, smiling awkwardly behind a scruffy beard, looking like a kid pretending to be a grown-up as he set off celebratory sparks. He called out to Fedora as she ran past him in her bobbling helmet.

“Hey, Fe! I like your lid.”

“Safety first!” Fedora called over her shoulder as she dashed away, playing chase with Bitsy and our youngest cousin, Tucker, who followed Rocket, Fish, Mibs, Samson, and Gypsy as the last kid in the big Beaumont family. Rocket shook his head with a laugh, his dark, fork-in-socket hair defying physics in the way only spiky-maned cartoon characters ever truly achieved.

“Rocket! Oh, dear!”

Rocket straightened his posture, brushed off his shirt, and searched for an exit as my mom approached, looking him up and down. Eyeing his shaggy hair and beard, Mom made a full array of mother-hen noises. With Dinah for a mother, my own hair hadn't touched the tops of my ears once in my life. Seeing the way she fussed over Rocket, I stepped farther back into the shadows outside the barn, hoping to delay the lecture I was bound to get when she saw my dusty shirt and ruined pants.

“You've always been such a good-looking boy, Rocket,” Mom started in. “Now look at you! It's no wonder you don't have a date for your own brother's wedding. Where's that Meeks girl? Didn't she come? She could've stood in as your date, just like old times.”

Running a hand through his untamed hair, Rocket saw Mom smile and took a step back, looking around for help.

“It's no wonder things didn't work out between you and Bobbi Meeks,” Mom went on. “A girl wants a cheerful, clean-cut beau, not a moody caveman. What you need to do is go into town tomorrow and get yourself a—”

“Aunt Dinah, stop!” Rocket's blue eyes flashed and he flushed red behind his beard, quickly plugging his ears like a first grader, singing an off-key
la-la-la
to drown out my mom. I'd tried the same move enough times to know it wouldn't work. Earplugs, loud music, headphones . . . drowning out Mom's voice only weakened her control, it rarely stopped it altogether.

“I'm not a kid anymore,” Rocket continued loudly, fingers still crammed in his ears.

“If you're so old,” Mom continued her assault, “why do you continue to haunt this ranch like a stubborn child refusing to go home at the end of summer camp? You need to—”

“Aunt Dinah! It's so good to see you!” Rocket's sister Mibs broke in, coming to Rocket's aid.

Maybe if I'd had ink on my skin up in the glade, Mibs could've heard my screaming thoughts and saved me from Sarah Jane. A scribble, a note, a tattoo, even a stray jot from a marker on your skin, and Mibs Beaumont could read your mind. Just one more awesome savvy that I could've gotten, but didn't.

Jags of anger jabbed me. Ten thousand ants in icy soccer cleats raced up and down my arms. My fingers and palms itched with a horrible tingling sensation.

“What happened to you, Ledge?”

I'd been watching the scene between Mom and Rocket so intently, I hadn't noticed Mibs's boyfriend, Will, as he stepped outside the barn.

“Wow, Ledge! Did you butt heads with a buffalo, or what?”

“Something like that,” I muttered. I'd met Will Meeks before. He was an ordinary guy without a savvy. He'd only been a teenager himself when he and his sister Bobbi first got mixed up with the Beaumonts and learned the family secret.

I looked down at my ragged appearance, comparing it to the put-together buttons and service ribbons on Will's crisp, clean army uniform. I doubted Will had ever made a mistake, been humiliated, or done the wrong thing once in his life. Then again, he had the luxury of being
normal
.

“What are
you
doing out here?” I asked him after a pause.

I was surprised when Will shuffled his feet, getting dust on his spit-and-polish shoes.

“I . . . er, thought it might be safer for me to avoid your mom tonight. When I ask your cousin to marry me, I want her to know I did it without her aunty Dinah making me.”

“You're going to ask Mibs to marry you?” My stomach took a water coaster plunge. The ants still swarming beneath my skin began to bite. I scratched the palms of my hands. Digging my nails in hard. Stopping just short of drawing blood. If Mibs and Will got married, they'd need Grandma's peanut butter jar, just like Fish and Mellie. Great-aunt Jules had said it earlier: The wedding jar was tradition.

The sick feeling in my stomach rose into my throat.

I should've chased after Sarah Jane, I thought to myself, vibrating with anger. I should have tried harder to get the jar back.

“Yo, Ledge! Incoming!” Marisol and Mesquite called out. I turned to see an enormous piece of frosted cake ducking and weaving full-speed through the crowd. When the cake stopped in front of me, I ignored it. But the twins were persistent. The edge of the plate bumped against my shoulder . . . once . . . twice . . . three times.

“Are you going to eat that?” Will asked, one eyebrow raised as he watched the plate of cake carom into me. If Will hadn't been standing there, I might've grabbed the plate and thrown it back at the twins like a Frisbee. Not wanting to look like a jerk, I reached for it instead. But my fingers closed on air.

Glancing inside at Marisol and Mesquite, I could see them laughing. In seconds, the plate was back. Jabbing me again. Making my blood pressure skyrocket. I made another grab and missed again, only to see the plate coming back fast.
Really
fast. The marble-cake cannonball hit me in the chest, the force of the twins' blow pushing me backward. Covering the front of my grubby shirt in crumbs and frosting.

The buzz beneath my skin began to multiply. I wiped at the frosting plastered to my shirt, letting a loud barrage of barnyard language rip. After a full minute of noisy cussing, I looked up, realizing that the rest of the world had gone much too quiet. Everyone inside the barn stared out at me through the open doors. Someone had stopped the music. Behind the others, Marisol and Mesquite choked with silent giggles, covering their mouths with their hands and bending over double.

Embarrassed and fuming, I began to pull myself up off the ground. But rising to one knee, I was hit by a sudden wave of dizziness. Unable to stand up without my stomach threatening rebellion, I stayed down.

Something was happening.

The tingling feeling that had started in my fingers and palms spread into my back and chest. It surged through all my limbs. My teeth buzzed inside my skull, vibrating like I'd downed six pops and seven pounds of sour sugar candy. But the taste in my mouth was metallic, not sweet.

I felt like the boy on that boat in Aunt Jenny's painting, trying to weather a stormy sea. Only, this time when my savvy let loose, it hit the barn with the destructive force of a tidal wave.

Metal folding chairs flew into pieces. Tables wobbled, then collapsed, crashing and spilling plates and glasses everywhere. The jar tables went down in a deafening explosion of shattering glass. Metal lids rolled away like giant coins as polka tunes, country ballads, ball games, and love songs jammed the air with the din of a radio factory being hit by a rockslide.

Then the entire barn started coming apart.

When the first heavy beam fell, lurching from its fittings as nails and studs popped free, the party dissolved into chaos. People shouted. Bitsy barked. The twins levitated Grandpa Bomba outside in his overstuffed chair. Grandpa held on tight and let out a thin
whoo-hoo!
whoop as the barn doors fell off their hinges just as he flew through them.

Mom and Dad tried to grab me, to drag me out of the way of the falling debris, while others tugged my sleeves or pulled at my collar. But crouched where I was outside the barn, I couldn't move. I was an anvil: hardened steel and hard to budge. Heavy with the weight of what was happening around me.

The understanding that I had a powerful savvy after all hit me like a hammer blow. It wasn't just watches and windshield wipers that needed to look out. It was the whole, wide world.

“N
O, NO, NO, NO!” I WHISPERED as my savvy continued to tear the barn apart. Mom and Dad—and even Fedora—stayed by me. I could feel everyone else looking from me to the clanking, clunking, collapsing barn. I could hear people murmuring to each other as the smell of sawdust filled the air.

“Stop, Ledge! Stop!” Mom said the words over and over. But words alone couldn't make me stop, and she couldn't find a way to smile. I kept my head down, trying to stop. Wishing I knew how.

“Ledger, look at me!” Dad kept saying. “Just take a breath and look at me.” I couldn't meet Dad's eyes—not while I was destroying everything around me. I knew I was a disappointment to him in every possible way. I'd never get to run the half marathon now. One false step and I'd topple water tables and dismantle guard rails. I'd deconstruct the marathon clocks into split-second parts and pieces. Or worse, bust the bolts out of a row of port-a-potties in the smelliest cataclysm ever.

Hearing a loud
pop!
I looked up in time to see two thick cables crash down into the garden, sparking and snapping like electric eels caught on dry land.

“Watch the power cables!” someone shouted. “No one go near them!”

“I suppose y'want me to do something with those?” I heard Rocket say.

“If you'd be so kind,” Autry answered, his voice quick and tight as he shepherded kids and old people farther away from the mounting wreckage.

“Happy belated birthday, Ledge,” Rocket growled as he moved past me toward the garden, picking his way carefully toward the fallen electrical lines.

“Rocket!” Fe called out, making him turn. “Avoid the worst! Put safety first!”

“No worries, little cousin!” he called back with a smile lit by the fitful flashes coming from the downed lines. “Just don't try this at home!” As Rocket's gaze fell across me, his smile vanished. The look that replaced it was sharp enough to make me suck in my breath.

Rocket moved into the garden, stopping at the place where the cables twitched and seized among the radishes, igniting the air with lethal-looking volts.

My mouth went dry as I watched my cousin pick up the fallen electrical lines like they were as harmless as a pair of green garden hoses. Pulling the two cables together in one hand, he clamped his other hand down over the sparking ends and held on tight. Electric currents shot up his arm and danced around his neck and chest.