“Uh . . .” the driver said.
Max looked at his watch and realized he would be late for school if he didn’t leave immediately. “Can I go now?” he said.
“Don’t forget your drone,” his dad replied.
“Vulturon!” Smriti exclaimed.
Max smiled. “It is finished.”
As he turned to the house, Mom called out, “Wait! Are we forgetting our manners?”
Max turned back. Mom had taken the hand of the driver, who was staring at all of them as if they were strange microscopic specimens.
“This,” Mom said with a smile, “is your cousin Alex.”
Max’s jaw dropped open. The person who had almost killed him was about to become his guardian.
“You guys,” Alex said, “are the weirdest family I’ve ever seen.”
The ride to school would have been better if the Kia hadn’t had a hole in the passenger floor, which scared Max. Smriti sat in the back. Max sat in the passenger seat, clutching his knees, with his feet raised up high.
“It’s not that big of a hole,” Alex said. “You won’t fall through. Well, no one has, yet.”
She let out a laugh. Max didn’t, because in his opinion this was not funny.
“Listen, I’m really sorry,” Alex said. “Using the word weird. Weird can be good, right? And actually I was kind of referring to our whole family. Including our part of it, the Canadians. The Vernes. We’re all weird in our own way.”
Max tucked his feet under him on the seat. “We don’t look alike,” he said.
Alex sighed. “My dad is Caucasian—”
“Mine is Dominican,” Max said. “Tilt is short for Trujillo, but my grandfather didn’t like that name, so he shortened it. Smriti is Nepalese.”
“Nepali,” Smriti corrected from the backseat.
“—And my mom is African-American,” Alex said. “In case you meant, you know . . .” Her voice drifted off.
“I know what?” Max said.
“In case you meant that we didn’t look like each other because of our skin,” Alex said.
“I didn’t,” Max said. “I was saying we don’t look alike because we don’t look alike.”
Alex smiled. “Fair enough.”
“In the spring, yes,” Max said. “I’m less fair in the summer.”
“Ha!” Alex barked. “I am beginning to sorta like this kid. Almost.”
As the car turned onto the school block, Max watched the windshield wipers. Smriti and Alex were both laughing. He wasn’t sure why, but it was a friendly laugh, so it made him feel relaxed.
Alex was telling Smriti about herself now. She was supposed to be in college, but she wanted to take time off. Something about wanting to write a novel.
“If you want to write a novel, why are you babysitting me?” Max asked.
“Because I need someone to help me fix the hole in my car,” Alex said. “No, just kidding.”
“I knew that,” Max said. “I have a good sense of humor. I like pranks. But I’m not good with sarcasm. So what’s the real answer?”
“I tried to be a waiter to support my writing habit and earn money for college,” Alex said. “But I’m too emotional. I’m not that great with people.”
“Really? You seem very nice,” Smriti said.
“I am supernice,” Alex answered, “unless you say things like, ‘Didn’t you hear me say I wanted another lemon, girl? I don’t have all day.’ In which case I say, ‘Well, I do have all day. So get it yourself.’ Only with a few four-letter words thrown in. And I get fired—a lot. So . . . when your dad called my mom to tell her what was up, they figured I could use a place to crash and you could use some help, and—voilà! Here I am in Savile, Ohio, helping my aunt and uncle. With this lovable, kooky kid who likes pranks and drones.”
“I can give you ideas for your book,” Max said. “If it’s action adventure, use Vulturon in the plot. He can snatch a secret weapon from the jaws of an evil ichthyosaurus in the Sargasso Sea.”
“That’s another thing Max likes—prehistoric animals,” Smriti explained. “He has a collection.”
“I’m more of a sci-fi writer,” Alex said, as she slowed down behind a yellow bus that was turning into the school driveway. “It runs in the Verne family.”
“Your parents are writers?” Smriti asked. “That is so cool!”
Alex shook her head. “My great-great-great-uncle on my dad’s side. Who was also Max’s great-great-great-grandfather on his mom’s side. He was famous.”
“Wait . . . you said your name is what?” Smriti said.
“Alex Verne.”
“Verne as in Jules Verne?” Smriti nearly screamed.
“You know who that is?” Alex said.
“He wrote Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” Smriti replied. “Journey to the Center of the Earth . . .”
“Oui, mademoiselle,” Alex said. “Max’s mom is Michele Verne Tilt.”
“Max, you’re related to a celebrity writer and you never told me?” Smriti said.
Max shrugged. “He’s not a celebrity. He’s dead. Celebrities are alive. Anyway, it never came up in conversation.”
“Jules Verne . . .” Smriti said. “I think I am going to faint.”
“Don’t faint,” Max said. “The bell’s going to ring in two minutes.”
As Alex pulled the car to the front of the school, Max gazed out at dozens of kids clustered by the school’s front lawn. They included the Fearsome Foursome, a group of boys from gym class. They hadn’t been too bad since the wedgie incident thirteen days ago, but even the sight of them gave Max a faint whiff of flounder. “Go as far away from those boys as possible,” Smriti said to Alex.
The car sputtered to a stop with a wheezing sound, a bit farther down the driveway. Max unfolded his legs and let his feet drop on either side of the hole in the floor. “Thanks for the ride.”
Alex was looking at him oddly. “Do you always wear shorts to school on a day that’s rainy and cold?”
“Sometimes,” Max said. “I hate the feeling of long pants.”
As he and Smriti stepped out, Max made sure to grab on to Vulturon.
“Where’d you get the limo?” a voice called out from near the lawn.
“Nice legs!” another shouted.
“What the—?” Alex sputtered.
Smriti’s expression tightened. “Ignore them.”
“Those aren’t legs, they’re too skinny!” the first voice said. “They’re stilts. One . . . two . . . three . . .”
The entire group shouted, “Tilt the Stilt!”
Alex was out of the car, walking toward them. “Any of you guys work for Comedy Central? I didn’t think so. Because your jokes are brain-dead.”
Dugan Dempsey, the tallest and dumbest of the Foursome, bounded over to Max. Ignoring Alex, he swiped Max’s lunch bag. “What are we eating today?”
“I smell fish,” Max said.
The boys howled. Alex stepped closer to them.
“Don’t, Alex . . .” Smriti warned.
Max held out his arm to prevent Alex from getting nearer. He did not want her to get involved. Not while he was forming another plan. “Seriously. Don’t.”
The guys walked away toward the front door, laughing and giving each other high fives.
Max placed Vulturon on the sidewalk, grabbed his remote, and powered up.
Smriti knew just what he was thinking. With a knowing smile, she took a huge apple from her lunch bag. “I don’t need to eat this.”
Max grabbed the apple and placed it into a small holding bay on the underside of Vulturon. Then he pressed Lift.
Vulturon rose upward, making a barely audible whirring noise. It swung through the air, about twenty feet off the ground.
As it hovered just over the heads of the Fearsome Four, Max pressed Release.
The apple conked Dugan in the head. As he screamed and jumped aside, Max guided Vulturon downward, where Claw #3 grabbed on to his lunch bag.
T
he drone lifted upward, his insulated plastic bag swinging freely. Every kid on the lawn was looking at it.
As Vulturon returned the lunch into his hand, Max said, “Thank you, Vulturon.”
A wave of cheering went up across the lawn.
“Woo-hoo!” Smriti shouted.
Max tucked Vulturon under his arm and turned to Alex, just as the school bell rang. “See you after school?” he asked.
Alex didn’t answer. Her jaw was hanging open.
4
“THESE are a lot of words.” Alex slapped a pile of papers down onto the living room sofa.
“My mom and dad’s caregiver instructions?” Max said. “Don’t worry, I memorized them.”
“I’m not worried about anything. We are going to have an awesome time!” Alex stood up from the sofa, knocking over a pile of papers propped up on the armrest. The place was kind of a mess. Just to sit, she’d had to move a pile of old magazines. Max was on his knees, leaning over the back of a chair at the other side of the room, looking outside the window. They’d already said good-bye to Mr. and Mrs. Tilt. Max’s parents were in their old Toyota Sienna now, still in the driveway, chatting with Smriti’s parents in the rain.
One of the living room windowpanes was cracked and patched up with yellowing clear tape. Just below it, a big, dark rainwater stain had grown on the carpet. As Alex stepped on the edge of it, she let out a little gasp.
“Sorry,” Max said. “Dad has been meaning to fix that. And clean up the mess.”
“I don’t mind.” Alex stood next to him by the chair. “Messes are refreshing. Real. My parents’ house is superperfect. Superneat. Everything matches. I feel like I can’t touch anything.”
“I would like that,” Max said. “Not the part about not touching anything. But the neatness.”
Alex nodded, then grabbed from the coffee table a half-eaten chocolate bar that was starting to turn white. “Almost forgot. I got this out of the fridge. There wasn’t much else in there. Do you think it’s edible?”
“The white is oxidation,” Max said. “It doesn’t affect the chocolate taste.”
Alex smiled. “What? How do you know that, little guy?”
“I like facts. And I’m not hungry. Or little. I’m in the thirty-ninth percentile in height.” His eyes never once moved from his parents.
“Worried, huh?”
Max nodded.
“Yeah, I don’t blame you,” Alex said.
The minivan made a scraping noise as it rolled over the lip of the driveway. Mom waved to him out of the passenger window, and Max waved back. As the car backed into the street and then straightened out, Max could hear the dull clanking of gears.
With a cloud of gray smoke, the Sienna pulled away down the street, letting out a couple of farewell honks.
“Bye, Mom! Bye, Dad! Bye, Toby!” Max cried out.
“Toby?” Alex said.
“Our car,” Max explained. “It has almost two hundred thousand miles.”
“Wowzer,” Alex said.
“We were going to buy a new one,” Max said. “Then Mom got sick the first time. She had to leave her job. Dad kind of stopped working too, to take care of her. He’s a lawyer—but the kind that works out of a home office. So he hasn’t taken new clients.”
“Bummer,” Alex said.
“Bummer,” Max agreed, slumping down into the seat. Toby was nearly out of sight now. And a new smell was creeping into his nostrils, something acrid and sour and sad, like a skunk.
Alex drummed her fingers on her knees. She looked uncomfortable.
Finally she slapped her hands on her thighs. “Hey, no gloom and doom allowed, right? We have things to do! I’ll start tackling the caregiver list, you do your homework, and in a couple of hours we’ll break for dinner! You do have homework, right?”
Max nodded. “One hour. I’ll be hungry then.”
As he stood and began walking out of the living room, Alex began scanning the list. When Max reached the stairs, he heard her crying out: “Whoa . . . May 5 . . . April 23 . . . March 17 . . . what’s up with this? Some of this mail goes back to last year!”
He turned and walked back. She was elbow-deep in the wicker basket. The mail, which Max had kicked all over the living room, had been dumped back inside the basket. Normally it was a place Max was not allowed to touch.
“Why are you doing that?” Max said. “It’s not your mail. The instructions are all about not touching me, not touching my stuff, letting me have my routine . . .”
“Someone has to do this, cousin.”
Alex began spreading the mail on the floor. Her face was nearly white. Many of them had red messages stamped on the front: PAST DUE . . . FINAL NOTICE . . . HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN US? . . . COLLECTION AGENCY . . .
“So . . . I’m sure . . . this is some kind of misunderstanding . . .” Alex said in barely audible voice. She was ripping envelopes open now, pulling sheets out, reading them. “The electric company says they’re going to shut off electricity . . . um, yesterday?”
“But they didn’t,” Max said.
“Right . . . right . . .” Alex nodded. “So maybe it’s just a threat . . .”
“Mom and Dad argue about bills a lot.”
“They owe money,” Alex said. “To a lot of people. Did they never talk about this?”
“They do—but to each other, not to me,” Max replied. “Dad is always saying it will all work out. He’s always making phone calls. He told Mom not to worry, he was going to start pulling in some big clients.”
“He said that before she got sick again?” Alex asked.
Max nodded.
“And then things kind of fell apart?”
“Yeah.”
Alex let out a big exhalation. She was staring at an envelope now, her eyes wide. Max scrambled around to look at it right-side up.
It was from a company called Savile Bank. And in great big diagonal letters across the front, it said FORECLOSURE NOTICE.
“That’s bad, right?” Max said.
Alex ripped open the envelope and read the letter inside. “Oh, boy. Oh, dear Lord . . .”
“We’re being kicked out of the house?” Max asked.
“Bingo,” his cousin replied. “In three weeks.”
5
“THREE weeks?” Max looked closely at his cousin. It was hard to tell if she was joking. He was hoping this was one of those times. “Ha-ha.”
“Look at me,” she said. “This is not my joking face.”
“But—that’s impossible,” Max said.
Alex began pacing. “You would think so, right? This is crazy. I’m not—I didn’t—how could they do this?”
“What do we do?” Max said.
“Call your parents, I guess.”
Max imagined himself calling his dad. If he did that, his mom would find out. If she knew the truth, it would upset her. If it upset her, she’d get even more sick. If she got more sick . . .
“No, we can’t do that,” Max declared.
“We have to,” Alex said.
“No.” Max shook his head. “No no no no.”
Alex pulled her phone out of her pocket. “Sorry, little dude. I didn’t think I was signing on for something like this. If I could call my parents to help out, I would. But they have no extra money. That’s part of why I’m not in college. We don’t have much of a choice.”
“No-o-o-o!” Max leaped at her, grabbing the phone out of her hands.
“Give it to me,” she said.
“Mom will get all upset!” Max said.
“What about me? I’m upset!” Alex moved closer, her palm outstretched. “Okay. Okay. A compromise—we’ll tell just your dad. We’ll keep your mom out of it.”
“She’ll find out!”
“Max, I hate to say it, but your mom and dad put us in a very uncomfortable place. Look, I know they’ve been busy. And distracted. But this is their house, and they should have told us what’s up. You like facts? We need some facts. Now.”
“No no no no no no no!” Max cried out.
“Be reasonable,” Alex said.
“I hate you!”
Alex lunged for the phone. “I don’t care what you smell and what kind of mental condition you have, you little spoiled brat, give me that right now!”
Max sprang back, banging his head against the window with the broken glass. As it shattered, he fell to the floor.
“Oh no . . .” Alex said, covering her face with her hands.
Max scrambled to his feet. He was angry now. He hated that smell. It was bitter and sharp like cat pee. “Go,” Max growled. “Just go. Now!”
“Your head . . .” Alex said.
“I’ll live here alone!” Max said. “I don’t need you. It’s my house and my mom is dying and if they kick me out I’ll sneak back in and I don’t want you here!”
As he drew his arm back to throw her phone out the window, she ran toward him. His foot slipped on one of the envelopes, and he slid, flipping into the air. His shoulders banged against Alex’s torso. They fell to the floor together, and she held him tight. He pushed against her, but she wouldn’t let go. Tears sprang into his eyes, which just made him angrier. He began pounding on her shoulders with his fists, screaming words he couldn’t control.
“I’m sorry . . . I’m so sorry . . .” Alex said. Max fought against her, but she was bigger and stronger. She wouldn’t let go, wrapping him tighter in her arms. “It’s okay. I won’t call. I promise. I’m impulsive. Everyone says that about me.”
“They’re right,” Max murmured.
“I should have waited. Slept on it,” Alex said. “I’m not ready to be a caregiver.”
Max’s breaths came fast. Being held like this was annoying. But it made him feel less out of control, and a tiny bit less angry at Alex. “That’s okay, I guess,” he finally said. “I’m not ready to be a kid without a mom and dad. I haven’t even read anything about it. I haven’t memorized any rules.”
Alex smiled. “Sometimes you can’t be ready to do the things you really need to do,” she said. “You just do them. And that makes you ready.”
“Yeah,” Max said. “I guess we’ll figure something out.”
Max’s muscles went slack. He closed his eyes. The hugging was uncomfortable, but at that moment, if she let go, Max thought his body would explode into a million pieces. He felt a strange sickening sensation on his face and realized he was crying. Words came racing out of his mouth, and he couldn’t control them. “She’s . . . sick. Really, really sick.”