Finding Orion by John David Anderson

Author:John David Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-03-20T16:00:00+00:00

Ice Cream, Poop, Winky Face

I’ve never snuck out of the house before. I’ve never met a friend for a midnight rendezvous in the park, or had to smuggle a telepathic girl with a buzz cut out of my basement, or run away with a Reese’s Pieces–eating alien. But I think I could do it if I had to. The getting out seems like the easy part—there are windows to climb through and trees to shimmy down. It’s the getting back in that’s tricky. Because you don’t know what happened while you were away.

For instance, your mother might have woken up to find the other half of the guest bed at your great-aunt’s house empty. She might have walked through the cluttered rooms looking for your father, only to find two notes on the kitchen table—the first from your great-aunt, informing everyone that she left early for crack-of-dawn yoga at the Y, and the second from your father, saying that he was running out to get something, that he took the kids, but not to worry, he’d be back soon.

Of course, if your mother is anything like my mother, asking her not to worry is like asking the sun not to rise, which was what it was starting to do when we pulled into Aunt Gertie’s driveway and found Mom waiting for us on the porch wearing her nightgown and a face that Lyra was quick to find a word for.

“She looks consternated.”

“Ew,” I said. “That’s disgusting.”

“Not constipated, you dope, consternated. She looks worried.”

“Oh.” That I couldn’t argue with. Mom was glaring at us through the Tank’s windows. I thought I could hear her teeth grinding before I even got out of the car. We made a line, standing like captured soldiers facing the firing squad.

“I can explain,” Dad began. This seemed doubtful but certainly worth a try.

Mom just stood there, taking in our muddy shoes, Dad’s filthy dress shirt, the scratches down my arms, the leaves in Cass’s hair. We looked like we’d just barely escaped from the deepest jungles of the Amazon. “I’m listening,” she said. But her arched-eyebrow Medusa’s stare must have paralyzed Dad, because he suddenly went mute, so we all jumped to his defense, each of us talking over the others.

“So we figured out the first clue . . .”

“. . . came downstairs for a glass of milk . . .”

“. . . woke me up and I slapped him, but then . . .”

“. . . got in the car and drove . . .”

“. . . in his old backyard under this rock . . .”

“. . . through the woods by the pond, but the gate was unlocked . . .”

“. . . used to dig for worms . . .”

“. . . pretty sure they had rabies . . .”

“. . . with Aunt Gertie’s shovel . . .”

“. . . found this box, but it turns out it wasn’t Papa Kwirk . . .”

“. . . like these cards, with pus, and pimples, and guys with their heads chopped off and brains leaking out all over the place .

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