What Goes Up by Wen Jane Baragrey

Author:Wen Jane Baragrey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2018-10-29T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

• • •

Mom patted my shoulder from the backseat of Grandma’s car. “It’s not that bad. Six weeks and you’ll be good as new. You can get all your friends to sign it.”

I glanced down at the bright pink cast on my left arm. I only had one friend who mattered, and he wasn’t talking to me. And if he had been, he’d have died from laughing after everything I’d said about him and broken arms. Not that I was capable of feeling embarrassment anymore. Having a flustered fairy for support in the ER had cured me forever. Despite her panic, Mom had taken the time to grab her wings and wand before we left the house.

“Just in case there’s a sick child who needs cheering up,” she’d said.

There was. Me. And the wings hadn’t helped at all.

Grandma pulled her old Chevy to the side of the road behind Martyn’s Drugstore. “One stop, then we’ll get you home so your mother can spoil you.”

Mom always made me chicken soup and garlic bread when I was sick or hurt, even if I couldn’t eat them. She got fidgety and kept me where she could see me, sleeping on the blow-up mattress in my room if she had to. Grandma reckoned I got better faster just to get some time on my own, but that wasn’t true. Okay, it was a little bit true. But mostly I liked it.

Grandma gave my leg a pat, hopped out of the car, and grabbed my bags from the backseat. As the toys disappeared into the huge yellow collection bin, I slumped back and groaned.

Mom leaned forward and wrapped her arms around my neck, her mouth right next to my ear. “Please don’t ever, ever climb out on that roof again, okay? You might have gotten yourself killed. I couldn’t bear that.”

Technically, it was Grandma’s tatty carpet that had been my undoing. Nothing had happened on the roof at all, except I’d torn a pair of perfectly good jeans and snagged a sweater. But I figured Mom wasn’t in the mood for technicalities. It didn’t matter much now, anyway.

Game over.

Goodbye, Densdale. Goodbye, usable arm. Goodbye, Dad.

Hello, satellite.

“I’m sorry, Mom.”

I stared straight ahead, watching a cat strut across the parking lot like a general checking out the troops. My wrist throbbed in my lap, my fingers fat and useless.

As we pulled out to the street, a weird contraption wobbled past. It took me a minute to realize I was looking at a man and a bicycle-powered rickshaw half hidden beneath a long coat that flapped in the breeze as he pedaled.

“Old Mr. Bones,” I whispered.

“Silly old fool. You’d think he’d be home by dinnertime,” Grandma muttered, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel as she waited for him to pass.

“He’s not an old fool,” Mom said. “He gets the elderly to appointments for nothing and gives free rides to little kids at the fair. He’s lovely.”

Grandma sniffed. “Lovely old fool, then.”

He didn’t look lovely.

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