Scumble (16 page)

“I can't.”

“Why not?”

“Daddy . . .” She hesitated, biting her lower lip before saying slowly, “Daddy recycled it.”

“
What
?”

“I'm sorry, Ledge! I thought he'd like it for his collection. But Daddy took the jar away and told me I was being foolish. I should've known he wouldn't care about it if I gave it to him. He's always loved weird things, but he won't even let me tie my shoelaces in an unusual way. He wants me to be normal.”

I snorted. “You're never going to be normal!” I hadn't meant it as a compliment, but my words made SJ brighten.

“Really? You think so?”

I threw up my hands and turned to walk away.

“Don't go, Ledge!”

“Why shouldn't I?” I asked. “You're going to do what you want no matter what I do! Put out your paper! Nobody will believe it anyway.” Only, in my gut, I knew that might not be true.

“Wait! Ledge! Don't go! What if I checked the recycle bin?” Sarah Jane pleaded. “Maybe Hedda the Horrible hasn't taken it out yet! Wait here! Don't go anywhere.”

I waited as she ran into the house, hope popping up in me like breakfast table nails. But Sarah Jane was gone so long, I began to think she'd ditched me. Impatience added fuel to my ire. The iron fence shuddered in waves and I tried not to panic and run. This might be my last shot at getting Grandma's jar back for Grandpa. But the feeling of ants crawling underneath my skin always freaked me out. If I didn't like the way other people controlled me, I liked the way my savvy controlled me even less.

I was tired of everyone and everything else determining what I should do and who I should be—whether it was Sarah Jane, my parents, or my stupid savvy. I wanted to make choices for myself. Surely my Maker had had some plan when He put me together like this? The Ledger Kale schematics couldn't have been all wrong.

By the time Sarah Jane emerged from the house again, I'd calmed down. I even smiled when I saw that Sarah Jane had both hands wrapped tightly around a jar.

I took a deep breath.

You're the one in control here, Ledge
, I told myself.
Just focus.

Not willing to trust Sarah Jane one hundred percent, I moved slowly toward the fence.

But as I reached between the iron bars, Sarah Jane tossed aside the jar, letting it land in the grass with a heavy
thud
. In the same movement, she reached behind her and deftly slapped one end of the antique shackles from her father's study around my wrist. Before I could pull back, Sarah Jane fastened the other half of the Sundance Kid's cuffs to one of the fence posts.

I'd been right not to trust her.

She'd tricked me again.

“D
ID IT EVER OCCUR TO YOU that this might be the reason you don't have any friends?” I clanked the shackles against the fence as I looked at Sarah Jane.

Sarah Jane held up a rusty key and backed away, moving just beyond my reach.

“I'll let you go, Cowboy,” she said, all traces of remorse long gone, “as soon as you tell me what I want to know.”

“What do you want to know?” I asked, working hard to keep from getting angry.

“
Ev-er-y-thing
,” she answered.

I squirmed, torn between keeping my mouth shut, breaking free and running, and blurting out everything as fast and as loud as Big Mouth Brody. I'd been keeping so many secrets—I was dying to tell someone
something
.

I struggled for a moment longer, then threw caution to the Wyoming wind.

“All right, I'll tell you,” I said, preparing to break
all
the rules now, not just the one about staying away from the Cabots. I'd gotten so good at breaking stuff, why not add a few rules and promises to my list?

Taking a deep breath, I started talking: about me, my uncle, Rocket, the twins, Samson. I skipped over the part about thirteenth birthdays—I didn't want to relive my own—but I still had plenty to tell. I even told her about Eva Mae. Sarah Jane stayed quiet, listening to my words like they were water and she'd just crawled out of the desert.

“My grandma captured the music in that jar,” I told her, nodding in the direction of the white lid nestled in the grass. “It's full of radio waves she pulled out of the air. There used to be a whole bunch of jars like that. But I broke them all. All but the one you took. That's why I've got to get it back. It means a lot to my grandpa, and Grandpa's not . . . he's not going to be around much longer.”

I waited for Sarah Jane to roll her eyes and laugh in my face. Or worse, to pull out a brand-new pad of paper and start taking down detailed notes, ready to call the Associated Press and syndicate the story in newspapers across the country. But she didn't do any of these things. Instead, she narrowed her gaze and said slowly:

“Prove it.”

Flashing a quick, wry grin, I canted my head toward the rusty shackles. With a click and a rattle of iron against iron, the antique cuffs slipped from my wrist and slid down the post to land on the ground in pieces. Puffed up with pride at this bit of control, I looked from the busted cuffs to Sarah Jane.

“How was that?”

Sarah Jane prodded the mangled manacles with the toe of one green sneaker, kicking at the scattered, twisted links of chain.

“How did you do it?” she asked. “
Precisely
.”

“Precisely?” I shrugged. Then, with a grimace, confessed, “I—I don't know. Usually it happens when I'm cranky.” But looking at the fallen shackles, I knew it wasn't anger or frustration that had forced the cuffs open. This time, I'd made the choice to do it.

“Cranky?” SJ lifted an eyebrow. “Judging from the wreckage I've seen, Ledge, you must be the crankiest guy around . . . or the second-crankiest,” she amended with a grimace of her own.

A Cranky Cabot is bad for Sundance
. I cringed. I didn't want to be like Noble Cabot.

“I didn't used to be this way,” I muttered, shuffling my feet as I thought back to better days—days
before
I'd turned thirteen. I shrugged again. “It's not just when I get cranky. Sometimes it happens if I get startled, or hurt. But I think I'm finally getting better at controlling it,” I added quickly, looking again at the busted cuffs.

Sarah Jane squinted at me again; I could see her brain working.

“Do something else!” she commanded.

“I'm not your trick pony!” I snapped.

“Those shackles were old. They probably just fell apart,” she snorted. But her face was watchful now—curious—and her eyes never left me for a second.

Without missing a beat, I snorted right back. “They
did
just fall apart. That's what I do. Haven't you been listening?” The bars of the fence shivered. Was she
trying
to upset me?

Yes, I realized. She was. I'd just told her all the things that triggered me. I breathed in through my nose, held the breath, then let it out slow, wondering why Sarah Jane had to be so stubborn.

“Do something else,” she repeated. “Do whatever it is you do again and I promise I'll give you this jar.” We both glanced down at the jar, its familiar white lid blinding in the sun.

“Okay,” I said at last. “But if I show you one more time, you have to promise not to tell anyone about me or my family and destroy all traces of your humdinger paper. You have to promise!
Really
promise.” I knew I was digging myself deeper into trouble by the second. But for some reason, I couldn't stop shoveling.

“Eyes, needles, death, you got it!” Sarah Jane crossed her heart. When I frowned at her flimsy oath, she crossed her heart again, then put her hands together. “I promise, Ledge! I do!” Then she asked excitedly, “What are you going to do this time?”

“Just watch!” I raised my voice in exasperation, but I was more eager now than angry. Now that I wasn't keeping secrets, I wanted to do something cool. I flexed my fingers once or twice and puffed my chest up even more.

What could I do that would really impress SJ?

Something in my gut flip-flopped. At what point had I started wanting to
impress
Sarah Jane? If Josh were here now, he'd be laughing his head off . . . or maybe he'd give me some advice. I was beginning to think girls were as hard to figure out as a new savvy. But Josh understood way more about girls than I did. He knew that Misty Archuleta would like that necklace with the
M
on it before he gave it to her at the planetarium. Remembering that, I got an idea.

Taking another deep breath, I wrapped my hands around the two closest fence posts and concentrated on the bolts and weldings that held them in place, trying to repeat my recent display of control. Repeat it, and, if possible, improve on it.

In seconds, things began to shift. The iron posts began to move and jerk, bending and twisting the same way the steel bracers of the windmill had done, only less out-of-control crazy. Quickly, I let go and stepped back, realizing that I didn't have to hold on, that I could feel my connection to all the pieces through the earth and the air between me and the fence. I let my vision blur, seeing only the shapes I wanted in the fence, imagining the ants under my skin crawling into the exact same patterns. The broken links of chain from the cuffs jumped at my feet like popcorn, and the spiked posts shimmied and began to snake into new shapes.

When I stepped back to look at my handiwork, the tips of my ears began to burn. Yet Sarah Jane's green eyes were bright as they reflected the twisted metal between us.

“Are those supposed to be my initials?” she asked with a grin.

Cramped and crooked, the letters
S
and
J
were bent into the fence, decorated with contorted curlicues and droopy flower shapes. All the picture needed was a lopsided heart with an arrow stuck through it, and my everlasting embarrassment would be welded in place forever. Half of me wanted to dig a hole and crawl into it. The other half was kinda proud. Crooked or not, I'd love to see Josh top
that
.

Sarah Jane was still smiling. I smiled back. Next to the house, the branches of the birch tree swayed in the breeze, its leaves shimmering like green glass in the sun. If a tree could laugh, I thought, this one was certainly doing it.

As Sarah Jane took a step back from her newly monogrammed fence, she accidentally kicked Grandma Dollop's jar, knocking it on its side. I looked down at the jar through my haze of embarrassment and pride, my brain slow to register what was wrong with the label.

The blocky yellow letters that spelled out
Peter Pan Peanut Butter
were missing. The label on this jar read:
Elmer Mann's Famous Pickled Herring
.

I looked back up at Sarah Jane, dumbfounded.

It wasn't Grandma Dollop's jar at all. This jar didn't contain any radio waves. This jar was full of nothing more magical than the lingering smell of fish.

I
SET MY JAW, THE CALM I'd felt gone. I'd told Sarah Jane everything! I'd broken family rules and embarrassed myself for her. And she'd conned me—
again
. Bent out of shape and seething, I was once again riding the storm on that boat in Aunt Jenny's painting. Only now that I was steering, I'd show Sarah Jane.

The Ledger Kale spectacular wasn't over yet.

Without lifting a finger or saying a word, I raised the fence in a tidal wave of iron, driving the force of my anger around the perimeter. Sarah Jane drew her arms up to shield her face as her initials fell between us, the bars of the fence toppling one after the next.

It was the sound of the screen door crashing that brought me to my senses. Hedda the Horrible stepped out onto the porch, a fireplace ash pan in one hand and a dry mop in the other, looking like she thought armies of aliens might be attacking. As soon as I saw the housekeeper, I reined in my savvy, shutting it down before Hedda could mistake me for an extraterrestrial and clean my clock.

Sarah Jane lowered her arms, running her fingers along a four-inch scrape below her elbow where a fence spike had grazed her skin. The scratch wasn't deep. Not even bleeding. But my mind flashed back to the night of the wedding and the gash left on Fish's face after I destroyed the barn. Rocket had warned me then. He'd told me to be careful.

What use was the control I'd shown today if I couldn't use it to control my own reactions?

I took a step toward Sarah Jane. Her eyes went wide as she looked at me—no, as she looked
past
me.

Behind me a car door slammed shut.

Slowly, I turned. A long black Lincoln was parked next to the curb. White-walled tires pristine. Black exterior spotless. Noble Cabot—red-faced,
cranky
Noble Cabot—was coming toward me.

“What in John Brown's britches is going on here?” he shouted. His eyes followed the line of fallen fence posts, then returned to focus, hawk-like, on me. “You again!” he shouted. His cane was a jackhammer pummeling the ground. “I thought I told O'Connell to keep you and everyone else like you away from my daughter!”

Cabot rapped the side of my leg with his cane as he hollered. It didn't hurt. Not really. But it did make me mad. And I couldn't afford to get any angrier than I already was. In hindsight, destroying the fence might not have been the best choice.

“Are you responsible for this . . . this
mess
, young man?” Mr. Cabot dropped his voice to a low growl. He pointed his cane at my chest. The movement was so sudden it scared a stream of cuss words out of me. The grill on Cabot's Lincoln shuddered. The rims of the headlamps rattled.