Unhappy Appy (9 page)

Dad and I didn't speak until we were halfway to Loudonville. He gave in first. “I hope you're not going to keep this up at Madeline's. We want you and Mason to be friends.”

We? As in Dad and Madeline? Dad, Madeline, and Mason?
I thought of Hawk's cuckoo shoving the warbler egg right out of the nest.

Dad glanced over at me. “Don't make me sorry I brought you.”

That's exactly what I wanted him to be—sorry he brought me. Sorry he'd brought
her
into our lives. My stomach knotted, and it was hard to breathe.

Neither of us said anything more until we hit Loudonville city limits. Then Dad sighed and white-knuckle gripped the steering wheel. “I want to tell you a little bit about Mason before we get there. He's—”

“I don't want to hear about Mason,” I said, my voice low, sounding a hundred times calmer than I felt. Nothing he could say would make me want to be friends with the kid.
They
were the cuckoos.
I
was being shoved from their nest.

Dad turned up a street with look-alike houses too close together.

I stared out the window. One tiny lawn had a dozen cars on it, some up on concrete blocks instead of tires. “Can we please get home before dark?” I asked, not looking at Dad. “Maybe Hawk and I can still ride.”

“I'll try. And I'm sorry I spoiled your ride, Winnie. But we did make these plans first.”

We?

“There's a chance they'll want to drive over to the barn yet this evening, though,” Dad explained. “Get things started . . . if things go well here.”

Note to self: Do your part to make sure things do not go well here.

Dad pulled up under a leafless tree, and we got out of the truck. We walked up the short, cracked sidewalk to a wooden, A-frame house, smaller than our rental. The little front lawn had been plowed into dirt rows. Houses on both sides looked run-down, and the one across the street was deserted. Apparently, Madeline Edison's inventions weren't selling much better than my dad's.

“Welcome! Welcome to the Edisons'!”
The weird, computerlike greeting roared down from the roof, which was covered in curvy antennae.

“It's automatic,” Dad explained, pointing to a giant speaker. “A security system Madeline invented a few years ago. Announces everyone who steps onto their property.”

I lagged behind him as he knocked at the yellow front door. The rest of the house had been freshly painted white. Peeking around to the side yard, I saw boxes of wires and metal gizmos scattered around. It looked like our yard, minus the appliance parts. No odd jobs, just inventions.

The door opened, and Madeline Edison grinned down at us. She wore a one-piece black work suit, kind of like Dad's, only with a belt. “You made it!”

We walked in, and I was hit with the same eerie feeling I get stepping into Coolidge Castle, only in reverse. Instead of leaping back in time, we'd jumped into the future. A silver net and tiny lights covered the whole ceiling, turning it into a starry sky. All the furniture matched, and it was all white. Except for one closed door at the far end, the whole house was right there in front of us, with only a partial divider to the kitchen.

“Thirsty?” Madeline asked. She took Dad's wrist and raised it to her nose. “The dog watch!”

I hadn't noticed the watch, so I checked it out, too. There was no dog on the watch. Plus the time was way off.

Dad's cheeks flushed. “Yep. Works perfectly. Advances seven times the normal rate, seven dog years per each human year.”

Barker would have loved it, but I acted uninterested.

Dad followed Madeline to the kitchen “to help.”

I couldn't stand to watch, so I plopped into the nearest chair. It felt weird, lighter than I'd expected, since it looked leathery. Rubbing my finger on the arm of the chair made me think of eyelid skin.

Dad came back and handed me a glass of un-asked-for lemonade.

“No thank you,” I said politely. He made me take it. I started to set it on the coffee table. A tiny trapdoor flipped over, and a coaster appeared.

I wanted to go home.

Out the window I could see gray clouds. I wanted it to snow, but not until Hawk and I got our ride.

“Winnie?” Madeline called from the kitchen. “Will you turn on the lights out there, please?”

I searched for the switch in all the logical places, but came up empty. There were no lamps either.

Dad came up behind me. “Here.” He walked to the door and used his chin to press what I'd thought was a door knocker. Light flooded the room. “Chin-lights! For when your hands are full.” He demonstrated a couple of times.

Madeline walked in and set flowers next to my lemonade. A second trapdoor flipped open on the tabletop, offering her another coaster. “Mason's in his room.” She nodded toward the closed door.

“Why don't you go introduce yourself, Winnie?” Dad suggested.

I could have given him a hundred reasons. But I didn't particularly feel like hanging out with the inventors either. I crossed to the door and knocked.

“Just go on in!” Madeline called.

I opened the door and stepped into a room with nothing on the floor except a little boy. He sat cross-legged, staring up at his window. He couldn't have been older than six or seven, thin, with wispy, white-blond hair.

He turned and smiled at me without moving his eyes. He had a round face and wire glasses like Catman's, only with lenses so thick his blue eyes looked huge. I'm not sure what I'd expected, but it wasn't this.

“Hey.” I stepped toward him, and his head swung back to the window. “I'm Winnie. You're Mason.” I sounded like Tarzan with better grammar. “So you want to ride horses, huh?”

He didn't move. His body leaned to one side, as if off balance. The more I watched him, the more I could tell he was staring
at
the window, not through it.

Dad and Madeline walked in, and Madeline knelt by her son. “Honey, we have company.” She smiled at us, not like she was apologizing for him or anything. “I told you about Winnie. And you already know Mr. Willis.”

I glanced at Dad, wondering how well Mason knew
Mr. Willis.

Madeline held Mason's head and gently turned it toward us. Mason turned it back, reaching tiny fingers toward the window.

“Mason.” Madeline's voice stayed low and even. “Show Winnie your reading chair.”

I scanned the room again. No chair. No bed. Nothing. Just a thick carpet on the floor and a bookcase built into one wall.

Madeline took Mason's hand and helped him reach what appeared to be twine dangling from the ceiling.

For the first time, I looked up. I was staring at the bottom of a bed. The furniture was all on the ceiling!

When Madeline pulled the twine, a big, white chair floated down. The chair matched the one in the living room. She slid something over one of the chair legs, and the chair stayed put. She did the same for a bed and another chair. I watched her, feeling like I'd walked into someone else's dream, where everything was light as air.

“Helium,” Madeline explained. “Mason likes having his room uncluttered in the daytime. Right, Mason?”

The chair looked rock solid. But I knew the second the weight slid off, up . . . up . . . up it would sail. I thought about how wonderful it would be if everything worked that way, if the worries weighing me down could float away like that.

“Madeline's chair won first place at the Invention Convention,” Dad said.

I knelt beside Mason, as the little light left outside fell across his face. His mouth turned up, as if he could burst into laughter any minute. “So, Mason, how old are you?”

He kept smiling out the window as if the best movie in the world were playing there. Then, without turning from the window, he stuck his hand out.

I wasn't sure if he meant it for me, but I shook his hand. His fingers felt like toothpicks, and his hand was so sticky it took a second for us to unstick.

“Sticky fingers!” Madeline laughed and kissed Mason's forehead. “You can wash your hands in the hall bathroom if you need to, Winnie.”

Dad pointed down the hall. “Through there.”

I hated that he knew where things were in this house.

The hall wall was covered with pictures of Mason, starting from when he was a baby. He was a cute little kid. There was obviously something wrong with him, and I felt lousy for not liking him before I met him. Dad should have warned me. Then I remembered he'd tried to talk about Mason in the truck, but I hadn't wanted to hear it.

Sorry, God,
I prayed.
I still don't want us all to be friends, but none of it's because of Mason.

Madeline was in some of the pictures, but none of the photos showed a dad. I had to admit that Madeline Edison wasn't ugly. She wasn't even funny-looking really, just tall. In every picture, Mason seemed to be staring at something off-camera.

I flipped on the bathroom light and shut the door. Birds started chirping, and the sound of rushing waterfalls filled the tiny, green bathroom. I flipped off the light, and the sound stopped. I turned on the light again, and the great outdoors returned. AstroTurf covered the floor and the walls and even the toilet. I washed my hands and got out of there.

In the living room, Madeline was helping Mason into his jacket.

“There you are! Shall we go meet us some horses?” Dad asked.

I nodded.

Any other time, I would have loved the idea of helping a kid like Mason over his fear of horses. Why did he have to be Madeline's kid?

Once out of the Edison house, I raced for the truck.

“Let's all go in my van!” Madeline shouted.

“Good idea,” Dad agreed, although it couldn't have been a good idea. Now he'd have to come back with them just to pick up the truck.

I tried to get Dad's attention, but he was already lifting Mason into the green minivan.

Dad and Mason sat in back because the middle was too full of junk, and I rode shotgun with Madeline. She drove a lot faster than Dad. I figured if he hadn't been reading a rhyming book to Mason, he would have asked her to slow down.

“Mason likes you, Winnie,” Madeline said matter-of-factly, not like adults say to bigger kids when they want you to like their little kids.

“What's wrong with him?” I blurted out. Then, as soon as I'd said the words, I was sorry. “I didn't mean—”

“That's all right.” She passed a car like it was standing still. “Some people call Mason
handicapped.
I call him
handi-capable.
He has a lot going on inside of him. We're still working on getting it out. He's not always like he is today. He can say a few words. And we're both learning sign language.”

She didn't seem to mind talking about it, so I asked, “Was he born . . . like this?”

She shook her head. “Head trauma . . . when he was just a baby.”

Head trauma.
My mind flashed me a picture. I tried to block it out, but I never can. I could see my mom's head against the steering wheel, blood trickling down her cheek. My mind had taken the photo seconds after the wreck that killed my mother.

I wanted to know more about Mason's head trauma, if he'd been in a wreck, too. But I wouldn't have wanted Madeline to ask me about Mom's accident. I changed the subject. “So where's Mason's dad?”

“Winnie!” Dad shouted up to us. I hadn't noticed he'd finished reading.

We'd turned onto our street. Madeline pulled up to the curb and got out to help Mason.

Dad rushed up to me. “Winnie, what did you say to Madeline?” he whispered.

“Nothing.”

Light glowed from inside our house, and I saw Hawk sitting in Dad's chair, probably studying.

I led the way to the barn. Just smelling the hay and horse in my barn helped me get a grip on things again. This was my turf, the only place I felt really at home