One thing became very clear during the twelve-hour car ride to Alabama—I was never going to do this again.
Never ever.
Sitting in an enclosed space with Granddad was like wiping your tears with sandpaper. Painful—excruciating, even—and you wondered why you ever thought it was a good idea.
Oh, think I’m playing?
Ten minutes into the trip: “When I was your age, I had a full-time job and I’d already fought in two title fights.”
Three hours in: “Oh, you’re hungry again? Did you bring some stopping-for-snacks money?”
Six hours in: “Man, I shouldn’t have ate those leftover beans for breakfast.”
Eight hours in: “Can’t believe I drove all this way to see a Strong boy fight so soft. That’s your grandmother’s side of the family. Ain’t no Strong ever look like that in the ring. Why, I remember…”
Anyway, you get it.
By the time we crossed the Alabama state line, I was ready to claw my way into the trunk. I don’t know how Nana could just sit there and hum and knit for most of a day, but that’s what she did. The Cadillac rumbled down a two-lane highway, kicking up trails of dust and exhaust, a dented rocket ship blasting through time in reverse from the future to a land that Wi-Fi forgot.
I’d put my earbuds in somewhere back in Kentucky, but the battery on my phone had long since run out. I just kept them in so no one would bother me. Nana kept knitting in the passenger seat, and Granddad tapped a finger on the steering wheel, humming along to a song only he could hear. Things seemed more or less calm, except for one thing:
Eddie’s journal sat on the seat next to me.
Now, I could’ve sworn I’d stuffed the book under the clothes in my duffel bag. Which Grandad had put in the trunk. And yet here it was, waiting on me to do something I’d put off since the funeral. The late afternoon sun, occasionally peeking out from behind the storm clouds, made the journal look normal, ordinary. But every so often I’d shade the cover with my hands and peek at it while holding my breath. Yep, still glowing.
Why not open it, you might ask, and see what’s inside?
Well, believe me, it wasn’t that simple. Before Eddie’s death, the cover of his brown leather journal had always been blank. Now a weird symbol appeared to be stitched into it, like a sun with rays that stretched out to infinity, or a flower with long petals. The same symbol was embossed on a carved wooden charm that dangled from a cord attached to the journal’s spine. I’d seen the tassel before—Eddie had used it to mark his spot, or to flick me in the back of the head—but the charm was new.
And, even more weirdly, the trinket pulsed with green light, too. I’d been staring at that book every day for minutes on end, but the glow always stopped me from opening it.
I mean, I knew what was in there anyway. The stories Eddie had jotted down in his goofy, blocky handwriting, from his own silly creations to the fables Nana used to tell us when we were younger, when she’d come up to visit. John Henry, Anansi the Spider, Brer Rabbit’s adventures—I’d read them all. Our end-of-semester English project was supposed to be a giant collection of stories from our childhood. Eddie was doing the writing, and I was going to give the oral presentation. Then the accident happened. The counselor Mom took me to every Wednesday had said I should try to finish the writing part, even though school was now over for the year, as a part of healing and other stuff.
(Before you say something slick you might regret, Mr. Richardson is pretty cool for a counselor, you get me? We play Madden while we talk, which means I can focus on running up the score on his raggedy Eagles squad and not on being embarrassed about answering questions. It helps…some. If it gets too tough, he knows when to back off, too. So you can keep your Sensitive and Man up comments to yourself. Chumps.)
To avoid thinking about the haunted journal, I watched the weather outside the car window. The clouds had never let up, even once we were in the Deep South. They just switched from hurling lightning bolts at us to hurling fat drops of rain that splattered across the windshield like bugs. Everything everywhere was miserable, and that pretty much summed up my life at the moment.
I took off the earbuds and sighed. Nana heard and turned around in her seat to look at me.
“You hungry, sweetie?” she asked.
“No, not really.”
“No, ma’am.” Granddad’s deep voice rolled back from the driver’s seat. “You answer ‘No, ma’am’ to your grandmother, understand?”
“Yeah.”
Granddad looked at me in the rearview mirror.
“I mean, yes, sir.”
He held my eyes a moment longer, then went back to looking at the road.
“Well,” Nana continued, turning around and picking up her knitting, “despite what your granddad said earlier”—she gave him a glare—“let me know when you are. Your mama told me you ain’t been eating much, and we’re gonna fix that. And don’t you have some writing to do? That’s what your counselor wants you to focus on.”
“Boy don’t need no counselor,” Granddad rumbled. “He needs to work. Ain’t no time for moping when horses need feeding and fences need mending.”
“Walter!” Nana scolded. “He needs to—”
“I know what he needs—”
I shook my head and stopped paying attention. After spending a day in the car with them, I’d realized that this was what they did. They argued, they laughed, they sang, they argued again, and they knitted. Well, Nana knitted. But they were two sides of the same old coin.
With Granddad, everything was about work. Work, work, work.
Bored? Here’s some work.
Finished working? Here’s more work.
Need someone to talk to? Obviously, that meant you didn’t work hard enough, so you know what? Have a little bit more work.
Nana, on the other hand, sang and hummed when she wasn’t talking, which almost never happened, because she always had a new story to share. “Do you know why the owl can’t sleep?” she’d say, and off the story would go, and you’d sit there and listen, just being polite at first, but by the end, you’d be on the edge of your seat.
I smiled. Eddie had loved listening to my grandmother. When she’d come to visit earlier this year, he’d practically followed her around, his journal in hand.
Speaking of which…
My left hand rested on top of it in the seat next to me, and I traced the symbol stitched into the front cover.
“What’s that, sweetie?”
I looked up to see Nana peeking back over the seat.
“Hm? I mean, uh, yes…ma’am?”
Granddad nodded, and I let out a sigh of relief.
Nana smiled. “Is that for your writing?”
I hesitated. “Yes, ma’am.” I held up the book so she could see it, and her eyes widened at the symbol on the cover.
“Where’d you get that?” she asked. Granddad turned to see what she was looking at, but Nana flapped a hand at him. “Watch the road, Walter.”
“From Eddie…” I began, then paused. “I mean, his mom gave it to me. It is…was for us. For our school project. Why? What’s wrong?”
Could she see it? Could she tell that the book was glowing, even in the daylight?