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Dad would never let me read Uncle Bob’s work—too many ideas. Too much action. But I’m on my own now. And I’ve read everything—in a matter of weeks. They’re good. My uncle writes like he’s lived a dozen lives.
“Yes,” Bob says, adjusting the collar of his plaid bathrobe.
“An expert, huh?”
“Yep.”
“I could go back to the bike shop…” Just thinking about that man produces summer scents in my head. “I could see if Levi would help me.”
Bob likes breadcrumbs. He’d never just tell me what to do. I’m pretty sure he feels like I’ve been told enough and if I don’t start making my own decisions soon, I might combust right before his eyes, completely full of choices never made.
I’m not sure he’s wrong.
I want to choose and decide. For myself.
“Sounds like you know what to do,” Bob says, and his fingers return to the keyboard.
I change into the lavender dress I bought last week. It hits right at my knees and almost has a puffed sleeve. I’m pretty sure Anne Shirley would love this dress.
I head for the door, but pause to kiss Uncle Bob on the cheek. His movement glitches, but only for a second, and then he’s back to typing a mile a minute. I didn’t know anyone could type that fast. Or think that fast. All that typing leads to words, and all those words must have been thoughts before his brain told his fingers what to say. It’s a beautiful, baffling thing.
Bob keeps his garage door open. At all times. He says if the door is closed in the summer, it gets too hot in there, like a sauna. And in the winter, it turns into an icebox. He’s got an old red Chevy inside that was made the same year he was born. And my bike. Lilac is as pretty as the day I bought her, even her tires are still clean. I can’t stay up long enough to get them dirty.
I back Lilac from the garage and hold onto her brown rubber handlebars, then start in the direction of the bike shop.
I ignore the conjuring smell of cool aftershave and the haunting whisper in my head ofnumber five… number five… number five...
At least I try very hard to ignore the two.
6
Levi
“Uncle Bearrrrr!” My niece, Alice, has the lungs of a professional trumpet player. “Max just peed on the floor!”
I hurry from the back room and peer down at Alice’s guilty, pink face and my dog, sitting on the showroom floor. I can clearly see the spray bottle behind her back, and the puddle on the ground near Max is less puddle and more spritz. But I play along because Alice is my favorite human on the planet.
“See?” she says, her lungs taking a break with her small lying whisper.
Max sits next to Alice, tongue hanging out. He’s her accomplice, who has been told to stay. He’s listening to the girl. He and I have the same problem. We have no backbone when it comes to Alice Jasmine Taylor.
“Wow, Max,” I say, but I’m making sure to keep my tone kind. I don’t want to punish my dog. Max might be able to understand a few words, but mostly it’s all about the tone. “You are a very bad dog.”
Max wags his tail. Yep.Tone. He hasn’t a clue what I’m saying.
“You’re just the worst, aren’t you?”
His front paws prance in place on the floor and I scratch behind his ear.
“Alice must be right, Princess is a much better pup than you are.”
“Ha!” Alice points at me. “You admit it! My dog is the best!Girls rule and boys drool.” She learned that one from the Disney Channel. Thank you children’s networks all over the world.
“Boys drool?Rude. I can’t believe you’d say such things about me or Max. We love you.”
Her little lips twist to the side. “Fine. You two don’t drool,” she says, just as slobber spills from Max’s open mouth onto the hard shop floor. This sends Alice into a fit of giggles, and the hours upon hours I’ve spent training Max go down the tube as he jumps up from his commanded spot to sit. Tail wagging, he stands over Alice’s small frame, his nose in her face. The minute he finds skin, he licks.
“Ooo,” she squeals through a laugh. “Boy drool!” She could care less that Max is a dog—but he is male, and Alice decided a long time ago that she is all about the girl power. I’m pretty sure that’s because for the first five and a half years of her life she was raised by a single dad and assisted by me, my three brothers, and our mom. We didn’t become a legal family until Jude married my sister, Coco, and made her Alice’s stepmom. She’s always felt there were too many boys and not enough girls in our family. Coco and her unborn baby sister are starting to even things out though.
