her do it?” Mom said to Dad. “There’s no point in getting into a screaming fight right now.”
I put down Turk’s stuff and went and got a broom and dustpan.
“Thanks,” she said when I handed them up. “You can just drop my stuff. I’ll get it when I’m done. Good night, guys. Thanks for having me.”
Dad dropped the duffel bag and the inflated doll. The Scream bounced across the floor and ended up in the corner, tilted back and looking up at the top of the steps, where Turk had started to sweep.
“I know how you feel,” I said to the doll.
We all went into the kitchen. Mom put on the teakettle.
“St.-John’s-wort tea,” she said. “It’ll help us get back to sleep.”
“Give me plenty,” Dad said. “I don’t want to wake up for the next few years.”
“It’s a good thing we’re doing,” Mom said. “It’s a necessary thing. It’s an obligation. We’re family. She and Imelda are at daggers drawn, and they need a break from each other. And Rachel—Turk—needs a new start. Moving in with us is the best chance she has.”
Dad looked up at the ceiling. Then he looked at me.
“All very true, and I will do my best to be a good uncle,” Dad said. “But Cody, my son, when the time comes for you to marry, promise you’ll give serious consideration to the advantages of birth control.”
2
I finished my movie and went to bed.
Lying there, I could hear Turk over my head, sweeping and moving things around. Since I couldn’t sleep, I remembered things about my cousin.
When I was seven and she was eight, she turned an old water heater into a spaceship. She painted it silver and cut out cardboard fins and stuck them on with duct tape. I mean, it was amazing work for an eight-year-old. Anyway, it amazed me.
And when she told me I could be an astronaut and go with her to the moon, I was ready. She even gave me her special Space Ranger Galaxy III helmet to wear.
“I’ve already been a couple of times,” she said. “It’s really easy if you know what you’re doing.”
So I climbed into the spaceship and lay there up by the nose, which was a cone of really heavy poster board, also painted silver.
Nothing happened. I just lay there, feeling more and more cramped and sweaty, watching my Galaxy III helmet’s faceplate start steaming up, feeling the oxygen going bye-bye.
I started to wonder: Had I already started? Was I in outer space? Why wasn’t there a window in this thing?
Then the spaceship was rocked by a cosmic bang. Then a horrible smell filled the helmet. I was crashing, I was burning, I was going to die.
I started to thrash around, rocking the ship, which just scared me more. And without thinking about it, just trying to get away from that horrible smell, I pushed myself forward and burst through the paper nose cone. When I got out, I took off running. I ran across the backyard, around the house, and up to the corner before I realized I was safe, and back on planet Earth.
I took off the good old Galaxy III. I breathed in the best air I’d ever breathed. I turned my face to the sun, and without thinking about it, I said, “Hi!”
Then I heard the sound of angry voices coming from Turk’s backyard. I walked back to find out what was going on.
I still remember Dad saying, “Where is Cody? What have you done with my son?”
It’s kind of a warm memory, actually. But not as warm as the memory of Number 3, Aunt Imelda’s husband of the year, turning Turk over his knee and paddling her.
He stopped when I came closer and said, “Let me, Uncle Jeff, let me!”
Then for two minutes it was all about Cody. Was I all right? What had happened? What had we been playing?
“I went to outer space,” I said. “But I didn’t like it.”
The spaceship looked like it had had a rough trip. The nose cone was ripped, of course. And the back end was blackened and smoking. A long electric cord ran from the house to a battery charger, the kind they have in repair garages, which Number 3 owned a couple of. The battery charger was hooked up to a battery surrounded by six other batteries, and those batteries were connected to each other by a few twists of copper wire. The spaceship’s engine, of course.
What had happened was that Turk had