 
**Stealing The Show**

**by Baker Lawley**

Published by ECRH Press at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Baker Lawley

Discover other books by Baker Lawley at his website, www.bakerlawley.com.

**Smashwords Edition, License Notes**

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This is a work of fiction. Names, places, businesses, characters and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, actual events or actual locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover image courtesy just4fun31.deviantart.com. Used with permission.

Part I

This Is The Life

IT'S A PERFECT moment, really.

It's almost midnight, and Jubilee Marshfield and I are sitting on the see saw at this little kid playground, without see-sawing. We just bob up and down slightly, our gangly teenager legs way too long for how low the see saw sits. There aren't any lights here, since kids aren't usually on playgrounds this time of night. And as we bob a little, the see saw makes this creepy moan that echoes around in the dark.

Perfect except for one thing.

I brought us here so that I could tell her—actually, finally tell her—that I am in love with her.

And I am failing miserably.

"But the thing is," she says, and then she stops to think. Her hair is in these long wild curls and right then she pushes off the ground and her curls bounce way up when she reaches the top as I bang my ass on the ground.

And as I rise up in the air as she falls, and her curls look like her hair is a campfire atop her head, I ask, "What is the thing, Jube?"

Sometimes she starts thinking and just forgets to keep me updated. Once she gets going on these rants, it's like trying to stop a hurricane. She starts railing against all the dumb rules of life and stuff, but can't do anything about them, so she feels Life Claustrophobia.

We see saw up and down a few times and the only sound is the wail of the see saw across the dark.

It's a perfectly horrible, impossible, useless time to tell someone you love them.

Especially that you've _always_ loved them and have been too chickenshit all these years to tell them.

"The thing is, Lewis, we don't even fucking _remember_ most of our _lives_. We live this long life if we're lucky, but most of it is so boring that we don't even bother to keep it in our brains."

Then, when she's at the bottom and I'm at the top of the see saw, she slips off her seat. I free fall until I feel my ass bang against the ground and my spine crunch together and my tailbone shatter. I hear her laugh and run off, and I stand up slowly and realize that I am, in fact, unhurt. Sort of.

I have this theory. The thing about being in love with your best friend, when they don't know it, is that you're in Heaven and Hell at the same time.

Or maybe the thing about being in love with your best friend is that you're best friends, and you can be yourself, but you want to _not_ be yourself. You want to be the guy that she will fall for, the guy she tells you about. You want to be somebody else different than you, better than you.

But then, if you did that, you wouldn't be friends anymore. And where does that get you?

I've taken what I could.

My best friend is Jubilee Marshfield.

As far as friends go, she's the best kind to have.

As far as people to fall in love with, I should've chosen a hedgehog. I'd have an easier time figuring out a Siberian fur trader's daughter who could only grunt at me.

But I'm doomed because this very quality of mystery is what I love about Jubilee Marshfield.

I see her across the playground over on the swings and walk over.

"I'm fine, by the way. You were saying?" I say.

I sit in the swing beside hers and spin in circles to twist the chains together, then let them unwind. She pumps her legs to swing higher. She has a beautiful voice and on the swing, while she talks, she gets louder and quieter, back and forth.

"Like this moment, right here," she says. "This. Right. Now. Will we remember this?"

I will. Because yet again I can't muster the balls to tell her how I feel.

But I remember lots of things.

Because the other thing about being in love with your best friend is that you remember things that most people can forget. Like, I will certainly remember this moment. I remember that she hates curly fries but loves tater tots. I remember that her favorite Muppet was Fozzie Bear. I remember that she loves The Decemberists and Randy Newman, who I'd never heard of.

She prefers Dr. Pepper, the color green, Macs, flip-flops, books, and football. She can't stand high heels (pumps, she calls them, and that name's why she can't stand them), _Glee_ , music with keyboards in it, texting or cell phones in general, my car (even though she doesn't have one, so we use mine all the time), and my other best friend, Freddie Shoemaker, or "Shoe," as we've called him since first grade.

I remember this stuff, but not because I'm a creeper. She's fascinating, and she's my best friend. So it sticks. I can't help it.

But I can't show up in a Fozzie Bear costume, wearing a football helmet and carrying a case of Dr. Pepper and a new MacBook and singing "Louisiana, 1948" by Randy Newman and expect her to suddenly fall in love back with me, either.

So what good does remembering so much of my life do me? Maybe I should forget more. It's another theory I have.

I say, "This is pretty cool, right now. I'll probably remember it. I remember playing on this playground when I was a kid. Shoe and I used to jump out of these swings."

"Ugh. You boys. You never change," she says.

"Shoe could do a backflip out of it," I say anyway.

Jubilee laughs. "Oh, Shoe."

It's not true that she can't stand him. She stands him all the time because we're together a lot. He just drives her crazy, but in a good way, if that's possible.

I keep getting texts on my phone, and I know it's him. But I don't check, because she hates it.

"See? I remember _that_ ," I say. "I remember a lot."

"But we haven't been alive that long. We don't have a lot to forget yet." She's a good arguer when there's no answer to the question. It's her favorite kind of conversation.

She says, "Like, what else are you remembering you remember?"

"I remember first grade, like, the whole year. Mrs. Peacock was my teacher. I remember the day you first came to school. I remember when my parents split up. Lots of things. Do you want my whole life story?"

She takes two long swings, pumps her legs harder each time so she goes higher and higher.

" _Yesssss_ ," she says right when her face passes mine, her eyes all bugging out. "Dying for it."

"Well, it was a little rainy on the day I was born, I could see out the window. It was cold in the hospital, so I cried some." She's passing back by again, her hair bouncing in the air behind her, and she's smirking. But she doesn't say to shut up.

"My nurse was named Angela. She was really hot. I was totally in love with her. Then they handed me to my mom and I fell in more love."

"Okay. Okay. Stop." She's smiling, but she won't stop. "Seriously, though? What's the point of being alive for a day we won't even remember?"

"I don't know," I say. "Maybe it's to eat food and breathe air and not die, so we can live until a day we'll remember."

"Yeah," she says. "Sounds fun. Eat and breathe. Whoopty-shit."

"Can I ask you a question? What's the point of being alive on a day we DO remember?"

She swings a few times. "You mean, what is the Meaning of Life?" The chain had this rusty part at the top, so whenever she came down it squeaked, but it squeaked like REurrrrp, pause, REurrrrp, pause. "Maybe it's to make more memories than we have right now."

"Wow. That's it. Two kids too old to be on a playground in the dark figure out The Meaning of Life. And we didn't even look up shit on Wikipedia or anything."

She swings a few times without saying anything. Then she blurts out whatever was going on in her head like it's a battering ram.

She says, "Let's make a pact: for as long as we know each other, let's do something every day that we'll remember. For the rest of our lives."

Of course I'm in. But I say, "Like what?"

"Like this," says Jubilee Marshfield. She swings back and pumps her legs and the chain REurrrps, and at the top she flips backward and her feet swing over her head, her wild hair winging behind her, and she's falling like a raindrop right onto her feet. She does a little gymnastics pose to the judges like she's scored a perfect 10.

Damn, I'm in love. This sucks.

IT'S MOMENTS LIKE that that give me this theory I have about girls. Which is that there's something girls understand about mystery that boys don't. Or at least, they understand how to _use_ mystery. They know just how to make their voice sound or just what to say to make a mystery out of it. They can make a mystery out of blinking. They know how crazy these tiny mysteries can drive a boy.

Mostly, this theory comes from observing Jubilee Marshfield.

The way she looks at me when she puts her arms down and yanks me out of my swing, like a halfway eye roll for her being a nerd, but a halfway wink like she knows I'm a nerd for liking it, and this little tiny smile and twist of the neck. It's unbelievable. It just kills me.

"Come on, we gotta go. The Count is no doubt watching the clock." Her dad is head of accounting at some company. He seems alright, but Jubilee says he's always keeping track of everything. He found his calling a long time ago, and it is counting things, she says. He was put on this earth to count stuff. So, The Count.

"How long do you have?"

"Nineteen minutes. Don't you have to get home?" she asks.

"I'm at my dad's this weekend."

She does it again, one of those looks—a shrug, her brown eyes with a glint in them, I swear. She knows that my dad is a lot more chill than my mom about curfews and stuff since they split. At his place, there's never any food in the fridge, so we order pizza or go out to eat. My mom has everything stocked at all times, just in case. Though she never says what case it would be when we would need thirty rolls of toilet paper.

My parents. It seems like it would've been a good partnership, because that's their whole personality, but really that's why they split. Not over groceries, but the philosophy of groceries. Among other things, too.

I have this theory that you can tell a lot about somebody by what's in their fridge. It means something if they have milk in there. Or if there's meals all prepared for the whole week. Or if there's just beer and tofu.

The look Jubilee gives me is like two theories crashing together. She's doing the girl-mystery thing and I wonder if she wishes she could come over and hang out longer, because my dad won't care. He'd probably like it.

We're walking to my car and I'm trying to decide if that is what she's thinking. But there's no way The Count would let that happen anyway, so I let it drop.

"So I have this theory," I say.

"Oh, God," she says. Again with the voice thing she can do. I know exactly what she means.

"No, listen."

"I always listen," she says. "You have great theories. They're smart, you're smart. Whatever."

"But I should DO something with them, I know." That's the lecture she gives me a lot. "Sure."

I have a theory that the weird destructive shit kids do isn't because we're young and stupid, it's because we're bored.

I have this theory that we spent our whole lives in helmets and kneepads anytime anything was slightly dangerous, so now we think the world ends anytime we get hurt any little bit.

I have this theory that the smarter you are, the more you have to act not smart, and part of the theory is that this, in fact, sucks.

She's right, I do watch people and try to figure out what I see.

And she's kind of right, that I don't ever do anything. I'm not in any clubs or on any teams. I like watching people, and I don't know why.

But I do actually do something. I'm a writer, writing a book with my grandfather, Paps. But I've never told her about it, for no good reason. I don't bother to make theories up about myself.

"OK, but this one matters for right now," I say. "I have this theory that my car knows when we're going to be late for curfew. He likes you, so he's going to start."

"Eeyore hates me," Jubilee says. She nicknamed my car Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh, because it feels sorry for itself. It's supposed to be navy blue, I think, but it's like fifteen years old and the paint faded to that pale blue color Eeyore is. There are dents all over it from when it belonged to my grandfather, who had to quit driving because he was too old and couldn't see good enough anymore. That was right around the time I got my license. If I don't keep the gas tank half full and talk nice to it and start the engine with this gentle twist of the key, Eeyore doesn't start.

"I'm totally going to be late," she says.

We get in—it still smells like Paps in there—and I give the key a twist. I swear, the engine says _I-don't-wanna, I-don't-wanna, I-don't-wanna_.

"I know it's late, buddy," I say. I pat the dashboard. Jubilee shuts her eyes and shakes her head no. Sometimes girls do things with no mystery behind them. So I stop. I try the key again, same thing. She makes a little noise like paper crumpling.

"Hang on," I say. I take out my phone, and she doesn't seem to mind, and it looks like Shoe is getting off work at the dumpy one-screen movie theater where he works as the fry cook. Shoe always has the shittiest jobs.

Anyway, the dirty, dumpy theater was showing a zombie movie marathon tonight, so like half of the dudes in our school were there. He was the one texting me over and over to come hang out, but now it looks like it's finished. I text him and ask if he can shoot over here and rescue us.

He writes back:

BRAINS!

"I think Shoe can come get us." Jubilee is looking out the window at the playground. The see-saw is the only thing we can see in the pale yellow of Eeyore's headlights. "What's with all your Deep Thoughts tonight, anyway?"

She laughs. "Maybe all your theory shit's gotten to me," she says. "No, I don't know what it is. Life. Change. We'll graduate in the spring and then what? Go to college, get married, have kids? It all feels so planned out, lately."

"You don't want to go to college? You have to go," I say.

"And just where is that rule written down?" She's a good arguer, like I said. She says, "Or is it just a theory that you have to?"

"But what would you do instead?" I ask. I mean, really. Girls. I never saw this coming from her.

"That's what I mean, I'd be DOING something if I didn't go. Instead of just, like, attending more school."

My brain is flying, trying to figure out what to say. I'd thought maybe I'd go to whatever college she chose, maybe. Or at least that something would change when we got to college and I could tell her how I felt. Maybe try to stay in driving distance.

But then, what she's saying isn't about me. I have this theory that everything we say and do is somehow all about ourselves first.

Ever since I had that theory, I've tried to make it not true. About myself, at least.

Anyway, I can't think of anything to say, but it's probably only like a few seconds even though it feels like ten minutes, and then I see headlights come around the corner that are Shoe's.

"The man has timing," I say, and we get out through Eeyore's creaky doors.

SHOE DRIVES ONE of those barebones pickup trucks that are so small they're almost miniature, and it's a stick shift. Which means that we have to sit crammed together by the door so he doesn't have to reach between our legs to shift. I don't mind—my legs are all woven together with Jube's and we don't know where to put our hands, and she locks her arm under mine like I'm her escort.

"Dudes! It was unbelievable!" Shoe says. "Dave Underwood ate _five_ hamburgers! In a row! It was hilarious!"

At the zombie movie marathon, nobody was much watching the movies because there was a Chuck Norris Challenge.

It's this dumbass thing some guys in my class do sometimes. That's how dumb it is: They call it the Chuck Norris Challenge. They'll show up at some restaurant and then one of them will challenge the other, like they're knights fighting for a lady's honor or some bullshit. But the challenge is over who can eat the most food.

And, you're a pussy if you don't accept.

So, it's like a bunch of kids getting rowdy in a McDonald's over two dudes jamming Chicken McNuggets in their face, and there's no prize money and the girls there usually pretend to like it but are disgusted. After the contest, the guys who just ate fifty Chicken McNuggets lay around on the greasy floor and burp and fart and laugh and then have to make themselves not laugh so they don't puke.

" _Five fucking hamburgers?_ " Jubilee shrieks. "Gross. Plus, what a waste of money."

"Nah, I was giving them to him for free," Shoe says.

"Dude, they're gonna fire you for something like that," I laugh.

"Yeah. They just did," Shoe says. That's the other thing about all of Shoe's shitty jobs: he gets fired from them, always. Over and over. And it never seems to bother him.

"So anyway, why weren't you two there?" asks Shoe.

I have this theory why we weren't there. It isn't much of a theory: it's because it's boring and gross to watch people stuff their face like that. They get Special Sauce all over their cheeks and stuff.

But it's fun to be there just to watch Shoe. He loves stuff like that. Not eating or the farting after, but he loves weird, stupid things people do. He does a few himself—he likes to sled down this hill on a lunch tray in wintertime where there's a natural bump that jumps you over a frozen stream. But he likes it because there's no way to land good. Everybody goes flopping like a rag doll, their tray flying off, their legs spinning, and then they splat down into the snow. It's that splat landing that Shoe loves.

It sounds like he's shallow, but really, Shoe has this deep appreciation for life that is very simple. Everything is funny if you look at it hard enough or wait long enough. Even the boring everyday stuff. It's like he sees the world with fun goggles on. That keeps me sane, to be around him. It's really a gift, if you think about it.

"Not a fan of zombie movies," Jubilee says. "I don't get the appeal."

"No way. You don't like zombie movies? Zombies are _awesome_ ," Shoe says. Everything is awesome to Shoe. I think that's awesome in itself, but Jubilee is a little more stingy about it.

"They're _not_ interesting. They look gross and they don't even have anything they want except to eat brains and that's all they think about. They're all like, ' _Brains!_ ' and that's all they've got to them. They're like you boys running around school desperate for a blow job."

We laugh, but Shoe's laugh is real.

"Holy shit—a Blow Job Zombie!" I can tell he's already imagining all the possibilities for such a thing. This will be a big joke next week at school, because whatever idea Shoe puts out there gets picked up. He puts something on Facebook and everybody copies it.

This entire time, he's speeding around Lake Harriet to get Jubilee home in time. His back tires squeal when he goes around the curves. He drives fine, but it's a miracle because it seems like he's flailing around and paying no attention.

"Zombies get a bad rap, you know?" I say. "They're all about 'Brains!' but really, you know what? You've got to be like that if you're after something. Like, ' _Collegeeeeeeeee!_ ' or ' _Lawyerrrrrrr!_ ' or whatever you want to be. You know?"

"Ha! Like, Denny is all, ' _Basketballllllllll!_ '" Shoe says. "He's a Basketball Zombie. Ha!"

"And boys are like, ' _Blow Jobbbbb!_ '" Jubilee says.

"And girls are like ' _Makeuppppp!_ '" Shoe says.

I don't think girls are zombies about anything. Girls can do more calculations per second than the fastest computer in the world. They're focused on a million things at once, not only one thing like zombies are.

And they're also totally powerful without doing much—just sitting here up in a Twister with Jubilee Marshfield is like some holy experience, the way she smells and the way her legs bend and the angle of her neck as she gives Shoe a glare that's also a glint and a smirk. She's not that into makeup, but she knows it's true enough to not argue over it.

We turn down her street and she lets go of my arm and I'm stupid enough to feel a little hurt by it. She has to get out of the truck but I don't want her to.

So I say, "And The Count is all, ' _Curfewwwww!_ '"

"God," she says. "A year from now and we'll be in college, and all this will be over. We won't even remember dealing with curfews before too long."

" _College!_ " says Shoe.

I lean in to say to her that I will most definitely remember tonight forever. But I don't. I puss out.

She gets out of the truck and shuts the door and starts to run inside, but before she takes a step, she twirls around and leans in through the window. For a moment I think she's about to kiss me and my lungs come shooting out of my ears.

"Lewis, what are you a zombie over? What are you after?"

She wants me to have a thing. She wants me to do more than watch and make theories.

But I am after something. I am a Jubilee Marshfield Zombie. _Jubileeeeeeeeeee!_

She is walking backward up the sidewalk toward the door, kind of waving goodnight. "Shoe! Thanks for saving my ass! Help Lewis figure that out, OK?"

And Shoe honks the horn three times and guns it, which doesn't do much because the engine is so little. Who cares that it's midnight? Shoe doesn't. He's smiling and living and driving me home. He reaches over and squeezes my shoulder. He knows exactly what my something is.

THE OTHER THING about Shoe is, he knows when to shut up. He drives me over to my dad's house without a word, since there's nothing to say anyway.

By the time we get there, I have this theory going. It's not ready yet, but it's some idea about how love isn't all everybody says it is. Maybe everybody has it wrong and we're tricked into love so that we make babies and keep the species going. Maybe love is just an illusion. I don't know yet, it's just the beginnings of a theory.

Shoe knows when to shut up but also when to talk. And he waits until we're sitting out in front of my dad's place to say anything.

"Shit, man," he says. "That must've felt harsh, dude. But she didn't mean anything by it. She really likes you or she wouldn't spend so much time with you."

"I'm like her goddamn teddy bear." I say.

"At least you get to be around her, right?" Shoe hasn't turned down the radio and it's really loud still. He's obsessed with classic rock and it's playing "Radar Love." We both notice at the same time and laugh at it.

Shoe starts singing. " _Weeeee got a thing, that's called Zombie Love..._ "

I glance over at my house and see that the light is on in the living room. This is very strange, because it's so late. Dad never waits up for me. But I don't feel like going inside yet. I'm not laughing hard enough at his singing so Shoe stops.

"Lewis. Okay. You're going to shoot me."

I look over at him. And he's staring at the dashboard like he can't make eye contact. This isn't like him.

"What is it?"

"I think she might be right," he says.

"About...?"

"I think maybe you need something. A thing. You're super smart and everything, but you don't do anything with it. _Yet_ , I mean. I know you watch everybody else and come up with all these brilliant theories about us, but what about _you_?"

Maybe it's because, yet again, I've failed to tell Jubilee Marshfield that I love her. I don't know. But I decide to prove to Shoe, to _somebody_ at least, that I do have something.

I'm a writer.

I've never told anybody, but something about tonight just makes me say, "Dude. Can you come inside for a minute? I gotta show you something."

He turns off the engine and flops out the door, no questions asked. Shoe was put on earth to be people's friend. And make people laugh.

"What are you a zombie about, anyway?" I ask him and give him a shove as we're heading to the front door.

He starts limping in a zombie walk with his arms out in front of him.

" _Blow Job!_ " he says.

God, what timing the man has. I almost piss my pants.

Which is good because I forget that I'm about to show him the book I'm writing with Paps. Nobody knows I do this except my grandfather and my dad. Why I'm showing Shoe, and why now, I have no theory. It just feels like I'm supposed to.

But when I open the front door, we walk in to the living room with the light already on, and there is my dad and my grandfather. They're in their usual spots, my dad on the couch, and Paps in the La-Z-Boy.

They're drinking champagne, which is extremely strange. They're smiling but it looks sad. They both look completely exhausted. But they pretend to be happy to see us when we walk into the room.

"Lewis! Freddie!" Paps says. "Freddie, it's good to see you! You need a haircut!"

"And you, Sir, need more hair! Let's trade?" says Shoe as he goes over and shakes Paps's hand. Paps is the only person who calls Shoe by his real name, Fred. Frederick, actually. Frederick Shoemaker. Anyway, they have this long battle of wit going on, and neither one of them will ever win it. They really like each other a lot—I think "Freddie" sees Paps as an extra grandparent who's also extra cool.

But my dad is having a hard time holding his smile. I can tell something's wrong.

"What are you doing up?" I ask. "What's with the champagne?"

"It's a reunion!" says Paps. "Welcome back, cancer!"

He's holding up his glass in a toast. This should be hilarious. If this were anybody else's grandfather, anybody else except for about the most deeply loved person I have in my life, this would be hilarious.

But it's not. It's so not.

SHOE TAKES A knee in true Shakespearian flair. "Oh, I'm so sorry," he says.

Dad is looking at the bubbles in his champagne.

I'm looking for an answer. Paps has beaten cancer like three times. He had skin cancer twice and then he had colon cancer. Every time he beat it. He beat it like it was his punk-ass bitch. He was in and out of the hospital so fast that it might as well have been a cold.

So he can beat it again. That's my theory.

But I think the theory has got to be all wrong. I know because of the way my dad can't look up.

I say it anyway, because what else is there to say?

"You've beaten cancer before."

Paps takes a sip of his champagne. "Well," he says, "those were the glory days."

Shoe, who has a knack for the dramatic, who would rather be on stage than anywhere, who can make anybody laugh just by standing there, who played Iago in the Drama Club's play of _Othello_ but got riotous laughter the whole time, can't take the real drama going on here. It's fine if it's only a play.

"I'm so sorry. I'm going to let you be alone with your family," he says and he stands up. He walks past me and gives me a hug with about ten back slaps. I can't even make my arms move. I just stand there and let myself get wrapped up. Then we all stay still and quiet. We hear Shoe's truck start up and drive off. We hear "The Joker" by the Steve Miller Band blasting out of his speakers and fading away as he drives off.

"Ha! That was easier than I thought!" says Paps. "I figured there would be all this wailing and crying. Why aren't you rolling around on the floor and ripping your hair out, Lewis, my boy?"

"Paps, this isn't funny!" I say. "I mean, you have cancer. You've got to check into treatment."

My dad looks up at me, finally. "He's not."

"What? Yes he is."

"No sir, I'm not. I'm drinking to my health," Paps says. "While I got it. But I'm not going to fight it this time."

"Bullshit!" I say.

"It's no use, son," my dad says. I look at him and I realize that he hasn't taken one sip of the champagne yet. "He won't fight it. I've tried to talk some sense into him all evening."

"Why didn't you tell me? I was just out at a stupid playground. I should've been here. We have to fight this."

"You two dunderheads, don't you get it? There's nothing to fight. It's too far. It's going to win."

There's a champagne glass there for me, even though I don't drink. I think hard about it but don't.

Because it's too far. That's what he said. It's too far. I know my grandfather and how he talks, and what he means is that the cancer is way advanced. He's probably full of tumors right now, even though he looks like he usually does. He's going to die from this. Soon.

I sit down on the floor because if I don't I'm going to fall over. I want to cry but I'm too in shock. I don't know anything about how to act because I haven't known anybody who's ever died.

I have no theories for this.

Paps smiles. "Anyway, I _am_ going to fight. But it'll be _my_ kind of fight."

OF COURSE I don't sleep much that night. When I do nod off, I dream of Paps, even though he's in his room with that foghorn snore coming like usual. He's not dead yet. I have to keep telling myself that.

The whole night is like a barrage of memories of Paps and me. For the first time in years, I don't think about Jubilee Marshfield for hours. It's all memories of Paps.

I remember that when I was a little kid, he wore these penny loafers and we'd go to the park and throw around a football. He'd kick the thing and his shoe would come flying off, and I'd fall down in the grass laughing. Every time. Of course he did that on purpose.

I remember that he can't cook worth a damn. He made American Toast because he couldn't figure out French toast. American toast was toast with syrup on it. It's my favorite breakfast.

I remember that he was a journalist in World War II, reporting from Europe as a stringer. He came home and worked at the newspaper in San Francisco for a long time before he came to Minnesota to live with Dad after my grandmother died.

Sounds like a noble, quiet career, but he tells stories from then like nothing I've ever heard. The trains full of soldiers who knew they'd probably die from freezing to death. He wrote about them in a magazine. "Seventy-two well-oiled voices sing in rhythm with the clacking train. The voices are deep for such young men. They are old men long before their time." That's how he wrote it up. I memorized the whole article because it was so perfect.

He covered politics in San Francisco and won a Pulitzer Prize for his writing about Harvey Milk, who was assassinated because he was gay.

Yes, my grandfather won a Pulitzer.

He's the greatest storyteller I've ever heard. He calls himself that.

"I'm just an old storyteller," he says. "But I don't mean that humbly."

I remember that he dresses up in costumes at Halloween and hides in the bushes outside our house. When little kids come up, he jumps out and scares the bejeezus out of them. He's ninety three and he does this.

He's such a badass.

I remember that he married my grandmother in Key West. They eloped. "Well," he says, "they didn't allow boys in her dormitory, so I had to throw these rocks at her window, and when she looked out, I said, 'Hello there. I, well, uh, I thought we could go take a little trip and marry along the way.' She said, 'But I have a chemistry test.' So, we waited until the next night after she took her chemistry test, and she threw her little suitcase out the window and I caught it, and then she came down the fire escape. She had these towels tied to her shoes so she wouldn't make any noise. And we drove down there and got married. That's just the way we wanted to do it. She had to go finish up her classes when we got back, and she still made the Dean's List."

My grandmother died when I was little. He tells the best stories about her.

He is also the funniest man I've ever met.

I remember that he put a whoopie cushion in my chair when I was one year old. He and I started prank-calling businesses together when I was three. By age five, I had more material than most professional comedians. We made up songs ("Way down deep in the snow up in a heap/ A dumb polar bear got tired and fell asleep..."). We had a bit where I was a guy named Scallawag and he was named Inky, and we'd have these long plays, but I can't remember any of what they were about. They were hilarious then, though.

When my parents split, something happened. I took it hard. I was still a little kid, and I didn't have any brothers or sisters to figure it out with. My dad didn't get any of my granddad's sense of humor. He's a good dad and all, he laughs and talks to you. But he just doesn't have the same kind of imagination that just explodes every time he opens his mouth, like Paps' does. Dad is a manager at an organic foods grocery store—he went all hippie back in the sixties and is still kind of mellowed out from that, I think. Great dad, just low-key.

That's kind of why they split up, my parents. My mom used to be a hippie, too, but then she changed and wanted to make it big. She's a lawyer. When they first met, she was a lawyer for causes she believed in and stuff. But then she got wrapped up in it and some big firm hired her on. She got a membership at the country club and started dragging us to social events where she'd network with people. It really killed my dad.

Really, it's better that they're divorced, actually. But when they split, I couldn't take it.

The only reason I got through it was Paps.

"I'll be your pretend brother," he told me. We were at Chuck E. Cheese and I had no interest in it. I wouldn't even eat any pizza. What kid won't eat pizza, even if they are sad?

"Boy, oh boy," he said. "It sure is sad about mommy and daddy." He had this high voice like I was his big brother and he was a baby. "I think I might have to cry all night." He waited, and I didn't know what to say. He said, "Let's throw something. That'll make us feel better." He picked up a slice of the pizza that was all hardened because it had just sat there for so long. Then he winged it like a frisbee at the stage, where it hit one of the robots and slopped pizza sauce all over its shirt. I couldn't stop laughing. Finally I picked up a slice and tomahawked it at the stage, but I couldn't throw too well—I still haven't learned this skill—and it hit this poor little girl who was having a birthday party.

Well, he thought that was funny but probably not very nice, so he went over and said, "I'm so sorry." He picked it up and said, "Sometimes pizza has a mind of its own, you know?" The little girl was looking at him like he was stoned. Then he pretended like the pizza flew out of his hand. It flew toward the stage and got wedged up in the guitar of one of the robots, and it stayed there, hanging on, sagging and flopping around while the music played.

I don't know why but I felt better after that. I started watching people more and stopped doing comedy routines out loud, but I never forgot how powerful a laugh is. I have lots of theories about it, about how laughing is so close to crying, about how somebody who laughs has more friends, about how there would probably be world peace if we had a sense of humor about money.

The whole night, I can't get past that. Paps is awesome. He is a smile. He is a laugh. He is what world peace could look like.

But he's dying. He's alive and dying right in front of me. So there's not much to laugh at anymore.

I miss him already and he isn't even gone.

WE PRETEND IT'S a normal Sunday.

We sleep late. We eat cereal. We watch the Vikings game.

It's turning to late fall so we talk about the weather.

Paps says it looks like it might be a cold one.

He tells us a story from when he was a kid, growing up in San Francisco. It snowed this huge blizzard, and back then they didn't know it was coming and weren't ready for it at all. So Paps was at school and they sent them all home, but the snow got so thick and awful that he couldn't make it. The only place he could see to go was this store.

"Well, I thought it was a store," he says. "But it was a saloon. A bar, I guess you call it nowadays. Well, there I was, seven years old, covered in snow and almost frozen to death. I come tromping in thinking I'm going to be buying some candy and comic books, and all these old men turn and look at me. I didn't know where I was, of course. I thought maybe it was a restaurant or something, I don't know.

"The bartender comes over and says, 'Hey, kid! You can't be in here.'

"I say, 'I can't be out there, either!' Well, that got them laughing. By the end of the storm, I was standing on the counter, singing songs and telling jokes. They were all tipping me, too. I came home, all this money in my pockets, my parents worried to death that I'd died out in the snow. I tell you what."

We eat hamburgers for dinner.

We get quiet. They read. I do homework.

Late, late, much too late for a ninety-three-year-old to be awake, Paps comes by my room.

"Wanna work a little?" he asks.

He means on the book we've been writing together for years. The never-ending book, because we don't want it to end.

I was about to show Shoe the book when I learned about Paps' cancer—that moment comes back to me and it seems like it was ten years ago already. It seemed like such a big deal to prove to him that there is something I do besides watch people.

_I'm a writer_ , I was going to tell him.

But that seems so stupid now. I just want to keep the book between me and Paps. Our secret.

Paps and I have been writing it for three years. It's at about a thousand pages, so it's stupid long. It's an alternate universe kind of book, where instead of money, people trade hours of their life for things. But this kid figures out how to get hours back by making people laugh. He's the funniest person who was ever born, this kid. He just looks at you and you laugh. So he goes around giving people years of their life back just by being a little weirdo. And of course, the Administration wants him dead.

It's stupid long. And it's kind of weird. There are talking animals—rabbits don't get any jokes, dolphins love puns, and the funniest animal of all is the hippopotamus.

I know I'm biased, but the book is fucking hilarious.

Anyway, I tell him I don't feel like working on it tonight. I just don't think I can be funny right now. He says okay. I instantly regret it.

We go to bed.

And I know I've spent a whole day where I was alive but didn't act like it.

Every thing that happened didn't seem real. Because everything feels different knowing Paps is sick.

I spent a whole day watching myself live. I was alive without living.

And that means something totally different now.

So at school on Monday morning, I'm a mess. I haven't slept much in two days, don't really remember what I did for my homework, haven't talked to anybody my age in about thirty-six hours.

I think I forget to shower before school. I kind of barely know that I put on clothes. I look down to check, and yes, I did.

Jubilee is waiting for me at my locker.

"Bless your heart," she says. "Shoe told me about Paps."

"You called Shoe?" Jubilee can't stand talking to Shoe on the phone because he answers with this very actor-ish voice that goes, _Ghellleeeww_?

"I wrote you four thousand texts and you never replied," she says.

"Twenty-seven. Let's be accurate. If you wrote me four thousand, I'd be thinking you were stalking me."

_I wish_.

"Whatever. How are you doing?" She has these eyes that are like lattes, this brown color that I just want to look right back into forever, and I can see in them that she really does care about me.

"It sucks," is all I can say.

I have this theory that words aren't as good as we think they are. They try real hard, you know, they _want_ to work, but they just don't. They're just squiggly black lines on paper, or sounds that come out of our mouths. They're not real, deep down pure communication.

And I realize that I've written a thousand page book full of them with Paps. Irony. Words are good at that. I have this other theory that words, as unawesome as they are, are still the best tool we've got. I don't know which one to believe.

Anyway. Sometimes "it sucks" is the best that words can do.

It gets enough across to Jubilee. Those eyes are still looking right into mine. And they don't stop. And they don't stop. And they don't stop. I don't want to blink. Then she comes in for a hug.

"Bless your heart," she says again. People are looking at us. I like it.

"Paps is so awesome," she says. "This _totally_ sucks. How's he feeling?"

"He seems exactly the same," I say.

"That's great," she says.

"Yeah. Great." She looks at me with a question in those brown eyes. "It makes it hard because he doesn't seem any different at all. It's like he's going to keep on living forever, even though I know he won't. So every time I'm around him, it's like all I can think about is how he's gonna die."

"God," she says.

"Let me know if He answers," I say. Man, I'm pissy.

Shoe comes walking up behind her. He's bouncing along. He cut his huge mop of hair into a mohawk sometime on Sunday. He shakes my hand, pulls me in, hugs me with this hard backslap, pushes us arms length apart, looks at me and nods. Then he bounces off to first period.

Shoe doesn't need words.

BUT THEN AGAIN, sometimes he does. When I get to lunch, he sits down and says, "Let's talk about other matters of great importance."

I must still look like hell. He can tell. And I have to admit, it's a great idea.

"Shoot," I say.

"Auditions. This afternoon. You. And me."

"Auditions?"

"For the play. You're going to be in it. With Jube."

"The fuck I am," I say. I've never tried out for anything. I have this theory that judgment is worse when we seek it out. We're judged enough already. "What play are you talking about, anyway?"

" _Romeo and Juliet_ ," Shoe says.

"Oh. God. Fuck you." I throw my fork into the mashed potatoes that are so gloppy that the fork stands up like a javelin right next to the gravy pool.

Shoe is laughing so hard I have to wait for him to tell me, "No, no, no. Just joking, Lew, just jokes. But you are going to be in the play."

"Mr. Blevins would never pick me." Mr. Blevins, the Drama teacher, is about the size of a sixth-grader, with this prickly moustache and this fake English accent. He's always fluorishing and bowing Shakesperian-style in the hall. He's a kook, so naturally Shoe loves him.

Shoe shakes his head at me. " _Cast_ you, son, not 'pick' you. Yeah he would. But anyway, he's not the director. I am."

"What?"

"Remember when I missed that paper for him and I asked for extra credit? Of course he said yes to _moi_. So, I talked Blevy-kins into letting me do a student-produced play. There's never been a play done just by students at this school before."

How Shoe talked Blevy-kins into this is no mystery. He could get a dog to marry a cat with an hour's worth of convincing. Plus, Shoe's been the best actor in school since freshman year. When he played Iago in _Othello_ , this little scrawny dude with big hair, it was the most evil thing I ever saw. People laughed but it was because he was so scary, I really think.

"Okay. Wait, wait, wait. _You're_ the director of a play. And you want _me_ to be in it?"

"Yes."

"Sorry. I've got other things going on, remember?" Paps is dying. I can never quite forget that.

"That's _exactly why_ you're playing the lead. So you can focus on something else."

"I'm the _lead_? What the fuck play is it?"

Shoe shrugs. "Haven't picked it out yet."

I almost laugh and projectile the mashed potato spackle I have in my mouth. Shoe is smiling and nodding and gets this faraway look in his eyes like he's watching the greatness that is the play before he even knows what the play is or how bad I am at acting.

"Is Jubilee going to be in the play?" I ask.

"Of course. The other lead."

"You know your leads but don't know what play it is?"

"I'll pick a play that fits you two, don't freak out."

He keeps smiling. I take a minute to chew on some of my leathery pizza rectangle. It tastes awful, but I get it every time they serve it. Every Monday, same as always. The world keeps going on, even when it's crumbling all around you, I guess.

Finally, I get too nervous or anxious or something. I want to watch the play, not be in it.

"Why?" I ask.

"Because!" he says. "Wait, what the fuck are you talking about?"

"Why am I the lead in the play?"

"Oh." Shoe sighs. "Jube's right. You don't do anything. She said you need to do stuff. And _being in a play is doing stuff_. That she'll be doing, _too_. C'mon, bro, this could be it."

I'm supposed to be mourning the impending death of Paps, my favorite person in the universe, and instead, I'm being sucked into an unknown play in the remote chance that my unrequited love interest will see the light and pounce on me right when the final curtain closes. No fucking way.

"I DO do stuff. I was gonna show you the other night, remember?"

"Oh, shit! I forgot! I totally forgot after hearing what your Paps said and everything." He puts down his fork. "Okay. Let's go see it this afternoon. Will you still show it to me? After auditions."

"No."

"After I 'pick' you. Yes."

THERE ARE ONLY five of us at the auditions. All of us apparently got talked into coming here by Shoe. Jubilee and me, and Dave Underwood who ate five hamburgers in a row but seems to have recovered, and this tiny freshman that's so crushed on Shoe and is always doing these over-the-top dramatic hand motions in between classes. We never knew her name, because we always called her Dramatical. Turns out it's Lacey Diggs.

Shoe's sitting about five rows back, right in the middle of the seats. He's got these bright lights on the stage and we're all standing up there like a police lineup.

"Alright. My thespians. Please take a script from the front row."

I almost laugh out loud because Shoe said 'thespians,' but nobody else thinks it's funny.

It's some scene from some play. Who knows what it is, really. Shoe shuffles us around and has us read lines with each other. I do a scene with Jubilee, and then I read with Dramatical. Dave and I do a scene where we have to sit side by side in metal folding chairs and pretend to be riding in a car. Dave was the driver and if it was a real car, we would've looked like he was blitzed drunk the way he kept winging the imaginary steering wheel back and forth. I watch a few other scenes.

It's really kind of fun because the script is so bad.

Me: Oliver, you know our mother was nearly killed in that plane crash!

Dave: _YesVictorButshesurvivedshe'sasurvivor_.

Shoe: No, no, no, Dave. See that dot? That's a period. It means you pause. Say it like this: 'But she survived. [Looooong pause] She's...a surVIvor.' Try again.

Dave: _YesVictorButshesurvivedshe'sasurvivor._

With Jubilee, Shoe had us do a lover's quarrel. She was still looking at me with those Bless Your Heart eyes at first, but the scene was so bad, so fucking funny, that there was nothing to do but commit to it. We went deep.

Jubilee: No, Hector! You don't love her! You love MEEEEE!!!

Me: Madam, I never shall see a woman more beautiful than you. Except for her.

Jubilee: I can be more beautiful for you! [And damn if Jubilee didn't actually do that, twisting her shoulder and tucking her chin and batting her eyelashes and tossing her hair. Damn.]

Me: Well, that's quite a sight, Madam. Perhaps I should go break your sister's heart.

Shoe: And SCENE! Perfect! Brilliant! My two leads, everyone!

He starts clapping like he overdosed on Zoloft and everybody else stands there for a second, then they start clapping. Dramatical has this pouty look on her face like she wants to kick our asses because she wanted Shoe to pick her. Cast her, I mean. But she claps anyway.

We're piled into my car after auditions, me, Shoe and Jube. Shoe is juiced about this play.

"It's going to be the greatest thing in the history of the school," he says. Everything he says is the greatest, the biggest, the best. If you give him a piece of toast, it's the best piece of toast in the History of Mankind.

"I hope it's better than that script we had today," I say.

"Yeah, man," Jubilee says. "That was like a really awful soap opera or some shit. Where'd you get that?"

Shoe looks out the window for a moment. "Uh. I wrote it."

I can't help it—I laugh. The laugh just blows out of me before I know it's coming. I glance over and Jubilee is laughing, too.

"You _wrote_ that?" she asks.

"Well, yeah. What was wrong with it?"

"Nothing. _Total_ Shakespeare," she says.

"No, seriously, what was wrong with it?"

Here is why I'm in love with Jubilee. I have this theory that words can't do anything right, because I can't say the things that I think about her. But she takes words and uses them like a kiss and a battering ram at the same time, and makes Shoe see perfectly. I can tell it works, because he doesn't argue, and when she's done, it looks like he's ready to go home and start work on a new script for us.

All she says is, "A play has to be more real than life really is, you know?"

Paps is sitting out on the back deck when we get to my dad's house. The air is turning cooler and pretty soon this will all be frozen in ice and snow for months. But for now it's great out here, the sun is out and the wind is just a tad cool. Paps has on his favorite hat and is reading _The Odyssey_ again. He reads that book over and over.

We all go out there and sit for a minute. Jubilee loves Paps. Shoe does, too—everybody does. But Jubilee LOVES him. They flirt like they might elope together.

"That's a fine hat," she says.

"Oh, well, here you go," he says back to her. He takes it off and holds it out for her.

She puts it on at this jaunty angle and winks at him.

"My dear, if my legs would let me, I'd ask you to dance." And Jubilee goes over and dances with him, Paps just sitting in his chair and Jube circling him and ducking under his arm. She's never done anything like that with me.

I keep thinking about what she said, that a play has to be more real than life really is. And this is real life. Watching my best friend, my unrequited love, dance with my favorite person, who's dying at this very moment. How do you get more real than this?

"Paps," I say, when they stop dancing. I have to push Shoe's hands down to make him quit clapping. He'd have let them dance for an hour.

"At your service," he says. Jubilee puts his hat back on and it goes down over his eyes.

"I brought them over to show them the book."

"What book? THE book?"

"They say I never do anything. So I wanted to show them."

I think Paps knows it as well as Shoe does, how I feel about her. He might be dying, but he's as alive as ever. He's got this smirk when he says, "Well, you best show them. I can't believe you haven't already told them about it."

"What book?" asks Shoe.

"Freddie, Lewis and I have written a book about the funniest kid in the world and you are going to love it."

JUBILEE SITS ON my bed and Shoe takes my chair, so I have to stand there in my own room. It feels weird. Maybe I'm supposed to give a speech or have on a tie or something. I don't know.

Everything about the moment feels awkward. A zillion questions pummel my skull.

Why haven't I shown this to them, my two best friends?

What was I afraid of?

Or ashamed of?

But on the other hand, why aren't I sitting down with Paps to write more and finish the book? Shouldn't I just be near him while I can, or to get him to tell me as many stories as I can bear to hear?

I need to bottle him up, just the essence of Paps. That's what I need.

"Sorry, guys. This is stupid. You don't want to see this."

"The fuck we don't," says Shoe. "I want this book in my hands right now, young man." He's got his voice sounding like Mr. McManus, the principal, who he can mimic perfectly.

"Yeah, Lewis. Don't puss out on us. We want to see it," Jubilee says.

"Okay. Fine," I say. My hands are trembling. This is so stupid.

I take the book out of the drawer and plop it on my desk. It's a big stack of loose pages that has edges poking out and crumpled parts.

"Holy shit!" Shoe says. "You wrote a book by hand?"

"Typewriter. Paps doesn't get computers," I say.

"I do bite my thumb at ye, sir!" Shoe says. I guess that's something from a play because he does it in his really bad English accent.

"Well, give it here," Jubilee says.

"You want to read it? No! I mean," I say, and pause. Then I gesture at the messy pile of papers, "There it is. Paps and I wrote this. Here's proof that I do stuff. A lot."

"Yes we want to read it, you freak," she says. It's one of those things again—I'm stronger than her because I'm a guy and she's a girl, but there is nothing I can do to fight her off. It's like her Girl Aura freezes me in a spell and holds me still and in awe while I watch her get up and come over and grab the papers and then sit down on the bed.

"What's it about, anyway?" asks Shoe.

"This kid." I don't know how to explain it. How do you explain something that's so deeply a part of you?

I hear Jubilee laugh and my spleen melts.

"Sounds fasssssscinating," Shoe says.

"He's the funniest kid in the world and..."

"Shut your pie holes, you dorks. Shoe, get over here and read this." Jubilee is handing him the first page. While Shoe goes to sit next to her, she looks me over with this move where her eyes widen. It means a million things. It means Why Didn't You Tell Us About This and You're Crazy and Bless Your Heart Because Paps is Amazeballs and—I think—I'm Impressed. Very.

I have to slump down into my chair because my knees explode when she looks at me like that.

They make this conveyer belt where Jubilee reads a page and hands it to Shoe, and he reads it and then stacks it face down. Every now and then they laugh. Shoe looks up to say something and Jubilee hits him on his arm to shut him up. They laugh. They laugh a lot. I pretend to check my email and play with my phone but I can't do anything because I'm so nervous I could puke.

Paps comes in when it gets dark and turns colder. He's so cool he doesn't say anything, but he smiles big and waits by the door.

Finally they come to the end of the first chapter. Jubilee hands it over to Shoe. He reads it and smacks it down.

"Damn. Fucking. Awesome." That's what Jubilee says.

I don't think she knew Paps was there. I look over at him and he's got his eyes all screwed into surprise. We all bust up laughing.

"Sorry," she says. "But I mean, this was so super good."

"If you've got to use words like that about a book, Missy, well, it may as well be the one we wrote!" Paps laughs. "It is mighty fine, isn't it?"

"It's funny as hell and it's breaking my heart and I want to keep on reading the next chapter. How long have you been working on this?"

"About three years now, right, Lewis?" he asks. I nod.

Shoe hasn't said anything. He's holding the pages of the first chapter in his hands and holding his face up toward the wall with this faraway look in his eye. He looks like he's at the Coliseum, a gladiator staring down the king in total glory after he slayed some weak bitch challenger. He's so over the top dramatic. He makes eating a grilled cheese look theatrical.

So you know it's awesome when whatever he's thinking comes together in his head and his frohawk jiggles as he snaps his head down to us. Whatever he says will be great and hilarious.

Shoe says, " _This is it._ "

He says it in a whisper like he's found some Lost Tomb.

We wait. He looks at me.

"This is the play." It takes me a second, then I get it. Shoe wants to make Paps' and my book into the play he's directing. The play that I'm the lead in. That Jubilee's in, and Dave Underwood, Worst Actor in the Universe, even worse than me.

This is the play. _This_ is the play?

"This is NOT the play," I say.

"IT SO IS THE PLAY!" says Jubilee.

"Excuse me, young people, but would you mind filling an old man in? What is the play? I'm lost, I must admit. My tumors are all confused."

I die a little bit every time he mentions it. Especially when he makes a joke about his cancer, I die about twice as much.

But they both can laugh at it. I mean, what other choice do they have?

"Shoe is putting on a play," Jubilee says, "and he gets to pick the script."

"I pick this. This chapter. It's perfect."

"Oh, well! Mighty fine," says Paps. "I'd like to see that, wouldn't you, Lewis, my boy?"

Hell no, I wouldn't, I think and I start to say it but— Wait. Waitwaitwait. It's brilliant. Shoe is smarter than his own brain.

"Yes. Hell yes. This is the play?"

"It has to be," Shoe says. He's still in this haze where he's watching the play in his head, figuring out how to stage it, rewriting it. It's like he's on Drama LSD right now.

Paps takes a few steps into my room and nods his head. "When is this play?" he asks. Innocent question, but time means everything to him right now. It stabs at me.

"In a week," says Shoe, still deep in visions of dramatic glory.

Paps nods and I'm still trying to figure out what just happened. We're doing a play of the book I wrote with my grandfather. The first chapter, anyway. In a week.

"In a _week_?!" It's Jubilee. She's screaming, screeching in her fury at Shoe. "That is fucked. That is so Shoe. A fucking week?"

"I didn't tell you? Blevins let me direct but it had to be short, so he gave me only two weeks."

"Two weeks is better, Shoe, but still... Impossible. Just sayin'." She has her arms crossed and won't look at him.

"Then I forgot, so now it's just one week."

"Asshole!" she says. She's standing up and screaming at him. Paps is right beside her with this wild grin on his face.

She won't stop. "This is too good, this story is too good to get ready in a week and your lazy _artiste_ attitude wasted a whole week and you think you're going to pull this together with your shitty actors and no set and no script in a fucking week? Huh?!"

I usually don't like it when girls get mad. I see them fighting with their boyfriends at school where they parade around or flirt with other guys or cry or slam locker doors or whatever. Jubilee doesn't do that stuff. Jubilee does this. She's like a lawyer in a movie, grilling some dude with all her concentration. I'd love to be on the witness stand.

Shoe is also unfazed, in his way.

" _Ze play vill be a sooksess!_ " he says in this terrible French accent.

"Asshole!" she says to him and goes outside.

Paps watches her go and then turns back to us. "She better be in the play, I think, boys."

I'VE NEVER BEEN in a play before, so I don't know how it usually goes.

Is it normal for rehearsals to go on until 1 a.m for school plays? For shouting matches and wrestling matches and at least two stomping-offs every night? Is it a usual occurrence for people to quit the play and then show back up five minutes later like nothing happened?

Because that's what it is like for us. I spend the week sleeping through class hoping not to get caught, then drinking about four Red Bulls and grabbing some supper and then hunkering down in the auditorium. We're supposed to have teacher supervision, so Mr. Blevins comes by to let us in, then he goes into his room and does who knows what. I think he makes YouTube videos all night with the camera equipment, but I don't bother to look them up because I get enough of him at school.

I have a sinking feeling that the play is going to be a disaster. But there's no turning back. There are already flyers up all over the school, and Shoe must not be sleeping because he's inviting everybody he knows to the play. He's got a Facebook invite out for it and he's emailing about four times a day.

I'm sure this is going to suck. We're only doing the first chapter, which stands alone pretty good. But Shoe called it "The Funniest Kid in the World" on the flyers. Way to set the bar low.

It's not funny in rehearsals. I'm The Funniest Kid in the World, and nobody laughs at my lines.

Our rehearsals are as freeform as Shoe's brain.

Jubilee says, "Why is Lewis standing way over there? We're arguing. We need to be over here together."

Shoe says, "Okay. Let's try that. Lew, go over there. No, closer. No, closer. _Closer_."

Jube and I are basically hugging. The bastard. Lucky I'm chewing gum. We do the scene.

"Brilliant!" Shoe says. Which can't be true.

Dave Underwood can't remember his lines. He's supposed to be playing this guy who is like an accountant and a cop at the same time, who goes around marking people up for the hours of their life they spend on stuff. We made him the accountant so he could have a clipboard and pretend to check off hours from people. That way, he can have the fucking script on his clipboard and read his lines because he can't remember them for shit.

I don't know why he's in the play. Dave seems miserable, but maybe it's got something to do with Shoe. Shoe seems to be the only guy who liked how Dave can eat such epic quantities. He's always eating, too. He brings like five sandwiches with him to rehearsals every night.

Dramatical loves this play because she plays the woman who realizes how laughing puts hours back on their lives. She walks all hunched over and has this sour look on her face and all, and one of my lines makes her laugh. Dave has to come up and check off an hour from her, but the checkmark keeps magically erasing when he writes it. So she chases me down and follows me around and laughs, and then goes to look at her hours and lots of checkmarks are gone. She becomes this fangirl of The Funniest Kid in the World.

The thing about The Funniest Kid in the World, though, is that he's not actually _funny_. He's not doing stand-up routines or slapstick or anything. He's just _different_. He's quick and super smart, and lots of his jokes are inside ones. What makes him funny is that he just doesn't live by the rules everybody else follows without question.

It makes for a cool book but on the stage, I'm afraid that'll flop. I'm supposed to be The Funniest Kid, but nobody's gonna laugh at me.

Finally, at 2 in the morning on the last day before the play—actually it IS the day of the play, it's Friday morning—we figure out that Shoe has to go all Clint Eastwood and be an actor/director. It's Jubilee's suggestion, and it's brilliant. Or desperate. Either way, it's the only way we're pulling this off.

We steal a podium from a classroom and set it off to the side of the stage, and Shoe fills in what's going on. He does it in this Anchorman voice, with the script right in front of him, but he reads it like it's straight-up news. Except for his awful accents, the guy is a natural. He makes me sick he's so good.

The final rehearsal with Shoe in the play is like magic. Everything clicks. We all act better, we're all a little more confident, and we know people will be watching Shoe most of the time since he has lots of the lines. We go home.

The next day. I'm not sure if it happens. I zombie through all my classes. I think I even take a test. I haven't seen Paps all week, and come to think of it he hasn't been snoring in his room when I get home. His light is on, but I don't have the energy to talk to him because I have to collapse into bed.

But when school gets out, the adrenaline kicks in. Shoe rounds up the whole cast.

"Epicness is about to rain down," he says. He puts us all in his truck and drives us to Value Village, a thrift store. "Go buy your costumes. On me. You get ten dollars. I just got my last check from my old job at the movie theater."

It's awesome—the play is in three hours and we're just now getting our costumes. I go with a shirt about three sizes too small and these sweet grandpa pants that are blue and red plaid. I find a fedora with a red feather in it.

Dave gets this marching band outfit that is actually perfect for his role.

Dramatical, of course, finds this wrap kind of thing, with paisley all over it. She looks like a waitress at a sushi bar.

And Jubilee gets a dress that fits her perfectly—it's bright orange and very low-cut. She finds these cowboy boots to go with it. She tries it all on and says, "I don't know..."

"I do," says Shoe. "Yes. That's it. Just go buy it. Don't even change out of it."

She looks so good, I almost tell her not to buy it. People will see her. How beautiful she is. They'll fall in love with her, and she'll find one to fall back in love with that isn't me. It's hard having a full-time broken heart. But I keep it down. I'm the one who gets to rub against her in that dress during an argument. It's something, at least.

I just hope I don't pop a massive hard-on up there on stage.

Shoe gets a tie. It's incredible. He finds a tie that has a picture of a naked woman on the back of it. I guess those used to be popular a few decades back. He puts it on and keeps checking it—it's the most hilarious thing he's seen in forever.

We stop off and get Subway for the pre-show meal and eat it backstage. Shoe runs us through a few lines and we goof off, and before too long, we start hearing the doors open and people shuffling in.

There's not a football game this Friday. There's not much else going on for kids. Shoe is pretty well-known and did put out a media blitz. All of this I realize as I keep hearing the doors, and the voices get louder and the auditorium starts sounding like the whole school is there, waiting for one of those dumb speeches from Mr. McManus.

"Do you hear that?" I ask Jubilee.

She listens. "We've got an audience? Let's go see!" She takes my hand and we run up the steps and along the back of the curtain to where it parts in the middle. She takes a finger and barely opens it.

Holy. Fucking. Heart. Attack. Of. Awesome.

It's full. Shoe's got a fucking horde of people to come see this dumb little half-assed play. One week ago, nobody knew about this book but me and Paps, and now there are three hundred people in our auditorium.

For about two milliseconds, I feel like I can't do this. Why am I up here? Why am I IN this stupid play?

But I know exactly why.

I'm doing this whole thing because of a girl.

How many things have guys done in the history of the world because of a girl?

"Hey," says Jubilee, that very girl, right then. "There's Paps, right in the front row! Aww, he looks so cute. He's got on a little tie and everything."

I take a look. He's smiling. He looks like he shrunk this week. He's sitting between my mom and dad, sunk into the chair like he can't do anything else, can't get up or move. He looks tired.

But he's here. Paps is fucking here. It's our book together and he's here to see it.

Now I can do it. I have to do it. It's the most important thing I've ever done.

I DON'T REMEMBER the play that well because of what happens after.

But I do remember a few things.

Dramatical is actually really good. She sounds real, like this kind of world where we spend our life hours instead of our money is really happening.

Shoe is, of course, awesome. His lines make everything make sense.

Dave does a fine job playing the dumb rule-follower because that's exactly who he is anyway.

And Jubilee. Oh, Jubilee Marshfield. Her voice is loud and pure, and the way that dress wraps her up in the lights, it's hard for me to remember I'm The Funniest Kid in the World and not drool all over her.

But I am The Funniest Kid in the World. I can't believe it, but they laugh. Every line I give, they laugh, the whole auditorium. I've never felt anything like it.

Jubilee and I do our up-close argument scene and they laugh.

Jubilee: I don't care how many hours it costs me, because I need that dress.

Me: Do you know what costs exactly zero hours? Being. Naked.

Audience full of high school kids: BWAHHHGRAHGGGGGARRRRGGHHHAHAHAHAH!!

It's probably because I wrote the book that I know how he'd say things. Whatever it is, it comes out right and the auditorium erupts every time I say a line.

It ends. Curtain closes. Shoe is also the curtain puller. He comes running over where we're all huddled and he tackles us.

There's this loud roar coming from the other side of the curtain, but I don't want it to open yet. I like this moment right here for a bit longer, in a pile with friends sharing something nobody else in the world can ever share in again. Plus I'm kind of laying on top of Jubliee.

Shoe gets up and helps us all up. "Stand in a line," he says. He opens the curtain.

And the wave of noise gets louder. Damn damn damn. We all take a bow.

Shoe steps forward and they clap a little louder.

Then he steps back and puts his hand behind me.

"Go," he says.

"What?" I look at him.

"They want you, Dumbfuck," he says, and shoves me forward. I almost fall, and by the time I catch myself and stand up, the auditorium is as loud as it's been. Clapping. For me. I almost puke in my mouth but keep it down. I peek over my shoulder at Jubilee, who looks more beautiful than ever.

I'm about to bow, when I look at the front row, where my mom and dad are sitting on either side of Paps. They're both standing up clapping, and then I look at Paps. He claps, then he stops, then he starts coughing.

That's when all this goes away.

Paps is coughing up blood. Its coming out like volcano lava and it's going all over his tie and his shirt and mom and dad don't see because they're looking at me but then they see my face and see where I'm looking and turn to Paps and bend down and wipe his face and Dad picks him up under his shoulder and they carry Paps straight out the emergency exit on the side of the auditorium, straight out to the parking lot, but nobody else in the audience sees this, they're still clapping and clapping and clapping like the world is still spinning like normal and fuck them for that.

But Shoe sees what happens. He runs over and jerks the curtains closed, and I run off the stage, down the steps, shoot out the emergency door behind them and catch them right as they get to the car.

WHAT HAPPENS HAPPENS fast.

Paps goes into the hospital that night. He's coughing up more blood. He doesn't know where he is.

We wait, helpless, in the waiting room. I watch CNN and hate everybody on there because they're going about their lives like nothing is happening, like whatever _BREAKING NEWS_ they have is more important than this.

The doctors don't come tell us what's going on often enough. My dad keeps asking the nurses and they always say, "The doctors will let us know when there's an update." Every fucking time, same thing, like they're robots.

We see some guys come in after a car accident. They're drunk. They think their broken arms are funny. One of them keeps touching his face that's all raw and full of glass. Assholes like that get to live and Paps has to die. I hate them.

I start to like the nurses because they make the drunk assholes with their non-life-threatening injuries sit out on their gurneys for an hour, and one of the assholes wets his pants.

My mom comes to the hospital, too. She loves Paps—everybody does, and for a moment it's like we're a unit again. She hugs my dad and sits next to me and holds my arm, and I even let her.

Jubilee and Shoe and the rest of the cast come by after about an hour. They've changed clothes and are out of makeup. They cancelled the cast party to be here, but I send them off after a while because this isn't doing any good. It's not their Paps in there in pain. They should be having a party for one fucking amazing play. It should be in honor of Paps, I say. He loved nothing more than a good time. Make him proud, I tell them.

But I don't go. No. I'm here, doing nothing.

Finally, after about four hours, he's stable enough for us to see him. We three head down the hallway, which is darkened since it's after midnight. I think we're probably not supposed to be here this late, but I don't care.

The one thing I want is to see him right now. And the one thing I don't want is to see him like this.

We get to his room and he's not even in the bed. There are three nurses in there flitting around like they've got crushes on him.

"Are you comfortable, Mr. Champion?" one asks.

"Darling, with a smile like that, you could lay me down on a slab of cement and I'd be comfortable."

She giggles. She actually giggles. She's probably seen Paps' wrinkly body and his ninety-three year old dong, and cleaned up the blood that kept spurting out of his mouth. And he still makes her giggle.

They've got him in a chair over by the window. He's wrapped in a hospital blanket that's tucked in all around him so he looks like a lumpy cushion with this disembodied head floating over it.

The heater is on right there under the window and it's blowing his hair. Paps' long comb-over hairs are winging up in the hot breeze.

Out the window there's a streetlamp that puts this bluish light into the room. It's started to snow, the first snow of the winter, and in that blue light coming in, the snowflakes make it look like there's a disco ball going around the room.

We're standing there, watching the light, watching his hair flutter, looking at his suddenly small-looking head poke out of his blankets, thinking how he almost died, but didn't, and he looks right at me.

"Ahh..." he sighs. "This is the life."

I've never laughed so hard. I laugh until I cry. I laugh until I can't breathe and I feel like I might die.

We stay in the room and talk until the sun comes up and we're all incoherent. Doctors start coming around, so we decide we should go home and get some rest and let him rest, too.

In my room, I check my email and phone but don't return anybody's messages. Apparently the cast party was quite epic, as there's a picture of Shoe with a bald head, and a picture of his former fro-hawk hair piled up like a sleeping sheepdog.

I go to sleep with the curtains pulled tight. I sleep like I'm dead.

Until Dad comes in. The door opens slowly and he sits down on the bed. He rubs my leg and I pretend to wake up even though I woke up as soon as he came in.

Paps is gone, he tells me. He died in his sleep.

Like I said.

What happens happens fast.

THE NEXT THING I know, I'm at Paps' funeral, even though I'm sure there were some days that passed in between.

Paps' funeral is also the first funeral I've ever been to that is actually for somebody I've known.

I have a theory that it might be good to take kids to practice funerals. This is not easy. It sucks how things can be surprising even when you know they're coming. Because I am completely unprepared.

I'm so unprepared, I don't even cry at the funeral. I've been crying for days. I'm exhausted and destroyed. There just isn't anything left in me to let out.

Instead, I just watch it happen, like it's not real, like I'm watching the world through a gauzy curtain.

And even though I know he's gone, it feels very weird that his body isn't here at the funeral. There isn't even a casket. I didn't know it, but he wanted to be cremated, so he's just a pile of ashes in an urn somewhere, instead.

Anyway, I can't imagine Paps lying in a coffin underground. Much less lying there forever with those asshole tumors embalmed inside him, the very things that killed him.

That's what I decide while I watch the funeral, which is like a surreal play. Paps arranged the whole thing. He did this years ago, after his second cancer. He picked out hymns, and the preacher told a few stories Paps had written up so we are actually laughing here and there, and everybody but me is crying in between.

When the service is over, we have to stand in the lobby and everybody walks by us and shakes our hands and tells us how sorry they are for our loss. I say thank you, but how can anyone think they know what this feels like?

I just keep thinking about how great that last night was. That Paps saw our book come to life. And I was The Funniest Kid in the World. And I really was funny.

I just keep thinking about him in that chair, saying, "This is the life."

Every now and then, some people who work with my mom—other lawyers—say something like, "Oh, so you're Lewis."

It gets very annoying, until it gets so annoying it becomes suspicious and I turn to my dad when there's a lull in the line while one of the suits is talking to my mom.

"Why is everybody acting so weird to me?" I say.

He shakes his head like he doesn't want me to talk about it. Which of course makes me want to talk about it more.

"Your Paps sure did love you," says the guy in the suit. It occurs to me that these lawyers probably don't have a funeral suit, but that they're wearing something that they'd wear to work. Anyway, when he says it, I look over at Dad with a face that says _See?_

When the suit walks off, Dad says, "Well, it's true. He talked about you to everyone."

Then I make a face that says _Bullshit_. He sighs. "There's an issue in Paps' will," he tells me. "Lawyer stuff."

" _David!_ " my Mom hisses at him.

"He's got a right to know," Dad says, but she's already turned toward the next person in line, wearing an incredibly fake happy face. Dad slumps his head down and rubs his eyes and I can tell the argument is yet another thing he's lost today, besides his father.

So we stand in a row and shake hands and say thank you, and it all sucks so bad that there's nothing to do but say as little as possible to get it over with.

A few hours later and I'm at Mom's house, in the kitchen arguing with her. She says Paps' will is none of my business. That dad is the executor and he already fouled it up with the cremation.

"But I'm in it, aren't I?" I say.

"You're still a minor," she says.

"So? That doesn't mean anything."

"I'm the lawyer here, Lewis. It's a legal document and I get to tell you what it means."

"I'm calling Dad," I say. But she takes the phone away first.

"I'll call him," she says. When she speaks, she barely gives him time for rebuttal. "Yes, he's asking about the will. No. No, I will not. He's not ready. Because, it's a stupid thing to put in a will," Mom says. Then she hangs up.

I am a hair away from walking down the hallway to my room and slamming the door. But if I leave, I know I've lost whatever argument this is. I don't even know what I'm arguing for, exactly.

"If I'm in it, shouldn't I be told what the will says?" I ask. "Isn't there some legal right thing about this?"

Mom does this thing she does. She shakes her head and then reaches up and puts her skull in this claw she makes with her hand, like it's all she can do to keep from pulling her hair out. She usually does that about her job, but this is something more.

This is her signal that the argument is no longer being debated. So I do go slam my door.

I sleep until noon and avoid her for the afternoon until it's time to go over to Dad's for the week.

"How are you doing?" she asks, when I finally emerge.

"Fine."

"You're not fine," she says. "You shouldn't be. None of us are."

"I'm fine. Sad and whatever but I'm fine."

But she's right. I'm not fine. I can't shake the feeling that Paps is not quite gone, that there's one last joke he wants to tell me, one last little nudge with that bony elbow. I'm sure there's something in that will that I really need to know, just because people are working so hard to keep me from knowing it.

Anyway, at Dad's we watch the Vikings game since it was the late one, and we don't say much. Paps' chair sits over there empty and without his wisecracks we mostly just watch the game without talking.

At halftime, Dad goes in for another beer and comes back. He hands me an envelope.

"Almost forgot," he said.

It has my name on it but there's no address or stamp or anything.

"What's this?"

"From the lawyer Paps got to do his will."

"Is it the will?" I ask.

"I don't know, it's addressed to you," Dad says. "But I don't think so, knowing your grandfather. And by the way, I don't think your mother knows about this letter."

I've got it torn in four pieces almost by the time he finishes his sentence. I figure it's whatever part of Paps' will that is about me. I'll get to see him tell his one last joke, or officially bequeath to me his typewriter—as if there is anybody else that would want it—and maybe it won't be so bad.

But.

It's not the will.

It's worse.

It reads:

_Dear Lewis,_

__

_Well, I must be hamming it up with Moses and George Washington by now if you're reading this. You've stopped crying, haven't you? If you haven't, then stop now. You don't look right when you cry. It looks like your face melted in a microwave. Well, that was how you looked when you were a kid._

Holy shit. A letter from the grave. From Paps. Fucking Paps. I walk to my room without saying anything, to finish reading it.

_Now, you may be wondering how I'm sending you a letter in my current state, which had better be a big pile of ashes if your dad did what he was supposed to. Well, it's hard to write without any arms, but I manage. _

_Of course I'm writing this before I go. And I'm having people send the letters I write to you—there's more than just this one. It wasn't hard to do. Remember, I was a journalist for lots of years, and there was a lot of dirt I knew but didn't report. I decided to cash in a few favors with people and they all agreed before I could even finish asking. _

_(And some of them are getting a bargain, let me tell you. For what they did, well, mailing a letter is about the most piddling thing to pay it back. But you take what you can get.)_

_Well, then. Lewis, I'm writing you this letter because I want you to do something very important for me. _

_I want you to spread my ashes, like it says in the will._

_And I want you to spread them in San Francisco. That's where I met your grandmother and fell in love, and that's where I learned to be a journalist first, and then learned to be a human being again when I got home from the war. I left my heart in San Francisco, like that old song goes. But Lewis, I left my fingers and toes and my brain and my guts there, too. My sweetheart is buried there and I want to be with her. She was kind of a feisty one so I'm not positive she's up in Heaven where I am. Wait, now. I'm not so sure I get to go up to Heaven! Hold on a second, I'm going to pray._

_OK. That was easy. Just in case, you know? _

_Well, San Francisco. You don't have any money. I'll take care of that. You don't have a job yet. That's good. You might miss some school, but I think you'll be okay because you have one of the sharpest minds I've ever come across. You'll catch up. Plus, I think you might learn a thing or two on this trip._

_Will you do it for me? I'll never know if you don't. Maybe. Who knows? But I hope you will. It'll be worth it, I promise._

__

_Love always, _

_Paps_

__

_P.S. Oh yes, I forgot. Some people who owe me favors will be sending you three more letters. They will explain everything. _

_P.P.S. What's going on in the book? You better keep writing it._

_P.P.P.S. Why don't you go ahead and kiss that Jubilee girl already?_

I read the letter about thirty times in a row. It's exactly his voice, and this is exactly the kind of thing he'd do. He would never go away without a little panache. He would not wither and die with a whimper. No, even riddled with cancer he schemed up this whole thing.

He would think up some fantastic last adventure for us to have together, even if he's just ashes in a jar.

And I feel absolutely shit-tastically fucking horrible.

Because I don't know if I can do it.

Part II

Words, Words, Words

"OH! THIS IS the greatest thing ever!" Shoe says when I tell him about Paps' letter at lunch the next day. He's showering me with bits of the Sloppy Joe bite that he just took.

"Shoe. My grandfather is dead, you realize. It can't be the greatest thing ever."

"Right. Sorry, dude. But, like, he's so awesome it's like he isn't dead. Paps figured out how to live longer without living. To live with words for forever. That's awesome. We've got to figure it out."

Words again. I think my theory is right, that they aren't as powerful as we'd like them to be, that there are some things they just aren't good enough for. This is one of them. Whatever the letters say, they aren't good enough, because they aren't Paps himself, alive.

Thinking things like this will make you not say anything. I just sit there.

"Dude. Lewis. Wake up. You have to go talk to Blevins." Shoe inhales about half his Sloppy Joe as he tells me this.

"What does he want?"

"You. To be in _Our Town_."

I make a sound like I'm hocking up a gallon of snot. Because, I know why Mr. Blevins wants me to be in the next play, and it's the dumbest thing, like, ever.

For whatever reason, since the play the other night, I've become a minor celebrity around school. People look at me in the halls now. I'm actually recognized for the first time. Nobody's asking me for autographs or anything, but I get a few nods and some of the younger girls who hang around Dramatical giggle at me while she does a gratuitous pirouette around a corner.

And nobody seems to realize that my favorite person in the universe has died in the meantime and _I don't actually feel like being their minor celebrity._

Apparently Mr. Blevins is one of my fake groupies, too. Great. He probably just wants me so he can use what Shoe did, all that publicity and all that work to put on one awesome play, to make himself look like he does some actual work.

I have this theory that people who are failures shouldn't be teachers. Blevins wanted to be an actor, and here he is, teaching high school drama. He isn't happy and he's supposed to be some model for us of how to act as an adult. It's like we're being taught to be miserable our whole lives. People who are failures bleed Fail on everybody.

"So are you gonna?" Shoe asks. He's inhaled his entire tray.

"Gonna what?"

"Go see Blevy-kins? He already has your part picked out."

"Probably not." I don't even touch anything on my tray except for the cookie. I still don't feel right about anything. I miss Paps and I know I'm going to let him down because I can't see how I'll be able to spread his ashes. Now Shoe wants in, saying 'we' have to figure it out.

It isn't his Paps, it isn't his job. It's mine. But I wish it wasn't. Shoe would be much better at it.

"Come on, Lew-lew. He's got everybody from my play trying out. We're like The New Lord Chamberlain's Men. Except we have girls. We're The New Lord Chamberlain's _People_. We've got to keep it going, man. You were great, you know?"

"I wasn't great. I can't do it again, anyway. I don't want people looking at me right now."

As if on cue, the talented little Dramatical walks by just then with her little gaggle of girlfriends. She waves at me and I look at her without waving back or anything, and for some reason they all giggle and huddle together more closely. Like I said: Girls. Wow. I mean, that huddle was as powerful as any football team's. They're younger and tiny and pretty and I'm not even in love with any of them, and still that giggle makes me nervous enough that I want to vomit up my liver.

"Lew, they're _already_ looking at you. And might I say, Sir: you are handsome when you're brooding. Might as well go with it. C'mon, it'll be fun." He stuffs a whole cookie into his mouth. "You could use some fun."

I don't need fun. I don't need to be a minor celebrity with freshman girls giggling at me and making me nervous. I don't need to be distracted. And I don't need to take a road trip across the country to some hippy-dippy city where I'll get lost and raped and mugged and won't know what to do with Paps' ashes. I don't need any of this. I didn't ask for it. I didn't ask for Paps to die.

"I don't think so. I just don't feel like it." I shove my tray away from me.

He does this long pause that would be dramatic but I can tell when he's acting and when he's not. And he's not. He means what he's going to say but I don't want to hear it.

"Stop," I say, but it doesn't work.

"No. _You_ stop. I know your grandfather just died and he was awesome and all but _come on_. Remember the other night, about being a zombie for something? Remember that? Jubilee's right. You're not geeked about anything. All you want to do is just watch people? And make up a theory about it? How can you make up a theory about something you've never even done, like fucking _living_? 'All we have to do is decide what to do with the time given us.'"

I roll my eyes—I can't help it, it's like automatic response. "Thank you, Gandalf." Shoe has the entire movie of _The Lord of the Rings_ memorized. I think that's where he learned to deliver lines like he does. "I'll see you later." I get up. I can't stand to be around him right now, or anybody. I take my tray up to the window and hear him behind me. He's doing his voice like a town crier. He's loud and it's a bad English accent, and he does not care who watches him.

"Auditions at 4 p.m.! And Miss Jubilee will be there!"

The man has impeccable timing.

I DON'T WANT to be around anybody. I sit through English and Government and head right for the gym. One of the best places to be alone is in the bleachers around a basketball court in the middle of football season. The lights are off and the room ticks and smells like sweat and plastic. It always feels weird to sit alone in a huge empty room in the dark. All that air in there, all that space, with nothing else but you. I don't know—it's like there's something about being alone in that big space that makes it easier to see the whole world.

I get lots of theories by sneaking into the gym. And I don't even play basketball.

Most of the theories that come to me in the dark today don't do me much good.

Shoe is my best friend. But he's pushing me and I don't like it. I don't want to do anything and why should I have to do something just because people say I need to? I already did that with the last play. I don't need to go through that shit again.

So, I'm pissed. That's not a theory. I don't like it when I get pushed to do things I don't want to do because I'll probably suck at them.

I'm pissed at myself, too. Paps is dead and he wants me to do this thing, and I don't think I can.

But this is what's nagging at me: _Why_ don't I think I can?

Because I haven't done it before.

Because I've never done anything like that.

Because it's easier to think about something like that than to do it.

Because Paps should've known that.

Because I'm a watcher, not a do-er.

Because nobody should ask you to do something like spreading the last earthly remains of somebody they love.

Because Eeyore can't make it.

Because I can't make it.

Because I can't do it. I just can't. I can't dump out my grandfather. Jesus, who can do something like that?

I'm starting to work on a theory about this. I don't get why people can't see that it's not cool to be forced into doing things you don't want to. I don't get what's so great about fucking up and falling on your face and having people laugh at you. I don't see why people do things where they could do that. I just don't.

It's easier to write a book and keep it in a drawer, for me. I wish I hadn't ever shown them the book. It was something special, just for me and Paps.

But then there's the other side of things, like what you read on those stupid motivational posters that guidance counselors always paste everywhere. They say things like "Life is about doing stuff" or "Life is for living." Or, "With great risk comes great reward. All those bullshit sayings with pictures of mountain climbers or cats attacking St. Bernards or whatever.

It'd be nice if I could buy those sayings.

But I just do not know.

Here's my theory: If life is about taking chances, or risking, or going out on a limb because that's where the fruit is, or whatever cliché you want to barf over, then that means life is about failing and losing.

And that just doesn't seem like a good reason for living.

Whenever I would get like this, Paps would come into my room and sit on the bed. "Y'know...?" he'd say.

Sometimes I would snap at him. "No, I _don't_ know," I'd say. I hate myself for that now. But it never stopped him.

"I had an idea today for the book," he'd say. "The kid goes into this car dealership." It wasn't always a car dealership. It was anywhere—a Mexican restaurant or a library. One time Paps suggested the kid started wading around in a goddamn fountain.

I don't know what it was, but it worked. In about a minute we'd be telling the story, writing it down, laughing at the world.

Damn, I miss him.

Paps thought life was about getting the story and telling it right.

Jubilee thinks life is about making memories.

Shoe thinks life is a play.

And I think. And think and think. I think a lot but I'm not sure what to do with it. I'm sick of myself sometimes. I wonder what I'm doing with this one life I've been given.

Jubilee. Shoe. Auditions. Oh, right.

I'm sick of myself because I don't want to do this. But I'm doing it.

For her.

That's what makes me stand up and walk down the bleachers. I'm forcing my feet to move. I have no desire to be in a play.

But Jubilee will be there.

Maybe there's something about her that has something to do with what life is all about. I can't think about it clear enough to make a theory because when it comes to her all I can do is what my heart wants.

I LEARN A lot at the audition.

First is that Shoe's method of auditions—and also selecting a play and writing and rehearsing and wardrobe and probably _everything_ we did with the last play—isn't the industry standard. I'd say he works on instinct. Because Blevins does not.

Blevins runs it like a machine. We all have to wait backstage until he calls our name, and then make this big dramatic entrance from the side. We have to walk right to the middle of the stage where there's an X taped on the floor. And then he asks us what scene we will be doing.

Shoe tells me all this when I show up a little late.

"I didn't think you were coming," he says. "Sorry about earlier. We okay?"

"Sure," I say. I don't know if I believe myself. "Where are the scripts?"

"Oh, dude, you're supposed to have your lines memorized. Did I not tell you that?"

And that makes it easy to say no. I start to walk out, not saying a word. Jubilee grabs me by my arm as I pass by her in the dark. I didn't even see her.

"Where are you going?" she whispers.

"Home. I didn't know we had to memorize our lines or anything. I'm not ready."

"So? Just go out there and read them. Here, here's the script. I'll find you some good lines."

On stage, we can hear Dramatical reciting some lines. She sounds good. For such a little thing, her voice carries around the auditorium like she's got a microphone. Jubilee hands me the script.

"I'm glad you came," she says. "Shoe told me about lunch. How are you?"

It's dark backstage so I can't really see her eyes, but that's probably good.

"I'm fine," I lie.

"He said you got a letter? From Paps? How's that possible?" she asks.

"Uh. Yeah, I did. It was part of his will."

"What'd it say?" she asks, but right then Mr. Blevins calls her name. "Ooh. Wish me luck! I'm so not ready, but who cares! This will be funny."

She rounds the corner from the curtain and into the light of the stage and for that one half second I get to see her. She smiles when the lights hit her and she doesn't squint or anything. It's like she absorbs the light. It's like, to me, she doesn't even need them.

I walk over near a window and try to read the lines she picked out. I can hear her voice and it doesn't sound like she wasn't ready because she's delivering them just fine and she sounds pretty good. I'm sure she'll get whatever part she wants.

Then I start reading the lines. I read the ones she picked out and start trying to memorize them.

But something feels funny. I start paying attention to what I'm actually mumbling. I keep reading further.

I've never heard of _Our Town_ before.

It turns out it's a play about dead people sitting in their graves talking to one another.

It turns out I don't feel much like being in a play about dead people talking from the dead because I have my own personal dead person doing this to me right now.

It turns out I figure all this out right about the time Mr. Blevins calls my name.

Some people—it feels like Shoe and Dramatical—drag me away from the window and shove me around the corner of the curtain. The lights hit me and I know I don't handle them like Jube does. I squint and stagger and when I look down at the stage for the taped X, all I can see is the ghosts of the lights burning in my eyes. So I walk a few paces to where I guess it would be. By the time I can see again, I realize I'm about ten feet away from it.

But I don't bother to go over to it. I'm not doing this play. It's too late to just leave, though, now that I'm on stage.

The auditorium is empty and kind of dark, but I can see the outline of Mr. Blevins sitting right in the middle about three rows back. "And what scene will you be doing for us?"

"I have no idea. Can I just read it? Get this over with?" I ask. There is this long pause from the dark that's kind of hilarious for some reason. Mr. Blevins doesn't know what to do. I'm sure he's making some idiotic pompous face that nobody can see.

"Proceed," he says. Finally.

I read them about as excitedly as if I was reading my Government textbook.

"Interesting," comes the voice from the dark when I'm done. I can hear Shoe behind me whispering very loudly, " _Do it, Lew!"_

"And why, pray tell, did you fail to prepare your lines for your audition?" Mr. Blevins asks.

"I didn't know we were _supposed_ to. I didn't know there were any _auditions at all_ ," I hear myself say. "So I sucked."

"Interesting," he says again. What could possibly be interesting? And who the fuck says "pray tell" anymore? He's got to be making fun of me. Backstage, it's silent. Everybody is listening in on me failing.

"I'm not going to be in the play. Sorry," I say. I start to walk off the stage.

"Drop the script for a moment. Give me Angry," Mr. Blevins' disembodied voice says. I turn and look at him, a little confused and pretty pissed that he isn't letting me leave.

"Yes, excellent," he says. "Give me Pensive."

I don't even know what "pensive" means so I just stand there.

"Yes. Yes. This is very raw, indeed," he says. Idiot.

I hear a whoop from backstage that I think is Jubilee's voice. I can feel my face blush so hard it's like blood's going to explode out of my nose.

Blevins calls out again.

"Be Raw."

"Be _what_?" I ask. "Look, I'm leaving."

"Where are you going?" The voice shoots out like it's some kind of accusation.

"Home." I'm having a conversation with a big empty room.

"What is home like?" it asks.

"Home is empty," I say. I don't even think when I do it. I just say it.

"Interesting," comes that dumbfuck voice of his. He pauses again but I don't wait any longer. I just walk over to the edge of the stage and jump down and head up the aisle through the dark. When I get to the back I pull open the auditorium doors and at the last second I glance over my shoulder. The entire troop of actors trying out is clumped together at the edge of the stage by the curtain, watching me leave.

BY THE TIME I get to Eeyore, Jubilee is there waiting on me. She's sitting on the hood of my ratty-ass car. Walking up to that would be most guy's fantasy. It's mine, but she's waiting there to be my friend, I know.

"That. Was. Awesome," she says.

"Shut up," I say. I throw my bag into the backseat.

"No, it was. It totally was. Your voice up there. There's just this...presence."

Now, I might be wrong, but I've never quite heard her voice do like that before. There is a new layer there. This is a new music. I keep listening.

Jubilee says, "Blevins let us all go right when you left. He said he'd let people know the roles tomorrow, but it was clear who'd be shouldering most of the load." She shoves me on my shoulder. "He meant you."

I just open Eeyore's door and get in. She looks at me through the dirty windshield and mouths _What_? As she gets down and walks around to the passenger door, I have a second where I wonder if, right now, I'm as confusing to her as she usually is to me. She gets in.

"Sorry. But I'm not doing the play."

I'm right. I'm being extremely confusing. The look on her face makes me cringe. I wish I could be normal and just tell her what I mean. I wish I could reach over and pull her to me and kiss her.

We hear tires squealing and Shoe's little pickup comes over about two inches away from Eeyore. "Dude! I had no idea that play was about dead people! Sorry! Can't talk—I'm so late for work they're gonna fry my hand in grease and then fire me. But you were awesome awesome awesome!" he shouts as he peels out of the parking lot and heads to his shift at Wendy's.

"Oh, holy shit," Jubilee says. She's just realized. "Oh, Lewis. I'm so sorry. That sucks."

I guess this is another thing to chalk up to Shoe's impeccable timing. I shrug for Jubilee. She rubs my arm and I die a little.

"Tell me about the letter from Paps," she says. "I can't believe he did that. He was so awesome, Lew."

"Yeah," I say. " _Awesome_. He wants me to spread his fucking ashes."

"Spread his ashes?"

"In San Fran-fucking-cisco."

"In San Francisco?"

I almost say 'I'm in love with you,' just to see if she'll repeat that, too. But of course I don't.

"Anyway," I say, "I don't know if I'm gonna. I just don't know if I can do that."

Jubilee backs up against the door with her back and wipes around in the air like she's erasing the chalkboard. "Wait-wait-wait-wait-wait. Your grandfather. Paps. Writes you a letter. From the grave. Asking you to spread his ashes. In San Francisco. And you don't know if you're going to _do it_? Are you even fucking _alive_?"

I don't know what to say. All I keep thinking is that I wish I was sitting in the backseat watching this happen instead of sitting in the conversation.

After a long and overdramatic sigh, I just barf out what's been eating at me all day.

I say, "There should be a grave, I guess. That's what I always thought, some place to go visit Paps, some grass to cut and stuff. But since he's in ashes, we could keep him in one of those urns and I could talk to him. He'd like that, staying around to keep an eye on us and crack jokes. It's a stupid thing to put in a will. I don't really want to do it. I can't do it. I guess I just want to keep him and not spread his ashes in some strange place."

She pivots ninety degrees in Eeyore's seat so she's facing right at the dirty windshield, like she can't bear to look at me.

Jubilee says, "This is what I was talking about, Lewis. Don't you realize? He's sending you on a fucking _adventure_. That is where memories come from. You will forget that boring funeral. You will forget lots of the hours you spent writing that book with him. You will forget lots of _him_. If you put his ashes in an urn and set it on a shelf, you will even forget that it's him in there."

She pauses and leans toward the dashboard and turns toward me, and she's more beautiful than anything I've ever seen, and she says, "But you will _never_ forget this trip. You will _never_ forget driving your grandfather's ashes across the country on the bravest, weirdest, biggest thing you've ever done."

"Maybe," I say. Because I'm kind of an asshole at the moment.

She groans like the Hulk.

I say, "I just don't know if I can. And I just realized something. I can't do it anyway because I don't even have the ashes."

AFTER SCHOOL THE next day—in which Jubilee doesn't talk to me and Shoe spends the whole lunch talking about Dave Underwood, who scored this prime role in _Our Town_ by some miracle since I wouldn't take it, and how Mr. Blevins still wants me to step in and do it—I get to my dad's and check the mail. There's a letter to me, an honest-to-God letter scrawled in this old person's handwriting.

I don't think I've ever gotten an actual letter in the mail. It's weird. I know Paps and I were tight, but we come from such different times.

It's weird holding this actual thing in my hand that was in somebody else's hand who brought it here, that somebody else wrote on and stamped. And the piece of paper inside here was in Paps' hands, was written by his hand. That's a lot of hands touching something.

Lots of things we write now don't ever touch a hand at all. It's really eerie to think about.

So I don't open the letter. I can't.

Because whatever is in there is asking too much of me. It's something I didn't even want to get asked to do.

I don't even do anything except sit on my bed. It's like I don't exist. Nobody texts me, I don't check my email, Facebook isn't worth looking at, and my dad doesn't come home from work for another hour. My mom will be at work until eight or nine, my best friends are in play rehearsal and they won't come by anyway.

And Paps, who'd usually be here, isn't. We aren't writing together like we used to do about this time.

All alone. I'm all alone in the universe, and I don't even need to go sit in the dark shithole of a gym to think about it. I can do it right here.

Not a good feeling.

It's one of those times that doesn't feel like real time. When I have to mow the lawn or whatever, or sometimes if I drive for a long time, I get in this zone where I'm lost in my mind. Actually I do that a lot, not just those times. Getting lost in thought is kind of my best hobby.

But most people come out of it. I just stay there. I stay there until I hear dad come in. I stay so still that he doesn't even know I'm home. I stay there when he walks right past my door to his bedroom.

The whole time I'm thinking how alone I am. And I'm wondering if it's because of me. If I'm the problem.

I don't want to think about it too hard because I'm afraid I'll start to come up with a theory and the answer will be yes, I am. I am the problem.

So I grab the letter. I look at the handwriting—the return address is also our address, like Paps told them to do that. It's postmarked from Idaho. Whoever mailed this letter must have some real shit in their past. Whoever it is, my grandfather had the power to break them and chose not to. All he did was ask them for a simple dying wish, and they actually did it.

Holy fuck, letters are so weird.

Anyway, I open the envelope. Inside is another envelope with my name on it. It's Paps' handwriting. I take out the pages inside.

I have this sinking feeling, which is kind of a theory, that goes: It's better to be asked to do something you don't want to do by someone you love, than it is to be all alone in the universe. Just a theory.
_Dear Lewis,_

__

_I imagine my funeral was pretty normal as far as funerals go. Likely, it was a bore. I should've planned out a comedy routine or something, I suppose, but planning these letters is already a lot of work. Plus, if you make people laugh at a funeral, I don't know, it seems like they might start doing that cry-laugh thing and start to slobbering and having snot running all over their clothes. _

_Probably better if I go out normal at the funeral and just let the people cry out of boredom. _

_I hope you're not bored. I hope you're excited. I hope you're not mad._

_Because it isn't nothing I'm asking you to do. It's probably kind of hard for you, and these are just words on a page. There's not much here I can say to talk you into it, mostly because I don't have a lot of time to write and rewrite these things to get them perfect. _

_I'm on a deadline. Get it? _

_Boy, that was a stinker. My apologies._

_Lewis, I know there's probably a big part of you that might not want to go on the trip and dump me out in California. I know it won't be easy and it might be kind of a strange thing. But you and I always had a special bond. I've loved writing that book with you, and all the time we had before we even started writing it. You're a better writer than I ever was. You're very special. I didn't tell you that enough, but I hope you knew it anyway._

_I keep thinking that this trip will be our second-to-last great adventure together. _

_But adventures don't come cheap, I know. So, there's a bank account for you. I put the numbers on a little card here with this letter, and I put both our names on the account. It should be plenty to do the trick. _

_Lots of kids would take that money and buy new stuff with it. And maybe there's a better use for it than an old man wanting his old ashes scattered somewhere. There's surely some charity or some starving child who could use it. _

_But I can't help it, Lewis. _

_All I know is, I'm dying as I write this. And not one of my memories, not a single one, has a dollar sign on it. I can't remember a bank balance or a paycheck or even when I just got out of the Service and was so poor I wore the same pants every day. What I remember is the things I did. The adventures I had, with your grandmother, and your dad, and here at the end with you. _

_I don't like the thought of not having any more adventures, and I don't like the thought of you not having any at all. _

_So, go have a look at your money. I'll be in touch again soon to tell you more._

__

_Love always,_

_Paps_

"PAPS." THAT'S WHAT Shoe says and nods when we talk at lunch the next day. He approves of the letter and of this whole organized scheme. "That man knows how to make a story."

"Knew," I say.

"Sorry. Sorry. But, like, you've got money to do it now, and you've got where you need to go. Why don't you do it?"

"Because. There's nothing to do. I don't have his ashes."

"You— Wait, _what_? Wow, small detail there. Did he forget? Do you know where they are?" Shoe asks.

I just shake my head. In English class last year we had to memorize the speech from that Shakespeare play that goes, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." I didn't get the play at all, but I got that line. That's how Shoe sees the world. It's a play and we're actors making up a story. But I don't want to be in this play.

"I'm sure it's no problem," Shoe says, about me not having the ashes.

"Right. No problem. Because I don't want to do it anyway. I don't want the ashes."

"You DO want them. You just don't know it," he tells me. We're waiting on the bell to ring to get on with the rest of the day. It's Friday afternoon and everybody's a little loose, and they don't have play practice so Shoe's itching for something to do.

So when school gets out he's waiting on me by Eeyore in the parking lot.

"C'mon, dude," he says. "Let's go see how loaded you are. Hurry up, I gotta be at Wendy's in like two hours."

What the hell, I figure.

The bank where the account is held is this little one that's crammed in the old Taco Bell that went out of business. It's one of those credit unions, I think, someplace where they still have tellers and people seem like they know each other. Which makes me very nervous. They're gonna think I'm some fake who's stealing money.

And I kind of feel like that's who I am at the moment. A fake.

Because I'm looking at this money without thinking about using it for what I'm supposed to.

So I'm kind of a nervous freak as I walk up to the teller. She's pretty young, probably in college or just out. She smiles at me. Wait—she _smiles_ at me?

"Hi, how can I help you?" I don't think that was a hello-there-next-customer smile.

I'm so nervous thinking about it that I mess it all up.

I say, "I. Um. Hi, hello. Need to check. Account." I slide her the card Paps wrote for me with our account numbers on it.

"Okay, sure, I can help you with that. And what's the name on the account?"

"It should be under Macklin Champion." I pause, then blurt,"Oh, and my name, too, I forgot." I hand her my ID. "Lewis Champion."

"Macklin Champion," the cute girl says as she types in some numbers. "Oh—this is the account for Mr. Mack."

"Mr. Mack? I don't know—that's the number he gave me. I'm his grandson."

"Tall guy, bald, a real gentleman? Really super funny?"

"Sounds like him," I say.

She types something into her keyboard and something starts printing. "I can't believe it. The grandson is here. We love Mr. Mack. It was so sad when he died." Then she leans back and looks down at the other teller who's shuffling some papers around. "Ginger, come see!"

Ginger comes over, this lady about my mom's age. My teller, whose name is Brigit, is smiling even more of that smile that feels like a little more than customer service. Maybe. I try and smile back.

"Ginger, this is Mr. Mack's grandson, Lewis," Brigit says. "He looks just like him, doesn't he?"

"Oh," Ginger says. She puts her hand over her heart and almost melts. This is the most trippy bank ever. "Oh, we just adored your grandfather," she says. "It was the highlight of our week when he came in here. He'd just charm all of us for an hour or two. You must miss him terribly."

"Yes," I say. The _bank_? The people at _his bank_ know he died? He came in here and _charmed_ them? This feels like an alternate universe. I bet Shoe is behind me jittering with happiness at this little play.

"He talked about you a lot," Brigit says. "He said you'd come in looking for this account sometime."

"Yes," I say. I seem to be a Yes Robot. Because my brain is frozen like it's got the spinning pinwheel of death on a computer. And, Brigit is hot. And she keeps smiling at me.

"He always checked the balance on this one to make sure it was okay. It was very special to him," Ginger says. It sounds a little like she's scolding me or something. Brigit gets up and goes to a drawer and pulls out an envelope and some pamphlets.

"It says on the account that we're supposed to get you all set up. Mr. Mack's wishes." She types in some things and verifies my address and takes the paper off the printer. "Well, Mr. Mack's grandson Lewis. Here are the checks your grandfather left for this account. You should get the debit card for this account in the mail in about a week."

When she hands it all to me, our fingers brush and I swear she lets hers linger there a nanosecond.

"Uhmm. So. How much is in the account?"

"I printed you out a balance report for your records, right there," Brigit says and points to the balance.

I look at the number and my eyes go out of focus and I have to keep shaking my head and getting closer and closer until I'm looking at it from about two inches away like I'm an old man. But I'm not charming like Paps.

"Thank you," I say.

"Come back again soon," Brigit says.

"' _Come back again soon_ ," Shoe says in a squealy, high-pitched bad imitation of her voice. For being an actor, he can't do voices for shit. "Dude, she was totally into you."

"No she wasn't. Shut up."

"Whatever, Lew-zer, she was. Why didn't you say something to her?"

I pull Eeyore over to the curb and take out the papers.

"Shoe: I was there to get the account that my dead grandfather is passing me along. It's not a place to be picking up girls."

"Sure it is. She was _into_ you, dude. Banks are hawt! So, what've you got, anyway?"

I look at my friend, who has no idea what he's about to see, and then I just hand him the paper. Shoe looks at it, looks again, bugs his eyes out, looks again, looks at me, opens his mouth in a little O, glances back, looks back at me with a very wide open mouth and says, "Holy shit."

There is $8, 327.14 in the account. That's about $8,275 more than I've ever had at one time.

It takes Shoe about half a second to turn this into a cause for celebration. "Paps! Woo Hoo! Roaaaadddd Triiiiiiippp!" He's leaning his head out the window hollering even though we're just sitting there parked in front of somebody's house. I start driving us away.

He says, "Dude, that's a ton of money."

"It still doesn't mean I'm going. I don't have the ashes."

"Ah! Lew-lew! 'To _die_! To _sleep_! To _sleep_ , per _chance_ to _dream_!'" I think that's from a play. He bangs both of his fists against Eeyore's dashboard as he says it. "Come. On. You've got no job, you can catch up in school, you're getting letters from the dead that this is their dying wish, you've got a pile of cash, you've got a car, your dad would let you go... What reason could you possibly have to NOT do this? Grab life by the balls, dude."

"I don't want to grab anybody's balls," I say.

"Except your own," Shoe says.

"I don't have the ashes and Eeyore wouldn't make it."

Shoe makes this fart noise with his mouth. "Just. Take me to work."

"What? It's like an hour before you have to be there."

"You need to go think this through, is what's needing to happen. I'll get you some chili-cheese fries or something."

We drive over toward Wendy's and don't say a word. Shoe keeps looking at the balance in the account and shaking his head. Right before we get there, Shoe points at this service station right next door.

"Pull in here," he says.

"Where? Why?"

"Here." He yanks on the wheel and Eeyore almost goes up sideways as we do a sharp ninety-degree swerve into the parking lot. "These are good guys. They come over almost every day for food."

I park and Shoe walks in. I follow after, once I take a minute to breathe. I almost drive away without him but I don't.

Inside, Shoe is talking with one of the mechanics and they're looking out at Eeyore.

"Those are good cars, those old Volvos," the mechanic is saying.

"This is Lewis. The car was his grandfather's."

"Looks like he took good care of it," the mechanic says. But it doesn't. The paint is fading and the seats are torn and it rattles like a slot machine tossing out a jackpot.

"It won't start sometimes," Shoe says. "But otherwise she never lets us down."

"Okay, so, we'll look at that and check it over. Where are y'all going?"

"California," I hear Shoe say. "You'll take a check, right?"

It's weird. I don't fight. I don't say anything. I stand there and watch it all happen. As usual.

But it's different, too. I'm not watching just to scrutinize and make up some bullshit theory. It's like I'm seeing something happen that's important, but I don't know why yet.

It's so weird that it's almost like I wake up from it only later, sitting inside a mostly-empty Wendy's with an enormous plate of chili-cheese fries in between us.

"Seriously, why didn't you ask Brigit for her number?" Shoe asks.

"I didn't want to."

"She was into you, dude."

"I think she was into Paps, not me."

"So? Who cares? All you need, is an _in_. Any one will do, and you had one."

"Please tell me that you are not actually saying a dead grandparent is a way to pick up chicks. And anyway. You know."

"Oh, right. Your fake girlfriend, Jubilee. Better get your balls dipped in steel and go for it before Dave beats you."

"Dave? _Underwood?_ "

"He's doing the play, you know. And you're not." He drapes a fry into his mouth and smears chili and cheese all across his cheek. He says, "They have a lot of lines together. I think they're rehearsing at her house."

Then Shoe has to clock in. I don't eat anything else and just watch the chili-cheese fries congeal into a disgusting pile. They call me when Eeyore is ready and I walk over.

"Man, your grandfather took great care of the engine," the guy tells me. "We put in the new starter and tightened up the belts, changed out the fluids and did an oil change. You might want some new tires, but really, everything looks great. Really great," he says.

Whatever.

I write him a check.

And I take my great-engined Eeyore straight to Jubilee's house where I park halfway down the block. Dave's car is there, Dave of the five hamburgers in a row, Dave of the clipboard-acting and the dum-dum voice and the stupid short haircut. Dave of _Our Town_ who had the balls to try out when I didn't. Dave of the Fuck-You, Dave.

But he doesn't know he's doing it. As far as he knows, Jubilee's not taken.

As far as Jubilee knows, she's not taken.

And that is nobody's fault but mine.

It's nobody's fault but mine that, when it's getting dark and I'm sure dumbass Dave wants to go watch our high school's dumbass football game, he comes out to leave and Jubilee walks out with him and they hug right there beside Dave's dumbass Ford Mustang.

And right when they're about to let go, as their faces pass nearby each other, they come together for a quick kiss.

YOU KNOW HOW, when you want to be alone more than anything, you go to the place where you've felt the safest from everything that can crush you and destroy you and ruin your life?

For me, that place has always been with Paps when we were working on "The Funniest Kid in The World." It didn't matter how much Jubilee was breaking my heart without knowing it, or how outside of the world I was from watching and thinking too much. Going there and writing with him always felt safe and good and right.

And that's where I go straight to after I see them kiss. I duck down in my seat and Dave Underwood drives past me, probably to go to McDonald's to stuff his face and then to go watch the football game. I can't call Shoe because he's at work until midnight, and my other best friend who I'm also in love with just kissed another guy. A guy who happens to have a talent for shoving processed food and pink slime down his face.

I shut the door to my room and lock it for no reason. I pull out the pages and Paps' typewriter. He's the only person I ever knew to use a typewriter. It makes you learn to not make a mistake the first time, he always told me.

I think about the last page we wrote together, which was the night before he told me his cancer was back.

I don't even have to read it, because I know what's going on in the book so well, it's usually like watching a movie in my head. But I try to remember the last scene we'd written and I can't see even one word of it.

I can't stop thinking about that kiss. That Dave Underwood touched Jubilee's lips with his. Before me.

I glance at the page. The page is still full of words and those were the last words that Paps and I wrote together and I can't even read them. They're just black squiggles on a white page.

So I put a blank sheet into the typewriter. And I stare at it.

And stare at it.

And stare at it.

My dad knocks on the door to see if I want to get some pizza and watch a movie or something. I tell him I'm good. That is a lie.

I stare at it.

And I keep seeing that kiss.

So I push one of the keys. I don't even look at which one. I just start pushing them one after the other and then I feel my fingers make a word and then another one and they come one after the other, words and more words, and they write about what it means to be a wallflower and why I do it, and what's so wrong with that anyway and maybe nothing. But maybe life isn't for sitting in the bleachers in a dark empty gym. And I'm not even a spectator—I'm alone in a dark empty gym, I'm alone in my room on a Friday night, and outside it's turning to winter and there are football games across town and there is pizza down the hall and there is a girl I'm in love with about seven blocks away sitting in her room not calling me. And what am I to do about this, what am I to do with what I saw, why him, why am I just a watcher instead of someone who does impossible things? Am I doomed to stay this way? Can I be better than I am?

The page is full, I see. It's got typos and the margins are all fucked, but it doesn't matter. I take it out of the typewriter.

I hold it up in front of me.

And I rip it in two, right down the heart.

Then I put in another sheet. And I type some more words.

Because maybe I can be. Maybe I can. I'm not sure because I watch other people so much I forget to watch myself, and forget that I can be watched, too, if I want to, and that in the bleachers in the dark may not be the best place to sit because the view isn't so good, and maybe this is my manifesto, like the manifesto Paps said he wrote one time about telling the best story he could and knowing what was the right story to tell in his heart and not what his boss said it was. And is this mine coming out of me, I wonder?

Because I don't know what it is saying yet but I do know that these are just words on a page, words on a page, words on a page, and I used to think they were powerless to do any good because they couldn't say what needed to be said, and they never could, but damn if I don't feel better just doing this, typing like crazy, no censoring, making words, little black squiggly lines stamped on a white sheet of paper, words, writing, and it's helping me get past why him why dumbass Dave.

It's helping me to realize that there's something in what Paps said about typewriters: they make you learn to not make a mistake the first time. I've been making a mistake all along with Jubilee and not telling her. And what was it Paps said in his letter, that there was nothing in his memory about any money he made, that it was all about things he did? Adventures. He called them adventures.

And what was it Jubilee said, too, about memories, that we won't remember most of our lives? How the days we'll remember are the most important ones, when we get closest to understanding what it means to be alive—all the pain and laughter and kisses and chili-cheese fries that go with those days that we'll remember—and the most important thing we can do with our life is to make more days we'll remember, hopefully for good, for forever?

I remember Paps telling me that nobody on their death bed wishes they'd worked harder. And nobody thinks of people they hate. It's all about the memories of what we love, and who we love.

And the whole point of Everything is to make as many of those memories as we can.

And that is the most beautiful philosophy I've ever heard. It's so beautiful that I type it out. And I stare at it and stare at it and stare at it.

THE WHOLE POINT OF EVERYTHING IS TO MAKE AS MANY GREAT MEMORIES AS WE CAN.

And this page I do not destroy. This one I keep. I fold it up and hide it in the pages of the book Paps and I have written together, somewhere up in the middle, where I will find it again one day and remember how right I once was.

"I'M THINKING ABOUT it," I tell Shoe on Monday.

I took the weekend to cool off and become a human again. I saw Jubilee in the hall and she looked as pretty as usual, but also a little unsure. She asked me if my phone was broken this weekend since I never returned any of her texts and I said I'd lost it in Shoe's truck.

"Thinking about what?" he asks.

"Going."

"Lewis Champion, you're my hero!" he says. But he says it in this whiney voice like it's Dramatical or something. His mind is already sprinting around what we're going to do and how amazing this real life play is going to be.

I tell him the plan I came up with to get Paps' ashes. The last missing key for the trip.

He, of course, loves it.

So, I sit in the back of the auditorium, slouched as far as I can, and watch them rehearse _Our Town_ that afternoon while I wait on him so we can do the plan.

The play is actually really good. Mr. Blevins keeps yelling for people to be raw and open and vulnerable. He keeps shouting for them to " _Risk!"_ Then they say their lines about the same way as before, which Mr. Blevins claims is "Egggg-cellent!"

And Jubilee Marshfield is brilliantly beautiful up there. She's in lots of scenes with Dave and she carries him the whole way, driving the story right through his clunky delivery and his tone-deaf voice. Nobody seems to notice how awful he is, because of how great she is.

When they're done with their scenes, they walk off to separate sides of the stage. This I notice. It's a small thing but it's some kind of hope, a sliver of something that I didn't think was there a few days ago. A chance.

Which, of course, means that I get awkward as hell when I see her as they leave.

"Lewis!" she says. She's surprised to see me stalking rehearsals, so I feel kind of stupid. But there was some kind of music in her voice like she was really happy to see me. Wasn't there? I have to hope so. "What are you doing here?" she asks.

"I...came to...watch. And see," I manage to stammer out.

"Oh?" she asks. That mysterious music again. I swear.

"You were great. It looks good." God, how boring can I be? And where the fuck is Shoe? We've got work to do.

But by some miracle she doesn't mind. It's like we're close friends or something. Which we are. I have to remind myself that—just because she kissed Dave Underwood doesn't mean we're not friends. Especially since she doesn't know that I saw them.

"Thanks!" she says. "It's _such_ a good play. I love it. I wish you were in it with us. There's this part you'd be perfect for."

"Really? Which one?"

"It's that long scene I do with Dave," she says, and all the organs in my torso do a mighty fist pump, though I play it cool on my face, I hope. "Did you see it?"

"I did. You think I'd be good at that?"

"Perfect," she says. Damn. I smile and look down at my shoelaces and search desperately for a word to say or something, and I'm about to settle on a very lame, "Well..." when Shoe saves me.

As if on cue, he walks up to us from the center aisle. "Another good day's work, Jubilee Marshfield," he says and gives her a squeeze on her shoulders.

"Egggg-cellent work," she tells him. It's like a miracle. They're kind of getting along. Or, at least they're appreciating each other. I guess you have to, when you're stuck in a graveyard forever like in this play.

"Me lady," Shoe says, with a very bad Irish accent like in a Lucky Charms commercial, "Ye must be gettin' along, little lassie. We boys be havin' sumthin' fer to do now. Only fer th' boys, now, ye hear."

Jubilee smirks. She's always kind of shot down boy-girl dividing lines. She thinks they're bullshit.

I have this theory that maybe that's why we're best friends instead of being in love. But I don't have time to go down that line right now.

"Off ye go," Shoe says.

"I'll call you later," I say as we turn to go toward Eeyore. It's a Hail Mary.

She still has that smirk on and she says, "You better."

Hell. Yeah.

ONCE WE'RE IN the hall, Shoe says, "Cover me." Like we're Navy Seals or something.

I don't know how to "cover" him as he ducks into the maintenance closet, so I stand in the middle of the hall and look both ways over and over. I hear a lot of banging and rattling inside. I crack the door open.

"Dude, keep it down!"

"I can't find the light switch! Okay, I got it."

I shut the door and just then Mr. Blevins and our principal, Mr. McManus, come out of the auditorium. They're talking about the play. They turn toward us, so I spin around and try to pin the door shut. I don't want Shoe coming out of the maintenance closet right in front of the two of them, or this batshit crazy plan we've concocted is ruined and Shoe'll be thrown out of the play and all kind of shit would go down.

Of course, Mr. Blevins notices me, as inconspicuous as I'm sure I am, leaning against a maintenance closet in the main hallway after school. Just what all the cool kids are doing these days.

"Lewis," he says.

"Hello, Mr. Blevins. Mr. McManus," I basically shout. I try to look like I know exactly what I'm doing.

"Can we help you?" Mr. Jenkins asks. Of course. I can hear some shuffling around inside, but surely Shoe can hear us. Just in case he's lost in Shoe-Land, I kind of bounce my back against the door a couple of times.

"Oh, I'm just waiting for a friend."

"Would that friend be Fred Shoemaker?" Mr. Blevins asks. "Because rehearsal got out about ten minutes ago. You've missed him like two ships passing in the night, I'm terribly afraid." Blevins even tries to make that line sound dramatic, like me missing Shoe is a Titanic-sized tragedy.

"Uh, well, I think he might be rehearsing some lines or something," I mumble. There's all this rustling around in the closet. Thankfully, Mr. McManus is a few steps on down the hall. I'm sure he has more principal-ish things to do than talk to an awkward kid leaning on a janitor's closet.

But Blevy-kins is not leaving. He is fucking magnetized to the situation.

Blevins says, "You know, I loved your audition. You've got a real stage presence. It's a gift, you can't be taught it."

"Yes? Thank you." I really couldn't care less.

"It's a shame you aren't in the play. We could've used you."

I kind of shrug—I still don't want to be in a play about dead people living forever, trapped in a grave. I'm having trouble with my own Paps.

He starts to walk away, but then he does this very Blevins move and pivots on his heel. "By the way, you're much better at acting when you're on stage. Mr. Shoemaker has left the school already, I saw him leave the auditorium." He comes walking back up to me, right in my face.

His breath smells like butterscotch and he's looking right at my eyeballs. And I panic a bit. All the forces aligning against me are suddenly very clear.

Shoe's in the janitor's closet to steal stuff. But we need it to get Paps' ashes.

My mother still doesn't want me to spread them. She doesn't even know that I know, because I don't dare tell her, or she'll get her hands on the ashes and we won't even have the option to take this road trip. She'd probably bury them or seal them up in some safe where they won't have any chance of ruining her career.

Plus, if we get caught stealing from the janitor's closet, we'll get detention or suspension or some kind of punishment and that would also make it hard to pull off my grandfather's last wishes.

Everything balancing on this stupid moment hits me at once and I just mutter, "No, he really is rehearsing, he told me."

"It's true!" says this sharp, high voice that comes barreling through the hallway. We all look down there, and it's Dramatical coming toward us, sashaying with her arms out wide. "Frederick and I were just rehearsing a scene outside. He is _so_ gifted. I just wanted to learn and absorb what I can from him, and get it right."

"I see," says Blevins. She's damn good. I even believe her lie, and I know that Shoe's in the closet right behind me, probably chewing on his arm to keep from laughing. Plus, she called Shoe 'Frederick.'

Dramatical walks up and stands right beside me. She looks up at me with these huge eyes. "Frederick said to tell you he'd be right out. He had to stop off at the little boys' room to tinkle."

All I can do is stare right back into her huge brown eyes to keep from laughing. My insides are blending up in a Smoothie, hoping that this will work.

"Very well. Lewis, I'd like to talk with you about other plays for the spring semester that you must audition for."

"Yes, Sir," I say. They walk away and go into the main office.

As soon as they go in, I yank open the door to the janitor's closet. Shoe's wearing the full uniform that our maintenance man, Ronnie Sessions, wears: blue coveralls with the Castrol mesh ball cap. He's holding a plastic mop bucket on wheels with a mop in it.

"Go, go, go!" he yells in a whisper, and the three of us run out to the parking lot and get in Eeyore and wheel out before we get seen again.

"THAT WAS AWESOME! Lacey, most egggg-cellent!" Shoe says from the back seat where he's sitting with the mop bucket and the mop. I notice that he even went to the trouble of putting on Randy's clunky white shoes.

Dramatical, who I have to remind myself is actually named Lacey, is riding shotgun. She's beaming. She even takes a bow in her seat.

"Yeah, thanks," I say. "Can we give you a ride home?"

"No fucking way," she says. "I saved your asses in there without knowing what was going on. And Shoe is dressed up in janitor clothes and has a mop bucket. I am not going home. What is going on? I'm in."

I give Shoe a look in the rearview mirror. He has this scheming glint in his eye.

"Lew-lew, this could be even better than we planned it. Lacey, can you fake cry?"

"Give me a minute," she says. She turns away and covers her face with her hands. I turn back at Shoe and mouth _What the fuck are you thinking?_ And he mouths back _Trust me._

When Lacey turns back to us, her face is red and puffy and there are real, genuine tears smeared all over her face. " _Why?!! Oh, why did Lord Buckingham have to kill The Baron in cold blood?!?!_ "

Fucknuts, she's dramatical. That's why she's Dramatical. But Shoe loves it.

She still sounds like she's crying when she asks, "Okay, but can somebody please tell me what we're doing so I can get in character?"

By the time we get to Beckman Chapel Funeral Home, where they did Paps' cremation, they're both in character. Dramatical has the waterworks going, making real-sounding, deep sobs. And Shoe is whistling and looking bored and beat down by his sucky job mopping for a living. I'm in character because I'm playing me, mostly.

She and I get out and we walk to the door. She puts her arm around me right then and hugs in tight, so I put my arm around her. She lets out this enormous wail right when I pull open the door.

"Hello," I say to the receptionist. "I was hoping you could help us. Our grandmother is very sick and we're afraid she may pass away soon, and my sister and I were looking for a funeral home. Our mother asked us to come here."

Everything I say sounds totally wooden, like I'm one of those bad actors in a cheap commercial. But Dramatical saves me.

" _Grammmmmmmmyyyyyyyyyyy!_ " goes Lacey. She's getting slobber and snot all over my hoodie. She hugs onto me tighter.

"I'm so sorry," the receptionist says with absolutely no emotion. What a shit job if this is something you have to deal with regularly. She says, "We have some brochures here and—"

"No!! Noooooo!" wails Dramatical. I'm afraid she's going over the top, but the receptionist buys it.

"There, there," she says, deadpan. She hands me a big envelope full of what are supposed to be dignified photos, of plants and bouquets and maybe some artful ironwork or a stupid fountain.

It's the glossy, pre-packaged version of death, not the real gutsy shit that death actually is, where it gets under your skin and festers and hurts and won't go away. At least, that's how Paps' death feels to me.

Dramatical starts to go weak in the knees and crumples to the floor. The receptionist comes around the desk and squats down to comfort her.

Shoe takes this as his cue. He slips in with the mop bucket and mop and squeals it down the hall toward the back. He looks at nobody, like this is normal, something he sees everyday while he works at the funeral home. Where he's never been before.

"She really loved Grammy," I tell the receptionist.

"Let me call someone," the receptionist says.

Up until that moment, everything was working way, way better than the plan I'd had. I couldn't believe how well it was going. It was like it might actually work.

The plan was for me to cause some sort of distraction up front while Shoe slipped into the back, pretending to be a maintenance man, and found Paps' ashes, then wheeled them out inside the mop bucket. But Dramatical is selling this poor receptionist lady on it way better than I could.

When she picks up the phone, though, I realize there are a lot of things I don't know. Like where are Paps' ashes? What do ashes look like? Are they in a bag, or in a jar, just sitting out on a shelf? I have no idea. I have this vague hope that Shoe would be able to stalk them out somehow.

But whoever the receptionist calls doesn't come up to check on Dramatical, no matter how hard she cries. I hear this man's voice down the hall talking to Shoe. There's this back and forth that I can't really hear because Dramatical is clinging onto my leg in complete, soul-crushing grief. But then Shoe comes speedwalking up the hallway past the receptionist, wheeling the mop bucket in front of him. Behind him is a man in all black with a reverse collar. Some kind of chaplain dude, I guess.

"Leave now or I'll have to call the police," he tells Shoe. Shoe does indeed leave. The man bends down to talk with Lacey, who suddenly gets her wits about her.

"There, there," he says. "Grief can be overwhelming at times, I understand."

She wipes her nose with the back of her hand.

"Actually, I'm feeling better now, thanks," she says. She flies out the front door and I'm left standing there with a receptionist and a man of the cloth kneeling on the floor in front of me.

"She was really close to Grammy," I say, and hold up the envelope full of bullshit pamphlets. "I'll take a look and get back to you. Thanks."

We leave, with Shoe ducking into the floorboard of the backseat. He's laughing and shouting down there about how awesome that was.

"Busted by the clergyman!" he shouts in, for no reason, an awful Australian accent.

"What happened?" we both ask him.

"Jesus, that fucking place. There was carpet everywhere, dudes. I was looking around for somewhere to pretend to mop, but I swear there wasn't one fucking tile of linoleum anywhere. So when Mr. Clergy came out, I looked really weird standing there with a mop bucket. He just told me to leave, man. Cool of him. He coulda called the cops, easy."

"You are so my hero," Dramatical says.

"But did you see where they keep the ashes?" I ask. I think they've forgotten that it wasn't just for a dramatic prank. We need those ashes. I need those ashes.

"No fucking clue. It's all wooden doors and, like, maroon carpet. Even the walls had carpet. I don't know where they would be unless I get to look around a lot longer."

I quit talking then.

Because.

We failed.

After we drop Lacey off at her house, Shoe comes up to the front seat. "Sorry, Maestro. That totally didn't work."

No more ideas come to us, so we just sit there and drive in silence. I take him over to Wendy's to drop him off for work.

As he gets out, he leans back into Eeyore and tells me, "Go through the drive-thru and I'll give you some chili-cheese fries as a consolation prize."

When I get to the pick-up window, Shoe comes jogging out the door on the other side of Wendy's and gets back in Eeyore with me.

"I just got fired," he says.

"What?"

"I was supposed to be here an hour ago." He leans across me to the window. "Hey, Robby. I just got fired. Can you comp these CCF's for us?"

"Damn the man," says Robby, whoever he is. He hands us a big bag full of grease and says, "Sayonara, Shoe. Sorry." We drive off without having to pay. Then I go to the park and we eat the fries. We get chili and nacho cheese all over our fingers and it's disgusting, but we don't care. It makes us feel better, even if just for a minute, to jam shitty food into our faces.

When I can't eat anymore, I sit back and sigh. Shoe keeps eating.

"Well that's it," I say. "I can't make the trip. It's over."

Shoe makes a noise like a protest and a question, but his mouth is full. "MMpffrh Phufh?"

"I don't know what I was thinking. I can't spread the ashes if there are no ashes to spread. I shouldn't have wasted any of that money getting Eeyore worked on or thinking about it. This whole thing is just stupid. I don't know what I thought I was going to do. Who would ever let me just take a dumbass road trip to California?"

Shoe swallows. "Paps would've let you."

"And where is Paps?" Shoe just looks at the fries. "Anyway, it's a relief that I can't go. I didn't want to do it. It would've sucked."

"Sucked HOW?" he asks. He thinks this is the greatest adventure we could imagine, even if it is totally morbid.

"You don't get it," I say. It's my whole theory with words again. I can't explain why I don't want to—even though I know that it's mostly _me_ that is keeping me from going. _My_ jealousy that makes me have to stay near Jubilee.

That, and the lack of having the ashes, which makes for an awesome excuse.

I can't help wondering what I'd be doing if our dumbass little play had actually worked and we had his ashes. Would I still be pussing out? There's part of me that thinks I would, even though I don't want to admit to it.

"I do get it. We need those ashes. Paps, man. I don't know. Why didn't he set you up with them to make this easier?"

"This shouldn't be _easy_ ," I say.

"Sorry, sorry. Okay, dude, you gotta drive me back to school. I just realized, I have to get these things back into the janitor closet before the morning. I already got almost arrested by the clergyman bouncer guy, _and_ I got fired. I'm on some kind of streak. Better not push it."

We get to school and I park. He gets out and tells me to just go home. "I got this. You go figure out how to get those ashes," he says.

BUT I DON'T go home. I go see Jubilee.

I send her a text: "You around?"

"@ Home. Come over?"

My heart thumps and I put Eeyore into gear. I can tell that she's annoyed with me for how I'm acting. And it's totally legit. It hasn't been my most shining moment since Paps died. And now that I can't make the trip to dump his ashes out, maybe I can explain everything.

Because I have to try and make it right with her, or as right as I can, anyway. That's what you do when you're completely, insanely, deep-shit in love.

So, being in love sucks. That's the best theory I can come up with in the time between leaving school and pulling up at her house.

The Count answers the door. "Hello there, Lewis. How have you been?"

"Good, Sir. How are you?"

"Fine. Come in. Listen, I was sorry to hear about your grandfather. I knew him for twenty-seven years and seven months. Never met a nicer man."

The Count of course counted how long he'd known Paps. But then he adds something very interesting.

"Jubilee tells me that you're quite the writer. And actor. You wrote a book with your grandfather?"

Wait. What? Jube is talking about me. To The Count. And he remembers.

"I did. But we didn't finish it before he died."

"Well, maybe you can finish it. That's something I'd like to do someday. Write a book."

I hear Jubilee coming down the stairs and I'm pretty sure I sigh out loud in relief. I can't imagine talking to The Count any longer, especially about something as inexact as writing. He wants to write a book, this man who was put on earth to count things? Does not compute.

"Come on," she says and takes my arm. It's like a magic all-powerful magnet when she says things like that. My whole body just goes toward her.

"See you," I say. The Count is standing there watching us go up the stairs. I think he's holding a book of Sudoku. That man loves some numbers.

Her room smells like lotion and every inch of it is covered in posters and pictures and things. There is no inch of wall that isn't covered. There are old concert tickets and a painting of a mule she got at a Thrift Store for a dollar.

She jumps on her bed and goes back to where she was sitting with all her homework spread around her in a little fan. I haven't been doing a lot of homework lately, I realize. It feels so stupid reading textbooks. It's like I've been learning real things, like how to handle death and how to abandon your life for an unplanned road trip.

How to fail at the dying wish of your favorite person in the universe, your grandfather. That, too.

"Haven't seen you in a while," I say. "Your dad wants to write a book?"

"Oh, God. The Count and his book. He always talks about things he wants to do someday. 'Someday.' When the hell is that?"

I sit down on her bed with my feet still on the floor and turn my head to look at her. "Good question." She seems more beautiful than ever. But I can't get that image of her kissing Dave Underwood out of my mind.

"What's going on? You're acting weird," she says.

"Sorry. It's just, this whole thing with Paps. I wanted to do it. But now I can't."

She's got this face that says _that's bullshit_ and _what's wrong_ at the same time.

I tell her the whole story of this afternoon. The plan I had. Playing it off in front of Mr. Blevins and the principal. Shoe in the janitor's uniform. Dramatical being dramatical. Shoe getting busted by the clergyman.

She laughs her ass off.

It's that best friend kind of laugh, not at me. I know. But it still hurts anyway.

"So stupid," I say.

"Why? That was awesome."

"It didn't work. It failed. _We_ failed, you know? I can't do it if I don't have his ashes. And I can't just go back in there and just _ask_ for them now. They'll recognize me. It's over. It's fucking impossible now."

She makes the most sweet face. "Bless your heart," she says. "But it's not."

I flop backwards and lay there looking up at her ceiling. It's so clear and clean compared to all the things covering her walls.

"Have some faith in Paps."

"Maybe," I say. It's hard to have faith in Paps at the moment. It's like he has way more faith in me than he should. But I don't say that out loud.

Instead, I say, "How's the play going?" It's a cruel thing to say, because I don't really care.

"God, I wish you were in it," she says—again—in this kind of long sigh. I look over at her. What I want to do is roll over and crush all her homework and knock her books out of the way and kiss her so hard that she forgets Dave Underwood even exists. But I just look over at her.

"It's a good play and everything. But it's so, like, sad. We're all sitting in these chairs and talking about these memories we have and we don't have anything else to look forward to."

"Shitty. How are rehearsals? How's Dave?" I can't help it.

"Mr. Blevins is a total drag. He doesn't get us like Shoe did. We've got to be all dreary. Shoe literally can't be dreary. He says his lines and they just, like, come out funny anyway. He could tell you that you're going to die of some disease and you'd have to just laugh. But he's good, though. Dramatical is good, too. Dave is actually good at this kind of play."

My insides feel like I just drank a jug of Drain-O.

"Oh really?" I manage. I have to look back at her ceiling.

"He's all blank and deadpan anyway. I don't know. This play's getting me all fucked up in the head lately. He wanted to come over and practice lines the other day and... I don't know."

"What happened?" I say. I have to hear her say it.

"Nothing."

Nothing meaning nothing happened? Meaning the kiss was nothing? Or, Nothing meaning she doesn't want me to know? I look back over at her, and she's looking right at me.

"It'd just be a lot more fun if you were in the play. I totally get why you didn't want to do it, though. God. Sometimes I wish I wasn't, either."

What do you say to something like that? Words. They suck.

I just say, "Yeah." Lame.

I make some excuse about needing to get home to study for a test. I have to leave but I don't know why. Because I came here confused and only got confused- _er_. What was that "Nothing" code about? Not nothing.

When I get up to leave, she walks me downstairs and outside to the front door. She shuts it so The Count can't see us, and we stand on the top stair. And she hugs me goodbye. And it feels real.

I DO HAVE a test in the morning, but as soon as I get to my room at my dad's house, I know I won't be studying for it. There's a letter for me sitting on my bed.

It's postmarked from Poughkeepsie, New York. Wherever that is. I can tell before I open it that it's from Paps. I can see the typewriter letters through the envelope.

_Dear Lewis,_

__

_I want to share something with you. I wrote a lot of articles in my day. Back in the early days when I was a young buck, I would write ten of them a day. Bang, bang, bang. My fingers against these typewriter keys feel as natural as walking and talking. I've always thought the best thing about writing was telling the story that needed to get told. And that's what I tried to do every day I wrote for the newspaper._

_But writing that book with you? Wow, what a ride, kiddo. Lewis, that was the best story I ever wrote. And you were the one who wrote it, mostly. I just helped._

_You always were The Funniest Kid in the World. You just didn't know it. _

_Do you know it yet? _

_Lewis, you gave me the key to something as we wrote that book together. So here's a key for you._

__

_All my love,_

_Paps_

__

_P. S.—I might be watching you. _

_P. P. S.—Make sure your dad is eating something._

_P. P. P. S.—How does the story end?_

Down below it, there's a key taped to the paper. It's stamped with the name of the bank. No instructions, nothing. Just the key.

THE KEY HAS LONGFELLOW CREDIT UNION stamped into one side and DO NOT DUPLICATE on the other. I don't exactly know what I'm supposed to do, but I figure this is just a subtle enough hint that the key opens something over at the bank where Paps was a celebrity and the very cute Brigit works.

The very cute Brigit who for some reason seemed to flirt with me.

I think I would be the most evil person in history if I used my dead grandfather to get a date. But I bet I wouldn't be the first one, either.

I kidnap Jubilee and Shoe and we sneak out of school at lunch the next day. It's easy to slip out of the parking lot and if we get caught, Shoe can talk his way out of a Ukranian court martial, so I'm not worried. I'm nervous as shit, though.

On the way, I have to explain what's been going on to Jubilee. I kinda stupidly, spitefully kept her in the dark about the letters from the grave after I saw her kissing Dave Underwood.

But she takes it well.

"You got MORE letters from Paps after he died? What the FUCK?" she shouts at me, about six inches from my face. And then, after a minute of intense and very loud silent treatment, she says, "And you're only telling me _NOW_?"

So here is where the boy-girl thing gets complicated. I should've told her, because we're friends. But I couldn't tell her, because I wasn't going to do it and she would hate me for it.

"Do I get to read these letters or am I supposed to take your word on it, you two assholes?" she says.

Paps wrote _Why don't you go ahead and kiss that Jubilee girl already?_ on the first one, so, nope. Can't.

"They're kind of private," I lie.

"Like you, Emily Dickinson Writer Boy. Always hiding something." My stomach curls in on itself. Cuts to the bone, that girl does.

To my surprise-horror-angst-joy-embarassment, it is indeed Brigit behind the counter at the bank again. She's looking cute, and it's Friday afternoon and she's dancing a little as we open the door. She looks right at us and sees me and we make eye contact and she smiles. It's not a work smile, either. She's actually glad to see me. There's no other customers in the bank, so she yells out across the lobby.

"Hello Mr. Mack's grandson Lewis. What brings you here?"

I hear Jubilee snicker behind me. But I just walk up to Brigit and they stay back behind the velvet ropes.

"Hi," I say. "I have this key from my grandfather, and I was wondering..." I slide it to her and she slides it right back instantly.

"Safety deposit box," she says. She goes and gets a key of her own and comes back to the counter. "What number is it?"

I shrug. She smiles and looks it up for me. This is too easy. It doesn't feel possible. Too bad I'm already gaga over a girl without a clue about how I feel. I look over my shoulder and Jubilee's staring at me. I feel like puking on Brigit.

"Right this way," Brigit says. I get Shoe and Jubilee to come with me and we head down into a secured room. The walls have a bunch of metal drawers, each one with two keyholes. Some are just the size of a drawer and others are bigger. Paps' is a big one.

When we go in the safety deposit box room, I get this eerie feeling for a second. Paps was standing right here once. He came in this room and put things into this safety deposit box, thinking of me when he did it. He was here and I'm right where he was and for a second it's like he is still here. Then it passes.

I take a second to realize how lucky I am to be here with two people, good friends, who I get and who get me. And all of us got Paps. It's a nothing moment, but maybe those are the ones you should remember but usually don't.

Brigit and I put the keys in each keyhole and the door unlocks. She takes her key and says, "I will leave you to deal with the contents, and you let me know when you're done to lock it back up."

She walks out and I don't look at Jubilee on purpose, because I can't take her joking with me. My heart is kabooming so hard it feels like my hands are going to shoot off. I manage to reach up and open the door to Paps' safety deposit box.

But there's nothing inside it except a cardboard box. I thought there would be a fancy something or other full of instructions for me. Or a crate full of his old articles and letters, maybe. I didn't know what I thought, but all there is is a cube of cardboard that could hold a volleyball, if that.

I take it out. It's damn heavy.

"Dude, what is it?" Shoe asks.

And then I know, before I even open it.

"It's Paps."

WE HAVE TO bust ass back to school before the bell for next period so we don't get caught cutting out at lunch. Eeyore hums and purrs and even takes the turns pretty sharp ever since she got her tune-up.

Shoe is staying pretty quiet. I think he knows what this means. I've got a cardboard box full of my grandfather's ashes sitting in the floorboard beneath my legs and I might be heading away soon to deal with them. He's laying off his usual commentary.

But Jubilee isn't holding anything back.

"How'd he do that?" she asks. "I mean, who put him there, if it was _his_ little safety deposit box?"

"There are a lot of people who owed him a favor," I say. "And a lot of people who'd have done anything for him."

"Like smuggle him into a bank, though? This is C.I.A. shit!" To her it's just awesome and to me it's an awesome responsibility that is sitting right down below my knees.

"He's sending me letters from the dead, Jube. Don't doubt Paps, ever," I say.

"I won't," she says. "And what was up with that bank teller? ' _Hello, Mr. Mack's grandson, Lewis_ ," she mocks in this ditzy voice.

I just shrug. But this doesn't satisfy her.

"Really. I mean, flirting like she's in heat or something." she says.

"Well. I've got...other interests," I spit out.

"You DO?" she says, slipping forward in the back seat and leaning up beside me as I pull into the school. "Who? WHO?? I have to know."

Girls. Sometimes they read the whole world into the way somebody's eyebrow arches at them while they're talking and think it means the person hates them. Other times there's this huge obvious clue and instead of just seeing it for what it is (like me basically saying I'M IN TOTAL COMPLETE HOPELESS LOVE WITH YOU, JUBILEE MARSHFIELD), they instead want concrete proof. They want it tattooed on your forehead and then a plaque nailed into your back saying it.

Words. It's always got to be words. But why? What good are they?

"Nevermind," I say as Eeyore stops in the parking lot and I turn her off. Jubilee has the farthest to go for her class, so she's scooping up her stuff and trying to slip out the door.

"This isn't over, Lew. We will talk later," she says.

Shoe and I just have Government, which is right inside the nearest door, so we're in no real hurry. He comes around and leans against the back door while I stand there looking at Paps in the box.

"Dude, that might've been the perfect time," he says.

"The perfect time? The perfect time to tell Jubilee? What the fuck, Shoe. What should I say? 'I've got my grandfather's _ashes_ here and I might have to skip school to drive to fucking _California_ , and _oh by the way_ I'm in love with you, Jubilee Marshfield.' Say that? Yeah, that'd work."

Shoe doesn't say anything. He's looking over the roof of the car.

He's looking at Jubilee.

She's about ten feet away, just standing there, not walking, just frozen. Our eyes meet and hers are perfectly round, and her mouth is a little bit open and her hair is wild and curly and kind of bouncing around in the winter wind that's blowing in. She looks like the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, right now at this moment.

This moment where I feel like I've lost her, because she heard me.

"Forgot my books," she says. She sprints over and grabs them out of the backseat, then sprints off the other direction. I have to sit down in the driver's seat because my knees have disintegrated.

"I don't think she heard," Shoe says. "I don't know, dude, but I don't think so."

Part III

Miles To Go

COACH CHILTON IS going over the importance of voter turnout in Government class around the moment I zone completely out. He's saying something about voter apathy and how political parties use other issues to motivate voters or whatever.

But I don't care. I'm afraid that I've ruined my chances with Jubilee and that she might not ever want to talk to me again. She probably thinks I'm a friend-stalker. She probably hates me.

The girl I'm in love with hates me. So.

It's completely clear now. There's no reason anymore for me not to go spread Paps' ashes. It's the perfect time to go. Now. Run. Get some space. Do what Paps asked me to do, and be alone for a while, and figure out what to do about the Jubilee Problem. If there is anything to do at all.

I'm so zoned out of Government that I look down and realize I've carried Paps' ashes inside the school with me. So, I pick up the box and take out my keys. Slowly and as quiet as I can, I saw through the industrial tape holding the box closed. Inside, his ashes are in a thick plastic bag that is sealed shut. It's grayed out so you can't really see the ashes at all.

Under my desk, without looking at the keys, I send Shoe a text that says I'M GOING TONIGHT.

PLAY'S 2NITE, he writes back.

I wait a few seconds, then write SORRY.

I'm not really there for the rest of the day, either. I'm gone far away in my mind already.

It turns out it's spectacularly easy to head out with Paps once I think about it. I email Mom and tell her that Dad's been down this week, which is true, and it'd be better if I stayed with him for another week, which is a lie. She sends me one back that says _You're sweet. OK by me. Love you._ She's probably glad because it'll give her more time to work longer hours. And I simply don't tell Dad anything, because he thinks I'm going over to Mom's after school.

They won't let a kid rent a hotel room, so I plan on buying a sleeping bag and a tent at Wal-Mart or something. No problem.

Food is easy. Gas is no problem with the card for the bank account. I've got the ashes. I just need some clothes and a toothbrush. If I didn't need those, I could leave right now, just get a hall pass for the bathroom and drive away to California.

It's creepy how easy it is, really. Why don't we do it all the time? What's wrong with us that we don't realize how easy it could be to start over? There's a theory in that. I'll have plenty of time to think about it on the road. Maybe I'll see what it's like and start over myself somewhere, forget about Jubilee and find someone new.

So when the bell rings for the day, I run out to the parking lot. I'm running to my car and running away from all this and running so that I don't see Jubilee and crush my soul with embarrassment. But when I get to Eeyore, it's looking as sorry-for-itself as ever. Both tires on the driver's side are flat.

I'm there, amped and itching to leave, and I just can't. I feel like I'm going to pick up Eeyore and throw the whole damn car across the parking lot, Hulk-style.

Shoe comes running across the lot, dodging cars. "LEWWW!" he hollers. "Dude, I'm so glad I caught you before you left, I... What the fuck?" he says when he sees the tires.

"I don't know. 'What the fuck' is right."

"Let me call my mechanic buddy, hang on," he says. While it's ringing, Shoe says, "I remember he said you needed new tires."

Shoe talks on the phone and I see her. Jubilee. She comes around the corner of the bandroom and heads for the auditorium door, for some last-minute stuff with the play, I'm sure. Dramatical comes running up to her and they hug. Dramatical is so excited for opening night, she starts skipping towards the door, and Jubilee kind of hurries up with her. But at the last second before she goes in, she turns, just a glance, a sliver of a look right over at me, right in my eyes, and then she disappears.

If I could be a thousand miles gone by now, I would.

Shoe tells me they're sending a tow truck and to wait here. They'll put new tires on all around for the trip, too.

"Dude, I got you this super good deal, and I know you have enough money." He's right. I don't even care about the money, anyway. I just want to be gone.

"Okay," he says. "Look. I know you're ready to go. But will you please come to the play tonight? For me? You can leave right after."

"I'm ready _now_ ," I say.

"You've got to wait on the tires anyway, and when they're done, it'll be time for the play. Just a couple of extra hours. C'mon, please? It'd mean a lot," he says.

"You slashed the tires, didn't you?" I say, realizing it the very second I'm saying it.

"No idea what you're talking about. But you did need new tires, the mechanic said so," Shoe says.

It's so damn funny that I'm not even mad. I don't exactly know why, but I smile.

"Awwwp! You're coming to the play," he says. "LEWIS CHAMPION IS COMING TO THE PLAY TONIGHT, EVERYBODY!" he then announces to the parking lot and the next three blocks around us, his voice carrying like a car's horn. He's backing away toward the auditorium door, the same one I ran out of when I saw Paps cough up blood and this whole thing began. He points at me and winks and goes in.

I SIT IN the back of the auditorium, closest to the doors so I can leave the second _Our Town_ is over. While I wait on it to start, I can't keep my leg from jiggling and my insides are foaming and fizzing like I've swallowed a whole bottle of Alka-Seltzer.

I want to be gone. I want to be out on the road in the black night, just me and Paps, because I kind of don't want to be the me I've always been. Not right now. Maybe not anymore, either.

And all of this makes me start to get up and leave before the play even starts. Just sneak away.

Abandoning my friends on their big night, yes. But at the moment, I just don't care.

I actually start to get up, but right then they flicker the lights a few times so everybody knows the show will be starting soon. All the people there to see the play come walking down the center aisle and I get trapped in my seat by the traffic.

So I stay.

And I am so glad I do.

_Our Town_ is a good story for being so old. But Blevins did it all experimental where there isn't hardly anything on the stage. There's just a black curtain behind them, no set at all. Shoe plays the Stage Manager, and he talks right to us in the audience.

Jubilee plays Emily Webb, the main female character. She marries this guy George, who Dave Underwood plays. They kiss when they get married. It's the exact same kiss that they did in the street, and I wonder for a second if they were just rehearsing. My heart leaps. Pathetic.

But it gets really good at the end. Emily Webb dies while she's giving birth to the kid she's having with George, and they bury her in the graveyard. All the dead people tell Emily not to go back to the real world to experience life again, but she does it anyway. She goes back to her twelfth birthday.

For the whole time I watch this, I don't think about the road trip. I don't think about Paps. I don't think about Jubilee or Shoe or Dramatical or anything. It's like they're really the characters they play up there. I don't even exist for a while, I'm so lost in the story.

So Emily Webb realizes something about life and all I remember is Jubilee saying we have to love our life.

"Every, every minute," she says.

She asks Shoe if people really know how good life is while they live it.

Shoe says, "No. The saints and poets, maybe—they do some."

Then Emily Webb dies all over again.

And I come back to life.

I've got Eeyore tanked up and full, and Paps is snug in the floorboard. I've got new tires and a sleeping bag and I know that I will not miss out on this, on life. I'm going. I'm no poet and I damn sure am not a saint, but I am alive right now and I know it.

Funny how it takes a dead man's play and another dead man's ashes to make me realize _I'm_ not the one who died.

Not only that, but that I've got to actually live. Some theory this one is.

They come out and the audience is clapping and whooing for everybody. The cast pushes Shoe forward and everybody claps a lot louder as he bows. I even stand up on my seat and whistle until Mr. McManus comes over and tells me to get down. Whatever.

I BEAR HUG Shoe when they all come out. Jubilee is behind him and she keeps looking over at me but all these girls keep coming up to her and hugging her. She was awesome and that Emily Webb character must really do a number on girls who see the play.

"That was amazing." I'm shaking his hand like we just did a business deal.

"You're about to leave, aren't you?" he asks.

I just nod.

Shoe says, "I'm coming."

"I've got to do this alone," I say. But the second I say it, I don't know why. What good is living if you do it alone?

Anyway, Shoe doesn't buy it. "The fuck you do. No way in hell I'm missing this. I'll tie myself to Eeyore's roof to take this trip."

Over his shoulder, I see Jubilee hug yet another girl, but the whole time she does it, she's staring right at me and Shoe, and I can't tell what that look is on her face. It's some kind of happy and some kind of scared and some kind of wondering. But it's beautiful and lost to me, I know that.

"We better go right now, then," I say.

"Just let me grab some things at my house and we're off. I'll tell my mom I'm going to the cast party. I'm gonna be so grounded, they're gonna duct tape me to my bed for a year when we get back, but it's going to be so worth it. Anyway, at least I'm unemployed at the moment, so I can't get fired over this."

I don't know what Shoe tells his folks, but he's in there for only about five minutes and comes out carrying a toothbrush and a stack of paper that looks familiar. No change of clothes, no bag, nothing like that.

"Couldn't you at least have brought deodorant?" I say.

"What? I'll use yours."

"No fucking way. Do not touch my deodorant. What's with that?" I take a glance at the papers. It looks familiar. I think I know what it is, but surely I'm seeing things. Nope, I'm not.

Shoe says, "It's your book. I'm reading it." I'm giving him a death stare. "Alright, so I stole it out of your room the other day. But I only stole it because it's good. It's so fucking good. I thought, if we're driving across the country to spread your Paps' ashes, we should read the book while we do it, right?"

He's right. We've got a long drive ahead of us, and, hell, it might be nice to listen to the story all over again during the boring parts of the drive.

I put Eeyore in reverse and back out of Shoe's driveway. It's dark and the leaves are falling like enormous snowflakes and as weird and stupid as this whole thing has been, I feel alive and infinite. I know that I'm living my life.

Just as I put Eeyore in drive, I look ahead. Eeyore's headlights are sorry and one of them kind of strobes because it's loose in the socket.

So the image of Jubilee Marshfield looks like something out of a fashion show, standing in the middle of the street, her hair blowing to the side and a strand of it covering her mouth, her dress flowing out, the bright yellow leaves descending in the headlight beams around her, the flashing of the right light like cameras going off.

She's so beautiful. I shake my head to clear it. I'm imagining things. It isn't real.

But then she gets in the car. It is real.

"For the record, I hate both of you, I think." she says. "But still. I'm coming with you. I'm Emily Fucking Webb. I've got to be alive 'every, every minute.'"

"Until The Count burns you at the stake for breaking curfew," Shoe says. "You know we won't be back for, like, days."

She shouts at us. " _Every, every minute_ , I said. Now drive, Lewis. We've got a long way to go, Fuckers."

RIDING IN A car with two drama kids is already stupid insane. But riding in Eeyore with two drama kids who just got done with a performance—a damn good one—is probably one of the things that would make people seek therapy or turn back for home.

They are skipping the cast party to be here with me, which means they don't have that party to get it all out of their system, so I'm the audience and I'm the sponge and I'm the one who has to hear everything that happened in rehearsals and the backstage almost-tragedies and the little moments when they sort of forgot their lines.

But that's okay with me. It gives us all something to talk about, so that the weird slimy worry about whether Jubilee heard me confess my feelings for her doesn't come up. Every mile that goes by, I worry about it a little less, until somewhere around the Iowa border, I start to actually breathe.

Maybe she didn't hear, maybe we're pretending it never happened. I don't know. But we've got a long way to go, so, whatever works.

While they talk about the play, I keep feeling like I missed out on something. I should have tried harder at the auditions. I wasn't doing well back then. Wasn't actually living.

But then, if I had done that, would the three of us be in Eeyore right now, on the interstate heading to the West Coast? Would I have taken life by the balls and actually done this? Maybe we have to choose what we do, because we can't do everything. It's our choice how we live and what we make up our life to be, I'm realizing. But that's where it gets fucked. Choices suck because they can be wrong so many times.

Anyway, right here in this moment, even though I feel left out of what they went through with _Our Town_ , I know it's right. I know that it's pitch black and we're driving south through Iowa, and it's flat as far as you can see, just a black plain of cornfields and a dark blue sky up above us. Sometime in the early hours before the sun comes up, when we're the only people in the entire world who are awake, we're suddenly near Nebraska and there are signs for Omaha.

The drama kids have quieted down for the last few hours. I think Jubilee fell asleep in the backseat for a while.

"Omaha is supposed to be cool, very indie rock." Shoe says. "I think Conor Oberst lives there."

"Who?" I ask.

"He's this musician guy Lacey turned me on to."

"Who?"

" _Who_ who?"

" _Lacey_ who!"

"Oh. Dramatical."

From the backseat comes this roar of a laugh from Jubilee. "I wish I had that on tape. We are so stupid tired right now."

We stop at 4 a.m. for breakfast at The Flying J, one of those 24-hour truck stops. We all get the buffet and it is pure greasy goodness. Eggs, sausage, biscuits, hashbrowns. There is nothing on the buffet that could be healthy, even if you left to run a marathon right after. You'd never burn it all off and you'd puke after about one mile.

But right then, with the three of us and one other trucker as the only people in The Flying J, it tastes perfect.

We get back in Eeyore and Shoe drives for a while. It's still dark, and Omaha comes up on us slow at first. The city's lights look like the reflection of a Christmas tree in a puddle. We drive through it while the sun starts to light up the edge of Iowa behind us, and still hardly anybody else is on the road since it is the ass-crack of Saturday morning.

"Anybody see Conor Oberst?" I ask.

"I wish," Jubilee says.

"It's a miracle. I feel sleepy finally," Shoe says. When we get through Omaha, we stop at a Starbucks and I buy us all gigantic lattes. We sit in the parking lot and drink them, and this is the real miracle: _after_ we drink the coffee, we all fall asleep. Hard. In Eeyore. In the Starbucks parking lot.

One of the workers wakes us up by knocking on the window. It took me a few seconds to realize where we were and what that taste was in my mouth and why I was wearing jeans to sleep in and why my neck felt like there was a butter knife stabbed through it.

The Starbucks dude could've been a dick. I was afraid he was going to be. But he wasn't.

Shoe rolled down Eeyore's window—they're the old school crank windows—and the Starbucks guy goes, "Can I sell you guys a refill? Get you something stronger?"

Shoe laughed, kind of too loud. We said thanks and backed out and Shoe pulled through the drive-thru for another round of caffeine. Then we were off again, in the daylight this time.

WE DRIVE FOR hours. We barely stop to pee and we only eat what we can buy from a drive-thru or get from a gas station as we fuel up. I've never been on a road trip this long, never really been on one at all.

But there are moments when this feels the most alive I've ever been.

There are long periods where we don't even talk. Just because we don't have to. It's not awkward, and we all know it. We're in the car with good friends and we don't have to keep up this fake face. It's real, and it feels very good.

But mostly we _do_ talk.

When Shoe's around, it just works that way. For a while, we try a schedule where the two people up front talk and the backseat person sleeps, so we can take shifts driving. Shoe gets in the backseat to sleep somewhere around the middle of Nebraska, and promptly does not sleep, but pulls out The Funniest Kid in the World and starts doing a dramatic interpretation of it.

Luckily, it's funny as hell. It's the only thing interesting in the universe at the moment. Driving through Nebraska, I'm realizing how good it was that we did Iowa all during the dark. There is nothing to look at—it's like we're on a treadmill, looking at the same pictures go by over and over. Fields. Some more fields. Oh, look! Fields again.

So, Shoe reading my book is actually awesome. The man does have timing, even if his accents aren't as good as his enthusiasm. Shoe puts some great feeling to it and it's way better than anything we can get on the radio out here. Jubilee takes out her earbuds and we just listen. I hear Paps in every sentence. It's Shoe's voice, but I hear Paps. That rhythm, that style he had. The jokes. It's kind of a perfect moment.

There are a lot of those. Perfect moments. I'll forget the boring hours we're in the car.

I'll remember the entire backseat being full of empty Red Bull cans and Mountain Dew bottles and the smell of Shoe's lunch, as he is the only person I've ever seen get the fish sandwich at Burger King.

I'll remember the cloud game where Jubilee sees a piggy bank and Shoe sees a tree stump and I see an exact replica of a grandfather clock but nobody else can make it out.

I'll remember how Jubilee keeps not answering her phone because she wants to be here. She calls her parents and says she's just hanging out with Dramatical all day, then calls Dramatical and gets her to tell her parents a lie, which Dramatical apparently has no problem with. Then she turns her phone off.

I'll remember the way we left Nebraska and went into Wyoming and Shoe started singing a song out the window at a trucker. The only lyric in the song was " _Wyoming!_ " Over and over, _Wyoming! Wyoming! Wy-O-Ming! Wyyyyy-oming!_

We pull into Cheyenne and I drive us to the first restaurant I see. For a city we've all heard of, this place feels very little and kind of like time never moved. The restaurant is in a hotel with one of those huge old-timey signs full of neon, and it's shaped like a cowboy boot.

"We're going in to sit down for food," I say.

"No! We gotta keep going!" Shoe says.

"I could use a break," Jubilee says. "You buying, Trust Fund?" she asks me.

"Anything you want," I say.

But inside, we crash. We've been in the car for about eight straight hours since our last pee break. We all order enormous breakfasts because this hotel is one of those awesome places that serves breakfast any time of the day. I have pancakes, Jubilee gets an omelette, and Shoe orders some kind of All-American Grand Slam thing that comes on a platter that takes up half the table.

We eat and don't talk much, and when we're done we sit there in a food coma and laugh and look around. The restaurant is not busy, and the waitress keeps coming over and refilling our sodas, so we stay put. It feels very good to be still for a little while.

Finally, I can see there's something on Jubilee's mind. She keeps looking down at her lap and looking out the window, but we can't see out of it because it's dark outside. So she looks at her reflection and looks away quick every time. It's like she doesn't like what she sees.

"What's the matter?" I ask after about ten minutes.

"Ugh. I just—I'm starting to feel bad. I know my parents are worried and I'm going to be grounded for the rest of the school year. I mean, The Count is going to seriously make me sleep in an underground jail cell."

"I thought you got Lacey to lie to them for you," Shoe says. He's in such a light mood, I start to think it hasn't even crossed his mind that we're breaking all kinds of rules and that people are freaking out wondering where we are right now.

"I did," she says. "But how long is that going to fool them?"

"She's a good liar," Shoe says. "Good actor, anyway. Call her and see what she told them."

We listen to Jubilee on the phone.

"Hey! It's going good, awesome... We're in Wyoming. Cheyenne. Yeah, totally. Totally... I think we're going to get to Salt Lake City in the morning and be in San Francisco by the end of the day. Listen, do my parents know what's going on yet?" She laughs. "You're the best, my darling damsel. OK, I better go."

She has a huge smile. "Lacey told her parents that we're putting on _Our Town_ at a midnight performance tonight, at an old theater in the warehouse district. They told my parents, so we've got tonight."

"What theater?" I ask.

"There isn't one. She made it up."

Shoe loves this. He actually claps over it.

"But Lacey can't be home, either—she's having to hide at her friend's house. This is so crazy."

"Yes!" Shoe says. He stands up and almost knocks over all of our sodas. "It is! It is so crazy. It is crazy awesome awesome crazy. You will get your ass burned when The Count finds out. We will all be punished severely. We're skipping school, no matter how fast we drive back. We're going to get detention and probably have our phones taken away and you're going to be locked in the attic and fed meals through a slot in the door, Jube. But we won't remember any of that when we're old. We'll remember that we took the most awesome road trip and we rocked it and when we spread Paps' ashes in San Francisco it will be the best thing we've ever done in our lives yet."

He leans forward on the table right over toward us. It makes Jubilee slide over in the booth and press against me and I love it.

"We are in the middle of a magnificent memory. Right now. And it is delicious."

After that, the waitress stops refilling our drinks, so we leave.

WE DECIDE TO go to a movie to try to relax for a little while before we hit the road again. But once we sit through the previews, we all three get antsy. Sitting is what we've been doing for almost 24 hours in Eeyore, so it feels stupid to sit in a movie theater. I don't really know what it is we've bought tickets for, anyway.

So we decide to go walk around town. And like we thought, Cheyenne is small. Pretty quick, the hotels and stores and stuff end and it's all houses and neighborhoods. It's flat as hell here and a wind whips through the city. We see an actual tumbleweed go by and Shoe freaks out.

Finally we find an elementary school, so we walk around it looking for the playground. It's dark and there aren't any streetlights, because Cheyenne on a Saturday night in this neighborhood is creepy quiet.

So we get on the swings and whisper while we talk. It isn't even late, really, about ten, but the whole world feels like it's asleep except for us three.

Jubilee swings higher and higher. So I start to swing as high as I can, too, and we get really up there, like almost level with the top bar. It feels so good to move through the air like that, swinging up and then falling down backwards, over and over. It reminds me of the night this whole thing started, me and her in the swings at the playground back home, and her talking about making memories. Now we're here, right in the middle of one, like Shoe said.

Shoe and I ride the see-saw, then we go down the slide a few times, then we all get on one of those spinning platforms and Shoe pushes us as fast as he can, sprinting around it, and Jubilee gets slung off down onto the ground. So we all lay down, the three of us looking up at the Cheyenne stars, not talking, not saying one damn word to ruin anything, because we all know something is going on that matters. We're all trying to memorize how happy we are.

A while later we hear a car come creeping by the playground very slowly. Somebody shines a bright light into the playground, at the swings and the monkey bars and the see-saws, so we stay laying down flat where we are. Shoe is laughing.

"It's the cops!" he says. "Somebody must've heard us and called 'em. Hilarious!"

"Just stay still," Jubilee says. Eventually, we hear them drive away, figuring we were gone.

We walk back to the car at the motel and decide to hit the road. I'm more awake than I've ever felt, so I volunteer to drive. Jubilee says she's tired and claims the backseat for a nap. Shoe tells me he's my wingman, ready to go all night. After about five minutes on the highway, he's out. Deep asleep, snoring like a lumberjack.

But I feel so, so awake. All night I can feel the landscape changing. There's something different about the air, like it's thinner. It smells different. Eeyore has to climb a little hill every now and then, and sometimes off in the dark distance, I can see what look like mountains, or at least hills. They're little lumps, a little blacker than the dark blue of the sky.

Then there are long hours where it's flat again, but the grass out on either side of the road doesn't look like farmland anymore. It looks like straight-up grass, a prairie just growing, doing its thing.

And I start to think that maybe that's what life is like. Sometimes you're on a hill and sometimes you're on a mountain, and sometimes you have to go through long flat nothing places where there's just grass growing all around you and nothing else. Maybe I've been in one of those flat places my whole life. Maybe right now in this car with my best friends and grandfather's ashes, right now is my first mountain. San Francisco will be my mountaintop.

When I get home and my mother decides to sue me for the road trip, I'll just be in a Grand Canyon for a while. But the scenery will change, I'm starting to see. It's a theory, but it's a pretty damn good one.

Driving in a silent car through the darkness of Wyoming, I think about The Funniest Kid in the World, and wonder what Paps would've written for the ending. And I figure that's kind of how it goes. We don't know how things will end in real life.

I come up with a theory that we're really lucky if we actually say something cool for our last words. Lots of last words are probably something like, "Don't forget to get garbage bags," or "I love Pringles." I wonder what my last words will be, but I can't come up with anything epic enough.

The night and the dark sky and the black blobs of mountains up ahead make me feel like words aren't enough, and I wonder if being silent might be the coolest last words there are.

The sun comes up in my rearview mirror and at first it's just a hint like the reflections off of a puddle of gasoline. Then it turns the whole sky a dark blue like we're deep underwater. Finally it looks like all of Wyoming behind us is on fire. We're almost to Utah and the mountains up ahead of us look higher than anything I've ever seen in real life. Every now and then on the side of the highway there's a great big rock formation straight out of a Western. These big rocks with sharp edges stick right out of the ground and stare us down.

Shoe starts to wake up, finally, in the morning light.

"Dude. Piss," he says.

I take the next exit and stop on the on-ramp, and he stands at Eeyore's door and pees on western Wyoming. It's the first thing Jubilee sees when she wakes up.

"Oh gross," she groans. "I gotta go too. Where are we?"

"Almost in Utah. Want to just go at their Welcome Center?"

"Yes. I prefer plumbing unlike Mr. Cro-Magnon Man here," she says while Shoe leans back into the car.

"Dude, let me drive. Where are we?"

We change seats and we're off. But it's only about five minutes later that Eeyore starts lurching and sputtering.

"Oh, fuck," Shoe says. He's looking at the dashboard for some sign why my car is dying in the middle of nowhere.

"What is it?" Jubilee and I ask at the same time.

"We're out of gas, kids," Shoe says. He coasts Eeyore over to the side of the interstate and puts on the hazard lights. "My fault. I should've checked."

"Well what the fuck are we supposed to do now?" Jubilee asks. She's pissed off and she has to pee. A lethal combination.

"There was a gas station back at the last exit," he says. "I'll hike back. You two stay here." And he actually winks at me as he gets out of the car.

Like this is on purpose, running out of gas.

JUBILEE ORDERS ME to stay in the car while she walks down the slope next to us and finds some privacy to pee. I look around and see one of those rock formations off to the side of the interstate.

That's when I get this theory. I remember thinking how life is like the drive I did all night, flat places and hills and boring stretches and beautiful moments. And then I see this hill off to the side and I start thinking that life isn't just riding along in a car, it's choosing to stop sometimes, or planning on running out of gas. It's getting out of the car and climbing the mountains you see in the scenery, stopping at the top and taking your shirt off and roaring into the wind. That's kind of what this whole road trip is about.

The mountain is pretty awesome. It's got this rocky face on one side about five stories high, and it slopes down gently on the other, almost like you can see where the earth shifted and lifted up the flat ground to that angle. It's not really a mountain as much as it is a hill, like it's the early stages of the Rockies that we'll get to later today. But it's still beautiful and inspiring and maybe that's why I do what I do next.

Jubilee is walking back toward Eeyore and on some instinct, I get out and walk to meet her.

"Come on," I say. I actually take her hand, and she actually follows me.

We head for the little hill and start walking up the gentle slope. The sun is still coming up and where it hits our backs we feel warm, even though there is a strong breeze that kind of blows us forward and freezes the parts of us that aren't getting the light. Jubilee doesn't say a word, like her worries of last night are back and she knows The Count is preparing his wrath once he finds her.

The grass on the slope is dry and rough with winter coming on. There are little scrubby trees here and there and the soil is hard and rocky, but we keep going without stopping to look at anything too closely because the real view is what we'll see up at the top.

I don't really see any of these details until later. I'm thinking about her. At the beginning of the trip, it was like Eeyore had this huge ball of awkward in the backseat with her, wondering if she'd heard me admit my feelings for her. But the longer we went, and the further we got away from that parking lot at school where I was so afraid, the less scared I was. The awkward died somewhere in Nebraska, and here close to Utah it's turned into courage, somehow.

This is my mountain to stop and climb. This is me getting out of the car and doing something. This is me blowing up everything.

At the top, these awesome square rocks jut out here and there like seats in a movie theatre. The view is unbelievable. Down below us, the interstate looks like a river, even though we're really not that high up. But when we turn the other way, we see all these mountains, some of them still kind of in a white haze as the sunlight first hits them.

And the breeze blows Jubilee's hair around her face and she doesn't even care, she lets it fly and it bounces around in its wild ringlets. She stands up and faces right at the mountains and she pulls her jacket around her a little bit but doesn't back down from the wind or the mountains. I can't look at her enough.

She says, "Wow."

"I know," I say, but we're saying wow to very different things. Her to mountains. Me to her.

"God, are we gonna pay for this," she says. "But this view makes it all worth it. For a little while, anyway."

I'm about to start telling her that I'm in love with her and always have been, but I realize something as I open my mouth and nothing comes out. Everybody always says you have to tell people if you like them. Nobody ever says to keep your feelings to yourself. That's never the advice.

But nobody says _how_ to do it, either. Words fail again. It's like a gamble, whatever I say could hit jackpot or make me go broke. But I don't even know the rules of the game I'm playing.

So I wait a minute, looking at her, looking at a mountain, dying. Finally, though, I can't wait any more.

"Jubilee," I say, and I hear my own voice shaking. She must hear it, too, because she looks at me with this worried stare. "Um, I...uh... You know, uh."

That look on her face gets worse. It's almost like she kind of knows what I'm going to say even though I sound like I'm having a seizure. I take a breath and go for it.

"The other day. In the parking lot at school. Did you hear me talking to Shoe about you?" I ask.

She sighs. And doesn't say anything. She wants me to say it. She's staring right at me.

"That I have feelings for you? That I kinda, you know, love you, or whatever?" I ask.

She looks off at the mountains we're heading towards. Then she starts to cry.

I don't know what I thought would happen. We're on a small mountaintop and she's beautiful and the wind is blowing and I thought this would be an awesome place to have a first kiss and fall in love.

But the moment isn't going that way. I feel my whole body sweat. I feel like I should jump off the steep face of this little mountain and bounce down the rocky edges, because that would feel better than how I feel watching her look away from me and cry.

"I heard you, Lewis. I just hoped I heard you wrong," she says.

"But I meant it," I say. "I do. Love you."

"But _why?_ " she asks, and she looks back at me. She's still beautiful, and I'm still sitting on a rock and she looks so tall and strong as I look up at her. "Why the fuck _do you?_ You're my best friend, and you're gonna fuck it all up so we can't be best friends anymore. You're gonna fuck it all up with _feelings_ ," she says.

"I— I'm sorry."

"You're _sorry?_ Sorry for _what?_ What is that supposed to mean?" she asks.

It's a damn good question. She's a good arguer when there's no answer to the question, and I can't make up any answers to this one. So I just sit there while she looks out at the mountain range again and her mouth opens up in this frowny grimace that kills me.

Finally she looks back at me. "You can't just do this. You can't just do this to a person and tell them something like that. You can't just keep something like 'I love you' to yourself. How could you do that? Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you tell me a long time ago?"

Wait. Pause, Mute, Time Out, because I'm totally confused. Does she want me to not love her? Does she want me to have told her I loved her when I first felt it years ago? Whatever she wants, I can't figure it out enough to say any words about it. She's looking at me for some words that just aren't there.

Instead, we hear Shoe's voice in this loud yell that is tiny by the time it gets up to us on top of the mountain.

"HEY GUYS! I'VE GOT GAS!!" he shouts. He's standing by Eeyore with one of those little red gas containers, jumping up and down.

Jubilee turns and starts running down the gentle slope.

"Jubilee!" I call out. I know not to chase her. But I do chase her. I catch up about halfway down the slope. I take her by the elbow and she throws my hand off, so I run in front of her.

We're both breathing hard, and she can barely breathe at all from the crying. But I have to say something. I have to have the words. I have to stop and climb a mountain or jump off it, either way.

_Every, every minute_ , I think.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner," I say. "And I'm sorry that I sprung it on you, and that you had to overhear it in the goddamn school parking lot. But I love you, Jubilee Marshfield. And I am not sorry for that."

She looks at me, crying harder, and says in a whisper, " _I can't..._ "

I watch her run down the rest of the slope and stop in the flat. I watch her stand up straight and wipe her eyes and breathe so deeply it raises her shoulders. She breathes out and seems to soften. She pauses. Then she takes a step toward Eeyore, then another one.

She doesn't turn around. She doesn't look back for me. She keeps walking.

THE AWKWARD RETURNS in Eeyore. Worse than ever.

Shoe can tell there's something different, like the car is in a different dimension than when he left to go get gas. But we're all crammed in there together and he can't say anything or ask us, and Jubilee and I don't offer to tell him.

I've never felt so empty. I had this idea that she might tell me she's always felt the same way and we'd start making out on top of that hill and the rest of this trip would be the most awesome time I'll ever have in my life.

It's hard to come crashing down the mountain like that.

Jubilee is just staring out the window in the backseat, but she's not looking at anything she sees. I can tell her mind is thundering and she keeps wiping her eyes, but she is too strong to let herself glance over my way.

Shoe does his best.

He says, "Okay, guys, we should be in Salt Lake City in about an hour for some breakfast! Sound good?"

We don't say a word.

He says, "This is amazing out here. It's like we're on another planet, so beautiful."

Silence.

When we cross the state line, he says, "Hellooooooooo, Utah!"

None of this matters. Nothing matters anymore.

Except for one thing. I start thinking about Paps, and how he put me on this roadtrip. He asked me to go on it, not Shoe, and not Jubilee. They came just because, but I am here because I want to be. I have to be.

That's all that matters, me spreading my grandfather's ashes where he felt most alive. Me living out what he hoped for me to do. Me, living.

The manuscript for The Funniest Kid in the World is on the floorboard beneath my feet where I ride shotgun, and I think about all those hours we spent writing it. I can still hear that click-clack of his typewriter going late into the evening. There are so many scenes and chapters in that book that I know by heart. It's so real, like the Funniest Kid is actually alive. He's like another friend, who won't change and won't crush my heart. And I won't crush his, either.

Paps. I need to just focus on Paps, on this road trip, on doing what I am here for. I've got to put Jubilee behind me for now. Maybe later I can figure out a way to be friends with her again.

That's when Shoe finally speaks again. I realize I've been sitting here, all up in my own head and just thinking, for about a half hour.

"Oh, I forgot," he says. "When I was at the gas station back in Wyoming, by some miracle I got like one bar on my phone and there was a voicemail from Lacey. She said there was a great breakfast joint by the airport in Salt Lake City that we had to go to. Sound good?"

"Sure," I say with about as much enthusiasm as a sloth. I couldn't care if we didn't eat at all. I don't feel like it. Jubilee doesn't even say anything.

We're driving through a lot of mountains now, heading into Salt Lake City soon. There are so many ridges and mountains that already have snow on top of them. There are houses that sit way up in woods looking down on valleys. It's really strange how different the world is here, and we're not really all that far from what's normal to us.

How different is the world if we go thousands of miles? What is it that makes it different? Maybe it's the landscape, maybe it's me. Maybe I'm different now, knowing that I just destroyed all hopes of future happiness with my Everything. Even home would look totally different to me right now.

There's a theory in there somewhere.

But, it's weird. I don't feel like nailing down the theory, for once. Instead, I just want to live. I want to go on living, to find my next Everything.

I check my phone but don't have any reception because of all the mountains. Then my mind makes a bunch of connections at once—phone, Shoe's phone, breakfast, voicemail, gas station...and that tiny red gas canister that Shoe had. We couldn't have gotten more than a few dollars' worth of gas.

"Shoe, how much gas do we have?" I blurt out.

"Oh, shit!" he says. We're on empty again. Already.

But we're coming close to Salt Lake City and there are starting to be more exits and towns. We wait for one stressful minute until we see that there's a gas station at the next exit. We coast into it on fumes.

"Dudes. Sorry. I'm filling Eeyore way up, every drop she'll hold," he says as he gets out to pump the gas.

Which leaves us in the car together alone. Awkward.

Jubilee and I don't say a word while we wait. I slouch and kind of sigh to try and look sorry and sad. I take a glance in the side mirror at her, thinking she might be looking out at the cars on the highway or something. But I catch her eyes. They're looking in the mirror, too. At me. She looks away after like one nanosecond of eye contact.

Still, we don't say anything. Finally, Shoe gets back in.

He says, "FOOD! The Shoemaker is HUNGRY. Want to check out that place Lacey said? I think she said it was one of those old timey diner joints, like a Pancake House or something."

"Fine with me," I say. He starts the car.

"Wait." It's Jubilee's voice. God, it's the most perfect thing I've heard, because it kind of sounds like her again. Even though my guts feel like I'm a frog trying to outrun a T-Rex.

She says, "Lewis, will you come back here, please?"

I get right out and walk around Eeyore to sit behind Shoe, who's apparently now going to be our chauffeur through Salt Lake City. The walk around Eeyore, through the exhaust and around the trunk, up to the back door and into the seat, feels like it takes days.

I have no idea what's going to happen when I sit down and shut the door. But I do it. And we're off on our way.

OUT THE WINDOWS, the landscape starts to change. Nature kind of moves off to the background and we start seeing strip malls and suburbs. The mountains start to get a little more mellow and the traffic gets a little heavier. People are running errands, doing their boring routines, waiting to live.

They're not feeling anything like what's going on in the back of the Eeyore car with the Minnesota license plates.

Jubilee and I are at least looking at each other. Every now and then. Then we look down. Then we look out the window.

I'm not sure what's going on, but it seems like this is better than silently staring out of a window at a beautiful landscape without even seeing it. It's nothing. It's us looking around.

But it's better. It's good. Isn't it? I wonder.

All of our phones go off with texts, now that we're in a city and the mountains aren't blocking our signals. But Shoe's dealing with traffic in a strange city and looking for the signs for the airport, so he hands his phone to me over his shoulder.

I don't check his or mine, because Jubilee doesn't check hers. We just sit and watch ourselves get folded into the big city.

I'm looking out the window on my side for a second, at a big building with this even more enormous mountain behind it, and I'm thinking what a picture that is: what man can make, and what Nature can make, and how Nature wins.

And I feel this little pull on my pinkie finger that's on Jubilee's side.

She's got her pinkie kind of wrapped over mine, just kind of hugging pinkies.

But she's not looking at me. She's looking out the window on her side.

I hug her pinkie back with mine, and we sit there, holding pinkies, looking out our windows but I don't see anything anymore. The whole world is in my little finger on my right hand.

"Airport! One mile!" Shoe says. "Shoemaker so hungry!"

She turns toward me and I turn towards her. And now she's looking at me, but this time it's not through a mirror. And this time she holds my eyes and does not look away.

She doesn't make a sound when she talks, or if she does, it's the smallest noise I can hear. It's mostly her moving her mouth, but she also speaks with her pinkie and her eyes and she says, " _Why didn't you tell me?_ "

It feels like she is a tiny bit less mad because she's still looking at me with those eyes and she's still holding my pinkie in hers.

I make a face that I hope shows her _I'm know, I should've told you_. And I take another of her fingers, and we just look at each other for a long, amazing time.

Then her phone goes off again. And again about five seconds later. We all start looking at each other, even Shoe, like something's wrong.

We stop holding pinkies in the backseat and panic.

I check my phone. It's a message from Dramatical—Lacey, I know, but I actually have "Dramatical" as her name in my phone.

It says SORRY.

I look at Shoe's phone. He has two from her.

The first one was sent sometime back when we were up in the mountains. It says, DON'T DO IT.

Then the next one, sent a few minutes ago. SO SORRY. PLS DON'T HATE ME.

Jubilee is flipping out when I look at her. "Holy shit. I've got like a thousand texts and voicemails from my parents and people..." She's trying to flip through them to see what's going on. "My parents. Oh God. They know. They figured out yesterday afternoon." She looks out the window and I can almost see the happiness drain out of her.

Shoe pulls into The Pancake House. "Alright. It's gonna be alright. We knew this would happen. Let's go get some food and figure out what we need to do. We'll call some people and explain what's going on from inside."

"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit," Jubilee says. I take the phone from her and look at it. It's another one from Lacey.

DON'T GO TO PANCAKE HOUSE!!!

"Oh motherfucking shitface fuck," she says. She's looking out the window toward the restaurant.

Then I see him, too.

It's The Count. He's running out of the restaurant and right towards us.

I WONDER IF there's some kind of class you take when you turn into an adult where they teach you the Very Disappointed In You speech for kids who are in trouble.

Because that's what The Count gives us in the booth inside the Pancake House. Anybody who has ever been in trouble as a kid, anybody who has ever gone to a school, ever, knows exactly what his speech sounds like. It's full of Unacceptables and Dangerouses and Irresponsibles. He does lots of dramatic pauses and the three of us just sit there and wait them out because if we say anything back it'll just drag it out longer.

The weird thing about this version of the completely ineffective scolding speech is that we're in an awesome diner, in Utah, and we're scarfing down amazing pancakes.

But we're also silent because we know it's over. We're caught and the adventure is ending. It kind of sucks that Paps didn't think about me getting caught by other adults and failing to spread his ashes. It's like a big gloom that sucks way worse than anything The Count can spout off.

It all makes sense how we got caught, finally, though. When Jubilee didn't show up at home after the fake performance in the warehouse district, The Count went over to Lacey's house. I'm sure she kept him busy for a while, but The Count does like to keep everything monitored, so he probably just called Shoe's parents or my parents, or he might've just asked Lacey's parents about the midnight show.

Of course it all came unraveled pretty quickly, and once they got to my parents they figured out where we were going and what we were doing. When none of us answered phone calls from our parents, The Count made Lacey leave that message about coming to The Pancake House to lure us, and then he hopped the earliest flight here and sprung his trap.

Apparently there were cops in all kinds of Western states who'd been alerted, too, but the fucking Count's precision outdid them all.

It sucks. I was feeling the most alive I've ever felt, and our parents were freaking their shit and doing everything they could to prevent that very feeling.

I mean, when we grow up do we forget that feeling of being alive?

Because adults can be maniacs when memories are being made. I mean, it's not like we were robbing banks all along the way or anything. We were just riding in a car, and it was awesome.

Anyway, it's over.

But I don't feel half as bad as I should, because Jubilee and I held pinkies and that has to mean something. And whenever The Count says something totally stupid, she steps on my toe like she's pushing a gas pedal. It's hard not to laugh right in The Count's face.

The Count says, "All of you will be facing severe punishment when we get back home. [And here he gives an overly long dramatic pause.] You can count on this. [Again. Pause. Eye contact with each of us.] I've spoken with each of your parents and we all agree that nothing like this will ever happen again."

He looks tired, with these big bags under his eyes and his face all papery, like he has been awake for an entire day. Which he probably has.

"We're heading back immediately. We'll be buying plane tickets at the airport and you will all be paying me back for them in due time. With interest."

"What?" Jubilee says. For some reason, she decides this is worth protesting. "Why? What about Eeyore?"

"Who?" asks The Count.

"Lewis's car. We're just leaving his car in Utah?"

"The car is irrelevant. All of your parents have agreed that you all are to come home with me today. Tomorrow is a school day. And I'll take the keys, Lewis."

What can I do but turn over Eeyore's big heavy key to The Count? I sit there with half of my stack of pancakes staring at me. I'm not hungry anymore.

There aren't any flights back to Minneapolis that we can all get on until way late that evening. We buy four tickets—or The Count does, probably with some special accountant credit card that gives him frequent flyer points he can tally up—and then we go through security and wait. And wait.

The Count doesn't know that I could write a check for the plane tickets and pay him back right now. He probably wouldn't care, anyway. He's hellbent on whatever heroic mission he thinks he's on, saving us from the doom that _surely_ would've come over us, like we can't take care of ourselves, like it's some impossible mission to drive a car on an interstate for a long way.

So we're waiting in an empty gate because we have about seven hours to kill before our flight. The Count tells us that we're not allowed to walk off just the three of us. We can only leave one at a time. It's like we're on airport lockdown.

When it's my turn, I go for long, aimless walks down different concourses. I eat some food, drink some soda, watch some football on TV without even caring about it. I read some magazines without really knowing what I read. I eat another sandwich. Then I head back and loan Shoe or Jubilee some money and they go off for a while.

Other times, we sleep. Jubliee lays across three seats and naps for an hour. The Count leans his head back and shuts his eyes and seems to be out. He makes small noises but looks straight up at the ceiling with his eyes shut. He probably is counting things in his dream. He looks so tired. Like his mission to come get us has really drained him dry. Seriously, his skin is like super thin and white like glue.

And after the most boring, depressing day I've had in a long time, it finally gets close to the time to board our flight. About ten minutes before we plan on moving to our gate, I get up.

"Where are you going?" Jubilee asks. She's still laying down across the seats. I think she's pretended to sleep all afternoon so she wouldn't have to talk with her dad.

"Bathroom," I say. "If that's okay with your dad." We look over at him and he's still asleep. Then Jubilee pulls her hoodie back over her head and lays down again. I turn to go.

"Lew, hold up—you dropped something," Shoe says. I look at him and he's walking toward me, pushing my bag toward me with his foot. He's holding out his hand in a fist and I put my palm under it.

He drops Eeyore's key into my hand.

"You have to go," he says quietly.

"But—what? How? I don't—"

"Dude! I ganked the key while he was passed out, but—fucknuts, anyway, it doesn't matter. You have to go. I'll take the heat for it."

"But—"

"You have to go. Think about Paps. Think about all the reasons we came on this trip to begin with."

"The Count—"

"The Count will get over it," Shoe says. "But you never will, if you don't go." He kicks my bag at me again, softly.

I pick it up. I give Shoe a fist bump, and though I have no idea what I'm doing, I do it. I walk away from the gate, glancing back at Jubilee and The Count, who are both looking very asleep, walking toward the baggage claim signs, walking past the TSA guy and into the parking lot, even though I'm sure I look guilty of something to everyone that sees me.

I start Eeyore up and speed out, figuring that any second The Count will realize I'm gone, but it will be too late to look for me. It'll be too late because he has to get on that flight and he can't leave, and they'll page me over the loudspeaker because I'm late but I'll never show up and they'll take off without me.

By then I'll be fifty miles from Salt Lake, and in the morning I'll be in San Francisco with Paps, and probably facing a lawsuit from my mother who will try to divorce me from being her kid.

RIGHT AFTER I drive away from the parking garage at the airport in Salt Lake City, I figure the best thing I can do for myself is call my dad. At least that might buy me time to finish this mission.

"Hello?" he says. I hate it how adults do that: answer the phone and pretend they don't know who it is, when I know my name came up on his phone.

"Hey, Dad, it's me."

"Lewis." He says this and kind of sighs out pretty loud. But it doesn't seem like he's all that mad at me—it's like he's just exhausted from having to deal with all of it, everybody's parents, my mom. I'm sure The Count has been driving everyone insane.

"Dad? I'm not getting on the plane. I'm not coming home right now."

"Lewis—what are you talking about?"

"They're boarding the plane right now, and I'm sure The Count is—Mr. Marshfield is calling Mom right now. But I'm not in the airport. I snuck out, and I'm sorry. But I'm in my car, and I'm driving to San Francisco."

There's this long silence. Then there's this long sigh.

And then, I can't believe it, but there's this long laugh.

"You two are just alike, you and Paps, you know it? It's like he's still here," Dad says. He laughs again, but this one sounds like he does it to keep from crying. "Are you safe? Are you alright?"

"Dad, I can do this. Everything is fine. I'm just driving a car like I do every day."

"Yes, but—" he stops himself. "Okay. Okay. Get home safely by Tuesday, and then you're going to probably pay for this for a long time. Oh, and we never had this conversation, alright? Never, never, never tell your mother about this. Or she'll sue both of us. Jesus, I hope she can't subpoena our phone records."

There are lots of things I should remember from the next twelve hours of driving. I pass through the most amazing landscapes I've ever seen, like I'm driving across some strange planet halfway across the Milky Way. I go across a desert. I go right through Reno, Nevada, and don't even feel temped by casino lights.

I'm basically a robot on a mission.

But I did at least have the smarts to call my dad. And I did have the energy to drive all the way to California in one day, with a few stops for food and stretching. And I was kind of insane the whole time in the car—talking to myself, talking to my dead grandfather, practicing speeches I'd make to The Count when I got home, imagining what my mother was going to shout at me while I sat on her couch and waited to hear the verdict.

For hours and hours, what kept me from feeling tired was this one thought: What was Jubilee thinking right now?

She wanted me to do things, and act, and make memories.

She wanted me to tell her how I felt.

She held my pinkie.

But.

I bailed on her.

I left her and Shoe to pay for everything with her dad.

I went on and did things, like she wanted. Like this mission. Without her.

So did she hate me right now? Did she wish she'd left it that I'd ruined everything? Was she regretting almost holding my hand?

I don't know. I don't call her to find out.

Because as much as all this worrying sucks, I've got to deal with something else. I'm in between Sacramento and San Francisco, somewhere on the interstate in California.

And I have no fucking clue where I'm going.

I PULL OFF the interstate and into the parking lot of a hotel in some town that looks kind of old but has sort of turned into a suburb. I think I'm near Sacramento somewhere. Probably about two hours from San Fran.

And all of a sudden, I feel totally drained, dead exhausted. For days I've been guzzling caffeine and not sleeping, and it hasn't mattered until now. I drove all night last night while my friends slept, and all day today the worry about Jubilee was way stronger than any juice Red Bull would've given me.

But it can't last. I can't even think straight enough to figure out a plan for Paps. I can't even pull out the letters he sent to see if there was an address, or a clue, or something in them.

Surely a man who can send letters from the dead doesn't just want his ashes just anywhere in the city limits of San Francisco.

So I do the only thing I can think of. I know they won't rent a high school kid a hotel room, so I drive around back and find a big moving truck that's already parked for the night, and I slip Eeyore in close to it. The great thing about Eeyore is that it's like driving two couches on wheels, so I move my bag to the front seat and lay down in the back seat and even though I can't stretch out, it doesn't matter. I pass out.

In the dream, Paps and I are swimming, and we can breathe underwater. Mrs. McGee, my third grade math teacher, swims by, and it makes perfect sense in the dream. Then I'm in a play, where my line is, "The gentleman will NOT eat a burrito!" I walk off the stage and we're not underwater anymore, and I find Paps playing basketball—old Paps, in his nineties, and he jumps up and dunks it with two hands, and then we're sitting by a campfire.

Fire. Something... Fire, ashes. I start to wake up.

It's like somebody's stabbed icepicks all along my spine, but I manage to sit up. Fire, ashes... I grab Paps in his little cardboard box. I've just got to hold him, as morbid as that seems. It's still just the thick plastic bag in there, but I lift it out. And there's another envelope.

All it has on it, when I finally manage to get control of my hands, is an address.

It's still dark when I leave the hotel parking lot. The Count and all the other adults would call it a miracle that nobody caught me and I wasn't murdered in my sleep. By the time I get to San Francisco, the sun is coming up and the fog is kind of burning off the city.

I use my phone to find the address—I'm sure I'll have to pay my mother back for every byte of data for this—but it isn't too bad. It's kind of scary how easy it is.

San Francisco has a pretty chill vibe. For all he ever talked about it, Paps never really told me what it was like there— _here_ , actually. I'm in the very place he called home, and something about that makes the city feel magical.

I don't know how else to think about it, and I know I'm a freak, but that's how it seems. Magic.

The address in the envelope is just a little house in a quiet neighborhood. All the streets are on these steep hills and the houses are all connected so there's no yards between them or anything. And if it wasn't the address on the paper with my grandfather's handwriting, I don't know that this one would have caught my attention at all. What can I say? It's a skinny blue house on a street that's a steep hill, tucked in between a bunch of other houses just like it.

But why here? I start to wonder. What is it about this place that Paps sent me to? Whatever it is, he clearly wants me to spread his ashes here. There's a tiny little garden up near the front door, and some steps, and the sidewalk has a little grass beside it, so I figure with all of those I could probably spread them out enough that nobody would notice much.

I walk up the steps with the box and open it, and I take out my keys to try and punch a hole in the tough plastic bag where his ashes are. It's a weird feeling. I almost have to force myself to do it.

Then the front door opens.

"What are you doing on my steps, Hombre?" says this voice. It's a man, probably a little older than my dad. He looks artistic, with big glasses and this kind of ratty black sweater. He looks right in my eyes. "Whoa. You gotta be Mack Champion's grandkid. Far out." He's just staring at me, but not really, I can tell. He's staring at his memories of Paps.

"He passed away," I say. "This is him, actually." I hold up the box a little bit.

"Far out," the guy says again.

"Did you know my grandfather?"

"Taught me everything I know," the man said. "Great writer. And an even better friend. I bought this house from him when he moved to Minnesota."

"Oh," I say. I look at Paps' old house, back before he was Paps at all, when he was young and alive. It feels very weird, like time traveling.

"This is too trippy," the man says. "Mack said you'd come here. The day I got his letter, whoa daddy. One of the saddest things I've ever read. But he said you'd come for this someday pretty soon. Didn't know it'd be this soon, though. Hang on." He disappears inside and comes back out with another envelope and a pair of scissors.

"Here you go, Compadre. Do me a favor? Leave a few of his ashes here in the flowers?"

I have a seat on the steps and open the letter.
_Dearest Lewis,_

__

_If you are holding this letter, then either you've achieved a miracle or I've figured out how to meddle with the world from my new place in the spirit realm. Because I know your parents and probably your school are all mad at you, and you'll probably be in trouble for a long time, and your poor car is probably going to die of exhaustion. _

_But you're here and you're holding this letter and somehow everything happened! Wow, what a world we lived in!_

_Well, we're about to part, my friend. What you're doing is a lot harder for you than it is for me, I assure you. I think being dead is going to be rather easy; it's going on living every day that can wear a fellow out. But living is probably a lot more fun._

_Speaking of which: Welcome to San Francisco!_

_I wanted you to see where I was when I felt most alive. It's the city where I started making up the person I wanted to be, and becoming him. It's where I fell in love for the first time. True love, I mean. It's where I was so happy I couldn't imagine living any differently than what I already had—and that's true happiness. Your dad was a boy here, your grandmother baked her legendary breads here. I wrote millions of words here, and people read them. I wanted you to see this, Lewis._

_Because when I left here, after your grandmother died, it was never quite the same. Life was different. The best part about it was watching you grow up and seeing you start to have these kinds of places for yourself. Someday maybe you'll write a sorry, sappy old letter like this one. But when you're old, there won't be such a thing as letters anymore! _

_Anyway, I could go on and write another novel here, but I'm a tired old man whose days are numbered. So I'll send you around the city, and if you'll leave a little bit of me everywhere you go, well, that sounds just wonderful. I won't bore you with long stories about each place. After all my years at the typewriter, I've learned a few things. One of them is this: The pen might be mightier than the sword, but it's a hell of a lot slower. So, I'll just show you where to go, and you use your sharp eyes and your beautiful imagination and fill in the rest. _

_And Lewis? Thank you. Just writing this letter to you, whether you're able to ever read it or not, makes this next stage of life a hell of a lot easier to bear. _

__

_Love always,_

_Your grandfather,_

_Paps_

__

_P. S. If you're hungry, there's a sandwich shop that you'll visit. Get the Chicken Parmesan. _

_P.P.S. Be careful going home. Your journey is only half over! _

_P.P.P.S. Don't be sad. This is a happy thing you're doing. One last adventure together._

_P.P.P.P.S. Except for our book! That's our last adventure together! I can't wait to see how it ends. I'll be reading over your shoulder._

_P.P.P.P.P.S. This P.S. business is getting out of hand! I can't bear to end the letter! Now off you go._

On the next sheet was a list of addresses around town. Seven of them, that's all. Seven places he wants to spend the rest of eternity. Well, hell, it's a lot better than just one, in some grave.

I head off to the first one, but before I go, I remember. I pour a few of his ashes out in the garden at his old house, adding an eighth spot.

Far out, I think.

THE LIST IS barebones, even for a dead man. It says things like _Fell in Love_ and _First Kiss_ and _Wrote Stories_ , and then it gives an address. I get in Eeyore and punch the first one into my phone, and it feels weird, like I'm running errands for mom to pick up her dry-cleaning or something.

And then it's not weird. At the first stop, _Fell In Love_ , it's at Golden Gate Park and you can see the famous bridge and there's grass and there's other people walking around and jogging. There are other couples there holding hands and falling in love, too, and being there and imagining him there with my grandmother, both of them young, with their whole lives ahead of them, full of adventure. I shake out Paps on the ground and stay there watching everything around me for a long time.

_First Kiss_ was at an Italian restaurant, and _Wrote Stories_ is outside a big building where his newspaper's offices used to be. I spread Paps' ashes out in front of the hospital where my dad was born, and where he covered some _Big Story_. It's sad when I drop off more ashes outside the hospital where _Lost Wife_ is the note.

But it's the last one on the list that gets me. I head to the address, which is just an old sandwich shop. It's the one he mentioned in his P.S., maybe. It's tiny and looks like it hasn't changed in a million years. It's just a counter with a menu and about five tables.

Paps' note for this place is _Understood Love_.

I've only got a few more ashes left in the bag, and I don't know if I simply can't bear to spread them yet, or what it is. But I don't do it.

I wash my hands and order a chicken parmesan sandwich and sit at one of the tiny cafe tables. I realize how starving I am, even though it's only like 10:30 a.m. I'm the only person there besides the guy who took my order and made the sandwich, and I'm so hungry that it seems like the most delicious thing I've ever had.

I look around the place after I've destroyed my sandwich. There are pictures up all over the walls of celebrities who've signed them, but I don't know any of them. All the pictures look old, like the people were famous back a long time ago when Paps came here.

I start thinking how he sat in here, maybe right in this very chair. All these places I went today, seeing the places where he was in the big moments of his life, it was like I was seeing him in a totally new way. He was young once, like me. He lay in the grass with a cute girl and fell in love. He got nervous on a date as he leaned in to kiss her. All of these things are part of the wise, funny, kind grandfather I loved so much. And I still love.

It's like, while I'm sitting there, I start to understand love, too. It's scary and it's risky, and it sucks because it pretty much always ends badly. You break up, or one of you dies.

But I get it.

I see that it's worth it anyway.

I don't know who it was who said it's better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. Everybody's heard that, but it doesn't mean anything until you sit in a sandwich shop where your grandfather ate, probably after the love of his life had died, and you eat a sandwich he recommended, and sit in a chair he could've sat in, and you look at the same pictures of dead celebrities, and realize how much you miss him, how much that sucks, and how much more it would've sucked if you'd never known him.

Whatever the risk is in love, I'm seeing, it's worth it.

I'm already standing up before I know it. I'm heading out the door and almost forget to drop off his ashes, but there's a tree growing in the sidewalk outside the sandwich shop and I sprinkle what's left of his ashes around its roots. I hold still for a second and look at them, look up at the tree with its leaves turning orange, look up and down the sidewalk at the coffee shops and the chain stores that have moved in.

And then I take off running, back to Eeyore.

It is worth it to risk it. I get it. Thanks to Paps.

I have to get back to the road.

I have to get back to Jubilee.

Part IV

Acting, Not Acting

THE THOUSANDS OF miles across the country going back home are a blur. I sleep for a few hours here and there, at rest stations at night, in fast food joint parking lots in the daylight. Every stop for gas, I get about four Red Bulls and the cans start to fill up Eeyore's backseat floorboard, rattling around when the interstate pavement gets rough.

I try calling Shoe and Jubilee and even Dramatical, but nobody answers. They all go straight to voicemail, like their phones have been confiscated. For my folks, I just send dad an occasional text message about where I am, reminding everyone that I am still alive, too.

For being alive, I feel very weird. I drink enough caffeine to basically see the electrons everything is made out of. The entire world is reduced to needles that poke into my eyes.

The landscape passes by me and this time I don't even notice it. I go back the same way, so none of it is new anymore, but I feel like I'M new.

And the new me doesn't feel like philosophizing about landscapes anymore.

The new me wants to be home, going after Jubilee Marshfield.

Except that I do stop in one place. When I cross into Utah, I pull over at the little hill where I first told Jubilee how I felt about her. I park Eeyore on the shoulder and run across the interstate lanes, then out into the field and up the slope. I'm so tired that everything feels like a dream.

Whatever it is, real or imaginary or out-of-body, it's cool. I stand there and think about what I said and how she reacted. I can hear it all like it's a play.

But I'm not embarrassed, and I don't cringe or anything. I took a risk, and even though it didn't work right then, it might still work. I actually smile, since this is the place where I first realized I had to do something, and actually did it.

Then I laugh—I picture Shoe down at the shoulder off the road, holding up that gas can and yelling, "HEY GUYS! I'VE GOT GAS!!"

It's all over when I pull up to my dad's house—I go there because there's no way I'm going to my mom's. I have no idea what day of the week it is or how long it took me to get back, but I know it was something ridiculous, and I probably am lucky to be alive, driving with so much caffeine and so little sleep.

My mom keeps reminding me of that when she comes over. Dad called her when I got in, late on that Thursday night, and I get the longest lecture of my life. She gets up in my face like one of those insane football coaches, just shouting at me from an inch away, like I fumbled away the Super Bowl.

But I don't feel like that. I feel like I won.

She keeps turning to my dad and saying, "Do you have anything to add to this?"

"I agree with what you're saying," he keeps adding.

And though I'm getting skinned alive, I'm having a hard time staying awake.

"You're going to sleep?!" my mother yells into my face, and even that can't wake me up. I've pushed myself too far.

"Let's let him get some rest," Dad says. "He's been up for three days in a row. We'll talk about his punishment tomorrow."

"I already know what his punishment will be. You are always way too lenient with him," she says.

And I tell them I'm sorry again and walk off to bed. It's funny, watching them together trying to parent me. That was what I thought it was like during all those years they were married. Before I went to California, I already understood that they're better off divorced. But I think I understand love differently now.

So they can fight all they want—and I can still hear them in there, probably negotiating my punishment. Because that's love, too, as much as it sucks. Of course I wish they wouldn't ground me or make me get a job or whatever it is they (Mom) decides. But whatever it is, I won't remember it, in the end.

I saw Paps' memories, and how the good memories live on.

I went back to the hilltop in Utah and know that if I'm lucky, that'll be one of the places I'd want somebody to spread my ashes someday.

But not now. I don't want to die, even with the Solitary Confinement I know is coming for me. I wanna live like I never have before.

Now is no time for ashes.

OF COURSE THEY make me go to school in the morning. And of course the first half hour of school is taken up with a Very Disappointed In You lecture from Mr. McManus, then being sentenced to two weeks of after-school detention that start immediately.

Of course, I have to work like a CIA agent to figure out how my friends are doing. I finally see Shoe at lunch and catch up on his fallout.

When he sees me, his eyes get huge. "DUDE! Holy shit, you're back already?!"

Shoe's parents seem to understand. We're kids, and kids do stupid things sometimes. Nobody died. We didn't even drink. We didn't even drive all that fast, because Eeyore doesn't _go_ fast. All they make him do is get another job. This time, his shitjob is at Papa's Custard, this dump of an ice cream place.

I ask him, "How's Jubilee doing?" and he shrugs.

"No idea," he says. "I saw her in the hall and she waved at me but the bell rang. The Count's got her chained up the second school lets out for the day. I wouldn't be surprised if he hired goons to come running in and escort her out in handcuffs every afternoon. That fucker ruined everything."

Then Shoe lets out this big laugh. He's the only person in the world who can laugh right after saying everything is ruined.

Shoe says, "Dude. You should have seen him just go ape-shit when he realized you were gone. He was yelling and throwing things and random people were filming him with their phones. The airport cops had to come over and settle him down."

The Count is _still_ ruining things, like my hope for Jubilee. I don't feel like eating again.

"Anyway. Holy shit, man, you spread Paps' ashes! How was San Francisco?" Shoe asks.

I tell him everything, and he listens, hard. It's like he's finishing the trip through my story and he loves every second of it. He keeps saying "Paps!" and shaking his head at how awesome this whole thing is.

But I don't tell him about what I realized. I don't tell him that I'm home so soon because of Jubilee.

For the rest of the day, every teacher gives me their best You Should Be Ashamed Of Yourself look when I ask what I missed. But Paps was right. I've caught up with most everything by the time my in-school detention is over that afternoon. I hoped Jubilee and Shoe would be in there with me, but they didn't get detention because they actually never missed any school days. They just went out on a wild weekend, so it's only up to the parents to punish them.

When I finally get out, my mother is waiting on me in her car and I get the rest of my punishment.

Apparently, she's decided that moving me back in time to the era of her childhood is the worst thing that could happen to me. No computer, no cell phone, no email. It's like I'm Amish or something.

She takes my phone away and actually cancels the contract for a couple of months. I can only drive to school and home, and if I do go out in Eeyore for anything else, I've got to check with her and be back in fifteen minutes.

I'm not allowed to talk on the land line for a week.

I'm not allowed to go out except to school-sponsored events. And I discover that our high school's football game is somehow not a school-sponsored event that evening when I try to go.

I guess the sting is still too much for her. I'm staying with Mom during the entire course of my punishment, which they tell me will last one month, and then we'll assess how it's going.

That evening, The Count comes over and gives my mother a bill for the airfare he spent on coming out to "rescue us," as he put it. Bastard. An actual bill. I know he had that bill drawn up within five minutes of walking in the front door of their house on Sunday night. But he waited until now, until I'd be home and he could see me. Very calculated. He's got this look on his face that's like he's serving some kind of notice that I'm about to be beheaded in the town square for corrupting his daughter.

So I just sit in my room all night. Without my phone or email or anything, it's like I don't exist. My Facebook status is frozen to whatever it was before I left—and it might as well be a totally different profile that the me I am now. I sit there alone in my room like I'm a vegetable on life support. Bored to fucking death.

Then I start thinking about Paps. I remember what he wrote in one of his letters. _Finish the story. I can't wait to hear how it ends. I'll be watching over your shoulder._

I head to the door to go get the book out of Eeyore, where all my stuff is still sitting.

"Where do you think you're going?" my mother yells at me.

"Nowhere! I'm just getting something out of the car. I'll be back in ten seconds."

I come back in with the stack of pages and look to see the last thing we wrote together.

That's when I see the note from Paps.

IT'S RIGHT THERE on the last page we got to with _The Funniest Kid in the World_. Right where the typewriter stops and we were coming in to the finish, right where we were when he announced the cancer was back and we just quit working on it.

It's weird finding it only now. I should've seen it a long time ago. I actually looked at it once before, but I was so screwed in the head that I couldn't even read it.

But the weirdest thing is, it looks fresh, like he just wrote it today.

It's not even typed, it's handwritten. And for some reason this means something huge. Like he didn't even want to take the time to roll in the paper and type it out. Like the thought was so urgent he didn't even want to make it sharp or creative. He had to get it out and get it down as soon as he could.
_Lewis,_

_Something just occurred to me. I can't believe I never realized it in all the years I've been writing stories. I only now can see it, and I think I have you to thank for it. _

_Here is what I can see clearly now. _

_Stories don't end when we think they do. _

_What I mean is this: when a story ends happily, say a man and a woman get married, that's not the end! It's only just the beginning of the real story of their lives together. "Happily every after" is where the real story is._

_And who knows? Maybe the same is true when a story ends with a funeral, like mine right now. You'll probably know the answer to that. I hope I get to watch. _

_When the story ends, it's really just the beginning. _

_All the articles I published in newspapers all those years, all those stories I wrote, all the endings after however many inches I got in the paper, I never thought about this. All those endings, when things were just beginning._

_And here we are, coming toward the end of our book. I wish I could be there to write it with you. But then again, I'm looking forward to seeing how you end it without me messing with your imagination._

_You know, I'm kind of babbling on here because I don't really know how to end this note! All this thinking about endings makes me want to_

And then it just ends. Without really ending.

SO THE NEXT morning I have to find a way to get in touch with Jubilee. Because I need to see how this part of the story ends, and because I really really really want the next thing to begin, since I'm risking it that she likes me back.

I try to see what the beginning of the ending looks like with this:

Me: "Mom, could I please be allowed to go to the library?"

Her: "No. You know the terms of your punishment."

Me: "It's for school, though. I need a book for an assignment."

Her: "Use the library at school, then."

Me: "But I wanted to work on it this weekend, since I can't do anything else."

Her: _Long sigh_. "Okay. But you have twenty minutes to be gone. That's all, door to door."

She actually sets a timer on her watch.

So I sprint out to Eeyore and, as great as she performed the entire way to the west coast and back, now is the moment she doesn't want to go.

Eeyore: Urr-uhh, Urr-uhh, Urr-uhh.

Me: "Come on, baby. Come on, baby."

Eeyore: Urr-uhh, Urra, Urra, Urraurraurra, _Vroom!_

Me: "You're the best car in the world, you know that?"

I actually think about driving over to Jubilee's house, but there's no way I'll be home in twenty minutes, plus The Count would probably seal me up alive in a tomb made of old tax returns. So, it takes me about five minutes to get to the library, then another couple of minutes for the ancient public computer to actually load my email.

Then it takes me another couple of minutes to figure out how to start an email to her. It's not like there's a standard opener for the category of "girl you love who knows you love her though you don't know if she loves you back yet or has decided she hates you since you ditched her in a Utah airport."

I try out "Jubilee," then "Hi Jubilee," then "Hey." I delete them each.

Three minutes pass. I go with "Dear Jubilee" but feel like barfing because it might be too much.

I tell her about the Dungeon of 1970's Technology that my mother's put me in as punishment and say that explains why I haven't been in touch. I write, "San Francisco was so amazing. I've got to tell you about it. But I can't right now because I have to be home in seven minutes."

I tell her I'm sorry for leaving them at the airport. I say I hope that she doesn't hate me. I say I really want to talk to her sometime soon.

I say _P.S. I really meant what I said on that mountain._

But then I delete it.

And I send it.

On my way running out the door, I realize I should actually come home with some kind of book, so I grab one without looking and check it out. Eeyore starts right up because she's badass like that, and I sprint in the door with the book in hand. I happen to look at it right when I come in the door. It's _The Home Handyman's Complete Guide to Plumbing_. So, I keep the cover hidden from my mother.

Mom: "Wow. Thirteen seconds to spare. I was thinking I'd have to add some months to your sentence."

FOR THE REST of the weekend, with nothing better to do, I write in The Funniest Kid in the World. I just go and go and go. I don't stop to edit or revise or anything. I just keep thinking about what Paps says about endings.

He was sure as shit right about his own ending just being the beginning of the story. But the sly old dog knew that anyway.

Endings. I'm in one here with the book. Maybe there's another ending waiting in my email from Jubilee even if I don't know it yet.

So I sit at Paps' old Underwood typewriter and clack out page after page, idea after idea, as fast as I can get them down. I just write down what I imagine Paps' voice saying, telling me the story like always, guiding me right where we need to go like some Captain of the high seas of storytelling.

Kind of late on Saturday night, my mother comes in with this enormous glass of wine. "I'm glad to hear you working so hard," she says. "But, could you knock it off? I can't hear myself think." Then she takes this huge gulp. I'm sure it's been a hard few days on her. So I stop.

Finally on Monday I manage to get a few minutes at the computer in the library at school and I feel like my heart is ricocheting all over my rib cage when I see the email back from Jubilee.

She just starts hers with "Hey."

Jubilee's punishment is about as bad as mine. No activities allowed, and she has to be home ten minutes after school gets out. The Count actually had a GPS tracker installed in her car, too. At least she got her phone back.

She tells a funny story about The Count at the Salt Lake City airport, when he wakes up and realizes I'm gone. Shoe was pretending to be asleep and The Count, in a rage that I'm not there when they announce the flight is about to start boarding, grabs him by his hoodie and pulls him right up to stand on his feet.

"You have one minute to find that boy," The Count said. That boy.

"You shouldn't put pants on a llama!" Shoe said, pretending to be dreaming. Then he zombied off to pretend to look for me.

Jubilee writes, "My dad's pretty mad at you. Like INSANELY mad. Like he might try to sue you or something. But he won't. He just doesn't understand."

_He's_ mad at me. Which perhaps means that _she_ is NOT mad at me? I don't know.

But she does end her email with three words that give me enough hope to get through whatever sentence my mother has handed down.

"I miss you," she writes.

It's those words that make me take out the pages I'd written toward the ending of The Funniest Kid In The World, which I thought I'd look over during detention this afternoon, and fold them lengthwise, and slip them into the vent in her locker. I want her to see what I've been doing.

And it's those words and some lightning strike of genius that bring on what happens next. At lunch, Shoe tells me all about his new shitty job at Papa's Custard.

"Yeah, the boss is a total fuck-up. I think he dropped out of eighth grade. In like 1972. Jesus, if I'm that old and that stupid and I work at a yogurt shop, you have my permission to harpoon me to death."

"Wait. Idea," I say. "Do you know if he's hiring?"

Shoe gives me this classic Shoe look. His eyes get as big around as cue balls and he tilts his head forward so he's actually looking up at me, even though we're both sitting at the lunch table, totally level.

"Were you listening to me? My. Boss. Is. Shitbarf. He, like, actually barfs shit out of his mouth. Not actually, actually, but metaphorically actually. Whatever. Why would you want to work there? What the fuck are you thinking?"

"I don't _want_ to work there. But maybe I can use it to get out of my lockdown at home." I don't tell him what else I'm thinking of using the job for. I don't dare, because I don't want to jinx it if it can't work. But it just might.

"Ahhhh," he says, and rubs his chin like he's some Zen master. "You are a crafty one, Grasshopper," he says in a terrible Zen Master accent. "I'll check with Shitbarf today."

"Thanks, dude. And may I say: 'Shitbarf'? Excellent."

"You like that one, do you?"

I GUESS ONE reason Shoe gets all these shitty jobs is because they're easy to get. After he checks at work about getting me a job, he calls my dad to pass along the message that they are indeed hiring. Except Shoe feels like he has to put it in code.

Mom lets me talk on the phone to Dad, at least. He talks kind of slow, like he's slogging through some strange muddy swamp in his brain.

"Hey, Lewis. Your friend called—Shoe, I think he said his name was? And he said to tell you that the crow is nesting right now. Is this something for Biology?"

"Uh, yeah. Yeah, big project we're doing. Thanks, Dad," I say. "Guess I better get to work on that, uh, bird project."

I hang up and walk right down the hall to Mom where she sits in the kitchen behind this huge stack of files. She gets paid a ton, but I wonder if that job is any better than Shitbarf's job at Papa's Custard.

The woman admires hard work, even if it destroyed her marriage. Which is why I'm feeling like this will work.

Before I open my mouth, I realize that this is exactly the kind of thing I would never have done just a few weeks ago. I wouldn't have done it because I don't know what I'm going to do next. And I don't know if it's going to work. And I'm not exactly sure what "it" is right now.

But I just know I'm going to do _something_. And I can't do anything sitting here in house arrest and no contact with the outside world.

I can't believe I used to just wait on whatever life would happen next.

"Hey, Mom," I say. "I've been thinking about that bill that Mr. Marshfield brought over for the plane tickets and everything. And I feel really bad about it."

She looks up and takes off her glasses. This is good.

"I know I'm grounded here and whatever, but I was wondering if it would be okay if I got a job to pay for that bill."

"A job." I think that's supposed to be a question. She's like a judge and I've got to argue my case.

"Just an after-school kind of job, you know?"

"Where?" She leans back in her chair.

"I don't know yet. Probably just a fast food place or something."

"That doesn't sound very ambitious. Is that what you want to do with your life?"

"No. Of course not. I just want to make some money quick to pay for the airfare, is all. Isn't it ambitious that I'm even thinking of this?"

She laughs a little laugh, like she's slightly impressed.

"Maybe."

"What was your first job?" I ask.

"Objection: Irrelevant," she says. I roll my eyes automatically, and she laughs. "Okay. I was a waitress at a fast food joint. It was one of those drive-up places where the people eat in their cars."

"That doesn't sound very ambitious. But you did okay."

She does this very unprofessional smirk that she'd never do in court.

"Alright. You can get a job. But all the other terms of the punishment are still the same. And all your paychecks go straight to your dad and me for the bill. By the way, what a jerk that guy was about it, huh?"

And that's what I call a chink in the armor, right there. We're on the same team again, sort of.

THAT NIGHT, I attack the ending of the book. The typewriter is running out of ribbon and the words are really faint on the page, but I can still read them. And they keep coming, like the story is taking over on its own.

But it's sad, too. I kind of don't want the book to end. It'll be the end of all that time I got to spend with Paps.

Except: _The ending isn't the ending. It's just the beginning._ I get it.

I can see Paps' handwriting telling me that. And I can see what'll happen at the end of the book. And I can see that I'll have this story that we shared forever.

And I get a slammin' idea for exactly what I'm going to do to go after Jubilee Marshfield.

Of course I get the job at Papa's Custard. It takes two minutes right after school the next day. Turns out Shitbarf can't keep any employees around, because he's the kind of old man who gets nicknamed Shitbarf, so he hires me after one quick glance to make sure my fly is zipped and my shoes are on the correct feet.

I get put to work instantly, alongside Shoe. I think we're the only two employees. Shoe makes us two custard cones, which taste like candle wax, and I tell him my idea. I have no idea if it's going to work. But besides this small detail, everything is going perfectly.

And there's no doubt that this plan is going to get us fired. But I'm not in this job for the money.

Of course Shoe thinks the whole thing is brilliant.

We spend a week getting everything ready. There are a few people we have to get on board with this idea.

Usually it goes like this:

I tell them my plan.

Them: [blank stare]

Me: You know, it's like a play.

Them: What?

Me: Just, not in a theater, or on a stage.

Them: What? Why not?

Me: And most of the audience doesn't know it's a play, either.

Them: [blank stare, longer]

Me: It'll be great. [Also here, insert flaming blush across my face because I'm pretty sure they know the only reason I would do this is for a girl.]

Them: Oooooookay?

Shoe's a better salesman of the idea. I get him to talk Dave Underwood into it, but Dave's so dense he doesn't even realize what's going on. He's so fired up about it, I think he'd probably give me a chest bump if it works.

There are two people we have to have, and luckily they're the easiest to convince.

I tell Dramatical my plan.

Dramatical: Holy shit. This. Is. Awesome.

I tell Blevins my plan.

Blevins: Interesting. Truly experimental theatre. I've never done that with a high school play before. Once, I was in a conceptual art scene in the early nineties and—

Me: _(interrupting)_ We're totally breaking down the fourth wall. _(Shoe told me to say this. I have no idea what I'm talking about.)_

Blevins: _(looks at me like I have no idea what I'm talking about.)_

Me: Except we don't have any walls. We don't have a stage.

Blevins: Yes, I realize.

Me: _(blank stare)_

Blevins: Yes, Lewis, I will help you. _(Starts to walk off but then does that overdramatic pirouette spin turn he does.)_ By the way, this is not a school-sponsored event.

Every night, I stay up until one or two, working on the ending of Paps' book. It's killing me to end it. I keep adding in scenes and bringing up new things, trying to drag it on.

But Paps was too good. No matter what I write, what I try to do, the end just keeps coming. Dude was a master storyteller. He's dead and I miss him and he's still pulling strings to help me.

So finally I put in a sheet of paper and stare at it, and there's nothing I can do. It's the ending of the book. It has to be, that's what happens next, there's no doubt about it. I think I know how it will go, but I'm not sure. That's my favorite way to write: knowing kind of what'll happen, but letting the characters decide how we get there. Paps taught me that.

But I can't do it.

I can't type anything.

I can't face the ending of the book. It'll be like Paps is really gone then.

So the blank white paper just sits there and stares back at me. It's ready, but I'm not. How can I ever be?

SO I THROW myself into the plan for Jubilee.

Shakespeare, this isn't.

We take a week and hammer it together as best we can. I pass out some rough scripts and a few props from the Drama Club stash. When Blevins sees my script, he says he'll still help, but reminds me that this "would neither be a school-sponsored, nor school-related, nor school-endorsed event." Fine with me.

The only way we can get rehearsals together is to bribe everybody with free custard, which is surprising because the custard is so bad and because our boss is so clueless. For years, nobody has come in here except people making a first-and-only mistake, but suddenly there are all these kids hanging around like it's that stupid fake diner on _Saved By The Bell_. Shitbarf doesn't seem to realize that the cash register is awfully empty in spite of the sudden and meteoric rise to popularity for Papa's Custard.

So we run through the script a few times, and we've got it down pretty quick, because it's not a complicated play. Not only is it no Shakespeare, it never was meant to be.

But the night before we're set to do it, damn if it doesn't _feel_ like it is Shakespeare. Damn if I'm not more nervous than before we put on the play of Paps' book. Damn if I'm not more afraid of this than of anything I've ever done.

I guess that's why people still read Shakespeare and go to his plays. My life might not be anything like what's going on in those dramas, but this night, awake at 3 a.m., worried out of my brain, even over something as idiotic as the dumbass play I'm making for Jubilee in the afternoon, it feels damn Shakespearian. It feels like lives are at stake.

It feels scary as fuck because it's going to end. And I'm still not sure how. But it will.

Over there on my desk, I can see the white sheet of paper in the typewriter waiting to end the book, almost glowing in the dark and laughing at me with its blank stare.

That afternoon, everything has to go perfectly for this to work. It's Friday, the football season is over, and there's nothing to do anyway. Jubilee's punishment is winding down soon, and The Count seems to have gotten tired of his end of the deal, keeping tabs on Jubilee all the time and tracking her every move. Shoe got word that he even stopped checking the GPS tracker in her car

She's got to be willing to risk all of that for this to work.

I put the bait in between the slots in her locker. It's a fake gift certificate that tells her she's won free ice cream for two from Papa's Custard. Some prize.

But she's been cooped up for so long, we're betting she takes this as gold. It'll give her a precious hour out in public, even if the other person of her free ice cream for two will have to be her dad, since he has knighted himself as her hovering protector.

It has to be worth it for her. She knows Shoe works there, and it'll be a chance to see him. And I'm hoping she thinks it's a chance to see me.

All day long I just keep thinking of that email. The ending.

_I miss you._

Does she miss me enough to take the obvious bait? Is this little trickery enough to fool The Mighty Count?

At lunch, I must look awful. I'm staring over my tray and all of my food is congealed together into patties. I feel like I might puke a hose right over all of it.

"Stage fright, Broadway?" Shoe says, sitting right in the line of fire. "You look as gray as Taco Bell meat, dude."

"Appreciate that."

"Don't mention it," Shoe says. He's scarfing down half his tray already, like today is another awesome day in The Life of Shoe. It almost makes me hate him, just a little. Almost, but not really.

"C'mon, dude. It's gonna be awesome. And even if it isn't, it'll be such a spectacular fail that it'll work somehow. But it won't fail. It won't."

"But what if it does?" I ask him. I haven't thought about this before. If it fails, will I lose Jubilee forever? Will I make life worse for her? Will I ruin everything we had that was good, like she told me on the mountaintop? All this must be clear on my face.

"Congratulations," Shoe says. "Welcome to the gloriously fun torture of being fucking alive!" He eats some mac and cheese. "And it won't."

MOST ICE CREAM shops have the common sense to close during the winter in Minneapolis, because it's twenty-degrees below zero outside and the last thing anybody thinks is fun is eating something really cold. But not Papa's Custard. This is such a stupid restaurant, we don't even offer anything hot to any customers that would mistakenly wander in. Shoe and I wear heavy hoodies the whole time we're at work. Even Shitbarf doesn't bother to be here—Shoe's actually the Manager on Duty.

Which is to say: We're stupidly and stubbornly open, even though nobody comes in for months.

For sure, nobody is here right now, on a Friday evening. And waiting on Jubilee to show up, or not, is a lot worse when there's nothing to do, no customers to serve, nobody to distract me from the impending doom of going for the girl I've loved forever.

It also makes me wonder something. What if you put on a play and nobody comes? What if the only audience for the play are the other actors in it?

I wonder if even the other actors like what we've cooked up.

Because they come in about an hour after we've been at work. For being artsy, drama kids are really punctual. The bell above the door seems as loud as a gong when Dramatical comes in with Dave Underwood. They look around at the empty shop and it looks like a playground to them. Dramatical is walking along on the little swivel seats, and Dave sits right on the top of a table like a Buddha.

And they start calling people.

I'm so nervous, though, that I don't realize it until they start showing up. Dramatical's little gaggle of girlfriends all come over. Dave's buddies from the Chuck Norris Challenge. A herd of kids who I barely even know or recognize, and a few stranger kids who probably go to other schools and are here with their friends. A few people who probably heard about it and just wanted to see a massive fail. They're so stupid they're actually ordering ice cream from us.

"Shoe," I say. "Why are there so many kids here?" I must look petrified, because he takes a second before he opens his mouth and his eyes kind of bug out.

"Wasn't me!" he says. "But, hey, go big or go home, right?"

"I'm going home, then." I start taking off my apron, but Shoe comes over and puts his arm around my shoulder, leans in. It's very dramatic, like everything he does.

"Listen," he says, "life is not a rehearsal."

"Fuck your Snapple cap motivational bullshit," I say.

"You say that, but you know that's what Jubilee told you, too. And you know, if you go home, you can't get all these people to help you out again, and they'll all know you're a failure. You've at least got to try it, Lewis. _Jesus_."

"But I didn't want all these people here."

"Well, they're here. People go to where there's a story. Paps would've told you that. He'd be here. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if he _is_ here, somehow."

Paps. Oh wow.

Someday when I'm old and my skeleton looks like a question mark, this will be one of the places I would send a kid to discover who I was. This shitty ice cream shop and this go-for-broke scheme is one of my moments. Paps is here, somehow, like this whole thing was kind of his idea, or at least the idea of the idea was his.

It's strange, living through a moment that you know is going to be one of your biggest memories for the rest of your life.

It seems a lot more—I don't know. It seems a lot more awesome, I guess.

"Anyway, can't leave now," Shoe says. "Jubilee's here." Shoe hollers over to Dramatical and she starts telling all the other players to get in character and wait for their cue.

It's easy to recognize The Count's car because he has those asshole halogen headlights, the kind that are probably great for helping him see, but that blind everybody else. It's very like him to have such headlights.

And also like him to drive straight past the door and up to the drive-thru. Nothing we've planned will work if they're not inside. I look at Shoe, who himself has a look of terror as he grabs the headset. I glance at Dramatical, and she has this look like she's watching a world-ending meteor fly right at us. None of us are prepared for improv, except maybe Blevins, who simply stands there, in character already, waiting and ready.

"Hello?" Shoe says into the drive-thru, like it's a phone.

"Two free ice cream cones," The Count says. "We have a coupon."

Just very faintly, I can hear Jubilee's voice over in the other seat, complaining about something to him. It is the sound of hope, actually.

"Uh... You need to come inside to use the coupon?" Shoe says.

"I beg your pardon?" The Count says.

"The sliding door is frozen shut so we can't hand you anything out through it." He points at me and winks.

"The door is frozen?" The Count says. I think I hear Jubilee laughing.

"It's an ice cream shop in Minneapolis in the winter. It gets cold in here. We sincerely and deeply apologize," he says as he humps the soft serve machine.

You can hear The Count make some kind of grumbling noise as he throttles the engine and whips around the corner of the building into a parking spot. He shoots out of the car and slams the door and walks toward us like he's ready to put all of us under house arrest. I've never seen anybody get so mad over free ice cream—and for a second, as I put on my wig, I feel sorry for him. I glance at Jubilee's gorgeous outline running behind him, her wild curly hair bouncing everywhere.

It's the last thing I see as I turn my back to the door, hear Shoe bark "We're on!" and hear the dumb ding-dong that plays when the door opens.

And I also think that The Count deserves what is about to happen to him.

I'M PRETENDING TO mop, facing the other side of the building, and I hear The Count burst through the open door. I sneak a peek over my shoulder because I feel so conspicuous. The mop isn't even wet.

But The Count isn't looking at me. He looks so furious over his free ice cream that he can't see anything at all, until he stares behind the counter and sees Shoe standing there with a goofy grin. The Count turns and stomps toward the counter—it's hard to tell if he's just after his ice cream, or if he realizes he's being duped again, but just then I see Dave Underwood take his cue and turn away from the counter and toward The Count.

So it begins.

When we got to work, we poured strawberry syrup into one of our GigantiGulp cups. It's like eighty ounces of neon crimson glop, sticky and smelly, and Dave does a fake little trip as he turns and pretends to fall right at The Count. With all eighty ounces of the syrup flying.

Right about then is when Jubilee makes it into the door. She has this look of amused horror, because Dave hits The Count right in the crotch with the syrup. It's running up his sweater and down both legs of his pleated khakis and plopping on his loafers into a gooey pool at his feet.

The Count says, more or less, "Graaaakkkk Aahhhsssshhhhh!" He tries to take a step but realizes he's standing in the center of the most slippery and sticky space-age fruit-flavoring ever. He looks up at Dave, furious.

I think Dave's having a hard time keeping a straight face. But so am I. The way the syrup hit him, it looks like The Count's crotch has exploded.

Shoe, though, is in character. He vaults over the counter and bounds toward them.

"Mr. Marshfield! Oh! The humanity!" He turns to Dave. "How _dare_ you do that to Mr. Marshfield!" It's a bad English accent, like he's a knight in King Arthur's court. And the fake fight begins. Shoe rears back and throws a right hook at Dave, Dave blocks it with his forearm and comes back with a right of his own, which Shoe tries to block but misses and instead takes the punch right to his gut.

"Ouufff!" he says. So he slaps Dave on the ear and Dave kind of looks stunned. Dave yanks Shoe's sleeve and they spin around, and for a second I wonder if the fake fight isn't a little bit real all of a sudden. They go twirling away from The Count and into a little table, and the cheap chairs go flying away like birds scared out of a tree. As they descend to the floor to grunt and wrestle, like most all fights I've ever seen in high school actually do, Blevins walks in, right on cue. He looks perfect: a short-sleeved blue button-up shirt and a red tie with ice cream cones on it. It's like he bought the outfit just for the occasion.

I can't help but watch, once Blevins starts his lines. For being the drama teacher, he's _terrible_ at acting.

"Sir! My sincerest apologies!" He romps over to The Count. "I'm Dan Mouser, the manager here. This is unacceptable for the high standards we follow here at Papa's Custard. Mr. Shoemaker will be terminated. From his employment here, I mean." Which is true, of course. Me, too.

Down on the ground, Dave and Shoe are rolling around like they're in a mad makeout session.

"Do you hear me, Mr. Shoemaker? You're fired." Blevins stares at the two of them like he's disappointed in their poor stuntman fighting skill.

From the ground, there only come a few more indistinguishable grunts. I glance over at the door where Jubilee is still standing. She still has the exact same look on her face, like she doesn't know what's happening, doesn't know whether to laugh or be mad, doesn't know if this is actually happening or not.

"Please, allow me to assist you—we can go to the executive restroom and clean up, Mr...?" Blevins says, holding out a hand to help The Count across the moat of strawberry glop.

The Count looks very confused, staring back and forth between the squirmy wrestling and Blevins.

"M-Marshfield," he says.

Blevins helps him walk carefully through the puddle and back to the bathrooms. There is no executive restroom, of course. It is Blevins' job to keep The Count occupied for the next three to five minutes. As they pass, I pivot around them, keeping my back and the long hair of my wig to them, wheeling the empty mop bucket over toward the mess I have no intention of cleaning.

Perfectly on cue, Dramatical pops up from behind the little divider, her head just taller than the green plastic leaves of the fake plants atop it.

"Stop!" she says. Then she starts singing, " _In the naaaame of love..._ "

Dave and Shoe stop writhing on the tile floor and sit up suddenly, singing, " _Before you breaaaaak my heart_."

Dramatical pops around the divider, wearing a dress covered in spangles, like something out of the 1920s. " _Stop! In the naaaaame of love..._ "

" _Before you breaaaak my heart,_ " sing the dudes, who've gotten up. They both run over and jump up on the countertop and start doing this little side-to-side shuffle step while Dramatical sings, " _Think it o-o-verrrr... Think it o-o-verrrr..._ "

Dramatical goes over and pulls Jubilee out of the door and into the room with us, then twirls around over in front of Shoe and Dave and join in their little dance. They start humming the song for background music, which is my cue.

Jubilee. She's absolutely beautiful. Hot. She's the kind of girl who is so nice to look at, you can't stop, like she isn't real, she's a mirage, like you have to try and soak her right into your eyes and brain and soul because you can't get enough. To be best friends with a person who looks beautiful like this to you is maybe the most petrifying, glorious thing.

But it isn't enough, either.

Jubilee is wearing this amazing look on her beautiful face. Her mouth is open in confusion, but there's a smile curling up at the corners of it, too. Her eyes are huge, taking in everything. Her posture is straight up, as if she's ready to join in, not scared at all.

She sees me, of course, and the corners of her mouth get a little curlier. It's just what I need. I whip off my gross long-haired wig and use the end of the mop like a microphone.

I can't sing. But I sing.

_Girl, when I had to leave you_

_You know I had to go_

_And Paps showed me 'bout love_

_In San Francisco_

_But you weren't there with me_

_You were back here instead_

_All we had was a mountaintop_

_And those words I said_

And I know there are a bunch of strange kids watching this, and I know that the two dudes on my team are clowning around behind me dancing on the counter between the cash registers, and I know it's very strange to try and win a girl's heart after you kamikaze her dad's crotch with strawberry syrup. But none of that matters, because it feels so good to take a shot at love.

"Jubilee," I say, over the humming of my backing band. I can feel every eye from the room on me, so I talk softly where only she can hear it. "I wish we could've made it to San Francisco together. Everything there that I learned just made me love you more. I had to tell you. I'm sorry for leaving you at the airport, but I had to go—"

"Of course you had to go," she interrupts. "I would've been mad at you if you didn't go. For Paps' sake." She pauses and looks around the room. The dancing, the puddle, the crowd—she sort of waves her hands around at all of it and says, "But _this._ You didn't have to..."

"Yes, I did. That's what I learned. That love takes action. It's not something you wait around for."

"Yeah, but—"

"This is me acting. Not 'acting' like in a play, but _acting_. This is me telling you I meant what I said on that mountain in Utah. This is me telling you, Jubilee Marshfield, that I love..."

But the look on her face changes. The mouth, the bright eyes, all of it turns to horror and fear. Her eyes aren't looking at me, I realize after a nanosecond of meltdown. They're going right over my shoulder. That's when I hear the commotion behind me.

"Outrageous! Unacceptable...You'll be out of business come Monday!" shouts The Count.

"Mr. Marshfield, please, let us make it up to you," Blevins is saying. But The Count comes storming through all of us, like he fully expected to find kids dancing on the counters, and a wig on the ground. Come to think of it, he probably did calculate as much. He takes Jubilee by the shoulders, spins her around, and they walk out the door into the dark evening together.

At the last second, I think I see her eyes glance over her shoulder and find mine. But I can't tell what they mean.

THIS IS ME, getting apologized to from Blevins, who can only say, "He's a very forceful man."

This is me, getting pitiful looks from the girls and a few snickers from the guys who saw me fail.

This is me, staggering past my best friend Shoe, who knows enough to not say anything, but pats me on the back. Staggering past Dramatical, who is, of course, overtly dramatical and sobbing openly.

This is me, walking home, still in my work uniform, without my coat, in a Minneapolis winter night.

This is me, not feeling anything. Not the cold, not sadness, not relief from it being over, at least. Nothing. Empty.

This is me, walking in the door, surprising my mother, who is watching some trashy reality TV show. _Reality_ , I think.

This is me, lying to her that I'm home early because the place is going out of business. Which may be true, knowing the wrath of The Count.

This is me, getting in bed, realizing how numb my body is from the cold outside, and how numb my mind is.

This is me, realizing that this is what it feels like to go big, then go home. This is what it feels like to know you failed without knowing what's happening next. This is what it feels like to have had a chance, and blow it.

This is me waking up, realizing I didn't know I'd fallen asleep. This is me waking up to someone pecking at my window with their fingernail just enough to wake me up but not wake my mother. This is me hearing someone do this over and over and over, until I realize what the noise is and go over to the window and see Shoe outside in the glow of the moon on the snow, and he holds up his phone to the window and waits for me to read it.

Jubilee @ playground right now. Go now. Fly, you must.

Even his texts are dramatic. And even though I know that our footprints in the snow will give us away in the morning, I pull on a jacket and hat and open the window as quietly as I can, and slip out. And when I get to my feet, Shoe is gone and it's just me. I have to go to the playground alone to meet Jubilee. Go, I must.

This is me, going.

THE WAY THE playground lights glow in their globes and throw light down onto the snow, it bounces back up like this is some kind of magical fairyland. The slides and the see-saws look so colorful in it against the black of the night sky behind them. I keep looking at it all, because it doesn't look real, and I don't feel real, and it all makes perfect sense that I'm waiting in the freezing cold in my pajamas under a jacket in the middle of the night.

For a few moments, I'm alone in the playground, alone in the strange Dr. Seuss world under those lights. Then, she is there, out of nowhere, sitting on the see saw.

I go over to her. It's the longest walk ever. The snow hushes at me under my shoes. She looks at me with half-serious, half-playful eyes, and I can't tell which way they're going to go. I can't figure out how we're even here, or what to feel, or what to say, so I stand there still.

"Take a seat," she says, and I slip onto the seat across from her. It's so cold, my ass gets practically seared by the metal through my sweatpants. I remember how, as a kid, the see saws felt so big. I felt like I was a hundred feet in the air when I went up high. But now, with the two of us on it, just balancing level and not moving up and down at all, it feels like I'm only about a foot off the ground.

"Jubilee," I say, but she holds up her gloved hand to stop me.

"Three things," she says. "I'm thinking The Count is going to deport me to Uzbekistan if he finds out I snuck out, so... Three things."

Her words turn into this mist in the air when she speaks, because of the cold. It hangs there like a ghost, like a cartoon speech bubble, like the most perfect thing I've ever witnessed, because it's her voice, and I'm hearing it again.

"Okay," I say.

"So, why didn't you ever tell me how you felt?"

I breathe out a ghost of my own into the cold night air.

"I really don't know. Because. I was scared. And stupid. Because I like being around my best friend and I figured it was better to be near her and in love in secret than risk her not feeling the same way and lose her entirely."

Those eyes, blue and beautiful, are looking at me with that same mixture in them, I think, when I maybe see them soften a touch. She says nothing. She wants me to go on.

"So, like everything else in my life, I just watched. I overthought everything and made theories and figured it couldn't be any different through anything I could do. But when Paps died... I don't know. He said some things there at the end, and then we go on this crazy mission. I can't explain it, other than to say that I realized life was happening and I didn't want to just watch. I wanted to act on the happenings, and I wanted to take a chance at going through the happenings in love with my best friend."

"Okay," she says. "Not the most eloquent, but I'll go easy since this is a pop quiz. So. What if this doesn't work?"

She pushes with her feet and rises up on the see saw, just a little ways, and in the cold the metal joint in the middle makes a tiny howl as we go up and down.

"But what if it _does_?" I say. "That's what I mean. That's what Paps made me realize when I saw all those old places he was when he was living in his love. What if it does work, and we get to have this playground as a magical place between us forever? And we have more places to get, still? And the only way you get those is by earning them, by trying. And the person I want my stories and magic and memories to be with is you."

She plants her feet and brings the see saw to a stop. But now she isn't looking at me. She's staring at the snow a few feet beside her. She breathes out twice, big sighs that I can see as her breath mists in front of her.

"Okay," she says. Then she stands up from her swing and walks over to me.

"Okay what?"

"Just, okay." She stands up slowly so I do, too, and she walks over to me and takes my hands and pulls me close against her and hugs me tight. And she looks up and I look down and we look right in each other's eyes for the millionth time and the first time, too, and she's more beautiful than I ever understood. And then, like magic, we kiss.

How many times did I imagine doing this? How many nights did I wonder what her lips would feel like, and what her breath would taste like, and what she would do with her tongue. Though I am worried that I'm too enthusiastic with my tongue, or that she's grossed out by my breath or something, she doesn't stop, so I don't either. And it's more wonderful than I've ever imagined. And even with my eyes closed, I know what she looks like, because I've looked at her so much, for so long. I can't believe that those are her thin lips against mine, that that is her wild curly hair brushing against my cheek, that that is her perfect little ski-jump nose against mine. But it all is. I don't need to open my eyes to know how unreal and magical this moment is, with the glow of the lights and the cold and the bright still silence of the playground, waiting for action.

After a long while, the longest kiss I've ever experienced, anyway, she breaks off and looks down against my chest.

"Okay," she says.

" _Okay_?"

"Very okay." She clears her throat. "Um, so, a couple things. We do this. But we go slow. Life isn't like a play. We have waaaaayyy more time than a play. We don't need to stage any more scenes in public to tell each other how we feel."

"But I had to do that to..." I say, but she cuts me off with this look in her eyes.

"I know. And as much as I hated it, I really loved it. It was awesome. But we can't stay at that fever pitch forever. We can't keep it up—nobody can. So, we go slow."

She looks up at me now. "And we play no games. We're honest, and we tell each other what we're feeling."

"Okay," I say.

She gives me a skeptical smirk.

"Really!" I say.

"Alright. And one more thing: we stay friends. Even if it means we have to break up to do it. We end this, either one of us, before anything goes so bad that we can't be friends."

She means it, from the way she's looking at me.

I've never heard a more beautiful logic about something as mysterious as the heart.

"Okay," I say, because what else is there to say? "Yes, absolutely."

And then she's there again, us in a kiss, our second one which is just as magnificent as the first. Then she looks away and checks her watch.

"Oh. Shit. I've gotta go! The Count's probably readying my papers for a convent or something!" She's already running away into the dark, out from under the fairytale glow of the lights in the park. She's fading and fading, and then I hear her voice come clear through the cold air. "I might perhaps possibly like you an incredibly lot, Lewis!"

"Can I see you again?" I shout.

"We'll see what happens!" she says, and her car starts and she's gone.

And she's right. I don't know what's ahead for us, and I'm trembling just a little bit from the cold or the not knowing or both. But I do know that this moment, right here, when everything is cold and scary and beautiful, is one that I will always remember, no matter what happens next.

_DEAR PAPS,_

__

_I did it. I kissed Jubilee Marshfield. We're going to start dating. _

_Of course, I'm writing this to you in a letter you're never going to get. But maybe you already know this. Maybe you always knew._

_Maybe now, wherever you are, you already know the ending to all the stories._

_I sure don't, and right now, I don't even care. I kissed Jubilee Marshfield and we're going out, and that's all that matters. Where we're headed, we don't know, but that doesn't matter. _

_It's not the end of our story. It's the_ beginning _._

_That's kind of the point._

_Anyway I think that's the point, and I think that's what you were telling me when I went to all of the places in your past. It's that we can't understand the story of our life until our life is ending, and I don't want my life to end anytime soon, so on we go not knowing, and not knowing, and not knowing, and we keep going anyway. _

_Sorry that it took you dying for me to understand this. I miss you. _

_But it's like you're still here, sometimes, too. Shoe said once that you were a man who knew how to pull off a death with real pizazz. I think that's what she meant._

_But I think you understood endings, and beginnings and middles, too, who knew how to tell a story and how to make that story change people's lives for the better. You did it for me, anyway. So I'm writing this letter to nowhere, this prayer, to say thank you, I love you, I miss you. To say I've never had so much fun being in so much trouble. To say how lucky I am to have known you. To say that I hope I can help somebody like you helped me._

_I can see you right now, nodding your head and smiling a smile full of memory and wisdom. _

_I miss you, but I'm smiling, too._

__

_Love always,_

_Lewis_

__

_P. S. Did I mention? I KISSED JUBILEE MARSHFIELD!_

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THE END (for now..)
**What will happen next for Lewis, Jubilee, and Shoe? **

**Find out in** ** _The Play's the Thing_** **, the much-anticipated sequel to _Stealing the Show_.**

**Click here to get your copy!**

**ABOUT THE AUTHOR**

Baker Lawley is a lifelong storyteller, as a journalist, a magazine and book editor, and professor of creative writing—but also as a septic system tester, a lifeguard, and a school uniform salesman, because great stories happen everywhere.

Baker lives in Minneapolis with his wife and daughter the ghosts of two amazing hound dogs. Check out his website at www.bakerlawley.com and his podcast on writing at www.fictionschool.com.

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Thank you, always, for reading.
**O** **THER** **T** **ITLES** ******BY** **B** **AKER** **L** **AWLEY **

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**Books available at all major online bookstores.**

**~~~**

**_The Battle Hymn Blues_**

Stoney Nix can play anything, from Beethoven to the Blues, on his old rattletrap piano. It's just a gift, and a good one. Music is his ticket out of Pinewood, Alabama, his ironic, dying hometown, where they reenact the Civil War but cancel marching band because it's too small. Then Sadie Green, the hilarious and beautiful new girl (and Stoney's major crush), convinces him to fight in the fake Civil War battle.

What happens there will haunt Stoney forever—and only through voices of the past, struggle, friendship, and his music, will Stoney find himself.

_The Battle Hymn Blues_ is a story filled with ghosts and pranks, music and mystery. It's a love song to the blues we all share, how the past and the future and happiness have the strangest ways of finding you.

★★★★★ \- "Could not put it down!"

★★★★★ \- "...Beautifully written, smart, funny, powerful, and thoroughly entertaining..."

★★★★★ \- "A Southern Gothic Gem"

****

**Click here to read more and get your copy!**

**~~~**

****

**_Stealing the Show_**

**Book 1 in the _Such Sweet Sorrow Trilogy_**

Lewis Champion is in love-total, hopeless, unrequited love-with Jubilee Marshfield. Which is complicated, because she's his best friend. He can't find the courage to tell her since he's a wallflower. Watching people, making theories, never acting on his feelings.

But when Lewis' awesome grandfather, Paps, dies, the will contains the strangest request of Lewis. And what he must face, with his friends alongside him, gives new meaning to the idea of "acting."

****

**Click here to read more and get your copy!**

**_~~~_**

**__**

**_The Man Who Invented Writing_**

It is the beginning of one of the world's great civilizations. For generations, tribes of nomads across an ancient land have been at war. But suddenly, after decisive victories by the powerful Yellow Emperor and his army, the tribes are united and the land is at peace.

Cangjie, the Master of Communications for the Yellow Emperor, has returned to his village as a war hero, to lead a quiet and still life with his wife and son. Cangjie is happier than he has ever been.

Yet the Yellow Emperor believes that a time of peace is not a time for standing still.

One morning, as the light breaks the horizon at the messenger's most dangerous arrives, Cangjie sees movement on the edge of the forest by his home. It is a messenger sent from the Yellow Emperor, burdened with delivering an impossible task to Cangjie.

As Shen the messenger tells him, "The Emperor summons you to...to... Oh, Master Cangjie, the Emperor desires for you to take these words that we speak and, I do not understand, but... _capture_ them."

So begins the story of Cangjie, the man who invented writing.

In this retelling of a legend from a time before writing, in the renaissance that gave rise to modern Chinese culture, award-winning author Baker Lawley spins a tale about the origin of the written word, and the burden and magic and miracle of the act of writing.

**Click here to read more and get your copy!**

**~~~**

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**Visit** **www.bakerlawley.com** **and get the insider information on new books, special deals, **

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Table of Contents

Part One: This Is The Life

Part Two: Words, Words, Words

Part Three: Miles To Go

Part Four: Acting, Not Acting

Get Book 2 in the trilogy! _The Play's the Thing_

About the Author

More Books by Baker Lawley
