The Lord of the Hat

  I don’t know if my parents were woozy from the dry chicken we had for dinner or if they had been replaced by aliens, but for some reason, they both agreed that I could bring Trevor and Jack, and Libby could bring Melany on our trip.

  Libby and I didn’t waste a moment going to ask. We both knew that my mom could change her mind in an instant. I ran out the front door across the street to Trevor’s house, and Libby called Melany. At Trevor’s house, I rang the doorbell ten times.

  Trevor answered the door wearing a paint smock. He was busy painting some scenery for Mustache and the Mighty Cool Adventure.

  After he got done squealing, I told Trevor all the details. We would be leaving in a couple of days, we would be gone a week, and we would be riding in an RV. He was a little worried that his parents wouldn’t let him miss a week of school. That was a problem, so I told him to tell his parents that it was going to be super-educational and that we would be stopping at a bunch of landmarks and would get to ride a train. Plus, my mom would probably force us to sing songs about math. I also told Trevor that I was going to invite Jack as well.

  Trevor ran off to ask his parents while I stood outside his front door. It seemed like forever, but finally he burst back out.

  I couldn’t believe it. My life was really going well. Janae and I were kind of an item. Even though I didn’t know what kind of item exactly, but we were one.

  And now I got to miss a week of school and go on a trip in an RV with my friends instead of my wonderful … I mean awful cousin, Kyle. Ever since Kat had come and gone, things were going swimmingly.

  We ran over to Jack’s house and rang the doorbell at least twenty times. His older brother answered the door and gave us an evil glare.

  Jack’s big brother was nice on some days and mean on others. He was in high school and used to be a star football player. But last year he had an accident on the field, and now he had a bum knee. I’m not really sure what that even means.

  A few weeks ago, Jack’s big brother had started his own business making T-shirts. Not many people bought them because they were dumb.

  When he wasn’t making T-shirts, he was throwing rocks at things, and because of that, he was always getting in trouble for throwing rocks at things. Last week he threw a rock at a window of the Awful House, and Aaron’s mom had seen him do it. So he was grounded for a few days. Now he was trying to act nice. He almost smiled and then went off to get Jack. When Jack came to the door, he was holding an old Barbie and a bottle of barbecue sauce.

  I told Jack about the trip and how Tuffin had asked that he come along. I told him we’d get to miss a week of school and that we would be driving in an RV.

  I told Jack that my whole family was going and that Libby was bringing a friend. I asked him if he wanted to come.

  Jack’s family life was a little different than mine. He could stay out later, watch movies that were scarier, and use words around his parents that my mom wouldn’t approve of.

  Apparently he could also go with his friends on weeklong trips to another state without asking permission.

  This was going to be a great trip.

  CHAPTER 7

  RECREATIONAL VEHICLE

  My other friends were pretty upset that they hadn’t been invited to come to New Mexico. I tried to tell them I was sorry and that I could only bring one person and Tuffin had picked Jack, but they weren’t accepting it.

  I couldn’t take them, and there was nothing I could do about it. My dad had won a trip for eight people, and they would make nine, ten, and eleven.

  Trevor promised to film a ton of footage so that when we got back we could edit it into one epic mustache movie for everyone to watch.

  The night before we were going to leave on our trip, my dad came home with the RV he had rented.

  It was huge and way better than our house. There were two TVs, a kitchen, bedrooms, and a ladder you could climb to go through a hatch and get up on the roof.

  Teddy, Aaron, and Rourk were even more upset now. They had never been in an RV, and it seemed like me and Trevor and Jack were going to be traveling in some cool, fun, futuristic vehicle.

  Even though we all knew Aaron had never ridden in a recreational vehicle, he started saying some of his normal lies to make it sound like he had, and that he wasn’t all that impressed we were going to be going in one.

  None of us were impressed. We really didn’t even listen to him, but all of my friends did help me explore the RV until Teddy broke one of the knobs off of a cabinet and my dad asked him politely to get out and …

  My dad then instructed me, Trevor, and Jack to go pack and bring our stuff so that he could get it into the RV and make sure everything was ready for tomorrow. Trevor and Jack ran to their homes, and I took off to my room. It didn’t take me too long to pack, but I got the feeling that Beardy was watching me as I moved around my room.

  He didn’t reply. I was starting to think he might never open up again. Maybe Katfish was the last creature that would ever come out. She could have been wrong when she said it was going to get weirder. Maybe she meant it would get weirder like Janae would stop hating me and I would get to go on a trip with some of my friends.

  For some reason, Beardy didn’t look as sure about that explanation as I did. It kind of seemed like he was rolling his eyes at me.

  When I made it back to the RV, Trevor and Jack were ready with their stuff. Trevor had his suitcase, I had my duffel bag, and Jack had something else.

  Trevor had packed tons of extra stuff like hand-powered flashlights, a safety whistle in case he got separated from my family, and twelve pairs of underwear, even though we were only going to be gone seven days.

  My dad put our things in the storage bins at the bottom of the RV. He then told my friends to go home and …

  Trevor thanked my dad for the great advice and Jack said,

  My dad was pretty worried about the tribe. He started to ask Jack all sorts of questions, so Jack decided to leave. That left just me, my dad, and Tuffin to talk about the people in the Amazon who never slept.

  In my dad’s mind, the world would be a perfect place as long as everyone had enough slides and swings. I helped my dad pack a few more things into the RV and then went to my room to get ready for bed. We were going to leave at six in the morning. I changed into one of my dad’s old concert shirts and got in bed. As I was lying there, it looked like Beardy was glowing. What? Could this be happening?!

  I was going out of town for a week. Now would not be a good time for Beardy to unlock himself. I couldn’t care for another creature at the moment. I needed things to be calm. No distractions. Tomorrow was going to be the beginning of a fun time—no worries for over a week. I looked at my window and realized that it was the reflection of the setting sun that was making Beardy glow. Phew! I fell asleep quickly, knowing that everything was perfect.

  CHAPTER 8

  ON THE ROAD

  Tuffin was even more excited for the trip than I was. He woke me up early the next morning by breathing in my face and staring at me as I slept.

  It was five o’clock, so I rolled out of bed and stretched as big as I could to wake myself up.

  The rest of my family was already up. Libby was in the bathroom getting ready, my mom was making food for the trip in the kitchen, and my dad was wearing what looked like a train conductor’s hat with a scarf around his neck.

  As soon as Libby was done with the bathroom, I got ready. Then I helped Tuffin pack a few toys to bring. He wanted to take a bunch of things that weren’t very practical.

  I talked him into taking just a few little cars and a stuffed animal. At quarter to six, Trevor and Jack were at my front door knocking. Trevor had a hat and bandanna on too.

  Jack had a shirt with Beardy on the front of it to match the Beardy burned into his palm.

  It was pretty early, but our driveway was packed. Trevor’s parents had come to see their son off. They were acting like he was going to war. Jack’s dad was there, but I think it was
just to make sure Jack was actually leaving. Aaron and Teddy were there to see if by some chance things had changed and they could come. Melany, Libby’s friend, was there with her suitcase and ready to go. Melany’s sister, Maggie, had come to see her off, and standing next to Maggie was Janae. I was really glad I had showered and gotten ready. It was quite a crowd.

  I walked over to Janae as my mom gave our house keys to Trevor’s mom so she could feed Puck and Fred while we were gone. I looked at Janae and smiled.

  Janae told me to have fun and that she would miss me. Janae was going to miss me? This was crazy. I had a hard time believing I wasn’t dreaming or that the universe wasn’t messed up, pushing the planets out of whack.

  To make things even stranger, Janae gave me one of her necklaces to wear so that I would remember her. Was she crazy? There was no way I would forget her. Still, I took the necklace and promised I would wear it. I was glad that it looked more like a boy necklace than a girl one.

  Trevor’s mom was big-time into scrapbooking, so she insisted that everyone who was going on the trip gather together for a group picture.

  After we took the picture, my dad climbed into the RV and honked the horn. We all got in and waved at everyone standing in the driveway. As my dad was backing out and I was waving at Janae, I heard something sneeze in one of the small cabinets by the table. I knew that there shouldn’t be sneezing coming from there, so I opened it up to see …

  Rourk was acting confused and weirder than usual. My dad stopped the vehicle so that our stowaway could get off. Rourk stepped down the stairs looking sad. My dad closed the door and we drove off, but not before my mom had us check to make sure that some other friend wasn’t hiding in some other cabinet.

  By the time we finally got moving, it was five minutes after six. My dad was a little upset that we were getting off to a late start, but he tried to sing himself out of it.

  The RV was really big, but after we had been driving an hour, it started to feel a little small. Libby and Melany were hogging the big bed in the back to watch a movie about an ice skater who lost his foot. My mom was sleeping in the passenger seat, and Tuffin was strapped in at the kitchen table playing with Play-Doh. Trevor was filming scenery that we drove past, and Jack had already used the bathroom three times.

  To make things worse, my mom was supposed to pack our video game system and a bunch of games and movies for us. But when we pulled out the box, there were just books. And the only ones were the Lord of the Rings trilogy and a bunch of Dr. Seuss books for Tuffin. My mom swore she had packed the other stuff, but we couldn’t find it anywhere. She was also confused because the books that were in the box had all come from the public library.

  I figured my mom had just forgotten, since sometimes parents are forgetful. But something about the books in the box made me nervous. I picked up Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now! and flipped through it. I loved Dr. Seuss books when I was little, but I hadn’t read one in years. And I loved the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit movies, but the books were really long, and there was no way I was going to spend the trip reading. As far as I was concerned, I was on vacation from books and from my closet.

  So the RV seemed a little cramped, and we didn’t have any games or movies to watch, but we did have my dad and his lame driving games.

  Another thing about RVs that’s not that great is how slow you have to drive. My dad was already a slow driver, but he had to go even slower in the RV. We were driving so slow that when the road became a two-lane highway, we had at least a hundred cars behind us honking and wishing we would go faster.

  We made our first stop for gas in a town called Myron, Arizona. It wasn’t much of a town, but the truck stop was huge. My parents encouraged everyone to use the bathrooms so we didn’t overuse the one in the RV. I think they were mainly talking to Jack, because no one else had used it yet. Everyone got out and went into the truck stop while my dad filled the RV with more gas and whistled a song about filling up.

  I had never been to a truck stop before, and the bathrooms were weird. There were showers right in the bathrooms. I guess truckers that drove cross-country needed a place to clean up too. Because of that, there were some truckers in towels standing in the bathroom waiting to shower.

  Luckily we didn’t have to hold it or use the RV’s. Not far from the regular bathroom there was a family bathroom.

  I used it first. It had paintings of friendly animals and a diaper changing table that folded out and a big thing of hand sanitizer. There were also all kinds of simple signs explaining things.

  Trevor used the bathroom after me, and Jack used it after him. When Jack came out, he said,

  We made our way to the RV quickly, and right before we climbed inside, Jack asked,

  It took us three more hours of driving before we arrived at the RV campground. During those three hours, not much happened. My dad honked the horn like mad when we crossed over the New Mexico border, and I read a lot of Dr. Seuss books to Tuffin as Jack and Trevor played cards with Libby and Melany. The RV campground was kind of cool. It was right next to some mountains and a big river. After we parked, my parents gave us two orders.

  Libby and Melany went to see if there were any cute boys traveling with other families at the RV park. My mom started to prepare dinner with Tuffin’s help, and my dad set up some folding chairs and built a fire near the back of the RV. Me and my friends headed into the woods to film stuff.

  I put my mustache on, and we filmed Jack and me sword-fighting with sticks for Mustache and the Mighty Cool Adventure.

  When it started getting dark, we returned to the RV to find everyone sitting around the fire eating Lunchables and Hot Pockets.

  We ate and sang some songs, and then me and Jack tossed a football around while Trevor showed my dad some of the rocks he found. Libby and Melany went back into the RV to talk about Roy, and Tuffin fell asleep in my mom’s arms. After Jack accidentally beaned me in the head with the football for the seventh time, we decided to stop doing that and watch some of the stuff we had filmed earlier. We just watched it on the camera. It was a small screen, so we walked away from the firelight to see better.

  While I was watching one of the scenes, I thought I saw something odd.

  Trevor replayed the video, and I saw it again. In the background, some red and white stripes were moving behind a bush.

  Trevor and Jack squinted and examined the video carefully. We replayed it a dozen times, but it still wasn’t clear what it was.

  My heart began to beat faster. I had recently had some experience with unidentified little things coming from my closet. It seemed impossible that something that had to do with my closet could be so far from my house, but impossible was a word I was believing in less and less these days.

  My mom took Tuffin back to the RV to tuck him in for the night. He was mumbling a bunch of things that didn’t make sense.

  My dad started yawning and talking about …

  There was room for me and my friends to bunk inside the RV, but we had brought sleeping bags so that we could stay outside. My dad grabbed the sleeping bags and gave them to us. He told us how to tend the fire and said to have a good night. We placed our sleeping bags around the fire and crawled into them.

  I was happy to be on the trip. I was happy to be sleeping outside with my friends. I was also more than a little curious about what I had seen on Trevor’s camera. We talked and belched and acted like kids should in the wild. It was a nice moment. As I drifted off, I thought I heard something in the wind.

  CHAPTER 9

  BUMPS IN THE NIGHT

  I didn’t sleep well. It was cold and Jack snores—a lot. I also kept hearing things. I wanted to wake my friends up and go into the RV, but I knew they would make fun of me for years. So I slept poorly, and when I woke up, the first thing I said was,

  I was uneasy. There was something going on, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. My rhyming was not normal. The ULT I saw on the film was unusual. I knew that somet
hing was happening, but how could Beardy and my closet be messing with me so far from home? It wasn’t like they could just phone it in.

  After breakfast we drove for two hours and stopped at the world’s biggest toothpick to take a picture.

  We then drove another three hours and had a lunch of fried chicken near the world’s largest collection of dice.

  Then we drove about three more hours and reached our destination for the night in the town of Simmering, New Mexico. We stopped at another RV park near a drive-in movie theater that was no longer in operation.

  We had dinner around another campfire, and my dad filled us in on what would be happening tomorrow.

  My dad said that it was also one of the grandest. We would be in the town of Tolk for two nights. There would be horseback riding and tennis and hiking.