“I don’t think so,” I said. “Go to sleep.”
She punched me in the arm. “I’m telling him. I have to. I have to tell somebody.”
I wasn’t surprised. Besides cheating and lying and confessing, she’s also the world’s worst secret keeper. “You better not,” I said, and went to sleep. What I didn’t say was that I actually didn’t care that much. In fact, I had kind of been wanting to tell somebody too.
But we weren’t the only ones with something to tell. Poppy surprised us in the morning. He was at the kitchen table with our parents when we came down for breakfast.
“What are you doing here?” Lily asked him.
“Eating an English muffin with jelly,” he said. I guess you could say that was the truth but not the whole truth.
Mom and Dad grabbed their tool belts and headed out the door for work. And Poppy dropped the bomb. He told us he was leaving next day.
Lily squawked, “You said you’re staying till we kick you out!”
“I know,” he said. “I guess I lied.”
Lily threw an English muffin at him. “I don’t like you, Poppy.”
She didn’t stop grumping until Poppy hauled her onto his lap and made her laugh with funny faces. He told us that because he was leaving next day, Mom and Dad said we could stay home from school. And that’s when we told him. We told him about the first sleepwalk to the train station and all the birthday-night sleepwalks since then. We told him about the day at the beach and Neverlost, and about The Great Snow-Fort War and The Bruise That Moved.
We told him about the time Lily yelled, “I’m stuck!” only it was me who was stuck in the backyard. And the time I yelled, “Stop!” when Lily was ready to chase a ball into the street five miles away.
We told him—well, Lily told him—her idea that “the rest of us” was born during that first sleepwalk to the station. We told him we know who we are now, but we can’t put it into words. We know we have a special thing, we told him, but we can’t even describe it to ourselves, so we call it goombla.
Poppy nodded and smiled. The only thing he said was, “Wow,” now and then. By the time we were done telling him, it was almost lunchtime. The breakfast dishes were still on the table and we hadn’t brushed our teeth.
We told Poppy he was the only one who knew besides us. We made him promise not to tell Mom and Dad. We asked him what he thought about all the stuff we told him. He grinned. “Well, as your grandma would have said a long time ago: far out.”
Poppy had recently gotten his driver’s license in California, so that night he borrowed Dad’s car and drove Lily and me to French Creek State Park. He didn’t tell us why. He did tell us there were two places where he finally found himself, and he was driving us to one of them. “French Creek State Park is where you found yourself?” I said. “Well, not exactly,” he said, and refused to say any more. This drove Lily crazy, of course, because besides being a cheater, liar, confessor, secret-spiller, and pumpkin seed–stealer, she can’t stand waiting. She bugged him all the way: Poppy this and Poppy that, until he growled, “Lily, zip it.” She did. Poppy is the only person who can make her shut up.
When we got there, Poppy drove through a parking lot and past some log cabins and down a skinny, winding road. He pulled off to the side, onto the grass. “Wait here a sec,” he said. He got out, looked at the sky, came back. “I think we’re good. Clear but no moon. Let’s go.”
It was really dark. No streetlights here. Poppy took each of us by the hand. It seemed like we were walking onto a big flat field. Snow crunched under our boots.
After a while we stopped. Poppy said, “This looks good. Time to lie down, kiddos.” He made us lie down with him in the snow, one on either side. “Okay,” he said, “all you need to do now is open your eyes and let the universe pour in.” While we looked at the stars, Poppy started talking. His voice didn’t need to be loud. It was the only sound in the night.
“I was in Chile,” he said. “I hired onto a boat bringing fruit up to the US, but it wasn’t leaving for a week. So I rented a car and drove out to the Atacama. The Atacama is a desert in northern Chile. It’s the driest place on earth. Sometimes they find mummified people and animals there. It’s a natural mummy maker.” That made us laugh. We didn’t laugh again. From then on it was some of the fiercest listening I ever did.
“When I got there, I think maybe I finally felt like I was where I belonged. Like, without Grandma, my life was a match for the Atacama. Ha! Together at last, the two driest deserts in the world.
“So I got out of the car and just started walking. The sun was setting and next thing I knew it was night. I don’t know how long I walked with my eyes to the dry, parched earth. Ha.” He kind of laughed, but we both knew it wasn’t a laughy laugh so we didn’t join in. “Yeah, I guess I do know—about ten years. Anyway, I don’t know what it was. Maybe when you’re completely dry and empty, up is the only way to look. So I looked up.
“And I wish I could tell you how I felt. That’s why I understand when you say you can’t explain your special thing, your goombla. I looked up and for the first time in my life I wasn’t just looking—I was seeing. Suddenly the word sky seemed so flimsy. Useless. For one thing, I had never known there were so many stars up there. There’s no light pollution from cities out there in the Atacama, and just like tonight, no moon to wash out the starlight.
“But that was only the beginning, the wonder of that blizzard of stars. Something else was happening. With Grandma, my world was the earth. The earth of trees and oceans and people and sockeye salmon. Now the night in the Atacama seemed to be telling me something: look…look…there is more. I saw a gusher of stars from one end to the other and I thought, It’s the Milky Way! My galaxy! I was filled with a sense that I belonged to something way bigger than I ever imagined. Than I ever could imagine. The ends of it were unreachable. I could travel at light speed for a million lifetimes and I would barely get out of the driveway.
“But you know what got to me most?” We were both too mesmerized to ask. “It wasn’t the sense of the vast endlessness of it all. It was just the opposite. It wasn’t that it was all too much for me to comprehend. It was that no matter how big and unimaginable it was, it was my home. My ultimate neighborhood. My hometown. It was where I belonged. And—here was the best part—so did everybody else belong. Everybody who is and everybody who ever was. I wasn’t alone after all. I was connected to it all. That star there”—he pointed—“it’s my neighbor…and that one…and that one…. And Grandma. For the first time in ten years I sensed her presence in something that wasn’t a picture or a memory. She was out there too—but not really there, because everything is here. And that’s where”—he took my hand, and I knew on the other side he was taking Lily’s—“that’s where I found myself. There.” He brought our hands to his heart. “Here.”
Lily
Even before Poppy said Grandma was out there, I knew he was talking about more than stars. When Poppy stopped talking, we just lay there in the snow, looking up. After a while I started to feel what Poppy felt. I started to feel comfortable, at home, like the world was our room, like the stars were our ceiling.
On the ride home Poppy told us about entanglement. He said entanglement shows that everything in the universe is connected. He said that light is made up of particles called photons. “Sometimes,” he said, “photons come in pairs. It’s called entanglement.” He looked at us squeezed into the shotgun seat. “You could call them twins.” I jabbed Jake in the ribs. Poppy said if twin photons are separated, they still act as if they’re together. You could put them on opposite ends of the universe and it wouldn’t make any difference. “If you tweak one photon,” he said, “the twin on the other side of the universe will twitch.”
I jabbed Jake again, hard this time. “See?”
Jake squawked. “Ow!”
I was so busy thinking about entangled twin light particles that we were on the porch at home before I remembered something. “Poppy!??
? I said. “You said you found yourself in two places. Where’s the other one?”
He didn’t say a word. He took a step back. His grin got bigger and bigger under the porch light. When it seemed his grin was ready to crack his face in half, he pointed with both index fingers—straight at us. And grabbed us in a bear hug that lasted forever.
THE END
Jake
I knew she would try to end it there. She says that since I had the first chapter, she gets the last and so she gets to end it wherever she wants. But somebody’s gotta be the Whole Story Police here, and the hug on the porch wasn’t the end.
In the first place, the bear hug didn’t last forever. It lasted about five minutes—which, I admit, is pretty darn long for a hug. Even the hug when Poppy left next day wasn’t as long. Lily was mad and thumping his chest one minute, bawling into his arms the next. Poppy said don’t worry, it wouldn’t be another ten years before he showed up again. I’m not sure we believed him.
Before Dad drove us all to the airport, Poppy came into our room and got all whispery. “Listen,” he said, “I have a suggestion for you two. Okay?” We said okay. “So here’s what I’d like you to do. I’d like you to write down your story. The story of you two. Your goombla. Like you told me yesterday. I wish I had done it when I was your age. I can hardly remember those days now. I know it’s hard to put into words, like you said, but I want you to at least try to write your story down before you become an old poop like me who can’t remember anything.” Then he pulled two notebooks from the bag he was holding. He gave each of us a pen. “Okay?”
“Okay,” we said together.
So we took Poppy to the airport and hugged some more and waved good-bye. We wouldn’t leave the terminal until we saw his plane take off and disappear into the clouds.
That night after dinner we started writing in our notebooks. And today, just this second, we finished our book. And that’s what you just read.
Okay, say it now….
Lily
THE END
oops
Intro II
Okay, so we made a mistake. Hey, we never wrote a book before.
You’re always in such a hurry to get to the end.
I am not.
You read the last page of books first.
I skim. Anyway, for this second intro, I (Lily) wrote that first line up there.
She confessed.
For both of us.
I’m still older than you.
Ignore him. So we figured the book was done last November.
Poppy was gone.
Nothing much happened for a long time.
Except school.
Whoopee.
And then suddenly on a dark and stormy night
Oh, good grief. It was yesterday at dinner.
I was just trying to be literary, since we’re back to writing a book.
From now on it’s going to be more like a journal. Or a diary. Day-to-day.
Whatever. So yesterday at dinner Dad says
Mom says.
Right. Mom says, “So what’re you guys gonna do this summer?”
She said it because the school year was over next day.
Right. And we just looked at each other for five seconds
ten seconds
and we both said the word at once:
“Write.”
This was no big deal to Mom and Dad.
Just another twins thing.
They asked us what we’re going to write.
We just said, “Oh, whatever.”
After dinner we went to CVS. I got a new notebook.
I got a new notebook.
So, what’s your first line going to be?
Don’t know. My head’s a blank.
So what’s new?
Ha-ha.
How about “Once upon a time…”
Right.
Or “It was a dark and stormy night….”
If you don’t shut up, I’m never going to start.
Ladies and gentlemen, my sister…
Lily
School’s out! EEYYESSSSSSS!!!!!!!
Poppy said we don’t have to write in our journals every day about every little thing. Just stuff that seems important or interesting. Well—helloooo?—what’s more important than summer vacation? I counted on the calendar. We don’t go back to school for—ta-da—81 days. Eight. Tee. One. In other words—forever! Our fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Webber, said, “Now, young people, don’t waste your summer. Read. Volunteer. Improve yourselves. Be productive.” Yeah, I’ll be productive all right. I’ll tell you what I’m gonna produce. I’m gonna produce fun. Fun! Fun! Fun!
Jake
Don’t tell my sister, but forever is already down to 75 days. I’m just starting my notebook because I’ve been busy getting my new room ready. On the second day of forever Dad made an announcement at dinner: “Good news, guys. You’re each going to have your own room.”
I pumped my fists. “Yes!”
Lily snickered. “That’ll be the day.”
Dad rolled on. “You’ll stay where you are, Lily girl. You’ll get a regular bed now. The bunks will go.” He nodded to me. “You’ll get the room next to hers.”
Lily wasn’t snickering now. She was squawking. “He can’t move there! That’s Poppy’s room!”
“We’ll fix up the attic for Poppy,” said Dad.
Lily snapped away from him. “Mom—he can’t! Tell him!”
Mom gave a big, sad sigh. She patted Lily’s hand. “It’s time, honey.”
Lily snatched her hand away. “Don’t touch me.” She swung back to Dad. She put on her sob face. “But Dad, you can’t separate us. We’re twins.”
“You’re also boy and girl,” Dad reminded her. “You’re not little kids anymore. You need your own rooms. Stop acting like it’s the end of the world. He’s not moving to Timbuktu. He’s moving a couple feet down the hall. You can visit each other all you want.”
Amazingly, my sister didn’t say another word. She just stared bug-eyed off into space. She was in shock. Then she dropped her fork to the floor and left the table.
So next day we moved—Dad and I, that is. Lily sat in the doorway and made us step over her the whole time.
That was four days ago. For four days Lily glared and grumped and slumped. Then yesterday morning she barges into my new room and shakes me awake and says, “Let’s ride.”
So we rode our bikes.
And we went to the creek to hunt stones for my collection.
We went to the comic shop.
And we went to Little Train That Could, the model railroad shop, so Lily could stare at an American Flyer blue-and-silver diesel engine that she says is just like the California Zephyr dream train that streaks through us once a year on our birthday night.
And we checked in with Mom and Dad twice at the house they’re working on down the street. Nobody is living in it. It’s what builders call a handyman special. That means it’s cheap because it needs a lot of fixing, which is where Mom and Dad come in. Because it’s so close and because we check in, we’re allowed to stay at our house by ourselves this summer.
And we tried to play hide-and-seek, but we still can’t because we always know where the other is hiding.
And Lily tried to teach me to burp on command.
That’s what we were doing when a funny thing happened.
Lily
There was nothing funny about it. As I was demonstrating a simple beginner’s burp, the doorbell rang. We ran for it but nobody was there. But something was. On the doormat. A stone. A blue stone. Jake of course was impressed. “Blue,” he said. “Cool.” He took it to our—ex-cuse me, his—room and put it in the new box Mom made for his collection.
Me, I just had a bad feeling. I tried to be happy for him. I know how much he loves cool stones. But the bad feeling stuck. And got badder, because in the next couple days two more stones showed up: a pink one and a gold one.
I told him, “That’s not real go
ld. It’s fool’s gold. It’s fake.”
He shrugged. “I know.”
I told him, “These don’t count. They’re stuff you buy at a hobby place or a museum. You should just have stones you find yourself. That’s a real collection.”
He didn’t even hear me. He just ran upstairs pumping his fist: “Yes!”
No stone came yesterday, but my bad feeling got a name. Jake and I were out riding our bikes when we ran into Bump Stubbins and his gang. Not long ago Bump dug up two other nitwits from under a rotting log, and now the three of them ride around together and call themselves the Death Rays. As we were cruising past them, Bump called out, “Hey, Jake! D’juh like the stones?”
Jake shot a look at Bump, all surprised. It had never occurred to him this was where the stones came from. My brother can be a real moron sometimes. I picked up speed. “C’mon,” I said.
I thought Jake was going to do it right, but when we were half a block past them he looked back and called, “Yeah! Thanks!”
Last night I got out the cards to play poker, but Jake didn’t want to. Not even when I promised I wouldn’t cheat. He just kept making goo-goo eyes at the new stones. He’s already making plans for a bigger collection box. “How many more do you think I’ll get?” he said. “As many as it takes to make you kiss him,” I said. His face got all frowny. He just didn’t get it.
“Jake,” I said, “why do you think he’s giving you stones? Because he’s trying to suck up to you. He hates me because I beat him up and struck him out, so he’s trying to take you away.”
“Away from what?” he said.
“Away from me, dumbo.”
He just laughed and ran downstairs to check the doormat.
Today we were out riding again, and again we ran into the Bumpsters. Bump called, “Hey, Jake! C’mon and ride with the Death Rays!”