My legs were tired. We’d been moving all day along the side of these mountains. My pack felt heavy on my back, and my rifle, hung by its strap on my shoulder, banged against my body with each step. The regular army was after us and our commander said we couldn’t stop moving until we made it to the secret mountain sanctuary where we might be safe from the government soldiers, at least for a while.

One of the other guys whispered, “Commander, are you sure this is the right path?”

Then I heard strange people singing. I couldn’t tell where their voices were coming from. I woke up. They were coming from the clock radio…

Stay on the right track
To Nine Mile and Mack
And get the best deals around
‘Cause Roy O’Brien has the best deals in town

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I was in the attic of that giant house again, but there was still a stairway over in the corner going up to what was another attic above the one I was in. As I climbed the stairs and looked around this new attic above the one I’d been in, there was yet another wood staircase going up, but how could that be because from the outside the house didn’t look tall enough to have so many attics above each other. What if there was no top? Could that be possible? Should I stop trying to see what was at the top of every new staircase?

I decided to go up this one more staircase. As I walked up the bare wood steps and my head got high enough to look around, I couldn’t see another staircase, but I saw dad crouched in a corner crying. He looked like he was my age, but I knew it was dad somehow. He didn’t look at me but spoke.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. I woke up, and I was shocked to see dad, regular grownup dad, looking at me in bed from the doorway of my room with a worried look on his face.

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I was in this giant house where I kept going up in the attic but there was still another attic above it, so I went up there too. In each new attic I found a different stairway that went up to ANOTHER attic above the one I was on. As I walked up the creaky stairs I felt something wiggling my big toe. Wait… I was under a blanket. Where was I?

A grownup man’s voice that sounded familiar said, “Wake up sleepyheads. It’s four in the morning. Time to go”, and I suddenly remembered. We were going to drive to Cape Cod.

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Yesterday, the last day of school, had been the best day of the year, just like it had been for the last four years. When the school bell rang yesterday and we were done with fifth grade, so many things I’d worried about, every day, every week, I didn’t have to worry about anymore. No more tests. No more book reports. No more SRA colors. No more grownups in charge of me five days a week.

Miss Kennedy watched us kids all jump out of our seats and start talking with each other as some of us ran out the door and others stayed to talk to other kids. She looked kind of sad, like she would miss us, and I even felt kind of bad for her, even though she was a grownup. But then Beth and Abby went up to talk to her and she smiled and didn’t seem sad anymore. They were the real “teacher’s pets”, especially Beth, who REALLY liked doing school stuff.

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Our teacher handed back our stories today we had written for our big monthly writing assignment for April. The story I had written was called “Enroute to Ekoe”, and it was about a very large pretend island I made up that got captured by the Japanese before World War Two and became a military base for them during the war. It had five smaller “satellite” islands around it. My story was about the initial “campaign” to capture the small islands around the big island before we invaded it.

Even though I had to do it for school, I had actually liked doing it. Most of the OTHER assignments I had to do at home for school, I really didn’t like doing. If they were easy, they still took time that I would rather spend playing, with my friends, in the park, with David, or just by myself. And if they were hard, I’d just keep thinking I had to do it, but not doing it yet, until it got to be the last minute and I HAD to do it. I just HATED that feeling, like grownups, in this case my teacher, were in charge of my life.

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It was the middle of March about two weeks before my birthday, but it still seemed like winter outside, even though there was hardly any snow left on the ground.

“You know Coolie”, mom said as she rubbed a white cloth on the shiny top of the round table in the living room, “Your tenth birthday’s coming up, and I think I’m at a point where I’m ready to have a real party in this place.” She looked around the room. “Our lonely little Herman Miller chest and Windsor chair from our old living room FINALLY have a lot of company. Thanks to all your dad and I’ve been able to do, we now have this round table, the rectangular table and the square coffee table in the sitting room, the overstuffed rocking chair, the deacon’s bench, the love seat, and a couple nice end tables.”

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“Are you feeling better Coolie?” mom asked as I sat at the kitchen table eating Campbell’s chicken noodle soup out of a bowl. I nodded. I had opened the can and heated it up myself on the stove.

“Oh good”, she said as she turned back to a big metal tray full of little paper cups with dirt and small shiny green plants in them that she called “cuttings”. She had her garden clippers and was cutting off parts of some of the bigger plants and putting those new “cuttings” in a bowl that looked like it had a white paste in it. It was Friday, and I had been home from school all week.

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It was Monday morning and I woke up to that disc jockey guy on the radio on CKLW again just talking away about the weather…

Twenty twenty weather word, “snow”. It’s comin down boys and girls, flake by flake, inch by inch, maybe nine inches before it’s done in the Detroit Metro area, and it’s not even Thanksgiving yet. Thanks for nothing, mother nature! Unless you’re a kid whose school is closed today, and then all hail the weather goddess! Temp in the high teens this morning… hi all you teens out there… but barely breaking thirty this afternoon. But somebody please “break it” to Tommy James and the Shondells that no school is no excuse for bad behavior…

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I woke up to that guy on the radio, that “disc jockey” guy, talking in his fast way that kind of went up and down and was almost like singing, but not really. Dad had gotten David and I a “clock radio” to help us wake up for school in the morning, though David usually was already up before it went off. Instead of the alarm, I had moved the little switch on the side to turn on the radio at 7:45, which we usually had on that CKLW station at the “8” on my little transistor radio but at “80” on this new bigger radio. After a bunch of other words all over the place he said…

Twenty twenty weather word, “muggy”. Low sixties this morning but a humid near ninety, yes nine zero boys and girls, this very afternoon. So much for Labor Day being the end of summer! And Martha Reeves and the Vandellas’ new hit’s got something to say about just walking to school this morning…

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It was just a week ago that we moved here. Mom said we needed to move for her “mental health”, so “your dad and I can have more of the kind of life we imagined when we agreed to get married”, and so “I can continue to do all those things you need your mom to do for you”. Yeah, she said all that, and I guess it all made sense, but mom was always good at figuring out what to say so it at least sounded like it made sense, so I was never completely sure.

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