FROM SNOOP

Chapter One

 

The wind on the mountain is cold enough to freeze fire.

As I slalom down the slope, it sneaks inside my hood, attacking my ears. I hear the crunch of my skis digging into the spring snow as I pick up speed. It’s beautiful too—Colorado in March, a world-class ski resort, the Rockies all around me. I can see why Dad loves this sport so much.

But my mind is focused on the Chattanooga Chop.

I’m sure you’ve seen the viral videos. You swirl your hips, undulate your shoulders, and swing your fists like you’re battling with a samurai sword. It’s gone totally global by now. The most popular clips have over fifty million views. And the best part is, you can do the Chattanooga Chop with anything you like—a hockey stick, an umbrella, a bouquet of flowers, an overgrown zucchini. In my personal favorite, the dancer dressed in a Batman suit is balanced on a tightrope, wielding a roaring . Someone off-screen is pelting him with overripe tomatoes, and he’s slicing them in midair. The world is red-orange with tomato juice. Just thinking about that amazing video makes me start waving my ski poles. I almost overbalance and plow the rest of the way down the run on my face.

My father is waiting at the bottom, frowning. “What was all that about, Carter?”

I play innocent. “What was all what about?”

“The arm waving. The wobble.”

I blush almost hot enough to unfreeze my face. The last thing I want to admit is that I was distracted by a dance I saw on my phone. Since their divorce, my parents have seen eye to eye on exactly one thing and one thing only: the fact that I log far too much screen time.

That was the main reason behind this spring break ski trip with Dad: to get me away from my assorted gadgets—computer, TV, tablet, phone—and make me do something active. I don’t mind the skiing and I like spending time with Dad, who lives pretty far away from the rest of us. But every day, thirty-four million more videos are posted to my favorite app. Obviously, I can’t see them all, but I like to get a good cross section of what’s new. The Chattanooga Chop craze will be ancient history before you know it. Right now, people could be doing the dance with table legs, balloon animals, and mozzarella sticks . . . and I’m left out.

I start moving toward the chairlift, high-stepping in my skis. “I’ll get it right on the next try,” I promise.

“Not now,” Dad tells me. “I need you to keep an eye on your brother. I want to take a run down the Widow-Maker.”

The Widow-Maker is the tallest, steepest, toughest slope on the mountain. That’s the kind of skier Dad is—and the kind he expects Martin and me to turn into. I’m closer than Martin, who’s eight years old and still trying to graduate from the bunny hill.

Dad disappears into the crowd around the chairlift. I click out of my skis, sling them over my shoulder, and head off in the direction of the bunny hill. I’m not at all bummed at having to play Martin’s babysitter. This is exactly what I hoped would happen. I tap my chest. There it is, right where I stashed it, buried in the layers of Gore-Tex where Dad would never think to look: my phone. If there’s any signal at all on this mountain, I should be able to get in some much-needed viewing while Martin travels the length and breadth of the hill on the seat of his ski suit.

The bunny hill is a gentle slope not far from the paths that lead back to the main lodge. It’s wide and open, dotted with terrified beginners. I know this because I used to be one and my brother still is. They’re flopping, flailing, crawling, and occasionally skiing. Two or three of them are making snow angels.

Martin is easy to spot, thanks to the fluorescent lime-green ski suit Mom bought him. It hurts my eyes, even though my goggles are supposed to have UV protection. In the time it takes me to trudge to the bottom of the hill, he’s fallen and gotten up three times.

“Hey, Martin!” I bellow, waving to let him know I’m here.

I don’t wait for him to wave back. I’m already digging for my phone. It takes some doing. It’s in a pocket of my one-piece long underwear, covered by three layers plus all my ski stuff. In order to get it out, I have to pull off my mittens and glove liners. At this altitude, I’m going to freeze my fingers off. But it’s worth it: technology at last, my connection to the outside world. And look—I have two bars of service!

It’s a little slow, so the videos take forever to load. But I’m not complaining. Pretty soon I’m watching a deep-sea diver in full scuba gear doing the Chattanooga Chop underwater with a spear gun. Man, I’m glad I smuggled my phone onto the mountain. I could have missed this!

“Carter—I’m doing it!” I hear Martin shout in excitement.

I look away from the phone long enough to confirm that my brother really is doing it. He’s up on two feet, knees bent, picking up speed.

“Great,” I call absently. Oh no, my video is buffering. The Rockies may be spectacular, but they sure aren’t built for connectivity. Pretty soon, Dad will be down off the Widow-Maker . . . and if this phone isn’t hidden away by then, I’m toast!

“Look at me-e-e!” Martin’s voice again.

I don’t answer because the clip is running. A jellyfish has swum up to the diver, and so help me, it looks like its tentacles are moving in time to the music! No wonder this video is trending! It’s epic!

“Carter!” my brother calls.

“Not now!” I murmur. I’m trying to swipe to another video, but my fingertip is so cold that the phone screen isn’t responding. I breathe on my hand in an attempt to warm things up.

“Carter!”

“I’m busy—”

And by the time I glance up, it’s too late.

A normal skier keeps control by veering from side to side in a snakelike motion, but Martin’s skis are pointed straight ahead. Even on the bunny hill, the speed can get away from you.

“Snowplow!” cries the instructor.

But there’s no time for that. The kid is hurtling right at me.

At the last second, he tries to throw himself to the ground to avoid a devastating collision. Instead, he turns his body into a human boomerang that hits me just below both knees.

It only hurts for a second, but in that instant, it feels like my legs have been dipped in lava.

They say that by the time I hit the snow, I was already out cold.

 

I have only a blurry understanding of being in the ambulance. Dad can’t ride with me because he has to stay with Martin. The EMTs keep asking about my head, which is weird, because that’s the only part of me that doesn’t hurt right now.

Or am I wrong? The pain is so intense it blocks out everything else.

The ambulance’s double doors burst open and they roll me into the hospital. Medical people in scrubs swarm the stretcher. More questions about my head. Did I bang it? Is it bleeding? How many fingers—?

“My head is fine!” I rasp. “It’s my legs you should be worried about!”

Someone slips a breathing mask over my face and I’m knocked out again.

The next thing I know, I’m warm and dry, my ski suit gone.

I voice the first thought that comes to mind. “My phone . . .”

“I’ve got it,” my father says in a quiet voice.

He sounds a lot less mad than I thought he’d be, considering I took my phone skiing after I’d been specifically told not to. I’m relieved he isn’t threatening to flush it down the toilet—and to be honest, a little surprised too.

I open one eye. The fluorescent lighting is harsh and really bright. There’s a strong antiseptic smell.

“Am I—?”

“You’re in the hospital,” my brother supplies.

I glare at him. “You’re a really crummy skier. The worst.”

Instead of snapping back at me, he bursts into tears. “I know! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”

“Cut it out, Martin—”

I sit forward in bed, which gives me a head rush. But the worst part comes when I try to swing my legs over the side. They don’t swing. I can feel them, but it’s like they’re too heavy to move.

“Lie back down,” Dad advises.

That’s when I see what my brother is so upset about. The blanket has slipped off my left leg, which is encased in a fiberglass cast from above the knee almost to my toes.

“You broke my leg?” I accuse Martin.

“Calm down,” Dad orders, then pulls the blanket off the other leg.

Another cast exactly like the first one.

“Two broken legs?” I wheeze. “Is that even a thing?”

“It’s a thing.” At that moment, a white-coated doctor enters the room. “But don’t worry, Carter. They’re both simple fractures. You’re going to be fine. You’re lucky you were wearing a helmet. Your legs were your only injuries.”

After introducing himself, explains that when Martin collided with me, he must have been almost perfectly horizontal, parallel to the ground, because my fractures on each leg are almost identical and in exactly the same place—just below the knees. “If you tried to duplicate this accident, you couldn’t do it in a thousand tries.”

If that’s supposed to make me feel better, it’s not doing the job. “But what’s going to happen to me? How am I supposed to walk?”

“You’re not,” the doctor replies readily. “Not for six weeks, anyway. Probably closer to two months. Normally, you’d have crutches to help you get around on your good leg. But you don’t have one of those. So it’s a wheelchair for you until your legs have healed enough for walking boots.”

A wheelchair! Yeah, okay, a lot of people use wheelchairs and get around just fine. But this is so not how I thought spring break would go!

For the first time, I’m aware of a dull ache in my splinted legs. “Something’s wrong,” I tell Dr. Samuels in alarm. “It’s starting to hurt!”

“That’s all normal,” he explains. “You’re starting to feel it because the painkillers from surgery are wearing off. It will probably be uncomfortable for the first few days.” He turns to Dad. “I’ll get out of your way. I’m sure you have a lot of plans to make about how you’re going to get Carter home to North Carolina. Keep monitoring him and let me know if anything seems off.” He scribbles a few notes on my chart and rushes out.

“Does Mom know?” I ask my father.

He nods. “Oh, she knows. I’m amazed you didn’t hear the screaming all the way from Charlotte. It was all I could do to keep her from getting on the next flight here.”

I’m actually a little disappointed that she didn’t make the trip. I’m no mama’s boy, but a guy needs his mother when he’s all busted up like I am. Plus I wouldn’t mind hearing what she has to say to Martin for breaking both my legs.

On the other hand, if she came here, she’d be in the same room as Dad, and that’s never good.

“In the end,” my father goes on, “we decided it’s best for her to stay home and get the house ready.”

“Why does the house have to be ready?” Martin puts in. “Ready for what?”

“Well, for one thing,” Dad explains, “Carter won’t be able to run up and down stairs, so he’ll need a bedroom on the ground floor. So Mom’s moving him into the guest room.”

I’m horrified. “You mean the onion room?” Our guest room is right next to the kitchen, so a lot of cooking odors get in there. To me, it always smells like fried onions.

“It’ll only be for a couple of months,” Dad soothes. “I understand it seems like a long road because we’re right at the beginning. But it’ll be over before you know it.”

“But all my stuff is upstairs,” I whine. “My computer! My game console!”

“Mom will move it down for you,” he promises. “But here’s something to think about: If you hadn’t been staring at your phone, you just might have been able to jump out of the way of your flying brother. So this might be the perfect opportunity to reevaluate the amount of time you spend staring at screens.”

I bite my lip. Talk about kicking a guy when he’s down. I mean, I was perfectly fine with staying home this spring break. I didn’t need to go skiing. That was a plan hatched by Mom and Dad to get me “active.” And what did it accomplish for them? Thanks to their scheming, I’m flat on my butt for the next two months.

An odd notion strikes me, and I think about all the stuff my parents have tried to get me to do to keep me away from screen time: the hikes they wanted me to take; the pool they wanted me to join; the fish they wanted me to catch; the sports they wanted me to sign up for. Not a single one of them will be possible for a kid with two broken legs. I can’t rock climb or rollerblade or square dance or swim. I figure the only things I can do right now involve staring at a screen.

The throbbing pain under my casts suddenly hurts a little less.

I won’t be doing the Chattanooga Chop anytime soon, but having two broken legs might not be the worst thing that ever happened to me.

 

Chapter Two

 

My wheelchair skills are improving.

But only because they couldn’t get any worse.

My wheeling is okay and I’ve learned how to turn on a dime. But the average house isn’t built for wheelchairs. The doorways are narrow and I bash my elbows on the way in. There’s always too much furniture and not enough floor space for maneuvering around it. And Martin’s Lego bricks turn everywhere into a minefield. Luckily, he’s still so guilty over the original accident that he’ll do anything I ask. But I’m getting to the point that I might ask him to find another family.

The worst part is climbing out of the chair and into bed in the onion room every night. Let’s just say it isn’t very dignified. Plus, if I forget to set the brake on the wheelchair, it rolls away and I end up flat on my face on the floor, sometimes with a bloody nose. Then Mom has to come and drag me into bed. Martin could help, but I don’t let him touch me. In the hospital in Colorado, they had a poster that said there are 206 bones in the human body. I’m not letting my brother anywhere near the 204 he hasn’t broken yet.

Mom is gasping with effort as she lifts me up under my arms and heaves me onto the mattress. “I hope you’re a fast healer, Carter,” she pants. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

I don’t hold back. “Like it’s my fault your younger son is a weapon of mass destruction.”

“Don’t blame Martin,” she says with a sigh. “What was your father thinking leaving the two of you alone on the mountain?” She pulls the wheelchair over and leaves it, locked, next to my bed.

Come morning, I’m going to have to do the whole thing over again. And again and again, for the next two months.

She picks my phone up off the floor and hands it to me. That’s the only silver lining in the black cloud of my injury. Since Dad brought Martin and me home from Colorado, I haven’t heard a single complaint about my screen time. He said something vague about being “mindful” about “moderation” before heading back west. Still, I think even he suspected that separating me from my devices was not a good plan.

My game console is set up in the onion room and I’ve got my laptop down here too. On any normal night, Mom wouldn’t be giving me my phone, she’d be snatching it back from me. But when screen time is your only connection to the outside world, taking it away is cruel and unusual punishment.

Mom does have one warning, though. “Don’t stay up too late. You’ve got school in the morning.”

That’s only 50 percent true. I was granted an extended spring break to give me time to get into wheelchair mode. But I’m not going back to school in person. It just isn’t practical with my two broken legs. So it’s been arranged that I’m going to do the “next best thing”—virtual school. For the foreseeable future, I’ll be attending all my classes via Zoom. That’s another hidden advantage of my medical situation. I’m not a morning person. Sterling Township Middle School starts at 8:05, which means I’m usually out there sleepwalking the half mile to the building by 7:45 at the latest, rain or shine. But Zoom doesn’t require a commute. All I have to do is click a link on my computer and, presto, I’m in class. Plus I’ve been excused from homeroom, so I’m fine to sleep in until first period starts at 8:25.

Ethan Harouni is at my door by 7:15. The guy is my best friend, but he’s really pushing it today. The only thing worse than getting up earlier than you have to is doing it when it involves having to be wheeled to breakfast thanks to two broken legs.

“This better be good!” I slurp at him through a spoonful of cornflakes.

He lowers his voice to a confidential level. “So, did you ask her yet?”

I’m supposed to appoint two student ambassadors to represent me at school and bring home whatever assignments and projects can’t be sent electronically. Ethan is my obvious first choice, since we’ve been friends forever. For number two, I’ve chosen Lacey D’Agostino, who I’m not that close to. To be honest, we’re not technically friends. We’re neighbors and our moms are in the same pickleball league. But we’re in a lot of classes together and the truth is I’ve had an insane crush on her since kindergarten.

“Even better than that,” I reply. “My mom asked her mom. That way, there’s less chance she’ll be able to say no.”

“Smooth. Very smooth,” Ethan agrees. “Man, you’re lucky. Why can’t I get two broken legs?”

“It’s not all fun and games, you know,” I assure him. “You have to wear pajamas twenty-four seven because the casts don’t fit in regular pants. And going to the bathroom—forget it. I feel like an elephant trying to do Cirque du Soleil.”

“I can’t believe I’m going to be co-ambassadors with Lacey D’Agostino,” Ethan remarks. “I don’t know if I’ve ever even had the guts to say hi to her.”

Ethan and I share everything, but for some reason, it bugs me that he wants to use my bad luck to get close to Lacey, who’s one of the most popular girls at our school. After all, he’s not the one who’s stuck in a wheelchair for two months. And his mom isn’t even in the pickleball league!

So I say, “I guess you should be heading to school now. Wouldn’t want to be late on your first day as an ambassador.”

He moves reluctantly to the door. “I guess so. It’s weird being at school without you.”

“I’ll be with you the whole time,” I remind him. “On Zoom.”

Once he’s gone, I’ve still got more than an hour before I have to be online. But the prospect of climbing from my wheelchair into bed only to have to climb back out again isn’t very appealing. So I have a second bowl of cornflakes and wait it out.

Martin heads off for the elementary school bus and Mom loads up her SUV for a photography assignment. She does a lot of work for construction companies where she takes aerial pictures of a building site. She has this really cool drone with a camera mounted on it. I love to go with her to help with the drone, but today is a school day. And even if it wasn’t, a person with two broken legs isn’t exactly who you’d pick to set out on a job.

So I’m by myself in the house when I start the Zoom call for my period-one class, math.

Mr. Grimes’s face appears on my computer screen. I’m glad to see him. He’s my homeroom teacher and a really good guy.

“Right on time, Carter. Sorry to hear about your accident. Everybody say hi to Carter.”

He swivels the computer around and I get a view of my fellow students waving at me. Their expressions range from sympathy and concern to who-gives-a-hoot to the superior smirk on the face of Maddox Miller. I note with some annoyance that Lacey is at the desk right next to Maddox. On the other side of the room, Ethan is waving like crazy, as if he hadn’t been standing in my kitchen barely an hour ago.

I wave back, a little embarrassed by all the attention. “Hi, guys.” At least my arms work.

Mr. Grimes might be a great teacher, but math isn’t any more interesting on Zoom than it is in real life. I suffer my way through the period and pretty soon I hear the bell ring in the classroom.

The teacher barks out the day’s homework and turns back to me. “Stick around a second, Carter. I’d like a word with you.”

Even though I’m excused from homeroom, I have to schedule regular check-in sessions with Mr. Grimes in order to make sure my remote learning is going well. “Don’t get me wrong, Carter,” he explains. “You’ve always been an excellent student and this may seem like we’re riding herd on you, but it’s district policy.” And then, right there on Zoom, the teacher yawns wide enough to swallow his whole laptop.

I stare at him. “Are you okay, Mr. Grimes?”

Instead of answering, he yawns again, this time with a little more control. “Sorry, Carter,” he says sheepishly. “I haven’t been getting much sleep lately. My brother has been staying with us and things have been—hectic.”

“Is he, like, a drummer or something?” I ask.

The teacher chuckles. “No, nothing as obvious as that. My brother lives alone and he’s used to doing things his own way. But I’m sure you don’t want to listen to my problems.”

Actually, I do want to listen to his problems. That’s another thing about being stuck at home—it’s pretty boring. Some good gossip would add spice to my life, especially coming from a teacher. You never think of them as having real lives. I assumed they were perfect people who all room together in a sort of hotel in the basement of the school.

“Brothers can mess you up,” I tell him in sympathy. “Mine broke both my legs. Beat that.”

He flashes me a ghost of a smile. “I can’t. At least, not yet.” The bell rings again, signaling the end of the passing period. “Well, I know you’ve got another class to get to. I’m sorry to hear about your accident, but we’ll get through this together.”

“Bye, Mr. Grimes.” I end the call and click on the link for second period.

 

Chapter Three

 

I’m pretty good at school, and Zoom school turns out to be so much easier than the real thing. I guess showing up in person was always the hardest part.

The only thing that gives me any trouble is lunch. There’s leftover pizza in the fridge, but getting the door open means I have to roll back so far that I can’t reach it anymore. It takes about fifteen tries to get my positioning right, and by that time, I’m freezing cold. When I make my getaway, a plastic jar topples out of the overstuffed door shelf, spilling mayonnaise all over the floor.

I try to clean it up with some paper towels, but I can’t bend down low enough—not without toppling out of the chair. The microwave beeps, signaling that my pizza is hot. Our lunch periods are only twenty-six minutes. You can eat or you can clean up, but there’s not enough time to do both. I choose eating. The microwave door swings open and whacks me in the face. On the way to the table, I drive right through the mayonnaise and carry it all across the kitchen. The pizza’s too hot and I burn my mouth.

I’m sure there’s some way that I can blame the mess on Martin, but I can’t think of anything before I’m due at the computer for my first afternoon class. The trail of mayonnaise follows me back to the onion room.

Sometime during seventh period, it hits me: a mop. Long handle, no bending required. So at the end of the school day, I wheel back into the kitchen and head straight for the broom closet. It takes some doing to wrestle the mop handle off the clip that holds it to the wall. When I’ve finally got it in my hands, the next problem presents itself: How am I going to wet it? I can just about reach the sink, but I can tell it would be a major operation. There’s a bucket, but filling it and hauling it down to the floor would be practically impossible. I have a flash of inspiration. There’s only one source of standing water in our house that’s available to a guy in my situation.

I don’t even have to enter the bathroom. From the doorway, the mop is long enough to reach into the toilet bowl and soak up some of the water sitting there. It’s a little messy, since I can’t get close enough to wring it out, but at least the water’s clean.

Ding-dong.

Uh-oh, the doorbell. Who could that be? I roll to the front hall, holding the dripping mop out in front of me like a jousting lance.

Another ring followed by a knock. “Anybody home?”

I use the mop to unlock the door and yell, “Come in!”

The door swings open and in steps Lacey D’Agostino—in person!

The only time I’ve ever had Lacey all to myself and I’m waving at her with a mop swollen with toilet water.

“Honest it’s clean!” I blurt.

She looks uncertain and holds out something wrapped in a paper towel. “We baked these in FCS,” she explains, unwrapping what looks like a hunk of coal. “It’s a muffin. It got a little overcooked.”

“It’s perfect,” I assure her. Perfect is a word I think of a lot when I see Lacey. Everything about her is somehow exactly right—the right size, the right shape, the ideal mix of brains and personality. Perfect.

“There wasn’t any homework,” she adds, then turns back toward the door. “Well, enjoy—”

“We can split it!” I blurt. “Anything this great should be shared.”

“No, thanks.” She wrinkles her perfect nose. “I’ve got a friend waiting.” She opens the door and I get a look at the “friend.” Maddox.

Oh, how I hate Maddox Miller. Why does it have to be him? Maddox is the most popular kid in our grade, but it isn’t because he’s good-looking or a great athlete or anything like that. He formed this group called the Chairmen of the Bored. Get it? Bored? That’s what passes for brilliant humor in Sterling Township.

“Nice pj’s,” Maddox calls out when he sees me in the doorway.

I was hoping nobody would notice my pajama pants, but I guess the dinosaurs are hard to miss.

“Two broken legs!” I shoot back. I’m not expecting sympathy from him, but maybe Lacey will take pity on me.

Maddox is carrying a sign made out of laminated paper. I squint at the message: stick.

“Stick?” I .

Lacey giggles. “Isn’t that hilarious? We’re going to tack it to that gigantic tree at the end of Main Street!”

I’m horrified. “You’re joining the Chairmen of the Bored?”

“Well, maybe,” she concedes. “But only if they change their name to Chairpersons. We’re not all guys, you know.”

“Let’s go, Lace,” Maddox says impatiently. “We’ve got a job to do.”

I edge a little closer to Lacey, nudging her with the mop, which leaves a damp mark on the knee of her jeans. “So I’ll see you tomorrow?” I ask, clutching the muffin so hard it starts to crumble.

She looks startled. “Oh—I guess. If there’s homework.” And off she goes to join that creep outside.

I close the door with the mop, leaving a small puddle on the welcome mat.

I can’t believe Lacey wants to join the Chairmen of the Bored. They think their sense of humor has so much attitude, sarcasm, and brilliance when in reality, they’re just a bunch of idiots. Like calling a big tree a stick. LOL. Or putting a sign that says garbage on a beat-up old car. I might pass out from the genius of it all. Seriously, who would want to join a boneheaded group like that?

Full disclosure: I tried to join once near the end of sixth grade. Maddox gave me an initiation test. I was supposed to swipe a snow globe from Souvenir Shop and then smash it on the sidewalk in front of the store. Very Chairmen—not only was I stealing something, but I had to prove I didn’t even care about it in the first place.

I’m no thief, but I had a plan. I grabbed the snow globe and, when nobody was looking, I slipped money to Mr. Amberson to pay for it. Maddox spotted me cheating and banned me from the Chairmen. Which I don’t care about, except now that Lacey wants to join, it could have been something for us to do together. Forget it. It’s a lifetime ban. Even when I’m ninety, living in the old folks home, I won’t be able to get in.

I wheel back to the kitchen and clean up the mayonnaise spill with the mop. Just because Lacey is interested in the Chairmen doesn’t mean she wants to be Maddox’s girlfriend. I’m probably overthinking this whole thing.

 

“Oh, they’re together, all right,” Ethan informs me a couple of days later. “I just didn’t have the heart to hit you with it while you’re, you know, injured.”

I take the news like a physical blow that sends my wheelchair rolling backward a few inches. “How come you’re just telling me this now?” I howl. “Maybe I could have stopped it! You’re the worst student ambassador in the world!”

He shakes his head sadly. “It’s too late. She found a way to switch partners in science so they could be together in the lab. She keeps all her books in his locker. They walk home together practically every day.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” I offer hopefully. “A lot of people walk home together.”

He studies his sneakers. “There are reports of hand-holding.”

My heart sinks. “Confirmed?”

When he shrugs, I realize that I need better information than this. I can’t go by rumors. I need to see this so-called relationship for myself. But how’s that supposed to happen when I’m stuck at home for the next two months?

 

One of the few good things about what’s happened to me is I’ve turned Martin into my personal butler.

It’s good to have a butler. I see what all those rich people like about it. The minute he gets home from school, I send him to get me stuff: drinks, snacks, everything I need and a few things I don’t.

“Here’s the nine-volt battery you asked for,” he says, handing it to me. “It was on the shelf behind the furnace. Lots of spiderwebs down there.”

“Mmm.” I take the battery from him and absently place it on the side table.

He bristles. “You didn’t need that! You just like ordering me around!”

I rub my knee and grimace in pain, which reminds Martin that he’s the one who did this to me. So he backs off, and in just a few minutes he’s ready to get me a bottle of water.

Mom doesn’t like it when I order Martin around. “You know, you should have mercy on your little brother,” she tells me later, once she’s back home and we’ve settled down after dinner.

“Like he had mercy on my legs?”

She sighs. “He feels bad about that. But sooner or later, his guilt will run out. Then who’s going to fight the spiders for the nine-volt batteries you so desperately need?”

Mom never should have become a photographer. She would have made a great lawyer or maybe a hostage negotiator. You want to argue with her, but she’s just so reasonable.

We’re watching the news on TV and they play a video of lightning striking the gazebo in Sterling Park, setting it on fire. The reporter says that the blaze burned all night and the gazebo is totally destroyed.

I’m confused. “How did they get that video?” I ask Mom. “I mean, who stands in the middle of a thunderstorm waiting for something to get struck by lightning so they can film it?”

My mother laughs. “Nobody filmed that. The feed comes from one of the public safety cameras in the park.”

“Public safety camera?”

“Sure. They’re all over town. The police use them to prevent crime. You can access them online.”

I stare at the image of the burning structure on the TV screen. It’s not the gazebo I care about. They can build a new one in a day or two. But Sterling Park is right next to my school. Before I broke my legs, I used to cut through there twice a day. I was getting filmed without even knowing it!

My heart beats a little faster. If Lacey and Maddox really are walking home together, they must pass right by this camera. I can’t get out there to spy on them, but maybe I don’t have to. If I can access the feed from that camera, that’s just as good as being there in person. Even better, because no one will know I’m watching.

That night, when I’m back in the onion room with my computer, I google the keywords security camera Sterling Park and our zip code.

It takes me to the website of the Sterling Police Department. The home page has dozens of links, including information on street closures and traffic detours and an update on the old county courthouse, which is scheduled to be torn down. I’m literally on the verge of dying of boredom when I find it: a link that leads to a list of eighteen security cameras around town. The one in Sterling Park is marked camera 12. A button beside it reads live feed.

I click on it and watch in wonder as the same view as I saw on the news appears on my computer screen. It isn’t raining anymore, since the storm is over, and in place of the gazebo is a smoldering pile of burned wood. I can see the middle school lit up in the distance and, more important, the paved path that Lacey and Maddox will be walking along at three thirty tomorrow.

If those two are as chummy as Ethan says they are, I’ll be able to see it right here.

 

Chapter Four

 

The pregnant lady is as big as a house. She must be having at least quadruplets. Her maternity blouse is wrapped around a stomach the size of a minor asteroid.

She has one kid already—a toddler, two-ish. He has a face like an angel . . . but don’t believe it. He’s one of those kids with an almost magnetic attraction to disaster. So the poor pregnant lady, stomach and all, has to chase around to keep him from running out into the road or impaling himself on a fence post or barreling headlong into a brick wall. She’s yelling at him too, although I can’t hear anything. There’s no audio on the video feed. He’s running her ragged.

My virtual classes are done for the day so I’ve switched my computer over to the camera in Sterling Park. If Lacey and Maddox walk home together today, they should pass by here in just a few minutes. In the meantime, I have to admit that watching this lady is pretty interesting. By all the laws of physics, she shouldn’t be able to move. But there she is, hauling her ginormous stomach all over the park in an attempt to keep up with her Tasmanian devil of a child.

When the toddler picks up the remains of a slice of pizza from the ground, I actually yell a warning “Hey!” You just know a kid like this is going to try to eat it, dirt and grass and caterpillars and all. As he raises it to his mouth, Lacey and Maddox stroll into the security camera’s frame.

I instantly tear my attention away from the drama with the pizza and focus on my two classmates. Relief floods over me. No hand-holding. But—my heart sinks a little—she’s definitely smiling. Her teeth are perfect too. Maddox must tell a joke because she laughs like she’s never heard anything so funny. That bugs me because I know for a fact that Maddox isn’t smart enough to have a sense of humor.

I study their faces. Is this a future boyfriend-girlfriend pair or just two school friends whose houses happen to be in the same direction? I’m poised over my laptop, struggling to decide, when—poof!—they walk out of the frame, leaving me with the pregnant lady and her rotten kid. Now she has two fingers in his mouth and is frantically removing chunks of half-chewed pizza.

Desperately, I go back to the menu and start clicking on camera views all over town. But none of them are in the right place! Who cares about Main Street and the firehouse and the municipal water tower? I catch a quick glimpse of Maddox cutting across the baseball field. Lacey’s not with him. They must have split up at some point. Good.

I exit the police website, amazed at how tense I am. My shoulders are practically up around my ears. Maybe Mom and Dad are right—I really do spend too much time staring at screens.