only joking around, but he didn’t lighten up or anything. He just pointed his finger, first in my face and then in Mick’s, and squinted his eyes in this silent threat thing he does.
Then, with the tattoo still hanging off his hand, he swiveled on his sock feet and padded back out of the kitchen.
“Yeah, but wait, Pop!” I called. “That tattoo was mine! All I was doing was getting it out of the box and Mick jumped on me!”
My father kept going.
“Can I please have it back? Please?”
Pop’s bedroom door slammed.
I was steaming mad. Really fuming. But instead of backing off and letting me calm down, Mick started teasing me in this stupid pirate voice, saying stuff like “Shiver me timbers,” and “Thar she blows,” totally cracking himself up.
That’s when I shoved him into the refrigerator and called him a name that I’d never called anybody before in my whole life.
A really ugly name, I mean. A street word that you mostly hear only on HBO, or on school playgrounds.
It shocked him that I said it.
It shocked me, too.
But instead of apologizing, I just turned my mouth up in this nasty little grin.
Mick pushed me away from him. Hard.
“You’re cool, Phoebe,” he said.
Then he walked out of the room.
T HAT WAS our last morning together.
The last one ever, I mean.
I T KILLS ME when I remember that. Because usually I hardly cuss at all. At least not as much as most kids my age, I don’t think. Mick didn’t either. Which is almost
weird
for a seventh-grade boy.
Not that the two of us were angels or anything. I’m not saying that. We were always getting in trouble. But normally it was for stuff we did together. As a team. Because even though it sounds corny and all, when we weren’t fighting, my brother and I actually
liked
each other. A lot.
I think it was the result of being so close in age. Like when Mick was learning to talk, I was the only one who could understand him, so I sort of became his translator. I mean right from the beginning I knew that
truck
meant dog, and that
meme-fluzit
meant he wanted to flush the toilet.
The first big “caper” we pulled together was right after Mick started kindergarten. That was when we defaced our first property. To be specific, we scratched the letters F-A-R-T in the new driveway that had just been poured next to our house.
We didn’t do it to be bad. It’s just that I was learning how to spell. And Mick was learning how to print. And the cement just sort of
called
to us, I guess you’d say.
Mick promised that if I would tell him the right letters, he’d do a good job with his printing. He did, too. I mean his R was backward, but at the time neither of us knew the difference.
All I remember is how excited we both were when he finished. We clapped, and jumped up and down, and totally laughed our heads off. Without a doubt, this was the funniest thing anyone had ever done in the entire history of the universe.
It’s amazing how a little fart in the driveway can totally lose its humor when your father sees it.
I really don’t want to go into all the details ofwhat happened when he discovered it that night. But I will tell you that when he and Mom stood us in front of them and made us “solemnly swear” to tell them the “complete and honest truth” about how it got there, Mick swallowed hard, took a big step forward, and told them “a monkey did it.”
Seriously. He said that.
The trouble was, I had to back him up on it. I didn’t really have a choice, you know? So I stood there and swore that we had both seen a monkey run into the driveway with a little stick in his hand and write “fart” in the concrete.
Then—just to make the story even
more
believable—Mick said the monkey’s name was Zippy. And the two of us had saved the day by chasing him “all the way back to Africa.”
We ended up going to our rooms for a week or something, I think. But after a while, it became one of those things that everyone looks back on and
Then, with the tattoo still hanging off his hand, he swiveled on his sock feet and padded back out of the kitchen.
“Yeah, but wait, Pop!” I called. “That tattoo was mine! All I was doing was getting it out of the box and Mick jumped on me!”
My father kept going.
“Can I please have it back? Please?”
Pop’s bedroom door slammed.
I was steaming mad. Really fuming. But instead of backing off and letting me calm down, Mick started teasing me in this stupid pirate voice, saying stuff like “Shiver me timbers,” and “Thar she blows,” totally cracking himself up.
That’s when I shoved him into the refrigerator and called him a name that I’d never called anybody before in my whole life.
A really ugly name, I mean. A street word that you mostly hear only on HBO, or on school playgrounds.
It shocked him that I said it.
It shocked me, too.
But instead of apologizing, I just turned my mouth up in this nasty little grin.
Mick pushed me away from him. Hard.
“You’re cool, Phoebe,” he said.
Then he walked out of the room.
T HAT WAS our last morning together.
The last one ever, I mean.
I T KILLS ME when I remember that. Because usually I hardly cuss at all. At least not as much as most kids my age, I don’t think. Mick didn’t either. Which is almost
weird
for a seventh-grade boy.
Not that the two of us were angels or anything. I’m not saying that. We were always getting in trouble. But normally it was for stuff we did together. As a team. Because even though it sounds corny and all, when we weren’t fighting, my brother and I actually
liked
each other. A lot.
I think it was the result of being so close in age. Like when Mick was learning to talk, I was the only one who could understand him, so I sort of became his translator. I mean right from the beginning I knew that
truck
meant dog, and that
meme-fluzit
meant he wanted to flush the toilet.
The first big “caper” we pulled together was right after Mick started kindergarten. That was when we defaced our first property. To be specific, we scratched the letters F-A-R-T in the new driveway that had just been poured next to our house.
We didn’t do it to be bad. It’s just that I was learning how to spell. And Mick was learning how to print. And the cement just sort of
called
to us, I guess you’d say.
Mick promised that if I would tell him the right letters, he’d do a good job with his printing. He did, too. I mean his R was backward, but at the time neither of us knew the difference.
All I remember is how excited we both were when he finished. We clapped, and jumped up and down, and totally laughed our heads off. Without a doubt, this was the funniest thing anyone had ever done in the entire history of the universe.
It’s amazing how a little fart in the driveway can totally lose its humor when your father sees it.
I really don’t want to go into all the details ofwhat happened when he discovered it that night. But I will tell you that when he and Mom stood us in front of them and made us “solemnly swear” to tell them the “complete and honest truth” about how it got there, Mick swallowed hard, took a big step forward, and told them “a monkey did it.”
Seriously. He said that.
The trouble was, I had to back him up on it. I didn’t really have a choice, you know? So I stood there and swore that we had both seen a monkey run into the driveway with a little stick in his hand and write “fart” in the concrete.
Then—just to make the story even
more
believable—Mick said the monkey’s name was Zippy. And the two of us had saved the day by chasing him “all the way back to Africa.”
We ended up going to our rooms for a week or something, I think. But after a while, it became one of those things that everyone looks back on and
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