Jake Read online

  ALSO BY AUDREY COULOUMBIS

  Getting Near to Baby

  Love Me Tender

  Maude March on the Run!

  The Misadventures of Maude March

  Say Yes

  Summer’s End

  War Games (with Akila Couloumbis)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2010 by Audrey Couloumbis

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Couloumbis, Audrey.

  Jake / by Audrey Couloumbis. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: When ten-year-old Jake’s widowed mother breaks her leg just before Christmas while her sister and best friend are both away, a grandfather Jake barely remembers must come to Baltimore, Maryland, to help a neighbor take care of him.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89321-6

  [1. Grandfathers—Fiction. 2. Neighbors—Fiction. 3. Hospitals—Fiction. 4. Accidents—Fiction. 5. Single-parent families—Fiction. 6. Christmas—Fiction. 7. Baltimore (Md.)—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.C8305Jak 2010

  [Fic]—dc22

  2009029383

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  To a mysterious bald person who prefers to go unnamed

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  “Joey Ziglar says it’s boring, grocery shopping with his mom,” I said. It was our usual Saturday-afternoon trip to the store.

  “Lucky for you, I’m not Joey Ziglar’s mom.”

  “It’s a little boring,” I said. “Sometimes.”

  “You’ve got your own list and a budget,” Mom said. “What more do you want? A dance routine?”

  “We-ell—”

  “Get real,” she said with a little smile.

  “A lot of the stuff on my list is a snore,” I said. “Bread, cereal, canned tuna. Juice boxes, milk, and ice cream.”

  “You weren’t listening,” she said. “You have a budget. Figure out how to get yourself a treat out of it.”

  It took me nearly an hour to do it. I mean, there’s just one canned tuna we like. And we always try to pick ice cream that’s on sale. Where’s the wiggle room?

  I found it. Two boxes of cereal cost an amazing amount of money—more than ice cream. Oatmeal is cheap and healthy. Cocoa Puffs are neither. Cocoa Puffs don’t taste as good as big, soft cookies that could be homemade, so that decision practically made itself. Mom spotted the oatmeal in my cart. “Figured out how to buy treats on your budget?”

  “Cookies,” I said. “Big, soft cookies.”

  Mom’s eyes lit up. “What kind?”

  “White chocolate with some kind of nuts. And chocolate chip.”

  “Good picks.” She looked pretty cheerful about the cookies. She likes the ones with the strange nuts.

  I pushed the filled-to-the-top grocery cart outside. Everything up to this point was like any other Saturday.

  As we walked out to the car—no, as we skidded and skated across the icy parking lot, sometimes sliding away and then coming back together like we each held the end of a rubber band—Mom said, “Let’s make one more trip to the mall. Last-minute Christmas shopping.”

  My hopes that she’d be looking for a bicycle sank. If I was going with her, she wasn’t shopping for me.

  I would stand in line to hold the space, and then I’d carry the bag. I shoved the grocery cart around our car to the passenger side, huffing it over an icy ridge running along the ground. “I’m old enough to stay home alone, I hope you know.”

  Mom said, “Not a chance. Who’s going to lug the loot ba—” and the locks on the car doors sprang open. I opened the door and unloaded the cart, putting everything on the floor in front of the backseat. It took five minutes, probably less.

  “Mom?” I said, looking around when I’d finished.

  I didn’t see her.

  “Mom!” I yelled. “Mom?”

  CHAPTER ONE

  This Saturday had started out like any old weekend. We slept later than on a school morning, just not as late as on Sunday morning.

  I was up earlier than usual this Saturday. I had a mission.

  I sneaked into Mom’s darkened room. She was snoring a little. I waited a second to see if she’d wake up and then I tiptoed to her closet. It was the likeliest hiding place now that I’d ruled out Aunt Ginny’s and our friend Suzie’s closets.

  The jumble of Mom’s shoes across the floor seemed undisturbed. The clothes, on the other hand, never looked the same to me, as if shirts and pants on a hanger and a few dresses changed places when no one was home. I reached in, running my arm through the dark space at each end of the closet, hoping to find a bike standing on the back tire. When I leaned in a little, I felt the wall. No bike. No luck.

  Behind me, Mom sighed a little. I shut the closet door partway, like I’d found it.

  “Mom, it’s nine-thirty.”

  She pulled the covers over her head.

  “Rise and shine,” I said, heading for her windows.

  “I’m shining,” Mom said. “Can’t the rising wait another five minutes?”

  “Only if you’re a loaf of bread. Think of Master Kim telling us, ‘Twenty-five push-ups for tardy.’ ”

  I yanked on a roller shade and let it go. It racketed to the top of the window and snapped to a halt. The blast of sunshine hurt my eyes for a second, even though I’d already been up for ten minutes.

  “Aaaaah,” my mom yelled. “Death rays!”

  Sunshine reflecting off snow and ice is like sunlight supercharged. If you close your eyes after you look, the inside of your eyelids are white, white, white.

  “I’m feeding the fish.” I went away, knowing Mom wouldn’t get up yet. She never got up on the first call. This used to bother me a lot more when I was younger, like seven or eight. It was almost scary sometimes.

  For one thing, I had to catch a bus.

  If you saw the look that driver gave me after she had to wait a few seconds for me to leave Mom and run the last half block, you’d be scared too.

  But ten is a turning point, maturity-wise, Aunt Ginny says.

  I can really feel it. It doesn’t bother me so much that Mom isn’t always the one in charge. Plus, it makes me feel more grown-up when I’m in charge.

  Sometimes, just sometimes, I wish we were more than the two of us. Then if Mom was having one of her not-in-charge moments, somebody else could pick up the slack.

  Not that I want somebody to think it’s their job to boss me around. Ju
st a person who knew it was their turn to take over sometimes.

  I stood in Mom’s doorway.

  “Toaster waffles after we eat an egg,” I said, the way Mom did when she was the first one up. It was the same breakfast every Saturday.

  “Okay, okay, I’m getting up.”

  So I got out of there. Mom sleeps in her underpants and a T-shirt.

  I never noticed this until Matthew Haygood said in class that’s what his mom slept in. Our health teacher, Mrs. Baggs, sent the social worker around to his house.

  His mom hadn’t been told anybody was coming. She answered the door in the same outfit. What happened after that, Matthew had to go spend three weeks with his grandmother, who lived two blocks away.

  His mom had to go to court to say she was physically fit or had a fit, or something fit, anyway. Which maybe wouldn’t have been enough to convince the judge, except Matthew’s grandmother went to court that day with her lawyer.

  Matthew said his grandmother told them she didn’t sleep in anything at all and they thought Matthew was safe enough with her, so who were they kidding?

  Matthew loves that part; he even took me into the kitchen and begged his grandmother to say it again the way she said it that day, and she did. She said it exactly.

  It wasn’t so much what she said as the way she said it. Like she thought they could all be replaced by hockey pucks and no one would notice. If I ever went to court, I’d want Matthew’s grandmother on my side.

  His grandmother told me the lawyer said legal things. He also said Matthew’s mom answered the door that way because her mother lived two blocks away and visited every day. She expected it would be her mother at the door.

  The upshot of it was, Matthew got to go home.

  But it looked bad there for a while.

  Single mothers have to be really careful is what Mom said when she heard about this. I had never heard Mom call herself a single mother. Or maybe it was the first time anything made me think about it.

  Maybe I’d only ever noticed when she told people she’s a widow. Until Matthew and his mom had that trouble, being a widow sounded so much worse than being a single mother.

  I don’t remember having a dad. Well. Certain things. A deep voice. A certain way of being carried under someone’s arm so my arms and legs hung like a dog’s. Someone who could bounce on my bed so hard I’d lift off the mattress, and all the time I was laughing like a maniac. I wish I remembered my dad better.

  The trouble with memory is you can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what you accidentally made up. One time, Mom asked me, “What do you remember about your dad?”

  We were sitting elbow to elbow on the couch so we could share the popcorn. She’d turned down the sound on the commercials. So I told her all these things about the voice and bouncing on the bed.

  I also thought of this one memory that I sometimes get when we’re near people smoking a cigarette. First, it’s the smell of the smoke. Then I’m sitting on somebody’s lap and there’s a low voice in my ear, singing—I know this sounds weird—that counting song about beer bottles on the wall. The first time I heard that song when it wasn’t in memory, the hair stood up on my arms.

  I told Mom how important that smell felt to me. How I started to pay attention to smokers until I figured out only Camel cigarettes mattered. She gave me a strange look and said, “Your dad didn’t smoke.”

  The commercials weren’t over but she turned the sound up.

  We don’t talk about what I remember about my dad anymore. I still like the smell of Camel cigarettes, even knowing it isn’t a Dad memory. I breathe deep whenever we pass someone with that smell floating around them.

  Even knowing cigarette smoke is bad.

  It probably doesn’t matter whether my memories are perfect. Cigarette smoke made me feel like I remember my dad. That was better than nothing.

  So this Saturday, we left the breakfast dishes in the sink. Mom said we needed the extra five minutes to dress warmly. We put on long underwear and knotted scarves around our necks like snowmen. We still got cold standing in the elevator.

  “It’s going to be brutal outside,” Mom said, like she was thinking about turning around and going back to bed.

  “Joey Ziglar’s dad says the elevator shaft works like a thermometer. The cold comes from the basement, where there isn’t much heat because heat rises. The cold follows it up the shaft like mercury.”

  “Thanks for that bulletin,” Mom said, rolling her eyes.

  The lobby, usually shadowy, was bright with reflected sunlight. The plants around the fountain looked more enthusiastic than at any other time of year. Or maybe the super, Mr. G, made it look that way by adding all these red flowers in pots for the holidays.

  We zipped through the doors in our usual hurry and stopped. The first couple of seconds outside took our breath away.

  Mom and I looked at each other with scream faces, then ducked back into the lobby for a second to let ourselves get used to it. “Cold out there,” I said, sort of gasping.

  Mom kept jumping from foot to foot, warm-ups.

  My eyes teared up when the wind hit me. It’s cool really. Everything looks like it has such sharp edges for a few minutes after that happens.

  “I’m gonna beat your butt in class,” Mom said.

  Okay, so there was no turning back. We charged outside again.

  The wind blew so hard my scarf stood straight out over my shoulder. A fresh layer of snow had fallen overnight, and the wind picked it up, so that it danced through the air like crisp, cold bees, stinging our faces.

  We turned the corner of the building to get to the car, and walking in the shade there, the wind wasn’t so bad. We were too cold to talk, though. Mom says the air makes the fillings in her teeth hurt.

  Then we got out in the sun again. It was better in the sun. Not really warm, but better.

  We scraped an eggshell-thin layer of ice off the windows and mirrors while the car warmed up. I like doing this. The ice falls away in dinner plate–sized sheets that make a sound like crickle-crackle. It looks like broken glass when it hits the ground.

  I said, “What did you get me for Christmas, that’s what I want to know.”

  “For me to know, for you to wonder and worry,” Mom said, not wanting to open her mouth too much.

  We go to karate class first.

  My mom and I take class together. It’s sort of hard to live down, taking class with Mom. She says, if one of us has to quit, I’m going to get awful cold waiting in the car for her because she’s not embarrassed to be seen in class with me.

  Or without me.

  So neither one of us is going to quit.

  Next is grocery shopping.

  Everything up to this point was like any other Saturday. Well, except for the hundred Christmas trees lined up in front of the store for people to choose from.

  Lately it smells like walking through a pine forest to go buy bread. A Santa Claus rang a bell for people to drop money in his Meaty Bone box for the dog pound. Even dogs get Christmas, I guess.

  More pine forest as we left. I kept trying to get Christmas present hints out of Mom. As we skidded and skated across the icy parking lot, she planned the rest of our day.

  Shopping, shopping, and shopping.

  When we got to our car, I had to work the grocery cart over an icy ridge. I didn’t need any help. Karate has made me strong. I said, “I’m old enough to stay home alone, I hope you know.”

  Mom said, “Not a chance. Who’s going to lug the loot ba—” and the locks on the car doors sprang open. I lost the rest of what she said as the cart rattled over that last icy bump.

  I unloaded the cart, putting everything on the floor in front of the backseat. It took five minutes, probably less.

  “Mom?” I said, looking around when I’d finished. I didn’t see her.

  “Mom!” I yelled. “Mom?”

  This old lady who was slipping and sliding along behind her cart looked my way. I
yelled, “Mom,” then she yelled and pointed at the car. At the other side of the car, so I ran—slid—around there.

  Mom had fallen on the ice.

  She’d slipped partway under the car. She was white, almost like the ice, her face pinched in a way I had never seen. It was a lot more slippery on this side of the car. The ice was wetter, like somebody had spilled something there. I fell on my butt getting to Mom.

  I hardly felt myself hit. For a second, everything went black.

  I’d heard someone say that once in a movie. I pictured it like Suzie’s darkroom where she makes her camera film into photographs. You switch off the light and you have this little bit of light in your memory so you have a second or two to get used to the black.

  It wasn’t like that. I was in the dark so fast I didn’t know it until the light was coming back.

  I felt numb as I got up; I couldn’t move as fast as I wanted to. Something did hurt. I couldn’t tell what, and I didn’t feel like thinking about it.

  Mom hadn’t moved. That old lady never stopped yelling. I liked that. By the time I got on my knees next to my mom, help was arriving. The Santa. Then four or five more people.

  “Mom,” I said. I put my hand on hers, not sure where she hurt, or if I could make it worse. She grabbed me and held on tight. She hadn’t said anything. I looked up, saying, “She’s hurt.”

  “Somebody call an ambulance,” a man in a store jacket said over the other voices.

  “Mom,” I said again. I couldn’t get over it. I ran the idea through my mind a few times. Not like a thought, over and over, but something I had to figure out.

  Mom worries about something like this happening to me. Not out loud. But when she hesitates a little before she says yes to rock climbing with Aunt Ginny and then adds, “Be careful,” I get it that she’s worried. When she won’t buy me a bike, I get it.

  And now I could see her point. I was right here when this happened and I didn’t even know it for whole minutes. And there was nothing I could do to help.

  Another few people came to look, including a woman with a crying baby on her hip. The baby kept crying and crying. The mom paid no attention to it at all. When the ambulance came screaming down the street, it took me a minute to know the difference.