“Cell phones,” I correct.
“Cell phones. Shoot. Don’t tell Sparky about that, okay?”
“Let’s try calling,” I insist, struggling to hold on to these words before they dissolve like sugar in the warm puddle of my mind.
India unzips her vest pocket slowly, as if each tooth of the zipper is a note she can’t wait to hear. She flips open her cell and stares at it, mesmerized. Her finger wavers above the icons before it finally makes contact with my mom’s red apple.
We wait, the car purring along the highway in the strange dark night.
“Dead?” Chuck asks after a time, though I don’t know how long. I had forgotten we were waiting.
India nods. “Maybe closer to the city,” she suggests.
Chuck shakes his head. “Won’t help. Once you’re out of the area the calls get dropped.”
Won’t help . . . out of the area . . . his words echo through my head, through my sleep, through my dreams. The calls get dropped . . . dropped . . . dropped.
CHAPTER 8
TRAVELS WITH CHUCK
Bing says it’s time to wake up, but I fall asleep again. I can’t do everything Bing says, you know. India is bossy enough.
I think we’ve only been sleeping a few hours, but it’s late morning already and we are still in the car with feathers. When are we going to get to Uncle Red’s?
India and Finn are asleep. India has her head by the door, her hair stuck with spit to her mouth. Finn is curled up on the seat. He looks like a comma. I check to see if he has grown any pimples overnight. None. Good.
Bing is already up. That is the nice thing about an invisible friend, he is always up before me. I never have to be even one minute without him. I’m always his favorite person too. I’m no one else’s favorite person. Pluto probably wasn’t either, so they kicked him out of the solar system. I hope they don’t kick me out of the solar system. I watch for signs that say Not the Solar System, but I don’t see any.
Bing is chatty this morning. Usually he doesn’t notice other people that much, but he says Mr. Chuck is a good guy and we should trust him. I spy on Mr. Chuck, but he doesn’t do anything interesting. He just drives. That’s all.
“How come you get to drive?” I ask.
I see Chuck’s dimples in the rearview mirror. He’s taken off his jacket, which says Travels with Charles in thread above the pocket. “Good morning, Mouse. I was just about to wake you up.”
“How come you don’t need a driver’s license?”
“I have one,” Chuck says.
“Does it have a picture on it?”
“Yes.”
“How old are you?”
“Twelve.”
“You can’t get a driver’s license when you’re twelve, otherwise Finn and India would have them.”
“Things are different here.”
“Yeah, I know. My mom doesn’t have the right teaching credenza,” I say.
“That’s too bad. I would have liked to have met her,” Chuck says, and then points up through the windshield. “Mouse, look up in the sky. Over on the left there.”
In the bright blue sky there are no clouds, but in big white writing it says: Welcome, Mouse. I can read it even though it’s cursive. I don’t like to read cursive as much, though. They never put cursive in books, and I’m glad about that.
“How’d they know I was coming?” I ask.
“Everybody knows you’re coming.”
“Does the president know?”
“Of course. Now wake your sister and brother. They won’t want to miss this.”
“India! In-deee-aaa! !” I jiggle the leather fringe on her vest, which she tells me never to pull on or she will hang me upside down out the window when we are driving on the freeway after she gets her license and she can finally drive. “My name is in the sky! The president knows!”
She jerks upright and scrunches her face like she can’t pull her eyes out of her dreams. “Huh?”
I point to the sky outside the window.
Finn is awake now too. He’s not a comma anymore. He’s back to being straight like an exclamation point. “What the heck? India! Your name’s in the sky!”
“My name?” India is really interested now.
“There.” Finn points and India and I scootch over until we see Welcome, India.
“Me too! Me too!” I tell Finn, pointing to my name. “Uh-oh.” I lean forward to whisper to Chuck. “What about Finn? You forgot about him.”
“He’s up ahead,” Chuck says, and then a minute later we see Welcome, Finn Tompkins out the front window just as the W in Welcome, Mouse is beginning to droop.