The Underdog Parade Read online

  Table of Contents

  ___________________

  Copyright & Credits

  Part 1

  Day 57

  The Great Willow Creek Race

  Day 58

  Day 59

  Uncle Herb

  Day 60

  Night

  Day 61

  Bath Time

  Day 62

  Day 63

  The Project

  Nighttime Reading

  Day 64

  A Visitor

  Night

  Part 2

  Day 65

  The Giant Pine

  Day 66

  The General Store

  Day Camp

  The Giant Shoe Box

  Cocktail Hour

  Looking For Hoob

  Maria

  Pizza Again

  Late Night List Making

  Sneak

  Hecksher Park

  Day 67

  Lunchtime

  Dusk

  Rain

  Part 3

  Day 68

  The Sound of a Black Dot

  The Cavalry

  Golfin Sighting

  The Pine Barrens

  Hollywood

  Day 69

  The Return of Dad

  Gray Sheep

  Day 70

  A Golfin Rally

  The Stand

  Smoky Night

  Day 71

  Black Feathers

  Snowing Fire

  Josh’s Ark

  The Pond at Hole Number Eleven

  The End of Summer

  Acknowledgments

  About Michael Mihaley

  This book is for my mom.

  Something small, compared to all the love she gives.

  All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.

  —J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

  Part I

  Day 57

  It was the summer of the drought.

  This drought ranked sixth on Peter Grady’s list of reasons to stay in his room and add another sweat stain to his pillow. Peter created lists regularly—it was his way of putting his feelings on paper. He treated his lists like pop music charts with entries changing positions often. The major difference between the pop charts and his lists was the number of people polled. Peter’s lists had only one.

  Through his locked bedroom door, Peter heard the muffled, fake laugh of his mother. Her bogus chuckle was easy to detect; it sounded like the added laugh track of an old television show. When his mother laughed really hard, things found a way of shooting out her nose—water at the dinner table, snot during the winter, stuff like that.

  Peter would bet his Mike Piazza–signed catcher’s glove that his mother’s nose would lie dormant for another full hour at least. Mrs. Keeme, the next-door neighbor, was visiting. She was funny like the chicken pox.

  Earlier, Peter made it out of the living room just in time. Before the doorbell had even rung, a whiff of Mrs. Keeme’s powdery scent—like something you’d use to cover the stench of an old, damp sneaker—entered Peter’s nose. He took flight to his room and started formulating this new list of his at his desk. He gave Mrs. Keeme today’s top honors, subject to change depending on how the rest of the morning turned out.

  It was not like Mrs. Keeme was mean. She just complained on and on, usually about her husband, soon to be ex-husband, Bernie. From her visits, Peter learned too much about Bernie. He was fat, lazy, and stupid—pretty much a slug with black socks. Peter never had a problem with Mr. Keeme. He was one of the few neighbors who would wave to him.

  No matter how much Peter tried, it was nearly impossible to escape Mrs. Keeme’s every word. Their new house had no hiding spaces. Her voice tumbled down hallways, crashed down doors, and smothered Peter’s ears and weighed down his shoulders until he felt his knees turn to jelly, as though he and Mrs. Keeme were partners in a chicken fight and Peter had the unfortunate bottom position.

  There was a bang on the door and the knob rattled—CJ.

  “Peter, the door is locked,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “I want to come in.”

  “I know.”

  After a pause, CJ said, “Are you going to let me in?”

  “I moved,” Peter said, glancing at the globe on his desk for a reference, adding, “to Bangladesh.”

  The knob rattled again then stopped, followed by a jarring thud pushing out the bottom third of the door. Peter pictured the pink-and-white sneaker slamming into the door. It had happened a thousand times before.

  Peter waited, watching the door. CJ never gave up easily. She was relentless in her pursuit to drive her brother nuts. It was her calling. The ensuing silence had a slightly unsettling feel, similar to a horror movie when you’re waiting for something to jump out, but the door remained still.

  The window shades were closed as they had been all summer, blocking the sun and heat during the day and anything (or anyone) from looking into his room during the night. Mrs. Keeme continued to drone on, but she said something that now had Peter’s undivided attention. Mrs. Keeme told Peter’s mother she was moving out of “the Creek”—the pet name that residents gave their gated community, Willow Creek Landing.

  Peter stared impatiently at his bedroom wall. He wanted dates, a time frame on Mrs. Keeme’s departure, but as she so often did, she went off on another complaining rant, this time about her son, Joshua. Apparently he would be staying in their home until it was sold. Mrs. Keeme said she already rented an apartment for herself outside the Creek. Bernie was already gone. It was like a jailbreak.

  Peter didn’t care about this Joshua. He had never even seen him before, though due to Mrs. Keeme’s visits, he felt like he’d known him for years. When Peter’s family had moved into the Creek a year ago, Joshua was away at college. Through a succession of home visits, Peter learned Joshua had run into some sort of trouble while away, and then Mrs. Keeme stopped mentioning him altogether. Until today.

  Thumps and scratching noises came from outside Peter’s window. He stood and sighed. He pushed aside the shade and shielded his eyes from the ever-present sun, then saw the familiar, gold tiara with a red star in the center covering a mop of yellow curls. A leg kicked over the window sill outside, and Peter saw the full getup: a sparkling, red-and-gold top, white stars on blue shorts, and golden, plastic-coated lasso wrapped around the shorts like a belt.

  “You know the screen opens only from the inside, right?”

  “Right,” CJ grunted, trying to hoist her body up to the window with her elbows.

  Shortly after coming to the Creek, Peter came to the overriding conclusion that the move was a horrible mistake, but one easily rectified if he could convince his family of their erroneous ways. So he made a list—“Reasons Why Willow Creek Landing Sucks Rocks”—and supplied this four-page document, complete with bullets, to his parents.

  Nothing happened.

  “Living on a ranch” was reason twenty-seven. Peter felt a lot more secure living in his old home where you needed at least a ladder to get to his room on the second floor. Here he was as accessible as a McDonald’s drive-through.

  He opened the screen to help CJ inside. Though the fall was no more than four feet, the height would still be a hard fall for CJ.

  “I can do it,” CJ said, slapping away at his hand.

  Peter helped her anyway. “I know, I know. You’re Wonder Woman.”

  The Great Willow Creek Race

  It’s only fair to note that Peter had never been in favor of the move to Willow Creek Landing. He liked his old neighborhood where he had friends on his block and friends in school. Though Willow Creek Landing was only a twenty-minute car ride away, it might as well ha
ve been Iceland. There was a whole group of unfamiliar neighbors and a new school district. It was no big deal for CJ; she was entering kindergarten at the time they moved. Peter came in at sixth grade, a year before middle school, when groups of friends were already established.

  Peter’s skepticism of his new neighborhood was born when his father, Nick, had brought home a glossy, full-color brochure advertising Willow Creek Landing, “a community for the twenty-first century.” His old neighborhood didn’t need that sort of promotion. Peter wasn’t impressed with the private golf course (he hated golf), luxurious new homes, on-site restaurant and catering facilities, or the general store where you can shop without leaving the wrought-iron gates. Big deal.

  The community also hosted several events throughout the year for the residents, which was the reason Mrs. Keeme cut short her visit earlier. Today was the Great Willow Creek 5K, a 3.1 mile run through the development—which the residents made into this huge deal. Mrs. Keeme wanted to get outside the gates before the community’s security team closed the streets to traffic.

  When the front screen door slammed shut, announcing Mrs. Keeme’s exit, Peter unlocked his bedroom door and walked down the hallway to the living room with CJ at his heels.

  Their mother, Abby, was in the kitchen loading the dishwasher and going over the conversation she had with Mrs. Keeme in her head. Abby would miss the cranky, old lady; in a strange way, she enjoyed her company. There was a part of Abby that understood and felt for Mrs. Keeme. The urge to drop everything and start anew was not groundbreaking—Abby had felt it several times standing at this very spot, loading or unloading the dishwasher. The damn machine required the attention of an infant.

  “You can come out now, the coast is clear,” Abby said, hearing the kids’ footsteps.

  “Is Dad coming to the race?” Peter asked.

  “He’s hiding in his room too. You can tell him she’s gone. He’ll be happy to hear all the news.”

  The neighbors were one of the few things Peter’s father didn’t absolutely love about their new surroundings. On several occasions, he said they lived in the “fruits and nuts” section of the Creek. At first Peter thought his father was talking about the trees lining the block, though his father was never the nature-loving type. He later realized his father was referring to the neighbors.

  CJ drifted into the living room and turned on the television.

  “Did you take your meds, Peter?” Abby asked.

  Meds, Peter thought. It used to be did you take your pill; now it was a concoction of different orange vials soon to be changed again since this recent recipe hadn’t worked either.

  Peter had taken his meds with his Cheerios in the morning, scarfing them down as quickly as he could, hoping the bitter aftertaste or smell of the pills wouldn’t revive the horrible memory of his last seizure. But they always did: gym class, end of the school year.

  He had done a good job up to that point of melting into the background. Fitting in was Peter’s ultimate, but highly improbable, goal at school. He’d planned on settling for remaining invisible. But after the seizure, even that goal was no longer possible. He shuddered when he pictured himself flopping around the gymnasium’s Lysol-stinking oak floors in front of all the other students, lying on his back with his arms and legs flapping about as the gym coach removed any objects near Peter that could harm his out of control body. They had nicknamed him “Nemo” after that. Indeed, Peter was a fish out of water.

  * * *

  Peter, CJ, and their parents walked down Ranch Street—named, rather unoriginally, after the style of homes on the block—toward the pavilion in the center of the Creek. The pavilion was like a town hall where all the big events were held. People were already gathered near a huge, white banner that read FINISH LINE in big, blue letters. Two men held a thin tape taut, ready for the winner to break through. The runners started at the cart path of hole one on the golf course and continued along the perimeter of the development. Willow Creek Landing bordered on the Pine Barrens, a huge nature preserve that Peter was excited to explore once the drought broke. From an aerial view, the preserve shaped Willow Creek Landing like a bushy beard.

  Peter lagged behind his parents, and CJ lagged behind him, dragging a small, stuffed dog in her lasso. Over the last few months Peter developed an acute sense of when his parents were fighting. Recently, they had provided him with ample resources to polish this talent. He couldn’t understand when they’d found the time to forge this new fight since his father had just returned home late last night from another one of his business trips. They faced one another only to speak in hushed, forceful bursts, and then turned away after tossing whatever verbal grenade they threw, unconcerned by the damage it would generate. It was like a dance of the angry.

  Thankfully, the dancing stopped as they approached the growing crowd. Peter found himself in the awkward position of standing between his silent parents as CJ lingered behind them, whispering indecipherable words of either encouragement or threats to her imprisoned fluffy animal. Every once in a while, a resident would stop and greet either Peter’s father or mother or both, and wide smiles would crease their faces only to disappear once the neighbor left. Peter couldn’t wait to go home. He’d add parents seemed a lot happier in old home even if they didn’t realize it themselves to the list of reasons why he hated Willow Creek Landing.

  “This is fun,” Peter lied to his father, just to break the silence.

  “Oh, yeah. Holding a race in August in ninety-five-degree dry heat, during a drought. Brilliant idea,” his father said, returning the icy stare of a lady in front of him who overheard his answer. Nick looked around with disdain at the faces of the crowd, detaching himself from the people surrounding him.

  Peter could feel only relief as a smattering of applause turned into a steady stream of cheering as the lead runners came into view from down Victorian Row one hundred yards away, for the final stretch. The sweltering sun had apparently taken a greater-than-obvious toll on the runners, and the two men in the lead, with their arms and legs flailing, looked more like they were falling off a cliff than sprinting to a finish. The spectators started to cheer.

  Peter cheered because everyone else was doing it, not counting his father. He held little interest in the outcome of the race until, just ahead of the runners, a figure broke suddenly from the throngs of people on the sidelines and started sprinting toward the finish line. From a distance, Peter thought this unofficial runner was a tall, skinny girl because of the long, flowing hair, but then he saw a flimsy beard bouncing up and down in the air. His beard didn’t have that rough look of iron wool, but seemed soft and fragile. He wore blue jeans hastily cut into shorts and a T-shirt with many different, bright colors melting into each other like a kaleidoscope. His eyes were wide and alert. He wasn’t running that fast—the open sandals on his feet were designed for a more leisurely pace. The lead runners, with barely enough energy to register a look of surprise or anger, tried to catch the bearded fellow but eventually withered and faded farther behind.

  The crowd, fuming at this stranger who was ruining their great event, shouted things as he passed, but the stranger continued to run with a determined grin to the end. He skidded at the finish line, almost tripping into the tape, then contorted his body into a limbo-type maneuver and passed cleanly underneath. He pointed to the crowd and held a finger to his lips, similar to a reprimanding librarian, and shouted, “Your wealth is rotted! Restore, people! Restore!”

  Willow Creek Landing’s security team, color-coordinated in dark-blue pants and collared polo shirts, surrounded him immediately and escorted him off the course by his elbows. His sandals skimmed the ground.

  “Live righteous, people! You have been forewarned!” the bearded guy shouted before being swallowed up by the crowd.

  No one noticed who really won the race.

  CJ giggled, thinking the act was part of the day’s planned festivities.

  Nick looked sickened. “Don’t tell me that’s
the Keeme kid.”

  Abby nodded slowly, having watched the scene play out in disbelief. She glared at her husband. “Joshua. Product of a broken home, exhibit A.”

  Day 58

  Most of the trees in the Creek were no older than ten years and were neatly arranged—not by nature’s plan, but by some developer with an Italian last name. But on the edge of Peter’s front lawn, bordering the Keemes’ property, stood a giant pine tree, one of the remaining remnants from the original landscape. No one knew why this tree survived the developer’s master plan. Cost maybe—there was speculation that the developer had cut corners in the end after hemorrhaging money.

  Peter now sat high in the tree, skimming the pages of The Outsiders. It was one of his favorite books, though lately he wondered how “outside” this group of boys really was. Maybe they were poor and social outcasts, but at least they had a strong-knit group of brothers and childhood friends who banded together. Right now, all Peter had was CJ circling the tree below dragging a branch with her lasso.

  Peter couldn’t stop thinking about Joshua, the sandal-wearing runner from yesterday. The fact that this guy lived thirty feet away now made him even more interesting. Peter wondered if Mrs. Keeme had already left the Creek.

  CJ stopped and stared high in Peter’s direction. “Are you coming down soon? I’m bored to death.”

  Sunlight poked through the limbs and leaves, dotting the pages of Peter’s book. He loved this tree. It kept both the sun and CJ at bay.

  A burst of sharp laughter came from down the block and Peter felt the hairs on his neck tingle. His list, “Reasons Why Willow Creek Landing Sucks Rocks,” instantly popped into his mind. That sharp laughter came from reason number two: Chipper Kassel.

  Chipper was a constant presence on most of Peter’s lists these days, but he had rocketed to the top since Peter’s seizure at school. Chipper would have made his rock sucking list, though further down, even if he didn’t live in Willow Creek Landing just for the sheer terror and humiliation he brought Peter during his first year at the new school. Knowing that Chipper roamed freely within the Creek’s gates made Peter feel like he’d slipped and fallen into the lion exhibit at the local zoo.