Hidebehind

Eleven

Jay didn't want to stay for dinner—said he wasn't hungry—but he wanted to play after, so he just rode his bike around the old farm while we went in. Dinner was about as normal as could be expected, with Great Grandma rambling on with Penny about the horses that used to live on the farm and Grandpa just staring at the food on his plate, hardly touching it. The big white cat prowled around, hoping for scraps, and I stared at my food, thinking less about eating it and more about sneaking it to the cat. A couple of times, I looked over at Grandpa and wondered what he was thinking about and whether my brain wasn't thinking something too different.

After dinner but before it started to get dark, Great Grandma told me and Penny to go play outside. I grumbled that my sister had to come, but the two of us swung out the front door and onto the patio. Jay saw us and stopped going in circles on the driveway, leaving his bike to fall to the ground as he jogged over.

"Look, Jay! It's Great Grandma's tick jar!" Penny had actually picked the disgusting jar up and was waving it in Jay's face. The bloated bugs sloshed around like marbleized blueberries. I almost threw up in my mouth.

Jay wasn't interested in anything a little girl had to show him. He waved Penny aside. "Rob, you wanna hear a story?"

I raised an eyebrow. "What kind of story?" Stories were for school reading time.

"It's an old ghost story. Happened here a long time ago. My dad told me it."

My dad used to tell me stories, too, I remembered. Frowning, I said, "Who cares? I don't believe in ghosts."

Jay shrugged and bent over to pick at the moss growing around one of the patio bricks. "All right. It's just about your Grandpa is all."

My interest piqued a little, but I said nothing.

"Our Grandpa?" chirped Penny, obviously not offended that Jay had snubbed her moments ago. "You got a story about our Grandpa? I want to hear it! Go on, tell it!"

I still didn't talk, even when Jay looked at me like he was waiting for my approval.

"Please, tell it, tell it!" Penny chimed. Her energy never died.

Jay stood back up from picking at the moss and stretched his arms over his head. "Sure, ok." He sat at the table where the tick jar was still sloshing after Penny had plopped it down. The jar didn't even seem to bother him. "A long time ago, before you were even born, your grandpa was a kid."

"That's deep," I told him.

"Don't interrupt!" Penny chided.

I rolled my eyes, but Jay just went on.

"Your Grandpa was friends with a kid named Jimmy."

That name caught my attention, but I didn't want Jay to know it. I acted like I was just tossing pebbles out on the gravel road.

"They were friends, and then one day, all of a sudden, Jimmy disappears. Just up and pops into oblivion. And everybody said your Grandpa had something to do with it."

Jay stopped. The absence of his voice was real weird; we could hear cicadas buzzing all around—they hadn't seemed so loud until he stopped. I waited for him to say more, but when he didn't, I said, "That's it? That's your story?"

Penny was disappointed, too. "My dad used to tell much better stories. They were more than five seconds long. They were about dragons and gnomes and fireflies."

"Well excuse me for living," Jay muttered. "I just wanted to tell you about it, cause he's your Grandpa."

"What do you mean?" I said. "Are you serious about it? My Grandpa had a friend that disappeared, and then everybody thought it was his fault? Did they ever find out what happened to the kid?"