My father almost steered the station wagon onto the sidewalk when I asked if I could buy a single Dragonite card for twenty bucks—“Twenty bucks for one card?! Maanuggia! Straight to the poor house!”
My father’s frugality was a trait of envy among the Jews and Indians of Millburn-Short Hills, according to my brother and George. As a child, when I would insist on being put in one of those racecars or spaceships planted outside of supermarkets that required a quarter in order to shake and shimmy in place, my father would instead use his brute force to move the vessel, saving the coin for a rainy day.
We were frequently told we could only buy something during a full moon—my brother and I would crane our necks out the back window of the station wagon, sulking at the sight of a waxing crescent—and if we ever neglected to turn off a light after departing a room, my father would ask, rhetorically, if he, in fact, owned the “electric company.”
My mother came down to the basement and joined me on the couch.
“Hello, my prince.”
“Hey Mom, what does ‘hypnosis’ mean?”
“It’s a type of mind control, I guess. Hey Victor, are you happy?”
“Well, I made this trade with Silas, and I gave him my Machamp for his Clefairy, which, according to this list…”
“No, Vic, I mean… are you a happy kid?”
“Yeah. Pierce Stone traded my Nidoking to Jack Yamamoto…”
“He stole it from you?”
“No, I traded it to Maine Ogden, who… At least, I think it was him.”
“Is that kid still giving you problems, Vic?”
“Maine is my friend…”
“No, no, that Pierce kid.”
“I don’t know.”
“You can tell me, honey.”
But before I could respond, the list of Pokémon and their rarity rankings began to glow and shift before my eyes, as if I was suddenly able to translate a tablet of hieroglyphs. “It’s alphabetical order! Mom, don’t you see, this list isn’t how rare they are, it’s just in alphabetical order.” I started reading the names aloud as if she didn’t believe me. “Alakazam, Blastoise, Chansey, Charizard…”
“Vic, what about…”
“Mom, I gotta go tell Karl. I’ll be back for dinner.”
I sprinted out the back door, following the snaking patio that surrounded my house, up the hill and across the Geigers’ front lawn, waving the list of Pokémon in the air like it was a telegram stating that the king was dead.
Karl was dumbfounded, not by my revelation, but that he hadn’t caught it himself. My new information shook things up on the black market thriving in the bathrooms and hallways of Glenwood Elementary.
Jeremy Finklestein defended the worth of his Alakazam like a used-car salesman defends a lemon, but nobody was buying it, especially not Jack Yamamoto, who lost credibility himself due to his negligent oversight of the list.
But my reputation of status-quo hellion was short-lived, for summer was upon us, and second grade came to an end.
Everyone talked about their summer plans: the WASPs went to tropical islands and the Jews went to sleepaway camps, Michaela Silves went to Portugal to see her grandmother, and Andrius headed back to see family in the magical land of Lithuania. I was headed to Gettysburg. Yeah, I would go back to Ocean City that summer, but no matter how many times I told myself it was an island, I still felt like I was missing something—if only they planted a few damn palm trees.
“The most important battle of the Civil War!” my father reasoned. “The peak of the Confederate offensive.”
I was much more interested in the battles between the medieval kingdoms of Europe, but the chance of finding some bones or abandoned weapons in Pennsylvania did excite me, and at least during the Civil War some soldiers, like generals, still wielded swords in battle.
So my dad took me, Karl, and my cousin Derek to witness the carnage from the most significant battle in the American Civil War.
There are no bones left in Gettysburg.
On the third day of Britney’s fever, my mother started to worry; I could hear the crack in her voice that always meant something terrible was close. “It just won’t break,” she would repeat, as if a fever were something you could snap in half over your knee.
It was the part of November when the days got shorter, when it really started to get cold, signaling that fall was leaving us.
My mother threw open the door to Britney’s room and rushed to the telephone in the kitchen, mumbling something under her breath that I couldn’t comprehend. I poked my head inside and was hit with the stench of hot air. I had to squint through the tiny glow of the night-light to make out my sister’s shape hidden beneath the blankets.
“Brit?”
It sounded like she tried to say something but was interrupted by a sharp cough that ended with her wincing in pain. I walked to the bedside and placed my hand over her forehead. She was hot like the kitchen radiator I accidentally touched in our old house.
I could hear my mother yelling and walked out into the hall and peeked around the corner. “I’m not overreacting! It’s a goddamn hockey game. I don’t know why you have to be there… No… no, I don’t give a shit. I’m taking her to the hospital. Okay, just meet me there.”
I turned back around the corner and slid down the wall and sat with my knees tucked into my chin.
“Victor.” She came around the corner, almost tripping over me seated in the hall. “Victor, honey, you’re going to have dinner at the Geigers’ tonight. Tony’s mother will drop him off there tomorrow.”
“What’s wrong with Britney, Mom?”
“We’re not sure. I’m going to take her to the hospital, but she’ll be fine, okay?”
“Mom,
