Crash

Scooter is recovering slowly, but he remains in the hospital. Christmas Day, Crash and Abby get more gifts than ever, and good ones, but Crash keeps feeling haunted about Scooter. Every year, their folks like keep all the gifts under the tree “so people who come to visit can see them” (114). The kids protest—they want to play with their toys and games upstairs, and people rarely visit anyway, so their parents relent after three days.

Crash buys Scooter a real gift, a book about US naval vessels. The red shoes he hides under his bed. Crash thinks that they may be a good luck charm and that there’s no sense throwing them away if that might jinx Scooter’s recovery.

On New Year’s Day, the rest of the Coogans visit Uncle Herm’s family but Crash stays home. Mike visits, and they watch TV bowl games and compare gifts. Mike’s new, expensive sneakers are so nice, they win the contest for best gift. Mike later wanders into Scooter’s room, finds an old sailor hat, and puts it on. Crash angrily snatches it off and returns it to Scooter’s room.

The doorbell rings and Penn Webb is at the door. Crash refuses to answer, and Penn puts down a box and leaves. Crash retrieves the box: It’s a gift for Scooter, Penn’s jar of good-luck Missouri River mud, with a letter that expresses the hope that the mud will help Scooter get well. Crash stares out the window for a long time.

Back at school, Mike wants to trick Penn into eating meat, but Crash isn’t interested. He bumps into Jane Forbes and ignores her. She calls after him, expressing her sorrow about Scooter.

Crash’s grandfather is in a rehab facility. The family visits: Scooter looks emaciated. He can’t talk, but he stares at Crash and holds tight to Abby’s arm while she catches him up on family events. He opens his mouth to speak but only drool comes out. On the way home, Abby wants to know how soon Scooter will be better and their mom says it will take a long time. Abby suddenly understands and cries out, “He’s never gonna call me swabbie again!” (122).

Mrs. Coogan hired a woman to clean house weekly and cook three days a week, and Crash doesn’t like her cooking. At loose ends, Crash goes for a walk and ends it in the backyard. He notices a bit of pizza on the dollhouse’s tiny dining-room table. He also notes a small pile of sticks hidden under a bush, then several more near other bushes and trees. At the back door, he turns and looks and realizes that all the piles are hidden from view.

The next morning, Crash checks the dollhouse: The bit of pizza is gone.

Crash tries to make “catfish cakes” for Abby on her birthday. Scooter used to make them, putting little cat faces on them with icing. Crash’s look terrible, but he hopes she’ll like them. Abby rejects them angrily.

At school, Mike shows Crash his water gun that he got for Christmas. Crash says he’ll get suspended. Mike wonders what’s gotten into Crash lately, and he calls him a dud. Crash grabs Mike by the shirt, lifts him up, and asks if he’s still a dud. Mike says, ok, he isn’t a dud.

That afternoon after school, Crash walks home and sees Mike pelting Penn with the water pistol. Crash keeps walking; he knows Penn won’t resist, but he doesn’t want to watch. Crash wonders why he isn’t teasing Penn like the Mike and thinks about how he doesn’t feel like his nickname fits anymore.

At home, he finds a letter on his bed from Abby. She apologizes for being mean about the catfish cakes and thanks him for the effort.

Scooter can talk, but all he can say is “A-bye.” It’s his answer to everything. Abby’s bothered that he can’t say more, but then she says, “It must have been terrible not to have a single word. And now he has one. And he can use it for anything!” (130) The thought makes her happy.

After Mike drenched Penn with his water gun, he was out of school for two days, apparently sick. One evening, while taking out the garbage, Crash hears someone rushing down the street. He looks: It’s Penn, doing sprints.

The cleaning lady finds Crash’s red shoes and brings them to Mrs. Coogan, who asks Crash about them. He explains, and she understands but starts to giggle. Crash swore never to buy anything at a thrift store, but the shoes came from Second Time Around. He hopes no one at school will notice.

Crash tells Abby the mouse won’t live in her dollhouse unless she moves it someplace hidden, so it’s like when the mouse lived in his football bag. Abby doesn’t get why he cares. She retorts, “I guess the Mouse House has to be smelly too” (133).

Crash notices that Penn sprints past their house every night.

Essays are due for English class and Crash wrote his about Scooter. At school, when Penn gets up to talk to the teacher, Mike steals his essay, crumples it into a ball, and tosses it to Crash, who quietly opens the paper and reads Penn’s essay. It’s about his great-grandfather, whom Penn loves and who used to tell him stories about the past. When young, his great-grandfather ran in the Penn Relays. Now 93, he’ll visit soon for one more visit to the races. Penn writes, “Sometimes he makes me sad when he says that he feels himself disappearing like the prairie” (135-36).

Crash returns the essay to Penn so he can hand it in to the teacher. Crash thinks about how track sign-ups will open the next day.

Abby confronts the exterminator and forces him to take his weed killer spray back to his truck and drive away. Her dad tries to lecture her about getting rid of weeds, but Abby retorts that weeds are “plants and flowers just like daffodils and all” (138). Her dad gives up after Abby tells him he was brought up wrong and asks him what he would do if a truck came by to spray poison on him just because someone decided to call him a weed.

At track tryouts, Crash beats out everyone, including eighth graders. Coming in second is Penn.

Abby’s dollhouse now nestles deep in the bushes. The mouse hasn’t moved in yet, though. The exterminator, Crash notices, hasn’t returned.

Jane Forbes angrily approaches Crash, asking if he wrote a note to Penn. Confused, Crash learns that Penn got a note from Mike threatening his pet turtle unless Penn eats some meat. He says that he didn’t write the note and tells Jane to stop accusing people without proof.

After the second race—again, Crash wins and Penn takes second—Crash goes to Mike’s house, marches into his room, and searches until he finds Penn’s turtle, to Mike’s protest. He takes it and turns to leave, noting that Mike didn’t even have food for the turtle. Mike challenges Crash, punching him in the chest and asking why he’s suddenly defending Penn. On the third punch, Crash shoves him, and Mike tumbles backward down the hall. Mike stands, fists balled, and whines, “What’s the matter with you?” (143) Crash tells him to figure it out, and leaves.

Crash leaves the turtle on the Webb’s back steps, knocks on their door, and runs. At home, Crash’s dad can’t mow the backyard because the mower’s spark plug is missing.

The entire chapter reads: “April 16: Scooter came home today!” (144)

It’s the week of the Penn Relays. With 15,000 contestants, the relays are bigger than the Olympics. Huge, lively crowds attend. It’s a big deal. At Springfield Middle School, there’s one slot open on the 400-meter relay race. Everyone expects it’ll go to Crash.

At home, Scooter now lives downstairs, uses a walker very slowly, and still only says “A-bye.” Crash and Abby visit him each evening and sit on his bed with him, but Crash notices he doesn’t quite feel the same safety. Before, Scooter was the captain of the bed boat, but he thinks, “Now it’s turned around. We’re the captains. You don’t feel so safe being captain” (147).

Crash is surprised to find his mom at home after school. She tells him that she reduced her work hours to part-time so she can be with Scooter. She asks Crash, “Now really, would you rather have my money or my time?” He quips, “Your money,” but he’s glad she’s back (148).

She makes dinner and Crash thinks it’s not too bad. Scooter eats with them and listens avidly. Mrs. Coogan warns that there’ll be less money to spend, and that she’ll buy some clothes at Second Time Around. Crash groans. She says they will all have to give up something, and she will be selling her car. He makes her promise there’ll be no used underwear. Mrs. Coogan says that on the bright side, Crash can stop comparing price tags with his friends.

For some reason, Crash is nervous about the upcoming racing tryout. He’s noticed that Penn, who always greets him, has been silent the past few days. He hears Penn running past the house again, even though the track coach tired them out that day at practice.

Meanwhile, Crash’s dad replaces the mower spark plug, but now the gas cap has gone missing.

Crash can’t pay attention in his classes or eat and fantasizes about coming from behind in the Penn Relays to win the race in the last second. At the trials, he sees Mr. and Mrs. Webb in the crowd, accompanied by an ancient, skinny man, Penn’s great-grandfather, Henry. Like Scooter, Henry shows up to support Penn.

As the racers take their lanes, Crash realizes there’s something only he can do to express his appreciation for grandfathers. He hates it, but it’s the right choice. Penn wishes Crash good luck, to which Crash tells Penn to remember to lean. The contestants race, and Crash makes short work of all but Penn, with whom he matches strides until the finish line. There, he tells him, “Lean!” and Penn leans forward and wins.

Instantly, Crash regrets losing. The feeling haunts him for days, but another feeling begins to push it aside, and with it the image of Penn’s great-grandfather cheering as Penn runs in the Relays. On Friday, news arrives that the Springfield team had their best showing ever, and that Penn ran the final lap and pulled his team out of last place to take second. Quietly, Crash cheers.

Crash is working on cutting out coupons when he hears his mom yelp. Mrs. Coogan finds Scooter’s walker abandoned and she locates him upstairs, gazing at her painting of him. She confesses that she did the portrait from memory so she wouldn’t forget how her father looked when he was away at sea. She tells Crash she recently became worried that her own kids would forget her. She tells Crash that she started worrying about it right before she requested to go part-time with her work.

Crash isn’t surprised that his grandfather suddenly got up the stairs. Two days earlier, he made up a story about a science project to Scooter and dipped his grandfather’s toe in some of Penn’s Missouri River mud.

That summer, the backyard grass gets knee-high and the mouse moves into the dollhouse. Abby and Crash tell stories to their grandfather. Their mom resumes painting and Jane Forbes invites Crash to a July 4th party. Crash reports that now, “Penn Webb is my best friend” (162).