Emmett (Fowler Enterprise #3)

PROLOGUE

“Did you get enough to eat, bud?” Dad asks as he picks my plate up off of the table.

Today is pancake Wednesday; I love pancake Wednesday. My dad makes the best pancakes in the whole world. He doesn’t even use the mix or anything, and he lets me have loads of syrup and Batman sprinkles on them every time he makes them for me.

“Yup!”

“Alright, go get those teeth brushed,” he tells me, patting me on the head while I hop out of my chair. While I walk down the hallway and toward the bathroom, he adds, “The back ones, too!”

I got one cavity last month, and now he thinks I don’t brush my teeth good enough. I’m eight now, I’m not some dumb kid anymore; I know how to brush.

I squeeze toothpaste onto my toothbrush, counting one, two, like Dad taught me.

While I brush my teeth, I sing the Teen Titans theme song in my head three times like he taught me, too.

My dad teaches me a lot of stuff all the time.

He’s really smart, and I wanna be just like him when I’m a grown up.

I run out of the bathroom when I hear my Uncle Davis come in; I can always tell when he’s here, because he has a really loud voice, he talks funny, and he laughs a lot. “Uncle Davis!” I yell through a mouth full of toothpaste foam while I run toward him.

He puts a hand on my head, keeping me at an arm’s distance away from him, and he curls his top lip up like he’s grossed out. “Not so fast, speed racer,” he tells me. “Spit that nasty shit out and then we can talk.”

“Davis!”

Dad doesn’t like it when grown ups say bad words in front of me, but Uncle Davis does it a lot.

I think he forgets sometimes, because he doesn’t hang out with a lot of kids.

He taught me how to say ‘crap’ and ‘damn,’ but I’m not allowed to say them in front of Dad.

It’s a secret just for us when we’re hanging out as ‘the guys.’

I can hear the two of them talking while I rinse my mouth out, even though they try to be quiet. Uncle Davis asks if Dad has heard anything from ‘you-know-who’ about coming to my birthday party this weekend, and Dad tells him no.

“You gotta let that ship sink, man,” I hear Uncle Davis say.

“He practically begged me to invite her, Davis, what was I supposed to do?”

They don’t say her name, but I know they’re talking about my mom.

I asked Dad a bunch of times if he would invite her to my party this weekend; meeting my mom is the only present I really want him to get me.

I made a wish for it on the cupcake he got me for my actual birthday and I think I’m gonna wish for it again at my party, just in case.

Dad always says stuff about ‘doubling down on investments,’ double stuf Oreos are the best Oreos, and my favorite gum is Double Bubble, so I think a double wish would work better than just one.

I’m not supposed to, but I use my stool to climb up and open the big cabinet on top of the sink where Dad keeps the jar of stuff he puts in his hair.

I twist off the lid and dig a bunch of it out – it’s really hard, but I get a handful of it and I rub it between my hands just like he does, then I push my hands through my hair just like he does.

I use Dad’s brush to comb all the extra goop out, and all of my hair sticks down flat on my head.

I go across the hall into my room to grab my backpack and I throw it onto my shoulders before I head back out to the living room, where Dad and Uncle Davis are waiting for me. They stop talking to each other when I come out, but they give each other a funny look.

“Lookin’ good, Hoss!” Uncle Davis gives me a high five up top with a laugh, then we swing our arms down and high five down low, too. We stick the tips of our thumbs on our noses and wiggle our fingers at each other with our tongues stuck out.

“Emmett Reid, did you get into the medicine cabinet?” Dad pinches his nose like he does when he’s annoyed, but he’s smiling.

“I used your hair stuff!”

“I can see that,” he laughs.

Uncle Davis reaches for my hair and pulls a piece of it so it hangs next to my face. “Best lookin’ kid in the whole damn school now.”

Dad’s hand flies up behind him, whacking him on the back of the head for saying a bad word in front of me again, and Uncle Davis laughs really hard.

I do, too.

“Alright,” Dad says. He starts counting on his fingers while he says, “Homework done, teeth brushed, tummy full…hair done. Did we miss anything?”

I bounce on my toes and flash him a big smile with all of my teeth so he can see how good I did cleaning them. “Nope!”

When we leave, Dad pulls the front door shut behind us, tugging on the handle while he jiggles the key in the lock.

It sticks sometimes, so he always has to do a special trick to lock it before we leave.

He and Uncle Davis each grab one of my hands when we get to the top of the stairs and they lift me up so I can float down with them.

“Your old man’s gonna buy you a house after today,” Uncle Davis tells me.

“We don’t know that,” Dad argues.

“Sure we do.”

“Can we get a big one?” I ask him. “With a big yard and a pool and a basketball net and a—”

Dad lets go of my hand when we get to the bottom of the stairs and he crouches down in front of me, straightening my shirt and smoothing back the piece of hair that Uncle Davis pulled out.

“If today goes well, I’ll show you a few places and you can pick one out for us,” he tells me, tapping his finger against the middle of my chest. “How does that sound?”

“Good,” I tell him. My arms shoot out in front of me and I give him two big thumbs up.

Uncle Davis clears his throat from behind us and he bends down real low so his mouth is next to my ear. “I call shotgun.”

He takes off running toward Dad’s car and I drop my backpack on the ground so I can catch up with him faster, running as hard as my legs will let me. “Hey! No fair!” I shout after him.

Maybe Uncle Davis can live with us in our cool new house.