It's been a few days since I rolled into Bellwood—a place that's half prairie, half city. Miles of grass, then suddenly neighborhoods: houses and apartment blocks, schools, strip malls, a few tall buildings casting their own shade. This morning, Grandpa Max and I got up to start our day. The night we arrived, everyone dropped us off after some…strange interactions, then went home to crash, and Grandpa gave me a tour of his RV. It's roomier than it looks. Cramped, sure, but you could squeeze nine people in here if everyone likes each other. If they didn't, well...
There's a single door on the side with a screen that snaps if you look at it wrong. Up front: the driver's seat and a passenger seat. Then a tiny kitchen, a double-sided booth with a table between, and a couch behind that. At the very back: a closet, the restroom, and a little room with four bunks, why so many, who knows. Decently spacious, all things considered.
Grandpa made the coffee that smells like pavement after rain and pushed a mug at me just to let me smell it, like a museum exhibit called SOMEDAY. He used the THIS IS FINE mug because he thinks he's hilarious. The window shade that broke on day one tries to behave for a second and then gives up, and a pale rectangle of sun ends up across my knees. Outside, the lot is still strings and trenches and promise. The permit box clicks in the wind like a shy metronome.
I felt the compass tap gently on my chest, attached by a thin silver chain grandpa had found. I had watched Grandpa tap the face of the compass—light, a knuckle brushing metal, not a press. He rigged the thin silver chain with a breakaway clasp "so it won't catch," and so my hands don't sit on it in my hoodie pocket like they used to. New rule: it hangs where both of us can see it. Newer rule: nobody touches the face. It's a compass until I say otherwise. We never talked about what it actually was, or what he knew, we both had secrets to keep, who was I to ask. He'd tell when he was ready. I was the same way.
This all still felt so, unreal to me. I guess...
"PT in twenty," Grandpa says, like a coach who's soft on purpose. "Eggs first or toast?"
I blink once for eggs. My head does the smallest nod because sometimes my body forgets and remembers all by itself. We've got a system now. One yes, two no, eye-roll for rude questions, look-left for windows, look-right for I'm done.
He scrambles eggs the way kids draw clouds—too much, all at once—but he keeps them soft and doesn't add the spicy stuff unless I blink once twice in a row. That means brave. I don't today. He sets the plate where I can reach and waits like he's not waiting. We're good at pretending things are casual.
Because of some catching up and errands, the dinner with the family was post-poned until later today. I guess we will go over there after my physical training.
By the time I'm done, the wind has picked up. Bellwood does that, like the prairie half of it is always trying to remind the city half who was here first. Grandpa props the screen door with his boot and checks the ramp he built out of plywood and one very experienced 2x6.
"We'll build a proper one," he says, every day. "We're making do until we make better."
I blink once for outside. He smiles like I just told a joke he hasn't heard in years. We take the ramp slow, the wood giving a long creak that would be embarrassing if wood had feelings. He parks me where the rectangle of sun can work on my legs. Prairie grass ripples and the SOLD sign squeaks like it's trying to say a word it can't pronounce.
We do the exercises the PT named like weird animals: heel slides, clamshells, bridges. Grandpa talks about footings and concrete and how the inspector, Nadia, said the bones look good. "Good bones," he says again, like the lot is a dog he's proud of. When I get the breathing part right and the count to ten doesn't feel like counting to the moon, he grins and says, "That's it," in a way that makes the morning bigger.
Grandpa counts like he's reciting a spell that only works if you believe in it exactly enough. By ten, my hip burns. By twelve, it's a steady weather. He gives me the coach look—proud, pretending not to be—and wheels me toward the window when I glance left. The broken shade behaves for five seconds and then quits again. Sun lands across my knees like a warm book.
"Dinner's later," he says, rinsing the egg pan. "Frank's cooking Burgers of Ambition, Natalie's cooking vegetables to keep him honest, Carl's bringing the 'We Should Level That' speech, and Sandra is bringing the notebook she already left here. Which means she will be bringing potato salad."
"And the gremlins," I don't say, because Gwen and Beatrice are not gremlins. They're cousins. My cousins now, I guess. Kids, like me, except they come with parents attached and the kind of laughter that bangs off RV walls and makes the place feel bigger.
We run errands before the chaos hits: a hardware store for screws that "talk to each other," Grandpa says (self-tapping, but he likes his joke better); a grocery stop for things that go on burgers; and a quick detour around the town, get me familiar with it.
By late afternoon, people start arriving without knocking, like weather systems colliding over the lot. And by people, I mean us.
Knock
Knock
The second knock is polite, like it's wearing a tie.
Footsteps. A lock clicks, a chain slides, and then the door swings open on a wash of air-conditioning and grilled-onion smell.
"Look who showed up handsome," Natalie says, all grin and elbows, and steps aside. "C'mon in—watch the threshold."
Frank is right behind her with a folding ramp like a briefcase. "Borrowed from a neighbor," he says, unfolding it over the single step like a magician who believes in OSHA. "Tested twice. Squeaks once."
"Everything squeaks once," Grandpa says, easing my chair forward until the front wheels find the lip. The ramp answers with a question-mark creak and then a yes.
Inside is the exact kind of middle-class I remember from field trips and sitcoms: vinyl runner, framed school photos up the stairs, a whiteboard calendar bleeding with soccer practice and PTA meetings, a couch that has seen naps, a coffee table with a baby corner guard still clinging to one edge long after the baby is clearly a kid. The AC hum is steady as a heartbeat.
Gwen appears from nowhere and stops herself three inches from collision because her mom trained her brakes. "Benjamin," she says formally, then ruins it with a grin. "Hi. We drew the solar system on the driveway. Pluto's back in, by popular vote."
"Controversial," Frank says, proud of his household's democracy. He points his chin at me. "One blink for pro-Pluto. Two for cowardice."
I give him one. He clutches his heart like I've knighted him.
"Shoes off," Natalie tells Grandpa, then looks at my wheels and says, "We'll call these sandals," which is how you know she speaks fluent logistics. She's got a bowl of cucumbers on the counter, a pan of roasted potatoes cooling, and a salad that looks like she threatened it into being colorful.
"Carl and Sandra are five minutes out," she adds, pouring lemonade like it's a potion. "Beatrice has rehearsed three jokes and a promise to keep rocks in the yard."
"Nature's pockets," Frank says, already opening the back door to the deck. Smoke curls up from a grill that hums like it believes in itself. The backyard is textbook: fenced grass, a maple the kids have turned into a planet headquarters with chalk, two lawn chairs that don't match and never will.
I glance left—window—and Grandpa wheels me so I catch the light from the sliding glass door. Sun slides across my knees like a warm book. He sets the brake, one hand hovering near the compass out of habit before he remembers and lets the hand fall. He counts my breaths with his own, quiet, like we're syncing watches.
The doorbell plays a melody that wants to be a song but stops at three notes. Sandra enters with a casserole carrier and the spiral notebook under her arm like part of her outfit. Carl follows, already squinting at the deck. "You've got a dip right there by the post," he tells Frank, pointing. "Pools water."
"Citizen's arrest," Frank says. "After burgers."
Beatrice rockets in, hands high, palms open. "Zero rocks," she declares, then spots me and parks herself by my right wheel at perfect not-touching range. "I brought my reading voice," she adds in a whisper. "And restraint."
"Restraint looks good on you," Sandra says. "I can tell one day you wont have it anymore, call it a gut feeling."
"Hey!", Beatrice wines, stomping her left foot dramatically, her face formed in a pout, clearly, pretending to take it personal.
Dinner happens in that way families do when they're warming up at it: everybody talking, nobody drowning. Frank flips patties like he's auditioning for a show called Grills of Valor. Natalie snipes him with a spray bottle whenever the flames get ideas. Carl and Grandpa discover they can argue drainage from across a sliding door with only eyebrows. Sandra sets plates in a stack that seems physically impossible. Gwen presents Pluto's reinstatement as a matter of justice; Beatrice wants to know if planets have eyebrows (jury out).
"Sauce?" Frank leans in with two bottles like a game show host. "Blink once for ketchup, twice for mustard, three for both, four for chaos."
I give him one. He bows.
"Onions?" he tries.
Two. He sighs tragically and loads his own like a man of principle betrayed by a child.
Natalie sneaks a peach slice onto my plate like contraband. I blink once for brave. Sweet goes off like a tiny firework. Grandpa does his skilled pretending-not-to-watch. He's good at not making anything a test.
We eat. We talk around the thing without puncturing it. Not a car accident, not that. Something else. The part where my mouth knows "Mom" but my chest forgets what to do after. The AC hums. Somewhere, a neighbor's dog makes a decision and then un-makes it. The house smells like onions and soap and a little like crayons because Gwen once melted a box on the heat vent and it refuses to be forgotten.
"You steer," Sandra says gently, almost like she tripped over my thought and decided to put it back where she found it. She nods at my chest. "We follow."
I look at Grandpa. He looks back like a harbor—here, and here, and here. One blink. Small yes.
"Okay," Frank says, letting the air be air again. "Serious question. Are pickles cucumbers that chose delicious violence?"
"Pickles are cucumbers that learned boundaries," Natalie says.
"Boundaries are my dad rock," Carl offers.
"Please stop saying 'dad rock' near food," Gwen begs.
Beatrice leans over the arm of my chair. "Pew-pew permission pending," she whispers, tapping the comic Gwen slid onto my lap.
Three slow blinks, the code we invented for jokes. She beams and supplies the pews at a respectful volume. Sandra ruffles her hair like she earned a medal.
After burgers come potatoes, salad, a slice of something that wants to be cobbler and gets there anyway. The table's a rhythm. The middle-class neighborhood does its evening routine around us—garage doors yawn, sprinklers tick, bikes clatter onto porches. The chalk solar system loses Mercury to a sneaker and regains it with a smear.
Mercury gets stomped, then resurrected with a heel-scrape halo. The chalk ring looks tired and heroic. I watch the driveway through the glass and the reflection of the room floats over it—faces, plates, hands moving like constellations I don't know yet.
The compass taps once against my chest when I shift. Not a warning, just the metal saying I'm here. I keep my eyes where the sun warms my knees, because the warmth feels like permission.
"Emergency delivery," a voice calls, and the front door opens without a knock. A breeze slaps the music out of the doorbell after two notes.
Lucy slides in with a pitcher sweating so hard it looks nervous. "Tea assortment. Sweet, unsweet, and a third one I made by accident but feel spiritually committed to. It tastes like summer camp and regret."
"Regret pairs well with burgers," Frank says, suspiciously generous with himself as he pours.
He drinks. He makes a face that is technically gratitude, if you squint.
"Water it," Sandra orders, already unscrewing the good kindly tea and fixing it like a medic. Lucy bows and accepts her rescue.
Gwen migrates back to me like a planet with plans. "We voted Pluto back in," she says, very formal. "We also demoted homework to a comet because it's mostly ice and shows up out of nowhere."
"Also, Ben—meet Lucy. Lucy, meet Ben."
We both sort of freeze like we've just been called on in class. Then, at the exact same time, we throw up these tiny, awkward waves that are more wrist than hand.
"Hi," Lucy says, dragging the word out like it's trying on shoes.
I nod back, the smallest lift of fingers. The compass taps once against my chest, like it wants in on the introduction.
Beatrice leans into my side like a cat who read a manual on respecting boundaries. The comic in her hand waits. She taps the word bubble with a nail. "Requesting further sound effects clearance."
Three slow blinks for jokes. Pew-pew season opens, quiet and precise. She keeps it at librarian volume. Gwen narrates like a wildlife documentary about raccoons with tool belts. It does a thing to the air that feels like somebody unscrewed the cap on the word safe and let it breathe.
"On deck after dessert," Frank announces from the grill like it's his ship, "we require a film. Vote with your stomachs."
"You can't vote with your stomach," Natalie says, even though everyone absolutely does it. "Also someone needs to go get the string lights from the hall closet. The ambiance will not create itself."
"I volunteer as ambiance," Lucy says, already goose-stepping toward the hallway with Gwen, both of them whispering about battery packs like they're planning a heist.
Sandra sets a wedge of peach thing on my plate and pauses, eyebrow hovering: brave? I blink once, then once again because the first bite turns on lights behind my eyes. Sweet, warm, a little cinnamon. I don't flinch when three people pretend not to watch me like it's a fireworks show and they don't want to admit it.
The conversation drifts to the backyard like smoke. Carl is still in a committed relationship with the dip by the post. He gestures at it like he's giving a TED Talk to dirt.
"It'll heave in winter," he says through the glass. "Then you have a slip, then you have a lawsuit."
"You've got a slip right now," Frank says, sliding a plate through the door to distract him. "Of paper, where you write 'eat burger.'"
"He's not wrong about heave," Grandpa says mildly from the sink, rinsing the spatula with priestly focus. I check his eyes in the window reflection. He's got me in the corner of them, little checks every few heartbeats like a lighthouse.
"Please," Sandra says, passing napkins. "Let us have one dinner without a heave."
"Define heave," Lucy says on her way back, trailing a comet tail of LEDs.
"No," three adult voices chorus.
The string lights go up along the curtain rod like a cheap starfield that forgot to be cheap. The glass turns dark early; the living room becomes a small theatre with one good row.
Gwen kneels by my footrest and adjusts the pillow like she's been issued a tiny license. "Comfort check," she says. She doesn't look at Grandpa, which somehow makes it better. I blink once. She nods like we did paperwork.
Frank claps his hands, powdered with salt. "Agenda item: soda versus pop."
"Soda," Natalie says, immediate.
"Pop," Frank says, because of course he does.
"Carbonated beverage," Carl says, which is not a person's answer.
"Fizz-juice," Beatrice offers, delighted with herself.
"Soda is correct," Sandra says, as if correcting a spelling test.
"Regional variance," Lucy shrugs, which is code for I'm not dying on this hill.
I roll my eyes, the universal sign for stop asking opinion polls like it's a trap. The table laughs. It's not at me. It's with me. A weirdly specific difference I didn't know was a thing I missed until it happened.
Grandpa drifts to the couch arm nearest my shoulder and lands there without making a fuss. He's figured out how far is far enough. The compass says nothing, which is its way of saying okay.
"Follow-up agenda item," Frank continues, thrilled. "Is it pecan or pecan?"
"Don't," Natalie warns him.
"Pih-KAHN," Sandra says, blade already slicing the cobbler like she's carving a map.
"PEE-can," Frank counters, wrong on purpose the way some people whistle in hallways.
"Pee-KAHN," Lucy tries, starting the third party.
"Say it however your grandma did," Gwen decrees like a judge who's also in a play.
"I called it 'pie,'" Beatrice says smugly, and earns herself a crumb bonus.
I take another bite and catch myself smiling with exactly one corner, traitor mouth. Gwen sees it and doesn't explode. She only taps the table twice, soft, like a drumbeat to remember.
"We're wasting daylight," Frank announces to a room that is ruthlessly indoors. "Spaceships or bust."
"No bust," Natalie says with a face that means content moderation. "Spaceships are fine. No nightmares, no clowns, and no end-credits scenes that imply a homework sequel."
"Spaceships," Gwen says.
"Spaceships," Beatrice echoes, then adds, "but the spaceship is also a penguin that collects pebbles for ceremonial reasons."
"That's just a rock with marketing," Carl mutters.
"Rocks are my brand," Sandra says, stealing his line by accident and owning it.
"Your brand," Frank says gravely, "is saying 'we need to use up the cilantro' and then sentencing me to cilantro."
"We do need to use up the cilantro," Natalie adds, tragically true.
"Cilantro is soap," Lucy says, braced.
"That's genetic," Gwen tells her, excited to have science. "Some people taste beans. Or pennies. Or regret."
"Regret is the tea," Frank says, nursing his glass like a wounded soldier.
I glance left. Window-light is mostly star-light now. The string lights spill fake stars down my shins. I blink once and Grandpa reads it clean, rolling me a hair so I keep the glow. He doesn't touch the compass. Neither do I.
"Intermission," Natalie declares. "Bathroom, plates to the sink, someone check the dog-proofing on the trash like we've learned this lesson before."
"We absolutely have," Sandra says, putting foil on a bowl with the kind of finality you could build a bridge on.
"Dog-proofing is an art," Lucy says solemnly. "A martial art."
Gwen comments,"Hey mommy makes me do that." I raise my brow, something to think about later.
Gwen slides a DVD case under my hand like contraband. "Classic," she whispers. "Zero clowns. One spaceship with opinions." Beatrice leans in and breathes a sound effect that is probably the ship warming up.
I flex my thumb just enough that the case shifts. Not an accident. Gwen's grin happens all the way up to her eyes and then hides behind casual like it's ducking under a branch.
People move. It's organized chaos with jokes. Grandpa gets claimed for Popcorn Duty and pretends to resist the title. Frank argues with the microwave about the correct number of seconds like it insulted his honor. Natalie bans paprika before it becomes a debate. Carl attempts to wedge a coaster under the wobbly coffee table leg and is personally attacked by gravity. Sandra rearranges the seating plan with two gestures and a glare that positions everyone where they'll both see and be seen.
I catalog sounds the way PT taught me to catalog muscles: fan hum, bowl clink, a little sneeze from Gwen, Beatrice whispering pew pew like a benediction, Lucy's laugh ricocheting off the hallway, Grandpa's voice counting in the kitchen—two shakes of salt, three shakes of not too much.
Somebody says my name. It's quiet enough that it lands without knocking. "Ben," Gwen says from somewhere just above my shoulder, "do you want front row or mission control?"
I blink once for front row. She salutes like a professional and adjusts the chair tilt with a seriousness that would make space programs jealous.
The room settles like a big animal circling once before lying down. The first preview starts to talk to itself. The compass sits light and patient. I breathe in, hold for three, out for four. It doesn't feel like counting to the moon. It feels like measuring a room I might live in.
"Last call on the soda-versus-pop ruling," Frank says, because he cannot stop chasing undefeated arguments.
"Soda," Natalie fires back.
"Pop," Lucy sides, purely for sport.
"Carbonated beverage," Carl insists, now on principle.
"Fizz-juice," Beatrice says, doubling down on chaos.
Gwen pats my hand, conspirator. "Tie-breaker?" she asks, eyes bright.
I roll my eyes slow and huge in a way no one could mistake for anything but I am not being dragged into this. The room breaks into laughter again. Not at me. With me. That roof feeling settles back over my shoulders.
"Democracy has spoken," Sandra says, dimming the lamps until the string lights do the heavy lifting. "It said 'hush and watch your spaceships.'"
Grandpa passes behind the couch and lets his hand hover over the back of my chair for the length of one breath, like a lighthouse blink you could miss if you weren't looking.
The previews end. The main titles start. The room argues in whispers about whether popcorn is a dinner or a lifestyle. Frank says lifestyle. Natalie says dinner with a hat. Lucy says it's a hat with dinner in it. Carl says hat is an engineering term. Gwen says shh on behalf of art. Beatrice supplies one last dignified sproing that somehow fits.
We hush. We watch. The ship on the screen comes to life in a wash of fake stars and real noise. Somewhere under my ribs, something unclenches, not all the way, but enough.
In the dark, they keep up a low-grade bicker about nothing that matters and everything that does—lights too bright, blanket distribution, whether the hero is being dramatic or efficient. I let the talking and the string-light stars and the warm spot on my knees do their job.
Families argue like that, I guess. They don't solve the universe. They name the planets wrong and still get home.
"Also," Frank whispers at a volume that means not actually whispering, "it's totally pop."
"Soda," Natalie whispers louder.
"Fizz-juice," Beatrice whispers loudest, proud.
"Watch the movie," Sandra whispers with the power of law, and the room obeys, give or take a grin.
That's where I leave it—for now—with everyone pointed the same direction and the stars pretending to be ours.