Church Camp Chaos (10 page)

We’ve been working on it together a few hours every weekend since school let out, and today is the day we’ll finally get it done. Just a few finishing touches, and we can call it home-sweet-tree-house!

EJ

P.S. Two weeks and two days till C-A-M-P!

“EJ, would you take these out with you?” Dad handed EJ a box of three-inch screws he pulled from a drawer from his garage workbench.

“You got it.” EJ wedged the box into the tool belt around her waist. “You need anything else to go, Dad?”

“That’s it for now,” Dad said, picking up his own tool belt and slinging it over his shoulder. “I’ll join you out back in just a second.”

EJ walked toward the side door of the garage that led to the backyard and whistled for Bert to follow her. The two strolled through the door into the sunshine of the warm summer day.

EJ paused halfway through the yard to inspect their work so far. The tree house was about ten feet off the ground, with a rope ladder that led from the ground up to a trap door on the front porch of the tree house. The porch had a railing on all sides except the back, where there was a fireman’s pole anchored to the tree house roof—for quick escapes. The tree house itself was a one-room square building big enough for four people, and the roof was high enough that Dad could stand up inside without ducking. A door led inside from the front porch, and there were window openings on the other three walls. EJ’s favorite part of the house had been Dad’s awesome idea—a “sky hatch”—a swinging door in the roof that opened with a pulley system so they could watch the clouds by day or stargaze by night. He had gotten the idea from an old movie called
Swiss Family Robinson
, where a family was shipwrecked on a deserted island and had to build their own shelters to survive.

It was almost hard for EJ to believe that the tree house was made entirely from their old swing set. In fact, the only evidence left that there ever was a swing set at all was the lone baby swing, lying on its side next to the trunk of the tree.

“EJ! I’m putting up my dinosaur posters on the walls.” Isaac poked his head out of the window and waved his toy hammer at her. “You’d better come and stop me!”

“You know what Mom said!” EJ yelled up at him. “No decorating until we decide on a name!”

“Yeah, I know.” Isaac grinned down at her with his missing-tooth smile. “I just wanted to see what you’d say.”

“Brothers.” EJ rolled her eyes.

EJ walked to the five-gallon bucket that was sitting on the ground at the base of the tree, set the box of screws inside, and tugged on the rope that attached the bucket to the tree house above. “Special delivery, Isaac!”

“Oooh, yes!” Isaac pulled on the rope, and the bucket slowly rose off the ground. “I hope it’s the dinosaur-scented air freshener I ordered!”

“Even better than that,” EJ called up. “A box of screws!”

“You two ready to get started?” Dad called as he walked across the yard, his arms full of lumber. “All that’s left to do is get these shutters assembled and installed, and we can call this Swing Set Switcharoo finished … aroo!”

“Dad, what do you want me to do with this baby swing?” EJ poked at the plastic swing with the handle of her hammer. “Want me to go put it on the thrift store donation pile?”

“No, I think I’ll hang it from that limb over there.” Dad pointed to a sturdy-looking branch on the oak tree.

“But why—“ EJ didn’t get her question out before Mom called, “I’ve got surprises for everyone!” She walked across the yard, dragging a couple of big shopping bags behind her.

Dad’s face lit up when he saw Mom. “Isaac, come down for a minute. Let’s see what Mom made for the tree house!”

“Be there in a second!” Isaac ran through the tree house’s door and flung himself down the fireman’s pole before sprinting to Mom, Dad, and EJ.

“I think that was even
less
than a second!” he panted. “A new record!”

“Eaaasy, buddy,” Dad said, putting Isaac in a headlock and rubbing his head with his knuckles. “You need to keep the crazy to a minimum when you’re coming down that pole.”

“You guys ready to see what I have for the tree house?” Mom’s eyes were bright with excitement. “I’ve been working pretty hard, so I hope you like them.”

“Show us!” EJ said, grinning.

“Marmalade, what is it?” Isaac said, pulling himself out of Dad’s headlock and stepping toward Mom to try to look in a bag.

“First, something to add a little homeyness to your new place.” Mom revealed a set of window curtains—with cartoon dinosaurs on them. “What do you think?”

“Excellent!” Isaac’s eyes widened. “Those will go great in the Dino Den!”

“Those are really … nice, Mom.” EJ tried to sound happy about dinosaur curtains but was failing miserably.

“Oh, really?” Mom said, sounding skeptical. “I thought you might like
these
better.” With a quick tug on the fabric, Mom pulled the curtains inside out to reveal red fabric with gold and silver stars that shimmered in the sunlight—not a single dinosaur in sight!

“Oh man!” This time it was EJ who was amazed. “Mom! Those are
cool
! How did you do that?”

“I’ll show you how to switch curtains once I install these bad boys,” Mom said. “And since you couldn’t come up with a name that would work for both of you, why not have two names?”

Mom held up a wooden nameplate on a string that she had painted herself. One side said I
SAAC
’
S
D
INO
D
EN
and the other side said EJ’
S
S
TAR
P
ALACE
.

“You can hang it on the nail that’s next to the front door,” Mom explained. “And I have one more surprise….” Mom pulled back the big plastic bags to reveal what was inside: two oversized beanbag chairs, one covered in Isaac’s dinosaur material and the other in EJ’s red-with-stars material. “Homeyness plus comfyness! What do you think?”

“I think we may never see our kids in our own house anymore,” Dad said as EJ and Isaac plopped down into their new chairs with big smiles on their faces. “On second thought, this tree house is going to be so rad that maybe
I
want to move out here, too!”

EJ laughed. “No, Dad! Kids only.” Then she added, “Well, adults can come—but by invitation only.”

Dad had a far-off look in his eye, still imagining living in the tree house. “I’d call it the Dad Cave. Yeah, that has a nice ring to it.”

“That paint job on the shutters looks great, David,” Foreman EJ says as she observes one of her best employees. “Think we’ll be ready to hang them on time?”

“Yes ma’am,” David says, raising his paintbrush to his forehead in a salute, leaving a smudge of green paint on his hard hat. “Right on schedule.”

EJ nods and encourages David to keep up the hard work. This is the biggest, most important house construction she’s ever overseen, and so far everything has gone according to plan. The only strange thing is that nobody knows who is actually going to live in the house. The whole job was commissioned anonymously, but since the payments keep coming, EJ has found no reason to complain or even question who is behind it
.

Ten thousand square feet of living space, complete with a bowling alley and driving range in the lower level, a forty-seat state-of-the-art movie theater (with plush reclining seats), an Olympic-size swimming pool in the backyard with eight waterslides emptying from the house’s second floor into the pool, a full arcade with video games and skee-ball (EJ’s favorite), eleven bedrooms, and fifteen bathrooms—EJ wouldn’t mind living in this house once it’s all done
.

EJ walks into the living room to check on the interior decorator named Tabby, who is installing curtain rods and curtains
.

“Looks amazing,” EJ says, admiring her work. “Do you know who is supposed to be moving into this place when it’s done?”

“All I’ve heard is that it’s some kind of famous inventor,” Tabby says, adjusting the curtains so they hang evenly across the window. “Whoever it is must be extremely rich, so I’ll be interested to hear what he invented.”

A young boy walks into the room, sipping from the juice box in his hand and dragging a beanbag chair behind him. “Hi!” he says between sips. “Is the arcade ready yet?”

“Excuse me, but this is an active worksite,” EJ says, making sure that her “foreman” name tag on her chest is visible. “You need to have a hard hat on. And by the way, who are you?”

“I’m the owner,” he says. “This is my house.”

“Wait a second,” EJ says, not believing him even a little bit. “What did you invent that made enough money to build this house?”

The boy holds up his juice box and pulls the straw out. “Bendy straws,” he says. “Just think about how much better they make our lives. Kids love ’em. Adults love ’em. There’s all kinds of money to be made in bendy straws.”

“Oh Isaac, I never know what you’re going to come up with when someone asks you a question.” Mom laughed as she used a power screwdriver to finish putting up the last curtain rod.

“My genius brain surprises me sometimes,” Isaac said, sitting in his beanbag chair and slurping the remaining juice.

A few minutes later, EJ and Dad were hanging shutters—EJ in the tree house, with her head and arms sticking out the window, Dad standing on a plank of wood that was lying across the rungs of two stepladders. They were halfway done when Dad’s cell phone rang in his pocket.

“Hi, Steve!” Dad held the phone to his ear with his right shoulder while he checked to make sure the shutter was level. “Right now? Yes, I know it’s hard to get everyone together. Sure, that’s no problem. Give me ten minutes and I’ll be there.”

EJ’s heart sank. As a pastor, Dad sometimes got phone calls at home that meant he had to leave quickly—an accident or a sudden sickness of someone in the church and he’d need to rush to the hospital. Sometimes he could just be a calming person in a situation, and he loved people so much that he was happy to do it; he said it was part of his calling. And EJ loved that Dad loved people so much. But that didn’t make it any easier when he had to leave in the middle of something fun like finishing the tree house.

“Hey, hon?” Dad called up to Mom, who was painting the railing on the front porch with Isaac. “The guys on the church board want to meet to talk about some stuff … about the thing. Shouldn’t be long.”

Stuff … about the thing?
EJ’s mind immediately went back to the teary prayer circle between Mom, Dad, Nana, and Pops. All this secretive talk reminded EJ of when she was four and her parents would spell things in front of her so she didn’t know what they were
actually
talking about, which would sometimes result in confusing conversations:

“Dad, why are you meeting with the church board?” EJ asked, trying to sound casual. “Aren’t your normal meetings the first Tuesday of the month?”

“Nothing you need to worry about, EJ,” Dad said, hopping off the makeshift scaffolding to the ground. “Adult stuff. Boring.”

Dad’s answer didn’t satisfy EJ’s curiosity. If anything, it made her wonder even more.

“Be back in a jiffy, and we’ll fire up the grill for hamburgers for supper.”

“We’ll finish up that last set of shutters,” Mom said. “EJ, can you show me the ropes once I finish this coat of paint?”

“Yeah,” EJ said absentmindedly as she watched Dad walk to the garage. She made a mental note similar to the ones she made in her notebook as EJ Holmes:

1. Mom crying

2. Unscheduled meeting with church board: stuff … about the thing.

What was going on?