Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life Read online

  “There’s some kind of funky smell there.”

  “It’s the cats! You love cats!”

  “I love my cat,” she corrects me. “Not all cats. Your grandmother has, what, like, twelve of them?”

  I nod. “Twelve cats, twelve rooms. Only cat lovers stay there.”

  “Hey, Dad, guess what?” Lizzy asks, apparently already having lost interest in the cats.

  “I give up.”

  “We found one of the keys for Jeremy’s box!”

  He looks at me and grins. “That’s wonderful.”

  “I know! And we still have a lot to go through!”

  “You two can get back to it if you like,” my mom says. “Just finish your burgers.”

  Five minutes later, we’re back on our knees in front of the open suitcase. Fifty minutes after that, we find our second key. Lizzy’s hand shakes as she turns it and it clicks into place. This time we sit very calmly, although my heart is racing. The second key is short and squat. Nothing at all like the first.

  “They could all be here,” she says, her voice cracking. “You might be able to open the box on your birthday after all.”

  “I know,” I whisper, realizing I never let myself believe it might really happen.

  “So what are we waiting for?”

  Two hours later I am bleary-eyed and ready to pass out. But still, I forge ahead. Soon Mom knocks on the door and suggests to Lizzy that it might be time to go home.

  “We just have about twenty more to go, Mom.”

  “Okay, but the train leaves Penn Station at nine a.m., so we’ll be getting up early.”

  With eight keys to go, I find the third one. It slides right in. After that, it’s a mad scramble to try the other eight. But none of them even go halfway into the last keyhole.

  It’s over. I can’t believe it’s over. I stare helplessly at the jumble of rejected keys.

  “Well, that bites,” Lizzy says.

  I don’t say anything. Picking up the box with the three keys sticking out of it, I shake it as if it would help. I try pulling on the top. I tug and yank, but nothing budges.

  “What are we gonna do?” Lizzy asks.

  I look over at the pile of discards and grit my teeth till they hurt. “We could try each one again. It would go faster this time since we’d only have to try it in one hole.”

  “I can’t stand to look at one more key tonight,” Lizzy says. “But maybe you can do it during your H.O.J.?”

  I’m so tired I don’t want to do anything during the H.O.J. except sleep. But I nod. “Okay, that’s fine.”

  “I still have to pack,” Lizzy says, getting slowly to her feet. “See you bright and early.” I grunt and force myself to retry all the keys in the one remaining lock. None of them work. I am practically delirious with exhaustion at this point.

  As a final resort, I retry the three keys that did work in the one empty keyhole. Nothing.

  I’m so disappointed I feel hollow. I scribble a note and stick it in the hole. The tinfoil is gone. To be one key short, the day before we leave, is almost worse than being four keys short. Maybe it is worse. This has been twenty-four hours full of highs and lows. I’d like to get off the roller coaster.

  In the morning I transfer all the stuff from my duffle into the new suitcase. It looks much more grown up than the old canvas bag. A cab honks downstairs to take us to the station. I say a quick good-bye to the fish as Mom hurries me out the door. Lizzy is already on the stoop. She’s holding the note I sent last night about not finding the last key. She looks up, and I can see the concern in her eyes. “Are you doing okay?”

  I nod and force myself to smile bravely. What else can I do? If I don’t smile, I’ll cry. I watch the cabbie put our bags in the trunk. “We tried the best we could, right?”

  Lizzy crumples the note and sticks it in her pocket. “We sure did. That has to count for something. C’mon, let’s just try to have fun at your grandmother’s. You know, go with the flow like Mr. Rudolph said.”

  “I’m not sure I can,” I reply honestly.

  “There’ll be funnel cake,” she says.

  I smile, for real this time. “And food on sticks. Food always tastes better on sticks.”

  “That’s the spirit,” she says as my mom ushers us in the back of the cab.

  When we get to the station, Mom leads us to the huge electronic sign that lists where all the different trains are boarding. Our train goes to Dover, New Jersey, and will take about an hour and a half. There’s one to Chicago, one to Miami, and even one to Los Angeles. Our train leaves in six minutes, and we have to run across practically the whole station. Lizzy has her hula hoop over one shoulder, and it keeps flying around her head and hitting people. Every few feet she calls out “Sorry ’bout that!” or “Oops, excuse me, sorry!”

  We make our train with two minutes to spare. We stash our suitcases on the rack above our heads, but the hula hoop is too wide. Lizzy puts it on the floor under our seat, and we all have to keep our feet inside it so it doesn’t slide into the row behind us. Lizzy grumbles that when this is all over, she’s going to burn the wretched thing. I remind her that it’s plastic, and, therefore, won’t burn well and would probably give off toxic fumes.

  She mutters something I can’t hear and gives the hula hoop a kick.

  Grandma is waiting for us at the station. It’s been months since I’ve seen her, but she doesn’t look any older. After Dad’s accident, she aged about ten years overnight. Since then, she’s stayed the same. Grandma is like that Easter Peep that I found. She’ll be here forever.

  Before we can stop her, she’s tossing our bags into her van. Grandma’s so used to carrying people’s stuff at the bed-and-breakfast that she’s gotten really strong. She smiles when she sees the hula hoop. “Are you excited for the talent show?” she asks Lizzy.

  I expect Lizzy to grumble, but instead she forces her mouth into a smile and nods. “Jeremy’s really excited, too, aren’t you Jeremy?”

  I’m already in the van at this point. “Oh, very,” I mutter.

  “Why don’t I believe them?” Grandma asks Mom as she shuts the back door of the van.

  When we arrive at The Cat’s Paw B&B forty-five minutes later, I’m feeling a little carsick. The country roads always get me. In the city, the roads are straight and mostly flat. Lizzy and I stumble out of the van. She looks a little pale, too. Mom asks her if she feels okay, and I hear her whisper that her stomach hurts a little. Mom says she’ll give her some Advil, but that it’s normal and will go away in a few days. I realize they’re talking about women stuff again, not carsickness. I grab my suitcase and hurry into the inn. I’m greeted by six cats in various positions. Some cleaning different body parts with their tongues, some sleeping, one batting around a mouse made of yarn, and another one scratching the leg of a chair. I don’t see my favorite though.

  Grandma comes in behind me. “I put Tootsie Roll in your room already.”

  Grandmas are the best!

  I lug my stuff up the flight of stairs to the room I always stay in when I’m here. Mom’s room is across the hall, and Lizzy’s attaches to mine by a door. Tootsie Roll, long and brown, is waiting for me on my pillow. He purrs when I pet him, but not a growling purr, like Zilla makes. Grandma’s cats are normal cats, not prehistoric beasts dressed in cat costumes. Grandma put a photo of a family visit to the inn on my night table. It was a few years after she opened it, when I was three. Tootsie Roll was just a kitten then, and Grandma let me name her. I make myself look away from Dad’s smiling face in the picture.

  I have to unpack all my clothes right away or else I feel really unsettled. While I’m stuffing things into drawers, I hear Lizzy and Mom trudging up the stairs. Mom suggests to Lizzy that she lie down for a few hours. Not to be unfeeling or anything, but if Lizzy’s going to be sick this whole week, it’s going to be pretty boring.

  The suitcase is now empty except for three items that I had carefully wrapped in newspaper. First I pull out my dad’s