The one time something really important happened to him, and he had to leave. Her hair hung in wet curls around her chin. Your sister’s waiting,” Mom said through the kitchen window. “Stanly, you promised you’d be in the garage by five to ten. Even Mom and Dad didn’t know how to do that. When he was seven, he already knew how to read and change diapers and get Miren to take her medicine. Stanly wondered if he’d said dumb things like that when he was seven. Like how Miren told him cows pee milk, and playing video games can make your fingers fall off. Seven-year-olds get a lot of things wrong.
“Egg,” said Stanly, shaking his head, but Miren was already gone. “Last one to treasure’s a rotten nobody.” “I can breathe fine.” She shrugged and sprinted back to the house. “You know what Mom said about running too fast.” Mom never let him dig in the backyard anymore, since Dad left. If Miren saw it, she would tell Mom and ruin everything. “Stop it! That hurt!” He stepped in front of the bone so Miren wouldn’t see. “Hey Bony-Butt, don’t you know it’s treasure time?” said Miren, racing down the cracked stone path and punching Stanly in the chest. Finding the finger bone felt the same way. Or the night ten months ago, when his father took a taxi to the airport and never came back. The day Stanly’s sister was born, for example. One little thing happened, and nothing else was ever the same. Or he might awaken a horde of slimy, flesh-eating zombies. He might find something good hiding underground, like a dinosaur fossil. In that moment he felt like an explorer, like Dagger Rockbomb, hero of his favorite video game, Skatepark Zombie Death Bash. Wind slapped his face, blowing orange and brown leaves in from the neighbor’s yard. Cold seeped from the bone finger into his fleshy one.
He touched the bone, quick, like it might bite. A shiver tickled his toes and curled all the way up the back of his neck. It could have been a bean sprout, only it was white and hard and shaped like the tip of a little finger. The day the rain stopped, Stanly Stanwright found a bone in the garden, poking up out of the dirt. To my grandmother, who inspired me to write, and my grandfather, who taught me that whimsy and wonder often hide in the most ordinary places.
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