Grandad grabs the folding chairs from the garage where his car is still missing, and I put on my sneakers.

  Mom arrives in a T-shirt I’ve never seen before. It says, Don’t be scared. I’m just a feminist. She says, “Are we eating first? Or do you want to get something while we’re out? That new place on Main has great breakfast sandwiches.”

  I don’t know why I’m so shocked that Mom is here.

  “What’s wrong?” she asks.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “I don’t have to come with you if you don’t want. I get that this is your thing with your grandfather.”

  “No!” I say. “I want you to come. I’m just not used to—uh.”

  “You’re used to her being here on Saturday, cooped up all day and making dinner for spaceman Mike,” Grandad says.

  Mom scolds him for being sarcastic.

  “Sorry, but the man stole my car,” he says.

  She doesn’t say anything else. She doesn’t have to. I can see it in her face.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” I tell her. “You tried. You even still let him come over and made him dinner!”

  “I just wish it would have worked out,” she says.

  “He smashed your blue mug,” I say. “Nothing you could have done.”

  “Hear, hear,” Grandad adds.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a protest,” Mom says.

  “I brought licorice shoestrings.” Grandad holds up his candy bag.

  Mom smiles and looks like she’s going to cry. Those are her favorite.

  We walk until we get to the space in front of Tad’s where we sit every Saturday. It’s finally feeling like autumn, and I’m not sweating for once. Grandad and I set out the chairs and Mom goes to buy us breakfast sandwiches.

  “Nice sign,” Grandad says.

  I smile and balance it on my knees. It’s my favorite.

  CENSORSHIP: WHEN GROWN-UPS ACT LIKE CHILDREN!

  “Is that Marci?” Mom asks as she carries two cups of coffee in a cup carrier and a brown paper bag in her other hand. She’s looking behind me, so I turn around.

  “Hi!” Marci says.

  “Hey,” I answer. I get up and set her chair out next to mine.

  “What do you think?” she asks, showing me a colorful sign that says STOP BEING AFRAID OF WORDS with a stop sign as the O in STOP.

  “Love it,” I say. I turn my sign around to show her the other side.

  She smiles. “Always one step ahead, Mac.”

  STEALING HALLOWEEN FROM CHILDREN? SOUNDS LIKE A TRICK TO ME.

  “That’s my boy,” Mom says.

  I offer Marci half my breakfast sandwich and we sit down and eat. Grandad’s friends always stop and say hello. They keep laughing at my sign, saying when they were kids, things were a lot more “loose” around town.

  “We could walk around and do whatever we wanted,” one says.

  Marci has small leaflets that she’s handing out. On the front, it’s an overview of what happened with our copies of The Devil’s Arithmetic with a picture of the blacked-out part. On the back is the proposed school board policy.

  A woman who passed by and took a leaflet a half hour before comes to us and says, “It’s sad that this is happening. I’d love to help.”

  Marci says, “The best way to help is to come to the emergency board meeting on Tuesday night. You can sign up to speak or just bring a sign!”

  The woman says, “Sounds good. I’ll be there.”

  Only after she’s long gone, Grandad says, “She’s Tony Farisi’s daughter.”

  “Isn’t that the guy who started the bookstore?”

  “Sanctimonious turd,” he says.

  “Yeah, him,” I answer.

  “She turned out a lot nicer than her old man. And a lot smarter about the world. I hear she’s running for school board,” Grandad says.

  “I bet she really meant it, then,” Marci comments.

  More people than usual stop to talk to us. All of them support our cause. It makes me feel nervous. I know there are people who don’t agree. I guess they’re keeping to themselves. We’ve been here three hours already and we decide to stay longer. The place is packed because it’s a beautiful day.

  “Columbus boy!” someone says. I know the voice. It’s Aaron James.

  He’s with a man who I assume is his dad. The man says, “Nice sign!” I’m a bit surprised Aaron’s dad likes my sign, but he’s only seen the Halloween side, so who can’t get behind that?

  Aaron and his dad talk for a while with Marci, who gives them leaflets, and I talk to a woman who stops to say she’s behind us all the way. Grandad tells her about the meeting, but she says she can’t make it. “Write a letter to the board,” he says. “And to the paper!”

  “That, I can do!” she answers. “Good luck!”

  Aaron and Aaron’s dad go to the bookstore, and Aaron comes out with a copy of The Devil’s Arithmetic. He shows it to me, smiling.

  “But we already finished reading it,” I say.

  His dad says, “Don’t worry. I’m billing the school district for it!”

  Grandad laughs. I don’t see why that’s funny. When Aaron and his dad leave, Grandad explains. “Some people go about protesting in different ways. I’m pretty sure that guy and I don’t vote for the same people, but we think the same about our kids. And grandkids. You get my drift.”

  “I’ll take whatever support I can get,” Marci says.

  I nod.

  By the time three o’clock rolls around, we’re all hungry and Mom suggests we drop the chairs back home and go to the sandwich shop. I ask if Marci can come with us.

  “Can I call my mom and see if that’s okay?” Marci asks. She borrows Grandad’s phone and comes with us.

  My hands aren’t sweaty around her anymore. She’s just my friend, only a bit more. I’ve known her forever. She knows how to dance to “Rock Lobster.” We are fighting a town together.

  When we get to the sandwich shop, I order a grilled cheese kid’s meal and so does Marci. When the food comes and we start eating, she says, “I don’t know how you eat French fries without ketchup.”

  I say, “And I don’t know how you eat French fries with ketchup.”

  Suddenly, Grandad jumps out of the booth we’re sitting in and runs toward the window.

  “That’s my car!” he yells.

  And then he runs out the door and down Main Street.

  Grandad is a fast runner for a man his age. Plus, tourists don’t tend to use the dedicated crosswalks in town on Saturdays, so traffic can be slow. By the time Marci, Mom, and I get outside, Grandad has already caught up with the car and is yelling something at my dad, who is in the driver’s seat.

  From what it looks like, Dad is ignoring Grandad and pretending it’s his car. That’s an educated guess on my part—I’m too far away to see or hear what’s really going on.

  “I’m calling about a physical altercation on Main Street,” Mom says into her phone. “If they just walk out of the office, they’ll hear it.”

  It’s true. If the police step out their door, they’ll have front-row seats to whatever is about to happen.

  As I get closer, I can hear what Grandad is saying. “Block the car!” he’s saying to anyone who’ll listen. “This is my car!”

  Two older guys step in front of the car so Dad can’t drive forward. Grandad stands with his arms crossed and says something quietly to Dad. Dad keeps looking forward as if Grandad isn’t standing there.

  “You okay?” Marci asks.

  I nod. “My dad is in the long grass,” I tell her. I don’t even care if she understands. I know what I’m talking about.

  “But you’re okay?” she asks.

  “I’m embarrassed,” I say.

  We start to walk toward the car. The police arrive at the same time and ask my dad to pull the car into the nearby bank’s drive-through lane. Mom is now standing next to Grandad.

  Dad gets out of the car and says something I can’t hear. Then he … walks away. The police go to stop him but Grandad puts his hand out and says something while he shakes his head. Dad takes off running up Broad Street. Running.

  I walk over to Mom. She ruffles my hair. I say, “I worry about him.”

  She says, “Me too. But he’s his own man and he can’t seem to see what he’s doing to us or himself. And it’s not our problem to solve.”

  I look into the car. On the floor of the back seat is my old baseball glove.

  The police go back to what they were doing and the four of us pile into the car and drive the four blocks home. Grandad leaves the Karmann Ghia in the driveway so he can wash it. He opens the trunk, which is in front, where the engine usually is, and finds a bunch of our stuff. My baseball bag is there, and he tosses it to me. I find my lucky rock and put it in my pocket.

  I walk Marci home.

  “That was … confusing,” she says.

  “Yeah. My dad is confusing.”

  A lot of silence goes by. Too much.

  “Let’s focus on the board meeting,” she says. She holds my hand and squeezes it. “It’s better to think about things you can control instead of things you can’t control. And all that adult stuff is up to the adults.”

  “I’m not looking forward to the board meeting,” I say. “I have a bad feeling that they aren’t going to do the right thing.”

  “All we can do is give them a good fight.”

  “That’s what Jane Yolen said when she wrote back to me,” I say. But then I remember. “Oh shoot. I never told you that story.”

  “Wrote back? Does this mean you wrote to her?”

  So I tell Marci that I sent a letter and that, yes, Jane Yolen wrote back. “I’ll show it to you,” I say. Then I realize I have to tell Marci the mug story. And when I tell her, she looks sad. “Anyway,” I conclude, “even if we lose this fight, we just keep fighting.”

  The way Marci talks for the rest of the walk is all grace. She’s not mad at me for not sharing my letter with her and Denis, and when we arrive at her house, she gives me a hug that has all kinds of grace in it. She says, “Don’t worry. Your dad will figure himself out one day. And if he doesn’t, he’s missing out on the coolest kid I ever met.”

  I walk home from Marci’s and think of all the ridiculous rules in town and try to number them in order of priority. For me, censorship, dress codes, and curfew are of the highest importance. Then junk food. Then Halloween.

  Grandad and Mom are on the front porch when I get home, and I ask them, “Are we still going to get my bike ready?” Grandad nods and smiles. So I go to the garage.

  I get my bike and turn it upside down, balancing it on its handlebars and seat. I spin the wheels. I have no idea how to fix a bike outside of pumping up the tires, but I know Grandad does and I know it’s not really broken, just a little run-down.

  When I walk over to the bench to get the tire pump, that’s when I see Dad, sitting on an upturned five-gallon bucket—the same one I’d sit on when I helped him work on his “spacecraft.” He waves. As if that’s a normal thing to do.

  I feel a sort of panic rise in me and then I remember what Marci just said about how I’m the coolest kid she knows. I take a deep breath like Grandad would.

  “Hi, Dad,” I say.

  “I had to stick up for myself, kid.”

  I don’t even know what to say, so I keep breathing deep and I start to connect the pump to my bike tire.

  “What?” he says. “What aren’t you saying?”

  I let seconds run by. Then I say, “You had to stick up for yourself to who? Mom? All she ever did was go to work, help people, make us food to eat, clean up after us, and love us.”

  “I had to stick up for—I had to make my voice heard,” he says.

  “We all heard you just fine.”

  “You’re listening to your grandfather now.”

  “He has a lot of good stuff to say.” I start to pump the tire up. “And he doesn’t change stories around so he’s the hero. Or the victim. Not even the war stories. He’s honest. Even if it makes him look bad. I’m a lot like him.”

  “I guess you are.” Dad says this like it’s not a good thing.

  More seconds run by.

  “Can I ask you a question?” I venture.

  “Sure,” he says.

  “What are you so ashamed of?”

  “What?!”

  “I said, what are you so ashamed of?”

  “I’m not ashamed of anything!” he shouts.

  I look at him. He looks at me.

  “Listen,” I say. “I don’t think anyone likes me and I’m not smart enough to be Marci’s boyfriend or I didn’t think I was, and now I don’t know what I think. I sometimes think I’ll never be able to be happy with a girlfriend anyway. I’m scared of relationships and—”

  “Stop, Mac,” Dad says.

  “And I don’t know why you smashed Mom’s mug and I’m embarrassed that you did and that you took our stuff and left, and I’m tired of adults lying to kids and—”

  “No!” Dad interrupts. Then he stands up, looks at me without understanding me at all, and says, “You gotta stop living in the past.”

  I don’t let this stop me. “Also, I feel really bad about the way I treated Denis last weekend and I think it will take him a while to trust me again. I don’t blame him. I was a jerk to him.”

  “What are you trying to prove?” Dad asks.

  I don’t have an answer. I notice I’m shaking. I can’t tell if I’m scared or angry or cold but I think it might be all three. Dad doesn’t move. He looks past me to the garage door switch, then back at me. He’s trapped. I can’t move, so I’m trapped, too.

  Grandad solves the problem by opening the garage door from the outside and then saying, “Mike. Fancy seeing you in my garage.”

  “I was just leaving,” Dad says. “Wanted to stop by and see Mac.” He turns back to me. “Okay, bud. So I’ll be in touch about the camping trip and stuff.”

  I have never been camping with my father. I’m not sure he’s ever been camping himself. And now he’s more like an alien than he ever was except, actually, he’s always been like this. Always acts half-caught, like what he’s doing is wrong. Always throws out weird lies like I’ll be in touch about camping! that make me feel like a disposable accomplice.

  I’m glad Marci said those nice things about me earlier because those things are what’s holding me together right now. Between that and Grandad’s deep breaths, I feel like I’m pretty okay.

  By the time I look up from my bike, still spinning the pedal so I can feel the tire running across my fingers, Dad is gone and Grandad stands, smiling at me. Or maybe it’s more of a grimace.

  “I don’t even know what to say to you, Mac,” he says.

  I nod and keep spinning the pedal.

  “I’m going to keep trying to help him figure out—” He stops talking when I put my hand up.

  I say, “Some battles we lose. Some battles we win. But some battles aren’t ours to fight.”

  Grandad moves over to the bench and gets the oilcan. We grease the bike’s gears and chain, we check the tires again, we wipe it down and clean it until our hands are black.

  Letters to the Editor—Snippets

  Re: Junk Food—You may buy all the junk food you like and eat it whenever you like. If you don’t like living here anymore, move somewhere else!

  I started thinking about how the person who censored these books is the same person who helped push the ordinance against pizza delivery. I would like to get pizza delivered sometimes and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

  Last Saturday, I talked to the kids who complained about the book that was censored. They were kind, intelligent, well-spoken, and determined. I think without knowing it, our school system just created a bunch of kids who will care more about the real world than my generation ever did. Go, kids! We stand with you!

  If they’re censoring fiction books in this district, how do we know if they’re censoring history books? Science? How do we know what’s really being taught?

  I know it’s not holiday time yet, but I’d like to remind people in the district that it’s not right or legal for our school to put on a holiday show with religious music. If we’re so strict as to not allow junk food or certain words in books, then why are we allowing this religious show and forcing children who do not believe in this religion to sing about it?

  Three years ago, some guy walked around on trick-or-treat night wearing a scary mask and holding a rubber knife. He was older—maybe a college kid or even someone my dad’s age. Probably just trying to get in the spirit. But he scared a bunch of little kids and parents, too, so they decided that if we stopped having Halloween, that would solve the problem.

  All it did was make kids sad not to be able to trick-or-treat and eat free candy.

  Turns out, censorship is never the right decision.

  The last thing on our mind Monday is trick-or-treating, though. Marci has printed agendas for the five minutes we’ve been given to speak at the emergency board meeting tomorrow. She hands a copy to me and Aaron and sticks the rest of them in her back pocket.

  “My dad is going first,” she says. “Then Aaron’s dad.”

  Hoa says, “My parents can’t make it, but they wrote them a letter.”

  “My mom wants to say a few things,” I say.

  “Yep,” Marci says. “I talked to her last night. She goes last.”

  We sit in our desk pod with our censored books in front of us. I had to bring mine back in to return it, but I want to save the censored one as a memento, so I plan on giving Ms. Sett my uncensored one.

  Aaron has been allowed back into the pod. Ms. Sett starts going from pod to pod, asking groups what they thought of their books. Until it’s our turn, we talk about random stuff.

  “You guys were right. I liked the book,” Aaron says. This makes Hoa smile.

  I say, “If you liked this one, I have two that you might really love at home. Part time travel, part mystery. I have a bunch of manga, too.”