Maps by Nash Summers Page A

and I hear that judges can be real sticklers about that sort of thing.”
    The sadness Maps felt was written all over his face. He didn’t want his best friend to move away, even if it was only a few blocks in another direction.
    But now Benji was moving away. No more Big B and Mappers—or Master Maps and the B-Kid—or Baps.
    Maps’ life as he knew it, was over.
     

Chapter Two
     
    “I have the worst luck,” Maps said to himself. He was sitting on his front lawn conducting an experiment to see if feathers turned hard when dipped into ketchup and dried. A large piece of corrugated cardboard stretched out before him, a tub of ketchup and a plastic container of feathers beside it.
    He dipped the feathers into the tub and laid them out to dry. Splotches of red landed all over his face, glasses, hands, pants—well, practically everywhere. He couldn’t see through one of his lenses, but was too giddy with his results to stop to go wash it off.
    “Mattie, dear,” his mother called from the front porch. He hated being called Mattie. “What on earth are you doing?”
    “Experimenting.” Maps had learned long ago to stop trying to explain his genius to any of the members of his family. They just didn’t understand.
    “Why don’t you just look these things up on the internet, Mattie? Wouldn’t that be easier?”
    “Nothing rewarding ever came from something easy, Mom.”
    She sighed and put her hands on her hips. They looked alike, Maps’ mother and him. His mother had the same dirty blond hair as he did, but hers was longer and cut nearer her shoulders. She wasn’t particularly tall, but she was rather thin, and had bright blue eyes that somehow managed to take on a touch of the devil when she was mad—especially when she aimed that madness at Maps. Her long summer skirt waved gently in the wind as she stood on the freshly painted white porch and looked down at her son.
    “Well, I have some errands to run. Will you be all right here by yourself?”
    “Yes.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Yes.”
    “If you say so.” She didn’t look like she was convinced. “But no experiments in the house. And don’t please, Mattie, don’t dig up my new flower garden.”
    “I’m sixteen and not a Labrador—I think I can handle it.”
    “You won’t dig up my garden?”
    “Of course not.”
    Of course he would. He needed the bugs that lived near the plant roots.
    His mother walked down the sidewalk and stood next to him. “I’ll be home around dinner, okay? Oh, and the neighbors should be moving in sometime later today. Why don’t you go over and say hello?”
    “Because I’m going to ignore them forever and one day they’ll be so offended by the lack of my presence that they’ll have little choice but to move away and let Benji move back in.”
    “They didn’t kick Benji out of his house, honey.”
    She explained it to him like he was four years old and didn’t actually understand why families had to move away. She had this sweet, sad smile on her face as she leaned forward to look at him, as if talking slower and having her face closer to his would make him understand better.
    “Oh,” Maps said suddenly. “Can you also get some oats at the grocery store?”
    “Dare I ask why?”
    “I want to see how much more flammable dry oats are than wet oats.”
    His mother just gave him the look, then began to walk across the lawn to her car in the driveway.
    “So, no oats?” he called after her, but she didn’t reply. “Nah, she’ll get the oats.” He was used to people walking away from him.
    Maps spent the next twenty minutes finishing up his elaborate ketchup dipping, then left the feathers on the lawn to dry. He headed inside, leaving drops of ketchup behind him in a trail all the way to his bedroom. Sitting down on his computer chair, he picked up the phone and speed-dialed Benji.
    “What up, home-bread?” Benji asked on the other end of the line.
    “The new neighbors are moving in today. I was