Free 100 Days and 99 Nights by Alan Madison Page B

tiger, jumped off the bed, and raced out of my room, almost knocking Ike down the stairs.
    When Grandpa saw us he gave us a big double hug. His eyes were not quite as bright sky blue, his hair more grayed than light brown, his face more gentle, but Grandpa McCarther looked a lot like Daddy, which, when you think about it, is really no great surprise. Crossing the crumbly skin on his arm were the rusty remains of his robin redbreast tattoo, now a faded red-and-black blur.
    I looked down at my slender splinter of an arm and knew for certain that that picture could never fit. When I looked back up, Grandpa was smiling at me in that way grandparents do when they know exactly what you were just thinking. He winked at me to signal that we had just shared the same thought.
    “Did you bring me a present, Grandpa?” Ike asked rudely. Grandpa always did bring us something, but it was best left as a surprise and not something expected.
    “Isaac!” warned Mom.
    “I most certainly did.”
    He reached behind the couch and slid a wrapped box to Ike, who ripped it open to reveal a hulking yellow dump truck.
    “Wow! Thanks, Grandpa.”
    Ike sped to the basement to test it out with the rest of his collection.
    “Esme, I think I have solved quite a prickly problem you have been having.” An oddly shaped, awkwardly wrapped package appeared in front of me. Grandpa McCarther was a great solver of prickly problems.
    I carefully picked at the taped paper corners and slid the contents out, revealing a big-beaked stuffed bird.
    “Esme, dear, finally this is it. This is the X for your bedzoo.”
    I still had no X. Everyone knows there are very few words that start with that terribly troublesome letter, and absolutely no animals.
    “It is a bird, Grandpa, and bird starts with a B, like bandicoot or beetle.”
    “It is not just any bird, Esme . . . it is a dodo bird.”
    I was silent while my brain raced through the alphabet once, then twice. Both times dodo started with D. But Grandpa was very smart and he would never mistake the D in dodo for the ever-troublesome X, so I checked a third time, because as Dad always said, “three strikes and you are out.”
    “D — dodo definitely begins with D, not X,” I gently reminded him, and then thought, Grandpa, yer out!
    “Ahhh.”
    That big open-mouth sound meant Grandpa McCarther had somehow tricked me.
    “Dodos are X-tinct, and X-tinct begins with X!”
    I threw my arms around his neck to show him how much I loved the gift, then ran upstairs to my bedzoo to name my X-tinct Dodo.
    “Hurry back,” Grandpa called. Then ordering and asking at the same time, he added, “What say we give you two tykes a little break from your mom and take a park adventure?”
    I didn’t need a break from Mom, but maybe she needed a break from us.
    Unicorn
    Unicorns are not real live animals. This has been told to me many times. They are made up, like mermaids, dragons, and werewolves. But if, with a wave of a magic wand, there was one animal I could make real, it would be my unicorn, Ulrich. I can close my eyes and imagine his shiny white coat, long twisty horn straight to the sky, silver hooves kicking up dirt, and me on his back riding through the forest.
    I t was a great day with Grandpa. We rode the carousel six times straight — a McCarther family record. I went on the camel, donkey, giraffe, dragon, skipped the elephant because its seat was broken, and finished with two straight rides on the sea horse. We drank dark soda, ate big salt pretzels, three candy bars, a lolly, and a soft vanilla-chocolate-swirled ice-cream cone — having all in the same afternoon was another McCarther family first.

    As I held Grandpa’s right hand and Ike his left, we walked through the park answering his questions about how school was and what our favorite subjects were.
    “Math. Math is my favorite. I like the way everything comes out exactly right in the end.”
    “That was your father’s favorite. . .