The Family Hitchcock Read online

  The

  FAMILY

  HITCHCOCK

  Story by

  MARK LEVIN & JENNIFER

  FLACKETT

  Written by DAN ELISH

  Dedication

  For Ellen and Lindsay,

  who make everything more fun

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  About the Authors

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  When she was younger, Maddy Hitchcock didn’t mind that her little brother was so smart. It was fun in a way—sort of like living with an around-the-clock walking, talking circus freak show.

  Step right up and meet Benji Hitchcock, the three-year-old kid who can already do long division!

  Meet the four-year-old wonder boy who knows that there are three hundred and fifty-three species of sharks!

  Hear the boy genius play Beethoven’s first ten piano sonatas by memory!

  That was Benji—with the exception of sports, he was good at practically everything. Though she never really said it, Maddy was even proud of him. On Sunday mornings, she liked to hear him read the front page of the New York Times to his parents. And who else could construct a four-foot-tall Death Star out of Legos?

  To tell the truth, Maddy wasn’t sure exactly what had made her feelings go sour. Maybe Benji had always been annoying but she had just never noticed? Maybe it was just part of growing up?

  “It’s hormones.” That’s what her best friend, Grace Richards, had said on the first day of seventh grade. “I mean, we’re in junior high now. We have algebra homework, French verbs to conjugate, boys who like us, and more than a thousand friends each on Facebook. Who has time for a nine-year-old brother?”

  “I love him,” Maddy said. “But the boy-genius act is getting old. Last night he sang the clarinet part of Mozart’s fortieth symphony at dinner. It’s like I’ve spent my life competing for attention with a champion puppy.”

  Sure, Maddy’s parents tried to give her equal time—she knew that. Her father was always ready with a compliment on a good report card. Her mother had showed at every one of her gymnastics competitions. But it was a losing battle. Creative and bright just didn’t hold a candle to cute and brilliant. But did that mean that a teenage girl, smart in her own right, had to put up with it anymore?

  “Here’s what you do,” Grace said. “Lay down a new law.”

  Maddy chewed on that for a minute. “You really think I can? After all these years?”

  Grace pointed to the school entrance. “Look at that sign. hillside township junior high. That’s us. Big girls.” She shot Maddy a look. “Don’t tell me you can’t handle a fourth-grade boy?”

  So Maddy handled him. It was the following morning at breakfast. Maddy was focused on a bowl of granola and a dog-eared copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves. Benji was scrolling websites on his laptop.

  “Guess what, Mads,” Benji said. “There’s this really cool thing online about black holes.”

  Maddy knew full well what the old her would have done—flashed an affectionate grin and said, “Tell me everything!”

  But that model had been retired. No need to be overly harsh. Just the facts, ma’am.

  “Look, Benji.”

  “What?”

  Maddy sighed. Her brother really did look like a champion puppy. He was that cute. That eager to please.

  “I’m thirteen now,” she began. “I have algebra homework, French verbs to conjugate, two boys who like me, and more than a thousand friends on Facebook.”

  “Yeah?” Benji said. As usual, his thick glasses were slightly forward on his nose. His hair was uncombed. “So?”

  Maddy shook her head. How could a child so intellectually gifted be so clueless?

  “So this,” Maddy said. “No offense, but I just don’t have time for black holes right now.”

  Benji looked confused. “Then when?”

  Maddy forced a smile. “I’ll get back to you on that, OK?”

  She buried her face back in her granola. When her cell phone rang, she sprang to her feet, already talking, and all but speed-walked down the hall to her room.

  She hated to do it, but sometimes a girl had to look out for herself.

  As for Benji, it didn’t take him long to blame it all on junior high, an institution that had magically transformed his once sweet sister into a moody, illogical jerk. After a few failed attempts at conversation, he deduced that the safest course of action was to lay low and pretend she didn’t exist—a state of affairs that suited Maddy just fine. And so from fall through winter the Hitchcock siblings shared the same roof, food, and parents but little else. Maddy spent time at home with iChats, fights with her mom, texts, more fights with her mom, fights with her dad, and, when required, homework. Benji spent his time devising a computer program that measured global climate change by ZIP code and perfecting Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude in C Minor. Sibling communication ran the gamut from “Where’s the toothpaste?” to “Give it.”

  Until the first week of spring break. The last remnants of snow were melting in the Hitchcock front yard. Benji was in his bedroom reading a biography of Sir Isaac Newton when he heard an impatient rap on his door.

  “Yeah?”

  “Come on, Benj. You know who it is.”

  The boy’s heart nearly stopped. Maddy! His first thought was that she was stopping by to rip out his heart with a sharpened barrette. Earlier that morning, while trying to rewire his computer, he had accidentally cut the power to her room. He had fixed the problem in minutes, but who knew what damage had been done? Had his sister been cut off mid-IM to Grace? Had her blow-dryer fritzed out in the middle of a particularly wet strand of hair?

  “Yeah?” he stammered.

  “Come on, Benji. Open up!”

  What else could a little brother do? He opened the door. There was Maddy, wearing a pair of bell-bottom jeans, black boots, and a purple top. Her blond hair hung loosely around her face. Even Benji had noticed the change in her over the past year. Though he vaguely understood that older boys thought his sister was pretty—hot, even—it was a subject he didn’t like to think about.

  “What?”

  “Hey, can we talk?”

  “Sorry if your computer crashed, Mads. I can fix it. I can fix anything. I’ll rewire your room. Put speakers in your shower. Put a forty-inch monitor on your ceiling.”

  Maddy flopped down on his bed.

  “Relax. It’s not my computer.” She smiled. “I’m being nice here, can’t you tell?”

  To Benji’s surprise, his sister’s lips were, in fact, curving upward. For a brief moment, Benji was reminded of the sweet girl that he was certain still resided somewhere inside his sister’s body.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s Mom and Dad.”

  “What about them?”

  Maddy gave him a knowing look. Yes, Benji was book smart. But she was life smart.

  “What happens this time every year? What do we plan f
or?”

  Benji got it. The annual family vacation. Every year since he could remember, his father and mother had taken them on some sort of summer trip. When the kids were little, the vacations had been fun—at least, that’s how Maddy and Benji remembered them. Hawaii. The Grand Canyon. When Benji was six, they had spent a week in New York seeing shows.

  But over the past few years a once-fine family tradition had gone sour. In Disneyland, their mother had made them wear so much sunscreen both children had come back whiter than when they had left. In Alaska, their father took one too many pictures of a grizzly, goading the giant bear into charging their minivan. The year before had been the worst of all. A camping trip to Yosemite fell apart when their dad’s port-a-stove set fire to their tent, forcing a visit from a park ranger and a premature escort out of the park.

  “I overheard Dad say he wants to go to Rome this year,” Benji said. “He’ll burn down the Colosseum.”

  “I know,” Maddy said. “I’ve got to stay here this July. Grace and I are going to hang at the town pool. You don’t know what it’s like being a teenager. Junior high is murder. Nothing but cliques and bad makeup. My social pressures have social pressures.”

  Benji nodded. Something about his sister’s desperation touched him. For a brief instant, the brittle facade was gone and Benji caught a glimpse of the Maddy he had once considered a friend. And with his sister opening up, perhaps there was something he could admit to her.

  “There’s Camp Keys,” he said. “It’s this sleepaway music and computer camp in Ohio. Look, I’ll show you the site.” Before Maddy could object, Benji had it up on his screen, a home page filled with pictures of serious-looking boys and girls playing pianos, practicing cellos, and sitting in front of monitors. “I could probably get a scholarship.”

  To the boy’s surprise, his sister seemed proud of him—like when she used to have him name the presidents in order for her friends back when he was in nursery school.

  “Nice,” she said. “That’d be perfect for you.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it.”

  Brother and sister exchanged a smile—their second in months.

  “Hey, check out what I’m reading,” Benji said. He held out the biography of Sir Isaac Newton as if his sister’s approval would make everything in it worth knowing. “Did you know that Newton built the first reflecting telescope? He also developed a theory of color based on the observation that a prism decomposes white light into the many colors that form the visible spectrum.”

  Benji’s mother had warned him about his tendency to spout facts. But how could he help it when he was just that enthusiastic about all the great stuff he was learning? Still, this time he paid a high price. By the time he was finished, Maddy’s welcoming smile had faded.

  “I’ve come up with a plan.” Once again, she was all business. “It’s pretty darned brilliant, too.”

  “Yeah?” Benji said. “I’m not surprised. You’re the smart one.”

  If Maddy heard her brother’s obvious bit of flattery, she didn’t acknowledge it.

  “So get ready,” she said. “You’ll find out at dinner.”

  “At dinner? Come on, Mads. Give me a hint. What do we do? A hunger strike? A sit-in?”

  Benji couldn’t remember the last time she had seemed so pleased with herself.

  “Just back me up, OK?”

  Benji knew his sister well enough to know when further questioning was pointless. “You got it.”

  Still, for the third time that morning, there was the smile. Had the ice broken? Probably not. But Benji knew that for the next few hours, a truce had been called. He would have to settle for that. No more snippy comments or fear of death at the hands of a sharpened barrette. Sister and brother were a team, brought together for a larger purpose. As their eyes met, there was a quiet confidence that this year would be different. Come July, Maddy would be doing her tan teen thing by the pool and Benji would be pale in front of a PC.

  “No more last-minute packing,” Maddy said.

  Benji nodded. “No more plane delays.”

  “No mutant mosquitoes.”

  “No wet sleeping bags.”

  Maddy tousled Benji’s hair. “This is our year.”

  Benji watched his sister swagger back down the hall and disappear into her room.

  Yeah, he thought. Our year.

  Chapter Two

  That afternoon, Maddy ran a series of increasingly detailed searches for online bathing suits, flip-flops, and suntan lotion. Down the hall, Benji took a virtual tour of the Camp Keys grounds, downloaded the application, recorded himself playing Mozart’s First Piano Sonata, and typed a draft of his own recommendation letter. But come dinnertime, the Hitchcock children were to learn a lesson on the perils of overconfidence.

  On the surface, Roger Hitchcock was a perfectly reasonable man, the sweetest of dads. He didn’t throw fits over bad grades or force on rain boots in a drizzle. He looked the other way when an hour of TV turned into two. But just because Maddy and Benji’s father let the little things slide didn’t make him a pushover. When the chips were down, the usually affable Roger could be as unmovable as the Great Wall of China. And nothing was more important to him than the annual vacation, a time each year when his family could get to know each other a little bit better and just plain have fun.

  So what if he had torched their pup tent in Yosemite? Who cared if the ranger at the scene had asked that he never return? By the time the family had returned to their Chicago home the past summer, Roger was already planning the next trip. It would be bigger and better than ever. Which meant one thing: When Maddy and Benji sat down to plates of lasagna that night, they never stood a chance.

  “So Dad,” Maddy began. “Benji and I have been thinking.”

  The Hitchcock parents exchanged a surprised glance. After half a year of the silent treatment, their children had been thinking? Together?

  “About what?” Mrs. Hitchcock asked.

  Rebecca Hitchcock was blond like her daughter and still beautiful at age forty. Married to a man who was almost pathologically easygoing, she had assumed the role of the responsible parent who made sure that homework was finished and vegetables eaten. She could be grumpy about the little things—a decade of unmade beds and scuffed floors had driven her to yoga and Pilates—but Maddy and Benji thought that their mother might be a strong ally in their push to remake their summer plans. On the return trip from Yosemite, she had filled in the empty squares of the in-flight Sudoku with the words “Never Again! No! No! No! No!”

  Maddy took a deep breath. With so much at stake, she was suddenly more nervous than she had anticipated.

  “It’s like this, Dad,” she said. “Benji and I have been thinking about the economy.”

  Roger stopped midchew.

  “The what?”

  “The economy,” Maddy repeated.

  She looked imploringly at Benji. Though he didn’t know where his sister was going, he picked up his cue.

  “America’s gross national product is down,” the boy said with a grave nod.

  Roger washed down his food with a glass of water, then smiled. “I’m aware of that.”

  “People are suffering,” Maddy said.

  “Losing their jobs,” Benji added.

  Maddy appreciated how fast her brother was getting with the program.

  “The ranks of the unemployed are growing daily,” the boy went on.

  The children saw their mom shoot their father another glance.

  “What’s this about?” Rebecca said.

  Maddy took another deep breath. Time to go for the kill.

  “The market, Dad.”

  Maddy could tell from the pained look in her father’s eyes that she had struck a chord. Roger made his living trading corn futures. A few weeks earlier, a plague of lice had wiped out half of America’s crop.

  “Oh, sweetie,” Rebecca said. “Are you worried that we don’t have enough to make ends meet?”

  “Things li
ke that happen all the time in my business,” Roger said, patting his mouth with a napkin. “It comes with the territory.”

  “Times are tough, but we’ll be OK,” Rebecca said.

  “Oh, I know we will, Mom,” Maddy said.

  “Then what’s the problem?” Roger asked.

  By that point, Benji was wondering the same thing. As smart as he was, he wasn’t exactly sure where Maddy was headed.

  “No problem, Dad,” Maddy said. Suddenly her heart was beginning to pound. But she was almost home. Better spit out the rest and hope for the best. “It’s just that in these difficult times, Benji and I wanted to say that we’re willing to sacrifice this year’s annual vacation. You know, for the good of the family.”

  For a moment, Roger’s face was unreadable. The two children’s eyes met. Had they gone too far? Was the father who never yelled about to pound the table with his fists and rant about the joys of family togetherness? Apparently not. Finally, Roger shook his head with a grateful smile.

  “Amazing,” he said, looking across the table at his wife. “Not many children would be willing to sacrifice something so important to them for our sake.”

  Benji exchanged a glance with his sister, then looked at his dad.

  “So that means we’ll stay home this year?”

  Maddy found herself holding her breath. For a brief moment, there was hope.

  “Stay home?” Roger cried. “What kind of father would I be if I let a little thing like money get in the way of our special family time? I would never do that. No, never fear, Hitchcocks!” He raised a finger to the ceiling. “I’ve already made plans.”

  The kids exchanged a glance. Each thought the other had never looked so stricken. Rebecca seemed just as surprised—and unhappy.

  “Plans, dear?” she asked, voice trembling.