Stranger things have happened. Just wait and see.

My name is James Sturges Jr., but you can call me Jim, same as my dad, and I used to be just like you. I was fifteen when my adventure began. It was a Friday morning in October and the alarm clock went off at its usual rude time. I just let it beep; I had learned to sleep through it. Unfortunately, my dad, Jim Sturges Sr., was the world’s lightest sleeper. A gust of wind against the side of the house was enough to wake him up, and then he’d come check on me, waking me up, too. I guess you’d have to attribute it to what happened to his older brother, Jack. That kind of thing messes you up.

He came in and turned off my alarm. The silence that came next was even worse because I knew he was standing there looking at me. He did that a lot. It was like he could barely believe that I had survived another night. I cracked my eyes open. He was wearing a too-tight dress shirt, dirty around the collar, and was trying to get that left cuff buttoned, something he did every morning until he broke down and asked me for help.

He looked old. He was old. Older than most of the dads I’d met, going by the wrinkles pinwheeling from the corners of his eyes, the bushiness of his eyebrow and ear hair, and his almost total baldness. He also had a slumped posture I didn’t see in other dads, though I doubt that had to do with age. I think it was other stuff, weighing him down.

“Rise and shine.” He didn’t sound particularly shiny. He never did.

I sat up and watched him take hold of the steel shutters over my window. He plucked his glasses from his pocket, broken as always and held together with a Band-Aid, and squinted at the key code. After punching in the seven-digit number, he yanked upward and the steel panels accordioned to reveal a sunny day.

“Don’t bother,” I grunted. “I’m just going to have to lock them again when we leave.”

“Sunshine is important to growing boys.” It didn’t sound like he believed it.

“I’m not growing.” I took after my dad when it came to size and was still waiting for that growth spurt everyone kept raving about. “In fact, I think I’m shrinking.”

He fussed with the left wrist button some more before heading out the door.

“Up and at ’em,” he said. “Breakfast is important, too.”

It didn’t sound like he believed that either.

After showering and getting dressed, I found Dad right where I expected him, standing in the living room entrance by the altar to Uncle Jack that was arranged above our electric fireplace. I call it an altar because I can’t think of a better word. Every inch of the shelf was filled with Jack memorabilia. There were school photos, of course, of kindergarten Jack beaming above a Lone Ranger shirt, second-grade Jack happily displaying his various missing baby teeth, fifth-grade Jack sporting a black eye and looking darn proud of it, and eighth-grade Jack—the final Jack—tan and healthy and looking like he was ready to conquer the world.