PACJ Chapter 29

Chapter 29: Toe End


The very tip of the cricket bat, the end is made of untreated wood. Its owner should pay attention to its particular needs, as it may deteriorate from dampness.

​The Butler says, "Make good decisions and remember who you are."
My name is Carter Jonathan Jones. I live in Marysville, New York. I am the son of Carolyn Samantha Jones and Jackson Jonathan Jones. I will always be their son.
I am the brother of Anne Elizabeth Jones, Emily Hope Jones, Currier Bronson Jones, and Charlotte Doyle Jones. I will always be their brother.
Ned is our dachshund.
Mr. August Paul Bowles-Fitzpatrick is our Butler. And more.
I am halfway through sixth grade. I am hoping the second half will be easier than the first half.
Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick says I am a gentleman. I am going to try to be.

​Right now, I am on a plane. Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick is in the seat next to me. He's asleep, which isn't surprising since we've been on this plane for seven hours and we have two more to go and there's only so many movies you can watch in a row.
When the Butler told us that my grandfather's endowment allowed for substantial travel, he asked us where we would like to go for Christmas, and we told him.
So we're flying to Italy together.
In my pocket is Currier's green marble. It is always going to be in my pocket.
In my backpack is Captain Jackson Jonathan Jones's beret. The Butler gave it to me before we left. "You will want to have this," he said.
I did.

​Across the aisle are my mother and Annie and Charlie and Emily. They're asleep too. Annie is going to a robotics competition in Rome, and while there she wants to sit through a real Italian operate in a real Italian opera house. "That would be lovely," the Butler told her. I put my finger up to my mouth and pretended to do what Ned does--but I guess I'll go anyway. Charlie wants to see a real Italian ballet. I'm hoping they don't like ballet in Italy. And Emily wants to spend a day on a gondola in Venice and she wants to row by herself. That would be okay.
My mother wants to see the Sistine Chapel. Father Jarrett got her special tickets, and when she picked them up at St. Michael's they had a long talk. A really long talk. When it was done, my mother was the full-time administrator of St. Michael's Church.
Guess where we've been going for mass on Sundays again.

​The Butler comes too. He likes the architecture of the church. Its central nave, he said, is a credit to its American architect.
And what do I want to do in Italy?
First, I want pizza every night.
You can imagine what the Butler said about that.
But second, I want to climb high up into the mountains of northern Italy. The Butler is going to climb too, even though he's sort of portly, as you might remember.
It's wintertime, so we won't be able to go to the peaks. But we can climb up paths that lead higher and higher until the woods grow thinner and thinner around us, and then there will only be evergreens. The trees will hold up fat boughs of snow, and the air will get cold and colder, and quieter and quieter, and we'll pass high icicles that drip from open rocks, and the snow will crunch beneath our boots, and the sunlight will glint off the snow and the ice, and it will be so bright that we'll have to wear sunglasses in winter.

​High up in the mountains of northern Italy, the air will be blue--maybe not blue like the eucalyptus forests of Australia, which I've seen before, so I know what that blue is like. But blue in a different way. In its own way.
The Butler says there are lots of places where the air is blue in its own way.
I've got my eye in now.
I'm going to find them all.

​On your Story Windows paper, write three events/details from Chapter 29.