Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space Kapow by Nathan Bransford Page B

technology they had in outer space. And as a highly skilled liar himself, he was fairly good at knowing when someone wasn’t telling the truth. “I don’t believe you,” he said. He turned to Sarah and Dexter. “He’s full of it. Let’s get out of here.”
    â€œJake,” Sarah whispered, “if you told me yesterday that it was possible to fly through the solar system in a talking spaceship I would have thought you were bonkers. What if the wish thing is true? We could wish ourselves back to Earth! If it was destroyed maybe we could wish it back to life! How else are we going to get back home?”
    â€œI agree,” Dexter whispered. “The quantum whatever thing seems possible.”
    â€œHe’s lying,” Jacob said through clenched teeth.
    Sarah shook her head and turned away from Jacob. “I want to go for it,” she said to Mick.
    â€œI’ll go if she goes,” Dexter said.
    Mick Cracken looked at Jacob and beamed. “Well, well, well. Seems as if your friends are the smart ones. You shouldn’t be surprised. I’m very persuasive.”
    â€œOh, jolly day,” Praiseworthy said. “How I love adventure. Master Cracken, I do wish you would find me a proper buccaneer flag to display. My fellow cruise liners would be so jealous if they knew what dangerous voyages I was embarking upon.”
    Jacob couldn’t believe that his friends sided with Mick and his stupid diamond instead of him. They didn’t even care what he thought. He was billions of miles away from home. Billions. They had been gone for hours. But even those hours and billions of miles weren’t as long and vast as the twelve years of friendship that had just been fractured by the appearance of Mick Cracken.
    Jacob turned and walked away.
    â€œJake,” Sarah said.
    But Jacob didn’t stop. He could feel Mick’s smile burning a hole in his back.

CHAPTER 13
    J acob sat in the rear hold of Mick Cracken’s ship, and as he often did when he was upset, he thought about his father. Jacob’s dad was the type of person who was a little too much fun for his own good. He would always dress up like Sherlock Holmes with a crazy hat and wooden pipe on Jacob’s birthday and give Jacob clues about where he could find his presents, although sometimes he would end up forgetting where he hid them. Everyone liked him because of his silliness, and Jacob grew used to hearing his friends and classmates say his dad was cool. Jacob really wanted to believe them, even though his dad had a special talent for turning ordinary events into catastrophes. When he took Jacob fishing in the mountains one time he ignited a massive lighter-fluid soaked campfire that quickly spread to a nearby bush, and Jacob had to help stamp out the flames. Only Jacob Wonderbar and a North Face sleeping bag stood between a fatherly mishap and a raging forest fire, but thankfully boy and camping gear were up to the task. They never caught any fish either.
    Sometimes Jacob’s dad would look at him like he was surprised that Jacob was there. It was as if he couldn’t imagine that life had given him a small person who followed him around and depended upon him and had the same color eyes but different color skin and represented the one thing in his life that perhaps needed to be taken somewhat seriously. So while Jacob was too old and had seen too many movies to think that his parents’ divorce was his fault exactly, he knew that he was a part of it. Not that he drove his parents apart because he was so much trouble to deal with, but rather he knew that his dad couldn’t really picture himself being a dad. Jacob was a human-sized shirt that didn’t fit. His dad looked at Jacob and saw a kid, and the presence of that kid made him an adult, and adults were people who grew old and died. Jacob’s dad left his kid and ran away so he could go be a kid himself again. But knowing that