Dodger for Sale (11 page)

“No, I’m telling you, my sister is that girl right there—Amy!”

Right when I said “Amy,” every leprechaun dropped to one knee and chanted, “Long may she reign!”

Whoa. Apparently, my sister
was
their new queen. Tim Tuttle said, “It is rather unfortunate that ye are the brother of Queen Amy—long may she reign. Now I can’t order my entire army to attack ye.”

I breathed a sigh of relief.

But then Tim Tuttle continued, “As a nobleman by blood, ye are entitled to death by single combat instead!”

So much for the relief. I forced myself to sound braver than I felt. “Oh, yeah? Who’s gonna fight me?”

Tim Tuttle called three leprechauns out of the group: “Stand forward, Hank O’Hare, the Extremely Long-Armed. Stand forward, Nick Shea of the Bulging, Sculpted Biceps. Stand forward, Walter O’Malley of the, Um, Really Huge Teeth.”

“Wait a minute! If it’s single combat, how come I have to fight three of you?”

Lizzie said, “Yeah! I mean, I know your people are a bit on the small side, but—”

“Small side?” Tim Tuttle thundered. “SMALL SIDE?”

I reached over and pinched Lizzie’s arm. “You’re not helping,” I hissed.

“We shall see who is on the small side, Willie!” screamed Tuttle. “Attack!”

I spread my feet and made my hands into fists, just like they do in my Ultimate Fighting video game. I tried to look as intimidating as I could, and prepared to die in battle for my sister. Or at least get hit in the shins a lot.

But then Amy yelled: “STOP!”

Everyone stopped. The leprechauns stopped because she was their queen, and the rest of us stopped because Amy is just so darn loud when she really wants to be. She stood and walked over between me and the three wee fighting men. “Nobody has to fight today,” she said. “We’re all on the same side.”

“We are?” Tim Tuttle asked.

“We are?” Dodger repeated.

“Yes. Willie, aren’t you trying to save the wild and magical forest?”

I nodded.

“Tim Tuttle, aren’t you trying to save the wild and magical forest, too?”

Sheepishly, he nodded as well.

“Then there’s no time to waste! We have to sit down together and figure out a way to make this happen. Men, bring out my book!” Two leprechauns came forward, holding a copy of Dad’s classic
Save the Planet in Ten Easy Steps.
“I think what we are up to now is Step Four: Identify your allies. Then comes Step Five: Brainstorm a list of your assets.”

“Our what?” I asked.

Rodger said, “Assets. You know, tools. Weapons. Things we have going for us.”

“After that, we’ll go to Step Six: Plan your presentation, followed by Step Seven: State your case in public.”

“Wait,” I said. “Before we start, can somebody please tell me how my sister became your queen?”

“It’s somewhat embarrassing, actually,” Big Pat Clancy said. “Ye were right that we went to your house intending to take her hostage. But as soon as we burst into her room, she said we had better stand back or her brother’s blue ape friend would attack us. We asked what blue ape friend she was talking about, and she said, ‘I don’t know who he is, but I know that if he’s a friend of my brother’s, he won’t let anything happen to me.’ We asked where he was, and she said she didn’t know because she couldn’t see him. That was when we knew that Amy—long may she reign—had to be our queen.”

“Huh? Why?” I asked.

“Because your sister has the greatest gift a human can have. Ye first believed in magical creatures because ye could see Dodger, right?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Willie, it’s easy to believe in magic if you can see it. But your sister believed even though she could NOT see—and even when you kept telling her she was wrong. Your sister has true faith in the power of magic. And that is what the world needs most from you humans. If all of you trusted in the unseen power of magic, the wild places of the world wouldn’t be disappearing. And my people could still roam free, granting our mighty blessings wherever we go. So we made Amy—long may she reign—our queen, and granted her the power to see the magic in the world.”

I looked at my sister, who nodded. “I knew you were hanging out with an invisible blue orangutan. I just knew it! You lied to me!” Then she looked at Dodger and shyly said, “Um, hello.”

Dodger grinned sheepishly and said, “Hi, Amy.”

“Hey, I didn’t exactly lie,” I said. “Technically, he’s a chimpanzee.” She still looked hurt, so I continued. “But I’m sorry I didn’t trust you, Amy.”

She ran over and hugged me, then stepped away. “All right,” she said. “What are we all standing around for? We’ve got a forest to save!” Then we all sat down in a big circle and got to work.

W
HEN
A
MY AND
I got home several hours later, we woke up our mom, who was totally fine—although I have noticed she’s been spending a lot of time looking at shoe catalogs lately. Then we sat down to make some more plans for the big city council meeting. In fact, Lizzie, Amy, and I spent basically every free moment for the next few weeks working on our presentation—with the student council during the days, and with our magical friends after school. Then, finally, the big day came. I could hardly sit still in class, and it looked like Mrs. Starsky was having the same problem. She kept asking us over and over, “Are you sure you’re ready? And do you promise you won’t cause another big scene like you did with the mayor? Because I’m telling you, we just can’t have that again.”

I looked her right in the eye and said, “We’re ready.” I didn’t promise not to cause a big scene, because frankly, I thought that would be one promise I would have to break.

My parents drove Amy and me to Town Hall for the meeting. I was all dressed up in my only suit. I hadn’t worn it since my cousin Theresa’s wedding the year before, and the arms and legs had gotten kind of short on me. But Dad’s book said it was important to dress up if you wanted the “people in suits” to take you seriously. Lizzie was already at the front of the big room when we got there, setting up her laptop for the very special slide show we’d been working on. If the leprechauns and Rodger did their jobs when the time came, that slide show was going to be amazing.

The mayor was near the front of the room, too, chatting with Mr. Beeks. They were smiling at each other nonstop, and there was lots of backslapping and handshaking going on. It looked like they thought the building project was a done deal. But we had other ideas.

The hall filled up shockingly fast. All of the student council members were there with their parents, and so were a whole bunch of reporters and a lot of other grown-ups. Lizzie and Rodger had written a couple of letters to the newspapers, and Mrs. Starsky had put one of them in our school’s monthly newsletter. Apparently, adults really read that stuff, because they were showing up in droves. There were also dozens of leprechauns around the room. Some were sitting on light fixtures, some were perched on the balcony railings, and some were just standing around. Even the Great Lasorda was in the room, wearing his most sparkling golden outfit.

It’s amazing what people don’t notice.

The mayor started the meeting. He looked like he wanted to grab me and Lizzie and shake us, but of course he couldn’t do that in public. Instead he just told the crowd, “Thank you all for coming tonight. As you know, recently the parcel of vacant land behind our elementary school was sold by one private citizen to another. Even though we as a town believe that the government should try
very
hard not to interfere in private, legal business,
some
youngsters in this town feel otherwise.” He paused to glare at Lizzie and me, then continued. “These children have put together a little slide show in an attempt to show us why they feel the land should remain vacant. After the presentation, the city council will vote on whether the town should withhold the building permit that Mr. James Beeks, Senior, has requested for the property. Are there any questions?”

Ooh, this was going to be good! We had picked some of the youngest members of the student council to ask the mayor several key questions. The first was a little kindergarten girl, who raised her hand and said, “Mister Mayor, I know they want to put a bunch of stores in where the woods are now. But I don’t understand something. There are lots of empty stores downtown. Why doesn’t Mr. Beeks just make his new stores out of the old ones?”

The mayor looked annoyed, but said, “Well, young lady, Mr. Beeks can make the stores wherever he wants to. Wherever he builds them, they will create new jobs and prosperity for the good people of this town.”

Then a first-grade boy asked, “But won’t the new stores take away jobs, too? My daddy owns a butcher shop on Main Street, and he said that every time a bunch of stores goes up away from the center of town, it forces more downtown stores out of business.”

Another little girl stood up and said, “My mom said the same thing about her bookstore.”

A second boy stood up and said, “And what about traffic near our school? Right now, even with the woods behind it, crossing the streets is dangerous. Won’t that get a lot worse if everybody is driving to the stores?”

The mayor held up his hands. “All right, children, thank you for your excellent questions. Our town is quite lucky to have such intelligent young citizens. But now question time is over, and the presentation will begin.” I couldn’t help but notice that he hadn’t actually answered the last few questions, though.

Lizzie and I stepped up to the podium. Just as we had practiced a few days before, she gave a signal and the lights in the room dimmed. Lizzie took a deep breath, brought up the first slide, and began. The first several slides were photos and drawings of endangered local animals and their habitats. Lizzie went through the horrifying statistics on vanishing farmland and woodlands in our area, and explained how important it was to preserve the few remaining wooded areas within our town limits.

Mrs. Starsky looked excited. The student council kids were leaning forward in their seats nervously. I snuck a glance over toward the mayor, who was making a big show of yawning. I smiled. I had a feeling he wouldn’t be yawning for long.

Next Lizzie presented a whole bunch of information that the student council members had put together about downtowns, and how important it was to the health of a city to have a successful central business area. She also showed pictures of several other towns in our area that had allowed developers to knock down all of their surrounding woodlands and put in huge stores. The downtowns were all horrible looking: empty sidewalks and row after row of boarded-up storefronts.

The mayor was still yawning, and one of the town council members was now doing a crossword puzzle.

For the final part of her presentation, Lizzie showed a bunch of photos we had taken of beautiful scenes in the forest, with happy student council members posing everywhere. As we had hoped, all the parents in the audience made “Awwww …” sounds every time a new slide of their children popped up. Lizzie ended this part of the program with a statement and a question: “We hear all the time that we children are the future. Well, don’t we deserve a future that includes the beauty and magic of nature?”

All of the kids (except for James Beeks) and parents clapped wildly, while Mr. Beeks, the mayor, and the town council members just kind of sat there. As soon as the applause died down, the mayor stood up and said, “Thank you, children, for that heartfelt and touching presentation. Now I believe it is time for the council to take a vote on Mr. Beeks’s permit application. Please know that we appreciate your participation and concern.”

“Excuse me, sir?” I called out. “We’re not finished yet. We’ve prepared extra information in case there are any questions from the council. We also have an expert witness available, if time allows.”

I could tell the mayor was immensely annoyed, but he said, “Very well. Do we have any questions from the council?”

The member who had been working on the crossword said, “That was a lovely presentation. However, I do have something I want to ask you: Are any of those animals you showed us officially listed as endangered in our area?”

Lizzie said, “Um, no. Not as far as I know, sir.”

Then the same man asked, “And do you know for sure that each of those creatures actually lives on the specific piece of land that Mr. Beeks has purchased?”

“Um, no, sir.”

Another council member, a woman with a big old-fashioned curly hairdo and pointy eyeglasses said, “Well, then, if you can’t produce an actual example of an endangered species living in that particular area, I don’t see how we can hold up Mr. Beeks’s project.”

I spoke up for the first time. “But we can. We were just waiting for our expert witness to present this part. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the world-famous wildlife expert, Dr. Rodger Chimpstone!”

This was where the leprechauns’ magic became really important. They had used their illusion skills to make Rodger visible and human looking. He stepped forward amid polite applause and said, “The members of the student council first contacted me several weeks ago and asked me to investigate, look into, check out the status of the plant and animal life in the little forest we are discussing here today. As you have heard, there are many local species that need land like this to survive. However, I admit that we did not succeed in finding, locating, uncovering specimens of those animals here.”

The mayor was smirking now.

“We found something even better, even more amazing, spectacular, and precious in your very own forest. Ladies and gentlemen, we found the first known living specimen of that rarest of amphibians: the Large-Mouthed Blue Frog!” Rodger reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a familiar-looking blue creature. The leprechauns had used their magic to turn Dodger back into a frog for the evening. At first, Dodger hadn’t wanted to go along with it, but then he had agreed—as long as we promised to give him some extra-juicy flies after the meeting.

Every person in the room was leaning forward to get a better look at Dodger, the Large-Mouthed Blue Frog. We had prepared for this, too. Lizzie turned on the webcam built into the computer and projected Dodger onto the big screen. Rodger continued his speech.