Jake and Lily (16 page)

I
’m usually groggy when I wake up in the morning. Not today. I opened my eyes, dropped to the floor, reached under the bed, and pulled out my Gray Shadow Crimestoppers kit. I looked at my Gray Shadow hat. Should I wear it? No, I decided. That’s for play. I’m not playing today. I took out the only two things I needed: handcuffs and whistle.

I had to practice. I snuck into Jake’s room. He was still sleeping. His arm was hanging off the bed. Perfect. I knelt by the bed. I opened one cuff. I snapped it over his wrist, clicked it shut. Took maybe three seconds. He squawked. His cuffed arm flew up and caught me in the lip. He stared at the cuff, stared at me, shoved me onto my butt. “Get this off me!”

“I have the key,” I said, all calm. “Say please or you’ll be wearing that thing all day long.”

He started to get out of bed, real slow, the way Mom moves when it’s don’t-even-think-about-it time. Things were instantly obvious:

He wasn’t going to say please.

He was going to kill me.

I pulled the key from my pocket and unlocked him and got outta there. I tasted something. My lip was bleeding. I got a wad of toilet paper and clamped it between my lips.

But I was happy. The practice pinch had gone pretty good. I practiced some more on my old Nerf bat. Each time I snapped the handcuff on the bat, I pictured Bump Stubbins’s wrist.

I was ready.

I was too excited to eat breakfast. I put on my watch, got my bike, and headed off. But I couldn’t go straight to his house. It was too early. He’s a lazy bum, so I knew he wouldn’t be up and out very early. I figured nine a.m. was about right.

I cruised the streets, passing time.
Exposure.
That was my weapon. Not a stun gun or nightstick. Most criminals are sneaky, my Crimestoppers
manual says.
They do their dark deeds in the concealing shadows of law-abiding society
, the manual says. What many criminals fear most is
the blinding beam of justice
lighting up their creepy little crannies and showing other people what scumbags they are. Exposure works especially good on criminals with a conscience. I wasn’t sure if Bump Stubbins had a conscience, but I figured it was worth a try. Not to mention that he was bigger than me now, so I couldn’t just beat him up like I did when he smashed my snow fort.

The sun was warm on my bare knees. I checked my watch. 8:55. Time!

I pulled into his driveway. 129 Mulberry.

Across the street I could see kids popping up and down behind a high hedge. Trampoline.

Up the street a lady with a pink sunshade was on her knees in a flower garden.

A teenage boy was looking down at his dog, waiting, pooper-scooper bag ready.

A UPS man was lugging a big box up a driveway.

Good. I wanted people. Witnesses.

I rang the doorbell. I kept ringing it. He was probably still in bed. He probably figured if he
didn’t come down and answer it, the bell ringer would go away.

I must have been ringing for five minutes before the door finally opened. He wore sweat shorts. That was all. His toes curled under his feet so he looked toeless. His eyes were sleepy slits. I could see him struggle to bring my face into focus. When he did, the eyes came open and I could practically hear them speak:
What the heck is
she
doing here?

When the moment arrives, don’t delay
, the manual says. The best time to pinch a perp is when they’re
confused or otherwise distracted.

“Hold out your hand,” I said. I said it like a command, no-nonsense, like he had no choice.
Your voice is your authority.

Sure enough, the dummy held out his hand.
Snap!
I had the cuff on him. Before he could say, “Huh?” I had the other cuff on my own wrist.

“You’re under arrest,” I told him.

He blinked. He stared at his wrist. He was finally waking up. “You can’t arrest me. You’re not a cop.”

“Citizen’s arrest,” I said.

He blinked. “Huh?”

“Vandalizing the playground. Painting
GOOBERS
on the pipe.”

“What’re you talking about?” He was getting growly now. He was remembering he’s bigger than me. “I didn’t do nuthin.” He yanked his cuffed hand away—which yanked me lurching right into him. My head clipped his chin. For the first time he realized he was handcuffed to me.

I took the plastic Baggie from my pocket. In the Baggie was the chewed-up glob of black licorice. I wagged it in front of his face.
Hard evidence wins the case.
“This was found at the scene of the crime.” I smiled.

He tugged at the handcuff. He hollered. “Take this off!”

The Crimestopper must remain calm, alert, and in control.

“I will,” I said calmly. “When you fix the damage you did.”

He let out a screech with no particular word attached to it. He threw out his cuffed arm, which made me slap myself in the face. Maybe I should have handcuffed him to my leg. He tried to stomp back inside the house and almost slammed the
door on his own arm. His face was raging purple. I hadn’t seen him so mad since the time I struck him out in Pee Wee Baseball. He screamed in my face: “Forget it, girlie!”

I stayed in control. “Forget it?” I shook my head calmly. “I don’t think so.”

The unexpected is your friend.

Without warning I yanked him out of the doorway and onto the porch. I pulled the whistle from my pocket. I looked at him. I smiled. “Forget it?” I pulled him to the top step. I faced the street. “Forget it,
girlie
?”

I blew the whistle.

Nothing else sounds like a whistle. You expect it on a basketball court or football field—but not on a nice quiet street with flower beds and dog walkers.

Mulberry Street froze. The UPS truck jerked to a stop. The pink sunshade turned. The trampolining kids boggled for two pops above the hedge, then reappeared in full bodies on the sidewalk. Even the dog stopped in its tracks to stare at me.

“HEY, EVERYBODY!” I yelled. “BUMP STUBBINS WRECKS LITTLE KIDS’
PLAYGROUNDS! BUMP STUB—”

A hand mashed my mouth shut. Bump hauled me by my cuffed wrist across the porch and into the house. His eyes were wild. He was panting.
Well well, he has a conscience
, I thought. “Okay,” he gasped, “okay.”

I took off the cuffs. My mouth and my whistle were all the shackles I needed now.

Exposure.

I let him go upstairs to put on more clothes. He got his bike. We rode to Devon Park.

Along the way I suddenly realized I had given all my attention to pinching the perp. Now what?

Mrs. Addison was a big help. She drove us to the paint store and laid out the plan. Except for feeding us lunch, she stayed behind the scenes for the rest of the day.

One coat of black, and
GOOBERS
was gone. Then came the new name as big and yellow as before. And better. Turned out the perp could be really neat if he tried. Thanks to quick-dry paint, the job was done way before dinnertime. Now the lettering said:

TUNNEL OF DOOM

I
f my parents weren’t builders, I guess I never would have heard of barn raising. It happens with Amish people. If somebody needs a new barn, all the nearby farmers come over and build the guy a new barn all in one day. I guess what happened today was a clubhouse raising.

My parents wanted to start at seven a.m. Seven a.m. to my parents is like ten a.m. to normal people. As we pulled into the driveway, I could hardly believe what I saw: the Lindops—Mr., Mrs., Ernie—all waiting and waving on the porch. But the biggest surprise was Lily—she came along. And nobody made her. She hasn’t been grumpy for the last couple days. She’s talking to me again.

Mr. Lindop went for supplies. Dad set up his
workbench in the yard. He ran a long orange cord to an outlet on the porch and connected the buzz saw.

Then we started building. It was hot. Mrs. Lindop brought out lemonade and iced tea with mint leaves in it.

After a while Nacho and Burke showed up, still half asleep. Their main jobs were to stay out of the way.

By lunchtime the walls were up and spaces framed for two windows and a door. Mrs. Lindop had a picnic set up in the shade of the back porch. Cold cuts. Potato rolls. Chicken salad. Blue corn chips. Pickles. Olives stuffed with cheese. Brownies. Watermelon. You name it. Once, as I looked up from my sandwich, I saw Bump ride by.

All afternoon we were swimming in sweat. Everybody was dragging but Ernie. He was darting like a squirrel. I swear, from seven a.m. till the end, I never saw the smile leave his face.

By dinnertime the job was almost done. Peaked roof with shingles. Hardwood floor. It was beautiful.

“I want to live here,” I said, only half joking.

Last came the paint. “What color, Ernie?” said my dad.

Ernie didn’t hesitate. “Orange!” Everybody made groany smiles. Before anyone could say,
You can’t paint a clubhouse orange
, Dad said, “Orange it is.”

An hour later, one wall to a painter, it was done. A miniature orange house. “I take it back,” I said. “I
don’t
want to live here.” Everybody laughed—Ernie loudest of all. I’ve never seen anybody so happy as that kid.

“One last thing,” my dad said. He went to the truck and came back with a weather vane he had saved from an old job. He screwed it onto the roof. It was a floppy-eared dog with its straight-out tail pointing in the wind direction.

Then we all went out for pizza to celebrate.

I
t was Poppy’s idea for me to help build the clubhouse.

Here’s how it happened.

I couldn’t wait to tell Poppy about my detective work and citizen’s arrest and the new paint job. Telling it was almost as much fun as doing it.

As I was blabbing on, I noticed him grinning at the bowl of fudge ripple ice cream in front of me. I looked down. It was a creamy puddle. We laughed. “Guess I got carried away,” I said.

Now he was aiming his smile at me. I asked him what else was funny.

“Not funny,” he said. “Just nice.”

“What’s nice?”

“Something’s missing,” he said. “Do you know what?”

“Tell me.”

“You haven’t mentioned Jake or goombla this whole time.”

I thought about it. He was right.

“In fact,” he said, “I don’t think I’ve heard those words since you’ve been telling me about your days with your new friend Sydney.”

“So what are you saying?” I asked him.

He took away the puddle bowl and brought me another with three new scoops. “I’m saying I think you’ve done it.”

I knew exactly what he meant, but I wanted to hear it in his words. “Yeah? What’d I do?”

“You got a life. You’re a new Lily. You learned that you could go solo, stand on your own without clinging to your brother.”

I took a spoonful of fudge ripple. I nodded. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

He stared at me, thinking. “How would you like to
know
, not guess?”

I shrugged. “Sure.”

“That clubhouse I heard about? That Jake and your parents are going to rebuild for Jake’s new friend, kid named Ernie?”

“Yeah,” I said. “What about it?”

“I’m thinking maybe you should jump in. Help them build it.”

“Why should I?” I said. “It’s gonna be for Jake and his friends.
His
life.”

He snapped his fingers. “That’s the point. It would be a good test for you. Prove to yourself that you can spend a day with your brother—with the
boys
—and walk away on your own two feet. Still the new Lily.” He took the spoon out of my hand and stole a big gob of my ice cream. “Whaddaya think? You gonna do it? Or wimp out? Afraid you can’t pass the test?”

I didn’t wimp out.

Next morning I rode the family truck to Meeker Street. I sweated. Lifted. Hammered. Ate. Talked. Even laughed at their stupid jokes. Nacho. Burke. Ernie. Jake. The boys. I asked myself,
Do I still want to be one of them?
The answer was no. I prayed they didn’t remember that day I yelled after them
from my bike, “I’m not a girl!”

The day came and went, and at the end of it I was still me. Still standing on my own two feet. The new Lily. I passed the test.

T
he door was open. The two windows were open. Still it was hot in the clubhouse. But we didn’t care. We sat on folding chairs—Ernie, me, Burke, Nacho. Our lemonades sat on a TV tray, along with a bowl of munchies that Ernie’s mom kept coming in to refill. She was funny. Every time she came, she knocked on the door and said, “May a lowly female have permission to enter the grand palace of major dudes?” Ernie acted all serious and granted her permission, then said, “Females are welcome, Mom.”

We sat and munched and talked and just chilled out in the coolest clubhouse in town. We talked a lot about school, which starts next week. Then Ernie said, “Let’s play Revelation. You have to tell
something about yourself that the rest of us don’t know.”

We said okay. Nacho went first. He told about the time in third grade when he sang “God Bless America” for the class and everybody was laughing because his fly was open.

Burke told about the time he cut a bug in half. That was years ago and he just remembered it the other day and he really feels bad about it.

I took a deep breath and told them about the first sleepwalk to the train station. Their mouths and eyes were gaping. When I finished, I never heard such silence in my life. Finally Ernie reached over and touched my arm. “You’re lucky,” he said.

Nobody said anything else. We were waiting for Ernie’s revelation. It took awhile before we realized he had already started. He was holding out his hand, palm up. In the middle was a mark. Round. Smaller than a dime. Whitish. I wondered why he was showing us.

“Blister?” I said, remembering our blister lies.

He shook his head, still smiling.

“So, what?” said Nacho.

“Scar,” said Ernie.

And then he told us. Back at his last school in Gary, Indiana, there was a kid who zeroed in on him. The kid would trip him and knock his books to the ground and make life miserable for him. The kid was already smoking, and one day he shoved Ernie up against a wall and said, “I heard you been bad-mouthin’ me.” Which of course Ernie wasn’t, but the kid was just setting him up. “I’ll teach ya to bad-mouth me,” the kid says, and he grabs Ernie’s hand and snuffs out his lit cigarette right there in the palm.

“One day you asked me why we moved away from Gary and came here,” he said. “That’s why.”

“I don’t blame you for leaving that dump,” said Burke.

“It wasn’t my choice,” said Ernie. “My parents made me. I tried to hide the burn, but it got infected and the school nurse saw it and sent me to the hospital, and that’s when my parents found out.”

I was shocked. “You mean, after all that, you didn’t
want
to move?”

Ernie shook his head. “I had friends. Most of the kids were nice.” He laughed. “I wasn’t going to
let one rotten apple run me outta town!”

We all clinked glasses and drank to that and I thought,
Goobers have guts.

“But,” Ernie said, holding up his finger, “that doesn’t mean I’m sorry. Because if we didn’t move, I never would have met you guys.” He was doing it again, smiling and hard-staring each of us.

I swallowed. I clinked his glass. “We’re glad too, Ernie.”

Ernie took a swig. “I’ll tell you, it was coming down to the wire. I was getting nervous at the prospect of starting a new school without having a single friend.”

“Now you have three,” said Nacho.

“Right,” said Ernie. “Too bad it’s not four.” We knew who he was referring to. “I guess Bump is busy looking for more goobers.”

I almost gagged on my mouthful of corn chips. For a minute you could practically hear the ice melting in the lemonade. Sooner or later somebody had to say something. I swallowed. “He’s prob’ly away on vacation.”

“Or maybe”—he snapped his fingers—“he just can’t bring himself to be friends with a goober.”

“Why do you keep saying that?” said Burke.

“You’re not a goober,” said Nacho.

“Sure I am,” said Ernie. He looked proud. He laughed. “Whatever it is.” He looked at me. “What exactly makes a goober a goober, anyway?”

Dead silence.

I finally choked out, “You guys are all so stupid. There’s no such thing as goobers.”

Ernie just smiled. Then chuckled. “And I bet Soop doesn’t really mean ‘cool,’ does it?”

More silence.
Enough of this
, I thought. “Hey,” I said, “anybody going out for football this year?”