Sammy Keyes and the Runaway Elf (21 page)

Taylor plants himself between us like a road-wrestling referee. “He is telling the truth. He bought it off me.” He shrugs. “I got it at a garage sale for five bucks.”

Well, that buttons my beak. Finally I choke out, “But it’s
mine
.”

Taylor gives me a sad little shake of the head. “If it was, it’s not anymore.”

Just then a primer-gray pickup truck with wide tires and huge sideview mirrors comes rumbling down the street. And the minute Taylor sees it, he practically stomps his foot. “Oh, maaaan …”

The driver cranks down the window and calls, “Get in. Mom and Dad want you back home.”

There’s also a guy in the back of the pickup, and he leans out and calls to Taylor, “Hop into the paddy wagon, bro. The gestapo’s out in force.”

Marissa whispers, “Is that Karl?”

I whisper back, “Who’s Karl?”

“Brandon’s best friend, remember?”

Now maybe it was, but the guy in the back of the truck wasn’t anyone I recognized as being any kind of friend of Brandon’s. I mean, I’d been to pool parties at Brandon’s
before, and this guy sure didn’t look like anyone I’d ever seen him with.

Marissa whispers, “God, that
is
Karl. His hair’s gotten long, and he looks … I don’t know,
older
, but that’s him.”

Baggy Boy goes over and asks for a ride, and pretty soon Snake’s on board, too, only none of them are in the cab. They’re piled up like a load of cattle in the back, settling in as Big Brother grinds into gear and lets out the clutch.

So off they go into the fog with my skateboard. And all of a sudden my body’s aching and I can feel the blood crusting my jeans to my knee, and all I want is to sit down and cry.

Marissa sees the sleeve of my sweatshirt and says, “Maybe we should take you to a doctor.”

“I don’t need a doctor!”

Holly comes over and says, “Let me see,” and makes me pull my arm out of the sleeve. Marissa about faints when she sees the scrape, but Holly turns my arm back and forth and says, “You just need some gauze and tape. A doctor can’t do anything for that.”

I don’t happen to have a box of gauze and a roll of tape handy, and I sure didn’t want to go home to dig some up. But then Marissa asks, “Do you think Hudson will have some?”

Hudson! Of course! We were only a few blocks from his house, and if anyone in Santa Martina could patch me up, it was Hudson Graham.

Not that Hudson’s a doctor or anything. He’s seventy-two and retired—from what, I’m not real sure—but what
I do know is that he’s a friend I can count on, and he’s got the tools to fix anything. Including a scraped arm and a banged-up knee.

So off we went to Cypress Street to find Hudson. And I was expecting him to be in a chair on his big porch, sipping tea like he always is, but when we turned up the walkway, no Hudson.

I tried the bell, then peeked in the living room window. No Hudson. And I’m just about to give up when a jogger in gray sweats and white Nikes appears on Hudson’s walkway.

He might have been able to fool me altogether if it weren’t for those bushy white eyebrows sticking out like fog lights from beneath his sweatshirt hood. And even after I knew it was Hudson, it still felt strange. Like discovering that the jacket you’ve been wearing all year is reversible.

I mean, Hudson drinks iced tea, reads books, and spends his days on his porch watching the world go by. Hudson does not wear sweats. Hudson does not jog. And Hudson Graham does not wear tennis shoes. He wears boots. Cowboy boots. Red ones, green ones, furry ones, ones that look like the hide of a Tyrannosaurus rex—boots.

So seeing him appear out of the fog in tennis shoes and sweats spooked me.

He pulls back his hood and ruffles his beacon of white hair. “Sammy, are you all right? You look pale.” Then he notices the sleeve of my sweatshirt. “Here. Come up here and sit down.”

He gets me onto his porch and parks me in a chair, then asks, “What happened?”

I glance over at Marissa, who starts fidgeting around, doing the McKenze dance. “They came out of nowhere. And they were going so fast!” She looks up at me. “I couldn’t help it!”

Hudson sizes up the number of wheels on his walkway and the number of people on his porch and says, “You riding tandem again?”

I scowl and nod, and pull my arm out of my sweatshirt. After he inspects it, he whispers, “I thought you swore off,” and heads for the house.

I call after him, “I did! But Dot’s moved out to Sisquane, and I can’t exactly
walk
that far.”

A minute later Hudson’s back with a first aid kit, and while he’s cleaning me up, I tell him about our little crash-dummy convention and how I wouldn’t have to be riding on Marissa’s handlebars if my skateboard hadn’t been stolen.

When I’m all done, he says, “This whole situation could also have been avoided if you’d asked me for a ride.” I keep twitching away from him, because he’s scrubbing pretty good and it stings. But he pins my arm down and says, “I’m surprised your grandmother didn’t insist.” He eyes me. “She
does
know what you’re doing, doesn’t she?”

“She knows I’m spending the weekend at Dot’s …”

One bushy white eyebrow arches up.

“And I told her Marissa was giving me a ride …”

His eyebrow arches up even higher. “But …?”

I look down and confess, “But I never told her that the
ride
Marissa was giving me was on her handlebars.”

He studies me with a frown, then pops open some disinfectant and smears it all over my arm. “A vital piece of information conveniently omitted?”

“I didn’t
lie
. I just didn’t tell her.”

Hudson doesn’t say a word. He just puts gauze on my arm, wraps it up, and starts working on my knee. And I’m feeling bad, like I
did
lie. “Hudson, it was either go with Grams to visit Lady Lana or spend New Year’s at Dot’s. What would
you
have done?”

“Rita’s gone to Hollywood?”

“Uh-huh. And she was really pushing for me to go with her.” I scowl at him and mutter, “Like I want to start my New Year with a tour of the set they used for Lady Lana’s GasAway commercial.”

“Could’ve been interesting to see your mother’s work environment.”

“It would’ve been torture! Besides, seeing her for two days at Christmas was enough to last me for another year.”

Hudson sighs and says, “I heard about your angora sweater.”

“It’s
pink.”

“I know.” He tries to stifle a grin. “I guess I’d have chosen Dot’s, too.”

“Exactly.”

Hudson snaps his first aid kit closed. “So let’s get you there in one piece, shall we? I’d give you a ride, but I sense that being chauffeured is not what you had in mind.”

“It’s really nice of you, but I …”

“But you don’t want a lift when your friends are riding.”

I shrug. “Yeah.”

Marissa and Holly have been kind of standing around, keeping quiet, but when Marissa hears that, she says, “Maybe our bikes would fit in the trunk?”

Hudson smiles. “I have a better idea.”

He disappears down the side steps, and when he comes back, about ten minutes later, he’s pushing a bike alongside him. Now this bike is old, but it’s old like his car, Jester. Shiny old. Tons-of-chrome old. Whitewall-tires old. Way-too-cool-to-ride old.

I take one look at it and say, “You’re kidding, right?”

“Not at all. What am I saving it for? It’s just collecting dust.”

“But what if I wreck it?”

He throws his head back and laughs. “Then you wreck it. It’s seen a few adventures in its lifetime. A few more won’t hurt.”

So we divvied up the duffels and started off again, and let me tell you, I couldn’t stop smiling. Hudson’s bike was smooth and fast, and the wind in my face felt like something I hadn’t known in ages. It felt like freedom.

But if I’d had any idea what we were riding toward, I’d have turned right around, returned the bike, and jumped the next train to Hollywood.