Hunter Moran Saves the Universe

by Patricia Reilly Giff

  I hear frothing behind me, but there’s no time to look back. It’s too bad I don’t look at anything that’s ahead of me. I trip over the shopping cart that we left there earlier.

  I stagger forward and trip over the rope that holds down the balloon. I hear it snap as I hit the next one, and that snaps, too. The balloon basket tips and I fall headlong into it. The frothing thing, Fred, dives in after me.

  And then we’re rising, spinning, as the planes from Sturgis zoom away. Under me are lights, the grandstand, Zack …

  All getting smaller, smaller.

  And who’s that screaming? I peer over the side of the basket. With one hand Steadman holds on to the trailing rope. Under his arm is the black box.

  It’s a moment of horror. “Steadman!” I yell, watching his legs dangle. I can’t believe it; I can hardly breathe. If something happens to him, it will be the end of everything. “Hold on!” I yell. “Please hold on.”

  I grab the end of the rope and pull. He’s heavier than I thought, and the wind whips around us. But finally I reel him in like a trout, until he collapses into the basket. I put my arms around him. “You’re safe,” I say.

  “I know it,” he says back.

  So it’s Fred, Steadman, and me. And don’t forget the black box tied up with rope, a splash of orange paint on one side.

  We’re all heading for the stratosphere.

  Over my head, the rip in the canvas is growing. “Help!” I yell, but everyone is listening to Zack.

  We crouch there, watching the world tilt underneath us. Old Lady Campbell throws her cane under the bleachers. She hobbles across the town round.

  Fred is trying to bury himself under Steadman. He looks terrified. I don’t blame him. I’m terrified, too. We’re getting higher by the moment. The wind blows, the canvas flaps, the rip grows.

  From behind Steadman, Fred begins to chew on the ropes that cover the bomb box.

  And Steadman is loving all of it. “Hey, look!” he shouts. “Fred wants to see the bomb.” He grins. “I took the bomb away from William. He thought it was your treasure.”

  William? Has the world gone crazy?

  But I have a quick flash in my mind of Sarah Yulefski at Vinnie’s garbage. It was William she saw taking the bomb. William, who must have been spying on us.

  Now Diglio looks up. His mouth opens as if he can’t believe what he’s seeing. “Hey!” he yells. “Hey!”

  Zack stops playing, and everyone in the grandstand turns and looks up at us, too. Linny takes a few steps, arms out, crying, “Hunnnnn-terrrrr!” And is that her friend Becca crying, too?

  I’m glad they feel bad for me, because when Pop gets out from under the popcorn machine he’s going to banish me to my room for the rest of the summer. And Steadman, too. That is, if any of us are alive. We’re sailing toward the woods now. As soon as we’re over the trees, I’ll lean over the side and hurl the bomb as far away from us as I can.

  Fred growls at me from behind Steadman. Gingerly I reach down and take the note from his collar. It’s addressed to Zack and me. What’s that all about?

  But Diglio is doing something really strange. He’s climbed into the fire truck and is zooming toward the woods, his head out, watching us. Wouldn’t you know! He still hopes he can capture the bomb.

  And what is Old Lady Campbell doing? She’s hopped into the old Sturgis Air Force Base plane. For a quick second I think of the pictures in her kitchen drawer. All of them have to do with planes.

  But now the propellers whirl and Old Lady Campbell takes off, wearing the goggles, the scarf streaming; she barely misses us as she turns west.

  Diglio is underneath us now. He’s reaching out and out … any minute he’s going to crash into the trees that are coming up in front of us. Yeow. And so are we.

  That’s exactly what happens. Diglio and the balloon hit the same tree at the same time. Leaves and small branches drift into the basket. And Fred climbs into Steadman’s lap.

  Diglio climbs the ladder toward us as I reach for the bomb. “Don’t!” he yells. “Don’t—”

  But it’s too late.

  Chapter 19

  I shove the bomb over the side of the basket. The box crashes into a branch just below us, the half-chewed rope separates, and the top sails off. What’s inside is the most disgusting—

  mess—

  of dead goldfish.

  Five of them.

  They fly into the air almost as if they have wings. One lands on me, another on Fred. He opens his mouth and devours it. The rest splatter down onto Diglio’s upturned face.

  “My poor wife Olyushka’s dead fish,” Diglio moans.

  Olyushka? That’s Mrs. Diglio’s name? Not the name of a bomb?

  But what about Bom/Twin?

  Here’s something else. As Diglio teeters on the ladder, someone climbs the tree toward us.

  I peer down. It’s Mom.

  “Good work, Five,” she tells Diglio as she wedges a foot into the V of a branch above her.

  Diglio is Five?

  “Thanks, Six,” he says.

  He grins at us. I have to say his teeth are perfect. “Your mom and I used to call each other agents when we were kids,” he says. “I lived at Five Ann Court; she lived at Six.”

  I close my eyes, trying to make sense of everything. Steadman’s photo of Diglio, leaning over a victim whose face is filled with horror. Probably just a patient getting a tooth pulled.

  Cheech!

  Diglio on the phone. My name, Hunter. He wanted to take care of me. Zack, too, I’m sure.

  But dig.

  I must have said it aloud. “Not digging exactly,” Diglio says. “Just another word for searching.”

  “Searching for what?”

  “The original Tinwitty soup recipe,” Diglio says.

  Over my head, high up, the old plane grinds along.

  Mom looks up. “The Bom/Twin,” she says.

  That’s the name of a plane?

  Cheech, I tell myself again. And then I think of the revenge note sailing out of the shopping cart. I think of Old Lady Campbell at the library that day, dropping everything. Dropping a note to herself?

  Revenge?

  Why?

  We climb down the fire truck ladder, one after the other, Fred holding on to Steadman.

  “It’s time to announce the soup winner.” Mom sounds a little out of breath.

  We head toward the town round like a parade, Steadman and Fred in front. I’m next. Mom and Diglio come up in back of us. I hear them whispering and I slow down, looking up at the stars as if I’m thinking about a constellation or two.

  Diglio is talking. “It’s fortunate I was there to save these kids. It’s all that karate I do. The tae kwon do.” He shakes his head. “I have to say, though, your kids are desperadoes. I keep trying to look after them, but it’s as hard as looking after their teeth.”

  I take a quick look back to see Mom give Diglio a St. Dorothy smile. “You’re telling me something I don’t know?”

  In front, Steadman whispers, “What’s Diglio talking about, anyway? He didn’t save us. We saved ourselves.”

  Everyone is waiting. Mom climbs the steps to stand in front of Lester Tinwitty’s soup kettle. She waves her hand at the winning pot of soup on top.

  The crowd ducks as the plane with Old Lady Campbell dives down and loops over the town round.

  Zack comes up to me as Mom clears her throat. “Not a bad sonata,” he says. “Thought it up as I went along.” He slaps my shoulder. “Too bad I missed the balloon ride. But I saw two fighter jets streak after Old Lady Campbell. I wonder if they’ll catch her.”

  And there’s Mom talking now; her voice is squeaky. “The winner is …”

  I move forward to hear her better. The note from Old Lady Campbell crackles in my pocket.

  There’s a drumroll from one of the Seven Guys Over Seventy. And Mom calls, “Vincent Moochmore!”

  Who is that? Then it comes to me. Vinny’s Vegetables and Much More.<
br />
  Vinny bounds up the steps. “Thank you!” he yells. “I always wanted to win.”

  Wait a minute. I remember spying on Diglio’s office, the familiar voice I heard. Yes, it was Vinny, and he was talking about cutting up small bodies. Sardines?

  Zack leans over. “From the top of Vinny’s garbage pile, you can see right into the library window.”

  I nodded. “He must have seen Mrs. Wu putting the original recipe into Lester’s book in the S-T-U section.”

  Zack’s eyes widen. “He stole the original recipe.”

  “Sneaky!” Steadman yells at the top of his lungs. “Vinny’s a thief.”

  “I should have figured it out myself,” Diglio says.

  And Mom and Mrs. Wu look at Vinny with suspicion. “Well?” Mom asks him.

  He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a yellowed paper. “I’ve never won anything in my life. I’ve never been to the Ozarks.” He sighs. “And I found this original recipe stuck in a book.”

  “I thought your soup was too good to be true.” Mom stands up straight. “Vincent Moochmore, you’re disqualified.”

  “Disgraceful,” Mrs. Wu says as she snatches the original away from him.

  Head down, Vinny sneaks out of the town round, and I sink down against the grandstand. My back sticks to the paint. I pull out Old Lady Campbell’s note.

  But Mom is down the steps and holds out her hand. “I’ll take that,” she says, and begins to read. I look over her shoulder.

  Diglio appears. He looks over her shoulder, too.

  Dear Zack and Hunter,

  You’ll be thrilled to know I’m leaving Fred for you as a gift. I’ve taken the old Bom/Twin plane. It’s my revenge.

  I was the first one to fly this plane years ago, and I was the one who drew up the Bom/Twin plans with Leon Bomson.

  I will contact Sturgis Air Force Base at some point. If they want it back, they’ll have to pay. (Plenty.)

  In the meantime, I’m off to see the world.

  Love,

  Constance Campbell

  P.S. I waited to take off so I could hear Zack play his music. Maybe he should take up another instrument next year.

  “Well, Six,” Diglio says, “Tinwitty Day is over for another year. Tomorrow, Olyushka and I will take a little vacation. I’m not going to think about kids in a balloon and dead fish hanging in trees for at least a week.”

  “You deserve it,” Mom says.

  William is right behind us. “I thought you and Steadman were goners in that balloon,” he says. “It was the worst moment of my life.”

  Zack and I look at each other. Sometimes William surprises us.

  “I guess I shouldn’t have put Lester Tinwitty’s soup cover over you,” William goes on.

  “You did that?” I’d like to bash him, but he looks really sorry. Instead we wend our way to the hot dog stand. The hot dogs are rock hard, but we don’t need to starve to death. Fred follows, high-stepping along with Steadman, looking like Best Friend Buddy, Tuesdays, three-thirty.

  We eat three hot dogs each, and get one for Pop, who is still working on the popcorn machine. Good thing he didn’t see what went on with the balloon.

  I cross my fingers. With Pop you never know.

  There’s another drumroll. The new winner is Old Lady Campbell. She didn’t even need to win. She’s probably heading for the Ozarks anyway.

  IT’S ANOTHER DAY, AND NOT A MYSTERY IN SIGHT.

  Instead …

  Chapter 20

  I feel the sun against my closed eyes. I think of the beach, I think of …

  What’s that noise outside? Banging. Hammering. Yelling.

  “Ignore it,” Zack mutters. “Go back to sleep. It’s summer. Even Pop is on vacation. And now that Old Lady Campbell will probably end up in prison, I don’t have to take music lessons anymore. She can teach Bach to the rest of the inmates instead.”

  There’s more banging. “Yeow!” Pop yells.

  “He’s hit his thumb with the hammer,” Zack says as we climb out of our beds.

  “Hunter! Zack!” Pop shouts.

  “I knew we’d be involved somehow,” Zack says.

  From the hall window, I peer into the yard. It’s a nightmare out there. Boards all over the place. Pop’s rusty tools. A keg of nails.

  Zack leans over my shoulder. At the same time, Pop looks up and sees us. “Time’s a-wasting,” he calls, cradling his thumb.

  It comes to me in one horrible flash. It comes to Zack, too.

  “You’re building my playhouse today,” Steadman says from the stairs. “Pop says it was your idea. Thanks, Hunter.”

  “Yeah, thanks a lot, Hunter,” Zack says.

  We clump down the stairs, take a fistful of granola and a slug of orange juice.

  “There’s no help for it,” Zack says through a mouthful of granola. “We’ll have to spend the day out there, sun pouring down, dying of thirst, like Doom in the Desert, Tuesday mornings, seven-thirty.”

  “You’re right,” I say. “We’ll be holding boards while Pop hammers his fingers to pieces.”

  Outside, Pop acts like we’re building the Taj Mahal. Zack has to measure every piece of wood. I have to sort through the nails to find non-rusty ones.

  Zack is right. It’s about two hundred degrees, and by noon, only one wall is finished.

  “What do you say, men?” Pop says. “We don’t need lunch, right?”

  After a while, the rest of the walls go up, and the roof. Pop cuts in a door, and Zack gets the idea to add a window.

  It’s looking good.

  And now there’s a little shade. Mom makes a quick trip outside with lemonade and sandwiches, and Linny’s baked sugar cookies. All you have to do is saw the burned parts off with your teeth.

  It’s late afternoon by the time we’re finished. Steadman hops around, just missing our feet. “I’m going to move right in when I’m ten,” he says.

  At last we step back. Pop’s arm goes around the two of us. “It’s great to spend a day working with your sons,” he says. “And there’s no one I’d rather work with than you two. I’m a lucky guy.”

  Actually it’s been a great day.

  I look up at Pop and move closer. “We’re lucky too,” I say, and Zack nods.

  We really are.

  Pop grins at us. “Look who’s coming.”

  I don’t want to look. I hear the voice. It’s Sarah Yulefski.

  I turn. She’s wearing a tan bathing suit, the color of her teeth. “Want to swim in my pool?” she asks Zack and me.

  Pop gives my shoulder a squeeze.

  We’re steaming hot.

  Why not?

  “Wait till I get my bathing suit,” I say.

  Yee-ha! It’s summer.