by Phoebe Stone
“Wow, Henderson, that’s awesome,” I say. “If they knew what a cool, fabulous, great writer you are, they’d accept you in a snap. Wouldn’t they, Reni?”
“Thanks,” Henderson says, and he looks kind of wistful and puts his hands in his pockets.
We end up going to a store with tons of bumper stickers.
“Well,” goes Reni, “if Benny spent money on a book for you, the least you can do is buy him a new bumper sticker since I wrecked his old one. You are gonna make it to the Spring Fling Dance, girl. I’m gonna get you there.”
I bump my head against Reni’s shoulder. I would have butted heads with her, but she’s too far up there. We start going through the bumper stickers in a bin. Henderson wants me to get the one that says, KEEP HONKING. I’M RELOADING.
But I go, “No, Henderson. He doesn’t have a car. This is for his locker.”
We finally decide to get one that says, IF YOU LIVED IN YOUR CAR, YOU’D BE HOME BY NOW. We’re going to cross out car and put in the word locker so it will say, “If you lived in your locker, you’d be home by now.”
Henderson is frowning. He still has his hands in his pockets, and his glasses have slipped partway down his nose, so he looks kind of thoughtful, like a thirteen-year-old professor with a bothered poetic twist. I decide to get my grandma and grandpa a bumper sticker too. It says, THIS VEHICLE STOPS AT ALL GARAGE SALES.
As we leave the mall, Reni’s wearing the antlers again. We step out into the parking lot and I lock arms with Reni on one side and Henderson on the other. I lean my head against Henderson, and the warm fuzzy flannel of his shirt feels nice against my cheek. Suddenly a wave of something sweet pours over me. We pass a poster of Frosty the Snowman standing in front of the main door to the mall. Underneath Frosty, it says, SAY GOOD-BYE TO WINTER! SPRING SALE!! FIFTY PERCENT OFF EVERYTHING!! I feel a tiny melting glimmer of something.
Chapter
Seventeen
I get in on the ground floor with everything the Elliots do. Sometimes I’ll call Mrs. Elliot and say, “Mrs. Elliot, I’m going to the store, can I get anything for you? If you are making cookies, I can pick up the chocolate chips.”
And she’ll go, “You have great manners, Louise. I wish Reni was that polite. No, thank you, though. We’re all set for supplies.”
I’m so much a part of the Elliot family that when I hear they are hanging Annais’s paintings at the gallery, I show up on my own. I don’t even wait for an invitation. Who needs an invitation when you are a true member of the family? The minute I get there, I start to help unload paintings. I don’t need to be thanked. When you are part of a family, you are expected to help. Right?
Inside the gallery, Annais is standing in the middle of the room with Mrs. Elliot. They’re both wearing matching flowery flowing dresses. “I want that painting over there,” says Annais, pointing. Her black hair is long and so curly and it stands out around her body. When she moves her head, it follows her and swishes around her like a silky black shawl. Her mom nods.
Henderson is over in the far corner of the big empty room. He’s on the floor, reading a book. Reni and I are leaning against the wall across the room. Reni has her drawing pad with her. “Here’s a new sketch I did of Justin Bieber,” she says. “I think I made him look like stir-fried mashed potatoes by mistake.”
“No, Reni, it’s nice,” I whisper. “Hey, I thought of something problematic recently.”
“What?” says Reni.
“It’s possible Newton Mancini left the note. He delivers a lot of pizza to my door. He started asking me questions last night.”
“Like what kind of questions?” goes Reni.
“Oh, he was asking if you and I were interested in participating in some walkathon. I didn’t know he even knew we were friends.”
“Really? I never thought of him. He’s not bad, pretty cute actually,” Reni says. And then she looks at me, shining with Reni sureness. “Uh. Nope. This note is a Benny McCartney deal. This is his style.”
Suddenly the big wide gallery space makes me want to do a series of flips. I could do a string all across the room. I could throw in a handspring at the end. Oh, I miss my handsprings. No, I say to myself. No. No. No. I bite my fingers.
Annais has her thumb and arm out as she eyeballs where a painting should be hung. Then she glances over at me. Her voice echoes in the big room. “What are you whispering about? I hope you two are dropping this Benny nonsense. It’s totally off the wall,” she says, squinting now at the wall before her. “No pun intended, girls. Over to the left, Mom,” she calls to Mrs. Elliot.
“Like this?” Mrs. Elliot calls back.
“Perfect,” goes Annais.
Henderson looks up at me. He has a train-station expression on his face, the kind of expression people have when they’re holding suitcases and are about to say good-bye and climb aboard. I don’t know what he’s been reading lately, but it seems to have done the impossible. Henderson has stopped smiling. “Thumb, did you know that before Roald Dahl wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, he worked for the British government in Washington as a spy during World War II?”
“Really?” I say. “A spy?”
“So you see,” he says, “someday I can be secretary of state and still write mysteries on the side.”
“Cool,” I say. “Did you like the part where the spoiled fat kid drowns in the chocolate?”
“It’s my favorite part,” Henderson says.
“Mine too,” I say.
Reni looks at me looking over at Henderson and says, “Hey, by the way, speaking of chocolate, I had a box of Justin Bieber chocolates in the van. Each piece of candy had a JB on it. They’re gone. Did you eat them, Henderson?”
“Well, you shouldn’t be eating chocolate anyway,” he says.
“What’s all this stuff disappearing for? Speaking of spies, you’re a spy. I know it. We’ll find your attaché case after you’ve left town,” says Reni.
Henderson looks confused. “What?” he says.
“Grrr,” goes Reni. Then she slides back down the wall to the floor and whispers to me. “You have to be careful what you tell Henderson. He puts stuff in his novel. Remember that time our school took a field trip to the state capitol last year and I got my foot stuck in the space next to the elevator door and nobody could get my foot out? Finally the police came and the newspaper reporters, and our state senator came out and gave a speech while I was lying there on the floor with my foot stuck. Remember? Well, Henderson put that in his novel. In his book, it happened to some nerdy robot girl from planet Zing Zong. I was, like, super mad. I was going to sue Henderson, but my mom says you can’t sue your brother.”
“You probably would have lost anyway, Reni,” I say.
“Yeah, you’re right. Oh, I forgot to tell you. Yesterday I stuffed the new bumper sticker into Benny’s locker,” she says.
“You did?” I say.
“Yeah. I drew this little smiley face on it in the corner. It was so cute. It was my best smiley face.”
“Did everything go okay this time?”
“Yeah, except that Benny saw me doing it.”
“He saw you? Oh no,” I whisper.
“Yeah, and he came over and saw the bumper sticker and he started laughing. He said it was really funny.”
“Oh no. Did you tell him anything? I mean, about me?”
“No, but I gave him an invitation to the opening and he said he was planning on being there.”
“Oh my gosh,” I say in Reni’s ear, “I feel dizzy. Why didn’t you wait to put the bumper sticker in his locker till he wasn’t around? I think I’m going to die.”
“Don’t worry so much,” Reni says out loud now. “He isn’t a snowman. He isn’t going to melt and disappear.”
“Speaking of snowmen,” says Henderson from across the room, “Thumb, do you know how to say snowman in French? It’s un bonhomme de neige, which translates as ‘a good man of snow.’ If you ever want to hear the original French poem about
a snowman that came before Frosty, I know it by heart.”
Reni rolls her eyes at me. “Figures,” she says.
By now Mrs. Elliot has hung up about three big messy-looking paintings. She’s standing there with Annais in the middle of the room. I look around at the mushy, blurry paintings hanging on the walls, and Henderson’s word comes to mind again. Baffling, baffled, bafflement.
“My Dreams has so much feeling in its abstraction, honey. It has great feeling. Oh, I’m so proud of you,” Mrs. Elliot says, and she throws her big happy arms around Annais. “This is just the best show I’ve ever seen. Pablo Picasso, move over!”
Reni sits on the floor, looking down at one of her drawings. Then suddenly she gets up and starts to cross the room toward her mom. She’s holding out her drawing. But halfway there Reni changes her mind. She closes the pad and slides back down to the floor.
Chapter
Eighteen
It’s that time of year in April when everybody is just waiting for spring and sunshine. So what do we get instead? A big, nasty, windy rainstorm. It’s early afternoon and I’m coming back from the café and gallery. I’m on the Toot Toot Trolley again. Suddenly, I hear my cell ringing. It’s in my backpack. Grandpa programmed my cell to play his favorite Beatles song.
“Your backpack is ringing,” says the lady sitting next to me. “Cute song too,” she says.
“Thanks,” I say and start fumbling and rummaging in there. I hear a great whoosh of wind and rain and I pull my cell out and open it. “Hey, Reni,” I go.
“Hey ho,” says Reni. “Are you sitting down?”
“Yeah,” I go.
“In a great big sturdy chair? Are you ready for this?”
“What? Reni, I’m sitting in a trolley seat. Yes, I’m ready,” I say.
“Oh my gosh, I was vacuuming the hallway upstairs when we came back from the café. I went into Henderson’s room and I’m standing there and suddenly I look on his shelf and I see this curly clown wig and this red clown nose and a clown jacket.”
“What???” I say. “A striped jacket with big yellow pockets?”
“Yes,” says Reni.
“Oh my gosh. Henderson has gone completely off the wall. I mean, what is he doing? That writer’s camp has caused him to seriously go bananas. I don’t know this kid anymore and he was, like, my best friend.”
“I thought I was your best friend,” she says.
“Oh, well, you were both my better than best. I mean, I could always tell Henderson anything. I mean, he knows everything. And now he has become a total lunatic. Look what he did when Benny was at my door with the pizza.”
“I know,” says Reni. “This spy thing keeps popping up. Well, to be fair, I guess he’s major stressed. I have to say, he was nice today and mailed out two hundred invitations to Annais’s opening celebration and he ended up helping my mom contact The Pottsboro Shopping Guide for a possible review. We’re renting a microphone to have there. My mom loves testimonials and people getting up and talking and reading poems and stuff.”
“It’s gonna be great,” I go. “I can’t wait.” And then an enormous gust of wind rushes across the sky and shakes every tree and building and it must have shaken all the air waves and signals that make cells work, cause Reni and I get cut off again. Honestly, is it me or do all cell phones die when you need them the most?
I spend the rest of the rainy, windy trip home thinking about Henderson wearing that clown suit and following us that day. Was he being protective and supportive in his old Henderson way? Or was he being demented and weird and looking for material for his next novel? Reni’s right, he is always listening and watching for ideas to put in his books. He pauses in stores to listen to conversations. He watches people. He writes notes on a pad. On the other hand, maybe he was just being good old Henderson from planet Good Guy. It kind of makes me feel special that I have someone who would protect me like that. It feels kind of nice in a weird sort of way.
The trolley stops and I get out into the wind and rain and run down the street to our condo building. To be quite honest, I feel suddenly like I am in Henderson’s latest novel. There are two guys in white puffy moon suits, wearing space helmets with breathing tubes, coming out of the basement door of our condo. They have on great big white gloves and they are carrying this little metal box. A lot of people from our condo are out on the street even though it’s raining. My grandma is standing there in her vintage coat with her arms crossed, talking at a distance with one of the astronauts.
Have I been transported to some other planet? “What is going on?” I say. “What’s with the Star Wars stormtrooper dudes?”
Grandpa leans over toward me, and under his breath and out of the side of his mouth like some old-time detective in one of Henderson’s old 1940s movies, he says, “Well, pal, your grandma won the battle. They’re testing those wrappings around the furnace pipes for asbestos. If it is asbestos, it’s been there for fifty years, so now we’re going to disturb it and everyone living here. Your grandma’s a pro.”
The woman from downstairs comes at my grandpa with the pointed end of an umbrella. “Mr. Terrace,” she says, “you do nothing but bungle things. These condos are our investment. What have you done now and why are these spacemen here?” He gives her a very sheepish smile and takes off into the crowd.
Me, I just sit down on the wet curb and watch the moon men waving their moon-suit arms around, and then in their big moon boots, they climb in their truck and drive away. I cross my arms and sigh, waiting to go back to my room upstairs, feeling like a party girl endlessly without a party.
Chapter
Nineteen
It’s close to the end of April and it’s still raining. Once it was snow, then the temperature climbed above freezing, and the snow turned to rain. Either way, so much has been falling from the sky. It’s a cold, gloomy South Pottsboro rain. Grandma says, “Oh, it’s our big winter cleansing, honey. Think of all the old snow and dirty drainpipes that are being scrubbed and freshened and dressed up for spring.” She says this in a very peppy way. I’m surprised she hasn’t added her usual “Oh, don’t you love the rain? Isn’t life just full of magic!” Grandpa looks at her with a special forgiving smile and he stands with his hands clasped behind his back, as if he’s about to surprise her with a bouquet of flowers.
Then suddenly his earpiece rings. Someone is actually calling my grandpa on his cell phone headset! At first Grandpa hardly knows what to do. He gets all flustered. It turns out to be the angry lady downstairs who wants him to explain about the men in moon suits. “It was just a test,” Grandpa says, kind of shouting to be heard. “They just took some pieces away to test. They’ll let us know in ten days or so. Well, if it tests positive for asbestos, we’ll just have it removed. That’s all. No, no, it’s fine. No worries. What, me worry?” he says, laughing.
Then my grandpa gets real quiet while the lady announces loud enough so that I can hear that she is selling her condo. She doesn’t want to live with any asbestos pipes.
Grandpa shouts back, not because he’s angry, but like he’s never gotten the hang of telephones. Come to think about it, telephones were probably just being invented when Grandpa was little. Before that, I think his parents had to communicate with smoke signals. “No need to sell now,” Grandpa shouts, smiling. “It will probably be fine.”
I watch the rain out the window and I am thinking I will have to bring an umbrella to Annais’s big celebration tonight. I’m already planning my “getting ready” schedule. First I’ll take a shower. I bought some awesome pumpkin pie shampoo at the Pampered Pumpkin. Then I will put on lip gloss, a touch of blush, freshen up my nail polish, slip on my shoes (my dumb child’s-size-12 white patent leather ones.) And then the dress and the crown of rosebuds and violets. Okay. Fine. I know. It’s over the top. But I feel over the top. And besides, Benny sent me the book Thumbelina: A Fairy Tale. I can’t show up looking just like any other ordinary girl. I should show up looking like a princess. I mean over
-the-top or not, a person must come to accept the true responsibility of their destiny. Right?
Just to make sure of everything, I call Reni. “Hey, Reni,” I go. “I think you’re right. I am starting to crush Benny. It’s happening. I mean, who wouldn’t love someone who could send a book like that? That book shows that person knows me all the way down to my toes. It’s my favorite book in the whole world.”
“Well, it’s about time,” goes Reni. “Opportunities like this don’t grow on trees.”
“So, Reni,” I say, “what’s everybody wearing tonight?”
“Mom says we should all wear whatever we want. Be creative. Wear anything you want.”
“Your mom is so great.” I go, “She’s just sooo my mom too. You know what I mean?”
Reni goes, “Annais is wearing this gorgeous beaded dress. It’s like flapper girl goes New Age. OMG, it’s so cool. I bet it weighs ten pounds. I’m wearing my pink Easter dress even though Henderson says I look like the Easter Bunny’s daughter in it.”
“I didn’t realize the Easter Bunny had a daughter,” I say.
“Henderson is wearing a plaid flannel shirt and jeans,” says Reni.
“Really?” I go, “How unusual. Ha ha. Do you think I can wear my new dress?”
“Of course you can. It’s a creative dress night. You should wear it. You know Benny will be there. This is it.”
It takes me hours to get ready and we only have one bathroom, so when I’m all done with my shower and nails and my hair and everything, I step out of there in a cloud of steam, and there’s Grandpa looking all desperate, hopping up and down from foot to foot, waiting to get in. “You know your grandpa has that wild loose bladder,” says Grandma, folding her arms as I pass her in the hall. This is my life.
Finally the dress is on. The shoes are on. My hair is blown dry. I look in the mirror and I add the crown of flowers. Then when I’m all done, I go out into the living room, and Grandma and Grandpa are standing there with cameras. Two different kinds. There’s Grandpa’s old Nikon with a big silver flash on top, and Grandma’s little digital camera. They both start shooting away.
