The Kid in the Red Jacket

by Barbara Park

  He can actually even be fun once in a while. Like sometimes I’ll sit him on my lap and watch his head start bobbing around. Once I told my parents we should have named him Bob. After I said it, I laughed for about two hours. Finally, my father told me to please shut up.

  As soon as my parents were gone, I sat down next to Gaylord and looked around us. “Geez, Gaylord, we’re really here. I mean it’s actually happening. We’re in a new state, all alone without any friends.…”

  Gaylord rolled over and tried to grab his stuffed walrus. He has two favorite stuffed animals—Mr. Walrus and Mr. Giraffe. My mother named both of them. Clever, huh? I’m surprised she didn’t name Gaylord “Mr. Baby.”

  Gaylord stuffed part of Mr. Walrus in his mouth and rolled back over.

  “No wonder you don’t understand how bad this is,” I continued. “You got to bring your friends with you. But what about me? What am I supposed to do without Roger and Thornsberry?”

  Gaylord made a squeaking sound.

  “Oh, sure, I know I’ve got you. But let’s face facts, little fella, you’re two feet tall and you don’t understand English. No offense, but right now you’re more like a pet.”

  My mother surprised me by opening the door. “You two having a nice little chat?” she asked cheerfully.

  Quickly I jumped up from the bed. I hate it when she sneaks up on me like that. If I’m not careful, she’ll catch me doing something nice and think I’m “bouncing back.”

  Just then the phone rang. It was the moving company.

  “You’re kidding! That’s terrific!” my father exclaimed after a few seconds. “You mean they’ll actually be ready to unload tomorrow? Those drivers really must have put the pedal to the metal!”

  I hate it when Dad tries to talk like a truck-driver. It never sounds natural. His handle on our CB radio is Big Jake. The stupid part is, my father’s name is Clifford. Every time he says “Big Jake,” my mother falls over on the seat laughing. Once she was laughing so hard, my father had to turn the CB off so no truckers would hear.

  After a few more calls to the electric company and the phone company, Dad took us over to the new house to make sure everything was ready. I didn’t want to go. I begged and begged to stay at the motel, but they wouldn’t let me.

  I’m not sure why I hated going so much, but I’d been dreading it for a long time. I’d barely even looked at the pictures of it my parents had tried to show me. See, to me my old house wasn’t just a building. It was part of my family, kind of like my dog. And to stand around oohing and aahing over pictures of the new one would have been pretty heartless, if you ask me. It’s something a traitor would do.

  I was right about the new house too. I knew it as soon as we pulled into the driveway. It didn’t look like part of our family at all! It was big and old and looked nothing like my Arizona house. It was made out of brick and was two stories tall. It had this giant porch that went almost the whole way around. You see houses like it on TV a lot. There are usually a couple of people sitting outside in rocking chairs, talking about good old-fashioned lemonade.

  Next to the front door was a plaque that read BUILT 1768. When my mother saw it, she practically went nuts.

  “Wow, Howard, look at that! 1768! This house is part of the history of our country! This’ll certainly be something to write Roger and Thorny about, won’t it?”

  I sighed. I could just see the letter now:

  Dear Roger and Thornsberry,

  My new house is part of the history of our country …

  Whoopee.

  As soon as we were all inside, my father came up and patted me on the back. “This house is over two hundred years old, son. Maybe George Washington even slept here.”

  If that was supposed to impress me, it didn’t. As a matter of fact, the thought of a dead president sleeping in my room sort of made me sick.

  After that, my father took me on a tour of the house. In practically every room, he’d stop and tell me to take a look at how much bigger it was than our old house. He was right, too. The rooms were gigantic. The whole thing sort of reminded me of a museum. Tyrannosaurus rex could watch TV in our living room and not even feel cramped.

  But big doesn’t always mean better. Take my room, for instance. Just because it was big, my father tried to make it seem like the answer to a kid’s dreams or something. The school cafeteria’s big, but I wouldn’t want to sleep there.

  “Can you believe the space in here, Howard?” Dad went on. “It’s at least twice the size of your old bedroom. Maybe even three times! You and your friends can really have some breathing room up here!”

  “I don’t have any friends, Dad,” I replied smugly. “When you don’t have any friends, they don’t breathe that much.”

  My father put his arm around me and squeezed gently. “You’ll make friends, son. You’ll make them. Meanwhile, why don’t you just give this place a chance, okay? Why don’t you stand here at the window and get to know the neighborhood while Mom and I check out the bathrooms.”

  After he left, I sauntered over to the window and looked out. A huge oak tree stood nearby, and its branches practically touched the windowpane. Looking through them, I could see almost every house on my block. They were all huge. And they all looked every bit as old as mine did. Some were brick and some were painted white with green or black shutters. The house on the corner was painted gray and dark red. It reminded me of a gigantic, old-fashioned dollhouse.

  Near the gray house was a street sign. It was pretty far away, and the letters were just a blur. Squinting at it, I realized that for the first time in my life, I didn’t even know what street I lived on. This probably wouldn’t have worried a lot of kids, but it worried me. If you get lost and you don’t know the name of your street, you can end up living at the bus station, wearing plastic bags.

  I strained my eyes until I brought the letters into focus.

  “Hmmm, let’s see. C-H-E-S-T-E-R-P-E-W-E.” I looked hard, but no more letters came into view.

  Quickly I ran to the doorway. “Hey, Dad, what’s the name of our street? I can see the letters, but I can’t pronounce it!” I shouted.

  From somewhere down the hall came his answer. “Chester Pewe!”

  For a minute I just stood there, letting it slowly sink in. After that, I panicked.

  “Chester Pewe?” I shouted. “Are you kidding me? I’m living on a street named Chester Pewe? Does anyone know how humiliating this is going to be? What kind of idiot would name a street Chester Pewe?”

  My mother stuck her head out a doorway. “It’s a name, Howard! He was probably one of the town’s founding fathers. Maybe even a Revolutionary War hero!”

  Oh, that makes it a lot better, I thought angrily. Some old pewie soldier names a street after himself, and now I have to live on it.

  “Do you know what this is going to do to my future?” I shouted back down the hall. “I’ll never be able to write to Thornsberry or Roger or anyone! I’ll be too embarrassed to include my return address. And don’t think they wouldn’t laugh at it, either. They’d probably fall right over on the floor and never be able to get up.”

  This time no one responded. But knowing they were trying to ignore me only made me yell louder.

  “Well, so much for me ever getting a pen pal! I really wanted a pen pal too! I was thinking about writing to some kids in Egypt after I got settled.”

  I don’t know why I said that. It just sort of popped into my head. It didn’t matter, though. No one was listening anyway.

  I sighed and stationed myself back at the window. That’s when I saw her. A little girl was just coming out of the brick house across the street. She was wearing a fireman’s hat. I figured that made her around six years old. After six, you usually have too much pride to wear a fireman’s hat out in public.

  I could tell right away the girl was weird. The first thing she did was to grab the garden hose and drag it out to the sidewalk. Then she stood there and pretended to squirt stuff. The water w
asn’t on, but she held the hose with two hands and pretended it was as hard to control as a real fire hose.

  A man walked by and she pretended to squirt him in the back. He turned around and said something to her, and she put the hose down. As soon as he turned the corner, she picked it right up again.

  I guess by this time she was tired of pretending. That’s when she turned on the hose and squirted her cat.

  As soon as she did it, a lady came barreling out the front door. I knew it would happen. Don’t ask me how, but grownups always know when the outside water is on.

  The woman shook her finger at the little girl for a second. Then she snatched off the fireman’s hat and went back inside. I could see the girl’s hair now, wild and red and frizzy, almost bigger than she was. It was styled kind of like Bozo’s.

  The little girl stood alone in her front yard for a minute before sitting down on the curb. It wasn’t long before she spotted our station wagon in the driveway. She was up and over to the car like a flash.

  She cupped her hands and looked in every window. She didn’t even check to see if anyone was watching. Then, before I had a chance to call my father, she climbed right onto the car roof and sat on the luggage rack. I couldn’t believe it! We’ve had the car for three years, and I’ve never even been allowed on the hood!

  “Dad!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “There’s somebody on our car! Daaaaaad!”

  When he didn’t come, I ran into the bathroom and grabbed him.

  “Let’s go! There’s some kid crawling all over our car!”

  By the time we got outside, the girl had opened the tailgate and was sitting in Bill’s empty dog cage. When she saw us coming, she grinned. Two of her front teeth were missing.

  “Better get out of there, young lady,” said my father, taking her by the arm. “That cage is for our dog.”

  The little girl clapped her hands. “Ooh! You guys have a dog? I love dogs! I have a cat. Her fur was on fire a minute ago, but I put it out.”

  My father and I just looked at each other. What do you say to something like that?

  “I’m Molly Vera Thompson,” the girl said. “I live across the street in the house with the nonny.”

  Dad and I looked at each other again. “Er, the nonny?” Dad asked finally.

  “That’s my grandmother,” she informed us. “I call her my nonny.”

  Dad smiled. “Well, we’re going to be your new neighbors, Molly Vera Thompson. I’m Mr. Jeeter and this is my son, Howard.”

  Molly’s face dropped as she looked me over. It was pretty clear that she was disappointed.

  “You mean you’re it?” she asked at last. “You’re the new kid?. Pooey. I wanted one that looked like me.”

  For the third time, my father and I stared blankly. Talking to this girl was like being in the Twilight Zone.

  “You wanted a new kid that looked like you?” questioned Dad.

  “Yup. You know, a little girl my same age in my same grade.”

  She paused for a second. “She doesn’t have to have red hair, though,” she added thoughtfully.

  “How very fair of you,” I grumbled.

  “Oh well,” she said, shrugging her shoulders, “it doesn’t matter. You’re better than nothing, at least. What’s your name again, boy?”

  Gritting my teeth, I muttered, “Howard Jeeter.”

  Suddenly Molly Vera Thompson’s face broke into a big smile. “Hey! I got an idea, Howard Jeeper! Since you’re a boy, we can play house and you can be the daddy!”

  I’m not kidding. You could hear me groan all over Chester Pewe Street.

  3 It was the next morning, but I still couldn’t get the thought out of my head.

  “House! She actually wanted me to play house!”

  We had checked out of the motel and were on our way to meet the movers. I knew I was probably making too big a deal out of it. But house was just so insulting!

  My mother shook her head. “Are we going to have to listen to this again, Howard? Now just cut it out, okay? Besides, like I told you last night, it wouldn’t kill you to play.”

  “Yes, it would. It would kill me. I would die before I would be the daddy.”

  “I don’t see what the big deal is,” Mom continued. “You used to like to play house. Remember when you were seven and you carried Dad’s toolbox wherever you went?”

  I rolled my eyes. Couldn’t she get anything right? “I wanted to build a house, Mother, not play it.”

  Mom thought it over a second, then smiled. “Okay then, what about that time a few weeks ago when you were pushing Gaylord in the carriage and you told little Harriet Miller that he was your son? What do you call that?”

  “Lying! I call that lying!” I answered. “Harriet Miller will believe anything.”

  Just then my father turned the corner to Chester Pewe Street. I looked up just as Molly Vera Thompson was coming out of her house.

  “Oh, no! Hide me! Hide me! Give me your coat!” I demanded, quickly getting on the car floor.

  My mother peered over the back seat.

  “Don’t look at me!” I yelled. “If you look at me, she’ll know I’m here!”

  My mother continued to stare. “You’re making a fool of yourself, Howard. Get up.”

  I should have known that’s how she’d react. You can never count on your parents to hide you when you need it. It really makes me mad. What’s the big deal about throwing a coat over your kid once in a while?

  By this time my father had opened his door.

  “Hullo! Hullo!” called Molly, running toward us.

  Before I knew it, she was staring in our car windows again.

  “Hey! What’s that boy doing on the floor in there?” she yelled so the whole neighborhood could hear.

  “He’s hiding,” replied my dad. My father’s always a big help in situations like this.

  When Dad got out of the car, Molly looked in the front seat.

  “Hey! Mr. Jeeper! Is that your mother in there?”

  “Our name is Jeeter,” corrected my father. “And that’s my wife.”

  “Hey! Is that a baby back there? No one said anything about a baby! Is that a baby, Mr. Jeeper?”

  The trouble with Molly was that she never waited for anyone to answer one question before she asked another. I’d only known her a few minutes, but she was already getting on my nerves.

  “Hey!” she called from the back of the car. “Here’s that doggie you were tellin’ me about. Is he tired, Mr. Jeeper? He looks kind of dead.”

  My father opened the tailgate.

  “Pew,” Molly said. “He’s a smelly one, isn’t he?”

  My mother unstrapped Gaylord and reached in to pick him up. By this time I was off the floor. Molly peeked around my mother’s back.

  “Hi, boy,” she said. “Is that your baby brother? I could baby-sit, you know.”

  My mother smiled. It was actually like she thought this little pain was cute or something.

  “Have you ever baby-sat before?” Mom asked.

  “No. But I know how. I can make him laugh. Wanna see? I’ll throw him high up in the air and catch him. I saw a man do that to a baby in the grocery store once. My nonny said he shouldn’t do that, but the baby was laughing. Wanna see?”

  “Your nonny?” questioned my mother. “Oh, yes, that’s your …”

  “Grandmother,” Molly chimed, finishing the sentence. “We live over there. I already explained it to your little boy and your father.”

  All of a sudden Molly looked up. “Hey! Here it comes!” she squealed, spotting the moving van coming down the street. Then she started jumping up and down like it was her stuff they were delivering. “It’s coming! It’s coming!”

  While Molly was busy clapping at the truck, I stood on my tiptoes to reach my mother’s ear. “Tell her to go home,” I whispered.

  Mom turned around sharply and frowned right into my face.

  “Be nice,” she ordered.

  If you ask me, this is on
e of the stupidest things my mother does. She actually orders me to be a nice person.

  My father greeted the truck and shook hands with the moving men. Then we all went into the house to show them where stuff went. When I say “we,” I mean Molly too. She walked right in like she was part of the family or something. On the way she grabbed hold of my hand. I couldn’t believe it! I practically had to pry her fingers off.

  By the time we’d shown the guys around the house, Dad was acting like they were old friends. He kept calling them pal and buddy. I knew why he was doing it, of course. Before we left the motel, he said that if you act friendly, the movers are more careful with your stuff.

  I wonder if my mother thinks that’s “nice.” I mean, I don’t want all my stuff scratched up, but I don’t think you should pretend to be friends when you’re not. I think you should just be honest and say, “Hey! Be careful with that, okay?”

  Anyway, at least they weren’t the same moving men who had packed us up in Arizona. This time there were only two of them—Buzz and Ralph. They both had on orange overalls. Ralph was pretty thin, but Buzz weighed about three hundred pounds. Molly asked him if he was any relation to Santa.

  Not only was the girl a pain, but she was nosy, too. She followed me around everywhere I went. “Do you have a piano?” she asked, looking out our living room window. “I love the sound of a piano.”

  “No,” I snapped. “No piano.”

  “Oh. Could you get one, do you think?”

  The thing is, I wasn’t in a very good mood to begin with. Moving-in day wasn’t much better than moving-out day had been. In fact, it was worse. At least on moving-out day, I had had Thornsberry and Roger to talk to. Talking to Molly was like talking to the Smurfs.

  Also, no matter where I sat, I was in the way. Buzz and Ralph kept saying “beep-beep,” as if they were buses or something.

  Finally, I grabbed my jacket and headed outside. It was chilly, but it was better than Buzz’s beeps.