Samantha Spinner and the Super-Secret Plans

by Russell Ginns

  Have fun shopping.

  —Uncle Paul

  Mrs. Spinner looked at her husband. “Where did this money come from?” she asked, not really expecting him to know.

  Mr. Spinner shrugged. “I didn’t think Paul had a job,” he said as he handed a folder to Nipper.

  Nipper opened it to find a packet of papers. He read the top sheet. It was the deed to Yankee Stadium. All the baseball players’ contracts were attached to the deed with a binder clip. Nipper closed the folder to read the note that was taped to the front.

  Don’t miss opening day.

  —Uncle Paul

  “That might be a warning not to lose these, Nipper,” Mrs. Spinner said, tapping the folder.

  “Yeah. Like that old superhero comic book you fed to the birds,” said Buffy. “And everything else Uncle Paul gives you.”

  “I didn’t feed it to anyone,” said Nipper. “A pigeon flew away with it while I was tying my shoe.”

  “Uncle Paul always says if nobody lost anything, nothing would be valuable,” Samantha reminded her family. She had waited patiently. Now it was her turn.

  For a moment, her parents glanced at each other without saying anything. Then her dad reached under the table and lifted up a red umbrella. He handed it to her quietly.

  It was old and worn. A paper tag dangled from the wooden handle. The tag had a message, too.

  Watch out for the RAIN.

  —Uncle Paul

  Samantha stared at the umbrella.

  Her uncle had given her an umbrella. A rusty old umbrella.

  “Don’t worry,” said Mrs. Spinner. “I’m pretty sure we can figure out how all this crazy, mixed-up stuff fits together.”

  Samantha was pretty sure of one thing already: It wasn’t fair!

  It really wasn’t fair.

  In her heart, she knew that if anyone ever wrote a book about her life, the title of Chapter Two would be “It Wasn’t Fair.”

  Samantha’s brother’s real name was Jeremy Bernard Spinner, but everyone called him Nipper. That was because when he was little, he used to bite people all the time. Never hard enough to break the skin, but it sure hurt! Now he was eight, and he didn’t do that very much anymore. Actually, it had been three years, seven months, and twelve days since he’d bitten anyone. Everyone still called him Nipper.

  With his very own baseball stadium and professional ball club, Nipper was looking forward to the best summer ever. He might even be getting an awesome magical ring on his finger—a World Series ring!

  Meanwhile, Samantha’s older sister, Buffy, was already having the time of her life. As soon as she deposited the check for $2,400,000,000 in her bank account, she rode her bike to her favorite boutique in Seattle and bought the fanciest, most expensive handbag she could find. She went back to the store an hour later in a cab and bought an even larger handbag to carry the first one in. Then she returned in a stretch limo and bought the store. A great, grand shopping spree had begun.

  Buffy headed to the mall early Saturday afternoon and came back home five hours later with a convoy of tractor-trailers. Each truck was filled with scarves and sunglasses.

  “When is this going to stop?” Nipper shouted to Samantha.

  “I can’t hear you,” she replied, looking down at the umbrella.

  Big rigs rolled past them for the rest of the day, dumping crates of accessories in the backyard.

  Sunday was all about sweaters and belts. A fresh column of trucks rumbled down the Spinners’ narrow side drive, and crews added the cargo to the rising pile of crates, which was now almost as tall as the Spinner house itself.

  There was no school that Monday because it was parent-teacher day. So Buffy woke up and started shopping all over again. For decades to come, that day would be remembered as Shoe Day in malls and department stores throughout the Pacific Northwest.

  Wearing her most expensive scarf and designer sunglasses, Buffy went to every shop within twenty-five miles of Seattle and systematically purchased every pump, sneaker, and boot in sizes 9-½ and 10. Meanwhile, a squad of foot proxies—teenagers with the same size and shape feet as Buffy’s—visited stores in all the major cities of Oregon, Idaho, and Washington State, buying footwear on her behalf.

  By Tuesday morning, Buffy’s wardrobe was as fabulous as it was ever going to be. So she shifted gears. She announced that her destiny was to be a movie star and that she had set her sights on Hollywood.

  Mr. and Mrs. Spinner said it was fine that Buffy wanted to become an actress but that she absolutely could not leave school.

  Buffy listened to her parents and agreed she wouldn’t leave school. She paid for a team of engineers to raise Lake Union High School, including its football field, parking lot, and flagpole, onto a caravan of two dozen massive flatbed trucks, and she took the school with her. Students, teachers, books, band instruments, cafeteria food, and all began the journey south.

  They left behind an empty dirt field, a row of lockers that were permanently rusted shut, and a girl named Nelly McPepper, who Buffy refused to bring because she wore white after Labor Day.

  No one heard from Buffy for two weeks. Then, one afternoon while Samantha was moping in the living room, Nipper walked in waving an envelope.

  “Mom just gave me this letter to share with you,” he said.

  The envelope was addressed in ornate calligraphy drawn with gold ink. It was from Scarlett Hydrangea, in Beverly Hills, California. There was at least ninety-seven dollars in stamps on it.

  “Who the heck is Scarlett Hydrangea?” asked Nipper.

  Samantha opened the letter and read it out loud.

  “Dearest Sammy and Little Nipper,

  I’m the star of my own big-budget movie, and it’s going to be a blockbuster. No one seems impressed yet, but once I learn my lines, I know that the world will appreciate my brilliance.

  My 550-room mansion is delightful. Uncle Paul was right—I finally have space for all my accessories! I even have space for both of you when you come to visit. There are two empty stalls in the stable behind my waterfall. I’m planning to keep a pair of rainbow unicorns there, but no one has been able to find any for me to buy yet. Come soon and you are welcome to them. (The stalls, not the unicorns.)

  Write back, but please don’t rattle on about your boring lives!

  Kisses,

  Scarlett Hydrangea

  PS: That’s my new stage name.”

  “Okay. Got it,” said Nipper.

  Samantha dropped the letter on the floor. “I’m just like poor Nelly McPepper,” she moaned, and flopped facedown on the couch. “I have nothing to do and nowhere to go.”

  Nipper was about to point out that she could go to California and stay in Buffy’s stable, when Dennis trotted in. Samantha looked up from where she lay to see that the dog had a shiny new collar. A gold band sparkled with colorful gems ranging in size from tiny rubies to a huge blue diamond about the size of a walnut. Uncle Paul had even left a fabulous present for their dog!

  “Even you got something amazing!” she said to the pug.

  Dennis stepped forward and sniffed Samantha’s hand, but she didn’t move. He was getting petted a lot less often lately.

  Since Uncle Paul had disappeared, power moping now took the place of petting, and just about everything else, for Samantha. Come to think of it, other than going to school, doing homework, and snooping for signs of Uncle Paul, lying around feeling blue had become her main activity.

  For weeks, Samantha kept hoping that there was something more to the rusty old umbrella. She inspected it several times a day. Maybe there was a key to a secret bank vault hidden inside the handle. There wasn’t. She peeked through a tiny hole in the cloth near the center. Nope, there was nothing to see. The whole rickety thing seem
ed like it was about to fall apart. She fiddled with it over and over again and finally gave up.

  Uncle Paul had taught Samantha about archaeology and how to ride a bike. Samantha had helped him solve puzzles and found interesting stickers and buttons for his collections. On the day before he disappeared, she gave him a set of scratch-and-sniff stickers that smelled like fruit.

  “You know, Samantha, people can remember smells two hundred and fifty times better than sights or sounds,” he’d told her. “Smells have the power to unlock important memories.”

  He scratched at one of the stickers.

  “Berry important,” he said.

  If memories were so important, then why did Uncle Paul forget about her? Why would he just go missing without telling her? And how could he give her silly big sister all that money and her brother a major-league baseball team and give her nothing more than a piece of junk and a note about the weather?

  The fact remained: it wasn’t fair.

  Samantha looked at Nipper. He was still standing there, waiting for her to say “Watch out for the rain.”

  “Watch out for the rain,” she said gloomily, and rested her head back down on a cushion. Samantha had begun to mutter the phrase to everyone several times every day.

  With that out of the way, Nipper turned to leave. His thoughts were on his franchise.

  The Spinners lived in Seattle, but his parents had promised that the whole family could take a trip to see his Yankees in New York City as soon as school ended. It might even help Samantha focus a little bit less on her moping.

  “Cheer up,” said Nipper as he crossed the living room. “You can sit with me in the owner’s box. Sooner or later there are going to be some rain delays, and that old umbrella will come in handy.”

  He left her, walked through the kitchen, and grabbed his folder full of contracts from the counter. Then he headed outside to see if any friends, neighbors, utility workers, or passersby were around to hear more about his baseball team.

  The Spinners had two of the worst next-door neighbors on planet Earth.

  On the south side of their house was Morgan Bogan Bogden-Loople, a boy who never, ever said anything that wasn’t ridiculous or impossible. When Samantha went looking for clues about Uncle Paul, she asked Morgan Bogan if he had seen him.

  “I saw your missing uncle just a few minutes ago,” he told her confidently. “He was wearing big rubber boots and said he was on his way to take cello lessons. He had a pet raccoon on his shoulder.”

  Their other neighbor was Missy Snoddgrass. She lived next door to the Spinners on the north side, closer to the park. She was a little girl with curly blond hair, freckles, and a cute button nose. She was Double-Triple-Super Evil.

  When Nipper walked out of his house and hopped the bushes that afternoon, with a folder full of papers to show Missy that he owned the New York Yankees, he should have known he was in for trouble.

  “My uncle disappeared,” he told Missy as she stared at him through the screen door at the side of her house.

  “I know all about that,” she said.

  “Now I’m the new owner of Yankee Stadium!” Nipper said, excited to share the news with someone who seemed to care. He held up a fancy certificate with a big gold seal on it. “This is the official deed to the ballpark.” He flashed it for her to see.

  Missy pushed open the door and slid out onto the landing a few feet from Nipper.

  “Impressive,” she said, looking directly into his eyes without blinking. She did not sound very impressed.

  “I’ve got contracts for all the players, too,” he added cheerfully.

  Missy rubbed her chin with her right hand. Then she extended that hand toward Nipper, palm up.

  “Fascinating. You should let me see some of those contracts.”

  Nipper opened his folder and handed her several pages stapled together.

  “Here,” he said, beaming with pride.

  Missy inspected the pages carefully. He watched her lips move silently as she read the fine print.

  Finally, she looked up from the contract and smiled at him. There was a huge gap where she was missing a tooth.

  “He’s one of the finest pitchers in the entire American League,” she told him. “Uniquely talented. Will you let me see one of the outfielders?”

  Nipper thumbed through his folder and held up another contract. Missy took the papers from him and read them more quickly.

  “Amazing,” she concluded. “Now can I see the document for the stadium?”

  At last, Nipper had found someone interested in his Yankees. For weeks, he had tried to engage Samantha in conversations about baseballs, stadiums, Leagues, the infield fly rule, hot dogs, or even big, fuzzy mascots. Nothing he said could distract her from the moping. She just wanted to whine about the umbrella. Of course, Nipper was the first to admit that he understood nothing about big sisters—or any eleven-year-old girl, for that matter.

  Soon he had handed the complete set of documents to his neighbor.

  “Well, I think we both know the secret to a winning sports team,” she said. Suddenly she started speaking in a very soft whisper. “It’s the players that you trade. Don’t you agree?”

  “What was that last part?” asked Nipper.

  “I said ‘trade.’ Don’t you agree?” she said clearly.

  “Sure,” he answered cheerfully.

  “Terrific,” Missy announced. She reached into her back pocket and took out a large magnifying glass. It had a shiny metal band around the lens and a blue handle.

  Nipper thought she was going to use it to examine the papers again. Instead, she gave it to him.

  “What’s this?” he asked, taking it from her.

  “That’s what some people refer to as a hand lens,” she explained. “Of course, you can still call it a magnifying glass. I don’t mind at all. It’s yours now. And no backsies!”

  “Backsies?” asked Nipper, confused. He turned the hand lens over. The blue plastic handle was flimsy. It had a crack at the bottom. “I don’t understand.”

  Missy reached into the front pocket of her yellow polka-dot blouse and took out several pages torn from a book. She shuffled through them quickly and handed one to Nipper.

  It came from a dictionary. He read it out loud.

  “No backsies:

  noun phrase.

  [nō bak-seez]

  A command used to prevent a return action or consequence. This term originates from the game of tag, stopping players from immediately tagging the player who tagged them. More broadly, it prevents someone from going back on an agreement or trade.”

  “I didn’t want an agreement…or a trade,” said Nipper, beginning to feel very nervous. “And I don’t like this magnifying glass.”

  “Didn’t you hear me call it a hand lens?” Missy corrected him. “Well, you will definitely learn to love it. Bye.”

  She tucked all the papers under one arm and turned to open the screen door.

  “Wait!” shouted Nipper, reaching out to grab her sleeve.

  Missy spun around violently and shook a fist two inches from his nose.

  “Never touch me again or I will smash you like a bug. Endless misery and woe will fall upon you like the rain!”

  Nipper could swear he saw her eyes flash red with fury. Then she smiled and looked down at her watch.

  “Whoopsy. Look at the time,” she chirped happily, and stepped back into her house, slamming the door behind her.

  And with that, she was gone.

  And so were his New York Yankees.

  Nipper was going to miss Opening Day.

  Nipper stood on Missy’s porch for a few minutes. Then he slunk down the stairs and backed away from the Snoddgrass driveway. A magical new ring wasn’t in his future, and he didn’t feel like jumping ov
er the bushes anymore. Soon he was inside his house, stomping up the stairs toward the second floor.

  “Sam!” he called. “I lost my baseball team!”

  All the people were gone.

  Dennis sat under the table.

  When the Man with the Orange Shoes first showed up, a waffle fell on the floor.

  There was syrup and there was powdered sugar.

  It could happen again.

  * * *

  —

  Something went hiss.

  Dennis looked around.

  He didn’t see anything.

  He didn’t smell anything.

  Someday, he would get another waffle.

  For weeks, Samantha divided her moping evenly between flopping on the living room sofa, sulking at the kitchen table during meals, and muttering to herself as she paced under the basketball net outside Uncle Paul’s apartment. Every afternoon, she took Dennis for a walk around the neighborhood. She spent half of each walk looking for clues about Uncle Paul and why he had disappeared and the other half wondering why he’d done it without saying goodbye.

  When the weather was bad, however, she stayed indoors to power mope. There, she’d lie on the floor and write depressing entries in her journal. It was springtime in Seattle, so it rained for a few hours almost every day. The little black notebook already had sixteen sad entries.

  On the thirty-fifth afternoon since Uncle Paul had gone missing, Samantha chose her bedroom for the gloom session. She invited her brother to join her. Ever since he’d lost his Yankees, Nipper was more than willing to mope along with her.

  Samantha was on the floor, lying on her back with her feet on the bed. She flipped through her journal to one of the recent entries and read out loud.

  “There’s a little bit of Nelly McPepper in all of us.

  One moment, the future looks great. The next moment, all our hopes and dreams are jacked up onto a massive flatbed truck rolling south.