Nekomah Creek

by Linda Crew

  Published by

  Dell Yearling

  an imprint of

  Random House Children’s Books

  a division of Random House, Inc.

  1540 Broadway

  New York, New York 10036

  Text copyright © 1991 by Linda Crew

  Illustrations copyright © 1991 by Charles Robinson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher except where permitted by law. For information address Delacorte Press, New York, New York 10036.

  The trademarks Yearling® and Dell® are registered in the U.S.

  Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-53886-4

  Reprinted by arrangement with Delacorte Press

  v3.1

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  1 CAUGHT AND CORNERED

  2 MY DAD, THE COOK

  3 ALARMING NEWS

  4 PIG SNOUTS AND OTHER WORRIES

  5 ON THE HOT SEAT AGAIN

  6 THE SPAGHETTI DISASTER

  7 PLAYGROUND SHOWDOWN

  8 HARD HATS AND DUCKY DIAPER PINS

  9 HALLOWEEN SHIVERS

  10 TOUGH TIMES FOR A FAILED HERO

  11 LITTLE PURPLE FINGERPRINTS

  12 GREAT WHOPPING LIES

  13 A HECK OF AN HONOR

  14 PLEASE PASS THE KAZOOS

  15 BELLYFUL OF TROUBLE

  16 AMBUSH!

  17 PUMPKINS EVERY TIME

  18 A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

  19 A KID’S GOTTA DO WHAT A KID’S GOTTA DO

  20 ONE LAST CHANCE

  21 THE FANCY ROMANCEY DINNER

  Dedication

  1

  Caught and Cornered

  “So that’s where you’ve been hiding!”

  Mrs. Perkins’s voice jerked me right out of my paperback and back to the real world.

  “Robert Hummer.” She pressed her lips together and frowned into the old dory where I’d been huddled down reading. “What am I going to do with you?”

  A horrible gloom came over me. This peeling blue boat, beached in a pile of sand at the edge of the playground, had got me through a month of recesses. Why’d she have to come marching out here and find me now? I thought I was safe, what with the stretch of long wet grass between me and the merry-go-round. I should have known wet grass wouldn’t bother old Mrs. Perkins in her thick-soled shoes.

  Now when I say old, I don’t really mean years. Mrs. Perkins was probably about average age for a grown-up. But something seemed old about her, like maybe she’d been thinking the exact same thoughts, over and over, for a real long time.

  “Well, come on out now.”

  I climbed over the side and stood in front of her, clutching my well-worn copy of Encyclopedia Brown #5.

  She put her hands on her hips. I won’t say her fat hips. She was big but she was solid.

  “Whatever is a healthy boy like you doing sitting here reading when you ought to be off playing with the other kids?”

  I sighed. I’d already told her about five times—I hate recess.

  Now I know that sounds weird. The other fourth graders all rip out like they’ve got rockets on their heels when that bell rings. Sixty seconds flat and they’re lined up for tetherball or foursquare. But I’m not big on sports.

  We’d been through all this before though, so why answer? She didn’t want to hear it, just like she didn’t want to hear how I wish she’d call me Robby, how I think the hokey pokey is totally dumb, how the story problems in math sometimes don’t make any sense.

  “If Johnny has fifty-five stamps,” she’d read out loud this morning, “and he pastes five on each page, how many pages will he need?”

  “But that’s silly,” I said, forgetting to raise my hand. “He could fit a lot more than five on each page. And besides, you don’t paste stamps in the book. That wrecks them. You’re supposed to use stamp hinges.”

  Mrs. Perkins just looked at the ceiling and took a deep breath like she was counting to keep calm. I guess extra talking loused up her schedule. Fifteen minutes for this, twenty minutes for that. She had to be totally organized.

  “Robert,” she said now, “I don’t understand why you do this.”

  I shrugged, listening to the creek rushing by at the edge of the playing field. I wasn’t the worst kid around by a long shot. I did my assignments. Unless you counted asking questions, I didn’t goof off in class. So why’d Mrs. Perkins want to pick on me? Right now, over by the gym door, two eighth-grade girls were having a shouting match—trading names you wouldn’t dare repeat to your mom and dad. Wouldn’t you think Mrs. Perkins’d want to hustle over and break it up?

  But no—she was too busy with me.

  I sighed. “I just don’t like sports.”

  “Oh, come now. All boys like sports.”

  Was I supposed to call her a liar or what? I stared at the grass. My shoes were getting soaked.

  “This bookworm business is getting completely out of hand. I saw you trying to read during the film strip this morning. It’s got to stop!”

  She was right about that. Reading in the dark was hard on my eyes. I’d have to smuggle in the tiny flashlight I used under the covers at night.

  She held out her hand. “Let’s have the book, please.”

  I held it out. So long, Encyclopedia. I sighed. I’d been right in the middle of a case.

  “Mrs. Perkins? Didn’t you ever feel that what was happening in a book you were reading was more interesting than real life?”

  She squinted at me like I was some weird bug in a box.

  Well, gee. Seems to me lots of people like books or movies or television programs better than real life. When you’ve only got one life, in one place, it’s fun to go off in your mind to other adventures.

  And books are best, I think. TV only shows you the story—a book takes over your whole brain. It may look like nothing but paper, but open it and start reading and presto—you’re in another world, maybe the past, maybe the future. It’s like magic. Really. Think about it—characters made from little black markings coming alive, barging right into your head and carrying on their business there. Sometimes they never leave.

  Mrs. Perkins ought to understand this. Every time she opened her desk drawer to put in my milk money I’d see a different paperback tucked in the corner—usually the kind where a lady in a swirly dress and too much hair is running away from a spooky castle …

  She’d been looking off toward the creek. Now she turned back to me. “Why don’t we go see what Mrs. Van Gent thinks about this.”

  I groaned. Not the new school counselor. What would Mom and Dad say? At the school board meeting, they’d stood up along with some of the other newer families and argued how important it was for Nekomah Creek School to have a counselor. But I figured they wanted a counselor to straighten out some of the wilder kids. I don’t think they were picturing me getting dragged into her office.

  “I hope she can fit you in,” Mrs. Perkins said, hustling me toward the double doors at the primary side of the building. “If not it’ll have to wait until next Monday.”

  Be busy, I prayed. Please be too busy. I glanced longingly at the third-grade classroom as we passed. Mrs. Kassel never seemed to think I was a problem last year. She used to laugh at my jokes. She thought it was great how I loved to read. She even had an old clawfoot bathtub full of pillows in her room just for flopping in with a book when you finished your other work.

  Funny—with Mrs. Kassel it was like I couldn’t
do anything wrong, but with Mrs. Perkins I couldn’t do anything right. Had I changed into a different kid over the summer or what?

  Mrs. Perkins parked me in the hall and went into the little room next to the principal’s office.

  I’d never seen the counselor before. What would she be like?

  After a couple of minutes this girl from my class came out. Amber Hixon. She wasn’t crying, but her face had that pink-to-the-eyebrows, darned-if-I-will look.

  She sniffed and stuck out her chin. “What are you doing here?” Her sandy-colored hair was one big cowlick in front, standing up straight and stubborn from her forehead, then flopping over.

  “They’re making me talk to the counselor,” I said. “You too?”

  She nodded. I could tell whatever happened in that room was no picnic.

  “Pretty bad, huh?”

  Amber crossed her arms over her chest and glared back at the door. “She comes on real nice, but you better watch what you say. That’s my advice.”

  “What do you mean? What does she ask you?”

  “About your family. Stuff that’s none of her business. I’m not kidding, she’s nothing but a big snoop. My mom’s going to be sorry she ever gave them permission to talk to me.”

  “Why’re they making you do it?”

  She glowered. “It’s so stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, just ’cause of this picture I drew.”

  I didn’t get it. Amber was a pretty good artist, and her pictures were always things like unicorns sailing over rainbows or princessy-looking girls picking flowers.

  “It was just something I scribbled one day when I was mad at my mom and dad,” Amber said. “I never meant anybody to see it. It musta fell out of my desk.”

  “Oh,” I said, like this explained everything. “So it wasn’t one of your unicorn pictures?”

  “Ha. Not hardly.”

  Wow. What had she drawn? I was wondering if I dared ask when the door opened.

  “ ’Member, don’t tell nothing,” Amber whispered. Then she spun on her heel and marched off, hands knotted into fists.

  Mrs. Perkins motioned me inside to a chair. She gave me one of those long, grown-up looks that you know are supposed to mean something, only you’re not sure exactly what.

  Then she sighed. “Mrs. Van Gent is here to help you, Robert. Please try to be honest with her.”

  “Okay.” I hung my head. I thought I was always honest. I lifted my eyes. “Could I have my book back now?” I wanted something to hold on to.

  “Why don’t I just go ahead and return it to the library for you?”

  “But it’s my own.”

  She frowned at the book and checked the back for a library card. That made me mad! I am not a liar!

  “All the same,” she said, “I believe I’ll keep it at my desk for now. I don’t want you peeking at it while Mrs. Van Gent’s trying to talk to you.”

  My face got real hot. Guess she’d seen me pulling that in class.

  She went out, leaving me to the counselor.

  Mrs. Van Gent was a serious-looking woman wearing a gray suit and those high-heeled kind of shoes you see on TV but not very often around Nekomah Creek. She was really sort of pretty. You could tell she didn’t care about that, though. She had big black glasses and blond hair twisted back into a tight bun. She was dressed for important business.

  She rested her rear against the edge of the desk. “So, Robert …”

  I looked up. “Could you call me Robby?”

  “Oh, sure.” She cleared her throat. “Robby. Why do you think your teacher wants you to talk to me?”

  I squirmed. “Uh, because I read too much and I don’t want to play with the other kids?” I watched to see if this was the right answer, but she wasn’t saying. Her face looked friendly enough, though.

  “Are you having trouble making friends?”

  “No.” I scratched my left shin with the heel of my right shoe. A nervous habit, my mom says. “I have friends.”

  “Why don’t you want to play with them, then?”

  I shrugged. I had more fun with my friends when they came to my house or I went to theirs. Then we could play Clue or build things with Construx or play spies in the woods. But playground stuff was all sports. Ben and Jason and the others had given up trying to get me in on it.

  “I guess I’d just rather read,” I said finally. “I get plenty of sports in PE.”

  “It’s wonderful that you like to read so much. It’s too bad we can’t get more of the students interested in books the way you are.”

  Right, I thought. And then you could start bugging them about it too.

  “Playing games outside is also important, though. We like everyone to be well-rounded.”

  Huh. Well-flattened was more like it. I thought about the last time I took a tetherball in the teeth.

  The door connecting the room to the office opened and one of the secretaries handed Mrs. Van Gent a folder of papers. She sat down at the empty desk and studied them.

  After a while she looked up. “You’ve had a big change at your house recently, haven’t you, Robby?”

  I thought. Then I nodded.

  “Something that’s been a bit hard on you?”

  “Well, I didn’t like it when my mom came home with her hair all frizzed like that, but it’s her hair. I’ll get used to it.”

  The counselor smiled. “No, Robby. I meant the twins.”

  “The twins? But we’ve had them for two years.”

  “Yes. Now I want you to be completely honest with me, Robby. How do you feel about your brother and sister?”

  I shrugged. “I like ’em.”

  “Of course you do. But do you like everything about them?”

  What was she getting at? Lucy and Freddie are the cutest babies in the whole world. I thought of the way they’d waved me off to school just that morning, standing on the porch railing. Dad held the backs of their Superman and Wonder Woman jammies so they wouldn’t fall off while they jumped up and down, flapping all four arms, trying to outshout each other yelling “Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye!”

  “Well, there are two things I don’t like about ’em,” I admitted. “Um … what they do in their diapers and spitting up.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  I nodded, remembering the time I got carried away hugging Freddie—squeezed him to the popping point. He urped all over me. Yuck.

  “Oh, and I hated having to give up going barefoot around the house.”

  “Why can’t you go barefoot?”

  I looked at her. “Have you ever had soggy Cheerios stuck between your toes? It’s disgusting.”

  “Ah. I see.”

  “But the babies don’t spit up much anymore. And about the diapers … well, I just told Mom and Dad right from the first, ‘Hey, don’t count on me changing any. You’re on your own.’ ”

  She smiled. “So these are the only bad parts about having the twins around? You don’t ever feel … a little jealous?”

  Amber was right. This was getting awfully personal. Besides, Mrs. Van Gent had it all wrong. Lucy and Freddie made me feel special. Nobody else at Nekomah Creek had baby twins. I’d felt almost famous for a while, passing out chocolate cigars to my whole class.

  “They must take up a lot of your parents’ time.”

  “Yeah … but mostly we all have fun together. I like it.”

  “Well, good.” She took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Without her glasses she looked a lot younger. “And how is it now that your mother’s gone back to work?”

  Good grief. How did she know all this stuff? Was she some kind of detective on the side?

  “Things are okay,” I said, wishing I could figure out where she was heading with this. She had her glasses back on and was looking official again. “Maybe a little wilder than before.”

  “Oh?” She leaned forward. I’ll bet she thought it was like this movie I saw where the mom g
oes back to work and the dad doesn’t know how to do anything so the house falls apart.

  But my dad knows how to use a vacuum cleaner. He even showed us how to ride ours like an indoor scooter. And so what if I have to wear dirty socks once in a while? I sneaked a corner-of-the-eye peek at the ones I had on now. Oops—one with red stripes and one with blue. I inched my jean legs down, pretending to be very interested in the Appaloosas in the pasture beyond the office window.

  “Can you tell me what you mean by wilder?”

  I was trying to concentrate on the horses, thinking how maybe I’d draw them sometime.

  “Robby? About it being wilder?”

  “Hmm?” I turned back to her. “Oh. Well, ever since the twins it’s been wild even with Mom. They get into everything, throw the laundry around, stuff like that. I never know what I’ll find when I get home.”

  “I see.”

  “It’s funny, though.” I was telling the truth and she wouldn’t believe me. “I like it.”

  “Please understand, Robby. We’re just … exploring here, trying to find out what’s bothering you.”

  You’re bothering me, I wanted to say. I could have been through three more Encyclopedia Brown cases if I wasn’t stuck in here.

  She made her voice sympathetic again. “Let’s try this, Robby. If you could have one wish, what would it be?”

  Okay …

  I took a deep breath. “I wish my mother would get pregnant again”—I stared Mrs. Van Gent straight in her pretty blue eyes—“and this time I wish she’d have triplets!”

  2

  My Dad, the Cook

  Thunk.

  “Not nice!” Freddie hollered. “Not nice!”

  “Oh, no!” I said. “Dad! Look what Lucy’s doing!”

  From the porch, my sister shot me this wicked, can’t-catch-me grin. She’d pushed a jack-o’-lantern off the rail and I could tell by the glint in her eye she planned to go straight down the line, shoving off every last one of the pumpkins we’d just finished carving.

  Dad glanced up from the pumpkin he was working on. “Well, don’t just stand there, Robby. Stop her.”