Connect the Dots

by Keith Calabrese

  “I know,” Frankie said, sticking it in his backpack. “But, hey, it’s free.”

  Matilda wasn’t at school again the next day. Though she was probably just sick or something, Oliver couldn’t help but wonder if she’d left. For another school, another city. She did say she moved around a lot.

  Her absence distracted Oliver for the entire morning and into lunch. So much so that he almost overlooked the fact that, since Billy Fargus had pillaged Frankie’s lunch yesterday, it’d be his turn today.

  Oliver handed over the sandwich before Billy Fargus could deliver his eat-for-a-day/eat-for-a-week spiel. (The worst sarcasm in the world is sarcasm from a bully. That’s because it implies that they’re getting their way through actual cleverness and not just dumb, brute force.) Oliver didn’t even look at Billy, just held the bag up for him to snatch without so much as a word.

  “Wow,” said Frankie. “That was kind of hard-core.”

  Oliver shrugged. He wasn’t even that hungry. Besides, he’d had to use that weird jam he’d bought yesterday. Billy Fargus was probably doing him a favor.

  “Man,” Frankie said. “He’s really going to town on your sandwich.”

  Oliver turned to see that Billy wasn’t so much eating Oliver’s sandwich as he was flat-out inhaling it. Apparently, it tasted so good he couldn’t eat it fast enough.

  Then, strangely, Billy stopped chewing. He dropped the sandwich and inexplicably started slapping the sides of his face with his hands.

  “Wha … wha …” Billy garbled, shaking his head frantically.

  “What’s he doing?” Oliver said, concerned.

  “I don’t know.” Frankie shrugged. “But it’s awesome.”

  “I can’t feel my fwace!” Billy bellowed, his cheeks turning red from a likely combination of an allergic reaction and all the desperate slapping and shaking. He was panicking now, pinching and pulling at his ears, nose, and lips. “Iiiii cwannnn’ttt tawwwlk … Nooow mwyy wwips dwon’t dwork!!”

  “What the what?!” Frankie said as he and Oliver rushed over to Billy, who was now curled up in a whimpering ball under the table.

  “Help!” Oliver called out. “Um … Somebody! We need help here—”

  “Now, now, hold on,” Frankie interrupted, staring down at the blubbering Billy Fargus. “Let’s just respect the moment.”

  “Dude!” Oliver turned sharply to glare at his friend. “I think this is serious.”

  “Fine.” Frankie scowled and hopped up on a chair to flag down an adult.

  Billy Fargus and his mother showed up at the school office the next day to discuss Billy’s lunchtime thefts, and Principal Wilson knew immediately that this was not going to be the average parent-teacher conference. When he saw the haggard and worn look in the woman’s eyes, he got it. When she explained that her son wasn’t a bad kid but that things had been kind of tough at home lately and that money and time were both in short supply, he listened. When she said that she and her husband were both stuck with new shifts at work and that meant neither one of them could make Billy lunches, let alone drive him to his guitar lessons, Principal Wilson cared. He knew what it was to come home to an empty house, to have to fend for yourself. And even though Billy’s allergic reaction to whatever was in that sandwich wasn’t dangerous and had been easily remedied with a little Benadryl, Principal Wilson was confident that the experience had gone a long way to scaring the school’s lunch thief straight.

  Still, Billy had to be disciplined. In this zero-tolerance age, Principal Wilson had a lot of severe options to choose from: suspension, expulsion, police involvement. All of which would be, sadly, commonplace for a kid prone to bullying.

  But Principal Wilson believed in reform over retribution. He preferred to fight fire with water as opposed to more fire. And he knew that suspending Billy, expelling him, or dumping him in detention wouldn’t fix anything. The boy would still be angry, and he’d still be taking that anger out on everyone else one way or another. Luckily, Principal Wilson was known for his creativity.

  “I think,” he said slowly, “I may have a solution.”

  Meanwhile, Oliver couldn’t help but notice how relaxed the lunchroom was today compared to, well, every other day of middle school so far. It was as if the entire sixth grade had taken one big lion-sleeps-tonight sigh of relief.

  He also couldn’t help noticing how kids kept sneaking looks at him all during lunch.

  “What do you expect?” Frankie said. “You dropped the class bully with a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. That kind of thing gets noticed.”

  Like most sixth graders, the last thing Oliver wanted was to stand out. But throughout the afternoon, he felt like other kids were always watching him, whispering about him.

  Then at the end of the day, he closed his locker and turned smack into Matilda.

  “We need to talk,” she whispered.

  “What? How long were you standing there?” Oliver started, but Matilda had already taken him by the arm and yanked him into a nearby empty classroom.

  “Matilda,” Oliver tried again as she shut the door and killed all the lights in the room. “Where have you been the last few days?”

  “Running down leads,” she said matter-of-factly as she went to the window.

  “You mean, you were skipping?” Oliver asked.

  “Chicken noodle soup in the toilet. Basic fake flu,” Matilda said, her attention focused more on whatever she saw outside than Oliver’s questions. “Yes, Oliver. I was skipping.” She turned away from the window and looked at him. “I was doing it for you.”

  “Matilda, I’m having an even harder time than usual understanding—”

  “You’re being followed,” she cut in.

  “What?”

  Matilda pulled him over to the window.

  “Black Lincoln Town Car, southwest side corner.”

  Oliver peered out from the side of the window. “Ummm, okay. Yeah, I see it.”

  Matilda led him away from the window to the teacher’s desk, where she turned on the desk lamp and opened up her composition book.

  It was a logbook, a very neat and meticulous daily accounting of anything and everything that Matilda had deemed suspicious or unusual going back months, years even. It was amazing, both in an impressive and kind of unnerving way.

  “Well, I’ve been seeing it,” Matilda said, pointing to several entries in the log. “Every day for the last two weeks.”

  “Matilda, it’s probably just a parent picking up their kid.”

  “No dice,” Matilda said dismissively. “I ran the plates.”

  “You ran the plates? How did you—”

  “Doesn’t matter,” she said. Then, remembering something, she went back to the window. “Where’s the other one?” she muttered, her brow furrowing.

  She stood by the window, puzzled, then shook it off and went back to Oliver, taking her smartphone out of her pocket and showing it to him.

  “Do you recognize either of these two men?” she said, handing him her phone. The first picture was a surveillance shot of a big, broad-shouldered man with a confused look on his face. The second man was smaller and looked like a ferret who had just eaten some convenience store sushi.

  “No,” Oliver said. “I’ve never seen either of these men before.”

  “Are you sure?” Matilda pressed. “Oliver, it’s important.”

  “Matilda, stop it. What is going on?”

  Matilda put the phone back into her pocket. “Okay, like I said, I ran the license plates on the Lincoln Town Car, the one that’s out there now.”

  “Yeah? And?”

  “And I got nothing.”

  “What? What do you mean you got nothing?”

  “I mean nothing,” she said. “At all. Those plates aren’t registered. That car doesn’t exist, legally that is. So last week I tailed it.”

  “You what? Are you nuts?”

  “I followed it. And that’s when I realized that this car has been following you. To and fr
om school, every day.”

  “Me? No way.”

  “Yes way, Oliver. Along with another Lincoln Town Car that has fake plates as well. They’re working together, these two men. It’s a classic front-and-follow technique, that’s how come you didn’t notice.”

  Oliver was so confused he didn’t know where to begin. Those men were stalking him? In cars that didn’t, legally at least, exist? And what the heck was a front-and-follow technique? Eventually he settled on, “But why are they following me?”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out,” she said, flummoxed. “I don’t get it, Oliver. Whoever these guys are, they mean business. But near as I can tell, you and your mom are clean.”

  “What? Clean? Of course we’re clean!”

  Matilda thought for a moment. “Was your mom ever a whistle-blower against a major corporation or government agency?”

  “She does freelance marketing.”

  “Anyone in your immediate or extended family work for the CIA, NSA, or DOD?”

  Oliver sighed. “No.”

  “Silicon Valley? Mafia ties?”

  “No!”

  “Well, I’m stumped, Oliver. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It makes even less sense to me, I promise you that.”

  Matilda checked the window again.

  “All right,” she said with a sigh. “We’ll figure this out, Oliver. Don’t you worry. But for now, we better just get you home. We can take the south exit near the faculty parking lot.”

  She started for the door, but Oliver didn’t follow.

  “Matilda?” he said. “Don’t you think this all sounds a little, I don’t know, far-fetched?”

  Matilda cocked her head toward the window. “You tell me,” she said.

  Frankie Gets a Job * The Other Car * Trust the Math * Archie * George Kaplan, Game Changer * More than an Egghead

  Frankie waited around in front of the school as long as he could, meaning as long as he could before he felt awkward and stupid enough that he gave up and started walking home by himself.

  He made a detour past Henry’s Market, which was now swarmed with middle school kids looking to buy the Billy Fargus–repelling mango-chutney jam, and went inside to get a soda.

  Frankie drank the soda too fast. He was still angry and confused that Oliver was a no-show after school. They always walked home together; it was weird.

  About a block or so past the market, it got quiet. He’d turned onto a side street, away from the traffic, and was the only person on the sidewalk, on either side of the street. Frankie got a tingly feeling up the back of his neck, one that said he was being watched or followed. He started walking more quickly, but in that way a person walks when they don’t want to look like they’re walking more quickly.

  A block or two later, Frankie could hear the sound of quick, light footsteps behind him. They were getting closer.

  Then he heard breathing. Low, heavy breathing.

  Frankie turned his head warily to find the breathing belonged to a dog. Not just any dog, but a massive rottweiler. The beast was ferocious. It looked like it should be guarding the gates of Hades. Worse, it looked hungry.

  Frankie made the mistake of locking eyes, and the dog charged. Frankie shrieked in a key he didn’t know he could reach anymore as he took off down the street. He ran as fast as he could, which, he was embarrassed to discover, wasn’t very fast at all. His first glance backward revealed that the dog had already closed the gap to a few feet.

  Frankie tried to kick into a higher gear, but the dog was already on him, attacking high and knocking Frankie to the ground with an ease that might have been a bit insulting if it weren’t so terrifying.

  The last refuge of any prey is to curl up in a ball, cover the softest bits, and whimper, and this is precisely what Frankie did. The dog’s massive snout poked and prodded him several times but, curiously, didn’t bite. It soon settled on Frankie’s backpack, but when it couldn’t remove that, it stopped altogether, stepped back, and barked expectantly at Frankie.

  After a quick inspection of his personal parts, Frankie noticed that the dog’s tail was wagging eagerly as it sat, more or less still, in front of Frankie.

  Like it wanted a treat.

  “Good boy?” Frankie tried.

  The tail swung faster as the massive dog did a little hop with its front feet.

  Frankie had a hunch now. He went into his backpack and pulled out the beef jerky Oliver had given him at the market. The dog remained sitting at attention, but its whole body vibrated with carnivorous anticipation as two waterfalls of drool cascaded down either side of its mouth.

  Frankie broke off a piece of the jerky and fed it to the dog, who took it, to Frankie’s surprise, with gentle care. By the time the dog had gobbled down the last of the jerky, Frankie had a friend for life. He checked the dog’s tags and found its name to be Archie. There was an address, too. It was a bit of a walk, but in the general neighborhood.

  Archie led the way to a very grand, very old house currently in the middle of some massive renovations. Workmen were coming and going when Frankie and Archie arrived. Frankie was just about to ask one of them if the owner was at home when he heard, “Archie! Oh, thank goodness!”

  A man in khakis and a dress shirt came running out the front door. Archie met him halfway, at the bottom of the porch. The man crouched down and hugged Archie tightly, his relief apparent. The man then noticed Frankie and stood up, holding out his hand.

  “Steve Bishop,” the man said. “I cannot thank you enough for finding him.”

  “Frankie Figge,” Frankie said, shaking the man’s hand. “Not a problem.”

  “The workmen keep leaving the back gate open. And Archie likes to explore.” Steve dug into his wallet and pulled out a couple of twenties. “Here, please. Let me give you a reward.”

  Frankie waved away the bills. “That’s okay, really.”

  Archie started nudging Frankie for attention. Frankie crouched down to roughhouse with the massive canine.

  Steve watched them for a moment. Then he said, “You know, Frankie, I work in the city, sometimes late. I could really use someone to come and walk Archie in the afternoon. Maybe feed him dinner, hang out with him a bit. Would you be interested?”

  Frankie’s eyes lit up. “Really?”

  “I’d pay you, of course,” Steve clarified.

  Frankie’s face worked overtime to hide any tells that he would have gladly done the job for free. “Um, yeah. Okay. I think we can work something out, Mr. Bishop.”

  “Steve, please,” Steve said. “Now, it is a lot of responsibility. Think you can handle it?”

  “Well, Steve, I do know how to close a back gate.”

  Oliver and Matilda had almost reached Oliver’s house when Matilda yanked him behind an oak tree.

  “What are you doing?” Oliver asked.

  Matilda pointed to a black Lincoln Town Car parked in front of Oliver’s house. “That’s the other one,” she whispered.

  They watched in silence for a couple of minutes. When nothing happened, Oliver decided he had to go inside, whether it was the smart move or not.

  But then the front door opened, and he saw his mom step outside onto the porch, along with a tall, handsome man in a business suit. Even from a distance, the man was the kind of person you couldn’t help noticing. He had an easy, effortlessly confident way about him, like he was used to things going exactly the way he expected them to.

  Seeing as pretty much nothing in the past year had gone the way Oliver had expected it to, a part of him couldn’t help but be, at least begrudgingly, impressed.

  Oliver instinctively stepped out from behind the tree, but Matilda pulled him back again.

  “No. Wait,” she pleaded. “That guy looks dangerous.”

  The man was saying something to Oliver’s mom. Oliver feared the worst, but then he saw her smile. And laugh. Were she and the man flirting?

  Oliver and Matilda watched as Oliver’s mom
walked him to his car. She handed him a flash drive, which he put in his shirt pocket. Then he patted his pocket as though promising her he’d stored it for safekeeping, and they laughed again. They shook hands, holding on just a half second longer than necessary. Oh man, Oliver thought. They were flirting.

  As soon as Oliver’s mom went back inside and the Lincoln Town Car was out of sight, Oliver bolted across the street. Matilda barely caught him before he got to his house.

  “Matilda,” Oliver said, irritated. “Let me go.”

  “You can’t tell her, Oliver.”

  “What?” Oliver said, appalled. “She’s in danger. You said so yourself.”

  “She’ll be in even worse danger if she knows,” Matilda said. “Trust me, Oliver.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. It’s not your mom.”

  Matilda let go of him. “We need to figure out what it is that these people want. And our only advantage right now is that they don’t know we’re onto them.”

  “What, then? I just have to pretend like everything’s fine?”

  Matilda paused, considering her next words carefully. “Something tells me you’ve had a little practice in that department,” she said.

  Oliver scowled but didn’t contest the point.

  “There you are!”

  Oliver and Matilda practically jumped as they turned around to find Frankie standing behind them.

  “I waited forever for you, Oliver,” he said, irritated. “Seriously not cool.”

  Frankie’s idea of what was “not cool” expanded considerably after Oliver and Matilda told him what they had been up to for the last hour and change.

  “Are you nuts?”

  “It’s true, Frankie,” Oliver said. “I saw it with my own eyes.”

  “Yeah?” Frankie said, shooting a dubious look in Matilda’s direction. “Saw what, exactly?”

  “Listen, I know you think Matilda’s a little strange and, well, she kind of is.” Oliver gave Matilda an apologetic look. “Sorry,” he said.

  “Not a problem,” Matilda said.

  “But I believe her,” Oliver said. “I really do. Someone’s spying on me and my mom.”