Crunch

by Leslie Connor

  “Hey!” She stopped me cold. “Don’t say it! I didn’t expect to spend my summer like this—covering everything that needs to be done around here. I’m supposed to be in a class. In the city. So don’t even say it, Dewey! Don’t!” She pulled her lips in. She was done talking.

  I was done listening. I left the laundry and stomped off into the shop. I rolled the door shut behind me and leaned on it.

  Hanging off a scaffold.

  Okay. Superstupid thing to say to Lil. She was right; this was not the summer of her dreams. I felt like dirt.

  Only two things in this world seem to set me straight when everything else has collided. One is a long, all-out bike ride. The other is a cleaning frenzy. The way I saw it, I didn’t particularly deserve the bike ride. Not until I apologized to Lil, and well, I wasn’t up for the taste of crow so soon after supper. Robert had run the Shop-Vac just the night before, so not much dust was floating around. I looked at the paper slips and the parts all plunked down on the bench ready for tomorrow.

  The inventory, I thought. That’s sort of like cleaning.

  I set to counting everything in sight. I made lists. I took a look at all the logged-in jobs and compared them to the parts we had in stock. Then I spent a while trying to stuff away the feeling that maybe Lil was right; maybe this was gaining on me—just a little bit.

  23

  ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON, ROBERT AND I heard lots of scrambling and rustling above the shop. He glanced up and said, “You grow big squirrels here on the Marriss mini-farm.”

  Then we heard a victory cheer. “We did it!” Stomp, stomp, stomp! Dust fell from the boards above us.

  I called to Vince, “Psst! Here they come!”

  Angus and Eva threw open the Trap with a bang. They appeared at the hole and called, “Who’s down there?”

  I answered them with a load roar and a growl. A second later Angus and Eva came running down the stairs into the shop.

  “We made it!” Eva said. “All the way up the scaffold!”

  “And in the hay door!” Angus shouted. “And here we go again!”

  They took lap after lap. I watched them turning redder and redder in the dry heat. “They could use a run under the hose,” I mumbled. “And maybe a sandwich.”

  “Hey, you know what?” Robert said. He set a wrench down and wiped his hands on a rag. “I say we all go for ice cream.”

  “Ice cream?” Vince came around the corner.

  “Come on. Let’s lock up. Just for an hour, Boss Man. Hallenrock Dairy is still open. Everybody should have a weekend. Or at least a couple of hours off on a Saturday.” Robert gave me a convincing sort of nod.

  “I’m with him.” Vince pointed at Robert with a socket wrench.

  “Have Angus and Eva even had lunch?” I asked Vince.

  He shrugged. “They were in the garden for a while.”

  “Yeah, but they’re not rabbits,” I said.

  “Bet they’re hotter than they are hungry.”

  “Come on!” Robert said again. “Angus and Eva will like this.”

  I looked at Vince. “Okay. We’ll take the tandem? We’ll pull the twins together?”

  “You’re on,” said Vince.

  On their next run through the shop, I caught Angus and Eva in my monster arms and told them, “We’re going to make you eat ice cream!” They ran squealing around the back of the barn to tell Lil.

  Big surprise: She decided to go with us. (I was a little sorry. I wanted points for taking Angus and Eva off her hands for a while.)

  “Dew, bring money from the tin. We’ll treat at the dairy,” she said.

  I locked up. We loaded up. We took the path toward the shore roads, figuring we’d catch the sea breeze. On our way through the yards we saw Mr. Spivey staring at the back of the barn. As we broke through the shade, Lil said, “I don’t think he loves my mural.”

  I said, “Well, then you’re doing good work!”

  We saw Officer Macey coming along Beach Road.

  “Hey, Officer Plainclothes!” Lil called out. “We’re heading out to Hallenrock Dairy. Want to come?”

  “Wish I could,” he said. “I’m on duty in less than an hour. Hallenrock is a little too far out in the wrong direction. But thanks!”

  The sea breeze felt awesome—a reminder of summer beach days when I had nothing to do but push my toes into the sand and keep my lunch away from the gulls. But I could not have relaxed into a day like that. Not while I was managing the Bike Barn. As we got closer to the dairy, I got a wicked case of shop fever. Kept feeling like I ought to be working, and like Officer Macey had said, I was heading in the wrong direction.

  A couple of scoops of raspberry swirl in a waffle cone and a cool patch of grass in the shade helped me chill. But I was the first one to snap my helmet back on. If I hadn’t been Vince’s tandem partner, I might have gone on ahead of my siblings. I set a fast pace for home. I took us up the connector to the highway. We flew down the ramp toward home.

  “Whee-hee! We’re on the high-a-w-a-a-y!” The twins cheered from their seats in the carrier, hands up in the wind.

  Vince and I began to pull away from Robert and Lil.

  “Hey, hey. Not so fast with the precious cargo!” Lil called.

  “Can’t go fast! Too much twin in the trunk!” I called. “But we’ll beat you home, for sure.”

  “Not by much!” Lil insisted. It was funny to look back and see her neck and neck with Robert.

  “Vince, you ready?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah.”

  We biked out. Best we could with the extra weight.

  I do a lot of things with my brother. Home stuff. School stuff. Bike-shop stuff. But there is no place on earth that we are better together than on the tandem. We had perfectly smooth road and wide-open space to travel. I had to laugh when I remembered Lil saying, “Dad always says the highway is fastest.” It was.

  “We should come out more often!” I shouted.

  “You say when!” Vince called back.

  It was true. He’d go anytime.

  “Soon!” I said. “Who knows how long the shortage will last? Ha! Picking it up now,” I called. “We are two with the machine!”

  24

  I AM NOT MAGICAL. THAT’D BE RIDICULOUS. BUT sometimes I can sense that something is up. This isn’t about my sharp hearing. This happens closer to my bones. By the time we got off the highway I just knew it; something was going to be different at home.

  The nanny goats were all up at the gate doing a nervous sort of dance. Everybody-to-the-left, now everybody-to-the-right. Something or somebody was around. Vince knew it too.

  “What’s going on?” he said. “And where are the dogs?”

  “I don’t know. Good-ness! Great-ness!” I called.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Greatness lift her head for just a second. Deaf, old Goodness couldn’t hear me. They were both bowing outside the Bike Barn door. Noses to the sill, haunches in the air. I clapped my hands. Greatness looked at me and wagged her tail. Goodness looked up and did the same. There was something way more interesting than me over there by the door.

  “Hey, Vince, get the twins out of the carrier, will you? I’m going to unlock the shop.”

  I ran into the house and grabbed the shop key. I came jogging, bound for the shop door. I figured I’d let Goodness and Greatness go inside. Quench their curiosity. But I changed my mind. I veered past the dogs and headed toward the back fence. Maybe the Spive had something to do with all the weirdness. Maybe he’d borrowed Gloria Cloud again.

  Oh no! What if he’s done something to Lil’s mural? Would he?

  I hustled. I looked back over my shoulder to see if the dogs had followed me. A voice rang out.

  “Watch it!”

  Too late. I ran my groin straight into the front wheel of a bicycle.

  Make that a copsicle.

  “Ugh! Runks!” I crumpled.

  “Whoa! Dewey!” Runks took several crazy hops to keep his bike from going over
. “Oh, terribly sorry. Ay-yi-yi! That has to be excruciating!”

  I groaned. “Y-you’re tell-in’ me-e-e…” Trails of pains shot up my core. I bent forward and leaned on the side of the barn. “Ugh…oh. Ugh.”

  “I’m glad I wasn’t going any faster,” Runks said. “Though I suppose it isn’t much consolation to you.” The dogs came. Wagging. Licking. Woofing. Runks patted them while I attempted to breathe normally. Vince and the twins arrived at the scene of my misery. Robert and Lil came right behind them.

  “Runks? What’s going on?” Lil asked. (I hoped he would not make some town-crier announcement about the details of our crash.) “Dewey, are you all right? You look like you’re about to get sick.”

  “Oh-h…” Robert spoke in a low growl. “I recognize that posture.”

  “Yes, I am afraid we had a…compromising collision,” Runks said. “Man versus wheel.”

  “Groin versus wheel,” said Vince.

  “Oh,” said Lil. “What a drag, hey, Dew?”

  Runks scratched his head. “Neither of us was looking. Amazing. It was so precise,” he said. “We probably couldn’t duplicate that if we tried.”

  “Oh-h.” I drew a difficult breath. “Let’s. Not. Ever. Try.”

  Runks set a hand on my shoulder. “All you can do is wait it out.”

  I gave him a nod and weathered another wave of shooters.

  Lil got right back to business. “Runks, why are you here? Did something happen?”

  “I’m not here in response to a call, if that’s what you mean,” Runks offered. “I was just hoping to find someone in the shop.”

  “Oh. Is Officer Macey with you?” She looked beyond him. “We saw him just a while ago. He said he was coming on duty.”

  “Officer Macey has been assigned a split shift today,” Runks said. “He comes on in an another hour or so. The Rocky Shores PD has made some changes. Perhaps you’ve seen the papers?” He sounded gloomy. “We’ve had a few robberies recently.”

  “No!” said Robert.

  “Like when our bikes got stole?” Eva asked.

  “Very much like that,” Runks told her. “Some…uh…items are missing from the police impound lot over on Dogtown Road,” he said. “That’s the holding space for larger unclaimed items.”

  “Larger unclaimed items?” Vince cocked his head.

  “Sure. Things like abandoned cars, runaway canoes, rowboats…”

  “Bikes,” I croaked.

  “Bingo!” said Runks. “We had twelve in our possession at one point. They’ve gone missing now, a few at a time.”

  “Oh my gosh…” Lil muttered.

  “Bikes,” I said again. I straightened up as much as I could. I turned and hobbled back to the Bike Barn door and shoved the key into the lock. The dogs were back to sniffing at the sill.

  Vince streamed past me, saying, “I’ll check the paddock.” I heard the fence creak as he vaulted over it.

  I jiggled the key, turned it hard, and the lock popped open. Robert and I rolled the door aside together. In went the dogs, sniffing and wagging. They scratched at the sill and seemed to find something edible along the bearing track. Inside the shop, I let my eyes adjust. Nothing seemed off to me. Vince pounded the paddock door from his side and I opened it.

  “Anything?” I asked.

  “If something is gone, I don’t know what it is.”

  “Same here,” I said. Robert shrugged in agreement. The lineup of bikes on the south wall looked undisturbed.

  “Did you think something would be amiss?” Runks asked.

  “Well,” I said. “Coming home, I just had this feeling….” I already sounded lame, so I went on. “We were gone for a while. We don’t usually do that. Then we got back and the animals were being weird. And just now, when you said there have been bike thefts, it’s just—”

  “Well, you have a lot of bikes to worry about!”

  “Yes. We do,” I said, and I caught Lil in a little eye roll.

  “Anyway, it appears that all is well,” Runks said. “When I saw the shop was closed, I took a quick lap around the place just to see if anyone was here, thus my coming around the barn like I did. Sorry again, Dewey. I hope that pain has subsided.” I gave him a thumbs-up. Runks went on. “But it’s funny, I was sure I heard someone somewhere nearby.”

  “Maybe just the neighbor….” Lil jabbed a thumb toward Mr. Spivey’s yard. “And you know we’re used to him, so don’t worry.”

  “Oh, by the way, Lilly Marriss.” Runks turned to face her. “Looks like something incredible is going up on that wall back there.”

  “In progress,” she said. “Or maybe in process. But thank you.”

  I caught a wave of guilt. I should really go out and see what she was up to. The compressor seemed to be resting lately. But she still had possession.

  Runks went on, “Please invite me to the unveiling.”

  “If there is an unveiling, Runks, you’ll be on the list, I promise,” said Lil. “So can we all agree that all the beasts around here got stirred up over nothing?” She turned to look all around the shop. It seemed she was right. Even the dogs had backed off from the sill. They stood looking up the stairs now.

  “Hey, mutts, we all know you’re not going up there.” I laughed at them. They wagged and kept licking their chops. My guess was that they’d found one of those wonderful things in the doorsill that dogs just love to eat. Ants. Mouse turds.

  “So, Runks, you wanted something from the shop?” I said.

  “Quite right.” He changed character and spoke out one side of his mouth. “I’m traveling without a spare,” he admitted. He shook his head in mock shame.

  “Shouldn’t ever happen,” I said in my deepest, most serious tone.

  “Mea culpa, mea culpa!” Runks said. “And Officer Macey would shame me for it too, if he knew. Preparedness seems to be a motto of his. Thing is, I swear I had a tube in my kit yesterday.” He paused. “Strangest thing. Be that as it may, I wondered if you’d sell me one. Or two?”

  I turned to the bench. I pulled two inner-tube boxes off the shelf. “Here you go,” I said.

  “Grand!” Runks said. “Now, I can either pay you cash out of my own pocket or go through proper procedures with a purchase order from the PD and bring you a check tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow is fine,” I said. I was being Dad again, in a distracted sort of way. Something was still bothering me. I stood there in the shop, puzzling. Looking back at the shelf with all the inner-tube boxes on it. I barely managed to say good-bye to Runks before Lil and the twins walked him out.

  “Everything cool, Boss Man?” Robert stood just behind me.

  “Yep. Yep. Everything is cool,” I said.

  The Boss Man is in control.

  Vince and I stayed in the shop after Robert left. We both wanted to finish up the jobs we had started. Then, of course, I got sidetracked tending to several pickups. Eventually, I found myself staring at the shelf again. This time, I had the inventory list in front of me.

  This does not match up.

  “Hey, Vince,” I said. “I’m pretty much doing all the blowouts that come in, right?”

  “What’s your question?” He sounded annoyed.

  “Have you been using any inner tubes?”

  “Nope.” He started to shake his head. “You can’t blame me for—”

  “No, wait, Vince. That’s not what I meant. In fact, I-I’m sorry for that stuff,” I said. My brother was looking right at me now. I came so close to telling him what I was thinking. Then I just couldn’t. I held up the inventory list and twisted the truth like a pretzel. “Th-this kind of explains it. Now that I’m keeping track,” I said. “We’re all set.”

  “Okay,” Vince said. He wore a sort of strange look on his face. Then again, I knew I was being weird, lying and all.

  “Hey, listen, I was thinking about what Runks told us. About that theft at the impound?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let’s just double-check ourselves w
hen we lock up. And let’s move all the bikes from the paddock in.”

  Vince gave me a sickish look. It was a big job.

  “I know, I know. We’ll cram ’em in here,” I said. “There’s room for a few more under the stairs. It’s just for peace of mind—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Vince. “I’ll drag them to the door. You find the space.”

  25

  I LAY ON MY BACK IN THE ATTIC ROOM. VINCE twitched in his sleep in his bed just a few feet away. I felt guilty for not telling him what I knew. If he told Lil—even accidentally—she’d think I’d somehow lost control of things in the Bike Barn. And I hadn’t. But we were being robbed—just a little. I was sure of it.

  It sounded crazy—robbed just a little. “And who does that?” I whispered in the dark. “Who steals from us just a little bit at a time?”

  The Spive. Not much of a mystery.

  And what’s a few bike parts between neighbors?

  I tried it on, but it didn’t have the same ring as when Dad said it.

  What did the Spive want with bike parts, anyway? As far as I knew he didn’t own a bike. Maybe he’s started hoarding, I thought. Maybe he sees bikes becoming valuable. Maybe he’s reselling. Maybe there’s an evil, bike-dealing Spive-cousin across town….

  And just when was he getting this done? Sure, there were times he’d spooked us by walking into the shop, like the day he wanted the mower. But wouldn’t we have seen him take something? Suddenly I thought of the money in the tin.

  “Stupid!” I said, and I hopped up in the night. I hustled on tiptoe down the stairs and grabbed the shop key from the hutch.

  “Goodness! Greatness!” I hissed to them. “Come on, dogs! Wanna go out? Once more before bedtime. I know you’ve got it in you!”

  Not four feet outside our door, Greatie’s ears stood up. She rumbled, then wagged. She barked. “What’s up, girl?” I asked. I looked at Goodness. He was sniffing the air. Suddenly both dogs bolted. They ran to the barn and crouched at the sill.

  “Not this again,” I moaned. Then the dogs turned and ran around the side of the barn. “Dogs! Hey, hey!” I called and whistled. I trotted after them but just for a few paces. It was dark, and I didn’t want to run into anything that might be—oh, say—the height of my lap again. I heard a few clanks and bumps at the back of the barn, then some rustling that seemed to whisper, bend and scurry, bend and scurry.