by David Yoo
“I don’t need the help,” she snapped, grabbing her flute back and heading in the opposite direction.
I watched her walk off. I couldn’t believe we were being forced to pretend to actually like a monster like that. Drew put a hand on my shoulder.
“Well, we tried,” he said.
“Give it time,” I said. “If there’s one thing I know about Sunny, it’s that she loves to have people drool all over her.”
“Gross!”
“It’s just a figure of speech.”
“I know it is, but I couldn’t help picturing it.”
I groaned. “Thanks a lot, now I’m picturing everyone drooling all over Sunny, too!”
“It’s a gross picture, right?”
“Maybe we should stop talking for a little while,” I said, squinting the image out.
Anytime we saw Sunny at school that day, we’d practically sprint at her, and in response she started dodging us whenever she saw us. It didn’t matter, the plan wasn’t working anyway. We made a big show of knowing her whenever we managed to catch up to her, but nobody seemed to even take notice. And meanwhile, for the first time I was realizing that Sunny might have been the best student, the president of all the clubs, and worshipped by all the teachers, but that was different from being popular. She was always heading off to class or her locker or the library between periods, never stopping to chat with friends. Nobody called her over as she marched to the library after seventh period, and I wondered if maybe it wasn’t just the Sweet brothers who weren’t friends with her.
By the end of the day I was sick of trying to act like I actually liked her, and at dinner Sunny started complaining about it to Mom and Dad.
“He’s following me everywhere,” she whined. “It’s annoying.”
“Your brother just wants to be near you in school,” Mom said, smiling at me.
I tried very hard not to throw up a little in my mouth and pretended she was right. I nodded, even though it made me feel gross to do it.
“It would be nice if my own sister liked to spend time with her brother,” I said.
“You’re a loser, though.”
“I’m a loser? The Sweet brothers hate you!”
“Of course they do—they’re nobodies!” She laughed. “They’re probably going to be in the eighth grade for the next ten years.”
I thought about it for a second.
“What about everyone else in school?” I asked. “How come I never see you hanging out with anyone between classes?”
Sunny glared at me.
“Your sister’s involved in so many clubs, not to mention so focused on studies, that I’m sure she doesn’t have time to loiter in the hallways between classes,” Mom suggested.
Sunny nodded, still glaring at me.
“You go ahead and be like the Sweet brothers, and I’ll be sure to visit the three of you at whatever gas station you work at in ten years,” she said.
“The odds of all of us working at the same gas station in ten years is—”
“Enough! Why do I even bother trying to eat anymore?” Dad suddenly shouted. He very carefully put his uneaten forkful of steak on the plate and stared at my mom. “Honey, are they too old to put up for adoption?”
Mom laughed.
“You signed up for this job, too, mister,” she said.
“No, I didn’t! When you asked about having kids, I suggested getting a dog.”
“Do you guys realize you’re talking out loud?” I asked them.
Chapter Nine
THE NEXT MORNING AT SCHOOL, Sunny suddenly started acting differently around us. She didn’t complain when Drew offered to carry her schoolbag to homeroom, and before second period she even showed up at my locker and asked if I’d bring her flute down to the band room for her. Before every period she found us and let us run errands for her: carrying her books, shutting her locker for her, sharpening pencils for her before class started . . . and it wasn’t until lunch that I realized what she was doing.
“Forget this,” I said, after me and Drew had raced down to the vending machine outside the cafeteria to buy her a bag of chips. “She’s not trying to be a decent sister, she’s just using us for slave labor.”
“What kind of a person would do such a thing?” Drew asked, his face all twisted up as if he’d bitten into an apple with a worm in it. “That’s so deceptive.”
We caught up to her in the hallway—and I made a big show of opening up the bag of chips right in front of her and eating a couple, then offering some to Drew, who chomped loudly right in front of her face.
“We’re eating your chips, what are you going to do about it?” Drew asked.
“You paid for them with your own money, so I’m totally fine with it,” she said, and headed into her class.
“It’s also kinda lame that she always has to have the last word on everything,” he added.
I sighed.
At lunch Drew and I were miserable. “I really want to get an ice cream, but I spent all my extra dough on those chips,” I whined.
“I don’t want to sound the alarm bells too early, but it might be time to start thinking about running away,” Drew suggested.
“I don’t think we’re there yet, but I’ll take your suggestion under consideration.”
“There goes another scheme down the drain. . . . I can’t believe this is happening to us,” he said. “Do you think we’re being punished for something?”
“You mean by God?” I asked. Drew nodded. “I don’t think so. We didn’t do anything wrong. And I go to church every Easter. That better count for something. Where’s this coming from, anyway?”
“We were popular last year. Maybe that’s why this is happening.”
“Being popular isn’t a crime. And we weren’t mean to people like they are to us. I was always nice to Carson, for example. Remember that time in fifth grade when I let him eat some of my Tater Tots at lunch?”
Drew’s eyes lit up.
“I remember that day,” he said. “He didn’t even ask, you just offered them to him totally out of the blue. You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know, I was being nice!” I said.
“So, what then? Is it just bad luck?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“I have to pee,” Drew said.
“Do you tell me that because you know it’s going to make me have to pee, too, or do you just really want me to know?”
Drew thought about it for a second.
“I guess a bit of both.”
I sighed. We ditched our lunch trays and went to the bathroom off the lobby. Of course, the Sweet brothers were standing by one of the sinks, filling it with wet paper towels.
“Hey, boys, we’ve been looking for you two!” Hank said.
“Do these guys even go to class?” I whispered to Drew.
“We really have to stop using this bathroom,” he whispered back, and I glared at him.
“Actually, I left my wallet in the cafeteria,” I announced, starting to back out.
“Oh darn, I did, too,” Drew said.
“Everyone else keeps them in their back pockets,” I told him.
“Yes, that does make more sense—oof,” Drew said, bumping into the wall as we headed for the door. “Let’s now go get our wallets and put them in our back pockets so in the future—”
“Hold it!” Hugh shouted.
We froze.
“Now come forward,” Hank said.
We did. It was like they had invisible remote controls for us or something. And then they gave us our very-first-ever atomic wedgies. The elastic band of my underwear actually snapped in half, and the Sweet brothers laughed.
“See you soon,” they said, high-fiving on the way out.
“You know, I’ve always been scared of getting a wedgie, but that didn’t really hurt at all, I have to admit,” Drew said.
“Why’s your voice so high all of a sudden?” I asked.
Drew shrugged. I stared at my ref
lection in the mirror as I tucked the elastic band back into my pants.
“What are we going to do about this, Peter?” he asked. “I mean, forget about becoming popular, I now just want to make it out of sixth grade alive.”
Next to the mirror was a poster for the talent show, being held that coming Friday. I’d gone the last two years because Sunny played her flute for the show. She won both times. Suddenly it dawned on me that I was staring at the solution to all our problems.
“Drew, I think I just figured out a way we could kill two birds with one stone.”
“What are you talking about?”
I looked at him.
“We’re going to win the talent show.”
I watched a smile slowly form on his face. It was like watching the sun rise.
“That’s a great idea!” Drew shouted, but then his smile faded. “What’s wrong?”
“Sunny always wins the talent show! No matter what we do, she’ll win, because she plays the flute like a pro.”
Drew twisted his mouth for a couple of seconds.
“Well, then maybe we can join her act and win the thing with her?”
“I told you I’m done trying to be nice to her!”
“What choice do we have?” he asked.
I didn’t say anything. Drew was right. Maybe Sunny wasn’t as popular as I’d assumed, but she was still the most important student in the school because she got the best grades, was the president of so many clubs, and won the talent show every year. To win it with her would only make everyone think we were important, too, which would at least be a step in the right direction.
After school Drew came over to my house and we went up to my bedroom, where I converted my bottle-rocket launcher back into a recorder. Then we went downstairs and snuck up on Sunny as she was practicing the flute. I started trying to play along with my recorder while Drew started hitting my old lunch box like it was a tambourine—it was really loud, and startled Sunny. Old bread crumbs from really good sandwiches from my past sprinkled out of the lunch box onto the carpet like snow.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked us.
“Oh man, this sounds great, why didn’t we think of this before?” Drew said, banging away at the lunch box. “We could probably get a record deal if we played for the right people.”
“You know, Sunny, Drew has a point there,” I said. “We should perform together at the talent show on Friday. I heard that talent scouts from Hollywood will be in the audience.”
“There is no chance we’ll play together,” she sniffed. “You guys are horrible.”
“What are you talking about?” I said, and started rocking out on my recorder again. Sunny rolled her eyes.
“Do you even know any other songs besides ‘Three Blind Mice?’” she asked.
I sighed. In order for her to need my help someday, I’d need to actually have something to offer her.
“I was thinking you could play a fancy version of it with us.”
“Leave me alone, you’re wasting my time,” she said, and we trudged out of the living room. We went over to Drew’s house and got online to the school’s website to sign up for the talent show, even though we didn’t even have an act for it, and that’s when we saw the Lost-and-Found Forum for the first time. At the top it read:
Have you lost something? Post an alert here in the official Fenwick Middle School Lost-and-Found Forum!
Below it there was already a half dozen posts from students.
Reply to: Heidi Markowitz
I lost my iPod this morning (Friday, September 7). It is a black 160GB with hard clear plastic case—either in the music room or on bus 17.
Email me if you have found my phone.
Reward offer!
And:
Reply to: Hank Sweet
My Notre Dame hat missing. If you find it, immediately return it or else. Hank Sweet.
“At least we haven’t lost anything in school,” Drew said.
“You’re a really positive person, you know that?” I told him.
He smiled at me.
“Well, I eat right,” he said.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I replied.
We tried to figure out what we could do for an act. It was kinda depressing to realize that, outside of collecting mica, we weren’t really that good at anything else.
I sighed.
“Isn’t there anything else we’re good at besides collecting?” I asked Drew.
“I have that magic set in my bedroom from a long time ago.”
“Now, there’s a start. Let’s check it out,” I said, trying to feel hopeful.
Unfortunately it was a basic kid’s set—just a bunch of stupid coin tricks and some colored scarves for beginner-level juggling.
“Coin tricks aren’t nearly exciting enough. Where’d you get this, anyway?”
“At the pawnshop.”
“Maybe they have advanced sets or something.”
We rode our bikes over to the pawnshop. The creepy owner was sitting behind the cash register, reading an issue of Guns & Ammo.
“Do you have any advanced magic sets?” I asked him. “Something that involves a lot of smoke and stuff? Or something that would cause a really huge but safe explosion?”
He led us to the back of the store, where there were two aisles full of magic stuff: a magician’s hat and wand, some used kids’ sets just like the one Drew already owned. I groaned. Drew noticed a weird jacket hanging from a hook at the end of the aisle.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“An authentic straitjacket from an old asylum,” the store owner said.
“What’s a straitjacket?” I asked.
“They keep mental patients in them so they don’t bite their arms off.”
“Yuck,” Drew said.
“But what the heck does that have to do with magic?” I asked. “Shouldn’t that be in the insane-asylum aisle?”
“It’s an old magic trick—Houdini used to escape from one hanging upside down. After two minutes you run the risk of getting brain damage.”
“Perfect!” I said. “I have a pretty big brain, so I can afford to lose plenty of brain cells. How much?”
“It’s for an adult, so it’s too big for you,” he said, hanging the jacket back on the rack.
“Even better,” I said. “That’ll make it easier to get out of.”
“We don’t do returns here. I don’t want your parents coming in here mad at me for selling you something you can’t use.”
“So you’re trying to talk us out of buying it?” Drew asked. “What kind of a salesman are you?”
The owner stared at us for a couple of seconds and realized we were dead serious. Then he took the straitjacket back down, and we followed him up to the register. Drew also bought the magician’s wand and hat, along with a red plastic cape from an incomplete, used Superman costume. We immediately brought our loot back to Corbett Canyon and spent an hour putting the straitjacket on each other. There were all these straps, but we figured out that if you kept it loose enough you could squirm out of it, eventually.
The rest of the week we went straight to Corbett Canyon after school each day to work on our act. Drew prepared his spiel as the magician, while I kept practicing getting out of the straitjacket on my own. I got good enough at it that I figured I could do it just as easily upside down. On Thursday afternoon we met with the janitor and he helped us set things up on the stage of the auditorium. The act would require that I use a harness (which the janitor had because he used it for cleaning the windows on the second floor of the school) tied to my feet so I could hang upside down. By the time Friday night rolled around, we were convinced that our act could beat Sunny’s boring flute performance and solve all of our problems.
Chapter Ten
THE AUDITORIUM AT SCHOOL WAS already packed when we showed up for the talent show Friday night. Everyone in school was there, along with everyone’
s parents. I could see my mom and dad in the third row, looking through the program. Sunny was up last, while we were the fourth act. I felt nervous peeking out at the packed audience and just wanted to get the act over with, but there was a delay when the third act—a seventh-grade girl in a pink tutu, couldn’t find her ballet shoes and ended up having to do the dance in her sneakers. At one point she tried to stand on her tippy toes and almost fell into the first row. When it was finally our turn, the janitor helped set up the act behind the closed curtains.
He’d secured a rope to the metal girder above the stage, and we positioned a ladder directly underneath it. I climbed up the ladder, sat on the top, and put on the straitjacket. Drew secured the straps, and then we attached the rope to the harness around my legs. When Drew was in position offstage, we gave the janitor the thumbs-up, and he cranked the curtain open. The crowd murmured as I waved at everyone from atop the ladder in the center of the stage. Drew walked out into the middle of the stage, wearing the cape and magician’s hat, waving the plastic wand in his right hand.
“People of Fenwick!” Drew shouted. “Many of you don’t know me and my partner Peter yet, because this is our first year at the middle school, but my name is Drew Newmark, and in addition to being best buddies with Peter Lee, who’s sitting right up there—hi, Peter!—in addition to being best friends, we’re also . . . practicing musicians!”
“Magicians,” I corrected him.
“Magicians!” Drew said. “Anyway, our hero is David Blaine. Growing up we were obsessed with his bootleg ‘street magic’ videos, and he inspired us to study all the masters. So today we’re going to re-create one of Houdini’s most famous acts. As you can see, Peter is trapped in a real straitjacket, which they use in mental asylums so the patients don’t bite their own arms off. On the count of three, Peter’s going to hang upside down from this girder and escape from this straitjacket, but it’s very risky. He’ll have to do it in under two minutes, because after that an upside-down human starts to lose brain cells, and he could black out and get serious brain damage.”
