by Steve Cotler
I had just righted my bike when that police car passed us going back toward The Haunted Toad. Georgie spun his bike around, straddled it, and looked at the car. About a second later, I did, too.
The squad car continued until it was just about even with The Haunted Toad, then stopped in the middle of the street.
“What’s he doing?” I wondered out loud.
“Come on!” Georgie said, riding away.
Before I could follow, a woman (G. J. Prott?) stepped onto the sidewalk and waved her arms at the police car. When she pointed in our direction, it was as if that arm froze me. I couldn’t move.
The police car U-turned and drove up right next to me. The policeman stared without speaking. He looked angry or mean or both. He turned toward Georgie, who was two houses away, stuck an arm out the patrol car’s window, and motioned. Georgie rode back and stopped next to me.
When the policeman finally spoke, his voice was scratchy and odd. “I know you. I know both of you.”
I, Ronal Dwellerson, cannot remember our capture. I now think it was a witfog spell that overcame us. We had been completely unprepared, standing beside our wheelers, unarmed and unarmored, surprised by one of Peezoff Fizzur’s black four-rollers … and then there was nothing … until the dark became more than just blackness, and Geo and I, tethered by metal chains, were stumbling over the uneven stone floor, pulled by a massive horned creature.
In the smoky light of rimtorches, we could see only the rock tunnel walls and the hide of the monster’s back, matted and marred with what must have been dried blood and the knotted scars of old wounds. He stopped at a heavy wooden door and pushed it open, revealing a very small, very damp room. Then he turned to face us. A thick brass spiral sharpened at both ends hung from his belt, and a long thread of snot from his nose.
“I know you,” he said in a reedy voice so wrong. “I know both of you.”
*
Remember I wrote Chapter 4α in science-fiction style? Well, just when I started to write about the policeman and me and Georgie, my sister, in her room with one of her friends, began to blah-blah-blah way too loudly about why Harry Potter was better than Narnia and Frodo. So I decided to write what happened to me and Georgie as if we were living in Middle Earth or Narnwarts. My dad helped me with some of the sentences.
I think Ronal Dwellerson is a very cool name. And maybe Georgie would like to be called Geo. I’m going to ask him.
Anyway, you get the idea. And that’s why this is Chapter 8§.
(I don’t know what that squiggle is. I just found it on my computer and decided it looked old and magical.)
Maybe someday I’ll write a fantasy book.
Busted by the Cops
I am sure you have heard this: If you fall off a cliff and are plunging toward the jagged rocks below, your whole life will flash through your mind in the split second before you die.
Well, that’s sort of what happened to me in the split second after the policeman spoke. Here’s what went through my mind:
I want to pet my dog. (Makes sense. I love Deeb. But why did I think of this first?)
Even after I was forced to hold Mrs. Crespo’s hand at graduation, now I’m going to miss my graduation party. (Makes sense. I really wanted to go.)
In first grade I wet my pants at recess once, and my teacher never told my mother. (I don’t know why I thought of this, and it’s a little embarrassing, but it really flashed through my mind, so I won’t leave it out.)
E-I-E-I-O. (What was this all about? It even had the music to it. Sometimes I don’t understand how my mind works.)
Point Battle. Go to jail. GAME OVER. Goon wins. (After all the other thoughts evaporated, this was all that was left … and it was really loud.)
The policeman got out of his car and walked toward us. He was tall and very big, like a football player. He had a gun in a holster on his belt. The belt had lots of gadgets and bullets and stuff on it. He had a badge on his chest and a name tag that said “Crompton.” He looked at Georgie for a long time.
“Either of you boys …” He paused and looked at me with hard, staring eyes. “Know anything about what happened …” He turned his head toward Georgie, but his eyes stayed on me. “Back there?” He pointed very slowly toward The Haunted Toad.
I looked back up the road toward the house. The woman was still there, staring back. I looked at Georgie. His eyebrows were waggling up and down. I knew that if I didn’t speak, Georgie would start talking, and when he did, he’d blab everything. So I started talking first.
“We didn’t really do anything wrong. I mean, okay, maybe we did. I don’t know all the laws. You probably do, being a police officer and stuff. But we had this note to deliver, and we didn’t want to bother the person who lived there, so we, I mean I—Georgie didn’t because he was holding my bike—went across The Haunted Toad’s lawn. That’s what we call that old green house, not because we think it’s actually haunted or it’s a toad or anything like that. We just think that’s what it looks like. And I know I didn’t ruin or break anything. Okay, maybe a branch of a bush—I got my shirt caught, and it was a little branch. Really little. But we had this note to deliv—”
It was at this point I realized that I was doing exactly what I wanted to keep Georgie from doing. So I shut up.
The policeman was an excellent starer.
Finally he said, “You’re Cal Mack’s son, aren’t you?”
How did he know? I gulped, then nodded.
“And you.” He turned to Georgie. “You’re Ben Sinkoff’s boy, right?”
Georgie’s nod was so small, the policeman just kept staring until Georgie nodded a second time, much bigger.
“Why don’t you two just ride your bikes back up the block and park in front of that green house? I’ll be right behind you.”
We rode very slowly. The police car followed very slowly.
“We’re going to jail,” Georgie whispered loudly.
I swallowed really hard. My knees were shaking all by themselves. “How does he know who we are?”
As we approached The Haunted Toad, the woman on the sidewalk never took her eyes off us.
I whispered, “She must be G. J. Prott.”
We parked our bikes and stood next to them. The woman looked really mad, but she didn’t say anything until Officer Crompton got out of the police car and walked over. Then she began waving her arms every which way and bawling us out. “Thispolicemanjusthappenedtobedrivingbyandsuchamesswhatgivesyoutwotroublemakersmygoodness?”
She was so upset that her words all ran together, and I had no idea what she was talking about. She was waving one arm and pointing with the other at the tipped-over recycling barrel. Then she spun around and pointed at the white house next to The Haunted Toad and said, “TenyearsI’velivedherepeacefulneighborhoodthisismytrashcansodisgracefulandifyouthinkI’mgoingtowellyou’rewrong.”
I looked at the house she was pointing toward. I was completely confused. Then suddenly it hit me.
I started grinning. Georgie looked at me like I was crazy. Then I burst out laughing.
The lady stopped waving her arms.
Officer Crompton’s stern look got even sterner.
“We are sooooo,” I managed to croak through my laughter, “sorry.” I started bouncing on the balls of my feet. This lady wasn’t G. J. Prott! She was G. J. Prott’s next-door neighbor, and Georgie and I were guilty of littering!
Guffawing (there’s that word again!) and choking, I grabbed Georgie and pulled him over to the tipped trash barrel and its scattered pile of bottles and cans. I was hooting and ha-hooing as I picked up the barrel. I was hey-harring and ho-heeing as I grabbed an empty wine bottle and a couple of crushed soda cans and tossed them in. Then Georgie got the idea and bounded into action. He snatched up wine bottles in both hands, stood, spun, and did a jumping double-stuff into the barrel. We became bathing-suited zoom chucklers.
(I just made that up, but I’m sure you know what I mean.)
I
t took us no time at all to pick up everything except the bottles that had broken into lots of glass pieces.
The policeman hadn’t moved or said a word while we were cleaning up. “Don’ttouch,” the woman warned. “I’llgetabroom.”
“We are so sorry,” I repeated, this time without giggling. I turned to Officer Crompton. “May we leave? We have to get to our graduation party.”
He nodded.
I said, “May I ask you a question?”
The policeman stared.
“How do you know who we are?”
“I know every kid in Gloucester,” he said with a thin smile. “So watch yourself.”
Officer Crompton then pointed to the lady’s house and The Haunted Toad and said, “No more trash can problems. No more notes. I want you two boys to stay away from these houses, you hear?”
Georgie and I nodded seriously, and the policeman walked back toward his car. As we got on our bikes, I looked back at The Haunted Toad. The note I had stuck in the door was gone!
Class Party Trickery
All the other fifth graders were already at school having fun when we arrived. The playground had been transformed into a water park … kind of. Two of the sprinklers were on, a big waterslide had been set up, and there was a huge Slip ’N Slide mat on the hill by the side fence. Everybody was wet and almost everybody was yelling or squealing.
As we walked through the gate, two boys in our class heaved water balloons at us. They missed, and Ms. Higgins, our mostly terrific teacher, warned them she was going to be setting up the dessert table, and it was off-limits to water balloons. “So cool it right now!” Goon and her supposed boyfriend Kevin Welch, whom I do not like, were sitting at the table. I ignored them and walked toward the playground.
About one minute later, nearly all the boys and a few of the girls were gathered around us listening to how Georgie and I were almost just arrested for littering. Georgie waved his arms all around like G. J. Prott’s neighbor lady while I told the story. Everybody seemed shocked when we told them that Officer Crompton knows every kid in town by sight, except for Glenn Philips, who said that with over four thousand kids in Gloucester schools, “Such a feat of memory is entirely unlikely.” Then Mrs. Crespo told Georgie and me to get our tickets for the drawing because the prize would be forty dollars’ worth of pizza and stuff at the best pizza place in town.
We went over to the dessert table, where Ms. Higgins was putting out the goodies. Kevin and Goon sat at the end. He was holding the roll of red tickets for the party’s prize drawing. She was just sitting. He tore off two tickets, removed our stubs and set them on the table, and handed our tickets to us.
My number was 05554. Georgie looked at his ticket, got excited, and then stuck it in my face and pointed at the number. It was one more than mine, and he was excited about all the fives. He showed it to Kevin and hooted.
Kevin said, “Don’t get all bonko. You’re gonna lose.”
“Maybe not, maybe not.” Georgie grinned. “I’m very lucky, and this is a very lucky number.”
“Not today, you’re not,” Kevin said. He looked at Goon, who nodded, made a big L with her thumb and pointer finger, and said, “Loser.”
Georgie is not afraid of bigger kids. He glared at Kevin.
Kevin sneered a grinning sneer and picked up our two ticket stubs. He handed them to Goon, who made a big show of stuffing them through the slot in the lid of the jar that held all the other stubs for the drawing, but I saw what she really did.
Yeah, I saw what she did, and I thought about the Point Battle and how this might be my big chance. I thought about this for a few seconds, but because of all the fun going on, I did not think about it again for the next ninety minutes. Here’s what I did instead:
I ran around like a lunatic. No one could catch me. Lana Shen is the only kid who is faster than I am, but she didn’t even try.
I ate three colossal scoops of ice cream on one cone—brown cow, double fudge, and mint chip. There were six different kinds to choose from. You can probably guess that I love chocolate.
I did an awesomely dangerous trick that ended with a terrific face-plant in the mud. Everyone cheered! Ms. Higgins commanded me not to do it again.
I ate five strings of red licorice in less than one minute. Georgie dared me. I dared him back, and he ate nine and almost threw up!
I took a huge running start, then scoogled (this is my made-up word … it is a combination of scoot and wiggle) on the Slip ’N Slide and skivolvunged butt-first into the dirt, which was actually mud. (Can you guess what skivolvunged is a three-way combo of? The answer is on my website.)
I ate one bite of a homemade, low-fat, low-sugar, organic oatmeal-raisin-carob cookie that Ms. Higgins made. IMO the real ingredients were cat litter, library paste, wood chunks, and rabbit pellets, so I fed the rest to Mrs. Crespo’s pug dog, who is so ugly he is cute.
I invented a game that almost the whole class played. I named it Playground Marco Polo, and it’s just like in a swimming pool except everyone bumps around on their knees. It doesn’t have to be in mud, but ours was.
I split two double-stick Popsicles—one orange and one green—with Georgie. The combination turned our tongues brown.
I had as much fun as any kid in the world could possibly have in ninety minutes on a warm, sunny June day on a sopping-wet public school playground in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
Then Ms. Higgins called out for everyone to gather for the prize drawing. Mrs. Crespo stood smiling as Goon and Kevin handed her the jar of ticket stubs. As soon as I saw the jar, I instantly knew what I was going to do. I grabbed Georgie’s shoulder and whispered, “Today, at our graduation, my sister tattled on us. Sure, we were guilty in the Mouse Plot, but that’s not the point. She ratted on us and almost got us Partially Expelled. But now we get our revenge.”
Georgie had no idea what I was planning to do, but he grinned anyway. He’s my best friend.
“Boys and girls,” Mrs. Crespo announced, “it’s time for the prize drawing. Get your tickets.” Everybody ran to their backpacks, which is where we were told to stash our tickets during the water party.
Alex Welch pulled his ticket out of his bathing suit pocket and whined, “I can’t read my number. It’s all soggy.” Kevin laughed at his little brother and called him a dope. Ms. Higgins patted Alex on the head.
Alex rewhined, “I need another ticket.”
Ms. Higgins gave Alex a stop-the-whining face, and he shut up.
“Give me yours,” I said softly to Georgie.
“Why?” he whispered back, holding out his ticket.
“Just watch,” I said, taking it from him.
Mrs. Crespo, smiling broadly and standing tall—which for her is still very, very short—proclaimed, “I shall now, after a proper shaking to assure random mixing …” She shook the jar of stubs. “… draw out a single ticket.” She unscrewed the lid. “And we shall then have a winner of the forty-dollar pizza party, to which I hope I will be invited, because I do like pizza so very much.”
I read somewhere that pizza is the favorite food of American kids. I don’t know if that is actually true. Whenever I travel, I see way more hamburger signs than pizza signs. But pizza is my personal favorite. If you want to vote on your favorite food, please go to my website—CheesieMack.com—and let me know your opinion.
Mrs. Crespo held up the jar of ticket stubs and started to reach in for a ticket, but I jumped forward and interrupted. “Mrs. Crespo! Before you draw a winner, I have a question.”
She raised her eyebrows in a yes-what-is-it way.
“Is this supposed to be a fair and honest drawing?” I asked.
She looked surprised. “Of course.”
I walked toward her. “And if you found out that someone had cheated, would the cheater be punished?”
“Certainly.”
“And what if the cheater was someone you had put your trust in, someone who abused that trust?” I was now standing near the dessert table,
right next to Goon.
“The punishment would be severe.” She had now set the jar back on the dessert table. “Do you have something to tell me, Ronald?”
“Yes. Yes, I do. Here are the tickets that Kevin Welch and my sister gave to me and Georgie when we got here.” I held our bright red tickets up for everyone to see. “In order for this to be fair and honest, the people who gave us these tickets would have put our stubs in that jar with all the other stubs. Right?”
Mrs. Crespo looked impatient.
“But my sister and her accomplice, Kevin Welch, have purposely and cheatingly made certain that Georgie and I would not have the tiniest chance of winning by hiding our stubs in her pocket!”
If I have done a good job of describing, you will realize that this moment was like a scene from one of those television shows where the good-guy lawyer, Mr. R. Cheshire MacAronie, Esq., has just sprung a clever trap on the villains, the master criminal known as Madame Goon and her muscle-bound sidekick, Kevin the Welcher. As a result of MacAronie’s superb cunning, the malevolent (muh-LEH-voh-lent, which means “really evil”) villains are trapped, caught, pinned, and exposed in front of the entire courtroom of witnesses—in this case, my fifth-grade class, my teacher, and my principal.
Mrs. Crespo turned to my sister. “June?”
“My brother is an idiot. I did no such thing.”
“I saw her do it,” I said.
“I don’t have your stupid stubs. Idiot.”
“That’s enough, June. I’ll handle this.” Mrs. Crespo began tapping her fingers together. Tapping fingers meant, you remember, that guilt was already decided and punishment was coming. I was doomed. This would be a big loss in the Point Battle. Big. My face felt hot. Everyone was looking at me.
“After this morning’s events—you do recall the incident I am referring to?—I thought we had an understanding about your behavior, Ronald. But it appears that I was wrong. I shall have to—”
Suddenly I blurted out, “Empty her pockets!” And then I yelled, “MAKE HER EMPTY HER POCKETS!”
