Cheesie Mack Is Not a Genius or Anything

by Steve Cotler

  She nodded and took the coin.

  “This one”—I held out the no-S-VDB coin in my other hand—“has the same date, but it’s different, and it’s worth much, much less.”

  She looked back and forth from the coin in my hand to the one in hers.

  My eyes got watery. “They are both as old as your sister, and like your sister said, they’ll never die. You can sell the valuable one and—”

  Quit it! I said to myself, but it was too late. I plopped down on a sofa and felt tears on my cheeks.

  Ms. Prott sat down next to me. She didn’t say anything for a very long time. “I’ve been alive almost a century. I taught high school.

  I was a nurse in the war.” She handed me the tissues and touched my hand.

  “I’ve ridden on an elephant.

  And I’ve flown in a hot-air balloon.

  I’m old and frail, but I’m a good listener. Would you like to tell me what’s wrong?”

  So I told her everything. My words jumbled out so fast that she had to squint to keep up. But she listened silently. Her many quick movements disappeared. There was no fluttering or head nodding. She didn’t even smile. When I told her about Georgie’s not going to camp and me staying home to be with my best friend, she asked which camp and where it was. And when I told her that at first we were going to keep the S-VDB penny and give her the other one, but that I changed my mind once I realized that her house and stuff were old and that she needed the money, she smiled a little bit.

  I took a deep breath, plunked my head against the back of the sofa, wiped the last wetness out of my eyes, and ended with, “It looks like this will be the worst summer of my life.”

  She nodded once, then thought for a long time. Finally she asked, “How did you determine that the Lincoln Head cent was worth twenty-two hundred dollars?”

  I had stopped crying. “There’s this coin store on Main Street.”

  “That was very clever of you. Did you talk to Mr. Whelan?”

  How did she know? I nodded.

  “Do your friends call you Ronald?”

  “Cheesie,” I said softly. “Everyone calls me Cheesie.”

  “Cheesie it is.” She picked up a small book next to a telephone on the table next to her, looked in it, and then dialed a number. “Mr. Whelan? Yes. This is Glenora Jean Prott. Very well, thank you. Yes.” She looked at me. “I shall be sending a lad, Mr. Ronald Cheesie Mack, down to you with a coin I wish to sell. Give me your best price and credit my account. Yes, he’ll be along shortly.” She hung up the phone and turned to me. “Cheesie, I am a numismatist. Do you know what that means?”

  I nodded. “A coin collector.”

  She took a scrapbook sort of thing off a shelf next to her and put it in my lap. There were about ten other books just like it on the shelf. She opened it. It was a collection of Lincoln Head cents with every hole filled.

  “My sister sent me that coin for two reasons. I told you only the emotional one. The other reason was that I needed it to complete my collection. When I lost it, I purchased another to replace it.” She pointed at a coin with “1909-S VDB” printed under it, then held the one we found right next to it.

  “But I think I’d prefer the coin my sister sent me.” She removed the 1909-S VDB coin from her coin book and replaced it with the one from Georgie’s basement.

  She reached for my hand and put the penny from the coin book in my palm next to the three-dollar coin. Her skin was thin and dry and very soft.

  “You did a very good thing today, Mr. Cheesie Mack. Now, do me a favor and take that coin to Mr. Whelan, and then go find Mr. Sinkoff and convince him to be friends again.”

  I shook my head. “He’s too mad at me.”

  “That will change sooner than you think.”

  I shook my head harder.

  Her on-off-on-off smile returned and she nodded her head several times. “Best friends are forever. I am convinced of it.”

  She walked with me to the front door. I was so depressed that without even trying, I walked just as slowly as she did. As she opened the door, she put a hand on my shoulder. “There’s one thing more, Mr. Cheesie Mack. I am not poor. Actually, I am quite rich. My mother left me this home and quite an ample sum of money that I have wisely invested. You needn’t worry about me.”

  Then she gave me a hug. She smelled like baby powder and flowers.

  I walked outside, stuck the coins in my pocket, and trudged to my bike. I had left it plopped on the sidewalk, but someone had picked it up and propped it against the fence.

  “Cheesie?”

  I turned around. Georgie was straddling his bike.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  I didn’t know what to say. “Okay, I guess.”

  There was a long pause. I didn’t look at Georgie, and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t looking at me. Finally he said, “Umm, did you give her the penny?”

  “Uh-huh. She had another just like it. She wants me to sell that one for her.”

  There was another long pause. There didn’t seem to be anything else for either of us to say.

  Georgie broke the silence. “Yeah, well, I’ve been riding around thinking, and I think you were right and I was wrong, and I’m sorry I made fun of how much your ears stick out.”

  “You didn’t make fun of my ears.”

  “I know, but I thought about them.” He reached out and flicked my ear and grinned.

  I grinned back, and we rode to Mr. Whelan’s and gave him the coin, and we were best friends again. Maybe, like Ms. Prott said, “forever.”

  On the way home, I told Georgie everything that happened while I was inside The Toad.

  (I’ve changed my mind. Even though it’s Ms. Prott’s house and not haunted, it still seems like The Toad to me.)

  He was really surprised when I told him that Ms. Prott was rich.

  “Look, I apologized and I meant it, but I think it stinks that she didn’t give us even a tiny reward.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. “We still have the other coin as a souvenir.”

  “Yippee. It’s worth three bucks. Big shmeal.”

  “We did the right thing, Georgie.”

  He shrugged. “I know. But I can still be a little bit angry.”

  I gave him a super-stern look. “If you’re angry, I’m irritated.”

  “If you’re irritated, I’m aggravated.”

  “If you’re aggravated, I’m infuriated.”

  “If you’re infuriated, I’m transpaxulated,” Georgie said.

  I smiled and gave Georgie a thumbs-up sign. This is another game he and I play. The rule is that you have to use a bigger or harder word each time. Since I have a larger vocabulary, Georgie mostly wins the game by making up a super-big word.

  (There’s a word game kind of like this on my website.)

  When we got back to my house for lunch, Goon was reading a book, Granpa was watching golf on TV (he has never played, but he thinks he knows exactly what the players should do at each hole), and Mom was in Dad’s office doing something with his computer. I made BLART sandwiches for Georgie and me, and a BLT for Mom. I was feeling so good, I even made a sandwich for Goon. Granpa likes to make his own lunch.

  While I was pouring drinks, I had an idea. “Georgie, let’s build a tree house this summer.”

  “We did that two summers ago.”

  “That was just some planks nailed to a branch, and it was only ten feet up. I’m talking about walls and a roof and building it in the tree outside your attic window with an extension cord for electricity. We could rig up a pulley to get the boards and stuff up there. And nail about thirty boards onto the trunk to make a ladder.”

  It was a great plan. We were both grinning when I set Goon’s sandwich down next to her.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “A LART sandwich.”

  “For what?”

  “For you.”

  “Why?”

  “Just because.”

  “Don’t
expect me to make one for you tomorrow just because.”

  I shrugged and walked away.

  “But thanks anyway,” Goon said to my back as I carried Mom’s sandwich into Dad’s office.

  Georgie took a bite of his BLART while he was following me and had to pull his plate up to his face to catch the drippiness that glorped out on his face and everywhere else. “For that tree house, my dad has some old rug pieces in the garage,” he said. “We could nail those down and bring up sleeping bags and my TV and play video—” He didn’t finish his sentence because he took another super-dribbly bite.

  Mom seemed very frustrated with her computer stuff.

  “I wish your father kept better track of the checks he writes. Hey, thanks for the sandwich.” She took a bite. “How did it go with the lady you were helping?”

  “Huh?”

  “You had to return an envelope?”

  “Oh, that. Fine.”

  “Actually, she called a little while ago. Found our number in the book. She’d like you boys to do some yard work this weekend.”

  “Yard work?”

  “Sure. Cut the grass, weeding … jobs like that.”

  Georgie looked confused. I am completely sure that I did, too.

  “You are helping her, aren’t you? Ms. Prott, right?” Mom continued.

  “Well, kind of, I guess. We were. I mean, we did.”

  “She’d like you to come over every week, starting this weekend. And in the winter, she’d like you to shovel her walks.”

  Georgie’s lips and chin were white with ranch dressing. “Is she going to pay us for our slave labor?”

  “Me too,” I murbled into my sandwich.

  Mom dipped her BLT into some of the ranch dressing on my plate and took a bite. “She is. In fact, she said she’d like to pay you for the whole next year in advance. And she understands that you won’t be able to work during the summer when you two are away.”

  Both Georgie and I had sandwiches poised in midair. I had just taken a huge chomp, but I was too confused to chew.

  “Away? Huh?” I grunted through the BLART bite.

  “Ms. Prott told me what you boys did about that coin.” Mom took another bite of her sandwich and made us wait while she chewed and chewed and finally swallowed. “I am so proud of you both. I’ve already told your father, Georgie. Ms. Prott has given you a reward. She’s paid for your camp this summer!”

  We screamed.

  We jumped.

  We dropped our sandwiches on the rug and made a huge BLART mess.

  Mom didn’t care.

  The End

  After the Story Is Over

  I lied.

  About two million pages ago, I explained that I wrote Chapter 0 last. But then lots of things happened in the summer, so I am writing this chapter absolutely last.

  I promise.

  A chapter like this is called an epilogue, but that is not a word kids use very often. It means the place where you put the moral of the story or what happens after the story ends. So here goes.

  Three weeks after we dropped our sandwiches, two weeks after the pizza party, and one week after we did Ms. Prott’s yard work—it was easy—Georgie and I were on the bus with all our old friends and a bunch of maybe new ones. We were out of Massachusetts, past New Hampshire, and on the Maine Turnpike heading north to what would become the greatest summer camp experience of our lives.

  Here’s what happened at camp:

  Anticipation

  Disaster

  A Big Decision

  Big Problems

  Amazingly Great Fun

  Huge Disaster that culminated (This is the last big word in this book. It means “ended.”) in …

  A Surprise Conclusion that even I was amazed at … and I was there!

  It’s all in my next book, which I’m going to begin writing immediately after I finish this epilogue and go to the bathroom. I haven’t figured out what the title will be (because I haven’t written the book yet), but by the time you read this, the title will be on my website.

  This really is the last chapter of this book. If you liked it, please tell your friends because Mom says if lots of people buy my books:

  I’ll have enough money to pay for college on my own.

  My parents can retire.

  Mom can grow her hair long and do pottery like she always wanted to.

  Dad might finally fix up his motorcycle (which has been broken in our basement since before I was born and has a totally excellent sidecar that I’ve never ridden in), so that he and Mom could travel together from Alaska to the bottom of South America before they get too old for their own adventures.

  BTW, Mrs. Crespo convinced Georgie and Lana Shen to combine their pizza parties so no one would be left out, so with eighty dollars to spend, Georgie was able to have his pizza-eating contest after all, and Lana Shen tried to sit next to me, but I got a bellyache from eating too fast or something, so I sort of stood behind Georgie and watched him eat eight slices and win.

  Double-BTW, Georgie and I did not build a tree house. We did not have time.

  Triple-BTW, I never did figure out about the mysterious Eureka word. I think it had something to do with Eureka Avenue, but why was it dented into the paper that was wrapped around the 1909-S VDB Lincoln cent and the heart necklace? I guess I could ask Glenora Jean Prott, but I’d rather ask you. If you have a theory, please go to my website and tell me.

  And that’s what happened at the end of fifth grade.

  So … finally … at last … and in conclusion, Cheesie Mack Is Not a Genius or Anything culminates with this epilogue.

  This is the third-to-last sentence.

  I hope you liked this book.

  Go to my website.

  Signed:

  Ronald “Cheesie” Mack (age 11 years … yesterday!*) CheesieMack.com

  The Very End

  (but keep reading anyway)

  *If you want to know about my birthday party (super cool and very different), go to the birthday page on my website. And if your birthday was super cool and very different, tell me about it.

  This Is Not a Chapter.

  Visit CheesieMack.com If …

  1. You liked this book … or if you didn’t … or whatever.

  2. You want to tell me your grandparent nicknames.

  3. You know any countries with money that doesn’t break into hundredths.

  4. You have an idea what it will cost to mail a letter fifty years from now.

  5. You have an image of a cool stamp and a clever, weird, or funny caption to go with it.

  6. You know anything about frog and toad leg lengths.

  7. You have any excellent rodent jokes to add to my collection.

  8. You’ve seen a vampire or, even better, been bitten by one.

  9. You want the answer to my “eighty-three cents in four coins” puzzle.

  10. You know any cool words that sound like what they mean.

  11. You want to know which three words skivolvunged is a combo of.

  12. You’d like to vote for your favorite food.

  13. You want to see how to toss things over your head backward with your toes.

  14. You know any other names for sow bugs. Do not eat one!

  15. You have an idea what the evidence in Goon’s pocket was.

  16. You want to read Glenn’s “a half of a time” explanation.

  17. You’ve got another way to determine if Glenora Jean Prott was a Ms. or a Mrs.

  18. You want to see my and Georgie’s junk food presentation.

  19. You want to see pictures of the six pennies minted in 1909.

  20. You want to play my and Georgie’s Bigger-Word game.

  21. You want to know the title of my next book.

  22. You know why Eureka was dented into the paper in the envelope.

  23. You want to know about my birthday or tell me about yours … or just say hi. I hope you do!

  Acknowledgments

  While writing this
book, Cheesie got a lot of guidance from two new best friends, agent Dan Lazar and editor Jim Thomas, and one best friend he’s known all his life, author Julia Quinn. He is very grateful for their help.

  is a retired Little League catcher who’s also been a shoe salesman, telecom scientist, singer-songwriter, Apollo 1 computer programmer, Hollywood screenwriter, Harvard Business School MBA, investment banker, and door-to-door egg man. He lives with his wife and writes in Sonoma County in Northern California’s wine country. He thinks he is and always will be eleven years old.

  has illustrated twenty-two children’s books, including Jon Scieszka’s Time Warp Trio series, Louis Sachar’s Wayside School series, and Betty Hicks’s Gym Shorts series. Adam also illustrates picture books, and his animation “Fast Food” is in the permanent new-media collection of SFMOMA. When he’s not drawing, Adam enjoys cooking, playing drums, and surfing in the cold Pacific waters. You can see more of his work at AdamMcCauley.com.

  Visit Cheesie online at CheesieMack.com.

  Visit Steve at SteveCotler.com.