by Jim Benton
“Looks like your dad didn’t lift a finger to help you,” she grumbled. “Figures.”
“No, Mom,” he said. “Dad did most of this.”
“Ha! Right,” she scoffed. “You can go outside for a while. Stay out front where you can hear us when we call,” she said. And Jack was down the stairs and out the door before she could change her mind.
Maggie was outside playing catch with her brother.
“Did it work?” she asked.
“Did what work?” Sean asked.
“Yeah. It was pretty amazing,” Jack said, ignoring Sean.
“What was amazing?” Sean demanded.
“How do you think Mike’s doing?” Maggie asked, also ignoring Sean, who was beginning to squirm with frustration.
“What is Mike doing?!” Sean yelled, prompting his mother to stick her head out the door.
“Sean! Be quiet! Why are you yelling? Maggie, why is he yelling?”
“I think Sean went in his pants,” she said. “Want me to change him?”
“Sean!” Maggie’s mom scolded. “Get in here!”
Jack and Maggie walked down to Mike’s house, barely hearing Sean’s screaming protests behind them. They stopped in front of the front window and watched Mike and his dad playing a video game inside. The two of them were laughing and jumping around, and the sight made Jack and Maggie giggle.
“Looks like it worked,” Jack said. “What about you? How did you do?”
“I’m testing it tomorrow morning,” she said, and the two of them could hear her mom yelling at Sean from inside her house, two doors down. “Wish me luck.”
* * *
The next morning, Maggie rolled out of bed and looked in the mirror. Every morning when she woke up, her hair was a spectacular swirling nest of auburn chaos. Most mornings, it would not be hard to imagine that a strong wind had blown bats into her room during the night, which, becoming entangled in her hair, spent hours and hours trying frantically to free themselves.
This morning was no exception, but just to make sure, she shook her head violently and made certain that it was the worst it had ever been. It was the only way to really test their strategies to defeat the book.
She looked at the old photo she held in her hand, and glanced over a page of notes she had made.
“Stop the fight before it starts,” she whispered to herself, and walked down the stairs.
As she came around the corner, she saw her mom’s mouth drop open, ready to go off on her about her hair. But Maggie was prepared and got off the first shot.
“Is this you in this picture?” Maggie said with a big smile. “You look like a model.”
Her mom’s mouth clamped shut with a soft popping sound.
“I love how your hair is so untamed and free. You look like some sort of carefree young socialite out on her family’s yacht.”
Her mom grinned and looked at the photograph. “That’s from when your dad and I first met. I was hardly a model, Mags.”
“Were you out on a yacht? Is that the ocean in the background?”
“That’s old Skunk Pond,” she said tenderly, her eyes filled with memories of youthful romance. “They drained it years ago after all those dogs got malaria,” she said, still smiling sweetly.
She tilted her head and touched her fingertips to her lips gently. She looked like she was a million miles away.
“I want to look just like you did, Mom,” Maggie said. “I love that young, breezy, young, carefree, young look you have here. I love how your hair goes where it likes and does what it wants. That’s some young-looking hair you have there, Mom.”
Maggie’s mom looked at her and beamed. She hugged her close and laughed.
“Carefree hair, huh?” she said, and Maggie held her breath for a second, afraid that her mom had seen through the strategy. “Yeah, okay,” she said. “We’ll have to run a brush through this a couple times, but I know what you mean, Mags. You want it breezy.”
And after a very short and very lighthearted hair-brushing session, Maggie’s mom turned her loose, with her hair less fussed-over than she could ever remember.
She smiled, stuck her tongue out at Sean, and strolled out into the warm summer morning. Jack and Mike were already standing in Mike’s driveway and she strode happily to meet them.
The three of them looked at one another and laughed hysterically.
“The book,” Maggie said. “It’s real.”
Sometimes summer days roll past like a thunderous roller coaster, clattering and shaking with screaming howls of laughter exploding from the wild-eyed riders.
And sometimes summer days roll past like a dirty, underinflated little beach ball, wobbling and wiggling and then coming to a stop on its plastic nozzle, which somebody neglected to stuff up inside it.
And some days—some very special days—are like that roller coaster, but now you own the roller coaster, and you own the amusement park, and everybody in the park works for you.
The week had been one of those days after another. They had studied the book carefully, even memorized parts of it, and had discovered that by knowing what the book recommended to the parents, they could construct counterstrategies that would permit them to do almost anything they wanted.
Maggie was brushing her hair only when she felt like it and watching whatever she wanted on TV. Mike was playing video games for hours at a time, and sometimes playing with firecrackers in the driveway until very late at night. Jack had his mom helping him when he went trash picking, and nobody was on him to clean his room.
Outside of what the book said, their parents really seemed to have no actual ideas about how to handle kids, and that was just fine.
At times, Jack felt he had control over them that was almost hypnotic.
“More pizza?” Jack said, sliding the box across the table to Mike. Jack had arranged to have Maggie and Mike over for dinner, and had manipulated his parents into ordering pizza again.
“Sure,” Mike said, and added a big scoop of ice cream to his plate as well.
“Sprinkles, Mike?” Jack’s mom asked, and handed the bowl to Mike.
“Yes, please. And the gummy worms, too,” he said, wiping his hands on his dirty shirt.
Maggie brushed her messy hair out of her eyes and grinned at Jack.
“After dinner we have dessert,” Jack’s dad said, and Jack smiled proudly, as if he was showing off some wild animals that he had trained to do impressive tricks.
“But isn’t the ice cream already dessert?” Jessica asked. “We’re having dessert for dinner.”
Jack scowled at her. Who knew what kind of damage a statement like that could do to the progress he had made?
“Maybe you’re right, Jessica. Maybe you should have vegetables for dessert,” Jack hissed angrily.
Jack’s parents looked at each other and looked at the ice cream. It was as if they were beginning to swim up out of a hypnotic trance, or shaking off the effects of a powerful mind-numbing medicine.
“Is this really … dessert for dinner?” his dad asked slowly.
“Ice cream comes from milk, and it would be pretty darned hard to imagine anything as high in calcium as milk,” Maggie stated sternly. “So important for strong teeth and bones. And vitamin D has been linked to strengthening the immune system. Not to mention the antioxidants in the chocolate. You had better listen to me, Jessica; you sit there and you eat that ice cream or there will be no dessert for you.”
Jack’s parents looked at Maggie, then they looked at each other. Jack and Mike braced themselves. Maggie had gone too far: She had quoted the book’s chapter on milk almost word for word, and Mike flashed a freaked-out look of astonishment at her.
But Jack’s parents smiled and relaxed. They were so content that the correct words about milk had been spoken that they seemed to forget Jessica’s remark about eating dessert for dinner.
“How many kids do you have, Maggie?” Jack’s mom asked casually.
Maggie choked on her ice cre
am.
“Mom. Maggie doesn’t have any kids!” Jack said. “She’s my age.”
His mom looked confused for a moment. “Oh. Yes. Of course. Where did I get that idea? I suppose because you know so much about milk and things. Silly of me,” she said, laughing off her mistake.
After dinner they all went out into the front yard to eat Popsicles for dessert. Even Jack’s dad, who didn’t really like Popsicles that much, had one after Mike explained to him about the kids at the equator who never get to enjoy Popsicles because they melt so fast there.
Then Jack and his mom started to have a pretend sword fight with sticks.
Everything was as it should be. The kids were calling the shots, the parents were easy to control, and life was a ball.
Jack’s mom giggled like a little girl as she swished and slashed, but an unexpected slip on a decaying steak caused her to lunge forward awkwardly, and she drove the stick hard into Jack’s face.
“Oh my God, I poked his eye out!” she screamed.
The nurse at the walk-in clinic put a little Band-Aid under Jack’s eye. “That was a close one,” she said. “An inch higher and you could have had your eye poked out. What were you doing, sword fighting with one of your friends?”
“With my mom,” Jack said as he climbed off the examination table. “It was an accident.”
The nurse turned and glared unpleasantly at Jack’s mom and dad.
“You were sword fighting? With sticks?” she asked. “You know what could happen if you swing sticks around?” she demanded.
They nodded.
The nurse looked down at Jessica. “You okay, honey?” she asked sweetly.
Jessica smiled and said yes. The nurse picked up a jar of lollipops and offered them to Jack and Jessica. Jack took one but Jessica passed.
“No, thanks,” Jessica said, and the nurse put the jar back on the counter.
“Don’t like lollipops, huh?” she said as she finished filling out Jack’s paperwork. She handed the form to Jack’s mom as they began filing out of the examination room ahead of Jessica and Jack.
“I like lollipops,” Jessica said. “But we had ice cream for dinner and Popsicles for dessert. I just don’t want any candy right now.”
Jack quickly added, “Our, uh, freezer broke, and you know, you can’t let food go to waste,” he said. “Starving people in, uh, India, and places like that.” He amazed himself that he could concoct a suitable lie that quickly.
“Our freezer didn’t break … ,” Jessica began to protest, but Jack ushered her along before the nurse could follow up.
“Thank you,” he said to her. “You saved my eyesight and you look young and slender in your nurse uniform. Nurses are so important.”
She smiled and rubbed his head. Adults are always knocked off balance by compliments.
“You be careful, now,” she said. “No more sticks.”
The nurse looked at the paperwork again, and then at the jar of lollipops. “I better report this,” she said, but then caught sight of her ample figure in the mirror and smiled.
“He’s right. I do look slender,” she whispered. “And young, too.”
She helped herself to a lollipop and set down the clipboard, forgetting entirely any idea she had about reporting the incident.
Mike’s mom had come over that morning to join Jack’s mom for coffee. Jack mumbled a good-bye to them, ran outside, and crossed the street.
He walked up to Mike’s front door just as Mike came out to meet him. Mike had his basketball as usual, and an unlit cigar between his teeth.
“Is that real?” Jack asked.
“Yeah. I got it from my mom. I told her that cigars are so full of vitamins and minerals that I would never want one. Next thing you know, she’s stuffing this in my mouth. That book is great.”
“You’re actually going to smoke it?”
Mike put it in his pocket and spit into the bushes. “Ugh! Tastes terrible. Heck no. Those things will kill ya. I just wanted to see if I could get one.”
He dribbled his basketball loudly on the sidewalk.
A black car pulled up at the end of the driveway and rolled down the window. Two men who looked like Secret Service agents were in the front seat.
“Hey, boys. Is that the Hartfield residence? Jack Hartfield live there?” the agent shouted, pointing with his thumb across the street to Jack’s house.
The house number had been knocked off their house several weeks ago when Mike was trying to demonstrate a tricky way to spin a basketball on his foot.
“We don’t talk to weirdo strangers,” Mike yelled, backing up the driveway and pulling Jack with him. “But the Hartfields moved about two weeks ago anyway. Now they’re over in the blue house on Edmonds Street a few blocks north. What are you guys, anyway, like a pair of weirdos out on weirdo patrol?”
Jack couldn’t help but snicker.
“This is official police work, son,” the agent said, and rolled the window back up. As they drove away, Mike ran a little closer to the street to get a look at the license plate.
“That WAS a government license plate,” he said. “I wonder what your dad did. Maybe he cheated on his taxes.”
Jack said, “You know that there’s no Edmonds Street around here, right?”
Mike laughed. “Good one, huh? Those weirdos will be looking for that street forever!”
A look of concern flashed across Jack’s face. Those were not regular police.
“Go get the book,” he said. “I think I should go get Maggie.”
“The book? What do you need the book for … ,” Mike said, his voice trailing off as he watched another black car roll into the Wallaces’ driveway next to Jack’s house. A man dressed in a black suit stepped out and then another got out of the backseat, followed by Mr. Wallace.
“Hey. Those guys with Mr. Wallace look just like those other weirdos. What’s he doing with them?” Mike asked.
Jack whispered urgently, “Go get the book.”
“I don’t have the book. I thought you had it,” Mike said as he continued to bounce the basketball in front of him.
“Maggie must have it,” Jack said, his face full of worry.
“So let’s go get her,” Mike said, and took a step in her direction before Jack stopped him.
Jack was watching the men across the street. He waved at Mr. Wallace, and Mr. Wallace waved back feebly. He looked tired, and much, much older than he had looked just a couple weeks ago.
One of the men was Agent Washington. He put his hand on his hip as he talked on his cell phone. He suddenly swiveled his head and looked directly at the boys.
“You know who he’s talking to, right?” Jack whispered. “He’s talking to the weirdos in the first car—the ones you sent to Edmonds Street. They probably just told him that you sent him on a wild-goose chase.”
“Sent who on a wild-goose chase?“ Maggie asked, and both boys jumped.
“Maggie! Don’t sneak up on us like that!” Jack gasped. He looked down at her backpack, which she was swinging carelessly.
“That the book in there?” he said quietly.
“Of course it is,” she said happily. “Why are you two acting so weird?”
Mike’s basketball suddenly jumped out of his hands and wobbled on the driveway. Mike stared at it, confused, and Jack and Maggie looked as well, trying to figure out what Mike was staring at.
It was smoking. There was a peculiar electric smell in the air, like when a motor runs too long. And small crackles of blue static flickered for a moment around the ball.
The electric blast had come from Agent Washington’s immobilizer. His abduction experience was still fresh in his mind, and he wasn’t going to take any chances.
Before Maggie could say anything, she was whisked along with Jack and Mike. Years of Nerf battles taught them to NOT THINK, JUST RUN. They ran alongside Mike’s garage and into his backyard. In a blink they were over the fence and in the yard of the people behind Mike’s house.
; “Those guys were shooting at us! With some kind of electric thing,” she screeched, and they both shushed her.
They climbed the fence one house over to the left, and then started circling back again in the direction of their own street, staying low behind the hedges.
“We’re headed right back toward them!” she whispered, trying her best to keep up. She really didn’t want to follow them, but it was clear that they had done this sort of thing before.
“They won’t expect this,” Jack said. “They’ll think we kept on going in the direction they saw us leave.”
In spite of her fear, Maggie smiled at the plan. Turns out boys are pretty sneaky, too, she thought.
They crouched down in the bushes and listened quietly. Dogs were barking in the yards behind them. They knew that meant the men had pursued them over the fences and were looking for them on the street behind them now, exactly as Jack and Mike had predicted.
“They said they were police,” Mike said.
“Real police do not usually shoot at kids,” Maggie said. “This is about the book. It must be. I mean, look what we’ve been able to do with it.”
“They’ll go to our parents next,” Jack said. “Let’s just give the book back.”
“I have to pee,” Mike said.
“He has to pee when he hides,” Jack explained.
“I don’t think we can just give the book back,” Maggie said. “These guys shot at us before they were even sure we had it. They are not the type of people that are going to just pat us on the head and let us go.”
Jack nodded. “She’s right. We can’t stay here, though. Eventually they’ll figure out we doubled back, and Mike will probably wet his pants.”
“It’s happened before,” Mike said solemnly.
They stood up and peered into Mike’s backyard and saw no sign of the agents. They quietly slipped over the fence into Mike’s yard, and snuck along one side of his house.
“My bedroom window is unlocked. You know, in case of burglars. If a burglar gets in, I don’t want a locked window to slow me down if I have to escape,” he explained to Maggie.
