Philip and the Loser (9781619501522)

by Paulits, John

  “Leon, don’t! What did I tell you?” Emery said angrily.

  “Dey’re good,” said Leon, his mouth newly stuffed with the three cookies.

  Emery and Philip tossed the remaining cookies into the garbage can.

  “And don’t you go into the garbage can after them, Leon. He would,” Emery explained to Philip.

  Leon started yuk yuking. “Garbage cookies. I don’t eat garbage cookies. I only eat floor cookies. Your friend likes garbage, though. Maybe he’ll eat them.” He continued to laugh as if he’d said the funniest thing.

  Philip glared at Leon. Poor Emery, he thought, to be related to a bingo chip like Leon.

  Leon skipped over to where the two other boys stood staring at him.

  “Come on,” said Emery in disgust. They went into the living room. Emery and Philip sat on the sofa, and Leon sat on a big soft chair facing them. He began humming to himself and bouncing up and down on the chair. Little by little he hummed louder and bounced higher, until it looked as if he were about to break himself into pieces every time he landed back in the chair.

  “Leon, cut it out,” Emery shouted.

  Leon settled into the chair a little at a time like a bouncing ball running out of bounce. “Fun!” he reported. “Wanna see me do it again?” He bounced once.

  “No, no, no, no, no,” said Philip. “We have a game to play.”

  “We do?” Emery asked.

  “Yes, yes we do.” Philip leaned over to Emery and whispered, “Say yes to everything I say.”

  “A game? Good,” said Leon, sitting still. “I like games.” He started to bounce again.

  “You can’t play if you bounce,” said Philip.

  “No,” Emery agreed. “You can never play again in your whole life if you bounce. Not in this life or the next life if you start bouncing again.”

  Leon stopped. “This game has hard rules,” he said. “What’s the name of the game?”

  Emery looked at Philip.

  “Uh, the uh, name of the game?” stammered Philip.

  “Yeah, what’s the name of the game? I want to know if I played it before,” said Leon.

  “No, you never played this game before,” said Philip. “It’s a new game. It’s only played in our neighborhood. Kids other places don’t even know about it.”

  “What’s it called?” asked Emery with interest.

  Philip fired him a hot look.

  “Oh, yeah. Only around here we play it, Leon. It is so cool. Tell him about it, Philip.”

  “Well, it’s called Kleebis.”

  Emery turned to Philip. “Kleebis?”

  Philip tossed him another fiery look.

  “Kleebis. Yep, good old Kleebis,” said Emery. “You’ll like it, Leon. Tell him the rules, Philip.”

  “Well, you see we take one person’s shoes—the newest person in the game—his shoes.”

  “The newest person,” Leon pondered. “Hey, that’s me! You take my shoes?”

  “We take your shoes, and we hide them,” Philip went on.

  “Yeah,” said Emery. “We hide them real good.”

  “Then what?” asked Leon, looking at Emery.

  “Then . . .” said Emery. “Then . . . tell him what then, Philip.”

  “Uh, then you have to find your shoes. After you find your shoes, you hide yourself.”

  “Yeah,” said Emery with enthusiasm. “Hide yourself real good where nobody can ever find you.”

  Leon nodded. “Not in this life or the next life, right? Yuk yuk. What do you two do?”

  “What do we do?” said Emery, whose anticipation of the game increased the more Philip described it. “Why, we . . . we . . . tell him what we do, Philip.”

  “Well, after we hide your shoes, then we hide, too, and we all stay hidden until we find each other.”

  Leon clapped his hands. “Yuk yuk, yeah. We all stay hidden until we . . .” Leon’s eyes got a faraway look in them. “We all stay hidden until we find each other? How can we find each other if we’re all hiding?”

  “Uh, the Kleebis looks for us,” said Philip, thinking fast.

  “The Kleebis?” said Leon.

  “Yeah,” said Philip, “we all hide, and the one whose house is the nearest gets to be the Kleebis, and the one who found his shoes has to stay hidden until the Kleebis finds him.”

  “I think I played this game before,” said Leon uncertainly. “Is it a game where I hide, and nobody comes to look for me?”

  “Oh, no, this game’s way different,” Emery promised, getting into the spirit of things. “The Kleebis doesn’t want to stay a Kleebis. He has to find the hidden one who found the shoes so that one can be a Kleebis forever. Get it?”

  “I think so. If you find me, I’ll be a Kleebis forever, right?”

  “Right,” said Emery. “In this life and the next life.”

  “Yeah, great game, right?” said Philip. “Okay, let’s play.”

  Leon nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah! Kleebis forever, woo hoo. Kleebis forever, woo hoo. Kleebis forever, woo hoo.”

  “What are you doing?” Emery demanded.

  Leon started yuk yuking and punching his fist into the air. “Yeah, I want to be a Kleebis forever, woo hoo.”

  “You’re not allowed to go woo hoo until you’re the real Kleebis,” said Philip. “It’s against the rules.”

  “Oh, those rules again,” said Leon. He took off his shoes and handed them to Emery. “Here, hide them, Kleebis.”

  Emery took them, and Philip said, “Now, you go lie down on the sofa and keep your eyes covered and count to one hundred. Count real slow. Then you can look for your shoes.”

  Leon laughed. “Yeah, okay.” As he walked to the end of the sofa, the boys heard him say in a small voice, “Kleebis forever, woo hoo.” Philip and Emery looked at one another and shook their heads.

  “Start counting,” said Philip. “Remember, count slow.”

  “One . . . two . . . three . . .”

  Emery waved at Philip, and they ran to the hallway closet. Emery opened the door and tossed the shoes onto the topmost shelf. Then he and Philip got their jackets and shut the closet door softly. They tiptoed to the front door, opened it quietly, and closed it behind them. As Leon worked his slow way to one hundred, Philip and Emery ran as fast as they could toward the park two blocks away to enjoy a quiet afternoon without Leon.

  Chapter Four

  Emery waited for Philip on the sidewalk next morning, and he did not look happy.

  “What’s wrong?” Philip asked as they started off toward school.

  “Stupid Leon is what’s wrong. I’m in trouble ’cause of him.”

  “What’d he do?”

  “He didn’t find his shoes.”

  “You’re in trouble because Leon lost his shoes?”

  “He didn’t lose them. We hid them. Remember? We hid them, and then he couldn’t find them. He walked around my house all afternoon singing some stupid song about his shoes.”

  “A song about his shoes?”

  “Yeah. And singing about being a Kleebis. What the heck is a Kleebis anyway?”

  Philip shrugged. “I don’t know. I made it up. So he sang . . . ?”

  “Yeah. And my mother asked him what he was doing, and he told her about being a Kleebis—you can guess how much sense that made—and why he didn’t have any shoes on. That probably didn’t make any sense either. She helped him look for them, but they couldn’t find them, and when I got home, I got yelled at for hiding his shoes and going to the park without him.”

  “So what did Leon do then?”

  “He sat on the floor, laughing and singing about being a Kleebis. He wants to play the game again. He liked it!”

  They saw Leon skipping up Brill Street in their direction.

  “Uh, oh. Here he comes,” said Philip.

  “Hi, guys. We gonna play Kleebis again later? Kleebis forever, woo hoo. Yuk yuk.”

  “You’re only allowed to play Kleebis once a month,” said Philip in di
sgust. “It’s in the rules.”

  “Oh,” said Leon, disappointed. “I don’t like those rules much. Maybe we can make up a game like Kleebis, you know. Kleebis forever, woo hoo. Kleebis forever, woo hoo.”

  “Leon,” screamed Emery. “No woo hooing. It’s against the rules, and I don’t want to hear it. And no Kleebis. And no singing!”

  Under his breath Leon muttered, “Kleebis forever, woo hoo,” while Philip and Emery walked ahead of him to school.

  It was one of Mr. Sagsman’s days, and when he greeted the class, he immediately asked the children to pass up the essays he’d assigned about brotherhood. Philip worried about his essay. In it he complained that he only had a little sister and sisterhood was ruining his life. He didn’t think Mr. Sagsman would like this example, though.

  “Okay, kids, last night you had to find some illustration of brotherhood in your own life.” He glanced through the class’s essays as he spoke. He lifted his eyes for a moment and looked straight at Philip. Philip turned red and melted down in his seat. Philip watched Mr. Sagsman’s lips puff out as he exhaled a big sigh. He put the papers down on the teacher’s desk.

  “I have a new assignment for you, a long-term assignment. I want you to plan some kind of activity, an activity that displays the principles of brotherhood, something to show me you understand what brotherhood really means. We’ll go over last night’s papers now one by one.” He looked at Philip. “At least most of them, so you can get an idea of what I’m talking about and what I’m looking for. Then you’ll have a week to come up with your project, and the project must be completed by the following Monday. That gives you two full weekends.”

  Philip knew Mr. Sagsman would ignore his paper. His paper was stupid, and he knew it. He didn’t know why he wrote such silly stuff, but he felt tired and didn’t want to do the essay at all after playing in the park with Emery. Plus, he had other homework to do and writing needed too much concentration. So Philip settled in and listened to what his classmates had written until the bell sent Mr. Sagsman to his next class.

  Later, on the way home from school, Philip waited for Leon to turn off toward his house, and when he did, Philip asked Emery, “Want to go to the park again?”

  “I can’t. I told you. I’m in trouble. I have to stay in.”

  “Can you go to Mrs. Moriarty’s?” Mrs. Moriarty was Philip’s favorite neighbor. She was an older woman who lived alone and liked visits from Philip and the other children in the neighborhood. She always had dishes of candy out—M & Ms, tiny Hershey Bars, miniature Milky Ways—and she didn’t complain one bit when Philip took all he wanted.

  “No, I gotta go right home and nobody over.”

  “Oh, well. At least Leon went home.”

  “That’s ’cause his family’s coming to my house for dinner tonight, and he’s got to do his homework this afternoon. I have to spend the whole night with him.”

  “Oh,” said Philip sympathetically. “Well, see you tomorrow.”

  Emery grunted a quick goodbye, and Philip crossed the street and headed toward Mrs. Moriarty’s. He knocked on her door and called through the screen.

  “You home, Mrs. M.?”

  “In here, Philip.”

  Philip entered and found Mrs. Moriarty sitting at her dining room table, sewing.

  Philip slid onto a dining chair. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m sewing borders on these doilies for my woman’s club.”

  Philip turned to look into the living room. “They’re the things you stick on the arms of your chairs, right?”

  “Right.” Mrs. Moriarty looked up at him and smiled. “There’s some candy on the coffee table. Go and see what you like.”

  Philip didn’t hesitate. This time he found a bowl full of tiny Tootsie Rolls and a second bigger bowl full of miniature, foil-wrapped Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Philip took a handful of each. He thought a minute and put two Tootsie Rolls back. He didn’t want Mrs. M. to think he was a greedy pig. He sat back down at the table and peeled the paper from a Tootsie Roll.

  “Want one?” Philip asked.

  “Not now. I don’t want to get any chocolate on my hands.”

  “Why are you sewing so many?” Philip mumbled as he tossed the Tootsie Roll into his mouth.

  “My club is having a fair in two weekends to raise money for the new hospital. I’m going to contribute these and hope people will buy them, and I’m going to bake some pies and sell them, too.”

  Philip had tasted Mrs. M.’s pies before. He’d have to remember to tell his mother to buy one. He had a sudden thought. He chewed fast and swallowed.

  “The fair’s kind of like a brotherhood thing, isn’t it? I mean helping the hospital?”

  Mrs. M. stopped sewing. “Mmm, yes, I think you could say that.”

  “Can Emery and I help you? We have to do a brotherhood project for school and turn in a report in two Mondays.”

  “Do you know how to sew?”

  “Sew? No. Is sewing the only thing at the fair?”

  Mrs. M. laughed softly. “No, other women are doing other things. There, finished.” She opened her eyes wide and stretched. “I could go cross-eyed with all this sewing I’m doing. Time for a break. May I?” She reached for a Reese’s.

  “What else will be at the fair?” Philip asked.

  “Other things for sale. A flea market. You know, people trying to sell things they don’t need anymore.”

  “Yeah, my dad likes to go to them. He looks for toys he played with when he was a kid.”

  “And games.”

  “Games? What kind of games?”

  “Games to win little prizes. Nothing very big.”

  “Games. Hey, I’ll bet Emery and I could make a game for your fair. And any money we get from it, we could give to the hospital. Could we do a game at your fair?” Philip felt excited. When he’d left school, the idea of doing something about brotherhood had been very annoying. Neither he nor Emery knew what to do. Now, he had this great idea only half-an-hour after school ended. He celebrated with another Tootsie Roll. “Huh, can we do a game?” Philip repeated when Mrs. M. was slow to answer.

  “Well, I suppose it would be all right.”

  Mrs. M. talked real slow, like she wasn’t sure it was a good idea. Philip tried to reassure her.

  “Emery and I will be careful. We’ll make up a good game. Don’t worry. Nothing can go wrong.”

  Mrs. M. raised her eyebrows and gave Philip a small grin. “Okay. You and Emery go to work, and let me know what you come up with.”

  “Oh, boy! Great,” Philip cried, jumping up from his chair. “We will. I won’t see Emery until tomorrow, though. He’s punished because Leon lost his shoes, but I’ll call him when I get home. Bye now.”

  Philip grabbed some more Reese’s cups on his way to the front door as Mrs. M. scratched her head and wondered who Leon was and what Leon’s shoes had to do with anything.

  Chapter Five

  Friday morning Philip met Emery outside his front door.

  “Are you done being punished?” Philip asked. “We have stuff to do this weekend.” Philip had called Emery as soon as he got home from Mrs. Moriarty’s the day before. Emery agreed that making a game for Mrs. M.’s fair would be a fun and easy way to do their brotherhood project. They hadn’t talked long, though, because Leon’s family was due for dinner, and Emery had to get his homework done.

  “I think I’m done being punished. My mother didn’t say anything this morning. Having two baby sisters makes my mother forget things, so at least they’re good for something.”

  “Okay then, after school let’s go to my house and work on the game for the fair.”

  Emery noticed Philip look down Brill Street. “Are you looking for Leon?”

  “Yeah, I hope we miss him.”

  “We won’t see him today. He’s punished this weekend, and his mother is taking him to school this morning so she can talk to his teacher.”

  “Good! He deserves to be punished.”
Philip took a few more steps. “What did he do?”

  “He got 33% on his math test and 25% on his spelling test.”

  “Wow! 33% and 25%. They don’t even add up to a good mark. Leon is a loser. A real loser.”

  “He thinks he’s a Kleebis.”

  “What!”

  “He kept singing his Kleebis song last night, all night. You know, Kleebis forever, woo hoo.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “I wanted to stick a baked potato in his mouth to keep him quiet.”

  “You should have. Well, at least we can work on our game in peace this weekend. What games did you think of?”

  “Well, there are all those games we saw at the circus sideshow this summer. Break balloons with a dart. Throw rings on pegs. Throw a ball and knock down those cat statues.”

  “Yeah, they’re all good. Let’s both think about it in school and then pick one later.”

  When they reached the schoolyard, Emery pointed at Leon being led into school by his mother.

  “Did he do anything else besides sing last night?” Philip asked.

  “He took off his shoes and threw them up in the closet. Then he wouldn’t tell his mother where they were. My mother thought I hid them again.”

  “He put them in the closet where we hid them?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did he do that for?”

  “He said he felt more like a Kleebis if his shoes were in the closet.”

  “There’s something wrong with that kid. How did he chip his tooth?”

  “Hah!” Emery snorted. “He did it jumping up and down on his bed. Remember how he bounced on the chair in my living room? Well, he bounced in his bedroom and missed the bed and ended up on the floor bleeding and with a cracked tooth. His mom didn’t like that.”

  “I guess not. He’s weird.”

  “I know,” said Emery said somberly. “Last night he took two of the babies’ diapers and wrapped them around his elbows.”

  “What did he do that for?”

  “He told his mother he wanted padding in case he fell down. He didn’t want to chip his elbows, he said, but all he got was yelled at for wasting the diapers. Then, after dinner he started yelling from the kitchen that he couldn’t see, he couldn’t see. His mother jumped up, spilled Coca-Cola on the rug, and ran into the kitchen to see what happened.”