Philip and the Loser (9781619501522)

by Paulits, John

  “What was wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? Why did he yell he couldn’t see?”

  Emery looked at Philip. “He couldn’t see because he had his eyes closed. It was supposed to be a joke. Then he started laughing his stupid yuk yuk laugh. His mother didn’t think he was very funny. Neither did my mother. She had to clean the Coke off the rug.”

  The bell rang, and Philip and Emery walked to line up.

  “Don’t forget,” Philip said. “We gotta decide which game we want to do.”

  “After school,” Emery agreed, and classes started to walk into school.

  Chapter Six

  After school, Philip and Emery walked with Leon, careful not to mention what they planned to do with their weekend. Mr. Sagsman had put Philip in a bad mood. Even though his class didn’t have Mr. Sagsman on Fridays, Mr. Sagsman had come to his classroom first thing in the morning and beckoned Philip into the hallway. He asked Philip whether he thought his assignment involved making fun of brotherhood. Not really, Philip whispered back. Definitely not really, Mr. Sagsman said in a hard voice. He told Philip he’d better do a whale of a job on his brotherhood project because report card time was coming soon. And to top that off Philip found out that Leon’s class never had Mr. Sagsman and so didn’t have to do any of his brotherhood stuff. Leon’s class got Ms. Wong, the pretty young art teacher, and spent time drawing and coloring two days a week while Philip had to listen to Mr. Sagsman be boring.

  “We can’t play Kleebis this weekend,” Leon sadly announced. “I’m punished. I messed up my tests. Just like a Kleebis, yuk yuk.” The yuk yuk came out pitifully small, nothing like his usual loud and goofy laugh. “So I gotta study all weekend. Study all weekend, woo hoo. Just like a Kleebis, woo hoo.” Leon turned down Brill Street, singing as he walked away alone.

  “Pshew! He’s a Kleebis all right. I’m glad he’s gone,” said Philip. “We have work to do.”

  They hurried to Emery’s house, and Philip waited on the lawn while Emery took his book bag inside. Then they continued on to Philip’s bedroom to decide what game they were going to make for the fair.

  “How about the cat game?” asked Emery. “Your dad has those tennis balls we can use. We just gotta make the cats.”

  Philip approved. “Sounds easy. All we need is wood for the cat to stand on, construction paper for the cats, markers. A hammer and some nails. My dad has all that stuff in the garage, and I have paper and markers.”

  Philip got his construction paper out of his desk, and he and Emery began to make cats.

  “How big?” Emery asked.

  Philip stretched his hands apart. “Like this. They have to be pretty big so people think they can hit them.”

  Emery turned his paper one way then the other way. He put down the red marker and picked up the brown one. He scratched his head. “How do you draw a cat?”

  Philip turned his yellow paper long ways. “The paper has to go up and down.” He drew a small circle for the head and a large egg shape for the body. Then he put two pointed ears, eyes, a mouth, and four whiskers sticking out on each side. “How’s it look?” he asked Emery.

  “It looks like a cross-eyed 8 that needs a shave,” Emery answered. “Why’d you make the eyes so close together?”

  Philip crumpled up the paper. “Okay, you do it.”

  Emery drew the same kind of 8 as Philip had drawn, but concentrated on the eyes. When the eyes came out even, he gave Philip a see-what-I-did smile.

  Philip grumbled, “Big deal.”

  Emery put two triangles for ears and some lines for whiskers. He put a double, curvy line for a tail down at the bottom of the lower circle.

  “Now that looks like a cat,” he said proudly.

  Philip couldn’t argue. It did look like a cat. “How many should we make?”

  “Well,” said Emery thoughtfully, “if you have to knock down three to win a prize, we need at least three. But suppose two people want to play at once?”

  “Then we’ll need six,” said Philip.

  “What if three people want to play?”

  “Nine.”

  “Suppose a lot of people want to play?”

  “Then they’ll have to wait,” Philip barked. “We’re making a game here, not a zoo. We can’t spend the whole weekend making cats. Besides I don’t know how many pieces of wood my dad has.”

  “Let’s go see. We don’t have to make more cats than there are wood things to stick them on.”

  “Good thinking, Emery.”

  They ran downstairs and out to the garage, which sat behind the house at the top of a driveway. Philip’s father usually left the car in the driveway, preferring to use the garage to store things. A cement patio ran from the garage to the back door of the house, but the rest of the yard was grass. Philip’s father had planted a lot of flowers in the backyard, now not looking so good as the cooler weather settled in. A picnic table with a bench on each side of it stood on the cement patio behind the house.

  Philip lifted the garage door and pushed it up over his head. “There,” said Philip. “See the wood in the corner.”

  Emery ran over and counted. “Seven pieces. So let’s make seven cats.”

  “Seven? Good. That won’t take too long,” said Philip.

  They went back up to Philip’s bedroom, and before long Emery and Philip had each added three cats to the one Emery had already made. Some of the cats had stripes, some spots. Emery even made one with rainbow colored circles on it. Philip didn’t like it, and he and Emery argued over it, but Emery said if he made it, he could make it any way he wanted.

  “It still looks stupid,” Philip mumbled as they went back down the stairs and out to the garage.

  Working at the picnic table, they hammered the bottom of their cats onto the narrow edges of the small, flat, square blocks of wood so the biggest part of the wood would make the cat stand up. When they finished, the boys stood the cats up and stepped back to admire them.

  “Hey! What are they doing?” Emery cried.

  All the cats had bent forward and appeared to be checking out their paws.

  Philip walked back to the table and straightened the cat in the middle, but it stubbornly dipped down and stared at its paws again. Philip looked at Emery in disgust. “The paper won’t stand up. It’s not thick enough.”

  “They need something on their backs to hold them up,” said Emery. “You got any more wood in the garage?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s go see.”

  They searched the garage until they found seven thin sticks resembling giant Popsicle sticks.

  Philip studied the situation. “I think we gotta take the cats off and glue them to the skinny stick and then nail the skinny stick back onto the wood.”

  “Be careful you don’t rip the cats at the bottom. I don’t want to have to draw seven more cats.”

  The boys gingerly pried the cats off their wooden blocks, but couldn’t help ripping the bottom of the paper on all of them.

  “How about we just cut the ripped part off?” Emery suggested. “These cats don’t really need tails so much.”

  “I guess we gotta.” Philip ran into the house and came back with his mother’s scissors and some white glue. They cut off the ripped part of the cat’s tails, and after they glued the sticks to the backs of the cats, they hammered the cats back onto their stands. The cats, now a little shorter than before, stood tall nonetheless.

  “There!” said Philip with satisfaction. “Let’s try them out. Get the tennis balls. They’re in a bucket. See them?”

  Emery got two tennis balls from a dented bucket full of balls sitting on the floor of the garage. Philip lined the cats up along the edge of the picnic table.

  “Let me try first,” said Emery. He wound up and threw. The tennis ball missed everything and sailed straight to the back wall of the house.

  “Ha. You won’t be winning any prizes,” Philip teased.

  Suddenly, one of the cats fell over.
Emery and Philip looked at one another. A weak breeze sailed through the backyard, and three more cats fell onto their faces. As they watched in amazement, a second breeze toppled the last three cats.

  “I threw one ball and knocked over seven cats,” Emery muttered in amazement. “Maybe they do need their tails.”

  “Not you, goof. You didn’t knock them over. The air knocked them over,” said Philip. “That’s no good. We’d lose every time the wind blows.”

  “Maybe we can nail them down to a table.”

  “Then they wouldn’t fall down even if somebody hit one.”

  Emery thought a minute. “Maybe we can make them heavier. You got anything to hold them down?”

  Philip scanned his backyard until his gaze settled on the garden hose. He went and unscrewed the heavy metal nozzle off the front of it. He moved to the picnic table and put the nozzle down on the small wooden stand of the end cat. He stood an unnozzled cat next to it.

  “There. Let’s see what happens if we make it heavier.”

  The boys watched for a few moments until the wind blew. The cat with the nozzle did not topple over, but the unnozzled cat fell on its face.

  “Ha! Pretty smart, eh?” Philip crowed. “Let’s see how the game works now.” He held the second tennis ball in his hand and moved to where Emery had stood. “Cross your fingers.”

  Emery crossed his fingers, and Philip threw. He hit the cat held down by the hose nozzle right in the stomach. CRACK.

  “Uh, oh,” said Emery. He inspected the cat’s spine. “The stick is cracked in half. Poor guy’s got half a tail and a broken back.”

  Philip joined Emery to do his own inspection. “The stick’s too thin, I guess. Anybody who hits a cat hard will break the stick. We could be out of business after seven throws.”

  The boys stood quietly contemplating failure until Philip’s mother opened the back door.

  “Emery, your mom called. She wants you home.”

  “She needs help with my baby sisters, I’ll bet,” said Emery glumly. He looked over the broken cat and the other six cats lying on their faces on the picnic table and softly said, “It looks like a cat cemetery.”

  Philip scowled and muttered, “Stupid game anyway. We’ll make a different game tomorrow.”

  “I’ll come over early,” Emery said. “We’ll think of a new game. We still have lots of time. Tomorrow’s only Saturday.”

  Philip picked up the seven cats and dumped them into the black plastic trash can inside the garage. “Yeah, tomorrow we’ll think of something.”

  Emery and Philip parted, downcast but not ready to give up.

  Chapter Seven

  The next morning Philip and Emery met in Philip’s backyard at ten o’clock.

  “What’ll we do now?” Emery wondered. “The cat game took all afternoon and ended up a big mess-up. Even Leon couldn’t have messed things up more than we did.”

  “Well, it was your idea,” said Philip.

  “No, no. It was your idea.”

  Philip couldn’t really remember whose idea it was. “Well, if it was my idea, then it’s your turn to come up with the next idea.”

  “Oh,” said Emery, realizing he’d trapped himself. “Maybe it was my idea then, the cats.”

  “No, no. You said it was my idea, so you have to have the next idea.”

  “Hi, fellows.”

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “Hi, Mr. Felton.”

  “What’s cooking today?” Mr. Felton asked.

  “We have to think up a game for Mrs. M.’s fair,” Philip explained. “It’s a school project.”

  “Oh, yes. Your mom mentioned. Well, you have a nice day for it,” he said, looking at the sky. “But I thought you made up a game yesterday.”

  “We did, but it didn’t work.”

  “What game did you make?

  “The one where you throw balls at those standing-up cats.” Philip threw Emery a glance. “Emery thought of it, but it . . . the cats . . .” He shrugged. “It didn’t work.”

  “So what now?”

  “How about throwing rings on sticks?” said Emery.

  “There you go. That’s a good game,” Mr. Felton said encouragingly. “Well, good luck. Your mother and I are off with the baby to the supermarket.”

  “Dad,” Philip called. “Can we use your old wood if we have to?”

  “Sure. But be careful. Don’t hurt yourself.”

  Philip turned and walked toward the garage. “Let’s go see what’s there.”

  “Look,” said Emery. He pointed to a large flat piece of wood leaning against one wall of the garage. He went and got it. “If we can stick pegs on it, this’ll work good.”

  Philip went to the far corner of the garage. He grabbed a small, white trash bag and brought it back to Emery. “Look at these.”

  Inside the bag were round sticks of different lengths.

  “Hey, perfect,” said Emery, all excited. “All we have to do is glue a bunch of them to the board, find some rings to throw, and we’re done.”

  He and Philip laughed. “This is going to be so easy,” Philip said. “I’ll go get some super glue.”

  Philip rushed inside the house and rushed back out again. The boys laid the board on the picnic table.

  “Here, hold this,” said Philip, giving Emery the medium-sized tube of glue. “Open the bag, and I’ll pick a stick.”

  Philip closed his eyes and reached inside the white plastic bag as if he were picking out a winning ticket and pulled out a short stick.

  “Where shall we glue this one?” Emery asked, putting down the plastic bag and taking the cap off the tube of glue.

  “Mmm. Let’s start on the outside. Here.” Philip touched his finger to one of the four corners. He turned the stick toward Emery. “Put some glue on the bottom.” Emery squeezed the tube hard and psszztt, a blob of glue shot toward Philip and hit him on his right cheek.

  “Hey! Watch.”

  “Whoops! It’s okay now. Just that first squeeze. Uh, oh, it keeps coming out.”

  Philip had no time to wipe the glue from his cheek. He handed the short peg to Emery. “Here, rub the bottom of the peg with the leaky glue. Quick, before it drips.”

  Emery obeyed. “Hurry up and stick it. The glue won’t stop coming out. Stick it. Stick it and get another peg. The glue’s getting on me.”

  Philip stuck the first peg down on the board and quickly reached inside the bag for a second stick. He pulled out one a little longer than the first one.

  Emery used his finger to wipe the glue from the front of the tube before it fell onto the ground.

  “Put your finger glue on the bottom of the peg,” Philip ordered. “Come on!”

  Emery rubbed his finger on the bottom of the second stick.

  “Put the top back on and keep the glue in.”

  Emery picked up the top and stuck it back over the leaking glue. When he did, he found the cap stuck to the glue he had on his finger and wouldn’t let go.

  Philip took a tissue he had in his pocket and tried to wipe the glue from his cheek, but when he did, the thin white paper stuck to his cheek.

  “Hey,” said Emery. “We’re getting all gluey. Where’d you put the second peg?”

  Philip looked around. He’d laid the second stick on the picnic table, but now he didn’t see it there. He looked around and saw the stick nestled against the trash can in the corner of the garage where Philip had thrown yesterday’s cats. He went to get it, continuing to scratch at his face to get the tissue off. He picked up the peg and inspected it.

  “Yuck! The glue grabbed a lot of junk when it rolled away,” Philip reported. The glue on the bottom of the stick had accumulated dirt, a piece of grass, and two scraps of paper on its rolling trip to the trash can.

  Emery shook his hand, trying to get the tube of glue unstuck from his finger. “This is harder than we thought. The tube’s stuck to me. The cap’s stuck to me. The glue’s going wild.”

  Philip rubbed at his gluey chee
k as Emery shook his gluey hand.

  Leon walked around the corner of the house into the backyard. When he saw Philip and Emery rubbing and shaking he asked, “What are ya doin’, guys? Hey, me too. Watch.” Suddenly, Leon started shaking one hand in imitation of Emery and rubbing his other hand against his cheek to copy Philip. Then for no apparent reason, he started hopping three times on his left foot, then three times on his right foot.

  “What are you doing, Leon?” Philip asked hotly.

  “Yeah, cut it out,” Emery ordered.

  “I’m only doing what you’re doing. Rub and shake, woo hoo.”

  “Nobody was jumping up and down, Leon,” Emery said angrily

  “Yes,” Philip agreed. “Nobody. And no woo hooing. This is my property and no woo hooing on it.”

  “Right,” Emery barked. “This is his property, and we don’t ever woo hoo here. Not in this life or the next life. Umph!” The tube of glue finally came unstuck.

  “They’re the rules?” Leon asked.

  “Unbreakable rules,” said Philip, pawing at his cheek.

  “If I break the rules, do I turn into a Kleebis?” Leon gave a loud yuk yuk.

  “And no laughing either,” Philip barked.

  “Nobody turns into a Kleebis. And don’t even say the word Kleebis,” Emery demanded.

  “You stand still and don’t talk,” said Philip. “The rules say so.”

  “What are you doing here, Leon?” Emery asked. “I thought you were supposed to study all day.”

  Leon didn’t say anything. He didn’t move. He didn’t blink.

  Emery raised his voice. “Leon, I said what are you doing here?”

  Leon remained absolutely still.

  “Leon!” screamed Emery. “What are you doing here?”

  Leon smiled. “Philip said to stand still and don’t say anything. I did it good, right?”

  “Leon,” Emery repeated very slowly. “What are you doing here? I thought you were punished all weekend. Answer me.”