Philip and the Loser (9781619501522)

by Paulits, John

  That done, Philip tried another throw. He and Emery followed the flight of the dart as it spun backwards same as the first throw, hit the cardboard next to the balloon, and fell to the ground. They stared silently at the useless dart.

  Leon said, “Here’s what you gotta do.” Before Emery or Philip could stop him Leon grabbed a new straw and a needle they’d left lying on the picnic table. “Use it like a blowgun. Blow the needle out the straw to break the balloon. I saw this in my India book. Like this.” Leon popped the needle into the near end of the straw and raised it to his mouth.

  “Don’t do that,” said Emery.

  Leon took a deep breath. “Arrrgghhh!” Leon coughed. “Arrrghhh. Ummmph.” Leon began jumping up and down, grabbing at his mouth.

  “What’d you do? What’d you do?” Philip shouted.

  “Arrgghh. Ogggeeefffff.”

  “Smack him on the back!” yelled Emery. “I think he swallowed the needle!”

  Leon nodded his head faster and faster and pointed at his mouth.

  “He did!” said Philip. Both boys smacked Leon as hard as they could.

  “Arrglll, ufffff,” and out came the needle. “Oh, oh,” Leon moaned. “I almost needled myself.”

  “Leon,” said Philip angrily. “Will you please go home? You’re a jinx. You’re a wrecker.”

  “Leon, leave us alone. We’re working on a project, and you ruin everything every time you show up,” Emery added, as upset as Philip.

  Leon rubbed his neck and shrugged. “I thought it would work. You blow it out.” He shot his fingers forward to show what he meant. He shrugged again, and as he walked away, Philip heard him say, “Just trying to help, and I almost got needled. Sheesh.” Leon disappeared around the corner of the house.

  Chapter Nine

  Monday, Philip and Emery met again after school and tried a guessing game. But when Emery guessed that his mother weighed one hundred and ninety-six pounds, she scolded him for such a high guess. “What do you think I am? An elephant?” She tossed a baby onto her shoulder and stomped out of the kitchen. The boys decided a guessing game would only get them into trouble.

  Tuesday, Emery had to stay in and help Leon with his homework. Philip left Emery’s house quickly when he heard Leon was on the way. Mrs. Moriarty, who’d stepped outside to put a plastic bag of trash into a trash can, saw Philip and called him over.

  “Hi, Mrs. M.,” said Philip.

  “I wanted you to know I reserved a space for you and Emery at the fair Saturday. The fair starts at noon, so be there ahead of time to set up anything you need. We have plenty of tables and chairs, so don’t worry about them. What kind of game did you finally decide on?”

  “Well . . . well, it’s going to be kind of a surprise,” Philip replied nervously.

  “Good,” said Mrs. M. “I like surprises. I’ll be looking forward to whatever it is.”

  So will I, Philip said to himself.

  “Anything I can do to help, you let me know,” Mrs. M. said. “See you Saturday.” Mrs. Moriarty turned and went back into her house.

  That night Philip talked with his father.

  “Dad, I need a game for Mrs. M.’s fair on Saturday.”

  “I thought you and Emery worked all weekend picking a game.” His father rested his newspaper in his lap for a moment.

  “We did, but nothing worked. Especially after Leon came along.”

  “Leon?”

  “He crunched our pegboard, you saw. Then he almost swallowed a needle.”

  “What kind of game involves swallowing a needle?”

  “No game. Leon is a jinx. Today, Emery has to help him with his homework so we can’t do anything.”

  “He’s Emery’s cousin, right?”

  “Yeah, and he’s a real loser, Dad. Everything he does is a mess. He got the lowest marks in the school in his math and spelling tests. His mother had to go see the teacher.”

  “Well, maybe he has hidden talents.”

  “Hidden? How about invisible?”

  His father picked up his newspaper again. “Why don’t you simply have those little toy ducks in a tub of water and put a star on the bottom of a couple. Whoever picks the duck with the star gets a prize. What kind of prizes are you giving out?”

  “We didn’t even get to that yet.”

  Philip stared at the newspaper now covering his father’s face and went up to his room. Ducks with stars was not a good idea, he thought. Way boring!

  Wednesday and Thursday it rained, so Philip and Emery spent Wednesday in Emery’s house and Thursday in Philip’s house. Try as they might, no good games came to mind. On Friday, Philip and Emery slumped hopelessly on Philip’s backyard picnic bench, and in desperation Philip told Emery about his father’s suggestion.

  “Toy ducks? Where you pick them up and turn them over?” Emery asked.

  Philip shrugged. “Yep.”

  “Not too exciting.”

  “I know.”

  “And we don’t have any toy ducks, anyway,” Emery reminded him. “Or prizes.”

  “How about we stick little notes into balloons that say You’re a winner. Then everybody can pay to pop a balloon and see if they win.”

  Emery frowned. “Yeah, but everybody can pop a balloon. That’s going to be an awful lot of balloons to blow up. And if the balloon’s the right color you can see inside it. We’d have to put papers in every balloon to try to trick people. At least with the dart game people would miss, and we wouldn’t need so many balloons. We’d have to blow up a million balloons if all you did was just pop them, and we don’t have a million balloons.”

  “Well, what are we going to do? I already told Mrs. M. we had a surprise game for Saturday.”

  “It’s going to be a surprise if we have any game on Saturday,” Emery said mournfully. “Mr. Sagsman is going to kill us if we don’t have a brotherhood project to give him on Monday.”

  “Me especially. I got like a zero on the composition.”

  Leon walked around the corner of the house into the backyard. He had a bandage above his eye.

  “Uh, oh,” said Philip. “Leon, stay there. You’re a jinx.”

  Leon stopped and plopped down on the grass.

  “What happened to you?” Emery asked.

  Leon gave a yuk yuk. “I was jumping on my bed, and I missed again.”

  “You missed?” asked Philip. “You missed the whole bed?”

  “One leg missed, and I went blammo! into the dresser. Lots of blood. It was neat, yuk yuk. Want to play a game of Kleebis?”

  Philip and Emery looked at each other and didn’t bother to answer Leon, choosing instead to continue to think about the fair. Leon got up.

  “Leon, don’t go near the garage,” said Philip.

  “Leon, don’t come near the table,” said Emery.

  “Leon, sit back down on the grass,” said Philip.

  A partially open, folding red lawn chair sat on the grass near Leon.

  “The grass feels wet,” said Leon. “I’ll sit here.”

  “Leon, look out!” Emery cried.

  Leon threw himself into the chair which immediately closed on him, like a gaping red mouth swallowing a big bug with a giant gulp.

  “Ow, ow, ow,” Leon screamed.

  Philip and Emery jumped up and tried to open the chair.

  “My finger’s stuck,” Leon bellowed.

  Philip saw Leon’s finger caught in between the metal arm of the chair and one of the metal rungs of the back of the chair.

  “OW, OW, OW,” Leon roared.

  Philip tapped the chair. “Emery, hold here.”

  Emery grabbed the arm of the chair, and Philip pulled the chair’s back as hard as he could.

  The chair opened a little, and Leon fell out.

  “Yow, ow, oo,” Leon screeched, jumping up and down like a kangaroo. He froze for a moment to inspect his finger. “Blood!” he screamed and took off running around the back of the house. Philip could hear him howling, “Blood! Blood! Blood!”
as he ran down the street toward home.

  Philip and Emery gave up trying to think of any more games. Leon had messed up their concentration. They decided to meet the next day morning at ten and somehow or other figure out something they could do at Mrs. Moriarty’s fair.

  Chapter Ten

  At ten-thirty on Saturday morning, only ninety minutes from the start of Mrs. Moriarty’s fair, Philip and Emery were deep in an argument.

  “I told you. I can’t get my dad’s darts. They’re too fancy, and they’re locked up, and he’s not home anyway, so cross out anything with darts,” Emery insisted for what felt like the tenth time.

  Philip looked down at the loose leaf notebook in his hand and crossed off another possibility. He’d spent Friday night making a list of possible games he and Emery could make to get them out of their emergency. “Then let’s blow up a lot of balloons and do something with them,” said Philip. “You can blow up balloons, can’t you?” he added testily. Panic had begun to bubble in Philip’s stomach. The list he’d made was nothing but crossed out ideas. Mrs. M. would think he was an idiot if he didn’t show up with the game he’d bragged about, and Mr. Sagsman would tell him he was an idiot and probably give him a big red I on his report card to show he was an idiot.

  “We don’t have time to blow up a million balloons,” Emery argued. “Anyway, it takes me forever to tie those little knots in them. I had to blow a lot of balloons up twice the first time for the darts game ’cause the air leaked out when I tied the knot. Some of them jumped out of my hand and flew around the room.”

  Philip had no answer. The same thing had happened to him when he blew up his balloons. “Your sisters got any toy ducks? I think Becky has one.”

  “We need more than two or three ducks. Anyway, ducks is a stupid game. All you gotta do to win is watch which duck has the star. How could you forget if there’s only three ducks. Everybody’d win a prize, and we don’t even have any prizes. This is a disaster.”

  “Did somebody call me?” Leon walked around the corner of the house and entered the backyard. He had a white bandage around his left hand to go along with the bandage above his eye. He held his hand up. “A chair bit me, yuk yuk. You saw.”

  “You weren’t laughing yesterday,” Philip said grumpily.

  “That’s because it bit me yesterday.” Leon walked over to the lawn chair lying on the lawn where he’d left it. He gave it a kick and said, “Bad chair.” Then he took a step away from it and gave a yuk yuk. “Did you feed it today, I hope?”

  “Leon,” said Philip. “Can you please shut up and stay over there? If you get near us, the picnic table will probably fall apart.”

  “And maybe the house will fall down,” Emery added.

  “Yeah. Don’t make my house fall down,” said Philip half seriously.

  Leon laughed and wiggled his fingers at Philip’s house as if he were a wizard casting a spell.

  Philip and Emery watched the house for a moment, just in case.

  “Don’t worry,” said Leon. Then with some pride he added, “I can’t stay long. I’m meeting my school friends in a little while.”

  “You have friends?” said Philip.

  “Of course. They told me to meet them in the schoolyard.”

  “Well, sit there and wait and don’t make trouble,” said Philip.

  “Can I have some paper to play with?” Leon asked.

  “Will you stay there and not knock anything over?” Philip asked in return.

  Leon smiled. “I’ll be as quiet as a Kleebis.”

  Philip rolled his eyes and took some papers from his binder. He gave them to Emery, who walked over to Leon and handed them to him. Leon sat down, and Philip and Emery went back to arguing.

  At eleven o’clock, Philip crossed out the final item on his list. “We’re dead,” he said simply. “Where’d Leon go?”

  Emery looked behind him. “I don’t know. Went to the schoolyard, I guess.”

  “He threw his garbage all over,” Philip complained. Six crumpled balls of paper lay spread out over the grass. “Great. He throws his junk around, and I’ll get in trouble for it.” Philip gathered up the papers and put them on the picnic table. “Well? What’ll we do?”

  “Go tell Mrs. M. we don’t have a game.”

  Philip made a pained face. “I told her we did have a game. Come on, Emery. There must be something we can think of to get money for the fair.” Philip looked at his watch. The fair began in fifty minutes.

  For five more minutes the two boys sat on the picnic bench, heads drooping, thinking of the embarrassment looming ahead for them. In frustration, Philip slammed his palm on the picnic table, smashing one of the papers Leon left behind. “There has to be something. We can’t both be this dumb.” The paper he’d smacked opened up a little and something caught Philip’s eye. He picked up the paper and opened it. He looked at Emery, then back at the paper.

  “What?” asked Emery, seeing the surprise in Philip’s face.

  Philip smoothed the paper out and turned it toward Emery.

  “Hey,” Emery cried. “That’s you. It looks just like you.”

  Philip opened another of the papers. “This one is you.” He showed Emery.

  “Open them all,” Emery said.

  Each of the other four papers had a drawing. One showed Philip’s house; another, his garage. One showed Philip and Emery at the picnic table, and the final one had the word KLEEBIS in big letters, each letter decorated in a different way.

  “Leon did this?” said Philip.

  “I didn’t know he could draw,” said Emery.

  Philip jumped up. “Hey! You remember when we went to get your new sneakers at the mall? Some lady was drawing people’s faces.”

  “Yeah. For money!”

  “For money! You think Leon . . . ?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know,” said Emery excitedly. He jumped up, too.

  “You don’t think we made him mad at us, do you?” Philip wondered.

  Emery made a face as if he’d heard something very painful. “It’s possible.”

  “It’s twenty after eleven. Leon can save us. We have to ask him.”

  “He’s with his friends.”

  “We’re his friends, too, aren’t we?”

  “Are we?”

  “Of course we are! Practically. Let’s go find him,” said Philip. He and Emery ran as fast as they could out to the sidewalk and down the street toward the schoolyard.

  Chapter Eleven

  Philip and Emery dashed across the next-to-last street before their school and stopped short. Halfway up the block Leon walked slowly toward them, head down and kicking at imaginary stones on the sidewalk. Philip and Emery went to meet him.

  “What happened to you?” Emery asked. “You’re all wet!” Leon’s dripping hair hung over his forehead and beads of water covered his face. His clothes had a few dry spots, but not many.

  Leon gave a loud sniff. “No kidding.” Philip saw a tear roll down Leon’s right cheek and bump into a water drop sitting motionless there. Leon brushed them both away.

  Leon turned and looked back toward the empty schoolyard.

  “What happened?” asked Philip.

  “They said they wanted me to play with them,” Leon explained. “But when I got there and ran up to them, they started throwing water balloons at me. They didn’t really want to play with me. They just wanted me to come to the schoolyard so they could wet me.” Leon started walking. “No one wants to play with me.”

  Philip and Emery exchanged a quick look and hurried after Leon.

  “Uh, why don’t you come to the fair with us, Leon?” Philip asked.

  Leon didn’t answer. He simply walked faster.

  “We have something neat you can do. It’ll be fun,” Philip said louder as Leon got further away. Philip speeded up, but Leon walked even faster.

  “Come on, Leon,” Philip pleaded. “We really need you for this.”

  Leon stopped. “You don’t mean it. Yo
u want to trick me, too.”

  “No, no! We mean it, Leon,” said Philip.

  Emery added, “We won’t trick you. We really need you.”

  Leon stared at the boys. “You two always tease me and trick me. You don’t let me do anything with you. You tell me to stand over there or go away.”

  “Well,” Philip said slowly, “you do have a lot of accidents, you know.”

  “And you did crunch our two games,” Emery pointed out.

  Leon looked down and shrugged. “Sometimes I’m not lucky.”

  “You can do this with us, Leon, and we’ll all be lucky,” Philip argued. “It’s a game we want to do at the fair, and we need you to do it. We told you we were making a game, right? If you help us, we’ll play Kleebis with you.” Philip heard Emery moan.

  Leon’s head snapped up. “Kleebis? Really? Can I make some of the rules?”

  “Help us at the fair, and you can make all the rules, right Emery?” said Philip.

  “Yeah, all the rules,” Emery repeated with little enthusiasm.

  “And you’ll play with me when I want?” Leon’s eyes were wide.

  “Unless there’s something else we have to do,” said Philip.

  Philip could hear Emery mutter under his breath, “He’ll want us to play Kleebis the rest of his life.” Philip gave Emery a secret kick with his heel.

  Leon laughed his goofy yuk yuk. “What game are you doing at the fair?”

  “Come on,” said Philip. “We only have . . .” He looked at his watch “. . . twenty minutes. And we need drawing paper and pencils.”

  “I have a lot of drawing stuff at home. Did you know I like to draw?” said Leon.

  “We know!” said Philip. “Hurry up and get them. My dad will drive us.”

  ~ * ~

  At ten minutes after twelve Leon sat contentedly at the fair, drawing the face of a little girl as the little girl’s mother watched. People wandered over to watch Leon work. Philip and Emery stood nearby, calling for people to come and see the artist who could draw anyone’s face. When Leon finished drawing the first little girl, Philip watched the girl’s mother take a five-dollar bill out of her wallet. Philip’s eyes bulged, and he rushed over to help.