“So what are we gonna do?” Emery asked.
“We gotta convince him of bad luck. If I hear him screaming again about the booga woogas, I may stay in the house all day myself. We gotta get him to stay inside.”
“We tried that,” Emery reminded his friend.
“Yeah, and it would have worked except for your mother. But she’s not here now so we gotta try again.”
Philip had heard Emery’s mother muttering, “I’ve got to get out of here,” under her breath repeatedly when he’d arrived at Emery’s that morning. A short while later she’d taken the babies out in the double stroller for some air.
Emery moaned when he heard Leon singing his way down the stairs. “Let’s play again to-day. Let’s play again to-day. Here come the booga-woogas. Here come the booga-woogas.”
Suddenly, Philip’s eyes widened and he quickly whispered to Emery, “Do what I do.”
“Hi guys,” Leon said cheerfully entering the kitchen. “I really had fun yesterday. It was . . .”
“Oh, no!” Philip cried and pointed at the wall clock. He turned to Emery.
“Huh? Oh yeah. I mean no, no, oh no!” And Emery pointed. Philip grabbed his arm and redirected it at the clock.
“What?” Leon barked in alarm.
“Look at the clock and look at what you did,” Philip said, lowering his arm.
“Yeah, look at it . . . and what you did,” Emery echoed, dropping his arm, too.
Leon turned to look at the clock, and Philip punched Emery and whispered, “Don’t do it so stupid.”
“What did I do? What did I do?” Leon cried. “It’s ten o’clock. So what?”
“That’s just it,” said Philip with a knowing nod. “It’s not ten o’clock.”
“What do you mean?” Leon asked.
“Do you know how many times you sang when you went upstairs and down?” Philip asked.
“Times?”
“Thirteen!” Philip said, knocking Emery’s knee with his own.
“Yeah, thirteen. You shouldn’t have, Leon. Thirteen, thirteen, thirteen.” Emery said each thirteen louder than the one before.
“I didn’t. No, I didn’t.”
“You did,” Philip assured him. “You did. We counted. And you did it before ten o’clock. We thought you stopped at eleven upstairs, but you sang twice more just now. You know you did.”
“Did I?” Leon paused thoughtfully and then burst out, “I didn’t mean to.”
“You did and now,” said Emery, getting into the spirit, “your trissa blah blah is going to get you.”
“Arggh! Not that. Oh, I have triskaidekaphobia real bad. My doctor said.”
“How can we help him, Emery?” Philip cried. “His bad luck could start any minute.”
“Yeah, and a shiny penny doesn’t stand a chance of beating trissa blah blah.”
“No,” Philip agreed. “And the penny probably used up all its luck yesterday.”
“Wait, I know,” Leon cried. He pulled his shirt over his head so that he looked Egyptian again. He started removing his rabbits’ feet to put over his ears. “I didn’t use this good luck yesterday, remember?” He took off his pants and put them on inside out.
“Your sneakers,” Philip reminded him.
“Oh, yeah.” Leon sat on the floor and removed his sneakers. “If I sit here all day, will that take care of my triskaidekaphobia?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Emery. “That should . . .”
“No!” Philip shouted. “This needs more. It better be the kitchen table.”
“Huh?” said Emery.
Philip ignored Emery and looked at Leon. “Quick, before it’s ten o’clock. Get on the kitchen table and sit there. Hurry. You only have fifteen seconds.”
Leon clambered onto the kitchen table.
“Did I make it? Did I make it?” he cried and stared at the clock.
“Just in time,” said Philip in relief. “That was lucky.”
Leon’s eyes brightened. “Then it’s working.”
“But you have to stay there all day, Leon,” Emery warned. “Trissa blah blah is very powerful.”
“I know. I know,” Leon nodded. “And it’s not trissa blah blah. Oh, I can’t play with you guys today, and yesterday was so much fun. I’m sorry this is gonna spoil your day.”
“Don’t worry,” said Philip generously, pulling Emery by the arm. “There’s always tomorrow.” Then softly to Emery he said, “Come on. Before your mother gets home.”
And out the front door they went.
“That was a great day,” Philip crowed as they approached Emery’s house, weary, dirty, but pleased.
“And I’m starving. Except for the ice cream, we skipped lunch.”
The boys had chosen to be hungry rather than go home and see what was happening with Leon.
“It was worth it. We gotta find a way to keep Leon home tomorrow, too,” Emery said with a smile, even though he was limping. “I have to go to the dentist first thing so you think all morning without me.”
“I will,” said Philip. “How’s your leg?” Emery hadn’t been watching where he was running in the playground and smashed his knee into one of the poles that held up the swings.
“Hurts a little.”
“Emery Wyatt. Philip Felton. Get in here now.”
Philip and Emery jumped. Emery’s mother was standing at her front door, her arms crossed and looking very upset. When the boys walked past her, she said, “Go into the kitchen and tell me what you see.”
Philip and Emery went into the kitchen knowing what they would see. There was Leon, sitting happily atop the kitchen table, looking like an Egyptian king who wore his pants inside out. Leon waggled the sneakers on his hands in greeting.
“Nothing bad happened,” Leon grinned. “Yuk yuk.”
“He won’t get off the table,” Mrs. Wyatt said in distress. “And now he says he can’t eat his meals in the kitchen anymore. What is wrong with him? Why is he dressed like that? I have to make dinner. Why did my sister have to go away? I can’t make dinner with him sitting on my table. Get him off my table. Get him off.”
Philip looked up at the kitchen clock. “Oh, look at that, Emery.”
“What?”
Philip hit Emery with his elbow.
“Oh, yeah, wow. Look at that.” Emery wondered what was coming next.
“You just passed the time you needed, Leon. You defeated the bad luck of singing. You can get down now.”
Leon looked doubtful. “You sure?”
“Very sure,” Philip said, nodding.
Acting as if he were stepping on very thin ice, Leon stood on one of the kitchen chairs. Mrs. Wyatt gave a brief scream of dismay. Then Leon jumped as far as he could toward the entrance to the kitchen and then leaped twice to the doorway. He gave Philip and Emery a wide smile. “Let’s go and play, guys.”
“Uh, well it’s dinner time,” said Emery. “Maybe tomorrow. Why won’t you eat in the kitchen anymore? ”
Leon’s face dropped. “I didn’t have anything to do when I was sitting on the table. Do you know how many floor tiles there are going that way? I counted them.” Leon pointed.
“No,” said Emery impatiently.
“Thirteen! That’s why I can’t eat in the kitchen anymore. Something will happen. Something bad. Because of my triskaidekaphobia.” He looked at Mrs. Wyatt. “It’s not me, Aunt Shirley. It’s my triskaidekaphobia.”
Emery looked at Philip, and Philip knew just what he was thinking. Watching Leon eat was enough to make you sick. He dropped food, sang with his mouth full, burped, smooshed his food all together on his plate into a disgusting mess and then asked you to watch him eat the mess. Afterwards he’d laugh his “yuk yuk” and the food would be all over his teeth. Emery’s mother spent half the previous night’s meal telling Leon to eat with his mouth closed and the other half of the meal muttering and rolling her eyes. The prospect of eating dinner without having Leon to look at was a favorable one.
“He c
an just eat out there, Mom,” said Emery.
Even though she didn’t want to give in to Leon’s strange demands, Mrs. Wyatt knew this demand would be an improvement in her life.
“Yes, and you won’t be waiting until tomorrow to go out to play. You’re going out to play tonight,” said Mrs. Wyatt. “Right now. Dinner won’t be for an hour. And it stays light until eight-thirty. You can play ’til then. Leon, go fix yourself.”
“Yuk yuk. Yay, guys!” Leon ran out of the kitchen and up the stairs singing, “Going out to play-ay. Going out to play-ay.”
Philip and Emery watched him.
“Take him outside and play with him. You hear me?” Mrs. Wyatt ordered, pointing a deadly finger at Emery.
Emery nodded glumly and he walked Philip to the front door to await the return of Leon.
Chapter Eight
Philip sat in the bushes outside of Mrs. Logan’s house the next day, waiting for Emery to get back from the dentist. What an awful night he and Emery had spent watching Leon run up and down the sidewalk screaming, “I’m a kleebis. I’m a kleebis.” They begged him to stop, but he was having too much fun, he said, and why didn’t they join in since it was a game they had taught him.
Once when he and Emery were trying to get rid of Leon, they’d made up the kleebis game with ridiculous rules and convinced Leon that hiding as a kleebis was a good thing and that they would try hard to find him. Leon, glad that anybody would play with him, joined the game enthusiastically and hid himself all afternoon while Philip and Emery went to the playground and forgot about him. Emery’s mother almost had a heart attack when she opened her closet door and Leon jumped out and shouted, “I’m a kleebis.” Emery had gotten punished for that little trick, a whole weekend indoors locked up with Leon, for whom his mother was babysitting.
Last night was so embarrassing. People came out of their front doors to see who was screaming that he was a kleebis. Finally, Philip told Leon that he’d screamed he was a kleebis thirteen times even though it had been more like fifty times. That gave Leon pause and so he stopped.
Suddenly, the bushes rattled and Leon crawled into the hidden space. He sat across from Philip, who stared at him.
Oh, no, Philip thought, a whole morning alone with Leon.
“What do you want?” Philip snapped. “And what did you do to your sneakers?”
Leon’s sneakers had no laces and the long tongues flopped outside.
“This was bad,” Leon warned. “I’m lucky I figured it out.”
“Figured what out?”
“You better take the laces out of your sneakers, too.”
“Why would I do that?” Philip asked in disdain.
“I took one of mine out and measured it. You know what?”
“What?”
“They’re thirteen inches long. I threw them away. You better throw yours away. And I ate in the living room away from the tiles,” he continued as if he were checking off a list of dangerous things to avoid. “And I didn’t use the thirteen stairs. I jumped. Yuk yuk. I like jumping. I broke my tooth jumping.” Leon bared his teeth and pointed at his disfigurement.
Philip sighed.
“Well, why don’t you go jump back in Emery’s house until he gets home?”
Leon’s face turned serious. “He may not get home. Not safe anyway.” Leon stared waiting for Philip to ask what he meant.
Philip tried to hold out. He didn’t want to encourage Leon, but finally he gave in.
“Why won’t he get home safe?”
“Remember yesterday when he hurt his knee?”
“I remember, but how could you? You weren’t there. You were sitting on the kitchen table playing Egyptian, remember?”
Leon nodded. “I wasn’t there but Aunt Shirley asked Emery why he was limping, and he told her and I listened. That’s how I found out what time it was he got hurt. You remember what time?”
Philip thought back. They’d stopped running around for a while until Emery’s knee felt better. It was around lunchtime because that was when they went to get ice cream. The lady ahead of them in line at the ice cream truck asked the ice cream man for the time.
“It was about one o’clock,” Philip finally answered.
“And you know what time that really is?”
Philip pressed his lips together impatiently.
“Yes, Leon. One o’clock is really one o’clock.”
“Nope. It’s thirteen o’clock. I think Emery may be catching my triskaidekaphobia ’cause we’re sleeping in the same bed.”
Philip was about to call Leon a freak, but suddenly remembered something his father had explained to him. His father had been watching a war movie on TV, and the general had said something about fifteen hundred hours. That hadn’t made any sense to Philip, so he’d asked his father what the general meant, and his father explained that in the army, the clock didn’t go to twelve o’clock twice like clocks did in the real world. It went all the way to twenty-four once. Fifteen hundred hours was three hours after twelve—three o’clock. That meant that Leon was right. One o’clock really was thirteen o’clock.
“Just a coincidence,” Philip said weakly.
“Oh, no. No it’s not. Know where Emery is today?”
“Yeah, I know where he is today. The dentist.”
“What floor in the building is the dentist on?”
Philip had been to the same dentist, whose office was in a big building downtown, many times before.
“It’s on the fourteenth floor.”
“And you know what the fourteenth floor really is?”
“One o’clock?” Philip asked sarcastically.
“Nope. Close, though. It’s the thirteenth floor.”
“How can the fourteenth floor be the thirteenth floor?” Philip cried, catching himself and lowering his voice so that no one would hear and find out about their secret spot.
“’Cause everybody is scared of thirteen and doesn’t want to get triskaidekaphobia. Buildings skip the thirteenth floor. They never name a floor thirteen. So the fourteenth floor comes after the twelfth floor and that makes it the thirteenth floor. And that’s where Emery is now, and my disease . . . our disease will find him there. I know it.”
“But . . . Leon, . . . I don’t believe it. Grown-ups won’t act so stupid. Only you do.”
Leon’s eyes widened. “I’m not stupid,” he mumbled sadly and turned sideways so he wouldn’t have to look at Philip anymore.
Philip felt a flash of guilt. Then he felt a wave a guilt when he saw Leon swipe at his eyes.
“All right. All right, Leon. You’re not stupid.”
Leon spun back to face Philip and smiled.
Philip continued, “But you’ll see. When Emery comes home, he’ll say nothing bad happened. You’re just too superstitious, Leon. And you have bad luck anyway even without your triskaphobium.”
“It’s not called triskaphobium,” Leon insisted softly, shaking his head in resignation at the truth of Philip’s statement. “But you’ll see,” he went on. “You’ll see. Emery will have bad luck there today, and so probably will you the next time you go there.”
Philip sighed deeply.
“Leon, I don’t have triskaphobi-whatever.”
“Neither did Emery ’til I gave it to him. And you play with us both, so you’ll probably get it, too. It jumps around like chicken pox.”
Leon put his hands on his drawn-up knees and lowered his forehead onto his hands as if in mourning.
“I am real bad luck,” Leon muttered
Philip didn’t answer, but started thinking back over everything Leon had said.
Chapter Nine
Emery had promised to meet Philip in the bushes as soon as he got home from the dentist, but lunchtime came and Philip got hungry and went home. Emery was still not there when he got back to the bushes, but ten minutes after Philip had settled back into their hiding place, Leon returned.
“What’s wrong with you?” Philip asked after taking a long look at L
eon’s face.
“Emery’s home.”
Philip was puzzled. “He said he’d meet me here. Where is he?”
“In bed.”
“In bed!”
“Yeah. He said it was the worst dentist trip ever. The dentist took out two back big baby teeth so new teeth had room to grow. He said you can go see him if you want.”
Five minutes later Philip was standing next to Emery’s bed. Both sides of Emery’s face were swollen, and Philip thought he looked like a chipmunk trying to hide an acorn in each cheek.
“It’s just these cotton things,” Emery explained, and he rolled a bloody one to his lips.
Philip cringed at the pink splotches on it. Emery rolled it back inside.
“I have to change them every half hour till dinner. Like I’m going to eat.”
Philip and Leon exchanged a look.
Philip asked, “Did you go to the same dentist we always go to? The one on the . . . fourteenth floor in the building where your father works?”
Emery nodded forlornly.
“Did you notice . . . did you notice anything funny about the buttons on the elevator?”
Emery knitted his brow and shook his head.
“Tell him,” Leon encouraged.
“Tell me what?” Emery said in a tiny, pained voice.
“Well, Leon says that buildings don’t have a thirteenth floor because everybody is afraid of the number thirteen . . . ”
Leon butted in. “And I’m giving you my triskaidekaphobia,” he wailed, shaking his head remorsefully. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
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