Mom’s cheeks were pink. Her eyes were unnaturally bright.
“Are you sick?” Cody asked. “Did you get the ax?”
“Big news. News the size of Texas.”
Inside, Mom sat Cody and Wyatt down on the couch. She pressed her hands to her heart.
“Mr. O’Becker offered me a promotion. He offered to make me Head of Shoes!”
“Head of Shoes!” That cracked Cody up. She could just see it! Also a Foot of Hats! “Wow! That’s great!”
“You rock, mamacita,” said Wyatt.
Mom went up on her toes like a ballerina, but a second later came back down. “It’s a trial period. After that, Mr. O. will judge my performance and decide if I get the job for keeps.”
“No hay problema,” said Wyatt. He grabbed the chip bag from Cody and began to munch.
“I don’t know.” Mom paced back and forth. “I’ve never been anyone’s boss before.”
Cody and Wyatt traded looks. That was news to them.
“I’ll need you both to help me,” said Mom. “Can I count on us pulling together? Will you be my support team?”
Group hug! Even Wyatt participated, meaning this was one extra-special occasion. Cody did a left-handed cartwheel. Life was good! For ambidextrous training, she tried a right-handed cartwheel and landed on her bungie. Life was still good!
“My trial starts Monday,” said Mom. “The same day as your camp, Cody. I’ll have to work extra hours, but you can go to Before-or-After-Camp.”
Before-or-After-Camp! As if Now-Camp wasn’t bad enough!
Even Wyatt looked upset by the news. A strange expression crossed his face. He hooked his finger inside his mouth. He pulled it out and stared at the shiny black blob on its tip.
Oh, no.
“I’m going to call Dad, then fix us a celebration dinner.” Mom hurried to the kitchen.
Wyatt flicked away the black blob and followed her.
That left Cody all alone. Feeling terrible.
Terrible for her brother who’d just chomped ants.
Even more terrible for the ants who’d just gotten chomped.
In this life, one minute things are perfect, and the next you are an ant-murderer.
An ant-murderer headed for Before-or-After-Camp torture.
“Cody!” said Mom. “Cody, wake up!”
Cody was dreaming that she held MewMew in her arms. Fat, sweet, deaf old MewMew. But when she opened her eyes, it was her pillow instead. The fog of sleep lifted. There stood Mom, clutching her ashtray.
Mom didn’t smoke anymore. But when she got very upset, she cuddled her old ashtray. It helped soothe her.
Today was Monday, her first day trying out for Head of Shoes. She wore her black dress with the shiny red buttons, and her red patent-leather slingbacks. Not counting the ashtray, she was gorgeous.
“Camp’s closed,” Mom said.
“What?” Cody must have fallen back asleep without noticing. She was having the world’s most beautiful dream.
“Your camp is closed. It’s a toxic dump!”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” said Cody dreamily.
“No.” Mom paced up and down. “For real. The director sent an e-mail on Friday, but I only read it this morning. The playing field is giving off some kind of emissions. The whole place is shut down until further notice.”
Click-click-clump. Mom stepped on Gremlin. Gremlin used to be Wyatt’s, but now he lived in Cody’s room.
“Thank goodness Wyatt’s doctor camp doesn’t start till next week,” Mom said. “You’ll have to stay home with him.”
Cody sat up and pinched herself. Ouch! This was no dream.
“I can’t be late my very first day!” Mom bent to kiss Cody’s cheek. Only she missed and got her in the eye. “I have to run.”
Click-click-click, out of the room. Then click-click-click, back into the room.
“I know,” said Cody. “No ants in the house, no screen time until —”
But now Mom sat down on the bed.
“Honey,” she said, “this new job means a lot to me. But you and Wyatt mean much more! Maybe I should just stay home. I can call in. I’ll say I’m sorry but this isn’t going to work.”
Poor Mom! She looked so upset. Cody scooted close and rubbed her mother’s back in steady circles, the way the earth goes around the sun. She’d learned how to do this from Mom herself.
“We’ll be fine,” Cody said. “First days are always hard. But everything will work out. Just you wait and see.”
“Oh, honey.”
“You’re the world’s best mom. And you’ll make the world’s best boss.”
“Oh, and you’re the world’s best girl.” Mom gave a sniffle. “If I’m going, I better go. I hate to go. Here I go.”
Mom kissed her again, this time right on target. Clutching her ashtray, she sped out of the room. Cody and Gremlin went to tell Wyatt the good news.
Deep asleep, he hugged his pillow tight.
“Payton,” he murmured. “Oh, Payton.”
Payton! Payton Underwood, a girl who had run him down with her bike and not even said sorry. Cody was in the nick of time.
“You’re having a nightmare, Wy! Wake up! Wake up!”
Her brother’s eyes flew open, then clamped shut.
“You are not here,” said his robot voice. “You are at camp. I am having a nightmare.”
“No way! I’ll prove it!”
And Cody gave her brother’s arm a helpful pinch.
Wyatt was on the computer again. But instead of internal organs, today he was examining photos of other kids at parties.
Kids dancing. Kids laughing. Kids dancing and laughing at the same time.
Payton Underwood was in every picture. Her hair could be the star of a shampoo commercial.
“Guts are more interesting,” said Cody.
Wyatt sighed. He clicked off and began his exercises. Over and over, he pulled himself up on his bar. His face went from carnation pink to stop-sign red. At last he let go and hit the floor. Cody followed him into the bathroom, where he scrubbed his face with his stink-bomb soap.
“That soap is a waste of money,” she said. “You use it every day and still get loads of pimples.”
Wyatt dried his face. He peered sadly into the mirror.
“Any more helpful hints?”
“I thought you’d never ask!” said Cody. “Let’s go see MewMew.”
“WhoWho?”
Outside, Cody fed the ants their afternoon snack. Then she dragged her brother down the street. By now, Spencer would be getting really lonesome. Just think! She got to make two people happy at once! Just like a store special: “Buy One, Get One Free.”
On Spencer’s porch, a short, cozy woman watered the flowers. If she were a building, she’d be a cottage. Her pink T-shirt said I SCIENCE.
“I know who you are,” she said. “You’re Cody.”
“Hello, Grandma Grace. This is my big brother, Wyatt.”
“Call me GG.”
GG’s hair was a silver nest, only instead of birds, several pairs of glasses lived there. She set a pair on her nose.
“You’re in the nick of time. Spencer’s parents just called. They’re extending their vacation an extra week. Poor pumpkin’s got the blues.”
“So does my brother,” Cody whispered.
“Let’s cheer them up,” GG whispered back.
Inside, Spencer sat on the sofa with his hands in his lap and his feet on the floor, the student of every teacher’s dreams. MewMew lolled around on the cushions like a plump naked lady in a museum painting.
“This is my brother,” Cody told Spencer, “who’s the same age as MewMew.”
Spencer spoke not a word.
“A-choo!” went Wyatt. “A-choo!” But then he pointed at MewMew. “Look. It has its initial on its head.”
How could Cody have missed it? Four lines formed a dark-gray M on MewMew’s forehead.
“It’s a monogram, like Mo
m has on her blue sweater!” said Cody. “MewMew the monogrammed cat!”
Wyatt sneezed some more. His nose ran. His eyes began to water.
“I’m allergic to the secretions of feline sebaceous glands,” he said. “I’m having a histamine reaction.”
“And how,” said GG, handing him a box of tissues.
It turned out GG was a biology teacher at the high school. Wyatt perked up at that news. He told her he planned to be a surgeon. The two of them went into the kitchen together, discussing stuff you don’t really want to hear about.
Cody pulled MewMew onto her lap and rubbed her monogram. Every cat has a secret purring switch, and she’d found MewMew’s.
“GG’s super nice,” Cody said.
Spencer nodded.
“But you’re still homesick,” she said.
More nodding.
“Maybe you can have a teeny-tiny bit of fun. You know, in between being homesick.”
“They were supposed to come,” he burst out. “But they changed their minds. That’s not fair! And Grandma Grace plays music too loud and cooks veggie burgers. And my pillow here is puffy, and at home it’s flat. Plus the backyard has an extremely dangerous hole in it.”
“Really?” Cody could hardly wait to see that. But Spencer’s bottom lip was trembling.
“You’ve got the blues,” she told him. “But your parents will come before long. In the meantime, try to be brave.”
Spencer shook his big, round head. A tear spilled over.
“What?” she asked. “You don’t want to be brave?”
“I can’t,” he said.
“Just try, amigo!” she said. “Even ants can be brave.”
“You think you know everything,” he said.
Things were not going well in the cheering-up department. Too bad humans didn’t have hidden purring switches you could flip. In this life, animals are superior in so many ways.
At dinner that night, Cody and Wyatt told Mom about their day. She said, “Oh!” and “Cool!” and “I hope you said thank you!” in all the right places.
But when she told them about her day, it was a different story.
Head of Shoes was responsible for crabby customers. For example, the woman who tried on thirty-two pairs of shoes and didn’t like any. Or the man who demanded fur-lined boots even though it was June.
“Another woman went to a party in a pair of our jeweled gladiator sandals. Her boyfriend stepped on her foot while they were dancing and broke her toe.”
“That’s not your fault,” said Wyatt.
“I tried to tell her that,” Mom said. “But Mr. O’Becker gave me a lecture. He said the customer is always right, even when she’s wrong.”
Mom’s lips puckered, like she’d bitten something rotten. At times like this, Cody could tell that being a grown-up was harder than it looked.
“To make matters worse, your camp is closed for good, Cody. And every other camp I called is full,” said Mom. “What are we going to do when Wyatt’s doctor camp starts?”
“I’ll come to work with you,” Cody said. “I’ll tell those cranky old customers to just get over it.”
“I need to lie down,” said Mom. “I’ve got the whim-whams.”
It was quite a week for everyone. GG’s house had lots of books about blood and brains for Wyatt to enjoy. Music was always playing, and GG was happy to demonstrate dances like the Mashed Potato, the Hustle, and Saturday Night Fever. Out back, her half of the yard had a vegetable garden and chairs shaped like butterflies. The other half looked like someone was trying to tunnel to China.
“Grandma Grace says the kids next door have been digging that hole forever,” said Spencer. “Sometimes they even dig in the middle of the night.”
Those kids were away on vacation. Or maybe in reform school. One afternoon, Cody and Spencer built a contraption that fired rocks into the hole. Spencer said its proper name was a catapult.
It worked with marshmallows, too. Also eggs from GG’s fridge. Though Spencer only let Cody do that once.
Oops. Twice.
Oops. Once more.
At home, Spencer said, he never played outside. At home, his house was climate-controlled. He had his own computer. Also his own personal flat-screen TV.
“Sounds to me like you’re spoiled,” said Cody.
“Sounds to me like you’re jealous,” said Spencer.
“I challenge you to a staring contest,” said Cody.
Using her special blurring vision, Cody was the easy winner. Spencer pretended not to mind.
“You don’t know everything,” he said.
“Nobody does,” said Cody. “Except Wyatt. The only thing he doesn’t know is how to make Payton Underwood fall in love with him.”
“Payton Underwood?” Spencer cocked his big, curly head. “You mean her initials are P.U.?”
“P.U.!” Cody smacked her forehead. “You’re right!”
That cracked Cody up. It cracked her up so bad, she fell over backward and rolled around on the grass.
“Pee-yoo!” she gasped. “Peeeee-yooooo!”
“It’s not nice to laugh at other people,” Spencer said.
Then he made a tiny plip sound, like one drop of milk in a glass. Plip-plip-plip, went Spencer, faster and faster, till that glass of milk was full to the brim and overflowing. By then Spencer was laughing so hard, he rolled around on the grass, too.
The two of them crashed into each other and then, somehow, they rolled into the hole. Since the hole contained catapulted rocks and smashed eggs, this should not have been a fun experience.
But it was.
Even for Spencer.
All week long, Mom left early and came home late. Search back through the mists of time, and you would not find a shoe salesperson who worked as hard as Mom.
Saturday was O’Becker’s busiest day. When Cody woke up, she heard her mother getting ready to go. Jumping out of bed, she ran for a good-bye hug. But when she burst into the kitchen, Mom spun around and gave a gasp.
“Oh, dear,” she said, hiding her hand behind her back.
“What’s that?” Cody tried to see. “A surprise?”
It was a surprise, all right. Mom was holding a pack of cigarettes.
“You quit!” cried Cody. “You promised to never coat your lungs in filthy black tar again!”
“I wasn’t going to actually smoke them,” said Mom. “I was just going to look at them now and then. When the whim-whams got really bad. But that was a mistake.”
Mom was wearing her best outfit, the gray pants suit and imitation snakeskin stilettos. Now she tapped the garbage pail with her imitation snakeskin toe. The lid flew up. The cigarettes flew down.
“There.” She dusted her hands together. “Close call. Thank goodness. Oh, my. What was I thinking?”
You might suppose a kid would enjoy being 100 percent right and having her parent admit it. But you would be wrong.
“Dad comes home tomorrow,” Mom said. “It’s my day off, and we’ll have a nice cookout. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Mom kissed Cody good-bye. Cody slowly buttered her toast with her left hand. She carefully wrote Wyatt a note with her right hand. Outside, early as it was, the ants were already hard at work. Cody lay down on the sidewalk for an ant’s-eye view. Did they ever get the whim-whams? They had plenty to worry about. For example, human foot-stompers. Or enemy ants. But there they were, working away as hard as ever. As Cody watched, they touched their eyelashthin feelers. That was ant for “Keep your spirits up, old buddy!” She tore her toast crusts into extra-tiny pieces for them.
Down the street in the neighbor’s front yard, a baby skunk snuffled the grass. Skunks weren’t supposed to be out in the daytime. Its white stripe went only halfway down its back. This was a beginner skunk, and it didn’t have the hang of things yet.
A vine of tenderness climbed up inside Cody. Oh, how she longed to pet that pointy little head! But inside her, the wise voice spoke. Put your hand in your
pocket, said the voice. Pet that sweet stink-machine with your eyes alone.
So Cody walked on, around the corner to the seeing-double street. Spencer sat on the porch swing, not swinging. He was still wearing his pj’s. They were so faded, it was hard to tell what the pictures on them were. Elephants, maybe. Possibly toasters. His sturdy wrists and ankles stuck out.
“Those pj’s are your old favorites, aren’t they?” she said.
“My mom threw them away, but I rescued them,” he said.
“Moms really need our help sometimes.”
Spencer pushed his glasses up his nose. He plucked at a toaster/elephant.
“When I try to help my parents, they say, ‘Spencer dear, you’re getting in the way.’”
“Too bad for them,” said Cody. “In my opinion, you could be a very helpful person.”
“Probably that’s why they didn’t take me on their trip. Because I’d get in their way.”
Very gently, Cody started the swing swinging.
First Mom and her cigarettes.
Then the ants.
The baby skunk.
Spencer’s worn-out pj’s.
In this life, so many things can twang your heart.
If only she and Spencer had feelers, she’d have touched his right now.
“My dad is coming home tomorrow,” Cody said. “We’re having a cookout, and you should come.”
He bit his lip. Decisions were hard for Spencer, even no-brainers. Cody sped up the swing a teeny-tiny bit, to help him make up his mind.
“Will you have veggie burgers?” he asked.
“My dad hates those,” said Cody.
“Okay,” Spencer said at last.
“Hooray! MewMew can come, too!”
Oh, no. There he went, thinking again. Cody made the swing go a little faster.
“What if she gets scared and runs away again?” Spencer asked.
“Did you forget? I’m going to hypnotize her. I will put her in a light trance, and then . . .” Cody snapped her fingers, only they didn’t snap. She tried her other hand. Oh, well. “MewMew will never run away again.”
Cody and the Fountain of Happiness Page 2
