Owen and Eleanor Meet the New Kid
Book 3
Written by H. M. Bouwman
Illustrated by Charlie Alder
Beaming Books
Minneapolis
For Alannah! Welcome to the family! And with much thanks to Naima Abdi for so much good discussion and helpful information. Many blessings to you, Naima.
Text copyright © 2019 H.M. Bouwman
Illustrations copyright © 2019 Beaming Books
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the written permission of the publisher. Email [email protected].
First edition published 2019
Printed in the United States of America
25 24 23 22 21 20 19 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Paperback ISBN: 9781506452029
Ebook ISBN: 9781506452036
Illustrations by Charlie Alder
Cover design by Alisha Lofgren, 1517 Media
Interior design by Eileen Engebretson, 1517 Media
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019932335
V63474;9781506452029;MAR2019
Beaming Books
510 Marquette Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55402
beamingbooks.com
Contents
1. Eleanor
2. Owen
3. Eleanor
4. Owen
5. Eleanor
6. Owen
7. Eleanor
8. Owen
9. Eleanor
10. Owen
11. Eleanor and Owen
About the author
About the illustrator
Other books in the Owen and Eleanor series
Chapter 1
Eleanor
Eleanor was having a boring boring Friday afternoon. When she came home from school, there was no one to play with. Her best friend Owen, who lived in the duplex apartment above hers, was not home. He’d left a note on the door that said, “We are at the Science Museum. We will be home soon.” But what did soon mean? Did soon mean in five minutes? Or did soon mean in five years? Owen once said that Galapagos tortoises lived for a hundred years or even longer. Five years wasn’t soon to Eleanor, but maybe it was really fast if you were a Galapagos tortoise.
Owen wasn’t a tortoise, so maybe soon really did mean five minutes.
Eleanor waited outside Owen’s door for five minutes. Owen did not come home.
When she went downstairs to her family’s apartment, her dad was cleaning the kitchen. He didn’t like cleaning the kitchen, but he did it to be nice to the family. Eleanor decided to be nice too. So she and her kitten helped sweep the floor until her dad told her that they had helped enough and maybe they should do something else. Then she practiced doing cartwheels in the living room until her dad said cartwheels were only for outside. Then she went in the backyard.
But the backyard wasn’t that much fun without Owen. Even Michael, Owen’s little brother, would be more fun than nobody. Why wasn’t there anyone to play with? If there was another kid in the neighborhood, that might be nice. Even though Owen was her best friend, maybe another friend would be good too—one who played whatever games Eleanor wanted.
Just then, a truck drove down the alley—a pickup truck, with a sofa in the back held down by straps. The sofa did not have any sofa cushions, but it did have a brown-and-orange flowered design all over it. Eleanor watched it pass, but she didn’t watch in time to see who was driving.
The truck pulled into the yard two houses over—the backyard of the house that had a For Rent sign in front. Eleanor checked to make sure no one else was coming, and then she ran down the alley and peered around the fence.
The truck was parked behind the For Rent house. Maybe there was a new kid who would follow all her directions and play all her games whenever Owen wasn’t around!
The truck door opened. A man got out, a small thin man with dark skin, darker than Eleanor’s. He had gray hair mixed in with the black. Gray hair. And he moved like he was tired and sore. Or very old.
The other truck door opened, and a teenage boy got out. Eleanor slumped. Teenagers were no good. They didn’t play with you, and they definitely didn’t follow your directions.
The teenage boy reached into the cab, pulled out sofa cushions, and stacked them on the back of the truck, while the old man unlocked the back door of the house. They looked like they were moving in. A teenager and an old man. No one the right age. Eleanor sighed and walked down the alley.
She climbed the stairs to Owen’s apartment. At least she could tell Owen about the new neighbors, even though they weren’t anything interesting. But the Science Museum note was still on Owen’s door, and Owen still wasn’t home. Did he even know what soon meant? Eleanor grabbed a marker from downstairs and crossed out the word soon on the note and wrote “IN A MILLION YEARS.” She wrote really big and put four exclamation marks after it (!!!!) to make sure that Owen would realize how late he was.
Then she went down to her own apartment and found Goldfish the kitten. But Goldfish didn’t want to play and instead stalked away to sleep somewhere that wasn’t near Eleanor.
Eleanor flopped on her bed in the room she shared with her older sister Alicia. Alicia’s pillow was gone, and her backpack wasn’t at her desk either. Dad poked his head into the room and said, “Alicia is at Millie’s for a sleepover. Remember, honey? And I’m going to grade papers for a little while, so don’t bother me unless it’s an emergency.”
Ugh. It was such a boring afternoon that Eleanor even missed Alicia.
After a while, the front door opened, and a scratchy, kind-of-deep voice said, “Dad, I’m starving! Is there any food?”
It was Eleanor’s brother Aaron. He was in high school. He was tall and skinny and had brown hair like their mom instead of almost-black hair like their dad and Alicia and Eleanor.
And he was way better to talk to than no one.
Eleanor ran to the kitchen. The dishes were all clean and there were apples in the bowl on the counter. Aaron picked one up and bit into it. “Did you see that the house down the street has been rented?” he said. “I wonder who’s moving in.”
“Old man and a teenager,” said Eleanor. “No one interesting. They have a boring flowered sofa.”
Aaron laughed. “You’re like a super-detective, coming up with all that information on the new neighbors.”
It sounded almost like Aaron was making fun of her. “I could be a super-detective. If I wanted to,” said Eleanor.
“I’m sure you could.”
“I’d figure out all kinds of stuff about the new people.”
Aaron dropped his apple core in the little compost bin. “Want to come out and help me rake? Dad wants us to get the backyard done today.”
“Dad wants you to get the backyard done today.”
“You can jump in the leaf pile when we’re done making it.”
“Will you call me Darth Vader? Or—what’s a detective name?”
“Sherlock Holmes.”
“Sherlock. That’s what you have to call me. Sherlock Vader.”
“Deal. But you have to actually rake.”
They dug the rakes out of the entryway closet that their family shared with Owen’s family and went to the backyard. There were a lot of leaves on the ground, and they were all different colors—red and yellow and purple, along with some sad, crumpled brown leaves that were starting to melt into the ground. Eleanor and Aaron only needed to rake the grassy part of the yard, not the way-back part near the alley, the part Eleanor called the forest because of all the trees there. That part was covered with pine needles and leaves, and they left everything there to turn into dirt. The grassy part, though, needed clea
ring, and it was big enough that Eleanor was a little tired just looking at all the leaves.
Aaron started raking right away. “Let’s get going, Sherlock Vader,” he said. “Big leaf pile, remember?”
Eleanor raked one rake’s worth of leaves, and it formed into a teeny tiny pile that a mouse could maybe jump in. It would take about a million rakings to make a big enough pile for her. “I’m going to deduce something,” she said. “Like a detective. I deduce that there are a million leaves on this lawn.”
“I think that’s more like a guess,” said Aaron.
“Not if I count them.”
“Well, okay. Or you could count how many are in one rakeful, and then count how many rakefuls you do, and then add them all up.”
That sounded like way too much counting. “I have a different theory. I think . . . that the new neighbors are old old people.”
“With a teenager?”
“He was probably their grandson. He was helping them move in.”
“Okay. Well, it would be pretty easy to solve that puzzle—you could just ask them. Keep raking, please.”
Asking wouldn’t be any fun. “What if you couldn’t ask, though? Then how would you figure it out? What would a detective do?”
“Well, I guess you’d observe and draw conclusions from observation,” said Aaron. “Like . . . you’d watch what furniture they brought into the house, or who seemed to be there when they moved in. Or you’d look at their mail to see who it’s addressed to.” He paused. “Don’t look at their mail. That’s illegal.”
No mail. That was fine. Eleanor started raking super fast. She had just thought of something she and Owen could do that would be interesting. They could be detectives, and they could spy on the new neighbors. Eleanor and Owen both still had a lot of space left in their journals from when they wrote essays about their lives. They could use the notebooks for detective notes, and they could collect clues—
“This went much faster than I thought it would,” said Aaron. “We’ve got a big leaf pile. Want to jump in it?”
She looked up at the house and saw a light flicker on in Owen’s second-floor apartment. “Maybe later. I gotta go. Owen and I have some work to do.”
Chapter 2
Owen
Meanwhile, Owen and his little brother Michael and their dad had had a good time at the Science Museum. Owen read all the description signs in the dinosaur-bones
room, which he wanted to do; Michael pushed all the buttons on the talking descriptions, which he wanted to do; and they both climbed on the “PLEASE CLIMB ON ME” pretend-dinosaur exhibit just outside the dinosaur room, which both of them wanted to do. And later, in the exhibit on electricity, all three of them—Dad included—made their floppy hair stand straight in all directions.
After they rode the bus back to their own neighborhood, they walked the last block home. And as they neared the For Rent house, Owen’s dad paused. “The sign is gone.”
Sure enough, the For Rent sign was not there.
“It’s not the For Rent house anymore,” said Michael sadly. “Hey, can I run all the way home?”
“Yes,” said their dad. Home was only three houses farther. Michael raced away.
Owen stopped to look at the For Rent house. It almost looked lonely without the sign in the yard. “Do you think someone rented it?”
“Probably,” said Dad. “And, maybe it’s someone with kids. More kids on the block would be nice, right?”
More kids? Did they really need more kids than him and Eleanor? Owen felt a little lurch in his stomach. What if the new kid was really cool, and Eleanor liked the new kid more than she liked Owen?
Then he shook his head to himself. No. She had just said the other day at the ice-cream store what good friends they were, and that she liked Owen exactly the way he was. She would stay his friend even if a new kid moved in. He knew that.
But the question was still there. Did they really need a new kid in the neighborhood? Weren’t Owen and Eleanor happy the way things were? Why should more kids move in?
“What are you thinking, sweetie?” asked Dad.
“Just thoughts,” said Owen. “Nothing important.”
Michael was already on the steps of their duplex, panting. They were home.
* * *
Almost as soon as they got inside the apartment, Eleanor was at their door, knocking very loud and fast. Owen let her in, and she blew past him into his and Michael’s room. “Michael,” she said, “there is a giant leaf pile in the backyard.”
Michael yelled to his dad and ran outside.
“Let’s go,” said Owen, starting to the door. A leaf pile sounded good.
But Eleanor didn’t run downstairs right away. She stood in the middle of Owen and Michael’s room. “There are new people in the For Rent house.”
“I know,” said Owen. “We saw.”
“You saw the new people?” She sounded disappointed.
“No, we saw that the For Rent sign was gone.”
“Oh, good. I think we should be detectives. I even have detective glasses and a detective coat for us and everything. And we have spy notebooks.”
Owen was confused. What did this have to do with the new people in the For Rent house?
“We’ll spy on the new people and observe them, like detectives, and figure out who they are and what they are like.”
“That’s kind of like the scientific method,” said Owen. “We just talked about this at the Science Museum today. Did you know that scientists observe things and make theories? We were talking about dinosaurs—”
“I did not know that,” said Eleanor, bouncing on her toes. She bounced when she was excited. “We’re not going to be scientists. We’re going to be detectives. But if you want to be a scientific detective, that’s fine. We’ll find out all about the new people.”
“We will?”
“Yes. And we’ll keep detective notes in our notebooks. I’ll wear the spy glasses since you have your own glasses already. But you can wear the detective coat if you want.”
Owen thought about it. Detective sounded like a good game. And he was curious about the new people. “Okay. Can we jump in the leaf pile now?”
Eleanor stopped bouncing and froze, a shocked look on her face. “Yikes! We better hurry, or Michael will get all the good jumps!”
* * *
First they grabbed Owen’s notebook from his room and stopped at Eleanor’s apartment to grab her notebook too—and the spy glasses and detective coat. Then they ran outside.
Michael was half-hidden under the pile of leaves, only his lower body sticking out, legs kicking.
“What are you playing?” Eleanor called to him. “Wait, I’ll detect it.” She shoved the glasses onto her face. They wobbled on her nose and rolled their googly eyes. Spy glasses didn’t normally have googly eyes, Owen was pretty sure, but these were Aaron’s Mad Scientist glasses from Halloween a long time ago. Eleanor said they were just like real spy glasses.
Owen rolled up the sleeves of the white detective coat (also from Aaron’s Mad Scientist costume) so he could use his hands. The pocket of the coat, which held his notebook perfectly, said “Dr. Frankenstein” on it in official-looking black letters. Eleanor said he’d be Frankenstein the Detective and she’d be Sherlock Vader.
Eleanor tried to explain all this to Michael, but he didn’t seem interested. He was still head-first in the leaves. “I’m busy. I’m digging a hole to catch a fairy.” Michael’s legs slowly disappeared into the leaves.
“Well, we need a turn too,” said Eleanor. “I raked that pile.”
“By yourself?” asked Owen, impressed.
“Aaron helped.”
Michael emerged out of the side of the pile, covered with leaves. “The fairy escaped,” he said. He wandered off to the woods at the back of the yard.
Eleanor took off her spy glasses and Owen took off his real glasses so they wouldn’t get smooshed, and they put their glasses on the little table near the hous
e. Then they held hands and ran together as fast as they could toward the pile, Eleanor yelling, “Charge! Defeat the Empire!” and Owen imagining that all of the Star Wars Empire soldiers were standing against them and they were detectives, racing into unimaginable danger. They didn’t need any more friends. They needed exactly what they had now.
Owen and Eleanor jumped, and leaves went flying, and everything was perfect just the way it was.
Chapter 3
Eleanor
That afternoon, Eleanor helped Dad with supper until her helping got too loud, and then she was sent to the living room to color quietly until Mom came home from work. She colored loudly, but no one seemed to notice, not even Goldfish the cat, who stayed asleep on the sofa next to her.
When Mom came home, she first said hi to Dad, who came out of the kitchen. They called each other sweetheart and other mushy things in Spanish. Dad called Mom a little duck and gave her a kiss.
“You know I can understand you,” said Eleanor. “And, weird.”
“We aren’t trying to be sneaky,” said Eleanor’s dad. “If we were, we wouldn’t talk at all in front of you.”
“When we met, we met speaking Spanish,” said Eleanor’s mom. “So that still feels right for talking to each other sometimes.” They had met in Costa Rica, where Eleanor’s dad was living because that’s where he was born and grew up, and where Eleanor’s mom had moved for a job. That was all long before Eleanor was alive, of course.
Dad called Aaron, and they sat down for supper.
After they prayed and started eating, Eleanor said, “We have new neighbors, but my theory is that they are old and boring.”
“Theory?” said Mom.
“I think she’s pretending to be a detective,” Aaron said.
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