by Geoff Rodkey
MOM AND DAD (text messages)
(MOM) Did you see ClickChat wall?
(DAD) No
Apparently teams can split up.
Claudia wants to. I think terrible idea
bc not safe for kids to be wandering
alone in city w no parent
Probably not so bad
You’re not letting your team split up,
are you?
No they’re together
I should def tell Claudia no, right?
your call
But whole point of chaperoning is
making sure kids are safe. Right?
guess so
Claudia furious. V stressful. Tell me
it’s ok to stand my ground and make
kids stick together even if it hurts
team
Seriously, what should I do? Feel like
bad mother either way
Eric?
in mtg
How can you be in a meeting?
sorry in hurry
Calling you now
can’t talk
Y not??
on subway
no reception
Then how can you send texts?
g2g
CLAUDIA
It took forever, but I finally came up with a plan that Mom couldn’t argue with: she’d take Parvati and Carmen with her, and Jens and I would go off by ourselves.
This made sense, because A) Mom would still be chaperoning Parvati and Carmen; B) Mom had to admit I was a responsible enough person to go off by myself as long as I wasn’t alone; and C) Jens and I convinced her that his parents are very laid-back and would be totally fine with it.
In fact, Jens’s parents are so laid-back that he wasn’t even sure if they knew he was at a scavenger hunt.
JENS
Dutch parents are not so… how do you say it…?
CLAUDIA
Uptight?
JENS
Yes. The Dutch are more downloose. Ed. Note: not a word (but VERY cute)
CLAUDIA
Right when Mom finally downloosed, Carmen found the rugs.
CARMEN
OMG I CANNOT BELIEVE HOW MUCH THOSE RUGS COST!
CLAUDIA
The rug department was right next to furniture, and the second we started checking tags on the handwoven Persians, it was obvious we’d hit the jackpot.
PARVATI
All I could think was, “What if you had a dog… and you bought that rug… and the dog peed on it?”
I mean, seriously. Can you imagine? Do rich people not have dogs or something?
CARMEN
I think there might be a secret department in the basement of Bloomingdale’s where you can buy dogs that don’t pee or poop. To go with your $300,000 rug.
The dogs are, like, $400,000.
CLAUDIA
Finding the rug (eight points!) put everybody in a good mood. Then Mom went with Parvati and Carmen to get more items on the East Side, while Jens and I headed for Times Square and the West Side.
Although first I had to find Jens, because he’d temporarily disappeared.
TEXT MESSAGES (Claudia and Jens)
WHERE R U???????
Shoe department. Do you like?
Better for running
OMG GET BACK TO FURNITURE
RIGHT NOW
BUT FIRST BUY THE SHOES
CHAPTER 15
MY BROTHER’S TEAM GETS IN SERIOUS TROUBLE
CLAUDIA
While I am a very responsible person who can definitely be left alone in the middle of Manhattan for longer than ten minutes without causing a major disaster, my brother is not.
And neither are his idiot friends.
REESE
There were a TON of people waiting to get on the Staten Island Ferry. Which was kind of surprising, because minor-league baseball season was over. And if you’re not going to see a Staten Island Yankees game, I don’t know why you’d go to Staten Island.
CLAUDIA
Maybe because, I don’t know, you live there? Like HALF A MILLION people do?
REESE
Oh. Right. That makes sense. Wow, it must be a pretty big island.
Anyway, Xander told Wyatt to get on the ferry and take a pic of Calvin with the Statue of Liberty in the background.
WYATT
I said, “Why do I have to do it?”
XANDER
I was all, “I ain’t doin’ it.”
REESE
I was like, “I get seasick. For reals.” Which is totally true. I’m a barfer. Ed. Note: Unfortunately true (also happens in back seat of cars) (#HardToLiveWith)
JAMES
There’s a warrant for my arrest in Staten Island. I can’t set foot there.
REESE
I seriously doubt that’s true. But whatever.
WYATT
So I said, “I don’t want to go to Staten Island alone!”
REESE
And I went, “Somebody’s gotta do it. Why don’t we take a vote?”
So we did.
The results were three votes for Wyatt and one vote for “anybody but Wyatt.”
WYATT
That was totally unfair of you guys.
REESE
Then Wyatt tried to get out of going. He was like, “We can’t split up—we’ve only got one Calvin the Cat!”
JAMES
I said, “Actually, we have two. You want the head or the legs?”
WYATT
I took the legs. ’Cause the head had fallen in some kind of sewer water on the subway tracks, so it smelled really nasty. Ed. Note: SO disgusting—can’t believe nobody got incurable disease
REESE
We left Wyatt in the ferry line, and we walked out of the terminal thinking, “We are going to crush this!”
But then we realized we didn’t have a list of the scavenger hunt items. Dad had our only copy, and nobody’d remembered to take it before we ran off.
JAMES
For a person with a photographic memory, this was not a problem.
But none of us had a photographic memory.
So it was a problem.
REESE
We spent a couple of minutes going, “What was that thing in Times Square…?” And “Something, something Chinatown…?”
All we could remember for sure were the FAO Schwarz piano and the Coney Island Cyclone, which is this awesome roller coaster way out on the edge of Brooklyn.
Then Xander was like, “Bull pic, yo!”
So we walked over to the Wall Street bull statue and got that for three points.
Then we decided to go to Coney Island.
XANDER
I was all, “Cyclone, yo! Mad points for that bad boy!” So I peeped Coney Island on Google Maps, and we needed to mack the 4 train, then hook up a transfer.
So we wuz gonna hit the subway. But then we peeped the bar showing Man U–Liverpool.
REESE
Xander’s second-favorite soccer team is Manchester United. They were playing Liverpool that day, and there was this big sign on the sidewalk outside this bar that said “WATCH MAN UNITED VS. LIVERPOOL ON THE BIG SCREEN!”
Right when we walked past the bar, we heard all this cheering, like somebody’d just scored.
And Xander was all, “Let’s check the score, yo!”
And I was like, “We don’t have time for this!” But Xander had already gone inside. So James and I followed him.
CLAUDIA
You do know it’s illegal for a 12-year-old to walk into a bar without a parent, right?
REESE
Well, I do NOW. I didn’t know then.
I also didn’t realize the bar was called Hooligans. Which is, like, NOT a great name for a bar that shows English soccer matches. Ed. Note: for more info, google “English soccer hooligans.” It is CRAZY
Also, it’s a VERY bad idea to walk into a bar like that with James Mantolini.
JAMES
I’m not really
into sports. So to me, it just looked like a bunch of loud, sweaty guys yelling at a TV.
And I thought, y’know… join the fun.
REESE
So we get in there, and it was definitely a Liverpool bar, because it was totally packed with their fans. It was, like, this army of giant bald guys in red jerseys.
And Xander had totally disappeared.
XANDER
I was hittin’ the little boys’ room. X-Man needed to tinkle.
REESE
Liverpool had just scored, so the whole bar was doing this victory chant. They had super-thick accents, so it was hard to understand what the chant was. But it was definitely dirty. And it was REALLY mean to Man U’s fans. And their players. And the players’ moms.
And right when the chant finished, there was this moment of quiet where nobody was yelling anything.
And that’s when James screamed, “LIVERPOOL SUCKS!” Ed. Note: really, really, REALLY not smart to do this in bar full of giant Liverpool fans
JAMES
I was just trying to get in the spirit of it. Everybody else was yelling stuff. So I thought they’d appreciate hearing a wider variety of opinions about their little soccer team.
But they definitely did not appreciate that.
So they tried to kill us.
REESE
Fortunately, we were right by the front door. If we’d been, like, ten feet farther away from it, I think we’d literally be dead right now.
The next couple of minutes are kind of hard to remember. I know we were running, and I was really, really scared. And a bunch of the Liverpool fans were chasing us. I’m not sure how many.
XANDER
Alls I know is, when I came out of the can, half the bar was gone.
Which was beast, ’cause then there were free seats! So I copped one and started to peep the game.
And I ordered some wings. ’Cause X-Man was hungry.
REESE
I have definitely never been that scared in my whole life. I was running flat out, so I couldn’t look back. But we could hear the Liverpool guys screaming at us. They were going, “WE’RE GOING TO KILL YOU!” Only with really thick accents. And a lot of swear words.
And the streets in that part of town are crazy narrow and short, so we kept, like, skurtling Ed. Note: N.A.A.W. around corners looking for a place to hide.
And we skurtled Ed. Note: S.N.A.A.W. (STILL Not An Actual Word) around this one corner, and there was a delivery truck sitting there with its back door wide open. And it was totally dark inside it.
And all of a sudden, James jumped into the back of the truck and disappeared.
So I followed him.
JAMES
Now that I think about it, Reese never once thanked me for saving his life by jumping in the back of that truck. He was actually kind of ungrateful.
REESE
You were the whole reason we were running for our lives!
JAMES
But I also SAVED our lives. So it balances out.
REESE
Whatever.
So James and I got all crouched down behind the boxes. And we heard the, like, “RAAAAH!” of all the soccer guys running by.
Then it got quiet, and we were about to stand up and get out of there. But then we heard somebody coming, so we ducked down again. And a second later, there was this crazy-loud shuddery rumble.
Which must have been the roller door of the truck coming down. Because all of a sudden, it was pitch black, and we couldn’t see a thing.
Then a second later, we heard the front door open and close real fast. Then the engine started.
And that’s how we got trapped in the back of a truck headed for New Jersey.
CHAPTER 16
SABOTAGE IN TIMES SQUARE
CLAUDIA
Even though Jens had lived in New York City for over three months, he’d never been on the subway before, because his mom is scared of it. So it was very exciting for him to take the 6 to Grand Central and then transfer to the shuttle to Times Square.
JENS
I was surprised. I thought there would be a bad smell, but it was okay.
CLAUDIA
It only smells really bad in the summer.
We were headed to Times Square for two things: a Playbill from a Broadway musical (5 points) and a picture of a guy in a Flubby suit holding Calvin the Cat (8 points).
Getting the Playbill was easy. All we had to do was go to a theater and beg.
But pointwise, the really important thing was the Flubby picture. In case you were never a kid and/or grew up without a television, Flubby is a character on the show Aardvark Avenue. He’s basically a rock star to every three-year-old in the world.
JENS
In the Netherlands, he is not Flubby. He’s Fluuber. Ed. Note: SO cute
CLAUDIA
On most days, there are half a dozen people in Flubby suits wandering around Times Square, charging tourists money to take pictures with them.
It’s a little weird, but then so are a lot of things in Times Square.
It didn’t take us long to find a Flubby, and he seemed totally happy to let me take his picture… until I pulled our Calvin out of my bag.
When he saw the Calvin, he started shaking his big Flubby head side to side, like he was saying, “Nooooo.”
I figured it was because I hadn’t tipped him yet, so I pulled out a few dollars and offered them to him. When I did, he started waving his arms, like, “No, no, no!”
I said, “Why not?”
Then he turned his back on me and ran away.
Considering how much Aardvark Avenue I watched when I was little, having a Flubby run away from me like that was actually kind of upsetting.
But it was about to get much more upsetting.
JENS
It was very strange at first. All the Fluubers, when they saw the Calvin, folded their arms and would not hold him.
CLAUDIA
It was like they were vampire Flubbies, and our Calvin was made of garlic. Every time we walked up to a Flubby, he’d be all, “Oh, hi!” friendly—but as soon as I pulled out the Calvin, he’d freak out and refuse to hold it.
When it happened with the fifth Flubby in a row, I got very frustrated. So I yelled, “Why won’t you hold it? It’s just a cat!” at him.
And this muffled, echo-y voice from inside the Flubby head said, “I promised the girl no one else!” in a Spanish accent.
“What girl?” I said.
“The rich girl,” said Spanish Flubby. Ed. Note: other Flubbies who rejected us:
-angry Flubby
-lazy Flubby (wore Crocs)
-Fur-Falling out Flubby
-red Flubby (might actually have been Elmo)
Right away, I knew what had happened: Fembot sabotage.
“Did a girl pay you not to take any pictures with these cats?” I asked him.
Spanish Flubby nodded his giant head.
“What did she look like?”
“Long hair. Black car. Nice clothes.”
Athena Cohen.
Actually, it could have been Meredith. Or Ling. Or Clarissa. Depending on how much she’d paid him and how nice the clothes were.
“How much did she pay you?”
“Fifty dollar.”
Definitely Athena. Only she was rich and evil enough to pay off every Flubby in Times Square.
“Can’t you just please take this one picture?” I begged him. “She’ll never know!”
“No,” said Spanish Flubby. “I make a promise.”
“Please?”
“No. Sorry. Flubby is role model for the children. Flubby has to keep promises.” Ed. Note: actually very admirable of him (but annoying)
JENS
When you kept asking him and the Fluuber kept saying no, you looked so sad. I just wanted to make you cheer up.
CLAUDIA
Jens gave me a hug and said, “Don’t worry. It’s just a game. Let’s go eat lunch.”
Which act
ually made me REALLY mad. Because I felt like if we couldn’t even get an 8-point Flubby picture, we’d definitely lose to the Fembots. And I didn’t want Jens to be okay with that—I wanted him to get mad and kick butt with me.
