by Don Calame
I lie there on the floor in complete shock. It looks like a miniature Pearl Harbor. Pete is going to freak. He might even cry. Right before he beats me to death with what’s left of his Sopwith Camel. He won’t care that it was an accident. I could have taken a loose lamb-tikka-masala dump on Pete’s pillow and it wouldn’t have been as bad as this.
I have to think. How can I fix this? How can I make this better? I get to my feet and survey the situation. Okay. Okay. Some of the models don’t look too bad. Some of the wings have just snapped off. The aircraft-carrier table is split in two, but it’s a pretty clean break. I don’t know. Maybe I can do some repair work.
I heave the weights back into their little pyramids and bolt downstairs.
“What the hell was that?” Grandpa calls from his bedroom.
“Nothing, Grandpa. I just dropped . . . something. It’s fine.”
I dash outside and over to the garage, yank the garage door open, and find the old rusty toolbox. I root around and grab some heavy-duty wood screws, a screwdriver, a little vial of SuperDuper glue, and some electrical tape.
Back up in Pete’s room with my makeshift repair kit, I stand there in the middle of the wreckage and there’s no friggin’ way I’m going to be able to make it look like nothing happened here. I need a plan B.
And plan B is to make it look like it wasn’t my fault. Something fell on the table. Like Pete’s framed Harry Houdini picture. It could have happened. It’s not right over the table, but who knows how these things go. The weight of the picture frame wrenched the nail out of the wall and then the rest was physics. He should have let Dad help hang the picture. But Pete was stubborn and he wanted to do it himself. I remember that. And now look what happened.
The thing is, if Pete were a normal brother and would just scream at me and let me give him some money to smooth things over, then I’d never even think about covering it up. Okay, I’d think about it, but I probably wouldn’t follow through. But Pete will kill me and I’m not kidding. It will be a crime of passion. Pete loves those models more than anything. If he had to choose between Melissa and his models, there wouldn’t even be a discussion. It’s really just survival at this point. He’ll probably thrash the poor Harry Houdini picture, but better Houdini than me.
I move to the wall and carefully lift the heavy picture frame off its hook, shuffle to the right, and then drop it into the mess. I pull the nail from the wall, throw it on the floor, and tell myself that it looks believable. It’s a bit of a stretch, but I have a few weeks to try and convince myself before Pete comes home.
COOP HAS CALLED SEAN and me to an emergency strategy meeting. We’re already three weeks into July and we are no closer to seeing a naked girl — and Mandy Reagan in particular. What with swim practice and the Kelly situation, and the fact that our last attempt backfired in such a big way, we haven’t exactly rededicated ourselves to the cause. Coop says that if we don’t start planning something right now, this could be the first summer we fail to achieve our goal, which, to hear him tell it, would upset the balance of the entire universe. I don’t know about that, but what I do know is that if we don’t somehow get that picture of Mandy, our own little universe will be more than just upset. It will be completely capsized.
“What we need is a Clamato Classic to get our creative juices flowing,” Coop says as the three of us make our way into his backyard.
And sure enough, Coop’s got his rickety old Ping-Pong table all set up and ready to go. The Clamato Classic is a round-robin table tennis tournament that we came up with a few years ago. The objective is not so much to come in first but to avoid coming in third. Because third place means you have to drink the most unholy of beverages: a super-sized Adventure Town souvenir cup filled to the brim with equal parts Clamato and chocolate milk. It makes me queasy just thinking about it.
“Whoo-hoo!” Sean hollers, running to the table and grabbing a paddle. “Who wants to get their butt wiped first?” He leaps around, swatting an invisible ball.
“You can wipe mine.” Coop laughs. “But only after I whip yours.” He picks up the other paddle along with an orange Ping-Pong ball.
I take a seat on one of Coop’s wobbly foldout beach chairs.
“Volley for serve.” Coop sends the ball over the net and Sean returns it. They go back and forth about a dozen times before Coop lobs a high one that just nicks the corner.
“Damn it.” Sean snatches the ball off the grass and tosses it back to Coop.
“All right,” Coop says, bouncing the ball on the table several times, testing it out. “Let’s talk strategy. How are we going to get that naked picture of Mandy Reagan? We can’t let the locker-room incident get us offtrack. That was probably too complicated. We should try to keep things simple.” He grabs the ball and serves a low, fast shot.
Sean handles the serve easily. “It was a good plan. And it would have worked if it wasn’t for someone’s mocha mud slide.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I say. “Can we let that go?”
“Well, we know you can let it go.” Coop laughs, cutting the ball underneath, trying to add spin. It doesn’t fool Sean, though, even though he’s laughing. He follows it perfectly and sends the ball right back.
Sean and Coop are pretty evenly matched. They can play for twenty minutes straight without anyone taking a point. It’s kind of annoying.
Finally, Coop gives the ball a violent smack. It catches the top of the net, and the ball dribbles onto Sean’s side, making it impossible for him to return it.
“Cheap,” Sean says.
“Not as cheap as your momma.” Coop points his paddle at Sean.
“My mother’s not cheap, flush hole.” Sean hurls the Ping-Pong ball at Coop, who catches it without flinching.
“Oh, that’s right.” Coop nods, apologetically. “She just let me use a coupon that one time.”
“Laugh all you want now,” Sean says. “We’ll see how funny you find it when you get that first room-temperature taste of tomato, clams, and chocolate milk.”
“I’ll find it pretty damn funny because I’ll be the one watching you suck down Satan’s swill.”
“Guys,” I say, trying to get us back on track, “let’s get focused. We have a situation to deal with here.”
“Matt’s right.” Sean sighs. “Cathy smirks and waves her cell phone at me every time she sees me.”
Coop shrugs. He balances the Ping-Pong ball on the surface of his paddle. “I’m fine with trying to see Mandy Reagan naked if we can work it out. But if we can’t, and Cathy sends out the picture, I still say we can claim she Photoshopped it. I mean, it doesn’t look like anyone’s examined Matt’s incriminating underwear too closely, so there’s no proof we were in the girls’ locker room.”
My stomach sinks. “Yeah, about that . . .” It’s not fair to hold out on them anymore. “There’s something I didn’t tell you guys,” I say.
Coop and Sean both look at me with concern. The ball rolls off Coop’s paddle and bounces on the table.
“When I went to the bathroom . . . I sort of ran into Kelly.”
“Are you serious?” Sean blinks. “But she didn’t recognize you, did she?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I explain. “If that picture of us gets out, she’ll put it together. That’s all the proof Cathy will need.”
“Aw, man.” Sean groans. “I can’t believe this. If we weren’t totally screwed before, we are now.”
Coop taps his Ping-Pong paddle on his chin. “Okay, wait. Let’s not overreact, here. So, you passed Kelly in the bathroom. Big deal. She probably won’t even remember.”
I sigh. “Oh. She’ll remember.”
Sean and Coop both bury their heads in their hands and moan.
Coop starts to laugh. He pulls his hands down his face. “Matt. Jesus, dude. I’m sure there’s something worse than shitting your pants in front of the girl of your wet dreams; I just can’t figure out what that would be.”
We spend the next two hours playing Ping
-Pong and trying to come up with any way we can think of to see Mandy Reagan naked. The ideas get progressively more ridiculous as the day goes on. There’s a plan to string a tightrope between Mandy’s house and her neighbor’s. There’s another where we hang-glide past her bathroom window when she’s taking a bath. And then there’s Sean’s latest, where we get someone to buy us a lottery ticket and we win a million dollars and then offer it to Mandy to take all her clothes off.
“Dude,” Coop says, “if we had a million bucks, we’d get to see all the woofers and tweeters we wanted.”
“That’s true.” Sean nods, perched on the edge of the beach chair. “But that still wouldn’t solve our problem with Cathy.”
Coop cocks his head. “You don’t think a few grand wouldn’t buy your sister off ?”
“All right, enough already,” I say, squeezing my eyes shut. “I have to concentrate on the game.”
Coop chuckles. “Ooooh. Someone’s getting a little panicky.”
We’re down to the final match that’ll decide third place. It’s between me and Coop and I’m behind nineteen to eighteen and it’s his serve and, yes, I’m getting a little worried. I’ve had to drink the clam-milk once before and it’s disgusting. Plus, you end up burping it up for the next three days.
“I’m not getting panicky,” I lie. “I just want to focus.”
“Okay, let’s focus, then.” Coop bounces the Ping-Pong ball over and over again on the table. The hollow click of it is driving me crazy. “But keep your mind on the game. Two more points and I win. You don’t want to go thinking about Kelly West jumping up and down on a trampoline.”
This makes Sean crack up. “Yeah,” he says. “And try not to imagine her doing it in a wet T-shirt. Because that would really distract you.”
I glare at Coop. “Are you going to serve sometime this century?”
“Wet T-shirt.” Coop grins. “Man, oh, man. What could be more distracting than that?” He gestures with his Ping-Pong paddle. “Unless, of course, it was a chilly day.”
“Ohhh.” Sean doubles over in fits, toppling out of the chair. “Do not think about that, Matt. Whatever you do.”
“Whenever you’re done,” I say.
“That’s just . . . wow,” Coop says, his eyes glazed over. He shakes his head like he’s trying to dislodge the image he’s created. “Okay. Here we go.”
Coop wastes no more time. He rockets the ball over the net with a ton of topspin, but it misses the end of the table and whirls around in the grass.
“Damn it!” he shouts. “I just psyched myself out.”
I retrieve the ball and get set to serve.
“Boiiing. Boiiing. Boiiing.” Sean makes hushed bouncing-on-a-trampoline noises.
“Okay. That’s funny,” Coop says. “But enough. Matt’s right. This is too serious for that kind of distraction.”
“Now who’s getting panicky?” I laugh.
“Please,” Coop scoffs. “I’m not the one who’s going to be walking around with a chocolamato mustache.”
“Of course you’re not,” I say. “Just put Kelly completely out of your mind and you’ll be all right. As long as you don’t instantly replace her with Mandy Reagan. And her beautiful marshmelons bobbing up and down in slow motion.”
Coop points at me. “Screw off, okay?” He drags his hand down his face, presumably to try and erase the image of Mandy. But I can tell it’s still there, because his eyes have a feverish glaze.
“My serve.” I flip the ball into the air and bat a nice, hard, low shot across the table.
Coop barely manages to get it back to me.
I pretend to slam the ball hard but instead just tap it lightly onto Coop’s side of the net.
He backs up, totally fooled, then tries to lunge for it. But it’s too late. “Crap!”
“Nineteen all,” I say, laughing.
“Man, you must really be under the spell of Mandy’s angel cakes,” Sean hoots.
“Zip it, Sean.” Coop grits his teeth. He glares at me. “Okay. We’re even now. Can we play the rest of the game fairly?” He rolls his shoulders and tilts his head from side to side.
I turn to Sean. “Are you listening to this? The cheater feels cheated.”
“I know,” Sean says with mock sympathy. “Look at him sweat. Imagine what would happen if we threw Miss October into the mix. And some hot oil. He’d probably have to concede defeat.”
Coop grabs his head and groans. “Stop it!”
“Stop what?” I say.
“You don’t want to win this way, Matt,” Coop whines. “You’ll feel guilty. And there will always be that nagging feeling in the back of your mind. Like you didn’t deserve the win.”
I look at Coop a second before completely losing it. Sean and I bust up.
“You’re right,” I say. “I’d feel awful.”
I take a breath and send a bullet Coop’s way. He smacks the ball back to me with determination.
But I’m totally confident now and I do this insane spin-o-rama move, swatting the ball high in the air.
Coop’s eyes follow the arc and I can tell he thinks it’s going to miss the table by a mile, so he lets it go, except it somehow grazes the side with a soft tick that makes him fall to his knees.
“Holy shit!” I holler. “Someone call Sports Center. Point, nineteen.”
“Thanks a lot, Sean,” Coop says, wanting to blame someone.
“What?” Sean throws his hands up in surrender. “It’s not like you were ever going to return that.”
“Whatever.” Coop’s already retrieved the ball. He hurls it at me. “You think you can get that lucky twice in a row?”
I waggle my eyebrows. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
“Okay, then. Bring it.”
I smile and serve, and it’s like the Ping-Pong gods are killing themselves with laughter, because the ball is way overshot and still it brushes the edge of the table before coming to rest on the lawn.
“Second place is mine!” I whoop it up and throw my paddle high into the air.
Sean walks over to Coop and pats him on the back. “Sorry, dude. But better you than me.”
A few minutes later, we’re in Coop’s kitchen. He sits at the table, his leg jiggling, wanting to get this over with as quickly as possible. But me and Sean take our time getting everything ready.
Sean places the yellowed, plastic Adventure Town cup in front of Coop. I pour the Clamato slowly, plop by foul plop. Sean follows, doing the same with the chocolate milk.
“You have to drink it all,” Sean says when he’s topped it up.
“Good to the last drop,” I add.
Coop grabs the cup and cautiously brings it toward his lips.
The sick smell of it hits me in the face all the way over here.
“Clam, clam, clam,” Sean and I chant.
Coop nearly yaks after the first taste. That’s the worst part. It’s like a cold, rancid chowder. When I had to drink it last year, I had to pretend that I’d been poisoned, that the clam-milk was an ancient Indian recipe and it was the only thing that could save my life.
I find myself cringing as I watch Coop chug the rust-brown sludge. At one point I actually have to turn away.
When he finally finishes, he slams the cup onto the table. “Deee-licious,” he says, letting out a loud soggy belch. “That hits the spot.”
It only takes about five seconds before he bolts to the bathroom with his hand cupped over his mouth.
WHEN I ARRIVE HOME, I hear Grandpa Arlo talking to someone whose voice I don’t recognize. I enter the kitchen and see him sitting at the table, having tea with Mrs. Hoogenboom.
“Hi,” I say, trying to smile.
Grandpa and Mrs. Hoogenboom both turn toward me.
Mrs. Hoogenboom has on a light purple dress with a tie at the waist and a gold dragonfly broach pinned to her chest. Grandpa Arlo is wearing his old faithful: a pale pink dress shirt, slacks, and a belt.
“There he is,” Grandpa says. “We
were just talking about you. Edith came by a little while ago. She was wondering if you might know anything about a kitten that was dropped off at her house this morning.”
Mrs. Hoogenboom smiles at me while Grandpa shakes his head furiously behind her.
“A kitten?” I ask, stalling.
“Yes,” Mrs. Hoogenboom says. “Wrapped in Christmas paper, of all things.” Her voice is thin and wheezy. Like a kazoo.
“Huh,” I say. “Why do you think I’d know anything about that?”
“She thought maybe you might have seen something.” Grandpa takes a sip of his tea. “Or heard something from your friends.”
“I can’t imagine who would do such a thing,” Mrs. Hoogenboom says. “I don’t know if it was meant as a gift or some kind of practical joke. Either way, I just don’t know what to do with the poor thing. She’s such a dear. I’m calling her Daisy. Just for the time being. Oh, but I can’t keep her, can I? What if she belongs to someone else?”
I’m not sure how to play this. Grandpa Arlo is making all sorts of grimacing faces behind Mrs. Hoogenboom but I can’t tell what he wants me to say.
“I guess if it was wrapped up and it had a card on it, then it was probably a gift,” I say.
“Oh, yes, the card. ‘From Someone Who Cares.’” Mrs. Hoogenboom squints at me. “But how did you know about that?”
Grandpa Arlo grabs his forehead behind Mrs. Hoogenboom’s back, like he’s just had an aneurysm.
“I . . . umm . . . just figured, I guess, because most presents come with cards.”
“That’s true,” Grandpa interjects. Mrs. Hoogenboom turns to look at him. “And if it had a card, the cat was probably a gift. Maybe from someone who knew you always wanted one.”
Mrs. Hoogenboom smiles big. “I do hope you’re right. I have sort of fallen for Daisy. And it would be nice to have some companionship. I just wish I knew who gave her to me.”
“I’m sure it was someone of great character.” Grandpa Arlo sits up tall. “Someone who understands how much you would enjoy some comfort right now. Probably someone who —”
