Lost in Hollywood

by Cindy Callaghan

  “A few more times and your legs will practically be on the ground,” Margot said. She repeated, “Rainbows,” to herself.

  ABJ was pulling on my legs with her weight. I could feel the Velcro on my belly between the wall and the vest coming loose.

  “Hurry!” I said. “I can’t hold on.”

  She pushed up with her elbows again, but this time she tugged at my feet a little too hard—

  FFFFTTTT!!!!

  My Velcro vest lost hold and we fell onto the trampoline below, missing Payton, but crushing Margot.

  Oh no, I hope she didn’t get a concussion.

  “I’m okay,” Margot groaned from underneath me. “Are you guys?”

  ABJ swished her blond locks out of her face. “Great!”

  There was the sound of applause. We looked up to see a party of eight-year-olds clapping for us.

  P. Pop said, “And that concludes the entertainment portion of the party. The Velcro wall is now open!”

  29

  Leo delivered ABJ back to her house. Then, looking at his watch, he said, “We have forty-five minutes before we meet Mitch to check out that second D. And we have a bunch of burritos left.”

  “Where do you wanna park?” Payton asked.

  “I have an idea that I think you two will like.” Leo pulled over on the Sunset Strip in front of Crunch gym.

  “Really?” I asked. “Are people going to eat bacon burritos after working out?”

  “Once they smell these, they will,” Payton said.

  Margot added, “And these aren’t just regular ordinary people.”

  We opened the trunk and the sweaty crowd exiting the gym flocked to us. I realized right away what Leo meant about not “just regular ordinary people,” when I recognized celebrity faces. Speaking of celebs, hello, Emmit Hennessy. He was the star of the last installment of the vampire trilogy.

  “Good workout?” I asked him.

  He grinned. “Super hot today.” Then he winked at me!

  I said, “Don’t worry, your hypothalamus will regulate your temperature.”

  His smile faded, and he walked away. I was able to snap a pic of his back and—swoop—sent it to QuickPik.

  Payton asked, “Seriously? Hypothalamus? Was that supposed to be cute?”

  “Oh, just be quiet.”

  When Payton saw Jackson Holmes, who had just won an award, I think it was the Julio, for his part in The Windblown Cornfield, she said to him, “You might need two burritos.”

  “I do?” I asked.

  “Yup. One for each of those guns.”

  Jackson smiled at the compliment and posed with the three of us for a selfie. Swoop! To QuickPik.

  “Now, that was cute,” Payton said to me after Jackson walked away.

  “Sometimes when I get nervous, science comes out,” I said.

  Payton said, “We’ll have to fix that before high school.”

  “Maybe you can think about rainbows too?” Margot suggested. “And that will relax you.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  Even the ladies leaving Crunch gym took a burrito for the road. I recognized Tricia LaRock from Shop Till You Drop Dead. Payton and I weren’t actually allowed to see that movie.

  “Make sure you save two for Mitch,” Leo said. “It was part of the deal.”

  Payton stashed six.

  “We just need two,” I said to her.

  “I know, but watching all these people leaving the gym has built up my appetite. And I figured you guys would want one too.”

  “Good thinking,” Margot said.

  “I know. Right?”

  Workers from a construction project across the street at The Laugh Factory spotted the Burrito Taxi, or smelled bacon, and cleaned us out.

  “Perfect timing,” Leo said. “Let’s go find us a bicycle cop, a letter D, and a lost treasure.”

  30

  “I cannot believe we saw Jackson Holmes,” Payton said.

  “He’s even cuter in person,” I said.

  “It’s been quite a morning,” Leo said, careening the taxi up winding Mulholland Drive.

  We found Mitch leaning against a shuttle bus, with his arms and legs crossed.

  I popped out of the taxi first. I asked him, “You know what you look like you need?”

  “A nap?”

  “A burrito!”

  “That’s the next best thing to a nap,” he said.

  “This is better.” Payton handed him two. “It’s bacon!”

  He bit into one and said, “You’re right. It is better than a nap.” He pushed the rest of the burrito into his mouth. I think he said, “Let’s go.” Mitch continued talking through his food as he drove. Somehow Leo understood his muffled words. I think it was about the Wiener Mobile auction.

  Ted swiped his passcard to open the razor-wire gate, and said to Payton and me, “I’m surprised you want to look here again.”

  “They realized there was another D,” Margot said.

  “In L-A-N-D,” Payton said.

  “Yeah. I should’ve thought of that.”

  As we got out of the shuttle, I asked, “Any chance you have a shovel or metal detector?”

  “Nope,” Mitch said. “But, don’t forget, I have the power of the LAPD behind me. What else do you need?”

  On the hike to the space where the last D in Hollywoodland had been, I explained what we were looking for to Mitch. “So, we need something to help us find and dig up a treasure chest.”

  Margot asked, “Could ABJ really dig a big hole and bring a treasure chest out here and bury it?”

  “When you say it like that, it doesn’t make sense,” I said. “But this has to be the D. It totally makes sense with every part of the clue.”

  “Gimme just a second,” Mitch said.

  I took advantage of that second to take in the view from up here. I could see into the valley that was Hollywood, or maybe at one time, Hollywoodland. The hills were covered with green-brown trees ribboned with roads. Farther into the valley, the trees became more sparse, and the roads became straight, aligned into city blocks.

  He mumbled as he tapped on his phone. “If I can get the GPS coordinates . . . got ’em. And I’ll send them to my friend Sal from the NASA . . .”

  “NASA? As in . . . NASA?” Payton asked. “You know someone there?”

  “Sal and I were in the same LEGO League when we were kids. Out in Minnesota. We stay in touch on social media.”

  We made it to the spot. The ground was dry and hard. There was no way ABJ could dig a hole here. I walked around the area looking for a duffle bag of money. I didn’t see one.

  Margot put her hands on her hips. “Any word from NASA Sal from LEGO League?”

  Mitch looked at his phone. “In fact there is.” He held it out for us to see. “And it looks like good news.”

  “What are we looking at?” Leo asked.

  “Thermal imaging from a satellite. Sal scanned the ground right where we are and guess what that is?” He pointed to a dark shape on the image on his phone.

  “It’s not a treasure chest,” I said.

  “Nope. It’s a room.” He walked a few steps using the phone to guide him. “It’s right . . .” He took a few more steps then stopped. “Here.” He started brushing leaves and dirt around with his feet until something appeared.

  It was a handle. The metal color blended in with the colors of the earth.

  Mitch kicked some more dirt away, and in just a minute I could make out the shape of a door. It was a door that I recognized—the same kind as the one in ABJ’s kitchen closet.

  “A fallout shelter,” I said.

  Mitch’s radio made a FFFFT!

  I tried to open the door the way I’d seen Leo do. It didn’t budge.

  Payton pointed to a twisting lock. “It has a combination.”

  Leo said, “We don’t know what it is.”

  I felt a tingle in my brain. “I do,” I said. “Four, thirty-­six, ten.”

  Mitch asked, “Ho
w could you possibly know that?”

  “It was on the clue.” I took it out of my pocket. “See.” I pointed to the hay bales of four short tick mark lines and one diagonal across.

  “That’s a way people count by fives,” Payton explained. “ABJ did it when we inventoried her closet.”

  I spun the combination lock, and the door made a faint pop and a sigh.

  Like ABJ’s shelter, it was supplied with water, radios, blankets, canned food, flashlights, batteries, and there were piles of boxes. One small one in the middle of a stack was marked 1964–1966, the year missing from the boxes at ABJ’s house.

  Leo lifted the stuff on top of it and I slid it out.

  I was covered with gooseflesh. It was cold in here, so maybe my hypothalamus needed a minute to regulate my body temperature, but I think it was the excitement.

  “I can’t stand it,” Leo said. “The anticipation. The suspense. Open it up already!”

  “Here we go,” I said.

  I remove the lid. There were stacks of hundred dollar bills tied together with paper marked $1,000.00, and then stacks of thousand dollar bills tied together with a marker that said $100,000.00. I added it together in my head. “More than one million dollars,” I said.

  “Exactly one million and twenty thousand,” Payton corrected me.

  “And—” Margot reached down to a Christmas gift bag on the floor.

  “Is it eight and a half pounds?” I asked.

  Payton held it. “Eeeeexactly.” She pulled out the statue. “One Oscar.”

  “Priceless,” Leo said.

  “I know. Right?” I exclaimed.

  31

  ABJ recognized the box immediately when we brought everything in. “You found it!”

  “What?” Dad asked.

  “ABJ’s money,” I said.

  “And an Oscar.” Payton handed it to her.

  “Where was it?” Mom asked.

  “Temporarily misplaced,” I said.

  “Banking error,” Payton said.

  “Purely an accident,” Margot said.

  “Happens all the time,” Mitch said.

  Mom asked Mitch, “Who are you?”

  “Mitch LaBleu.” He pointed to his badge with one hand and extended the other one for handshakes. “Bicycle cop. B-Nineteen.”

  “And—” Leo encouraged Mitch to say more.

  “And the proud owner of a Wiener Mobile.”

  “You’re kidding?” Dad asked.

  “Nope. I just picked it up,” Mitch added.

  “Can I see it?” Grant, who wore his familiar football helmet with tin foil balls, asked.

  “Sure,” Mitch said. “But what’s with all this?” He referred to the helmet.

  “I’m expecting a call,” Grant said. “Can’t wait to tell them all about the Wiener Mobile. Can I go for a ride?”

  “Sure can.”

  Then to ABJ, Mitch said, “By the way, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m a huge fan.”

  “Aren’t you sweet.”

  Dad, Grant, and Mitch went to the street to see the Wiener Mobile.

  “I have to see this,” Mom said. “I’ll call the bank later to get this sorted out.”

  “I took care of that, Mom,” I said.

  “You did?”

  “Yep,” I said. “I told them we can’t use them anymore.”

  “She was quite polite about it,” Margot said.

  “I said that we were going to bank somewhere else.”

  Payton clarified, “Elsewhere was the word she used.”

  “Well, good job. You girls are getting very mature,” Mom said. “I’m going to check out the wiener.”

  When it was just me, Payton, and Margot, I said to ABJ, “It was at the D in Hollywoodland.”

  “In a bomb shelter up there,” Payton said.

  “Hollywoodland, of course. That’s the bomb shelter that Howard Hughes built. It was a big secret. Only a few select people in the inside circle of Hollywood fame knew about it. You know, in case we needed a place to go.” She sighed. “I was in the inside circle back then. And that is a special place to me. I went there with Clint Eastwood.”

  “To kiss?” I asked.

  “Usually to run lines in private. But, yeah,” she said. “We kissed once too.”

  “That area is totally restricted now. How did you get there?”

  “I get fan mail. And sometimes I write back. One guy who wrote to me works at the radio tower and offered to bring me there to reminisce,” she explained. “I brought a shoebox and my Oscar. When my pen pal gave me a minute to be alone, I went in—I remembered the combination, can you believe it, after all these years? And I hid my stuff among the other boxes.”

  “And you wrote yourself a note,” I said.

  “Good thing that you did,” Margot said.

  “Good thing you girls came out here to help me. Now I can stay in my house. How can I thank you?”

  “I have a few ideas,” I said.

  “It’s for the Science Olympics,” Payton added.

  “Anything to get those DeMarcos,” ABJ said.

  32

  There were just twenty-four hours left in Hollywood, and Payton, Margot, and I had a lot of ground to cover to get my grand plan in motion.

  First we went to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, where we filled out an application for a very special surprise for ABJ.

  Next we met with ABJ’s doctor to talk about Alzheimer’s disease over a snack. Turned out that he loved burritos.

  Then we dared to return to the Dolby Theatre.

  “You!” Harry said when he saw us. “You aren’t allowed in here. Do you know how much trouble I got in for canceling that tour? I got a demotion!”

  “Just hear us out,” I said.

  We apologized to Harry and presented him with an amazing opportunity.

  Last we went to see Patel Poplawski at Bounce Land. We only went there to talk, but ended up bouncing and jumping onto a Velcro wall for two hours.

  Who says I’m a fuddy-duddy?

  When we returned to ABJ’s house late that afternoon, Mom asked, “Where have you been?”

  “Everywhere,” Margot said.

  “You know, a lot to do with the Olympics,” I said.

  “And another little project we’re working on,” Payton added.

  “Hey, Dad, I need to talk to you about an idea. An invention. I really think this could be TBO.”

  33

  “Bacon burritos!” Margot called as she walked in the front door.

  “Get ’em while they’re hot!” Leo said.

  “We’re out here,” ABJ called from the patio where she sat with Payton and me.

  We’d had a chance to fill her in on everything, and she loved the plans.

  Once the bacon smell infiltrated the house, we were joined by Grant, Mom, and Dad.

  Dad opened a foil wrapper. “Perfect for our last morning.”

  “I’m gonna miss this when we get back to Delaware,” Mom said.

  Grant pulled out a ziplock bag filled with small leftover bites of a week’s worth of burritos. “I saved these. To send to my people.”

  “Gross,” I said.

  “Eeew,” Payton said.

  “How are you going to get it to them?” Leo asked.

  “I’m gonna flush it down the airplane toilet and when it shoots out the back of the plane, there won’t be a gravitational pull and it will float in space until discovered.”

  I didn’t want to tell him that planes didn’t let poop fly into space, because other than that, it was a clever idea. Weird, but clever.

  “Rainbows. Rainbows. Rain—I can’t rainbow this one, sorry.” Margot explained to Grant, “Exposing alien life to Earthly bacteria will make them very sick, which will make them very mad. When they feel better they’ll probably attack and annihilate our whole planet.”

  “That’s a great point.” Grant threw the leftover food away.

  “I guess everything can’t be rainbows all the
time,” I said to Margot.

  Payton said, “I’m so glad I met you, or I never would have known there were so many possible natural disasters in the world.”

  “I know I’ll do anything in my power never to get a splinter,” I agreed. “So, thanks for that.”

  “You’re welcome,” Margot said. “This was the best spring break I’ve ever had.”

  We high-butted.

  Then I hugged ABJ. “This was a great visit. Thanks for the adventure.”

  “No. Thank you for you-know-what.”

  “What?” Mom asked.

  “If I wanted you to know, I wouldn’t have said you-know-what,” ABJ said. Then to Payton she said, “I hope you’ll come again.”

  “I know. Right? Me too.”

  Grant said to ABJ, “You’re okay for an Earthling.”

  ABJ said, “And you’re okay for an alien.”

  “Gee, thanks. No one’s ever said that to me before.” Grant glowed with delight.

  Later in the day, Leo loaded the Science Olympics project and luggage into ABJ’s Caddy.

  He honked and we waved the whole way as we drove down her street.

  34

  One Week Later

  Delaware Middle School Science Olympics

  Mrs. Walsh strolled around the school gymnasium and scribbled notes on her clipboard. Finally, she came to our display: HEALTHY BRAIN AFFECTED BY ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE.

  I started our presentation, “Welcome to our exhibit. On this table you will see a model of a healthy brain. It weighs about three pounds. Specific regions of the cortex interpret sensations, solve problems, generate thoughts, store memories, and control involuntary movements.”

  Payton said, “You will see that those regions are labeled.”

  “The brain has more than one hundred billion neurons. Signals traveling through the neurons control thoughts, feelings, and memories.”

  Payton pointed. “You will see here that the neurons are represented by these white Christmas lights.”

  I led us into the ooh la la portion of the presentation, “Alzheimer’s disease destroys these neurons.”