by Thomas Tosi
“What—”
Brian and James jumped and stumbled backward. They grabbed their bikes as they ran, hopped aboard, and pedaled away madly.
“Ahem.” From behind me, I heard the sound of someone in the office clearing their throat…someone big…football player big…Mr. Richards‐getting‐ready‐to‐charge big.
I gritted my teeth, squeezed my eyes shut, and slowly turned. Cracking one eyelid open just a sliver, I saw them. In the frame of the now‐open office door was Mr. Richards. Behind him, and trying to see around him, was Mrs. Stonebottom—Dolores. And in front of Mr. Richards, standing just inside the office, was Marlene.
Marlene held up her left hand. On two fingers, she had shiny metal splint things wrapped in white tape.
Here Come the Judge
The nurse said Marlene’s fingers weren’t broken. But they were all purple and swollen enough for Marlene to go home from school early. She wouldn’t be playing the piano for a while.
This was the second time something bad had happened to Marlene that sort of involved me. But, just like the first time, Marlene was technically the one who started it. I wasn’t to blame. She sure knew how to get herself in trouble. Some people just have a knack for it, I guess.
Mr. Richards had to turn me loose. You would think that would be the end of it. But, at Green Hill Academy, news travels fast. By the end of the school day, almost every kid in the building knew that I had hacked off both of Marlene’s hands with a lime green plastic ruler, using the centimeter side. Hey, I only told you news travels fast—I didn’t say the news was accurate.
Although I doubt she believed the bit about the ruler and Marlene losing both her hands, Faye had heard the story. She was more than happy to share it with Dad during our car ride home.
“Aren’t you going to ask us what happened at school today?” Faye asked before Dad even put the beast in gear.
He didn’t answer her right off. I don’t think what Faye asked had clicked with him yet. Dad pulled out of our parking space and glanced over at her. He must have wanted to make sure he’d heard right. Faye was beaming. One of his kids actually wanted to tell him about her day. This was Dad heaven.
“Judging by your mood,” Dad said, “it must’ve been something great. And since I love hearing great things about my wonderful kids…okay, what happened?”
“Abe killed a girl in his class!” Peg shouted from the back seat.
“What?” Dad hit the brakes so hard that we all lurched forward and then back in our seats.
“Did not,” I said.
“Well, that’s what I heard,” Peg said.
I got Dad straightened out on the real story of what happened with Marlene. Due to many interruptions from Faye and Peg, it took most of the ride home to get it square. What a mess.
The only bright spot was that it was going to be a long while before Dad ever wanted to hear all about our day at school again. I think he realized that, sometimes, he’s better off not knowing.
The one part of the story I hadn’t told Dad about was Brian and James.
Why did they get out of their school early?
What were they doing at my school?
Why were they suddenly interested in the Sweetly Crisp game piece?
And why was I going to be famous?
I didn’t know the answers to these questions but, when we got home, I raced up the attic stairs to find out.
“All right, what gives?” I said as I cleared the top step and pushed through the blanket wall to the boys’ side of the attic. Brian and James were both sitting on the lower bunk of their bed and flipping through some papers they had on a clipboard. I would have thought I surprised them, storming into our side of the attic the way I did, but it was more like they were expecting me.
“Ah, Abraham,” James said, looking up from the clipboard. “So nice to see you. Please, come in and have a seat.”
One, James really did call me Abraham. Two, both he and Brian were wearing ties—and not only ties but also their suit coats and dress pants, which we usually only put on for weddings and funerals and stuff. Our family hadn’t been to any weddings or funerals in a long time. Their suit coat sleeves ended about three inches above their bony wrists. They also both had a few inches of ratty white gym socks showing between the top of their sneakers and the bottom of their dress pants.
“Who died?” I asked, taking one look at how they were dressed.
“You, if you don’t get your butt over here,” Brian said.
“Now, now, Mr. Mitchell,” James said to Brian. “That is not how our partnership addresses a client.”
“Partnership?” I asked. “You wouldn’t mean J & B Enterprises, would you?”
“You little rat.” James grabbed the pillow from the lower bunk and chucked it at me. “I knew you were spying on us.”
I caught the pillow an inch away from my face. It stank of older brother, so I threw it back at James. He deflected it onto the bed. He started to get up, but Brian pulled him back down.
“I thought our partnership didn’t talk to clients that way,” Brian reminded James.
“Client?” I asked. “What are you guys talking about? And what were you doing at Green Hill? And why are you so interested in the doughnut prize piece all of a sudden?”
James lowered his head and took a deep breath. A cleansing breath is what I think Mom calls it when she’s doing yoga or trying not to blow her stack at us. Brian and I both waited. When he was good and ready, James looked back up at me.
“Convenient you should mention the company assets. Dude, sit down.” He pointed to my unmade bed like it was an order.
I didn’t like being bossed around by them, but they seemed more serious now, which was unusual for Brian and James. Plus, I really wanted to find out what was going on, so I sat.
“Look,” Brian said, “I know we mess with you a lot—but you’re our younger brother, and it’s kind of like a law that we have to do that.”
“It’s for your own healthy development,” James added. “You think it’s easy for us? It’s not.”
“So, how much do you know about J & B Enterprises?” Brian asked.
“I know about the Doughnut Face video.”
James laughed. Brian elbowed him in the ribs to quiet him down.
“Then you know the important part,” Brian said. “Did you tell anybody?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Good. Then we’ll let you live. You also know it went viral and got a ton of hits?”
“Yeah, I saw.” I thought about Celia and her screaming.
“Well, lots of hits means lots of people saw it—people from everywhere,” Brian said.
“So?”
“A bunch of those people commented. And some of them…well, some of them messaged us.” He thumped the clipboard James was holding. “Show him.”
James turned it toward me. I couldn’t read the top paper on it from where I was sitting, but I could see it well enough to tell that it was a printout of an email from our living room computer, all streaky with toner.
“We got this through our J & B account on MyVids,” James said. “It’s from a woman named Bethany Applegate. She’s a TV producer. She thought the food fight was hilarious.”
“And…?”
“And we replied to her and told her what it was about. She wanted to see the game piece.”
“And the best part is,” Brian said, “she didn’t just want to see the game piece. She wanted to see the back of the game piece. You know, the rules, the legal stuff.”
“Why?” I asked.
“‘Cause it’s a legal show,” he said.
Brian and James smirked, then simultaneously said, “The Judge Sally Rules show.”
“Judge Sally Rules!”
That’s the TV court show where real crazy people come to sue each other and argue. The one with the judge who’s—
“But she can be wicked mean,” I said.
“She’s not that mean. Only when p
eople do stupid things,” James said. “Besides, who cares? The court cases are real, you know.”
“So?”
“So, when she decides a case, that’s it. It’s legal.” James slapped the clipboard onto his thigh. He was trying to be tough and make a point, but I don’t think he meant to do it that hard. He winced, and I saw a little water build up in the corners of his eyes.
“When she says that one person owes another person money, then they do,” Brian said. “They can even get the cops to make the people pay. And if she says that a certain company owes certain kids six thousand doughnuts, well…”
Finally, I knew why my brothers were so excited.
“Wait, what do you mean, kids?” I asked, making sure I pronounced the s very clearly.
“Huh?” James was rubbing his thigh where he hit it.
I pointed to Brian. “He said, ‘owes certain kids six thousand doughnuts.’ What do you mean, kids?”
“You, me, and James,” Brian said. “Don’t worry. You’ll be getting your full ten percent.”
“How did you guys worm in on the deal? And how do you figure ten percent for me? Three of us would mean a third each—that’s like thirty‐three percent, not ten percent.”
“J & B Enterprises,” Brian said. “If it weren’t for our video, Judge Sally would never know about you or your little game piece. We have expenses and fees, you know.”
“Besides,” James added, “you’re gonna need us there. She can be wicked mean.”
“You said she’s not that mean.”
“I said she’s only mean when people do stupid things—normal people, normal stupid, normal mean,” James said. “Now, if somebody like you does off‐the‐chart stupid, then she’s gonna give you off‐the‐chart mean. That’s why you need us.”
“No. No way,” I said. “Not you two.”
“Who better to stand by you in court,” Brian said, “than your older brothers who’ve looked out for you your whole life?”
Who better to stand by me in court than you guys? Anybody.
I was going to say it out loud but, before I could, a clanking, banging, metallic racket of a noise came from outside. When the three of us went to the window and looked out, we saw it.
Celia’s junky, little, orange, and smoking car was limping into our driveway.
Who better to stand by me in court? How about my law‐school cousin?
I Got a Lawyer Acquaintance
Doggone it!” Celia said, getting out of her car and slamming the door.
I had just raced down two flights of stairs and sprinted out to the driveway, leaving Brian, James, and the not‐so‐tempting offer of J & B Enterprises behind me. Celia had shut her car off. The engine was no longer running, but it was still making a noise. Her car was hissing.
“Lord, ain’t that car pitchin’ a fit,” Celia said.
“What happened?”
“Beats me, but that engine’s hotter than a jalapeno’s armpit.”
When I’d looked down from the attic window and thought the car was smoking, I was wrong. It wasn’t smoking. It was steaming—sour‐smelling steam that made my stomach a little woozy.
Celia stomped around to the front of the car and pushed her fingers into the grill to open the hood.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to do that when it’s so hot,” I said.
“Shoot, if I didn’t do everything folks told me I’m not supposed to do, nothin’d ever get done.”
I started backing away from the car and onto the lawn.
“Yeah, but one time I heard Dad telling Brian and James that when a car’s steaming like that, it’s really dangerous to—”
There was a clunk as Celia pulled the release handle. With a loud metallic shriek, the hood of her little junker sprang open like the mouth of an orange baby dragon exhaling a hot sulfur breath. Celia stumbled back two steps and fell on her butt near the open garage door.
“You little dickens!” she yelled right back with steam of her own.
“Wow, I never saw someone so mad at a car.”
“It ain’t the car I’m mad at.” Celia was pointing.
Hopping out of the engine part of the car and up onto the front fender was a chipmunk. In its mouth, there was a stale piece of a Sweetly Crisp doughnut—apple cinnamon glazed, I think.
“Holy smokes,” I said as the steam faded away. “There were doughnuts inside the car, too?”
Curious, I took a few steps toward the chipmunk. He clutched the doughnut fragment tighter and eyeballed me. He kind of reminded me of Marlene. You know—he was cute, but I bet if he could have spoken right then, he would have used the angry ventriloquist voice and—
Wait, forget I said Marlene was cute, okay?
“Shoo now,” Celia said to the chipmunk, getting to her feet and waving her arms. It bounded down to the driveway and scurried under the car.
Celia put her hands on top of the grill but pulled them back quickly. It was still hot.
“Dang!” she said, looking at the engine.
I got down on my belly onto the driveway and tried to see where the chipmunk had gone.
“I sure hope you weren’t comin’ down here to ask me for a ride somewhere,” Celia said. “That little critter’s been in here chewing on all the doughnut pieces we missed.”
“Um, I don’t think doughnuts were what he was chewing on.”
Celia squatted down and looked under the front of the car. She saw what I saw.
A big puddle of yellowish‐green something was spreading on the driveway. It was being fed by a steady dripping from a who‐knows‐what kind of hose on Celia’s car that had been gnawed through.
A chirping sound came from over by the oak. It wasn’t a bird. The chipmunk was on a root and yelling at us in angry bursts.
“You hush over there, now,” Celia commanded.
“It’s not really too bad, is it?” I pointed up toward the leaking hose.
“Any bad is too bad. I only got money for school, books, food, and such.”
“I know someone who would hire you for a job.”
“And just who do y’all know that’d have a job for a legal greenhorn like me?” she asked, peeking down at me through a gap. She was holding a soggy, greasy piece of doughnut that she’d just pulled out of a big spring.
“Are you kidding? You’re awesome. I saw the way you went after Mr. Paczki at the doughnut shop. You had him all tripped up.”
She tossed the grimy chunk of doughnut over toward the tree and started poking around for more.
“Him? He wasn’t much competition. Ol’ Honey Pie’s daddy.” She frowned and pulled out another disgusting chunk of dark gray, slimy dough.
“Yeah,” I said. “He was kind of a guppy.”
“Kind of a chubby guppy.” She pulled out another chunk of doughnut. This one didn’t look too bad. I mean, I wouldn’t have eaten it, but it might have met the standards of Brian and James.
“And someone like you,” I said, “should be going after whales.”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
“I bet if anybody could get a whale, it’d be you.”
“Now, you just hold your horses right there…” Celia took the piece of doughnut she was holding and flicked it through the gap at me. I turned, and it got me on the side of the head. It was hot, wet, and sticky.
“Someone’s looking to hire me, my Aunt Fanny! I mean, c’mon now,” she said as I wriggled out from under the car. “It’s you, isn’t it?”
“So, what if it is?” I stood, brushing away the doughnut slop.
“Boy, you gonna offer someone a job, you better be able to pay them money. And to pay them money, you have to have some first. Far as I know, you got three itty bitty dollars.”
“Yeah, but I’d get a lot of doughnuts if I went up against the whale and won, wouldn’t I? That would be worth something. Couldn’t you wait until then? Don’t lawyers do that sometimes?”
“That there is what they call a contingency fee. Mea
ning you don’t pay me unless you win your…how many?”
“Six thousand.”
“Six thousand doughnuts—and what in the blue blazes would one person need with six thousand doughnuts, anyway?”
“Well, how many would be yours?”
“Normal contingency’s in the neighborhood of thirty percent, give or take.”
“That’s an awful big neighborhood.”
“You asked.” Celia slammed the hood of the little orange junker down so hard it made me jump.
“Well, it’s just…I could use a little backup, you know. She can be wicked mean.”
“Who? Honey Pie? Shoot, she isn’t gonna be mean. She’s sweet on you.” Celia chuckled and walked off around the corner of the house.
Wait. She thinks I mean Marlene. And wait again. She thinks Marlene likes me?
I raced to catch up with Celia. She was washing the doughnut gunk off her hands with our garden hose.
“No, no,” I said. “I’m not talking about going after Marlene and her dad at the one Sweetly Crisp where we had the fight. You said they’re the guppy, remember? I want to go after the whale.”
“You got it in your head to go after the Sweetly Crisp Corporation? The whole shootin’ match? Didn’t I tell you that’d take a miracle?”
“What if a miracle happened?”
“What kind of miracle? And you tell me straight this time.” Celia narrowed her eyes and studied me.
“A TV kind of miracle,” I said. “The Judge Sally Rules show. They want us to be on.”
“Judge Sally Rules!”
Celia put her thumb over the end of the hose, turned the running water into a jet stream, and doused me.
“Hey!” I said, trying to pull my now cold and wet shirt away from my skin.
“Forget it.” Celia stormed by me and back toward her car.
I chased after her, shivering and dripping water.
“Don’t think for one blessed minute I don’t know how those TV people found out about your doughnuts,” Celia said. “They know right well how many folks watched that gosh‐danged MyVids clip, and they want in on the publicity. It’s bad enough that my kisser’s being smacked by a doughnut in a video on the Internet. It sure don’t need to be on television, too.”