by Thomas Tosi
She peeled the scuzzy cucumber slices from her eyes so that she could see the screen.
“Is the doughnut video on again?”
“No!” Celia said.
James held up the cat. It still didn’t move a muscle.
“How could they not get the Bond joke with the white cat?”
“Faye, it’s Baron von Fluff,” Peg said, touching the computer screen and leaving a little smudge of green goop from her fingertip.
Faye’s stuffed cat. Well, at least that explains why it isn’t clawing and scratching to get away from the clammy grip of my brother.
“Did you two steal Baron von Fluff from my dresser?” Faye asked. “Is that my cat?”
Onscreen, Brian now shoved his face in beside James’s to get a better look at us.
“Who cares about your dumb stuffed cat?”
“Silence!” James was slowly stroking Baron von Fluff again. “We have information—information for which you will pay dearly. You are aware of the judge show, yes? And yet you have none of the critical details—the time, the place…what they serve for lunch.”
Brian held up the printout of the email from the Judge Sally Rules producer. His hand was covering some of the print.
“This email has the list of all the stuff you need to know about going to the studio for Judge Sally Rules. There’s no show for you without it. And no show means no doughnuts.”
James tried to do a laugh that sounded evil, but it just ended up sounding stupid. He then lifted his curled pinky finger to the corner of his lips and arched his eyebrows.
“You will give us eighty percent of the doughnuts and a mention of J & B Enterprises on national television. Or we burn the list.” He tried his laugh again.
“No one’s burning anything in this house,” Mom said.
“Who said we’re in the house?” Brian said.
“No burning.”
“Fine,” James said. “Then we will rip it into tiny pieces and flush it. Mwahahaha!”
“Eighty percent!” Celia and I said together.
Brian said, “Those’re our demands in exchange for—wait a minute, is that our guac?”
He squinted at the screen. His eyes flicked back and forth between Peg’s face—still streaky and smeared with green—and Faye. For the first time, I noticed that Faye was holding an almost empty container of guacamole.
“It’s an avocado facey,” Peg said.
“Facial,” Faye corrected.
“That was our guac,” Brian whined.
“Y’all plastered that video of my face gettin’ smacked by a doughnut up there for the whole world to see. Now you’re worried about guacamole?” Celia said. “Not to mention y’all thinkin’ you’re getting eighty percent of our doggone doughnuts.”
Our doughnuts?
“Everyone just stop bickering,” Mom said. “It’s nobody’s guacamole. What we get grocery shopping belongs to all of us.”
“Does that mean I can have one of your organic special dark chocolate bars?” Faye said.
“Absolutely not. Now, I want all of you to just zip it.”
“Hey,” Peg said, “you sound like the mean judge lady.”
The Lair
Judge Sally, of Judge Sally Rules?” Mom said. “You’re still talking about that contest. I thought I told you to stay away from Sweetly Crisp.”
“You told me to stay away from Mr. Paczki’s Sweetly Crisp shop,” I said. “And I am.”
“And what about Mr. Paczki’s daughter…Marlene, right? You’re staying away from her?”
“That’s not my fault.”
Mom tilted her head at the angry angle—you know the one, when the chin goes down, and the eyebrow goes up. “Abe Mitchell, are you bothering that poor girl again?”
“No. In fact, you could say we’re…buddies.”
Mom looked at Faye. Getting verification from Mini‐Mom was her go‐to move in situations like this—unless, of course, Faye was the one she was grilling.
“Oh yeah, they’re buddies, all right.”
“So, you’re trying to tell me,” Mom said, “that you’re planning to appear on Judge Sally Rules? What makes you think you can even get on that show?”
“I’ve already been invited.”
“Ha!” James said. “You haven’t been invited anywhere. The invitation is to J & B Enterprises. It was our video that made them find out about the doughnut contest.”
“Yeah, well it’s my game piece. And if I hadn’t figured out how they got the rules wrong by—”
“Abe, please…” Mom said.
“What? If it wasn’t for me, none of us would be standing here right now in the middle of all this—”
“Mess?”
“Opportunity,” I corrected. “I’m totally unappreciated.”
“I’m supposed to appreciate your plan to go to court and win a…doughnut trial?”
“Oh, we’ll win,” Celia said. “We got ourselves a rock‐solid case.”
“Celia’s going to be my lawyer,” I said.
“Some lawyer.” Brian dangled the email printout in front of the camera. “You don’t even know the details of the show.”
“I’ll know them details,” Celia said. “Just wait ‘til I get my hands on you in whatever hole you’re hidin’ in.”
James leaned in closer. His schnoz was enormous.
“Evil villains are not in holes. They have lairs. And the location of a lair is secret. That’s the whole point of a—”
A rumbling sound built on the computer speaker. Bright light flooded in on Brian and James. Their camera spun wildly as a large door rattled upward. Images slid and flashed. I caught glimpses of our croquet set, bicycles, leaf rakes, the lawnmower, and the front of our car as Dad pulled in.
The secret lair looked an awful lot like our garage.
Brian and James Get Fiber in Their Diet
Mom, Peg, and I watched the MyVids chat screen as Celia and Faye burst into the garage. I could see that Brian and James were trapped like the rats I knew them to be—caught between the two girls and Dad’s advancing station wagon.
James chucked Baron von Fluff. Celia dodged the stuffed cat Matrix‐style, and Faye caught him by the tail.
“Y’all get ready for a whoopin’,” Celia said.
Throwing a plush toy kitty had done nothing to slow Celia down. This surprised nobody other than James. You might think that was about the dumbest idea possible, but Brian managed to top it. He threw their phone.
The video we watched streaked into a blur of faces, walls, arms, and feet. With a sharp cracking sound, the image settled. A spider web of lines was now etched on the screen in the MyVids chat window.
Mom, Peg, and I all tilted our heads as we watched the living room monitor. Through the broken web lines, we were looking up at Celia and Brian from below—like from the garage floor where the phone now lay.
“Give it over!” Celia shouted.
She had Brian in a headlock. The angle from which we watched them made them both look like giants. Brian’s face was red and smooshed, and his arms were swinging and flailing wildly. In one hand—the one farthest away from Celia—he held the email printout. Celia was trying to take it with her free hand but couldn’t reach.
“Dude‐sha, get‐sha email‐ish,” Brian gasped out of his mouth. His words were as squished as his face.
“What?” James asked.
“Email‐ish, email‐ish,” Brian said, rattling the printout in his extended hand.
James lunged for the email paper. He was able to grab hold of it but, when he did, Celia got him into a headlock, too.
The paper ripped.
With a head trapped in each elbow, Celia held Brian and James while they each held onehalf of the email printout.
“Aren’t you going to do something?” I asked Mom.
“Oh, not really…” Mom sighed.
“Our phone‐ish,” James was looking directly down into the spider web on the screen. He had an expanding thre
ad of drool dangling from the edge of his mouth. “You buh‐schted our phone‐ish.”
“I’ll bust more’n y’all’s phone. Gimme them papers.” Gripping her hands together and flexing her arms, Celia put more of a squeeze on my brothers. They each grunted as the red of their scrunched faces took on a subtle hint of purple.
“Nev‐ersh,” Brian said.
“Now what’s going on?” I heard Dad’s voice ask from somewhere farther away.
“Faye, get them papers from ‘em,” Celia said.
“Eat‐shem, eat‐shem,” James forced out.
“Eat‐shem?” Brian sounded baffled.
James crumpled his half of the Judge Sally instructions email printout, stuffed it into his mouth—streaky toner printing and all—and chewed.
“Eat‐shem!” he said, with a mouthful.
“Oh, eat‐shem,” Brian stuffed his half of the crumpled paper into his mouth and chomped.
Dad suddenly came into our onscreen view—towering.
“Oh, tell me that you guys didn’t break your phone.”
“Aren’t you going to do something?” I heard Faye ask.
“Oh, I suppose…” Dad sighed.
He scooched down and reached for the phone. On the MyVids screen, his hand was gigantic and exaggerated—filling our camera view as if we were a bug he was picking up off the garage floor. Then, the live video share went dead.
Mom stared at the blank chat window, processing.
“The Judge Sally Rules show? We’re going to have to talk about this, you know.”
“Yeah.”
When the video feed from the garage didn’t come back on, Mom pulled Peg over to her, yanked a few fresh tissues from the box, and went on cleaning Peg’s face again. The guacamole was already turning a darker, brownish shade of green and was drying on Peg’s cheeks. Mom licked her fingertips, rubbed Peg’s face, and tried to wipe the guac off with the tissues.
Gross.
We watched the end of the Best of Judge Sally Rules: Savage Put Downs, which was still playing in the main window.
“Just look at us, Your Honor,” the lady in the zebra pants said to the judge while snuggling her makeup‐coated cheek back and forth against the face of Duchess the yipper.
Do dogs throw up?
“Anyone can tell that Duchess is mine,” Zebra Pants said. She took hold of the pink ribbon in her own hair and held it against the matching ribbon in the dog’s hair. “See the resemblance? Isn’t that what they say about owners and their pets?”
“Resemblance? Owners and their pets? That’s your case? Am I wearing an idiot badge on my robe today?” Judge Sally looked down at herself like she half expected to see one. “Nope. Nothing there. Guess that means I am not an idiot. And that’s why I don’t buy your story for an instant.”
“You,” the judge continued, “are much too pretty to be with her.”
“Oh, Your Honor,” Zebra Pants said. “I’m very flattered—”
“I was talking to the dog,” Judge Sally said.
Duchess barked. The audience exploded with applause.
“That’s so mean, making someone feel dumb,” Peg said quietly to the screen. “I think she’s scarier than the monster movies Faye was showing me.”
“Oh, she just acts that way to get people to watch her show,” Mom continued, scraping more of the facial off Peg.
“Ow!” Peg tried to turn her head away from Mom. “Do you think the paper that Brian and James ate can still be read after it comes out?”
“Hold still.” Mom wiped another brownish‐greenish gob of guac into a tissue. “And no poop talk while I’m in the middle of this job.”
His hands gripping both of their shirts at the shoulder, Dad led Brian and James into the living room.
Dad saw Peg’s face and made one of his own.
“I’m dealing with this,” Mom said to Dad, throwing a tissue into the trash. “Did you deal with them?” she nodded toward my brothers.
Promises, Promises
Brian and James were still getting a talking to from Mom and Dad—good for them. Faye and I softly climbed the attic stairs in the dark. We left the light off because Peg had been sent up to bed earlier. We didn’t want to wake her.
On those attic stairs, it didn’t matter. She heard us.
“Hey, Abe?” Peg whispered as I slipped through the blanket wall to the boys’ side.
“What?”
“Are Mom and Dad really gonna let you be on that show?”
“Yeah—maybe—no. I don’t know. It’s complicated,” I replied as I slid under the covers of my bed.
“Complicated? That means that you don’t think I’ll understand, huh?”
“Peg, no,” I said quickly. I didn’t want her thinking that I thought she was dumb. “It isn’t that. It’s just…Mom and Dad gave me some conditions. You know, stuff that has to happen in order for me to be able to go. And I don’t think it all will.”
“Like what?”
“Well, like, they record that show on a school day—so, I’d have to have permission from Mr. Richards to miss school. And my grades have to be okay.”
“Mr. Richards let my class go on a field trip,” Peg said. “And you always get good grades.”
I buried my face in my pillow. Peg forgot about my trip to the office, and she didn’t know about my essay.
“Yeah, usually,” I said in a muffled voice. “But I have this writing thing I did that might not be so hot. Miss Sorenson says I can do it over. I’d have to do super good on it, though. There’s this kid, Bernard, I could ask for help, but—”
“Oh my gosh,” Faye butted in. “Bernard? Fifth‐grade Bernard?”
“Is he the string bean?” Peg asked.
“You know about that?” I asked.
“I know that’s what Franny says her older sister, Bridget, calls him,” Peg said.
I got up on my elbows, suddenly very interested. “Franny? Sleepover Franny? She’s Bridget’s little sister?”
“Yeah, Franny says that Bridget thinks he’s a string bean ‘cause he’s so skinny,” Peg giggled.
“Peg, don’t giggle,” I said, hoping Faye would know I meant her, too. “Not ever. Especially not about guys. Also, what Bridget said was kind of mean. Bernard was crying about that. He can’t help that he’s skinny.”
“Oh, sorry.”
I knew she didn’t say it to be mean—Peg’s not like that.
“Maybe,” Peg said, “if you promised some of your doughnuts to Bernard to fatten him up, then he wouldn’t be a string bean anymore, and he’d help you with your writing thing.”
Promised?
“Peg, you’re a genius,” I said.
“I am?”
“Sure,” I said. “Promises. That’s it. Downstairs, Celia pounced on Brian and James and made them sign promissory notes—like written‐down promises.”
“Promises for what?” Peg asked.
“They promise to give us the information about the Judge Sally Rules show, and we promise to give them some doughnuts.”
“Isn’t that what they wanted, anyway?” Peg said.
“Yeah, but they wanted eighty percent. Celia whittled them down to one percent. Mom and Dad were pretty miffed at them, and Celia knew they didn’t really have a choice.”
“Wow.”
“So, you just gave me the idea that I can ask Celia to make one of those promissory things for Bernard,” I said. “And Mr. Richards, too.”
“Mr. Richards?” Faye asked.
“Well, I need him to let me out of school to go to the show, and he needs snacks for parents’ night. His tuna pea wiggle glop sure isn’t gonna cut it.”
“Tuna fishes wiggle when they pee?” Peg laughed.
“Who knows?” I said. “Peg, I think you just helped me meet all my conditions.”
“Aren’t you forgetting one?” Faye said. “Didn’t that email say Marlene and her dad had to be on the show? Do you really think she’ll agree to that? Sign up to fight you g
uys in court? She’d have to be mad, fighting mad, courtroom fighting mad. And I thought you guys were getting to be buddies.”
Were we? If we were, would I really want to do anything that would make Marlene mad at me again? But what if I had to in order to get the doughnuts?
There were no easy answers. The attic was quiet for a long time. I had the chance to noodle over the Marlene situation. I didn’t even realize I was drifting off to sleep until Peg’s voice whispered directly into my ear. She had been noodling over thoughts of her own.
“Do you ever feel dumb?” she asked me secretly.
She had snuck out of her bed and was standing next to mine. The little bit of street light coming in through the window was all broken up by the leaves it had to go through to get into the attic. In that soft pattern, I could see Peg’s face pretty well.
“Of course, sometimes.”
“It doesn’t seem like it. How come you never say anything?”
“I don’t know. But I do. Everybody does.”
“That judge lady…she makes fun of people sometimes, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“A lot of people watch that show, don’t they?”
“Sure,” I sighed.
“Be careful,” Peg said.
She kept her eyes locked on me like she used to when we were smaller and had staring contests. In a staring contest, she always rolled her lower lip beneath her upper teeth to keep from laughing. She wasn’t doing that now. Laughing was the last thing she would do.
Peg reached out and pulled me into a hug with one arm. Then she cried. Mrs. Fuzzy Hair was still clutched in her other hand, sandwiched between us.
Into my shoulder, Peg said, “It’s not a good thing when someone makes you feel dumb.”
I almost hugged her back. But I didn’t.
What I did do was say, “Peg, if I do win those doughnuts, I’m going to give you some, too.”
“Really?” she asked.
“Promise.”
The Ants Go Marching Two by Two
Why did I promise Peg doughnuts? She was crying, that’s why. I might not have been the best big brother in the world—or in town, or at the Green Hill Academy, though I definitely was in my house, that’s for sure—but even I know that when your little sister is crying, you’re supposed to do something about it.