by Lorri Horn
Sometimes make up funny songs together
Like the beach
Like spaghetti
Like tacos
Like strawberries
Like Uncle Kenny
Hate cauliflower
Hate tomatoes
Love bike riding
Don’t like long car trips
Don’t like emptying dishwasher
All this drama and nothing exciting on this list at all. How was that possible, Dewey wondered? How was this going to come together? Well, Dewey thought. Bikes. Bikes seemed like as good a place as any. She had one. He had one. Adam had one. He could figure something out with bikes. He sat tossing his phone up and down in his hand that way his dad hated as he thought his way through the alphabet rhyming with bike to see if anything hit him as an idea of what to do with the bike. It was as good an approach as any.
Bike. Fight. Maybe, something with the bike and a fight? He’d come back to that. Hike. Like. Mike. Pike. Psych. Psych. That could work. How could they psych him with the bike? Tell him someone stole it? That could work Dewey thought. That’s good. That’s good-ish, anyway.
Dewey sat at his desk. The late morning sun filtered through the window on the other side of the room, so he had the light turned on his desk. Clara wasn’t in, and he had the office to himself. There were no cookies out. It was quiet—only the hum of the refrigerator filled the air. Dewey opened a picture of a bike online somehow thinking this might inspire him to fill in the details of the operation whose details remained fuzzy.
Just at that moment, the tell-tale sounds of someone crawling into the vents could be heard followed by the thump and arrival of a guest. As his brain tried to make sense of the visual message his eyes sent it, Dewey’s heart jumped and he found himself back in that place where perception gets jumbled by expectations. He simply could not compute that Stephanie sat on his green client pillow. Not as challenging to decipher was what abruptly followed—the rough landing of Pooh Bear.
“See?!”
“Whoa.”
“See?!” Pooh repeated, standing up. “Where’s Wolfie?”
Dewey could not even find his tongue let alone form words.
Stephanie began walking around.
Dewey found his voice.
“Stop. You’re not supposed to be here.”
“And you are?”
He threw up his hands.
“See?!”
“Stop saying that!” Dewey yelled.
“What?” Pooh asked, confused.
“Go!”
“What? No way. What is all this? Spill!”
“It’s nothing. It’s nothing. You’re not here. This isn’t happening. I’m not the most miserable person in the world right now.” He pushed them both onto the Gator as he spoke and pushed the button to lift them up.
“Dewey! What is all of this! I want to—”
“Off you go,” Dewey cried out.
He slumped into his chair and texted Clara.
sos
sisters onslaught surprise
Bruno
Colin had some very funny pictures of Dewey hanging upside-down from the tree.
“Pretty good!” Dewey said, chomping on a chocolate brownie snack bar. “What should we do with them?”
“Maybe the Pentagon wants them to study weird insects.”
“Weird insects . . .” said Dewey, Googling the topic in his phone. “Whoa, look at these. This one looks like a leaf!” he said, holding up his phone so Colin could see.
“What do they call it?”
“Giant Leaf Insect,” Dewey laughed. “Oh, this’s the one I’m gonna to be! Assassin bugs inject deadly saliva into their prey and then suck out all of the guts and stuff. That totally sounds like one the Pentagon would want to study.”
“Well, you look more like a monkey than a bug in these,” Colin said, holding up a shot from the drone of Dewey dangling upside down. “These’re pretty good, but we gotta get better at fly-by shots and reveals. After school?”
“Nooo. I’ve got a whole mess on my hands. I’ve got this case I’m working on. Plus, I didn’t tell you! Pooh brought Stephanie up to the office. Now they both know about it.”
“Really? Now what?”
Before Dewey could answer, which was just fine since he had no answer, Seraphina and Elinor showed up with their snacks and joined them on the grassy area where the students gathered.
“Damp?” Elinor asked putting her hand to the ground.
“No,” Dewey answered. How come everybody else thought about that first?
Seraphina put down her sweatshirt on the ground first anyway.
Colin showed the pictures of Dewey.
“Nice! How’d you get a closeup shot from that height?”
“Mini-drone.”
“I saw one of those you can control with your phone,” Elinor said. The bell rang before they could talk more. Why were these breaks so short? Dewey thought. Just enough time to start a conversation before they had to end.
After school, Dewey walked over to Claire’s house.
“Here’s the plan. I’m going to ride your bike home and stash it at my house. You’re going to discover it gone and cry your eyes out. Get him to feel sorry for you and want to help you find it. Meanwhile, I’m going to work it on my end to make sure he’s good and invested. Just play along.”
“Hope this works,” Claire sighed, sliding her hands in the back pocket of her jeans.
“It’ll work. Did you do your ‘gratefuls’ at dinner?”
“Yeah, I told him I was grateful he makes me laugh, just like you told me. I wanted to barf.”
Claire motioned Dewey to the side of the house where her bike leaned against the wall.
Dewey laughed. “It’s a little pinker than I’d counted on riding down the street. Maybe we can take off this basket?”
“No. I love that basket!” The front handle bars held a brown wicker basket attached by two Velcro lined leather straps. “It’s Amish.”
Dewey laughed when he looked inside. “You have a dog in there!” He pulled out a stuffed tan puppy dog. It had little Cs for ears, a high hung apostrophe tail, a black button nose, and two small round eyes, brown, with black puddle pupils.
How, wondered Dewey, could a little stuffed animal be so expressive?
“It’s my Lhasa Apso, Bruno. Our parents won’t let us have a real one.”
“This is good. This is great! Okay. I’ll keep the basket. He’s coming with me.”
“Really?” Claire’s voice squeaked.
“Don’t you see? It’s even better than I thought. I’ll work in the Asa Lapso, too.”
“Lhasa Apso.”
“Right. Lapso Apsa.”
Claire giggled.
“Anyway, leave it to me. I’ll take good care of little Bruno.”
“Can’t I just hide him in my closet? He won’t find him.”
“You gotta trust me, Claire. He’ll be fine. You have my word. He’s potty trained, right?”
She rolled her eyes.
“Right! So, we’re all good!” Dewey hopped on her bike and looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was around to see him. “I’ll be in touch soon.”
Claire leaned into the basket and gave Bruno a kiss goodbye and pat him on the head.
“Go find him and let him know about your bike. And try to keep it just between the two of you. You need him to solve this with you, not a bunch of grown-ups. That’ll be a whole other mess.”
“Good thing I’m not the one who leaves my bike in the driveway all the time. They’d notice his missing in a heartbeat.”
Dewey gave a final glance over his shoulder and strapped her helmet to his head. He had not thought to bring his own. Now, Dewey Fairchild rode off down the street on Claire’s pink bike with the Amish basket, wearing her purple, pink and light blue splatter helmet covered with shooting stars. Dewey thanked the heavens above no one saw him.
> Black Light, Brown Bag
As soon as Dewey left, Claire set off to do her part. She went to the bathroom and tried standing in front of the mirror to see if she could get her eyes to squeeze out any fake tears. She stared at herself, her long brown hair and brown eyes looking back at her, but nothing came. She could still see the remnants of the message Adam had left for her in the mirror—AIR STINK it read now, as the CL and final E and S had smudged off when she wiped it earlier. That made her laugh. It’s funny to watch yourself smile for real in the mirror, she thought. It looks different from smiling fake for a camera.
She wet her fingertips with a few drops of water from the faucet to wipe Adam’s message off the face of the earth for good when she got her idea. She could use the water from the faucet to make fake tears. She tried dropping a few right under her eyes and inspected. Nice! But how could she get them on demand for the moment required?
She looked around the bathroom drawers and cabinet for an eye or ear dropper but found only one that had swimmer’s ear drops in them, and she was pretty sure she’d be in trouble if she dumped that out.
She found an ointment in a sandwich-sized re-closable bag. That will work, she thought, remembering how they’d filled those baggies with icing at Christmas to decorate the holiday cookies. She could fill one with water, poke a pin-sized hole in the corner and drop tear-sized water down her cheeks!
She headed into the kitchen to set it up, and just in time, because Adam came ricocheting in to get a snack. Claire sat at the round kitchen table. The walls of the sitting area were white, and the kitchen had cream tiles. Five long open shelves with plates, cookbooks, pitchers, mugs, and a couple of leafy green plants lined the wall. The Bautista-Knickerbocker family had painted one wall with green chalkboard magnetic paint, and on it was the week’s events, some grocery items, some stick figures and hearts, and a magnet holding a dish towel. A small prep island separated the table from the kitchen where Adam stuck his head into the refrigerator.
Claire, without anything sharp to poke a corner in her water bag, bent down and rubbed her top and bottom front two teeth quickly together until just the tiniest of openings allowed water to seep out. With Adam still rummaging around in the fridge, she carefully squeezed a drop or two under each eye, tipped the bag the other way in her lap so it wouldn’t leak, and put her head down in her arms.
“Sniff, sniff,” she began when she heard him shut the fridge door. She added some shaking of her shoulders for effect.
“Claire?”
“Sniff, sniff,” and she added a little hiccup sound.
“Claire?” he repeated. “What’s wrong?” He hadn’t caused the suffering, so he concluded it could actually be serious. Adam sat down next to her.
Claire lifted her head and he saw her tearful face. “Someone took my bike,” she sobbed.
“Gone?! You sure?”
“Yes! It’s gone!” she wailed and put her face back into her crooked arm on the table. “Go see for yourself.”
Adam went outside to check, giving Claire time to add more droplets to her face and dump the bag in the sink.
“You’re right! When did this happen?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know!” she began to pace.
“Don’t worry, Claire,” he said reassuringly, reaching up to pat her shoulder. “We’ll find it.” Adam looked around and couldn’t find any tissue. He went to the bathroom and came back, trailing a long piece of toilet paper to give her to wipe her eyes and blow her nose.
Claire had to try hard not to laugh. She felt something that resembled warmth in her chest at the sight of him trying to help her. She felt half bad. Almost.
The next day, Dewey put phase two of the plan into effect by leaving Claire a ransom note. He took letters from a magazine, cut them up, and glued them onto a piece of paper. He rolled the letter up, stuck it in Bruno’s collar, and left them both on the porch. The note read: ‘We have your bike.’
“Claire! Claire! They really do have your bike! They left Bruno as proof! They’ve made contact!” Adam cried as he held the letter up to the light as if that might somehow reveal more about its authors. Claire felt grateful Dewey had returned Bruno. Now what, she wondered. She needn’t have wondered long, for as Adam held up the letter, he realized there was more to it.
“Wait. I think there’s more here, Claire,” Adam said. “Go get me a black light.”
“A black light? I don’t have a black light.”
“I’m telling you, there’s more here.”
“Where are you getting a black light from?”
“You can get them anywhere. Amazon. Hardware store.”
“No, I mean, where are you getting that we need one from?”
“Right here,” he said, holding up the ransom note. “Here’s your dog black,” he read.
“Oh. I didn’t even notice that,” she said.
“Well, I did.”
“Don’t you think it’s just a typo?”
“A typo?!” Adam threw his arms up in the air in complete exasperation. “Claire, they are cut out letters.”
“Good point.”
“Okay, I’ll go ride—”
“You were going to say you’d go ride your bike down to Busy Bees weren’t you?” he said, gently reaching up and putting his hand on her shoulder again. “You can take my bike.”
“Thanks,” she said, feigning feeling all glum. She didn’t have to feign feeling curious about that note, though. Even though she knew its author, she really did start to wonder what they might uncover.
Bring a brown paper bag filled with tootsie pops to the bridge by the elementary school. Leave it at the foot of the bridge by 3:00. Wait for further instructions.
That’s what the note said when they shined the black light on it.
“Okay! We know their demands! We just have to bring the loot to the bridge.”
The whole thing seemed absurd to Claire. She couldn’t believe Adam was falling for any of it. “I don’t even get how you knew to shine the black light,” she said.
“It was obvious. I told you. No one leaves a ransom note with a typo.”
“That’s true. No one does.”
“Okay!” he began again. “I’ll go to Pal’s and get the tootsie rolls and we’ll do it. Don’t worry so much, Claire. We’ll get your bike. I promise.”
Claire wasn’t worried, of course, about her bike. She was worried this whole thing was somehow going to blow up like the center of the tootsie pop in her face. But she was in too deep now. She sighed.
“Thanks,” she said.
Pal’s was the name they gave to the corner mini-mart down the end of the block. It wasn’t really called that, but Pal was the owner’s name, and the kids in the neighborhood all called it that. Gone were the days of the mini-mart filling up a plastic bag for you in California. Adam was proud of himself that he remembered to bring a reusable bag with him, the contents of which he now dumped onto Claire’s bed.
“I couldn’t decide if I should just get a few flavors or a bunch of different kinds. So I got two of each,” he said, lining up the Tootsie Pops as pairs on her comforter like dance partners. “Chocolate, cherry, orange, grape, raspberry, pomegranate, strawberry-watermelon, and lemon, which is disgusting, but I guess some people like citrus in their candy.”
“Orange is citrus.”
“Yeah, that’s gross, too.”
“Did you get extra?” she asked, going for a chocolate one.
“No!”
We can just take that pair of chocolate out.” She handed them each one, smiling.
“Okay,” he said, pulling off the paper and popping it into his mouth. The flavor of hot cocoa mingled with the feel of hard plastic on his tongue. “Sure hope this doesn’t make or break the deal. What if bike-nappers like chocolate best?”
“Hmm,” Claire said, her cheek round with a bulge from the lollipop. “Probably okay, but maybe we can get a few more to fi
ll the bag a bit more.” She punctuated the end of the sentence with the snap it made against her tongue and lips as she pulled the lollipop out.
“What time is it? After noon! We’d better get going!”
Pothole
Little did Dewey know, Claire and Adam had hit a pothole along the way.
“How long has it been missing?” Their dad asked, holding the ransom letter in his hand. His brow lowered and his lips pressed together closely into a thin line.
Claire gulped hard. Adam replied. “Day before yesterday?”
Adam told his dad all about the bike missing and the ransom letter.
“I appreciate, Adam, that you wanted to help your sister, but this is a job for the police, and someone should have told your mom and me.”
“But Dad,” Claire said, finding her voice. “It’s obviously a kid and just a joke or a game.”
“Stealing property isn’t a game. This is an opportunity for you kids to learn how to report a crime.”
He’s going to make this a teachable moment. And he’s mad. We’re doomed, thought Claire! There’s no stopping that train once it’s headed down the tracks. This time it was headed straight for the police station. Her heart began to beat fast, and her palms felt sweaty as they rested against her legs.
“Are you going to call 911?” Adam asked excitedly.
“We call their non-emergency number,” he said, pointing to a number written on the chalkboard wall. “It’s always right there next to where it says 911, see? You’re going to make the call, Claire.”
“What, no!” Her face reddened.
“I’ll teach you how and what to say.”
“No. Dad. Noo!”
“You say, ‘Hi. I’m Claire Bautista-Knickerbocker. I’d like to report a stolen bike.’ Then they’ll ask you questions and you answer them. I’ll be right by your side.”
Adam clapped his hands together. “Can I do it? Can I do it?!”
“I think since it’s Claire’s bike we should let her.”
“Ugh. Dad! Can we wait a couple days and just see if it turns up?”
“No, sweetie. These things have to be handled right away.”