Nickel Bay Nick

by Dean Pitchford

  A father and the wide-eyed little boy on his shoulders are entranced by the animated elves in the window at Toys R Us. I casually bump against the dad, mumble “Sorry,” as I insert a hundred in his back pocket, and melt into the crowd.

  On my way down to the fourth floor, I listen carefully for any sound rising above the hubbub, a joyful scream from somewhere behind me that might indicate the first Ben has been found and the operation is over. So far, so good.

  In Slacks ’n’ More, as an oblivious guy who looks to be about my dad’s age models a new pair of jeans for his wife, I zip into the changing room where his old pants hang on a hook and zip right back out again. Done!

  Zip! Zap! Zip! I’m really moving now, my hands flashing in and out of my coat and into other people’s pockets and parcels. On the third floor, I steer clear of a pair of security guards making their hourly rounds. Once I’m finished on three, I descend to the second level, where a choir of carolers up on a stage has attracted an appreciative audience. Engrossed in the music, they don’t notice the teenybopper in pigtails who squeezes through their midst, leaving Bens along the way.

  With only three bills left in my pocket, I’m on the down escalator, heading for the ground floor, when I encounter the first serious threat to my mission. Coming toward me on the up escalator are two pimply teenage boys—fourteen, maybe fifteen years old. One bozo sticks his fingers in his mouth and whistles loudly, as the other one shouts, “Oh, baby! I’d sure like to find you under my Christmas tree!”

  It takes a second to realize that they’re whistling and hooting at me. Not me Sam, but me Samantha. I stop breathing. As they glide by, the whistler growls, “Oh, mama! What’re you hiding behind those sunglasses?” He follows that with a rapid stream of air kisses. “Mwa! Mwa! Mwa! Mwa! Mwa!”

  I suddenly regret that I haven’t adopted the disguise of a plain Jane, but it’s too late now. Is it my fault that, in the right light and with the right wig, I am kind of a total fox?

  I’m relieved that the yahoos are heading up while I’m going down, but before they reach the top, they both vault over the escalator rail and start to descend, pushing through the bodies in their way. From the steps behind me I can hear irritated shoppers snarling.

  “Hey, watch it!”

  “Stop shoving!”

  “How rude!”

  As the stairs slide into the ground floor, I cut through the mob and make a beeline for the nearest restroom, with my admirers in hot pursuit. My first instinct is to race into the men’s room. After all, that’s the door I’ve entered my entire life. But when I remember that I’m in disguise, I whip around and head for the women’s room door. Through the thicket of winter coats and shopping bags behind me, I spy my stalkers getting dangerously close, and that’s when I realize what a bad move I’m about to make. Those jerks will expect me to be in the women’s room, won’t they?

  I spin again, push through the door marked MEN, and nearly trip over a guy who’s down on one knee, tying a shoelace. As he’s about to look up, I fake a loud, wet sneeze, and he quickly turns his face away from my explosion of germs. I hurry into the main room, where five men and two boys are standing along the urinal wall, busy doing what guys do at urinals. Not one of them glances around. My purple sneakers squeak on the tile floor as I dash into an open stall and lock the door.

  Time for Plan B.

  Off come the sunglasses, ski cap, wig and pink parka. From my backpack, I pull a dingy-brown zippered sweatshirt, dark-green tennis shoes, a gray scarf and a navy-blue baseball cap. In ninety seconds, I’m Sam again. My shoulder bag turns inside out, so it’s now black. Before cramming my old costume into it, I pull the last three Nickel Bay Bens from the pocket of the parka and stuff them into my sweatshirt.

  On the way out, I check myself out in the mirror, pulling the scarf up over my mouth and tugging the cap visor down to my nose. There’s no question that I’m more exposed, but I feel freer to move around than I did as Samantha.

  Hunching my shoulders and ducking my head, I exit the men’s room, and sure enough, Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Dumber are pacing in front of the women’s room door, waiting to hassle the girl of their dreams. In the blink of an eye, I disappear back into the crush of shoppers.

  With only three Bens left, I’m feeling pretty pumped. But as anxious as I am to finish my work and get out of the mall, I’m also feeling a little down. Once the White Mission is complete, I realize, Operation Christmas Rescue will be history. Next year, I’ll bet Mr. Wells will be up and walking, and he’ll want his old job back. So I have only three more chances to be Nickel Bay Nick. Three more opportunities to feel this frightened and excited.

  And complete.

  The sight of a security guard holding tightly to the leash of a German shepherd startles me back into focus. This is no time for daydreaming, I remind myself.

  In front of Bed, Bath & Beyond, a wrinkled old nun wearing dark glasses stands beside a collection kettle, vigorously ringing a bell. Clutched tightly in her other hand is a red-tipped cane, the kind blind people carry. She responds with a cheery “God bless you!” every time she hears the jangle of a coin tossed into her kettle, but I’m happy to report that she doesn’t react as my contribution falls silently through the money slot.

  A young couple with three little girls—triplets!—gets my second-to-last Ben, and with only a single bill left in my sweatshirt pocket, I pause to look around.

  This is it. The last drop of the season. Nickel Bay Nick’s final move. What’s it gonna be? In the next moment, though, an unexpected sighting makes me gasp and flatten my body against a pillar.

  I twist my neck around the corner to see . . . Mrs. Atkinson, my counselor from Family Services. Sitting on a bench in the middle of the arcade, she’s eating a hot pretzel with mustard and watching the crowds go by. Instead of wearing her hair in a bun today, she’s got it hanging around her face, and the difference is surprising. She doesn’t look like the stern, disapproving grump I’m used to. Instead, she looks sort of . . . normal. Pretty, almost. The way my mom looks when she doesn’t curl her hair.

  At her side sits a girl—her daughter, I’m guessing—a little older than me. Her knees are drawn up to her chest, and her head is bowed over the video game she’s playing with great intensity. When Mrs. Atkinson breaks off a piece of pretzel and offers it to her daughter, the girl rejects it with a jerk of one shoulder, not even bothering to look up. A fleeting look of loneliness flashes over Mrs. Atkinson’s face, and in that moment, I realize I’ve never thought of Mrs. Atkinson as a person.

  She’s always been just another adult in the long line of adults who disapprove of me. She even wanted to take me away from Dad! But seeing her like this—smiling sadly and licking the mustard from her thumb—I get a different impression. Mrs. Atkinson isn’t a monster. She’s a lady with a tough job who’s trying to do what’s best. She has her own family, and I can tell she loves her daughter, even if her daughter doesn’t get that right now.

  I know who’s gonna get the last Nickel Bay Buck.

  Crossing behind their bench, I zero in on the two shopping bags next to Mrs. Atkinson. Either one of them would make a perfect target. I’m playing with fire, I realize, getting this close to someone who could recognize me, but I’m determined not to wimp out. I rub the final hundred-dollar bill between my fingers, savoring the feel one last time, waiting for Mrs. Atkinson to turn away. A split second of distraction is all I need.

  But when it comes, it’s not the sort of distraction I’m hoping for.

  Behind us, somewhere down the south arcade, a woman screams something, followed by a man yelling words I can’t understand.

  Every shopper stops. Every head whips around.

  I’m so focused on Mrs. Atkinson’s shopping bag that I fight the urge to look. Strolling past, I make my drop, and it’s only then—once the final Ben is in place—that I actually hear what the man down t
he hall is yelling.

  “Stop him!” he’s howling. “Stop that pickpocket!”

  Panic rips through my body. This is it! screams the voice inside my skull. You’ve been caught! The blood rushing to my head makes me stagger away from Mrs. Atkinson, but the fringe of my scarf snags on a corner of her bench and pulls it from my face. I can’t stop to untangle it, because the shouts behind me are growing louder, getting nearer and nearer.

  “Don’t let him get away!” other voices yell. “Grab that kid!”

  Despite the thumping of my heart, I try not to freak out. I lower my head and pick up my pace, plowing through a wall of people. Everyone in my path, though, is stopping, craning their necks to watch the tidal wave of commotion that’s bearing down on me. Up above, on the second and third floors, I spot security guards running along the railings, shouting into their walkie-talkies, dashing to the escalators. Then up ahead, without warning, a hulking guard breaks through the crowd, gripping the leash of a snarling German shepherd and running straight at me!

  Stopping dead, I throw both hands overhead in surrender and am about to shriek, “I give up! You got me!” when the most amazing thing happens.

  The cop and his dog run right past me.

  Now I’m totally confused. If they’re not all chasing me, then who are they after? I look back. Up and down the hall, voices are hollering and echoing.

  “There he is!”

  “Don’t let him get away!”

  “He’s the one!”

  I don’t see who they’re talking about until suddenly, thirty feet behind me, a kid in a hooded sweatshirt sprints out of the crowd of shoppers, leaps over the German shepherd in his path and veers to his right, leading his pursuers down the west corridor of the mall. Just before he disappears from my sight, the hood falls back from the guy’s head, and I can see that it’s . . .

  “Jaxon?” I whisper in shock. What’s he doing here?

  But this is no time to ask questions. Any second now, someone is going to find one of those fifteen Nickel Bay Bens, and then a whole other circus is going to break out. And despite the baseball cap pulled low over my forehead, I’m really exposed now. I’ve got to get out.

  I mistakenly assume that every guard in the mall is hot on Jaxon’s tail, but when I round the corner to the nearest exit, I find out how wrong I am. Three guards stand between me and the parking lot. And two of them have kicked me out in the past.

  With a quick U-turn, I head back into the mall. I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but I have no other choice.

  I’ve got to activate Plan C.

  As I whiz along, I unzip my backpack and, into each trash can I pass, I deposit a single item from Samantha’s outfit. When the nylon shoulder bag is finally empty, I ball it up and toss it, too.

  Plan C requires me to get myself to the Pampered Pooch, a pet grooming salon, in the west corridor of the mall. Unfortunately, it’s the same corridor that Jaxon has just led all those guards and angry shoppers into, but by the time I arrive, I’m relieved to see the mob has moved beyond the Pampered Pooch. The store’s employees—six men and three women, all wearing white smocks and holding hair clippers and brushes—are standing around in the arcade, drawn outside by the uproar. As I slip into the unattended shop and dart into the back work area, I hear one of the groomers asking a passerby, “What’s happening?”

  “Cops caught a pickpocket,” comes the answer.

  Twenty minutes later, when Dr. Sakata arrives to pick up Hoko from his grooming appointment, he is led into the workroom, from which he emerges carrying an enclosed kennel. Inside is one shampooed, fluffy dog.

  And lying at his side, sharing the crate, is one small boy.

  Although I can’t see out—and no one can see in—I still hear the footsteps racing past and a new chorus of voices, this time shouting joyfully.

  “Somebody found a Ben!”

  “Then he’s here! He’s here!”

  “Nickel Bay Nick is in the mall!”

  THE CLUE IN THE COAT

  On the way home, in the darkness of the dog crate, I calm Hoko by scratching his back, his ears and his neck. He repays me with a thousand kisses. On his collar, I’m confused to discover something hanging alongside his dog tags. I’m rubbing the object between two fingers, trying to figure out what I’ve found, when suddenly the SUV’s tailgate swings open.

  We’re back in Mr. Wells’s garage.

  Dr. Sakata unlatches the door of the crate, and Hoko bounds out. I crawl after him, stand up straight and stretch out the kinks. With all the licking I’ve been getting from Hoko, I’m wet from chin to forehead. I rub my face dry with the sleeve of my sweatshirt, muttering, “Yuck!” which gets an understanding nod from Dr. Sakata. Then I follow him as he carries the empty cage into the house.

  A weird grinding sound is coming from the living room, where we find Mr. Wells standing over a paper shredder, feeding documents from the folders on his desk into the steel blades.

  “Any problems?” he calls over the noise.

  “Nope,” I answer. “What’re you doing?”

  He waits until the machine stops whirring before he answers. “Operation Christmas Rescue is at an end. You have fulfilled your part of our agreement.” With the sweep of an arm, he indicates the files and reports he had collected about my dishonorable past. “So now I’m destroying all the evidence I collected on you.”

  I don’t know how to respond. I guess I’m relieved that Mr. Wells can no longer blackmail me, but at the same time, I’m bummed to realize that, yeah, our missions are over. Operation Christmas Rescue is history.

  Mr. Wells smiles broadly and rubs his hands together. “So! You had to resort to Plan C, huh?”

  • • •

  For our final lunch together, Mr. Wells decides we should eat in the dining room, so he, Dr. Sakata and I seat ourselves at one end of a table that could easily handle twelve. Then I give Mr. Wells a full account of the White Mission. He chuckles when I tell him about the two boys chasing me down the escalator and into the bathroom.

  “Smart move, choosing the men’s room!” he exclaims.

  When I get to the part about Jaxon, he nods knowingly. “Yes, I heard that on my police scanner,” he says. “He’s been booked down at the station.”

  “Dad was right about Jaxon,” I grumble, stirring my soup. “I bet his lawyer father gets him out tonight, and he’ll be back in school tomorrow.” After a moment spent staring into my bowl, though, I set down my spoon and say, “Y’know what I think?”

  “What’s that, Sam?”

  “I think tomorrow, when I go back to school,” I announce, “I’m gonna try to make some new friends.”

  Mr. Wells smiles and nods. “Sounds like a plan.”

  Without any more missions to prepare for, we linger over our meal. The mid-afternoon sun is throwing long shadows across the dining room floor when Mr. Wells finally reaches into the pocket of his three-button sweater, pulls out a small box and sets it on the table in front of me.

  “What’s this?”

  “Think of it as congratulations for a job well done,” he says.

  “But I was working to pay you back for the damage to your roof,” I protest. “I shouldn’t be getting a present.”

  “It’s not really for you.”

  I scrunch my nose in confusion. “Who’s it for, then?”

  “Open it and find out.”

  I lift the lid off the box and fold back the tissue paper to reveal a small wooden picture frame holding a square of glass. It takes me a moment to realize what I’m looking at behind the glass.

  It’s a coin. A very old nickel. I’ve seen others like it only twice before. One is in a bulletproof case at the Nickel Bay Historical Society. And the other is in a photo in Dad’s scrapbook.

  I look up at Mr. Wells. “Is this Phineas Wackburton’s four
th nickel?”

  “It is,” he says. “That’s the one your father received from the town of Nickel Bay for saving all those lives in the factory fire.”

  “But Dad said he lost his! When we moved all those times!” I press my hands to my skull, feeling like my head might explode. “Okay, wait! How . . . how did you get it?”

  “Six months after your heart transplant,” Mr. Wells begins, “you developed a serious infection. I’m sure you don’t remember much of this, it was so long ago.”

  I shake my head. “It’s mostly a blur.”

  “Your father’s finances were already stretched to the breaking point, and the costs of your unexpected hospitalization and treatment were threatening to bankrupt him. He felt that the only thing of value he had was the Wackburton nickel, so, in desperation, he contacted a coin dealer. Who contacted me.”

  “And you bought Dad’s nickel?”

  Mr. Wells nods.

  “Wow.” I lift the tiny frame and peer at the coin. “So, when you asked me to tell you about the naming of Nickel Bay, you already knew the story?”

  “More or less, but I needed to learn how much you knew.” Mr. Wells nods to the coin. “I thought it might make a nice gift from you to your father.”

  I look up. “But he’ll wonder where I got it.”

  “So tell him we found it while we were organizing my files,” Mr. Wells says with a flip of one hand. “Say that it was in a box with a lot of other coins and trinkets, and that I had no idea what it was.”

  “Then he’ll want to know where you got it.”

  “Oh, Sam!” Mr. Wells chuckles. “You’ve always been such a good liar. Don’t let that skill desert you now!” He rubs his palms excitedly. “You could say that, over the years, I’ve bought collections from many coin enthusiasts. Tell him that I have been negligent about organizing and cataloguing those coins, to the point that they’ve ended up jumbled together in a stack of cardboard boxes in my attic. If he asks me, I’ll say that I don’t remember who sold me what. That story should hold up, don’t you think?”