by Jake Burt
Of course, it should’ve mattered. We knew that now. The noise, it turned out, was the high-pitched whine of air and water being forced through a crack in an old bit of rubber hosing beneath the dishwasher. That water and air gradually ate away at the wood and plaster beneath the dishwasher until finally that poor floor just gave up, dumping a big mound of damp drywall and piping onto Ms. Culverson’s kitchen table. It was a Friday evening, so I was home, and when I heard the crash I rushed to the kitchen. The bright light of Ms. Culverson’s apartment beamed through the dust and darkness, as if an old ’49er had gone digging in our kitchen and struck gold. I scrambled over to the hole and looked down. Our grubby dishwasher was hanging by pipes and hoses right over the middle of Ms. Culverson’s Friday-night poker game, kind of like the world’s worst chandelier. Nobody got hurt, but once the dust settled and the shock wore off, Mrs. Hanamura from apartment 7B threw her cards up at the ceiling and declared, “I fold.” The next day, we had to get a crew in to remove the dishwasher before it did any more damage.
So now we had no dishwasher, a hole in our kitchen floor, and a heaping helping of trouble. It turned out the landlord wouldn’t accept responsibility—we hadn’t reported any problems with the dishwasher before then. My dad had argued that we hadn’t known about them, since all the damage was hidden beneath the dishwasher, but the landlord got our neighbors to testify about the noise, and he said that was grounds to force us to pay for the repairs. The insurance company wouldn’t cover the damage either; they required a note from the landlord to even get in and assess the damage, and he wasn’t about to write one. Of course, Ms. Culverson was nice enough to offer to pay for the repairs, “On account of that I should’ve said something about the water stains on my ceiling a long time ago,” but my parents wouldn’t hear of it. That left us stuck in a great big hole, so to speak.
And now it seemed like that hole was about to get deeper.
“They’re closed!” my dad moaned.
“Well, of course they are, Matthew. Nobody’s open at eight o’clock at night!”
“What’s wrong, Dad?” I dared to ask.
My father threw the envelope onto the ground in reply. It skidded toward the hole, and I stomped on it. Picking it up, I was able to read quickly before my mother grabbed it from me.
“No way,” I said. “They think we violated the drought restrictions?”
My mom scowled as she read on. “Apparently, the leakage from the stupid dishwasher caused us to go over our water limit four times in the last six months.”
“Wouldn’t that show up on our water bill?”
“We don’t pay it, Addison. The landlord does, for the whole building. He just adds a bit to the rent to cover it. L.A. County was probably sending him letters, and he ignored them until now, when it’s convenient for him to report us. According to the government, we’re on the hook for the fine, which is ridiculous. Do you know how much water we’d have to use to warrant a fine this high? We’d have to be filling bathtubs. The landlord is just using this as leverage.”
“That’s gotta be…,” I began.
“… Illegal!” shouted Ms. Culverson from below. “Sorry. Couldn’t help but eavesdrop! Anyone else want lemon cookies?”
I bent down to get another one, but my father shook his head.
“Sorry, Ms. Culverson. We’ll keep it down. Have a nice night,” Mom said in her “This concludes our parent-teacher conference” voice.
“You too, ceiling-neighbors!”
I spent the next five minutes scrounging together some dinner while my parents whispered to each other. It kept Ms. Culverson from catching anything, but I picked up every word. Not that I needed to hear. I knew they were talking about money. My parents only ever whispered about two topics: finances and love, and this didn’t seem like a particularly romantic moment. Either way, it wasn’t something I wanted to stick around for, so I grabbed my sub sandwich and hightailed it to my room.
I shared my bedroom with my brother before he went away to college. Now I used his bed to eat on and mine to sleep—fewer crumbs on my comforter that way. In a weird sense, he was mixed up in all this, too. He was the first Gerhardt man to go to college, and his tuition was on my parents’ “nonnegotiable” list. A fourth pair of shoes for Addison’s huge feet? Negotiable. Our own car? Negotiable. Marcus’s college money? Nothing doing.
That’s why I felt fine eating on his bed. After all, what with the stupid dishwasher and these new fines, it might not be too long before sandwiches were negotiable, too.
CHAPTER TEN
DEVIN’S FIRST FOLLOWER
Bennet C. Riley was in a decent neighborhood. It took up a whole block if you included the teachers’ parking lot, the playground, and the fields, and it had nice-looking palm trees on each corner. Across the street was a public park, and if we were lucky, a few food trucks would set up over there around three o’clock so we could get a snack while we waited for the bus.
Before school started, a bunch of us camped out on the stone wall in front. There were maybe three dozen kids in all—so many that the school started sending Ms. Rosa to keep an eye on us. It used to be that when I perched on the wall, I could get a good, rhythmic kick going with the heels of my shoes. Now my feet scraped the ground.
That morning, I sat with Benji Wilson. He was a fourth grader with redder hair and more freckles than anyone else I knew. He claimed he could see the freckles on his nose if he crossed his eyes just so. He told us he counted them every day, and every day there was at least one more.
“Hey, Addi! What’s your guess today?”
I shrugged. “Seventy-one?”
“Ninety-two! That’s up one from yesterday. Mom says it’s ’cause I’m growing. Watch out. Gonna block your shot soon!”
I looked down at him. He was beaming. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was still growing, too.
“Maybe so, Benji.”
I scanned the street for Devin. His grandma usually dropped him off out front before she went into the market, but I figured they might be late, what with his dad and all.
“Hey, Addi! Did you hear that Devin did the Backflip of Doom yesterday?”
My feet stopped kicking.
“So cool! I’m gonna try—”
“No, you’re not,” I said gravely. I turned to face him, putting my nose so close I thought a freckle might hop on over, just to spite me. “It was dumb of him, and it would be dumb of you, too.”
“Awww, but, Addi…”
I imagined Ms. Carrillo standing over my shoulder. “No, Benji. And you’re going to do me a favor. Anyone else says they’re going to try, you tell them Addison said it was off-limits. You got it?”
Benji swallowed, but he agreed.
“I guess it’s pretty dangerous, huh.”
“Very.”
We sat there for a few moments more. Another bus full of kids pulled up, and Ms. Rosa directed them to open spots on the wall, away from the street.
“Hey, Addi!” Benji exclaimed suddenly.
I sighed.
“Yeah, Benji?”
“So you’re in a hole, right?”
My mind immediately conjured Ms. Culverson’s face, smiling up at me from the floor. I arched an eyebrow. “Huh?”
“Yeah, Addi. You’re in this hole, right? And there’s two ways out. Way A and way B. Which way do you take?”
“Is this a joke?”
“It’s a riddle! My teacher told it to me yesterday.”
I shrugged, but it was better than Benji talking about the Backflip of Doom again.
“Are the two ways different?”
“No, you don’t get to ask questions about it. You just pick!”
“If they’re both ways out, does it matter?”
Benji scrunched up his nose.
“I dunno. My teacher didn’t say that part. Have you picked one yet?”
“I pick A.”
“Wrong! It’s B!”
“Okay,” I said, and I reached down
to mess with some of the concrete along the top of the wall. If you got your fingers under there just right, you could pry up a nice, flat piece of it.
“Don’tcha wanna know why?”
I looked at him again. He was twitching, and his eyes were wide, like he was going to explode in freckly fireworks if I didn’t humor him.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because when you’re trying to get out of a hole, you always take the latter! Get it? Latter? Like ladder? You climb out with the latter. Or ladder. Because it’s like the second choice, you know?”
At just that moment, Devin snuck around from behind us. He must have been dropped off while I was contemplating Benji’s facial constellation.
“Devin!” Benji exclaimed. “You did the Backflip! Was it hard? Were you scared? How did you pull it off? You’re, like, a superhero!”
Devin glanced around, then grinned. “You heard? Man, it was awesome. I pretty much—”
I coughed loudly and shook my head.
“I mean, um, we’re not talking about that, Benji.”
Benji pouted, his eyes lowering as he kicked at the wall with his sneaker and shoved his hands into his pockets. Suddenly, though, his head popped up.
“Hey, Devin, so you’re in this hole…”
“Wha?” Devin asked, adjusting his glasses.
“Benji will tell you later,” I said quickly, hopping down and dragging Devin through the gate toward the school.
“What’s up, Addi?”
“We need to talk.”
“Totally. I’ve got news!”
When we snuck behind the bushes under Mr. Ruffalo’s classroom windows, Devin pulled out his phone.
“Check it out, Addi!” he said proudly, and he held up the screen. Between last night and this morning, he had picked up his first follower.
“That’s great,” I said, “but you need to—”
“You’re gonna love this. See who my follower is?”
Devin tapped his screen a few times, and another account came up. In big letters, it said @ADDIGERHARDT17.
“It’s you, dude!” Devin proclaimed proudly.
“What? I didn’t … My mom told me not to … I … huh?”
“I looked this morning and saw that I still didn’t have any followers, and I figured your parents told you that you couldn’t make an account. So I made one for you. You’re welcome!”
“Delete it, man.”
Devin pulled his phone back and cradled it to his chest.
“Heck no!”
“I’ll tell your parents, then, and they’ll make you delete it.”
He started to whimper. “But, Addi, you know how much I need this! How am I supposed to break the Curse if I don’t get famous?”
“You mean post a YouTube video.”
Devin rolled his eyes. “They’re the same thing. Fame gets you followers, which gets you views, which makes you more famous!”
Gritting my teeth, I pressed my fingers to my forehead to think.
“All right. We’ll make a deal,” I said. “You can keep me as a follower. But we have to leave school out of this. You heard Benji talking about the Backflip.”
Devin’s shoulders slumped. “So Ms. Carrillo was right.”
“Yeah.”
“Guess this means you’re not going to help me hijack the PA system so I can broadcast my new rap to the whole school?”
I shook my head. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Or record me as I try to get from one end of the teachers’ parking lot to the other only on the roofs of their cars?”
“Now I know you’re messing with me.”
Devin pushed a strand of hair away from his glasses and smiled. “Yeah, maybe. But you’re coming over tonight to help me think of a new phase one. A real spectacle.”
“It’s Friday night. The Warriors-Clippers game is on.”
“Watch it at my place. Or are you afraid we’re going to beat you?”
I laughed. The Warriors beating the Clippers was about the only thing I was sure of these days.
“Then it’s a deal,” Devin said, and he held out his hand.
I wished I had a pair of false teeth to put in there, just to teach him a lesson.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A DRAMATIC TURN
My mom talked to Devin’s mom after school, and they worked it out so that I could spend the night at his place. To earn the privilege, I had to clean my room until it was spotless … or, should I say, crumbless, since Mom had found out I’d been eating on Marcus’s bed again. I tried to tell her it was because it made me feel closer to him while he was away, but she saw right through that. I was a terrible liar.
So, after ten minutes of vacuuming and five minutes of trying to pull Marcus’s bedspread out of the vacuum hose, I got to call Devin for the pickup. His grandma drove him to get me, and she was standing by the curb when I went outside, an umbrella over her head for shade. I smiled and kissed her cheek, and she stretched up to kiss me back. She was just about Devin’s size.
“Good afternoon, Addison,” she said warmly. I peered into the car, where Devin was doing … well, something. It looked like he was yelling at the back of the driver’s seat. Every so often, he’d point at it, open his mouth really wide, and shout stuff. I could hear him even though the car door was closed.
“What’s Devin doing?” I asked.
“Same thing he’s been doing for the whole drive. He’s rehearsing.”
“For what, G?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. Let’s both hope he stops once you’re in the car.”
He did, for a few seconds at least. I slung my overnight bag at him, and he caught it and tossed it down by his feet.
“Hey, Devin. Ready to cry tonight when the Warriors stomp your team?”
“None of that from you, young man,” G said sternly as she closed the umbrella and slipped into the driver’s seat. “It’s bad enough having to play chauffeur for the one lonely Warriors fan in all of Los Angeles, but I’ll suffer no ill talk about my Clippers. Keep that up, and you’re walking.”
I reminded myself that I was in enemy territory. The entire Velma family were rabid Clippers fans. Devin’s sister was even a member of the Clippers Spirit dance team. I loved G like my own grandma, but I was fairly sure she wasn’t bluffing about kicking me out of the car. Depending on what I said, I’d be lucky if she bothered to pull over first.
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied. “I meant, ‘Devin, are you looking forward to tonight’s game? It should be a lively and amusing matchup.’”
“Out!” Devin screamed, pointing at the door behind me. I jumped, banging my head against the ceiling.
“Devin!” G gasped.
“Dude, we trash-talk, like, all the time! What’s got you so—”
“Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing!”
When he was done, Devin was panting. He had been gesturing so wildly that he had accidentally slapped himself in the face, and his glasses were crooked, one lens right above his nose. I could actually see his neck veins pulsing.
“Devin, sweetie, are you not well?” G asked softly. “Because we have some VapoRub at home we could—”
“Macbeth!” Devin exclaimed between breaths. “Shakespeare. How was it?”
I blinked. “Um, scary?”
“You were terrifying, dear,” G added.
Devin fixed his glasses and slumped into his seat. “I was going for impassioned ennui.”
“Impassia-what?”
“Never mind.”
We spent the rest of the car ride in silence. I pressed myself as tight as I could against my door, just in case Devin decided to go all Shakespeare on us again.
When we got to Devin’s house, he ran upstairs to his bedroom. I stayed to get my cheek kisses from Mrs. Velma, Double-G, and Triple-G; Devin’s
dad was in bed resting, and his sister was at the arena for the game already. After our hellos, I scrambled up to find Devin.
His door was open, though the light wasn’t on. The glow of his computer screen illuminated the back wall, and I could see him furiously flying through websites in the reflection of his window.
“What is going on?” I asked as I flung my bag onto his bed.
“Dang…,” he mumbled.
I scooted around his desk to look, accidentally knocking over a pile of books on acting. Each one had the familiar public library barcode taped to the spine. At the top of the pile was a copy of the CliffsNotes to Macbeth.
On Devin’s screen I saw a picture of Disneyland. Above it, a headline glimmered and blinked—it was made entirely of animated stars. Once my eyes adjusted, I could read what it said: “So You Want to Be a Star?” Below that, in regular letters, it continued: “Top ten tips for becoming a Disney child actor!”
I put a hand on Devin’s shoulder. “You thought you could get famous as an actor?”
“Look at this!” Devin moaned. “Even this seven-year-old has been working at it since he was two! His parents homeschooled him so that he could focus on acting. How do I compare with Travis Everyoung? That’s probably not even the dude’s real name.”
A fresh-faced blond kid with a gleaming smile stared at Devin from the screen.
“And those definitely aren’t real. You ever met a seven-year-old with all his teeth?” I pointed out.
“They might not be, but the twenty-two million subscribers to his YouTube channel are,” Devin whimpered as he slid farther and farther down into his seat. “But it’s a dead end, too, Addi. Apparently, there aren’t actually talent agents just roaming the streets, looking for the next superstar.”
“Let me guess … You were going to get your mom to take you to Hollywood, then stand in front of the Dolby Theatre and spout lines until someone recognized your genius?”
“Well, yeah, kind of…,” he said. “I was going to get you to dress as Lady Macbeth, and then we’d record ourselves. It’d be hilarious and artsy. People love that!”
I stared him down so hard he slithered all the way under his desk. When I grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and hauled him out, he looked up at me with saucer eyes. “Was it really that bad?”