by Lee Wardlaw
Two hours later, the police had come and gone, taking our statements and Marcos with them.
“What will happen to him, Daddy?” Hayley asked.
Mr. Barker, who’d arrived not long after the cops, rubbed a weary hand through his curls. “There’s a lot of damage,” he answered with a sigh. He surveyed Gadabout from where the six of us stood atop the North Pole. “Several thousand dollars’ worth, at least. Marcos is eighteen, so he’ll be charged as an adult. That means he’ll face jail time.”
“And what,” I asked, my throat dry, “will happen to Gadabout?”
Mr. Barker rubbed his head again. “We’ve no choice. We’ll have to close completely to make repairs. It could take months. I don’t know what we’ll do about the Tower of Pisa. It’s a total loss.”
“I can help!” I said. “I can design a new Pisa for you in my CAD class. And with the right tools, I bet I can fix the stuff Marcos smashed. I’ll work every Saturday and Sunday, Mr. Barker. And every holiday. And—”
“It would be an honor for me to assist, as well,” Hiccup broke in with a hapkido-ish bow. “Provided it is in a mosquito-free environment, of course.”
“Yo, I’m in too,” Ace said. He pinched an invisible mosquito from Hiccup’s shirt and flicked it to the ground.
“Don’t know much ’bout jungle ball,” Cullen said, fingering his shark-tooth necklace. “But my dad, he da kine carpenter. Back in small kid time, I learn my way round a hammer and saw.”
“Thank you, all of you,” Mr. Barker said. “I’m overwhelmed by your generosity.” He pulled me into a rough hug.
I glanced at Hayley. She was wiping her eyes with the hem of her shirt. Not a blouse. A regular old T-shirt.
“It’s late,” her dad continued, “so we’ll finish discussing this tomorrow. Right now, you should all be home, in bed. Steve, I’ll call your parents, yes? They must be back from the movies by now and worried sick about you. Where’s your bike? I’ll throw it in the back of my truck and take you home. Hiccup, Ace, how did you two get here?”
“We also arrived via bicycle,” Hic said. “I pedaled; Ace rode on the handle bars.”
I almost laughed.
Mr. Barker stifled a smile. “Fine, that’s fine. Your bike can go in the truck too. Cullen? Do you need a lift?”
“No tanks. I got Auntie’s car.”
Mr. Barker hugged me again. “Thanks for coming to warn us, Steve,” he said. “All of you. If you hadn’t been here, who knows how much more damage Marcos would’ve done.” He ruffled my hair, then headed for the parking lot. I’d never heard him walk without jingling his pocket change.
“I go too, menehune.” Cull slapped me on the back, almost dislocating my spine. “See you tomorrow. No, tonight. Dinner at six sharp. No be late—or I eat all Auntie’s huli huli chicken myself, eh?”
“Thanks for coming, Cull.” I held out my hand. “You took a big risk.”
My hand disappeared within his paw. “Naw. Bigger risk if I stay home.”
“What do you mean?”
But he only smiled, his straight teeth gleaming white as the North Pole’s snow. “Shaka,” he said to Hayley and lumbered away.
“I. Am. So. Mortified,” she said with an intense blush. “Mortified that he knows that I believed—that he—that we—” She blushed harder. “Oh, golf tees!”
“Yeah, about that.” I gulped. “I’m really, really sorry.”
She didn’t, wouldn’t look at me. She turned to Ace and Hic instead. “What I want to know is: What are you guys doing here? Don’t take me wrong. I’m glad you came. But if Cullen didn’t call you, how did you know to come? How did you know what Marcos was going to do? I mean, even Goldie didn’t know, and she’s the snoop with the scoop!”
“Ace appeared without warning on my doorstep,” Hic explained. “He insisted we must make haste to Gadabout to assist you; that my hapkido skills could be useful.” He frowned. “But Ace, how did you know Hayley needed our assistance?”
A recollection zinged my brain. “July!”
Hic’s frown deepened. “Sneeze, the current month is September. The stress of this evening has obviously affected your cognizance. If you are receptive to alleviating the problem, I can provide you with a few memory-enhancing exercises, or a mnemonic device or two that would—”
“Hiccup, I meant July Smith. The Queen of the Clubs. Pierre’s Juliette. Ace’s sister. Am I right?”
Ace shrugged. “I overheard her making plans with Marcos on the phone. I wasn’t sure she was serious. So I did the only thing I could do.” He blew on the nails of his left hand, then polished them on his shirt.
“Which was . . . ?” I prodded.
“Locked her in her room.”
Hayley, Hic, and I burst out laughing.
“She must be expectorating with fury!” Hiccup said, pleased.
“Don’t you think it’s time you let her out?” Hayley asked.
Ace shrugged. Gazed at the stars as if they were the numerals on a clock. “No.” He sauntered off toward Mr. Barker’s truck.
“I should assist with the bicycles,” Hic said. “Steve. Sneeze. I am enormously relieved and . . . pleased you are uninjured.”
I coughed at an odd lump in my throat. “Does this mean . . . we are friends again?”
He shoved his hands into his pockets. Hunched from his great new height to look me straight in the eye. “Friends can get mad at each other, sometimes bug each other, right?”
“Right.”
“Then—I never wasn’t your friend, Sneeze.”
We both blinked. Nodded. Grinned.
“Man hug!” he cried, and pounced, crushing me, slapping my back so hard I almost coughed up a lung.
“Ow! Get off me!” I half laughed, half gasped.
“Boys!” called Mr. Barker. “Let’s go!”
Hic hustled to the truck.
“Steve’ll be there in a second, Daddy!” Hayley hollered. Then she faced me, fists on her hips, the SOS on red alert.
Eep.
“Why did you come tonight?” she demanded. “I fired you! I told you I never wanted to hear or see or talk to you ever again! So why did you bother to warn me about Marcos? He could’ve killed you, you know.”
“I know,” I said. “But at the time, I didn’t think about that. It didn’t occur to me at all. And if it had, I would’ve come anyway, because . . .”
My voice trailed off. But gazing into those beautiful ice-cream-cold blue eyes, breathing in the fresh peach scent of that skin, my words continued inside my head:
Because it was right . . . because it was worth the risk . . . and because . . .
I closed my eyes and thought of:
Pierre: “disguising” himself with a ridiculous moosetache; buying carwash donuts; slaving away at Lickety-Split Chick, a place he hated more than pork rinds . . .
Hector: speaking in monosyllables, hicking in polysyllables, accusing his best-ever friend of being a traitor . . .
Ace: reading. Reading textbooks. And Roman love poems. And silently playing the role of guard dog . . .
Hayley: shopping with Goldie; squealing like a girly girl in equally squeal-ly clothes; believing that a gorgeous guy surely had gorgeous brains to match . . .
And me: pretending to be someone else because I didn’t believe the someone I was would ever, could ever, be enough.
“Because,” I said aloud with a grin, “sometimes love makes you do crazy things.”
Epilogue
“Stephen J. Watt: You’re not peeking, are you?”
Hayley’s guiding hand became a boa constrictor squeeze.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Are. You. Peeking.” Her SOS seared through my blindfold.
“Ow! Okay!” I laughed, rubbing my arm. “Yes, Hayley, I’m peeking!”
“What can you see?” she demanded.
“Not much. Just feet. So I know Goldie’s here . . . and Ace and Pierre and Hector and . . . Oh! I’d recognize those shel
l-pink toes anywhere. Hi, Joonbi!”
She gave a lilting laugh. “You recognize my toes? Truth?”
I nodded. I could also see that she and Hiccup were holding hands.
Pierre noticed too. “May wee! ’Ave you two no ’eart? Take zis deesplay of P, D, and A outside. Eet reminds me, wis much pain, of Juliette!”
I could hear Goldie roll her eyes. “Oh, like you ever held July’s hand!”
“Eye did! Eet eez zee truth!”
“Pfffff!”
“Eye ’ave been eensulted! Eye challenge you to zee duel!”
“Give me that club, Pierre,” Hayley said. “You know rule number one at Gadabout.”
“I saw them hold hands once,” Ace put in.
“You see?” Pierre’s words were puffed with pride and vindication. “Please to give Goldee zee details, Ace!”
I imagined Ace’s shrug. “It was a Friday. July was forced to touch his hand when she passed him a customer’s bag of French fries.”
“I hope you did not partake of those potatoes, Pierre,” Hiccup said with a chuckle. “It is a known fact that digesting foods high in fat and salt contribute to an increased prevalence of—”
I smiled beneath my blindfold. Ah, some things never changed. While others . . . ? Well, a lot had happened in the month since Marcos the Moke vandalized Gadabout. Such as:
After round-the-clock research, Hiccup discovered the cause of Joonbi’s stomachaches: a rare disorder called Eocinophilic Gastroenteritis. EG has no cure, but after Joonbi’s doctor confirmed Hic’s diagnosis, she was given a prescription for a new-on-the-market drug—and is feeling much better. Joonbi and Hic are now an “item” and spend every moment possible together, honing their hapkido skills and comparing notes on how to annoy their older siblings.
The editor in chief of Ridiculous Reads changed his mind about Hiccup’s illustrations. Or, rather, the editor’s mind was changed for him. Seems the publisher and sales department thought Hic’s illustrations were buggably hilarious with loads of kid appeal. So, RR made me and Hiccup an offer—and we signed on the dotted line. Keep your eyes peeled for 101 Ways to Bug Your Parents, Teachers, Friends, and Siblings, coming soon to a gift store near you!
As for Hayley and me, well, there’s only so much apologizing a guy can do. So I’d hung back, giving her space, giving her time, hoping that one day she’d come to trust me again, want to be friends again. Although, secretly, I was starting to think, starting to fear, neither would ever happen.
So I almost fell over when the phone rang that afternoon.
“Stephen!” Hayley said in her businesslike tone. “It’s an emergency. Get to Gadabout. Now.”
I dropped the receiver, clipped on my tool belt, hollered a hasty good-bye to Mom and Dad, and sped off on my bike. Now, twenty minutes later, I stood, blindfolded, inside Gadabout’s musty office for the first time since the ransacking.
“Wait a sec,” I said with an SOS (Squinch of Suspicion). “This isn’t another surprise party for me, is it?”
Hayley snorted. “No, but it is a surprise! Okay, everyone, on the count of three. One . . . two . . .”
She whisked off the blindfold.
I blinked in the bright light—and gasped.
Hayley, Hiccup, Joonbi, Goldie, Ace, and Pierre stood shoulder to shoulder behind a large table. And spread across the table, sprawled a model of . . .
“Gadabout Golf!” I whispered.
“A new and improved Gadabout Golf,” Hayley corrected. “Not only did Daddy get enough insurance money to repair the damage Marcos did—but to do a few major renovations as well.”
I traced my finger along the miniature gravel paths . . . the teeny-tiny vanes of the Windmill . . . the powdered-sugar snow of the North Pole . . .
“Wow,” I said. “It looks—”
Hayley’s SOS zeroed in on my face. “It looks what?”
“Great!”
“Huh. You mean it didn’t used to look great?”
“No. Yes! I mean, soon it’ll be a greater great.”
I touched a turret of King Arthur’s Castle . . . saluted the skull-and-crossbones flag on the Pirate Ship . . . ran a hand down the sugar-cube-sized coarse blocks of the Great Pyramid . . .
“Why haven’t you said anything about hole seventeen?” Hayley asked with mock innocence.
I searched for Pisa but couldn’t find it. “I did the drawings in CAD. I gave them to your dad, but I don’t see the tower anywhere. What happened? Were my calculations wrong? Did you have to—”
Then I gaped. Gawked. Almost cried.
Where Pisa had once leaned, there now hunched, like a boxy toad, a tiny replica of . . .
The Nice Alarm.
I beheld it for a long moment—or maybe it was an hour—before I noticed Hayley, smiling into my eyes.
“I told you it would get built,” she said. “No. Matter. What.”
“For thousands to enjoy,” I whispered.
Goldie frowned. “It’s an alarm clock. How does it work for mini-golf?”
“Give us a few months and we’ll happily demonstrate,” Hayley said. “But first, what do you think?”
Pierre removed his beret and placed it over his heart. “Well, eet eez not zee Eiffel Tower, ’owever—”
“Not you!” Goldie whapped him with her notebook.
“Steve . . . ?” Hayley coaxed.
I didn’t need to answer. She already knew. Just like she always knew when something with me was Just. Exactly. Right.
I smiled back into Hayley’s eyes and said to her—because there was only her:
“It’s love at first sight.”
1. Sneeze all over their birthday cake so only you can eat it.
2. Steal their One True Love.
3. Write letters or e-mails to them impersonating their One True Love.
4. Gossip about them behind their back. Extra points if you submit the gossip to the school newspaper.
5. Tell him he has a unibrow.
6. Tell her she has a unibrow.
7. Tell him his fly is undone when you’re in the middle of a big crowd of girls.
8. When you notice she has a new hairstyle, blurt: “Eww! What happened to your hair?!”
9. Show pictures of them that they hate to the person they have a crush on.
10. Don’t sit next to them in class or on the bus.
11. Sit behind them in class and tap them repeatedly on the shoulder. Alternate with repeatedly kicking the back of their chair.
12. Hum or whistle under your breath when they’re trying to concentrate.
13. When your class is having a slide show or PowerPoint presentation, jump up and say: “I have a question!” and block their view.
14. When the teacher asks a question, raise your hand and say: “My friend knows the answer!”
15. When a teacher asks for a volunteer, point at your friend. Extra points if you can get everyone else in class to point at your friend too.
16. Ask if you can copy their homework and/or borrow their class notes because you were too busy spending the day at a nearby amusement park.
17. Brag about your latest A.
18. Brag about your latest A even if you know they got a D or an F.
19. Never study for tests, but get A’s anyway.
20. Be a teacher’s pet.
21. Take the last good meal in the cafeteria so they’re forced to eat Chef’s Surprise.
22. Snitch food off their plate when they’re not looking. (Extra points if they are looking.)
23. Have so many after-school activities that you don’t have free time to hang out with them.
24. If they forgot to bring their lunch money, offer to loan them some of yours. Make them wait while you search for ten minutes, then say: “Oops! Sorry! I guess I don’t have any money after all.”
25. When you see them in the hall, keep stepping in front of them so they can’t pass you.
26. Draw weird creatures or cutesy stuff on their binders, folders, or
book covers.
27. Don’t invite them to your birthday party.
28. Forget their birthday.
29. Forget what she gave you for your birthday and re-gift it to her on her birthday.
30. Tell them that the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus do not exist.
31. Tell them the Tooth Fairy gives you $20 a tooth when you know they only get $1.00.
32. Pull pranks on them on April Fools’ Day.
33. Decide you’re too old for trick-or-treating before they are.
34. If they call you when you’re busy, say you’ll call them right back. Then forget.
35. Give them the silent treatment.
36. Repeat everything they say.
37. Repeat everything they say.
38. Use chat-speak (LOL, OMG, BFF, etc.) in everyday conversation.
39. Send them chain letters. (Extra points if the chain letter promises them ten years of bad luck if they break the chain.)
40. Don’t tell them when you’re angry with them.
41. If they ask you what you’re angry about, say: “I shouldn’t have to tell you!”
42. Use sarcasm. Always.
43. Interrupt them when they’re trying to talk.
44. Leave weird messages on their answering machine or voicemail.
45. Blurt out the punch line to a joke they’re telling.
46. If they pass notes to you in class, don’t write back.
47. When you’re on vacation, don’t send them postcards.
48. Run off as soon as they start talking about their problems.
49. Run off as soon as they ask you about your problems.
50. Keep pushing them to talk about their problems even when they’ve said “I don’t want to talk about it!”
51. Imitate them.
52. Do bad imitations of them.
53. Click SEND on their e-mails before they’re ready to send them.
54. Pick them last to be on your team. Sigh heavily and say: “I guess I choose ________.” Extra points if you act like you’re doing them a huge favor.
55. Don’t pick them to be on your team.
56. When they’re getting ready to kick, hit, throw, bat, catch, or spike a ball, shout: “Don’t mess up!”
57. Show up late. Everywhere. For everything.
58. Promise to do something with them or go somewhere with them. Then forget.