But she’d already decided. And Jedis were not quitters.
Chapter 4
Owen
Owen stood over Eleanor, worried. “Are you okay?” He didn’t think he’d lunged at her that hard—but he didn’t usually fence without fencing gear. And she’d lunged toward him at the same time.
Eleanor’s eyes popped open. “I’m fine. I was doing Vader. From the old, old Star Wars.” She made the weird breathing sound.
“That’s pretty good,” said Owen. “But you know Vader’s evil, right? Don’t you want to be one of the good guys? Like Luke? Or Leia? You should be Leia. Or someone from the new Star Wars.”
She ignored the new Star Wars suggestion. “My hair doesn’t make buns.”
“Oh.” Her hair was too curly to look like Leia’s. But then again, she didn’t exactly look like Vader either.
“I think maybe I’m going to be a memorial funeral preacher when I grow up,” said Eleanor, standing and brushing the twigs off her pink leggings. “And Darth Vader.”
“You’re going to be an evil preacher?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Don’t be silly. I’ll be Vader when he’s good.”
Owen decided not to point out that good Vader was around for only about a minute of the movie.
They kept practicing, but the sticks didn’t make great swords—mainly because Eleanor jabbed hard, and even though she didn’t hit Owen very often, when she did, it hurt. A lot. When they needed bandages, Owen had an idea.
“I have an old pool noodle. Let’s cut it in half and put it on the ends of the swords.”
Eleanor wrinkled her nose, like she was about to say no.
“It’ll look like the lighted part of a lightsaber.”
“That’s a great idea!” Eleanor said.
When they went inside, they found Owen’s mom in her medic pants and shirt, hugging Owen’s dad. They were laughing and dancing slowly in a circle, and the radio was playing dance music—the kind that parents and other old people like.
Owen’s dad said, “I got royalties today!”
And Owen’s mom said, “We’ll celebrate on Saturday! I’m off to work now.” She kissed Owen’s dad and left.
Eleanor said, “You’re royalty?”
Owen’s dad grinned. “It means I got paid for my writing.”
Owen added, “He only gets royalties about once in a zillion years, so we always celebrate. Are we going to go to Pizza King? Can Eleanor come?”
Eleanor bounced, eyes bright.
“Sure, maybe this weekend. But I need to ask her parents first. And,” he said to Eleanor, “your family is invited here for supper tonight. Pasta. Lots to go around.”
“My dad would love that,” said Eleanor. “He’s supposed to make dinner, and we can’t even find the toilet paper.”
Owen told his dad why they were practicing fencing, and Dad said he wanted to go to the funeral too. “I’ve never been to a funeral with fencing.”
“My dad’s going to play guitar and sing,” said Eleanor. “And I’m going to preach. Maybe you can read some of your writing? Do you have a poem about a dead fish?”
“He only writes books,” said Owen.
“I’ll write a poem this afternoon,” said Owen’s dad. “A haiku.”
“Make sure it says that Scrumpy is in fish heaven. With his family.”
“I’ll do my best.”
The kids went into the closet to find the pool noodle, and as they dug around, Eleanor said, “Oh, I get it!”
“What?”
“Pizza King! It’s for royalty!” said Eleanor.
Owen found the pool noodle. It was blue.
“Pizza King for royalty!” said Eleanor again. “Get it?”
“That’s good,” said Owen.
She knelt. “Make me royalty too.”
Owen knew exactly what to do. He tapped her with the noodle, once on each shoulder. “I dub you . . . Queen Good Vader.”
Eleanor said, “We fought with swords, and we’re going to do a funeral together, and”—she lowered her voice to a loud whisper—“we have a secret plan together to help me get home. Because we are friends.”
“Sure,” said Owen. “Friends.” But suddenly the closet felt too small, and his stomach hurt.
Chapter 5
Eleanor
Alicia had unpacked her room—which was also Eleanor’s room. Eleanor got the closet, and the bed next to the big window. Alicia got the bed away from the window, but she also got the nook that stuck out of the room like a thumb and had its own window. Not fair. A closet was okay—because of Narnia—but a nook with its own window was way better. Alicia had put her desk and chair in the nook and had tacked posters on her wall.
Eleanor looked at her side of the room. Yuck. Her boxes were piled at the foot of the bed. She didn’t even know where her sheets were.
Alicia said, “You should do your walls. But don’t steal my tacks.”
Eleanor glared and walked out. She wasn’t going to live here anyway.
But what about Owen? said a little voice in her head. Don’t you want to live near him? She tried not to listen to that little voice.
Aaron was unpacking too. He danced around with earbuds in his ears as he tossed clothes toward his dresser. It seemed like he didn’t mind moving either. Suddenly Eleanor’s stomach hurt.
Eleanor went to the kitchen. “I’m starving,” she told her dad.
“When Mom’s home, we’ll eat. If I can find the pots . . . and the pasta . . . and the forks.” He grinned at her expression. “I found the sauce!”
“Owen’s dad said to come over for dinner. He’s making pasta too. I guess he cooks like you.” Eleanor’s dad made pasta a lot. The pasta was always spaghetti with tomato sauce. His other meals were black beans and rice, and pancakes. His other meals after that were takeout.
“How fantastic,” said Dad. “And that would definitely solve my current kitchen problems.” He opened and peered into a box. “Oh! Here’s the toilet paper!”
Eleanor took the toilet paper to the bathroom. When she returned, her dad said, “Now, Cosita, we need to decide about Scrumpy.”
Poor Scrumpy still floated in his bowl on the counter, belly up. He was still dead. He did not smell great.
Dad said, “We could bury him. There’s a spot in this backyard that would work nicely.”
Eleanor shook her head. She wasn’t going to bury Scrumpy away from the other Scrumpies.
Eleanor’s dad opened a box and found spoons, forks, and knives. “We could flush him—”
“Uh-uh,” said Eleanor. “No way.”
Dad put the silverware away in a small drawer. He said, “You can have a day to decide. We can . . . keep him in the freezer until then.” He didn’t sound very excited. “But only a day or two. Your mom won’t like this.”
“Okay,” Eleanor said. Mom could adjust. Scrumpy would only be in the freezer overnight. Tomorrow Eleanor would bring him home for the burial. And she’d move into her tree house.
Suddenly she thought of Owen again. It was like the little voice in her head was yelling at her: If she moved into the tree house, she and Owen couldn’t play anymore. He couldn’t teach her fencing. She couldn’t teach him—well, all the things she knew. Like how to build things and how to raise goldfish. She’d miss Owen. He had made her a queen Jedi knight.
No. It didn’t matter. She was leaving—for her real home. She frowned at her dad’s unpacking. “The old silverware drawer had dividers.”
Dad sighed. He did that a lot lately. “Maybe you should put your toys away.”
Eleanor went back to her room. She didn’t feel like unpacking. Her box of toys sat in the closet. Alicia said, “I moved it there. It was on my floor.”
Eleanor sat in the closet and opened the box of toys. She didn’t have dolls.
She had building sets: Legos and blocks and Erector sets and even a little wooden trebuchet that she had built with her dad on her last birthday. A trebuchet was like a catapult, only better. And it was pronounced tray-byou-shay, which just wasn’t right.
She dug down in the box for the pulleys and rope she’d used in her old room so that Aaron’s Millennium Falcon could fly and escape from Darth Vader. Building that contraption had involved nails in the ceiling and a very long Time Out.
THUMP.
Something was hitting the ceiling.
“What’s that?” said Alicia.
Eleanor thought she knew. She dragged Alicia’s chair over to the closet.
“Hey,” said Alicia. “What are you doing?”
“Shhhh!” Eleanor climbed on the chair. But she was still too short to reach the ceiling.
THUMP again! Eleanor listened. A small voice floated from the ceiling. It was saying . . . it was saying . . . , “OPEN YOUR WINDOW!”
Eleanor ran to her window and yanked it open. There wasn’t a screen, so she stuck her head out and looked straight up. There was Owen!
“Michael and I have the bedroom right above you!” he said.
“Michael?”
“My little brother. He was taking a nap. Now he’s awake. See?” Owen disappeared and a smaller kid stuck his head out the window and waved. His hair was squished on one side from sleeping.
“I’m not little!” he yelled cheerfully. “I’m already five!”
Owen pulled Michael out of the window and stuck his own head back out. He said, “We can send messages by thumping in the closet. I know about secret codes. I did a whole unit on them.”
“You did?” Homeschooling suddenly sounded way interesting.
“Yes. We can decide what one thump means, or two quick thumps plus one slow thump, or anything like that, and we’ll make a whole secret code.”
From her side of the room, Alicia said, “That’s a really annoying secret code for everyone else. Thump thump thump all the time. Also, you can’t reach the ceiling.”
Eleanor pulled her head back inside and studied her window. She stuck her head out and studied Owen’s window. She had an idea. “I’m coming up.”
Upstairs, Owen brought her to his and Michael’s room. A bunk bed stood on one side of the room and bookshelves and toy shelves on the other side. Eleanor gasped. “You have tons of books!”
“Our dad is a writer,” said Michael sadly. “We have to have a lot of books.”
“Did you have an idea for messages?” said Owen.
Nodding, Eleanor studied the window in Owen’s room. She said, “We can send messages by pulley!”
Chapter 6
Owen
Owen’s dad said they could all play in Owen and Michael’s room, and to please leave him alone for a while so he could write his chapter. Which was kind of perfect.
Owen helped Eleanor put together a pulley that would reach from his window to hers. He’d never built a pulley before.
“We just need to attach it, right?” said Owen, after Eleanor explained how it worked. “To the ceiling or something?”
“We’ll get in trouble,” said Michael. “Can I help?”
Eleanor handed Michael a plastic spaceship. “You can hold this for us. The notes go in here.”
It was the Millennium Falcon, Han Solo’s spaceship. Owen knew it right away. He had three books with the Millennium Falcon in them.
Eleanor explained how the pulley had been set up in her old room with nails in the ceiling.
“Well . . . ,” said Owen. “We once put a nail in my wall to hang my corkboard. But the ceiling. . .”
“Big trouble,” said Michael. He zoomed the spaceship around the room.
“Would it take more than one nail?” asked Owen. One might be okay.
“Probably ten nails,” said Michael. “Or twenty-ten.”
Eleanor said, “Less than ten. Maybe. Depends if chunks of ceiling fall down.” She hitched her thumbs in her pockets and stared up.
Chunks of ceiling sounded bad. But should he stop Eleanor? Could he stop her? Should he . . . tell on her? Having friends was hard. “How about . . . maybe another option?” he said.
Eleanor kept studying the ceiling. She didn’t answer.
Owen looked too. He studied the ceiling, then the window. “Oh! What about the curtain hooks?”
Eleanor grinned. She turned to Owen. “That’s genius,” she said.
Up near the ceiling were two big hooks, one on each side of the window, to hold up a curtain rod. But there was no rod and no curtain, only blinds. The two big hooks stuck out of the wall, doing nothing. Just asking to hold up a pulley.
Owen and Eleanor borrowed a kitchen chair. Then they ran downstairs and borrowed Aaron because they still couldn’t reach the hooks. Aaron stood on the chair and looped the pulley over a curtain hook, winked at them, and went back downstairs.
Then Michael gave Eleanor the spaceship, and she tied it on the end of the rope and lowered it out the window, draping the rope over the ledge that stuck out just far enough to keep the ship from hitting the house. The Millennium Falcon dangled in front of her bedroom window. Eleanor raced down to her room. She reached out and poked the ship, making it sway. “Pull the rope,” said Eleanor, “and make it soar back up!”
“Okay!” said Owen. He pulled, and the spaceship rose just like it was flying. Then he had an idea. “Don’t leave yet! Wait there!”
He ran to his desk, pulled out a piece of paper, and scribbled Olleh! Woh era uoy? Then he folded it up very small, opened the door to the spaceship, and put the note inside.
Owen pulled, and the Millennium Falcon descended to Eleanor.
A few minutes later, Eleanor was back in his room. “That note was in code, right? I figured it out! Every word was backward!”
“That was an easy code,” said Owen. “But if we want it to be tricky, we should invent a code together. That way it will be something only we know.”
“Yeah,” said Eleanor. “Alicia figured your message out really quick too. We need a harder code so it’s secret from spies.”
Owen found his book on codes, and they looked through it. Finally they decided that they would pick a complicated code later. For today they would just have some secret phrases, like the way The eagle has landed means you’ve finished doing something important. That was one the code book had told them.
“How about The goldfish has landed?” Owen asked. “It could mean . . . I don’t know . . .” He wasn’t sure what they needed to say that was secret from everyone else.
“I’ll need to let you know when we’re doing The Plan,” said Eleanor.
“The Plan?” said Owen.
Eleanor glanced around, but no one was there except Michael, who had crawled under his bed, muttering about beavers and wolves and endless winter. All you could see were his feet. “The Plan,” Eleanor whispered loudly. “The plan to run away back home. To bury Scrumpy and move back to the tree house.”
“Are you sure . . . ?” Owen asked.
“Yes,” said Eleanor. “And you promised not to tell. And to help me.” She looked very stern.
Owen nodded slowly. He had promised not to tell. He didn’t remember promising to help—but friends helped each other. What kind of friend would he be if he didn’t help? Still, he wondered what his parents would think of his keeping this secret and helping with this plan.
“Excellent! All systems are go.” Eleanor bounced on her toes. “How about The goldfish is hungry is the code for when I’m going to run away and ride the city bus to my old house? It’s on the corner of Central Avenue and 31st Street. Can you figure out which bus I need?” She was talking very fast. “You’re my trusty navigator—you’re like Chewbacca, and I’m Han Solo. I’ll send you a note tomorrow when it’s time to go.”
Eve
rything was happening so fast. And Owen wasn’t sure he liked being Chewbacca. “Tomorrow?” He was hoping they could wait until—well, until forever.
“Yes, tomorrow. We’ll go to play in the backyard, and then I’ll escape.”
Owen sighed and nodded. “The goldfish is hungry.” He had promised, after all. But he really wished he hadn’t.
Chapter 7
Eleanor
When Eleanor’s mom came home from the store for the third time, everyone went upstairs to Owen’s apartment for supper with Owen and Michael and Owen’s dad. Owen’s mom was still working—she was a paramedic, so she worked a lot of strange hours. Once every three days, she was gone all day and night.
The two families stood around the table. There were only really four places at the table, but Owen’s dad had squished an extra chair in so all the bigger people, even Alicia, could sit down. “I thought Owen and Eleanor and Michael might like a picnic on the floor.” In the living room, on a blanket, were three more plates and silverware and water cups.
“That will be great!” said Eleanor. Usually she was not allowed to eat on the floor because of spilling. She started toward the living room. Owen followed.
“Wait,” said Owen’s dad. He turned to Eleanor’s parents. “We usually pray before we eat. Is that okay with you?”
“Of course,” said Eleanor’s mom. “We usually pray before meals too.”
They all held hands (Eleanor had to hold Alicia’s and her mom’s), and Owen’s dad said a prayer that was made up out of his own head. He called God Spirit of Life. He said God was like a mother and a father. And he asked God to bless the new friends in the apartment below. That’s us, thought Eleanor. Except I’m not staying.
When they finished, she said, “That was a weird prayer.”
Her dad said, “Eleanor.”
Owen and Eleanor Move In Page 2