by Tom Watson
“We’ll wash your hubcaps!” I yelled.
WE WASHED MYRTLE’S car as she stood at the side of the driveway. She liked the way Simon and I gave Rosie a boost so she could reach the roof of the car. We were starting on the hubcaps when Myrtle called me over.
“Can you help me with this?” she asked and held her cell phone out to me. “I want to call my friend Joe. He lives at the Breezy Acres retirement home too.”
“And you want to call him?”
“Yes, I do! Got something important to tell him,” Myrtle said. “But I don’t know how to use this doggone phone. My daughter got it for me. She put Joe’s number in there somewhere. It’s supposed to make life easier. Hogwash! That’s what I say! It’s like this hearing aid thingamajig. Sounds like buzzing! Like mosquitoes! Did I tell you that?”
“You did, yes.”
“My name’s Myrtle—rhymes with turtle,” she told me again. Then she got a funny look on her face. She stared at the top of my head for a few seconds. “You remind me of my cat. Her name is Frenchie. Your hair reminds me of her fur. It has a wonderful sheen to it.”
“Umm, thanks,” I replied, because I didn’t know what else to say. Nobody had ever, you know, compared me to a cat before.
I showed Myrtle how to use the home button to activate her phone. I found Joe’s name on her Favorites screen and told her to touch it.
“Why should I touch his name?” Myrtle asked.
“That’s how you call him.”
“But where are the numbers?” she asked. She wasn’t quite getting it yet. “You need numbers to call somebody! Everybody knows that!”
“The phone knows the number,” I said. “Your daughter put it in there.”
Myrtle touched Joe’s name and I motioned for her to put the phone up to her ear.
“It’s ringing!” she exclaimed. “By golly, it’s ringing!”
Then I went to help Simon and Rosie with the hubcaps. I knew Myrtle wanted those hubcaps shiny. We could hear her talk to her friend Joe as we worked.
“Joe, it’s Myrtle!” she said loudly. “Listen, I’m getting a car wash on Maple Avenue. Where the old soybean farm was. They cleaned the roof even though they can’t reach it. You should have seen it! Bring your car over! It’s filthy. Tell everybody at Breezy Acres!”
Rosie, Simon, and I all heard her.
“No,” Simon whispered. “No, no, no. The garage will never be clean by the time Dad gets home!”
When we finished, Myrtle paid us fifteen dollars—five dollars each. She told us we were better than Sudsy Sam’s. We said goodbye and watched Myrtle pull slowly—very slowly—out of the driveway.
Simon said, “I wish my dad drove that slow.”
As soon as Myrtle pulled out, Joe drove in.
And there were three cars behind his.
We washed Joe’s car.
Then we washed cars for Harriet, Hazel, Becky, Archie, and Gladys.
We washed seven cars—and made fifteen dollars per car. Rosie did the math in her head. We made one hundred and five dollars. That worked out to thirty-five dollars for each of us.
“That’s more than I get for my birthday!” Simon said. He was pretty excited.
Rosie and I were too. It was a lot of money.
That’s when Simon’s mom came out again.
“My car looks great!” she said.
We told her we washed seven other cars. We told her we made one hundred and five dollars—and she whistled at such a big amount. Then we told her all about Myrtle. She thought it was super funny that Myrtle talked really loud and said her name rhymed with turtle, like, a million times.
“Mom?” Simon asked. “Can you show us where Dad is now?”
She did.
He was almost to Indianapolis.
We were running out of time.
THE GARAGE WAS totally full of stuff.
“Where should we start?” Simon asked.
“Let’s just pull everything out,” Rosie suggested. “We’ll put it all in the driveway. We should knock down the cobwebs and sweep the garage out anyway, right? Then we can clean stuff and bring it all back in.”
Here is some of the stuff we moved out to the driveway:
It took almost an hour to get everything out of the garage. Simon went to check with his mom. His dad was way closer. He was past Lafayette.
Simon and Rosie let me do the organizing. I like to organize things. My brain is good at it.
I put everything together in categories. Some of them made perfect sense to Rosie and Simon. A bunch of outside stuff—two of the rakes, the hoses, and gardening things—were grouped together. And I grouped Simon’s stuff—the balls, skateboard, and his broken bike—all together.
But some of the groups didn’t make as much sense to them.
Here’s an example: the motor oil, the Easter basket, a broom, a rake, and the adult bike.
Rosie asked, “Why are these things grouped together?”
I thought it was kind of funny that they couldn’t tell why. I mean, it was obvious to me.
“It’s The Wizard of Oz group,” I answered.
“The Wizard of Oz?” Simon asked. “How?”
“Well, the Tin Man needed to be oiled all the time, so that’s the motor oil,” I explained and pointed at each item. “Dorothy rode around on her bike and carried Toto in a basket. The Wicked Witch of the West rode around on a broom. And you could use a rake for sweeping up straw. That’s the Scarecrow.”
Simon and Rosie nodded and smiled at me. They really understand how my brain works. It made sense to them now.
We put a lot of stuff on the three tables after we unfolded the legs. The rest we just put on the driveway.
Once everything was organized, we each took a broom and knocked a bunch of cobwebs and dust off the garage walls, corners, and ceiling. It took a while. We didn’t see any actual spiders.
When that was done, we swept the floor.
We built up a big cloud of dust and whooooshed it out the door—and away from the newly washed car. The dust cloud was so thick that we could barely see through it.
When that big dust cloud settled, we could see better.
We couldn’t believe what we saw.
WHOA! WHAT DO YOU THINK THEY’LL SEE?
THERE WERE THREE people in Simon’s driveway.
There was a woman about my mom’s age. She had a boy with her. He was younger than a kindergartner but big enough to walk without falling down. There was also an older kid, like a teenager. He looked like he was in high school or college.
He was the one who saw us come out of the garage. He called to us, “How much?”
“What?” Simon called back.
The teenager pointed down at something on the driveway and asked again, “How much?”
We couldn’t see what he was pointing at because the blue Toyota Camry was in the way.
“How much what?” Simon asked as we got closer.
The teenager leaned down and picked up one of the bright-pink flamingos.
“How much for a flamingo?” he asked a third time. “This would look awesome in my dorm room.”
“Umm, I don’t know,” Simon said.
Rosie was the first to figure it out. Again.
“They think it’s a garage sale,” she said. “They think the stuff in the driveway is all for sale.”
“No way,” Simon said.
“Way,” Rosie answered and laughed a little.
“I’ll be right back,” Simon said and ran into the house.
“He’ll, umm, be back,” I called to the teenager.
“Okay,” he said, shrugged, and put the flamingo down. He started to look through some of Simon’s comic books.
Simon came out of his house with his mom. He waved to us, and Rosie and I ran over.
Simon explained to his mom that the people in the driveway thought we were having a garage sale.
“I’ve been trying to get rid of that stuff for years. But your father wouldn’
t let me,” she said and laughed. She was making fun of Simon’s dad without being mean. “If there’s more than one of something, you can sell it. And you can keep whatever you make.”
“Really?” Simon asked.
“Really.”
“What about the prices?” Simon asked.
“You three are smart. You’ll figure it out,” his mom answered and then pulled her phone out of her pocket. She looked at it for a few seconds. “You better get moving though. Dad’s almost to Remington.”
We ran back to the driveway.
And we had a garage sale.
SIMON GOT THE teenager’s attention. He pointed to the pile of eight pink plastic flamingos and said, “Three dollars each.”
The teenager thought that was fine and said, “I’ll take two. And how about the comic books?”
“How about twenty-five cents each?”
“Sure.”
The mom stood by the flamingos and said, “I’ll take one of these too.”
She picked out a pink flamingo and handed it to her son. He started chewing on its yellow plastic beak for some reason.
Some high school girls bought a bunch of Simon’s dad’s old shirts. They said they looked retro.
We also sold a hose, one scooter, one table with folding legs, four more pink flamingos, one rake, almost all the comic books, one broom, some flower-pots, and one stepladder.
It took over an hour. And by that time, Simon’s dad was in Crown Point, Indiana.
When we were sure nobody else was coming, we wiped everything down with wet towels and put it all back in the garage. It was a lot cleaner and there was a lot less stuff.
Simon pushed the final thing—his broken bike—into the garage’s farthest back corner. It was kind of sad and funny how the bike wobbled and clunked on its flat tires and dented wheel rims.
After Simon leaned the bike against the wall, he joined Rosie and me. Simon pulled two big wads of money and a bunch of change out of his pockets. He dumped it all on the garage floor.
“How much do you think we made from the garage sale?” he asked, looking down and watching one of the quarters roll to a stop. “It looks like a lot.”
“It does,” I said.
“It’s eighty-one dollars and seventy-five cents,” Rosie said. “I kept track.”
Simon and I knew we didn’t need to count the money. If Rosie said it was eighty-one dollars and seventy-five cents, then it was eighty-one dollars and seventy-five cents.
“How much is that for each of us?” asked Simon.
And, of course, Rosie knew. She said, “It’s twenty-seven dollars and twenty-five cents apiece. And we each made thirty-five dollars at the car wash. So that means we have sixty-two dollars and twenty-five cents each. That’s a total of one hundred and eighty-six dollars and seventy-five cents.”
We all smiled at each other. It was a ton of money.
“Will you two sort it all out and divide it and stuff?” Simon said and pointed down at the pile of money. “I’m going to get Mom so she can see the finished job.”
After Simon left, Rosie crouched down and started to separate the bills into stacks of singles, fives, and tens.
But I stopped her.
I grabbed her right hand.
She looked up at me.
I pointed toward the back of the garage and said, “I have an idea.”
SIMON’S MOM LOOKED at the garage and said we did an excellent job. She congratulated us on making the money.
We realized right then that we were all starving. All that work made us super hungry.
“We should go for pizza or ice cream,” Rosie suggested.
“Can I?” Simon asked his mom. “Where’s Dad?”
“He’s in Hammond,” his mom said after checking her phone. “That’s about an hour and a half away. You can make it back in time.”
We were all happy about that.
“Should we get pizza or ice cream?” Simon asked as we walked to town. “We’re like millionaires! We could get both!”
“Maybe,” Rosie said and caught my eye when Simon wasn’t looking. She winked at me.
“Yeah,” I said and winked back. “Maybe.”
“We have enough money to get, like, fifty pizzas and twenty milkshakes!” Simon said. He was excited. I think he thought maybe—just maybe—he wouldn’t get into too much trouble with his dad now. “Where should we go first?”
We didn’t stop at the pizza place first.
And we didn’t stop at the ice cream shop first.
We stopped at Sycamore Sports first. It was a store that had loads of sports stuff and camping stuff.
And bikes.
“Why are we going in here?” Simon asked.
Rosie said, “I want to look for something.”
She walked straight to the bikes at the back of the store. There was a high school kid working there. He had a bike up on a rack and was spinning its front tire.
“Can I help you three?” he asked.
Rosie did the talking.
“We’re looking for a mountain bike,” Rosie said.
Simon hadn’t figured it out yet. He just watched Rosie with a puzzled look on his face.
“We’ve got a few models,” the teenager said and walked us over to a wall where a bunch of bikes were lined up. He waved at them as he described them.
“These are the Rock Jumpers—good basic mountain bike. These are Trail Hunters—about the same, just a little sturdier. And the top of the line is the Mongoose. It has an aluminum frame instead of steel. Much lighter, but twice as strong. Can really take the bumps.”
Rosie asked, “How much is the Mongoose?”
“It’s expensive.”
“How much?”
“It’s 145 dollars.”
“Do you have an orange one?”
“I do.”
“We’ll take it.”
He went to get the bike.
Simon still hadn’t figured it out.
He asked, “What’s going on?”
“We’re getting you a new bike!” Rosie said. “One that won’t get all busted up on the trails at Picasso Park. It was Molly’s idea!”
I could see tears welling up in Simon’s eyes. He was so surprised. And so happy.
ONLY ONE MORE CHAPTER TO GO! ARE YOU FEELING AS GOOD AS SIMON?
WE HAD ENOUGH money left over for pizza.
Simon insisted on sitting in the front window at Pequod’s Pizza. He wanted to keep an eye on his new bike.
We got an extra-large pepperoni pizza and three large lemonades. Since I only eat things in even numbers, I like pepperoni pizza the best. That’s because it’s easy to count the pepperoni slices. If it’s not an even number I can just take one off, easy peasy.
We ate the whole thing.
And we drank all the lemonade.
And then Rosie and I ran along on each side of Simon as he rode his new bike home. He probably wanted to go real fast—who wouldn’t want to go fast on a brand-new bike?!—but he didn’t. He went slow so we didn’t have to run too hard.
When we were about one block from his house, Simon’s dad passed us in his car. He honked and waved.
Simon stopped his bike on the sidewalk. It was so new that the brakes made a rubbery squeaky sound.
“Wish me luck,” Simon said. I could tell he was getting nervous again.
“Good luck,” Rosie and I said at the same time.
We didn’t go with him, but we sort of stood behind a clump of trees and watched from a distance.
We couldn’t hear what happened. We were too far away.
But we could see what happened.
Simon parked his new bike in the driveway after his dad pulled into the garage. His mom came out and stood on the porch. When his dad came out of the garage, he was smiling and shaking his head.
Simon used his hands as he talked. He pointed at his mom’s clean car and up the street toward the Breezy Acres retirement home.
He held up seven fingers t
o show how many cars we washed. I think he told his dad all about the garage sale then, because he waved his hands toward the driveway. Finally, Simon pointed at his brand-new bike.
Then he shoved his hands in his pockets and hung his head a little bit.
“Do you think he’s telling him about getting into trouble at school now?” Rosie asked.
“I think so.”
His dad nodded his head and rubbed Simon’s hair. Then he put his arm around Simon’s shoulders and kind of steered him into the garage.
“What’s happening now?” I asked Rosie.
“I don’t know.”
A minute later, Simon’s dad came out of the garage riding the adult bike. He called something over to Simon’s mom. Simon hurried to his new bike and hopped on.
They rode side by side out of the driveway and turned right.
That’s the way to Picasso Park.
Fun and Games!
THINK
Molly, Rosie, and Simon think Myrtle (rhymes with turtle) is charming and funny. Do you know any silly-acting grown-ups? What’s the wackiest thing they do? What’s that person’s first name? Can you rhyme that name with other words?
FEEL
Simon totally loves Cocoa Puffs. What’s your favorite food? Would you walk five miles to get it? How would you feel when you got your favorite food and ate it? Can you draw your favorite food—and the expression on your face when you got to eat it?
ACT
There is a ton of stuff in Simon’s garage. Do you have extra things in your room? Maybe you have clothes that don’t fit or toys you don’t play with anymore. Do you know someone who could use and enjoy those things? Is there a place in your town where you could donate them?