It was a kitchen, and Chip Mason’s mom was sitting at the table, her head in her hand, her other hand holding a coffee mug. She didn’t see me. Slowly, I stood again, just enough to peek through the window. She wasn’t holding her head in her hand after all. She was sleeping with her cheek propped on her hand, her other hand loosely wrapped around the cup.
As if she could sense that someone was watching her, she jerked awake, knocking her cup over. She jumped up, swiping at the brown stain that had soaked into her pant leg. She looked confused and irritated. And really, really tired.
She went over to the counter for a towel, and I took the opportunity to study the room. No Heirmauser head.
I crept back down the porch steps, thinking maybe I should just give up. But there was one more window on the other side of the house.
It was just above the air-conditioning unit.
I climbed on top of the unit, rose up on my toes, and peered in. It was a dining room. Only it wasn’t exactly a dining room. It was a dining room that had been turned into a bedroom. There was a bed—the kind you see in hospitals—on the far wall, a shriveled-looking old man lying in it. I jumped and ducked back under the windowsill, almost falling off the air conditioner, but then I realized that the old man had been sleeping, his mouth open in a wide “O.” Slowly, I rose back up on my tiptoes.
There was a tube going into the old man’s nose. He was very pale. His skin looked loose and like it was just kind of draped over his bones. He wore a thin T-shirt and was covered with a tan blanket. Next to his bed was a table. On it was a glass with a straw and several pill bottles.
Old Huck Mason. Grandma Jo had said he’d invented mean. But in that bed, he didn’t look so mean at all. He just looked sick.
And I kind of felt sick for spying on him like that. It didn’t feel right. Even if Chip deserved to be spied on, Old Huck Mason hadn’t done anything wrong, and he deserved his privacy. I started to lower myself and just give up, but a glint of sunlight bounced off something on a table on the other side of Old Huck’s bed.
A forehead.
Beneath unruly, wavy hair.
Wide, raving eyes.
A mouth held open in a perpetual scream.
All frozen in bronze, and somehow managing to look worse than the sick guy lying next to it.
I was right: Chip Mason was the Helen Heirmauser Head of Horror bandit.
Erma looked like she was half asleep by the time I got back to our driveway, and Chip was still two scenes away from the end of Act I.
I slunk around Dad’s car and caught her attention, giving her a thumbs-up, followed by a slash across the throat using my forefinger, and then motioned for her to come home. We needed to come up with a plan on how we would approach Chip and get the statue back, safe and sound. We would sit down tonight and think of something intricate and precise. No room for error. Maybe we would even have graphs.
Her eyes narrowed, and she stood up like a shot.
“I think we’re done here,” I heard her say.
Chip’s Popsicle, forgotten, was dripping down his hand. “Okay,” he said uncertainly. “It picks up in the second act, though.”
She stomped one foot one time, true Erma-style, and I knew then that this was going to be bad.
“You’re a thief!” she cried, pointing at him like they did in old detective movies.
So much for coming up with a plan. And just when I’d started to get excited about the graph part.
I started across the street, my heart in my throat. Now that I knew where the head was, I was suddenly really nervous about getting it back. What if he denied taking it? What if he argued and refused to hand it over? What if he was wearing deadly ninja socks and went all foot tornado on us?
Louis XIV: Finished by a foot tornado to the chops.
“Huh?” The Popsicle fell off the stick and landed on his leg. He brushed it into the grass.
“We know you stole that statue. You’re a liar and a thief, and a really, really bad friend!” She jabbed her finger at him with every word. “And we’re going to tell on you!”
Ah. I hadn’t considered that. We could just … tell. Sometimes fifth graders could be pretty smart in ways we wouldn’t think of.
Chip saw me coming up into his yard and licked his lips nervously. He stood. A drip of orange Popsicle trailed down his leg. His eyes darted between me and Erma. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“You do, too, and we’re going to call the FBI on you, right, Thomas?”
“Well, I don’t know about the FBI …”
“Then we’ll call the president!” Jab-jab-jab.
“The president probably wouldn’t really care,” I said.
“Then we’ll call the school.”
I thought about it. “They would probably care.”
She started hopping up and down on her toes, the way she always did when she got, as my mom called it, “overly excited.” Clearly, Erma was having an Overly Excited Adventure, and I knew from experience that if I didn’t calm her down soon, there would be no saving Chip from her.
“We’ll call the school, and they’ll call the police,” she said. “And they’ll call the FBI. And they’ll come out with helicopters and sirens and big dogs with huge teeth.” She bared her teeth at him and growled. “And they’ll tell those dogs to—”
“Okay, okay, I took it!” Chip’s face had gotten very red, and his eyes were swimmy-looking. Erma’s mouth clapped shut, and she stopped hopping. She probably hadn’t expected him to cave in so quickly. “I took it for my grandpa. I’m guilty, and you should just … take me to jail.” His chin quivered. “I’ll go get my jail socks.”
Erma threw her head back. “Aha! I knew it!” She started dancing around and singing, “We solved the cri-ime. We solved the cri-ime.”
To be fair, I solved the crime—she only got me locked in a cheese-curl truck and distracted Chip for a few minutes. But it didn’t seem like a good time to point that out, because when I looked at Chip again, two big tears were hanging off his chin. “We solved the cri-ime. We solved the—”
“That’s enough, Erma,” I said.
She stopped dancing and glared at me. “So what are we going to do? Turn him in? Call the news? Pound him into the ground like a nail?”
I waved my hand at her, the way Dad does when he wants her to stop talking. “Go home, Erma. Thanks for the help, but I’ve got it from here.”
“You’re going to turn him in, right, Thomas? You’re at least going to tell Mom.”
I glanced at her. “Just go home. I’ll let you know when I get there.”
Erma’s shoulders drooped in a sulk, but she trudged through the grass and back across the street. Once home, she plopped onto our porch step and rested her chin in her hands, watching us closely.
I turned back to Chip. More tears had gathered on his chin. There were so many things I wanted to say. I had imagined myself yelling at the thief when I finally found him. Dancing like Erma did. Maybe even calling him a few names that would make Mom want to take me on a Wash Out Your Filthy Mouth with Soap Adventure. But Chip looked so pathetic and sorry, all I could say was …
“Why?”
He shrugged, his throat working, his face crumpling until it looked like a red, splotchy paper ball. He looked like he wanted to talk but couldn’t get the words out.
“Why, Chip? Why did you take it?”
He only shrugged again, more tears falling down his cheeks. I felt a surge of anger and dismay that made my insides feel like concrete.
“Say something!” I ran my hands through my hair, and then pounded my fist into my palm. “How could you do that to me? All this time, knowing what was happening to me at school, knowing that my own parents—my own parents, Chip!—thought I was the thief. I got suspended! You helped me break into the school to accuse an innocent man. You made me go to rodeo clown school. And all this time, the statue was sitting in your dining room! Why?”
“Because he w
as getting really bad,” Chip finally answered. He choked out a sob. I stopped pacing. “My grandpa Huck. He’s not going to get better. Ever. And he was in a lot of pain. And he was sad and mad all the time, and my mom was sad and mad all the time, and I just … I thought the statue of his aunt Helen might cheer him up.”
Aunt … Helen?
“Wait. Did you say ‘Aunt Helen’?”
Chip nodded. “Grandpa Huck was her favorite nephew. And also her favorite student. Mom says when she died is when he got cranky all the time. He really misses her.”
“His aunt Helen,” I repeated, because in all this time it never occurred to me that the Great Helen Heirmauser was ever anything more than a legend and a statue. She was a real person with a real family who loved her and missed her.
“I only planned to borrow it, until … well, you know.”
“Until he dies,” I said. I flashed onto the image of the old, sick man that I’d seen through Chip’s window. He looked really, really sick—so sick that it had kind of scared me. I couldn’t help wondering what it must have been like to be Chip, living with him being so sick right in the same house. It was probably really scary and really sad all the time. But you never would have known that by the way Chip acted. Chip was … kind of strong.
Chip nodded, squeezing out more tears. “I didn’t think it would be such a big deal. I was going to give it back. I told my mom that the school loaned it to me, and she’s so busy with Grandpa Huck, she hasn’t heard anything about it being stolen. I figured by the time she knew anything, I would have it back on its pedestal, and everything would be fine. It would be an interesting note in my baby book.”
“But it wasn’t fine,” I said. “It wasn’t fine, because I got blamed for it. And you let me take the heat. You even pretended you were helping me solve the crime, when the whole time you were the criminal.”
“I felt really bad about that,” Chip said. “And I almost gave myself up. But the thing is …”
“What?” I prodded. “The thing is what?”
“Well, you were being my friend,” he burst out, turning his palms up helplessly. “And I never really had one of those before. I’m so … different. Nobody likes me because I don’t think or talk or act or dress like everyone else. Nobody even talks to me at Boone Public. I was having so much fun with you, trying to solve the crime, I almost forgot that I was the person we were trying to catch. I didn’t want it to end. I wanted to keep having a friend. For the first time ever.”
“Oh,” I said, because what else could you say to something like that?
“But now you hate me, and I don’t blame you,” Chip said, and he sat back down in the grass, almost landing right in the Popsicle puddle. He looked small and pathetic down there.
“I don’t hate you,” I said. “I’m pretty mad at you right now, but I don’t hate you.”
“But you’re going to turn me in,” he said. “And I’m going to get into huge trouble.”
Something about that made me feel kind of squicky in ways I couldn’t quite describe. But that wasn’t my fault, was it? I didn’t make Chip Mason take the statue. I didn’t steal and then let someone else take the blame. I was innocent in all of this, and I had already gotten into huge trouble. Chip’s huge trouble. And he’d let me.
“You should have thought about that before you took the statue,” I said, and walked toward Erma, who was now standing on the front porch with her arms crossed.
Grandma Jo was sitting on the couch, watching a game show with a bowl of cheese puffs in her lap. I stormed over to her. Erma trailed behind me.
“You knew,” I said.
Grandma Jo pointed at the TV. “Oh, you’re just in time to see this guy win the grand prize. It’s a zip-lining trip.”
“You knew,” I repeated.
She dug into the bowl and pulled out a handful of cheese puffs. “I think I’ll talk to Barf about taking a zip-lining trip. Wouldn’t it be fun to skim across the tops of the trees?” She glided her free hand through the air, then held the other palm open toward me. “Cheese puff?”
Erma grabbed one, and I glared at her.
“You knew it was Chip Mason.”
Grandma Jo chewed thoughtfully, and then nodded. “Yep, I did.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“You were handling it.” She picked up the remote and adjusted the volume, louder. “Oh, it’s back. Watch, he’s about to win.”
I took the remote from her and muted the sound. “I was in so much trouble. I got suspended. I got grounded. I lost friends. I almost got killed by a bull.”
She shrugged. “I didn’t say you were handling it well. And don’t be such a ninny. That bull was never going to kill you. Maybe just break a few bones or something.” She leaned forward and set the cheese-puff bowl on the coffee table. Erma immediately went for it. “Look, Thomas. I would have come to your rescue if it had gotten bad enough.”
“Bad enough?” I raged. “It wasn’t already bad enough?”
She shook her head. “You were fine. Better than fine, actually. You were having adventures. You were going places and thinking about things and taking risks, and there was pink in your cheeks.” She pinched her own cheeks to display. “I hadn’t seen that since you left your old school. I had been starting to worry about you in that stuffy bow tie and vest, looking like a miserable little old man.”
I started to argue with her, but she was sort of right. Trying to solve the mystery had felt a little bit like an adventure, and there was a part of me that wondered if I would be bored now that the statue, and the thief, had been found.
Grandma Jo reached forward and plucked the remote out of my hand. “You were having fun, Thomas. That’s a good thing. You should do it more often.” She pressed the mute button, but the show was over. “Oh, rats. I missed it. Did you see, Ermie? Did he win?”
Erma shrugged, shoveling more cheese puffs into her mouth. “You gonna tell Mom, Thomas?” she asked around a mouthful. “Thomas?”
I heard her, but I kind of didn’t hear her, because my brain was too busy talking to me, telling me that Grandma Jo was right, whether I liked it or not. I thought about Chip’s mom, asleep at the kitchen table, and his grandpa in that bed. And Chip playing I spy with me while eating ice cream like nothing at all was wrong. Having fun. For the first time in a long time for me. For the first time maybe ever for him.
I felt kind of sorry for him. My friend.
Wow. I had begun to think of Chip Mason as my friend.
“Thomas? Are you telling?” Erma asked again.
But I didn’t answer her. I just turned around and went right back outside.
Chip was still sitting in the grass, where I’d left him. He’d broken his Popsicle stick into several pieces and was using blades of grass to tie them together in the shape of a person. He looked up as I approached.
I marched right up to him. “I was having fun with you, too.”
He blinked up at me. I tried to ignore how much his nose was running onto his upper lip, because if I looked too long at something like that, my stomach got all jumpy.
“Really?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Are you still going to turn me in?”
If I turned Chip in, he would be in huge trouble. And the whole town would turn on him—I knew this because of what had happened to me.
And, because he was my friend, I didn’t want it to happen to Chip. He was only trying to make his grandpa feel better, after all.
“Maybe not,” I said. “I might have an idea.”
TRICK #33
GONE
Erma couldn’t believe I wouldn’t let her tell anyone what Chip had done.
“I can’t belieeeve it, Thomas,” she said. “I just can’t belieeeve it.”
“Well, believe it, Erma, because I’m not turning him in.”
We were in my bedroom, where I was gathering some materials together to perform the greatest trick I’d ever performed. Grandpa Rudy h
ad been on the verge of perfecting it right before he died. After he’d gone, I had promised myself that I would finish the job. And I’d gotten pretty good at it. Even if the silver pennies hadn’t convinced Mom that I was a magic genius, this trick would have. It wasn’t everyone who could make an invisibility cloak.
Now I had a real reason for using it. And I had the supplies—four simple lenses of different focal lengths. I’d never tried it on such a grand scale, but it seemed easy enough. The hard part would be getting the head there in the first place. And getting Erma not to spill the beans.
“Well, there’s no reason I can’t still turn him in,” she said.
I sighed and continued packing my bag. “Okay, what do you want?”
“What do you mean?”
“What can I give you to make you not tell?” I asked.
She thought about it. “You have to play with me sometime,” she said.
“That’s it? Fine. I’ll play with you.”
“And it has to be what I want to play.”
“Okay, whatever.”
“And you have to let Arthura play with us.”
I gritted my teeth. I hoped Chip appreciated what I was doing for him. “Okay,” I said. “Deal. Now will you keep your trap shut?”
She mimed zipping her lips together and then locking them with a key.
I finished packing my bag, then went to bed, hoping Chip and I could pull this off in the morning.
Chip had the idea to put the head in a wagon and to cover it with the rolled-up newspapers his Grandpa Huck had kept in his recycling. I worked on my tie-wad while he worked on that.
I threw on my vest and gobbled down my cereal before Mom and Dad even came to the breakfast table. Erma was to tell them I’d gone with Chip on his newspaper delivery route “to learn responsibility and see the error of my ways so that school would let me back in and I could continue my education without incident.” Chip helped us write that. He was wearing his speech-writing socks at the time, and I thought it came out pretty good. Maybe there was something to this sock business.
Pennybaker School Is Headed for Disaster Page 18