Made You Look

by Diane Roberts

  “Shoot,” I said. “Jen will be furious if I fill that question out.”

  “El Camino Real is the oldest highway in the U.S.,” Freddy said, “and New Mexico reached statehood in 1912. Write those in your New Mexico packet tomorrow. You'll have a better chance of winning if you get most of the answers right.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “How did you find out?”

  “Easy. A camposaurus told me,” he said. “I know something else, too.”

  “What?” I said.

  “The Alamo was built in 1718 as a mission. Davy Crockett fought there. So did James Bowie. I put those answers in my Texas packet,” he said.

  “Well, I blew that,” I said. “I left those questions blank. I looked in the books but I couldn't find the answers before Mom called in the packets.”

  “Hmmmm,” Freddy said. “Maybe we should let the camposaurus be on the show instead of you.”

  “Maybe so,” I said. I zipped up my sleeping bag and rolled over to go to sleep. No way was I going to let a camposaurus or anyone else keep me from getting to be a true Maniac.

  The next morning when I opened my eyes, Freddy was gone. He'd probably left to shoot baskets. Jen was gone, too. She was probably out looking for cute boys. I saw Mom lugging our dirty laundry across the road as I crawled out of our tent. Dad was brewing coffee. Sausage patties were sizzling on the grill. My stomach growled loud enough to wake up a bear.

  “I'm going over to the office,” I told Dad. “I'll be back to help with breakfast. I need to plug in your laptop and send Carey Anne an e-mail. Your battery is almost gone and I want to check on Patches.”

  “Go,” he said. “I can handle breakfast.”

  I ran to the office. “I need to plug in my laptop,” I said to the lady at the desk. “Is that okay?”

  “Help yourself. We aim to please. But you don't have to use your computer. We have computers here for the use of our campers. You can send an e-mail from here.”

  “I want to use my computer but I need to use your port. Is that okay?”

  “Okay by me,” she said. “It'll be three dollars.”

  Carey Anne,

  How is Patches???? Is he eating ok? Are you walking him? Does he look depressed?

  Write back!!

  Jason

  P.S. If you see Amberson (that annoying kid that bugs Freddy and me) don't tell him we're going to California and don't mention that we're trying out for Mania. I wore my allosaurus head in the shower last night. It's a great costume.

  “Can I wait in your office until I get an answer?” I asked. “This is an emergency.”

  “Suit yourself,” she said.

  I picked up a dog-eared Sports Illustrated and flipped the pages. “Look at that,” I said, pointing to a photo of a man standing on a mountain of dollar bills. “That guy must have won the lottery.”

  The lady looked over my shoulder at the magazine. “Yeah,” she said, “I had a cousin who won some money once at the grocery store. He won fifty dollars and a dozen eggs. I've never won anything but some bug spray and it wasn't any good. The bugs love it.” She went back to her desk.

  “I've never won anything either,” I said, “but I'm getting ready to win a trip to Hawaii, maybe.”

  She looked over the top of her glasses. “Really? How are you going to do that?”

  “My family and I are on our way out to California and I'm going to try and be a contestant on Masquerade Mania. I have a great costume and I'm sure I can talk my way into getting on.”

  “I love that show,” she said.

  “I'm going as a dinosaur. I've never seen one on the show before. Have you?”

  “We had a dinosaur in the men's showers last night,” she said, laughing. Before she could put two and two together, Mr. Friendly Cowboy ran into the office.

  “May Belle! May Belle!” he yelled. “Some kid slipped in the laundry room. All the washers are overflowing and bubbles are everywhere.”

  May Belle jumped up. “What happened?”

  “Someone put too much soap in the washing machines. Water's everywhere. The kids are going crazy. They're running and sliding through a million bubbles.” May Belle rushed outside. I saw Mom and Jen running to our car. They grabbed the first-aid kit and started back to the Laundromat. I knew Mom could fix up the kid who had gotten hurt. I wasn't sure what Jen could do. I went back to our campsite without getting an answer from Carey Anne.

  “What's going on?” Dad said, flipping a sausage patty.

  I told him what Mr. Friendly Cowboy had said. “You know Mom. She'll fix the kid up and he'll be as good as new.” I crawled up on the picnic table and let my feet dangle over the edge.

  “We'll be in California later today and I'd like to get settled in our campground so we can do some sightseeing,” Dad said. “I think we should have our first drawing tonight after dinner so we'll know where to head first. How about that?” I was so excited to hear the good news I could hardly believe it. Masquerade Mania was just around the corner. I could feel it in my bones. I planned to finish all Mom's questions before we crossed into California.

  “Go tell Jen and Mom as soon as they're ready we need to eat breakfast and be out of here. Freddy is swinging Millicent. Get them, too.”

  I took off running. As I ran I passed the playground. Jen was talking to some boy with blond hair. I knew she wouldn't be helping Mom.

  “And,” I heard her say as I ran by the swings, “I plan to do a lot of shopping on Rodeo Drive.” She'd be lucky if she could afford a pair of socks there.

  “Hey, Jen,” I yelled. “Dad said come eat breakfast and pack up your gear.”

  She didn't turn around. “Jen!” I yelled. “Dad said we're leaving soon. Unless you want to stay here with your boyfriend.”

  “I'll be there in a minute,” she said, scowling at me. She was careful not to be too nasty—she didn't want to reveal her true self.

  We had finished eating our muffins and sausage when Mom got back to camp. She had our laundry in black garbage sacks. She set them on the table. Jen was with her. I saw the boy who had been hurt limping to his camper.

  “Was it serious?” Dad asked.

  “No, just a bad sprain. He'll be okay.” She looked at our laundry and started laughing. “I've got good news and bad news.”

  “Uh-oh,” I said. “Not again. What's the good news?”

  “All our laundry is clean and we're ready for California!”

  “What's the bad news?” Dad asked.

  She looked at us and burst out laughing again. “All our underwear is bubble-gum pink.”

  I froze. “My underwear is pink?”

  Mom patted Millicent's curly little head. “I don't know how or when but Millie put Lulu in the hot wash and she bled on everything.”

  Millicent grinned, holding up a faded Lulu for us to see. “See?” she said. “Lulu clean. Mud all gone.”

  “My underwear is pink, too, Mrs. Percy?” Freddy asked.

  “I'm afraid so. All the underwear is pink. But no one will know. After all, underwear doesn't show.”

  Freddy and Jen thought it was hilarious. I was the only one who was horrified.

  “What if we're in a wreck and the doctors and nurses see our underwear? What if there's an article printed about us in the paper and some journalist says we were all wearing pink underwear when we died on the highway?” I was furious. Millicent started crying.

  “Jason, you're such a twerp,” Jen said, picking Millicent up. “Just be glad you have underwear.” An evil glint came into her eyes. “Besides, everyone knows you love wearing pink.”

  Thanks to Mom's packets, we learned that the Grand Canyon is 277 miles long. The grizzly bear is California's state animal. The Sequoia National Forest redwoods are the oldest trees in the world. But all that paled compared to what we learned next.

  “California is the Golden State!” Freddy and I shouted when we crossed the state line. We were finally here! I stared out the window hoping to see someone famous. But t
here were just billboards for fast-food places and lots of traffic. Not a movie star in sight. It was hard to imagine anyone camping in L.A., but Mom had done her research well and right next to Disneyland was an enormous campground. Of course, we'd be camping on cement, but I would have camped on a sack of nails by then.

  After we settled into our camp spot in Anaheim, Dad took out the box. “Okay,” he said. “All packets in? Right?”

  Mom nodded. “I've checked each one. Everyone did a great job,” she said. “Freddy had the most correct answers, so he's the one who gets an extra choice to put in the box.” Freddy took a bow.

  “Way to go,” I said, hoping he'd put in the TV studio for me. Jen had a scowl on her face but no one paid attention to her. We were all too excited.

  “Maybe Freddy chose the ballet,” I whispered to her. She punched me in the back and walked away.

  “Okay,” Dad said. “Let's draw.”

  I crossed my fingers, then my toes, and closed my eyes. I was afraid to breathe. Mom drew the first sheet of paper.

  “A tour of movie stars' homes!” she yelled out. I was sad and glad at the same time. She deserved it. Mom had planned the trip, bought the food, written the packets, and done everything she could to make us all comfortable. It was only right that she got to do what she wanted. I didn't want to be a spoiled brat so I acted excited, too. I had three chances to go to Masquerade Mania. It would definitely happen—just not tomorrow.

  “Movie stars' homes it is,” Dad said. “We'll catch a tour bus in the morning and see where the stars live.”

  “I can't wait to check out Hollywood,” Jen said, tossing her hair. “Maybe I'll be discovered. You can tell people that you knew me back in the day.”

  “Sad, isn't she?” I whispered to Freddy.

  The tour bus was packed. Freddy and I found a seat together near the front.

  “Hello, hello,” a young man said, bouncing onto the bus. “I'm Toby, your tour guide.” Green-and-red sunglasses were perched on his head and his yellow sandals matched his sunshine yellow shorts. A million heavy gold chains hung around his neck along with a brass whistle. If we couldn't see him, at least we'd hear him.

  “Welcome to Hollywood,” he said into a tinny portable mike. “You're going to see fabulous homes.” There was a tattoo of a surfer on his left arm that said RIDE THE WAVES.

  Freddy nodded toward his gold chains. “If he rode the waves, he'd sink!” Toby looked weird, but he was so friendly I couldn't help liking him.

  The bus headed out Sunset Boulevard. Jen kept her nose pressed to the window and so did Mom. We headed down Roxbury Drive. “On the left is where America's favorite redhead, Lucille Ball, lived. Next door to her, in that big brown house, was Jack Benny's home.”

  I didn't know who Jack Benny was, but all the grownups looked impressed.

  “Didn't Lucy live in that apartment in New York?” Jen asked.

  “That was just for the TV show!” I whispered back. Jen swatted me away like a mosquito.

  The homes were the biggest I'd ever seen. They made Amberson's house look like a cottage. The mansions had manicured lawns and iron fences with PRIVATE! KEEP OUT! signs on them. The driver stopped the bus for us to get out for a better view. A man with five cameras jumped off first.

  “This is a Kodak moment,” Toby said. “We'll have a twenty-minute stop here. If you'd like to follow me, I'll point out the different homes in the neighborhood and tell you who lived there in Hollywood's heyday and who lives there now. Follow me.”

  “Wait a minute, Freddy,” I said, holding his arm as the crowd surged forward. “I want to check this one out.”

  My parents and Jen were so entranced that they didn't even notice we weren't behind them.

  I pointed to the house in question. It was brick, with a huge balcony. But the best part was the line of gargoyles perched along the rooftop. Nobody had gargoyles back in Texas.

  I hopped up onto the low fence framing the yard.

  “Are you crazy, Jason?” Freddy hissed, looking around in a panic. “You could—”

  Before I knew what was happening an alarm sounded. Guard dogs appeared out of nowhere and a man came running to the fence shaking a rake at me. Big mistake. Big, big mistake.

  “Hey!” the man yelled. I guessed he was the gardener. “What do you think you're doing? Get off that fence!”

  Freddy ducked into some bushes.

  I froze. “I didn't mean any harm,” I told the gardener nervously as the dogs growled. “I'm on a tour bus and they let us off to take pictures. I climbed on this fence to get a closer look. I'm sorry.” I saw a lady in a wheelchair sitting under an umbrella by a swimming pool. She called out to the gardener.

  “What's the commotion?”

  “Just a boy on the fence, Miss La Faye. He wanted to look at your house.”

  La Faye, La Faye. Could this be Josephine La Faye? She was in a ton of the old movies Freddy and I had. If it was her, she must be about a hundred years old by now.

  “Bring him over,” the lady said.

  “Do those dogs bite?” I asked without moving. One of them crouched down and his mouth curled up in a snarl.

  The man said something in a foreign language and the dogs sat down. The gardener motioned for me to follow him, and with one eye on the dogs, I walked slowly over to Miss La Faye. The gardener ran to turn off the alarm. Freddy stayed out of sight.

  “Just what did you think you were doing, young man?” She wore a crisp white shirt and pale blue pants. A wide-brimmed hat shielded her face from the sun. “Don't you know this is private property?”

  “Yes,” I said, trying not to stare. She had a face full of wrinkles but I recognized her as the actress from those old movies. “I'm on a tour of movie stars' homes.”

  “Pooh,” she said. “Those tour buses are frauds. They don't know where anyone lives. They make up all that stuff and the tourists don't know the difference. You pay good money for a pack of lies.”

  She looked expectantly at me. I didn't know what to say.

  “Your house is awesome,” I blurted out. “I wish my friend Freddy could see it.”

  “Where is he? On the fence, too?”

  “He's hiding in the bushes. He was afraid we were going to get in trouble.” I swallowed. “You're not going to call the police, are you?”

  Her eyes sparkled. “Not unless you do something heinous.” Then she laughed. “The police don't like to come here. They're afraid of my dogs.”

  “So am I,” I said, looking around for them.

  “Pshaw. They're gentle as kittens.” She smiled over at me. “I don't get many visitors here so I'll make a deal with you.”

  “A deal?”

  “Since you bought a ticket to see movie stars' homes you're going to see a movie star's home. Deal?”

  “Wow!” I said.

  “Go get the busload of people,” she told me. “We're going to have an open house.” She reached for a glass of her lemonade. “And grab your friend from the bushes!”

  Miss La Faye couldn't have been nicer. Once Freddy and I were able to convince everyone in the tour group that we weren't kidding, she gave us a tour of her home. She even had an elevator so she could get upstairs without help. Then she let us sit by her pool and drink lemonade while she entertained us with stories about what Hollywood had been like back in the beginning. She had started out in the movies when she was fifteen and had been a star for over eighty years.

  “This is just like Cribs!” Freddy said, high-fiving me.

  When it was time to leave, Freddy and I were the last to go to the bus.

  “I can't thank you enough, Miss La Faye. This has been the best afternoon of my life.” I shook her gnarled hand. “Now if I can just get on Masquerade Mania, my trip to California will be a big success.”

  “I watch it every night,” she said warmly. “That's what life is all about. Having fun and laughing. I'll be looking for you boys.”

  “I'll be wearing a dinosaur head,” I said.
“An allosaurus.”

  “Sounds good to me. If I weren't in this chair I'd go with you. But when you're ninety-five you don't get to do many fun things.”

  When we got on the bus everyone cheered. It had been a fabulous day. Toby said it had been the most successful tour he had ever given. “You've got guts, kid,” he said. He'd tried to get Miss La Faye to open her home up to every tour group but she wouldn't have any part of that.

  Jen had her nose glued to the window again. “What did you think of Miss La Faye?” I asked her.

  “Fabulous,” she said. “But you could have been arrested, you know. You lucked out this time.” Her face broke into a grin.

  “What?” I said.

  “Just thinking. That's all.”

  “Thinking what?”

  “About what the police would have said when they frisked you for a weapon and saw you were wearing pink undies.” She exploded in laughter.

  When we got back to the camp, I used a phone port to open Dad's laptop. Carey Anne had sent an e-mail.

  Hey, Mania Man,

  Patches is fine but he still can't run as fast as Bruno. Your uncle Dan can't run at all. LOL Carey Anne P.S. I already told Amberson about you getting on the show before you told me not to mention it.

  Each day Mom drew a different piece of paper out of the box. We saw everything there was to see in southern California. We were the ultimate California tourists. When I got my first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean I almost stopped breathing. It was as fantastic as Dad had described. There was water as far as I could see. I squinted at a ship miles out into the ocean. It looked the size of the boats in Millicent's bathwater.

  We rented chairs one day at the beach and spent the day building sand castles and playing volleyball with a bunch of kids. Our skin turned blue when we dove through the waves. Jen flirted with all the lifeguards. She dipped her toes in the water once, then said it was too cold for swimming. Mom and Dad lay in the sun, soaking up all those California rays. Millicent made sand pies and she and Lulu gave tea parties all day.

  Disneyland was a blast. I liked the Electrical Parade at California Adventure. Freddy and Jen loved the rides. My heart skipped a million beats when we raced down the rails and did flips and turns so fast I couldn't think. They went too high and too fast for me. The Indiana Jones ride was cool, though. And it was fun taking Millicent on the teacups.