“Oh my gosh, I have that same nail polish!” she squealed, pointing at a character on the screen.
All of a sudden the TV went dark.
“HEY!” Louisa gave me a death stare. “TURN IT BACK ON, Spaghetti-O.”
“I didn’t do anything!” I argued.
I glanced around and saw that Popcorn had grabbed the remote. He stood in front of Louisa.
“Louisa, please help us,” he said sweetly. “I want to meet Tito the Bonecrusher.”
“Who the heck are you?” she asked, then grabbed for the remote. “Actually, I don’t care who you are. Turn my TV BACK ON.”
I saw Popcorn clench his fist around the remote. He took a deep breath. “Louisa, please help us or I’m going to tell my babysitter that you are Mr. Jiggly Fluff.”
“Oooh, your babysitter,” Louisa said.
Brain and I looked at each other. Whatever Popcorn was doing, it wasn’t part of the plan.
“My babysitter is Mitzy Calhoun,” Popcorn said. His voice was steely.
I had heard the name Mitzy Calhoun many, many times. If they made an action movie of Louisa’s quest to be the valedictorian of Haselton High, then Mitzy Calhoun would be the villain. Mitzy has been Louisa’s mortal enemy since tenth grade, when she asked to see one of Louisa’s already-graded lab reports, and then she pointed out to the teacher that Louisa’s grade had been miscalculated and should have been three points lower.
Mitzy would be the last person Louisa would ever want to know about Mr. Jiggly Fluff, and somehow Popcorn had known this. I guessed that when Mitzy was babysitting, she had the same number of nice things to say about Louisa as Louisa had to say about her. Which would be a total of zero.
Popcorn wanted to make his threat perfectly clear. “As you know, Mitzy plans to be a famous journalist when she grows up. She hosts the morning news at Haselton High, and she told me every homeroom watches it. I’m sure she would be very interested to know that you are Mr. Jiggly Fluff.”
Popcorn’s words seemed to have struck real fear into Louisa’s cold, bored heart. She narrowed her eyes. “You wouldn’t.”
“Not if you help us,” Popcorn’s voice was sweet again.
Now Louisa was listening. Popcorn, Brain, and I took turns explaining the details of the plan, including how Popcorn and I would hide in the Mr. Jiggly Fluff costume box, then sneak into the gala.
“Then what?” Louisa asked.
“Then … we’re at the gala,” I repeated.
Louisa explained to us in the meanest way possible that just because we got into the gala didn’t mean we were in the clear. “It’s a seated dinner,” she said, like we were so clueless we were embarrassing her. “The plates are assigned. If you don’t have a place at a table, they’re going to know right away that you don’t belong. Each place setting has a little place card with the person’s name on it.”
“Maybe we could make our own place cards,” I offered.
“And what else? Bring your own chairs and plates?” Louisa sneered. “I’m telling you, there won’t be anywhere for you to sit. Nancy Dunston is coordinating the whole event, and she’ll know if even one fork is out of place.”
“Nancy Dunston?” Brain echoed, her voice faint.
“Isn’t that Sharon’s mom?” Popcorn exclaimed.
Sharon Dunston.
Our plan for meeting Tito the Bonecrusher was going to involve that two-faced priss Sharon Dunston? She had landed me in the headmaster’s office twice, and that was nothing compared to what she had done to Brain.
But for me, this wasn’t about Sharon, or Brain. It was about being the only person who could rescue my dad. I would never quit trying, and I knew that Brain and Popcorn wouldn’t, either. We had already made a deal with Louisa. We could deal with Sharon.
“Brain,” I began.
“Nope,” she said.
“Brain—”
“Don’t wanna hear it.” She covered her ears.
Popcorn looked back and forth between us. Louisa had returned to her TV show.
“Let’s go upstairs,” I said. Popcorn and Brain followed me.
As I walked upstairs, I thought about what Brain had said to me earlier, about Tito sometimes having to work with people he doesn’t like so he can get his own way. Then I thought about the scene in Steel Cage 2: Back in the Cage when Bruce Paxton tells his partner Leroy (played by The Germ, of course) that they have to work with their former enemy Rosco Jones to break Bruce Paxton’s mother out of the science laboratory, because Rosco is the custodian at the laboratory and has all the keys. Bruce Paxton stands up and says to Leroy, “Leroy, here’s some science for you: I don’t care if I have to make a deal with the cuss-word devil himself, I’m getting the keys to that laboratory.” It’s like the second-most-famous quote from Steel Cage 2, after “Bruce Paxton always saves the day—even when it’s night.”
I closed the door to my room, took a deep breath, and prepared to quote Bruce Paxton’s speech to Brain. I was ready to do whatever it would take to convince Brain that we could do this. She had been pushing us forward, and now it was my turn.
“Brain,” I declared. My voice kind of broke, so I cleared my throat and started again. “Brain, here’s some science for you: I don’t care if I have to make a deal—”
“I know,” she groaned before I could even finish the quote. “We have to talk to Sharon.”
16
SHARON
Brain, Popcorn, and I walked the two doors down to Sharon’s house and huddled together shoulder to shoulder. It was still cold and had started to rain, and “Grab a jacket!” hadn’t been part of Bruce Paxton’s speech to Leroy, so we were just shivering on the porch.
All of the houses in my new neighborhood are extremely nice, but Sharon’s has an extra layer of fanciness. Her door has all these squiggly designs carved into it, and the glass windows on either side of her door look like something you might see in a church, with shapes and flowers etched into them.
I rang the doorbell. We waited.
I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.
I took two steps to the right and looked through the etched pane of glass to see Sharon’s face staring back at me.
“What do you want?” Her voice was muffled and her face was distorted through the flowery glass, but I could see that she was seriously frowning.
“We need to talk to you,” I said.
“About what?” she asked, still muffled.
I looked at Brain, who was looking madder by the second, probably because Sharon wasn’t opening the door and we were left out on her porch. “We need your help,” I said.
“Why should I help you?”
“Because…,” I began. I had hoped to talk to Sharon directly. As I’d learned from Tito’s movies, people have a harder time saying no to you when you’re face-to-face. “Because we need to—”
“Oh, for the love of money, open the cuss-word door, Sharon,” Brain interrupted, stepping in front of me to lean her face close to the glass. “We’re freezing out here. Popcorn’s with us, and he’s about to become a Popsicle.”
This was true. Popcorn’s teeth were chattering.
Sharon’s face disappeared from behind the glass pane, and then the door opened. She smiled sweetly. “Come on in, Paul,” she said to Popcorn, who stepped inside. Then she crossed her arms, stared at Brain and me for a moment, and smirked. “You have to say the password.”
This seemed like a trap. “What’s the password?” I asked.
“The password is,” she announced, “WE ARE SORRY, SHARON.”
I grabbed Brain by the elbow before she could run off the porch or punch Sharon in the face.
“Can the password be something else?” I asked. “Like ‘open sesame’ or something? You got me sent to Saturday Service Reflection.” (I didn’t bother to mention that Popcorn had taken my place.) “I’m not going to say sorry.”
Sharon smirked again and opened her mouth to say something else, but I kept going.
“And Brain’s not going to say sorry, either, after what you said about her.”
Sharon’s face turned kind of pink. “I didn’t say anything about Brain.”
“Don’t lie, Sharon,” Brain growled beside me.
* * *
So I guess I should back up and explain how everything broke down with Sharon, Brain, and me over the summer. Like I said, I used to hang out at Brain’s house on Saturdays while my mom was working. Sharon would come over, and we would play these games that Brain invented.
For a while we used to play a game that Brain called Crime Scan. The idea was that we would patrol the neighborhood looking for criminal activity. But my mom said we were allowed no farther than the end of Brain’s driveway, so we did most of our crime scanning from her front yard. The only crimes we saw were people running the stop sign at the corner of Culverton and First, or not picking up their dog’s poop when they were out walking. Also the across-the-street neighbors almost never cut their grass, but we weren’t sure that was a crime, even if Brain’s dad complained about it a lot. Even though there wasn’t a lot of crime, Sharon took notes and shared them with her mom, who was in charge of the Neighborhood Watch, whatever that was.
When we weren’t playing Crime Scan, we played in Brain’s backyard playhouse. The playhouse had been decorated by Brain’s mom with fuzzy pink beanbag chairs, purple shutters that really opened and closed, and a pastel play kitchen. It also had Barbies everywhere, which was great because Brain invented this game called Barbie Attack and we needed a bunch of Barbies for it.
Here’s how to play Barbie Attack: One kid is outside the playhouse, and the other kids are inside the playhouse with the shutters open. The outside kid has to run circles around the playhouse, and the inside kids throw Barbies through the open windows. The inside kids get a point every time they hit the outside kid with a Barbie.
It’s rough on the Barbies, but none of us really cared except for Sharon.
“Can’t we just play regular Barbies?” Sharon asked one day. “Or house?”
“No,” Brain declared.
Brain could be kind of bossy to Sharon, but I didn’t care because I sure as heck didn’t want to play Barbies, either.
“We can play wrestling with the Barbies,” I suggested.
“Okay,” Sharon said.
We pretended that Totally Hair Barbie was Tito the Bonecrusher and Prom Night Barbie was John Rancid. We also used Malibu Skipper as The Germ. We drew on Totally Hair Barbie’s face with dry-erase markers because it’s pretty much impossible to find a store that sells lucha libre masks for Barbies, no matter how many places you ask. We borrowed a chair from Barbie’s Dream House to perform John Rancid’s signature move of smashing a chair over Tito’s head. Tito went down hard and the referee (Wedding Day Ken) started counting, “One, two…,” and then Tito got up and started to fight again.
“Let’s keep going till one of their arms pops off,” I suggested.
“This is boring,” Sharon complained. “I’m going home if you don’t play something else.”
“Okay, see you Monday,” Brain said.
“See you next week,” I added.
“Oh. Okay,” Sharon said. Then she left.
I guess that was when it started to change from being me, Brain, and Sharon as best friends to me and Brain as best friends and Sharon as our third best friend. It wasn’t like we weren’t all friends anymore, we just weren’t playing all day every Saturday. I didn’t really notice it at first, because there was other stuff going on, like Mom and Carl getting married. But Sharon started spending less and less time with us on Saturdays, and when she did, she kept wanting to do more stuff Brain didn’t want to do, like paint her nails or practice cheers that she learned from her cousin.
One Saturday last summer, Sharon brought over this magazine with a bunch of guys on the cover from this cheesy band called 5 Summer Boys, and she asked Brain to take some quiz called “Which Member of 5 Summer Boys Should You Marry?”
“I’m not marrying one of those cheeseballs,” Brain scoffed. She was really cranky with Sharon that day. She was spending every weekday with Sharon at day camp, too, and that was enough to make anyone cranky.
“They’re not cheeseballs! They’re so hot! I think Beau Masters is the hottest. I would marry him. Maybe I will!” Then she made this strange giggle-shrieking sound. “I’m totally going to marry Beau Masters.”
“Can I see that?” I asked. I have to admit I was completely fascinated by these extra-shiny magazines of Sharon’s. I started flipping through it while Brain and Sharon started arguing.
“Don’t be a blockhead, Sharon,” Brain said. “You’re not going to marry Beau Masters. Let’s go outside and play Barbie Attack or something instead of making yourself even cheesier by reading those weird magazines.”
I looked up from some magazine quiz questions (“Which of the 5 Summer Boys loves mangoes?” “5 Summer Boys: Why are there 5 of them?”) to see that Sharon’s face was getting red and her chin was a little wobbly.
“They’re not weird!” Sharon cried. “Just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean it’s cheesy and weird. You’re the weird one for not liking any girl stuff. And don’t call me a blockhead!” Sharon looked at me for some reason, even though Brain was the one who had called her a blockhead. Her eyes were all watery with tears.
“Whatever, Sharon,” Brain said, sounding bored. Now she was looking at me, too. “You’re not READING that stupid magazine, are you, Oliver?”
“Um, no?” I said, pushing it back toward Sharon. “I don’t want to read about those cheeseballs.”
Sharon grabbed it. Her tears were spilling over and running down her cheeks. “You’re both jerks,” she said.
“What did I do?” I said.
“You always agree with her!” Now she was flinging tears everywhere. “You’re supposed to be my friend, too!” Sharon grabbed her magazine and her purse that she carried around for no reason and she stormed out of Brain’s house.
I figured she and Brain would work things out at their day camp, but by Saturday things were way worse. According to Brain, Sharon said a bunch of horrible stuff about Brain to some mean girls, and we could never, ever be friends with her again. We spent a couple of weeks talking about all the things that had always annoyed us about Sharon, and it turned out that she had been awful all along and neither of us had really noticed until we took the time to think about it.
Whenever we saw Sharon during the rest of the summer, like at the pool or around the neighborhood, we made a big deal out of ignoring her, and she made a big deal out of ignoring us.
Brain’s mom didn’t seem to notice that Sharon wasn’t hanging out with us anymore, but my mom realized it right away. I think Sharon’s mom had called her and said Sharon was upset about it or something.
“It’s not a big deal,” I told Mom when she asked me what was going on.
“It’s a big deal to Sharon,” Mom said. But I told her I didn’t want to talk about it, and she didn’t force me. She just said that although I didn’t have to be best friends with Sharon, I should at least be polite.
I tried to be as polite as I could to Sharon without irritating Brain, which wasn’t easy since all three of us wound up in Mrs. Thumbly’s class when school started. I’d say I was polite about 75 percent of the time, which I thought was pretty good.
The politeness lasted until the first day after winter break, when I saw Sharon in the hallway before class.
“Oliver!” she shrieked, giving me a hug in front of what felt like a thousand people. “I heard about your dad! I’m soooo sorry! I can’t believe he might be—”
Then she said it.
“—GOING TO JAIL!”
And, I swear she said it louder than someone could holler it with a microphone. In front of a ton of people. What kind of person does that?
I backed out of her hug. “Don’t be a blockhead, Sharon,” I said, knowing how much she hated being called a blockhea
d. “My dad’s not going to jail. Quit making up stuff to get attention.”
Sharon looked around. She seemed to actually care who was listening, now that she was done blabbing my personal business. “But my mom told me that he was charged with fraud—”
“Your mom’s a liar.”
You shouldn’t call someone’s mom a liar, especially when it turns out she’s not lying, but I didn’t know at the time that it was true.
“You’re the liar!” Sharon’s voice sounded all wobbly. “I wish you’d never come to this school!”
Then she flounced away and, I guess, proceeded to think of all the things she could do to make my life, and Brain’s life, impossible.
* * *
So that’s everything that had happened with Brain, Sharon, and me. Yet there we were on her doorstep, begging for her help. And I’m sure she was absolutely loving it until we brought up her gossiping about Brain over the summer. Now Sharon started apologizing.
“I didn’t say you don’t like boys,” Sharon told Brain. Brain’s face turned bright pink. “I said that you didn’t like any of the boys in 5 Summer Boys, and I thought that was weird. I only said it because we were in a fight.”
Brain’s face was turning redder and redder. “Then why did people tell me you said it?” she demanded. “And what difference does it make who I like or don’t like?”
Popcorn, who hadn’t known any of this dramatic stuff, didn’t seem to know where to look. He looked at Brain, then at Sharon, then at me, and finally stared at the floor.
“Madison said it,” Sharon cried. Madison is this annoying friend of Sharon’s from summer camp. “Madison said you don’t like boys, and I laughed. That’s all. I just laughed. I didn’t say it.”
I imagined what it was like for Brain to hear people at camp whispering and laughing about her.
“I’m sorry I laughed,” Sharon went on. “It’s been weighing on my heart, Brianna. But we were in a fight! You had been so mean to me! Remember when you said—”
Brain stepped into the house and Sharon stepped aside, forgetting to block our entry. I followed Brain.
Tito the Bonecrusher Page 9