by Joyce Magnin
“Oh, don’t worry about that. Elaine draws things so good you’ll think they’re real.”
“Meetcha tomorrow,” Brian says, “and we’ll get started.”
I walk him to the ladder. “You’ll see. We’ll have people lined up for a mile to see a genuine, bona fide spaceship.”
“Bona fide? Don’t know how bona fide it’ll be.” Brian climbs down the ladder.
What I don’t tell him is that getting a drawing from Elaine will not be easy. Unless I tell her the plan, and that will mean telling her about Brian and risking her telling Mom. But something deep inside knows I have to try.
I pull my knees up to my chest and think. Before Brian, I felt like I didn’t have anything that mattered. Mom has her hems to sew, and Elaine has the pig and her drawings and fancy pencils and paper and erasers. Dad has his secret projects. Bud has the war—maybe not in a great way, but still, he’s there because it’s supposed to be helping the country, protecting freedom. And now I have something too. I have Brian. I have Brian and a carburetor to buy and a flying saucer to build.
I look up just in time to see a star shoot across the sky.
Yeah, it’s good to have something that matters.
Nine
I decide to wait around for Elaine to come home from bowling. I also decide I need to come up with a plan to get her to give me one of her pictures. I can’t just steal one because she’d notice the page missing. Asking her could be the best way to go, but I will have to finagle it—that’s what Mom calls it when she wants something from Dad. “I’ll get him to do it,” she says. “But it will take some finagling.”
I hear a car pull up.
“Thanks,” Elaine calls. “Talk to you tomorrow.”
I hurry down the ladder to catch her before she goes inside.
“I need to talk to you.”
She jumps about thirty feet in the air. “Hey, creep, you scared me.”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to. But I really need to talk to you.”
“About what? I’m tired.”
“UFOs.” I look her in the eye when I say it. You have to keep a straight face when you are finagling.
“Stop making fun of me,” Elaine says as she walks to the steps.
“Wait,” I say. “It’s just…just that I saw one.”
“One what?”
“UFO.”
Elaine gives me a shove. “Get out. Stop making fun.”
“I’m serious.”
“Really? You mean you finally saw one?” Elaine’s voice is excited.
“Maybe,” I say. “I saw something weird—that’s for sure.”
“I betcha it was the same one I saw,” Elaine sounds even more excited. “Tonight. I saw it hovering over the bowling alley. I went outside for some air and there it was, hovering right over the Bowl-A-Rama sign, the neon one with all the pretty colors.”
“Did anyone else see it?”
“No. By the time I got Sac and Andrew outside, it was gone. Andrew said I was crazy and there ain’t no such thing.”
“I saw it.” I have to bite my bottom lip to stay serious.
Now, the truth is, I never saw anything except an airplane. But I’m thinking that telling her I saw the flying saucer might help me convince her to give me one of her drawings without asking too many questions.
I’m not sure she believes me.
“Look, I need a favor,” I say. “I want you to give me one of your pictures.”
“What? Why? You’re up to something.”
“I’m not up to anything.” I can feel my cheeks flush. I always turn red when I out-and-out lie. Even if it’s for a good cause. Which this is—a good cause.
“You’re always up to something. Spill it.”
Elaine sits on the stoop. “Tell me.”
I don’t want to tell her about Brian. Not yet. “I just want a picture because you’re such a good artist, and when you’re famous and have paintings hanging in the Louvre, I can show people my drawing and—”
“Aw, you’re full of it. That ain’t why. Now tell me.”
“I can’t. Just do it for me. Please. I’ll do your chores for a whole week.”
“The rest of the summer.”
I stamp my foot. “Fine. The rest of the summer.”
Elaine laughs. “You’re crazy. I’m going to bed.”
I climb back to the roof, thinking it is going to be really hard to keep Elaine from knowing the truth—and now I have to do her stupid chores for the rest of the stupid summer.
• • •
The next morning, the trash men wake me early with their noisy truck and loud voices. Mom’s fixing Dad’s breakfast. As usual, he’s as quiet as a spider and reading his newspaper. Sometimes, I think he expects to see Bud’s name printed inside or a picture of him, so he scrutinizes every page. I shiver.
“Cold cereal this morning,” Mom says. “Take it or leave it.”
“OK. Corn Flakes.” I look at Dad over his paper. “You goin’ to work, Dad?”
“Just like every day,” he says.
“’Course he is,” Mom says. She plops the box of Corn Flakes on the table. “What kind of plans do you have for the day, Joyce Anne? Don’t forget, it’s almost the Fourth of July.”
“Oh yeah, fireworks,” I say. “Can’t wait. Maybe I’ll watch them from the roof.”
“No you won’t,” Dad says with his face screened behind the paper. “You’ll be with the family. As always. Besides”—he pulls the paper down so I can see his face—“I might just have something…special planned.”
I pour milk over my flakes. “Like what?”
“You’ll see. Now eat your breakfast. I gotta go unstop Mrs. Culbertson’s sink.”
Dad kisses Mom’s cheek. He grabs his lunch box and thermos off the counter.
“Do you know what he has planned?” I ask Mom once Dad has gone downstairs. “Is that what he’s doing in the garage? Is it for the Fourth?”
“He never lets me in on his projects. Guess we’ll all find out together.”
I munch down my flakes, thinking it’s kind of neat that Dad and I are both wrapped up in projects. I set the bowl on the floor for Polly. She likes to drink the leftover cereal milk. Mom will kill me if she sees.
“Where’s Elaine?” I ask. “Still getting her beauty sleep?”
“Nah, she was up. Came down earlier.”
I swallow. “Did she say anything?”
“About what?”
I shrug. “Just anything?”
Mom gives me one of her You’re up to something looks. “Nope. She seems kind of quiet this morning.”
When Polly finishes, I retrieve my bowl, drop it in the sink, and go to find Elaine. I find her in the bedroom sketching, with Jelly Bean on her lap.
“Whatcha doing?” I ask.
“Drawing.”
“The flying saucer? Really? Let me see.”
“Not finished.”
“That’s OK. Let me see.”
She turns her sketchbook around, and there it is…one bona fide flying saucer.
“It’s cool,” I say. “Can I have it?”
“It’s more than cool. It’s real. It is the exact one I saw last night. And no, you can’t have it.”
“Why? What gives? You promised.”
She sets the sketchpad aside and puts Jelly Bean back in her cage. “I’ll let you have it under one, maybe two conditions.”
“But I’m already doing your chores. This ain’t fair.”
“Do you want it or not?”
I take a breath. Here it comes: sibling blackmail. “OK, what are your conditions?”
“The whole story and nothing but the whole story. If I’m going to give you one of my original drawings, I have to know why.”
I take a huge breat
h and look out the window, thinking I might be able to see Brian on his roof. But I can’t. I have no choice. I have to tell.
“OK,” I say, turning around like I saw an actor turn in a movie once, just when he was about to announce the murderer. “Now remember you can’t breathe a word of this, not a single word of this, to anyone. It’s top secret. A triple-sister secret.”
Elaine doesn’t look at me. She keeps sketching, but she asks, “Does this have anything to do with what Dad’s doing in the garage?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“So spill,” Elaine says real final-like. “The beans—all of them.”
“I met a boy. His name is Brian. He likes to hang out on his roof. That’s how I met him. On the roof.”
Elaine laughs. And that makes the pig squeal. “Oh, come on. You met a boy on the roof?”
“I was looking through my binocs, and I saw him across the way. On his roof. Over on Crestview Drive. I guess lots of people like the roof…I don’t know. But anyway. I went over to his house yesterday and—”
All of a sudden, Elaine takes such a giant breath that I think she’s sucked all the oxygen out of the room. “You what? You went to a boy’s house? Without permission? A boy you met on the roof? You are crazy…as a loon.”
At least I have her attention now. “Yeah, I did. So what’s the big deal?” Even though I know it’s a pretty big deal—a giant deal—I don’t let on. “He’s nice.”
“Oh man, oh man, are you in for it! Wait until Dad finds out.”
“He can’t find out, and you better not tell him. Triple-sister secret. You swore.”
Elaine hugs her pillow to her chest. “Yeah, yeah, but what does Roof Boy have to do with needing a picture of a flying saucer?”
“I’m getting to that.” I sit on the one chair we have in the room. A rickety, old wooden folding chair Dad got at church. You have to sit just so or it will collapse. “Now listen. Brian is fixing up an old truck. It was his dead brother’s.”
Elaine shoots me a look.
“He died in the war before he had a chance to fix it up himself.”
Elaine swallows. I swallow too. “Bud’s OK,” I say after a few seconds. “I know it. He promised me he’d come home, and I’m holding him to it.”
“Mmm-hmm. Right,” Elaine says. “So what about this kid?”
“Brian wants to fix the truck and drive it around Westbrook Park to honor his brother and then drive it to Arizona so he can live with his aunt because his father can’t take care of him anymore.” Phew. That’s a lot of information.
“I still don’t get what in tarnation that has to do with the UFO!”
“He needs money to buy a carburetor—”
“A what?”
“A carburetor. It goes in the truck engine. And we thought we could build the flying saucer and sell tickets for people to come see it and raise money so he can buy the carburetor and fix the truck before July fifteenth.”
Elaine laughs. “Now I know you’re crazy. It’s like you can’t possibly be my sister. Mom got you from gypsies.”
“Please,” I say. “It’s the only way. His brother is dead. His dad can’t help him, and to top it off, he’s got a dead mother. That’s like a triple whammy.” I didn’t want to tell her that it was important to me too. That I needed something to do, something to care about.
Elaine gets up and paces around the room like she needs to stretch her legs. Then she looks at her drawing. “Look, even if I agreed to your cockamamie scheme, how will you build it?”
“I don’t know. We’ll put our heads together. I bet Brian can build anything. And Dad has enough junk lying around the house to build a real rocket ship. I figure we could use Christmas lights or something and—”
Elaine pulls herself up to her full height.
“OK, I’ll give you a picture on one more condition.”
“What? I told you the story.”
“One more. This is too big for just two conditions.”
“OK, OK. What’s the condition? And it better not be stupid.”
“You stop calling me pig nose.”
I sigh. “Aw, man, I like calling you pig nose. But, OK, OK. I’ll do it. But just for summer.”
The door bursts open. “Laundry day,” Mom says. “Gather it all up and bring it down. You too, Joyce.”
“OK, OK,” we say.
Mom stands at the doorway and looks at us. She doesn’t ask any questions or say anything. She smiles though. That weird I know you’re up to something smile she has.
“We’ll be right down, Mom,” I say.
I wait until I’m sure Mom is all the way down the steps, and then I hug Elaine. “You’re the best.”
“Yeah, yeah, I hope it works.”
“So give it,” I say.
Elaine reaches for her sketchbook. “Not so fast. It’s not finished.”
“It’s good enough.”
“Nope. I’ll give it to you when I’m done.”
“Fine.”
I look out the window again. And then I say something I didn’t plan on saying. “Maybe you should come and meet Brian and stuff. Maybe you can help us figure out how to build it.”
“I guess.” Elaine looks at her sketch again. “If you’re gonna do this crazy scheme, it should be perfect…just like the real thing.”
“Bring the picture, and we’ll go over to Brian’s.”
“Now?”
“Yeah, why not?” I say.
Suddenly, I feel nervous about having Elaine meet Brian. I really need her to keep my secret. I hope she likes him.
“Don’t forget laundry,” Elaine says. “And you can carry mine down too.”
“What? You do your own.”
She crosses her arms and raises one dark eyebrow in a very sinister fashion. “One of the conditions, remember?”
“All right, all right,” I say.
I carry all the dirty clothes to the basement. Mom is already busy with a load.
“Here you go.” I say.
“Elaine’s too? How come?”
“No reason,” I say.
Mom just says, “Uh-huh, OK.”
I take a moment to look around the basement. There are stacks and stacks of boxes and stuff. There’s got to be enough junk to build one measly flying saucer.
Ten
I head back to the bedroom. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Hold your horses,” Elaine says. “I need to find my other sneaker.”
“It’s under the bed.” Normally, I would make her look all over the house even if I knew where it was, but considering how much I need her, I tell her.
We scramble down the steps.
“Going out, Mom,” I call loud enough for her to hear down in the cellar.
“Hold up,” she says.
Elaine and I stop cold at the front door.
Mom comes up with a wicker basket of clean clothes. “Where are you two going?”
No way we can tell her where we’re really going. Mom stands between the living room and dining room. “I asked where you two are headed.”
“Just out,” I say.
“Together?”
Elaine drapes her arm around me. “Yeah, together. I’m trying to do what you say, Mom…you know.”
Mom gives us a look. But she doesn’t say anything. She just turns around and heads back to the kitchen.
“What did you mean?” I ask when we got to the end of the walkway.
Polly barks.
“About what?”
“What you said, about doing what Mom said.”
“Nothin’, she just said I should humor you.”
“That’s what she told me about you. Especially when it comes to your UFOs.” I skip a few steps ahead of her. Polly stops to sniff around a telephon
e pole.
“They’re not my UFOs. They’re from outer space.”
I swallow a snicker. If my plan is going to work, I have to convince Elaine that I am on her side, at least a little.
We walk around past the playground and around the corner toward Crestview.
Elaine keeps her sketchbook tucked under her arm. Mom didn’t ask about it because it is never strange for Elaine to leave the house with drawing stuff.
Polly sidles next to me. I pat her head. “Let’s go up the alley. He’s probably out back working on his truck.”
The back alleys of row houses are where the kids mostly play. You can get a pretty good ball game going in the alley and an even better game of hide-and-seek—especially at night. I’d say the kids on Gramercy Drive have the best hide-and-seek games ever. One of the big kids figured out how to kick one of the light poles and knock out all the lights on the block for a minute or so. Just enough time for us to scramble and hide in almost pitch-black.
“That’s his house,” I say. “The one with the green garage door and the truck parked in front.”
I am about to knock on the garage door when Elaine grabs my hand. “Listen! It sounds like crying.”
I put my ear to the door. I hear a man’s voice. Must be Brian’s dad. “It’ll be OK, son. It’s better this way. Just until you finish school.”
I hear Brian’s voice. “I want to stay here.”
“It’s just not possible. I… With this new job, I’ll be around even less than I am now.”
“Why’d you take the job then? I don’t want to go to Arizona.”
I put my hand over my mouth. He told me he wanted to go. Guess he was just being tough. Like when I say I like going to the dentist, even though I’m scared almost to death.
“I need the money, Brian. And you need a home. Aunt Natalie can give you that.”
There was a long silence until his dad says, “Aunt Natalie is buying the bus ticket for the twentieth. I’m sorry. You can’t drive across the country in that beat-up old truck.”
“We should go,” Elaine whispers. “It’s their private business.”
We start to back away, but first, I sneak a peek through the cracked wood on the garage door. Brian looks toward the door right as I look in. I see him swipe a tear from his cheek. And not just any old tear, I figure. A big one. A tear that carried a whole boatload of sadness.