Tarantula Shoes

by Tom Birdseye

  Telly let out an even bigger hoot of laughter. “Steal your spider? Man, you’re a jokester, too!” He stopped laughing and cocked his head to one side. “Not a bad idea, though. Except I might get arrested and charged with Fangnapping.” He started laughing again. “Get it? Fangnapping? Get it, O’Keefe?”

  I got it, but I didn’t want it. I was so mad, I was ready to scream. None of this would have happened if we hadn’t moved to Kentucky. It was Dad and Mom’s fault for getting new jobs, the twins’ fault for bugging me all the time. It was Gordon’s fault for having my shoes and Telly’s for being tall and full of dumb jokes. And it was Bobbie Jo’s fault for moving to Macinburg and acting like it was no big deal, like I was a wimp because I hated it here.

  I could just imagine how Bobbie Jo would laugh when she heard that Fang was missing. She’d shake her head at how stupid I was and act like she knew everything there was to know about anything. She’d probably laugh even more than Telly, thinking the best joke of all was that someone had stolen Fang and I couldn’t figure out who had done it, and—

  But wait a minute! The truth hit me so hard I almost fell down. Why hadn’t I seen this to begin with? It was Bobbie Jo! Of course! She took Fang!

  Furious—at Bobbie Jo for being so low and at myself for not seeing it earlier—I stomped away from Aaron’s house and headed straight toward the Websters’.

  CHAPTER 19

  Stop!

  Bobbie Jo’s cousin Amy from Charleston was out on the front lawn, dancing in a tutu, when I came racing up.

  “Where’s Bobbie Jo?” I demanded.

  “Bobbie Jo!” she yelled at the house without breaking from her twirl. “That nut from Arizona is here!”

  I couldn’t believe the pipsqueak was talking about me like that. But before I could do anything about it, Bobbie Jo opened the front door.

  “Give me back my tarantula!” I yelled at her.

  Bobbie Jo’s eyes went wide. A look of surprise crossed her face, but it only stayed for a second. She shook her head in disbelief. “Just how long have you been practicing to be a blockhead? You’d better go back to Arizona and look for your brain.”

  “I wish I could go back to Arizona!” I shouted. “But I can’t! Fang is all I’ve got left of the desert, and you stole him, and I want him now!”

  Bobbie Jo laughed. “I don’t have your spider.”

  “Yes, you do,” I screeched, “and it’s not funny!” I was so mad, I was spitting my words out.

  She laughed again, and I felt like hitting her, even if she was a girl. But just as I was about to decide it didn’t matter if she was a girl or not, she suddenly pointed toward Sycamore Street and yelled, “Look!”

  I wasn’t in the mood for anymore jokes. “Don’t try to pull that one on me!” I shouted.

  “Stop!” Bobbie Jo yelled, and jumped off her porch toward me.

  I balled up my fists and prepared to slug it out with the Mississippi smart-mouth.

  But Bobbie Jo ran right past me. “Stop!” she yelled again, jumping the curb and sprinting down the street. “Stop!”

  I turned and called after her. “Hey, what … where are you going?”

  Then I saw what Bobbie Jo was yelling at, and a shiver ran up my spine. There were Justin and Ellie, on their bicycles with the spaceship box mounted over them. They were pedaling like crazy, picking up speed entirely too fast, heading straight down the Sycamore Street hill.

  CHAPTER 20

  Quando the Spaceman

  I ran after them, the soles of my Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers slapping the pavement faster and faster. I pumped my arms and pushed forward as hard as I’d ever pushed in my entire life.

  But I couldn’t catch up. Bobbie Jo stayed out front, and in front of her were Justin and Ellie. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how new and expensive my shoes were, I couldn’t gain on them.

  “Stop!” Bobbie Jo and I both yelled.

  But the twins didn’t. If they could hear us, they ignored us. Down the Sycamore Street hill they steered their spaceship, faster and faster with every second, until it started to swerve.

  A car came around the curve at the bottom of the hill and started up. Bobbie Jo waved her arms as she ran. “Car!” she shouted. “Look out for the car!”

  “Yeah, look out!” I screamed.

  The spaceship straightened out just in time and safely passed the car on the right. Then it picked up even more speed. I kept running after the twins, going so fast I almost pitched face first onto the asphalt.

  But it was no use. “Look out!” I screamed again, watching helplessly as the spaceship missed the curve at the bottom of the hill. It bounced over the curb, shot across the freshly mown Kentucky bluegrass, and sailed off the creek bank into the air, acting for all the world as if it really were taking off for the moon.

  Bobbie Jo was just clearing the curb at the bottom of the hill when I finally passed her. I flew through the air and landed in the grass, immediately tripping over the root of a tree. I fell forward and skidded on my chest to a stop at the edge of the creek bank.

  Justin and Ellie’s spaceship was on its side in the shallow water below me. They were nowhere to be seen, and there were no sounds from inside the box.

  I jumped to my feet and leaped halfway down the creek bank. But it was wet and slippery, so I skidded the rest of the way, arms flailing, trying not to end up on my bottom.

  Instead, I went forward, falling splat on my face. I staggered to my feet, covered from head to toe with slimy dark mud.

  “Justin?” I yelled. “Ellie?” I stumbled through the creek water over to the spaceship. “Are you all right? Hey, you guys, speak to me!”

  Nothing. I searched frantically for the spaceship door, finally found it, tore it open, expecting to see the broken, bloody bodies of my brother and sister.

  Justin and Ellie were in one corner of the box, piled there like dirty laundry. They both looked up at me for a second, a strange mixture of fright and surprise on their faces. Then Ellie broke into a big grin.

  “We made it!” she cried. “We made it to the moon!’

  Justin pointed straight at me. “Yeah, look!” he said, his eyes shining like pie pans in the sun. “It’s Quando the spaceman!”

  CHAPTER 21

  Pretty Cool

  For a moment I stood there looking down at Justin and Ellie, and I almost started crying. Not sad crying, but glad, glad that they were okay.

  Then Justin pulled a hot dog from his pocket. “We brought this for you, Quando,” he said. “It’s food from our dinner table on Earth.” He held it out for me.

  But the hot dog slipped from Justin’s fingers, did a double flip, and landed on top of my mudcaked shoe. Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers à la hot dog. I started laughing at the sight of it, a wave of relief washing over me.

  “That’s not Quando!” Ellie said. “Not even a spaceman could laugh that much like Ryan!”

  Justin reached up from the corner of the toppled spaceship. “Ryan! You came to the moon, too!”

  I laughed even harder and pulled the twins from the box. “No, we’re in Kentucky,” I said. “We’re home.” Then, there in the middle of the creek, I gave them a big mud-covered hug.

  “Well, that’s a who’d-a-thought-it,” Bobbie Jo said quietly. I turned to see her standing at the top of the creek bank, green eyes sparkling. She smiled, and I couldn’t help smiling back.

  Bobbie Jo and I helped the twins climb the slippery bank. I hauled their bicycles out of the muck, and their soggy spaceship, too.

  By the time we reached the top of the hill, it was beginning to get dark. Back at the house, I took off my muddy Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers and left them on the front walk. I changed and washed up while Bobbie Jo helped Justin and Ellie get into pajamas and ready for bed.

  When I went into the twins’ bedroom, Justin said, “Will you read us a story, Ryan?”

  “I know just the one,” I said. It took me a minute to find it, but when I pulled The Cat in the Hat off the shelf,
Ellie said, “Oh!”

  The twins sat in my lap while I read to them. They insisted that Bobbie Jo sit close by, so she could see the pictures.

  After the story, I tucked the twins in. Bobbie Jo sang the fried ham song so softly, it sounded like a lullaby. I found myself singing along: “Fried ham, fried ham, cheese, and bologna …”

  Ellie said, “You sing nice, Ryan.”

  Justin nodded. “Even better than that!”

  I laughed and said, “Thanks.” I gave them each a hug, and a kiss, too.

  At the front door, I turned on the porch light for Bobbie Jo. She said good night and started down the steps. I followed, calling, “Hey, thanks for the help.” She stopped and looked back. I fidgeted around for a second, then added, “I’m sorry about the things I said over at your house.”

  Bobbie Jo smiled and, before I knew what was happening, came back up the steps and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “See you tomorrow at school,” she said, and was gone.

  All the blood seemed to rush to my head. I felt dizzy and had to sit down on the porch steps. I squeezed my eyes shut, then popped them open and looked out into the night. It took a few seconds, but my vision finally cleared.

  The first thing that came into focus were my Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers, lying where I had left them on the sidewalk. I could also see my old shoes, on the lawn where I’d thrown them earlier. If I hadn’t known, though, I wouldn’t have been able to tell which was which. One pair muddy, the other smudged with desert dirt, in the dim glow of the front porch light, each looked as good as the other. All that money and energy and trouble, and from where I sat, I couldn’t see any difference.

  Except there was something about the old pair—the left shoe of the old pair.

  I stood up and stared. Hmmmm. Maybe the dim porch light and darkening night shadows were playing tricks on my eyes. I was really tired. It had been a long day.

  But then I thought I saw something move inside the shoe. I walked down the porch steps. I crept out onto the grass and leaned closer … just as my tarantula crawled out onto the shoelaces.

  “Fang!” I yelled, and swept him up on his old-shoe perch. “Is that really you?”

  It really was.

  Not long after I’d gotten Fang settled back in his terrarium and the lid put on tight (he’d pushed up one corner to escape, I figured out), Mom and Dad came home. When they asked what the twins and I had done while they were gone, I said, “Took a wild spaceship ride to the moon. But we landed in Kentucky.”

  They both laughed.

  I said, “Ask Justin and Ellie.”

  But they just kept on laughing.

  I shrugged and said, “I’ve been thinking that I should go with you to take Justin and Ellie to their kindergarten class tomorrow, before I go to junior high. I could tell them what it was like for me when I first started school, give them a few tips.”

  Mom looked at me for a moment, then nodded and said, “That’s very nice of you, Ryan. Very mature.”

  Dad patted me on the shoulder. “He’s growing up!”

  I rolled my eyes but had to smile. Come to think of it, I did feel different than I had when the day started. Not a completely new person. Just a little more grown-up, maybe, like Dad said.

  Which didn’t mean that life was going to be one big happy-ever-after from then on. I still had schedules and new teachers’ names to learn at junior high, and a locker combination to remember. And probably classes to run for on opposite ends of the building. And big seventh- and eighth-graders who would hog the ball during basketball games after lunch. And swirlies to avoid. And on top of all that, at least two more apologies to make: to Gordon and Telly, for accusing them of stealing Fang. It wasn’t going to be easy.

  But after everything that had happened with Justin and Ellie, all that stuff didn’t seem as important as it had before. I figured I would probably be able to handle it, no matter what brand of shoes I put on in the morning.

  After saying good night to Mom and Dad, I climbed into bed and turned off the light. Although Mom still hadn’t started painting yet, the moonlight that filled the room made the walls look less pink. Through the window I could see the moon—beautiful, silvery, a Kentucky moon.

  Quando’s moon, too, I thought with a smile. Crazy twins. They really were … well, pretty cool.

  “Good night, Justin,” I whispered up toward their room. “Good night, Ellie.” I slowly closed my eyes … just as my bedroom door flew open, slamming into the wall.

  I shot straight up off the mattress with a scream—“Aygh!”—and landed on the floor.

  Justin and Ellie ran in. “Ryan! Ryan!” they yelled. “Quando is coming back!”

  They waved their stuffed animals in my face. “Sleepy Bear and Hippo are going to fly with him to Jupiter! We’ve got to get the spaceship ready! Get up, Ryan! Get up, NOW!”

  Acknowledgments

  Although writing is mostly a solitary task, turning a story into a book is not.

  I especially want to acknowledge the expert guidance I have received on Tarantula Shoes (and on many other projects) from my editor, Margery Cuyler. Working behind the scenes, she rarely gets all the credit she deserves.

  Also, thanks to John and Kate Briggs, and all the good people at Holiday House, for their warmth and support of me as a writer.

  TOM BIRDSEYE

  Corvallis, Oregon, 1994,

  About the Author

  As a kid, Tom Birdseye was decidedly uninterested in writing—or any academic aspect of school, for that matter—never imagining that he would eventually become a published author. And yet, nineteen titles later—novels, picture books, and nonfiction—that is exactly what has happened. His work has been recognized for its excellence by the International Reading Association, Children’s Book Council, National Council of Social Studies, Society of School Librarians International, Oregon Library Association, and Oregon Reading Association, among others. Combined, his books have either won or been finalists for state children’s choice awards forty-three times. Life, it seems, is full of who’d-a-thought-its. He lives and writes in Corvallis, Oregon, but launches mountaineering expeditions to his beloved Cascades on a regular basis.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1995 by Tom Birdseye

  Cover design by Connie Gabbert

  ISBN: 978-1-4976-4608-7

  This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

  345 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com

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