Finchosaurus

by Gail Donovan

  “Diplodocus,” suggested Atticus.

  “Or Iguanodon,” said Finch.

  “Totally,” agreed Atticus.

  Finch kept digging and tossing the weeds into a pile. Dig, yank, toss. Dig, yank, toss. He should have talked to Atticus a long time ago. Not because of his investigation; just because the kid was pretty fun. Why hadn’t they ever hung out before?

  Maybe because he was already hanging out with Noah, pretty much 24/7. They hung out during school. And they hung out after school.

  Simple—except it got Finch thinking. If a kid did something different than you after school, you might be a during-school friend. But maybe not. Best friends were usually the kids you saw after school, too. Over the years, Finch had done different things, but whatever he had done, it was almost always with Noah.

  “All right, Mrs. Adler’s fifth graders,” called Miss Kirby. “Time to get out of this heat.”

  Finch and Atticus lined up to rinse their hands with the hose, then trooped inside to the Activity Room—out of the dog-breath air and into the air-conditioning—where everybody had to wash their hands again using soap. Miss Kirby asked for a few helpers to wash and cut up kale. Everyone else could have free time at one of the quiet tables.

  Finch saw Angelika volunteer to make salad, along with Charlotte, Haley, and Graciela. He followed Atticus, who beelined it for one of the smaller tables. There was a stack of books and the usual assortment of mazes, puzzles, and word searches.

  “Hey,” said Noah, as he plopped down in a chair beside Finch. “We’ve got a problem.”

  “Hey,” said David, as he took another seat.

  David was one of the shorter-than-Finch kids. He was so short that when he sat down his head was barely above the table. He had super-curly hair that he let grow long, kind of like camouflage: I’m bigger than I look!

  “Hey,” echoed Finch. “What problem?”

  “They want more money,” said Noah.

  “Money?” asked Finch, trying to play dumb. And trying to signal Noah: Why are you talking about this in front of everyone? Remember how this was kind of a secret?

  “Oscar and Oliver took your money,” explained David, giving Finch a funny look, as if he really was dumb. “And now they say they want more!”

  “Sorry,” said Noah, with a shrug. “But he basically guessed.”

  “Guessed what?” asked Atticus.

  Finch didn’t answer right away. For a second, he held on to the used-to-be-all-his secret. But what was the point? Noah and Angelika and Guppy knew everything. Fatouma and Mohamed knew he was trying to do favors for kids, even if they didn’t know why. And now David knew they were trying to help him. So why not tell Atticus?

  Besides, he was mad. Too mad to worry about keeping secrets. In a low voice, he explained: How he’d found a note that said Help. How they thought David might need help because Oscar and Oliver were taking his milk money. How Noah had given money to Oscar and Oliver. How they’d taken money from Angelika, too. And how now, apparently, they wanted more money.

  “That stinks,” said Atticus. He sounded mad, too.

  “Totally,” agreed David. “And I didn’t even write the note! And now you guys are out all that money, and it’s my fault.”

  “No,” said Finch firmly. “It is not your fault.”

  “I know!” said Noah. “I know how to get more money. I’ll charge kids to see my bare feet.”

  “I always wanted to see your toes,” said Atticus.

  “Me, too,” said David. “Are they really stuck together?”

  “I’ve seen them,” said Finch. “You don’t want to pay money for that. Seriously.”

  Everybody laughed, and Finch joined in. “But seriously,” he said again. “We’re not gonna let them shake you down. I get allowance again on Saturday.”

  “I have a better idea,” said Atticus. “When do they get you?”

  “Recess,” said David.

  Atticus leaned forward. “So, we make sure you’re never alone at recess. One of us is always with you.”

  “Really?” asked David, sitting up a little straighter.

  “I’m in,” said Noah.

  “We’re all in,” said Finch.

  He held out his fist, and Noah, David, and Atticus all bumped their fists against his.

  Miss Kirby began tapping a spoon against a big bowl. “Grammy Mary, can you tell us what time it is?”

  Grammy Mary looked in the bowl. “I think it’s time to eat the fruits of our labor,” she said.

  “Yes,” agreed Miss Kirby. “Everybody please line up and get ready to try a delicious vegetable.”

  Finch got up and stood in line.

  “I hope you love it, Finch,” said Miss Kirby as she handed him a bowl of kale salad.

  Finch took the bowl, seriously doubting he was going to like it. Maybe if he was an herbivorous dinosaur he might. But he wasn’t. He took a nibble. Disgusting! It was worse than the weeds he had eaten, trying to make Atticus laugh.

  That got him thinking about Atticus again. Atticus had turned out to be funny. Atticus had turned out to have a good idea for how to help David. Most important, nothing Atticus had said seemed like he might have a reason to bury a note that said Help. But when David said he hadn’t written the note, Atticus didn’t say, “Me neither.”

  “This is poison,” said Noah. “I’m dying.”

  “Me, too,” said Finch, hoping that Miss Kirby’s definition of “trying” really did mean one bite, and not “cleaning your plate.” Glancing around, wondering where to dump out the rest of his salad, he saw Atticus. He was shoveling kale into his mouth with a strange look on his face.

  The look didn’t say Disgusting. But it didn’t say Yum, either. It just said Hungry. Like he was going to eat that bowl of kale, no matter how it tasted.

  15. Martin Martin

  Finch woke up Saturday to the smell of pancakes and the sound of a baby crying. Pancakes meant that his parents were starting the day with a big breakfast because it was going to be a clean-the-house Saturday. Everybody would have to do their fair share. A baby crying meant . . . he had no idea.

  He ran downstairs to see what was going on.

  “Mom, how do I make it stop?” asked Sam, holding the crying baby. It wasn’t a real baby. It was one of the make-believe ones the health teacher gave to eighth graders. “I already fed it and burped it and changed its diaper. That’s everything on the checklist.”

  “Change its diaper?” asked Finch. “Does it—you know—go poop?”

  “No,” said Sam, wearily. “You just change the diaper and somehow the software knows. It keeps track of everything you did or didn’t do.”

  “Does this baby have a name?” asked Finch’s dad from where he stood at the stove, cooking pancakes.

  “Martin,” said Sam. “His name is Martin.”

  “Martin?” cried Finch. “So, it’s Martin Martin? That’s funny!”

  Their mom reached out for the baby. “I’ll hold him for a little bit. Hello, you sweet thing,” she cooed.

  The baby stopped crying. In the silence of no-crying, the warm air coming through the open window was suddenly filled with bird chirps.

  Sam plunked himself down in a chair and rested his head on the table, using his arm for a pillow. “I’m so tired,” he groaned. “He kept crying in the night.”

  Finch’s dad added another pancake to the platter on the table. “You cried when you were a baby, too.”

  Finch put a pancake on his plate. “Did I cry?”

  “Of course,” said their mom. “That’s one of the ways babies communicate. Our job as parents is figuring out what you’re trying to say. Sometimes babies are hungry. Sometimes they just want to be held.”

  Finch smeared butter and poured maple syrup on his pancake. “What did I want?” he asked, before
he took a big bite.

  Finch’s mom and dad laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” he cried, his mouth full of warm, sweet pancake.

  “You wanted to move,” said his mom. “You liked being jiggled.”

  “And you liked being outside,” recalled his dad. “I took you outside. And then jiggled.”

  Finch jiggled a little in his chair, because jiggling still felt good.

  “What did I like?” asked Sam in a muffled voice, facedown in the crook of his elbow.

  “Eating,” said their mom. “And sleeping. You were the most marvelous sleeper.”

  “Sleeping now,” he said.

  The baby began crying again and Finch jumped up from his chair. “Can I try? Maybe he likes being jiggled.”

  Finch’s mom held out the baby and Finch took him in his arms. His body was all bundled up so the only thing that showed was his little face, the golden-brown color of maple syrup. He tried jiggling, and Martin Martin stopped crying.

  “You’re a natural,” said his dad as he flipped a pancake.

  “I’m Maiasaura,” said Finch. “The good mother dinosaur.”

  “I’m going back to bed,” said Sam.

  “Hold your horses,” said their dad. “It’s Saturday. We’re doing chores.”

  “What about the baby?” asked Finch.

  “Maybe the baby will sleep,” said their mom. “Or maybe Sam can find a babysitter.”

  “I’ll do it!” said Finch. “Sam, want to hire me?”

  “How much?”

  Bird chirps flew in on the warm air, while Finch thought. Then he grinned at his brother. “I’m thinking, five dollars?”

  Sam stared at Finch with a look Finch didn’t see too often. Outsmarted. Finch wasn’t going to be blackmailed out of his allowance this week!

  “For the whole day,” countered Sam.

  “Deal,” agreed Finch.

  “Whoa,” said their dad. “Isn’t Sam supposed to be responsible?”

  “Finding child care is being responsible,” pointed out their mom.

  “I don’t know,” said their dad, shaking his head. “Isn’t the point of bringing home these babies to learn that you’re the one on duty, twenty-four/seven?”

  “No,” said Sam. “The point is, I needed extra credit in health class.”

  “How can you need extra credit in health?”

  “I’m going to be honest with you, Dad,” said Sam. “I did less work than I should have.”

  “Very funny,” said their dad. “But all right, fine. Finch is babysitting. You think five dollars is fair?”

  “Too late!” crowed Sam. “He made a deal.”

  “It’s okay,” said Finch. “I’m cool with five dollars.” Still holding the baby, he slid back onto his chair. Martin Martin stayed quiet, and Finch gobbled the rest of his pancake to the sounds of birds chirping and cheeping.

  “It’s something to think about, boys,” said their mom. “You care for a child yourself, or you pay somebody. Or, if you’re lucky, you find somebody like Noah’s mom.”

  “What about Noah’s mom?” asked Finch.

  “We traded child care,” she said. “You knew that.”

  Finch was so surprised he stopped eating. “No, I didn’t.”

  “Of course you did,” said his mom, wrapping her hands around her mug of coffee, a puzzled look on her face. “You know how, if you weren’t in aftercare, you either went to Noah’s, or he came here, right?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Because he’s my friend.”

  “You were already friends in kindergarten,” agreed his mom. “And it was lucky you kept on being such good friends, because we both needed child care after school.”

  She went on, talking about how back when Noah’s mother was a stay-at-home mom, they almost always went there. Then Noah’s parents divorced and his mom went back to work, so they had gone to school aftercare, remember, in third grade? In fourth grade the grown-ups decided that they could go to one of their houses, if they stuck together. Finally, this year the grown-ups agreed that fifth graders were old enough to go home alone, if they wanted.

  “So, you’ve graduated, I guess,” finished his mom. “No more child care for you. Now you’re the one doing the child care!”

  “Way to go,” added his dad.

  “Way to go,” echoed Finch. “Yay, me.”

  But Finch wasn’t feeling all Way to go—yay, me. The way his mom had described the last few years was true, he guessed. He’d just never thought about the reason why. Or, the fact that his why—he and Noah were friends—was totally different from his mom’s why. Glorified babysitting. It was like looking at a picture book you thought you knew by heart, and finding that the caption said something totally different.

  He felt like a lot of things were starting to look different, ever since he had found the note. Things looked the same on the outside. But underneath, it was a different story. How far beneath the surface did you have to go, to get to the bottom? Which reminded Finch—Guppy was waiting for a report.

  “How goes it?” asked Guppy. “Any luck getting to the bottom of your mystery note?”

  “Not really,” said Finch, sitting cross-legged on the grass with Martin Martin, Sam’s health class make-believe baby, in his lap. He had taken the phone outside so he could talk without other people hearing. “It’s like, the more I dig, the farther away the bottom gets.” He told his grandfather about the kids he’d talked to that week. “But I don’t know if any of them wrote the note.”

  “I suppose everyone needs help with something or other,” said Guppy. “Except me! You can tell your mother not to worry about me. Tell her I’m fine, will you?”

  “Okay,” said Finch. “How’s Gammy?”

  “Well, it’s a funny thing, now that I think of it. She was the one who helped others all her life, and now she’s the one being helped. Sometimes it makes her grumpy.”

  Finch got that. He had felt grumpy back when everybody was trying to help him all the time.

  “Finch, I have to tell you something. Gammy was having a bad day and I was trying to take her mind off things, and I told her about your mystery note. She was so excited! I hope you’re not mad?”

  “That’s okay,” said Finch, looking down at the make-believe baby in his lap. Little Martin was quiet now. But if he was crying, Finch would want him to stop. Just like Guppy would want to stop Gammy from feeling grumpy. “It’s cool.”

  Guppy said he was sure Finch would figure it out soon, and Finch hoped that was true, because there wasn’t much time left. It was June—only two and a half weeks of school to go.

  16. In a Blur

  The next week went by in a blur.

  On Sunday, Finch offered to babysit again—if his brother gave him more money. Ten dollars.

  “Ten dollars?” cried Sam, just as Martin Martin began crying. “All right, whatever,” he said, handing over the baby. “I heard you need it for a good cause, anyway.”

  “What did you hear?” asked Finch.

  “That you’re stopping two kids from messing with another kid.” Sam made a fist and thumped Finch on the shoulder. “So that’s cool.”

  On Monday, he had Green Team with Noah. They looked at all the papers in all the recycling bins. Nothing.

  On Tuesday at Paleo Pals, he and Noah and Angelika sat together at one of the small tables with a Do Not Disturb: Student Reading sign and went over the class list again.

  For starters, they crossed off themselves. Angelika, Finch, Noah. Because it wasn’t them. Obviously. Then they crossed off the kids they had at least tried to help. Charlotte, David, Graciela, Haley, Kael, Khalid, Millie, Mohamed. That left Atticus, still a mystery. Fatouma, who was helping Millie but not getting any help herself. Oscar and Oliver, who Angelika said shouldn’t count. And Quinn and Samantha, who they st
ill needed to check out.

  On Wednesday, Finch challenged Atticus to a game of rock, paper, scissors. For a second, Atticus looked surprised. Then he made a fist and in unison they chanted, “Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!”

  Finch was paper. Atticus was scissors. Scissors cut paper.

  “I win,” said Atticus.

  “Two out of three?” asked Finch. “And if I win, you answer a question, okay?”

  In answer, Atticus held out his fist.

  Finch tried paper again, and Atticus picked rock. Paper covers rock. They were tied.

  Third round. Finch was rock. Atticus was scissors.

  “Rock smashes scissors,” admitted Atticus. “You win. So, the answer is No.”

  “I didn’t even ask the question!”

  “It’s about the note, right? The one you found? The reason we’re guarding David at recess?”

  “Yeah,” said Finch.

  “It wasn’t me. I mean, I guess I could have written it . . .” Atticus trailed off, then finished with, “But I didn’t.”

  On Thursday, Mr. White invited Finch for a little chat in his office.

  “How’s everything going?” he asked. “How is Finch?”

  “Good,” answered Finch, swaying from side to side. Because if he had to sit still—on a regular chair, inside—he at least had to move.

  “I should get one of those bouncy-ball chairs in here,” said Mr. White. He stood and offered Finch his seat. “Want to switch?”

  Finch hopped onto Mr. White’s chair. Nice. You could scoot around on the wheels. You could swivel back and forth, or even spin in a whole circle. How come grown-ups got such nice chairs, and kids didn’t? That was another not-fair thing about being a kid.

  “That’s a cool drawing,” he said, pointing to the picture of the three-headed dog, with Kael’s name in the corner.

  “It is,” agreed Mr. White. “Do you like to draw? Mrs. Haywood is here early most mornings for kids who want to use the art room. I hear there’s a few boys your age going now.”

  Uh-oh. Awesomeraptor on the hunt.

  “That’s okay,” Finch said, swiveling back and forth. “I don’t really like drawing.”