Dodger for Sale

by Jordan Sonnenblick

  Oh, no, I thought. Dodger had worked for the Great Lasorda for thousands of years, until I had used a magical wish to ask for Dodger’s freedom. I didn’t want him to have to go back after all we had been through together. I sat up so suddenly that Dodger yanked his hand away from my nose and yelped. “Dodger,” I said, “you can’t go back to Lasorda. You just can’t!”

  “But what about the forest? What about your big quest? We can’t just let the trees get chopped down and everything.”

  “We’ll think of something. We always think of something. Right?”

  Dodger gave me a crushing hug. Which made my nose start bleeding again. Meanwhile, Dodger’s phone fell on the frozen ground, and I could hear a faint voice coming from it: Dodger, are you still there, present, accounted for?

  “Dodger,” I said, “why didn’t you just tell me all this stuff? Why would Rodger know everything if I didn’t?” Rodger is Dodger’s brother, who still works for Lasorda. Rodger and Dodger look almost exactly alike, but you can tell who’s who when they speak. Rodger has a strange habit of talking in synonyms.

  “Uh, can I call you back?” Dodger asked.

  Sure, fine, A-OK, no problemo, Rodger said.

  Then Dodger hung up and looked at me. “Buddy,” he said, “I think I messed up.”

  Then he explained everything to me. I had always thought Lasorda just made all of the magical potions Dodger had used in our adventures together, but apparently Lasorda had been buying them from a group of leprechauns that live in our forest. Dodger had been promising all along that he would pay Lasorda back, and now the leprechauns had started asking Lasorda for the gold.

  Jeepers. This was a pretty complicated situation. “A hundred thousand gold pieces, huh?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Dodger replied. “Is that a lot?”

  I sighed and patted him on the shoulder. My head hurt. “Let’s go home, okay?” I said. Then we trudged off through the woods, leaving a purple patch of blood in the blue snow.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Sold!

  “DOES IT HURT A LOT?” Lizzie asked me at lunch the next day.

  My nose had swollen up overnight, and people had been asking about it all morning. At home, I had made up an elaborate excuse about a branch falling off a tree and hitting me, but at school I was just telling everyone I had “run into something.” Unfortunately, I had a feeling my parents and sister hadn’t believed the excuse about the branch—and the last thing I needed was to give Amy a reason to snoop around even more than usual.

  “Only when I breathe,” I said.

  “Ha-ha. So, Willie, what are we going to tell the student council today? Do we have a plan for saving the forest or not?”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “Why don’t we tell them we’re working on it? That’s what mayors and governors always say when they don’t have a good answer.”

  “All right. But we will have to find something useful to do really soon. Otherwise, Dodger and everything else that lives in the forest will be in real trouble.”

  Everything else that lives in the forest? I thought. Hmmm … Maybe I would be able to come up with a plan after all. I just needed a little more time to think.

  After school, at student council, Lizzie told the group that she and I had been doing research in order to save the forest. Some of the younger kids looked kind of impressed, but one third grader said, “Research? Isn’t that, like, reading? How is reading stuff going to help a forest?”

  “Research isn’t just reading,” I said. “Sometimes you have to do science experiments, or go searching for information on the computer.”

  “And sometimes you even have to find information out in the world,” Lizzie added.

  “Like what?” Beeks said.

  “Like the name of the person who’s selling the land,” Lizzie fired back.

  “So, how does that matter?” Craig Flynn asked.

  “Well, maybe we could convince the person not to sell the property,” Lizzie said.

  “Or maybe we could find someone to buy the woods who would promise not to knock them down,” I added.

  “Oh, really?” Beeks said. “Who in the world would want to do that? What good are a bunch of stupid old trees, anyway? It’s not like the trees do anything.”

  Mrs. Starsky put her hand on Beeks’s shoulder and said, “A forest is more than a bunch of trees, James. It’s also a factory for making the oxygen we all breathe. Plus, it’s a home for thousands and thousands of different plants and animals.”

  “Oh, and that’s another thing,” I said. “If we could find some kind of rare living thing in the forest, maybe we could convince the town that the woods have to be saved.”

  “Good thinking, Willie,” Mrs. Starsky said.

  Good thinking, Willie, I could see Beeks mouthing with a smirk behind her back.

  “Have you actually tried to find anything in there?” a fourth-grade girl asked.

  “We went exploring in the woods yesterday, but we didn’t find anything that looked particularly rare,” Lizzie admitted.

  “What if you had help?” a kindergartner asked. “My mom says I’m excellent at finding stuff. I mean, during the vacation, I found every single one of my Hanukkah presents. They were in my dad’s closet, behind his sneakers. That was a pretty good hiding place, because nobody wants to touch Dad’s sneakers, believe me. So anyway, I think I would be an excellent strange-creature hunter.”

  All of the other little kids liked that. Instantly, we had a ton of volunteers to help us comb the forest for odd wildlife. Then Lizzie decided to sign kids up for other tasks, like writing letters to the town council and the newspapers, researching the history of the forest, and reading up on endangered local species. It was pretty cool. In about five minutes, we went from having to do everything all by ourselves to having our own workforce. In fact, the sign-ups went so well that soon there were only two people who hadn’t volunteered: James Beeks and Craig Flynn.

  Lizzie went to work. “You know, James,” she said, “what we need now is someone who could be in charge of working with the town government on this. You’d be great for that job, with all of your political experience and all. Plus, I think you could really impress a lot of people by saving the forest. You’d be showing everyone what a true leader you are.”

  “Oh, yeah? Like who?”

  “Like … I don’t know … your dad?” Ooh, that was a good one. We knew from experience that James had a major issue with trying to impress his father.

  “My dad has more important things to worry about than a bunch of trees.”

  “Yes, but he would definitely be happy to see you taking charge of a major political operation … working with the town council and the mayor … getting big things done. Unless you’d rather have me give the job to someone else. I’d imagine there are plenty of fourth graders who could use this when they run for student council president next year.”

  Beeks whispered a few words to Craig Flynn, who whispered back. They seemed to be arguing for a minute or so, but then they both nodded. “Fine,” James said. “We’ll do it. I’ll write the letters and make the phone calls, and Craig here can, um, bake cookies for the next town council meeting.”

  “Bake cookies?” Craig growled. “I’m too tough to bake cookies.”

  “You know,” Lizzie said, “whoever bakes the cookies gets to eat as many as he wants when they’re done.”

  “Oh, fine,” Craig said. “But don’t expect me to wear an apron or anything.”

  Beeks smirked at him. “Nah. But maybe one of those cool white hats with the poofy part on top?”

  And that was that. It looked like we had the student council on board in our fight to save the woods. I told all of the kids who were doing research that they should come to our next meeting with information, and then I adjourned the meeting. That means I got to bang the gavel again, which wasn’t as much fun as usual because the vibration running up my arm made my nose hurt.

  Lizzie and I spent the week
between meetings reading up on endangered and threatened animals in our state, hanging out with Dodger, and trying to keep Amy from driving us totally nuts. She followed us everywhere with lists of animals, names of wildlife protection organizations, and of course her trusty Sherlock Holmes tools. If you’ve never been stalked by a second grader who carries a magnifying glass and wears a checkered hat with earflaps, you just don’t know what you’re missing.

  And you probably want to keep it that way.

  Because Amy was around all the time, Dodger had to lay low. From what I could tell, he spent a lot of time in his lamp. From the occasional snippets of the Chimptopian national anthem that floated from the lamp at odd hours, I got the feeling he was also on the phone a lot. I hoped he was arguing with the Great Lasorda. I mean, I knew Lasorda was annoying and pushy, but I hadn’t thought he was the kind of guy who would sell the whole forest for so little reason.

  Unless Lasorda was trying to threaten Dodger into going back to work for him. Or maybe he wanted to sell the forest so he could pay the leprechauns back, but take away their homes at the same time. That would be really, really sneaky. Jeepers. As soon as money is involved, life gets really complicated.

  The day of the next meeting rolled around, and Lizzie and I decided to meet early before school to make one last check for forest creatures. Amy had told us that sometimes different species are visible at different times of day, and all of our other exploration visits had been in the afternoons. Lizzie had a list of animals to look for, along with a picture of each. There was a tiny mammal called the Least Shrew that looked kind of like a mouse with a long, pointy nose, a reptile called the Bog Turtle, and an amphibian called the Spotted Salamander. There was even something called a Flying Squirrel, which sounded kind of alarming. I didn’t mention it to Lizzie, but I had a feeling I might have to run away and hide if I saw one of those coming at me.

  We were just about to step off the sidewalk and into the forest when Amy came bounding around the corner. “Can I go with you guys? Huh? Huh? I promise I won’t bother you at all. I’ll just help you look. I mean, six eyes are better than four, right? Unless your strangely invisible companion is meeting you here, too, in which case eight eyes are better than six.”

  The worst thing about Amy’s constant snooping is how smart she is. Even though she couldn’t see Dodger, she somehow seemed to know that Lizzie and I had an unseen friend. Once she had even asked us whether we were hanging out with a blue orangutan, and I denied it. Which wasn’t exactly lying, since Dodger is a chimpanzee. But anyway, we couldn’t possibly bring her into the woods with us. What if she somehow found the Field of Dreams? Or spotted a leprechaun? Or kept up her nonstop talking and drove every animal in the forest into hiding?

  “Amy, please go home,” I said. I really didn’t want to be mean, but there was just no way I was taking her in there.

  “No,” she said. “We’re already halfway to school, and I don’t want to go home and take the bus. Plus, you need me.”

  “Yeah, right,” I said.

  “You totally do. Watch, I’ll ask you some questions to prove it. Where in the forest would you look for a Least Shrew?”

  “Ummm …”

  “See, told ya. And where would you find a Bog Turtle?”

  “Uh, in a bog?”

  “And what, exactly, is a bog?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe we’ll just look for the turtle, and wherever we find it, that’s a bog.”

  “All right, I just have one more question: Who bought the forest?”

  “What are you talking about?” Lizzie and I both asked at once.

  “I’m talking about that!” Amy exclaimed. She was pointing to the FOR SALE sign at the edge of the sidewalk. Someone had stapled a big red banner to the bottom, with just one word on it:

  SOLD!

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Beeks, Beeks, Beeks, and Son

  ONCE WE FOUND OUT the disastrous news that the forest had already been sold, Lizzie and I didn’t even bother going in to look for rare animals. We just walked the rest of the way to school, with Amy trailing behind.

  “I wonder who bought the woods,” Amy said. “Maybe it’s a huge real estate developer and they’re going to put a hundred outlet stores in there. That would be the worst—wall-to-wall pavement as far as the eye can see. And can you imagine the view from our windows at home? Parking lots—yuck! Or maybe a garbage company is going to put a massive dump there. And they’re going to throw disgusting stuff in: Dead bodies! Bloody pig guts from butcher stores! Toxic chemicals! Yikes! We’d never be able to open our windows again! On the other hand, maybe a hospital is going to build a psycho ward. And they’re going to send all the craziest madmen in the state to live there! All day long, we’ll hear their disturbed laughter. And then at night, we’ll be awakened by the terrifying screams of their tormented—”

  I couldn’t take listening anymore, so I snapped, “Could you just be quiet for a change, Amy? You are NOT helping! Why can’t you just leave us alone?”

  Amy looked at me like I had just thrown something at her. For a moment, I thought she was going to cry, but then she just stomped away from us and into the school yard. Lizzie turned to me and said, “Why did you do that, Willie? She’s not that bad. And she really does try to help.”

  I sighed. “I know you’re right. It’s just that she never stops. I’ll tell her I’m sorry later, okay?”

  Lizzie nodded and we went into school.

  At the student council meeting, a lot of the younger kids were very excited to show us all the work they had done to learn more about the forest. It was pretty interesting. Kids had drawn life-size pictures of several animals (as it turns out, bog turtles are kind of cute); made maps, charts, and graphs (it was sad to see how little wild land was left in our area and how fast it was disappearing); and even brought in little dioramas of animal habitats (it’s amazing how many animals can live in a forest if nobody cuts the trees down). The excitement was running so high that I couldn’t even bear to tell them the bad news about the SOLD banner.

  As soon as I banged the gavel, I gave all of the council members time to show us what they had learned. Then, because I knew I had to tell them sooner or later, I told the group that the land had already been sold. That got everybody really riled up, and kids started shouting out ideas for what to do next:

  “Let’s call the mayor!”

  “No, let’s call the governor!”

  “No, let’s call the newspaper!”

  “Hey, why don’t we form a human chain and block the bulldozers?”

  “What bulldozers?”

  “You know, the ones that are going to knock down the forest.”

  “Oh, those bulldozers.”

  “Hey, I think bulldozers are cool! I saw this one show where a bulldozer totally flattened a hill in about five seconds flat. And then they put a car in front of it, and the bulldozer turned the car into a twisted pile of smoking wreckage. It was awesome!”

  “Uh, can we focus for a minute here?” Lizzie said. “We really do have to act fast now. We will still need to gather evidence to prove that building on our woods would be a bad idea. Then we’re going to need to get the word out to the government, the newspapers and TV stations, and everybody in town. We’ll need committees, volunteers, sign-up sheets! We’re not going to take this lying down!”

  Then James Beeks said, “You might as well forget it, Lizzie. I mean, it’s not like the town council is going to listen to a bunch of little kids, anyway.”

  “What are you talking about, James? We’re just getting started.”

  “Yeah, but doesn’t it seem kind of pointless? Whatever they’re going to build there, they’re going to have to build it somewhere. So even if you do stop them from knocking down these woods, you’re not really saving the planet, anyway.”

  Wow, that sounded kind of logical. I hate it when Beeks starts sounding reasonable.

  “James,” Lizzie said, “what’s going on? At the last
meeting, you agreed to help.”

  “I know, but … look, maybe we should just have a big bake sale to raise money for charity. We’d be doing something totally useful, and … and … and Craig would even wear an apron!”

  Craig jumped up. “What? Why would I have to wear the apron? Why couldn’t you wear it? Why do I always have to do the dirty work, huh?”

  James looked down for a minute, then back up at Lizzie. I couldn’t believe it: He almost looked like he was apologizing for something. “Lizzie, please. I’ll even wear the apron. I’ll wear ten aprons—pink ones. With bunnies on ’em. Just don’t make us do this forest thing.”

  Lizzie was speechless. So was everybody else, until Mrs. Starsky broke the silence. “All right, kids. Time’s up for today. Let’s all take a few days to see what happens, okay? In the meantime, Willie and Lizzie can work on finding out who is supposed to buy the land. Then maybe we can vote on our next steps when we meet again.”

  I was so confused I almost pounded the gavel down on my own hand. Why had James suddenly tried to get us to change our project? He had been negative at first, but that was different; it was just his usual sniping at anything Lizzie or I said. Now he was almost begging us to do something else. And was he right? Was saving the forest a hopeless idea?

  My head hurt.

  Lizzie had a dentist appointment after the meeting, and Amy had left when school got out, so I walked home all alone. As I drew within sight of the spot on the sidewalk where the FOR SALE sign had been, I couldn’t help noticing it looked different somehow. For a few moments, I felt hopeful. Maybe the project had been canceled! Maybe we had just imagined the SOLD banner! Yeah, right. And maybe my ninety-year-old aunt Ida is going to run away and join the Marines.

  When I got close enough to see, the sign was different. In fact, the old sign was completely gone, and in its place was a larger one: