Dad was practically galloping down the stairs. I had never heard him move so fast, and I turned to talk to him. But he didn’t come into the kitchen. The front door banged open and he went thundering across the porch.
Mom tried to peer around the doorway. “What’s he doing?”
We heard him shout. “Stay right there!”
In the moment it took me to reach the front door, Dad had already grabbed Angelo by the collar. They were standing under the little tree, a crazy-looking man in a bathrobe shaking a frightened kid. Dad kept shouting. “What are you doing here? What’s your name?”
I ran across the lawn. Dad’s bathrobe flapped around his hairy legs, and Angelo was crying.
I felt awful to see him like that, kind of dangling at the end of Dad’s arm. His fists flailed at nothing; his eyes squirted tears. I pulled at Dad’s bathrobe and shouted, “Leave him alone! He’s my friend, Dad. That’s Angelo.”
Dad looked confused. “Why’s he lurking around the house?”
“He’s waiting for me.”
Dad let go. Angelo took off like a rabbit.
“Wait!” I shouted. But he kept running, and I could understand that. If it was me, I would want to find a quiet, private place to straighten my clothes and wipe my tears away. I would never let on that anything had happened.
“Why couldn’t he walk up to the door like a normal person?” asked Dad, like it was all Angelo’s fault.
“ ’Cause he’s scared of you,” I said.
“Why?” Dad looked completely puzzled. Across the street, Angelo went scurrying into the shortcut.
“You don’t trust anybody,” I said. “You’re so mean sometimes.”
Dad looked up at the apartment buildings, then back toward the house, where Mom was standing at the door. Like he suddenly realized he was wearing only his bathrobe, Dad tightened the belt and walked quickly up the path.
At the door Mom asked him sarcastically, “Have a nice talk with Angelo?”
Dad pushed past and started up the stairs.
“I hope you’re happy with yourself,” she said, her voice rising to follow him. “You just drove away your son’s best friend. I doubt we’ll ever see him again.”
Dad stopped at the landing. “Well, he shouldn’t have been acting like a thief,” he said. Under the red bathrobe, the backs of his legs were as white as bowling pins. “I look out the window and see someone lurking under a tree, what am I supposed to think?”
“That he’s shy?” asked Mom. “Do you know what he wanted? He came to ask if Igor could sleep over at his house. And you—”
“All right, I’ll do it your way,” said Dad. “I’ll close my eyes and pretend everything’s fine.”
He stomped up the rest of the stairs and slammed the bedroom door. Mom sighed. “Don’t be mad at him,” she said. “I really think he’s trying his best.”
THE SLEEPOVER
Mom called Angelo’s mother to arrange for the sleepover. On Saturday afternoon I stuffed a few things into a plastic bag and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Dad tried to give me another lecture about the need to stay alert. “Don’t let your guard down,” he said. “This is important.”
It looked like he was getting ready to talk for a long time. But Mom stepped between us and gave me a small box wrapped in fancy paper. “For Mrs. Bonito,” she said. “A little thank-you.”
I was happy when I left the house. But only halfway along the path to the iron gate I began to feel afraid. In my whole life I had never spent a night away from home. What if I got lonely? The farther I went, the more my fear kept building. What if the Lizard Man arrived while I was gone, and I went home on Sunday to find a deserted house? I decided that I didn’t really want to be away from home all night. But as soon as I knocked on Angelo’s door and Mrs. Bonito greeted me, my worries vanished.
“Holy smackerels, my favorite boy,” she said.
She was wearing a different dress, but it still had flowers printed on it, like all her clothes were made from old sofas. She beamed at me.
Smasher came scampering down the stairs, crazy with excitement. Angelo shouted from his room, “Watson?”
“Yeah!” I shouted back.
“Come on up.”
I took Mom’s present out of the bag and gave it to Mrs. Bonito. She almost started bawling. “The nicest thing,” she said. Then she pinched my cheeks and sent me upstairs. “You know the way.”
Up in Angelo’s room, I found him setting up the game. He was looking at the TV, watching my reflection. “So they let you out,” he said.
I nodded. “My dad’s not too happy about it.”
“Your dad’s a freak.”
Angelo pressed some buttons on his controller, and the game came on. He had already made up two characters: for him another Johnny Shiloh, for me a guy called Colt Cabana.
“Where’d you get that name?” I asked.
“From all-star wrestling,” said Angelo. “Me and my dad used to watch Colt Cabana every Saturday morning. We lay on the couch and ate potato chips.”
That was more than he’d ever told me about his dad. But he didn’t say anything else. We started playing the game as Smasher lay on the bed with her ears twitching. Johnny Shiloh and Colt Cabana conquered Iwo Jima, with Angelo giving the orders: “Look behind you!” “Take the point!” When I went hand to hand with an enemy soldier, Angelo called out Colt Cabana’s favorite wrestling moves. “Eat the feet!” and “Give him the Frankensteiner!”
It was one of the greatest times ever. But we didn’t stay up until dawn. At nine o’clock we turned off the lights and told ghost stories in the dark, using a flashlight to make our faces look like fiery skulls. At eleven, Angelo said he was tired, and he turned on the lights again and brought out an old sleeping bag with a tartan lining. He tossed it on the floor.
It looked about as soft as a brick, and I wasn’t looking forward to sleeping there. But Angelo surprised me. “You can have the bed,” he told me. “That’ll be the rule. Whoever sleeps over gets the bed.”
I sat on the mattress to take off my shoes. By mistake I pulled off my sock as well, and the hundred-dollar bill sprang out. It landed beside Angelo, a little wad of green paper.
“What’s that?” he asked.
I bent down to grab it. But Smasher was faster. She snatched it up in her mouth and shook it furiously.
“Drop that,” I said.
She growled. She snarled. Her eyes shone crazily. When I tried to pry open her little jaws she pulled back her lips and growled even louder.
“Ow!” I said. “She bit me.”
Angelo found that hilarious. He tapped a finger on Smasher’s black button nose and told her, “Drop it.” But she only growled at him and wouldn’t let go of the money until Angelo wrestled it out of her mouth.
I reached out my hand. “Give it back, Angelo.”
But he rolled away and started unfolding my money. By then it was soaked with dog spit, and he had to peel the layers apart. First the phone number appeared, written in huge indelible writing, then the face of Benjamin Franklin.
“A hundred dollars!” said Angelo.
“Come on, give it back,” I told him.
“Okay!” He tossed the money at me. “I wasn’t going to steal it.”
I shoved it into in my sock, pulled the sock over my foot, and slid into bed. Angelo asked, from the floor, “Why do you have a hundred dollars in your sock?”
I felt like our whole friendship depended on what I said. If I lied, he would know it. So I told just enough of the truth to make sense. “Oh, that’s my dad. You know what he’s like. Everyone should carry money for an emergency.”
“In their socks?”
I shrugged. “You can’t lose it.”
“Well, he’s lost it,” said Angelo. “Good night.”
He turned off the lights and crawled into the sleeping bag. Without anyone saying anything, we invented our second rule: at sleepovers we slept in our socks and our jeans and our T-sh
irts. I heard Smasher wriggle in beside Angelo.
“So what’s the phone number?” he asked. “On the money.”
I stared into the dark and said, “I don’t know.”
“Yes you do.” In Angelo’s voice was a hint—just a little hint—of the bullying boy he had been at first.
“No, really,” I told him. “I don’t know.” And that was the absolute truth. “Dad wrote it down when he gave me the money. He told me to call it if I ever need help.”
“So it’s like the bat signal?”
“Yes, Angelo,” I said. “It’s like the bat signal.”
THE RULES OF FRIENDSHIP
Just like there were rules about sleepovers, there were rules about friendship too. Some were so obvious that even I knew them. If Angelo invited me to sleep over at his house, I had to invite him to sleep over at mine.
But I didn’t want to do that. I was afraid of what he’d think of Mom and Bumble, or that he’d get bored in my empty room and go home early. Either way, he would tell everyone at school what a loser I was, and we would never be friends again.
But the rules of friendship had to be followed.
My last hope was that Dad would say no. But without even thinking about it, he nodded and said, “Sure. Sounds like a good idea.”
“He has a dog,” I said, thinking that would change his mind. “A little dog.”
“Oh, really?” Dad’s face scrunched up. He hated dogs in general, but especially little dogs like Smasher. He called them rats in fur coats, thinking it was hilarious. He said, “Do you think Angelo could leave it at home?”
“No,” I said.
Dad sighed. “Well, I suppose it will be all right.”
I didn’t believe that Dad was trying to be generous or anything. He just thought it would be easier to watch over me if he kept me close to home.
Angelo showed up at noon on Saturday. I heard Smasher barking as I unfastened the chain and turned the lock. As soon as I opened the door she darted inside, leapt up to greet me, and bounded into the kitchen.
I heard Dad’s voice—“What’s that?”—and then an excited squeal from Bumble. I walked into the room to find my sister on the floor, with Smasher squirming upside down to get her belly tickled. Mom gushed. “Oh, what a cute dog!”
Dad watched with a sour frown. He didn’t look any happier when Angelo came into the room.
I had never brought anyone home before, and nobody knew what to say or how to act. Mom seemed especially flustered, like a bird that had flown into the house by mistake. I said, “This is Angelo,” and she bobbed her head and twittered, “How do you do?”
It was awkward for Angelo. He stood there holding his sleeping bag stuffed in its sack, with the end of his toothbrush sticking out of his shirt pocket.
But it was even more awkward for Dad. Pretending they’d never met, he shook hands and smiled so horribly that I could see all of his teeth and his gums as well. With faded clown paint on his cheeks, he looked stranger than ever.
Bumble was shy. She went away and brought Hideous George, holding him out in front of her for Angelo to admire.
Angelo told me, “I didn’t know you had a brother.”
“Oh, ha-ha,” I said.
We went upstairs. Naturally, Bumble came with us, scampering on her hands and knees behind Smasher. I tried to hold her back with my foot as I closed the bedroom door, but she started wailing. Angelo said, “Aw, let her in.”
Bumble gave me a dirty look, then climbed up on my bed and bounced on the mattress. Angelo was gazing around the room in a way that made me feel embarrassed. I imagined what he was thinking. No video games? No computer? How can anyone live like this?
He went to the side window facing the park and pulled the curtains open.
“You shouldn’t do that!” shouted Bumble.
“Why not?”
“ ’Cause we’re not s’posed to.”
Angelo looked at me strangely again. “You’re not supposed to open the curtains?”
“Dad doesn’t want people looking in,” I told him.
“Crazy.” He let the curtains fall shut and went to the other window, to look out on the river. He had to lean over the bed to move the curtains; then the first thing he noticed was the roof over the little back porch. “Can you get out onto there?” he asked. “Can you climb down?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You never tried?” Angelo got onto the bed and tried to push up the window. But it didn’t move. He banged with his fist till the glass made crackling sounds. “It’s painted shut,” he said. “You got a knife?”
“No.”
I didn’t know why he bothered to ask me. From his pocket he pulled out a little penknife with a bone handle. He snapped it open and started scraping at the wood. Old dead flies and flakes of yellow paint fell to the sill.
When Angelo tried the window again it made a terrible screech that I was sure Mom and Dad would hear downstairs. But nobody came running to see what we were doing, and he soon had it sliding up and down with barely a sound at all. When he folded the knife and put it back in his pocket, the window was moving so easily that he could push it open with his fingertip. He held it open and started climbing over the sill.
Bumble scolded him. “You’re not allowed to do that! I’m telling Dad.”
Angelo already had one foot out on the roof. He looked back and said, “You better not. This is a secret, and you know what happens if you tell a secret?”
Bumble shook her head.
“You shrivel up and die. Just like those old flies. Tell her, Igor.”
“That’s right,” I said.
Bumble bit her lip as she stared at the dead flies on windowsill. She looked very solemn.
“Why don’t you go stand guard?” said Angelo. “Tell us if you see someone coming.”
Bumble couldn’t move fast enough. She rolled herself off the bed and leapt to her feet. Looking just like a tiny Dad, she stood pressed against the door, peering through a crack.
Angelo climbed out onto the roof. Smasher stood up on her one hind leg, holding on to the sill as she watched him, her tail wagging furiously. Ivy crunched under his feet as Angelo crept to the edge and leaned over.
“We could get down here easily,” he said. “There’s kind of a trellis.”
I thought of Mom underneath us in the kitchen. I said, “You better come in.”
But Angelo knelt by the trellis and tested the ivy. “It’s pretty strong,” he said. “I’m gonna climb down.”
“Don’t,” I told him.
Dad called up the stairs. “Igor? What are you boys doing?”
“Come back inside,” I told Angelo.
The ivy shifted under his knees. He teetered at the edge, grabbing at the ivy to save himself.
Smasher yelped. She tried to jump out onto the roof, leaping at the sill until she jolted the window loose. It slammed shut with a bang that scared her.
Bumble said, “Someone’s coming up the stairs!”
I tried to push the window open again, but the latch had jammed. I had to fiddle with it while Angelo crawled up the roof toward me.
“It’s Dad!” yelled Bumble.
“Shh.” I turned the latch. I pushed the window up and reached out to pull Angelo closer.
“He’s at the top of the stairs!”
Angelo leaned in through the window. Smasher fell aside as he tumbled onto the bed. I swept the curtains closed behind him just as Bumble screamed, “He’s here!”
The door swung wide open and Dad walked in. He looked at Angelo on the bed, at Smasher wriggling upside down, at me just standing there. “What are you boys doing?” he asked.
“Nothing, Mr. Watson,” said Angelo.
“You’re not going out on the roof, are you?”
“Oh, no,” said Angelo, as innocent as a choirboy. “That would be dangerous.”
Dad knew the truth. I could see it in his eyes. But all he said was “You’re right. You’d break your n
ecks.”
A WHISTLING LOON
“There’s nothin’ to do here,” said Angelo on Sunday morning.
I had been right to worry.
“Why don’t you have any video games?” he asked as he sprawled on the bed with Smasher. “Why don’t you have a computer?”
“My dad doesn’t like stuff like that,” I said.
“Why? ’Cause he thinks they rot your brain?”
“He thinks people can use them to spy on you.”
“Through a video game? Is he nuts?” The bed creaked as Angelo rolled over to look out through the curtains. “We should go to Deadman’s Castle.”
I would do almost anything to stop him from going home early, but that didn’t seem like a good idea. “I better not,” I said.
“Why?” asked Angelo. “You’re allowed to go out, aren’t you?”
I didn’t realize he was teasing me. “Sure,” I said. “But I’ve got rules.”
“Like what?”
“I’m not supposed to cross Jefferson.”
“You’ve already done that. We went—”
“I know,” I said. “But I’m not supposed to. And I’m not allowed to go on the other side of the river.”
“Are you serious, Watson?”
“Yeah, kind of.”
He laughed. “I bet your folks go there.”
“Probably,” I said.
“So why shouldn’t you?”
That was a good question.
“You wanna go right now?”
“Where?”
“Across Jefferson Street and over the river to Deadman’s Castle,” said Angelo, like I was stupid. “Stay with the program, Watson.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You scared?”
“No.” But that was a lie. I was afraid of getting in trouble with Dad again.
“Then let’s do it.”
I shrugged and said, “Sure.” Like I didn’t care one way or the other.
Angelo sat up on the bed. “Let’s go out the window. We can climb down the ivy.” All of a sudden he was Johnny Shiloh. “Get your sister to distract your folks. I’ll go first and you can lower Smasher to me. I’ll give you a signal. Like a whistling loon.”
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