Double the Danger and Zero Zucchini

by Betsy Uhrig

  Javier had taken a bite of his sandwich, and now his face turned bright red. I thought he’d let a tomato chunk get past his inspection until he swallowed and rasped, “How would I know?”

  “The ghostwriter is a reader,” said Marta. “Which is the whole point. It’s probably read about tons of battles. And wouldn’t it be nice to include the ghost in this important scene? We don’t want it feeling left out.”

  69

  SO WE LEFT THE STACK OF pages, minus the dud peace chapter, in the usual place on the Weintraub kitchen table, along with the usual Post-it asking for help with describing an epic battle, and waited. We decided to give it a few days, since there was a lot of new stuff for the ghost to read.

  Meanwhile, Alvin hadn’t backed off about “helping” with the book. He’d gotten so annoying, I was starting to research boarding schools for him.

  “Don’t you have something to read?” I asked one day when he was suddenly blowing hot gusts of Cheeto breath on my neck.

  “I’m between books,” he said.

  He began wandering around my room, lifting things and moving things and generally asking to be grabbed by the throat and tossed like a sock monkey into the hallway.

  “Can I help you find something?” I asked as sarcastically as I could.

  “No, thanks,” he said. “I’m fine.”

  “Then stop messing with my stuff and get out of here,” I said. “I’m busy.”

  “You’re not busy,” he said. “You’re watching some kid see how long he can balance an orange on his forehead.”

  “It’s homework.”

  “Watching someone trying to balance fruit on his face will never be homework. Unless it’s Abnormal Psychology homework. Is that what it is?”

  “Yes,” I said, “that’s what it is. I’m taking Abnormal Psychology. It’s a requirement for living with you.”

  I thought this was pretty cutting, but Alvin just snorted. Then he said something strange. Something strange that turned out to be true, which made it even stranger, looking back on it.

  “I’ll be around when you need me,” he said. “Which will be soon. But the price will be higher than you think.”

  70

  WE RETURNED TO THE OLD WEINTRAUB PLACE on the third afternoon after we’d left the pages. We’d figured this would be plenty of time for the ghost to outline a detailed battle for us, maybe diagram some weird weapons made of logs and strapped together with vines.

  I went directly to the last page while Javier and Marta stood eagerly by. I could see right away that there wasn’t enough writing on the blank page to describe an epic battle or even a minor argument.

  Instead, we got a lecture.

  “There shouldn’t be detailed battle scenes in children’s books,” the ghostwriter wrote. “There shouldn’t be such battles in civilized society, for that matter. Take a bird’s-eye view of the battle, from overhead, in broad detail. Battles are bad enough without having them shoved in your face.”

  The ghostwriter must have been channeling Caroline. It would have loved the peace chapter. It probably would have contributed the lyrics to a sappy song for the enemies to sing as they held hands/claws.

  “Well, that’s no help,” said Marta after she’d grabbed the page from me to make sure I hadn’t somehow been reading it wrong.

  “Now the ghost gets squeamish?” I asked. “Not before I was hit by dirt balls and ended up looking like a pirate?”

  “And not in a cool way,” Marta added.

  “Maybe if the eye patch had been black, it would have been cooler,” I said.

  “I don’t think so,” said Marta. “Hey, maybe the ghost died in a battle and has bad feelings about them. That makes perfect sense!”

  Maybe it did, but knowing that didn’t help our situation.

  Javier was reading the ghost’s note over and over as if it contained some important clue to his future happiness. Eventually, he sighed and said, “Maybe the ghost has a point. And maybe Caroline is right. Kids’ books aren’t supposed to be violent, are they?”

  “That’s what video games are for,” I said.

  “We don’t need blood spurting all over the place and limbs getting chopped off and heads rolling around,” said Marta. I wasn’t sure what video games she’d been playing, but I was positive her mother wasn’t aware of them. “We need to know where the different groups are positioned,” she said, “and what their plans of attack are.”

  “Right,” said Javier. “We need strategy.”

  “Isn’t that what a bird’s-eye view is?” I asked.

  “A bird’s-eye view makes everything look smaller,” said Javier. “Right? So we need to think small.”

  “Crud,” I said when we’d thought small for a while.

  “What?” asked Marta.

  “Alvin,” I said.

  “What about Alvin?”

  “He was right,” I said. “I hate it when Alvin’s right.”

  71

  YOU PROBABLY DON’T REMEMBER, FROM WAY back in an early chapter, my mentioning that Javier sometimes made stop-action films using Alvin’s Lego creatures. He used Alvin’s creatures for two reasons. First, Irene and Emilia didn’t play with Legos, and Javier’s mother had given all of his old ones away. Second, Alvin had not only inherited my old Legos, he’d managed to collect a huge number of his own. Practically legions of them. So whenever we needed creatures for a film, we had to go through Alvin.

  And the price was always steep.

  Also creative. There was the week I had to pull Alvin to and from school in a wagon every day. Not only was this embarrassing, but Alvin plus wagon was too heavy for me to run or even walk quickly with. Then there was the very hot day I had to follow him around with a fan. Not an electric fan—a cardboard one, on which he had written, “Alex lives to serve Alvin.” And there was the time I had to try his experimental “energy drink.” That one was easily the worst. Let’s just say I had barely enough “energy” to cling to the rim of the toilet for several hours after that.

  You probably do remember, since it was only two chapters ago, Alvin telling me that I would need him soon, and that the price would be higher than I thought. I certainly remembered it.

  So now, as the three of us were walking toward my house and toward Alvin, crouched atop his Lego hoard, all I could think about was what he was going to make me do if we wanted to borrow most of his Lego creatures and a lot of the Playmobil characters as well. I was hoping that maybe, whatever it was, Marta would take over for me. Her arm was out of its cast and ready for action, and she was too.

  “Hey, Marta,” I began as we arrived at my front steps. “Since you didn’t get to do any of the trial stunts…”

  “Nope,” she said. “No way. Whatever your aunt can come up with for Gerald, I’ll do. But your brother—forget it. Too risky.”

  72

  THE THREE OF US MADE OUR way upstairs to Alvin’s room like Gerald and Snarko and the Daredevil climbing the Stone Steps of the Monastery of Moss, ready to sacrifice something dear to them in exchange for a Parchment of Purpose from the monks. (That’s from late in Book 2, if you haven’t gotten that far.)

  Alvin was lying on his bed, as usual, with a huge book propped on his stomach. I wondered how he could breathe under there.

  “Yes?” he said without taking his eyes off the page.

  I puffed out a sigh that had been building up ever since we’d figured out what we needed and from who. I didn’t want to start with something polite like “Can you do us a favor?” because then it would seem like a big deal and I’d end up changing his future kids’ diapers for life. So I went for a casual, no-big-deal attitude. And can I remind everyone that it wasn’t a big deal? We were asking to borrow some plastic toys—a big portion of which used to belong to me—and return them unharmed.

  “Uh, is it okay if we use some Legos for a film?” I said.

  Alvin’s hand, which had been inside the Cheetos bag, feeling around for crumbs at the bottom, withdrew slowly.
He removed the book from his stomach, carefully bookmarked it, and set it aside. Then he sat up and considered his three supplicants. (I got that word from the Monastery of Moss scene, in case you were wondering.)

  “Sure,” he said. “That would be acceptable.”

  “Great!” I said. “We’ll help ourselves. Thanks!”

  I went over to the shelf where the Lego crates were stored. Part of me was wondering what had come over Alvin to make him so agreeable, but I hoped the book he’d been crushed under was really gripping and he just wanted to get back to it. Another part of me suspected that it wasn’t going to be that easy. I decided to grab the crates as quickly as possible and scurry out of his room before he had time to think.

  “So, purely out of curiosity,” said Alvin, who’d already had plenty of time to think, “what are we talking about in terms of numbers? Half a dozen orcs, maybe a handful of monkeys? That sort of thing?”

  I stopped, my hand on a crate, and turned around to look at him.

  “What difference does it make?” I asked, and even though I’d tried to sound like I didn’t care one way or another, I could hear the tremor in my voice.

  Alvin heard it too. If he’d had whiskers, they would have been twitching. He sensed my weakness, he hunkered down, and he prepared to pounce.

  73

  “IT LOOKS LIKE YOU’LL BE NEEDING quite a few Legos,” Alvin observed from the comfort of his bed as Javier, Marta, and I moved crates into the hallway. “Do you want some Playmobil too?”

  “Sure,” I said. “That would be great.”

  Too easy. Way too easy. I was starting to wish Marta had invented some kind of homemade threat detector that would warn us when Alvin’s trap was about to snap closed with me in its pitiless jaws.

  “What are you working on that requires so many creatures?” Alvin asked.

  “Just a video,” said Javier, stepping between me and my brother. “The usual thing.”

  “This seems like more than the usual thing,” said Alvin. “This seems pretty epic if you need most of the Legos and the Playmobil reserves as well.”

  “Oh, it’s broader in scope,” said Javier, easily playing Alvin’s game, “but basically the usual stop-motion video. We appreciate your letting us use your stuff. I’ll put your name in the credits; how would that work for you?”

  “That would work fine,” said Alvin. He picked up his book. I decided then and there that Javier would negotiate all my future deals with Alvin. Then Alvin added, just offhand, like it was an afterthought, “There’s one more thing you can do for me, though.”

  “And what would that be?” I asked.

  Marta grabbed my arm like she was trying to brace me. Or maybe like she was afraid this was one of our last moments together.

  “I want to do the next stunt for Caroline’s book.”

  Ha! I thought, without letting any sign of triumph appear on my face. Alvin asssumed he was asking for something huge, something I would never let him do under any other circumstances. But he hadn’t read the book—he didn’t know that it was almost done, that there were no more trials left.

  “You know you can’t do that,” I said. “It’s too dangerous. Mom and Dad would ground me for life if they found out.”

  Clever, huh? I didn’t want to give in immediately—he’d smell a rat if I did.

  “Well, then, I guess it’s too dangerous for me to let you use my Legos,” said Alvin. Which made no sense. Ordinarily, I would have pointed that out, but in this case I didn’t need to bother with that useless side trip.

  I did my best to look angry and defeated. “All right,” I said. “If that’s the only way, then I guess we’ll let you do the next stunt. But you can’t tell anyone, ever. Got it?”

  “Got it!” Alvin said happily. “Let me know when the next one comes up.”

  “We will,” I said. “The very next one.”

  And the three of us escaped downstairs with our plastic loot before he could think of anything involving our firstborn children.

  74

  WE HAD OUR LEGIONS, AND NOW we needed our Pathless Plains. Which quickly turned into a problem.

  I’d pictured filming the battle outdoors, but even with my dad’s compulsive mowing, the grass in our yard was taller than most of the creatures.

  “What about a golf course?” said Marta. “The grass on golf courses is really short, right?”

  “Well, if you want the Battle of the Pathless Plains to involve all the armies getting crushed by giants wearing spiked shoes and carrying metal clubs, then that would work,” said Javier.

  “Sounds cool to me,” said Marta.

  It did sound cool, but on the other hand, “We’d get yelled at by golfers,” I said. “You know, the ones paying to play golf and not to step on Legos.”

  “What we need is a really big table indoors,” said Javier. “That way we don’t have to worry about it getting stepped on or rained on.”

  “Or interfered with by a squirrel,” Marta added.

  Javier’s dining room table was huge, but it was constantly in use.

  “I’d offer our Ping-Pong table,” said Marta, “but my dad’s train layout is all over it. And I’m not allowed to even breathe within four feet of that. Because of the time I drove the train into my face.”

  Javier and I nodded. We remembered the stitches. Marta had gone out for Halloween as Frankenstein’s monster that year. Javier was Dr. Frankenstein, and I was Igor. We’d done well.

  “I feel like I’ve seen a Ping-Pong table somewhere recently,” I said. I tried to remember where I’d been. I pictured the table… the little net… I pictured… chocolate-chip cookies. Big ones. “The senior center,” I said when I was done processing. “They have a Ping-Pong table. Next to the yoga room. And I’ve never seen anyone using it.”

  “Don’t you have to be a senior to hang around in the senior center and use the Ping-Pong table?” asked Javier.

  “I’m an honorary senior,” I said. Nate had told me that the last time I’d been there.

  “You really are old before your time,” Marta said to me.

  So off we went to the senior center Saturday morning, with our Lego crates in the same wagon I’d once been forced to haul Alvin around in.

  75

  SATURDAYS AT THE SENIOR CENTER WERE busy, it turned out, and I was worried, when we got inside and saw all the seniors milling around, that the Ping-Pong table would be occupied.

  But it wasn’t.

  Javier insisted we get permission to use the table, but there was no one at the front desk to ask. In fact, I’d never seen anyone at the front desk and was starting to wonder if it was fake. Not the desk, but the idea that someone ever sat there, monitoring the entrance or answering questions or whatever.

  We went into the common room and found Nate and his clique at their usual table. They were finishing lunch. Ziti, and it looked really good—the perfect sauce/cheese balance.

  “Albert!” said Nate. “And you brought your friend Javier and another one.”

  “I’m Marta,” said Marta. “Nice to meet you.” She stuck out her hand, and Nate shook it.

  “Nice to meet you too,” he said. “That’s quite a hairstyle you’ve got there, young lady.”

  “You think so?” said Marta, reaching up to smooth her half inch of bangs.

  “Sure—it doesn’t get in your face that way, does it?”

  “Never!”

  Javier, meanwhile, was glancing around the room like he was looking for someone. Great-Aunt Rosa, I figured. I’d forgotten that she came here, since I hadn’t seen her any of the times I’d visited. Maybe she came at a different time of day. Maybe she was a morning senior-center person.

  “We were wondering if we could borrow your Ping-Pong table,” I said to Nate.

  “Sure,” said Nate. “Ping-Pong isn’t too popular around here right now. These fads—they come and go.”

  Seniors had fads too? I thought when you got old, you got set in your ways, but apparently
not.

  So now we had our legions and our Pathless Plains. All we needed to do was film an epic battle. And we needed to make it so awesome that Caroline would realize how wrong she’d been to avoid it. The lingering problem, which we’d been able to ignore while we were concentrating on getting everything together, was that we still didn’t have anything like a battle plan. Caroline and the ghostwriter were the ones who supplied the plots. We were the detail crew. How were three kids who knew nothing about battles supposed to film a mind-blowingly exciting one on a senior-center Ping-Pong table with a bunch of toys?

  Nate was eyeing the crates, which we’d put down at our feet. “That’s a lot of equipment for Ping-Pong,” he said. “You do understand it’s not a contact sport, right? You don’t need pads and helmets for a game of Ping-Pong. Or are you youngsters playing some extreme form of Ping-Pong nowadays?”

  Marta had an expression on her face like extreme-contact Ping-Pong was now on her list of things to try. She opened her mouth to say something bizarre, but I cut her off before she could get it out.

  “We’re making a film,” I said. “A stop-motion film of a big battle. These”—I pointed to the crates—“are our legions.”

  Nate had an expression on his face like the one I’d just squelched on Marta’s. “You’re filming a battle? With legions? How do I sign on as an extra?”

  76

  I’D FORGOTTEN THAT NATE WAS A fan of military history. A big fan, it turned out. As in geek level. When we’d explained that we were filming a battle so my aunt wouldn’t wimp out on a crucial scene in her book, he sprang into action like a general taking over an army from, well, three kids with no military knowledge beyond the third Lord of the Rings movie.

  “So, these Pathless Plains,” he said when I’d told him how the “Battle Beckons” chapter had left things. “Any major features or landmarks? Hills, woods?”