“Stamos is at one-eleven,” Casey says, shining a light on one of the mailboxes. “The others are two-fifty and three-fifteen, so theirs’ll be the first property.”
“Let’s do it!” Billy says.
So off we go down Shady Lane.
FOUR
We’ve barely taken the first turn on Shady Lane when an eerie cry cuts through the darkness. Errr-eeeeerw!
“What’s that?” Marissa gasps.
Then we hear it again, but from another direction.
Errr-eeeeerw!
And again from right behind us.
Errr-eeeeerw!
“That sounds like a cat caught in barbed wire,” Billy says. “Here, kitty, kitty!”
Errr-eeeeerw!
“That’s no cat!” Marissa squeals.
Errr-eeeeerw!
“We’re surrounded!”
“By peacocks,” Casey says, shining his flashlight on a big bird that’s under an oak tree to our left. But this bird doesn’t have long, gorgeous feathers and a blue neck like the one Justice Jack was carrying.
It’s … brown.
“I think that’s a peahen,” Holly says.
Now, instead of lunging toward it like you’d expect a dog to do, Nibbles hightails it behind Dot and buries his furry face in her legs. Then he just stands there quivering like a big ol’ scaredy-cat haystack.
We spend a minute staring at the bird, and finally Dot says, “Do you think we should try to catch it?”
“Let’s do it!” Billy says. “Peace offering to the Sashanator!”
“We need a peace offering?” Casey asks.
I eye him. “Wouldn’t hurt.”
So Billy takes off his jacket and hands it to me. “Go for it, Sammy-keyesta!”
“Me?”
“You don’t want me to do it—I’ll blow it.”
“No, you won’t!”
“Aw, just do it.”
Casey offers to give it a try, but at this point I would have felt stupid letting him take over, so I creep up and blanket the bird with Billy’s jacket.
“You did it!” Billy cries when I have the thing wrapped up and in my arms. “A good deed, indeed!”
“You sound like Justice Jack,” I tell him as we head out again.
“Justice Jack is awesome!” Billy cries.
“Justice Jack is a nutcase,” I mutter.
Now, it turns out that Dot’s dad was right—there’s no missing the Stamos place. But that’s not because of the big red barn or the tall chain-link fencing or the line of large metal containers. It’s because Justice Jack and his goofy dirt bike contraption are in the middle of the long dirt driveway surrounded by a swarm of men with nets.
Big nets.
On long wooden poles.
The men are obviously mad. Like, one wrong move and—presto—those nets’ll become pitchforks. But what makes me go “Uh-oh” is the policeman standing next to a squad car parked near the dirt bike.
“Is that Officer Borsch?” Marissa asks.
I nod. “You’d think getting married would have given him a life.”
Billy laughs. “He’s too old to have a life, Sammy.”
“Hey, when I’m his age, I plan to have a life!”
Casey gives me a smarty-pants grin. “We’re here, too. Are you saying we don’t have a life now?”
I blink at him, then march forward. “Let’s just deliver the bird and find Sasha.”
“Wait—now you want to find Sasha?” Marissa asks, chasing after me.
“Uh … I think I’ll stay back here with Nibbles,” Dot calls, and Holly decides to keep her company.
So Marissa, Billy, Casey, and I head toward the congregation, and when Officer Borsch sees us, he does a double take. “Sammy? What in the world are you doing here?”
“Uh … we caught one of the birds, and—”
Justice Jack leaps forward and his head whips back and forth between Officer Borsch and me. “Commissioner, did you say Sammy?”
You know those people who are gum chewers, and when they hear or see something shocking, the only way you know they’re actually shocked is that they stop chewing? Their eyes don’t bug, they don’t jump back like, Whoa, they don’t gasp or faint or even say, What?
They just stop chewing their gum.
Well, that’s exactly what Officer Borsch is like, only he’s not a gum chewer.
He’s a tooth sucker.
So now instead of freezing mid-chew, he freezes mid-suck.
Which, let me tell you, is not a pretty sight. His left cheek is pinched up, his already squinty left eye is stuck in super-squint, half of his lip is arched up, and you can see a sliver—just a little sliver—of his coffee-stained teeth.
“Commissioner!” Justice Jack cries again. “Is this or is this not”—he turns his masked weirdness on me—“Sammy Keyes?”
I take a step back with my blanketed bird, and before I can stop my mouth from being stupid, it tells the truth. “Yeah, I’m Sammy, but—”
He turns to Officer Borsch, who’s still frozen in mid-suck. “This is the person who’s been giving evildoers a nonstop tour of Fist City? BAM! POW! ZAP!” he cries, punching his fists through the air. He looks at me again. “That’s been you?”
“I didn’t hit anyone,” I tell him, taking another step back.
“But you black-eyed the Mob! Uncovered a meth lab! Busted up a dogfighting ring! Cuffed those counterfeiters! Brought down a blackmailer! Cemented a gangster in a wheelbarrow!”
“Stop it!” I cry, because even though I had done all those things, it’s not like I’d done them in one day. And hearing him list them like that was really … embarrassing.
Then finally, finally, Officer Borsch snaps out of it and steps between us. “Who she is is none of your concern,” he tells Justice Jack, then faces me and lowers his voice. “I didn’t tell him any of this. He’s got a police scanner and no life.” He rolls his eyes. “Unless you call that having a life.” Then he adds, “Probably a good idea for you to get out of here.”
But Justice Jack has already moved around Officer Borsch. “All this time I thought you were a man!” he says to me. “Who’d expect Sammy to be a woman, let alone a girl? Not me! But it doesn’t matter! You’ve inspired me, man! I mean ma’am! I mean miss! Justice Jack exists because of you!”
Well, this is all a little much. So I take another step back and go, “Uh … we’re just here to return a bird?”
“Just like Justice Jack!” the nutcase cries. “See?” he calls to the army of Big Nets. “Crime fighters to your rescue!” He swoops in on me again and drops his voice. “I can’t believe you don’t wear hero gear—at least a mask! What if someone recognizes you? What if the evildoers of the world return for revenge? What if—”
“Here,” I tell him, shoving the bird into his arms and snatching back Billy’s jacket. “This is the only thing that’s getting returned.”
“A peahen?” he exclaims, like I’ve just handed him a pot of gold. He turns to the Big Nets and cries, “Your supply problem is over!”
“We don’t have a supply problem,” one of the Big Nets growls. “We have an escape problem.”
Suddenly Justice Jack snatches a buzzing cell phone from the back of his tool belt. “A security breach on McEllen!” he cries as he reads the text. Then he gasps, “Scoundrels!” and turns to Officer Borsch. “Urgent situation at City Hall, Commissioner—some hooligans have made off with the statue!”
“What stat—” Officer Borsch squints at him. “The softball statue?” Then he puts his hand up and says, “Never mind!” and you can tell there’s no way Officer Borsch is going to get his news from a wannabe superhero.
Justice Jack seems to take no offense. He just re-holsters his phone, then forces a business card on me:
JUSTICE JACK
It’s a Good World. Let’s Take It Back!
It lists three different ways to reach him to report “crimes in motion that need to be stopped!”
“To
the High Roller!” he cries, then charges to his tricked-out dirt bike, where his sidekick is sneaking swigs from a flask. “Farewell, citizens!” Justice Jack shouts as he fires up his rig and roars off with his flag flapping through the air.
“That dude is awesome,” Billy squeals after he’s gone. “I finally know what I want to be when I grow up!”
Marissa looks at him like he’s a Nibbles nugget gooshed on the bottom of her shoe. “Are you serious?”
He gives her puppy dog eyes. “I’d let you be my sidekick …?”
“This is not a joke!” one of the Big Nets calls. “Now, are you going to take a report, or what?”
“Please,” Officer Borsch says to me, “take your friends and go,” and I’m happy to do just that.
Now, the whole time we’ve been there, eerie peacock cries have been meowing through the air. And when we join up with Holly and Dot, Holly kind of shivers and says, “I would not want to live out here. Those cries are creepy!”
Casey nods. “Maybe that’s why somebody cut them loose.”
“Well, it sure didn’t shut them up!”
“I’m glad we can finally go,” Dot says, yanking hard on Nibbles’ leash. “He’s after something in those bushes, and I can’t get him to quit.”
“Couldn’t be a bird,” I tell her with a laugh.
She laughs, too. “Or a cat or a mouse or any other animal.” She yanks hard, dragging Nibbles along. “The only thing he goes after is—”
She stops short, then turns to look at the bushes that Nibbles is trying to get to.
“Is what?” I ask her.
Slowly she turns to face me, and her eyes are huge.
“People.”
FIVE
Casey shines a light at the bushes and takes a few steps toward them.
“No!” Marissa says, grabbing his sleeve. “For once, just once, can we go somewhere without looking in, or hiding in, or falling in bushes?”
“I’m just going to shine a light,” Casey tells her. “It’d be pretty hard to fall in.”
“No!” she says, pulling him back. “Someone will fall in. Someone always falls in!”
The rest of us stare at her.
“Why?” she squeals. “Why do we have to go investigate when Officer Borsch is right there!”
“What if it’s just a lizard?” Casey asks. “You want the Borschman to investigate a lizard?”
“It is not just a lizard! It is never just a lizard! It’s whoever cut the fence and let the peacocks out!”
Now, this whole time, Marissa’s been talking in a fierce whisper. And while she’s been yanking on Casey’s sleeve, Nibbles has been yanking on his leash, trying to get to the bushes.
“I’m with Marissa,” Dot whispers.
I look over my shoulder. “Officer Borsch has kinda got his hands full …?”
Marissa starts storming toward the Big Nets. “Fine! If you won’t tell him, I will!”
“No, wait!”
For a minute we all look at each other like, Hello? Who said that?
And then something comes out of the bushes.
It’s a boy.
Tall.
Gangly.
And the first thing he does is whoosh his hair.
We all go, “Lars?” and he says, “Shhh!” and then tells Casey, “Turn off that light! They’ll kill me if they find me here!”
So Casey clicks off the flashlight, and Nibbles finally gets his nose on Lars and sniffs him like crazy.
“So what are you doing here?” Holly asks. “And why’d you cut the fencing?”
“I didn’t cut the fencing!” He looks at her like she’s an idiot. “And what do you think I’m doing here? It’s the only way I can see her!”
“Because …?” I ask.
Now he looks at me like I’m an idiot. “Because her parents are making her be homeschooled again.”
“They are?”
“Where have you been?”
Now, Sasha had said she thought our school was a big waste of time, but I didn’t think that was the reason she was suddenly back at home. “Maybe her parents are just trying to protect her from vampires?”
He stares at me. “What?”
Marissa eyes him. “Uh, your necks?”
Even in the darkness I can see him blush. “Look, can you just let me get out of here? I didn’t cut the fence, Sasha did. But if they find me here, we’re both dead!”
We girls all go, “Sasha did?” and Casey and Billy go, “Why?”
“Because I accidentally left the gate open when I met up with her, and the birds got out! And she knew her dad would go ballistic, so she cut the fence.”
I shake my head. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It doesn’t have to make sense to you, okay? You’re not the one dealing with them! And I would have been out of here already, but by the time I got back to the road, her brothers were swarming the place with nets. Then the cops showed up. Then that freak showed up. Then you showed up. And then your stupid dog wouldn’t quit sniffing!”
Holly snorts. “You’re calling the dog stupid?”
Lars pinches his eyes closed. “Look. Can you please just let me leave? Things are hard enough on Sasha without them finding out I was here.”
I shrug like, Who’s stopping you? And Lars Teppler zips up the road and out of sight.
“I see what you mean about him,” Casey says as we start hiking out of there.
Now, what I’m thinking is, Yeah, that was classic Lars. But what pops out of my mouth is, “Actually, I feel kind of sorry for him.”
Everybody looks at me. “What?”
“Well, first off, he fell for Sasha, which is scary enough right there. But now he’s all sneaking around in the dark in the boonies because that’s the only way he can see her.” I look at Casey. “Sort of like having to meet up with someone in the graveyard.”
Casey gives me a wry smile, and Billy goes all ghosty on us, saying, “A frighteningly similar situation!” because with Casey’s psycho mom and sister determined to keep us apart, the graveyard’s been our secret meeting place for the past month or so.
Still. This parallel between Casey and me and Sasha and Lars bugged me. I didn’t want to feel sympathy for them. I’d rather think they were disgusting and hateable.
Because they are.
But I also hate having to sneak around with Casey. It doesn’t make me feel clever or smart or superior.… I’d way rather have an aboveboard life where I’m not hiding things from other people. It would be so much more … carefree.
And on the drive back into town in Mr. DeVries’ truck, it hit me what a ridiculously sneaky life I live. I mean, besides having to hide my relationship with Casey from his mom and sister, there’s the whole business of living in a seniors-only building. I have to sneak up the fire escape, then sneak inside and make sure the coast is clear, then sneak down the hall to my apartment. And because it would be a huge mess if someone—say, the manager or a neighbor or the police—stopped by unexpectedly and I got caught living there, everything I own has to be hidden away.
So believe me—I don’t own much.
And if someone does come by when I’m home, I’ve got to sneak into Grams’ bedroom and hide in the closet. And every morning when I leave for school, I’ve got to sneak back out of the building and down the fire escape.
Plus, I’ve got the whole sneaky Mom Issue. The school thinks I’m living with my mom, so when something happens and they demand to see her, it’s always this huge juggle of lies because she’s nowhere near Santa Martina.
So yeah. My life is just sneaky, sneaky, sneaky. But what was churning my stomach on the drive home from Dot’s wasn’t just realizing how good I’d become at being sneaky, but also realizing that if I had to choose just one thing I hate about my mother—which, believe me, would be hard—it wouldn’t be that she dumped me in a building full of old people so that she could go to Hollywood and become a soap star. And it wouldn’t be that she decided s
he was in love with the only person on the planet I wouldn’t want her to be in love with—Casey’s dad.
It would be that she’s sneaky.
Incredibly and successfully sneaky.
And I was so busy getting nauseous over the fact that the thing I hate most about her is the thing we have in common that I didn’t even realize we’d pulled up to Holly’s place.
“You okay?” Casey asks, because Holly lives in an apartment across the street from the Senior Highrise and I’m supposed to get out, too, but I’m just sitting there, spaced.
“Huh? Oh, right! Sorry!” I give Casey a quick hug, thank Mr. DeVries for letting us invade his celebration, grab my stroopwafels, and scoot out. Then I wait until Mr. DeVries’ truck is out of sight, because I can’t risk more people knowing where I live, which in this case includes Mr. DeVries and Billy.
When the truck is gone, I say bye to Holly, then hurry across the street and slip into the shadows of a hedge on the Senior Highrise property. And after I’m sure that the coast is clear, I make my way up the fire escape to the fifth-floor landing.
The only person who’s ever caught me sneaking in through the fire escape was our old neighbor Daisy Graybill. She was waiting for me in her dirty pink bathrobe, and when she saw the door inch open, she pounced and shrieked, “Ah-ha! I knew it! I knew it!” while she pointed a shaky finger at the bubble gum I’d crammed into the doorjamb to keep it from latching.
It was a close call, but I made up some excuse about taking the trash down for Grams, and since she couldn’t exactly prove anything, I squeaked out of that one.
Barely.
Then she died and Mrs. Wedgewood moved in.
Mrs. Wedgewood.
Wow.
Imagine a tuskless walrus wearing a crooked wig and a muumuu and you’ll have a pretty good picture of Mrs. Wedgewood.
And although pouncing may not be part of the Big W’s repertoire, eavesdropping and blackmail sure are. Actually, what she does is more like walldropping. The rest of her may be a wreck, but that woman has bionic hearing and isn’t afraid to use it.
So my worries with the Wedgie Woman are usually because of what happens inside the apartment, not outside, but this time when I peek down the hallway, I see a congregation of at least a dozen old people right outside Mrs. Wedgewood’s door.