Jake and Lily Read online

  Just to pry her away from my mirror, I took her down to the basement to my train place. It’s just a bookcase, for now. Someday I’m going to make a whole display on a Ping-Pong table. I showed her my yellow-and-red caboose with the off-duty engineer waving out the window. I showed her my Pennsylvania Railroad Vista Dome car. I showed her my Southern Crescent Pullman Palace sleeper. I showed her my B&O hopper complete with tiny coal pieces from a chunk I smashed on the sidewalk with a hammer. When I told her she could touch the coal, she made a face and said, “No way!” and raced back upstairs to the mirror.

  “Wanna play poker?” I said.

  She looked at me like I was a talking turnip.

  By the time she was finished with stuffing and beautifying herself, it was midnight. She didn’t like any of our DVDs, so we turned on the TV and watched everything I hated. We were sitting up in my bed in our pj’s. Hers were dark-purple with light-purple dots. She ate a whole bag of Reese’s Mini Pieces and never offered me one. I made the big mistake of going to the bathroom. When I got back she was sprawled on her stomach in the middle of the bed, sleeping. I stood over her, studying the situation. I whispered, “Anna.” No answer. I gave her a little nudge. “Unnnh unnnh,” she went, and flapped her hand at me like I was a moth. I gave up. I grabbed a blanket from the hall closet and slept on the floor.

  At breakfast my mother greeted her with a big smile and even a hug and said, “Okay, Anna, what’ll it be? Cereal? Eggs? Pancakes?”

  “French toast,” she said.

  She ordered five slices of French toast and ate two. She wanted blueberry syrup, but all we had was maple. She kept saying, “Boy, this would really be good with blueberry syrup.”

  I was terrified she would hang around all day. And then I got lucky. Halfway through breakfast, I let out a burp. I didn’t even mean it. It was an accident. It was also a doozie, a world-class ripper, one of my best ever. If you’re wondering about my parents, they don’t even bother to yell, “Lily!” anymore, except when there’s company. So I guess my mother figured she had to do something, so she says, “Lily,” and gives me a halfhearted glare. As for the overnight guest—ha!—she practically choked on her mouthful. Her eyes went wide and her face twisted like some chain-saw killer was loose in the kitchen. (Other kids just laugh and tell me to do it again.) I patted my chest. “Great French toast, huh?” I said. She took off right after breakfast. I carried her purple suitcase halfway down the block.

  Later that day I told Poppy, “Now I feel worse than ever. And I hate my favorite color.”

  Poppy acted like it was no big deal. “Hey—win some, lose some.”

  “But it just shows you how rotten my life is now,” I told him. “I was born with a built-in sleepover person. It was perfect. Why did it all have to change?”

  “That’s life,” he said. “Change. If you’re smart you’ll change with it. Took me a long time to learn that.”

  “If change means Anna Matuzak,” I said, “I’ll never change.”

  He laughed. “There’s other ways. And one thing hasn’t changed—Anna or no Anna, you still need a life.”

  So we thought about it, or rather Poppy thought about it. I have no idea how to think about getting a life.

  “Hobby,” he said. “You need a hobby.”

  “I have one,” I told him. “Trains. You know that.”

  “That’s more of an interest than a hobby,” he said. “And anyway, trains obviously are not doing the trick. You need something that will occupy a lot of your time. Hours a day.”

  “Like what?” I said.

  “Like…stamp collecting.”

  “Stamp collecting?” I wanted to barf. “Oh, pul-eeeeeze.”

  Jake

  So he painted his clubhouse yellow.

  And next day there it was again, splashed across the side. In black. Nice contrast with the yellow.

  SOOP

  Of course this time it was no surprise to us. Bump had told us he was going to do it.

  “Who do you think’s doing it?” Soop said as we pulled up to the curb.

  “Doing what?” said Bump, all innocent, like before.

  “Painting my name on the clubhouse,” said Soop.

  “Oh, that,” said Nacho.

  Bump leaned in and whispered to me, “Listen to him. Look at him.”

  I knew what Bump meant. The goober still wasn’t mad, just curious, like this was a math problem he hadn’t run into before. He should have been pulling out his hair, howling, What’s going on?, maybe even crying. But all he did was talk all calm with his hands on his hips, like he owned the world. That’s what gets you. You know if it happened to you, you’d be going nuts, you’d want to kill somebody. And then you see this kid who refuses—flat-out refuses—to be normal. Who stands there with his hands on his hips, all cocky-like. And if there’s one thing that burns your butt more than anything else, it’s a cocky goober. So naturally you want to smack him, slap some normal into him.

  But Bump stays cool. “I don’t know,” he says. “Who do you think’s doing it, Erno?”

  “Beats me,” said Soop. “It’s a mystery.”

  We all nodded: “Mystery…”

  And now Soop was giggling. Another thing that drives the ice pick into your neck: a giggling goober.

  “What’s so funny, Erno?” said Bump.

  “He still can’t spell soup!” goes Erno. He went on giggling, like it was the funniest thing since cow pies.

  His hand shot into the air. “Hold the presses!” He turned to us—“Wait here, guys”—and sprinted into his house. He was back in a couple minutes with a little paint can and a thin brush. He went to the wall. “I couldn’t find any black,” he called. He painted blue happy faces into the double Os. He turned to us. He threw out his arms. “Ta-da!”

  Bump started a slow handclap that of course Soop didn’t realize was bogus. The rest of us joined in. Bump hissed, almost loud enough for Soop to hear, “This is his last day as a happy goober.”

  Lily

  I caved in. I’ll try stamp collecting.

  Jake

  We could see it a mile away. It’s probably visible from the space station. We were laughing so hard we were wobbling as we rode down the street. Nacho crashed into a curb.

  The paint job looked like the head-on wreck of two rainbows. I never saw so many colors in one place, all splashed and squished and slopped all over each other.

  And there was the supergoober, ducking through the doorway and coming out to greet us—laughing. I swear, he was laughing even harder than us. And the more he laughed, the less Bump laughed. And when Soop threw out his arms and yelled, “It’s beautiful!” I think I saw steam coming off the top of Bump’s head.

  Lily

  Stamp collecting lasted a day.

  I’m trying homemade greeting cards.

  Jake

  Today it was a missing board. Halfway up the side facing the street.

  We were staring at it for a while when suddenly Soop’s face appeared in the gap.

  “Hi, guys!” he called, all cheery. “Look—somebody gave me a window!”

  Bump’s tires bit the asphalt as he peeled out.

  Lily

  Scratch homemade greeting cards.

  I’ll try reading palms.

  Jake

  Just me, Nacho, and Burke at the hideout today. Bump is away on vacation with his family. But his calling cards were all around us—black clumps of chewed-up licorice. He doesn’t eat his licorice all the way anymore. He folds a couple sticks in his cheek and chews and sucks and then spits out the wad. I think he thinks he’s chewing tobacco.

  So we didn’t ride over to Soop’s. It’s not the same without Bump. He always does most of the talking. But there was still plenty to hee-haw about—for the first time we weren’t just laughing about Soop. We were laughing about Bump too. About how he was getting madder and madder each day.

  “Did you see him the other day? Did he blast outta there or what?” said Burke.r />
  “I saw snots shooting out his ears!” said Nacho.

  That’s how it went. Hey, we understood. Nothing is more maddening than a goober who won’t get mad. It’s like they cheat you out of your fun. It’s like you throw a dart at a goober and all he does is say, “That tickles,” and throws it back at you, feather first. If you can’t have fun with a goober, what’s the point? So yeah, we saw Bump’s problem. We sympathized with him. But that didn’t make it any less funny.

  Before we left the hideout, Nacho got a stick and scratched in the dirt:

  SUPERGOOBER 10

  BUMP 0

  And we laughed harder than ever.

  Lily

  I read Poppy’s palm. I told him he’s going to buy me a car on the day I turn sixteen. He pulled his hand away. “That’s it for your palm-reading career.”

  Jake

  We’ve just been goofing off the last couple days. Riding around. Playing a little basketball. Skipping stones at the creek. We even did little-kid stuff at the park. Swings. Seesaw. At one point I found myself standing at the bottom of the sliding-board ladder. I was third in line, staring down at the head tops of two little preschool runts. That’s how bad summer can get. You wonder why you were so thrilled back on the first day.

  “Bor-ing,” said Burke.

  “That’s the last sliding-board line I’ll ever stand in in my life, if I live to be a thousand,” I said.

  “I miss Bump,” said Burke.

  “I miss Soop,” said Nacho.

  “You know what we are?” I said.

  “What?” said Nacho.

  “Goober addicts.”

  Lily

  “How about origami?” said Poppy.

  “What’s origami?”

  “Folding paper. You make things—birds, boats, almost anything. I saw kids doing it all over Japan.”

  “I make great paper airplanes,” I said.

  We went to the library for a book on origami.

  Jake

  So without Bump, we rode over to Soop’s. He wasn’t there working on the shack. We were surprised, but maybe we shouldn’t have been. We usually ride over in the morning, but this was afternoon.

  We were ready to push off when we heard a voice calling, “Hi boys!” At first we didn’t know where it was coming from. Then we saw a face sticking out of a second-floor window. A lady. Had to be his mother. “Hold on there a minute, boys,” she said. “I’ll be right down.”

  “Uh-oh,” said Burke. “She knows.”

  “Knows what?” I said.

  “Who’s been messing up the shack,” said Burke.

  “Yeah—Bump,” said Nacho. “We’re in the clear.”

  “I don’t feel in the clear,” I said.

  And then there she was, bouncing out the front door and across the porch and down the steps. She charged straight for us like a fullback. I wished we had cleared out. Her arm was coming up. I got ready to duck. I started to say, “Bump—” I never got to say did it because a massive grin broke across her face, and that was no fist on the end of her arm but a hand to shake. “You must be—let me guess—Jake?” She acted all proud of herself when I grunted and shook her hand. She got Burke and Nacho right too. She laughed out loud. “Nacho—I love it! Always wished I had a cool nickname.” She stepped back. “I’m Heather. Ernie’s mom.”

  My memory is kind of fuzzy on some of this. Probably because it was one of the uncomfortablest times of my life. I mean, everybody knows how to deal with a goober. But how about a goober’s mom? There’s no manual for that.

  Mrs. Goober took another step back, as if to get us all in the picture. “So,” she said, and just grinned away. Here it comes, I thought: So you’re the hoodlums that have been terrorizing my son. She had short curly brown hair. And hoop earrings you could spit through. And a T-shirt that said I BRAKE FOR TURTLES. At last she went on, “Finally I get to meet you. I see you coming by all the time, talking to Ernie. Sometimes I’ve been tempted to come out and say hello, but I see you guys laughing and having a good time and I say, ‘Nah, stay outta their business.’ Was I right, guys?”

  We glanced at each other. How are you supposed to answer that?

  She laughed. “I retract the question.” She looked back over her shoulder at the paint-splashed, lopsided shack. “She’s a beauty, huh?”

  Burke and I just nodded, but Nacho piped, “Absolutely.”

  She shot a look at Nacho and her cheeks bulged and her lips quivered and a laugh just barfed out, she couldn’t hold it in, and I knew that in her howling laughter she was telling us that she knew that we knew it was the most ridiculous-looking building in the history of mankind. She wiped her eyes. “Well, Wednesday is your pal Ernie’s art lesson day, so I guess you’re stuck with me.” She looked us over again, giving us a grin that seemed like a secret behind a zipper. “I know, I know, you just want to get outta here, escape the old lady.” She gave a big dramatic shrug. “Sorry, guys.” She waved and headed for the house. “Come on in.” We stayed. She turned. The grin was gone. “I said come in.” We parked our bikes and followed her into the house.

  She led us to the kitchen. She gave us lemonade to drink. (“We don’t believe in soda, dudes.”) And food. Oatmeal cookies. Brownies. Carrot sticks. Onion dip. Blue corn chips. (“Sorry, no nachos, Nacho.” She giggled for a whole minute over that one.)

  She asked a lot of questions. She wanted to know everything about us, like she was writing a book or something. I don’t mean she was grilling us. It was all friendly. She seemed so interested, nodding her head and saying, “Really?” and “Is that so?” The more she nodded, the more we talked. I found out stuff about Nacho and Burke I never knew. And when Burke pointed to me and said, “He’s a twin,” and Nacho said, “His twin is a sister,” she went bonkers.

  “Wow—Jake—no kidding? I always thought it would be so cool to have a twin. What’s it like?” Before I could answer, she said, “Never mind. Dumb question. Way too broad. Okay—what’s her name?”

  “Whose name?” I said.

  That really cracked her up. I think she thought I was trying to be a comic. “Your twin sister,” she said.

  “Lily,” I said.

  “Lily.” She smiled. She repeated it, like she was tasting it. “Lily.” The smile got dreamy. “Jake and Lily.” She took awhile to digest that, then: “Okay…so…tell me, is it true about twins, like, you almost know what each other is thinking? Stuff like that?”

  Suddenly everybody was looking at me. What could I say? How could I put into words for her something that we could never put into words for ourselves? Unless you count goombla. But more than that, her question smacked me up against something that’s been there for a while, I guess, I just never really looked—it’s not that way anymore. I suddenly realized how long it’s been since I knew what my sister’s been writing in her journal chapters. I remembered the fights with her, trying to tell her to chill out, we’re just growing up, that’s all.

  Mrs. G was tilting, smiling at me. She laid her hand on mine. “Forget it, Jake. Some things just can’t be put into words, right?”

  I looked at her. Something inside me said, Thank you. I nodded.

  She took it easy on me from then on, and it was pretty okay. I kept thinking, I’m in a supergoober’s house! But when I looked around the place, it looked like mine. Somewhere along the line it occurred to me that I wasn’t uncomfortable anymore. At the last second, as we walked out the door, I remembered to say, “Thank you.” Then the other guys did too. She stood at the door. She waved at us as we pedaled off.

  We didn’t go back to the hideout. We didn’t talk. We just rode around. From one end of town to the other and back. I know we were all thinking it, but nobody was saying it. Finally Nacho did: “First goober mother I ever met.”

  “She’s pretty cool,” I said.

  “She called us dudes,” said Burke.

  We rode some more, then split and went home to our dinners.

  Lily

  I
stink at origami. Whatever I tried to make came out looking like a giraffe in a bathtub.

  Poppy thought about it. He snapped his fingers. “How about this: flowers. You like flowers, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think about them.”

  “Everybody likes flowers,” he said. “You’re gonna help me landscape the backyard. Come on.”

  So we went to a garden shop and came back with a bunch of plants and flowers and a pair of trowels. He told me maybe I’m a green thumb and just don’t know it.

  “What’s a green thumb?” I said. I looked at my thumb.

  “Somebody who’s good with plants,” he said. “Green thumbs can make anything grow.”

  As soon as we went out the back door I knew I was in trouble. A dog was barking. It was in the next-door backyard. A big black dog. Sticking its nose through one of the diamond-shaped spaces in the chain-link fence and barking. I don’t mean a nice regular doggie woof woof bark. I mean a loud, nasty, growly bark. The kind of bark that’s so powerful it makes the dog’s head flop up and down. A bark that’s super excited, but not in a puppy-happy-to-see-you way. Super excited because he can’t wait to sink his teeth into you and rip out a vital organ.

  “No way,” I said. I stepped back behind the screen door.