They had been born just six hours apart, and began life in side-by-side cribs in the hospital nursery. Growing up next-door neighbors, they had taken their first step on the same day. Wiley’s first word had been “Jeff”; Jeff’s had been “Wiley.”
The two families had become almost one family because their sons did everything together. Wiley and Jeff team-mowed both lawns, team-weeded the shared vegetable garden, and team-ran every errand.
“I picked up an extra package of mozzarella,” Wiley commented as the two walked home from the market with Mrs. Greenbaum’s groceries. “Your mom’s homemade pizza has been kind of naked lately.”
“Good idea,” Jeff nodded. “Did you remember to forget the broccoli?”
Zoom!
The two were about to step off the curb when a slight figure flashed by on Rollerblades.
Wiley jumped back, juggling the grocery bag. A carton of eggs popped out.
Jeff dove forward and caught it an inch before it hit the pavement. “Maniac!” he shouted at the skater.
Wiley squinted at her colorful skirt. “Hey, isn’t that—”
Skillfully, the blader executed a hairpin turn and cruised up to them. Red curls spilled from under her helmet. It was Cassandra.
“Sorry about that. I was concentrating on the cars, not the people. You guys are in my class, right?”
“I’m Wiley, he’s Jeff,” Wiley said at the same time as Jeff was saying, “I’m Jeff, he’s Wiley.”
Eleven years of friendship had given them split-second timing.
“My folks put me in charge of unpacking my own stuff,” Cassandra explained, wheeling a delicate circle in front of them. “I opened the first box, and there were my blades, right on top. So I’m taking a break. My dad says I could be president if I wasn’t so easily distracted.”
“You just moved here?” asked Wiley, racking his brain for a nickname that went with “easily distracted.”
“From Philadelphia,” Cassandra confirmed. “My parents bought the property at the end of Farm Lane.”
Jeff goggled. “You mean the old Gunhold place?”
“Right! My dad was sick of the city. He wanted us to get back to nature.”
“That’s…uh…great—” Wiley managed. It was going to be easy to get back to nature in the old Gunhold house. Nature could come right in through the broken windows and the leaky roof. It was simply the most ancient, run-down, shabby, unpainted, and probably haunted structure in all of Old Orchard. Rats went four blocks out of their way just to avoid it.
“It’s a totally cool house,” Cassandra enthused. “Of course, it needs a little work. But it’s got so much character. I was telling Crusty about it in science. Neat girl, but what kind of a name is Crusty?”
“Oh,” Wiley chuckled, “it’s just a nickname.”
“A lot of people have nicknames around here,” Jeff added. “As you get to know everyone, you’ll notice—” He fell silent. Cassandra was gliding softly from side to side, her head thrown back, watching the clouds roll by. She was at least a million miles away.
The boys exchanged a bewildered look. Finally, Wiley reached over and tapped her on the shoulder.
She snapped back to attention. “Oh, I’m sorry.” She grinned engagingly. “See? What did I tell you? Easily distracted.”
“No problem,” said Jeff. “Everybody daydreams.”
“Oh, I wasn’t daydreaming,” she told them. “I was thinking about the blue-crested warbler sparrow.”
“The what?” chorused Wiley and Jeff.
“Blue-crested warbler sparrows live in the trees near river valleys,” Cassandra explained. “But with all the subdivisions going up around here, most of the trees get cut down. So the poor blue-crested warbler sparrows have no place to nest.”
Wiley and Jeff weren’t struck dumb very often, but this was one of those moments.
A horn sounded, and a sleek silver sedan whispered up to the curb.
Cassandra pirouetted and waved. “Hi, Dad!” She spun back to Wiley and Jeff, beamed, and said, “See you guys at school tomorrow,” before skating off. The circus parade on her skirt billowed out behind her.
Jeff frowned as she hopped into the car and disappeared. “The nerve of that girl! We’re trying to be friendly, and she tunes us out like a bad radio station! I say we give Carrot-top a second look!”
“Or Birdbrain,” Wiley added. “Did you catch that bit about the warbling sparrow?”
Jeff shook his head. “I suppose we shouldn’t be so hard on her. The poor kid has to live in the old Gunhold place. I wouldn’t board my dog there!”
“I wouldn’t board my gerbil there!” Wiley countered.
“My caterpillar!”
“My amoeba!”
Jeff folded his arms and grinned in triumph. “I wouldn’t board my germ there!”
“Good one,” Wiley conceded. He offered up a high five, which Jeff accepted. And they hefted their groceries and headed off toward home.
MR. DONCASTER WAS at the bottom of the stairwell when he heard the commotion from above. Quickly, he ran upstairs and cast the deer-in-headlights gaze down the upper-grade hallway. Every single teacher was in his or her doorway, peering quizzically toward the end of the corridor. The door of 6B was shut, but the ruckus was definitely coming from there.
“What’s going on?” the principal barked at Miss Hardaway, the 6A teacher.
She shifted uncomfortably on her four-inch heels. Because she always teetered around on stiltlike shoes, Wiley and Jeff had given her the nickname Skywalker.
“It’s Mr. Hughes’s class,” she replied nervously. “It started a few minutes ago. It was quiet, and all of a sudden there was this terrible yelling.”
Grimly, Mr. Doncaster marched to the door of 6B and threw it open. Mr. Hughes was galloping between the rows of desks, gulping Gatorade, and howling like a madman.
“Make sure the ovals are filled in all the way!…Watch those quotation marks, men! They’re killing us!…Find the main character! He’s the quarterback of the story!…Who needs a trip to the pencil sharpener? Break!”
“What is going on here?” demanded Mr. Doncaster, screaming to be heard over the teacher.
Gasping and sweating, Mr. Hughes turned to his principal. “Shhh! This is the practice test for the State Reading Assessment.”
“You’ve disturbed every classroom on this floor!”
“That’s impossible,” said Mr. Hughes protectively. “My team is very well behaved.”
The principal pulled the teacher aside. “Not them,” he murmured through clenched teeth. “You.”
Mr. Hughes looked utterly bewildered. “I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about, Mr. Doncaster.”
“You were yelling!”
“When?”
“Just now!”
“Oh.” Mr. Hughes shrugged it off. “I may get a little excited on the critical downs, but I wouldn’t exactly call it yelling.”
“Well, I would,” retorted the principal, “and so would anyone with ears!”
Mr. Hughes planted his sturdy legs like concrete abutments holding up a bridge. “If I’m going to expect my kids to give me a hundred-and-ten percent, I have to give them a hundred-and-ten percent in return.”
“Next time try to be a little quieter about it,” the principal said irritably. He focused the deer-in-headlights look on the class’s newest student. “Cassandra, how are you settling in?”
“Totally fine, Mr. Deer—”
Wiley kicked her under the desk. “That’s Doncaster!” he hissed.
Mr. Hughes glanced at his watch. “Game over,” he announced.
“Game over?” echoed the principal. He looked around in alarm. “You mean time’s up? But these tests are incomplete.”
“I gave them the full half hour,” said the teacher.
Mr. Doncaster marched up and down between the rows of desks, checking each paper. “But—but how do you expect to pass the real exam if you can’t finish it? Peter
—you barely made it halfway through!”
Peter chuckled. “Maybe it’s because we’re the Dim Bulbs.”
The principal stared at him. “The what?”
“It’s kind of a joke in our class,” Christy explained. “We call 6A the Bright Lights because they win all the spelling bees and math contests. And we’re the Dim Bulbs.”
Mr. Hughes was appalled. “How did we get stuck with a terrible nickname like that?”
Wiley and Jeff suuk down low in their chairs, making themselves small.
Charles was looking straight at them. “Why don’t you ask—”
Wiley leaped to his feet. “Can I go to the water fountain?” he bellowed, cutting Charles off.
Mr. Hughes ignored the outburst. “We’re not the Dim Bulbs!” he exclaimed. “We’re more like—the All-Stars! The MVPs! The Hall Of Fame, Powerhouse, Super Bowl, Record-Breaking, Legendary, Unbeatable—”
“You’re yelling again,” interrupted the principal.
“Sorry,” mumbled Mr. Hughes, embarrassed. “I’m just a little surprised at this negative attitude. Men, we’re every bit as bright as Miss Hardaway’s team. We’re all first-round draft choices.”
“What you probably mean,” translated Mr. Doncaster, “is that our sixth-grade classes are well-balanced. That’s true.”
“So how come the science fair winners all came from 6A?” asked Dinky.
“And don’t forget the editors of the school paper,” added Raymond.
“Stop!” Mr. Hughes held out a palm the size of a medium pizza. “It doesn’t matter if you’re in first place or last place so long as you give a hundred-and-ten percent.”
“Last place certainly matters when it’s on the State Reading Assessment,” Mr. Doncaster corrected sharply. “It’s the biggest exam we take all year. Mr. Hughes, I want to see these practice tests as soon as they’ve been graded.” And he left the room, closing the door behind him.
Mr. Hughes mopped his face with his desk towel. “Time to hand in the papers. Come on up, men.”
Cassandra cleared her throat.
“Whoops. I mean, men and Cassandra.”
Christy stood up. “Mr. Hughes, if Cassandra doesn’t have to be a man, I shouldn’t have to be one either.”
“All right. Men, Cassandra, and Christy.”
“And me,” chimed in Kelly.
One by one, all the girls in 6B spoke up for their right not to be men.
With a heavy sigh, Mr. Hughes perched on the edge of his desk. He looked very much like a normal-size person sitting on a footstool. “I apologize. I’m sorry if I offended anybody.”
“Oh, we’re not offended,” Cassandra assured him. “We’re just not men.”
For the last period of the day, 6B went to the library to check out material for their research projects. Wiley’s topic (gray sharks) took him to the same shelf as Jeff’s (blue sharks). Peter was also there, looking for information on coral reefs.
He was still wide-eyed over the practice test. “Can you believe Mr. Huge lied like that? He told Deer in Headlights he wasn’t yelling. He was screaming the whole school down!”
“I don’t think Mr. Huge realizes how freaked out he gets,” mused Wiley. “He coaches football, which means he runs up and down the sidelines cheering. He has to yell to be heard over the crowd.”
“And that’s how he acts for a reading test.” Jeff shook his head. “If it wasn’t so crazy, it would almost make sense.”
Mike Smith teetered around the high shelf. The tall boy was half hidden behind the stack of textbooks he was carrying. The top three volumes wobbled, overbalanced, and slid off the pile.
Peter stepped forward and caught the falling books. “Here you go, Iceman.”
Mike stopped dead in his tracks. There was that name again—Iceman. He looked around to make certain there was no other possible Iceman nearby.
Crash!!
The stack toppled, and books rained everywhere.
“Sorry,” muttered Mike, getting down on all fours.
“Here, Iceman,” said Peter. “We’ll give you a hand.”
The boys from 6B stooped to help.
In a daze, Mike restacked his books. It was definitely true. For some reason, he was now “Iceman.” Oh, sure, there were a lot of nicknames floating around Old Orchard Public School. But why him? And why Iceman?
As Jeff replaced a loose page, he spotted Charles Rossi in the next aisle. Charles was peering through a gap in the shelf, eavesdropping as usual. He wore a self-satisfied smile.
“Get out of here, Snoopy!” Jeff hissed.
The face disappeared.
Mike cast a feeble grin at Wiley, Jeff, and Peter. “Thanks a lot,” he managed. And he left the library, tossing a haunted look over his shoulder.
Wiley stared at Peter. “Hey, Skunk, how come you called him Iceman?”
Peter shrugged. “I don’t know. Everybody does.”
“Everybody?” Jeff echoed in horror.
“Well—a bunch of people, anyway.”
“But…but Iceman’s what you call a cool guy,” Wiley protested. “Mike Smith isn’t cool.”
“He might be,” replied Peter. “He kind of is. He’s laid-back.”
“Laid-back?” moaned Jeff. “He’s barely alive!”
“Well, anyway,” Peter said vaguely, “he’s the Iceman.” And he went to sign out his book on coral reefs.
Wiley and Jeff were left bug-eyed.
“You don’t think Snoopy’s right?” Jeff asked hesitantly. “You know—that any old nickname could stick?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” scoffed Wiley. “If that was true, we’d already have so many names for Cassandra we wouldn’t know which one to pick.”
Jeff’s eyes darted to the bright orange curls, bobbing up and down at the checkout desk. Even selecting a library book on the blue-crested warbler sparrow was a high-action event for Cassandra.
“Well, she’s pretty new,” he commented. “When we get to know her better, the right nickname will come to us.”
Wiley nodded. “Let’s pay a visit to the old Gunhold place after school today. We need to see Cassandra in her natural habitat.”
Farm Lane was a rutted dirt road about half a mile from the school, just outside the town limits. All the other properties on it were small working truck farms with neat houses and well-kept grounds. But at the end stood the remains of Josiah Gunhold’s Victorian mansion, a nightmare of turrets, gables, shutters, and chimneys. A symphony of peeling paint.
“To be fair,” said Wiley as they approached, “it was probably pretty fantastic—you know, way back when it was new.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet it looked great in the Ice Age.” Jeff shuddered. “I hope she doesn’t invite us in.”
“Don’t be a baby!” snorted Wiley. “If Cassandra can sleep there every night, the least you can do is walk into the place in broad daylight.”
It was like approaching a haunted house. The ancient wrought-iron gate creaked open to admit them into a front yard of knee-high weeds. They moved into the shadow of the old structure, and the temperature seemed to drop twenty degrees. They exchanged an uneasy glance.
Wiley nodded toward the porch. “Go up there and knock.”
“Me? Why don’t you do it?”
At that precise moment, a second-floor window was flung open, and a large bucket of dirty water was emptied out.
“Heads up!” cried Jeff.
The two hurled themselves aside just in the nick of time.
A mop of bright red curls appeared at the window. “Wiley? Jeff? What are you doing here?”
“Well,” Jeff said casually, “we were in the neighborhood, and we thought we’d see how you were settling in.”
“My mom and I were just doing some cleaning,” Cassandra called down.
Wiley nodded. “I guess the maid has been goofing off since 1898.”
Cassandra laughed. “Come on in, guys. I’ll be right down. Not that way!” she added hastily as they head
ed for the front door. “The porch is all rotted out. You’d fall totally through. Go in the root cellar and up the kitchen stairs. There’s a lot of cobwebs so try to hold your breath.” She disappeared from the window.
Jeff turned to Wiley. “If we run, we can make it down the lane, and be out of sight before she realizes we’re not coming.”
“Just for that remark,” growled Wiley, “you’re going first.”
Cassandra was waiting in the kitchen as they came up the creaking stairs, sneezing and spitting, and white with dust. She had shed her combat boots, but she was still wearing her school clothes. Today’s long skirt featured a star map of the Milky Way galaxy.
“This is so cool!” she enthused. “My first visitors at the new place.”
To their surprise, the kitchen was pretty nice—shiny plank flooring and gleaming brand-new appliances. But the hallway matched the rest of the house, with ancient buckling linoleum, peeling wallpaper, and dust, dust, dust.
“We’re fixing it up one room at a time,” Cassandra explained. “It’s kind of my parents’ dream. When I was growing up in the city, they always used to talk about a big old house far from the hustle and bustle of the rat race.”
Jeff’s eyes darted to the window and the field of weeds outside. “No hustle around here.”
“Not even any bustle,” added Wiley. “And the rats all take their time.”
They looked to Cassandra, but she had tuned them out. She’d hoisted herself up on the counter and was swaying softly from side to side, her eyes tightly closed.
Wiley touched her arm. “Sorry. We weren’t making fun of your parents’…uh…dream.”
Cassandra flashed them a dazzling smile. “Oh, I wasn’t mad. I was just, you know, thinking.”
“About the blue-crested warbler sparrow again?” Jeff asked.
“Oh, no,” said Cassandra seriously. “I was thinking about the Great Nicobar sand grub, whose only natural enemy is the dodo. And since dodos are extinct, there are so many sand grubs that the poor things can’t find enough food.”
“I guess they don’t have Pizza Hut,” Wiley ventured.
She laughed. “You guys are so funny. I can tell we’re going to be total friends. Come on, let me give you a tour of the house.”