Hunter Moran Hangs Out

  We deposit the worm in its home in the kitchen, sweep Mary’s half-eaten toast crumbs off her high chair for a welcome-home dinner, and imagine the reunion the worms must be having as we slide out the front door.

  Pop has forgotten to lock up again, very careless, especially when there’s a kidnapper lurking around. We lock the door behind us even though it wouldn’t keep a flea out.

  Outside, we skitter across the street, circling around the light pole, and dart down the driveway of the empty house. Strange, it almost sounds as if there are voices inside. But no time for that. We dive into the woods.

  Way into the woods.

  We just have to hope the kidnapper is staked out somewhere at the other end of town.

  The trees are huge, higher than houses. Dive off one of those babies, and you’d be buried right there under piles of old leaves, muck, and maybe even snakes, poisonous or otherwise.

  “This isn’t going to work,” Zack says.

  “I know it. All you can see are tree trunks.”

  Zack looks up. His head is tilted so far it’s almost leaning against his back.

  I look up, too. I see the tallest tree in the forest, higher than St. Ursula’s Church, but skinny as a stick.

  “You know what we have to do,” Zack says.

  I have a sinking feeling. But he’s right.

  “We’ll have to build a lookout tower,” Zack says. “Up on top.”

  I can hardly see the top, but we can’t worry about small details. Pop has rusty nails and pieces of boards all over the place.

  I flex my muscles. We’re ready to take action.

  Chapter 5

  We grab boards from Pop’s shed and drag them behind us, leaving a dusty path in the street. Who knew they’d make so much noise?

  We drop them under a tree, then go back to roll a barrel of nails into the woods. The nails are leftovers from Pop’s plan to build a workroom before we were born. Now he’s thrilled with his lawn seeding project. He’ll never miss all this stuff.

  In the woods, dark leaves and branches crisscross high over our heads. “Just like Jungle Terror, Saturday afternoon, four o’clock,” Zack says.

  There’s nothing left to do but climb.

  “Sheesh,” Zack says. “Climb what?”

  I see what he means. The lowest limb is almost out of sight. Even Pop couldn’t reach it.

  Zack throws his legs around the trunk to shinny up. He gets about two feet off the ground and falls back into an ooze of mud.

  I’m not going to try that. Instead, we lean Pop’s barrel against the trunk and throw ourselves on top of the barrel. The cover sinks in.

  Not only have I stabbed myself in a dozen places right through my sneakers, but we’re still not high enough.

  “Well,” Zack says, yawning.

  I hope he’s going to say we’ll forget about it for tonight. But no. He leans a board against the tree, backs up about ten paces, and takes off . . .

  . . . through the ooze, onto the board, and he’s right there, reaching, holding on to the lowest branch, swinging like a trapeze artist.

  “Good effort,” I say in a Sister Appolonia voice as he lands on a branch, legs dangling.

  “Hand up another board,” he calls down. “A good one for the floor.”

  I grab one that probably weighs as much as Nana and zigzag underneath, holding it high.

  Zack leans over, a little too far. “Yeow!” He just avoids a major fall as he latches on to a branch. The board swings back and I manage to duck before I’m conked in the head.

  We start over. This time he grabs the board. I put a couple of nails in my mouth and take off running, yelling, “Timber!” to man myself up.

  Too bad about the nails. Once I open my mouth, all but one has disappeared into the undergrowth.

  “Timber!” someone whispers back at me.

  “Keep going,” Zack calls down. “It’s only an echo.”

  “I don’t think that was an echo,” I say. Halfway up, I hang on to the tree trunk. Back and forth, forth and back, until I’m dizzy. One way, I catch sight of trees with gigantic spider legs. I swing the other way. A killer snake reaches out to circle my ankle. “Poisonous!” I scream.

  “A vine,” Zack says.

  I close my eyes. Insects buzz. The echo keeps ringing in my ears. Timber.

  “Let’s go, Hunter,” Zack calls.

  I lean my head against the trunk and open my eyes. Everything is still moving. “Onward to the next branch,” I whisper.

  Toward the top, the trunk is even skinnier. It bends, it sways. And we bend and sway with it.

  “High enough,” Zack says at last. “I can see St. Ursula’s roof and the town round.”

  He’s right. I spot the railroad station and Gussie’s Gym. And there’s the enormous Suicide Hill, which only the bravest skateboarders in the world would dare try.

  Not me. Not Zack.

  But we’ve forgotten something. Sheesh. The barrel of nails is all the way down below, and only one nail is left in my mouth.

  “Don’t worry about minor things,” Zack says. “We’ll lay the board out across a branch. You sit on one end. I’ll sit on the other.”

  A balancing act. Good.

  You can’t beat Zack for brains.

  But it’s not so easy to keep the board steady. Zack scootches in on his side; I scootch out. It’s windy up there, and the board seesaws. How can I search for a kidnapper if I’m trying to steady the board?

  Wait a minute. I do see something. First I think it’s just a shadow. My imagination.

  But on the other side of the board, Zack gulps.

  It’s urgent that no one sees us. I duck behind the leaves, forgetting to balance the board and myself. The board tips toward me. I tip toward the ground far below. Zack is somewhere above me.

  “Looook oooouuuut!” I shout.

  I slide . . .

  Fall.

  The board snaps back.

  We sail through the air, dislodging leaves and small branches.

  “Yeooooowwwww!” I scream all the way down.

  Across the street, Fred yowls, too.

  Chapter 6

  “I’m dead,” Zack moans.

  “You’re right.” I try to figure out if I’m breathing.

  “Not even close to dead,” a voice says. “Just scrambled brains.”

  The kidnapper? A female kidnapper?

  I look up. Sarah Yulefski.

  “I can’t believe it.” Yulefski, the echo I heard, the shadow I saw.

  “Believe it,” she says. “But I’m out of here. Your father’s coming this way.”

  Yes, the front door is open, and Pop is coming down the steps. We must have made enough noise to wake the whole town. Leaves are still floating down.

  I scramble up, searching for a place to hide. But Pop has eagle eyes. I watch helplessly. There’s nowhere in the woods he won’t see. Nowhere in town.

  Of course he’ll see us.

  I hear Zack gasp. He knows it, too.

  But no. It’s something else.

  Pop starts across the newly seeded lawn. “Sheesh,” Zack says. “Pop doesn’t see the coyote’s gravestone.”

  There isn’t time to yell “Watch out!”

  Pop slams into the gravestone. He slides over the top and ends up draped over the whole thing, his head on one side, his feet on the other.

  He’s down.

  But not dead.

  His yowl is louder than Fred’s.

  “You’d better do something,” Sarah Yulefski says over her shoulder as she heads out of the woods. “He’s probably broken his neck.”

  At that moment, all the lights in our house go on. Shades snap up. Doors slam. Mom and Linny barrel down the steps and tramp over the new lawn. There isn’t one spot left that’s . . .

  . . . . pristine, as Sister Appolonia would say.

  They stop in front of the gravestone and lean over Pop.

  Zack and I race across the street toward them.


  “I knew it.” Linny shakes her head so hard her hair flies. She points directly at us. “This is your work.”

  By this time, Pop is sitting up, leaning on the gravestone, yelling that both arms and one of his legs are broken.

  I have a quick picture in my mind. Zack and I will have to wheel Pop around in Mary’s stroller for the rest of his life.

  “Can you walk, John?” Mom asks calmly.

  “Of course I can walk.” He sits up against the gravestone.

  “Whew,” I whisper.

  Pop waves one of his broken arms around. “The lawn is ruined. And how did this rock get here in the middle, anyway?”

  “It’s a gravestone,” I begin, but suddenly I have major doubts that our coyote story is going to work. Besides, Linny opens her mouth, ready to give us right up.

  Now Steadman is at the door. “Something’s buried there,” he says around a caramel pop. “One of those huge tannish”—he snaps his sticky fingers and squints up at the light over the front door—“with horrible teeth.”

  How did he come up with that?

  Spying on us, of course.

  Pop hobbles into the house, holding on to Mom and Linny. “I’ll get to the bottom of all this in the morning,” he says.

  “Wicked bad news,” Zack whispers to me.

  But then . . .

  . . . over my shoulder . . .

  I look across the street at that gloomy empty house.

  Wait! Is there a light flickering inside?

  Wait again! Down at the end of its weedy driveway where the woods begin, I see a shadow again.

  A huge . . .

  Someone?

  Something?

  And it’s definitely not Sarah Yulefski.

  Zack turns to see what I’m looking at. “It’s worse than a coyote,” he says.

  There it is, a terrifying clue.

  The kidnapper is hanging out in the empty house . . .

  . . . spying on us.

  On Steadman.

  We dart into the house behind the rest of the family, almost knocking Linny over as we head for our bedroom and lock the door behind us.

  Chapter 7

  It’s morning. A red-hot sun beams through the window. Outside, something is banging.

  Is William bouncing his basketball against the house? Boom-ba. Boom-ba. No. It’s swish-a, swish-a. He’s painting something.

  I stretch, wondering why I feel uneasy. Maybe it’s because I had a nightmare; it was something to do with books.

  Something I’m supposed to remember?

  But what?

  Everything that happened last night comes back to me: kidnappers and gravestones. In one move, I’m out of bed. At that moment, footsteps pound down the hall, straight for our bedroom.

  Pop’s footsteps, heavy as an elephant’s.

  Zack pulls the pillow over his head. “It’s time for the gravestone inquisition.”

  But Pop keeps going down the stairs. The whole house vibrates. “This is it!” he yells.

  Zack leans up on one elbow. “Pop’s leaving home, and it’s all because of us.”

  Mom’s footsteps come next, a little slower, a lot lighter. She opens our door and smiles at us. “We’re on our way to have the baby. Nana will be here to take care of things in an hour or so.”

  Nana. Terrific.

  Mom frowns a little. “Pay attention to Linny in the meantime.”

  “Have a boy,” we call after her, crossing fingers and toes.

  “Think of names,” she calls back.

  We don’t have to think. We’ve figured it out already. K.G. for Killer Godzilla. We’ll tell Mom it’s for Kevin George, or something regular like that.

  The banging goes on. It sounds as if it’s coming through the window. The day has a whole new look, though. Nana will cook for hours, humming, patting our shoulders as we go by. She hardly remembers who’s who. We can search for the kidnapper in peace.

  Except for Linny. She bangs on our door with both fists. “Let’s get this house cleaned up before Nana gets here,” she says. “The whole place is a mess because of you guys.”

  She’s got to be kidding. Nana loves to clean.

  I pull a T-shirt out from under the bed. DON’T WORRY is splashed across the front in huge red letters. I’m worried. We have two days to solve this kidnapping.

  Zack and I go down the hall. We pass William’s room. Mom says he has a head on his shoulders. Too bad there’s nothing in it. A huge Gussie’s Gym bag is on the floor, probably stuck to the new paint. He said he paid Gussie a fortune for it. That means ten bucks, at least.

  Airhead William.

  We peek in at Steadman. He’s fast asleep with his thumb in his mouth and a half-eaten Baby Ruth bar melting on his pillow. We peek quietly, though. Once he’s up, we’ll have to follow him around all day to be sure he’s safe from the kidnapper.

  For once Linny is right. The kitchen is a mess. She’s standing at the sink, bubbles piled high, dishes piled even higher. “Grab a towel,” she says over her shoulder.

  “The dishwasher’s still broken?” Zack asks.

  “What do you think?” she says.

  “I think you’re doing a terrific job, Linny,” I say. “Just keep an ear out for Steadman while you’re at it, will you?”

  We dive out the door and stand on the back steps, listening. “Is that noise coming from Werewolf Woods?” I say.

  Zack looks across the street. “I think so.”

  I can hardly hear him. Linny is screeching at us from the kitchen. It sounds as if she’s being dragged away by the kidnapper.

  Who’d want her?

  “Close the window,” Zack calls in to her.

  Surprisingly, she slams it down, yelling something about a pile of books on the hall floor that anyone can fall over.

  Books! Last night’s dream! Something floats into my mind, then out again.

  Linny presses her nose against the glass. “What about those worms?”

  “Don’t worry,” I call back. “They’re healthy. They won’t catch anything from you.”

  We grin at her to show we’re joking; then we concentrate on the noise coming from the woods.

  “The kidnapper is building a prison, right there in the middle where the vines are thick,” Zack says.

  “Easy for the kidnapper, just steps away from the empty house where he’s hanging out,” I say.

  In front of the house, we try not to look at Pop’s ruined lawn with the gravestone looming up in the middle.

  We zigzag across the street, heading for the woods, and take a shortcut along the driveway of the empty house. Strangely, there are shades on the window. Black. You can’t see an inch inside, even though we take a couple of jumps to look.

  “Crummy house,” Zack mutters.

  Even William’s painting would be better than the peeling wood. Perfect for a kidnapper.

  In the woods, we pass Pop’s barrel of nails. Some of his wood is missing. Now the kidnapper is turning into a thief.

  The noise is closer, earsplitting. We look up.

  And up.

  Whatever is there is well hidden. We walk around the trees, squinting. I can see a couple of boards at the top of one of the highest trees.

  A lookout tower? It slants to one side, as if the whole thing will topple over any minute.

  Sarah Yulefski leans over the edge. She’s mostly hidden by the leaves. It’s an improvement.

  “Excellent view from up here,” she calls down. “I built it wide so there’s plenty of room.”

  Zack and I shrug. Should we build a platform of our own or become partners with Sarah Yulefski? Either option wears me out.

  Zack leans closer. “Isn’t that our wood? So that makes it our platform.”

  “Hey, Yulefski, where’d you get the wood?” I yell up, trying to remind her that she’s actually a thief.

  “Some idiots left it here,” she says. “Most of it was rotten, anyway.”

  I open my mouth to tell her it’s our
property, but what’s the use? We don’t want the whole world to hear that we’re the idiots.

  “Want to join in?” she asks. “A buck a day.”

  “You’re crazy,” Zack says.

  “Listen,” she says. “This was a tough job. I had to get my brother, Jerry, to help. We used ropes and—”

  “All right,” I say. “We’ll just have to owe you.”

  I hear footsteps and look over my shoulder. Bradley the Bully is coming along, muttering to himself.

  Most of the time, he hangs out at Gussie’s Gym; he wants to be a world champion wrestler someday. What he doesn’t have in teeth he makes up for in muscle. He could probably take Sister Appolonia right now.

  I heard her call him devious.

  Devious is right. He has a Vinny’s Vegetables shopping cart in his garage filled with potato chip bags and weight-lifting stuff. Probably all stolen.

  Get too close to him and he wraps one beefy arm around your neck until you beg for mercy. Zack and I scramble up the tree like a pair of mice escaping from a fox and throw ourselves onto the platform. It rocks a little, then settles back.

  Yulefski has outdone herself.

  A pair of binoculars hangs from a rotten branch above. A notebook hangs from another branch. Two thick books rest on the edge.

  Yulefski has a pencil behind each ear. “If you’re going to observe,” she says, “you have to take notes.” She points down as Bradley passes by underneath.

  He never looks up. He goes straight to the pond.

  “He might even be the kidnapper,” I say.

  “I never heard of a twelve-year-old kidnapper,” Zack says. “He can’t even drive a getaway car.”

  Yulefski reaches for her binoculars. “You have to look with one eye,” she says. “I cracked the other lens over my brother Jerry’s head.” She draws in her breath. “I can’t believe it.”

  “What?” Zack and I say together. But I don’t need binoculars to see what Bradley’s doing.

  He’s poking around in the pond with a big stick. And what does he come up with?

  “Is that what I think it is?” Zack forgets to whisper.

  I swallow. From here it looks like a head of hair, curly, dark, swamped with muddy water.