Mrs. Wu is nodding. “Excellent choices here.” She looks down at us over her glasses. “You also have six books out all summer. It’s going to cost.”
“Tomorrow,” I say. “We’re going to bring them right back.”
I don’t stop to see what excellent choices we have. I take Steadman’s hand, and the three of us are out the door.
Chapter 14
In the backyard, Nana barbecues hamburgers, with a little help from Linny and Becca. Becca’s going on about the new kid, Alex, who’s building steps for their workout practice. “Olympics, here we come,” she says.
Linny’s nodding. She looks a little rumpled from lying under her bed, but she’s prepared. She’s got Steadman’s looks-like-real sword tucked under her jeans belt and William’s baseball bat against the picnic table an inch away from her.
A worm is wandering around. One of ours? Sheesh, all that guy needs is a sunburn. I scoop him up, take a chunk of hamburger, and rush them both into the house.
I’m no sooner outside again than Linny begins. “I want some help after supper.” She stares at Zack and me. “We’re going to string spoons and forks over the back steps. The front steps, too.”
Zack shakes his head at me. This whole kidnapper thing has sent her right over the edge.
“Maybe William can help,” I say.
“Yeah,” Zack adds. “He can paint the spoons and forks.”
William gives Zack a nasty kick. “I have better things to do,” he says.
And then a surprise. “I’ll help,” Nana says, dishing out some of that brown pudding, which turns out to be butterscotch, the stick-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth kind. “But why, Linny?”
Linny takes a blob of pudding and swallows it down. “I hate to tell you this,” she says, “but there’s a kidnapper in town looking for a victim. All the evidence points to me.”
Nana bites the side of her lip. I can’t tell if she’s trying not to laugh, or if she’s worried. “We’d better get that silverware up, then.”
Linny nods. “If the kidnapper bangs into them, it will make enough noise to wake the neighborhood. I’ll be ready to dial 911.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll help,” Steadman says.
Great. That will take care of him for an hour. We’re free.
Linny starts to gather up spoons. It gives us a great opportunity to get out of there without finishing the pudding, and without having to hang silverware all over the property.
We slide out from the picnic table, and Mary waves bye-bye from her high chair. It’s her best trick.
We stop in the kitchen to check on the worms. A couple are twirled around, heads or tails poked up out of the dirt. They look comfortable and happy. Good.
We head for the lookout tower. It’s getting dark now, and the insects are going wild.
A couple of problems. Yulefski is there ahead of us. We can see her legs dangling from the platform. Bradley the Bully is sloshing around in the edge of the pond, fishing for something.
“What to do?” I whisper.
“Climb quietly, that’s what,” Zack whispers back. “We have no choice. We’ll have to watch the kidnapper’s house. If he comes out, we’ll follow.”
We take running jumps. Hand over hand we climb. We check to be sure Bradley hasn’t seen us.
Yulefski looks up from her book. “Everything’s quiet all over town,” she says.
A moment later, the door to the used-to-be-empty house flies open. The huge hulk of the kidnapper comes out and barrels up his driveway, his sneakers, elephant sized, pounding against the cement.
We don’t stop for a breath. We dive down the tree, the branches swaying as if we’re in a hurricane, and barrel after him.
He crosses the street.
It’s our house he’s after.
But no, he doesn’t even give it a glance.
We see him passing the streetlight. A moment later, he crosses Murdock Avenue and goes in through the gates of the town round.
Mom would be there, walking with Pop, if the baby, K.G., weren’t on his way.
The napper’s heading around the round now, just like a regular jogger, but he doesn’t fool us. He turns, and we dive into a bush. Has he seen us? It’s entirely possible.
Footsteps come up behind us now. The accomplice? I swing around, ready to defend myself, who knows how?
“It’s Yulefski following us,” I say.
“Hunter,” she says, hands on her hips, elbows like coat hangers. “Have you gone crazy? What are you two doing in the bushes?”
Zack gives her a zip the lip, and I pull her into the bushes, whispering furiously, pointing to the kidnapper, who’s coming around our side of the round. “Do you want the kidnapper to hear? He’s already sent us a ransom note. He really means business.”
She frowns. “The only way to see the kidnapper is from the lookout tower.” Then she stops, mouth open. She points at the kidnapper.
She bends over, hands on her knees, laughing through those disgusting braces of hers. “You think he—” She breaks off, trying to catch her breath. “That he . . .”
“Spit it out,” Zack says.
She shakes her head. She can’t talk. And here comes the kidnapper.
I try to cover her mouth, a little too hard, I guess.
She yells, “Ouch!” The kidnapper hesitates, then keeps going.
“You think . . . ,” she begins again, and shakes her head. “What a pair of idiots. While the kidnapper is roaming free in town, you are chasing the new principal of St. Ursula’s School.”
Chapter 15
How can I sleep? We’ve yelled at the new principal, we still haven’t tackled the summer reading, and worst of all, we’re being menaced by a kidnapper we still haven’t found.
Weighty, very weighty.
But I have to sleep. It’s the only way out.
And so the room is pitch-black and the pillow is jammed over my head when I hear Linny screaming down the hall.
Fred is barking, growling, howling.
In one motion, I’m out of bed. I grab one of the library books; it’s the heaviest thing in the room. Zack’s out of bed, too. He’s holding the lamp over his head, the wire trailing.
Zack’s eyes are like pizzas in the darkness. “We can do this. We have to save our sister.”
What is it she’s shouting?
We tiptoe to the bedroom door and ease it open. We have to surprise the kidnapper. It’s our only hope.
“Peaches!” she shouts above Fred’s horrendous noise.
Peaches?
Fred grabs the lamp cord and shakes it so hard that Zack drops the lamp on my foot. The lamp is in a thousand pieces; I’m lucky my toes are still attached.
Now I hear Nana. Is she yelling, too?
William’s door bursts open.
Steadman is standing against the wall, thumb in his mouth, shaking his head. “A girl,” he says. Then he’s really awake. “Yabaloo!” he shouts.
Fred snaps his jaw shut.
“Yes!” Linny stops in her tracks, dancing around, arms out, hitting the wall. “It’s Peaches.”
“Maizie,” Nana breathes, her hair twisted up in rollers, her face full of whitish cream. She smiles at us. “Your father just called with the news.”
A girl.
This is the latest in a string of disappointments. And poor Mary, asleep in her crib, doesn’t even know she’s not the baby anymore.
Still . . .
Zack and I grin at each other. We’ve had an alternate name plan just in case this happened.
We all troop downstairs to the kitchen. Nana pulls out a container of milk and a box of saltine crackers. She puts an open jar of peanut butter in the middle of the table. A knife sticks out of the top. William’s work. He never puts anything in the dishwasher.
I sit and chew; lights are blazing in the used-to-be-empty house. We’ve probably awakened the whole neighborhood. Worse, we may have awakened the kidnapper, wherever he is.
After we fini
sh off the crackers and milk, everyone goes back to bed. Everyone except Zack and me.
Upstairs in our bedroom, we look through the pile of books. Not one under a hundred pages; the letters are so small I’ll be wearing an eye patch by the time I’ve finished the first chapter.
“What we could do—” Zack holds up his hand so I don’t interrupt. He picks up the skinniest book. “One hundred two pages.” He snaps his fingers. “What’s half of that?”
I squint up to the ceiling. “Forty-one?”
“Fifty-one.” He squints, too. “You’ll read one half, I’ll read the other. We’ll figure out two life changes.” He looks thrilled with his idea.
We’re both yawning now; I can’t keep my eyes open. It must be after midnight. We’ll tackle fifty-one pages in the morning.
But Fred is barking again, a muffled bark.
Where is that coming from?
“It doesn’t sound as if it’s in the house,” Zack says. He goes to the window and peers out at the backyard. I look over his shoulder.
Is that Fred out there? We don’t see him, but he’s howling like Dracula.
How has he gotten out of the house?
We see the falling-apart playhouse we built with Pop a couple of weeks ago, and the half-dead bushes with their withered leaves dragging on the ground.
“Why hasn’t someone watered all that stuff?” Zack asks.
I don’t remind him that Pop told us to do it about fifty times.
But now we see something else. Someone is in the yard. It looks like an old man, all bent over, wearing one of those hats with brims that cover his eyes. His nose is huge, hooked like a pirate I read about once.
He’s dragging an odd-looking striped bag behind him. It’s big enough to stuff Linny inside. In the dim light it seems to move, to bulge one way and then another.
Without thinking, I shove up the window. “Hey!” I yell.
The guy, whoever he is, looks a little familiar. But before I can get a good look, he backs out the gate and takes off.
We’re going to take off, too. We can’t let him get away with this.
We won’t bother going through the house. Nana sleeps with one eye open. Instead, we dive into the closet for one of those rope ladder things. Nana gave it to us; she’s afraid of fire the way Linny is afraid of kidnappers.
“Just throw this thing out the window if necessary, then climb down,” she told us. “Read the instructions. It’s easy as pie.”
We haven’t read the instructions. And it’s not easy as pie.
The thing is heavy, but we manage to loop it over the windowsill, the handles like claws, ruining the paint, but no one will notice; the whole room is chipped from our wall-walking in spikes last summer.
I go first. I climb out backward, the ladder swaying like the lookout platform. I look over my shoulder at the maybe-kidnapper, who’s rushing down the alley.
“Hurry!” I yell to Zack as I find places for my toes. This ladder was built for feet like Mary’s.
Zack backs out behind me.
The kidnapper looks over his shoulder, too . . . and trips over his feet. “Oof!” he yells.
I leap off onto the ground, but my own feet are caught; the ladder comes with me, and Zack lands on my head.
Never mind that my brain is scrambled. We untangle ourselves and go after the kidnapper, kicking the rope ladder away.
Too bad we’ve forgotten sneakers. A thousand stones with sharp edges are hanging around. We dance down the alley on tiptoes and zigzag across Pop’s lawn again. We’ll have to deal with that later. A hyena memorial, or a grand WELCOME HOME, K.G. sign.
But right now, we’re saving lives. Our family is depending on us.
Ahead of us, the kidnapper sprints across the road, passing the streetlight. I know who this is; I’m sure of it. If only I could figure it out.
And what about that bag that seems to have a life of its own?
“Wait up!” I yell.
He doesn’t wait; of course he doesn’t.
We hobble over the curb, but here comes a delivery truck with a huge picture of bread on one side. Too bad the side’s a little dented. The bread looks squashed.
We have to wait until it lumbers past. And even losing those seconds makes us lose the guy.
Which way has he gone? Into the woods? Down to the town round? Maybe he’s racing to catch the midnight train to the city.
We look back and forth, toward the library, then the used-to-be-empty house, and the dark and creepy Werewolf Woods.
The guy has disappeared.
There’s nothing more we can do tonight. We head for home.
Chapter 16
It’s morning. My head hurts, and the soles of my feet are torn up, but Mom and Pop are home with the new baby. We gallop down the stairs to see her.
The baby’s face is a little red, a little squashed, and she looks like William, poor kid. She howls like Fred.
Mom sinks down with her on the big chair in the living room. Pop leans over them. He doesn’t seem to realize that the baby isn’t going to win any beauty contests. He looks thrilled. Good. It will keep his mind off the chewed-up lawn.
I reach out and the baby curls her fingers around mine. She belongs to us. I’m really glad she’s here. I’m glad Mom’s home, too.
Nana holds on to Mary, who’s jammed half the couch pillow in her mouth. “Do you have a name for her?” Nana asks Mom, and crosses her fingers.
“Peaches,” Linny whispers.
“Joey,” Steadman says.
“Leonardo.” William stands two inches away from the baby. “She looks like me.”
Nana’s eyes widen.
“She certainly does not,” Linny says.
Zack and I cross our fingers. “What was your grandmother’s name?” I ask Mom, knowing very well what it was.
Nana and Mom say it at the same time. “Kathleen Grace.”
We nod.
They smile. “That’s a beautiful name.”
“Kathleen Grace,” Nana breathes. “My mother’s name. How perfect is that!”
“Great idea,” Pop says.
Linny’s lower lip is out a mile. “I’m still calling her Peaches.”
“I’m calling her Joey,” Steadman says.
“We could even call her K.G.” Zack and I give each other a high five. Killer Godzilla.
The baby opens one eye and squints at me. It’s almost as if she knows Zack and I have railroaded the family into her name, but she doesn’t mind.
“Wait until Fred sees her,” Steadman says. “He’s going to go bananas.”
“Where’s Fred, anyway?” I ask.
Steadman looks around. “Komazahere!” he yells. He’s so loud, the baby stops crying and blinks. Mary knocks over a vase on the table and begins to chew on a daisy.
Fred doesn’t komazahere; he doesn’t even bark.
The doorbell rings. Becca is here to see the baby. She looks as if she’s jumped off a ten-story building into a pile of cement.
“What happened?” Nana asked.
“Gymnastics,” Becca says absently. She stares at the baby. “She seems a little squashed.”
“She does not,” we all say together.
“Nicely squashed, I mean,” Becca says.
“Komazahere!” Steadman screams. He runs through the dining room, into the kitchen. “Maybe he forgot the language,” he says over his shoulder. He clatters upstairs, and we clatter behind him.
“Fred, you’re the best dog!” Steadman cries. “Come out wherever you are.”
I’m beginning to have terrible thoughts. Last night in the dark. Chasing the maybe-kidnapper. The bulging bag.
Fred has been taken away in that bag.
Fred, who never keeps quiet.
Fred, who’d fit in a cage.
Fred, the kidnappee!
Not Linny, not Steadman, but still . . .
. . . part of our family.
Zack’s eyes bulge. He’s figured it out, too. He looks at
me and shakes his head. We’re both thinking the same thing. This is the work of a madman.
“Fred,” Linny breathes from behind us. “Who’d want Fred?”
Steadman opens every closet door, every dresser drawer. He’s crying so hard he can barely get the words out. “He’s a great dog. I bet he’s been kidnapped. He’s worth a hundred dollars at least.” He cries harder. “I have only three quarters and fourteen pennies to get him back.”
“Hunter and I are rich,” Zack says. “We have money tucked away all over the place.”
Actually, we have less than Steadman. But we’re on our way to deal with the kidnapper. Somehow.
“Don’t worry,” we tell Steadman. “We’ll come back with Fred.”
Chapter 17
Outside it’s almost too hot to move, but we drag ourselves to the town round, whistling for Fred. Zack even tries a “Komazahere” or two.
But Fred doesn’t komazahere.
We try every street in town. We see a couple of dogs panting in the shade, but not one that looks like Fred, with his weasel face and his sharp teeth.
We sink down on a bench; we’re so tired we ignore the pigeon goop. “Why did we bother to look all over the place in this heat?” Zack moans. “We know he’s been kidnapped, probably turned into hot dog meat by now.”
I think of Steadman’s sad face, his tears. He’s such a great kid. And then I remember the bulging bag last night. We know that bag. It’s a Gussie’s Gym bag. We look at each other in horror.
William?
“One of those bags was in William’s room,” Zack says.
I can hardly get the words out. “William’s the kidnapper?”
William has gone crazy.
“I thought it was an old man,” I say. “All bent over and wearing that hat.”
“It could have been anyone. Almost anyone,” Zack says. “We just have to hope it wasn’t William.”
It feels as if it’s 100 degrees; the sun is burning a hole in our heads. Still, we haul ourselves to our feet and head for Werewolf Woods. We’ll try the lookout tower next.
The woods are shady, cooler, the insects loud. We can’t find our tree. How is that possible?
“It was this side of the pond, right?” I ask Zack.