“You got it! And thanks!”
He took off, and the minute there was a break in traffic, I ran back across the street, where Dorito and Grams had a nuzzle-nose reunion. “You naughty, naughty boy!” Grams cooed. “You gave us such a scare! Don't you ever do something like that again, you hear me?”
Dorito licked his paw like, Yeah, right.
When we got home, the phone was ringing. Grams hurried to the kitchen to answer it, and I could hear her say, “Oh, Holly! We have wonderful news. Dorito's back!… yes … yes … hold on, I'll let you talk to Samantha.”
“Hey!” I said into the receiver.
“Where'd you find him?” she asked.
“Tornado Tony found him!”
“You're kidding.”
“No! We ran into him when we were putting up posters. He said he'd keep an eye out, but I didn't really expect him to find him.”
“Hey, that's great!”
Now, it's funny. Sometimes you can tell something's going on in someone's head, even when all you've got to work with is silence. Or a pause. And I could tell from the silence on the other end that the wheels inside Holly's head were definitely spinning. So I said, “But you weren't calling about Dorito, were you.”
“Well, no. But that is great news!”
“So…?”
“So I saw El Gato out behind Slammin' Dave's.”
“Yeah, and…?”
“And you won't believe who he was talking to.”
“Who?”
“That crazy cat lady”
“What? Really? When?”
“About half an hour ago.”
“Are you sure?”
She snorted. “There's no mistaking her. Or him.”
“He was wearing the mask?”
“Of course.”
“But Dave's isn't even open… is it?”
“Who knows. People come and go there at the weirdest times. It was just sort of freaky seeing the two of them together.”
“Well, what were they doing?”
“I don't really know. I saw them out the kitchen window, but I couldn't really hear anything. It looked like they were just talking… then laughing.”
“Laughing?”
I could practically see Holly shrug. “That's what it looked like.”
“Hmm.”
“But hey, who cares about wacky cat people, right? You've got your real cat back!”
I laughed. “That's right.”
“Which means your birthday wasn't a complete disaster after all, right?”
I laughed again. “Right.”
“Sorry we didn't get to do anything fun for it. Maybe tomorrow?”
“Maybe! Tony wouldn't take the reward money, so I've still got forty bucks to buy something. I was thinking maybe a CD player.”
“That'd be cool. Maybe I'll get you a CD.”
“Hey, no way! You gave me the best birthday present possible—you helped me get Dorito back.” Then a little uh-oh tickled through my brain, and I guess Holly could feel it across the line.
“What?” she asked.
“Oh. Well, I was just thinking I should go pull all those flyers down.”
“Now?”
“Uh, I probably should. It's got our phone number on it, and Grams is worried about getting fined because posting flyers is against the law.”
“Against the … what?”
“Yeah, I didn't know that, either, but you wouldn't believe how many people gave us grief about it.”
Grams overheard my end of the conversation and said, “It's much too late to go back out tonight. Especially to that part of town. We'll take them down in the morning.”
So I said into the phone. “Never mind. Grams says it's okay to wait until morning.”
“You want to meet before school?”
“Seriously?”
“Sure.”
“Okay! I'll come over. Is seven o'clock too early?”
“Nah, that's good.”
So Grams and I ate birthday cake for dinner. It was so good! And I must've been beat to a pulp, because when
I snuggled up with Dorito on the couch, all I remember thinking was, I had my cat back and I still had forty bucks … maybe being thirteen didn't mean total bad luck after all.
What woke me in the morning wasn't the alarm clock. It was an itchy arm. A really itchy arm. Then my neck started itching. And my side. Then my foot. I was itchy all over, and when I finally got up and looked to see why, I discovered little red bumps, all over the place.
At first I thought I had the measles or chicken pox or smallpox or some other nasty rash disease. But weren't those, you know, obliterated? So maybe it was some other exotic rash disease.
But I didn't have a temperature. And I felt okay. Well, except for the itch. And the more I scratched, the worse it got. It was like a nursery of baby mosquitoes had smorgasborded on me.
But the minute Grams saw the bumps, she said, “Oh no!”
Her eyes were big. Her jaw was dropped. And for a second I just knew—I was gonna die. “What?”
“Fleas!”
“Fleas?”
She studied my arm. My foot. “Look at all these bites!” She wagged a finger at Dorito and said, “You naughty, naughty boy! Where did you go to pick up fleas?”
She scooped him up and tossed him in the bathroom. “You,” she said to me, “take a shower.” She tore my afghan off the couch. “I'll get this and your clothes washing.”
So that's what we did. And later, when we met up in the kitchen, I heard her muttering about having to get flea powder and a flea collar and vacuuming twice a day for two weeks to make sure there weren't any flea eggs, and what a mess my mom had made of things, letting Dorito get away.
“What was that?” I asked, because I almost couldn't believe that she'd said anything negative about my mom.
“Never mind.”
I got busy vacuuming and beating out the couch pillows and vacuuming some more. And by the time we'd tried a bunch of different salves on my bites to keep them from itching, it was already seven o'clock and I hadn't even had breakfast, let alone packed a lunch. “You want to write me an excuse for being tardy?” I asked. “‘Cause I'm never gonna get all those flyers down before school.”
“Don't worry about the flyers. I'll go take them down myself.”
“By yourself?”
“Of course.”
“You won't call Hudson?”
“No! I'll be fine.”
Boy. People call me stubborn. And since there was obviously no talking her out of it, the only way to keep her from going to the West Side—through gang territory and who knows what else—was if I got the job done before school.
So I called Holly and told her I was running late, then powered through breakfast, threw some stuff together for lunch, and said, “Holly and I'll get it done, no sweat!” Then I tore out of the apartment before she could argue.
Holly and I did run around the neighborhoods as fast as we could, but we couldn't finish on time. Finally I looked at my watch and said, “You up for lunchroom?” because that's what Vice Principal Caan makes us do for tardy detention—eat lunch in a corner with other A.M. delinquents. Then he has us clean up the trash and slop left behind by everyone else. And believe me, if someone like Heather knows you've got tardy detention, she and all her friends make a righteous mess just for the fun of knowing you'll have to clean up after them.
Holly must have been thinking about scraping up mushy mashed potatoes, because her face crinkled and she said, “Can we finish after school?”
I nodded. “Let's go.”
So we tore across town and managed to slide into homeroom just as the tardy bell was ringing. I was glad to see that Marissa was back from Las Vegas, but she was looking pretty tired in her seat across the room. I smiled and waved at her, then noticed Heather snarling at me from two rows up.
Now, Hudson's always telling me I should try killing Heather with kindness—that it's the only way of dealing with her. That's
a tough thing to do, so I usually try to ignore her instead. And I don't know if it was because I was all out of breath from running or what, but on impulse I smiled at her and gave a little wave.
And what I learned is that for such a smart guy, Hudson's clueless about people like Heather Acosta. I mean, talk about lighting a fuse! Heather sizzled and sputtered and had a mini spaz-out right there on the spot. And I could tell that any second she was going to explode in my direction, so I put my hands up and mouthed, “Chill!”
She mouthed something right back, and even though I couldn't exactly follow it, the meaning was loud and clear: She was gonna kill me. And no, she wasn't planning on doing it with kindness.
I rolled my eyes like, Oh right, then stood for the Pledge with the rest of the class. But inside, my stomach was churning. Heather may be mean, but she's also smart and sneaky, and that is one dangerous combination.
After homeroom I avoided her the best I could by taking different routes between classes and just ducking out of view when I spotted her in my vicinity. Then at lunch Holly and I pieced together for Marissa and Dot most of what had happened over the weekend. Marissa kept saying, “I can't believe I missed all this! I can't believe they made me miss your birthday! I can't believe you guys had so much fun without me!”
“Fun?” I asked. “You call digging up dead cats fun? You call losing your own cat fun? You call being thirteen twice fun?”
She scowled and said, “Better'n babysitting Mikey.” And that's how it came out that pretty much all Marissa did in Las Vegas was look after her little brother while her parents went to shows and out for drinks and to the spa. “Even when we went swimming, I had to keep an eye on Mikey. The only thing I did that was any fun was go see Darren Cole and the Troublemakers with my mom.”
“Darren Cole and the Troublemakers?” Holly asked.
Marissa laughed. “Yeah, I know. Apparently my mom had a crush on Darren Cole when she was young. The concert was pretty amazing, but that's basically the only fun I had.”
So I actually wasn't thinking about Heather at all. But then Dot clears her throat, “Ahem,” and that's when I notice that there's someone standing right behind me. “Oh hi, Casey,” I say, turning beet red.
“Hi,” he says back, then scoots his way onto the bench. “I was sorta waiting for a break in the conversation, but lunch is about over and you're still jabbering away.”
“What's up?” I ask, because I can tell something is.
He grins around at the other three, saying, “I suppose she's told you that she and the Evil One have the same birthday?”
My friends nod, but I say, “I wasn't gossiping about Heather! I was talking about—”
“It's okay! I wouldn't blame you if you were talking about my sister. You should have seen her after brunch at the Inn—she spun into evil overdrive. If I were you, I'd definitely watch my back.” He digs deep into his jeans pocket. “Which is why I brought you this.”
“What is it?” I ask, and he shows me—a miniature horseshoe.
“Give me your shoe,” he says.
“My shoe?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Why my shoe?”
He rolls his eyes and looks at the others like, Is she always this cooperative?
They all laugh, so I say, “Hey! Stop that,” which just makes them laugh some more.
Then Casey says to me, “Worried you got stinky feet?”
“No!”
“So give it here.” He pulls my leg up so my foot's on the bench. And then—get this—he yanks the bow free and fwip, fwip, fwip, he starts unlacing my high-top.
I pull away. “Hey, what are you doing?”
He anchors my foot. “Trying to give you some good luck—would you quit fighting me?” Then he wags the horseshoe at me and says, “This is gonna stay right here on your shoe, neutralizing the bad luck that is thirteen.”
“But—”
“So which way should it go? This way?” He holds it against my shoe so the U end points toward my toe. “Or this way?” He flips it around so the U end is facing up.
“Uh…”
“Some people think having the horseshoe point up keeps luck from running out. Other people think it's gotta face down so its luck can pour over you.”
“Um…”
“Of course, people who bet on the horses think just touching a horseshoe makes you lucky.” He held his chin a minute, looking down at my shoe, then suddenly got to work, threading the lace through nail holes in the horseshoe so that the bottom of the U faced the toe of my shoe.
“So is that gonna keep the luck from running out?” I lifted my leg. “Or is it pouring over me?”
He laughed. “I guess it depends on your perspective. Or position.” He grabbed my foot again and started threading the laces up the rest of my high-top. “Either way, it's got you covered. Plus, it's right where you can reach it, so basically this'll give you three-way luck.” He finished lacing, tied a snug bow, then smiled at me and said, “Happy birthday.”
I looked at him, then at my shoe. And honestly, I couldn't think of a thing to say. The horseshoe wasn't shiny. It wasn't fancy. It was kinda crude and almost rusty-looking. And if I'd seen it in a store window I would have thought, Who'd pay money for that? But looking at it on my shoe, I thought it was without a doubt the coolest thing anyone had ever given me.
But before I can figure out what to say, Holly says, “Psssst,” and nudges her nose across the lunch area.
And when I turn around, who do I see?
Sister Snot and the Snidettes.
“Oh no,” Dot moans. “Not them again.”
I look at Casey and say, “Lucky horseshoe, huh?”
He laughs and stands, saying, “Seriously. She won't be able to touch you.”
I laugh, too. “Yeah, right.”
“Believe!” he says all voodoo-like, then heads over to talk to his sister.
The minute he's gone, Dot and Marissa swarm around me like love-starved locusts. “Ohmygod,” Marissa squeals. “That was romantic beyond … beyond comprehension!”
“Shut up, Marissa,” I say through my teeth.
“That was so Romeo and Juliet!”
“Stop it! It's nothing like that! It was just a nice, you know, gesture.”
Dot's shaking her head at me. “Oh no. He was dreamy.”
“Dreamy? Dreamy?” I scrunch my face and look from Dot to Marissa and back again. “I can't believe you're being so juvenile!”
Marissa snickers. “You are so in denial.”
“I am not!”
“Look, in the old days girls used to get pinned.”
“Pinned? What's pinned?” I was trying to keep an eye on what was happening between Casey and Heather, but my friends were running serious interference.
“Guys would put a pin—you know, a brooch or something—on a girl.”
“Yeah,” Dot says. “Or they'd give them a Saint Christopher necklace to wear…”
“A what?” I couldn't concentrate on pins or necklaces. Heather was shoving Casey… hard… but he was just laughing about it… walking away… and now… uh-oh, she was glaring at me again.
But that didn't stop Dot or Marissa from going on and on about signs of love.
“Some girls get a promise ring,” Marissa whispered.
“Or a class ring!” Dot giggled.
Marissa grinned. “You got a horseshoe!”
“It's not even the same thing!” I said, trying to avoid Heather's glare. “He gave me a rusted piece of bent metal!”
“But it's something of his—”
“That you'll wear—”
“Oh please!” I cried. “You've lost it, you know that?” I wagged my high-top at them. “It's a bent piece of rusty metal! With holes!”
But then Holly said, “I don't know, Sammy. And I've got to say, the guy's pretty gutsy. He gave it to you in front of all of us.”
“That's because we're just friends. He wasn't being all ‘dreamy' or romantic or… o
r… stupid. He was just being nice.”
Marissa giggled and said, “Maybe we should start calling you Lucky.”
“Shut up!”
“Yeah,” Dot chimed in, “Lucky Thirteen.”
“I mean it!”
Holly grinned. “Sounds right to me.”
I couldn't believe that Holly was joining in on this. “What?”
She shrugged. “Well, first you win forty bucks, then you get your cat back…”
Marissa nodded. “And now you've been horseshoed by a really hot guy.”
That did it. I started whipping the laces out of my shoe, saying, “I give up. If you guys are bent on making this into something it's not—”
But Marissa and Dot tackled me, yanked my arms back, and retied my shoe. “We're sorry!” Marissa said. “We won't say another word about it. We won't mention it to an-y-bod-y!”
“Oh right.”
“We promise!”
We stared at each other a minute, and finally I said, “Really?”
They all nodded. “Really.”
“‘Cause you know it was just a nice thing for him to do and… and I can use all the luck I can get.”
“You can say that again,” Holly muttered. She was looking across the lunch area, so we looked, too. Casey was long gone, but Heather was still there. And from the way she was still glaring at me as she huddled up with her friends, I could tell that surviving the day with her was going to take a whole lot more than luck.
Vice Principal Caan has slapped a little junior high restraining order on Heather that supposedly keeps her from getting within twenty-five feet of me during school. So it was probably more that than her brother's lucky horseshoe that kept her from actually touching me. Oh, her eyes sliced and diced me during science, and she walked past my lab table about twenty times trying to get a good look at my foot, but at the end of the day I was still in one piece.
So after we said bye to Dot, who was riding home with her dad, Holly, Marissa, and I headed across town to take down the rest of the Dorito flyers. And we were just moseying along collecting them when we came to a phone pole where I found another flyer posted above mine. “Hey,” I said. “Check it out—someone else is missing their cat.”
The new flyer was actually a lot better than mine because it had a picture. The cat was a tabby named Zippy, with white-tipped ears and a black star between the eyes.