The Fight for Kidsboro (33 page)

“Well, Sid, you've been the only bakery business around since we started. Now you have some competition. Maybe this'll force you to work a little harder. Present a better product. Advertise a little.”

“Well, I'll tell you what. I'm not going down without a fight.”

“That's the spirit!”

As I passed Le Bakeria, I got a few whiffs of something, and I was tempted to try whatever it was that smelled so good. But I couldn't do that to Sid. I noticed that there was a fan running behind the counter. Mind you, it was early December and about 40 degrees out, so the fan wasn't there for cooling purposes. It was there to send the smell wafting out to the masses, and it seemed to be working. People were being drawn like bees to pollen. Sid was going to have to do something special to get his customers back, though I didn't doubt for a second that Sid's food was better than anything they served at Le Bakeria.

I noticed a number of Kidsborians there, and when they saw me looking at them, a few ducked out of sight. Apparently, they didn't want to explain their presence in Bettertown.

But then I saw something that bothered me much more than that. I passed the recreation area, and there, resetting the bowling pins, was Scott. He didn't see me; he was busy trying to keep up with the bowlers, running from lane to lane, setting the pins back up after they were knocked down. Sweat was running down his face despite the 40 degree temperature, and he looked a little flustered.

I stood there watching, not wanting him to see me, but knowing that at some point there had to be a confrontation. Max came up from behind me.

“Good kid,” he said, seeing the direction of my gaze. “Hard worker. Must be tough for you to lose him.” He smiled at me, knowing how much this dug in. He left to go annoy someone else.

I walked around aimlessly for a few minutes, and then headed for the housing district. Sure enough, there was a mailbox in front of one of the houses that read “Sanchez,” Scott's last name. I heard footsteps and turned. Scott froze, seeing that I had noticed the mailbox and knowing there was no rational explanation he could give for it. We stared at each other for a few moments, and then I couldn't help but speak.

“What are you doing here?”

“I'm just … I decided to … I live here,” he said, looking at his shoes.

“Why?”

“I figured I needed a change of scenery. I mean, I
like
Kidsboro and all, but …” his eyes fixed on his house. “Well, I've only got a 10-minute break, I have to get back to work.”

“What? Setting up bowling pins?”

He looked surprised and a little embarrassed that I already knew about his new profession. “Look, it's a job. At least I'm doing
something
. A lot more than I was doing over there,” he said as he pointed across the creek.

“But Scott, you're working for
Max
. Don't you know he's gonna burn you?”

“He hasn't burned me yet. So far, he's given me a job, a living wage, and a house with electricity—none of which I had in Kidsboro.”

“But you've got
friends
over there.”

“I've got friends
here
. We had a rally yesterday, and we're a team. It's a family. I like these people.”

He was making too much sense, so I resorted to a lower blow. “How could you turn on us like this? You're a charter member of Kidsboro.”

“Oh, and that's really taken me far in 11 months,” he said sarcastically. “You know what, Ryan?” He stepped toward me and pointed in my face. “You have no right to say that. You have no idea what it's like to be me. You're the may or. You're the leader of the whole place. You
have
a job. You
make
a difference. Me? I'm the town fool. I have a detective agency that no one goes to, even if by some miracle they actually
have
a case to be solved. No one respects me there, Ryan. But
here
? Here, I'm a part of something. They need me. In Kidsboro, I go on vacation for two weeks and no one even knows I'm gone.”

“You're on the city council in Kidsboro! You count for 20 percent of the vote.”

“I'll tell you what.
You
can have my 20 percent. You pretty much had it any way.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, come on, Ryan. You know that whatever you voted, I voted the same. And if I didn't, you let me hear about it.”

“What?”

“I mean, you always made it
sound
like you were just reasoning with me, but really you
expected
me to vote with you. You controlled me, and that's probably the problem here too. You've lost your control, and you're mad.”

I was flabbergasted. “What in the world are you talking about, Scott?”

“Are you just jealous that I have a nicer house than you, Ryan? You don't think I deserve it?”

“Scott—”

“Or maybe you're having trouble dealing with the fact that there may be something over here that's better than Kidsboro. Well, for me there's no choice. In Bettertown, I'm equal with everybody else. In Kidsboro, I'm a pitiful, poor boy with a failed business and a lucky connection in city council.”

He slowly dropped his finger and let out a few exasperated breaths. I caught a glimpse of a smile, like he was proud of himself for standing up to me. His resolve shocked me, and I could do nothing but drop my shoulders—and my defenses.

“Well, Scott,” I said, stiffening my upper lip. “I hope you're very happy here.” I walked past him.

Scott's feelings about Kidsboro troubled me. I 't realized that there were people in our town who were unhappy. And I'd had no idea that one of the unhappy people was my best friend. On my way back into town, I noticed Mark, the owner of the miniature golf course, playing on his own course. Well, at least he appeared to be playing, but in actuality, he was firing his shots into trees outside the course boundaries. No one else was around.

“Why would anybody play here?” he asked before he even looked at me. “There's a bowling alley over there—and darts, and archery and … fun. There's
fun
over there. And here? We've got a guy knocking golf balls into trees with a putter.”

I told him the novelty of Bettertown would wear off, and I believed that was true, but at this point, its downfall couldn't come fast enough for me.

Usually I met with Mr. Whittaker once a week to give him an update on what was happening in Kidsboro. I wanted to meet with him this week and let him know how many problems he had caused, but I could never say that to Mr. Whittaker. Instead, I decided to avoid it completely and not meet with him at all. I went to Whit's End and was glad that he wasn't in the front. Connie Kendall was behind the counter.

“Mr. Whittaker's not here?” I asked.

“No, he's in the back. You want me to go get him?” Connie asked.

“No, could you just give him a message?”

“He's right in the back. I can get him.”

“No, just a message, please. Tell him I won't be able to meet with him today.”

“Well … okay, Ryan.”

“Thanks.”

I called a city council meeting to figure out what we were going to do. Pride in our town had been lost. Suddenly, no one had any reason to go to Kidsboro. We had to do something.

We started with a damage report. “We've lost six people,” Jill said. This meant six Kidsborians had left and joined Bettertown. So 11 of the 17 new citizens were from elsewhere. We decided to wait to fill up those empty houses, since none of us believed that Bettertown would stand for long. At least, that's what we hoped.

“Since Bettertown's grand opening a week ago, Kidsboro businesses are down in profits by 65 percent,” Nelson continued with the bad news. “Sid's Bakery has taken the biggest hit.”

“The crime rate's about the same,” Alice said proudly, as if Kidsboro had crime, much less a rate to keep track of.

We briefly discussed the ramifications of losing one member of the city council, and we decided we had to fill the spot. Since having a voting group of four members would result in a lot of ties, we needed a tie-breaker. But this was not first on our agenda. We had to come up with away to drum up new interest in our city.

“Let's have a ‘Pride in Kidsboro' day,” Jill declared. “Like a Fourth of July thing, where everybody celebrates the country.”

“That sounds great,” I said. “Tell us more.” The rest of the council members sat up in their chairs and took notice. Jill began slowly, giving us her ideas, then Nelson added a few of his own, and, as if new life had been breathed into us, it became an incredible brainstorming session with fresh and exciting things to add to our celebration.

By the end of the meeting, we had come up with some pretty interesting ideas. Jill was going to do a
History of Kidsboro
collector's book, outlining how Kidsboro came to be and events that had shaped Kidsboro along the way. Nelson suggested that Jill include a short biography of every citizen who had ever settled here. He reasoned that people would be more apt to buy the book if they could see their own names in print.

We were also going to have refreshments. We all agreed to bring food from home, plus, we would ask Sid to offer his cooking expertise and make a smorgasbord of pastries especially for the event. (As it turned out, Sid agreed to make the pastries and sell them for half price, but our end of the deal was that we had to advertise his bakery as much as was humanly possible. Sid was a hard sell.)

We also decided to create a flag, though admittedly, It wasn't an original idea. The Bettertown flag flew high across the creek, in full view from Kidsboro. Jill suggested that we ask Roberto to come up with some ideas because he was a pretty good artist. I told her that we needed something that symbolized what Kidsboro was all about—freedom, loyalty, peace, justice, responsibility, fun—and she said that to get all those things into one flag, we would have to fly a copy of our city charter on a pole. I told her that if he got any two of those things on the flag, I'd be happy. She said she would talk to Roberto.