Cheesie Mack Is Not a Genius or Anything (14 page)

I know what you’re thinking, but Lana is
not
my girlfriend, and since I’m the one who is writing this book, and I know what happened, I can promise that there are no girlfriends in this book.

Lana then asked me to call her house and tell her Georgie’s answer. I don’t even know her telephone number, and before I could tell her to call Georgie herself, Mrs. Crespo walked up, congratulated Lana on winning one of the prizes, and turned to me.

“I am not quite certain what to do about your sister’s actions today, Ronald. I think that I shall leave it up to you.”

Mrs. Crespo seemed to be waiting for me to say
something, but since Lana was there, I didn’t speak. It’s not that what I would decide to do about Goon would be secret or anything. It’s just that Lana was staring at me, and that made me nervous. Not nervous exactly, maybe more like shy.

“It’s your choice, Ronald. You may explain the situation to your parents or not,” Mrs. Crespo went on. “If they wish, they may telephone me.”

Mrs. Crespo said good-bye and walked away, leaving me standing there with still-staring-at-me Lana Shen and Rachel Campos, a classmate who had just sort of appeared next to Lana while I wasn’t looking. Rachel whispered to Lana. Lana giggled and waved, then they ran to get their backpacks and headed out the playground gate.

I looked around. Only Georgie and I were left. The school was deserted. Fifth grade was finished.

We had the rest of June. Then July and August. But no camp in Maine.

Summer.

Bummer.

A
s we rode away from school, I was thinking about what Mrs. Crespo had said. I was also thinking about the Point Battle. Goon would be in big trouble if I tattled. And big trouble for Goon meant big points for me.

Here’s how I figured it. (If you forgot how the Point Battle works, please look back at
Chapter 6
.)

1. School punishment equals 8 points; punishment by Mom or Dad, only 4. This one was tricky. Since the incident occurred at school, but the punishment would come from Mom and Dad, I thought that 6 points would be a fair compromise.
   
2. Since I was the one who exposed her crime, double it to 12 points.
   
3. Since it would undoubtedly be a big punishment, double it again to 24 points.
   
4. Since Goon lied and was caught, double it again to 48 points.
   

There has never been a 48-point win in the history of the Point Battle. With Goon currently ahead 623–592, this would put me in the lead, 640–623! The last time I was ahead, I was in fourth grade and the score was only 17–15!

“You want to stop and see if there’s a reply?” Georgie asked.

“Huh?” I had been pedaling and thinking and had no idea what he was talking about.

“The Toad, remember?”

We were just turning the corner onto Eureka Avenue. I nodded and accelerated, passing Georgie and zooming down the street toward the old green-gray house. I skidded to a stop, almost knocking over the recycling can again. I heard my mind saying,
Whew! That would’ve been hard to explain
. Then
I peered over the fence that guarded the front yard.

“See anything?” Georgie asked as he stopped his bike next to mine.

“Nope. Hold my bike.” Remembering my disastrous exit through the bushes last time, I went around to the front gate, opened it, and walked along the flat rocks that led up to the front steps. I had not forgotten that Officer Crompton had told us to stay away from The Haunted Toad, but because our note was gone, I figured that G. J. Prott had sort of invited us to trespass so that we could see if there was a reply.

(Now that I’m writing this, I’m not sure my reasoning was logical, but that’s what I was thinking back then.)

I climbed the steps and looked around. Nothing. I turned toward Georgie and shook my head.

“What’s that under the mat?” he whispered very loudly.

A white corner peeked out. I reached down, lifted the mat, and there, next to a bunch of sow bugs, was a small white envelope.

I know you want to know what was in the envelope,
and for sure that’s more important than sow bugs, but sow bugs are my favorite insects, mainly because they are
not
insects. I have included two drawings, so just in case you don’t know what a sow bug is, you’ll know what non-insect I’m talking about.

A sow bug is also called a roly-poly or a pill bug, depending on where you live. (If you use a different name, please go to my website and tell me. I have a whole page about sow bugs.) They don’t have wings. They are brownish or gray and have seven pairs of legs. They also have tiny overlapping armor plates that make them look like little armadillos. I like that. And they roll up into little balls when disturbed. I like that, too. But here’s what’s so cool. These non-insects are actually crustaceans and are close relatives of shrimp and lobsters.

Okay, I love to eat shrimp, and I
really
love lobster.
Gloucester is famous for lobster. We have tons of lobster fishermen who go out in their boats and set lots of lobster traps—they call them pots—in the Atlantic Ocean. You can buy lobsters right down at the harbor.

So here’s the question I have not had the courage to answer. If someone cooked and ate a sow bug, would it taste like shrimp or lobster? Or would it be disgustingly gross? I am
not
going to try it, and the people who published this book don’t want you to try it, either. So … DON’T TRY IT! AND DON’T EMAIL ME!

I walked back to my bike holding up the small envelope for Georgie to see.

“Let’s get out of sight before we open it,” Georgie said.

I shook my head. “Nope. Let’s open it here. Maybe G. J. Prott has been waiting for us to come back and is watching us right now from one of the windows.”

Both of us looked back at the house, our eyes moving from window to window, but we saw nothing unusual. I tore open the envelope. Here’s what was inside:

“What’s M-E-S-S-R-S?” I asked as I stuck the letter back in the envelope.

“Maybe ol’ Prott saw us mess up that next-door lady’s trash and thinks we’re messers, and he or she or it can’t spell,” Georgie replied.

That seemed like a really good answer, but I actually looked up “Messrs.” It is the plural of Mr., and it’s pronounced exactly like “messers.” Weird.

“Tomorrow morning two mysteries will be solved. Who is G. J. Prott? And”—I did my spookiest “ow-hooo-eeeee” and grinned devilishly—“what creepy creeps creep around inside The Haunted Toad?”

But Georgie wasn’t paying attention. His mouth was open, and he was staring straight at The Haunted Toad. I followed his eyes. There, on the third floor, the
curtains were parted, and a very small, very old woman stared back at us.

Georgie and I moved away from The Haunted Toad, walking our bikes, looking over our shoulders, never taking our eyes off the face in the window. The woman didn’t wave, didn’t smile, didn’t even move. When we couldn’t see the window any longer, I touched Georgie’s arm, and he jumped.

“This is turning out to be the strangest day of my entire life,” I said softly. We got on our bikes and pedaled slowly.

We had only ridden one block when Georgie surprised me by stopping and asking, “Let me see the penny.”

I took it out of my backpack and handed it to him. He looked at it carefully, turning it over a few times in the sunlight.

“This does not look like it’s over a hundred years old. It’s barely worn.”

“So?”

“I don’t know. But if we return this penny and the necklace, what if Prott says thanks and that’s all?”

Georgie did his disappearing coin trick. “Then we’ve got nothing. I found it. It was in my house. Finders keepers.”

“Come on, Georgie. We left a note. That’s kind of like a promise.”

“Then we’ll just return the necklace.”

“We might get a reward, remember?” I said.

“Maybe. But I bet we’ll get the same crummy reward for returning the necklace all by itself.”

“The penny’s only worth three bucks.”

“You said the value depended on its condition. Maybe you don’t know how to tell.” He put the coin in his pants pocket and started riding. “Follow me.”

We coasted down the hill toward the Inner Harbor. At first I couldn’t guess where he was going. But when we got down to Main Street, I knew. There was a coin and stamp store close to the pet store where he had gotten the mice. It was in between a bakery and a shoe repair.

We leaned our bikes against a squat statue of an old cobbler holding up a shoe and went into the coin shop. The door had a bell hooked to it that jingled loudly
and kept jingling for a long time. The store’s glass cases were filled with stamps, coins, old paper money, and lots of old medals, some of them with fancy ribbons. There was no one in the store.

“Hello?” Georgie said.

We heard a toilet flush, and a moment later a very skinny man came out from the back.

“May I help you?”

“Yeah,” Georgie said. “We have this penny, and we’d like to know what it’s worth.”

“Do you want to sell it?”

“Maybe,” I said.

Georgie took the penny out of his pocket and put it on the counter. The man took a small brown envelope from a drawer.

“Whose name should I put on this?”

“We just want to know what you’d pay us for it,” Georgie said.

“I understand. I’m the bookkeeper. Mr. Whelan won’t be back until this evening. If you leave the coin for appraisal, he’ll look at it tonight, and you can come back tomorrow morning to pick it up or sell it.”

Georgie gave the man his name and got a receipt.

We didn’t talk on the way home, so I guess Georgie thought I was upset with him. I really wasn’t. Or maybe I was. I could sort of see his point. But I also … I don’t know. I wasn’t sure what was right.

A couple of blocks from our houses, where our streets diverged (good word … it means going in different directions), I called out, “See you after dinner.” We had planned that he would sleep over. Georgie waved, then disappeared around the corner.

I’d been thinking about Georgie and the penny and The Haunted Toad so much that I’d completely forgotten about Goon and the ticket stubs. But as I rode my bike up our driveway, there she was, sitting on our front porch. She was eating celery and dip and staring right at me. I thought about what she’d done at my party. Mrs. Crespo had said I could decide. Should I tattle on her or not?

Because everything I have written so far about my sister makes her seem rotten, you might think that she is completely rotten. That is not true. Goon has many excellent qualities. Here is my list:

1. She bathes frequently.
   
2. She doesn’t step on insects.
   
3. Because of her many years of ballet, she can balance on one foot until everyone watching her is bored.
   
4. I can’t think of any others right now, but if I do, I will come back and put them in, so if you are reading this, you know I couldn’t come up with any more.
   

“Want some bean dip?” Goon asked.

I was suspicious. Why was she acting nice? I leaned my bike against the porch and took the celery stalk she offered. I scooped up some of the dip, but didn’t eat. Maybe she had poisoned the stuff. But after she stuck her celery in and took a bite of dip, chewed, and swallowed, I bit off the end of mine.