Cheesie Mack Is Not a Genius or Anything (5 page)

“My father said he can’t afford it. He got laid off.” Georgie’s face was all scrunched, and his eyes started to get even puffier and redder.

Georgie’s father
works
worked for some kind of technology company. He’s a microwave transmission engineer. I don’t know what that means, but I know
it does not have anything to do with the microwave I use to heat frozen burritos.

Georgie picked up some pebbles. I leaned backward because I thought he was going to fling them hard. But he just clinked them against the metal wall of our clubhouse and slumped his head. I had never seen him this miserable.

Then I felt miserable because this summer at camp was going to be our best yet. It has to do with Big Guys and Little Guys.

Granpa (I forgot to mention that he’s the camp director) and his staff of counselors divide the boys at Camp Windward into two groups. Big Guys stay up later, play some different sports like lacrosse and flag football, and have dances and stuff with Camp Leeward, the girls’ camp next door.

Georgie and I have been Little Guys for the last four years. This year we would still be Little Guys, but our cabin would be the
oldest
of the Little Guys, which is terrific. We’d get to be in charge of Little Guys campfires, movie nights, the skit and talent show, color war, and lots of other great stuff. Next
year we’ll be the youngest of the Big Guys. Not so good.

Granpa’s ex-wife owns both the boys’ camp and the girls’ camp. She is not my grandmother because she married Granpa fifteen years after my father was born, and they got divorced long before I was born. Everyone at camp calls her Aunt Lois, and so do I.

“This ruins the whole summer,” Georgie muttered softly, and then we sat in our clubhouse without talking. Finally I said something I didn’t really even think about before I said it.

“If you can’t go to camp, then I won’t go, either.”

After I said it, I wasn’t sure I really meant it.

Georgie lifted his head slowly and stared at me for a long time.

“You serious?”

Was I? Summer camp in Maine was my most favorite thing I did all year.

I looked at my best friend. He looked awful.

I felt terrible.

I swallowed hard, then gave a big nod. I knew I had made the right decision.

M
y decision not to go to camp was huge news in my house that night. Here’s what Mom, Dad, Granpa, Goon, and Deeb said:

1. “Ha-ha.”
   
2. “No way you two are staying home alone. Unless Georgie has adult supervision, you’ll go down to the limo garage every day.”
   
3. Said nothing. Tried to make me laugh with a squinty-evil-eye, but I didn’t even smile.
   
4. “Woof.”
   
5. “We’re going to have a lot of fun without you.”
   

(I mixed them up. Can you guess who said what? The answers are on
this page
.)

Then I got an idea. Sometimes I get an idea that I
know is terrible, but I have to say it out loud because even though I think I know the idea is terrible, maybe I’m wrong, and it’s a good idea.

“Granpa? Maybe you could let Georgie go to camp for free. You know, like getting a scholarship.”

Remember I mentioned how Granpa likes to argue and get mad? Well, I shouldn’t have been surprised by his reaction.

“That’s a dumb idea. That’s a dumb idea six different ways!” He was talking loudly. “Dumb Idea Number First.” He held up one finger and waved it around. “I don’t know a blue-blessed thing about how Lois runs her camps. Money-wise, I mean. Scholarship? Forget it. She doesn’t tell me anything. I’m just a hired gun.”

“Dumb Idea Number Second.” He stuck up two fingers in a
V
and jerked them around so fast that I leaned backward a little bit to get out of the way. “I happen to know that Lois is almost broke, very cash-short, out of money. Dumb Idea Number Third—”

“Hey, Pop,” Dad interrupted. “Your Dumb Idea
Number First totally contradicts your Dumb Idea Number Second. How can you not know a blue-blessed anything and also know that she’s out of money?”

Granpa ignored the interruption.

“Dumb Idea Number Third. If Georgie doesn’t pay, camp won’t mean as much to him, and he’ll just goof off all summer.”

“But I get in free because you’re the director,” I said, “and I don’t goof off all summer.”

Granpa ignored me, too. “Dumb Idea Number Fourth …” There was a pause while Granpa waved both hands excitedly. Finally he said, “I can’t remember. And Fifth and Sixth, I found out this week that I’ve got two empty slots on the camp staff that’ll cost Lois extra money to fill. The camp nurse just got a job on a cruise ship, and your counselor from last year has decided to bicycle across Canada.”

Granpa stared at me like it was my fault.

I have to admit I was having trouble concentrating on what Granpa was saying because he was holding up only five fingers, but he was already up to Dumb Idea Number Sixth. And I was also thinking about
Scott Dutcher, my last summer’s counselor. He was the bicycle-across-Canada guy. Dutcher was this awesome athlete who could do eleven one-armed push-ups, tell very scary lights-out stories, and eat an entire, full-size hot dog, with mustard and relish and tons of goop dripping off of it, in one bite.

At camp we called that “doing a Dutcher.” Me and all the other campers really liked him. Normally I would have been upset that my favorite counselor wasn’t coming back, but since I wasn’t going to camp unless Georgie got a scholarship, and Granpa had pretty much said that Georgie wasn’t getting a scholarship, it didn’t matter.

Plus my mother had just served a late dessert: rice pudding, my favorite.

I really like rice pudding with raisins, which is the way my dad makes it, but he doesn’t cook very often. My sister hates raisins, so Mom makes it without them and gives me a bunch on the side to stick in. But it’s not the same. When you cook raisins inside rice pudding, they get all plumpy. Otherwise, they’re sort of dried and hard. I was poking them into my pudding when Goon interrupted.

“What’re those? Dried roach brains?”

Granpa jumped in. “You want to know about roaches? Let me tell you about the bugs underneath Fenway Park. I’m talking cockroaches the size of trombones! I was seventeen, selling ice cream at the ballpark, and—”

Just then the back door opened, and conversation stopped.

Everyone (even Deeb, who looked up, yipped softly, and put her head back down) knew it was Georgie because no one else comes in the back way.

I totally expected him to still be upset about not going to camp, but he was grinning, bouncing from
foot to foot, and carrying a paper bag. I waited for him to speak, but he just gave me eye signals to come with him somewhere else. I picked up my rice pudding, yelled “Doin’ a Dutcher!” and slid the whole thing into my mouth.

Goon yelled, “Slob!”

My mom shook her head.

Georgie and I ran upstairs to my room. Deeb bounded after us.

“I have the greatest plan,” Georgie announced.

I was trying to pay attention, but I was having trouble swallowing.

He opened the bag. It was filled with white mice! I coughed, almost choked, and spewed a few globbets. Deeb, who had been sniffing at the bag, immediately licked them up.

(The rice pudding that I spewed really looked like whatever globbets would be if
globbets
was really a word, so I convinced the people who publish this book to leave it in. But I made globbets up, so don’t use it in school writing. Your teacher won’t understand.)

“After you went home, I went downtown with
my dad.” Georgie was talking fast. “And while he was in the hardware store, I went into Corvi’s pet shop. You know, across from the library, just to look around. They sell mice for snakes to eat. Today they had way-too-way many, so Mrs. Corvi gave me these for free.”

There must have been a dozen in the bag. But I didn’t have a clue what this had to do with anything, and to be honest, I was surprised that Georgie, who had been so miserable about not going to camp, was now so excited. I must have looked confused. And anyway, my cheeks were all puffed out with pudding.

“You don’t have a snake,” I plorfed through my pudding, then swallowed. (I’m having fun making up words!)

Georgie began knocking his knuckles on my skull. “Hello? We take the bag to school. Let them go during graduation. Screaming. Yelling. Get it?”

There was a one-second pause of dead silence, then the two of us were screaming and yelling. We stopped suddenly when we saw Goon standing in my doorway. She was smiling.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said sweetly, and walked away.

“Do you think she heard us?” I asked.

“Who cares?” Georgie replied. “This is the best idea I have ever had.”

The next morning Georgie, holding his bag of mice, walked in my back door almost an hour early. I was finishing breakfast, already dressed and ready. Mom never even had to remind me. I was that excited. And not about graduation.

My mom is very intelligent. I should not have gotten ready so early. She suspected something. So when Georgie wanted to whisper about the mice, I gave him a shut-up look, glanced over my shoulder at Mom, and changed the subject as we headed up to my room.

“I looked in the phone book for someone named Prott,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s good,” Georgie replied, staring into his bag of mice. I could tell he had forgotten not only about camp but also all about the heart necklace, the 1909 coin, and the hidden
Eureka
word we’d found.

“There’s a G. J. Prott who lives right here in Gloucester,” I said.

“But the letter came from California.”

I picked the phone book up off my desk and opened it to the Ps.

I pointed to a name: “Prott G J 207 Eureka Av Glou.”

“So?”

“So? Eureka!” I almost shouted. “Eureka! It’s the hidden word. This has to be the right Prott. The heart necklace? The coin? Remember?” I let that sink in while I scribbled the address on a page I tore from the phone book. It was the page that went from “Tobacco” to “Toilet Seats.” Since nobody smokes in my house, and we already have a seat on every toilet, I was pretty sure that no one would ever notice that it was missing.

I stuffed the T–T page into my jacket pocket. “Where’s Eureka Avenue?”

Georgie shrugged an I-don’t-know, held up the bag of mice, and whispered, “Come on. We can find that stuff out later. Right now we’ve got to do our most
excellent plan.” Then he grinned the most evil grin I have ever seen.

We hustled downstairs.

“What’s in the bag?” Goon demanded when we got to the back door. Middle school was already out for the summer, and she was mad that she had to go to my graduation.

We ignored her. She was talking to Alex Welch’s brother, Kevin. He’s in Goon’s grade. She thinks he is her boyfriend. He goes to our camp every summer and is really good at sports. After one of Goon’s soccer games, she dared Kevin to prove that he was strong enough to toss me into the Dumpster behind the gym. You can probably guess the rest. I could write a book about why I don’t like him. But don’t worry, I’m not going to. Alex Welch is our suspect for the bike seat dog-pooper. He’s a dork.

“Georgie and I are going to ride to school!” I yelled to Mom. “We’ll meet you there!”

“Feed your dog first!” she shouted back. “And stay clean for graduation!”

My dog is a springer spaniel with big, floppy ears.
We got her when I was three. Her actual name is Pandora, but because mythology says that some lady named Pandora let demons out of a box that she wasn’t supposed to open, I gave my Pandora the nickname Devil, which somehow got changed to Deeble, then Deebie, and that’s how we ended up with Deeb. She is a terrific dog, except that she really smells like a dog. I don’t mind it much, but visitors sometimes complain.

Deeb was waiting on the back porch, where we keep a plastic barrel of kibble. I could tell she was hungry because she was jumping all four feet off the ground over and over. I poured some food in her dish, knelt down, and pretended to eat it. She stopped jumping.

“You are gross,” Georgie said. “And so is your dog.” He was holding his nose.