Finders Keepers (2 page)

I thought she'd be less royal at the cabin, but last summer she just watched movies and read romance novels and texted her friends. She'd sit on the dock and watch me swim—only because she wanted a tan—but she didn't play at all. My dad felt bad for me. He tried to play shipwreck and shark hunters, but he wasn't very good. It's not fun to play with someone who's constantly yelling, “Be careful!”

Fast-forward through the school year. Before we started packing for the cabin, Amelia made the biggest stink about leaving. She stomped around and cried about missing her friends and our parents ruining her life. I overheard the whole thing. She listed all the things she didn't want to do. She didn't want to swim or fish. She didn't want to look for night crawlers in the rain or have bonfires. Then she said it: “Another whole summer with just Christa? I'll go crazy!”

Dad told her she was a role model and that I looked up to her. I was too mad to listen. I went to my bedroom and punched my pillows.

Amelia was stupid. She had it backward! She was going to drive
me
crazy with her hair tossing and lip glossing and the worst thing of all … her phone. Her stupid dumb stupid dumb dumb stupid stupid stupid stupid phone.

Who needed a sister? Not me.

Alex didn't have a phone for texting or long hair for tossing. Alex thought pretend-climbing Mount Everest was a brilliant way to spend a morning.

When I emptied out the bag on Mr. Edmund Clark's hill, Alex picked through the items with a smile on his face.

“Cassette tapes? Cool,” he said. “My parents threw a bunch of these out when we moved.”

I put one of the cassettes in my palm and spoke into it. “‘Roger that, base camp.' See? It's a walkie-talkie.”

“And the oven mitts?”

“Climbing gloves. We don't keep winter stuff at the cabin, but these will work.”

“Cool,” he said.

And we were ready for Mount Everest.

CLIMBING THE DEADLY MOUNT EVEREST

The Adventure:
The first kids to scale Mount Everest

The Place:
Mount Everest (the big hill next to the Clarks' house)

The Characters:
Chase Truegood (me) and Buck Punch (Alex)

The Wardrobe/Props:
Oxygen masks (plastic cups with rubber bands), ice picks (forks and butter knives), boot spikes (forks duct-taped to shoe bottoms), mittens (oven mitts), walkie-talkies (Dad's old cassette tapes), and rope (rope)

Chase Truegood and Buck Punch have survived many adventures, but Mount Everest may be their last. Known as “killer mountain,” Everest's steep cliffs and bottomless ravines lure climbers like buckets of worms lure fishermen.

Climbers rarely make it to the top. Chase's sister Jade, a once-famous mountain climber, failed to scale Mount Everest despite trying one hundred times. The embarrassment forced her to retire. Luckily, Jade didn't die on the mountain like thousands of others—2,000 victims, to be exact. Might Chase and Buck bring the total to 2,002?

The team pulled themselves up a sheer wall of ice with handheld picks and spiked shoes, grunting and groaning from exhaustion.

“Urrbmph…” Buck could barely speak. “Radio base camp. Ask how much time before the blizzard hits.” Talking nearly stole his last bit of energy. He breathed through the oxygen mask and spoke with a scratchy voice. “Chase, your tank's empty and mine's almost gone.”

Chase mumbled into the walkie-talkie and repeated the news to Buck. “Base camp says we have two hours to reach Whitefish Peak and get back to camp. And the temperature has fallen to 300 below zero. Base camp says we must return now or die.”

“We swore to do this or die trying. But maybe we should turn back,” Buck said. Chase's neck was so cold she could barely nod. Buck held up his mitten-covered hands, using his last milligram of energy to shout, “My fingers … They're frozen!”

It turned out to be a near-fatal mistake. In lifting his hands, Buck dropped both of his handspikes, which he needed to pull himself to Whitefish Peak.

“Buck!” Chase shouted. “Hang on to the rope. Kick the ice 'til your boot spikes lock in. That'll hold you.”

Buck tossed his oxygen tank to Chase. “You'll need this.”

“No! We'll share it!” She spiked closer to Buck. The sideways-spike-lunge was the single most dangerous move in mountain climbing.

“Buck, we've climbed mountains without oxygen before,” she said. “We will never ever give up. Never give up what's important to you, Buck! Never! Ever!”

“I broke my foot in the avalanche this morning. Didn't want to say,” Buck gasped. He put the oxygen mask to Chase's nose while his eyes drooped shut. “Chase … go … on … without me.”

“No!”

“I'm dying, Chase. Go … live our dream.”

Buck flopped and then log-rolled down the ice, down where they'd escaped the avalanche, down into a dark hole.

Chase screamed.

“Christa Boyd-Adams! How many times do I have to shout?” Mom was standing by our picnic table near the cabin door. Her arms were crossed.

“WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU!”

“Come home for lunch.”

Mom always ruined fun with food. I yelled, “NOW?”

“Now!”

“I'M NOT HUNGRY.”

“Stop shouting and get over here. I'm not telling you again.”

“CAN ALEX EAT WITH US?”

“Christa, stop shouting and come here and talk to me.”

I was just about to ask for ten more minutes when Alex said, “We're having tacos like the ones you can buy in Arizona and chips and cookies.”

“CAN I EAT WITH ALEX?”

“No. We're eating in town. Hurry up.”

“FINE.”

We scooted down the hill on our butts. I told Alex, “When I get back, we can go into the woods and climb my favorite tree.”

“There weren't trees where I used to live,” Alex said. “But my friends and I could climb a skyscraper if we wanted. I'm not afraid of heights at all.”

I studied his face and said, “You're totally afraid of heights, aren't you?”

“Am not.”

I heard a cough and a snort. Mr. Edmund Clark was walking slowly from the shore toward his shed. He had his fishing pole in one hand and a net in the other. It looked like he'd caught a couple of nice-sized perch. In all those years at our cabin, we'd only seen him fishing or working at his restaurant. Sometimes we'd be racing across the lake in our speedboat, and he'd be fishing from his boat in the cove at the lake's east side. Dad would slow down so our waves wouldn't interfere with his fishing. Mr. Edmund Clark did not like his boat to be rocked.

If he lived in a condo and made salad all day, I'd understand why he was an old crab. But he was surrounded by trees and water and pepperoni. How could someone with his own pizza business and a house on a lake—even if it was an old house—be so grumpy?

“Does he ever smile?”

Alex thought about it. “Dad told me not to expect hugs and kisses. He didn't say anything about smiles.”

“My grandparents hug me all the time. They even hug Amelia.”

“Until we moved here, I'd only seen my grandpa a few times.”

That was strange. My grandparents lived in Florida, and we talked on the Internet every week and saw them at least four times a year—sometimes more! They gave me presents and candy and called me Angel, which made Amelia snort. By the looks of it, they were a lot younger than Alex's grandpa, too. His face was so wrinkly it made a raisin look like a grape! My grandma had just a few wrinkles, which she called “smile lines.” If Mr. Edmund Clark hardly ever saw Alex, if he didn't have a grandchild for presents and hugs, then his wrinkles definitely weren't from smiles.

“Christa!” Mom's voice cut through the air. “I said now and I mean now!”

“COMING!”

When I stood up, my feet wouldn't bend because of the forks taped to my shoes. I had to keep my legs straight and wide, which made me walk like scissors. I could hear Alex laughing.

“What in the name of shoes are you doing?” Mr. Edmund Clark snapped at me.

I didn't answer, just scissored across the driveway as fast as I could.

 

PIZZA AND SUPERVISION

My family loved Clarks Pizza, the best restaurant in Hayward and in the world, actually. Amelia The Princess seemed to have forgotten that fact. She complained that pizza gave her pimples, but I figured Mr. Edmund Clark's pizza joint wasn't fancy enough for her. Nope. She probably wanted to eat at a fine-dining restaurant where the waiter put two forks by your plate in case you dropped one.

About a hundred years ago, Clarks Pizza had been one of those fancy places. Now the floors creaked under the waiters' feet, and water stains formed flat clouds on the ceiling. The restaurant still had a long wood bar with a mirror that stretched from one end to the other. The bar had shelves of old stuff, which Dad called artifacts. Sparkly crystal glasses, ladies' hats with feathers, the first-ever soda pop bottles, and flower-covered plates from the old restaurant. On the walls were black-and-white photos from the olden days and yellowed posters from the time when people wanted alcohol banned from the whole country. The posters looked like ink drawings and said things like “Alcohol Is Poison,” “Safeguard the Babies: Parents Drinking Makes Weakly Children,” and “Bootleggers and Their Booze Ruin Lives.”

Every time we came for pizza, Dad read the menu's back flap and laughed. It said,
No! We don't sell alcoholic beverages. Get your beer somewhere else!

My parents said the place was “charming” and “quaint”—they used those words a lot in the Northwoods—but the apostrophe made them crazy. The restaurant should be “Clarks' Pizza” or possibly “Clark's Pizza,” but never “Clarks Pizza.” And the menu said
beverages' come with free refills!
instead of
beverages come with free refills!
I learned more about apostrophes from Clarks Pizza than I did in school.

The only thing I cared about was the pizza. Mr. Edmund Clark put the
cheese
in the right place—all over the sauce in big mozzarella puddles. Delicious.

“Save room for dessert, because we're celebrating,” Mom said.

I pumped my fist in the air. “We're not selling the cabin!”

“Honey, no. That's not what I meant. Still, it's good news. Dad and I have been hired to run a tutoring program here this summer. We'll be teaching!”

I was confused. “If you have jobs, why are we selling the cabin?”

“It's just temporary work, honey,” Dad said. “The money will help, but it's not a permanent paycheck. This program runs for nine weeks.”

“You're not going to have time to fish or swim or anything.” I crossed my arms.

“We still have evenings and weekends.”

“You have evenings and weekends during the school year, and all you do is grade papers and coach the stupid debate team!”

Dad shook his head. “It'll be different, honey. It's a summer program, and we won't be sending students home with a bunch of work. They do everything in class. We'll still have game night and bonfires. And we'll fish and swim. I promise.” Dad nudged Amelia The Princess. “Tell Christa your news.”

“It's so not a big deal, Dad.” Amelia's fingers clicked on her phone while she talked. She didn't even look up. “But whatever. I'm going to be a waitress here. I get to use Mom's car.” She grinned at the last part.

“For work only,” Mom said. “Christa, listen up. Amelia will supervise while we're gone. Got it? No fighting. She's in charge.”

Amelia looked so proud of herself. I pulled the paper from my straw down to the tip and blew from the other end. The paper hit Amelia's left eyebrow. She frowned and mumbled, “I'm so sick of everyone letting you get away with murder.”

“What happens when you're all working at the same time?” I asked. “Who's going to watch me then?”

Dad looked at Mom, and Mom cleared her throat. She looked at the table while she spoke. “The tutoring program is at the community center. So you could spend time in the library.”

“The library? Are you kidding? That's like jail.”

“There are other options,” Dad said. “There's a summer rec program here, just like home. They have some fun classes.” Only teachers would think the word “fun” belonged in front of the word “classes.” Dad leaned forward and smiled at me. “They have a kids' taxidermy class.”

“Really?” I wasn't expecting him to say that. Taxidermy? That might be worth a few afternoons at the community center.

“Gross!” Amelia wrinkled her nose. “Why would you want Christa to learn how to stuff dead animals? That's disgusting.”

“Because Christa likes taxidermy,” Mom said. “It's not disgusting. There's taxidermy on the walls everywhere up here. It's a hunting … art.”

“I'm not blind, Mom. I know there's taxidermy everywhere up here. There's a deer head mounted in the ice cream shop for crying out loud.”

They definitely had me at taxidermy, but then what? What came after taxidermy? I'd seen those summer rec catalogues, and I knew the other options would be horrible stuff like “Introduction to Beading” and “Create a Family Tree.”

Amelia would not stop taxidermy bashing. “Christa and taxidermy? She'll want to save and mount every fish she catches and display them like school art projects. Our living room will be covered in sunfish. Next she'll be picking up dead raccoons from the road.”

I sprinkled some Parmesan cheese on my palm and blew it in Amelia's face.