One Day and One Amazing Morning on Orange Street (10 page)

“Good stuff,” said Manny.

“And, well, I was wondering if you'd give me a pointer or two. Basically, not to put too fine a point on it, I mean, for starters—” Robert pulled up one of his socks, then another, waiting for the right words to come to mind.

“Go on,” Manny said. The great thing about Manny was that he listened. He
really
listened. His brown eyes never once left your face.

“Like how do you do it?” Robert asked. “No, I don't mean that, exactly. What I mean is, how do you
wow
them? I haven't had much success . . . yet.”

Actually, he'd mostly failed in the wowing department. Except for that one trick he'd performed, for his mom. But moms, in general, were incredibly easy to wow.

Manny continued to stare.

“How do you do it?” Robert repeated.

“Yeah, Rob-o, I heard you,” said Manny, slowly. “I'm thinking hard right now. It's an important question and I want to come up with the best answer.”

Suddenly Manny straddled the railing of the porch, then landed gracefully on the front lawn. “As a matter of fact, your question is so important, I think it calls for some
po-eh-tree
! Listen carefully, now!”

He did a pretty good moonwalk, some more fancy footwork, some power moves, and then began waving his finger and moving his head to the rhythm of his words:

 

“You find a doozy of a trick and you do it for a crowd,

Be choosy 'bout the trick if you want them to be WOWED

You gotta find it

Hear me? FIND it!

 

“You repeat that trick 'til you see it in your sleep

You gotta beat that trick 'fore you take it to the STREET

That means practice

Hear me? PRACTICE!

 

“When you're set for the show, you gotta stay in the NOW

Just forget about Rob-o! Yes! That's how,

Just forget him

Y'hear? FORGET HIM!

Yeah!”

 

Manny leaped onto the stairs again. “That's my answer,” he said.

“It is?” asked Robert.

“Lighten up, man! And think about your audience.”

“I
do
think about my audience. All the time, every single second!” cried Robert, suddenly feeling very un-Rob-o-ish. “My audience is a great big hundred-pound gorilla that's ready to tear my head off!”

Manny stared at him again, and he looked as if he were about to come up with some more answers (maybe some answers Robert
understood
, for mackerel's sake!) when there was a soft, plaintive wail from inside the house. Manny ran inside, and after a short while he returned, carrying a flushed and sleepy-eyed Edgar, just up from his nap.

“
When you're set for the show, you gotta stay in the now
,” Manny crooned.

This time Manny's poem sounded like a lullaby. Edgar put his head on Manny's chest. “We're off to the lot. It's cooler there. Come with us?”

“I'll pass ... for now,” Robert said.

And so it happened that everyone was in the empty lot that afternoon (except for Robert, who had gone home to practice —the only pointer from Manny which seemed to make any sense!).

Just around the time Mitzi decided to pounce.

uch later, they'd all discuss how so much had happened in one small space and one small space of time that afternoon in the empty lot. Mitzi the cat didn't pounce right away. A few other things happened first. Things having to do with
words
. There were:

(1) Ali's new word,

(2) Edgar's strange words, and

(3) all those mysterious words on those scraps of paper in the old glass jar.

So when Mitzi burst from her silent hiding place behind the jumble of orange nasturtiums, raced up the tree, then made her long, graceful leap, no one was able to stop her in
time. That's because everyone had been distracted by the meaning (and mystery) of all those words.

Ali's word was
infrangible
, the word she'd heard from Ms. Snoops and examined further in the OED. A word she'd never expected to use so soon! Leandra had just apologized for yelling and saying mean things.

“I accept your apology,” said Ali, linking arms with both Leandra and Bunny/Bonita. “We are infrangible.”

“What's that?” asked Leandra suspiciously, who wasn't sure if infrangible was complimentary. To her it sounded too much like a fruit gone bad.

“I mean our
friendship
is infrangible,” said Ali. “That means unbreakable. We've been friends since we hung out in our strollers together. And we'll be friends until college when we'll probably move away to different cities. And even then we can still chat online and get together during vacations. That's what Ms. Snoops does with her old friend Gertrude.”

Bunny/Bonita nodded her head. “Sticks and stones can break your bones, eggcetera.” Although, not exactly, thought Bunny/Bonita, since the eggcetera part was how words could never hurt you. But words
could
and they
did
. It was a bit confusing.

Bunny/Bonita was glad the club was infrangible anyway.

Ali lifted Edgar from his stroller. “And I'll check on your idea about smaller wigs, Leandra,” Ali said. “Maybe you won't have to cut off more than a few inches.”

A soft fuzz of brown hair covered Edgar's head but you could still see his ziggidy-zagged scar. Edgar had been wearing a baseball cap that said angels, but he'd pulled it off. The little red hat was lying in the deep mulch under the tree, where, Ali supposed, a little wig would lie, too, if he'd been wearing one and pulled it off. She couldn't imagine that kids' wigs were glued on. What a sad thought.

But now Manny had begun to juggle and it was hard to have sad thoughts when Manny was juggling. Two balls were golden, two were silver, one was bright fire-engine red. Manny always asked everyone to keep their eyes on the red one to help him concentrate, and before Ali knew it, her sad thoughts were juggled away. She put her little brother into his swing.

And then, as she pushed Edgar back and forth, something amazing happened.

Maybe it was the musty coolness under the tree's leaves, or the juggling, or maybe it was because Ali was pushing the
swing higher than usual. All of a sudden, Edgar said, “Ahhh,” very softly.

And he said it again. “Ahhh.”

That is to say, Ali and Leandra heard “Ahhh.”

Bunny/Bonita heard “Bahhh,” or “Buhhh.”

“He's saying my name!” Bunny/Bonita whispered.

“
Your
name? He's saying
my
name!” Ali whispered back. “
I'm
his sister!”

“Actually,” said Leandra, “he's saying the back end of
my
name.”

“He is not!” said Ali and Bunny/Bonita at the same time.

“Eeeeh,” said Edgar.

“See?
My
name!” cried the three girls, forgetting about the infrangibility of friendship.

“Stop arguing!” cried Manny. “Edgar said
something.
That's what's important now.”

The girls had never seen Manny angry. It was as if it had suddenly begun to rain, after one hundred days of L.A. sunshine. They were so surprised, for a few seconds none of them could think of anything to say.

Manny grabbed the chains of the swing and looked into Edgar's eyes. “Say it again, little guy.” He spoke in a soft, calm voice.

“Whatever it was . . .” whispered Bunny/Bonita.

“Please,” said Ali. “
Please
.” She fingered the little stone heart in the pocket of her jeans.

But Edgar just stared straight ahead. Then he put his thumb into his mouth, as if to block any more sounds from coming out. Ali could feel her eyes smarting. She didn't want to cry in front of her brother.

“Let's have some oranges,” Ali said, rummaging in the bag from Ms. Snoops. “These are from the very, very top of our tree, a gift from Ms. Snoops.” Manny pierced the tops with his penknife, then gave them straws to draw up the golden juice. He even did the same for Edgar. When the fruit was sucked dry, the girls ate the pulp. The pulp got between their teeth, looking gross, and that was funny, but when they put the skins over their teeth, that was even funnier, even though they'd done it a zillion times before. And then they lay, infrangibly, under the tree.

“Those oranges are refreshing on a day like today,” said a deep voice.

Startled, the girls turned and saw a man standing at the entrance to the lot. He must have been standing there for a while, watching them. (He'd actually been watching them all day.)

Ali and Bunny/Bonita sat up and looked anxiously at Manny. But Leandra said, “They're from our tree. The sweetest ones are way on top.”

“Leandra!” said Bunny/Bonita. She realized it was the same man she'd seen acting much too friendly with Ruff that morning. Of course, Leandra wasn't afraid of anything, but still, you didn't talk to strangers just like that. The man
looked
strange, too, with his thick beard and vest and clunky hiking boots, on a hot day meant for sandals. He was bald, but he seemed like a man who shaved off all his hair on purpose; a man who would never think of wearing a wig, for any reason. He had a thick drawing pad under his arm.

“
Your
tree?” said the man, with a smile.

Ali felt nervous but she also felt like giggling. It occurred to her that it was upside-down to have a shiny bald head and a bushy beard. And then she wondered why the man had said
those oranges ARE refreshing
instead of
those oranges MUST BE refreshing
, as if he'd already been tasting them himself. She decided he must be a person who sleeps in his car and when he's hungry, forages for food. “It's OK,” Ali said kindly, “there are plenty of oranges to go around. You can pick some.”

But Manny was frowning. “Can I help you?” he asked.

The man came closer. He flipped open his drawing pad. “I
was just sketching the Valencia over there,” he said, nodding toward the orange tree.

He'd drawn the tree in pencil. Its oranges were small, white balls, like ornaments. Its leaves were a lacy, gray swirl. Bunny/Bonita wished she could draw like that! Leandra wondered why the man needed to draw the tree at all, when a digital camera could do a clearer and more colorful job. And Ali thought the tree was prettier in real life, although, until that very moment, she hadn't realized how lovely the tree actually was. It was as if the drawing itself was whispering,
Take another look
.

Manny stepped in front of the children. “I'm not sure I like it that you're drawing us, man,” he said.

You had to look closely but, sure enough, around the drawing's tree trunk were the shaded outlines of four people. And a tiny, blurry person in the tree's swing.

“Here, it's yours,” said the man, ripping the page from his pad. He handed the drawing to Manny.

While all this had been going on, Ruff had been digging furiously in the same spot Ali had found the heart-shaped stone.