Maniac Monkeys on Magnolia Street & When Mules Flew on Magnolia Street (8 page)

How did a big family like the Carters just disappear and not even leave shoes or something behind? We weren't going to find out
what happened to them by just looking in through the windows… so I climbed up the backyard trellis to the roof.

I loved being up high, even though I still didn't find out what happened to everybody. I did scare Lump and Billy real bad, though, when I howled down at them.

They ran around to the front of the house before I could tell them it was me. I got them good.

Boy, was that funny!

Lump and Billy even thought so. I found them lying on their backs underneath the Carters' crab apple tree, laughing, and I laughed with them.

“Good one, Charlie,” Billy said.

“Yeah, I thought the ghosts or aliens who took the Carters were just about to jump down on us,” said Lump.

Lump finally stood up, blew a bubble, and
said, “What next? I don't think an empty house is going to tell us what happened to the Carters.”

He was right. All the evidence was gone.

“We'll have to start questioning everybody in the neighborhood today. I'm sure somebody has seen something.”

Billy said, “What if they won't talk?”

Maybe the neighbors would think it wasn't our business to know anything. I said, “Well, we'll just have to trick them into talking. Or if they're anything like us, they are pretty nosy and want to talk.”

So we walked around Magnolia Street looking for neighbors to question. When we caught somebody outside, we acted sort of friendly, then asked a million questions about the Carters. Billy wrote down everything.

Ms. Multree lives on the right side of the Carters. She said:

“Don't know where they went, but I got a
good night's sleep for the first time since they brought home Woof.”

“Who's Woof?” I asked.

“That barking dog of theirs is Woof.”

“I thought the dog's name was Peanut.”

“It was Woof to me because that's the only thing that ever came out of his mouth.”

Then Ms. Multree almost skipped away down the sidewalk. She didn't miss the Carters one bit!

Mr. Warren, who lives on the other side of the Carters, said, “Who?”

We really never see Mr. Warren out in the daytime. Back in the winter I thought he might be a vampire, but Mom says he worked nights. He was kind of pale, though, and a little confused about who the Carters were.

Billy said, “Well, he was no help.”

The rest of the neighborhood was no help, either. It was almost like the Carters had never
been there. It was almost like ten kids never tore through the neighborhood or emptied the ice cream truck before anybody else got Pop-sicles or beat everybody who challenged them in football.

I looked down the ravine with my binoculars to make sure the Carters weren't living there. Billy sprinkled fingerprint powder all over the neighborhood and lost the rope when running from Mrs. Perkins after accidentally sprinkling her just-washed car.

Lump fed the cheese crackers to the Perkinses' cats while he was using the magnifying glass on them to count their fleas.

We were exhausted from a day of being spies.

The sim was going down on Magnolia Street. We all sat in my front yard feeling tired and unworthy of spyhood.

I waved to Lump and Billy as they dragged themselves home.

I went to sleep swatting a mosquito away and wondering what happened to the Carters.

Well, like I said at the beginning, this mystery didn't start off like the ones in books. No one saw them leave or knew they were leaving, but the Carters were gone. Dad said it was a real conundrum. When I looked confused, he said that was the same as a mystery.

Sometimes, though, a mystery isn't a mystery at all. Sometimes it's just that you don't have the information. And sometimes it helps if you leave your neighborhood with your friends to buy fish food and guppies for Mr. Pinkton.

Billy was holding the bag of guppies we had just bought at The Sea Hut. I love going to The Sea Hut. Me, Lump, and Billy stayed there for hours looking at the fish. We always feel better after leaving The Sea Hut.

You can get pretty sad when you're a failed spy. (And we were sad.)

But just as we were walking out of The Sea Hut, something went running by us. Peanut Carter! We knew it was him by his woof.

“C'mon!” I yelled.

The chase was on. We chased Peanut all over and under town. He was one fast little dog. Just a hint about how horrible it was for us to follow Peanut: Only dogs and a few other four-legged animals can crawl under barbecue grills.

I ripped my pants, Billy lost his hat, and Lump lost a shoe… but… we found the Carters!

I was pretty disappointed I wasn't a good enough spy to figure out what happened to the Carters, but we know now.…

Nothing!

That's what Ben Carter said while he was
standing in their yard on Maple Grove Road squirting people who walked by while one of his sisters swung in the hammock and another one sold lemonade in front of their bigger house.

When I told Sid that the Carters had moved in the middle of the night 'cause that was the only time they could get a truck, he laughed.

“I knew it all the time,” he said. “Ben came over for boxes a few days before they moved. Mystery, huh?” Sid laughed again.

Something very mysterious is happening on Magnolia Street.

All of my brother Sid's skateboards and inline skates just up and disappeared. Nobody knows what happened to them. I told him it must be a mystery. I figure any good mystery can start in an attic. And that's exactly where they are.

Although when Sid's not home, me, Lump, and Billy roll all over Magnolia Street on his skateboards and skates.

We might come across a mystery on a dark road or have to chase a fast dog. Spies need wheels.

here's magic now, on Magnolia Street.

A couple of weeks ago the Magics bought the Carters' house, and nothing will ever be the same on our street again.

In the beginning the Magics' moving day looked a lot like the day my family moved to Magnolia Street last summer. People were yelling for kids to get out of the way of the movers. Boxes that sounded like they were filled with glass tumbled down the stairs.

Me and Lump and Billy watched from underneath the crab apple tree in the front yard
of the Magics' house as the boxes and furniture moved out of the truck, up the porch stairs, and through the door.

The Magics have two teenage girls. They waved to us every now and then when they weren't carrying things into the house. They looked like they might be fun. We all smiled and waved back.

Their dad came out and waved at us, too. A few seconds later he looked at them and said something, then looked at us and waved his arm around the girls.

With a puff of smoke, the girls disappeared.…

Wow!

Magic on Magnolia Street.

Billy jumped up.

“Where'dtheygo?”

I jumped up, too.

“They disappeared, right in front of us.”

Lump jumped up and blew a bubble. He
didn't say anything, but the bubble grew huge, then exploded all over his face.

Billy asked, “Where do you think they went?”

“Gone,” I said.

“Gone where?” Billy asked.

Lump pulled a crab apple off the tree and took a bite out of it. How he can chew gum and eat food at the same time, I have no idea.

“It's magic. They aren't really anywhere. They're in Magicland.”

Me and Billy looked at him and smiled. Lump's eyes were shining like they had never shined before.

“I've always wanted to be a magician,” he said.

“You'd make a good magician, Lump. I've seen you make a lot of things disappear. It was mostly food, but I was pretty amazed how it was there, then all of a sudden it wasn't.”

Billy and Lump laughed and ate more crab apples. I ate the crab apples, too, but I was still
hungry. I wasn't going to leave, though, until the two girls appeared again.

We waited.

Their dad carried more boxes into the house. It looked like it might take hours to unpack the moving truck. After a while he started helping the movers with furniture.

My stomach started to growl.

The crab apple cores started to pile up beside Lump and Billy, and bees started to buzz around the cores.

I figured my mom had probably been looking for me to eat dinner. It was time to give up waiting for the disappeared girls. I turned to leave.

“I have to go home now,” I said.

As soon as Lump and Billy started complaining that the girls were bound to reappear any minute, the dad came out again. This time he had on a black cape. He nodded to us, then whirled his cape around.

And then one, two, three…the girls were there.

What a great trick! We clapped and stomped our feet. The girls and their father bowed, waved, then went inside the house.

I skipped home fast, yelling good-bye to Lump and Billy as I ran up our front steps and through the door.

Mom was just setting the table. Sid was complaining about not getting more allowance. Dad was stirring chili on the stove.

“I just saw two girls disappear into thin air,” I said.

“Oh yeah?” Sid asked.

“Yeah, and then a while later their dad made them magically reappear.”

Sid said, “Why didn't you ask if you could go with them?”

“Funny, Sid. I'd rather ask them to make you disappear, then forget how to get you back.”

Dad laughed. “Maybe I should go talk to the man and find out how he does that trick.”

Mom laughed, too, real hard. In a minute she and Dad were giggling so much that Mom had to stop putting out the napkins and Dad had to step away from the stove. Me and Sid, for once, agreed that the joke wasn't fiinny.

Dad wiped his eyes with his sleeve and finally stopped laughing. Mom giggled a little more and winked at him.

“Sounds like we have a family of magicians in the neighborhood.”

We all sat down to eat. I love my dad's chili. He always uses our garden tomatoes.

I ate two bowls and I think Sid ate about a gallon.

I asked Mom, “Do you think I could learn magic?”

“Sure, Charlie. Magic is a matter of practice, practice, and more practice.”

“I can practice,” I said.

Everybody knows I can. I just started playing the trumpet. It took me a long time to pick out the instrument I wanted to play. Mrs. Walker, my music teacher, helped me make my decision. She was great and told me that if I practice a lot, I could be a great trumpet player.

That's all it took.

I've been practicing ever since summer vacation began.

I practice early in the morning before anyone gets up. I practice in the living room while everybody is there. I want them to hear how good I'm getting. Mostly, though, I practice alone in the garden.

Mom says she thinks the plants will enjoy the music so much more than the walls in the house will. She says music will help them grow. She even set out a comfortable chair for me to sit in. She seems real happy about me sharing
my music with the vegetable garden. She even brings my snacks outdoors.

So everybody knows I can practice.

I thought about magic all through dinner and way past the time I was supposed to be in bed sleeping.

I looked out the window toward the magician's house, imagining the wonderful kinds of magic that were going on there.

Maybe they were making elephants and many different kinds of wild animals appear and disappear. You never know what kind of magic is out there.

Lump was in our front yard early the next morning. He had one of his aunt's tablecloths slung around his shoulders like a cape.

“What do you think?” he said.

“You look good,” I said.

“I'm ready for magic,” he said.

So we walked to the old Carter house and camped out on the front lawn underneath the crab apple tree again.

What would happen next?

Well, something happened sooner than we thought. One of the Magic girls walked out of the house and waved us over. She was wearing a ballet tutu and a baseball cap.

“Hi, I'm Chris. Were you two here yesterday?”

“That was us,” I said. “I'm Charlie, and the guy in the cape is Lump.”