Project Sweet Life (2 page)

“Have?” I said.

“You know,” Curtis said. “In savings.”

“I have, like, six dollars in my wallet,” I said. “Why would I have savings? That’s the whole point of an allowance.”

“I have some savings bonds,” Victor said. “But my parents would never let me cash them in. Other than that, I have about four dollars and fifty cents.” He looked at Curtis. “What about you?”

“I have forty-five left over from my birthday.” He thought for a second. “Okay, so we’ll have to earn the whole thing. But that’s no problem. I mean, it might take a week or two, but still. How hard can it be?”

“You’re forgetting something,” Victor said. “Even if we do somehow make seven thousand dollars, our dads would still expect us to leave every day to go to our summer jobs.”

“Piece-o-cake,” Curtis said. “We just tell our dads that we
did
get jobs. And then we make up fake schedules and just be sure to come here at the right times so it looks like we’re really working at our ‘jobs.’ My parents and sister work all day, so we don’t have to worry about them seeing us come here.”

“You mean we lie,” Victor said.

“Yeah,” he admitted, “but
little
lies. Remember, we
will
have a summer job. Of sorts. And we
will
make the money we would have made. And it’s totally not fair they’re making us do this in the first place!”

“So if my dad asks, I tell him I have a job working at KFC?” Victor said.

“Why not?” Curtis said. “We can pick you up a KFC
T-shirt somewhere, and you just have to come home every now and then with a bucket of chicken and maybe a Band-Aid from where you burned your hand on the deep fryer.”

“I don’t know if it’d be quite that easy,” I said. After all, our dads were
surveyors
; wasn’t the whole point that they
observe
things? My dad even sometimes joked about his “surveyor’s sense,” like Spider-Man’s “spider sense”—a feeling he supposedly got whenever something was a little off.

“Sure it would!” Curtis said to me.

“What would your summer ‘job’ be?” Victor asked Curtis.

“Hmmm, I should do something outside,” he said thoughtfully. “And something physical—my dad will think I’m building more character that way.”

“How about horse wrangling?” I said.

“No,” Curtis said. “I think maybe I’ll mow the lawns at the country club.” He looked at me. “Dave? What about you?”

“Well…” I considered my options. “I took lifesaving in school this year. And you only have to be fifteen to be a lifeguard.”

“Presto!” Curtis announced, waving at me like a faith healer. “You’re a lifeguard!”

“Okay, okay,” Victor said. “We get fake jobs. Like you said, that’s the easy part. How do we make the seven thousand dollars?”

“No,
that’s
the easy part,” Curtis said. “Trust me! This is
us
we’re talking about, remember? But we may not even need the money.”

“Huh?” Victor said, confused.

“You know our dads. Maybe they were just shootin’ the breeze. Maybe they got all excited about us working, but by tomorrow they’ll forget all about it.”

Curtis had a point. Six months earlier, my dad had bought an expensive health club membership, went twice, and then suddenly experienced selective amnesia, in which all traces of the health club membership were suddenly and completely forgotten.

But two days later, over a dinner of hot-dog chili, my dad’s eyes bored into me. “So,” he said, “how goes the search for a summer job?”

In other words, he wasn’t going to forget. Why would he? Unlike the episode with the health club membership,
this time I was the one doing all the work.

“Uh,” I said. “Not so good.”

My dad sighed. “Dave, Dave, Dave.”

This was too much. It was only the third day of summer vacation!

I thought about what Curtis, Victor, and I had talked about. Did I dare lie to my dad—even if it was just a little lie?

“I am thinking about applying to be a lifeguard down at the Fircrest Pool,” I said. This was the local community pool, and what I’d said wasn’t exactly a lie: When I did eventually end up getting a summer job, that was where I hoped it would be.

“Don’t think,” he said, shaking extra-mild hot sauce into his chili. “
Do it!
”

“My dad didn’t forget,” I said the next day, back in the bomb shelter.

“Mine either,” Curtis said.

“Mine either,” Victor said. “So does that mean the earn-seven-thousand-dollars-so-we-don’t-have-to-get-summer-jobs project is a go?”

“Magic Eight Ball says ‘Yes’!” Curtis said. He turned
the crank on our gum-ball machine, which we’d rigged so it didn’t need money. “And mark my words: We’ll have that seven thousand dollars in no time. But we need a name.”

“A name?” I said.

“For this summer project of ours!” Curtis said. “We can’t go around calling it the earn-seven-thousand-dollars-so-we-don’t-have-to-get-summer-jobs project.”

“I thought you said it was just a onetime thing,” I said. “Why do we need a name for that?”

“How about Project Sweet Life?” Curtis said, ignoring my perfectly reasonable observation. “Because the sweet life is what the rest of our summer is gonna be once we get that money!”

Victor twitched. “How?”

“How what?” Curtis said, confidently gnawing on the gum ball and settling back into the oversize couch.

“How are we going to make seven thousand dollars?” Victor said. “You still haven’t told us that. And I hope it goes without saying that whatever it is, it’s got to be
legal
.”

“It
does
go without saying,” Curtis said. “Trust me, I have the perfect, and perfectly
legal
, idea for making the money we need.”

“So?” Victor said. “What
is
it?”

“I can’t tell you just yet. I need a little more time to work out the kinks.” He started to blow a big bubble with the gum.

“When will you tell us?” Victor asked.

“I’ll tell you all about it this weekend,” Curtis said just as the green bubble popped in his face.

Friday night over a dinner of canned-tuna tacos, my dad asked me how it had gone with the lifeguard interview.

Suddenly the tuna smelled so bad, I thought I was going to throw up.

So this was it. Did I dare lie outright to my dad—fully and completely?

I thought about Project Sweet Life and what Curtis had said about having the “perfect” idea. I knew he’d been shading the truth again. But it was only seven thousand dollars. Curtis was right: How hard could getting that be?

I ignored the smell of the tacos and looked straight at my dad. “I got the job,” I said. “I start tomorrow.”

“Ha!” my dad said. “Thatta boy!” This is what he says to me on those incredibly rare occasions when
he is actually proud of me.

There it was; I had officially lied to my dad. Now that I’d said out loud that I had a job, he was going to expect to see the money I was supposedly earning from it.

In other words, whether I liked it or not, I was now fully committed to Project Sweet Life.

The next day, Saturday, I told my parents I had to work. Lying didn’t get any easier the second time around. But they didn’t question me, especially since I left with a towel and a pair of swim trunks.

Instead of going to my “job” at the pool, I met Victor and Curtis and we went for a bike ride. Technically, Curtis, Victor, and I live just outside the city limits of Tacoma, Washington, in a suburb called Fircrest, where the pool is. It’s so the burbs: yard gnomes and plastic birdbaths and cul-de-sacs everywhere you turn.

But we live in the older burbs—built in the sixties
and seventies. Since our families’ houses were built, newer ones have sprung up beyond them. The houses are bigger, along with the SUVs, and the yards are smaller, landscaped with gravel and small patches of bright emerald-green lawn. The streets are eerily deserted, and everything seems to be hidden behind fences and gates. No matter where you go, it feels like you’re in someone’s back alley. In other words, these newer suburbs are somehow even more lifeless than the old ones.

But at least the streets have bike lanes, and they’re always deserted, so that’s where we went on our ride. The Fircrest Pool wasn’t too far away, so if my parents drove by and saw me, I could say I was on my lunch break.

The time had come for Curtis to tell us how to earn the seven thousand dollars for Project Sweet Life. I was pretty sure he hadn’t come up with an idea, because if he had he wouldn’t have wasted any time telling us. But I didn’t want to ruin the day by pointing that out.

To my relief, Victor was the one who finally brought it up.

We were passing through the parking lot of one of those cinder-block strip malls when Victor said to Curtis, “So? It’s the weekend. What’s this great idea you have for
making seven thousand dollars?”

Curtis skidded to a halt. “
Estate sale!
”

“Huh?” I said, rolling to a stop. I turned back to look at him.

Curtis pointed to a storefront. “Look! They’re holding an estate sale.”

Sure enough, there was a sign in the window announcing an estate sale in big red letters.

“Let’s check it out,” Curtis said.

I knew Curtis was totally avoiding Victor’s question. But I also knew we’d check out that estate sale. We always did. It’s one way we’d ended up with all that cool stuff in our bomb shelter.

We locked up our bikes and went inside.

“This looks like a pretty big sale,” I said.

“I just overheard someone talking,” Curtis said. “It’s the estate of some local bigwig. Government guy.”

If it really was the estate of some rich guy, most of the expensive stuff must have already been sold. What we saw was lots of junk: dishes and a blender and books and a coffeemaker and magazines spread out over long cafeteria tables in no particular order. Bargain hunters flitted between the tables. In an estate sale, the owner is
dead, and I couldn’t help but be reminded of that scene in
A Christmas Carol
where the servants are laughing about taking the curtains right from the bed where Scrooge’s corpse lay.

“Curtis,” Victor said patiently. “You didn’t answer my question. What’s your idea for how we’re going to make seven thousand dollars?”

Curtis joined the browsers at the nearest table. “Hey, look at this!” he said, pointing to a twelve-inch-tall ceramic statue of Mr. Moneybags, the cartoon millionaire character from the Monopoly board game. It had the familiar top hat and handlebar mustache, and the arms were outstretched with a cane in one hand.

Curtis checked the price tag. “It’s only two dollars!” he said. “I’m so buying it. It’s a perfect mascot for Project Sweet Life.”

“Great,” Victor said patiently. “Now what’s your idea?”

But Curtis was already on to another table. “And look at
this
,” Curtis said. He held up a book called
Trains and Totem Poles: A History of Tacoma, Washington.
It had a photograph of Old City Hall, a local landmark, on the cover.

Victor looked over at me and rolled his eyes. I nodded. Curtis was usually good at shading the truth, but not always.

“Curtis,” Victor said. “Stop.”

“What?” He did stop, on the opposite side of the table. But that didn’t mean he looked at us.

“You don’t have any idea how we’re going to make seven thousand dollars, do you?” Victor said.

“I do
so
!” Curtis said indignantly. But he still wasn’t looking us in the eye.

“So?” Victor said. “
How?
”

Curtis stared down at the flatware. Then he looked up at us with a big grin. “We hold a garage sale,” he said smugly.

A garage sale? That was Curtis’s idea to make seven thousand dollars?

Victor was even less impressed than I was. “How are we going to make seven thousand dollars at a
garage sale
? Besides, you obviously just thought of it this very minute.”

“So?” Curtis said.

“So earlier you said you
already
had the perfect idea,
that you just needed to work out the kinks.”

“What difference does it make? I came up with a great idea, didn’t I?”

“
Did
you?” I said. “How are we going to make the money we need at a garage sale? I’ve never heard of anyone making anywhere near that much.”

“Ah, but this won’t be like any other garage sale!” Curtis said excitedly. “Look around you! Most garage and estate sales, sell
everything
—and most of it turns out to be complete junk.” He nodded to the nearest table. “I mean, wire hangers? Ice-cube trays? Come
on
. This is
garbage
. But we
won’t
be selling garbage!”

“What will we be selling?” Victor said evenly.

“Good stuff!” Curtis said. “All the great stuff we have in the bomb shelter. With stuff like that, making seven thousand dollars will be a piece-o-cake.”

It was true that we’d collected some pretty great stuff over the years. But it hadn’t come easy. Did he want us to just give it all up? The flat-screen television and game system? The mini-refrigerator? The movie-style popcorn popper? The
couch
?

“But that’s…” Victor said. “You know. Our stuff.” He sounded as reluctant as I felt.

“But it’d be for one last summer of freedom!” Curtis said. “Remember? How much is that freedom worth to you? And don’t forget, it’s not like we don’t get anything out of it. We sell our stuff, then we’ll have seven thousand dollars we can use to buy
new
stuff.”

“But what if it’s not enough?” I asked. We had great stuff in the bomb shelter, true, but I didn’t see how all of it put together could be worth seven grand.

An image of the plasma lamp back in my bedroom flashed through my mind. We might make it to seven thousand dollars, I realized, if the three of us also sold our personal possessions. It was kind of incredible what a kid could accumulate over the years even without a job, what with birthdays and Christmases and graduations. But would I really have to give up my plasma lamp? At night in my bedroom, long after I’d turned out the other lights, I loved to watch the purple bolts snake around the interior of the glass globe.

“It
will
be enough,” Curtis said, and I couldn’t help but wonder if some favorite personal belonging had flashed through
his
mind.

“But even if we did have this great garage sale, where would we hold it?” Victor said, and I was glad he was
changing the subject. “We can’t have it at any of our houses, or our parents will know where we got the money, and then it won’t count toward our summer jobs.”

On this point, even Curtis was stumped.

But that’s when I had an idea. “I think I know who can help us,” I said.

Uncle Brad is my dad’s brother, but they really couldn’t be more different. If everything is black-and-white for my dad, Uncle Brad definitely tends toward the colorful. For example, when asked to bring food to a party, most people might show up with salsa and a bag of corn chips; Uncle Brad brings tropical chicken on sugarcane skewers with a peanut-plantain dipping sauce. For Christmas gifts, most people give gift cards to Barnes & Noble or Target; Uncle Brad gives signed first editions of
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
and, well, purple plasma lamps.

Uncle Brad lives with his friend Uncle Danny in a house they’ve fixed up in the North End, the old part of town. Just like Uncle Brad is the opposite of my dad, the North End is the opposite of where we live. It’s the kind of neighborhood where most of the houses have
at least one stained-glass window and the roots of the old trees have gotten so thick, they’ve started to tear up the sidewalks. My parents’ part of town doesn’t even
have
sidewalks.

The next afternoon, Sunday, Curtis, Victor, and I rode our bikes over to visit my uncles.

“Dave!” Uncle Brad said at the front door. “What brings you and your friends here?” Uncle Brad looks like a more relaxed version of my dad, with longer hair and a looser posture. Uncle Danny, who joined us from the kitchen, is tall and slender with silver hair.

“We need to ask a favor,” I said.

“Sure,” Uncle Brad said. “Come on in.”

The inside of their house reminded me of our bomb shelter—sort of a clubhouse for adults, with Persian rugs and crown molding and lots of candles and hanging houseplants. The air smelled like cinnamon and Elmer’s glue, probably from one of my uncles’ craft projects.

I didn’t beat around the bush. “We want to hold a garage sale next weekend, and we were wondering if we could use your garage.”

“Actually, no,” Uncle Brad said.

“Oh,” I said. This was embarrassing.

Uncle Brad smiled. “We rent our garage to one of our neighbors, and he’s kind of particular about it. But you might be able to use our front porch.”

“Really?”

“Assuming you tell us why. Why not one of your own garages?”

“We figured we’d make more money here,” Curtis said. “Since this is a richer part of town.”

“I see,” Uncle Brad said. “Trying to keep it from your parents, huh?”

Unfortunately for us, my uncles are not stupid.

I looked at Curtis and Victor. They both shrugged, so I explained to my uncles all about Project Sweet Life.

Uncle Brad and Uncle Danny eyed each other, smiling. Then Uncle Danny snickered, and Uncle Brad joined in. Soon they’d completely busted up.

I let them laugh for a moment. Then I said, “I know you guys think this is very funny. And why wouldn’t you? We’re just a bunch of teenagers, right? Why should our problems count for anything?” I turned to Curtis and Victor. “Come on. I guess I was wrong about my uncles. Let’s get out of here.”

We started for the door. The floor creaked. Behind us, I could sense Uncle Brad and Uncle Danny looking at each other.

“Wait,” Uncle Brad said.

We waited.

“You are absolutely right,” he went on. “I can’t believe we laughed at you. I used to hate it when adults did that to me. We are so sorry.”

“And of course you can use our porch,” Uncle Danny said. “When will you need it?”

“Next Saturday from ten to five,” I said without missing a beat. “If it’s okay, we also need you to help us drive everything over here so we can store it in your basement until then. And we’ll stop by Friday night to put signs up around the neighborhood.”

Uncle Danny was the first to smile again. “We just totally got played, didn’t we?”

“Totally,” I admitted.

Tuesday was the Fourth of July. Since the whole point of Project Sweet Life was for us to have one last summer of freedom, we were determined not to miss the most
important holiday of the season.

We began the day traveling between our three houses, from the chaotic madhouse that is a holiday at Victor’s, to the plastic perfection of Curtis’s family, to the little piece of Americana that is my own parents. Everywhere we went, the adults wanted to know the same thing:

“How do you like working at KFC?” Curtis’s dad asked Victor.

“How do you like working at the country club?” my dad asked Curtis.

“How do you like being a lifeguard?” Victor’s dad asked me.

I think even Curtis was taken aback by the verbal onslaught. Since when did their teenage sons’ summer jobs become such fascinating barbecue conversation? No amount of apple pie and homemade ice cream was worth this, so the three of us took off again on our bikes.

By early evening, we’d ridden back to the North End and down to the waterfront, where the city puts on a big fireworks show over the bay. We climbed a big oak tree at the edge of a greenbelt and had a perfect view of all the boats in the water below us and the indigo sky above. The air smelled of cut grass and barbecue
smoke. Finally, we could relax.

Once the fireworks began, we watched wordlessly. When they were over, no one moved. We just kept watching the sky as the gray smoke slowly faded. In the distance, cars were already honking impatiently as they inched their way through the gridlock that now encased the entire waterfront. Even that was soothing in a way, because it seemed to be coming from a world apart.

“It’s not enough,” I said quietly.

“What isn’t?” Victor said.

I squirmed upright on my branch. “The stuff in the bomb shelter. Even if we do sell it all, we won’t make seven thousand dollars.” I hated to inject reality back into the night, but someone had to say it.

“Yes, we
will
,” Curtis said. “We just have to have faith.”

“What are you saying?” Victor said to me.

“I’m saying we need to sell our personal stuff too,” I said. “Everything.”
Even
, I thought,
my purple plasma lamp
.

My words hung in the air like the golden trail of a skyrocket right before the final explosion. They were just that obvious, and the conclusion was just that inevitable.