The Kid in the Red Jacket (3 page)

This time no one responded. But knowing they were trying to ignore me only made me yell louder.

“Well, so much for me ever getting a pen pal! I really wanted a pen pal too! I was thinking about writing to some kids in Egypt after I got settled.”

I don’t know why I said that. It just sort of popped into my head. It didn’t matter, though. No one was listening anyway.

I sighed and stationed myself back at the window. That’s when I saw her. A little girl was just coming out of the brick house across the street. She was wearing a fireman’s hat. I figured that made her around six years old. After six, you usually have too much pride to wear a fireman’s hat out in public.

I could tell right away the girl was weird. The first thing she did was to grab the garden hose and drag it out to the sidewalk. Then she stood there and pretended to squirt stuff. The water wasn’t on, but she held the hose with two hands and pretended it was as hard to control as a real fire hose.

A man walked by and she pretended to squirt him in the back. He turned around and said something to her, and she put the hose down. As soon as he turned the corner, she picked it right up again.

I guess by this time she was tired of pretending. That’s when she turned on the hose and squirted her cat.

As soon as she did it, a lady came barreling out the front door. I knew it would happen. Don’t ask
me how, but grownups always know when the outside water is on.

The woman shook her finger at the little girl for a second. Then she snatched off the fireman’s hat and went back inside. I could see the girl’s hair now, wild and red and frizzy, almost bigger than she was. It was styled kind of like Bozo’s.

The little girl stood alone in her front yard for a minute before sitting down on the curb. It wasn’t long before she spotted our station wagon in the driveway. She was up and over to the car like a flash.

She cupped her hands and looked in every window. She didn’t even check to see if anyone was watching. Then, before I had a chance to call my father, she climbed right onto the car roof and sat on the luggage rack. I couldn’t believe it! We’ve had the car for three years, and I’ve never even been allowed on the hood!

“Dad!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “There’s somebody on our car!
Daaaaaad!”

When he didn’t come, I ran into the bathroom and grabbed him.

“Let’s go! There’s some kid crawling all over our car!”

By the time we got outside, the girl had opened
the tailgate and was sitting in Bill’s empty dog cage. When she saw us coming, she grinned. Two of her front teeth were missing.

“Better get out of there, young lady,” said my father, taking her by the arm. “That cage is for our dog.”

The little girl clapped her hands. “Ooh! You guys have a dog? I
love
dogs! I have a cat. Her fur was on fire a minute ago, but I put it out.”

My father and I just looked at each other. What do you say to something like that?

“I’m Molly Vera Thompson,” the girl said. “I live across the street in the house with the nonny.”

Dad and I looked at each other again. “Er, the nonny?” Dad asked finally.

“That’s my grandmother,” she informed us. “I call her my nonny.”

Dad smiled. “Well, we’re going to be your new neighbors, Molly Vera Thompson. I’m Mr. Jeeter and this is my son, Howard.”

Molly’s face dropped as she looked me over. It was pretty clear that she was disappointed.

“You mean you’re it?” she asked at last. “You’re the
new kid?
. Pooey. I wanted one that looked like me.”

For the third time, my father and I stared
blankly. Talking to this girl was like being in the Twilight Zone.

“You wanted a new kid that looked like you?” questioned Dad.

“Yup. You know, a little girl my same age in my same grade.”

She paused for a second. “She doesn’t have to have red hair, though,” she added thoughtfully.

“How very fair of you,” I grumbled.

“Oh well,” she said, shrugging her shoulders, “it doesn’t matter. You’re better than nothing, at least. What’s your name again, boy?”

Gritting my teeth, I muttered, “Howard Jeeter.”

Suddenly Molly Vera Thompson’s face broke into a big smile. “Hey! I got an idea, Howard Jeeper! Since you’re a boy, we can play house and you can be the daddy!”

I’m not kidding. You could hear me groan all over Chester Pewe Street.

    3   
It was the next morning, but I still couldn’t get the thought out of my head.

“House!
She actually wanted me to play house!”

We had checked out of the motel and were on our way to meet the movers. I knew I was probably making too big a deal out of it. But
house
was just so insulting!

My mother shook her head. “Are we going to have to listen to this again, Howard? Now just cut it out, okay? Besides, like I told you last night,
it wouldn’t kill you to play.”

“Yes, it would. It would kill me. I would die before I would be the daddy.”

“I don’t see what the big deal is,” Mom continued. “You used to like to play house. Remember when you were seven and you carried Dad’s toolbox wherever you went?”

I rolled my eyes. Couldn’t she get anything right? “I wanted to
build
a house, Mother, not
play
it.”

Mom thought it over a second, then smiled. “Okay then, what about that time a few weeks ago when you were pushing Gaylord in the carriage and you told little Harriet Miller that he was your son? What do you call that?”

“Lying! I call that lying!” I answered. “Harriet Miller will believe anything.”

Just then my father turned the corner to Chester Pewe Street. I looked up just as Molly Vera Thompson was coming out of her house.

“Oh, no! Hide me! Hide me! Give me your coat!” I demanded, quickly getting on the car floor.

My mother peered over the back seat.

“Don’t look at me!” I yelled. “If you look at me, she’ll know I’m here!”

My mother continued to stare. “You’re making a fool of yourself, Howard. Get up.”

I should have known that’s how she’d react. You can never count on your parents to hide you when you need it. It really makes me mad. What’s the big deal about throwing a coat over your kid once in a while?

By this time my father had opened his door.

“Hullo! Hullo!” called Molly, running toward us.

Before I knew it, she was staring in our car windows again.

“Hey! What’s that boy doing on the floor in there?” she yelled so the whole neighborhood could hear.

“He’s hiding,” replied my dad. My father’s always a big help in situations like this.

When Dad got out of the car, Molly looked in the front seat.

“Hey! Mr. Jeeper! Is that your mother in there?”

“Our name is
Jeeter
,” corrected my father. “And that’s my
wife.
”

“Hey! Is that a baby back there? No one said anything about a baby! Is that a baby, Mr. Jeeper?”

The trouble with Molly was that she never waited for anyone to answer one question before she asked another. I’d only known her a few minutes,
but she was already getting on my nerves.

“Hey!” she called from the back of the car. “Here’s that doggie you were tellin’ me about. Is he tired, Mr. Jeeper? He looks kind of dead.”

My father opened the tailgate.

“Pew,” Molly said. “He’s a smelly one, isn’t he?”

My mother unstrapped Gaylord and reached in to pick him up. By this time I was off the floor. Molly peeked around my mother’s back.

“Hi, boy,” she said. “Is that your baby brother? I could baby-sit, you know.”

My mother smiled. It was actually like she thought this little pain was cute or something.

“Have you ever baby-sat before?” Mom asked.

“No. But I know how. I can make him laugh. Wanna see? I’ll throw him high up in the air and catch him. I saw a man do that to a baby in the grocery store once. My nonny said he shouldn’t do that, but the baby was laughing. Wanna see?”

“Your nonny?” questioned my mother. “Oh, yes, that’s your …”

“Grandmother,” Molly chimed, finishing the sentence. “We live over there. I already explained it to your little boy and your father.”

All of a sudden Molly looked up. “Hey! Here it comes!” she squealed, spotting the moving van coming down the street. Then she started jumping up and down like it was
her
stuff they were delivering. “It’s coming! It’s coming!”

While Molly was busy clapping at the truck, I stood on my tiptoes to reach my mother’s ear. “Tell her to go home,” I whispered.

Mom turned around sharply and frowned right into my face.

“Be nice,” she ordered.

If you ask me, this is one of the stupidest things my mother does. She actually
orders
me to be a nice person.

My father greeted the truck and shook hands with the moving men. Then we all went into the house to show them where stuff went. When I say “we,” I mean Molly too. She walked right in like she was part of the family or something. On the way she grabbed hold of my hand. I couldn’t believe it! I practically had to pry her fingers off.

By the time we’d shown the guys around the house, Dad was acting like they were old friends. He kept calling them pal and buddy. I knew why he was doing it, of course. Before we left the
motel, he said that if you act friendly, the movers are more careful with your stuff.

I wonder if my mother thinks that’s “nice.” I mean, I don’t want all my stuff scratched up, but I don’t think you should pretend to be friends when you’re not. I think you should just be honest and say, “Hey! Be careful with that, okay?”

Anyway, at least they weren’t the same moving men who had packed us up in Arizona. This time there were only two of them—Buzz and Ralph. They both had on orange overalls. Ralph was pretty thin, but Buzz weighed about three hundred pounds. Molly asked him if he was any relation to Santa.

Not only was the girl a pain, but she was nosy, too. She followed me around everywhere I went. “Do you have a piano?” she asked, looking out our living room window. “I love the sound of a piano.”

“No,” I snapped. “No piano.”

“Oh. Could you get one, do you think?”

The thing is, I wasn’t in a very good mood to begin with. Moving-in day wasn’t much better than moving-out day had been. In fact, it was worse. At least on moving-out day, I had had Thornsberry and Roger to talk to. Talking to
Molly was like talking to the Smurfs.

Also, no matter where I sat, I was in the way. Buzz and Ralph kept saying “beep-beep,” as if they were buses or something.

Finally, I grabbed my jacket and headed outside. It was chilly, but it was better than Buzz’s beeps.

Naturally, Molly followed. She sat down right next to me on the porch steps.

“Honk-honk,” barked Ralph. He was trying to get by with the kitchen table.

“Hey! I got an idea!” offered Molly excitedly. “Why don’t we go over to my house and sit there?”

It was like she hadn’t even noticed that we weren’t becoming friends.

I shook my head and moved to the middle of the yard. Molly sat next to me and tried to grab my hand again. Then she wrinkled up her nose and grinned.

“I like you, Howard Jeeper,” she said. “Do you like me?”

All of a sudden I just couldn’t stand it anymore. That happens sometimes. You’re going along, trying to put up with something, then all of a sudden it gets to you.

“Listen, I think you’d better go home now,
okay?” I blurted. “I think I heard your mother calling.”

Molly got a funny look on her face. “No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did!” I insisted, holding my hand up to my ear. “Listen. Didn’t you hear her?”

Looking puzzled, Molly stared at me a second. Then suddenly her face seemed to lose its happiness.

“I didn’t hear my mommy calling,” she said in a small little voice. “And you didn’t either.”

“I did too,” I persisted. “I’m almost positive that I—”

“No, you didn’t!” Molly yelled, interrupting me. “You didn’t hear my mommy calling me because I don’t have a mommy anymore! She and my daddy got divorced from me! I just live with my nonny now!”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Oh,” I replied, finally.

Neither one of us spoke for a while. Then Molly took a deep breath, like she had been doing some serious thinking.

“My mommy might come get me someday, you know. Or maybe my daddy will.…”

I was still feeling like a creep, so I just nodded. I
probably should have said, “Sure, they will,” or something nice. But I didn’t.

“Well,” declared Molly, suddenly shaking her wild, frizzy hair all over the place. “I’m not going to think about that anymore. My nonny said I shouldn’t worry my pretty little head about it.”

“Okay,” I replied stupidly.

After that the two of us just sat there watching Buzz and Ralph. Whenever Buzz picked up something heavy, he said, “Oooph!” and his face turned red. I guess being heavy doesn’t necessarily make you strong.

Even though Molly seemed to be feeling better, I didn’t have the heart to try and send her home again. She was still being a pain, but I tried not to be mad at her about it. I felt sorry for her, I guess.

Finally, across the street Molly’s front door opened and her grandmother called her for lunch. I couldn’t see her face too well, but she had on sneakers and jeans. Grandmothers don’t dress the way they did in the olden days.

Molly jumped right up and started for home.

“Hey!”
she shouted back to me when she was almost there. “Maybe I can come back later. What time do you take your nap?”

I couldn’t believe she said that! Geez! Practically
the whole world must have heard her. A nap! I haven’t taken a nap for years. I don’t even like to
sit
on my bed during the day.

Of course, I didn’t answer her. I just got up and ran inside. Ralph didn’t see me and accidentally backed into me with a chair.

“Whoops! Beep-beep!” he said quickly.

It’s a good thing Ralph’s not a bus driver. By the time he’d honk, half the people in the street would be dead.

    4   
I waited until the movers left before I went up to my room. I guess I should have told them where I wanted my bed and stuff, but I didn’t. What difference did it make? No matter where they put my furniture, it still wouldn’t feel like my room.