The New Kid (14 page)

A moment later, he heard someone moan:

“Oh.

“My.

“
Gosh!

“Mr. Lipman? Weston Walker just walked off with my acorn sweatshirt! Did you see how fat his pack was?”

“Calm down, Chloe.”

Chloe didn’t calm down. She got more upset!

“First Weston bugs me to trade sweatshirts. I say no. And so the guy just takes mine off my hook, shoves it in his pack, and leaves. Right under your nose. That
rat
!”

“Why would he take your sweatshirt? He’s twice your size.”

“He could squeeze into it!”

Carson peered over the top of the book cart. Wow. Chloe was really losing it.

“I cannot believe Weston Walker just walks out of here with Carson’s stuffed mammal and my acorn sweatshirt stuffed in his pack!”

Mr. Lipman stared at her.

“Bet you anything Parks’s green yo-yo is in there, too. What else around here is missing?”

She looked around the room.

“You’re more worried about Weston’s stuffy nose than the stuff he stuffed in his pack!”

“Chloe? Bus. B-U-S. You’re just about to miss it.”

As Chloe stamped out, Carson emerged from behind the cart, whistling softly. He waved good-bye to Mr. Lipman.

“I’m sure it’ll turn up,” Mr. Lipman said gently.

“Right.”

Carson’s dad was leaning against the Porsche with his arms folded against his chest, waiting for him. “Where’s your pack?” he called.

Carson pointed back at the school. He walked up to his dad and quietly told him about Moose getting stolen and the note he and Nancy made.

“What?! Shall I go in there and talk to your teacher about this?”

“No thanks, Dad. Moose’ll show up.”

“Where’s your sweatshirt?”

Carson pointed at the school again.

Carson couldn’t bring himself to tell his dad that,
just as the bell rang, he suddenly thought of the sound of four little hooves clattering around the empty hallways of Valley Oak School as Moose frantically searched for him.

And just for that moment, just that one moment, Moose became as real as he ever had been, back when Carson was a little kid. Back when Dr. Tichenal heard his heartbeat.

Well, maybe it was for more than one moment.

Maybe it was for two moments.

Or three.

Carson knew it wasn’t possible, but it did cross his mind that Moose might bed down behind the book cart for a couple of nights.

That’s where his hoodie was: folded up in the corner behind the rolling book cart. It was a secret spot. A perfect spot for a moose to hide. You could tell by the crumpled-up candy wrappers, balled-up papers, and checkers on the floor that even the Deputy Dustbusters had never been back there.

He figured that the scent of Carson on Carson’s hoodie might comfort Moose.

Carson frowned.

He hoped that the hoodie hadn’t been washed and dried and shrunk and washed and dried and shrunk too many times.

If it had, there would be no familiar scent left in it at all.

Grow
up
!
Carson told himself.

Well, he was trying.

“You want to go back for it?” his dad asked.

“Nah. I can wear my jacket.”

After supper, Carson watched TV, a program about how to hollow out a tree and make a canoe.

They showed two people in the finished canoe, dipping their paddles into the quiet river. A moose was standing at the edge of the water. It lifted its magnificent rack of antlers and gazed in their direction as they passed by.

With water drizzling from its muzzle.

“I’m thinking that Weston Walker may have Moose,” Carson quietly told his father. “Just a hunch.”

“Just a hunch?”

“Well … maybe more than a hunch.”

“How so?”

“A girl named Chloe pointed out that at the same time Moose vanished, a green yo-yo was heisted from the June Box, a green yo-yo that Weston Walker had previously shown an interest in.

“Also, she mentioned that he had been hounding her to trade hoodies with her, and hers mysteriously went missing, just moments before he was seen leaving with an overstuffed backpack.”

“Hmmm.”

“And we had just had Clean Out That Backpack, Dagnabbit! Day.”

“Wow. I don’t know what to say about this, son.”

“Neither do I, Dad.”

Carson crawled into bed.

There was a thump on the door and it swung open.

What?!

His dad was holding Mrs. Nibblenose! At arm’s length, but nonetheless, he was gently and carefully holding her. Her tail was waving in a scary way. Lashing, kind of.

“Look at this nice lady!” he said.

Good for him! Carson’s dad had made it over the hump.

“She says she wants to snuggle with you for a little while.”

“Her?”

His dad added, “Not all night, of course, but for a few minutes.”

Carson’s dad put Mrs. Nibblenose on the pillow, but Mrs. Nibblenose wasn’t into snuggling up, just sniffing and wiggling. Sniffing and burrowing under the covers. Soon she was all the way down at Carson’s feet. Her whiskers tickled his ankles!

“Thanks anyway, Dad.” Carson handed back Mrs. Nibblenose. “That was brave, Dad.”

“Thank you, son.”

After the Mrs. Nibblenose disturbance, Carson wasn’t sleepy.

He turned on the light and worked awhile on his Whiz Quiz poem.

“You awake in there, Dad?”

“Yes!”

“Crack, smack, crash, smash, crunch,” Carson called. “Good onomatopoeias?”

“Excellent!”

“Okay. Then here’s another clue. Crunches lunches.”

“Squirrel?”

“No. But I wish a squirrel would jump out of a tree and land on Weston Walker’s shoulder and chatter its teeth in his face.”

“Let’s not demonize Weston. We have no proof that he’s a yo-yo, moose, and hoodie thief.”

“But the evidence suggests that, don’t you think?”

“Sort of.”

His dad showed up at the doorway again, this time with Genevieve. “We can bend the basket rules occasionally.”

Genevieve jumped onto the bed, flopped on her back, and waved her tail. She tried to stand on her head for a minute. Then she flipped over, stood up, and stuck her head under the covers and tossed them around. She lay down beside Carson, panting loudly, with her mouth open and her tongue hanging out. After a while, she yawned, closed her mouth, and put her nose on the sheet. And looked at Carson, and rolled her eyes from one side to the other.

She slept with Carson, sprawled on the bed diagonally and trapping the covers underneath her.

Carson woke up and encouraged her to get up and stretch her legs. He got up, too, and looked through the black windowpane. Fog had rolled in and covered the stars, but he knew they were out there somewhere.

Carson had made it halfway through his first soggy, unstarlit, and moonless night without Moose in his life, and actually he felt good about it.

For about one minute at a time.

Yes, it was time to move on from Moose, time to put him away.

Set him up on a shelf.

But first he had to get him back!

It was the principle of it!

Carson was furious.

Maybe he would confront Wes.

He went back to bed.

When Carson woke up in the morning, his dad was reading the newspaper in the kitchen. “Sleep okay?”

“Yup.”

“Guess what’s going on this weekend? A classic-car and hot-rod show in Penngrove, across the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge and up the highway
about forty-five minutes. There’s a free rock ’n’ roll band, classic cars, food, and a rat-rod contest. Shall we go?”

“What’s a rat rod?”

“No clue. Sounds interesting, though!”

They put Genevieve outside in the yard. Genevieve’s gigantic water bowl was muddy because she enjoyed dropping her ball in it, then standing with her front legs in it and staring at the ball. Carson dumped it out and refilled it with the hose. She barked at the water when it was coming out of the nozzle. He tossed the tennis ball to the fence, and she brought it to the water bowl. All was good. Carson went out the gate, making triple sure it was latched.

Carson and his dad drove through the neighborhood and down to the highway entrance. They paid the toll. As they started across the bridge, Carson looked down at the water below. A huge black and red tanker, with a tugboat beside it, was docked at a pier.

Across the bay, Claude Monet sailboats were heeling into the wind. Beyond them, on the other side of the water, skyscrapers of San Francisco rose up and disappeared into the clouds.

Carson and his dad drove up the highway, which
was lined with redwood trees. They got to Penngrove and followed signs to Penngrove Park. They parked the Porsche in the gravel lot, far away from the other cars, so they wouldn’t get a door ding.

They bought tickets from some guys wearing
HOT ROD HOODLUMS
hats who said, “Keep the stub for the drawing, dudes.”

Carson put his into his shirt pocket, and they wandered in.

The classic cars were parked on the baseball field. So many, it was hard to pick a favorite, but Carson’s dad said that, for him, the ’34 Packard convertible was right on up there with the ’56 Porsche Speedster and the ’57 Nomad.

Rat rods were parked in a separate section, with scruffy owners standing around or else leaning against their cars.

The winning rat rod looked like it was shot up out in the desert, left there for ten years, hauled up out of a ravine, then squashed.

A skinny guy with a tattoo of a monarch butterfly on his Adam’s apple asked Carson if he wanted to sit in it, and Carson did.

He opened the rusty door and Carson climbed in.

Wow!

The windshield was only about eight inches high!

After that, Carson and his dad had tacos from a lunch truck and listened to the band play some oldies but goodies on a bandstand inside a wooden gazebo. The lead singer looked like Elvis, with black sideburns, black hair slicked back, and a pack of cigarettes rolled up in his T-shirt sleeve.

Right after the band played “Sweet Little Sixteen,” they took a break, and a guy went up onto the bandstand to announce the numbers on the winning ticket.

He read them slowly: “9-9-9-7-6-5-2.”

The crowd was quiet.

Then he read them again.

“Anybody out there with 9-9-9-7-6-5-2?”

Carson fumbled in his shirt pocket.

It was Carson’s number!

He was the winner of a rebuilt transmission for a ’32 Ford!

“Come on up!” the guy said into the microphone. And when Carson came up, the guy rested his elbow on Carson’s shoulder and pretended to lean on him.

“Now all ya need is to grow up, get yourself a driver’s license, get yourself a job, and get the rest of the ’32 Ford coupe that goes along with it!”

Everybody clapped and cheered and the band struck up: “Wake up, little Susie! We gotta go home.”

Carson’s dad accepted an invitation to dance with a woman in a ponytail wearing saddle shoes, white bobby socks, a felt poodle skirt, a pink sweater, and pink lipstick and holding a large paper cup full of root beer.

Some guys helped them load the transmission into the Porsche, and they headed home.

They spent Sunday quietly.

A neighbor came over and helped them get the transmission into the garage. In a few years, Carson would be all grown-up, with his own ’32 Ford coupe, maybe with a rumble seat. By then, the last thing on his mind would be having a stuffed moose.

On Monday morning, Carson quietly ate his breakfast: Egg in a Nest. It looked like a big yellow eyeball staring at him.

“If Moose doesn’t turn up, so be it. I’m past sleeping with a stuffed animal. And, Dad? I don’t need a birthday party this year. I don’t want a trail ride. Let’s just you and me hang out.”

“Let’s not decide that now.”

Carson frowned. “And let’s not make a classroom party, either.”

His dad said, “I feel like I have a stake in this, too, actually. I share a stake in this because Moose was
waiting for you in your crib the day I brought you home.” He put his hand on Carson’s arm. “Which was the happiest day of my life. Right along with every day I’ve had with you ever since. I feel sentimental about him. So yes, I’d like to have the goal of getting him back, and then you can put him up on a shelf, or put him away if that’s what you want to do.”

“I do. What’s the cutoff age for sleeping with a stuffed moose, anyway?”

“No set age. There aren’t guidelines or rules for everything.”

“Does nine seem about right?”

“Maybe.”

“That’s about halfway to getting a driver’s license.”

“Okay, nine then, if you say so.”

Carson waited by the classroom door till the bell rang and then walked in. The sign was still up; his pack was still empty.

He glanced over at Wes’s desk.

He was absent.

How convenient!

Carson wondered if Wes was sitting at home all
zipped up snug in Chloe’s sweatshirt, playing with Dandy, Moose, and a green yo-yo.

Dandy better not be biting Moose.

Darn Wes, anyway!

After the flag salute and attendance, a woman wearing workout gear appeared at the door. A Valley Oak backpack was hanging from her shoulder.

“Mr. Lipman?”

“Yes?”

“Melissa Johnson here. My son, Parks, has you for math.”

“Right.”

“And oh my gosh! He left school straight from your math class on Friday. Remember? He had all his things with him? Well, apparently he grabbed the wrong pack and chucked it into the back of my car with his trumpet and all his other stuff. We took my husband’s SUV to Tahoe and were gone all weekend.”

Carson looked over at the Valley Oak pack hanging on his hook with the note on it. He looked at the backpack hanging from Parks’s mom’s shoulder.

His heart thumped.

“There’s an adorable stuffed beast in it of some sort. Maybe a snapping turtle or dinosaur. In any case, it looks like it’s been loved half to death!” She unzipped the zipper. “Ta-da!” She pulled Moose out. “Anybody know this guy?” She gave him a big squeeze, and a big fat kiss on his back.