The Zippy Fix (12 page)

23

I
punched my alarm clock at seven the next morning.

Monday.

Stella’s sixteenth birthday.

I jumped down from the top bunk and pulled on my jeans. I counted the extra nineteen cents out of my fortune and set it aside to
pay Darci back. Eighteen dollars went into my pocket. A few bills and a lot of coins. It made a big bulge, and was as heavy as a fistful of nails. I patted it, feeling richer than I’d ever been in my life. Too bad by tonight I’d be broke again. In debt, too. I also had to pay Willy back.

In the kitchen, Mom and Stella were making lunches as usual. I grabbed the orange juice out of the fridge and started to drink from the spout.

“Stop!” Mom said, scowling at me. “Why is it that you can’t hold even the tiniest thought in your head? How many times have I told you not to drink from the carton?”

“Sorry.”

I got a glass.

Stella eyed me. “What you got in your pocket, Stump?”

“Mom! She called me Stump again.”

“Be nice, Stella,” Mom said. “He’s impressionable. We don’t want to diminish his self-esteem.”

“He’s got self-esteem?”

“Calvin, is there something you want to say to Stella this morning?”

I looked at Mom. Huh?

Mom sighed. “What
day
is this?”

“Uh, Monday?”

Mom squinted at me. “Happy birthday, Stella,” she said, scolding me with her eyes.

“Oh. Yeah. Uh … happy birthday.”

Stella pinched my cheek. “Thank you for remembering, Stumpy. That’s sweet of you.”

I was
so
glad my room was way out in the garage. I couldn’t even imagine living as close to Stella as Darci did.

In the pantry I found a brand-new box of Honey Nut Cheerios. I got a bowl and took it to the counter. Darci wandered in and climbed up onto the stool next to me.

Stella thunked a carton of milk down between us.

“Five minutes,” Mom said, leaving the kitchen. “I’m driving you to school today.” Sometimes we walked.

I ate and left my bowl where it was on the
counter. By the time I got home from school that afternoon, it would be crawling with ants. Maybe there’d even be a dead fly in it. Which would be great. I could feed it to Manly Stanley.

I grabbed my backpack and stuffed my lunch into it.

“Hey!” Stella snapped. “You can’t just leave your bowl there for the ants to crawl into while you’re pretending to learn something in school. Take it to the sink and rinse it out.”

Tell me again why I went through all that trouble to make eighteen dollars?

24

A
fter school Willy, Julio, Rubin, and Maya waited for me at the jungle gym while I got Darci. We were all going to the music store to turn my cash into a Chris Botti CD.

“Let’s go,” I said, running up.

Julio pointed with his chin. “Look.”

Tito, Bozo, and Frankie Diamond had a
couple of third graders surrounded. Robbery in progress. Time to slip away unseen.

“Run silent, run fast,” I said.

At the music store, we crowded around the jazz section.

I snapped up the brand-new Chris Botti CD. “This is it.”

Darci, Maya, Julio, Willy, and Rubin pushed in to see.

“Is he a singer, or what?” Maya asked.

I shrugged. “Don’t ask me.”

Keoni the sales guy was at the counter. “You’re back.”

Darci and Maya gawked at the two rings poking through his lower lip.

I dumped the wad of money on the counter.

“Ho! You rob a parking meter or something?”

“Worked for it,” I said, feeling proud that I’d made most of the money myself.

Keoni shook his head and scanned the
price code, then set the CD on the counter. “Eighteen dollars and seventy-two cents.”

I gaped at him. What?

Keoni leaned down on the counter. “You want me to help you count it out?”

“But…”

I looked down at the pile of money. “I… I thought it was eighteen dollars.”

Keoni rescanned the CD. “Yep, eighteen.”

“But you just said eighteen dollars and … something.”

“Well, with tax it’s eighteen seventy-two.”

“Tax?”

“Tax … you know what that is?”

“No.”

After all the work and scrambling I’d done, I
still
didn’t have enough money? I stared at the pile of coins and bills.

“Listen,” Keoni said. “Let’s just see what we’ve got here.”

Keoni separated the bills and coins into neat piles and counted it all up. “Eighteen dollars, right on the nose.” He leaned forward
and cupped his chin in his hand. “You’re short seventy-two cents. You got that in your pocket?”

I shook my head. I felt like I’d been slapped in the face with a wet T-shirt. “No,” I mumbled. “That’s everything.”

I stared at all the money. It looked like a lot. “I guess I can’t buy it.”

Keoni nodded.

The Chris Botti CD lay on the counter, shiny new in its plastic wrap. “It was a birthday present,” I whispered.

A silent moment passed.

“Tell you what,” Keoni said. He dug into his pocket. “If I have seventy-two cents, you can have it.”

“Really?”

Keoni smiled. “I think you might be in luck.” He poured a handful of pennies, nickels, and dimes onto the counter. He had the seventy-two cents and added it to the pile. “How did you get all this money, anyway?”

“Me and my friends collected cans and made shave ice and pulled weeds and found some money in the couch and the car.”

Keoni snorted. “Sounds like how my dad got this store. He scratched up every last buck he could find.”

“This is your dad’s store?”

“Every spider-infested corner of it.”

“Wow.”

Keoni bagged the CD and walked us to the door. “You folks come back again, okay?”

“We will,” we all said, heading out into the sun. “Thank you, mister, thank you!”

At Maya’s house, we found some wrapping paper that was shiny pink with little red hearts all over it. It was in the laundry room, left over from Valentine’s Day.

“Is this all you have?” I asked.

Maya shrugged. “Sorry.”

“Fine.”

I wrapped the Chris Botti CD. Darci helped me make a birthday card using red, blue, green, and yellow markers.

I signed the bottom:
From Calvin Coconut
.

Darci signed:
Love, Darci
.

“You sign, too,” I said, handing Willy the pen. “You made a lot of the money to buy this.”

Willy put up his hands. “No, no. This is your present.”

I looked at my friends. They’d all helped out.

Maya grinned. “Think she’ll like it?”

That was a good question.

25

L
ater that afternoon, Tito kept his word.

I was in my garage-bedroom scribbling down how much I owed Willy and Darci when I saw movement in the window and looked up.

Tito was standing in our driveway with a brown paper grocery bag. Across the street I
could see Bozo and Frankie Diamond squatting in the weeds that edged the road.

“No, no, no,” I said, dropping my pencil. I ran out.

“Heyyy,” Tito said, smiling like he was glad to see me. “Coco-pal, howzit?”

“What are you
doing here?
You got to go!”

“Is that any way to treat a friend? Come on, bro, be nice.”

I frowned and looked over my shoulder at the front window. Stella was home, and if she saw Tito she’d—

Tito raised the paper bag. “I just want to give Stella something … for her birfday.”

“What is it?”

“Surprise … for Stella, ah? Not you.” Tito grinned.

I frowned and looked across the street. Frankie Diamond waved. Bozo gave me stink eye.