Artifacts Page 4

  “A lot better than I thought it’d be.” I threw my backpack down and started pulling stuff out onto the table. “Crunch doesn’t have to go to summer school. He only has to do some extra credit that me and the guys are going to help him with.”

  “Wait. What?” Mom asked.

  “Bartholomew thought Crunch copied his brothers’ book reports so he was going to fail him,” I explained. “Crunch didn’t actually copy his brothers’ book reports, they copied his.”

  “So that’s good, right?” Mom asked.

  “Sort of,” I said. “It would have been perfect if Crunch kept handing in his assignments. He stopped doing them the minute he thought he was going to summer school because he didn’t want to have to do them twice.”

  “So will the extra credit let him catch up?” Mom asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “And all we have to do is find things to fill some display he’s doing at the library this summer. It’s all about fairy tales or artifacts about fairy tales.”

  “I have no idea what that means,” Mom said, stopping what she was doing.

  “What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the name Cinderella?”

  Mom thought a moment. “Glass slippers.”

  I laughed. “Exactly. Now, all I have to do is find a pair of glass slippers and put them in the display so when kids look at them, they’ll think Cinderella.”

  “That’s a wonderful idea,” Mom said. She was smiling like she had won something.

  “The only problem is, I don’t think the junkyard slash flea market will have glass slippers just lying around the yard … for free.”

  “Oh, you don’t need a junkyard slash anything,” Mom said. “Your best bet might be the bridal shops. They have to replace those plastic see-through shoes all the time, and if you explain to them what you need them for, they may give you a pair.”

  “Awesome!” I yelled. “Mom, you’re the best!” I jumped up and hugged her.

  “More sucking up, I see,” Sister Creature said, sweeping into the room, leaving darkness and despair over all she sees.

  I dropped to the floor.

  “Jax,” Mom asked. “What are you doing?”

  “She’s sucking the life out of me,” I said, rolling around, my hands around my throat.

  “I’ll put my hands around your throat if you don’t get up,” Dana said.

  Dad walked into the room and saw me on the floor.

  “His sister sucking the life out of him again?” he asked after kissing Mom hello.

  “All of us,” I whispered. “Run. Save yourselves.”

  “Oh, get up,” Dana said, not having fun anymore.

  Dad reached his hand down and helped me back to my feet.

  “The guys are coming over later,” I said.

  “All of them?” my dad asked.

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “Both Wahoo brothers, Korie, and Crunch.”

  “Can’t the Wahoos come over one at a time?” Dad asked.

  “Nah,” I said. “With the Wahoos, you get both or none.”

  “None’s good,” he said without hesitation. “I don’t have to think about that twice.”

  “You have to admit you do kind of like watching them beat on each other.”

  Dad laughed again. “Reminds me of my brothers when we were about your age … only about a hundred pounds heavier.”

  I told Mom and Dad all about Bartholomew and his master plan to have us do all the work with him taking all the credit. Sister Creature played with her iPhone, checking imaginary messages and pretending she had all these friends on the other end texting her back.

  About seven o’clock, I heard the rumble coming down the street. Cars were honking, kids were yelling, and dogs were barking. I ran to the back door and opened it up right before Mouth and Tank slammed it against the cabinets … again.

  They stumbled onto the porch and then hesitated, watching the door swing open slowly before them. I peeked around the corner and saw they were totally freaked out.

  “You thought it was haunted, didn’t you?” I said, flinging the door all the way open, bashing the cabinet anyway.

  “Heck, no,” Mouth muttered. “We just thought if you were going to go to all that trouble to scare us we might as well … ”

  “He was scared to death,” Tank said, walking around Mouth and into the kitchen.

  Mouth pushed him and then passed him.

  “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Murphy,” Mouth said, “I’m so surprised to see you.”

  “It’s my house, Mouth,” Dad said.

  “Mr. M.,” Tank said. “Mrs. M., Sister Creature … I mean Dana.”

  Suddenly, there was a crash at the door.

  “You’re both here,” Dad said. “What the heck was that?”

  I opened the door to find Crunch rolling around on the ground, holding his shoulder.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “The Wahoos have made that entrance, like, a thousand times,” Crunch said, the wind and dignity knocked out of him.

  “The Wahoos never try to bust the door off the hinges,” I said. “It’s timing, Crunch. You let me know you’re out there, and I unlock the door just in time for you to fall in. No broken woodwork and no broken bones.”

  Korie came through the backyard and stepped over Crunch and into the house. “Was he trying to make an entrance?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “He tried to do that at my house last week,” Korie said.

  “Did it work?” I asked.

  Korie laughed. “No, he tried to do it with the sliding glass door and forgot it was closed.”

  I laughed. “Ouch!”

  “It wasn’t pretty,” Korie said.

  “Come on in,” I said. “Now that everybody’s here, we can get started.”

  I ran up the stairs with the others thundering up behind me. At the top of the landing, we cut to the right and squashed through the door into my room.

  “Okay, everybody. Get comfortable,” I said. “We may be here for a while.”

  “Dibs!” Mouth yelled as he dove toward a hammock I had set up in the corner and landed with an oooomph. By the time we all turned around, he was rocking back and forth with his eyes half-closed and the ropes of the hammock wrapped around him.

  “You don’t have to keep calling dibs all the time,” Korie said.

  “Leave him.” Tank sighed. “At least that should shut him up for a while.”

  “I’m glad something could,” I agreed.

  “Hey, guys. Thanks so much for helping me with this,” Crunch said.

  “It’s no problem at all,” Mouth said, “considering we’re going to make you do all the work. Tank and I are here to do some brainstorming …”

  “Yeah, brainstorming …” Tank repeated.

  “Do you even know what brainstorming is?” Korie asked Tank.

  “Of course, I do.” Tank seemed a little offended. “Brainstorming is like when you get a really bad head cold and all this stuff is swirling and storming in your brain.”

  Mouth sat there with his face in both hands.

  “Brainstorming.” Tank smiled once he was finished. I thought he was going to bow.

  “I’m not really sure how it’s going to help us figure out what stuff to get for Bartholomew’s display, but I sure as heck know what it is.”

  Korie’s head was about to explode as she tried to hold her laughter in.

  “Okay,” I said, trying to get things back on track. “Does anybody want to start?”

  Mouth put his hand up.

  Oh, gosh, I thought while smiling the entire time. Here we go again.

  “Mouth?”

  “We need some really cool things to give to Bartholomew so we can get Crunch out of having to take summer school,” Mouth said. “How about we say the first word that comes into our head when we hear a fairy tale on the list? Then figure out where to get one?”

  I
was shocked.

  “That’s an amazingly well-thought out idea,” I said, surprised it came out of Mouth.

  “Anybody want to go first?”

  “I’ll go,” Korie said. “Little Red Riding Hood.”

  “The Wolf!” Mouth yelled.

  “A dentist!” Crunch yelled.

  Everybody stopped. It was like they were frozen in time, waiting for Crunch to explain.

  “What?” Crunch asked. “When Little Red Riding Hood was about to be eaten by the Wolf, a dentist who was strolling through the woods heard her yelling and pulled out all its teeth. The dentist saved the day, married the grandma, and Little Red Riding Hood now had a pet wolf and doesn’t have to worry about cavities for the rest of her life.”

  I shot a look at Korie. “Crunch, everything you just said except wolf, grandma, Little Red, and the Wolf is wrong.”

  Crunch looked around. “What do you mean?”

  “It was a huntsman in the forest,” Tank explained. “He killed the Wolf with his ax!”

  “Wait! What?” Crunch covered his face with his hands. “Oh, no, not again.”

  “Not what again?” Korie asked.

  “You know my parents,” Crunch explained. “They’re anti-violence and anti-everything-else that’s normal. Along with the no cursing rules, they changed our bedtime stories to make it easier on us.” Crunch’s face fell. “I had no idea.”

  “Was that the same dentist from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer who pulled the teeth out of the Bumbles?” Mouth asked.

  “You do understand how crazy that sounds?” I asked.

  Crunch shrugged and then nodded. “I do now.”

  Mouth cracked up. “And you never had nightmares?”

  “Not until I met you,” Crunch snapped back.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, taking control and using some of Crunch’s words. “Everybody who doesn’t want to use any of Crunch’s balderdash, codswallop, hokum, hooey versions of any of the fairy tales, put up their hands.”

  All the hands in the room shot up, one faster than the other. The Wahoos put up both their hands, and I think I even saw a foot or two sticking out in the middle somewhere.

  “Okay, Korie,” I said. “Pick the next one.”

  “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” Korie said.

  “Naked!” Mouth yelled. Then cracked up.

  “Crunch,” I said, “any weird twist your parents put on this one?”

  “Suntan lotion,” Crunch said quietly. “So once the people of the kingdom realized that he’s naked, he won’t get a sunburn.”

  “Perfect,” I said, “but no.”

  Tank raised his hand.

  Oh, this ought to be good. “Tank, what’s the first word that comes to your mind? Mouth already used naked.”

  “Suitcase,” Tank said.

  I laughed. “Is this a little teeny, tiny suitcase that Crunch’s dentist is carrying?”

  “No, wait. Seriously,” Tank said. “Just a suitcase. So when the Emperor’s people open it, they see nothing’s in it. Then they realize the tailor tricked him and made him look like an idiot in front of all his kingdomers.”

  I nodded. “That was great up until the word kingdomers.”

  Staring at Tank, I wrote The Emperor’s New Clothes on one side of the board, “suitcase” on the other, and checked it off.

  This went on for a couple of hours. I put Jacob Grimm’s pen in as our last item for several reasons. First, the Grimm Brothers did write a lot of the fairy tales. Second, we thought that the kids coming to the library to see the exhibit would love it. And third, I just couldn’t shake the feeling that it might lead to one of the answers we were looking for.

  “I did a great job,” Mouth said, “and you’re all welcome. You couldn’t have done it without me … well, you could have, but it would’ve been terrible.”

  I laughed. “Maybe you shouldn’t break your arm trying to pat yourself on the back. We all did a great job, now we just have to find the best example of each thing we’re looking for.”

  “What does that mean?” Crunch asked.

  Korie smiled. “The difference between handing in a helmet for a knight versus a bedpan. They’re both made of metal, but one is a lot better than the other. Sorry, Tank.”

  “That’s okay.” Tank waved. “Jax’ll pay for it in the end.”

  “Wait! What? Why will Jax pay for it in the end?”

  Everybody cracked up.

  Even I had to laugh. I knew they were right.

  Running down the stairs, our footsteps sounding like the “thundering herd,” as my dad liked to call us. And, of course, he was there, waiting at the bottom. Slowing down to a nice, easy crawl, we walked past him. “Good night, kids.”

  “Thank you so much for everything.” Crunch stopped right in front of my dad and looked up at him. “We weren’t planning any criminal activity upstairs at all, so there is nothing to worry about. Good night, Mr. M.”

  As Crunch left to join the others on the porch, I shut the door quickly. Then I tried to step past my dad and into the hallway going to the kitchen like nothing had happened. He put out one of his beefy arms and stopped me in my place.

  “What’s he talking about?” my dad asked.

  I laughed. “Nobody ever knows what Crunch is talking about. In fact, he thinks it was a dentist who saved Little Red Riding Hood from the Wolf.”

  I raised his arm up so I could scoot under, and as he stood there wondering what the heck we were up to … I was gone.

  Chapter Seven

  I had to get up early and get to school, which I hated doing two days in a row, but I was on a mission.

  I wanted to thank Mr. Bartholomew for all his help with Crunch and to tell him how far along we were in the assignment. In order to do that, I knew I had to leave before Korie and the Wahoos could get to my house.

  Stepping into the semi-dark school hallways, the place was eerily quiet, making the sound of the squealing metal doors and my squeaky sneakers on the freshly cleaned floors sound a lot scarier.

  Reaching Bartholomew’s classroom, the door was cracked open enough for me to see Marcus Braverman and his mom and dad sitting in those same stupid seats in front of his desk.

  Bartholomew’s mouth was moving and Mr. and Mrs. Braverman were at the edge of their seat hanging on every word. I knew what he was saying probably sounded caring and concerned, but he didn’t mean any of it. To me, he always talked like he was doing you a favor.

  I couldn’t hear what they were saying at first, but leaning closer to the crack in the door made it a lot easier. That’s when I heard the statement I thought would make my head explode.

  “Would you and your parents be interested in entertaining the idea of extra credit?” Bartholomew offered.

  “He’d love to do extra credit,” Mr. Braverman said. “He’d love to do anything that allows him not to have to go to summer school because we have a big summer planned.”

  “Extra credit would be great,” Marcus muttered.

  Bartholomew thought for a moment. “I’ve never done this before, but Marcus, if you come back to my classroom after school, we should be able to forge an agreement which allows you to make up the credit and avoid summer school. Will that work?

  Marcus nodded like a bobblehead doll.

  Never done it before? I stepped back from the doorway.

  Hearing the desks slide around, I knew the Bravermans were coming out.

  I slipped and slid down the hallway, taking a quick turn into one of the open classrooms. Then I peeked back around the corner.

  The Bravermans were walking toward me as one big happy family. I could almost see the smoke coming out of Marcus’s ears, the wheels turning as he tried to figure out exactly what he’d have to do to get his extra credit … and how long it would take.

  The hallways started filling up with kids as the bus doors popped open and unloaded. I knew Korie, Crunch, and the Wahoos would see my
bike in our spot and try to catch up with me.

  Korie was the first one through the doors. Her head snapped one way and then the other and the moment she saw me, her face lit up.

  She used her all-state hurdler form, jumping over backpacks, short middle schoolers, and ginormous musical instrument cases to run the forty yards between us in a sub five-second time.

  Hitting the brakes as she approached me, she went into this great, looooong slide. I grabbed her at the very last moment to slow her down and swing her around to safety. “They could use that speed on the football team.”

  She laughed.

  She has a great laugh.

  “I could have slid a lot farther if I had just my socks on. Why are you in school so early?”

  “I wanted to thank Bartholomew for helping out Crunch,” I said.

  “Crunch is helping him more than he’s helping Crunch,” Korie said.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “And there’re a lot more kids helping Bartholomew. I just heard him make the exact same deal with Marcus Braverman.”

  “What?” Korie asked.

  “Yeah,” I nodded, “he’s meeting with Marcus and some of his friends after school to ‘discuss the terms of his extra credit.’”

  “Wahoo!” Two strong voices poured out from the other end of the hall. As Mouth and Tank marched toward us, kids dove this way and that, some even sending themselves crashing into the lockers.

  There was a line waiting for high-fives running the length of the hall that Korie just ran.

  As the Wahoos were about to start through the fans, Crunch broke into the line and started high-fiving everybody before they could pull their hands away.

  “Awesome!” Crunch said, bounding over to us. He raised his hands up. “Wahoo!”

  Tank and Mouth stood back along the lockers and then started clapping their hands.

  For that moment, at least, everybody loved Crunch.

  “Hey, guys, that was great!” Crunch yelled. “Thanks.”

  “Yeah, great.” Mouth laughed.

  “Don’t ever do it again!” Tank snarled.

  Crunch put his hands up and took a step back. “I won’t. I’m good for a while.”

  “What’s going on?” Mouth asked. “I almost didn’t get breakfast at your house today.”