Authors: Zilpha Keatley Snyder
“I don’t think so,” Carlos said. “You don’t need axes very often in a restaurant. How about your dad?”
“Naw. No axes. But he does have a killer hatchet I could use.”
“A killer hatchet?” Carlos asked uneasily.
“Yeah. You know. Great, neat, awesome. That is, I can use it if I can sneak it out of the garage without my dad noticing.”
“Why? Won’t your dad let you borrow it?”
“Not anymore he won’t,” Bucky said. “Not since I chopped up a bunch of junk when I was practicing making a Boy Scout campfire. It sure looked like a bunch of junk to me, but it turned out to be this expensive antique my mom just bought at a garage sale. Sooo…no more hatchet time for the old Buckaroo.”
Carlos laughed. That was Bucky for you. Making a campfire out of an expensive antique sounded just like Bucky Brockhurst.
“Chopping down all that stuff just might make enough room for first base,” Bucky said. “But it won’t be easy. That’s a lot of trees. And I can’t help till tomorrow. I got to go to town with my folks this morning. They’re going shopping and then we’re going to a movie. I don’t know when we’ll come back. Let’s do it tomorrow. Okay?” Then he laughed and made a loud “brrr” noise. “Wish we had a chain saw,” he said again. “Brrr!”
Carlos sighed. “Okay, tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll start tomorrow. Maybe Eddy will be home tomorrow and he can help too.” Carlos really wanted Eddy to be there when they started.
It was when Carlos was saying good-bye that he realized he’d been hearing funny noises for a while now. Clicking noises and a loud breathing sound, like somebody was listening in on one of the other phones. But Rafe and Gabe, Carlos’s brothers, had gone to the restaurant with his dad, so no one was home except his mom and little sister. His mom wouldn’t listen in on someone else’s conversation. Of course Susie might—not that it was likely. Susie wouldn’t be at all interested in a conversation about baseball diamonds. At least that’s what Carlos thought.
After he hung up the phone Carlos headed for his room to change his clothes. It was while he was sitting on the floor pulling on his socks that he happened to notice a sports catalog under his bed, so he scooted over and pulled it out.
The PROs were going to need a lot of new equipment to go with the new baseball diamond. The next thing he knew he’d been sitting on the floor with one sock on for a long time, picking out the balls and mitts and bats they would have to buy. In fact, he got so busy deciding among Rawlings and Cooper and Wilson that he forgot all about the mysterious breathing noise he’d heard on the telephone.
W
HILE CARLOS WAS STILL
sitting on the floor picking out the best catcher’s mitt, the front door opened at number one Castle Court and Kate Nicely came out carrying a large paper bag.
Kate, who was in the same fifth-grade class as Carlos, had straight brown hair, fierce blue eyes, and a brown belt in karate. Everybody at Beaumont School knew about Kate’s brown belt, just like they knew that Kate Nicely and Aurora Pappas were best friends.
Kate closed the front door carefully with one hand while balancing her paper bag with the other—and stumbled over Nijinsky. Nijinsky was a collie dog who lived across the cul-de-sac with the Grant family. He was on the front porch waiting, as he did every morning, for the Nicelys’ poodle to come out and play. Even though Kate had almost fallen on him, Nijinsky, who was a very friendly dog, wagged his beautiful collie tail and put up a paw to shake hands.
“It’s no use waiting,” Kate said as she shook his paw. “Fifi isn’t coming out today. She urped all over the kitchen floor last night and Mom thinks it might be something catching like distemper.”
Nijinsky’s ears drooped and his forehead wrinkled. “Don’t worry,” Kate told him. “It’s not really distemper. It’s just lizard poisoning and I don’t think it’s fatal.” She leaned forward, lifted Nijinksy’s drooping ear, and whispered, “She ate one of Carson’s favorite lizards last night. But don’t tell. No one saw her do it but me.”
Kate smiled as she gave Nijinsky a last pat and picked up her paper bag. As she started down the steps she was thinking that talking to animals was another weird habit she’d picked up from Aurora, not to mention the rest of the Pappas family. Weird—but interesting. That was how you’d describe the whole Pappas family, all right—weird but interesting.
A minute later, as Kate was about to knock on it, the front door of number eight Castle Court flew open. A very small girl with a dark corkscrew ponytail flew out and almost ran into her. Athena Pappas was still wearing her pajama bottoms, her T-shirt was on backward, her feet were bare, and she had a big carrot in one hand. She dodged around Kate and slid to a stop.
“Hi,” she said breathlessly. “Aurora’s waiting for you.” Then she waved the carrot and went on running.
“You’re late,” Kate called after her. “I’ll bet Prince is mad at you.”
Aurora’s little sister, Athena, who was only four years old, was crazy about animals in general, and horses in particular. And even more particularly, Prince, the Andersons’ old Shetland pony. Every morning since she was two years old Athena Pappas had insisted on visiting Prince before she would eat her breakfast. In fact, Athena’s prebreakfast visits were kind of a neighborhood joke.
Kate grinned, thinking about what would happen if Athena were a Nicely instead of a Pappas. At the Nicelys’ nobody did anything until after they’d eaten their breakfast. A proper breakfast with napkins and place mats and gooey oatmeal in the wintertime. Kate was still watching Athena running toward the pony pasture when Aurora came to the door.
Aurora Pappas, who was a month older than Kate Nicely but quite a bit smaller, had Alice-in-Wonderland hair and large cloudy gray eyes. She was wearing a backpack over a long paint-smeared T-shirt that hung down almost to her knees. Probably one of her mom’s. Aurora’s mom, who was an artist, wore paint-smeared T-shirts a lot.
“Hi,” Kate said. “You ready?” She pointed to her paper bag. “I’ve got all my stuff. You got your stuff?”
Aurora nodded slowly. “I think so. And you know what? I think…” Her huge cloudy eyes widened and a faint smile flickered across her face. “I really, really think…” She paused and her eyes got even wider. “I think
this
will be the day.”
“Yeah,” Kate said firmly. “I think so too. Let’s go.”
Kate Nicely and Aurora Pappas walked down the gravel path between the Pappases’ two big old cherry trees and turned to the right on the circular sidewalk. When they were almost to the vacant lot that everyone called Dragoland, Aurora smiled and pointed. “Look,” she said.
Across the cul-de-sac three little girls were hanging over the fence at the Andersons’ pony pasture. The two blond ones were Anderson grandkids. The one with the brown corkscrew ponytail was, of course, Athena. Athena was patting Prince’s old head where it hung down low over the fence.
“Shhh,” Kate said. “Don’t let her see us.” She grabbed Aurora’s T-shirt and pulled her down the narrow path that led back to the Weedpatch. Aurora followed quietly. When they were safely behind a tall bush they stopped and peered out through the thick leaves. Athena was still standing on the bottom rung of the fence.
“Good,” Kate said. “She didn’t see us. That’s a relief.”
Aurora nodded. “Yes,” she said. “She’s really too young to be a unicorn maiden. And besides, she hasn’t had her breakfast.”
N
OT LONG AFTER KATE
and Aurora left the Pappases’ house, the door opened again and a small boy with a pointed nose, sharp eyes, and a huge mop of curly hair came out. It was Aurora’s eight-year-old brother, Ari. He looked around quickly, ran across the front yard, and climbed up into one of the big old cherry trees. When he was comfortably seated in the crotch of the tree he pulled his fanny pack around to the front, zipped it open, and took out a brand-new notebook. Opening the notebook to the first page, he carefully printed “THE BIG NEW GARCIA EXPOSé STORY by Aristotle U. Pappas.”
Ari, who was in third grade, had been writing in cursive for quite a few months, but he always printed his titles in big dark letters so that they would look like the headlines in a newspaper.
Ari was practicing to be a reporter. The kind of reporter who goes around investigating all sorts of interesting secrets about terribly important people and then writing “expose” articles about them. Someday the secret things he wrote about would be in newspapers and magazines and even books, and he would become rich and famous. He wouldn’t mind signing his books with his real name then. For a kid, having a name like Aristotle was a pain in the neck, but it would be just right for a famous investigative reporter.
So far Ari hadn’t met any very important people so he practiced by writing about the people who lived where he did—in Castle Court. None of them were terribly important, but some of them came pretty close. Like the Garcias, for instance.
From where he was sitting in the cherry tree in his front yard, Ari could see part of the Garcias’ house. It was a big house. The biggest one in the court. That was because the Garcias were pretty rich. A long time ago Mr. Garcia had been a famous baseball player and now he owned a sort of famous restaurant. So writing about the Garcias was pretty close to writing about famous people. Ari was still trying to decide which one of the almost famous Garcias to practice writing secret stuff about when the front door of the Garcias’ house opened and Susie came out. Susie Garcia came out of the big double front doors of her house and slammed them both behind her. Hard. Then she started across the circle. If Ari were more like his sister Aurora, he probably would have had a mysterious supernatural feeling that an important story was heading his way. Aurora had mysterious feelings all the time. But the only thing Ari felt at that moment was that Susie was angry. “Wow!” he whispered. “This time she’s
really
mad at somebody.” He sure hoped the somebody wasn’t him.
Susie kept on coming, swinging her fists and glaring. She stomped around the planter island and headed directly toward Ari’s house. “Wow!” he said again. He couldn’t think of anything he’d done lately that might make anybody that angry. But with Susie you never knew. When she was right under his tree he took a chance and said, “Hey, Susie.”
Susie jumped about a foot. Then she looked up and frowned harder than ever. She didn’t say anything. Even though Susie Garcia was in Ari’s class, third grade at Beaumont School, she never talked to him very much. In fact, at school Susie never talked to any boy if she could help it. At home Susie had nothing but big brothers, so at school she liked to talk to girls. Like Ari’s sister, Aurora, for instance. Susie particularly liked talking to Aurora. Susie went on not saying anything so Ari said, “You want to see Aurora?”
“Yeah,” Susie said.
Ari put his pencil behind his ear and his reporter’s notebook in his teeth. Then he swung down out of the tree. When he was on the ground he took the notebook out of his mouth and said, “Aurora isn’t home right now.”
Susie glared at Ari. Then she stuck out her lower lip and blew a bunch of curly black bangs off her forehead. “Where is she?” she demanded.
“I don’t know,” Ari said. “She and Kate went off somewhere.”
He really didn’t know. Not for sure. Actually, he had a pretty good idea, but he also knew what Aurora and Kate would do to him if he told. Particularly what Kate would do to him. Kate might not be quite as good at mysterious feelings as Aurora, but she was very good at karate. “What did you want to see her about?” Ari asked.
“I’ve got something to tell her,” Susie said. “Something very important.”
“Well,” Ari said. “She’ll probably be home in an hour or two. Could you tell her then?”
Susie sighed angrily. “I don’t know. Maybe not. I might not be mad enough by then.”
Ari felt his ears prick up. An experienced investigative reporter knew good story material when he heard it. But he didn’t take his pencil out from behind his ear and get ready to write. He knew that would be a mistake. Being too interested made people get suspicious and shut up. Instead he just said, “Oh yeah?” in a slightly bored tone of voice.
Susie nodded. “Maybe I’ll decide not to rat on him after all.” Her eyes narrowed and she stuck out her jaw. “Maybe I’ll just go home and…and…stick a knife in his basketball—or something.”
“Oh,” Ari said. “Carlos, huh?”
“Yeah,” Susie said. “The creep! He ate up all the Dove bars. A whole box full. And they were mine. I bought them with my own birthday money.” She frowned at Ari. “How’d you know it was Carlos?”
“Well, Rafe plays football mostly, and Gabe plays the guitar. Carlos is basketball, right?”
Susie shrugged. “Yeah, basketball.” But then her eyes narrowed again. “That’s just it. That’s what I wanted to tell Aurora. Carlos and the rest of those creepy PROs are going to start playing baseball too.”
Ari was puzzled. Carlos and his friends, Eddy and Bucky, played basketball all the time. They played in the summertime and in the winter. They even played before breakfast in the morning and after dark in the evening. Sometimes they played in their own driveways and backyards, but mostly they played on the old cement driveway at Dragoland. As far as Ari knew they never played baseball very much because there wasn’t enough room for a baseball game anywhere in Castle Court. But what Ari didn’t get was what any of that sports stuff had to do with Aurora. He took his pencil out from behind his ear and scratched his head with it. “Yeah?” he said.
“Yeah,” Susie said. “And do you know where they’re going to put their baseball diamond?”
Ari had no idea.
“At Dragoland,” Susie said. “Back in the Weed-patch at the back of the lot.
And
first base is going to be right in the Unicorn’s Grove. They’re going to chop down the whole grove with Bucky’s hatchet.”
“Wow!” Ari said. He was surprised—and excited. He was surprised because he didn’t know that Susie even knew about the Unicorn’s Grove. And he was excited because he had a feeling that he was on the trail of a very important story. He was planning his first sentence when he realized Susie was still there. And still asking questions about where to look for Aurora.