Aces Wild (10 page)

Oh boy, did Ace want that. His head jerked up and down, following the ball as Jeremy moved it. His eyes locked in a staring match with the tennis ball.

Jeremy gave the ball a good bounce on the floor to make his point. Clearly, this was too much for Ace, who barked excitedly, then threw himself at the ball and Jeremy all at once—
whomp!
—knocking Jeremy down and sending the ball bouncing off over his shoulder. Ace bounded over Jeremy, snatched his prize triumphantly, and trotted back to a spot juuuuust out of reach of Jeremy. He narrowly missed sitting on Jeremy’s glasses, which had flown off when he fell. Jeremy groped around on the floor and located them.

At which point, Ace saw the only thing more tempting to him than a neon-yellow ball: a face to lick. He dropped the ball and pounced on Jeremy.

“Ace, no!” said Jeremy, shielding his nose with his arm. “Zelly, hey, get him off me!”

“Ace, NO! SIT!” I said, grabbing him sharply by the collar and lowering my voice threateningly.

At which point Ace looked up at me.

And smiled as if to say
Oh, hi there!

“Admit it. He’s totally hopeless,” I said.

“I think you were onto something with the way you made your voice all deep. He looked like maybe he wanted to sit.”

“GREAT,” I growled, as loud and low as possible.

“We’re making progress. It’s just going to take a lot more Bridget,” said Jeremy stubbornly.

“How’d it go?” asked Mrs. Stanley when I went to return Bridget.

“Not so great,” I admitted. “I mean, Bridgie was perfect. Ace, on the other hand …”

“Don’t give up, honey,” said Mrs. Stanley. “Rome wasn’t built in a day, right? Plus Ace is still just a puppy. Aren’t you, sweetie?” She bent down to ruffle his ears, but Ace took the opportunity to try to eat her sports watch.

“Ace! Come on!” I pried him off Mrs. Stanley’s wrist.

“Hang on a second, Zelly. Let me get some money,” said Mrs. Stanley.

“Oh, that’s okay,” I said. I had walked Bridget for money over the summer, but it didn’t feel right for her to pay me when Bridget was helping me train Ace.

“Zelly.” Mrs. Stanley put her hands on her hips, mock-scolding. “You earned it. Put it aside for a rainy day, all right?”

“Okay, fine.”

“Quarters okay?”

“Sure.” I accepted a handful from her. When I got home, I popped the cap off O.J. and dumped them inside.

O.J. smiled back at me.
Yay, money! You’re that much closer to paying off Ace’s restaurant tab
, he seemed to say.

“Thanks,” I said, replacing his cap and patting him on the “head.”

“Good dog, O.J.,” I told him.

“What about a spaghetti dinner?” I suggested.

“Nah,” said Allie. “But I like the food idea. How about bacon and eggs!”

“Bacon and eggs?” I said dubiously, digging the toe of my boot into the dirt and shoving my mittens deeper into my pockets, even though it made it harder to balance on my swing. Since Halloween was two days away, Allie and I were spending our recess huddled on the swings, keeping an eye out for errant wall balls while brainstorming costume ideas.

“What? I like bacon and eggs! If you don’t want to be bacon, you could be the eggs.”

“Allie, duh,” I said. “You know I’m not kosher. Plus, even if I was, it’s not like I’d be eating you.”

Allie laughed. “Well, then, why not?” she asked.

“Smelly Fried Egg?”
I said, even though I hated repeating what Nicky Benoit used to call me.

“Come on, no one remembers that,” protested Allie.

“They will if they see me dressed like a fried egg!”

“Fine,” said Allie. “But I still think it’s a good idea. Hey, maybe Jenny can be eggs? You can be something else.”

“Okay,” I said, twisting my swing around. The metal chain got tighter and tighter. Trying not to sound too disappointed, I asked, “Like what?”

“Hmmm,” said Allie, considering this. “I know! You could be O.J.”

I stopped twisting and gave her a look. Allie’s forgetfulness could be irritating sometimes. “O.J.?” I said flatly.

“What?” said Allie. And then, “Oh, right.”

Even Allie couldn’t claim that no one would remember that particular episode.

As I unspun myself, I racked my brain trying to come up with something good to be. The year before, I had been the Statue of Liberty, using a green bedsheet, a foam headdress, and a flashlight torch. I guessed I could do it again, especially since moving to Vermont meant no one had seen me wear it already. Not that it mattered to some people—Sam had been Batman for about five years straight, although this year it was looking like Luke Skywalker would win out. Frankly, I kept hoping he’d be something else, since he wore his Luke Skywalker bathrobe so often it was almost as much of a schmatte as Susie-the-whale. If I had worn something like that, my parents would definitely have told me to change. But with
Sam, they were impressed that his dedication to all things Skywalker was not limited by, say, cleanliness.

The next morning I came down to breakfast to find my dad scrambling eggs. This was unusual on a school morning, but I wasn’t about to complain. It was also unusual that all five of us were at the kitchen table at once. Ace and Sam were playing crazy eights while my mom sipped coffee and read the
Burlington Free Press
.

“CLUBS!” said Ace, laying down the eight of clubs, which turned out to be his last card. He grinned. “BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME.”

“Next time? Know what I want to play next?” Sam asked. Before Ace or anyone else could answer, Sam took all the cards and threw them up in the air at once. “Fifty-two pickup!” he yelled, bursting into giggles.

“Sam!” said my mom sharply. She picked the three of hearts out of her coffee cup and handed it, dripping, to him with a dark look.

“Aw, man!” said Sam, sliding off his chair to gather up the cards.

At that moment, Halloween costume inspiration struck. I’m not sure why. Maybe because the cards flying made me think of those wisecracking Ace-card-men. Maybe because of my mom’s coffee mug.

“Hey, Mom, do we still have that old laundry basket?” I asked.

“The yellow one with the broken handle? I think so. If memory serves, it’s in the basement housing your grandfather’s golf ball collection. Why?”

“Oh, no reason.”

When I got home from school, I went down to the basement and relocated Ace’s golf balls. I called my dad and asked him to pick up some poster board. When he got home, he helped me wrap it around the laundry basket and glue it in place to make the sides and the handle.

“I love it,” said my mom when we let her see. “Wait, can I make a suggestion?”

“Um, sure.”

My mom ran upstairs and came down with a big tan scarf and a wicker basket that turned out to be filled with sewing stuff.

“I didn’t know you could sew,” I said nervously as she wrapped the scarf around my shoulders and pinned it in place.

“I can’t do anything fancy,” she admitted. “But I can get by. My mom taught me.”

“Were these hers?” I asked.

“Umm-hmm,” said my mom, because she was holding five pins between her lips. It gave me a warm feeling, and not just because the scarf was cozy. In a small way, it was like Bubbles was there with us. I thought about Bubbles’ painting kit, which had been given to me. I didn’t even like to open it, much less use the paints and brushes, because they smelled like her and made me sad. But the sewing things felt different somehow.

After a few minutes, my mom stood back. “There,” she said, “good to the last drop.” I shuffled over to check out my costume in the mirror. I gotta say, it looked pretty good. I could hardly wait to show Allie. Eggs, bacon … and me as a
mug of coffee. If we could convince Megan to be toast, we’d have the best group costume ever!

One huge bonus about moving to Vermont was that I could finally go trick-or-treating with just my friends, which my parents never would’ve let me do in Brooklyn. They almost said no, but Allie helped convince them by promising that her big sister, Julia, would be with us. But since they were still feeling a little nervous, my dad stopped me at the door and handed me something.

“You got me a cell phone?!”

“Ha-ha, very funny.”

“So, why are you giving me Ace’s cell phone?”

“I’m not. I’m loaning it to you for the night.”

“Yeah, that’s okay,” I said. I could just picture the looks on my friends’ faces when I pulled out the big bug phone with the number buttons.

“Take the phone,” instructed my mom. “It’ll be good practice for when you’re old enough to get one of your own.”

“Fine,” I said, thinking,
Sure, when I’m so old I don’t even see the point of having one anymore
. I turned around carefully. “But you’ll have to put it in my pocket for me. I can’t reach.”

My mom slid her hand down the back of my cup. I leaned to one side to help her gain access. Watching us, my dad started whistling “I’m a Little Teapot.”

“Dad!” I said.

“Sorry, sorry!”

“Okay, here’s the deal,” said Julia when her friends showed up to meet her. “You have a watch, right? So just meet us in
front of the Mahoneys’ house at nine-fifteen. Don’t be late or else. Got it?” Allie and I nodded. “Be good little girls,” called Julia over her shoulder. Her friends laughed as they headed off together.

“You are so lucky,” I told Allie, who rolled her eyes in response. But before she could start up about Julia, Jenny came running up wearing a store-bought egg costume.

“Hey! You guys!” Jenny put one hand up, out of breath. As soon as she pulled it together, though, she gushed, “Zelly, you look great!”

“Ahem!” said Allie, posing.

“Bacon!” Jenny grabbed Allie and pretended to chomp her. “Om nom nom nom!”

“Cut it out,” yelled Allie, swatting Jenny with her treat bag. “Seriously, stop it!” she yelled. “You’re going to rip it!” But she was laughing too.

It was the best Halloween ever. We picked up Megan, whose toast costume was kind of lame but at least she agreed to do it. She was wearing brown clothes with a big brown triangle of construction paper stapled to the front of her shirt and a small yellow square of construction paper stapled to that to be the butter. Everybody told Megan she looked awesome, which made me wonder if they were just saying my coffee cup looked cute because that’s what you do. I decided not to care because the whole point of a group costume is having something that goes together. Which we totally did.

“Hey, it’s the Breakfast Club!” someone said. At almost
every house, people called us cute or clever. Some of them even took our picture. We got tons of candy.

Then, all of a sudden, Jenny yelled, “Hey, I know. Let’s go to the Cunninghams’!”

“Ooh, yeah!” yelled Megan and Allie, dashing off with her.

“Wait, where?” I said, scurrying as fast as I could in my cup, trying to keep up with them. “Hey, Allie, wait!”

The scarf was coming undone. Plus the cup’s base was narrow, so I couldn’t separate my knees enough to get up much speed. Allie slowed down and gave me the scoop. Every year, a family named Cunningham transformed their home into a haunted house. It was awesome and scary and they always had the best candy.

“Full-size!” she said. “Not fun-size.”

“No way!” I said, trying to sound thrilled. I didn’t know how to tell her that I had never been in an actual scary haunted house, and I was pretty sure I didn’t want to. “Except I, uh …”

“Yeah?”

“I just remembered I have to go home and walk Ace,” I told her.

“Aw, really? Can’t you just do it after?”

I shook my head. Now that I had invented an excuse, it felt like a real obligation. “You could come with me and we could meet up with those guys after,” I suggested.

Allie didn’t answer right away. At the sound of laughter, she turned in the direction where Jenny and Megan had run. “I … guess …,” she said slowly.

“You guys! Come ON!” I heard Jenny yell from a distance.

“Gahhhhhhhhh!”

I jumped at the sound, and out of nowhere, Jeremy appeared, brandishing a sword. Or at least, Jeremy’s head, arms, and legs appeared. The rest of him was hidden inside a huge box, which had been painted to look like a cornflakes box … with red paint splashed all over it.

“Is Seth with you?” asked Allie, who claimed she no longer had a crush on Jeremy’s older brother but wasn’t convincing anyone. She looked around hopefully.

“Yeah, right,” said Jeremy, rolling his eyes. “He ditched me ages ago. Plus he’s not even dressed up. I was with Scott and Jason and everyone, but now I can’t find them.”

“What are you supposed to be?” asked Allie.

“Guess!” said Jeremy, posing with his sword up. Allie and I stared at him.

“Cap’n Crunch?” tried Allie.

Jeremy sighed and shook his head. “Zelly?” he said.

I studied him for a minute. “Oh, wait, I know. You’re a cereal killer! That’s awesome.”

“Thank you!” said Jeremy, attempting to take a bow. “Oof! It’s really hard to bend in this thing.”

“Join the club,” I said.

“What are you?” asked Jeremy, tilting his head to one side and considering my costume. “Some sort of pun about getting mugged?”