Edgewood Series: Books 1 - 3 (16 page)

Frank fished around in his pocket for his money, and not finding it, started emptying his pocket, one thing at a time. Bottle caps, gum wrappers, loose change. The kid carried around more junk than anyone I knew. Mr. Specter didn’t get impatient; he just smiled and answered my question. “Gordon and I were once good friends, but we’ve drifted apart. He’s had a lot of troubles, poor soul.”

“Alcohol?”

“That came later. Gordon had a sad life. His wife died giving birth to their only child. He raised that child, a boy, by himself. It was hard. And then years later, his only grandchild, David, died in a horrible accident. David was a good kid. He’d just gotten his driver’s license and must have been driving too fast. They’re not sure what happened, but his car went down the embankment on Highway 12 and exploded. The firefighters came to the scene too late to do anything but contain the fire.”

“How terrible.” I tried to look sympathetic, but I didn’t really feel that way, maybe because I didn’t know the family. Instead, I was fascinated by the thought that maybe this David Hofstetter was the true love my sister had mentioned. Her words echoed in my mind:
When I was your age, I found true love, and it hasn’t happened since. I keep looking for it, but nothing compares.
And then:
He died.
My parents had to know about this
.
How was it that
no one ever mentioned it to me?

Mr. Specter absentmindedly fingered one of Frank’s bottle caps. “Gordon never got over it. And after that, David’s parents moved away to California and Gordon felt abandoned and alone. It’s no wonder he turned to the bottle to drown his sorrows.”

“Found it,” Frank said, triumphantly holding his twenty in the air for a second before handing it over. I got out my wallet and gave Mr. Specter a five-dollar bill to cover the balance.

The cash drawer opened with an old-fashioned ding, and Mr. Specter made change, which Frank was going to take until I cleared my throat and moved his hand aside. I was putting the singles in my wallet and Frank was scooping his junk off the counter when Mr. Specter said, “What’s this?”

I glanced up to see him pick something up from the counter. He peered intently at it over the top of his glasses.

“That’s a stone from my collection,” Frank said.

“He collects everything,” I explained. “The kid has buckets filled with stuff.”

“I’m sort of a collector myself,” Mr. Specter said. “Would you consider selling this to me?”

Frank said, “Maybe.”

“I’ll give you twenty dollars for it.”

Frank’s eyes got big. “Twenty dollars? Sure thing!”

Mr. Specter moved quickly, putting the stone in his pocket and opening the cash register drawer. “I’ll tell you what, young man, I’ll even give you a brand-new twenty.” He handed Frank a crisp bill, and the kid bounced forward on the balls of his feet to reach over the counter to take it.

This whole exchange confused me. None of the junk in Frank’s pocket was worth even one dollar, much less twenty. Mr. Specter must have seen the other kids picking on Frank and decided to do something nice to make up for it. It was a kind gesture, but a little weird. “You don’t need to do that,” I said to Mr. Specter. “That’s a lot of money for a stone.”

“Believe me, it’s my pleasure to do business with a budding geologist.”

Frank admired the money, a smile on his face. “Whoa! This has turned out to be an awesome day. First Grandpa gives me twenty dollars, and now I got this one.”

“I’m happy it worked out for both of us,” Mr. Specter said.

“But—” I started to object, but another customer stood behind us, waiting to check out, and Mr. Specter motioned for him to come forward.

“See you in school tomorrow, Mr. Becker,” he said, dismissing us.

As Frank and I walked out of the store, the kid was still talking about what a good day he was having and how great it was to hang out with Uncle Russ. Not exactly a thank-you, but I took it that way anyhow. If it weren’t for me, he’d have been back at the house watching TV all afternoon.

We headed down the sidewalk toward the frozen custard shop, and when we got there, I saw the place was half filled and that the three punks were sitting up front by the display case, underneath a sign that said: TODAY’S FLAVOR: MINT CHOCOLATE CHIP.

“Hey, Frank, how’s it going?” Weasel-Face said in this really smart-mouth way. If he’d been my size, I would have been tempted to call him out. I’ll give Frank credit though, he ignored him and kept his gaze on the glass cooler full of the different tubs of frozen custard.

“I don’t know why you look, you always wind up getting the same thing,” I said.

Sure enough, five minutes later we were at a table, me with my root beer float and Frank with his double dip chocolate waffle cone. We sat at a table as far away from the three boys as possible, but I kept my eye on them. I know most kids that age are obnoxious, but these three idiots took it to a new level. Backwards-Cap was the definite leader, and the other two followed everything he did. When he laughed (this annoying, donkey-like bray), the other two did too. When people went up to the counter to order, he’d repeat what they said in a mocking way. I wanted to smack the kid. When Backwards-Cap stuck his foot out to trip an old lady with a cane (she saw it and walked around), I was ready to get up and say something, but Frank, reading the intention on my face, said, “Let it go, Russ, just let it go.”

“What are their names?” I asked.

He regarded me suspiciously. “Why do you want to know?’

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to make a big scene or report them or anything. I just want to know.” When he didn’t answer I leaned forward, my voice low. “The one who doesn’t know how to wear a baseball cap, what’s his name?” He looked nervously in their direction. “Frank Shrapnel,” I said, poking the table with mock impatience. “I believe I asked you a question.” He grinned. Frank loved it when I used his middle name.

“That’s Kyle,” he said. “I don’t know the other kids. They’re all a year ahead of me.”

Kyle. In old books and movies, bullies had names like Sluggo or Scut Farkus. Kyle wasn’t a threatening-sounding name at all. “So what’s Kyle’s last name?”

“You’re not going to call his house or anything?” He looked over at the three punks, a worried look on his face.

“No, I swear this is just between us. It won’t go any farther.”

“It’s Bischmann. Kyle Bischmann.”

“And he gives you grief about not having a dad.”

Frank nodded and put his cone up to his mouth to lick away a drip.

Kyle Bischmann. What kind of insensitive dirtbag torments someone about their missing father? I watched Kyle across the room, laughing his stupid braying laugh, and suddenly I found myself madder than I’ve ever been in my life. At my side, my curled fists pulsed with spasms of barely-contained energy. I seriously wanted to kill the kid. Pictures filled my head—flashes of me pounding on Kyle Bischmann and his moron friends. Another picture came to me too, and this one was even worse: me shooting lightning bolts from my palms into their chests and watching them recoil in pain as their flesh sizzled. I felt my muscles strain like I was lifting weights at the gym. “Look,” I said to Frank, my voice a deep growl I barely recognized, “if Bischboy every does anything to you, anything at all, you let me know and I’ll take care of him for you.”

Frank’s eyes got wide with delight and he laughed. “Bischboy! That’s really funny, Russ. I’m going to tell everyone at school that you said that.”

And just like that, I snapped out of it and my anger faded. Kyle turned from a monster who had to be destroyed to a stupid eleven-year-old kid who thought he was hot stuff. I shuddered, thinking how close I’d come to getting up and walloping him across the face. How would that have looked? I outweighed Kyle by fifty pounds. If I’d lost control and hit him unprovoked, who would be the bully then? I probably would have gotten hauled off to jail.

I shook my head. “He’s just a jerk,” I said to Frank. “He’s got nothing on you.”

“He comes to my class for math,” Frank said. “He got held back in a few subjects.” We sat for a few minutes without talking. When the frozen custard in his cone was nearly gone, he started nibbling on the edges of his waffle cone. “This is really good.”

Kyle and his cohorts made a point to walk right past us as they left the place. “Bye, Frankie,” Kyle said.

Frank didn’t even look up. “Bye, Kyle. See you in math.”

Kyle looked a little startled, but he didn’t say anything back, just kept going.

At that moment, I saw Frank with a new admiration. You think you know someone and then you see another side of them and you realize there’s more there than you gave them credit for. “You are one cool little dude,” I said, and his cheeks flushed pink at the praise. He wasn’t such a bad kid. I’d have to start pointing out his positive traits more often.

We were finishing up when I said, making small talk, “What are you going to do with that twenty dollars you got from Mr. Specter?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe give it to my mom. She comes up short a lot.”

I’d heard that expression from Carly more than once. She borrowed money from my folks all the time and that was always her excuse. “I’m coming up short this month.” My mom wasn’t all that sympathetic, but my dad was a sucker for her sad stories. She never asked me for money, which was good because I wouldn’t have given her any. “You shouldn’t have to give your mom money,” I said. “Parents give kids money, not the other way around. Grown-ups are supposed to be the responsible ones.”

“Yeah, I know. She just has problems.” Frank sighed and I saw how her problems sometimes became his problems and how that weighed heavily on him. No wonder he liked coming to our house where he could just be a kid. “Besides, it’s just extra money for a stone I got from the mud on your shoes, and Grandma already paid me two dollars for cleaning the shoes.”

Wait a minute—I reached over and grabbed his arm. “Let me get this straight. You got that stone out of the bottom of my shoe?” His words triggered something, and my head reeled with the sequence of events that must have occurred for this to have happened. I saw it in a collage of images: me walking at night in a damp field among (apparently) magic light particles; Frank cleaning the bottom of my shoes the next day; him (I now knew) removing a stone from bottom of said shoe and keeping it, and finally, Mr. Specter buying that same stone from Frank. As I was figuring this out, Frank had a worried look on his face like he was afraid that answering my question would get him in trouble. I tried again. “So you’re saying that the stone Mr. Specter bought from you came from my shoe?”

His head bobbed up and down. “Grandma told me to clean ’em. They were all crusty and gross with mud, and she said she’d give me two dollars if I could get the bottoms spotless. I had to pry a lot of junk out with a butter knife, and then I washed ’em in the sink in the basement. It took me like forever. But I found a cool stone wedged in there, and she said I could keep it for my collection.” His eyes widened. “You’re hurting my arm, Russ.”

“Sorry.” I released my grip. “What did the stone look like?”

“I don’t know.” His shoulders came up and he raised his palms. “Like a stone?”

“Describe it.”

“Russ, Grandma said I could keep it.” He rubbed his arm.

“I know, Frank, I’m not mad that you took it. I just need to know what it looked like. Think.”

“It was sort of round-ish.”

“How big?”

“You saw it on the counter.”

“I wasn’t paying attention. I was busy talking to Mr. Specter. About how big was it, Frank?”

His forehead scrunched in thought. “Maybe the size of a nickel?”

Okay, now we were getting somewhere. “What else?” I asked.

He looked down at the table, concentrating. “It had these sparkles in it.”

“Like fool’s gold?” I said.

“You mean pyrite?”

“Yes,” I said. I couldn’t believe he knew the actual word. “Like pyrite.”

“No, it didn’t have gold on it. The sparkles were
inside of
it.”

“Inside of it?”

He nodded. “It kind of glowed sometimes. Like there was a little, teeny-tiny flashlight inside of it.”

I couldn’t help myself. I slapped my palm against the tabletop. “You had a stone that glowed all by itself and you didn’t think to mention it to anyone?”

“It only glowed
sometimes
,” he said, defensively. “And not really that much. You could barely see it unless it was completely dark.” As if that made a difference.

I buried my head in my hands. How had this happened? I couldn’t believe we just handed the stone over to Mr. Specter. And how would he have known what it was? Had it started to glow on the counter and I didn’t notice? I could just imagine Jameson’s reaction when I shared this story. He already thought I was mentally challenged. This would confirm it. I got up suddenly, my chair scraping against the flooring. “Come on, Frank. Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?’

“To get that stone back.”

I headed down the sidewalk at a fast clip, dodging an old couple and darting around a teenage girl who carried a crying toddler on her hip. Frank was on my heels, jogging along, just barely keeping up. “Wait, Russ!” he called out. “What are you talking about? I can’t get it back. I already sold it to the guy.”

“He took advantage of a kid,” I said, not slowing. “We need to get it back.”

The door to Power House Comics jangled as I went through, but I didn’t even stop to hold it open for Frank. The kid was ten. He knew how doors worked. I went straight to the front counter where we’d just checked out less than an hour before. No one was at the register, but I wasn’t going anywhere until we got this thing worked out. Behind the counter, a drape covered a doorway leading to the back room. I said, loudly, “Excuse me, could I get some help?” It was exactly the kind of thing my dad did sometimes. When he did it, I wanted to sink into the carpeting from embarrassment. Right now Frank, standing next to me with the bag of comic books under his arm, looked like he wanted to sink into the carpeting himself.