Hero of Hawaii (6 page)

Clarence nodded. “That’s good, then.”

“Yeah.”

He started for his car.

“Wait,” I said. “Your cousin Rudy said hi.”

Clarence stopped. “How you know Rudy?”

“Uh …”

Clarence grinned. “Ah, the beach, right? He made you come home.”

I frowned.

“Hey, no worries. I won’t tell.”

He was okay, Clarence.

“Watch the river,” he yelled as he got into his car. “It starts coming up too high, call me. We make some sandbags for the house.”

Sandbags?

I looked at the river.

The rain roared on.

W
hen Stella, Mom, and Darci got home from the store, I said, “Clarence went to check on his mom and sister.”

Mom plopped a droopy wet grocery bag on the counter. “Shopping in a storm is no fun.”

“He said to say bye,” I added.

Mom started taking things out of the bag.
“What’s Clarence’s family like, Stella? They obviously raised him well.”

“Nice. They live in a little house on the other side of the river. His dad and uncle live there, too.”

“What?” I said. “He said he didn’t have a dad.”

“Well, actually the dad is Lovey’s, not his.”

“Lovey?”

“His sister, pea brain. You should know her. She goes to your school.”

“Lovey Martino?”

Stella snapped her finger and pointed at me. “Bingo.”

“But Clarence’s last name isn’t Martino,” I said.

Stella gave me a sad look. “Your lightbulb isn’t very bright, is it?”

“Stella,” Mom said.

“Fine. She’s his half sister. Different dad.”

Ho! Lovey Martino was Clarence’s
sister
? Man, was Tito going to be surprised about that. Tito’d met up with Clarence once and
was scared of him. Tito was this sixth grader who always bothered us at school. He followed Lovey Martino around like a shadow, even though Lovey wouldn’t give him a crumb off her lunch plate. Tito also liked Stella, who thought he was an idiot.

Mom looked at me as she put stuff away. “How’s everything at Julio’s house, Cal?”

“Oh … good.”

“Do they have any leaks?”

“Uh … no,” I said, hoping that was true. I made myself busy by emptying the leak bowl and setting it back under the drip.

Plink
.

The phone rang.

Stella answered cheerfully, hoping, I guess, that it was Clarence. “Hello-o.”

I started for the door before Mom could ask any more questions.

“Hey, twit!” Stella called. “It’s Willy.”

I took the phone. “Hey, Willy.”

Stella and Mom left the kitchen.

“Can you believe this storm?” Willy said.

“No kidding. You should see the river. It’s rising.”

“Is it going to reach your house?”

“I sure hope not.”

We were quiet a second.

“Hey,” I said. “You want to sleep over tonight? Ask your mom.”

“Yeah, great. Hang on.”

I held my hand over the phone. “Mom,” I called. “Can Willy sleep over?”

“If it’s okay with his mother it’s okay with me,” she answered from the living room.

Willy came back. “She said I could.”

“Cool. Come now. Bring your sleeping bag. My other bunk doesn’t have sheets on it.”

“Be right there.” Willy lived down the street, a few houses past Julio’s. We hung up.

A half hour later Willy came dripping in through the garage and stuck his head into my room. “You in here?”

“What took you so long?”

Willy tossed his sleeping bag on the lower bunk. “I had to clean my room first. Hey, Streak.”

Streak lay on a small rug on the polished concrete floor. She thumped her tail.

“Cleaning your room sounds like bribery to me,” I said.

“Totally.”

It was getting darker outside. “Let’s go see what’s for dinner.”

It was almost like camping out. Mom and Stella cooked up hot dogs and beans and sliced some apples. Willy and I took our plates out on the covered patio and sat watching the rain pour off the roof so hard it dug trenches in the sandy soil below. It was loud, too.

Willy shouted,
“Hot dang! Can you believe this rain?”

“Double dang! Ho!”

He grinned.

Back in my room it was just as noisy. Rain was misting through my screen, but only onto the windowsill.

Something else was coming into my room, too.

“
Yai!
” Willy yelped, and scrambled up onto the top bunk. “Look on your desk! It’s Manly Stanley!”

Manly Stanley was our class pet, a centipede that I’d caught in a jar and that now lived in a sandy resort on our teacher’s desk at school.

“That’s not Manly, it’s his uncle, Legs. Hey, Legs,” I said to the centipede. “Where you been?”

My desk was a counter that ran along one side of the room. Behind it was a stone wall, which was the old garage wall before someone who lived here before us made a storage room out of half the garage. There
were cracks in the rock. That was how bugs of every kind got in.

“They come in when it rains. Kind of like a bug explosion.”

“Great.”

I laughed. The centipede was pretty big, about four inches. It would probably look like an alien from outer space through a microscope. “Don’t worry. The small green-head ones are worse.”

“I feel better already.”

“Those ones you don’t see until they bite.”

Willy looked down from the top bunk. “Can’t you get it out?”

“Sure … but there’d just be more of them.”

Willy’s mouth hung open. “We gotta sleep with those things in here?”

“They won’t bite you. They just want to be dry, is all.”

Willy frowned. “Fine, but I’m not sleeping on the bottom bunk.”

We traded beds. I handed him his sleeping bag and he tossed me my pillow and sheet.

I snapped my fingers. Streak jumped up on my bed and plopped down by my feet.

“Say good night to Spidey,” I said to Willy.

“Who’s Spidey?”

“Look in the corner above your head.”

“Aw, man!”

“He won’t bite, either.”

I
t was still raining when I woke up the next day, Sunday. My window was filled with dark gray clouds and the sound of endless rain. It was supposed to be Darci’s party day, but that would have been a disaster in this weather.

I got up on my elbows.

My blinking clock said it was 2:18. The
power had gone out and come back on in the night.

“Willy,” I whispered. “You awake?”

No answer.

Streak stretched and yawned, sleeping by my feet.

I peeked up over the top bunk. Willy wasn’t there.

I pulled on yesterday’s shorts and T-shirt, and Streak and I headed to the kitchen. The smell of bacon hit me like a brand-new sunny day.

A glass bowl of pancake batter and a carton of eggs sat ready by the stove. Willy and Darci were sitting at the counter near the leak bowl with glasses of orange juice.

Mom looked at me from the stove, a spatula in her hand. “Good morning, sleepyhead.”

“What time is it?”

“Almost nine-thirty.”

“It’s still raining.” I was getting worried, because it had never rained so hard for so long.

“It’s supposed to let up sometime this
morning. At least, that’s what Ledward said. He called. Still stuck.”