Philip and the Case of Mistaken Identity and Philip and the Baby (9781597051095) (7 page)

The girl in the second row snorted a third
time. Philip saw her turn to her friend and say something and then
the friend snorted, too.

“It’s red,” said Philip.

Three more children snorted but Philip
couldn’t trace which three it was.

He heard Joanie say,” Petals.”

Philip knew that word. “Yes, and it has
petals.”

“So does my bike,” said the girl who had
snorted first for everyone to hear. More children laughed.

“Pe-
t-
als,” said Philip angrily.

Philip heard Joanie say, “Roots.”

“And it’s got roots. Down the bottom. For
water. In here.” Philip clicked his fingers on the green
flowerpot.

He watched as the girl in the second row
slouched down in her chair and rolled her eyes way up in her
head.

Philip felt himself turning red.

Mrs. Bushrod said, “Emery, can you tell us
anything more? Something you learned in the library that perhaps
the other children don’t already know?”

Yeah
, Philip thought,
I can tell
them something they don’t already know. Don’t play stupid tricks on
your friends.

“It’s got leaves, too. They’re green.”

A little wave of laughter swept through the
seated children.

“Plants make pollen,” Joanie whispered.

Philip didn’t understand and looked at
her.

“Pollen. Pollen. Plants make pollen.”

“Hollow. Hollow. Plants are hollow,” Philip
said.

“Not hollow! Pollen,” Joanie whispered
desperately.

“They have hollow pollen, too,” Philip said
assuredly, thinking that Joanie should know since she’d been to
every class.

Mrs. Bushrod moved toward him.

“Thank you, Emery,” she said. “I think we’ve
heard enough. Nice try.”

Philip handed the geranium back to her and,
with his chin on the chest, went back to his seat. When he sat
down, he noticed Janie looking at him. He turned to her.

“Dope,” she said.

Philip felt himself turning red again.

“That concludes our meeting of the plant
club,” said Mrs. Bushrod. “If you boys and girls will gently get in
line, we’ll give out the pizza. Don’t push. We ordered plenty for
all. Pizza here and then a glass of juice over there.”

Philip followed Emery into line.

Emery turned to him. “You didn’t know very
much. Why’d you let her put your name down for that? That was dumb
of you.”

The girl who’d snorted got in line behind
Philip. Their eyes met. She shook her head, snorted, and said,
“Hollow pollen.”

Philip turned back to Emery.

“Stop looking at me, Emery. Turn around.”

Emery faced front and the line moved
forward.

After they’d gotten their pizza and juice,
Philip and Emery sat at an empty library table. Philip didn’t want
to have to look at anybody. Joanie and her sister joined them,
though.

“See,” said Joanie. “I promised you pizza and
here it is.”

Emery said, “I enjoyed the show, too. I got a
chance to learn about hollow pollen.”

“Will you be quiet?” Philip growled through
clenched teeth.

Joanie laughed. “I tried to help you. I guess
you didn’t hear me very well.”

Philip stuffed some pizza in his mouth so he
wouldn’t have to answer.

Fortunately, the pizza and juice seemed to
have put Philip out of the minds of the other children. People had
stopped looking at him. All except the girl who snorted. When
everyone was leaving, she walked past him, gave a final snort, and
said, “Good-bye, hollow pollen.”

Philip gave her the nastiest look he could
manage.

Philip, Emery, Joanie, and Janie paused
outside the front door of the library to say good-bye.

“Well, Janie and I leave tomorrow morning for
home and then back to school,” said Joanie.

“Thanks for the pizza,” said Emery.

“That’s okay, Philip,” Joanie smiled. “I had
fun at the park yesterday. Maybe we’ll see you the next time we
come. Oh, do you know all the kids around here?” She looked at
Philip.

Philip shrugged. “Not all. A lot of them go
to our school. We know them.”

Joanie went on. “There were two weird looking
kids hanging around my grandmother’s house. They were dressed funny
and wore these weird hats. One of them... I don’t want to be mean,
but one of them had a deformed ear. Do you know them? I don’t know
why they were around my house so much.”

“They looked like dopes,” said Janie.

Philip and Emery refused to look at each
other.

“Deformed ear?” said Philip in a high,
nervous voice. “No, nobody like that in our school is there,
Emery?”

“Nope. Nobody like that.”

“Oh well,” said Joanie. “I just thought I’d
ask.”

The boys nodded.

“Well, good-bye,” said Joanie.

“Bye,” said both boys.

Janie looked at Philip and said, “Dope.”

And the two girls and the two boys went in
separate directions.

Except for a trip with his father to the big
mall a couple miles away, Philip stayed indoors the next day,
Sunday, dreading Monday and school. None of his good friends had
been at the Garden Club meeting in the library, but he did
recognize a couple of faces from his school. He was certain that by
the time school started, the whole school would have heard how dumb
he’d been and be laughing at him.

Monday morning he met Emery as usual in front
of Emery’s house and they walked to school. Emery didn’t mention
anything about the Garden Club, and for that Philip was grateful.
Since Emery was being nice enough not to mention the Garden Club,
Philip felt a little guilty about how hard he’d worked to play
those tricks on Emery.

But at least Emery didn’t know about the
second one.

The schoolyard was crowded when the two boys
arrived. Philip watched everyone. A few times he thought he caught
sight of people looking at him, talking, and then laughing. But he
couldn’t be certain. Thank goodness that snorting girl didn’t go to
his school, Philip told himself. If she did, he’d be known as
“hollow pollen” to everyone by three o’clock.

But the day went by with nothing
extraordinary happening, and Philip walked home with Emery as
always.

“Want to go to the park?” Emery asked.

“Sure, let me go home first. I have to change
my clothes or my mother’ll yell.”

“Okay. Come back when you’re ready. Oh, come
on in a minute. I have something for you.”

Philip followed Emery inside his house. Emery
dropped his book bag and ran into the kitchen. He returned with a
plastic shopping bag in his hand. He handed the bag to Philip.

Philip looked inside. There were four large
empty plastic soda bottles.

“What’s this for?” Philip asked.

“You can get a nickel for each one. That’s
the twenty cents I owe you.”

“I don’t want a bag of bottles. I want two
dimes.”

“Same thing.”

“No, it’s not. I have to take these to the
supermarket and redeem them. Why can’t you just give me the
money?”

“I don’t have the money. Anyway, didn’t you
have to go to the library to spend the twenty cents? So it’s the
same thing. You have to go to the supermarket to get the twenty
cents back. You didn’t just give me twenty cents in my hand.”

“It is not the same thing.”

“Then give me back if you don’t want
them.”

“No, no, I’ll take them.” Philip decided this
was probably the best chance he had of getting twenty cents out of
Emery.

Philip lugged his bag of empty soda bottles
home. He changed his clothes, grabbed a couple of newly baked
chocolate chip cookies, and had a quick glass of chocolate
milk.

When he knocked on Emery’s door, Emery’s
mother answered.

“Is Emery ready?” Philip said.

“Come in, Philip.”

Philip could hear a baby crying.

“The library called him as soon as he walked
in. They said they had something for him. Something about winning a
prize there Saturday. He went to get it. He’ll be right back.”

Emery’s mother went to take care of the
crying baby.

Philip stood in a daze.
Emery
had won
a prize Saturday? Another one? All Emery had done was sit on a
chair and listen. In a flash, Philip understood. Emery was getting
a prize meant for him! He was getting a prize for getting in front
of the whole stupid garden club and describing that stupid German
geranium. With the hollow pollen. Emery was getting his
second
prize for something that Philip had done!

Philip threw himself on the sofa and crossed
his arms over his chest and waited.

Fifteen minutes later Emery walked in the
door.

“Hey, Philip. I won a prize.”

Philip leaped to his feet. “No you
didn’t...”

Emery laughed. “I know. I know. It’s
yours.”

Philip stood still. When he realized his
mouth was hanging open, he shut it. “What did they say?” Philip
asked.

“It’s a prize for doing that thing at the
library Saturday with Joanie. You know. The hollow pollen
thing.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know.” Philip didn’t want to
hear any more about hollow pollen. “What is it?”

“I don’t know. I knew you’d be waiting, so I
just took it and came back here.”

“Let’s open it.”

Both boys ripped the plain red wrapping paper
from the box.

“Wow!” said Emery.

“Not bad,” said Philip.

Philip had won a kit containing instructions
and a CD on how to start a newspaper with your computer. There was
even a booklet with ideas for newspaper stories.

“You want to start a newspaper?” said
Emery.

Philip shrugged. “Sure. Why not?” He thumbed
through the booklet and said, “It even tells you how to put
pictures in the newspaper.”

“Oh yeah, pictures,” said Emery. “They took
my picture in the library. They’re going to put it in that
newspaper we get every week.”

“You get your picture in the paper for what I
did?”

“Well, if they took your picture it would
still have my name under it. That wouldn’t make sense, would
it?”

Reluctantly, Philip could see where that
would be confusing.

“Besides, we can put our own pictures into
our own newspaper any time we want,” Emery pointed out.

Philip nodded. “But I should get mine in
first.”

“Okay.”

Philip would be satisfied if he could
accomplish one more thing.

“My house will be the newspaper headquarters
since your house was the detective headquarters.”

Emery nodded. “We couldn’t concentrate with
the babies crying anyway.”

“Let’s drop the newspaper kit at my house and
then go to the park. We can talk about how we want to run our
newspaper. First, we’ll need a name for it.”

As they left Emery’s house, Emery envisioned
one word in big bold letters at the top of their newspaper. It was
the perfect name.

“
WHAT
,” Emery said, his eyes aglow at
the wonder his idea.

“I said we’ll need a name for the
newspaper.”

“
WHAT
’s the name.”

“What’s what name?”

“No, just one what.”

“One what what? What are you talking
about?”

“Yeah, I’m talking about
WHAT
.”

“You’re making my stomach hurt again,” Philip
cried, and that quickly, everything was back to normal.

Philip Felton was visiting his friend, Emery,
who lived down the street. Both boys were in the same second grade
class at Donovan Elementary School. Philip had brought some
candy—Hershey Kisses and Gummi Worms—for Emery, and Emery’s mother
had given the boys some pineapple juice.

“Doesn’t your mother have any soda?” Philip
whispered after Emery’s mother had handed him a tall glass of the
juice.

Emery shook his head. “My mother doesn’t
think soda is good for me. She never buys any. She only buys juice.
No fun. Right?”

No soda in the house! Philip was glad he
wasn’t a part of this family.

“Are you going to teach me to play chess?” he
asked after he took a tiny sip of the juice. Philip wasn’t sure
whether the juice tasted sweet or sour. But it wasn’t bad.

“Okay. But we have to be quiet.”

“Why?”

“My mother doesn’t want us to wake up the
baby. She’s sleeping upstairs.”

No soda. No noise.
Poor Emery
,
Philip thought.

“Want to call Tommy and Kevin and tell them
to come over? You could teach them chess, too.”

“My mother says no friends over. You’re the
first one she’s let me have over since my sister was born.”

No soda. No noise. No friends. Philip shook
his head. “Why no friends? Tell her we’ll be real quiet.”

“It’s not the quiet. It’s the germs.”

“Germs?”

“My mother doesn’t want Amy to get sick from
their germs.”

“Yeah,” agreed Philip. “Tommy and Kevin are
pretty germy.”

“You, too,” said Emery.

“I don’t have germs.”

“My mother says everybody has germs, and
germs can make babies sick.”

“My germs never made me sick. My germs never
made you sick, and we sit together in school.”

Emery shrugged. “My mother said.”

Emery’s mother sure had some funny
ideas
, Philip thought. “Oh, well. Let’s play chess.”

Emery got the board and set up the chessmen.
He was just about to explain the pawn to Philip when his mother
called from upstairs.

“Emery, would you bring me up a diaper,
please?”

Emery ran to get the diaper and carried it
upstairs. When he came downstairs, he was wrinkling his nose and
dusting off his hands.