Philip and the Superstition Kid (9781452430423) (7 page)

CRASH!

“
Leon!” came a cry from
Emery’s mother.

A moment later Leon entered the bedroom,
rubbing his head.

“
I fell,” he
said.

Mrs. Wyatt stuck her head into the bedroom.
She stared at Leon’s sneakers.

“
Leon, where are your
shoelaces?”

“
Uh, they fell
out.”

“
Fell out! That’s
impossible.”

A baby began to cry in the distance.

“
Ohhhh,” Mrs. Wyatt
moaned. “Get some shoelaces, Leon, before you trip and fall down
the stairs—like you just already almost did. I’m coming, Amy.
Mommy’s coming.” And she left the room.

Emery leaned over and looked at Leon’s
shoes.

“
Why
don’t
you have shoelaces,
Leon?”

Leon explained about his unlucky shoelaces.
“Better check yours,” he concluded.

Emery fell back against his pillow. “Get the
phone, Philip.”

Philip got the phone and handed it to
Emery.

Emery punched in the number and waited.

“
Hi, Dad. Yeah, I’m in
bed. No, I’m okay. I have a question. Does the elevator where you
work have a button that says the thirteenth floor?”

Emery listened and Philip could see the
alarm rise in his friend’s eyes.

“
Okay, see you
tonight.”

Emery ended the call, looked at Philip, and
shook his head.

“
Twelve to
fourteen.”

“
So fourteen
is
really
thirteen.”

“
I knew it,” Leon cried
dismally. “I told you. I knew it.”

The bedroom grew silent as Philip thought
with dread about the number thirteen and what Leon was doing to
them to make it the unluckiest number in the world ever.

Chapter Ten

The next morning Philip and Emery were
having breakfast in Emery’s kitchen. Leon was having his cereal in
the living room, away from the dangerous thirteen tiles on the
kitchen floor.

“
Maybe we shouldn’t eat in
here either,” said Emery, looking suspiciously over the
floor.

“
There really aren’t
thirteen tiles, you know,” Philip said disdainfully.

Emery looked puzzled. “There are. I counted
them.”

Philip shook his head. “Look at the last
row. It’s not really a whole tile. Some of it’s cut off.”

Emery got out of his chair and walked to the
kitchen wall. He came back to the table.

“
Not much is cut off,” he
said.

“
Any cut off makes it not
thirteen. It’s like twelve and nine-tenths. But don’t tell
Leon.”

“
No, let him eat out
there. Good idea.” Emery spooned some cereal into his mouth, chewed
and swallowed. “You think we’re really catching Leon’s
trissaphobium?”

“
Trissaphobi-
A
.” Philip shrugged. “I only know I don’t want to go to the
dentist on the thirteenth floor anymore.”

Emery tapped his spoon thoughtfully on the
side of his cereal bowl.

Philip stared at him. “What?”

“
If we’re getting Leon’s
disease, we need some way to cancel the bad luck.”

“
Yeah, well the bad luck
trissaphobia comes from
Leon
, so need a way to cancel
him
,” said
Philip.

“
You remember some of
those wild good luck things we looked up?”

“
On the computer? Yeah.
Hey, you think maybe if we make Leon do some of the
good
luck superstitions,
the real hard ones, he might believe his trissaphobia went away? If
he does, it might keep it away from
us
.”

“
And just in case, we can
do some of the good luck superstitions, too, me and you, for
ourselves—the easier ones. That should help.”

Philip didn’t argue. “Let’s sneak upstairs
while Leon’s busy and get the list. You still got it?”

Emery nodded. He quietly took Philip’s
cereal bowl and placed it along with his own in the sink. Together
the boys crept silently up the stairs, leaving Leon in the living
room with his breakfast and the morning cartoons.

Emery opened his desk drawer.

“
I got them,” he said,
waving some papers.

“
Find some easy good luck
superstitions.”

Emery scanned the list.

“
Here’s an easy one,”
Emery reported.

“
What is it?”

“
Sneeze three times before
lunch and you’ll have good luck.”

Philip nodded. “Find a couple more.”

“
Meet three sheep and have
good luck.”

“
Emery! Don’t be stupid.
It’s not funny anymore. Where are we going to meet even
one
sheep?”

“
At the zoo?”

“
We don’t have time for
that. We can snuff up some pepper before we have lunch and sneeze,
but no sheep, okay? We’d probably have so much bad luck getting to
the zoo, we’d never get to the zoo.”

“
Here’s another easy one.
Avoid cracks in the sidewalk.”

“
Okay,” Philip agreed.
“That’s good. And no walking under ladders.”

“
Or breaking
mirrors.”

Philip nodded. “A couple more.”

“
Find a penny. Find a
four-leaf clover. See a fish leap from the water.”

“
Forget the fish,” Philip
cried. “Just normal ones, for Pete’s sake.”

“
Hey guys?” Leon called
from downstairs. He started up the stairs.

“
Okay,” said Philip. “Put
it away. That’s enough. We’ll give Leon the hard ones. I remember
one.”

“
Hey guys. Yuk yuk. What’s
up? Whatdya wanna play today?”

Philip cleared his throat and said, “Leon,
you gotta help us. Anyway, you can’t go out without laces in your
sneakers. You didn’t bring any shoes, either. Right?”

Leon looked worried. “No, no shoes.”

Emery spoke. “And you admit you’re giving us
your trissaphobia.”

“
Triskaidekaphobia,” Leon
said absent-mindedly, looking even more worried. “I didn’t mean to.
I didn’t. It’s . . . it’s just my bad luck.”

“
You have to do some good
luck superstitions for us,” Emery commanded.

“
Yeah, Leon. You gotta
protect us. You already got Emery’s teeth pulled.”

“
What can I do?” Leon
moaned. “I’m just bad luck, but your mother won’t let me sit on the
table like an Egyptian anymore. That worked real good.”

“
The greatest good luck
thing there is,” Philip said with a dramatic pause, “is to wear a
dress.”

“
Yeah,” Emery agreed,
remembering how they’d laughed when they thought Leon would
probably do it. But he and Philip were deadly serious now. “That’s
the best good luck there is. We looked it up.”

“
Wear a dress! I can’t
wear a dress. I’m a boy!”

“
Well, you don’t really
have to wear it,” Philip explained. “You just have to wear it
inside-out.”

“
Oh,” Leon smiled. “Inside
. . . inside-out! I can’t wear a dress inside-out. I don’t even
have a dress. And if I did I wouldn’t wear it anyway. People would
see me. People would . . .”

Emery thought fast. “You don’t have to wear
it inside-out outside. You just have to wear it inside-out
inside.”

Leon looked puzzled. “You mean outside it’s
not inside-out but inside the outside’s inside?”

“
Don’t make it
complicated, Leon,” Emery said in a threatening voice. “You’ll be
inside when the outside of the dress is inside and you’ll never be
outside whether the dress is inside-out or outside
regular.”

Leon went on, frowning, “But if the outside
is inside how can I be inside when . . .”

“
Just wear the stupid
dress, Leon,” Philip shouted. “Inside, outside, inside . . .” he
muttered.

“
Yeah, Leon, just wear the
dress,” Emery agreed.

“
Oh, just wear the dress.
Sure, that’s easy to say for you,” Leon said in defeat.

Philip suddenly remembered the kleebis game.
“We’ll make it easy for you, Leon. We’ll hide you in the closet
where the bad luck can’t find you and where nobody can see
you.”

“
That’s it, Leon,” Emery
jumped in. “And even if the bad luck
does
find you, it won’t recognize
you ’cause you’ll be in your inside-out dress.”

“
Right,” Philip agreed.
“And you only have to stay there until dinnertime.”

“
Yeah,” said Emery. “It’s
not like it’s forever.”

“
It’s forever to
me
,” Leon said
sadly.

“
You’re the one who gave
us the disease,” Philip argued, hoping Leon would feel very guilty
about that.

Leon put his hand to his head. “I hate
closets,” he muttered. “I was in one once for a long time.” Then he
looked at his friends. “Why do these things happen to me? I don’t
have a dress,” he concluded in a very small voice.

“
He doesn’t have a dress,”
Emery repeated to Philip.

“
No, I guess not. Uh, the
junk store. The junk store in the mall where the supermarket
is.”

“
Yeah!” Emery cried. “They
sell clothes for like a dollar.”

“
I don’t have a dollar
either,” Leon said with a bubble of hope.

“
I have a dollar,” Philip
assured him, patting his right pocket. “
Four
dollars. We’ll find
something.”

“
Oh,” Leon
moaned.

Emery’s mother appeared at the bedroom
door.

“
Okay you three,” she
said. “Time to go out and play.”

The boys exchanged glances.

Emery’s mother tossed something at Leon.

“
Put these laces in your
sneakers,” she said wearily. “I measured them. Eighteen
inches.”

Everyone watched Leon sit on the floor and
lace his sneakers. Then he tied the biggest bows they had ever seen
on shoes.

“
Good,” said Mrs. Wyatt.
“Now out. Out.”

The three boys preceded her down the stairs
and went straight out onto the sidewalk.

“
Okay, let’s go to the
junk store before it’s too late,” Philip said, looking warily at
Leon.

Emery nodded and they set out.

Chapter Eleven

“
Come on, guys,” Leon
pleaded as they stood at the entrance to the junk store. “Do I
really have to wear a dress? You sure?”

“
Positive,” Emery snapped.
“You gave us this trissaphobia. You gotta take it away.”

Leon’s head sagged and he put his hand to
his forehead. “Okay,” he said in a small voice. “And it’s not
trissaphobia. It’s . . .”

“
Never mind,” Philip cut
him off sharply. “Go in.” He held the junk store door open for
Emery and Leon.

The floor of the junk store was littered
with tables covered with all kinds of stuff people had turned in
because they didn’t want it anymore. There were toys, books, shoes,
kitchen gadgets, lamps, hats, gloves—anything you could think
of.

“
Let’s find the ladies’
dresses,” said Emery and Leon moaned.

The boys walked through the jungle of junk,
stopping here and there to inspect anything that looked
interesting. Finally, Philip pointed. A long line of dresses hung
from a row of metal coat stands.

“
Go find one you like,”
said Emery.

“
One that fits,” Philip
advised. He whispered to Emery, “If it doesn’t fit, he’ll be
tripping all over the place and probably knock your house
over.”

Leon walked sadly along
the line of dresses until he came to a sign that said,
“
Children’s Clothes
.” He turned to Philip and Emery and pointed at the
sign.

Philip waved his hands toward Leon as if
shooing away a fly. “Make believe we’re not with him,” he said to
Emery quietly, “Somebody we know may see us.”

Emery waved his hand toward Leon, who obeyed
and walked slowly down the aisle as if he was going to the electric
chair.

Philip and Emery watched Leon walk up and
down in front of the dresses four times.

“
Come on, he won’t pick
one,” Philip said disgustedly. “He doesn’t look like he’s very
excited about this. Let’s find him a dress and get out of
here.”

He and Emery walked quickly to Leon.

Emery grabbed the first dress he saw and
swung it out where they could see it.

“
Here’s a pretty one,
Leon.”

Leon looked gloomily at his cousin and
declared, “I don’t want to look pretty.”

“
You won’t look pretty,”
Philip snapped. “You’ll be in a closet. No one will see
you.”

“
I don’t have to wear it
on the way home, do I?” Leon asked, rubbing his hand along the
dress. “It’s soft.”

“
Who cares soft or hard?”
Emery barked. “No, you can just put it on when you get
home.”

“
See if it fits,” said
Philip.

Emery held the pink dress, which had a
frilly bottom and looked like somebody might have gone to dancing
school in it, up in front of Leon.