The Graham Cracker Plot (5 page)

Then, Judge Henry, my stomach clenched again—so hard that I pressed one hand over my belly and the hand with the Idea Coin against my head. It was like cold water pouring over my body. I shivered. I wrapped both my arms around myself and tried to squeeze away the cold. The coin didn't come off with my hand. I could feel it stuck to my forehead.

The cold turned to a wave of heat. The warmth pressed through me, and all I could hear was the wind and the TV from Frank the Creeper's trailer. And that's when the idea shot out of the coin and into my brain. The Chemist. Me. Canada. Graham. Trees. Carrots. Cinnamon bread with honey.

The shivering stopped. The fist in my stomach unclenched.

“What's that on your head?” Graham asked as he walked away from the play dump sign.

“The Idea Coin,” I whispered.

He quickly kneeled next to me. “What'd it say?”

I pulled it off my forehead and licked it so it would stick to his forehead, too. I pressed it where his bangs used to be and stared into his eyes.

Then the words came out.

“We're breaking the Chemist out of prison and going to Canada!”

It's all blurry now. I honestly can't say if he said it or if I said it or if we said it together at the exact same time, but looking back, I think that voice and those words echoed down from the moon.

 

 

THE SECOND PART

 

DEAR JUDGE HENRY,

You need a lot of things for a prison break and a new life in a cabin in Canada. Like a cabin. And a car and money and food and solar panels for electricity and Internet. The next day we made lists and counted money. I had forty dollars in birthday money, and we counted sixty-five dollars in Mom's change jar. Graham had seven dollars and fifty cents.

As for Kari, she came home after we fell asleep that night. At breakfast she told us the printing press cut her job. Not enough orders for wedding invitations and business cards. She looked upset, and she cursed the Internet, but she was sober. We could tell because her eyes weren't half closed and she didn't smell like perfume cover-up and she wasn't taking aspirin.

“Mom, did you get fired?”

Kari yelled, “You are not the parent, Graham! I'm the parent.”

“Jeez, I didn't even swear. Just a simple question. Because you promised this time you wouldn't cause problems at your job.” Graham's arms were crossed, like he was going to ground her or something.

Kari acted like she hadn't heard him. “I won't be home for a few nights. I have to look at job listings at the County Center for Unskilled and Underskilled Workers.” She lit a cigarette when she said “County” and acted like she didn't care about the unskilled and underskilled parts.

I said, “You're not unskilled! You're a sponsor at those meetings to stop drinking. You're smart. That thing where you eat all your food at a restaurant and then complain about how bad it was so you don't have to pay? Brilliant! You have more uses for duct tape than anyone. Fixing sleds. Keeping your rearview mirror on your car. Hanging up pictures.”

Graham mumbled, “Maybe there's a job for her in the taping factory.”

I was only trying to help her see the positive side.

*   *   *

After Kari left, Graham and I started a planning notebook.

The first pages were lists of things we needed immediately (food, car, clothes, money, etc.) and things we'd need later (solar panels, canned food, hunting rifle, carrot seeds, etc.). Then came our new identities, Roger Ford Longdragon and Anastacia Katherine-Elise Trenton, along with suggested hairstyles, hair colors, and colored eye contacts. I pasted pictures from Kari's magazines of people we could look like.

Graham laughed. “Right. That's
exactly
like you. A twenty-one-year-old model with…” He pointed at her chest.

“Shut up! You are so gross.” I was never sleeping in the same bedroom with him again, even if there were two beds and a moat filled with crocodiles between us.

“And this fat kid is supposed to be me?” He slapped me with the notebook. “Fat-tastic. Thanks.”

“He was in an ad for allergy medicine. Find your own disguise, Roger F. Longdragon. Get back to business.”

I opened the notebook to the map section. I'd sketched the Club Fed buildings from memory. I'd marked where the fed-mates ate and smoked.

“This can't be too hard. It's only a low-security prison. But we need more detail,” Graham said. “Where do the guards stand? Where do the fed-mates walk?”

“I don't know much about the guards. Just Aaron because he seems to be in charge. He's kind of fat and not very fast. Anyone could outrun him,” I said.

“Even you?” Graham poked me.

“Knock it off. We're working here. So the buildings … hmm … I don't know what all of them are used for. One is a gym and three are for sleeping and there's a cafeteria. Across the street are houses. It's basically in a neighborhood.”

Graham rubbed his chin. “That's going to make it hard, huh?”

“Well, there's nothing weird about two kids hanging out in a neighborhood.”

“True,” he said. “We should stay away from the visiting center after what you did. Your face is probably on a wanted poster.”

“Very funny.”

“I thought so.” His smile was big and geeky. “Where'd you say they stand around and smoke?”

I pointed to an area of the lawn right by the cafeteria, where the grass slopes into a gentle hill and the hill goes flat before the fence line. There's grass on both sides of the fence. Grass on the one side for the fed-mates, and grass and a sidewalk on the other side for the neighbors. “The Chemist talks about smoking after dinner, and dinner is at five, so I'd guess they stand here, right outside the cafeteria exit, until about five-thirty.”

“How tall is this fence? Can he jump it?”

I was thinking about how it could work when Graham started talking. “That's where we'll nab him, right at the fence, right during the smoke break. We'll get the car as close as possible. Then we'll signal him or something. I'll create a distraction to buy time so the guards don't notice right away. I'll … I'll pretend to have a seizure in the street or … well, the seizure thing's good, huh? Really good. Then the Chemist will jump the fence, and we'll race away in the car. Back roads all the way to Canada.”

“Car? What car? And the fence has razor wire at the top!”

“What's razor wire?”

“It's like a huge Slinky on top of the fence. The wire is so sharp it'll slice your hands right off!”

“How are we gonna get around the razor stuff?”

“How are we going to get around the not-having-a-car stuff?”

We both sat there, our chins on our hands, looking at the notebook. I said, “If we had wire cutters, we could throw them over the fence for the Chemist. He could climb and cut the razor wire. Then it'd be safe for him to jump.”

“With wire cutters, we could cut a hole in the fence!”

“I don't think so. After Grandma told me the fence wasn't electric, I touched it. The razor wires on top look really thin, but the fence is like … it would be like cutting through really thick stuff.”

Graham slammed his chair into the table. Like a soldier, he announced. “Fetching wire cutters!”

And he left. I shouted out the door, “What about the car?” Graham rounded the corner past Mrs. Mundez. Frank the Creeper was working on his motorcycle. He looked at me. I looked at him, but I was afraid to say “Hello” or “How the heck are ya” or anything. He spit tobacco juice, and I slammed the door.

*   *   *

Twenty minutes later, Graham came back with wire cutters, a dirty face, and a braggy smile. “I broke into the maintenance shed.”

“Really?!”

“In the back of the shed, there's this huge plank falling off and it's all wet and covered in mold. Well, I kicked three times and I got a hole big enough to climb through. Ripped my pants. But I found the wire cutters on the shelf with a bunch of other crap they don't use around here.”

I took them from his hands. “Wow. They're heavy!”

“Change in plans.” Graham lifted his sweaty arms and kissed his muscles. “You'll be the guard and fed-mate distraction, and I'll be the wire-cutter thrower.”

I laughed. “Right. You're soooo strong. But soooo stupid. The Chemist hasn't seen you in ages. If he sees this boy throwing something at the fence, he'll be like, ‘What's up with that weird dude?' But if it's me, he'll run right down there.”

Graham wanted to be the wire-cutter thrower. I could tell. “Hey,” I said. “How about you help me practice?”

“Sure. You'll need a coach.”

Sometimes Graham acted like such a big shot. I said, “I don't
need
a coach.”

“Fine. I'll be your trainer.”

“I don't
need
a trainer.”

“What am I supposed to do then?”

“Watch and learn.”

*   *   *

Turns out, I needed a coach, a trainer, and a fetcher. After lunch, Graham and I walked a half mile down the county road near the woods. I had to guess the height of the fence. We looked for a tree branch that seemed the right height, and I threw the wire cutters straight in the air, hoping they'd go higher than the branch. But those cutter things zoomed straight down. We screamed and jumped into the ditch.

“You almost killed us!”

I crouched in the weeds, shaking. “That throw was just my guesstimate. Let's try it again.”

“You can't throw it straight above your head. It has to go
over
the fence.
Over
.” Graham made a half circle with his arm.

So I threw it high and over. And that stupid tree branch got in the way and caught it.

“Oops.”

Graham glared at me.

I tried to stay perky. “Can you climb a tree?”

“Not that one.”

We searched the ditch for sticks and rocks and threw them at the cutters so the tree would loosen its grip. Nothing worked. Graham said, “Wait here.”

About twenty minutes later, he came back pushing a wheelbarrow. It was full of old paint cans, a small radio, a couple hunks of wood, three boots, part of a shovel, a baseball, and a bat.

“Where'd you get this stuff?”

“I used a hammer to break a bigger hole in the maintenance shed. That's where I got the wheelbarrow. Then I dug through the Dumpster and found stuff heavy enough to hit the wire cutters and knock 'em down.”

“So why so much stuff? All we need is one or two heavy things.”

Graham scratched his head. “Oh yeah.”

“You should have told
me
your plan and I could've saved you from Dumpster diving. You smell like … chicken fat and dog turds!” Which couldn't be true because nobody in River Estates picks up their dogs' turds.

“Well, you smell like chicken fat and dog turds and you haven't even been in a Dumpster!”

I quit talking. He'd never stop coming up with stink-names, because in that game he is a champ, and we had to get those cutters down.

Graham threw the paint cans and missed the branch entirely. I hit the branch's edge with the small radio, and the radio swung from the tree by its cord. “Outstanding work,” Graham said. “Now we got two things stuck up there.”

The ball and boots failed, too. I took the baseball bat, swung it high in the sky and
wham
! The bat
and
cutters came down.

I practiced the wire-cutter throw for almost an hour, until I could throw a high arc that cleared the tree. My arms ached. “I think we've had enough practice for today.”

On the way back to Graham's trailer, we took turns pushing each other in the wheelbarrow. I was sure nobody would notice. I'm not sure River Estates even had a maintenance man. We put it back in the shed, and Graham used a hammer to close up the big hole.

We brushed the dirt and grass off our jeans before going inside, where we slammed big glasses of water. Spring wasn't just warm like usual. Hot. It was July hot. Then I remembered the most important part of the plan. Wheels, and not the wheelbarrow kind. The car kind.

“Graham,” I gasped from drinking so fast. “You said we'd have a car and a driver.”

He belly-flopped on the couch. “The car is a 1996 Oldsmobile. Dark blue. The perfect get-away color. Perfect for back roads. We'll hide in the day and drive at night so it'll be hard to see us.”

“Key problem. We don't know how to drive!”

He took the planning notebook and wrote,
The Graham Cracker Plot
. “Sounds cool, you think?”

“What about the Daisy … Flower … Pot?”

He exploded into giggles, and I had to admit it sounded pretty stupid. When he finally stopped laughing he said, “Let's make some sandwiches and hide them in the fridge drawer with the bag of wrinkled carrots. Mom doesn't go in that drawer. Then we'll have food for a couple days.”

He was making me crazy, and we weren't even at the cabin. I pulled the notebook out of his hands.

“Key problem!” I repeated. “We don't know how to
drive
.”

Graham looked really proud of himself. “We don't. But Mom's cousin Ashley does. And she's got a car.”

Hmm
, I thought.
Hmm
.

 

DEAR JUDGE HENRY,

I will tell you three things about Ashley.

Number one:
She is twenty-four and pretty, with bright blue eyes and a smile from a teeth-whitening commercial. She wears hats and wigs and scarves to hide the marks on her head.

Number two:
The marks on her head came from an accident with a semi. Her parents died, and Ashley's brain crisscrossed. After the accident, a lawyer zoomed to court. The truck company paid Ashley money, but half went to the lawyer. Half! Then Ashley's brother said he'd take care of her and her money in California. Good for him because becoming an actor pays way less than being a lawyer. Bad for Ashley because when he sent her back to Minnesota, he had a fancy sports car and she had suitcases patched with duct tape. The County said Ashley couldn't move to Graham's place on account of his mom having two bedrooms and her own problems. So Ashley moved to a County apartment where people come by to help her pay bills and make her clean the house and stuff.