The Knick Knack Nightmare Read online

  Water dripped from a broken shower head - each drop a deafening drum beat in the darkness. I lifted my head and caught a few drops in my mouth. It wasn’t enough to drink, and the rust made it worse. But at least I could wet my lips and ease the pain.

  While Mom slept, we told Ms. Pewter about Dad’s magic coin, our adventure, Levi the shapeshifter, and the bronze knight.

  Ms. Pewter took it much better than Mom. She had to believe us. She couldn’t refuse - not with three metal dragons outside waiting to roast us alive. “And this bronze knight? Did the coin thing bring him to life, too?”

  “I’m not sure how it works. I ask or think of something I need, the coin does the rest. Or it’s supposed to. The last one didn’t work well because it was old. That’s what Levi said.”

  “Maybe the knight is Levi Bram in disguise. Or the coin only works if you’re one of those cloud city people. Or you’re plain wrong about everything.”

  “I think those people…” An idea sprung up like whac-a-mole. “Arvin, were those people? I mean, were they human? They looked it, but they could change at any moment.”

  “Sure, they were. Levi got the coin from his uncle Logan, and his mother Leora gave it to us. Only humans have mothers and uncles and call each other by names. Right?”

  I shrugged.

  Ms. Pewter yawned and looked away. Mom was sound asleep. “Debbie has the right idea. We should rest an hour or two or ten.”

  Arvin and I agreed.

  “There’s one more thing.” Ms. Pewter clasped her hands and cracked her knuckles in Arvin’s direction. “How did you know there was hole in the fence?”

  Ginger dragon alert!

  Arvin’s eyes widened, and he stuttered. “Well, you, you see. There’s- There’s-” He gulped and looked at the floor.

  Ms. Pewter shook her head. “We’ll talk about this later. And it had better be a good story.” She walked to the back and laid next to Mom. She was snoring before the next drop of water hit the shower floor. Arvin and I stayed by the door.

  I laid on my back staring at the painted ceiling. The amber glow of the emergency light transformed the clouds into a permanent dawn for Arvin and I to sleep under.

  I couldn’t sleep. “How did you know about the fence? And why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Don’t be mad. I promised to keep it secret.”

  “Promised who what?”

  Arvin raised his head off the floor and glanced at his mom. Her snores rumbled over drips from the shower head. “Kaila and a dozen other Nelson juniors and seniors come here to,” he scraped his bottom teeth across his top lip, “make-out.”

  “No way!”

  “Shhhhhhh.” Arvin put his finger to his lips.

  “You’re lying.”

  Arvin crossed his chest with his finger. “Cross my heart. Honest-to-God.”

  “Come on, Arvin. That’s not the kind of secret you should keep from me.”

  “Kaila wanted to keep it between us. Besides, you blurt all the time. Face it. You’re a blurter.”

  “Do not.”

  Arvin cocked his head to the side.

  “Well, sometimes. Not much.”

  Arvin arched his left eyebrow. “Not much?”

  “So, more than a little.”

  Arvin cleared his throat.

  “Okay. A lot. But geez, Arvin. What else aren’t you telling me? There’s more, isn’t there?”

  “I can’t say. She wanted to tell you herself.”

  “Who wanted to tell me what? Whose secret is it?”

  “Perry, I promised I’d let her tell you.”

  “Arvin! Spit. It. Out.”

  He rolled on his back and looked at the amber lit clouds. “Emilia.”

  I prodded Arvin for more, but he refused to answer. He fell asleep with his secret and I with my anger.

  I was awake when the first rays of the dawn shined through a small gap around the door. My head pounded, and I was beyond thirsty. Arvin slept a yard away, and Mom and Ms. Pewter snored in the back. I let them sleep while I listened to wind whistle through the vents. Several more hours passed. Mom and Ms. Pewter leaned against the lockers and pulled their knees close, moaning as they rolled their necks and rubbed their shoulders.

  “Are you feeling better,” I asked Mom.

  Mom ran her hands through her hair, tucking the frizzy strands behind her ears. She yawned. “I want coffee. My feet hurt. Head, too. And I want coffee. Coffee would be nice. Did I say I wanted coffee?”

  “Yeah. You mentioned that.” I smiled. Even in the musty, damp room, I couldn’t help it.

  Ms. Pewter patted Mom’s knee. “I could use a cup, myself.”

  Arvin squirmed. “There’s something on your—,” and took a quick breath, waking up from his dream.

  “Since when do you talk in your sleep?” I asked.

  “Was I talking? What did I say?”

  “Nothing interesting. No secrets. Just mumbling.”

  “Perry,—”

  “I don’t want to know. What I want is to get out of here. We can’t stay forever, even with three knick-knack dragons outside.”

  “Are they out there?”

  “I haven’t heard anything for hours, and it’s got to be past noon.”

  Mom limped to the door. “Patty, help me with these lockers.”

  Mom and Ms. Pewter pushed against the fallen lockers from the dressing room side as I pulled from the shower side. One inch - two - three - six - a foot. The heavy lockers slid across the tile floor, allowing the steel door to swing inward.

  “I see the drained pool. Some leaves. Don’t see those little dragons anywhere.” Mom hobbled outside. “I going to buy myself some memory foam slippers. Probably those expensive ones we saw at Garden Glen.” She deserved them.

  Ms. Pewter stepped into the sunlight, followed by me and Arvin. “What the hell?”

  “Language, Patty!” Mom pointed at Arvin and I.

  Ms. Pewter gave Mom the most powerful evil eye I’d ever seen. “Debbie, we’re way past that.”

  “Holy buckets!” Arvin spun around.

  The oaks, the willows, the maples, the white pines, and hemlocks. Every plant, flower, tree and bush were bare to their stems and branches. Their dry, brown needles and leaves blew across the poolside and crumbled against the chain-link fence. Nothing growing in the ground was green. It was as if nature itself had gotten cancer. Holy buckets, indeed!

  Arvin looked around. “How could the trees loose their leaves so fast? They just started changing colors last week.”

  “Did the knight and the coin do all this?” Mom had come around - the long way around - to the truth. But she was here. That’s what mattered.

  I was in awe at the death surrounding me. I couldn’t believe it. “Sorry, Mom. I don’t have any answers. I don’t understand what’s happening.” Nothing made sense anymore. Not the knight, the coin, or the world. Mom, Ms. Pewter, Arvin, Emilia and Kaila, Tim and Martin, Sean, and even myself. What happened? I felt lost. And I didn’t like that feeling.

  Mom nudged my shoulder with hers. “It’s okay, Sweetie. We’ll figure it out like we always do. We’re a team.”

  “Our house is a couple more blocks.” Ms. Pewter pulled open the fence.

  Arvin tugged on my hand. “Come on. It’s time to go.”

  We sprinted past 9th street and into Arvin’s back yard. Ms. Pewter picked up a terracotta pot and grabbed a spare key to the kitchen door. One minute I was dying of thirst and scanning the treetops for dragons, and the next I was chugging a gallon of water in the Pewters’ kitchen. But I couldn’t shake off the dread.

  Where are those dragons?

  FIVE

  I had forgotten how good plain water tasted. At home, Mom had to add watermelon or cucumbers for me to drink four glasses a day. Never mind eight. But now, all I wanted was to drink every drop. I gulped until the flimsy bottle imploded.

  Arvin kicked my foot. “Slow down, don’t drown.”

  I continued to drink,
ignoring Arvin tugging on my shirt.

  Arvin cracked his knuckles like his mother. “Hey, Fish Face. Hand it over. You see my fist at your crotch, right?”

  “Here. Take it.” I passed the warped bottle to Arvin. “You see my knee at your crotch, right?”

  “Stop saying that.” Mom wiped a drop of water from the corner of her mouth. “I hate that word.”

  “What word?” I asked.

  “Crotch.”

  Arvin handed the bottle over to his mom. “Sorry, Ms. Dobbs. I didn’t hear you. What was that word?”

  “Crotch.”

  “Crotch?”

  “Yes. Crotch!”

  “Crot-?”

  Ms. Pewter cupped her hand over Arvin’s mouth. “That’s enough of that. Learn when to stop. Now, take Perry upstairs. There’s a couple old pairs of running shoes in my closet. See if any fit, and bring a pair for Debbie, too.”

  “I think—”

  “Move it, young man. I don’t want any more of your guff,” the Ginger Dragon snapped.

  Its fire was too hot for me. “Come on, Arvin.”

  The Pewter’s bare shelves and curio cabinets made the house feel like a stranger’s, like some catastrophe had scared them away, or someone had stolen everything. But nothing was taken. It all ran away. Where Ms. Pewter’s giant gnomes and snowmen once stood, shallow indentations remained - voids in the carpet where giant knick-knacks watched Arvin open his birthday presents days before and hosted movie nights years before that.

  “Arvin, what are those big things?” I pointed to the living room walls.

  “It’s the wallpaper.”

  “Since when do you have wallpaper?”

  “Since forever.”

  The ugliest flower wallpaper in the history of wallpaper surrounded us. Each blossom was the size of my head, each a different color and shape, each overlapping the blossoms surrounding it. I had been in Arvin’s house a hundred times but never noticed them.

  “Exploding flowers and twisted petals? Something you picked out?”

  “Yeah. Mom had only one display cabinet back then. We could still see the walls. I guess she went a little nuts when Dad died. I don’t think she’s missed a single sale on cabinets and knick-knacks since we moved in.”

  “My mom calls that kind of thing ‘retail therapy’.”

  “Mine calls it Sunday.”

  Arvin sat on the edge of his bed and kicked off his charred shoes. His bedroom was a cleaner version of mine, except everything was shorter and smaller. His single bed stood on legs an inch or two off the floor. His dresser was a little taller than my waist. A small lamp stood on one side, and school books sat on the other. Family pictures hung in tight rows on two walls, and three posters of famous old men and their inspirational quotes hung on the others. One man had a dark goatee and wore a ridiculous, frilly lace collar. Under the picture read, Hope is a good breakfast, but it’s a bad supper. No wonder I was starving.

  “Where were you two days ago?” I asked the man in the picture.

  “Dead.” Arvin wiped his eyes. “For about four hundred years.”

  “Lucky him. But it doesn’t sound very inspirational.”

  “I said the same thing to Mom when she bought it. She said it’s not supposed to make me feel better.”

  “What’s it supposed to do?”

  “To remind me to stop wishing for things and do them for myself.” Arvin hopped off his bed and took out a pair of clean, white socks from his drawer.

  “Sounds like something Mom would say. Our moms should dump their boyfriends and marry each other.” I chuckled.

  Arvin crossed his arms. “My mom has a boyfriend. Yours has a fiancé.”

  “Don’t remind me.” I pointed to a picture on the wall. It was of a chubby, bald man with reddish eyebrows holding a freckled-face toddler. They sat in front of a green tent, cooking marshmallows on sticks over a roaring camp fire. Arvin looked happier than I had ever seen him. “Isn’t he your Dad?”

  “That’s him. Yellowstone camping trip when I was three.”

  “I don’t remember this one.”

  “Mom found the picture in the attic last week.”

  I nodded. “History and mystery lurk in the dark.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Just something Dad used to say.”

  I wondered, if I had started the fire that killed my dad, would I keep a daily reminder hanging on my wall? It took weeks for my dad to die. I wasn’t ready though I knew it was coming. For Arvin, one day his dad was there, and the next his ashes filled a little chrome vase on the mantel. I didn’t understand how anyone could come back from that. I wanted to ask why, but I told myself, Shut up, Perry. Don’t blurt. We have enough problems with without your big mouth adding to them.

  “You were so cute. What happened?”

  “I got a girlfriend. You didn’t. That’s what happened.”

  Ouch. A deadly strike. “Your mom was right. You don’t know when to stop.”

  Arvin led me across the hall to his mom’s tidy room and fished two pairs of old running shoes out of her closet and two pairs of white ankle socks out of her dresser.

  “You can wear these.” Arvin handed me a pair of maroon running shoes with gold laces. “And your mom can wear these.” He held up a pair of gold running shoes with maroon laces.

  “I see a theme.”

  “Her university colors. Mine if I’m lucky.”

  I wedged my feet into Ms. Pewter’s running shoes. They squeezed my heel and crushed my arches. My big toes poked out of small tears, and my pinkie toes begged for mercy as they were crushed into Perry-ade.

  “Arvin, I can’t walk in these. They’re way too tight.”

  “Mom’s shoes or your ratty, old slippers. Pick one.”

  I tied the gold laces into a bow. “I’m going to die.”

  Arvin punched my arm. “There you go! No pain, no gain, ‘ey?”

  “You’ve stared at those posters too much. You sound like you actually believe them.”

  In the kitchen, Mom and Ms. Pewter were talking. Their high voices echoed in the empty house. Arvin and I sat on the living room couch and listened to the women’s choir in the kitchen.

  “Do you think it’s where they’d be?” Ms. Pewter asked Mom.

  “The gym’s been an emergency shelter for years. I’m sure they’d go there before anywhere else.”

  I whispered to Arvin, “They’re talking about Nelson.”

  “They want us to go all the way over there? Nelson’s four miles in the other direction.”

  The kitchen door swung open. Ms. Pewter’s head appeared in the doorway. “Five miles actually. We ran more than a mile, so you’d better be ready to hustle out of here.”

  “So, what’s the plan?” Arvin asked.

  “Debbie?”

  “Rest here for a while, then we’ll make a run for it. We’ll go back the way we came and head north on 7th street five blocks to Carter Boulevard. Then head west to Nelson High.”

  Arvin shook his head. “I don’t want to go back. We should go the other way.”

  The ginger dragon snarled. “Not now, Arvin.”

  “How long can we stay here?” I asked.

  Mom sat on the couch and slipped Ms. Pewter’s shoes onto her feet. “Until we’re sure it’s safe to leave. Watch out the window. If we don’t see any more knick-knacks go by, we’ll grab enough food and water for a couple days and head out.”

  “I’ll get my backpack.” Arvin stomped up the stairs.

  “And put on something warm. We’ll need more than shoes if we’re going all the way to Nelson.” Ms. Pewter yelled up the stairs. “It’s bad enough Perry didn’t put on decent clothes. We don’t need you both getting sick.”

  I scowled at Ms. Pewter, “I’m not sick,” and understood where Arvin got his sharp tongue.

  Five minutes later, Arvin walked into the kitchen wearing blue jeans, a white sweater with blue triangles across the chest, and his new leather jacket. He car
ried a backpack, one pair of Ms. Pewter’s jeans, and two heavy sweaters. He gave one sweater and the jeans to Mom and the other sweater to me. Mom thanked him and took a flashlight into the bathroom to change. She walked out a blonde version of Ms. Pewter. Little gold anchors were stitched into her royal blue sweater, and she fit into the shoes and jeans like they were custom made.

  I looked at my reflection in a glass display case. Ms. Pewter’s maroon shoes on my feet, my brown plaid pajama bottoms, and her awful sweater on top - pink and orange polka dots over purple swirls, World’s No. 1 Mom printed on the front.

  Why me? I whispered to Arvin, “Doesn’t she have anything else?”

  “Mom has a baby blue one with two calico kittens frolicking on the front and little pink bows glued one the shoulders.”

  I grinned at Ms. Pewter. “Thank you for the sweater.”

  “You’re very welcome.”

  We alternated between watching for knick-knacks, sleeping, and eating. While Arvin and I napped, Ms. Pewter and Mom took the first watch. A few hours later, Arvin and I took the second. We gorged on everything. I ate two green apples, half a can of pork and beans, and a large bowl of Crunchy Coco Balls with warm milk. Arvin ate two long sticks of spicy beef jerky and drank several cans of green melon soda.

  Twilight rose as the sun sank under the horizon. Warm amber light faded into shades of orange and peach, and everything in the world became cold and dark once again. Twice in the last few days, I watched the sun rise and set. Why did it take running away to see what had always been there? Hadn’t I been paying attention? Maybe there were other, bigger things to see and do right here in Shelbyville. But then again, no matter how nice dawn and dusk were, nothing beats a magic coin.

  Mom came down the stairs, followed by Ms. Pewter. “Sweetie?”

  “Yeah, Mom?”

  “Anything out there?”

  “A porcelain clown on a little tricycle rode past. But that was more than an hour ago.”

  “No’fing to weeport in ‘da alwee.” Arvin came out of the kitchen, two sticks of beef jerky stuffed his mouth. He shined a flashlight on his face and swallowed the jerky with a loud gulp. “What?”