CHAPTER 2

GUESS AGAIN

Friday morning I woke up happy. Not because everyone was nice to me again, but because we didn’t have school. I guess the teachers were having meetings about stuff they didn’t want the students to know.

I don’t care what they talk about as long as it means I get to stay home. I wanted to go hang out with my friends, but as usual my mom had other plans for me.

I tried to tell my mom how important friendship is to kids, but she wasn’t buying it. She gave me a list of things that she thought would help me feel better about the lies I recently told.

The one task on the list I didn’t mind doing was the first item. Our fat dog, Puck, and my uncaged, pooping bird, Fred, were the only living things in my house that were nice to me. Puck spent more time in my room, and Fred hadn’t pooped on anything of mine in days. Neither of them seemed the least bit upset.

The last item on my list of chores was to take a few books over to Aunt Betty’s house. Aunt Betty is really rich, but for some reason she’s always borrowing books from my mom instead of buying them herself. My sister says it’s because she spends all her money on important things—like fake hair and nails. I usually don’t mind if my aunt borrows stuff because both she and my mom have weird taste in books, but this time my mom was lending her one I cared about.

I didn’t necessarily care about clean sheets or tickling, but I did have some interest in the Hunger Games books. After I saw the first movie, everyone kept insisting there were tons of other cool things in the book that had been left out of the film. So last week without being forced, I read book one.

Now I had started book two, but my mom was letting Aunt Betty read the final book in the series. My aunt was kind of a slow reader, and I knew that when I needed it she probably wouldn’t be done. Which meant I would have to wait, and waiting was not something I usually enjoyed. To me waiting was worse than having to eat something really disgusting.

I put the books in an old grocery bag and left my house. I wanted to walk with better company than just myself, so I ran across the street to Trevor’s to see if he was home. Nobody at my school wanted anything to do with me, but my five friends—Teddy, Aaron, Rourk, Jack, and Trevor—hadn’t completely turned their backs on me.

Trevor is my best friend. His glasses are always crooked and he’s too glass-half-full sometimes, but he’s my favorite person to hang out with. He’s an only child and way into books and movies. He’s dorky, but he doesn’t do some of the dumb things my other friends do.

When I got to his house, Trevor was out front helping his mom wash her car. He wasn’t allowed to come with me to my aunt’s house until he was finished, so I decided to help.

It wasn’t that bad a job until Trevor’s mom told me that the rags we were using were actually cut-up pairs of old underwear Trevor’s dad used to wear.

I didn’t want anything to do with cleaning things with anyone’s skivvies, so I operated the hose for a while. After the third time of accidentally squirting Trevor’s mom, she excused us so we could go to my aunt’s house.

Thankfully, Trevor changed his car-washing clothes. We then cut through the alleys and over into the far neighborhood back by the empty church and the Mexican restaurant with the plastic burro on the roof. Trevor was taking Spanish in school and had recently become interested in Spanish culture.

I said yes just so he’d stop talking. We crossed the busy road and worked our way through the unknown alleys by the dog park. While walking through the park, I thought I saw something following us. Every time I turned around, however, nobody was there.

It seemed like I was still a bit unsettled from having used someone’s old underwear. On the other side of the dog park, there was a golf course, and next to the golf course was the gated community where my aunt lived.

Who knows why some neighborhoods are gated and some aren’t. If I had to guess I’d say that someone somewhere felt like they lived too close to Jack and Rourk to not have some sort of protection around their houses. My aunt had given me the code for the gate, so I punched it into the panel and we entered the neighborhood.

I liked Posh Peaks. I don’t know why it was called this, seeing how there were no peaks. I wasn’t sure what posh meant, but as usual Trevor knew.

The houses in Posh Peaks were big and old. They had tons of trees and fancy little waterfalls and streams in their front yards. Trevor and I talked about my situation as we walked. I asked him if everyone at school was still angry with me, and he said,

I asked him if Janae had said anything about me, and he said,

I asked him if it was something good, and he said,

I felt horrible about Janae. I had lied to her about the dance and had tricked her into going with me. Then to make things even stickier, she had kissed me on the cheek right before I confessed to all my lies. I felt pretty certain she would never talk to me again.

Trevor was almost as confusing as girls. My aunt’s house was located at the far end of the Posh Peaks neighborhood. It was big and fat and looked like it had eaten a couple of other houses to get so huge. We walked up a stone path to a large front door. The doorbell had a little golden angel on it.

I think Beardy would love the doorbell. I pressed the button, and it chimed loudly. Before the ringing stopped, my aunt answered the door in workout clothes and holding a large cup. It was really the only way I had ever seen her look. It seemed like she was always working out and drinking water.

I gave her the books, and she invited us in for a glass of water. As we walked into the house I thought I saw something behind one of the bushes in my aunt’s front yard.

After we had two huge glasses of water, we left my aunt’s house and began the walk home. I kept looking around to see if maybe Jack or Teddy had followed us, but there was no sign of anyone.

So Teddy was out, but something was following us. I felt uneasy. It reminded me of my Thumb Buddies. Thumb Buddies were small, decorated thumbtacks that used to be sold to kids. They stopped selling new ones years ago due to the fact that too many kids got poked and stabbed by them. You could still find them at Thumb Buddies conventions or online, but no stores sell them. My friends don’t know, but I still collect them. Three days ago I found one of the rarest Thumb Buddies on eBay.

It was quite a find. My Thumb Buddies didn’t make me feel uneasy, but the Thumb Buddies board game did. I didn’t like how bad I felt whenever I picked a bad Pin Pal card.

I hated to be sent to the carpet. I also hated the feeling of someone following me and Trevor.