It was a good question—where were the Wheelers?
The bidders sitting in the warehouse groaned when the black candle snuffed out, and the auctioneer raised his hand.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the candle has extinguished,” he said. “The final bid belongs to the gentleman in the corner there. Congratulations, sir. Lot twelve is yours. This concludes the auction. Good night, everyone.”
The people rose from their seats, some glaring at the Ragman as he did a victory dance. Once he’d finished his jig, he strutted up to speak with the auctioneer.
“What a triumph!” the Ragman said, handing the auctioneer a slip of paper. “You may deliver my goods to this address.”
“Yes, sir.” The auctioneer bowed. “There are many items to deliver. It is a very large lot. I don’t suppose the deceased ever gave anything away.”
“Him? Ha! No. Well, you know the saying. You can’t take it with you. When the game’s over, all the pieces go back inside the box. Glad to see the box belongs to me now!”
I could’ve sworn I heard the Life Miser whimper.
Soon after that, everyone left. The Life Miser and I watched a few workmen fold away the table and chairs, then store the podium in the back room. The last man switched off the lights and locked the warehouse door. Finally, the Life Miser spoke in the darkness.
“That shouldn’t have happened! I demand you show me my Wheelers! Why didn’t they stop this atrocity?”
Honestly, I was pretty curious to know the answer to that question, too. The Christmas Chronicler was in terrible shape, though. Probably we’d be pressing our luck, trying to see anything more. Maybe we should go home—while we still could.
“What are you waiting for!” the Life Miser said. “Show me my Wheelers!”
One more time using the Christmas Chronicler would probably be okay. I grasped the golden pencil and tried to ignore the three pages that came loose when I opened the book’s cover. At least the page we needed was still intact. Then, I wrote the only thing I could think of.
December 24th. Christmas Eve with the Wheelers.
The Christmas Chronicler transported us to a broad, snowy field with a deep concrete culvert running through the middle of it. A short distance from where we stood, a rusty metal bridge spanned the culvert, and under the bridge burned a campfire.
The Life Miser squinted at the small group of kids huddled around the flames.
“Are those my Finders?” he asked. “What are they doing out here?”
Only one way to find out.
The Life Miser and I approached the bridge. By the light of the fire, we could finally recognize the faces there. Blue Sky. Ollie. Dragon. All sitting pressed together, teeth chattering. Primo and Nosebleed sat opposite them. I didn’t see Prodigal or Spider anywhere.
The Life Miser shook his head.
“This isn’t right,” he said. “They shouldn’t be out here. Why aren’t they inside the warehouse?”
“Maybe the warehouse was sold too,” I said, “along with the other items. Maybe they got evicted. But it’s not like you care, right?”
The Life Miser’s eyebrows furrowed as he stared at his Wheelers. Ollie leaned closer to the fire so she could poke at the burning wood with a stick until Dragon shoved her shoulder.
“Stop messing with the fire,” Dragon said. “You’re gonna put it out.”
“It’s fine,” Ollie said.
“No, it’s not. We’re running out of wood.”
“So get some more.”
“There isn’t any. Look around you. We’re burning the last of it now.”
There was a long silence as the Wheelers gazed into the fire. Finally, Nosebleed asked the question they all seemed to be thinking.
“How are we gonna keep warm tonight?”
“We’ll manage,” Blue Sky said.
“Yeah, but how?”
Their clothes weren’t enough to keep them warm—that was for sure. None of them wore any coats or scarves. The most they had were sweaters and sweatshirts. Threadbare, too. Ollie’s black sweater had holes everywhere, and Nosebleed’s jeans were ripped at the knees. Primo didn’t even have a sweatshirt—just a t-shirt.
Blue Sky regarded them for a moment before she stood and walked to the base of the bridge where her longboard was stored with the other Wheelers’ bikes and skateboards. Seemed like a weird time to go skateboarding, but she brought her board over to the campfire.
“We’ll survive,” she said, “as long as we have each other.”
Then, she threw her skateboard into the flames.
The other Wheelers gasped. And oddly enough, so did the Life Miser.
“Blue!” Nosebleed cried. “What are you doing!”
“What I have to,” she said. “We need wood, right? So, I found some more wood. You guys are more important to me than a stupid skateboard.”
Ollie sniffled back her tears while Blue Sky wrapped her up in a hug to comfort her. Dragon, biting her lip, nodded at them, and the other Wheelers exchanged glances.
“We’ll burn mine next,” Primo said.
The flames changed colors as Blue Sky’s longboard burned—green, blue, red. Soon, the Wheelers stopped shivering, thanks to the warmer fire. Nosebleed gave Primo a nudge, then mumbled something.
“What is it?” Ollie asked.
“Top secret surprise,” Nosebleed said.
He and Primo left the fire and trudged a short distance away, where they started pushing the snow into heaps, patting it and moving it into mounds.
“What are those two doing?” Blue Sky asked.
Dragon rolled her eyes. “Who cares?”
Eventually, the mounds and heaps of snow began to form round shapes, but it wasn’t until Primo and Nosebleed heaved the second round shape up onto the first, and then a smaller third round shape onto the second that we understood.
“You’re making a snowman?” Dragon asked. “Why?”
The two boys didn’t answer—just grinned at her. Nosebleed found a couple of crooked twigs, which he used as arms, and Primo fished in his pockets for a couple of bottle caps, which he used for eyes. They placed old skateboard wheels for buttons, then pebbles for the snowman’s mouth. They didn’t have any carrot for a nose, but Nosebleed had a candy bar that came in an orange wrapper, so they used the candy bar instead.
“Look,” Nosebleed said, pointing. “Frosty the Snowman!”
Seemed pretty good to me, but Blue Sky frowned.
“You shouldn’t have made that,” she said. “You know the rules. We don’t talk about Christmas. Not since Spider…you shouldn’t have done it. You know how much Prodigal hates Christmas.”
“You’ll make Prodigal mad,” Ollie said, “when he comes back.”
“If he comes back,” Dragon said under her breath.
“Yeah, yeah. We know.” Nosebleed kicked at an icicle. “It’s only a snowman. Doesn’t have to be a Christmas one. We’re just trying to cheer everyone up.”
“I guess it’s kind of cheery,” Ollie said.
Nosebleed rubbed his chapped, red hands together to warm them. “Wait, I know what’s even better! Where’d you put the suitcase?”
“By the skateboards,” Blue Sky said.
He jogged over to the bridge and hauled out a brown suitcase, which he opened in order to search through its contents. When he returned, he carried some pretty weird items in his arms. First, a white saucer broken in two halves. He stuck each half on the opposite sides of the snowman’s head.
“Ears. Nice,” Primo said.
“Not done yet,” Nosebleed said. “Watch.”
The second item he’d brought was a red, plastic bag. He tore it into strips, then stuck it on the snowman’s head.
“Red hair?” Dragon asked. “Is there a point to this?”
Nosebleed winked at her. “Wait for it.”
The third and last item was a pair of thin wire glasses that he shoved onto the snowman’s face. Something about the glasses seemed familiar. The whole snowman, actually.
Nosebleed turned to the others. “G-guess who I am!”
A Life Miser snowman?
Ollie giggled, and Primo wagged his head, chuckling. Even Dragon smiled. I glanced over at the Life Miser, but his expression was blank. Still, I could imagine what he must’ve been thinking. Probably he wanted to go home and prepare a bowl of eggnog soup just so he could pour it down the drain while he made the Wheelers watch.
I sighed.
“Hey,” Ollie said, “Prodigal’s back!”
She pointed up the culvert where a dark figure skulked closer to the bridge. Over his shoulder, he hauled a full, black trash bag. The other Wheelers moved to help him as he approached the campfire.
“You okay?” Blue Sky asked. “You look cold.”
Prodigal grunted as he sat down. He had a scar now, running up his jawline and across his cheek. He reached his hands closer to the flames for warmth.
“Stole some good stuff,” he said. “Check it out.”
They opened the black bag and explored the items inside. Most of it was food—two cans of beans and a can of corn. A box of crackers, three bags of peanuts, a jar of jam. One loaf of bread. A bottle of ketchup.
“No candy bars?” Nosebleed asked.
Not all of it was food, though. At the bottom of the bag, there was also a coil of rope, a car air freshener, a dented saucepan, and a coffee mug. The other Wheelers collected the goods and carried them to the base of the bridge so they could store them. Prodigal remained by the fire warming his hands, and Blue Sky stayed with him.
Then Prodigal noticed that Blue Sky was watching him.
“What?” he asked.
She focused her gaze on the tiny sparks that floated in the air whenever the burning wood popped and hissed. Finally, she spoke.
“You’ve changed.”
Prodigal tilted his head. “You don’t…you’re not upset about the stuff I brought back, are you? We’ve stolen stuff before. Lots of times.”
“Yeah, but it bothered you then.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s not just the stealing. It’s the way you look at people. The way you treat them. The way you talk. It’s…it’s everything.”
Prodigal narrowed his eyes. “I’ve gotten smarter, that’s all. Life’s tough. And no one’s going to give you any chance or any help or even any sympathy. If you need something, you have to take it. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m taking it.”
She softened her voice. “If Spider were alive….”
“Don’t talk to me about my brother.”
Prodigal had winced at Spider’s name, and now he snapped the twig he held in his hands. Blue Sky bundled her sweater closer to her, shivering. She changed the subject.
“What do you want to do about…you know. What do you want to do with it?”
She glanced at the brown suitcase Nosebleed had dug through earlier.
“Sell it,” Prodigal said.
“Sell it? To who?”
“The Trash Collector.”
“Are you sure? He creeps me out. Maybe the Krum Brothers—”
“I already asked them. They laughed in my face. But the Trash Collector said he’d make a deal.”
“How much?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care. If he changes his mind, throw it in the garbage.”
“Are you serious?”
He smirked, so Blue Sky stood and picked up the brown suitcase.
“We need the money,” she continued, “so I’ll do it. But it’s wrong. Worse than stealing, even. And you know it.”
“When you need something,” he said, “you take it.”
Blue Sky started to walk away, but then she turned around. A cold wind whistled down the cement culvert and across the snow. The flames in the campfire wavered, darkening the shadows that moved across Prodigal’s face.
“You’ve become the Life Miser,” she said.
Prodigal didn’t respond. Just chewed on his lower lip and glared at the fire until Blue Sky had left.
“No, try lower,” Nosebleed said. “Maybe find a bigger pebble.”
He and Primo were standing near the snowman they’d built earlier, fiddling with the face’s smile. Prodigal overheard them and stood.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Our snowman. What do you think?”
Prodigal leaned in close and peered into its face while Primo and Nosebleed waited. The whole time Prodigal stared at it, his expression began twisting into a grimace, his nostrils flaring. Nosebleed and Primo glanced at each other.
“It’s not what you think,” Nosebleed said in a rush. “It’s not a Christmas snowman. I mean, just because tonight’s Christmas eve—hey!”
With one wild swing of his fist, Prodigal knocked the snowman’s head off and sent it flying down the culvert. But he didn’t stop there. Next, he knocked over the middle piece with a shove, and then he kicked at the bottom portion, smashing it into a heap.
“You didn’t have to do that!” Nosebleed cried.
“Are you a Wheeler or not?” Prodigal asked, his voice hard. “Because Wheelers follow the rules. My rules!”
“I hate your stupid rules! They make no sense! Don’t talk about Christmas. Don’t talk about Spider. Don’t talk about the Life Miser. What is the point of all this? Just camping out here, night after night. The least we could do is find a new Collector.”
“You want a new Collector? Go suck up to the Maestro, then. See if he wants another Choir Boy. Because you’re not wanted here. Got it?”
Nosebleed’s eyes widened. “You’re kicking me out of the Wheelers?”
Dragon and Ollie both looked up, their mouths hanging open. Nosebleed drew in a breath, then made a fist.
“Fine!” he said. “Maybe the Maestro will want another Choir Boy. It’d be better than staying here with you. Primo, want to come?”
Primo hung his head, his hair in his eyes and his face down. For a minute, I thought he’d say no. But then he gave a single nod. Prodigal turned his back, and he didn’t even look at them. Not when they hugged Dragon and Ollie good-bye. Not when they marched down the culvert and past the bridge, out of sight.
“You can’t let them leave!” Ollie cried. “They’re Wheelers! They’re the only family I have!”
Prodigal looked at Ollie for a moment, and then he waved his hand in the air.
“Oh, go join the Poshes. I’m sure they’ll love your cheap nail polish.”
Ouch.
Ollie backed away, slowly at first, but then faster, until she was running down the culvert. Her sobs bounced along the concrete sides, even with the snow muffling the sounds, until she was gone.
The Life Miser gulped. “Prodigal wouldn’t…they’re simply fooling around. They must be!”
Didn’t look like fooling around to me.
Dragon faced Prodigal, her hands on her hips. “You shouldn’t have said that to Ollie. She won’t be back. You know her past, her history. She never comes back.”
“Don’t you get it?” Prodigal yelled. “There’s no reason to come back! There’s no point! To any of it! The Wheelers are nothing now! Nothing!”
He gave the smashed snowman one last kick. Then he brought his foot down on the thin wire glasses, which had landed nearby. And when Dragon stomped away, he didn’t seem to realize he was the only one left. He just kept crushing the glasses with his heel, crunching them into the ground.
The Wheelers had disbanded.