CHAPTER 15

MY BROTHER’S TEAM GETS IN SERIOUS TROUBLE

CLAUDIA

While I am a very responsible person who can definitely be left alone in the middle of Manhattan for longer than ten minutes without causing a major disaster, my brother is not.

And neither are his idiot friends.

REESE

There were a TON of people waiting to get on the Staten Island Ferry. Which was kind of surprising, because minor-league baseball season was over. And if you’re not going to see a Staten Island Yankees game, I don’t know why you’d go to Staten Island.

CLAUDIA

Maybe because, I don’t know, you live there? Like HALF A MILLION people do?

REESE

Oh. Right. That makes sense. Wow, it must be a pretty big island.

Anyway, Xander told Wyatt to get on the ferry and take a pic of Calvin with the Statue of Liberty in the background.

WYATT

I said, “Why do I have to do it?”

XANDER

I was all, “I ain’t doin’ it.”

REESE

I was like, “I get seasick. For reals.” Which is totally true. I’m a barfer. ^{Ed. Note: Unfortunately true (also happens in back seat of cars) (#HardToLiveWith)}

JAMES

There’s a warrant for my arrest in Staten Island. I can’t set foot there.

REESE

I seriously doubt that’s true. But whatever.

WYATT

So I said, “I don’t want to go to Staten Island alone!”

REESE

And I went, “Somebody’s gotta do it. Why don’t we take a vote?”

So we did.

The results were three votes for Wyatt and one vote for “anybody but Wyatt.”

WYATT

That was totally unfair of you guys.

REESE

Then Wyatt tried to get out of going. He was like, “We can’t split up—we’ve only got one Calvin the Cat!”

JAMES

I said, “Actually, we have two. You want the head or the legs?”

WYATT

I took the legs. ’Cause the head had fallen in some kind of sewer water on the subway tracks, so it smelled really nasty. ^{Ed. Note: SO disgusting—can’t believe nobody got incurable disease}

REESE

We left Wyatt in the ferry line, and we walked out of the terminal thinking, “We are going to crush this!”

But then we realized we didn’t have a list of the scavenger hunt items. Dad had our only copy, and nobody’d remembered to take it before we ran off.

JAMES

For a person with a photographic memory, this was not a problem.

But none of us had a photographic memory.

So it was a problem.

REESE

We spent a couple of minutes going, “What was that thing in Times Square…?” And “Something, something Chinatown…?”

All we could remember for sure were the FAO Schwarz piano and the Coney Island Cyclone, which is this awesome roller coaster way out on the edge of Brooklyn.

Then Xander was like, “Bull pic, yo!”

So we walked over to the Wall Street bull statue and got that for three points.

Then we decided to go to Coney Island.

XANDER

I was all, “Cyclone, yo! Mad points for that bad boy!” So I peeped Coney Island on Google Maps, and we needed to mack the 4 train, then hook up a transfer.

So we wuz gonna hit the subway. But then we peeped the bar showing Man U–Liverpool.

REESE

Xander’s second-favorite soccer team is Manchester United. They were playing Liverpool that day, and there was this big sign on the sidewalk outside this bar that said “WATCH MAN UNITED VS. LIVERPOOL ON THE BIG SCREEN!”

Right when we walked past the bar, we heard all this cheering, like somebody’d just scored.

And Xander was all, “Let’s check the score, yo!”

And I was like, “We don’t have time for this!” But Xander had already gone inside. So James and I followed him.

CLAUDIA

You do know it’s illegal for a 12-year-old to walk into a bar without a parent, right?

REESE

Well, I do NOW. I didn’t know then.

I also didn’t realize the bar was called Hooligans. Which is, like, NOT a great name for a bar that shows English soccer matches. ^{Ed. Note: for more info, google “English soccer hooligans.” It is CRAZY}

Also, it’s a VERY bad idea to walk into a bar like that with James Mantolini.

JAMES

I’m not really into sports. So to me, it just looked like a bunch of loud, sweaty guys yelling at a TV.

And I thought, y’know… join the fun.

REESE

So we get in there, and it was definitely a Liverpool bar, because it was totally packed with their fans. It was, like, this army of giant bald guys in red jerseys.

And Xander had totally disappeared.

XANDER

I was hittin’ the little boys’ room. X-Man needed to tinkle.

REESE

Liverpool had just scored, so the whole bar was doing this victory chant. They had super-thick accents, so it was hard to understand what the chant was. But it was definitely dirty. And it was REALLY mean to Man U’s fans. And their players. And the players’ moms.

And right when the chant finished, there was this moment of quiet where nobody was yelling anything.

And that’s when James screamed, “LIVERPOOL SUCKS!” ^{Ed. Note: really, really, REALLY not smart to do this in bar full of giant Liverpool fans}

JAMES

I was just trying to get in the spirit of it. Everybody else was yelling stuff. So I thought they’d appreciate hearing a wider variety of opinions about their little soccer team.

But they definitely did not appreciate that.

So they tried to kill us.

REESE

Fortunately, we were right by the front door. If we’d been, like, ten feet farther away from it, I think we’d literally be dead right now.

The next couple of minutes are kind of hard to remember. I know we were running, and I was really, really scared. And a bunch of the Liverpool fans were chasing us. I’m not sure how many.

XANDER

Alls I know is, when I came out of the can, half the bar was gone.

Which was beast, ’cause then there were free seats! So I copped one and started to peep the game.

And I ordered some wings. ’Cause X-Man was hungry.

REESE

I have definitely never been that scared in my whole life. I was running flat out, so I couldn’t look back. But we could hear the Liverpool guys screaming at us. They were going, “WE’RE GOING TO KILL YOU!” Only with really thick accents. And a lot of swear words.

And the streets in that part of town are crazy narrow and short, so we kept, like, skurtling ^{Ed. Note: N.A.A.W.} around corners looking for a place to hide.

And we skurtled ^{Ed. Note: S.N.A.A.W. (STILL Not An Actual Word)} around this one corner, and there was a delivery truck sitting there with its back door wide open. And it was totally dark inside it.

And all of a sudden, James jumped into the back of the truck and disappeared.

So I followed him.

JAMES

Now that I think about it, Reese never once thanked me for saving his life by jumping in the back of that truck. He was actually kind of ungrateful.

REESE

You were the whole reason we were running for our lives!

JAMES

But I also SAVED our lives. So it balances out.

REESE

Whatever.

So James and I got all crouched down behind the boxes. And we heard the, like, “RAAAAH!” of all the soccer guys running by.

Then it got quiet, and we were about to stand up and get out of there. But then we heard somebody coming, so we ducked down again. And a second later, there was this crazy-loud shuddery rumble.

Which must have been the roller door of the truck coming down. Because all of a sudden, it was pitch black, and we couldn’t see a thing.

Then a second later, we heard the front door open and close real fast. Then the engine started.

And that’s how we got trapped in the back of a truck headed for New Jersey.