CHAPTER 9
Can’t you girls read?” asks a gruff police officer.
He has gray hair that’s been buzz-cut into a bristle-brush flattop. He also wears mirrored sunglasses.
“Didn’t you see that ‘No Bicycles Allowed’ sign back there?”
“Yes, sir,” I say, resisting the urge to add something a little more smart-alecky, like And didn’t you see what your hair looked like before you paid your barber?
Because the other cop isn’t just any old Seasonal Class One officer working the boardwalk beat with Officer Flattop.
The other cop is Dad.
Officer Flattop gives us a lecture and lets us off with a warning. Dad pretends he doesn’t know Riley or me.
I can’t blame him.
His chances of being offered a full-time job will probably go down the toilet with a very loud WHOOSH! if his superior officers ever find out that his two daughters are complete juvenile delinquents who regularly break the Seaside Heights no-bicycles-on-the-boardwalk law.
And no, that’s not the big mistake I made that summer, because, officially, summer hadn’t even started yet. My whopper was yet to come. Patience, girls, patience.
Anyway, Dad and his partner stroll up the boardwalk. Riley and I push our bikes in the opposite direction.
“Do you think Dad is going to start giving us tickets when we do something wrong at home?” asks Riley.
“No,” I say. “That’s Mom’s job.”
“She doesn’t give us tickets.”
“She doesn’t have to. She just has to give us the Look.”
I cock my left eyebrow halfway up my forehead and scowl at Riley, doing a pretty decent Mom impression.
“Hoo-ah!” I bellow, the way a marine would if there were a monster under somebody’s bed.
Riley laughs, which makes me smile. I think our recent run-in with the law upset her more than it did me.
“I’m so glad Mom is home safe,” says Riley. “Even if she does give us the Look.”
“Me too,” I say, because I am.
We were all worried sick when Mom was over in the Middle East. When your mother is a soldier and goes off to do her job and actually fight in a real war, there’s always a chance that she won’t come home when that job is done. We did a lot of praying when Big Sydney Hart was stationed in Saudi Arabia. We do a lot of praying now that she’s home, too. But these are the happy prayers. The ones where you say, “Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!”
We pass a giant fiberglass ice cream cone and a souvenir shop (with stuff like FBI: FULL-BLOODED ITALIAN printed on the T-shirts), then come to a whole cluster of game booths. There’s a Wheel of Fortune, a Baseball Toss, a Whack-a-Mole, and a Balloon Race. The Balloon Race is the goofiest because you aim your squirt gun at a clown’s tiny mouth. When you nail the target with your water jet, a balloon over the clown’s head inflates. First balloon to pop wins.
As fun as that sounds, the guy running the balloon race sounds totally bored.
“Win a Tweety for your sweetie,” he drones into his microphone. “Take home a Bart to your sweetheart. Nothing says ‘I love you’ like Winnie the Pooh.”
He limply gestures toward the stuffed Tweety Bird, Bart Simpson, and Winnie the Pooh prizes dangling off a pegboard behind him.
I hate to say it, but the guy in the booth is terrible at his job. He’s driving customers away in hordes.
“I’m going home,” says Riley. “It’s my turn to babysit Emma.”
“I’ll be right behind you,” I tell her.
Because I can’t resist.
The busker in me (busker is a fancy word for “street performer”) wants to pop behind the counter and show the Balloon Race guy how you drum up a crowd!