“I can’t find it. It’s gone forever. My sister won’t talk to me. My mother will hate me. I’ve looked everywhere!”
Philip and Emery exchanged glances. Philip’s mother walked around the living room waving her arms. Her husband tried to calm her.
“It will turn up, honey. Don’t worry.”
“It won’t turn up. I’ve looked up and down, over and under, and behind. Everywhere, I told you!”
“Don’t shout. Let’s start all over. We’ll search again. Systematically. Let’s do it together. We’ll start in the kitchen.”
“I looked in the kitchen. I looked a hundred times in the kitchen.”
Philip’s father put his arm around his wife and led her gently out of the living room.
“How you gonna do it?” Emery whispered. “You can’t just walk up to her and say here it is. She’ll know you lost it in the first place.”
“I know. I know.”
“You can blame Leon. Everybody knows he always messes up. It was his fault anyway.”
Philip shook his head. “I can’t. Then I’ll have to tell my mother he cleaned the room and not me.”
Emery watched as Philip went to the sofa and sat as close to the left arm as he could. He peeked to be certain his parents were nowhere in sight, and then he slid the piece of jewelry down the side of the cushion.
He looked at Emery, took a deep breath, and screamed “Ow!” as loud as he could. He waited a moment and then screamed again.
Philip’s father rushed into the room.
“What was that?”
“Something stuck me.” Philip reached down the side of the cushion and pulled up the emerald pin. “Is this what Mom’s looking for?”
Mr. Felton’s eyes bulged. He turned and hurried out of the room. Two seconds later, he pulled his wife along and pointed at Philip, who sat on the sofa, his heart beating wildly, holding up the pin.
Mrs. Felton stopped abruptly. “Arggghh! The pin! Mom’s pin. I don’t believe it. Where did you find it, Philip?”
“Down here.” Philip slid his hand down alongside the cushion.
“Down there? I took the cushions off the sofa and couldn’t find anything.”
Philip shrugged helplessly.
“Maybe it was stuck to the cushion,” Emery offered.
Philip’s mother walked briskly to Philip and took the pin. She pulled him to his feet and hugged him. “You don’t know what a relief this is, Philip.”
“Now, can we eat?” said Mr. Felton. “How about I get a pizza? I’ll call. You two can eat pizza, I imagine?”
“Sure,” said Philip, and Emery nodded his agreement.
Mr. Felton put his arms around his wife’s shoulders. “Go put that someplace safe, honey. Right away.”
“Don’t worry. I will. I’m taking it upstairs right now.”
Mr. Felton watched his wife go up the steps before turning his eyes on Philip and Emery. “You two wouldn’t know how that mess appeared in the garage, would you?”
“Mess?” said Philip, not understanding for a moment.
“Yes, mess. Two ripped open trash bags with the junk inside, all over the floor.”
“Oh. No, I don’t know.”
Philip’s father turned to Emery.
“Beats me,” said Emery. “Maybe cats got in.”
“I don’t think cats did it. The door was closed.”
The two boys stood silent.
“Well, all’s well that ends well, I guess.”
Philip changed the subject. “Can we get pepperoni on the pizza?”
Philip’s father glanced at Emery.
“I like pepperoni, too, Mr. Felton.”
“Good. Then we’ll get half pepperoni and half mushroom. Your mother likes mushrooms. I’ll go pick it up. It’ll be quicker. Tell your mother that’s where I am when she comes downstairs.”
Philip’s father called the order in, and when the boys heard the car drive away, Emery said, “I think your father’s suspicious.”
Philip slumped back onto the sofa, glad the missing jewelry episode had come to an end.
“What do you think Leon meant?” Emery continued.
“Meant about what?”
“He said something about Mr. Sorino getting money for your junk.”
“Did he say that? I wasn’t listening. I only wanted that stupid pin-thing back.”
“It’s a little after six. After we eat let’s find Leon again and ask him what he meant.”
“Okay with me. I don’t care what we do now. And tomorrow morning we’ll go rescue any other good stuff Leon threw away.”
~ * ~
When Philip and Emery approached Leon’s house after their pizza dinner, they saw him coming toward them pulling a red metal wagon.
“Hi, guys. Like my new wagon?”
“Where’d you get it?” asked Emery.
“Mr. Sorino found it and gave it to me. It’s in pretty good shape. He said I could use it to put stuff in that I find and bring it to him. And . . .” Leon dug into his pocket and pulled out a dollar bill. “He gave me this, too.”
“What’d you do?” asked Philip. “Walk his dog?”
“No. I brought him your stuff. I told you. He fixes broken things and sells them to the store in the little mall. He told me to keep my eye out for things.”
“What kind of things?” asked Philip.
“Stuff. Junk. If I see people throw out anything good, and it won’t fit in my wagon, I should tell him.”
“What store in the mall sells broken junk?” asked Emery.
“You know. The store where you give them old stuff you don’t want, and they sell it. And they sell the broken junk, too, after Mr. Sorino fixes it.”
“Pete’s Repeat Shop?” asked Emery.
“Yeah, yeah. That’s it.”
“And you got a dollar for what?” asked Philip.
“For giving Mr. Sorino your stuff.”
“What!”
“He’ll fix the broken stuff and sell it to Pete, and Pete will sell it to other people. You can go there and buy back your stuff if you want, after he fixes it.”
“I wouldn’t have to buy anything back if you didn’t give it away,” Philip argued, his eye on Leon’s dollar bill.
Leon jammed the bill back into this pocket. “Yeah, but it would still be broken if he didn’t fix it. You can take back any good stuff. He already said so, didn’t he?”
Emery interrupted. “And Mr. Sorino gave you a dollar just for bringing him broken junk?”
“Yup.”
Philip’s and Emery’s eyes met.
“You have broken stuff, don’t you Emery?”
“Tons of it. My sisters break things all the time.” Emery had two baby sisters only a year apart.
“Look,” said Philip, “get all your broken junk together, and when we go to Mr. Sorino’s tomorrow to get my stuff back, we’ll give him yours. Maybe he’ll give us money.”
“Us?” said Emery.
“Yeah, us.”
“My broken stuff is ‘us’?”
“You wouldn’t know about it if it wasn’t for my broken stuff.”
Emery’s eyebrows came together. “I guess.”
Leon gave one of his yuk yuk laughs. “Both of you wouldn’t know if it wasn’t for me.”
The boys turned slowly toward Leon, who wilted under their gaze. He shuffled his feet and said, “Uh, well. I guess I’ll go home. Time for dinner. Want me to come with you tomorrow?”
“No,” said Philip and Emery together.
“Well, bye.” Leon continued on, pulling his red wagon along behind him, and the boys watched him depart.
Finally, Philip said, “Emery, we can get lots of broken stuff.”
“How?”
“We can go knock on people’s doors and ask them for their broken stuff. Then we take it to Mr. Sorino and get money. We can do that all summer. We’ll be rich.”
“You think so?”
“Why not? Hey, look.”
Emery turned. Two houses away a man rolled a plastic trash can to the sidewalk. He set it at the curb and went back inside the house.
“Emery, tonight’s the night people put out their trash. We can find stuff in the trash.”
“You mean go through trash cans?”
“They gotta be full of broken stuff.”
“If I had an idea like that, you’d call it stupid. Who wants to look through people’s trash? Your trash had that yellowy, gooey stuff . . .”
“We’ll wear gloves.”
Emery frowned.
Philip tried again. “Well then, how about we only look? We don’t have to touch anything unless we see something good.”
Emery thought it over. “All right. All right. Maybe they’ll put something out separately. You know, all by itself and not in a bag. I guess it can’t hurt to look around.”
“Right. We gotta do it before Leon thinks of it.”
“Just look, remember. Not open up bags and empty them out.”
“Of course not. We’d get in trouble if we did that. Hmmm. If my father knows we’re looking through trash, he’ll figure out we looked through the trash in the garage. Maybe we better not mention anything.”
“Right. So we’ll just walk around the neighborhood and see what people put out? That’s it? No yellow gooey stuff.”
“Right. No any color gooey stuff. That’s easy to do, isn’t it?”
Emery nodded slowly. “I guess we can do that.”
Philip started off. “First, let’s go to your house and find all of your broken stuff. When we finish that, we can walk around the neighborhood.”
Emery followed along.