When Livvy didn’t show up to bug him first thing the next morning, Socko walked over and knocked on her door. He wasn’t going to make a habit of it or anything, but he was worried about what the owners of the three black cars had had to say.
She slid out the door, closing it behind her. The dirty pink shorts she wore were the ones she’d had on yesterday.
“How’d the meeting go?” He gave her a thumbs-up and raised his eyebrows.
She answered with an emphatic thumbs-down, her eyes shiny.
Socko looked away, embarrassed. He spotted a flattened cardboard carton leaning against the wall of the garage—which reminded him of something. “Are you throwing that box away?”
“I guess.”
“Can I have it?”
“Sure … but why?”
“I’ll show you. Follow me.”
He dragged the piece of cardboard as they walked, having second and third thoughts about what was probably a stupid idea. “So what went down at dinner?”
“We ate.” Livvy shoved her hands into the pockets of her shorts. “After dessert Mother sent me upstairs. I went, but only partway. I sat in that blind spot where the staircase turns and listened to what they were saying. Oh, Socko! The partners are getting ready to pull out!”
The General had been right. “That’s tough,” Socko said.
“Tough?” She gave him a wide-eyed stare. “It’s a disaster!”
It was bad, sure, but disaster? “It’ll be okay. Your parents’ll find other jobs.”
“They don’t have jobs! They have a company. No more company, and they’ll have to lay off all their employees.”
“What employees?”
“My dad’s finishing out a couple of contracts on other projects. He has his people there, but that work will dry up soon, and then they’ll all be out of a job. I don’t know what we’ll do. My dad owes so much money.”
Socko listened to the scratch of the cardboard as he dragged it down the road. This was way bigger than not having the rent—and he thought he could cheer her up? Fat chance.
They had reached the part of the development cratered with future basements. Socko stopped beside the largest mound of excavated earth. He stood the cardboard on edge, then let go. “We’re here,” he announced as it landed flat on the ground.
Livvy didn’t seem to notice the dirt mountains. Instead her eyes went to the nearby fence they’d climbed a few days earlier. “We’re not going after Brad and his friends, are we?”
He shook his head.
“And please tell me we’re not going over to Lorelei Meadows to admire the grass.”
“Nope.” Suddenly either of those options sounded less dumb than what he had in mind. He stared at the flattened cardboard box he’d felt so lucky to find. Forty-gallon hot water heater. Energy Star. The printed words glared up at him.
“So … why are we here?” She was looking at the flattened box too, a puzzled look on her face. Damien popped into his head. Damien was the friend who would have gotten the connection instantly. Damien was used to making do, pretending every piece of trash was something else. With Livvy staring at the cardboard, it turned from a genius idea back to what it really was. Garbage.
“Hey!” She dropped to a squat and ran a hand across its surface. “I bet if we dragged this to the top of that pile of dirt we could ride it down.”
Surprise and then relief flooded his chest. “And why do you think I brought it here?”
Livvy picked up the cardboard and balanced it on her head. Holding it in place with both hands, she ran halfway up the hill, then started to slide. “Aaaaah!” Never letting go of the cardboard, she dropped to her knees and careened back down the clay slope.
The edge of the cardboard slammed into Socko’s stomach, knocking him down. He sat with his legs out straight, serious dampness creeping through the butt of his shorts.
Livvy unfolded her legs so they stuck out straight too. From knee to ankle each shin was striped with mud.
Socko figured she’d give up after checking out her muddy self. Girls weren’t into getting slimed. Instead, she jumped to her feet. “Come on,” she said.
“Was that a smile? Did I detect a smile?”
She stuck her tongue out at him.
With each failed attempt to scale the clay mountain, the sliming got worse. Socko rolled. Livvy belly-skidded. She pushed herself to her knees and looked at the red clay stains on her formerly white blouse—then tried again.
“Queen of the Hill!” she crowed when they finally reached the summit. “And King!” she added.
They rested the cardboard Livvy had carried up the hill on both of their heads. Each of them held onto an outside edge with one hand. They weren’t in a hurry to try out the cardboard sled. It had taken them so long to scale the mud mountain, and they’d be at the bottom again in one quick slide.
Socko looked down at the massive shadow of the hill with the two of them, tiny mountaineers, on the top. The shadows of their legs and arms were spindly. The cardboard, caught edge-on by the sun, was reduced to a single line.
Socko’s short hair made a gritty sound against the cardboard as he turned his head. “Click?”
“You know, like taking a picture? Izzy and I made it up. We say it—said it—when some moment was worth remembering.”
“And this is a click?”
She pointed to their shadows. “We look like hieroglyphics.” She did an Egyptian thing with her arms, bending them at sharp angles, the cardboard resting on her head.
He Egyptianed his free arm, watching the shadow do the same. “Click,” he whispered, then felt kind of stupid. “Let’s try this baby out.” He set the cardboard down on the flat top of the mound. “You sit up front.”
Livvy climbed on and gripped the leading edge of the cardboard.
Socko sat down behind her, one leg on either side. “Now, I guess we … sort of … inch forward.” He dug in with his heels, trying to propel the cardboard forward.
She stretched her long legs out past the edges of the cardboard and dug in too. When they lurched over the edge, she let out a little scream. “That was anticlimactic,” she said when the cardboard sled hung there like a bug on flypaper.
The words were barely out of her mouth when the cardboard began to slide.
Socko tapped Damien’s Superman S just as the slow creep turned to an avalanche of speed. When they hit level ground at the bottom of the hill, he slammed into Livvy’s back, ripping the cardboard edge from her hands. She skidded off the sled on her knees, then stood, checked out her legs, and shrugged. “What’s a little more mud?” She looked up the hill. “Too bad it was over so fast.”
Their slide had smoothed out the tiny watercourses cut by rain, squeegeeing the clay flat and leaving a dark, shiny path. “It would be even faster if we went down again,” said Socko.
“Come on!” Livvy grabbed his hands and pulled him to his feet.
It was faster. Way. And this time when they hit the level ground they skidded farther. “Again?” he asked.
They rode the cardboard sled until it was so soggy it fell apart. “We’ll snag another big box before the next rain,” he said as they walked away.
“Hope it rains before the partners put my dad out of business. Who knows where I’ll be after that.”
“It’s not definite. They haven’t pulled the plug yet.”
“Yet,” she repeated.
Livvy looked as worried as she had when they’d set out from her house—and a lot muddier. So much for cheering her up.
They hosed off in Socko’s yard. The water in his sneakers bubbled between his toes with each step as they squelched into the house.
The General made them put towels on the kitchen chairs before they could sit. “How’d that meeting go last night, young lady?”
Behind Livvy’s back Socko zipped a finger across his own throat to let his great-grandfather know how it had gone—and to shut him up, but it was a little late for that.
“Terrible. The partners might pull out.”
The General drummed his fingers on the kitchen table. “I was afraid of that.”
“I want to help my parents, but they think I’m too young to even know about it!”
“Strange times we’re living in. Strange times. Used to be kids were expected to help. Once, back when I was a kid during the Depression my mother gave me four cents to buy bread at Lewis’s General Store. Ma knew it cost five but she only had four. It was my job to get that bread.”
Livvy listened intently, her heels hooked over the edge of the chair, her arms around her shins. “What did you do?”
“I walked slow with my hand in my pocket. I kept picking up and counting those pennies: 1 … 2 … 3 … 4. It was four every time.”
Socko slipped off his soggy sneakers and tipped his chair back against the kitchen counter. A couple of weeks before the move he had made a walk like that—only he was heading to Donatelli’s with Damien to get Louise a pack of cigarettes and they’d had no money at all.
“I was almost to the door when I had a bright idea,” the General said. “I stopped and tore a hole in my pocket so I could make like I’d lost one of my pennies.”
Damien had had a bright idea too—and a dead cockroach.
“I grabbed a loaf of bread,” his great-grandfather went on, “and then I put the four cents on the counter in a pile. Mr. Lewis counted them into his palm and then held out his hand. I felt around in my pocket and acted surprised.”
Socko had acted surprised too—surprised to discover that there was a dead roach on top of the pile of chicken wings under the heat lamp.
The General mimed turning his pocket inside out. “I showed Mr. Lewis the hole in my pocket, but he wasn’t fooled. Instead he handed me a broom and let me work off the last penny.”
When Socko had showed Mr. Donatelli the roach, he had been fooled—or at least distracted long enough for Damien to reach behind the counter and snag a pack of cigarettes. Socko wished he could have offered Mr. Donatelli some work in trade for the cigarettes, but the shop owner didn’t trust kids.
“I’d be happy to do any kind of work to help my family earn money,” said Livvy. “But things are different now.”
The General shook his head. “If you can’t help them earn money, maybe you can help them save.”
Livvy put her head down on her knees. “I got all over them about not sending me back to private school. I told them if they really loved me they would never make me go to public! But I didn’t know we were in real trouble until last night.”
The General leaned toward her. “So lie. Tell them you changed your mind. Tell them you decided it would be fun to go to public school with your boyfriend, Socko.”
Livvy blushed. “There are some lies nobody would believe.”
“You’re right,” the General agreed. “Sorry I suggested it.”
She went to the living room window. “No cars,” she reported. “I’ll lie to Mother as soon as she gets home.”
“You want to do something right now?” the General called. “Luke’s planting posies down by the guardhouse. Bet he wouldn’t mind some help.”
“What do you say Socko? Want to help Luke?” she asked.
She sounded pretty happy about digging holes in the hot sun. He was too. Doing something—anything that might help—beat worrying.
The General eyed Socko and Livvy as they came in the front door, glaring at their dirty hands. “I didn’t think the two of you could look any worse, but you managed it.”
“We straightened up the sign so it doesn’t look like it’s falling over anymore,” said Socko.
“Bet that looks a little more dignified.”
“And we planted about a zillion marigolds. And, let’s see, we put in tithonia, gomphrena, and verbena.” As Livvy ticked the exotic flower names off on her fingers, her father’s car pulled into the driveway across the street. “What was that creeping plant with little yellow flowers?” she asked Socko.
“Livvy,” the General said, cutting off the recitation. “Ask your father to come over for a minute if he’d like a little good news.”
Livvy dashed out the door. When she came back, her father was walking slowly behind her. Even though the guy had caused him a lot of trouble, Socko felt sorry for him. His whole body drooped, as if the dinner with the partners had put a huge weight on his shoulders.
“You know the guard booth Luke and the kids just prettied up?” the General asked. “How’d you like an old geezer to put in it? Someone to open and close the gate?”
Livvy’s dad looked disappointed. A geezer in the guard booth didn’t seem to be his idea of good news. “You can sit in the booth,” he told the General, “but I can’t pay you.”
“Not me!” the General snapped. “This geezer’s name is Eddie Corrigan. We were in the war together. After us boys came home, he hung around my store for better than fifty years, supposedly working. The only way to fire him was to sell out. Vermont’s getting too cold for him—and he misses my smiling face.”
Socko saw one corner of Mr. Holmes’s mouth turn up—which was twice the smile the General wore.
“They sold their big old house a few months ago, moved into a little apartment. His wife Lil is sick and tired of having him underfoot, so she likes the idea of a bigger house and a guard booth to stick him in. He likes the idea of being in law enforcement. I told him you might even throw in a uniform.”
“I can arrange that.”
“And a gun.”
“A gun?” Mr. Holmes puffed up his cheeks and blew out.
The General contemplated the ceiling for a second. “I think he’d settle for a big flashlight.”