Except for a trip with his father to the big mall a couple miles away, Philip stayed indoors the next day, Sunday, dreading Monday and school. None of his good friends had been at the Garden Club meeting in the library, but he did recognize a couple of faces from his school. He was certain that by the time school started, the whole school would have heard how dumb he’d been and be laughing at him.
Monday morning he met Emery as usual in front of Emery’s house and they walked to school. Emery didn’t mention anything about the Garden Club, and for that Philip was grateful. Since Emery was being nice enough not to mention the Garden Club, Philip felt a little guilty about how hard he’d worked to play those tricks on Emery.
But at least Emery didn’t know about the second one.
The schoolyard was crowded when the two boys arrived. Philip watched everyone. A few times he thought he caught sight of people looking at him, talking, and then laughing. But he couldn’t be certain. Thank goodness that snorting girl didn’t go to his school, Philip told himself. If she did, he’d be known as “hollow pollen” to everyone by three o’clock.
But the day went by with nothing extraordinary happening, and Philip walked home with Emery as always.
“Want to go to the park?” Emery asked.
“Sure, let me go home first. I have to change my clothes or my mother’ll yell.”
“Okay. Come back when you’re ready. Oh, come on in a minute. I have something for you.”
Philip followed Emery inside his house. Emery dropped his book bag and ran into the kitchen. He returned with a plastic shopping bag in his hand. He handed the bag to Philip.
Philip looked inside. There were four large empty plastic soda bottles.
“What’s this for?” Philip asked.
“You can get a nickel for each one. That’s the twenty cents I owe you.”
“I don’t want a bag of bottles. I want two dimes.”
“Same thing.”
“No, it’s not. I have to take these to the supermarket and redeem them. Why can’t you just give me the money?”
“I don’t have the money. Anyway, didn’t you have to go to the library to spend the twenty cents? So it’s the same thing. You have to go to the supermarket to get the twenty cents back. You didn’t just give me twenty cents in my hand.”
“It is not the same thing.”
“Then give me back if you don’t want them.”
“No, no, I’ll take them.” Philip decided this was probably the best chance he had of getting twenty cents out of Emery.
Philip lugged his bag of empty soda bottles home. He changed his clothes, grabbed a couple of newly baked chocolate chip cookies, and had a quick glass of chocolate milk.
When he knocked on Emery’s door, Emery’s mother answered.
“Is Emery ready?” Philip said.
“Come in, Philip.”
Philip could hear a baby crying.
“The library called him as soon as he walked in. They said they had something for him. Something about winning a prize there Saturday. He went to get it. He’ll be right back.”
Emery’s mother went to take care of the crying baby.
Philip stood in a daze. Emery had won a prize Saturday? Another one? All Emery had done was sit on a chair and listen. In a flash, Philip understood. Emery was getting a prize meant for him! He was getting a prize for getting in front of the whole stupid garden club and describing that stupid German geranium. With the hollow pollen. Emery was getting his second prize for something that Philip had done!
Philip threw himself on the sofa and crossed his arms over his chest and waited.
Fifteen minutes later Emery walked in the door.
“Hey, Philip. I won a prize.”
Philip leaped to his feet. “No you didn’t...”
Emery laughed. “I know. I know. It’s yours.”
Philip stood still. When he realized his mouth was hanging open, he shut it. “What did they say?” Philip asked.
“It’s a prize for doing that thing at the library Saturday with Joanie. You know. The hollow pollen thing.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know.” Philip didn’t want to hear any more about hollow pollen. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. I knew you’d be waiting, so I just took it and came back here.”
“Let’s open it.”
Both boys ripped the plain red wrapping paper from the box.
“Wow!” said Emery.
“Not bad,” said Philip.
Philip had won a kit containing instructions and a CD on how to start a newspaper with your computer. There was even a booklet with ideas for newspaper stories.
“You want to start a newspaper?” said Emery.
Philip shrugged. “Sure. Why not?” He thumbed through the booklet and said, “It even tells you how to put pictures in the newspaper.”
“Oh yeah, pictures,” said Emery. “They took my picture in the library. They’re going to put it in that newspaper we get every week.”
“You get your picture in the paper for what I did?”
“Well, if they took your picture it would still have my name under it. That wouldn’t make sense, would it?”
Reluctantly, Philip could see where that would be confusing.
“Besides, we can put our own pictures into our own newspaper any time we want,” Emery pointed out.
Philip nodded. “But I should get mine in first.”
“Okay.”
Philip would be satisfied if he could accomplish one more thing.
“My house will be the newspaper headquarters since your house was the detective headquarters.”
Emery nodded. “We couldn’t concentrate with the babies crying anyway.”
“Let’s drop the newspaper kit at my house and then go to the park. We can talk about how we want to run our newspaper. First, we’ll need a name for it.”
As they left Emery’s house, Emery envisioned one word in big bold letters at the top of their newspaper. It was the perfect name.
“WHAT,” Emery said, his eyes aglow at the wonder his idea.
“I said we’ll need a name for the newspaper.”
“WHAT’s the name.”
“What’s what name?”
“No, just one what.”
“One what what? What are you talking about?”
“Yeah, I’m talking about WHAT.”
“You’re making my stomach hurt again,” Philip cried, and that quickly, everything was back to normal.