Chapter 26
George

Jack takes my hand. “We have to go.”

The gopher lady steps in front of us. “To your aunt Rachel’s,” she commands.

“Who are you?” Jack asks, which is so rude since they were just talking like five minutes ago. He starts to go around her. The gopher lady closes her eyes, inhales deeply, and clenches her jaw before exhaling into her cheeks. She expands like a self-inflating balloon, becoming larger and blocking our path.

Jack and I stumble backward.

With another quick gasp, she sucks in more air and again increases in size on the exhale. She’s a foot taller than us now.

“She’s biggifying herself!” I cry out in horror.

“Listen to me,” she says, her voice so much deeper that the ground seems to tremble. She lunges forward, arms outstretched to grab me. I hadn’t noticed those claws before!

I try to run but my feet are glued to the grass as if by magic. “Holy mole lady!” I shriek.

Jack’s feet are fortunately not stuck, and with a quick tug, he pulls me aside in the nick of time. Her arms envelop the empty air, and she ends in a self-embrace as Jack and I dash across the park. We snatch our bikes and ride into the city beyond.

“Find Rachel!” the gopher-werewolf-balloon-lady-monster howls from beneath the tree house, but at least she doesn’t chase us.

After a thirty-minute ride, we find ourselves at the Bath Stuff and Such where I wrote Jack his letter. “In here,” I say to Jack, taking the lead, glad that he can finally read about everything he missed. We dump our bikes by the entrance. After two spins through the revolving doors, the warm sixties pop music reassures us that we are finally safe. The cashier is busy scratching the scruffy hairs on his chinny chin chin. “I’m back,” I announce to nobody.

“You’ve been here before?” Jack asks, wiping sweat from his forehead and scanning the giant store, one magnificent display at a time.

“And I have something for you!” The next few minutes are a blur as I race around the store, towing Jack behind. I point out all the key landmarks. “That’s where I borrowed some paper,” and “That’s where I met Stanley the alien,” and “That’s where I wanted to take a bath before I disappeared all the way to your house.”

I race down the aisle, towing Jack behind. Jack’s steps are not as quick as mine. My arm almost feels as if it’ll pull from its socket with his weight, but I’m sure he’s just going slowly to take it all in. He pants, “Slowdowgeorge,” hardly able to get the words out.

“What?” I ask, glancing behind me.

“Slow down this instant,” snaps a voice in front of me that isn’t mine or Jack’s. I look to see who’s there, but it’s too late because I’ve just crashed into her. “What the hedgehog,” shrieks the woman that I’ve crashed into, but with a ruder word. “What are you doing?”

“Sorry.” Jack’s breathing so hard he can hardly answer her. “We were . . . We were . . . We were . . .” He takes a deep breath and tries again: “Running, ma’am. We were running.”

His panicked eyes shift to me as I scoot right next to the lady. With my hands on my hips and my mouth in a serious straight line, I mimic the woman to extract a laugh out of poor frightened Jack. “Weeeeeeeee?” she asks. “Who is this weeeeeeeeeee, young man?” She points to him. “I just see youuuuuuuuu.” Finally a perk of being invisible.

“Fine. Iiiiiiiiiiiiiii was running,” he says, before joining me in uncontrollable laughter.

That’s when the lady says, “Well! Iiiiiiiii would like to speak with one of your parents.”

Between fits of laughter, Jack gasps, “Me too.” Breaking into a fit of giggles, Jack and I skirt around her and walk away.

“Do you want to try out my canopy bed?” I ask. “I left the letter I wrote you under my pillow. Now you can read it!”

Before Jack can answer, a voice says, “Annnnd sent.” We turn to find a kid with hair that sticks up in all the right places wearing a crimson collared shirt with a tiny alligator (or is it a crocodile?). He sits on the model bed that used to be mine, looking like he just won the lottery, tapping away on the fanciest-looking phone I’ve ever seen.

“George,” Jack says to the stranger. This kid stole my name!

“Morgan said we had to lay off,” Not-Me-George says with a smirk. “Be nice. That it was just your mom, and you were okay. This’ll show her.”

“Huh?” Jack and I say in unison. “Show her what?”

“That you’re just like your mom. A lunatic running around in a store, making a scene, and embarrassing everyone.”

“Don’t you dare say that about my mother!” Jack lunges forward as Not-Me-George snaps up a pillow to protect himself, revealing my letter. I grab the back of Jack’s shirt, trying to hold him back, but my arms still feel like absolute noodles after bench-pressing the air earlier. I’m useless.

“What the fluff, man?” Not-Me-George says, using an actual curse, crouching farther up the bed. My letter crinkles beneath his feet. He throws the pillow at Jack. It whacks him in the head, which seems to snap him out of his rage.

Jack bats the pillow onto the ground and looks at me. “Morgan knows where we are now. We have to get out of here.” We turn our backs on the other George only to find the furious lady we crashed into standing next to an official Bath Stuff and Such security guard.

“HERE HE IS!” she cries out. Not-Me-George snickers, pulling out his phone for another video.

I’m in panic mode, but Jack plays it as cool as possible, saying in his sweetest voice, “Is there a problem, Officer Stuff and Such, sir?”

“Where’re yer parents, kid?” he asks.

“Wish I knew,” Jack replies.

One of the officer’s eyebrows goes up while the other one goes down.

“No respect,” tsks the lady.

“All right, ma’am. I’ll take it from here.” He shoos her away with a swish of his hand. I do the same with both hands for dramatic effect. “Follow me, kid,” he tells Jack.

“And they never saw him again,” Not-Me-George chuckles maniacally, adding a chillingly effective bit of drama to his little phone video.

The officer shoots him a look. “You a part of this?”

Not-Me-George turns a shade of red that almost matches his shirt, shaking his head frantically. “Sir. No, sir! Sorry, sir.” His arms drop and without another word, he’s running away to the bath section of the store. Coward.

Officer Stuff and Such rolls his eyes. “Punk.” Except for the fact that he’s about to arrest us, I like this guy. Returning his attention to Jack, he says, “Come on.”

“Wait,” Jack says. He points to a woman all the way in the kitchen department. “That’s my mom,” he lies, waving to her and smiling his cutest smile. She isn’t paying attention, but if she were, she would not have waved back or smiled, because she is certainly not Jack’s mom.

“Follow me,” the officer says, marching toward the poor lady who is about to be scolded to keep a better eye on the bothersome son that she didn’t even know she had. As soon as the officer’s back is to us, I’m pulling Jack’s arm in the other direction.

When the officer reaches the lady, she growls and calls out an angry “GEEEEEORGE,” but I know I’m not the George she’s looking for.

“And they never saw him again,” I whisper to Jack, who chuckles at this good fortune of accidentally busting an enemy.

No time to celebrate, as Officer Stuff and Such has noticed we’re gone, and his eyes are scanning the store. He’ll never see us again though, because we are sneaking, and we are hiding, and we are dashing, and we are darting, and we are running out the door, and we are sprinting down the sidewalk, and we are safe, and we are laughing and laughing and laughing.