CHAPTER 3

Viola Dots is one of the few people that Cooper Starr is afraid of. I’ve seen her chase him off her front porch, threatening to call his parents or even the police. The minute he saw it was Viola in the wheelchair, he took off running down the street. Luna and I dashed straight for her.

“Get your hands off me!” she was yelling at the medical team that was trying to help her.

“Just relax, ma’am, relax,” a man with a beard said as they lowered her wheelchair onto the ground. “You’ve been in the hospital with a bad infection in your lungs.”

“I told you,” she squawked. “I’m much better now. I did not need a wheelchair for the ride here, and I certainly do not need one to take me into my own home.”

“Just let us do our jobs, ma’am,” the woman who seemed to be in charge said.

“Let me up. I can walk,” Viola shouted. “I know my rights.”

The two medical workers shared a look. Viola Dots is a hard person to argue with. The one with the beard shrugged at his partner. His partner shrugged back, and they stepped away from Viola.

Viola got to her feet. “Well, it’s about time,” she said, whacking the bearded man in the arm with her purse.

“Ma’am, please!” he said. “If you don’t settle down—”

“It’s okay!” Luna interrupted, moving in between them and taking Viola gently by the arm. “We’ll help Mrs. Dots inside. Won’t we, Tiger?”

“Sure, let me just get my catcher’s mask so she doesn’t whack me in the face,” I said with a laugh. Luna frowned at me very hard. I guess this wasn’t a good time for a joke.

“Good luck, kids,” the bearded man said. “You got one spicy meatball on your hands.”

He and his partner climbed back into the van and drove away. Before they left our block, I noticed that they stopped at Pooch’s lemonade stand to buy a cup.

I checked my watch. The hour of power was almost upon us, and poor Viola was sick. It looked like there was going to be no fantastic-frame journey today.

Luna and I tried to guide Viola through the gate into her yard. She had to stop to cough several times.

“I don’t need your help, either,” Viola snapped at us, when she had caught her breath. “Chives will see me in.”

This was not a good sign. It seemed she didn’t remember that we had to leave Chives, her talking-pig butler, behind in the last painting because he had injured his leg. Her son, David, had stayed to take care of him.

“Don’t you remember, Mrs. Dots?” I said very gently. “Chives is still in the art world, with your son, David.”

“That Chives,” she said. “He is never around when I need him. I could have used him to make me a cup of tea with honey. That would fix this cough.”

We were already inside the gate and heading up the path to Viola’s house when it hit me: I’d forgotten all about Maggie and her lemonade stand.

“I’ll meet you guys inside,” I said and hurried back to my sister.

“I have to help Mrs. Dots now,” I said, approaching Maggie. “Will you be all right on your own for a little while?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t have any customers. I still don’t have any money.”

“Have you learned that earning money is hard work?” I asked in my most grown-up voice.

Maggie nodded. I opened my mouth to point out how I gave up my invention time, so the world was not going to get to see my Pocket Buddy that day.

Then I had a thought. Wait a minute. Maybe they could still see it.

“I’ve got an amazing idea,” I said. “Mags, this is going to solve all your problems.”

I reached into my jeans and pulled out the prototype of the Pocket Buddy. “You can raffle off my invention,” I said, feeling proud of how excellent a big brother I was being.

Maggie looked at me blankly.

“You know, a raffle,” I said. “Like what they do at school when they want to raise money for the community garden? You give people tickets when they buy lemonade, and then pick a winner to get the prize,” I explained. “Some lucky person is going to get the first-ever Pocket Buddy.”

“Who would want this weird thing?” Maggie said.

“Oh, little sister,” I said. “You have so much to learn about business.”

I reached over and took Luna’s sign off the table. Picking up one of the red markers, I wrote WIN A ONE-OF-A-KIND INVENTION. ONE RAFFLE TICKET WITH EACH PURCHASE.

I dashed into the kitchen and grabbed a sheet of paper. I wrote a list of numbers, from one to twenty-five, and ripped up the numbers into tickets. Running back to the stand, I told Maggie to just hand out a ticket with each sale, and that we’d pick the winner as soon as I got back. I took the Pocket Buddy, polished it a bit with my shirt, and set it gently on the table.

“But I still don’t have any customers,” Maggie said. She looked like she was going to start crying again.

“You’ve got me,” I said. “Now how about a lemonade? I’ll buy one.”

That made her smile. As she poured it, I dropped a dollar into the fishbowl and helped myself to a raffle ticket. Maggie looked very happy and gave me a big hug. I was mid hug when I heard Luna calling me.

“Tiger, get in here! We need you!”

There was panic in her voice.

I left Maggie and ran as fast as I could up the path to Mrs. Dots’s house, not knowing what I was going to find inside. From the sound of Luna’s voice, it didn’t seem like it was going to be anything good.