Two Friends, One Dog, and a Very Unusual Week, page 4
Emily clutched the crumpled popcorn bag in one hand and Rani’s balloon in the other. She revolved slowly and anxiously in place, scouting for outraged SuperSmartSaverMart employees in their orange smocks and name tags.
What did they do to you if you spilled popcorn all over their store? She’d never spilled anything in a store before. She didn’t know what might happen.
They’d better get it all cleaned up before someone saw. But Emily couldn’t clean up if her hands were full.
She thought about letting the balloon go, but it was Rani’s, so maybe she shouldn’t. Then Emily remembered what her dad used to do with balloons when she was little. She parked the popcorn on a nearby shelf and tied the balloon to one of her belt loops.
Meanwhile, the vacuum cleaner roared to life. Rani charged at the fluffy white morsels on the floor and Emily had to hop backward to save her toes.
While pieces of popcorn vanished inside the vacuum cleaner, Emily heard a faint voice. “Excuse me! Excuse me! Young ladies!”
Oh no.
Emily’s heart began to beat faster. Rani’s balloon bobbed above her head as she looked up to see a bald man wearing an orange smock, a brown mustache, and a heavy frown. His name tag read, “Hello, my name is…” But the written-in name had turned into a gray blur. She couldn’t read it at all.
Emily bent down to start picking caramels up off the floor.
The SuperSmartSaverMart employee ignored her. “Young lady!” he said to Rani, raising his voice over the growl of the vacuum cleaner. “I can’t allow you to use that!”
“It’s no trouble!” Rani answered just as loudly.
To Emily’s eyes, Hello-My-Name-Is-Blur seemed to get taller. His frown definitely got sterner and his mustache more menacing. “Young lady!” he bellowed.
The last piece of popcorn was sucked up. Rani switched off the vacuum cleaner. “No need to thank me,” she told the employee. “I was glad to do it.”
“Excuse me, is that vacuum cleaner for sale?” asked a new voice.
Emily turned to see the mom with the toddler in her cart. The baby waved her pinwheel at Rani.
“I was hunting for a vacuum cleaner, and that one looks very good!” the mother said. “It was so helpful to see a demonstration.” She frowned a little at Rani in puzzlement. “Aren’t you sort of young to work here, though?”
“Oh, they don’t have to pay me. My pleasure!” Rani waved at the baby.
To her amazement, Emily found that she had a caramel in her mouth. She did not remember putting it there. It was large and extremely chewy.
Hello-My-Name-Is-Blur had transferred his attention to the toddler’s mother. “Yes, of course it’s for sale,” he told her. His smile spread as smoothly as if his teeth had been buttered. “It’s an expensive model, but more than worth the price. Here, I can put one in your cart for you. And who’s this handsome young gentleman?” He put his face near the toddler, who frowned and whacked him on the nose with her pinwheel.
“That’s my daughter, Elsie,” the mom said.
Hello-My-Name-Is-Blur straightened up, rubbing his nose. “Yes. Well. Yes. Here you go….” He seized a box holding a vacuum cleaner. “Young ladies, wait right there!”
Emily knew she’d have to explain to Hello-My-Name-Is-Blur that Rani hadn’t meant to break the store rules. But she couldn’t do it with a caramel in her mouth.
She chomped frantically as Hello-My-Name-Is-Blur heaved the vacuum cleaner into the cart. He narrowly missed whacking little Elsie in the head.
“Oh, that’s okay. We don’t need any help,” Rani told Hello-My-Name-Is-Blur. She tugged on Emily’s arm, pulling her toward the corner of the store where the stacked-up shoeboxes towered over the shelves. “You’re welcome!” she called back.
And the employee let them walk away. Emily was amazed. He was so busy getting the vacuum cleaner safely in the cart and apologizing to Elsie’s mom that he didn’t even chase after them or demand their names or call their parents or anything.
She gulped and swallowed a mound of buttery sweetness so big it hurt a little going down. “Oh, Rani, you shouldn’t have done that,” she managed to say.
But to her surprise, she found that she was giggling as she remembered little Elsie and her pinwheel.
“Why not?” Rani asked, astonished. “If you make a mess, you should always clean it up. It’s just good manners.” They turned a corner and found themselves in an aisle full of bikes and tricycles and skateboards. “Of course, if you’re having dinner with the king of England it’s good manners to talk to the person on your right first and then on your left. So it all depends.”
“Rani.” Emily wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. “You haven’t met the king of England. Have you?”
“No, but you never know. Hello, what are you doing there?”
The person Rani had said hello to was a kid about four years old, standing by himself in the middle of the aisle, staring at a display of scooters. His eyes were wide with longing and there were no adults in sight.
“Are you a boy?” Rani asked him. “Or are you a Homo floresiensis? They only grew about three and a half feet tall, so you might be one of them. I always say it’s best to ask.”
“Rani, he’s not a—whatever you said,” Emily told her. “Jonah? Jonah Pinkney?”
The boy turned his wide brown eyes to her. His lower lip sagged. His chin began to quiver.
“Where’s your mom?” Emily asked him.
Jonah’s shoulders moved up about half an inch. Then they settled back down where they’d started.
“I think he’s lost,” she said to Rani. “We should tell somebody who works here. They’ll help.”
“We don’t need to get help,” Rani said. “We’re going to help.” Deftly she hefted a glittery purple scooter from the display and set it on the floor. “Hop on!” she told Jonah.
“Rani!” Emily nearly wailed. “I told you—they don’t actually want you to have whatever you want. You’re not supposed to take stuff!”
“I’m not taking it. I’m borrowing it!” Rani boosted Jonah onto the scooter and hopped on behind him. “Come on!” With a mighty shove of her right foot, she pushed off.
“At least put on a helmet!” Emily called after her. But Rani didn’t seem to hear. She sailed down the aisle and then swooped right and headed into housewares.
Trailing Rani and Jonah, Emily skidded around the corner and caught sight of a familiar figure among the blenders—Mrs. Pinkney. Penelope was by her side. Emily could see her smooth blond hair falling halfway down her back with the usual pink headband holding it tidily in place.
Emily hesitated. The best thing to do, she was sure, would be to deliver Jonah to Mrs. Pinkney at once. That would hopefully get Rani off the scooter.
But it would also mean calling Mrs. Pinkney’s attention to the fact that Rani was on a scooter…and Emily didn’t think that was a good idea at all.
Before she could figure out what to do, she saw Jonah lift one hand off of the handlebars and point to his mother.
Rani wove between shopping carts and dodged a tall, skinny man lugging a tall, skinny wastebasket. He spun as they scooted past and staggered into the arms of a lady carrying a copper saucepan on top of a fluffy white pillow. Emily ducked around them.
Rani swept in an arc around Mrs. Pinkney and Penelope, slid to a halt, and dropped Jonah off at his mother’s feet. Then she pushed off once more and shouted, “Shoes ahoy!” in a ringing voice as she went rocketing down the aisle.
Emily charged past the Pinkneys. She heard Jonah whisper, “Wow,” but the faint word was all but drowned out by Rani’s whoop as she swung the cart around a corner, then another. She balanced on her left foot and stretched her right leg behind her like a figure skater gliding over the ice. Her pajama pants rippled in the breeze and she headed straight at the towering display of shoeboxes.
Emily didn’t want to watch what happened next, but she couldn’t look away.
At the last moment, Rani avoided slamming into the tower. She swung a neat circle all the way around the shoeboxes and headed back for Emily. She seemed to be slowing down.
Emily slowed down too. Her knees felt rubbery with relief. Rani hadn’t knocked down the tower of shoeboxes, after all. They could just get the scooter back where it belonged and everything would be—
But instead of stopping, Rani orbited Emily and shoved off even harder than before. She zoomed back down the aisle, heading straight at the tower once again.
Emily sped up.
A despairing voice came from behind her. “Young ladies! Young ladies!” It was Hello-My-Name-Is-Blur.
“Rani! Get off! You can’t keep riding that scooter!” Emily shrieked at Rani’s back.
Wide-eyed but obedient, Rani hopped off. Emily, gasping for breath, staggered to her side.
“What else am I supposed to do with it?” Rani asked.
Although Rani had gotten off as directed, she hadn’t stopped the scooter. It trundled on its way and plowed into the tower of shoeboxes.
Emily stifled a wail as the scooter toppled over onto its side.
The tower wobbled. Hello-My-Name-Is-Blur dove past Rani and Emily, hurdled the fallen scooter, and flung himself at the tower with outstretched arms. He hugged it as if it were a long-lost relative.
Emily let out her breath slowly.
A single box fell from the very top. It bounced off Hello-My-Name-Is-Blur’s bald head and hit the floor at Rani’s feet. The lid popped off.
Rani peered inside. The box was empty.
“Oh. We need some boxes with shoes inside them, please,” she informed Hello-My-Name-Is-Blur.
“Young lady!” He dropped his arms from the tower and turned to face Rani.
Emily felt herself begin to shrivel inside. Rani had gotten away with the popcorn and the caramels and the vacuum cleaner. But this? She was not going to get away with this.
She would get in trouble. They would both get in trouble.
How could Rani be so happy? So helpful? And such a disaster at the same time?
Hello-My-Name-Is-Blur stared down at them. Behind his back, the tower, released from his embrace, began to sway again. “I don’t think you realize—What were you thinking—Where is your mother?”
“In Patagonia,” Rani told him.
“Watch out!” Emily cried.
Rani hopped backward, snagging Emily by the arm, as four more shoeboxes rained down around Hello-My-Name-Is-Blur.
“No!” he cried in despair. He spun back around and flung himself at the tower so hard that he knocked the entire thing over.
* * *
Emily liked her new shoes very much. They were bright red and each one had a shiny gold zipper up one side. Rani had paid for them with a wad of cash she’d pulled from a zippered compartment deep inside her backpack.
She was wearing them as she sat next to Rani at the bus stop outside of the SuperSmartSaverMart. “My dad will pay you back for the shoes as soon as he gets here,” she told Rani.
Where was her dad, anyway? Shouldn’t he have gotten to the store by now?
“Oh, that’s okay,” Rani said. “It was nice of them to find shoes in your size so quickly.”
Emily sighed. Explaining this, she thought, might take a while.
“Rani,” she began. “They weren’t actually being nice. They just wanted us to leave.”
Rani hadn’t meant to do anything wrong. Emily knew that. Rani honestly had no idea she’d even done anything wrong.
If they were going to be friends, Emily was going to have to explain things to her. To explain everything to her.
“I kept telling you,” she said as patiently as she could. “You can’t take things without paying for them.”
“But I did pay for things!” Rani protested.
Well, that was true. Rani had paid for the popcorn. And the caramels. And the pinwheel. And the shoes that Emily was wearing right now.
“Well, okay,” Emily agreed. “But the vacuum cleaner…”
“Elsie’s mom paid for that,” Rani pointed out.
True again.
“And the scooter…”
“Wasn’t that fun?” Rani grinned.
“All those shoeboxes.”
“It was a shame that worker knocked them down. It’s funny they didn’t want us to pick them back up. But I don’t think they really wanted us to leave. That can’t be right. Everyone was so friendly. Like that clown—there he is! Rich! Hello, Rich! It’s us!” Rani waved wildly.
Emily looked around, but she didn’t see anybody in a clown costume. The man Rani was waving at was dressed in perfectly ordinary jeans and a shabby gray sweatshirt. He walked around a corner of the SuperSmartSaverMart building and vanished from their sight.
“He didn’t hear me. I’ll go find him.” Rani jumped up.
“No, Rani! We have to wait—” Emily’s next words were cut off by the rumbling and wheezing of a bus that pulled up alongside the curb. Her father jumped out. “Girls, I am so sorry I’m late. The bus took forever and then there was an accident on the highway and we had to take a detour and got stuck behind a dump trunk and I—Is that your new friend Rani? Where’s she going?”
Emily caught a glimpse of Rani’s orange T-shirt as she vanished around a corner of the SuperSmartSaverMart.
“I think Rani went to find a clown,” she told her father.
Together, Emily and her father followed Rani. They found her talking to the man in the gray sweatshirt. Without his clown costume and makeup, he looked like any other person—probably a bit older than high school but not as old as Emily’s parents. Somewhere in between.
“Sure I remember you,” he was saying as Emily ran up to join them. Her father hurried along behind. “You’re the one who asked my name. Nobody ever does that.”
Rani was craning her neck and leaning to one side to stare at something behind Rich.
“Wow, this is the best part of the store!” she said.
Rich seemed as confused as Emily felt. “Back here?”
Dumpsters lined the wall of the SuperSmartSaverMart. Many had their lids propped open by all the stuff inside.
“It’s just trash pickup and employee parking,” Rich said. “Hey, I don’t think you should climb on that!”
Rani had clambered up one side of a dumpster and was peering in.
“Oh, check this out!” she exclaimed.
Emily could see bright plastic sleds and snow shovels sticking out of the trash bin. A giant inflatable snowman was draped over one side, looking gloomy despite his jaunty hat.
“That’s just winter stuff the store can’t sell,” Rich said. “The manufacturer didn’t want it back, so they’re throwing it all away.”
“Rani, get down from there!” Emily’s father said in what Emily thought of as his teacher voice.
Rani dropped off the side of the dumpster, but she didn’t look at Emily’s father. Her eyes were on Rich.
“Throwing it all away?” she asked breathlessly, as if it were too good to be true.
“Yeah.” Rich shrugged. “Huge waste, but…”
Rani clapped her hands. “I love your store!” she exclaimed. “You really do want people to have anything they want!”
A little later, Emily lay on her bed, staring at Rani’s purple balloon bobbing gently against her ceiling.
Once they’d gotten home from the SuperSmartSaverMart, she’d found it still tied to her belt loop. In all the excitement, she’d completely forgotten to take it off and give it back to Rani.
There was a whirring sound from overhead. Then a bam! And another bam!
Emily sat up.
Was Rani building something new? What would it be? At this point, Emily felt that nothing from a roller-skating rink to an aquarium full of jellyfish could surprise her very much.
Should she go upstairs and find out?
Emily got out of bed. Whatever Rani was doing up there, it was sure to be astonishing. Spectacular. Incredible.
Then Emily hesitated and sank back down on her mattress. Because sometimes, maybe, you could have a little too much astonishing, spectacular, incredible.
It was hard to believe that she’d only met Rani five days ago. Five days—less than a week.
Whirr came the noise from overhead. And then a brisk rap rap rap.
But all that noise didn’t mean that Emily had to go up and see what Rani was doing. She could just flop back on her bed and admire her new shoes and relax.
Except that she was starting to get a little curious….
Bam! Bam, bam, bam!
Those weren’t hammer blows from overhead, Emily realized. That sound came from knuckles rapping on her own front door.
Emily heard that door open. “Oh, hello, Janice,” her dad said.
Janice? Who was Janice?
“Come on in,” Emily’s dad said next.
“No, thank you. I can’t stay. I simply thought you should be aware…”
Mrs. Pinkney. Janice was Mrs. Pinkney. Mrs. Pinkney was talking to Emily’s dad.
Before she thought, Emily was across her bedroom, huddled against the door and listening as hard as she could.
“I’m not upset,” Mrs. Pinkney was saying. “Not angry. Please don’t think I’m angry.”
“Well, of course,” Emily’s dad said.
“But concerned. Yes. Very concerned,” Mrs. Pinkney went on. “I will need to go upstairs and talk to that child’s parents. Naturally. But before I do…”
The vacuum cleaner. The scooter. Shoeboxes raining down. Mrs. Pinkney was telling Emily’s dad everything that had taken place at the SuperSmartSaverMart.
