The Vanderbeekers Make a Wish Page 7

  Hyacinth was putting the pizza back into the box. “I’m cleaning it up! Don’t worry!”

  On closer look, Isa realized there was a long smear of red pizza sauce leading from the carpet under the couch.

  Jessie, reading her sister’s mind, spoke up. “Tuxedo got a piece. She dragged a whole slice under the couch. No one is small enough to grab her except Laney, but Laney is stuck.”

  Isa shook her head. “I wasn’t gone that long!”

  “Ninety-three minutes!” Jessie said as Franz lunged again for the pizza. “It only takes ten seconds for things to get nuts around here. You owe me.”

  “I’ve got all the pizza back in the box!” Hyacinth said. “Except that one piece under the couch. I can’t reach that.”

  Isa looked at Mr. Beiderman and Aunt Penny. “How could you let this happen?”

  “We were talking,” Aunt Penny explained, pointing to Mr. Beiderman. “He was telling me about how the Mona Lisa was stolen back in 1911. It was taken right off the wall at the Louvre . . .” Aunt Penny trailed off.

  Isa sought out Grandma and Grandpa, but they just shrugged, innocent bystanders in this chaotic world.

  “Can you get me out of here?” Laney said.

  Isa then noticed Laney’s face was as red as Oliver’s hands were green.

  “What happened to your hands?” she asked Oliver. “And your face?” she asked Laney.

  “He dyed Tuxedo’s hair green and my hair red!” Laney said from the stairs.

  There was a pause.

  “What did you say?” Isa asked.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” Oliver said. He pointed a green finger at Aunt Penny. “It was hers.”

  Ten

  All eyes turned toward Aunt Penny, and Hyacinth saw her aunt’s face turn scarlet.

  “My fault?” Aunt Penny said, hands up in an I’m innocent! gesture. “I simply showed them a picture of Uncle Arthur when he dyed his hair back in high school. I specifically used it as an example for why you shouldn’t dye your hair!”

  Isa looked as if she was about to reply, but then Laney whimpered.

  “Are you sure you can’t get your head out?” Isa asked, kneeling on the step next to her sister. “I mean, you got it in there, right? You must be able to get it out again.

  Jessie spoke up. “My unscientific explanation is that she stuck her head in at a very particular angle that matched perfectly with the curves of the spindles, and along with the force of her panic, that created a perfect storm of being able to pop her head through. Based on a quick visual examination, for her to replicate that situation to get her head back out would be quite difficult.”

  “We tried to pull her out, but she kept screaming,” Grandma added.

  “And she won’t let us grease her head,” Aunt Penny said, “although I think that would help.”

  “No!” Laney screeched, and Grandma put her hands to her ears.

  “What a mess,” Isa said.

  “I’m ready to saw her out,” Oliver said, reaching out to get the saw back from Isa.

  Isa looked at Laney; then she nodded at Oliver. “Okay, fine. But be very careful! The last thing we need is to go to the emergency room again.”

  Isa handed over the saw and Oliver got down to business. The spindles were curved in a decorative way, so Oliver wisely pointed the sharp parts of the blade away from Laney and selected a section where the wood was at its narrowest point. Isa kept a protective hand on Laney’s head.

  A few minutes later, Oliver broke through the wood. He snapped the broken spindle away from his sister’s head, and Laney was free!

  “Hooray!” cheered everyone.

  Laney shook her head, and sawdust flew everywhere.

  “Thank you, Oliver!” she said, turning to hug him.

  “Oh jeez,” Isa said when she got a good look at the two of them together, speckled in red and green. “What exactly did you do?”

  While Isa listened to the whole story, Hyacinth managed to use the handle of a broom to get the pizza out from under the couch. Tuxedo pounced on the broom bristles, her now-green paws also red from tomato sauce.

  “I had no idea cats like pizza,” Aunt Penny said as Hyacinth picked up the half-eaten piece and walked to the kitchen to throw it away.

  “Tuxedo loves everything,” Hyacinth told her. “She ate the whole middle out of my birthday cake back in February, and Mama had to make a new one.”

  Grandma looked as if she wanted to say something, but then she shook her head and went up the stairs, carefully avoiding the broken spindle, which now hung crooked from its spot. A few moments later, Hyacinth heard her parents’ door close.

  “Is Grandma mad at us?” Hyacinth asked.

  “She’s probably tired from the travel,” Aunt Penny said as she watched Tuxedo groom her tomato-stained paws at Laney’s feet. “Is it always like this here?”

  “Yes,” Oliver, Jessie, and Isa said at the same time Laney and Hyacinth said, “No.”

  “I’m hungry,” said Grandpa, picking up a piece of pizza from the box on the table.

  “Uh, Grandpa?” Hyacinth said. “You might not want to eat that. It fell on the ground.”

  Grandpa shrugged and took a bite anyway.

  Hyacinth cringed. The floor could be extremely dirty, between their four pets and family of seven. But he seemed content eating the pizza, and everyone watched him without saying a word.

  “Should I order more?” Aunt Penny said, breaking the silence.

  But Mr. Beiderman was already calling the pizza place, and the Vanderbeekers got busy cleaning everything up before their mom got home.

  * * *

  Hyacinth did her best to clean the pizza sauce from the living room carpet, but it definitely left a red stain. Mama had called; she was having trouble with one of the ovens and had to wait for a repair person to come, so she would not be home for dinner. It gave the Vanderbeekers more time to clean, which was good because the bathroom was a mess too. Jessie and Isa spent twenty minutes scrubbing the dye-stained towels before giving up and stuffing them into the washing machine, along with a whole lot of detergent, and hoping for the best. By the time the apartment had been cleaned to the best of their ability, Grandma had come back downstairs and two more pizzas had arrived, along with Miss Josie and Orlando.

  “Hello, hello!” Miss Josie said, then looked closer at Oliver and Laney. “What happened to you?”

  “A food dye experiment gone wrong,” Oliver said.

  Miss Josie nodded as if this was completely normal. “And how is your father doing?”

  “He got to Indiana safely,” Jessie said. “We were glad because it was so stormy this morning. Orlando, where’ve you been today? You missed a heroic rescue by Oliver.”

  “He sawed through the staircase railing when my head got stuck in the spindles,” Laney told them.

  Oliver bowed. “I accept tips in cash or cookies.”

  “Wow,” Orlando said. “I’m really sorry I missed that.”

  “I was amazing,” Oliver told him.

  “How about dinner?” Mr. Beiderman interjected. “Set the table, will you?”

  Oliver headed to the kitchen to grab napkins and plates, and Aunt Penny brought the new pizza pies to the dining room table.

  While Hyacinth fed Franz, her family and their guests took their seats. As a result, by the time she was finished, she was stuck with the last choice of chairs: the one empty spot was between Grandpa and Aunt Penny. She didn’t mind Aunt Penny, but Grandpa scared her. She considered asking Oliver, who had gotten a seat between Orlando and Miss Josie, if he would switch with her, but it was so loud she’d have to shout, and she didn’t want to risk having anybody hear the reason she didn’t want to sit next to Grandpa.

  People were already biting into slices of hot, thin-crust pizza before she even sat down. The seats were crammed so close together that Hyacinth had to pull the chair all the way out before she could get in and then scoot it back into place, trapping her right next to Gran
dpa.

  Unfortunately, Aunt Penny was deeply involved in a conversation with Mr. Beiderman, who was sitting on the other side of her. Meanwhile, Grandpa wasn’t eating, probably because he had already eaten that slice from the pizza that had fallen to the ground. Grandpa always made her really nervous. He was even quieter than she was, and she never knew what to say to him. She reached out to get a piece of pizza, but just as she was about to put it on her plate, she changed her mind and put it on his plate instead. Then she got another one for herself.

  Grandpa didn’t acknowledge this, but that was okay with Hyacinth. She didn’t really feel like talking anyway, so she listened to the conversations going on around her. Orlando and Oliver were talking about their favorite topic (sports), while Laney and Miss Josie were deep in discussion about how to decorate the garden for Papa’s birthday party. Laney wanted to make sure plenty of glitter was involved.

  Over on the other side of the table, Isa was trapped in a conversation with Grandma. Polite as always, Isa smiled and nodded and said, “Yes, Grandma.” Grandma was drilling her on how many hours she played the violin and what pieces she was working on.

  “Your teacher should have you playing more sonatas,” Grandma scolded, as if the lack of sonatas were Isa’s fault. “How will you improve if you don’t play sonatas?”

  “I do whatever Mr. Van Hooten tells me to do,” Isa told her. “He’s the best.”

  Grandma sniffed, then changed the topic to colleges.

  “I’m only a sophomore in high school,” Isa said. “I’m not thinking about colleges yet.”

  “How about George Mason University?” Grandma suggested. “It has a great accounting program. You’re obviously good at math, since you play music. It’s only half an hour away from our house. You could live with us and save money.”

  “Uh, I’m not so sure about being an accountant,” Isa said, taking another bite of pizza.

  “Your mom was a great accountant,” Grandma said to Isa. “She had five accounting firms asking if they could hire her right after she graduated. Five!”

  Isa smiled at Grandma. “I might want to go into music.”

  Grandma looked as if she had eaten something both sour and rotten. “Music? There’s no money in music!”

  Isa shrugged. “Don’t worry about me, Grandma. I have plans.”

  Hyacinth, secretly thankful that she was not getting drilled by Grandma about her college or career plans, looked across the table to where Jessie and Orlando were sitting.

  “Do you think we could make a big balloon drop for Papa’s birthday?” Jessie asked Orlando.

  “I think so. We need a net and a really tall ladder,” Orlando said. “We can hang the net from the trees, and when we’re singing ‘Happy Birthday,’ you can pull a string and the balloons will all fall down around him.”

  “That sounds great,” Jessie said.

  Next to Hyacinth, Aunt Penny was still talking to Mr. Beiderman. Hyacinth believed they were talking about . . . sea otters?

  She leaned toward Aunt Penny, trying to hear her better. Hyacinth really liked sea otters.

  “Because they’re a keystone species,” Aunt Penny was telling Mr. Beiderman, “they’re really important. They promote the health of the creatures around them by eating urchins and keeping the urchin populations down. Without them, urchins would decimate the giant kelp beds, which are an important habitat for so many creatures. When that happens, species that live in giant kelp suffer, die, and harm the ecosystem.”

  “How many sea otters live in that area now?” Mr. Beiderman said, his pizza forgotten.

  “Nearly three thousand,” Aunt Penny said proudly. “Back before 1911, before the sea otters were protected under the North Pacific Fur Seal Treaty, the number around us had dwindled to only fifty.”

  “Wow,” Hyacinth said, and Aunt Penny turned to her.

  “Are you interested in oceans?” Aunt Penny asked.

  Hyacinth nodded. “I love animals.”

  Aunt Penny smiled. “I can tell how much you love them by how you take care of Franz and the chickens.

  “The New York Aquarium opened up a new shark exhibit,” Mr. Beiderman said.

  “Oh, I love sharks,” Aunt Penny said, turning back to Mr. Beiderman. “They’re keystone predators, just like sea otters.”

  Hyacinth thought about that for a little bit. She had always loved sea otters, but she had never been a fan of sharks. Their little eyes and massive, sharp teeth scared her. But she hadn’t known any of that stuff about keystone predators and giant kelp. It sort of made her want to learn more about the oceans, and maybe one day visit that aquarium Aunt Penny worked at.

  She took another bite of her pizza, which was now cooled off enough not to burn the roof of her mouth. She looked toward Grandpa to see how he was doing. His plate was empty, and he had left the table without her noticing.

  Hyacinth sighed with relief.

  Eleven

  Oliver lay on his bed with a copy of Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky, his flashlight illuminating the words on the page. It was after ten o’clock, and the brownstone was happily quiet after the chaos of the day.

  The sound of his doorknob turning had him quickly flicking off his flashlight and shoving his book under his pillow. Mama didn’t like it when he stayed up too late reading. She said it made him grumpy in the morning, but Oliver honestly didn’t see it. He was perfectly pleasant in the mornings.

  Oliver tried to make his breath even so Mama wouldn’t get suspicious.

  “Oliver!”

  It was Laney. Oliver sat up.

  “What?”

  “We’re having a family meeting in the basement,” she whispered. “But you have to be really quiet. Mama and Aunt Penny are sleeping in the living room.”

  Oliver climbed out of bed and went down his loft ladder one rung at a time instead of jumping down like he usually did. Together he and Laney descended the stairs, avoiding the three squeaky ones and getting all the way to the bottom without incident.

  The sleeper sofa was pulled out, and both Mama and Aunt Penny were fast asleep. Mama hadn’t come home until nine o’clock. She ate the leftover cold pizza, changed into borrowed pajamas from Isa, since Grandma and Grandpa had already gone to sleep in her bedroom, and promptly collapsed on the sofa.

  Laney and Oliver tiptoed past the slumbering adults, opened the door to the basement, and went underground. Isa, Jessie, and Hyacinth were all there, the twinkle lights making the space glow with a warm light.

  “This better be good,” Oliver grumbled, slumping down on the carpet. “I’m in the middle of a really good book.”

  “You’re always in the middle of a really good book,” Jessie said.

  Isa pulled out the letter they had found only that morning. “We haven’t had time to talk about Whalers Cove. I did some research on the internet this afternoon. I checked the Whalers Coves in Washington and Oregon, but nothing about them seemed related to World War II. All the stuff that came up in Washington had to do with condominiums and fishing boats.”

  “I tried to look up Whalers Coves in New York and Massachusetts using Jessie’s computer this afternoon,” Oliver said, “but then Grandma started bugging me about screen time and I had to stop. The only results that came up had to do with a yacht club and a nursing home.”

  “I didn’t find anything in California,” Jessie said. “Hyacinth and Laney, did you find anything in that book you brought home?”

  “Nothing in Florida,” Hyacinth reported.

  “The book is really interesting, though,” Laney said.

  “You’ve been reading it?” Isa said, surprised.

  Laney nodded.

  “I talked to Mrs. Castleman this afternoon,” Isa said, “and even though she knew Pop-Pop, she didn’t know about anything about Whalers Cove. But she had some really interesting stories.”

  “Really?” Hyacinth said. “Tell us.”

  “I can do better than that,” Isa said, pulling out the two
photos and her phone. “I recorded it.” Isa opened her voice recorder app, and soon they could hear Mrs. Castleman’s gentle voice.

  Everyone called your grandfather Pop-Pop. The name came from a book he used to read to your dad when he was little. I think it was called Pop the Porcupine. We would laugh because whenever your grandfather read it to him, he would point at the porcupine in the picture, then point at your grandfather and yell, “Pop!” Your dad loved that book so much. He carried it with him for a year.

  Pop-Pop always had a basketball wedged under his arm. He even brought a ball with him to work just in case the weather was nice and he could play ball with his partner at a nearby court during their lunch breaks. From Monday to Friday, he worked long hours with New York City’s Sanitation Department. But on the weekends, he would take your dad to the Harlem YMCA, where he coached a youth basketball league. Your dad did all the drills—even when he was as young as three years old. It was so cute to watch.

  Pop-Pop used to go to the parks in the area and watch kids do pickup basketball games. Sometimes he would invite one of the kids to join his team at the YMCA. It was always the kid with the beat-up sneakers or the last kid picked for the team—kids who obviously loved basketball but weren’t exactly the stars.

  When your dad was little, Pop-Pop brought him to the basketball courts on Fifth Avenue and 135th Street to practice early on Saturday mornings. It was usually deserted except for one person, a kid named Jamal. He was in middle school back then, and he was always around when they got there and stayed after they left. He wasn’t great at basketball, but after your grandfather saw him for a few months and gave him pointers, he improved a lot and Pop-Pop invited him to join the rec league at the YMCA.

  It was rough in the beginning. I used to go to some of their games, and whenever Jamal played, everyone sort of watched with one hand covering their face. When he was on the court, he would miss a pass or shoot air balls. But Pop-Pop kept working with him, and he got better. A lot better.