The Adventures of Pete and the Pals

The other kids were obviously so used to Johnny’s random remarks that they all ignored him.

“I hope there’s nice kids in our new house building,” said Rory.

“It’s called an apartment building,” Henry said.

Teddy looked sulky. “Why do we have to move from this great house to a dumb little apartment?”

“We only told you ten thousand times,” said Sally. “Because of Dad’s new job.”

Teddy frowned. “Stupid boss. Why did he have to fire Dad?”

“He wasn’t fired!” Sally said. “He was transferred.”

“Well, I bet there’ll be no nice kids at all,” said Teddy. “Nothing but bullies.”

“Yeah, like the bully in Boot Camp: Middle School,” said Johnny, getting in a shameless plug for one of his favorite stories. “He’s described by another character as acting like he was a monster straight from Tartarus.”

“What kind of monsters come from tartar sauce?” Teddy asked.

Johnny burst into laughter. “Tartarus! Not tartar sauce!”

“The torment part of the Greek underworld,” Henry explained.

“Oh. Well, there better not be anybody like that,” said Teddy.

“I didn’t see too many kids when I went over there with Dad,” said Sally. “But I did see one in the elevator. His mom called him Timmy.”

At this point, the modern version of Tim hit the pause button. “Whoa! Sally thought Amy was my mom?”

“Well, she is like ages older than you,” Pete said. “In fact, she could be your mom. Agewise, I mean. Not to mention she acts like a mom---an unusually bossy one.”

“Okay, back to the past!” said Johnny, pressing the play button.

“Why not try and have a positive outlook?” Younger Henry suggested. “It might turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to us.”

On this hopeful note, the DVD ended.

“I was right,” said Henry. “The move did turn out pretty well.”

“Don’t brag,” said Johnny. “You just wanted to argue with Teddy, and...”

This pleasant discussion was interrupted by the ringing of the phone. Henry answered it. “This is the McGillis residence. Henry McGillis speaking.”

The rest of the conversation was mostly Henry saying ‘yes’ with a lot of long pauses in between. Finally, he said, “All right. He’ll be there” and hung up.

“Well?” Johnny demanded. “Who was it? Who did they want?”

Henry turned to Pete. “That was Ed. He said something about one of his video game discs being missing?”

“It took him that long to say that?” Tim said.

“He said it several different ways, with a few threats thrown in,” Henry explained.

Pete looked nervous. “Uh…who put in the first movie we watched last night?”

“I think it was Teddy,” said Rory.

“Sure, blame me,” said Teddy. “I get blamed for everything! Starting way back when I was three and Johnny bribed me to take the blame for the Easter candy thefts!”

Tim looked interested. “I never heard this piece of McGillis family history.”

“Forget that for now!” said Pete. “Ed will kill me if we don’t find his disc.”

“Really, what’s the worst he can do?” said Johnny. “Wiping out kids over a misplaced video game has got to be illegal.”

“He could make us pay for it,” Henry pointed out. “And after the carriage incident, the treasury is one hundred and fifty dollars on the negative side.”

After some frantic group thinking, we ran over to Pete’s apartment to start searching. We were met at the door by a very angry Ed.

“You better find it, you little dweebs,” was his only comment. We let this insult pass for the moment and began a systematic search of the living room (to quote Henry). After looking in all the obvious places (the tops of the TV and DVD player, next to the TV, in the remote basket) we started on the unusual ones.

“It’s not up here in the light fixture,” Tim announced from on top of a stepstool.

“I would be seriously disturbed if it was,” said Pete. “Discs can’t fly, after all.”

After what seemed like hours, Rory declared he was going for a snack and marched off into the kitchen. A moment later, he gave a shout of triumph and returned waving the disc.

“Where was it?” Pete demanded.

“In the fridge,” Rory said.

“How did it get in there?” Teddy wondered.

We had no idea. (We still don’t. )
 
GGray said:
“It’s not up here in the light fixture,” Tim announced from on top of a stepstool.

“I would be seriously disturbed if it was,” said Pete. “Discs can’t fly, after all.”


“How did it get in there?” Teddy wondered.

We had no idea. (We still don’t. )
Click to expand...

Those made me laugh.:D:D
 

Ed grabbed the disc from Rory and stalked off without even saying thanks.

“So, now that that little issue is behind us, what should we do?” said Johnny.

“Let’s bike to the mall and play Spaceman Pro,” Rory suggested.

We all agreed to this, and Teddy ran off to get the McGillises’ helmets. He dashed back a couple seconds later, looking like he’d just seen a large and dangerous monster roaming the halls.

“What is it?” Pete demanded.

“I saw her!” Teddy gasped.

“Who---Dracula, Frankenstein, or an evil ghost?” Johnny asked.

“Worse,” said Teddy. “I saw---Livi!”

This took a couple seconds to make sense. Henry was the first to catch on.

“You mean Livi Harrington---Arch’s sister? But that means they must be back from Hawaii!”

“They aren’t supposed to be back til right before school starts,” Johnny protested.

“Well, they’re back, whether they’re supposed to be or not,” said Pete. “Teddy, how about some spying?”

Teddy agreed and headed out the door. The rest of us passed the time by sitting on the couch and thinking anxiously of all the ways the Spikers could get back at us. When Teddy finally returned, we practically mobbed him.

“The Harringtons didn’t come back early,” he reported. “Arch just got mixed up and told the other Spikers the wrong info.”

“Did you hear them mention ‘Pal’ or ‘revenge’?” Tim asked.

Teddy shook his head. “Nope. Right now Arch and VidKid are in the Harringtons’ living room playing CarThief 2.0. Arch’s mom said something about jetlag.”

Tim was impressed. “How did you get all that information?”

“I knocked on the Harrington’s door and pretended to be selling magazines for a fundraiser,” Teddy explained.

“You’re pretty smart for a third-grader,” said Johnny. “Or, actually, a going-to-be-a-third-grader.”

“I saw we disappear until school starts,” Rory said.

Pete was skeptical. “Yeah? How are we supposed to do that?”
“We can go visit some relatives or something. Or maybe go camping.”

Pete shook his head. “My nearest relatives are on a cruise til school starts, and the rest are in California or England. Way too far.”

“Anyway, Mom said when we got back from Loopy Island that we were going to stick around here the rest of the summer,” said Henry.

“We could sneak off on the train,” Rory persisted.

“Why the deadly terror?” said Johnny. “I mean, the Spikers are mean and all, but it’s not like they’re evil mobsters from the 1920’s. If they were, we’d have a real reason to be scared.”

“They could be planning something wicked and villainous,” Rory said.

“Like what?” said Pete.

“I don’t know. But something bad. They wouldn’t be scared of their parents---look what happened with the rec room. They got in trouble for a while, but then everybody forgot.”

“Well, no matter what they do, we can resist and retaliate,” said Johnny. “In self-defense, of course.”

Tim looked doubtful. “Amy’s not big on the whole ‘resisting bullies’ thing.”

Johnny waved this aside. “Oh, she won’t mind if we do it to protect ourselves.”

“No, you don’t understand,” said Tim. “Once, in first grade, this kid kept stealing my lunch, and then he started pushing me around. When he tried to push me off a slide, I knocked him down. I was the one that got grounded.”

“There won’t be any physical violence,” Pete assured him. “Just mental battles, like with Pal Publishing. We won then, didn’t we? And Amy wasn’t mad about that.”

“Only because she didn’t find out.”
 
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I suppose it's appropriate that rotten kids would play at being car thieves.

Unfortunately, it's true that authority figures have an astonishing talent for punishing a defender and rewarding an aggressor. Just recall REAL-LIFE cases where a burglar was allowed to SUE his own victims because he got hurt WHILE robbing their house!!!!
 
GGray said:
“There won’t be any physical violence,” Pete assured him. “Just mental battles, like with Pal Publishing. We won then, didn’t we? And Amy wasn’t mad about that.”

“Only because she didn’t find out.”
Click to expand...

That could be a good reason.:D
 
“Well, if she didn’t find out then, chances are she won’t this time, either,” said Pete. “Anyway. Here’s what we’ll do. We keep spying til we find out their plan, then counterattack.”

We agreed this was a good solution, and, since there was no immediate threat, settled down to play some Wii sports.

For the next couple days, we stuck to what Pete called the stakeout plan---we each spied on one Spike. While Teddy was sneaking after Laser in the park, some guy asked him what he was doing. Teddy put on his best ‘dumb little kid’ look and said. “Walking awound.” The guy evidently accepted this explanation. When Johnny heard about this, he congratulated Teddy on his use of ‘obfuscating stupidity’.

Finally, the Friday before school started, the Spikers had a big meeting under the pool table in the rec room. (Like Rory said, their parents let them go in it now.) Thanks to Teddy, we knew they’d be meeting, so we hid behind the couches beforehand.

“Okay, so, what’re we gonna do about those Pals?” said Mohawk. “They can’t just, like, get away with tricking us!”

“And there was that other time, when they disguised and joined the Spikers,” said ‘Heelies’.

“Hey, relax,” said VidKid. “Arch and me thought up a plan while we were in Hawaii. So, here’s what we’ll do. We’re gonna get them so grounded they won’t see the outside til after Christmas.”

“How about school?” asked Laser.

“I meant besides school, stupid,” said VidKid.

“It’ll be easy to get that Scott kid in trouble,” said Arch. “His oldest sister is some kind of freak! She actually told my mom that Burger Bud’s was gonna, like, wreck our immune systems or something.”

“How about the other ones?” asked Big Blow.

“We’ll come up with something,” said VidKid.

“What if they find out?” said ‘Heelies’. “They already busted us more than once, you know.”

“You see any Pals here?” said VidKid. “No! Unless they’ve got high tech spy equipment, they’re not listening in.”

Laser looked worried. “You think they might?”

“That was meant as sarcasm, you loser,” said VidKid. “Now, come on. I wanna catch the new episode of Tweenage Rebels.”
 
After the Spikers left the rec room, we held a conference of our own.

“Great,” said Tim. “Like I need any more trouble with Amy. That boarding school threat is still in effect, I think.”

Pete dismissed this with a wave. ‘She’d never do that. Then who would she boss around?”
“I wonder what they’re gonna think up to get the rest of us in trouble,” said Teddy.

“Can’t we just tell our parents what they’re planning?” said Rory.

“They’d just see it as us making excuses to be bad,” said Henry.

“We’ll just have to keep on our guard,” said Pete.

And we did, right up til the big neighborhood Labor Day parade. We figured the Spikers wouldn’t try anything in public. When we got back to the apartment building, we headed for Pete’s place to take inventory of the candy we’d gotten. We were met at the door by a very angry Ed---sound familiar?

“Okay, this was your last chance, and you screwed up,” he said.

“Do you mean ‘you’ in the collective sense or in the singular?” Henry asked.

Ed glared at him. “Shut up. And I mean all of you.”

“What happened?” asked Pete.

Ed snorted. “What happened? Don’t stand there and ask me what happened! Like you don’t even know!”

“We don’t,” said Teddy.

Ed looked at him like he was some kind of bug that needed squashing. “Yeah. Sure you don’t. My new Ipod Touch was broken by aliens that magically teleported from Mars.”

“We didn’t break it!” Johnny protested. “I never even saw it!”

“Sure. It busted itself and hid in Pete’s sock drawer.”

“You were in my sock drawer?” Pete said. “Why?”

“Because I was looking for my Ipod, and that’s where you hide all your stuff,” said Ed. “Just wait til Mom and Dad get back, Pete. You are going to be grounded til New Year’s.”

We fled to the comparative safety of the McGillis apartment---and we met at the door by Mrs. McGillis, who had left the parade early so Lauri could take a nap.

“No! Don’t tell me they struck here, too!” said Johnny.

Mrs. McGillis held up a disc. “Boys, why was this in your room?”

We took a closer look. It was CarThief 1.9.

“Never saw it before in my life,” said Johnny. “Except at that garage sale last week, and I’m sure this isn’t the same copy.”

“It was shoved inside Teddy’s pillowcase,” his mom said. “Are you sure you didn’t sneak it home?”

The McGillis boys emphatically denied this. Just then, Lauri started crying.

“We’ll talk this over when your father gets home,” said Mrs. McGillis, going inside.

“Boy, that baby sure cries at the best times,” said Tim. Then he gasped. “Oh, no. Think they got me, too?”

We rushed to Tim’s apartment. No, Amy didn’t meet us in the doorway---she was at the kitchen table with a pile of Greasy Joint burger wrappers in front of her. For a second, we thought we’d just crossed over into the Twilight Zone.

“Timothy,” she said sternly. “These were under your mattress.”

Tim gaped. “Uh…”

Henry nudged him. “Defend yourself before you’re assumed to be guilty!”

“They’re not mine! I haven’t eaten at Greasy Joint since Uncle Ryan took me and Evelyn there three years ago!” said Tim. (We’d heard about that time. Amy hadn’t let Uncle Ryan near Tim and Evelyn since.)
 
Oh dear.... :eek: How are they going to get out of this one?

However, I must say, why in the world would anyone hide BURGERS under their MATTRESS?! xD
 
Amy gave him a ‘yeah, right’ look.

“Anyway, where would I get the money to buy all that stuff?” said Tim.

“You know the rules, Timothy,” said Amy.

“Grounded til Christmas?” guessed Tim miserably.

“I’ll talk about it when your friends leave,” said Amy. We could tell by her tone she wanted us to leave, but we acted dumb and herded Tim into his room.

“Great,” said Pete. “I can’t believe they actually did it! How are we going to convince everybody we’re innocent?”

Johnny looked insulted. “I can’t believe they think we’re responsible for all that! Can’t they see the fingerprints of the Spikers all over this whole mess?”

Henry sat up like he’d been just been zapped. “Maybe they will---literally! The touchscreen of Ed’s Ipod probably has the fingerprints of whatever Spiker smashed it!”

“Yeah! We can get all the Spikers’ prints and compare them to the ones on the Ipod!” said Pete. “Then they’ll have to believe our story.”

Getting to Ed’s Ipod was easier said than done. Teddy managed to sneak off with it while Ed was updating his Facebook friends about the vandalism. Henry pulled out his science kit (last year’s birthday present) and set to work.

“Wow, just like the forensics team on Medical Crime Drama!” said Johnny.

“Somehow, we have to get the Spikers’ prints to compare to these,” said Henry.

Pete grinned. “I’ve got a plan. We get one of our sisters to set up a little stand in the rec room---shake a jar, and whoever shakes all the coins out first wins ten dollars. The Spikers won’t be able to pass it up, and we can test the jars for prints afterwards.”

“Where will we get the ten dollars?” Rory asked.

“I’ll borrow it from Anna Rose,” said Pete.

We ended up convincing Sally and Evelyn to run the stand. We kept out of sight, so the Spikers wouldn’t get suspicious. The girls met us in the McGillises’ apartment with the jars, and Henry did his work.

“By the way, which one won the money?” Pete asked.

“Arch,” said Sally. “VidKid said the money went in the Spiker Fund and grabbed it.”

After a couple hours, Henry finally had the results---the Iopd smashers were Mohawk and Big Blow. We convinced our parents (and Amy) to gather in Pete’s apartment for the announcement.

“…and as you can see, the fingerprints of Mohawk and Big Blow are clearly on the Ipod,” Henry finished.

Ed pushed his chair back. “Okay,where do those losers live?”

“Fifth floor, apartments 512 and 517,” said Johnny.

“Hang on, Ed,” said Pete’s dad. “We’ll handle this in a minute. The boys aren’t done yet.”

“Thanks, Mr. Lewis,” said Henry. “Anyway, like I said before, this proves our Spiker conspiracy theory.”

Thanks to Henry, we were believed. It took a long longer to convince the Spikers’ parents. In the end, Ed got a new Iopd, and we got the relief of knowing there wouldn’t be any more Spiker trouble for a while. Their parents would be watchful til Christmas, at least.
 
It makes one wish that in REAL life, kids harassed by troublemakers could ACTUALLY succeed in such clever stratagems to thwart their enemies.
 
9. The Children’s Caroling Club
After the above Spiker trouble, things went pretty smoothly for a while. We started school, did homework, went to school, did homework…you get the picture. The day after Thanksgiving, we met in Pete’s apartment just to talk about stuff. We noticed Tim seemed a little down.

“So, how was yesterday?” Rory asked Tim.

Tim shrugged. “Okay. At least Amy didn’t make a tofu turkey. She was thinking about it, though.”

Rory shuddered. “The words ‘tofu’ and ‘turkey’ have no business being in the same sentence.”

“Irene said the same thing. She threatened to bring home takeout from Greasy Joint unless we got a normal turkey,” said Tim. “Amy even let her make an organic pumpkin pie.”

“Wow, I didn’t know Greasy Joint was open yesterday,” said Teddy.

“It’s not, but Amy doesn’t know that,” said Tim.

“If yesterday was okay, why do you look so miserable?” asked Henry.

“Amy signed me up for something.”

“Not boarding school!” said Pete, horrified.

“No. Not that bad. But almost.”

He pulled a flier out of his pocket and handed it to Pete.

“Do you think your child has musical talent?” Pete read. “Would you like to see them perform onstage on Christmas Eve? If so, sign them up for the Children’s Caroling Club!”

Johnny choked on his hot chocolate. “What?”

“Rehearsals start tomorrow,” said Tim miserably. “I probably won’t see you guys for a while between that and homework.”

Pete pulled the rest of us aside, and we had a quick whispered conference. Then Pete turned to Tim.

“We decided to show support for you in your time of trial,” he said. “We’ll join, too.”

He didn’t mention that he threatened a couple of us with being kicked out of the club before we’d agreed.

“Great!” said Tim. “Thanks!”

“Well, Mom will be happy, anyway,” said Johnny. “It’ll be a nice Christmas surprise.”

The next morning, we took the bus to Hill and Washburn’s Music Store, where the flier claimed the rehearsals were. Sally came too. (She’d caught her brothers sneaking out and demanded to know where they were going. After they told her, she wanted to come.) Pete led the way inside. The music blasting over the stereo sure wasn’t Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. After asking a few people, one of them pointed us towards a flight of stairs. At the top, we went through a door and found ourselves in a large room. The place was obviously pretty soundproof. All we could hear of the downstairs stereo was the occasional boom.
 
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