The Tiny Mansion Page 8

  “Hurry up, Santi,” I said.

  “My bottom hurts when I walk,” he said.

  “Well, I hope your skateboard ride was worth it,” I told him.

  That took his mind off his butt, at least. A huge smile spread across his face.

  “Blake’s a expert skateboarder,” he reminded me.

  That was just perfect: now Santi worshipped Blake. What did he see in that guy? Besides the expert skateboarding, I mean.

  The exit doors were finally in sight. Another set of escalators was coming up, too. And judging from the way people were running and trying to get off the escalators, something was happening.

  First, I saw a mall cop running down the up escalator. She wasn’t making much progress, but I guessed she was trying to avoid the crowd on the other side, which was panicking because BLAKE WAS RIDING DOWN IT ON HIS SKATEBOARD.

  Like a surfer, he had his arms out and knees bent to keep his balance while he did a rail slide down the shiny black handrail. As he passed, people leaned back, ducked, or crouched to avoid him, and the chorus of gasps and screams rose like a wave.

  “I . . . AM . . . AWESOME!” he yelled.

  Who even thinks that, never mind yells it?

  “He is awesome, Dagmar!” said Santi excitedly. “He is awesome.”

  Then he said, “Ow! Quit it!” when I yanked his arm to get him to stop gawking and hurry up.

  We reached the bottom of the escalator at the same time Blake did, and I have to admit I was kind of impressed by the way he landed the trick and swerved the skateboard to a stop instead of just falling off the way I would have.

  Of course, as soon as he opened his mouth, he was annoying again.

  “Did Vladimir catch you yet?” he taunted us.

  “Obviously not,” I said, “because he’s not here.”

  “Well, he could have caught you and let you go, like he caught Santi. Santi, you’re out, and either Dagmar or I will win, except it’s going to be me, because I’m the best at this game and I always win.”

  I was thinking, How often do you play? when Vladimir climbed out from behind some shrubbery, wrapped Blake in a bear hug, and lifted him off the ground.

  “You are caught,” he said. “Now we go.”

  I could have cheered.

  Actually, I think I did.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  WE MADE IT to the car without anything else happening, and a few minutes later, we were on the road.

  “How did you get down from the upper level, Vladimir?” I wanted to know.

  “I am repelled,” he said.

  I was repelled by Blake, too, but I figured he meant something else.

  “You rappelled?” I echoed. “With what?”

  Vladimir looked at me in the rearview mirror, and I could have sworn he winked. “I have manny secrets,” he said.

  Blake, meanwhile, was grumpy because he’d lost—at least, that’s how he saw it. Since I’d canceled his game, I didn’t necessarily see myself as the winner, although I was satisfied that he’d been caught before me. Then again, Vladimir could have caught me first, instead of Blake, so . . . maybe he wanted Blake to lose, too. I couldn’t blame him. Working for Blake’s family seemed like a pain in the rear.

  Santi was bummed out, too. All the stuff he’d bought was gone. Vladimir had dumped the bags because there was no way he could carry them and chase us at the same time. Blake didn’t even notice anything was missing and seemed surprised when Santi started crying about losing his junk.

  “You can just buy more,” he told Santi as if that were the most obvious thing in the world, completely ignoring the fact that we actually couldn’t. I still had about a hundred and eighty dollars of his money in my pocket, but I figured I should hang on to it in case we needed it for groceries or something.

  “What is wrong with you?” I asked Blake, the words coming out before I knew what I was saying.

  He had already started playing the shooting game with Santi on the built-in screen, so when he looked up, it only lasted half a second.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  Everything, I wanted to say. He was a rich, spoiled jerk who had no idea how normal people lived their lives. He thought it was funny to create pandemonium (a wild uproar of anger or excitement in a crowd of people) and then just walk away like it was no big deal. And he’d gotten us involved without letting us know what we were getting into.

  “I just don’t know why you have to play that stupid game or why you chose us to play with you,” I said.

  This time he looked at me—really looked at me. He stopped playing, and his character in the game died while Santi’s floundered on. For the first time, Blake looked truly puzzled.

  “I invited you because I thought you liked escaping, too,” he said.

  I didn’t know how to answer that. Because he was right. It gave me a weird, shivery feeling to think that Blake, of all people, actually knew something about me.

  “Well, I guess you’ll be in trouble now,” I said as he went back to his game.

  He pressed a button on his controller to respawn. “Hasn’t happened yet.”

  As we got closer to the compound, I stopped being mad at Blake and started worrying what Trent and Leya would do when Santi told them what had happened at the mall. They definitely weren’t going to let me hang out with Blake anymore, and I hadn’t decided if that was what I wanted or not.

  They wouldn’t let Santi see him, either—which was the leverage I needed.

  “Santi,” I said, after his character died for the thirty-fifth time. “You can’t tell your mom and Trent about what happened.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Because we’ll get in trouble,” I said.

  “Okay, I won’t tell,” he said. “Unless I forget.”

  “Well, you can’t forget,” I told him. “Because if you do, and you tell them, you’re not going to be able to see Blake anymore.”

  His eyes got wide. “Really?”

  I nodded. “Really.”

  Blake must have been paying attention, because he said, “Santi? Do you want a soda before you get home?”

  “What kind?” Santi asked.

  “Any kind you want.”

  Santi nodded his head up and down so hard I thought he’d sprain his neck. He had recovered from eating his way around the world and knew that once we got back to the compound, sugar was going to be harder to find than a cell-phone signal.

  I imagined Blake was going to press a button and reveal a hidden refrigerator stocked with ice-cold drinks, but instead he told Vladimir to pull over at the little store down the road.

  We all went inside, and Santi picked out the biggest bottle of root beer he could find. He chugged half of it in the parking lot, and then the rest of it in the car. As we bumped and bounced up the dirt road, I pictured all that root beer sloshing and fizzing in his stomach.

  “Let me see your phone,” said Blake, probably because he wanted to make fun of it for being old and outdated or something.

  I honestly didn’t care, so I pulled it out of my pocket—and he snatched it out of my hand. Before I could get it back, he turned away and started tapping away with his thumbs.

  “Now you have my number,” he said, letting me have the phone again. “Just in case you want to hang out again.”

  I put the phone back in my pocket, thinking I could always delete the number if I wanted to, and that it didn’t matter anyway since we didn’t get reception.

  A little while later, Blake and Vladimir dropped us off, and we walked down the hill. Trent and Leya were excited to see us, and Leya scooped Santi up in a big hug.

  “Welcome back! How did it go?” she asked after she put him down.

  Santi looked uncomfortable, like ferrets were wrestling inside him. Glanc
ing from my face to Trent’s to Leya’s, he opened his mouth, and the mother of all burps echoed from deep within his belly: “FIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNE.”

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  TRENT ASKED ME if I wanted to help him work on the wall. I didn’t have anything better to do, and helping him didn’t violate my sabotage policy, so I said sure. It was now about twenty feet long and four feet high.

  “I think I’m going to turn a corner,” he said, showing me which way he planned to go.

  “Are you going to build it all the way around the compound?” I asked as I followed him down to the end where he’d left off.

  He smiled and shook his head. “I think that would make me feel claustrophobic.”

  “Why are you working so hard on this, anyway? I mean, when we go, you’ll just have to leave it behind, and then all your work will be for nothing.”

  “Dagmar, you really know how to cheer a guy up.” He scratched his beard, then picked up a rock and tossed it from hand to hand. “There are two parts to work: the work itself and the reward you get from it. Some people just work so they can get money and buy things, and the work itself may not be anything they enjoy. Other people find satisfaction in the task itself.”

  He handed me the rock, and I looked at the wall, trying to figure out where to put it.

  “Like piling rocks on top of each other,” I said.

  “I like making things,” he said, guiding my hands to a place where the rock fit perfectly. “Some people just like to keep busy, but I like solving problems, fixing something broken or making something out of nothing. Maybe someday someone will come along and admire this nice wall and wonder who built it.”

  “But you’ll never know,” I said, feeling bothered that he wouldn’t get credit.

  “Imagining it is enough for me,” he said.

  Building a wall was a lot more work than I’d realized. The biggest part of the job was wandering all over the place looking for rocks and then carrying them back. After a couple hours of that, my back was sore, and my hands were raw and scraped. But it was cool to see how you could make something so strong without using anything to hold it together. It was relaxing, too. We didn’t talk much except to tell each other where good rocks were or to discuss which rock went where. And when we took a break and drank cool water out of the pump, it tasted even better than the soda I’d had at the mall.

  By the time we quit for the day, we’d turned the corner and added a good two feet to the wall.

  “Nice work, Dagmar,” said Trent, squeezing my shoulder.

  “Good job, Trent,” I said.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  THAT NIGHT, AS I lay in my sleeping bag and watched the star lantern slowly turning, I remembered something Trent and Kristen used to argue about.

  Hard work is its own reward, he would say.

  Money is the reward for hard work, she’d say. Hard work alone doesn’t pay the rent.

  Weren’t they both right? Trent’s wall was really cool, and Leya’s art installation was getting more and more interesting, but neither of them seemed to be figuring out what to do next. It was like we were stuck in neutral, just coasting along and waiting for someone to come and push us.

  Behind Helen Wheels, the little generator putted along, powering the fridge and a light bulb as Trent and Leya stayed up and read books. Finally, the light went out, and I saw Trent’s silhouette as he came out of the tiny house and followed the extension cord to the generator. He flicked a switch to turn it off, and all of a sudden I could hear the night: croaking frogs, chirping crickets, the slow trickle of the muddy creek, even the flutter of a moth that brushed past my cheek on its way to the lantern.

  Trent paused on the steps and looked at me. I kept my eyes mostly closed so he wouldn’t be able to tell I was awake.

  After he went in, I waited until I was sure he and Leya were asleep before getting out of my sleeping bag and tiptoeing over to the generator. I’d seen generators before, and I knew how they worked, so it was easy to find the spark plug cap and pull it off. And because I’d planned ahead and hidden Trent’s socket wrench nearby, it was no problem to get the spark plug out.

  People who don’t work with small engines have no idea how important spark plugs are; if there’s anything wrong with them, your engine won’t run well. And if you get them oily or dirty or bend the ground electrode, they might not work at all.

  Usually, a running engine helps you move. In this particular instance, I hoped stopping it would make us go.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I Win

  In the morning, Trent made huevos rancheros: eggs and beans on tortillas, topped with cheese, salsa, and of course avocado. I guess you could say they’re like unrolled burritos, because if you did roll them up, you’d have one heck of a breakfast burrito.

  I was hanging bedding on the line afterward when I heard Trent say, “I’d better start the generator. I was enjoying the peace and quiet, but I don’t want that food to spoil.”

  I pretended I didn’t hear him. I just kept pinning sheets to the clothesline while he pulled the cord to start the little engine. He tried it again and again, but it just wouldn’t start.

  He was still tinkering with it while I got the bucket and the watering can and headed off to the pump to pretend to water the garden. When I got back, he was holding the spark plug between his thumb and forefinger, turning it this way and that to see if he could figure out what was wrong.

  Finally, he said, “Well, I guess I need to go to the hardware store. Anyone want to go with me?”

  “I’ll go,” said Leya. “If we can find a Salvation Army nearby, I need a few things.”

  “I’ll go if we can get ice cream,” said Santi.

  “No ice cream,” said Leya sternly. “Maybe you should stay here with Dagmar.”

  I gave Trent a pleading look that said, I don’t want to babysit.

  He understood what I was telling him and said, “Come with us, Santi. We’ll get you some other treat.”

  It gave me a funny feeling to make Trent deal with the engine and Santi when he was being so nice to me, but the way I saw it, he would be better off back in Oakland, too. He needed to be doing real work that helped solve real problems for people—even if it just meant fixing their toilets—instead of building a wall in the middle of nowhere.

  Even though the wall was kind of cool.

  I wasn’t all that surprised when Blake’s dogs came loping into the compound half an hour later, snuffling the ground until they got to where I was reading in the shade. They just stood there staring at me, like they’d done their job by finding me and weren’t sure what to do next.

  I wasn’t too afraid of them, but I didn’t reach out to pet them, either: they could chomp my arm up to my elbow in a single bite.

  When Blake showed up, I asked, “So what are their names, anyway?”

  “Alpha and Beta.”

  “Seriously?”

  “When we got them, my dad watched them play until he figured out which one was dominant and then named her Alpha. Mom asked what we should call the other one, and he said, ‘Beta, obviously.’”

  “Are they trained to be guard dogs?”

  Blake nodded and walked closer. He reached out, put his hand on my shoulder, and said, “Friend, Alpha. Friend, Beta.”

  The next thing I knew, the dogs attacked—with their tongues. Like puppies that weighed more than I did, they slurped my face, nuzzled me with their wet noses, and generally frolicked all over me until I scrambled to my feet and told Blake to make them stop.

  “Maybe we should make it so they don’t trust me again,” I said.

  “Too late,” Blake said. “The only way I can reverse it is to call you an e-n-e-m-y, but then they’d attack you with their teeth.”

  I was glad Alpha and Beta didn’t know how to
spell.

  “Want to hang out?” he asked.

  “Doing what?”

  “I don’t know. We could mess around in the forest, I guess.”

  If he had said, Let’s go to the mall, then I would have opened my book and ignored him. There was no way I was going back there. But going to the woods seemed safe enough, since he obviously knew his way around and there weren’t any mall cops to chase us.

  I closed my book and stood up. “Where’s Vladimir?”

  “He’s back at the house. He can keep an eye on me through the cameras.”

  Well, that didn’t feel creepy at all.

  I followed Blake down to the creek, but instead of crossing on the plank that had been laid down across the muddy trickle, he led me over to the widest part.

  “Dare you to go over on the rocks,” he said.

  There were enough rocks to make it all the way across, but they were spaced far apart, and some of them were covered with wet, slippery-looking moss.

  “I dare you back,” I said, wanting to see if he could make it before I tried.

  While Alpha and Beta splatted straight through the mud, Blake hopped from one rock to the next and made it across easily. His sneakers were completely dry while the dogs looked like they were wearing black socks.

  “Your turn,” Blake said.

  The first two steps were easy, but I had to stretch a long way to make the third, and when I put my foot down, I was already off balance.

  SPLUNK!

  I ended up with my left foot on the rock and my right foot ankle-deep in mud.

  “I win,” said Blake.

  I made it the rest of the way without messing up again, and when I reached land, I had one dry foot and one that was soaking wet and completely caked in mud. Blake didn’t say Sorry, or That stinks, or anything. He just turned and headed toward the forest while I followed behind, squelching with every other step and fantasizing about making him eat mud pies.

  We didn’t have to climb the fence because a little farther away, there was a gate. I hadn’t seen it before, obviously, and even if I had seen it, I still would have had to climb the fence because it was locked with a keypad entry system. Blake entered the code while I watched over his shoulder and saw that it was 3-6-7-1-9-9, a number I repeated over and over in my head until I had it memorized.