Amos Gets Famous (2 page)

“I don’t want to see it.”

“Come on, Amos—it’s cool.” He flipped the book across the table. As he did, a slip of paper fell out of it and fluttered to the floor.

“What’s that?” Amos asked.

“It’s the roundworm,” Dunc said, pointing to the picture. “You can actually see it wriggling under this guy’s skin.”

“Not the picture,” Amos said. “The paper. A piece of paper fell out of the book.”

Dunc reached down and picked it up. He looked at both sides and shook his head. “Weird.”

“What?”

“It has a date, an address, the word
clock
, and—” He stopped.

“And what?” said Amos.

“What did you say the name on the note the police found was?”

“Mr. Zipzoo.”

“That’s on here too,” Dunc said.

Amos stared at him. “Do you think—”

“I don’t know. Could be. Think we should check it out?”

Amos leaned back in his chair and shook his head. He looked across the table as if Dunc had some kind of skin disease. “Whenever we check something out, something bad happens.”

“That’s not true.”

“Sure it is. Either parrots swear at me, or ghosts scare me so bad I pee my pants, or dogs blow snot all over me. We have bad luck.”

“You have bad luck.”

“Same difference.” He turned the page in the book so he wouldn’t have to look at the roundworm.

“You’ll do fine this time,” Dunc said.

“How do you know that?”

“Because you’ve had bad luck all your life. How long do you think a streak like that can last?” Dunc looked back down at the note. “I wonder what those numbers in the paper meant.”

“What were they, again?” Amos asked.

“Fifteen, four, twenty, and there’s a P at the end.”

“I don’t know.” A thoughtful look crawled
like a bug across Amos’s face. “Maybe Mr. Zipzoo is an alien, and he’s collecting knick-knacks from Earth for a museum on his home planet. Maybe the numbers are spatial coordinates, like they use on TV. Spatial coordinates always sound like that.”

Dunc ignored him. “I bet this is a message from Mr. Zipzoo to one of the burglars that works for him. There’s one thing I don’t understand—why would he leave messages in library books? Anybody could find them.”

“No way. How many people are strange enough to look in a book about parasitic nematodes?”

“I did.”

Amos nodded. “My point exactly. I bet that book has been sitting on the shelf for years without ever being opened. When was the last time someone checked it out?”

Dunc flipped to the back cover. “Nineteen fifty-three.”

“See what I mean? What safer place could there be to hide a note?”

“Except now we found it. We know the place, the date, and what they’re going to steal,” said Dunc.

“Maybe we should go to the police.”

Dunc shook his head. “Don’t you remember the appliance smugglers?”

“Oh, yeah. I guess we can’t go to the police.” Dunc and Amos had once found an underground tunnel that some appliance thieves were using for storage. It was filled with gunpowder barrels from the Civil War. One of the thieves had lit a match and taken out most of that side of town. The police were still a little touchy about it.

“This address looks familiar,” Dunc said. “Do you know it?” He handed the paper to Amos.

Amos read it. His head popped up.

“What?” Dunc asked.

“That,” Amos almost shouted, “is Melissa’s address!”

.3

“Think about it, Dunc. We can be heroes!”

Dunc shook his head. “I don’t want to be a hero.”

“Not just a hero,” Amos said. “I’ll be
a hero
. I’ll rush into Melissa’s house and save her from some big dastardly brute. She’ll love me forever.”

“Speaking of big dastardly brutes, I saw in the paper that her brother Rocko is home from college. What happens if he catches us in his house?”

“Big deal.”

“Maybe you forgot. He plays the offensive line for one of those Big Ten football teams.”

“What position?”

“I didn’t say he plays a position. I said he plays the line. The whole line.”

“So? If we catch this burglar and save Melissa and her family, Rocko will be my friend for life. A guy like that is good to have for a friend.”

Dunc slid the paper back into the book and put it on the shelf. He turned and studied his friend and thought,
Right there is the problem. He is my friend. My best friend for life. And here is a chance for him to realize his dream
. He sighed. Amos’s dream was to get to talk to Melissa. He knew he had to do this thing—for Amos.
But it would hurt
, he thought. Somehow he would hurt himself.

Amos had been going on all this time. “They’ll be so grateful in that house, they’ll probably ask me to move in. I can see it now. Melissa will think the sun rises and sets on me—”

Dunc stopped him. A small figure, not more than five feet tall, walked into the aisle past Dunc. He put his face up close to the row of books at the beginning of the aisle and started moving sideways down the aisle, staring at each book as he moved. Then he stopped, reached up,
and took the nematode book down. He opened it, put the note into his pocket, and hurried past Dunc and Amos and out of the library. He was wearing a hat pulled low and a jacket with the collar up, so it was impossible to see his face.

Amos watched him leave. “I wonder …”

“Wonder what?” Dunc was moving toward the door.

“I wonder if the clock he’s going to steal is in Melissa’s room.”

Dunc shook his head. “Man, you’re hopeless. Come on, we’ve got to follow that guy.”

Dunc made for the door with Amos following, but outside there was no sign of the man. The streets were empty except for some girls and boys crossing at the corner. There was a row of maples with thick foliage along the street, and Dunc thought he heard a sound up in the trees but could see nothing and shook his head. “I don’t know how, but he’s gone, just gone.”

“Maybe he’s faster than we thought.”

“Must be.” Dunc started down the steps. “Let’s get home.”

“Home? Why? It’s still early.”

“We have to get some rest.”

“Rest?”

“So we can be alert tonight when we try to catch this guy.”

“Ah—I almost forgot.”

Amos followed him down the sidewalk.

.4

The moon was full that night. It lit up the Hansen yard silver, almost as bright as day.

“Keep your eyes peeled,” Dunc whispered. He and Amos lay together in the bushes by the front walk.

“Peeling my eyes—what a stupid expression. Can I do that like an orange, or do I need a knife?”

“Quiet!” Dunc pointed. A shadow darted through the trees at the side of the house.

Amos shook his head. “It’s a dog.” Ever since the time he’d been bitten by a werewolf and turned into a dog, Amos thought everything was a dog.

Dunc shook his head. “Since when do dogs walk on two legs?” He pointed again. The shadow melted into a shrub next to the house. It was the small burglar.

“How’s he going to get in?” Amos whispered. “He’s too short to reach the window.”

As if in answer to his question, the man jumped. He caught the second-story windowsill above his head with one hand and silently opened the window with the other while he was hanging there. One swing of his legs, and he was inside.

“Did you see that?” Amos asked.

“Yeah.”

“No, I mean did you
see
that? That little guy could slam-dunk a basketball.”

“Let’s go.” Dunc slunk toward the house. Amos followed him until they stood beneath the open window.

Amos jumped, but he couldn’t get close to reaching the sill. “Now what do we do?”

Dunc studied the window. “I’ll have to stand on your shoulders.”

“What do you mean, stand on my shoulders? Why can’t I stand on yours?”

“If I stand on your shoulders, I should be
able to reach the sill. If you stand on mine, you probably won’t. You’re shorter than I am.”

Amos looked into Dunc’s eyes. “That’s crazy.”

But Dunc was already pushing Amos into position. “Come on, give me a boost.” Amos shook his head, but he bent and cupped his hands. Dunc heaved himself up and put one foot on Amos’s shoulder, then the second.

It wasn’t quite enough. “If I can just get a little more height—”

“You just stuck your toe in my eye.”

“Move a little to the left. I can reach the shutter but not the sill next to it.”

Amos moved.

“Just let me get a little closer.” Dunc stepped on the top of Amos’s head. His fingers gripped the edge of the sill. “Made it.”

He bounced once on Amos’s head for momentum, then scrabbled his feet on the siding and up through the window. Then he reached down to help Amos up.

Amos didn’t look happy. “Man, it’s going to take a week to get my hair clean again.”

“At least we’re in, aren’t we?” Dunc took a flashlight out of his pocket. He flashed it once, then shut it off again.

“Did you see a clock?” he asked.

“No.”

“I didn’t either. There’s a desk, a chair, a standing lamp, and a bookcase. This must be Mr. Hansen’s study.”

“Did you see the little guy?”

“No.”

“Then he must be somewhere else. Let’s check Melissa’s room first.” They tiptoed across the floor.

Just as Dunc reached for the knob, the door slowly began to open. The small man walked in, carrying a clock tucked under his arm.

.5

The man wore a black body suit, a face mask, and gloves. He dropped into a half-crouch, which made him seem about half as tall as the boys, and gave a low growl.

Amos stuck his chest out and pushed Dunc to the side. “Melissa’s my girlfriend,” he said. “Let me be the hero.” He tried to grab the clock.

Later Amos could not remember exactly what happened. He remembered touching the clock and the small man grabbing his wrist. He remembered looking at his feet and seeing the ceiling, walls, bathroom door, ceiling, walls, and bathroom door, and then a doorknob seemed to
fly at him and hit him exactly in the middle of his forehead. After that things became hazy.

When he came to, he was outside the study propped up against the wall, standing on his head. His face was mashed into the angle the wall made with the floor and his left hand and foot waved crazily at each other.

“Try to be quiet,” Dunc whispered to him, seeing that he was conscious again.

Amos fell over, climbed slowly to his feet, and shook his head.

“Be quiet?” Amos said. “I’m tossed through the air like a beach ball, and you tell me to be quiet. Fine. Next time I’ll crash into the wall silently.”

Dunc stood in front of the window of the study, his arms spread like a goalie trying to guard a net. The burglar was darting back and forth in front of him, dodging left and right. The clock was still under his arm. He was trying to slip by Dunc to get to the window.

“Amos,” Dunc hissed, “help me!”

“On my way.”

Amos charged back into the room—or tried to charge. His shoes had come untied in the cartwheeling, and his feet now became hopelessly
tangled in the laces. He just had time to think how much like a phone call this was all turning out to be as he sailed over the burglar, over Dunc’s shoulder, and out the window.