“Come on, Maya, call her up,” I said when I got there. “She can help us. I know she can.”
Maya looked down at me like I was some insect she was thinking about stepping on.
“Okay, then, just see if you can get her phone number.
I’ll
call her.”
“Do I look like a phone book?”
“Well, where’s her house then? You know that?”
Maya finally relented and said she’d show us where Lynnette lived. But only if she didn’t have to talk. Three of us went—me, her, and Willy. Julio and Liddlebiddyguy had chores.
Lynnette’s place was twice the size of any of ours, and the yard was neat and clean—grass mowed, green and healthy, edged, not all ratty and brown with armyworms.
Maya waited out in the street, where she couldn’t be seen from the house.
Willy and I went up to the front door.
“This is too weird,” Willy whispered.
“No, it’s brilliant. You watch.”
I knocked.
Nobody came, so I knocked harder.
The door flew open. “What!”
Lynnette scowled at us, annoyed as a scorpion with its stinger curled up.
“Uh . . . we . . . we . . .”
I couldn’t say the words. The look on her face suggested that this might not have been the best idea.
“Whatever you’re selling, we don’t want it.”
She slammed the door.
I waited a few seconds, then knocked again.
This time when she opened the door, she took a step toward me.
I stumbled back.
“We’re not s-selling anything,” I said, putting up my hands. “We want to hire you.”
“Who’s we?”
I turned to Willy, but he was gone.
“Uh . . .”
She smirked, like maybe it amused her to see me so nervous. At least she had a sense of humor, which I could really have used just then.
“There’s this guy,” I said. “He—he always steals from us.”
“So?”
“Well, we need a—a . . . we need somebody to sort of . . . you know, make him go away . . . like you did with the guy in the parking lot at school.”
“You saw that?”
“We were walking by.”
Lynnette studied me closely. “You want me to help you stop some guy from stealing from you? Is that what you’re saying?”
I nodded. Exactly.
Lynnette’s mind was working. I could see it in her eyes, looking at me but not looking at me, you know? Thinking.
“Do I know this guy?”
I shrugged. “His name is Frankie Diamond. He’s in eighth grade, in your school.”
“Eighth, huh?”
“Yeah, I think.”
“Big guy?”
“Bigger than us,” I said.
“Is he cute?”
“Pshh. Not to me, he ain’t.”
She laughed. “I was joking. Come inside. Oh, and tell your friend he can come in, too.”
I turned and looked back.
Willy came slinking out of the bushes.
“Come, come,” Lynnette said, waving us in.
We both hesitated. Maybe it was a trick.
“We need to talk, right?”
We went in. She closed the door behind us.
And locked it.
She saw us looking at the door and said, “My mom makes me do that. Someone broke in and took our TV.”
We followed Lynnette through the house and out to the backyard. I couldn’t believe it. She had a swimming pool, turquoise blue and clear as ice. A vacuum was snaking over the bottom with its pump purring like a cat. Man, I thought, I could move into this situation
today.
We sat around a white iron table in white iron chairs with white iron arms on them. And you know what Lynnette did? She went inside the house and came back with three ice-cold Cokes.
Had to be a trick. This was too easy.
“All right,” she said. “Tell me about this Frankie Diamond.”
Lynnette met us
after school three days in a row, carrying a math book and a spiral pad so she’d look like us. “I don’t carry books,” she said. “This is a disguise.”
But Frankie never showed.
We did find out why Lynnette had been so nice to us, though—Maya. Lynnette had seen her that day we stumbled onto her parking lot fight, which we also discovered was just the end of a bad week with her boyfriend, now her
ex
-boyfriend.
The first day she met us, Lynnette said to Maya, “I remember you from those stupid beach picnics.”
“You saw me there?”
“Of course. You were the only one who didn’t look boring.”
Maya snickered. “I know what you mean.”
“One time I almost came over to see if you wanted to sneak away and do something intelligent,” Lynnette said.
“Why didn’t you?”
Lynnette shrugged. “Shy.”
“Shy? You?”
“I don’t make friends easily. My daddy says I’m way too opinionated. He said people don’t like it.”
Maya laughed. “That’s what my mom says to my dad.”
Lynnette tore a piece of paper out of her spiral pad and gave it to Maya. “Here. Write me your number. Next time let’s make plans to escape.”
Maya scribbled it out.
Lynnette nodded and smiled and jammed it into her pocket. “We got to stick together. Only way to survive, ah?”
On the fourth day
Frankie showed.
Along with the criminal brothers.
We had one bag of four-day-old saved stuff that we’d only nibbled at, since we were low on cash.
Lynnette looked just like one of us—short, and not nearly old enough to be an eighth grader. That’s right, she was in the same grade and same school as Frankie Diamond.
But she didn’t know that name.
Which is why when she first saw him she whistled low and said, “
That’s
Frankie Diamond?”
“The one and only,” Maya said.
“Ni-i-ice,” Lynnette said, dragging it out.
“Nice like a stink bug,” Liddlebiddyguy added.
“What’s he doing with Mike and Tito? I know those two, and what I know ain’t good.”
“He’s new around here,” I said. “Maybe he just doesn’t know who to stay away from.”
Willy snorted in disgust. “Those brothers should stay away from
him.
He’s the one robbing us, not them.”
Frankie started toward us with his bad-news grin that would be long gone after Lynnette got through with him. Mike and Tito, slouching along on either side of him, made it look like the gunfight at OK Corral. This was going to be something.
Yeah!
“So that’s Frankie Diamond,” Lynnette said. “I’ve seen him around but didn’t know his name. He’s cute.”
I glanced at Willy. I didn’t like the sound of that.
“Heyyy, Shrimpy-boy,” Frankie said to me, walking up. He nodded to everyone else and added, “Whatchoo got for me and my frens today?”
“Nothing,” Lynnette said. “Sorry.”
Frankie’s gaze wandered over to Lynnette, slow and amused, his white eyes smiling that magic that made Maya’s heart jump. “Eh look,” he said, turning to Mike and Tito. “The bugs went grow by one more since las’ time.”
Mike and Tito grinned. I guess they knew Lynnette and were thinking: This is going to be good.
Frankie walked up to face Lynnette, standing just inches away from her. “And what’s your name, ah?”
“Does it matter?”
“No, cuz I going make you one new one, jus’ like I did for all these liddle men las’ week.”
Lynnette crossed her arms, cool as ice.
“Let’s see,” Frankie said, posing like he had a smart brain and was thinking. “As I remember, we got Shrimp, we got Mouse, Louse, we got Zulu and Liddlebiddyguy. Am I right?”
“Liddlebiddyguy?” Lynnette said. She smiled and looked back at us. “That’s good. Who’s that?”
Rubin scowled, glaring at all of us, who’d done nothing. But who wanted to glare at Frankie?
“You like that?” Frankie said.
“Not bad for one half-eye babooze, I guess. So whatchoo going call me, ah? Liddlebiddygirl?”
Frankie’s grin grew when Lynnette broke into talking in pidgin English the way he did. He stepped back and looked her over as if he were just now seeing her for the first time . . . and was liking what he saw.
“Well,” he said, his squinting eyes zeroing in for the kill, “I t’ink I going call you Liddlebiddybigmout’, how’s that?”
Mike and Tito shifted and giggled, ribbing each other. Huh? I thought. They giggled?
Frankie turned to them and smiled.
“Big mouth?” Lynnette said.
Frankie turned back and studied her. “Yeah, big mout’ . . . Cuz you liddle bit sassy, ah? I like that.”
“You do, huh?”
“Yeh.”
They stared at each other a long time, neither turning away, both of them grinning that bad-news grin, which Lynnette had down as good as Frankie. Maybe even better than him, and I had to wonder where a nice girl with ice-cold Cokes, white patio chairs, and a swimming pool got all that nasty talent.
Frankie snorted and turned away first. “So, like I said, liddle bugs, whatchoo got for me today? All this talk is making me hungry.”
“I said sorry, remember?” Lynnette said. “Nobody got not’ing for you. Today or any day.”
“Ah?”
“From now on.”
“Ho, man, I
like
that sass,” Frankie said. “But,” he added, opening his hands, “don’t mean not’ing to me, ah? You can talk, you can make like you big, but whatchoo going do about it, ah? You see? You stuck.”
“Think so?”
“Yeh.”
Frankie spotted Darci and winked.
Darci, who was holding the one bag of stuff we had, said, “Look, I got you a jawbreaker.” Which she did. Bought it just to give to him because she knew he liked them.
She reached in and pulled out the jawbreaker and handed it to Frankie.
Lynnette said nothing.
Frankie took the jawbreaker and tossed it up and down in his hand. “Thank you, Darci, my liddle fren.”
“We going now,” Lynnette said, taking the bag from Darci. “Bye.”
“Sure, you can go . . . jus’ as soon as I check inside that bag.”
“No,” Lynnette said calmly. “We jus’ going.”
Frankie laughed and snatched the bag right out of Lynnette’s hand.
Lynnette snatched it back, quick as a toad’s tongue.
Yahh!
Frankie didn’t seem to know what to do. Mike and Tito crossed their arms and waited, as if thinking: in your hands, brah.
Frankie tried to grab the bag back, but Lynnette was too quick for him. He missed and Mike and Tito giggled. I expected Frankie to explode.
But all he did was smile.
Lynnette kept on glaring at him, eye to eye.
Frankie stepped closer. “You like die, liddlebiddybigmout’? Cuz you don’t give me that bag I going be force to step on you, ah? Not going be pretty.”
“Oooh,” Lynnette said. “I scared.”
Frankie took that last step closer, so now he was just inches from Lynnette, face to face, but of course Frankie was taller so he had to look down.
But Lynnette,
sheee.
Not like Willy. She didn’t stare at his neck. No. She walked right into those dangerous white eyes, and I prayed she would have the strength to walk back out.
Lynnette held the bag behind her back.
Frankie reached around trying to grab it, but Lynnette kept shifting it from one hand to the other so he couldn’t get it without pinning her arms back. Which he didn’t want to do, because, of course, it would be embarrassing. What kind of guy would ever bully a girl? See? My plan was right on.
Lynnette held the bag out for one of us to take. Willy grabbed it and stepped back.
Frankie grinned, as if saying, Forget the bag, then, now you and me got business. He tried a new tactic—belly bumping, walking into her, all the time staring into her eyes. It wasn’t about the bag anymore. Now it was about something else.
Frankie kept walking into her, pushing her back with his chest.
And Lynnette, being Lynnette, bumped him back. No hands, just chests.
Ho! I wondered what Frankie thought of
that,
because I noticed for the first time that Lynnette
had
a chest to curve out under her shirt.
Boom!
Boom!
Lynnette held his gaze, an almost-smile hidden in the corners of her eyes.
I wondered if Frankie saw it, too, staring down his nose at her with his chin practically on his chest. But still he bumped into her.
Bumping, bumping.
Lynnette giving it back.
Lost in each other’s eyes, never once blinking. It looked funny almost, except that I couldn’t stop thinking that any minute now they were going to get mad and start slapping at each other.
Mike scowled. Tito stood with his arms crossed, turning away every now and then to spit.
The rest of us gaped, mouths catching flies.
Then something weird happened. Frankie and Lynnette stopped banging into each other and stood with their chests and eyes glued to each other . . . and I knew my plan had just died.
Frankie grinned his shark-white teeth. Lynnette let that hidden smile loose.
And the Andrade brothers walked away.
Frankie, with his chest still glued to Lynnette, turned toward us and flashed his best movie-star look. “Like I said, liddle bugs, whatchoo got for me today?”
Willy gave him the bag.
The whole thing.
Nobody peeped or complained or even hiccuped.
Lynnette put her hands on Frankie’s chest and shoved him away. “I haven’t had this much fun since I ate a sixth grader for lunch. That was back when I was in fourt’ grade.”
“Yeah?” Frankie said.
Lynnette snatched the bag out of Frankie’s hand. “Wot we got, ah?”
Frankie looked at us and wagged his eyebrows. “I always liked bugs, you know?”
He put his arm around Lynnette’s shoulder. She raised an eyebrow but didn’t shrug it off.
“Hey, Darci,” Frankie said. “Lissen, anybody ever boddah you, I don’t care who it is, you come see Frankie Diamond and . . .”
He frowned and turned to Lynnette. “What’s your name, anyways?”
“Lynnette.”
He nodded and turned back to Darci. “You come see Frankie Diamond and his new fren, Lynnette, ah?”
Darci gave him a shy smile, so in love.
And that problem we had?
It had just doubled.
“Hey, liddle bugs,” Frankie said, walking away with Lynnette. “Nex’ time no forget jawbreakers for two, ah?”