Sammy Keyes and the Cold Hard Cash

After two years of sneaking up the fire escape and stealing down a hallway of old people’s apartments to get to my grandmother’s, you’d think I’d have it down. You’d think I’d know just where to duck and how to hide and what to say if some ornery old guy sees me tiptoeing down his hallway.

You’d think.

You’d also think I’d relax a little about living illegally in a seniors-only building. I mean, come on. I’m thirteen now, not some scared-to-death eleven-year-old worried about being tossed out onto the streets.

And the truth is, I
was
sort of used to it. I
had
started to relax a little. Slipping in and out of the apartment had become routine. The Senior Highrise was my
home.

But then one night I was doing my usual sneak up the fire escape when something happened.

Something that had never happened before.

And now I
really
know what it means to be scared to death.

ONE

Holly Janquell is one of my best friends, and she happens to live right across Broadway from the Senior Highrise in an apartment above the Pup Parlor. I love going over to the Pup Parlor. You never know what crazy canine creation you’ll find getting groomed there.

As far as the Pup Parlor
humans
go, you can expect to find either Meg or Vera, or both. Meg is Vera’s daughter, and they were both friends of mine way before they adopted Holly. Grams describes them as “salt of the earth,” but I don’t really get that expression. I just know that they’re hardworking and kind and trustworthy. They put it together about me living with Grams back when the only other person who knew was my friend Marissa. They never made a peep about it, either. They just minded their own business.

When I first met her, I thought Vera was, like, ninety. She’s got wrinkles galore, she’s missing teeth, and she’s wiry. Her forearms look like stretched-out, overroasted chicken legs. You know, where all the fat’s been burned away and what’s left are tendons, shrively muscles, wrinkly skin, and bones.

But I don’t think anyone who’s ninety could wrestle a bulldog into a bathing tank the way Vera does. It’s like seeing an Italian greyhound take down a mastiff. Those wiry arms go into action, and watch out! She’ll have a dog tubbed and sudsed before you can get across the shop to offer help.

Meg’s taller and stockier than her mom, but they let the world know they’re related by the way they do their hair. They both have pouffy poodle dos decorated with little clip-on bows: red, pink, purple, polka-dotted…. They seem to have a different pair of bows for every day of the month.

I used to go hang out at the Pup Parlor just to kill time before going home, but now I go there because Holly lives there and it’s fun to do homework together or help around the shop.

This time, though, I hadn’t just dropped by. And, it being summer and all, I sure wasn’t there to do homework.

This time I was there by official invitation.

Holly had called me at home Tuesday morning and said, “Hey! I’m inviting everyone over tonight to see pictures of our trip. Seven-thirty to nine-thirty. Can you come?”

I squinted at the phone. “You’ve got two hours of pictures?”

“No! It’s a party. We’re having pizza and salad, and dessert, too.” Then she laughed. “But Vera did get a new digital camera before the trip, so expect to be bombarded.”

I laughed, and after I cleared it with Grams, I said, “I’ll be there!”

Holly also invited Marissa and Dot, so it was a real best friends reunion. “Sammy!” they cried when I entered the apartment. I hadn’t seen Dot all summer because she and her family had been in Holland visiting relatives. She sorta blinked at me and said, “You’re so tan!”

“Just my arms and face. It’s a total backpacker tan.”

She bounced up and down a little. “Did you bring pictures of your camping trip? I heard you saw condors!”

I snorted. “And snakes and scorpions and ticks and a dead boar and—”

Her face pinched up. “Eew.”

I grinned. “So be glad—no pictures.”

Dot shrugged, then looked kinda embarrassed as she said, “I brought some pictures of our trip to Holland.” Then real fast, she added, “Meg and Vera said it was fine.”

I eyed Marissa and asked, “Did you bring pictures of Las Vegas?” because her family had already taken three trips there this summer.

Marissa scowled. “You can’t take pictures in Las Vegas. Everything’s too…
big.
”

The doorbell rang. “Pizza’s here!” Meg called from the kitchen. So we all swarmed downstairs, got the pizzas, and pounded back up to the family room, where Vera was setting up a slide show on a laptop computer.

Meg brought in a salad, more drinks, and plates, and we all got comfy on the floor around their oversized coffee table and dug in. Meg usually gives off a pretty serious vibe, but having an apartment full of teenagers seemed to agree with her. She sat back in a recliner with a piece of pepperoni pizza, reclipped one of her royal blue bows, and let out a happy sigh. “Ready, Mother?”

“I believe so,” Vera said, then started the slide show.

“Bombarded” doesn’t even begin to describe it. We saw pictures of Holly in the motor home, Holly at a meteor crater, Holly in the Painted Desert, Holly at the Grand Canyon, Holly cooking dinner, Holly next to a buffalo, Holly nose to nose with a chipmunk, Holly asleep, Holly waking up, Holly watching a Wild West show, Holly shopping for arrowheads, Holly standing by a pack of Harley-Davidsons, and Holly at Mount Rushmore. Fifty gazillion pictures of Holly at Mount Rushmore.

It might have been a real snooze, only luckily, Vera clicked through the shots fast and Holly had enough funny stories to go with the pictures to keep us entertained.

Plus, it was really good pizza.

When the slide show was done, Dot produced her photo album, and we saw another bunch of pictures, this time of Dot and her family by windmills, in oversized wooden shoes, by old churches, and on bikes. “We rode bikes everywhere!” she said. “Holland’s really flat, so that’s what everyone does. My brothers and I rode all the way into Germany. It was awesome!”

Now, when we neared the end of Dot’s photo album, I noticed that Marissa had gotten very quiet. So while we were cleaning up, I kinda pulled her aside and whispered, “You okay?”

She nodded, but I could tell she wasn’t. “What’s going on?”

She shrugged. “Dot’s got the coolest family, don’t you think? And Holly had a blast with Meg and Vera. And you had that amazing backpacking adventure. What have I done this summer but get dragged to Las Vegas?”

“I thought you liked Las Vegas.”

She frowned. “I am so over Las Vegas.” Then she eyed me and said, “My parents have been fighting so much lately. Going anywhere with them is a total drag.”

Holly and Dot were coming toward us, so Marissa put on a smile and said, “But Brandon’s pool party is this weekend.
That,
at least, will be fun.” Then she said to Holly and Dot, “You guys have to come to my cousin’s pool party on Saturday. It’s always such a blast.” She turned to me. “Huh, Sammy?”

I nodded. “It’s no sit-around-the-pool party, that’s for sure. It’s war.”

“War?” Dot asked, and she looked worried.

Marissa laughed. “Water hoops to the death!”

Holly’s eyebrows popped. “Water hoops?” And Dot said, “Oh,
that
sounds like fun. But…are you sure it’s okay if we come?”

“Absolutely,” Marissa said. “Brandon told me to bring whoever I want—if you guys come, it would be awesome!”

So we hung around talking about the pool party for a while, and when things started winding down, Dot called her dad to pick her and Marissa up, and we went downstairs and hung out on the sidewalk.

When Dot’s dad pulled up to the curb, he leaned across the bench seat of his DeVries Nursery delivery truck and called, “Hello, girls! You had a good time,
ja
?”

I laughed because Mr. DeVries puts
“Ja?”
at the end of practically every sentence, and it always cracks me up a little.
“Ja!”
we said, then told him their trip to Holland looked amazing.

As they drove off, Marissa leaned out the window and shouted, “I’ll call with details about the pool party!” but when they were gone, Holly kinda shook her head and said, “I don’t know if I’m going to that, Sammy.”

“You do
not
want to miss it, Holly.” I looked at her and added, “We’ll go over together, okay?”

She hesitated, then gave a little smile. “Okay.”

It was already ten o’clock, so I thanked her for inviting me, and when there was a break in traffic, I snugged down my ball cap, said, “See ya!” and jaywalked across the street.

Now, on my way home, I did what I always do: I took a roundabout route to the fire escape, hung back in the shadows a few seconds to make sure nobody was watching, then started up the steps.

By the second-floor landing, I was on automatic pilot, because really, what is there to do besides zigzag up to the fifth floor? It was nighttime, I was wearing dark clothes, there were no floodlights giving me away, and it’s not like anyone ever
uses
the fire escape. I mean, can you imagine creaky old men and women hobbling up or down switchback after switchback of stairs by choice? Even in a fire, most of the ones I know would just stay put.

Anyway, there I am, trucking up the stairs, and for the first time in all the years I’ve been going to Brandon McKenze’s summer pool party, I’m actually worrying that I don’t have a decent swimsuit to wear, when all of a sudden it happens.

A fire escape door starts to open right in front of me.

For a split second I freeze, not knowing what to do.

If I go up, I’ll be seen.

If I go
down,
I’ll be seen.

So I do the only thing I can think to do—I dive behind the opening door and suck up to the wall like a coat of lumpy paint.

The door shoves open slowly.

And not very far.

And then it just
stays
like that.

Even in the cool night air, my whole body’s sweating—my hands, my armpits, my forehead—I can practically hear the cotton band inside my cap slurping up sweat.

Then my knees start wobbling and my heart decides to try to bang its way out of my body as my mind scrambles around for a believable excuse. I mean, what’s my story? Why am I up here on the fourth-floor landing of an old folks’ fire escape at ten o’clock at night?

But with all that sweating and wobbling and banging and scrambling going on, I’m also thinking, Why isn’t anyone coming out?

What are they doing?

Just looking?

But for what?

For
me
?

I start willing the door to close. Close! Close! Close! I say in my head.

Unfortunately, the power to move large metal objects with my mind is not well honed, because the opposite happens.

The door swings open.

And then suddenly there’s a man stepping through the doorway and onto the fourth-floor landing.