Sammy Keyes and the Search for Snake Eyes (4 page)

She was reading the label. “Hold him. Or put him down on a towel to let him get some exercise.”

I liked the towel idea. I laid him on the floor and ran off to get the one out of the Sears bag.

“Samantha! You don't just put a baby on the floor. It's cold!”

“I'll be right back!”

“Oh, and close that cat of yours in my room. He is
not
going to like this baby.”

She was right. Dorito would
hate
Poopy Pepe.

And people wonder why I love my cat.

Anyway, I locked Dorito in Grams' room and came flying into the kitchen with the towel. “Here.”

“Put it on the carpet in the front room.”

I did.

She looks up from reading the formula can. “Samantha Jo, what are you waiting for? Put the baby on the towel!”

Pepe was not looking or sounding too happy. A sure sign he was about to bomb me with something. I picked him up and held him out at arm's length, then ran him over to the towel.

Grams mutters, “You are terrible with that baby, Samantha.”

“Well he's … he's scary!” I said.

“Why?”

“I don't know…. He just is.”

“You're reminding me of your mother, child.”

Ouch. I inched back into the kitchen. “Don't say that.”

“Well, it's true,” she said with a frown.

I looked over at Pepe, kicking away at the air above him, making little slobbery throaty noises. Had I been this scary to my mother? No way. Nuh-uh. That baby had done more to me in an hour than …

“You were a screamer.”

“What?”

“A screamer. Night and day. The doctor said it was colic, but that's just a nice way of saying you were a screamer.”

“But —”

“That over there is a good baby.” She stood and took the baby bottle out of the bag and said, “Now here. Clean the bottle and mix up some formula. Two scoops, tap water'll have to do. I'll get a pan going for you to warm it in—oh, never mind. We'll just be careful with the microwave. And don't mix it with the nipple on. You'll plug it.”

I did manage to do all that and feed Pepe. Even burped him halfway through because Grams told me that's what you're supposed to do.

It didn't stop him from spitting up all over me again, but this time it was only about a quarter of the bottle. And this time I didn't mind so much because, hey, I was already coated. Barf away, baby.

But two minutes after he'd finished re-barfing me, he starts turning beet red in the face and I can tell—Poopy Pepe's piling up a big one.

Grams laughs at the expression on my face. “They do that, Samantha.”

“Every time you feed them?”

“No… but often enough. And you have to change him right away or he'll get a rash.”

Twenty minutes later I finally had a new diaper on him. I didn't fall for the ol' fountain trick again, either. I wadded up practically a whole roll of toilet paper and laid it across him, and even though Grams' eyebrows were flying up and down a lot, she didn't actually
say
anything.

Then before you know it I'd shoveled down dinner, packed Pepe into his stroller, and hit the hallway. “Bye,
Grams!” I called for the world to hear, then hurried to the elevator. Down we went, and out through the lobby. “Bye, Mr. Garnucci! See you soon!”

“Bye, Samantha!” he yelled back. “You take care!”

The mall's only a few blocks from the Senior Highrise, so I actually got there five minutes early. I stood right outside the arcade, keeping one eye on the wall of glass doors leading to the parking structure and the other on the tower clock, which sticks right up through the escalators in the central courtyard. Seven o'clock. Seven-ohfive. Seven-ten.

There weren't a whole lot of people milling around, and even though I wasn't too worried yet, I couldn't help wondering what I was going to do if she
didn't
show up. Seven-fifteen. Seven-thirty. By now I was having to roll the stroller back and forth to keep Pepe quiet.

Then, just as the big hand clicked up to the Roman numeral nine, I saw something that made my heart stop. It wasn't the guy with the snake-eyed cobra. It was worse.
Way
worse.

Coming right at me was the Queen of Mean.

The Mistress of Misery.

The Baroness of Brattiness.

That's right, it was the one and only Heather Acosta.

And flanking her like a couple of court jesters were her wanna-bes, Tenille Toolee and Monet Jarlsberg.

I ducked behind the stroller, but it was too late. They'd spotted me. So I retied the shoelace on my high-top, took a deep breath, and stood up to face the firing squad.

Heather came right up to me and said through her sneer, “Hey, loser. What are you doing hanging around the mall with a
baby
, huh?”

I told myself to ignore her. I told myself to look right through her. But my mouth shoots off with, “I was about to ask Tenille and Monet the same thing.”

Tenille didn't get it. Neither did Monet. But Heather did. She wobbles her wicked red head, hissing, “Don't
even
think you can harass me here. There's no administration building for you to hide in, and I don't see Ms. Rothhammer around anywhere to bail you out.” She shoves me and says, “So don't start with me, stupid.”

Her even touching me was enough to make my skin creep right off my body, but her
shoving
me practically vaporized my self-control. I wanted to knock her flat! I didn't care that it was three against one. Monet and Tenille would be easy to scare off, and Heather, well, I'd taken her down before. Right here in the mall.

But then Pepe started whimpering and twisting around in the stroller, and I realized that I couldn't exactly run if it came to that. I was in charge of a
baby
.

So I took a deep breath, took a step back, and said, “Look, Heather, I'm baby-sitting. Don't insult me, I won't insult you. Okay?”

She snorts and says, “Just having to
look
at you's an insult, loser.” She smirks at my high-tops, then gives my shirt a pitiful little shake of the head. “Like, what
is
that all over you?”

Pepe's still squawking, so I roll the stroller back and forth to quiet him. “Look, do you mind? Just go away.”

All of a sudden her eyebrows go up and her lips curve into an evil oval. “It's baby barf!” She looks at Pepe and cries, “Look! It's all over him, too!”

I whip the stroller around so he's facing me, and sure enough, there's spit-up running down his jumper.

“How cute. Mommy and baby have matching outfits!” I pull out the same old flannel towel and try to wipe him up with it, but the towel's already pretty gross and it's not helping matters much. And with Tenille and Monet snickering and saying stuff like “Dis
gus
ting,” and “Who'd ever trust
her
with a baby?” and “Like, it's probably sitting in a diaper full of doo-doo, too!” well, it took everything I had not to punch their little lemon lips shut.

By now Pepe's crying, so I take him out of the stroller and move away from them a few yards, saying, “Will you please just back off ? Go. Go play video games. Just leave me alone.”

It came out sort of quiet because I was trying real hard to rock Pepe and hold it all together, but it must've sounded like I was scared—or at least intimidated—because Heather's head inflates on the spot. She'd won and she knew it. “C'mon, guys,” she says to Monet and Tenille. “Like we want to be seen anywhere
near
this loser.”

They slithered into the darkness of the arcade, which was almost worse than having them out where I could see them. There was something really creepy about knowing they could see me through the arcade windows when I couldn't see them at all.

So I moved into a corner near the wall of doors that led to the parking lot. Heather and her friends could still see
me if they tried, but at least I wasn't right out in front. I had a clear shot of the corridors and the clock, and there's no way Pepe's mom could miss
me
. I was bouncing her baby like crazy on my shoulder, trying to keep him quiet.

And the longer I bounced, the more panicked I got. Where
was
she? Pepe needed another bottle. He needed another
diaper
. He needed a clean shoulder to barf on!

But the clock ticked on, and at closing time Heather and her pip-squeak posse did a strut-by, shooting off with “Ooo, baby!” and “Sammy the Nanny!” and “Hot date, huh?”

I didn't even look their way. I had bigger problems than being the brunt of their jokes. It was late. It was dark outside. I didn't know who Pepe's mother was, and yeah, it had finally sunk in that no, she wasn't going to be taking over her motherly duties. Pepe's mother had made it real clear that I shouldn't go to the police, but I couldn't exactly go
home
. I mean, if
I
wasn't allowed to live there, imagine how welcome Pepe would be!

As the lights inside the mall started going off and cars zoomed away from the parking structure, I just stood outside, frozen to the sidewalk.

What in the world was I going to do with this baby?

There's only so long you can stand outside in the cold watching a mall go dark before you make a move. Especially when the baby you've been stuck with is wailing like his diaper's on fire. And maybe his bottom did need some attending to, but I just couldn't
think
straight with all the noise he was making.

So the move I made was to strap Pepe back in the stroller and run up and down the sidewalk looking for a water fountain. I needed to mix some formula and hush that puppy up!

Pepe's having none of it, though, kicking and wailing louder than ever. And since there's no water fountain or working spigot
any
where, I decided to go across the street to the police station.

Now, I wasn't going over there because I was thinking I could turn Pepe over to the police. I was going over there because I knew the police station had a hose coiled up behind a bush right by the front steps. So I charged through the parking structure, jaywalked across Cook Street, and parked Pepe on the police-station lawn. And right behind the bushes, there it was! Spigot, crank, hose, water!

I probably should have run the water a minute to clear the hose, or even just taken the hose off. I mean, you know what hose water tastes like, and it sure wasn't purified like the formula label directed. But I couldn't
think
. It's weird. A baby crying is not like a vacuum cleaner running, which actually
helps
me think. A baby crying
bites
your eardrums. And really, what I wanted to do was yell “SHUT UP! I'm working on it!” but instead, I threw in some formula, blasted it with water, shook the bottle like mad, then stuffed it in that big boy's mouth.

The formula was cold, but he didn't even seem to care. And the hose flavor must've seemed mighty tasty to him because he guzzled that bottle like there was no tomorrow.

I let out a sigh of relief, then sat down on the bottom step and helped him hold the bottle up. Finally. I could think. What was I going to
do
with this little chugalug? I glanced over my shoulder at the police station. Why had his mother been so afraid of the police? Not that I haven't felt that way myself a few times, but still. Instead of going to the police, she'd left her baby with me.

Me.

With her
baby
.

Plus, to me the guy with the snake-eyes tattoo was way scarier than the police. And why hadn't she shown up? Had Snake Eyes found her? Had he kept her from coming back?

As a certain big-bellied cop would say, I was
way
out of my jurisdiction. If only I could just go in the station and turn Pepe over. But they'd want to know a whole lot of
stuff that didn't have anything to do with Pepe. Like who I was and where I lived, and how to contact
my
parents.

No, if I was going to talk to the police, there was only one man I could talk to. One man who thought he knew me plenty well already—even if half of what he knew wasn't true. One man who was sick enough of seeing me that seeing me
leave
was a welcome sight.

Yeah, the one guy on the force I could hit with a dump-and-run was Officer Borsch. But would he still be here this late?

The bottle was empty enough for Pepe to manage it on his own, so I ran up the steps to the police-station door and tried the handle. To my surprise, it opened.

The clerk's window was rolled down tight and there wasn't anybody around. But there was a courtesy phone on the wall. I picked it up and listened to it ring on the other end—like I was calling home or something.

On the third ring a man picks up saying, “Detective Draper here. How may I help you?”

“Uh,” I said in a real intelligent fashion, “does, um … does Officer Borsch happen to be around?”

“No. He's working day shift. Is there something I can help you with?”

“Uh, no. That's okay.” Then I added, “Does that mean he'll be in in the morning?”

“At oh-six-hundred hours. Do you want to leave your name? Or a message?”

“Uh, no. But thanks. Thanks a lot.”

I hung up and jetted out of there, and the minute I got outside I thought something terrible had happened to
Pepe. The bottle was lying on the grass and Pepe's head was bent completely forward. He wasn't moving at all. I raced down the steps with wild thoughts flying through my head. I hadn't burped him! I'd just let him guzzle. Had he spit up and choked? Had he died from a burp getting stuck in his throat?