The Spy Catchers of Maple Hill (17 page)

“Oh, sure,” Maryann said, and threw her hair over her shoulder.

“It's true. Check with Mrs. Rushby.”

“I should have a restraining order against
you
,” Maryann said. “You pushed me.”

“It was self-defense,” Hazel said. “And the judge agreed. So scat.” She waved her hand at them dismissively.

They hesitated and then Maryann said, “Fine. We'll leave you two alone, but not because you said so.”

“Right,” Connie agreed, crinkling her freckled nose. “We don't want to be near enough to catch the weird off of you.”

“It was pathetic enough when she was hanging around Becky Cornflower.”

“Ugh. I don't blame Becky for moving away. I wish I could move far, far away, too,” Connie taunted. “Arizona wouldn't be far enough for me if you were my only friend, Hazel. I'd move all the way to Alaska. If it ever becomes a state, it'll be so
good Americans will have a place to get away from weirdos like you.”

“Actually, it would likely have more to do with Alaska's strategic location,” Samuel said. “With its closeness to Russia, it would be militarily advantageous for Alaska to be a state rather than a territory.”

Maryann sneered, and no one looks pretty when they sneer, not even girls with perfect blond hair. “You two are just perfect for each other. Triangle people. You're practically adorable.”

“So adorable it makes me sick,” Connie added. They both made retching and dinging noises as they walked away.

When Hazel looked back at Samuel, he was bright red and wouldn't catch her eye. Now it was her turn to look away. She tucked her knees up to her chest and tried to stop herself from blushing as madly as he was.

Samuel cleared his throat. “The one thing we know about Alice is that she's connected to Mr. Jones.” He held up his hand to stop her from interrupting him. “Maybe you're right and we do need to investigate him.”

“Really?” Hazel didn't even care that he still wasn't buying her theory about Alice being just a name. “You know what this means, don't you? Stakeout!”

Samuel frowned. “That's not the appropriate form of investigation for this situation.”

“How can you say that? It's the perfect form.”

“We can't see each other out of school, so how could we even get together to do it?”

“Can't you just say you're going over to do a grave rubbing? We don't even have to talk. I bet we'd get better information if we were spying from different viewpoints.”

He shook his head. “I don't think my grandmother wants me to leave the neighborhood.”

Then a brilliant thought came to her. “Halloween! You, me, stakeout in the cemetery, then trick-or-treating. It will be fantastic!”

“There's the small matter that we aren't supposed to be talking to each other.”

“It's all in how you present it, Samuel. Trust me.” She explained her plan to him, and even told him just what to say to his grandmother.

“You think this will work?” Samuel asked.

“Oh, sure,” she said, though really all she had was hope.

Later that night, Hazel laid out the argument before her parents:

“Insomuch as I have only been able to trick-or-treat once in my life,” she began. Her parents had taken her trick-or-treating when she was three, but the town teenagers, sensing the lack of authority, took the opportunity to vandalize the graveyard. Hazel had been allowed to dress up after that, but they never left the house: her mom handed out candy while her dad patrolled the graveyard with a flashlight. “And insomuch as this was meant to be my first time trick-or-treating
by myself. And insomuch as Samuel is not allowed to go trick-or-treating alone, and so won't be allowed to go if I don't go with him, and we all know what a sad, sad childhood he's had, I hereby propose that you allow me a one-night reprieve from indefinite groundation—which, by the way, I'm pretty sure violates the Geneva convention—to go trick-or-treating. Samuel will even help with weeding beforehand.”

Her mother looked up from her
Horticultural Digest
and swallowed her soup. “What was that, dear?”

“She wants to go trick-or-treating.”

“But she's grounded.”

“It's for Samuel,” Hazel reiterated. “His grandmother won't let him go alone and he doesn't have any other friends.”

Her parents exchanged a look. Playing the Samuel card was risky. She knew her parents felt sympathy for him, but they also were convinced that he was somehow responsible for all her recent bad behavior.

“Did you hear the part where Samuel was going to help me weed?”

Her parents exchanged a look. More like several looks, as if they were trying to come to an agreement using only their eyes.

“Will Mrs. Switzer allow Samuel to go trick-or-treating with you?”

“Oh, I'm sure she will if you say it's okay. Don't you see that Samuel's joy and happiness is in your hands?”

“That's a little much, Hazel,” her father said.

“Quite a bit much,” her mother concurred.

“Sorry,” Hazel mumbled. She tried to make her eyes as wide as she could so they could see how sad and pathetic her plight was.

Her dad shook his magazine. “You know, when I was your age, we didn't do any of this trick-or-treating.”

Hazel tried not to look exasperated.

“It's a form of extortion,” her mom said. “Kids going from house to house and begging for candy. My mother never would have let me do something like that.”

Hazel wiggled in her seat. She wished they would just tell her one way or the other.

“I suppose it wouldn't hurt to give them another chance,” her father said.

“Oh, all right,” her mother said. “But the grounding isn't over.”

“What are you going to be?” her dad asked.

“I was thinking maybe a historical figure like Eleanor Roosevelt or Amelia Earhart. Do you think I could make a plane out of cardboard boxes before Saturday?”

“I don't know about a plane, but I think I have an aviator cap up in the attic,” her mom said. “Your great-grandfather used to fly, you know.”

Hazel imagined herself with her cap and goggles, a scarf blowing back in the breeze. This was shaping up to be the best Halloween yet. Of course, as she herself should have known, life didn't always live up to expectations.

“Gum?” Hazel demanded. “Gum? Who brings gum to a Halloween party?”

Her mother pushed a long strand of her hair back from her face. “Girls who don't tell their mothers about the Halloween party and the need for snacks until the night before, that's who.” She plunged her hands into a sink full of soapy dishes.

“You could have made chocolate chip cookies. Those take no time at all.”

“Everybody loves gum,” her father said. “After World War II, American soldiers used to give it to German kids. They'd come running for blocks.”

“We don't live in Germany.”

“Hazel,” her mother said, but her tone said the rest:
zip it
. She wiped at her hair again, leaving a trail of soap bubbles across her forehead.

It's true that the night before Hazel had been so excited about going trick-or-treating and making her costume that she'd forgotten until bedtime to tell her mother that she needed to bring something to share for the classroom Halloween party. “Now?” her mother had demanded. “You tell me now?” But then she had said she would take care of it, and Hazel had gone to bed. Four packs of Wrigley's gum was not what she had expected when she woke up, but it was too late: she had to go to school. And she wasn't going to let the gum ruin her excitement for the day.

She tucked the packages into her knapsack, and headed out to her bike.

She pulled her goggles down over her eyes. They were darkened and a little cracked, which made seeing and thus bike riding a bit difficult, but she wasn't going to take them off. She had woven wire through her white scarf so it would look like it was blowing behind her. Her father had an old bomber jacket. “From my rebel days.” He had laughed, and Hazel wondered what on earth that could mean. She wore khaki pants and canvas sneakers. As she sped down the hill to school, she felt like she really was Amelia Earhart, flying over the ocean, nothing but blue sky and blue water in front of her, no place to go but around the world.

“I don't think Amelia Earhart wore sneakers,” Samuel said when he saw her.

“Well, Amelia Earhart got to fly her plane. We have to walk in the Halloween parade. What are you supposed to be, anyway?”

Samuel was wearing the same clothes he always wore. He bent over and took something out of his satchel. “I'm a ghost,” he said, and threw a sheet over his head. He adjusted it so that he was looking through two cut-out eyes.

“No one ever actually dresses as a ghost,” she said.

“Exactly,” he replied.

They walked together through the school toward the front door, where the annual Halloween parade was getting set to begin. Students of all ages were dressed in their costumes: skeletons laughed with clowns, Howdy Doody chatted with a Rocket Ranger, a pack of hobos drifted down the hall. The Halloween parade was one of Hazel's absolute favorite times of the year. She'd been Raggedy Ann, a gypsy, a flower (at her parents' insistence in first grade), and a wizard, but Amelia Earhart was certainly her best costume yet.

When Hazel and Samuel stepped into the bright sun, they saw Maryann and Connie dressed as identical bunnies. They wore pink jumpsuits made out of some soft material, pink ears on headbands—each with the right ear folded down—and had pink noses and black whiskers drawn on their faces.

“A rabbit's ears would never look like that in real life,” Hazel whispered. “One up and one down? That's ridiculous.”

“Almost as ridiculous as a pink rabbit,” Samuel replied.

Hazel grinned. It was nice to have someone else who valued truth and integrity and sticking up for the facts.

Mrs. Sinclair came hurrying out dressed as Annie Oakley
and begun ushering her students into a line. She was one of the only teachers who dressed up, which made Hazel like her even more. “Ready, children, let's get ready!”

They lined up as best they could, each jostling to see the parents along the street below. It was all mothers, except for one man, who— Hazel squinted. She couldn't believe it. What was her father doing at the Halloween parade?

Behind her, Otis Logan was shifting from foot to foot. He had on a gray jumpsuit. “What are you supposed to be, anyway?” she asked.

Normally Otis would have made a snide remark, but instead he wrinkled up his freckled nose and said, “I'm one of the spies at the factory.”

“That is scary!” Anthony said, laughing. “My father says the whole place is crawling with them.”

Otis replied, “My mother says when they catch the spies, they ought to put them out in those things they used in the old times, where the guy was all propped up in the town square and folks threw garbage at them.”

“The stocks?” Hazel prompted. She didn't think that sounded very Christian of Otis's mother, but she didn't say anything. She noticed that Maryann took Connie's hand and gave it a squeeze.

Timmy cleared his throat. “My father works at the factory, and he says there's no way any of them are spies.” He spoke to the ground, and the skin under his freckles turned as pink as Maryann's and Connie's bunny ears.

“Then why won't they say anything?” Otis asked. “Why won't any of those union guys sign the loyalty pledge to prove they're all American?”

“They've got nothing to prove. The committee has it all wrong,” Timmy said.

“Are you calling Senator McCarthy a liar?” Otis asked. “'Cause I'm pretty sure that's treason.”

“I'm saying you should watch your fat mouth,” Timmy said.

To which Otis responded the only way he knew how: he shoved Timmy. Otis was a lot bigger than Timmy, but Timmy barely tumbled back. Maryann and Connie emitted simultaneous squeals with their hands over their mouths.

Mr. Hiccolm was on them in a moment, pulling apart the boys before they could start something. He dragged Otis back to the end of the line, where he wouldn't bother anyone.

Connie and Maryann were in front of Hazel and Samuel. Their bunny ears flopped as they spoke. “What a brute,” Maryann said.

“Sure is,” Connie agreed, without her usual enthusiasm for echoing Maryann.

“Hey, don't worry about them,” Maryann said. “What's that your mom has?”

Connie squinted. “Oh, that's a movie camera that my dad got the last time he was down in New York.”

Timmy let out a low whistle. “That's pretty nifty,” he said. “My dad wants to get one, but he says he's going to wait until
they come down in price a bit, which means he will get it in 1967.” He shook his head.

A movie camera? Hazel elbowed Samuel and mouthed the words “Spy gear.”