The Hero Next Door Read online

  “I’m sorry, hon,” Mama says to me. “Don’t let this ruin the party, okay? I’m bringing the food out in a moment. Hakeem, you come with me, mister. You’re staying inside for the rest of the time.”

  Hakeem follows my parents into the house. There are tears on his face, and sand all over his shoes, leaving a trail behind him on the patio.

  “I’m so glad I don’t have a little brother,” Izzy declares.

  “But I wanted one so much,” I remember. “And I was so happy when we got him.”

  “Yeah, until he ruined your stuff and trashed your room,” Carmen adds. “I would be so mad.” I don’t even remember telling my friends about that. Baba finally painted over Hakeem’s scribbles on the walls last weekend, and I can barely see it anymore. A steam cleaning made the carpet stain a lot lighter, too. It finally feels like my room again, and Hakeem hasn’t done anything else to it this week.

  “No wonder you don’t want us to come over here most of the time.” Keisha sighs. “I don’t blame you.”

  “Me either,” Priscilla agrees. “He’s so annoying.”

  I know my friends are trying to make me feel better, but it isn’t working. Instead, their words swirl inside me and make me feel emptier than the bottles without any sand left in them.

  “No, you guys. You shouldn’t say those things,” I finally respond. “Hakeem’s learning. He didn’t have anything in his orphanage, and gets overstimulated. He just wanted to play with the sand. We can put it back in the bottles even if it’s mixed up, and maybe add glitter or beads to it to make it pretty.”

  I look at my friends and wait for their reaction.

  “Okay.” Keisha shrugs.

  “He is really cute,” Priscilla concedes.

  Mama brings out the cupcakes, arranged in a tower. Each one has a candle on it. Baba comes behind her, carrying a fruit platter. And Bilal trails behind with plates and forks.

  “You guys ready to sing?” Mama asks cheerfully. Bilal pulls his phone out to take photos.

  I glance around for Hakeem and see him standing alone inside the kitchen, his face pressed against the glass of the sliding door.

  “Hold on.” I stop everyone.

  I walk to the door and open it. Hakeem lights up and grabs my hand and practically dances outside.

  “Now I’m ready,” I say.

  I watch as everyone sings to me, including Hakeem, although he’s making up his own words. Hakeem’s birthday is next month. Or at least we think it is, based on the orphanage paperwork. Mama said it’s hard to be sure that it’s correct since no one can confirm it. I decide that Hakeem needs to practice before he turns five, so after I blow out my candles, I ask Baba to light them again, and Hakeem takes a turn.

  He’s so excited that he almost touches a candle, then sticks his finger in a cupcake, licks off the icing, and spits while he blows. We all cheer for him, and he beams and gives everyone high fives.

  I suddenly remember my birthday wish from last year, back when we were talking about bringing Hakeem to live with us and be part of our family. It came true. Even though it’s been messy sometimes, Hakeem is finally home—and I’m the one who got to teach him what that means.

  Ellison’s CORNucopia

  A LOGAN COUNTY STORY

  Lamar Giles

  Every Saturday, from nine in the morning to one in the afternoon, the Logan County Farmers’ Market opened under a pavilion in the town of Fry, Virginia, rain or shine. This day was a “shine” day with squint-and-shield-your-eyes kind of sun, no clouds, and a sweet, cool breeze blowing. The pavilion, a tent without walls, half the length of a football field, churned with vendors from all over, selling all sorts of things. Mrs. Honeydew had honey from her beloved honeybees, four dollars a jar. Mr. and Mrs. Yeasterly had fresh bread and pastries that were like advertisements for the bakery they were opening soon. The Pepperling family’s table was crowded with the plumpest orange and green and red and yellow vegetables, as bright as candy. Then there were the twins, Leen and Vicki “Wiki” Ellison. Two little brown girls who, well…sold robots.

  Not everyone knew that, of course. Not City Folk, who drove a long way to buy homemade soaps, or fresh pies for dinner parties. Or even Leen and Wiki’s uncle Percy, who drove the family’s rusted orange pickup truck filled mostly with baskets of corn, and jugs of corn oil, and corn kernels for popping, and corn bread each week. As far as he knew, their family was “so corny!”

  (He never failed to tell that joke, or be the only one to laugh at it.)

  Though Ellison’s CORNucopia did fine business with Logan County’s corn lovers, it did not serve the more specialized needs of the community. While Uncle Percy napped in the truck—he always napped in the truck—Leen and Wiki did business with their other regulars.

  “I’m going to need five ears, girls. Your corn with some leftover buttered rolls just sounds heavenly,” said Miss Wavers, a sweet old lady in big glasses with thick magnifying lenses who was Uncle Percy’s third-grade teacher back in the Stone Age. “I’ll also need two of those tiny Spider-Rovers, the ones I can control with that special headset.”

  Leen, always eager to show off her inventions and overly pleased by repeat customers, popped the lid on a fake corn basket and freed two palm-sized metal spiders from their chargers. “Absolutely. My new ones have upgrades you might enjoy. They’re lighter and faster, and have a longer battery life.”

  She stuffed the rovers in a canvas shopping bag with the corn and quoted Miss Wavers a price. While the lady rummaged in her purse, Wiki said, “Are you having any problems with your old ones?”

  “Oh no.” She handed over the money. “My other one is so helpful with little chores around the house. I just wanted more.”

  “Three,” Wiki said. “You mean your other three.”

  Miss Wavers blinked rapidly, realizing her mistake. “Oh yes. Three. How did I forget that?”

  Wiki Ellison didn’t know how to answer the question, because she didn’t forget anything. Ever.

  Leen handed Miss Wavers her change. “Thanks for shopping Ellison’s CORNucopia! We’ll be ‘ear’ next week!”

  Miss Wavers grinned. “So cute.”

  “Do you have to say that after every sale?” Wiki rolled her eyes and watched Miss Wavers fade into the crowd.

  “Uncle Percy said it’s like our, uh…” Leen couldn’t remember the word. Unlike her sister, she often forgot stuff.

  “Slogan. I know that, but it’s so…” She almost said corny but caught herself, and let the whole hopeless thing drop. Leen was a stickler for direction, and there was no use arguing. Instead, Wiki settled into her habit of undoing and redoing the elastic tie on her ponytail while observing the thousands of shifting details of this week’s farmers’ market—details she’d be able to recall a second, minute, month, or year from now with no effort.

  Mr. Hannamaker was set up across the main aisle, three tables down from the CORNucopia, and had on the same shirt he’d worn three Saturdays in a row. Wiki had overheard him tell a customer that he bought a bunch of the same shirts and pants because that’s what genius inventor Nikola Tesla—one of Leen’s idols—did. Mr. Hannamaker probably meant Albert Einstein, as that was the only genius Wiki had ever read about who kept several versions of the same outfit. Other famous folks who did it were Steve Jobs, and Johnny Cash, and Grace Coddington, and Jerry Garcia, and…

  “Wiki!” Leen snapped her fingers an inch from her sister’s nose, startling her. “You’re glitching again.”

  Wiki plugged her ponytail back through the elastic tie, calculating how long she’d gotten lost in her own head, perhaps ten seconds. It was a sucky side effect of her perfect memory. Sometimes when she recalled things, she thought about other related things, then other things on top of that, until she went into a daze, only thinking of things she remembered instead of what was happening in th
e real world. Glitching.

  “What was it this time?” Leen asked.

  “Mr. Hannamaker’s shirt. He’s telling people he’s got a bunch of the same kind, but it’s actually the same shirt. There’s a faded mustard stain just over his heart, and a small moth hole two inches below his left shoulder. Both have been there all month.”

  “So?”

  “His potato crop must’ve been bad this year. He’s using thirty percent less table space than he was last season, and he lowered his prices. His truck has a whining fan belt and squeaky brakes. He’s also got a bad toothache; he’s been poking at it with his tongue all morning, and chewing aspirin every half hour. Those are things people would fix if they had the money. Also…” Wiki stopped, reading Leen’s face. “I’m not being creepy.”

  “It’s not right, patting other people’s pockets. That’s what Uncle Percy says.”

  “I can’t help that I notice things, Leen.”

  “You could try noticing different things.”

  If only it were that easy. Try as she might, odd details jumped at Wiki, like when stuff explodes in those 3-D superhero movies. Even if she looked away, the memory stuck. Still, she pulled her focus from Mr. Hannamaker’s table to the one next to his, the Pepperlings’ veggie shop. There, another detail jumped.

  It was one so obvious Leen noticed it, too. “Hey, what’s wrong with Wendy?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Wendy Pepperling went to school with the girls, and when Wiki last focused on the Pepperling table, she’d been her usual smiley self. A healthy crowd of shoppers selected cucumbers, and squash, and bulging yellow onions, while Wendy took money and counted change. Now she was in tears, whipping about frantically behind her table, looking for—

  Wiki understood. Her memory of previous observations overlapped with how the Pepperling table looked now, clueing her in to what had happened. One eggplant was gone, purchased by a City Person with a beard and his hair pulled into a tight bun. There were two missing bunches of carrots, purchased by Fry’s veterinarian, Dr. Medina, presumably for some animal in her care. A cabbage was gone, and some celery. None of that was unusual, and it certainly wouldn’t have made Wendy cry. It was the other missing item, present one hour ago, gone now.

  Wiki told Leen, “Someone stole her cashbox.”

  * * *

  —

  Leen, admittedly, did not have her sister’s attention to detail, unless it was about her inventions. But even she understood how messed up it was for someone to steal Wendy Pepperling’s money. So many people here at the farmers’ market needed every dollar they made. Uncle Percy was always saying, “The market is how a lot of Logan County stays afloat.”

  Of course, whenever he said that, she’d start thinking about flotation devices, and how to improve them. She had at least three different hovercraft designs drawn up at—

  Oh. Wiki was staring. Now who was glitching?

  Wiki shook her head and sucked her teeth. “Watch the table. I’m going to investigate.”

  “Hey, maybe I want to hear what happened!”

  “If someone is stealing cashboxes, then one of us has to stay here, or we gotta carry ours around with us. Uncle Percy would love that!”

  Leen smirked. “There is a third option.”

  Wiki had a computer brain but didn’t always problem-solve so well. No worries. That’s what sisters were for.

  Uncapping the fake corn basket, Leen freed one of her Spider-Rovers. This one had a big green Mountain Dew logo on his back because his hull was built from old soda cans. She called him Dewey. Also, she grabbed her Augmented Reality rig from inside the basket—a device that looked kind of like sunglasses, but with only one, clear lens over the right eye. Leen put it on and synced it to Dewey. The rover waggled all eight of his legs before hopping upright in Leen’s palm. “Lift your shirt. I’m going to put Dewey under it.”

  Wiki stepped back. “You most certainly will not.”

  “Dewey has tiny eyes and ears. If you take him with you, then I can see and hear, too.”

  “Under my shirt, though?”

  “Do you really want City Folk to see a metal spider riding on your shoulder? They already think we’re weird.” Leen frowned. “Until they need corn bread.”

  No, Wiki didn’t want City Folk knowing about their robot business, and she remembered reading articles about how people trusted you less if you had a camera. A camera inside a robot spider probably made them trust you a lot less. She didn’t want to frighten Wendy.

  Wiki stretched her shirttail toward her sister. “Fine. Just hurry.”

  Leen shifted her eye slightly, and her headset sent a command to Dewey. The little rover leaped from Leen’s palm to Wiki’s jeans, then skittered beneath her shirt, forcing the girl to grimace and chuckle at the same time. “It tickles.”

  At first, all Leen’s headset registered was the dark fibers from inside Wiki’s clothes, but Dewey made his way to her torso, where his lenses peeked over the shirt collar, giving Leen a view of everything in Wiki’s line of sight. For one odd moment, she saw herself in her display and admired her short, spongy hair and her dark skin, which glistened in daylight like a new penny. Girl, you look good!

  “Stop primping!” Wiki huffed.

  Fine. Leen detached a small rubber nub from her headset and gave it to Wiki. “Put that in your ear. That way you can hear me, too.”

  Wiki did as told and set a course for the Pepperling table.

  More people crowded around the supersized veggies, but Wendy had to turn a few away, her cheeks moist. “I’m sorry. I don’t have change right now. Could you come back a little later?”

  Different folks had different reactions. Clearly, some—a few City Folk, but not all—were miffed, stomping off to other veggie stands. Their need for zucchini apparently couldn’t wait. Some asked Wendy if she was okay. She nodded too fast and said, “Allergies.”

  With a lull in the table traffic, Wiki approached, fighting a laugh as Dewey’s legs tickled her collarbone. “Wendy, hey. What happened?”

  She faced Wiki, her frizzy mouse-colored hair bouncing as she moved. By the subtle shifts in her face, Wiki knew she was about to say the allergy lie, and didn’t want to waste time. “Your cashbox was here, and now it’s not. If you want help getting it back, you should tell me what really happened.”

  Wendy’s eyes widened, and Wiki—an expert in facial expressions because she could remember and compare all of them—saw the girl tick through surprise, suspicion, and fear before settling on hope. “You can help?”

  It wasn’t really a question. The other thing Logan County knew about the Ellison girls was that they helped whenever they could.

  Wiki said, “Why are you running your table by yourself? Where’d your dad and brother go?”

  “Pa and Walt needed to pick up some things from Archie’s hardware store. Pa was complaining about having to do it after the market, when he’d be tired. I convinced him to go now while I watched over everything.”

  Wiki understood Wendy’s distress. Her family trusted her, and the money had disappeared on her watch. “When do you last remember seeing your cashbox?”

  “Right before I had a big rush. I’d just sold some spinach to Mrs. Yeasterly for that spinach-Feta bread she and her husband make, and I sold one onion to Mr. Hannamaker. I gave them both change from my cashbox. When the rush started, so many people were buying things I had a lot of cash in my hand. I was able to make change with what I had, without going to the box. When the rush was over, I went to separate all my bills, but the box was gone.” The tears welled again. “Anybody could’ve taken it.”

  No. Not anyone. Wiki recalled the rush Wendy had talked about. She only had snapshots of it in her head because she hadn’t focused directly on those moments, but she could still identify everyone who’d been around the table
. Unfortunately, Wiki had no snapshot of the moment the cashbox disappeared. Her attention had been elsewhere. That didn’t mean there weren’t clues left behind.

  “Wendy, could I take a look behind your table, where the cashbox was?”

  “I guess. Normally I’m not supposed to let anyone back here, but what’s it matter now?”

  Leen spoke through Wiki’s earpiece. “If no one was allowed behind her table, it’s highly unlikely someone could’ve snuck around there without being noticed.”

  Wiki agreed, examining the area closely. There was a tiny folding table, like the kind Uncle Percy ate off when he had dinner in front of his football games. The cashbox had been there, visible from as far away as the CORNucopia. So anyone would’ve seen it. To actually get to it…“A tall person could’ve reached over, Wendy. Snatched it quick.”

  The images that Dewey transmitted to Leen’s headset allowed her to access augmented-reality measurements that overlaid the scene. In seconds she knew the table’s height (29.38 inches), the size of the baskets (three quarts), how many of each vegetable were present (a lot), and so on. Leen made some fast calculations. “Wiki, for a snatch-and-grab like that, the thief would’ve had to be about six foot two to avoid toppling that pile of tomatoes in front of you and drawing attention.”

  Wiki sorted through her memory snapshots. Only one among her potential suspects fit.

  Leen knew it, too. “Tall like Mr. Hannamaker.”

  Wiki faced the potato salesman. The mustard stain and moth hole in his shirt were as bold as ever. It made sense that someone struggling with money would be tempted to steal a box full of it. He’d always been such a nice man. “I don’t want to believe Mr. Hannamaker is a thief.”

  Leen said, “Only one way to find out.”

  * * *