My Life in Dioramas (14 page)

When it was time to go,
I stepped out onto the porch and smacked my head and said, “Forgot my hat.” Bernie was tying a new yellow balloon to the
FOR SALE
sign, adding a dangling
OPEN HOUSE TODAY
to two hooks on it.

So I ran inside and downstairs to get the bags, and upstairs to hide the goods—one on top of the bathroom wall, then another on the wall of the closet, and another on the wall of my parents' room. I grabbed my hat, then went back down, all while Bernie was tying that balloon.

“Good to go.” I stepped back out onto the porch and put my hat on. “Good luck!” I said as Bernie went inside.

My horse was black and white
and named Oreo, a name I approved of. As we were being led down a wooded path near a huge barn, I realized I hadn't even named the kittens and how maybe I should. One of them had fur that reminded me of Special K cereal; another had black patches around its eyes like a bandit.

“Stella's going to horse camp to do dressage this summer,” I said when my parents' horses started to trot alongside mine in a widening of the path. It felt weird to be talking about Stella when I wasn't talking
to
her.

“That sounds fun,” Mom said.

And she actually sounded like she meant it.

“Dressage seems kind of dumb to me,” I said.

“I used to ride when I was a girl.”

I had the feeling I knew that about her but had forgotten. “Really?”

“Yeah, I always thought I'd have horses when I grew up.”

“Oh,” my father said. “Give it a rest.”

“Not everything is about you!” my mother said.

I had no idea what was going on so I just started talking to the guide who was leading us, asking how old Oreo was, how many horses they kept. Anything to block out my parents.

When we got home,
I realized I'd sort of forgotten
again
about getting the stink
out
of the house. I started to panic when we walked in and found Bernie sitting at the kitchen table. But she just stood up and said a happy “Hello!”

The house didn't smell bad, at all.

In fact, it smelled good.

Fresh.

Better than it had maybe ever.

“How'd it go?” my dad asked.

“Great!” she said.

Somehow my plan had failed. Maybe I hadn't used enough stuff?

“We have some very interested parties at this point,” Bernie said. “One woman came alone today but is bringing her husband back with her tomorrow. And a couple from last week is coming back tomorrow, too, for a second look. I'm optimistic. Another developer type showed up right at the end.”

“That's great,” Dad said.

“All righty, then.” Bernie grabbed her bag. “I hope you don't mind. I put a few little Febreze things around.”

“Yeah, it smells good,” my dad said.

“I can remove them tomorrow. Whatever you like. Toodles.” And she was out the door.

“I'm going to the bathroom,” I said, and went upstairs to
retrieve the stink baggies. But they weren't there.

Breathing hard, I went to my room and texted Naveen to see if he was around and could meet me at Truxton Pond. I thought about texting Stella but a fight was a fight.

Naveen wrote back,
IN THE MIDDLE OF SOMETHING! COME TO MY HOUSE?

My parents were sitting out on the back porch with beers on the table in front of them.

“Can I go to Naveen's for a little while?” I asked.

“Are his parents home?” My mom looked at me over her sunglasses.

“Yes.”

“Don't be long,” she said.

I got my bike out of the barn and took off toward Naveen's. His dad was out front mowing the lawn, and he turned off the mower and waved. “He's around back.”

I found Naveen in the backyard with some weird-looking contraption in his hands. He shouted, “Blasting off,” then launched an empty, plastic, two-liter soda bottle into the air. It hit a tree and bounced down to the ground, hitting branches along the way.

“Hey,” I said.

“Oh, hey,” he said.

“This is what you're in the middle of?”

“Come here. I need you to help me pump it up better this time.”

He showed me how the bottle launcher worked, and after we'd pumped it up good, we tried again. This time the bottle went really high, but Naveen said, “Still not high enough.”

So we tried again, and he made some adjustments to the launcher along the way.

And then, finally, we did two in a row that seemed to meet his goal.

“That one,” he said, “was definitely high enough. The problem, of course, is that the aiming isn't precise enough.”

“Precise enough for what?”

“To deliver a stink bomb to a chimney.”

I nearly gasped. He was doing this for me! But it would never work.

“Naveen,” I said. “The chimney has a cap sort of thing on top. A bottle of this size wouldn't fit through even if you had good aim.”

“I can't believe I didn't think of that.” He nodded. “Okay, so not that useful an invention. But fun at least?”

“Really fun,” I said.

We got ready to launch it again.

“So the realtor is on to me,” I said.

“What? How?” He let the bottle fly, way high again.

I said, “Woohoo!”

Then: “She didn't say anything, but when we got home, the house smelled like roses, and when I went to get the stink bags, they were gone.”

“An interesting twist for sure,” he said. “So she didn't tell your parents?”

“No. She left after talking to the three of us. I guess she could have said something then. Or maybe she's going to call them later. Anyway, she acted like everything was normal. Great, even.”

“So what are you going to do?” Naveen put the launcher down and sat on the steps to his back porch. “There's another open house tomorrow, right?”

“Twelve to two.”

I sat beside him. Maybe it was time to give up. But my grandparents' house was so far away, so dull, so full of parents and grandparents. Dance Nation was still ten weeks away and the thought of the rest of troupe going without me made my stomach tighten and twist. It was still too soon for my parents to find a buyer. I needed at least another couple of weeks so that by the time the whole sale was made official—that had to take at least three weeks?—I'd be in range of a reasonable amount of time to stay behind without them.

“I'm going to have to up my game,” I said.

“How?” Naveen asked.

“I have to think.”

“Okay, so we think.”

We launched the rocket again a few times while we both were thinking. Why else would someone not want to buy a house?

The roar of a truck carrying a huge cylinder full of pesticide shook the air. All the orchards used them, sometimes in the middle of the night. They were the one thing my parents complained about at Big Red. Well, them and Troy.

“I think I've got an idea,” I said.

“WHAT?” Naveen shouted.

“EXACTLY!” I screamed.

We lay in the grass
for a while after the noise faded away and made a list of things that made a house noisy.

“Neighbors with leaf blowers,” Naveen said.

“Barking dogs,” I said.

“Truck traffic.”

“Neighbors playing loud music. And fire alarms with low batteries, beeping stuff.”

“Yes, there are few things more annoying than constant and unidentified beeping.”

“I could figure that out, I think. Like set constant alarms on my phone and hide it somewhere, right?” I took my phone out, and went to the app store and did a search. “Would you believe there is an app for barking dogs?”

“As a matter of fact, I would.”

“So I have my phone and we have two iPads,” I said.

“You're scheming again! I'm a little scared.”

“The
problem
is that I'll be at my grandparents.”

“But
I
won't be.” Naveen reviewed our list. “And my dad has a leaf blower.”

“You're sweet. But I can't exactly ask you to stand around all day with a leaf blower.”

“It's only two hours. It's not like I've got a hot date or anything.”

I smiled. “I really wish we could have used the bottle launcher.”

“Me, too.” Naveen sighed.

“I'll text you later?” I said. “When I think it all through?”

He nodded.