Splat! (2 page)

I could have added so boring and so annoying, but I just smiled and nodded.

“So, what are you watching?” Keegan asked her.

“I'm not watching anything,” she said. “That
TV
is for people waiting to see the mayor.”

“In that case could we turn up the sound and change to something other than a soap opera?”

Before she could answer, the door opened and out walked a bunch of men— the most important business leaders in the whole town! What did all of them have to do with us? This couldn't be a good sign.

I looked over at Keegan. He looked as worried as I felt.

These guys were all the movers and shakers of our town...although you didn't have to do much moving or shaking to make it big here. They were all so busy talking and laughing and slapping each other on the back that they didn't seem to notice us at first.

Then, one by one, some of them said
hello to us or nodded a greeting. They all knew us. That was one of the things about Leamington. Everybody knew everybody else. When I was little I liked that. Now it was just boring and annoying.

Slowly they all finished saying their goodbyes and left, until the room was empty except for me and Keegan, and the chief, mayor and his secretary.

“In,” the chief said, pointing toward the mayor's office.

He was a man of few words. Maybe when you carried a gun you didn't need to say much. I certainly wasn't going to argue with him.

We shuffled in and sat down.

“Do you two know why you're here?” the chief asked.

“I was hoping you'd know,” Keegan said.

The chief looked like he was thinking of using his gun.

“Whatever it is we didn't do it, or mean to do it, and we won't do it again,” I said before any gunplay could happen.

“That pretty well covers all the bases,” the chief said. “You're sounding guilty.”

“That's what everybody is saying,” Keegan agreed.

“Well, hanging around with you can certainly lead to being guilty of something,” the chief said. “But you're not here because you did anything wrong...at least that I know of.”

“Then why are we here?” I asked.

“The Tomato Festival,” he said.

Then it all started to make sense. Those people who had been in the office in that meeting were all the people who would most likely be working on the Tomato Festival.

“You know how important the festival is,” the mayor said.

I was tempted to say something about how stupid it was, but I knew better. People here, especially if you were the mayor or the police chief or a businessman, took the Tomato Festival very seriously. Leamington was the tomato capital of the country. Almost everything around here revolved
around growing, canning or shipping tomatoes. And every year there was a big festival in town to celebrate tomatoes.

“But what has any of that got to do with us in general, and specifically, us being here now?” Keegan asked.

“Almost every young person in town is involved in the festival in one way or another,” the chief said.

“None of our friends,” Keegan said.

“Not a one,” I agreed.

“That maybe says something about your choice in friends,” the chief said.

Were we here to get a lecture about our choice of friends? I knew that some of them were a little questionable. Whenever this subject came up I always mentioned David and Sam. They were our friends, but they were also honor students, polite and family friends. They were above objection.

“And you two are
going
to become involved,” the chief said. “Consider yourselves officially
volunteered
.”

“You can't be volunteered!” Keegan protested. “It doesn't work like that.”

“He's right,” I agreed. “That isn't even good grammar.”

“I just don't know why this is such a problem for you boys. Alex, you used to love the festival.”

“I also used to be six, not almost sixteen.”

“I'm a lot older than sixteen and I still love the festival,” the mayor said. “Everybody loves the festival, right?” he asked the chief. “Everybody I know. I know for a fact that
your
sister still loves the festival,” he said, pointing at me.

I hated comparisons to her. “and just what is my sister doing at this year's festival?” I asked.

“She
would
be doing something if she wasn't at university.”

And if she hadn't chosen a university so far away that she would have dropped into the Pacific if she went any farther. Didn't anybody except me know that escaping the Tomato Festival was part of the reason she choose a school so far away?

“I just want you to follow in her footsteps,” the mayor said.

“Wasn't she Miss Tomato Festival two years ago?” Keegan asked. “I'm not sure, but I don't think Alex could follow those specific footsteps,” Keegan said.

“Keegan!” the chief warned him.

“I'm just having a hard time picturing Alex in a dress and heels.”

“That you'd even
try
to picture me that way is disturbing,” I said.

“But strangely compelling in a surreal way,” Keegan added.

“Both of you stop now!” the mayor said. “Do you two always have to behave like you have an unspoken contest to see who can be the most ridiculous?”

Keegan and I exchanged a look. Actually it was a spoken, agreed-to contest. So far today Keegan was winning, but the day was still early.

“That's the problem with you two,” the chief said. “Instead of one of you being reasonable when the other suggests something stupid you just egg each other on.”

“And I wouldn't know anybody like that,” I said.

Keegan chuckled, and both men looked sheepish.

I knew they'd been friends since they were little and I'd heard stories about things the two of them had gotten into. In a small town it was pretty hard to escape your past.

“Just because we made some mistakes doesn't mean you two have to make the same mistakes,” the chief said.

“Are you suggesting that we make new mistakes?” I asked.

The mayor got all red in the face— actually
more
red in the face. He and I had the same red hair and freckles.

Time to change the subject.

“Why is it so important for us to be involved?” I asked, trying to reason our way out of this.

“Every person on the whole committee has at least one child involved in the festival,” the chief said.

“Every person except the chief of police and the mayor.”

“But, Dad, we just don't want to—”

“No, buts!” my father, the mayor said, cutting me off.

“And don't even think of saying anything either,” the chief, Keegan's dad said, shooting him a serious look.

“We both feel that it's important for the two of you to learn about responsibility,” my father said.

“Isn't trying to
make
us responsible sort of like
volunteering
us?” I asked.

“He's right,” Keegan agreed. “And, even if he wasn't, how is dressing up in the Stewie the Tomato mascot suit going to make us more responsible?”

“Nobody said anything about dressing up as mascots,” the chief said. “We want you to be doing something more visible.”

“Like what?” Keegan asked.

“What do
you
want to do?” the chief asked.

“Well...the beauty pageant wouldn't be the worst place in the world to—”

“No beauty pageant,” I said, cutting him off.

“I wasn't serious about you competing in the beauty pageant,” Keegan said.

“I just thought we could do something else,” I said.

Actually I hadn't, but Keegan's ex-girlfriend, Kelsey, was entered in the pageant. Putting him anywhere near her right now would be a big mistake.

“So, what did you have in mind?” my father asked.

Now I had to come up with something. I quickly tried to figure out which event or activity was the
least
lame. It was almost a tie for last place. Then I remembered something even better—one of the regular events had been canceled this year. Perfect, volunteer for something that isn't happening.

“Um...I don't know...maybe something to do with the tomato toss.”

That was an event where people paid a quarter and were given a tomato to toss at a target.

“We weren't planning on running that event this year,” my father said.

“No tomato toss!” Keegan exclaimed. “If
there isn't a tomato toss I'm not sure I even want to
go
to the festival. I think that we should boycott the whole thing as a form of protest against it not being run this—”

“The tomato toss is back in,” the chief said.

“I agree,” my father said. “But since we're putting it in just for you two that means you won't just be
working
that event, you'll be
organizing
it.”

“A combination of my terrible suggestion and Keegan's big mouth had made a bad situation worse. There had to be some way out of it.

“Well,” I began, “if we run the event, then we should decide what to do with the money it makes.”

“Alex, we can't just let you have the money,” my father scoffed.

“Not keep it for us, but use it...Use it to um...fix up the skate park.”

I knew how much both of them hated skateboarding and the skate park.

“You already have two of those ramps and a bar thing,” the chief said.

“It's called a rail, and we have two old, handmade, wooden ramps,” Keegan explained. “Our skate park is a joke.”

Of course, it was a joke because of the way our fathers felt about it.

“And you want to raise money to fix it up?” my father said.

“We do. Wouldn't that show responsibility?” I asked.

“It would, but it's a lot of work to run an event,” he replied.

“We'd get some help,” I said.

“Most people are already committed to something. Getting help won't come easy,” my father warned.

“We can get our friends to help,” I suggested. “Like we said, none of them are doing anything.”

“And they would probably like to keep it that way,” Keegan suggested.

“We could convince them,” I said.

Keegan smiled. “We probably could. Especially if we could promise them new equipment.”

“I'm not sure having your friends
involved would be helpful,” my father said.

“How about David and Sam?” I suggested, pulling out my aces in the hole again.

“Well...the two of them would help make it work,” he admitted. “They're very responsible young men. The two of you could learn from them.”

What I knew we
could
learn was how to do wrong things and never get caught. They had an amazing ability to always come out looking innocent.

I stopped myself from smiling. I reached out my hand. “So, do we have a deal?”

He reached to shake, and I suddenly pulled mine away.

“But the deal is that
we
get to decide how we run it, who else we run it with, and there's no outside interference...from anybody, including the two of you,” I said, pointing at our fathers.

“That would show responsibility,” Keegan added.

My father looked like he was going to argue but he didn't. “Agreed.”

We shook on it.

“All settled,” the chief said.

“There, now that wasn't so hard, was it?” my father asked.

“Not that hard,” I agreed.

“Oh, by the way, speaking of hard,” the chief said. “Have you finished doing the jobs you were given?” he asked Keegan.

Keegan's dad was not just the chief of police. He was also a tomato grower, and Keegan often had work to do around the farm.

“Not everything, but it'll be done before you get home,” Keegan said. “Alex even offered to help.”

I tried to hide my look of surprise. Where was I when I agreed to that?

“That's nice of you,” the chief said.

“It's the least I could do,” I said. What I wanted to say was “what are you talking about, Keegan?” but I didn't.

Keegan just smiled—that same smirky, evil-genius smile of his that I knew so well.

We left the office. We dropped our skate-boards to the ground, pushed off and started gliding.

“Volunteering for something that was cancelled was a stroke of genius,” Keegan said.

“Thank you.”

“Shame it didn't work. Maybe it would have been smarter to just not say anything.”

“Yeah, like you could do that,” I said.
“But you know we weren't leaving that office without having to do something.”

“Yeah, but something is a lot different than having to be responsible for running an entire event.”

“It's not a big event. We just have to put up a few targets, get some tomatoes delivered and take the money. It's pretty simple.”

“And boring.”

“As opposed to dressing up in the mascot outfit or being part of the parade?” I questioned. “Or were you hoping to enter the Leamington Idol contest? I was really looking forward to hearing you sing.”

“You won't catch me up on stage singing,” Keegan said.

“That's good news for the dogs in town,” I said.

The Leamington Idol contest was like a small town
American Idol
where people got up to sing in front of the whole town on the main stage. Some of the performers were actually pretty good.

Unfortunately
everybody
thought they
could sing. And when they got up on stage they often proved that theory wrong.

“What was wrong with my suggestion to help with the beauty pageant?” Keegan asked.

“Do you think that you and Kelsey in the same place is a good idea?”

“I'm positive it's a
great
idea.”