The Diamond War (5 page)

W
HILE ATHENA WAS STILL
on her way across Castle Court the back door of the Brockhurst house slammed open and Bucky shot out. He skidded to a stop, dropped down into a starting-block crouch, and kicked off into an all-out run—hundred-yard-dash practice.

At the low hedge between his house and Carlos’s he practiced his hurdle-jumping technique. After he cleared the hedge he zigged and zagged clear around the Garcias’ swimming pool carrying an imaginary football and skillfully avoiding half a dozen imaginary tacklers. As he zigged past a water-polo ball he grabbed it up and dribbled it across the cement part of the patio. Then, tossing the ball back toward where he’d found it, he revved up to full speed again. Just before he got to the stairs he dove headfirst into a belly slide. Jumping to his feet, he yelled, “Safe at home!” and pounded up the stairs to bang on the Garcias’ back door. After a minute Carlos came out.

For a second Carlos stared in surprise. Bucky’s straw-colored hair was standing on end, his face was red and sweaty, and there was a big grass stain down the front of his shirt. But that wasn’t what surprised Carlos. There was nothing unusual about a sweaty, messy Bucky. What surprised Carlos was that Bucky was there at all.

“Hey, Buckaroo,” he said, slapping Bucky’s hand. “When did you get home? I thought you were going to be gone all day.”

“Yeah, I thought so too. But Muffy fought with me so much my folks got mad and we came home early.”

As Carlos led the way into the kitchen he said, “Hey, too bad. I thought you were going to get to go to a matinee.”

“Yeah, I thought so too. And what’s more, I’m grounded. And it’s all Muffy’s fault. She told Dad I kicked her.”

“Oh yeah?” Carlos said. “Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Did you kick Muffy?”

“Sure I did. But she’s not supposed to tell. You’re never supposed to tell adults stuff like that. Muffy knows that. But she did it anyhow so now I’m grounded.” He opened the door of the Garcias’ refrigerator and looked inside. “Got anything good to eat in here?” he asked. “I’m hungry.”

“Not much,” Carlos said. “I ate the last Dove bar this morning.” He was disappointed about Bucky being grounded. “You mean you can’t help with the first-base thing tomorrow?”

“No, that’ll be okay. I’m not grounded tomorrow. I’m grounded right now.” Bucky was pawing around in the cheese drawer. He pulled out a slice of cheddar and stuck it in his mouth.

“Right now? You’re grounded right now? How come you’re here then?”

“I’m not here,” Bucky said. “Not officially. I just came over to tell you I couldn’t come over. I’m leaving right this minute.”

“Right this minute, huh?” Carlos asked.

“Yeah,” Bucky said. He opened the refrigerator door again and took out another piece of cheese.

Just at that moment the front doorbell rang.

“I got to go to the door,” Carlos called back over his shoulder as he left the kitchen. “My mom’s washing her hair and nobody else is home. I guess you have to go home anyway.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “I have to go this minute.” But he didn’t. Instead he grabbed another piece of cheddar and, still munching, followed Carlos to the front door. When the big double doors swung open, Carlos thought for a second that no one was there. But then he noticed her standing beside the big potted Joshua tree. It was the little kid from across the court. He remembered the curly ponytail. The little kid from the kooky artist family. Angela, or something like that. “Hi, Angela,” he said.

“Not Angela,” she said. “Athena.”

“Whatever,” Carlos said. “Did you want to see Susie? She’s not at home.”

“I know that,” Athena said. “She’s at the council. I came to see you.”

Behind Carlos, Bucky laughed—“Hee, hee, hee”—the way he always did to tease people. “Hee, hee, hee. She came to see you, dude. You got a new girlfriend, Garcia?”

The little kid frowned at Bucky. “You’re a creep,” she said.

Bucky looked surprised—and then angry—and then confused.

Carlos couldn’t help grinning—because nobody dared to call Bucky Brockhurst a creep. Anybody who called Bucky Brockhurst anything he didn’t like got slugged—immediately. No questions asked. Anybody, that is, except this little bitty kid.

The little kid handed Carlos a piece of paper. “Here,” she said. “I brought you a message.”

The message was written in pencil on a page from a notebook. It was a little kid’s handwriting, fat and scribbly. Like someone who hadn’t been writing cursive very long. Carlos read the message. He laughed and handed it to Bucky. Bucky laughed too.

“We’ll be there,” Carlos said. “Dragoland. Tonight. Before dinner. You tell this
big
bunch of people we’ll be there.” Then he remembered about Bucky being grounded. “Or I’ll be there, anyway. This—” He stopped. He seriously considered saying, “This creep,” but then he decided against it. “This—dude is grounded.”

Bucky shrugged and grinned. “Grounded, schmounded. Count me in. I’ll be there.”

“You’re supposed to write it,” the little kid said. “On the back of the paper.”

“You write it,” Bucky said. “I got to get home.”

So Carlos found a pencil and wrote, “We will be there,” on the back of the notebook paper and signed it “Carlos Garcia.” The little kid folded it up carefully and went off across the circle to her house.

“Crazy kid,” Carlos said. He was talking to Bucky but when he turned around Bucky was disappearing down the hall at a run. A second later Carlos heard the refrigerator door open—and then close. He grinned. Some more of his mom’s cheddar cheese was disappearing too.

T
HE COUNCIL MEETING ENDED
right after Athena came back from the Garcias’ with Carlos’s signature on the message. Athena was disappointed. She really liked being part of a council. But Susie and Kate both had to go home.

“My mom said I could only stay for an hour,” Susie said. “I’m supposed to be finishing my book report.”

Kate Nicely jumped up and looked at her watch. “Wow, me too. I have to help Carson clean up his room. Aurora. Aurora! Hey, snap out of it! I’m leaving!”

Aurora, who was still sitting cross-legged on the bench with her hands on her knees, blinked rapidly and came back to earth. She slid down off the bench and followed Kate across the lawn and down the Pappases’ driveway. Kate kept glancing at Aurora. She looked strange, her eyes wide and empty—and sad. Very, very sad.

“Look,” Kate said. “It
was
about to happen. The unicorn, I mean. I’ll bet it was almost there when Ari busted in like that and scared it away.”

Aurora sighed and nodded. “Almost,” she said in a tragic voice. “And now it’s too late. Now the grove will be gone and the unicorn will never—”

“No, the grove won’t be gone,” Kate said as quickly and firmly as she could. “Like you said, something’s going to happen to stop those stupid PROs from cutting it down. You said there would be like some sort of magic spell that we could put on them to stop them from cutting it down.”

“Yes.” Aurora sounded uncertain. “Yes, the spell. I have to think about it some more.” She turned back toward her house. “I have to go think about it,” she said over her shoulder. Kate watched until Aurora had disappeared into the Pappases’ house before she crossed Castle Avenue and headed for home.

As she crossed the street and went up the path to her own front door Kate’s mind was going in circles.
It isn’t fair
, she kept thinking. It wasn’t fair that those jerks could just all of a sudden decide to chop down the grove when it had been Kate’s and Aurora’s for months and months. Years, actually. At least it had been Aurora’s for years and years. Kate knew that was true because Aurora had told her so.

“I was about three years old when I discovered it,” Aurora had said, “and I knew what it was right away. I absolutely knew.”

“You knew about the unicorn?” Kate had asked.

Aurora had shaken her head slowly and thoughtfully. “No, not the unicorn. Not right at first. I just knew it was a very special, magical place. The grove has been my very special place since I was three years old.”

Remembering what Aurora had said, and remembering over and over again how shocked and sad her face had been when she heard what the PROs were planning, Kate clenched her fists. “No they won’t!” she whispered. “The spell will work—but just in case it doesn’t I’m going to make some plans of my own, I’ll think of something even better than slingshots. Just as soon as I finish vacuuming Carson’s room.”

Kate’s brother, Carson Nicely, was a short, nearsighted seven-year-old weirdo. Actually their father had forbidden Kate to use the
weirdo
word about Carson. Being a lawyer made her father extra particular about the way words like
weirdo
were used, and what he always said was there were a lot better ways for Kate to describe her little brother. The words he suggested were
extraordinary person
or o
riginal character
or even
free spirit
. Kate still thought
weirdo
was a lot closer to the truth.

Like the bug thing, for instance. Carson collected them, and not just your ordinary, everyday beetles and butterflies either. Carson’s collection included every kind of ant, bee, worm, spider, and slimy slug known to mankind. He collected them in his room in beehives, ant farms, cages, terrariums, matchboxes, and mustard jars. Anything you touched, or bumped into, or sat on in Carson’s room probably had a bug or two in it. And that’s if you were lucky. If you weren’t lucky it could be a whole swarm.

And then there were the snakes to consider. As if bugs weren’t bad enough, Carson also collected lizards and snakes. In fact, some things in his collection were there just because they were waiting to be fed to the lizards and snakes. Just thinking about Carson’s collection made your skin crawl, and smelling it could ruin your whole day.

While Kate was still standing outside Carson’s room trying to prepare herself for the smell, Tiffany came out of her room and went down the hall. Tiffany, Kate’s older sister, was a teenager. A clever, sneaky teenager who had gotten out of having to help Carson clean his room by claiming she had a disease. Something called Bug-o-phobia. Tiffany claimed that if she so much as looked at Carson’s collection she would probably go into a coma and die. So now Tiffany was headed for the backyard in her new swimsuit, and Kate was stuck with vacuuming Carson’s room. Kate wished she’d thought of Bug-o-phobia first.

“Sneak,” Kate whispered under breath at Tiffany’s disappearing back. Then she squared her shoulders and opened the door to Carson’s room.

“Okay, Bro’,” Kate said. “Here I am.”

Carson was sitting on the floor in the middle of what looked like the city dump—and smelled like a rotting compost pile. His glasses had slid down to the end of his nose and there was a desperate look on his round, pudgy face. “I tried,” he said. “I just didn’t know where to start.”

Kate looked around at the ant farms, fly traps, terrariums, hives, jars, and bottles. “Let’s see,” she said. “You can start by moving everything to that side of the room while I go get the vacuum.” She headed for the door and then stopped. “Everything except the beehive, that is.”

Carson’s beehive was fitted into a window, and the only opening was out-of-doors so they couldn’t get inside the house and sting people. At least that was the theory. Three of the hive’s walls were made of wood but the inside one was of glass so you could watch everything the bees did inside the hive. Which was interesting, in a way—if you liked spying on the private lives of bees. Actually it was a pretty disgusting sight.

Carson nodded eagerly. “Okay,” he said. “Move everything. Over there. All except the beehive. Okay.” He grabbed up a big cage and staggered across the room.

The trouble with Carson,
Kate thought as she went down the hall to get the vacuum, is
that he just isn’t organized.
He’d probably been trying to clean up his room all morning without getting anywhere. But Kate herself was very organized. And what she was going to organize next was a foolproof way to defend the Unicorn’s Grove.

A few minutes later as Kate was carefully vacuuming around some shelves full of things she didn’t even want to look at, she stopped suddenly and turned off the switch. “Hey, Carson,” she said, “I just had an idea.”

Carson carefully put down the ant farm he was carrying before he asked, “What idea?”

“Well,” Kate said, “I guess you know that Edna told Mom she won’t clean your room anymore? You know, because of Slinky?”

Edna was the Nicelys’ cleaning lady, and Slinky was Carson’s biggest boa constrictor.

Carson nodded sadly. “Mom told me,” he said. “I guess Edna isn’t used to snakes.”

“And you know what Mom said about keeping your room clean or else you’d have to get rid of”—Kate gestured around the room—“a lot of this stuff.”

Carson sighed and nodded even more sadly.

“Well,” Kate went on. “How would you like to have me help you clean your room every week?”

Carson’s pudgy face lit up in a big smile. “Okay,” he said.

“Kate nodded. “Well, then I will. But there’s just one little thing I’d like you to do for me.”

Behind their little round glasses, Carson’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What do I have to do?” he said.

A
LL THAT AFTERNOON CARLOS
phoned Eddy every half hour to see if he’d gotten home, and every time he got only the phone machine. Once he even went over and knocked on the door of the Wongs’ house just to be sure. But of course Eddy wasn’t there. Carlos couldn’t see why it was taking so long just to visit relatives. It was getting later and later and before long it would be time to go to the Weedpatch and find out what this dumb meeting thing was all about.

The meeting would start, and Eddy still wouldn’t be home, and Bucky was more or less grounded—so maybe Carlos would be all alone. Toward five o’clock Carlos started hanging out in the backyard hoping that Bucky would get himself ungrounded or else sneak out while his dad wasn’t looking. Bucky was usually pretty good at that kind of thing. But as time went by with no sign of Eddy or Bucky, Carlos began to feel more and more worried. He paced up and down beside the pool worrying and thinking.