Touchdown Tony Crowne and the Mystery of the Missing Cheerleader (7 page)

“Mr. Pasquinel, I assume you were doing all the banging?”

“Ah yep, Miss Dingledine, there was a locker door that was twisted and I needed to bang it hard to get it re-aligned. Didn’t want to do it during school—too loud. Might scare the young’uns. I got another locker near the cafeteria I need to bang on too. Only take a minute, gonna do that then head on home. Are you ready to lock up?”

What! Oh, no, Tony thought, he’s coming down here. Now what am I gonna do? There’s no place to hide in this hallway either! My goose is definitely cooked.

“There is a student/teacher conference that has been going on for far too long. I’ll inform Miss Brady that she must wrap it up so that we may vacate the premises. Oh, one other thing, Principal Richmond’s desk drawer has been sticking. Would you be kind enough to inspect that before you fix the other locker door? He has been having a terrible time with it.”

“Oh, really? Hmm, I just fixed that durn drawer not too long ago. I’ve got the tool with me that’ll take care of it.” Tom raised the rubber mallet, grinned and walked into the office area followed by Miss Dingledine.

“Bingo!” Tony said under his breath. Great. Now I know Ash is still here and she’s coming out soon. I gotta get out of here while I can before old Tom comes down this way. Tony tip toed across the floor to the front entrance, gently opened the door with its push bar and backed out of the school slowly, trying not to make any noise. He softly shut the door until it clicked and turned to walk down the steps—

“TONY!” Judd’s face was exactly one inch away from Tony’s face when he hollered his name.

“Ah-h-h-h-h-h!” Tony screamed with a surprised look on his face, flung his arms up comically and stumbled backwards against the school door with a thud.

“Yah-h-h-h-h-h!” Judd screamed back at him, with an equally surprised look on his face, jerked his arms up like Tony and almost fell down the front steps before latching onto the stair railing.

Chapter 10- The Walk

Tony, bent over and with his hands on his knees, glanced up at Judd, laughed and shouted in a joking manner, “Don’t do that again! I almost had a heart attack. Do you know how ugly your face is that close up? Dang!”

“Haw-har, Haw-har! I ain’t the only owner of an ugly face in this town! Whoa! You looked like an alien from outer space when you yelled and your mouth was wide open and that little thing in the back of your throat was jigglin’ all around. Haw-har. Haw-har!” Judd was swinging around on the stair railing like a monkey in the zoo.

“Uvula.”

Judd stopped swinging for second and asked, “What? What’s a yubola?” Then he went back to his swinging.

“Uvula. U-v-u-l-a. That’s the name for the little thing in the back of your throat that was jigglin’ all around. Everybody has one. Even you.”

“How do you know all this stuff?” Judd asked as he swung from side to side on the railing.

“Dunno. I guess because I read a lot.” Then Tony suddenly remembered why they were at the school. “But that’s not important right now. What did you find out about Felicity? Where are they?”

“They were right where I thought they’d be,” Judd said in a matter-of-fact tone as he became engrossed in swinging under the railing and making chimpanzee grunts rather than answering Tony’s questions.

Tony had his arms crossed on his chest and was beginning to lose his patience. “And just
where
might this be?”

“Down at Coach Tiny’s restaurant.” Judd made other odd noises besides the chimpanzee grunts, “
Zing, zang, zooey
!”

Throwing his head back, looking to the sky and holding his hands up in disbelief, Tony barked, “How did you know they were going there?”

Judd was doing a little tap dance up and down the stairs while holding onto the railing and pointing a finger above his head. “
Lah, di, dah. Zipperoni. Dah, di, lah
. I saw them there every day this week after school.
Zingity, zangity, zooity
! They love to share one of Coach Tiny’s monster banana splits.
Doo, doo, dah, dah, di, doo
. They were still eatin’ when I left.
Zippity, zappity, doo, dah-h-h-h
.”

Tony smiled and said, “You know what? You’re a pretty smart cookie.” He teased Judd a little bit, “I don’t care what anybody says about you, you’re okay in my book!”

“Huh?” Judd stopped dancing and looked at Tony.

Ignoring Judd’s question, Tony frowned and said, “That’s awful strange that Felicity—”

“And her toads!” Judd added.

“Right. That’s awful strange that Felicity and her toads would make such a big stink to get revenge on Ash and then drop it and go have a banana split.”

“A monster banana split.” Judd corrected.

“Yeah, a monster split. It just doesn’t make any sense at all!” Tony closed his eyes, massaged his temples and paced back and forth. “They’re up to something. I just know it. But what? What are they going to do and when?” Tony caught a glimpse of movement behind the doors and warned Judd, “I think they’re coming. Don’t mention Felicity or the toads or the revenge plot to Ash or Miss Brady, ‘cause we don’t know for sure if they are going to do anything or not. There’s no reason to make her worried about nothing. If someone asks, we just happened to be walking by the school. Got it?”

“Gotcha! You can count on me. Mister Reliable, that’s me. I won’t breathe a word. My mouth is on vacation.”

The front door of the school building whisked open with Ash led out by Miss Brady.

“Oh, look Ash. Judd and Tony are out here.” Miss Brady smiled, put her arm around Ash and said, “Ash told me she was good friends with you two.” Ash smiled and waved at them as Miss Brady eyed Judd and asked, “Did you come to walk her home by any chance? I don’t want anything to happen to one of my cheerleaders before the big game.”

Judd, put on the spot because of Miss Brady’s question, couldn’t think of anything to say and stammered, “I think—I mean—Like, I don’t know.”

Tony began to say, “Well, actually, we just happened to be walkin—”

Judd blurted out in a long run-on sentence, “
Ran down to Tiny’s Saw Felicity and the toads Eatin’ banana split Monster split Plottin’ revenge Ran back here Tony screamed at me I screamed at Tony We just happened to walk by and that’s the truth honest
!” Judd slapped his hands on his face and covered his mouth.

Tony looked at the ground and wondered how the super-confident football player he had just been talking to could change so quickly.

“Oh, I see, I think,” Miss Brady said while squinting her eyes and unconsciously shaking her head no. “Well, you threw a lot of words at me in a short period of time.” She eyed Tony this time and asked, “Does that mean yes, you are going to walk Ash home?”

Good, she didn’t understand much of Judd’s gibberish, Tony thought. “Yes, ma’am. We were just walking by and I remembered she mentioned having a meeting with you. So I said to Judd, let’s stop and walk her home.” Tony glanced up at Miss Brady, grinned and added, “And here we are!”

Ash said her good-byes to Miss Brady, skipped down the steps, turned and waved to her. “See you at the game tomorrow!”

Miss Brady waved back and yelled in her best cheerleader voice, “Go ‘Cats, beat those Lions!” and then disappeared into the school building.

“So, what are you guys up to?” Ash asked as they walked down the school promenade toward Adena Avenue. “And don’t give me Judd’s two second version. I could only make out Felicity’s name and the word banana. Judd, why are you so nervous?”

“Oh, that. Well, I—lemme see—I, uh—I, uh—” Judd rubbed his head, looked behind Ash at Tony and silently pleaded with him to jump in.

“Aw, we saw Felicity and the toads down at Tiny’s having a monster banana split and Judd thought they were gonna get after him again like yesterday for calling them toadies so we came up here to wait for you. Plus, Miss Brady kind of makes him a little jumpy too, for some reason.” Tony stuck his hands into his pants pockets and looked at the sidewalk hoping Ash would drop the subject. The longer she talked about Felicity, he reasoned, the more opportunity Judd would have to spill the beans.

“Judd, you’re twice the size of those girls. Don’t let them scare you. They don’t scare me.” Ash lectured with a sniff of her nose.

“No, no, no. My Mom and Dad says under no circumstances am I to hit a girl. No, no, no.” Shaking his head, Judd added, “When I was little, I hit my Mom one day and made her cry. My Dad about hit the roof. He was so mad at me, he said I should be ashamed of myself and if I wasn’t ashamed of myself then he would be ashamed for me. Ever since then, I’ve never hit no one exceptin’ on the football field.” Judd picked up a gnarled tree limb and absentmindedly began poking the sidewalk with it as they walked home.

“Well, I didn’t mean it that way, Judd,” Ash glanced up at him and continued, “I just meant that you shouldn’t become a scaredy cat when they raise their voices at you or point their fingers. Just because they’re loud doesn’t make them right and just because you made an innocent mistake in calling them toadies instead of ladies doesn’t mean you should let them walk all over you.”

Judd nodded solemnly at her and poked the sidewalk a little more with the tree limb and said, “Oh, I know, I know, but my Dad said always treat people with good manners and they’ll treat you right and if they don’t then it’s not your fault. Besides, I overheard Felicity talkin’ about—”

“AHEM!” Tony cut in sharply and changed the subject, “So Ash, what did you and Miss Brady talk about in your meeting?”

“Hmm?” Ash looked upward, then over at Judd, then back over to Tony as they neared Lake Shore Drive and answered, “Isn’t that strange? I can’t remember what we talked about.”

“Yeah, that’s really weird.” Tony muttered as he knitted his brow and wondered how someone could completely forget an entire meeting.

“Hey! Look who’s waitin’for us at the edge of your yard! Come here, boy!” Judd clapped, flapped his arms like a bird, jumped up and down, slapped his thighs, clapped again, ran in place, danced his own peculiar ballet, but to no avail. Curly calmly sat and watched Judd perform his gyrations, occasionally tilting his head to one side when Judd would make an especially interesting pirouette. “Hey, what gives? We’re only a block away, surely he can see us?” An out-of-breath Judd panted to Tony.

Ash, with both hands up to her mouth, is giggling too hard to answer and Tony has his face buried in the crook of his arm as he leans against a streetlight pole, his whole body shaking from laughing at Judd’s antics.

“Come on, guys! I’m serious, I wanna learn how to get Curly to obey me. I thought I was his pal!” Judd begged as he stood with his hands on his hips in front of Ash and Tony.

“Muh-muh-muh.” Tony couldn’t form words because his mouth would rather laugh than speak, but he was able to signal Curly to come without Judd knowing it.

As soon as Curly saw Tony’s signal to come, he shot off like a rocket, woofing and wagging his tail all the way down the block. “Here comes Curly.” Tony said, laughing so hard he was almost crying. He shakily pointed his finger for Judd to turn around.

A surprised Judd only had enough time to pivot halfway around before eighty pounds of Airedale landed in those same outstretched arms. Curly’s weight spun him around in a circle, but Judd held on tight, lifted him in the air and in between energetic licks on his face from Curly he proclaimed, “Whoa, you’re a good dog, ol’ Curly! Yes, you are! Haw-har, haw-har!”

Tony and Ash stared at each other in amazement, their mouths wide open and uttered, “Wow!” Neither one had ever seen anybody catch Curly like that, much less hold onto him and cradle him like a baby. Usually, most kids that Tony signaled Curly to jump on would fall into a crumpled heap and be screaming “Uncle!” in two seconds flat, but not Judd.

Tony had never seen such an athletic move and asked, “Judd, can you catch a football like that?”

Judd put Curly down on the sidewalk, looked over at Tony and smirked, “Of course! I like to catch the ball, but with my size and all, I always get stuck playin’ the line. Don’t get me wrong, I like the line and I love to block and tackle. When my Dad would throw me the ball in the back yard, I never, ever dropped it. Not even when he tossed it a hunnert miles an hour!”

Tony gently slapped Judd on the back, winked his eye and said, “Guess what?”

“What?”

“After I tell Coach Tiny what I just saw, there might be a few more passing plays in the offensive playbook just for you!”

“COOL!!”

Chapter 11- The Pregame

For quite a few people in Dersee, two p.m. on fall Saturdays means only one thing: Bobcats football. In a lakefront town of roughly 15,000 souls, high school football is king on Friday nights and pee wee football rules the roost on Saturdays. Due to Coach Tiny’s popularity and the winning ways of the Bobcats, their games have become the “thing to do” for the local populace.

The Bobcats even have their own pep band, a ten person crew of enthusiastic local musicians who, in tandem with the cheerleaders, stoke the fan’s spirits during the games. The trombone player is noted for playing the “wah-wah-wah-wah” sound whenever the opposing team makes a mistake or receives a penalty flag from the referee. If the Bobcats have the game well in hand or time is running out and they are winning, the pep band and cheerleaders will break into a rousing rendition of “Na Na Na Na, Hey Hey, Goodbye” and the Dersee fans would good-naturedly stand up and wave bye-bye to the other team.