Trouble On Exeter Street Read online

  One thing that Susie was good for was making up enough people to play hide-and-seek and a few other games. I liked her when we played baseball as long as she was on the other team. She couldn’t hit or catch for anything. It was always an easy out.

  I guess I didn’t realize I played with her so much until Tammy moved in next door to Susie. Suddenly Tammy was over at her house all the time. Fortunately I still had Eric, Peter, and Tommy to fool around with. We would try to get Susie to come over and play whenever we needed a fifth person for a board game or something but she starting coming less and less.

  The other thing I noticed was that she started changing how she dressed. I mean it wasn’t a big deal but when she first moved in she wore jeans and tee shirts all the time. Now she wore skirts and blouses. I don’t know what’s up with that. Girls do some really strange things.

  One day I saw her standing outside and went over to see what was going on. She had on a skirt and that seemed kind of silly for just hanging out in the yard.

  “What’s up?” I asked her.

  “Oh, hi Warren,” she said, like it was the first time she had ever met me.

  “So what are you doing all dressed up?” I asked.

  “What? This old thing. I’m not dressed up silly.”

  “Well you could have fooled me. It sure looks like a dress to me.”

  “It’s a skirt and I am not dressed up.”

  “Okaaaaaay,” I said, thinking that she had lost her mind.

  “Anyway, I’m waiting for Tammy. We are going shopping for school clothes.”

  “School clothes? Why in the world would you do that? School has only been out two weeks. I don’t even want to think about that yet,” I said and shuddered.

  “Well we are going to be in the sixth grade. We have to be up on the fashions. It isn’t like the fifth grade you know,” she replied.

  “No I don’t know. I’m going to wear the same jeans I wore last year,” I told her.

  “Yes. I suppose you would. Boys can get away with that. Girls can’t”

  “Why?”

  “Why?”

  “Do you hear an echo in here?” I asked mockingly.

  “Because we just can’t. Boys are lucky. They don’t have the same pressure we have.”

  “Pressure? To dress a certain way? That’s just stupid,” I insisted.

  “It doesn’t matter what you think. We have to be much more fashion conscious,”

  “I think you girls are more likely unconscious,” I said.

  “Think what you want but we know better.”

  **

  There were times that I liked being around Susie, mostly when it was just her and me. We would play cards or some silly game. Often we would make up rules to just goof off. At those times she wasn’t so bad. The problem was when she got around Tammy.

  Once the two of them got together everything seemed to change. She treated me differently or at least that is the way it felt. She would spend more time talking to Tammy than me. I felt like I was the third wheel.

  I couldn’t understand how she could be one way at one time and completely different at another. I mean she still had the same curly blond hair and blue eyes but now she wore dresses and of all things, fingernail polish. Maybe her brain turned to mush when the zombies ate it.

  FIVE

  ERIC AND TOMMY SAVE THE DAY

  When Susie moved in she was about the only one I had to play with and that was okay. She and I would ride bikes and we would hang out doing dumb stuff at the playground.

  Then Eric moved in and I had another boy to play with. Susie still hung around and did stuff with us but now I could be more like myself.

  The problem with Eric was that he liked to read all the time. I mean even in the summer. No one reads in the summer unless they are being punished. He liked to play board games like Strategy and World Domination and other dumb games. Nothing that you could just make up the rules to and clobber the other person’s pieces. He even read the rules. How dumb is that?

  Eric did have a totally cool bike. He had a light that flashed when he peddled and neat reflectors that changed color when he rode it. The problem was he didn’t want to go outside much. What a waste. If I had that bike I would have gone a hundred miles a day.

  Just as I was thinking Susie might be better to hang with, along came Tommy. Tommy was smaller than the rest of us but he was a real daredevil. He would try anything once. We would take our bikes to the highest hill and challenge each other to see who could get to the bottom with no hands and without falling off.

  We both came home with lots of scrapes and bruises but who cared. Tommy became the guy I wanted to hang out with the most but his parents were very strict. It seems like every time we did some little thing wrong they would restrict him to the house.

  It’s not like we were looking to get into trouble but sometimes it just found us. Like the time we went down to the creek that was behind Eric’s house. It was winter and really, really cold. We decided to challenge each other to see who could stand in the creek up to our knees the longest.

  It’s not like we were taking a big risk. We would take turns timing each other to see who could stand it the longest. Tommy won when he stayed ten minutes and twenty seconds. The best I could do was eight minutes and forty-five seconds. He was the champion.

  By the time we got home we were half frozen but Tommy was pretty happy that he had won. His mother went ballistic. She thought we had lost our minds. She was so mad she didn’t even let me come in the house but sent me straight home. To this day I still can’t figure out what the big deal was. Tommy was grounded for three days because of that.

  Parents. Who can ever figure them out? You just never know what is going to set them off. Sometimes the simplest things can do it.

  Like the time Eric, Tommy, and I decided to have a snowball fight. It was in July and of course there was no snow. Tommy came up with the bright idea of us getting a dozen cupcakes with white icing and having a fight with those. We pooled our money, went to the bakery and bought a dozen white cupcakes with lots of icing.

  Let the fight begin. We all went and hid and the object was to seek out your opponent and clobber him with a cupcake. What a cool game. On top of that, you could eat any that stuck to you.

  I found Eric lurking behind a tree looking the other way. Pow, I got him right in the back of the head. It was so cool. The cupcake exploded leaving icing dripping down his back.

  “Ha. Got you,” I shouted with glee just as a cupcake splattered me on the side of my face. Tommy had managed to circle around and got me right on the ear. Half the cupcake went in my ear. I had to dig it out with my finger. It still tasted pretty good.

  From then on it was a free for all. We were all covered in icing and cake from head to toe. What a blast it was. We laughed until we all had tears running down our faces. It was the best snowball fight ever and we didn’t even get cold.

  Needless to say, our parents did not see the humor in it. My mom went totally ape at the condition of my clothes. What’s the big deal? It was just some icing. I spill more stuff than that down the front of me at an average meal. I tried to point that out but she was in one of her moods and wouldn’t listen. I got sent to my room for the rest of the day. Later I found out Eric and Tommy went through the same thing except Tommy was grounded again. And I thought my parents were unreasonable.

  The good thing about Tommy and Eric was that our summer days were filled with adventure. We would hang out at the creek and just talk about stuff. What we were going to do and all the neat stuff we would own someday. Eric actually wanted to try to fish but Tommy and I thought it was too boring to sit there waiting for some dumb fish to eat a worm. And even if it did, what would we do with it?

  Instead we would skip rocks or try to hit tree branches with rocks which was much more satisfying. One afternoon Tommy brought a pack of cigarettes down to the creek. Eric and I were blown away.

  “Where did you get them?” I asked.
<
br />   “I found them.”

  “Where?”

  “They were just lying at the curb.”

  “No way.”

  “Hey, it’s true,” Tommy replied

  “What are you going to do with them?” I asked him.

  “Smoke them.”

  “Oh give me a break. That is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard,” I told him.

  “Why? How do you know it’s dumb if you don’t try?”

  “You don’t have to try them to know they can kill you. They have all kinds of chemicals and stuff in them that make you sick and then you die,” I answered.

  “Suit yourself but I am going to try it.”

  “Don’t. You will be sorry if you do,” Eric added but Tommy took one out of the pack and put it to his lips.

  Eric reached out and knocked it away.

  “Hey you dweeb. Do that again and I’ll knock your block off,” Tommy said, placing another one in his mouth.

  He pulled out a lighter and lit the end of it. He sucked in the smoke and tried to hold it but started coughing. The smoke went up his nose and he doubled over.

  Eric and I thought it was really funny as tears started running down his cheeks and he continued to cough.

  “That good, huh?” I asked.

  He tried to say something but it was caught in his throat.

  “I told you,” Eric said.

  Tommy looked at us with tears in his eyes and tossed the cigarette in the creek. That was the last time any of us ever even mentioned smoking. I just can’t figure out why people do that in the first place. It seems like such a dumb idea.

  Tommy was small but he was a scrapper. It seemed like he wasn’t afraid of anything. Even bigger kids didn’t mess with him and it was good to have someone like him around, especially when more and more kids moved into the neighborhood. Now we were getting kids of all ages. Some were younger but a lot of them were older. We even had a few teenagers.

  It didn’t seem to bother Tommy but I knew it was just a matter of time before we had trouble with some of them. As it turns out, I didn’t have to wait long.

  SIX

  BIG KIDS STINK

  It didn’t take long for us to realize that some of the bigger kids were mean. Tommy, Eric and I had this really neat tree house we built one summer. We scavenged lumber, nails, and all kinds of material and spent the entire summer building it.

  It was pretty cool. It had windows on each side and shutters we could open and close. We even built a railing around most of it. It was hard to get into but we wanted it that way to keep out any girls that had moved in the neighborhood. This was a guy’s fort, no females allowed.

  Boy was it hard work but we had our own fort and could look out and see almost the entire neighborhood. We would spend all day just goofing around and talking about how we could make it even better. It seemed like we were always finding new stuff to add.

  I was able to talk mom into giving us an old carpet out of the attic for the floor of the tree house and we lugged it out there. That was a day I will remember for a long time.

  We had tied a rope to one end of it and Tommy and I were pulling it up while Eric was under it pushing. About halfway up it slipped out of our hands and went crashing down, right on poor Eric.

  It knocked him off the ladder and he fell and landed hard on the ground. We could hear him yelling that his arm was broken. We looked down and started laughing. He was sprawled out with the rug across of him and we couldn’t even see his face. At first we thought he was just putting us on but then we realized he really was hurt.

  We scrambled down and picked the rug up off of him. He was crying and holding his arm.

  “Oh man. I think he is really hurt,” Tommy said.

  “Let’s get him to my house,” I said since it was the closest.

  “No. You aren’t supposed to move someone if they broke something,” Tommy said.

  I have to admit, I had never heard that before. I knew if you hurt your neck you shouldn’t be moved, but an arm?

  “I’ll go get my mom,” I said taking off to my house.

  I raced in the house yelling at the top of my lungs for my mom.

  “What in the world is going on young man?” my mother demanded.

  “Eric fell and broke his arm.”

  “What? Where?”

  “At the tree house,” I said grabbing her hand and trying to pull her to the door.

  Moms are cooler than kids at this kind of stuff. She grabbed her cell phone and we headed out the door.

  “Call 911,” I yelled at her but she ignored me.

  When we got to where Eric and Tommy were she checked him over and pronounced the arm was indeed broken. She called Eric’s mother of all people. Was she crazy?

  “Mrs. Zimmerman. Eric fell and I think he broke his arm. I can take him to the hospital or would you rather do it?” she asked calmly.

  How could she be so calm? Call 911. Call someone other than his mother and just talk about it.

  “Yes. Okay. No, it’s no problem. Certainly. Alright then,” she finally said and hung up.

  “You boys stay here with Eric. I’ll get the car and we will take him to the Emergency Room. Eric, your mother was at the store and will come to the hospital just as fast as she can. I’m going to take you and get you looked at,” she told us.

  “Oooh. Hurry. It’s killing me,” he moaned.

  “It will just be a second honey.”

  She walked back to the house and in just a minute had the car by the edge of the road. We got Eric settled into the back seat between Tommy and me and off we went.

  It seemed like we were there forever. We waited and waited with nothing to do. If I had known it was going to take so long I would have brought a game or my tablet. Tommy and I explored some but were sent back to the waiting room two or three times.

  Finally Eric came back with a cast on his arm. Way cool. Man I wish I had been the one on the bottom.

  “Does it hurt?” Tommy asked him.

  “Not now. They gave me something. I feel really good.”

  “That is so cool. Can I write my name on it?” I asked.

  “Sure, when we get home. We can use a marker,” he replied.

  On the way home we got the usual lecture about being more careful especially playing around that tree house. I had only heard this like a billion times already.

  When we turned down our street I knew something was wrong. There was wood lying at the bottom of where the tree house was.

  “What?” I yelled.

  “What’s wrong?” mom asked.

  “Look,” I said pointing.

  She stopped the car when we got near the tree house. Wood was splintered and thrown everywhere. The railing was gone and the walls were lying in the field. Someone had gotten up and torn the tree house down.

  Tommy and I stood there in disbelief. It was ruined. Hardly anything was left standing. I looked around and saw three teenagers walking across the field. They looked back, waved and took off running.

  “Mom, call the police or something.”

  “I doubt they are going to do anything about it Warren. They have their hands full with bigger problems.

  **

  That wasn’t our last run-in with the big kids. A month later my bike and Eric’s disappeared from our front yards. Someone had stolen them during the night.

  “Mom, someone stole my bike. Eric’s is missing too,” I told her.

  “Where did you leave it?”

  “In the yard. Same place as always. When I went out it was gone.”

  “Well I told you to quit leaving it there. We are getting more and more people in the neighborhood and things like that are going to happen.”

  “But mom.”

  “Warren, I told you, either put it on the porch or in the backyard. Now it’s gone and that is partly your fault.”

  “So it’s okay for them to come in our yard and steal whatever they want? What about your potted plants. Is that okay too?” I
asked.

  It seemed like a logical argument to me but I forgot I was arguing with mom. They can turn everything around.

  “Warren, potted plants are for decoration. No one wants to steal something like that but a bike is just an object. It is highly prized by those kinds of people.”

  Huh? I didn’t get it but I knew there was no use arguing with her. Once she has it set in her mind I knew I couldn’t change it.

  When Dad came home from work I went to talk to him about it.

  “Dad, someone stole my bike last night,” I told him.

  “Yes, your mother said you left it out front again and someone took it.”

  Mom. She has already poisoned his mind. That was totally unfair.

  “But dad, I have been doing that since we first moved here three years ago. So what has changed?” I asked.

  “Honestly, the neighborhood. Three years ago we were one of the first to live in this addition. Only a few kids, kids your age, lived here. Now the place is filling up and new kids and teenagers are moving in. That changes the dynamics of the entire addition. We have to be more careful about what we do with things. Have you noticed I put the cars in the garage every night now? If I left them out it would be a temptation for someone to break in or try to steal it,” he told me.

  “You mean it’s the big kids that are causing all of this?”

  “It’s not just the kids. It is the way they are raised,” dad said, “Parents have a responsibility to make sure their kids respect other people’s property. Some parents just don’t care enough to give their kids guidance. That is one reason your mother and I are so concerned about what you do. We don’t care what your friends do, it’s you that matters to us,” he told me.

  Wow, talk about heavy. I just wanted to talk about my bike and see if they would get me a new one and I get a lecture about the world’s problems. Still, he had a good point. Some big kids stink. They cause problems for everyone if they aren’t raised right.

  SEVEN

  NEIL THE TERROR

  I can still remember how all my really big problems began. It was three days before we were getting ready to start sixth grade. Tommy, Eric and I were just playing out in the front yard of Eric’s house.