lock.
Across the road, Mr. Orso came out of his door and walked up to his car. He waved at us once, barking softly before getting into it. I waved back. He was our worst customer, if you could even call him that. He had never bought anything from us, ever.
“Damn nose,” Mrs. Weller said. I turned around again. The torpedo had fallen out. A tiny speck of blood started dripping. “Wait here girls,” she said tipping her head back and walking into her house like Frankenstein.
“Let’s go ,” Rennie whispered.
I frowned at the bloody torpedo and the next thing I knew I was bending down to pick it up.
“ Ach ,” Rennie yelled, slapping her hands over her eyes. “Sick!”
Even though she couldn’t see that I was only touching the part without any blood on it, you couldn’t blame her. Before M hijacked my life, I would never in a trillion years have picked it up.
“What are you going to do with it?” Rennie groaned through her fingers.
“I’ll be right back,” I said like I had a plan, which I guess going to find Mrs. Weller’s trash can was.
I held the torpedo out as far away from me as I could and walked through the front door. Inside, it smelled like a million different things rolled into one, but mostly just plain old oldness . There were thickly brushed portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Weller hanging on the walls. Even though Mrs. Weller looked like George Washington now , she used to look pretty good once, like a younger version of him.
The only trash can that I knew about was in the kitchen under the sink, so I turned into it.
And stopped.
Jesus was eating some toast.
“Jesus!”
He looked up at me with his big blue eyes and said, “Sorry, did I scare you?”
I shook my head.
He was sitting at Mrs. Weller’s kitchen table, and after he asked me that, he put his toast down and smiled. His nose looked a little bigger than it had on stage and his stringy blond hair stayed tucked back behind both ears, but anyone could tell it was him: Jesus Christ Superstar.
“Uh-oh,” he said spotting the torpedo in my hand. “I keep telling her she should stay in bed when she gets one of those, but she doesn’t listen. Trash is over there.” He pointed toward the sink.
Up on stage you might not be able to see how blue his eyes were, but sitting there at Mrs. Weller’s table, his eyes looked like perfect round blueberries . He was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt and sitting with his legs crossed like a girl.
I opened the sink door and threw away the torpedo. When I turned around again, he was chewing on the toast. Smacking it, really.
He smiled at me, then uncrossed his legs and sat up straighter.
You would think a Jesus’s teeth would be perfect, but they weren’t. They were kind of yellow and not exactly straight.
He pointed his crust at me. “You’re April, right?”
“Ap ron, ” I corrected him.
“Oh yeah, sorry man. Apron .” He held his arms up like he was under arrest and a few blond strips fell out from behind his ears. “The neighbor’s kid. You have a brother or sister or something named Cricket, right?” He put his hands in his mouth and started picking something out of his teeth, way in the back.
I shook my head. “Wrong house.”
He groaned, concentrating. “Got it,” he said finally, pulling his hand out with something pinched in between his fingers. “Lettuce. Been driving me crazy.”
I made a face. He stared at me. Then he stood and walked toward me. “I’m Mike,” he said. “Mike Weller.”
“Mike Weller ?” I asked. He looked nothing like Mrs. Weller.
“Yip,” Mike said holding out the hand he had just used for the lettuce, then thinking better of it and holding out the other one instead. “Millie’s nephew.”
We shook hands the opposite way, then I stepped back and saw that his jeans were dirty at the bottom and there was a hole right where the pocket should be.
“I gotta go,” I said. “Nice to meet you.” I walked out the door.
Rennie was