Is Anybody There? Read Online Free PDF Page B

one?”
    “Anjelica Trotter,” Robbie said.
    The guy curled his tongue up around his mustache, I guess to check if it was still there. “Anjelica Trotter! Well! By the way, I’m Fred Garcia.”
    “Hi, Fred,” Robbie said.
    I didn’t say anything.
    “You don’t happen to have this Anjelica Trotter’s phone number?”
    Fred was asking me and I was staring at him as if I didn’t understand English.
    He bent toward us and candle wax splashed on the sidewalk. His forehead was beaded with sweat. “Confidentially,” he said, “I happened to notice that she had a very intriguing message printed on the spine of her notebook.”
    “I love somebody,” Robbie said helpfully. Robbie is a very helpful person.
    “Yeah. Pity she didn’t think to put her phone number on her notebook too. I’d have asked for it, but this big hunk of a teacher was standing right there. You don’t happen to know her number, offhand, yourselves?” he asked.
    “Marcus?” Robbie turned to me, his eyes big and innocent. I felt like punching him out. I felt like punching them both out.
    “I
don’t
happen to know it,” I said. “And if I
did
happen to know it I wouldn’t happen to give it to just anybody on the street who asked for it.”
    “Quite right. Here, hold this.” Fred shoved the dripping candle into my hand and bit off one of his mittens. He used it to wipe his forehead, then fished in his pocket and came up with an old envelope. “It’s warm,” he said, and began searching his pocket again.
    “You need a pencil?” Robbie offered him one shaped like a candy cane that we’d just been given free at Tilton Hardware. Robbie is so helpful he makes me want to throw up.
    One of the carolers called, “Come on, Fred.”
    “I’ll be right with you,” Fred said.
    He wrote quickly and shoved the envelope at me. “My phone number,” he said. “Why don’t you ask Anjelica to give me a call?” He grabbed the candle and was gone, the end of his scarf trailing behind him. I stepped on it so fast, it came off and he had to turn back to scoop it up. He dropped his candle.
    By this time half the chorus was yelling at him.
    “Jerk!” I said, when he finally got everything together. I shoved the envelope with his phone number into one of the wire trash baskets that hung from the light pole. “That guy’s old enough to be Anjelica’s father.”
    “
I
think Anjelica might like a mature guy like Fred,” Robbie said. “For her red-and-green ‘Color Me Christmas’ lipstick. And her new top.”
    He was walking backward in front of me, talking and grinning. “How come you’re not giving her Fred’s phone number? That wasn’t very nice of you, throwing it away, Marcus. You know why you did it, don’t you?”
    “You look really stupid walking backward,” I told him coldly. I was ready to start a giantsizedrow, but just then a lady with a tray offered us little crackers with cheese on them. The food calmed us down, and by the time we’d eaten our way to the corner of Lake and Cordova, we were OK again.
    The clock on the Bank of America building said four fifteen.
    “I’m going to be late for Mom,” I told Robbie. “I still have to go home and pick up the two Wish Tree packages to bring to the mall. Let’s move.”
    We walked fast along Cordova, finishing the crackers and cheese we’d stashed in our pockets.
    “I like that Wish Tree thing you and your mom do,” Robbie said. “It’s neat. We should start that in my family.”
    “I like it too.”
    Robbie munched a handful of broken crackers. “Why didn’t we bum a couple of extra drinks? These things are dry.”
    “We have lemonade at home,” I told him. “But you’ll have to be quick.”
    As soon as we got to our house, I noticed that Nick’s car wasn’t there. Across the street Patchin drowsed in the afternoon sun, andMiss Sarah was in her driveway next door, washing her car. It’s a big old black Buick, shaped like a humpback whale, and she’s all the time