Philip and the Loser (9781619501522) by John Paulits

and
didn’t bother to answer Leon, choosing instead to continue to think
about the fair. Leon got up.
    “ Leon, don’t go near the garage,” said
Philip.
    “ Leon, don’t come near the table,” said
Emery.
    “ Leon, sit back down on the grass,”
said Philip.
    A partially open, folding red lawn chair sat
on the grass near Leon.
    “ The grass feels wet,” said Leon. “I’ll
sit here.”
    “ Leon, look out!” Emery
cried.
    Leon threw himself into the chair which
immediately closed on him, like a gaping red mouth swallowing a big
bug with a giant gulp.
    “
Ow, ow, ow,”
Leon
screamed.
    Philip and Emery jumped up and tried to open
the chair.
    “ My finger’s stuck,” Leon
bellowed.
    Philip saw Leon’s finger caught in between
the metal arm of the chair and one of the metal rungs of the back
of the chair.
    “
OW, OW, OW,”
Leon
roared.
    Philip tapped the chair. “Emery, hold
here.”
    Emery grabbed the arm of the chair, and
Philip pulled the chair’s back as hard as he could.
    The chair opened a little, and Leon fell
out.
    “
Yow, ow, oo,”
Leon screeched,
jumping up and down like a kangaroo. He froze for a moment to
inspect his finger. “
Blood!”
he screamed and
took off running around the back of the house. Philip could hear
him howling, “Blood! Blood! Blood!” as he ran down the street
toward home.
    Philip and Emery gave up trying to think of
any more games. Leon had messed up their concentration. They
decided to meet the next day morning at ten and somehow or other
figure out something they could do at Mrs. Moriarty’s fair.
     
     

Chapter Ten
     
    At ten-thirty on Saturday morning, only
ninety minutes from the start of Mrs. Moriarty’s fair, Philip and
Emery were deep in an argument.
    “ I told you. I can’t
get
my dad’s darts. They’re too fancy, and they’re
locked up, and he’s not home anyway, so cross out anything with
darts,” Emery insisted for what felt like the tenth
time.
    Philip looked down at the loose leaf
notebook in his hand and crossed off another possibility. He’d
spent Friday night making a list of possible games he and Emery
could make to get them out of their emergency. “Then let’s blow up
a lot of balloons and do something with them,” said Philip. “You
can blow up balloons, can’t you?” he added testily. Panic had begun
to bubble in Philip’s stomach. The list he’d made was nothing but
crossed out ideas. Mrs. M. would think he was an idiot if he didn’t
show up with the game he’d bragged about, and Mr. Sagsman
would
tell
him he was an idiot and probably
give him a big red
I
on his report card to
show he was an idiot.
    “ We don’t have time to blow up a
million balloons,” Emery argued. “Anyway, it takes me forever to
tie those little knots in them. I had to blow a lot of balloons up
twice the first time for the darts game ’cause the air leaked out
when I tied the knot. Some of them jumped out of my hand and flew
around the room.”
    Philip had no answer. The same thing had
happened to him when he blew up his balloons. “Your sisters got any
toy ducks? I think Becky has one.”
    “ We need more than two or three ducks.
Anyway, ducks is a stupid game. All you gotta do to win is watch
which duck has the star. How could you forget if there’s only three
ducks. Everybody’d win a prize, and we don’t even have any prizes.
This is a disaster.”
    “ Did somebody call me?” Leon walked
around the corner of the house and entered the backyard. He had a
white bandage around his left hand to go along with the bandage
above his eye. He held his hand up. “A chair bit me,
yuk
yuk.
You saw.”
    “ You weren’t laughing yesterday,”
Philip said grumpily.
    “ That’s because it bit me yesterday.”
Leon walked over to the lawn chair lying on the lawn where he’d
left it. He gave it a kick and said, “Bad chair.” Then he took a
step away from it and gave a
yuk yuk.
“Did
you feed it today, I hope?”
    “ Leon,” said Philip.