Philip and the Loser (9781619501522) by John Paulits Page A

“Can you please
shut up and stay over there? If you get near us, the picnic table
will probably fall apart.”
    “ And maybe the house will fall down,”
Emery added.
    “ Yeah. Don’t make my house fall down,”
said Philip half seriously.
    Leon laughed and wiggled his fingers at
Philip’s house as if he were a wizard casting a spell.
    Philip and Emery watched the house for a
moment, just in case.
    “ Don’t worry,” said Leon. Then with
some pride he added, “I can’t stay long. I’m meeting my school
friends in a little while.”
    “
You
have friends?” said
Philip.
    “ Of course. They told me to meet them
in the schoolyard.”
    “ Well, sit there and wait and don’t
make trouble,” said Philip.
    “ Can I have some paper to play with?”
Leon asked.
    “ Will you stay there and not knock
anything over?” Philip asked in return.
    Leon smiled. “I’ll be as quiet as a
Kleebis.”
    Philip rolled his eyes and took some papers
from his binder. He gave them to Emery, who walked over to Leon and
handed them to him. Leon sat down, and Philip and Emery went back
to arguing.
    At eleven o’clock, Philip crossed out the
final item on his list. “We’re dead,” he said simply. “Where’d Leon
go?”
    Emery looked behind him. “I don’t know. Went
to the schoolyard, I guess.”
    “ He threw his garbage all over,” Philip
complained. Six crumpled balls of paper lay spread out over the
grass. “Great. He throws his junk around, and I’ll get in trouble
for it.” Philip gathered up the papers and put them on the picnic
table. “Well? What’ll we do?”
    “ Go tell Mrs. M. we don’t have a
game.”
    Philip made a pained face. “I told her
we
did
have a game. Come on, Emery.
There
must
be something we can think of to
get money for the fair.” Philip looked at his watch. The fair began
in fifty minutes.
    For five more minutes the two boys sat
on the picnic bench, heads drooping, thinking of the embarrassment
looming ahead for them. In frustration, Philip slammed his palm on
the picnic table, smashing one of the papers Leon left behind.
“There
has
to be something. We can’t both be
this dumb.” The paper he’d smacked opened up a little and something
caught Philip’s eye. He picked up the paper and opened it. He
looked at Emery, then back at the paper.
    “ What?” asked Emery, seeing the
surprise in Philip’s face.
    Philip smoothed the paper out and turned it
toward Emery.
    “ Hey,” Emery cried. “That’s you. It
looks just like you.”
    Philip opened another of the papers. “This
one is you.” He showed Emery.
    “ Open them all,” Emery said.
    Each of the other four papers had a drawing.
One showed Philip’s house; another, his garage. One showed Philip
and Emery at the picnic table, and the final one had the word
KLEEBIS in big letters, each letter decorated in a different
way.
    “ Leon did this?” said
Philip.
    “ I didn’t know he could draw,” said
Emery.
    Philip jumped up. “Hey! You remember when we
went to get your new sneakers at the mall? Some lady was drawing
people’s faces.”
    “ Yeah. For money!”
    “ For money! You think Leon . . .
?”
    “ I don’t know. I don’t know,” said
Emery excitedly. He jumped up, too.
    “ You don’t think we made him mad at us,
do you?” Philip wondered.
    Emery made a face as if he’d heard something
very painful. “It’s possible.”
    “ It’s twenty after eleven. Leon can
save us. We have to ask him.”
    “ He’s with his friends.”
    “
We’re
his friends, too,
aren’t we?”
    “ Are we?”
    “ Of course we are! Practically. Let’s
go find him,” said Philip. He and Emery ran as fast as they could
out to the sidewalk and down the street toward the
schoolyard.
     
     

Chapter Eleven
     
    Philip and Emery dashed across the
next-to-last street before their school and stopped short. Halfway
up the block Leon walked slowly toward them, head down and kicking
at imaginary stones on the sidewalk. Philip and Emery