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

went to meet
him.
    “ What happened to you?” Emery asked.
“You’re all wet!” Leon’s dripping hair hung over his forehead and
beads of water covered his face. His clothes had a few dry spots,
but not many.
    Leon gave a loud sniff. “No kidding.” Philip
saw a tear roll down Leon’s right cheek and bump into a water drop
sitting motionless there. Leon brushed them both away.
    Leon turned and looked back toward the empty
schoolyard.
    “ What happened?” asked
Philip.
    “ They said they wanted me to play with
them,” Leon explained. “But when I got there and ran up to them,
they started throwing water balloons at me. They didn’t really want
to play with me. They just wanted me to come to the schoolyard so
they could wet me.” Leon started walking. “No one wants to play
with me.”
    Philip and Emery exchanged a quick look and
hurried after Leon.
    “ Uh, why don’t you come to the fair
with us, Leon?” Philip asked.
    Leon didn’t answer. He simply walked
faster.
    “ We have something neat you can do.
It’ll be fun,” Philip said louder as Leon got further away. Philip
speeded up, but Leon walked even faster.
    “ Come on, Leon,” Philip pleaded. “We
really need you for this.”
    Leon stopped. “You don’t mean it. You want to
trick me, too.”
    “ No, no! We mean it, Leon,” said
Philip.
    Emery added, “We won’t trick you. We really
need you.”
    Leon stared at the boys. “You
two
always
tease me and trick me. You don’t
let me do anything with you. You tell me to stand over there or go
away.”
    “ Well,” Philip said slowly, “you do
have a lot of accidents, you know.”
    “ And you did crunch our two games,”
Emery pointed out.
    Leon looked down and shrugged. “Sometimes I’m
not lucky.”
    “ You can do this with us, Leon, and
we’ll all be lucky,” Philip argued. “It’s a game we want to do at
the fair, and we need you to do it. We told you we were making a
game, right? If you help us, we’ll play Kleebis with you.” Philip
heard Emery moan.
    Leon’s head snapped up. “Kleebis? Really? Can
I make some of the rules?”
    “ Help us at the fair, and you can
make all the rules, right
Emery?” said Philip.
    “ Yeah, all the rules,” Emery repeated
with little enthusiasm.
    “ And you’ll play with me when I want?”
Leon’s eyes were wide.
    “ Unless there’s something else we have
to do,” said Philip.
    Philip could hear Emery mutter under his
breath, “He’ll want us to play Kleebis the rest of his life.”
Philip gave Emery a secret kick with his heel.
    Leon laughed his goofy
yuk
yuk.
“What game are you doing at the fair?”
    “ Come on,” said Philip. “We only have .
. .” He looked at his watch “. . . twenty minutes. And we need
drawing paper and pencils.”
    “ I have a lot of drawing stuff at home.
Did you know I like to draw?” said Leon.
    “ We know!” said Philip. “Hurry up and
get them. My dad will drive us.”
     
    ~ * ~
    At ten minutes after twelve Leon sat
contentedly at the fair, drawing the face of a little girl as the
little girl’s mother watched. People wandered over to watch Leon
work. Philip and Emery stood nearby, calling for people to come and
see the artist who could draw anyone’s face. When Leon finished
drawing the first little girl, Philip watched the girl’s mother
take a five-dollar bill out of her wallet. Philip’s eyes bulged,
and he rushed over to help.
    “ Thank you, ma’am.” Philip grabbed the
five dollars.
    “ It’s for a good cause,” Emery put in.
He turned to Philip and smiled. Then he called out, “Only five
dollars. Get your picture drawn only five dollars.”
    Philip followed suit and people lined up.
    By the time five o’clock rolled around and
the fair drew to a close, Leon had drawn thirty-two faces, and when
Philip handed Mrs. Moriarty the profits, she stared at him,
momentarily speechless. When she found her voice, she said,
“Philip, one-hundred-sixty dollars! Amazing! You made more