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  I took a forkful of the sea bass. “Going fishing was a good idea,” I said. Vince looked up from his plate and gave me a guilty look.

  “About that…” he said.

  “I’ve been thinking,” I said. “Do you want to do both trips to Sea Camp?”

  “You kidding? I’ll do the milking early. I’ll be in the shop by nine thirty.”

  “Deal,” I said.

  “Umm…umm.” Lil swallowed another bite of her sea bass. “Nicely negotiated, boys. But we also have to find time for Vince to go fishing again. Soon! Even if we don’t have lemons.” She paused to put a whole wedge in her mouth.

  Eva’s face puckered up. “Oh! Lil! I can’t eat a lemon like that.” She grabbed the sides of her cheeks.

  Lil gave Eva a lemon-slice grin.

  Eva shook her head at Lil. “Mom says you’ll ruin the ee-nanimal off your teeth!”

  Timing is everything. The phone rang. Mom and Dad were messaging in early. They’d had word that there was a government-aid truck out on the highway.

  “Aid trucks? What kind of aid?” I asked.

  “I expect it’s mostly a lot of speaking in soothing tones.” Dad laughed. “We’re hoping to pick up bottled water and some food and reduce our diner meals a bit,” Dad said. “It’s getting expensive.”

  “Bad for his waistline,” I heard Mom interject.

  “The shop is making lots of money, Dad.” I couldn’t help telling him. “It’s pretty unbelievable.”

  “That’s great. But how much are you boys working? The shop’s important, but don’t let it tie you down too hard,” Dad said. “It’s also summertime, Dewey. You need to have some fun.”

  Vince overheard. He grinned at me, sprung up on his toes, and pretended to cast a fishing line.

  “People really need us, Dad.”

  “They need to chew on our butts,” Vince mumbled, and I steered away from him with the phone.

  Dad asked, “Are you making it to the bank with the cash? You’re not leaving it all in the tin every night, are you?”

  “N-no.” It was a half-lie. “I’m just leaving enough to make change.” I tried to think then. I might have skipped a night. Or was it two?

  Vince put his face in mine again. He looked at me with one eye closed, one eye wide open. I turned my back and changed the subject with Dad.

  “Dad, about the aid truck…well, it means there is fuel somewhere. Right?”

  “Well, ‘government reserve’ or something like that. And it’s making people a little crazy. They arrested a fella up here for siphoning from an aid truck in the middle of the night!” Dad said.

  “Stealing gas,” I mumbled. “What next?”

  “Anything valuable is subject to theft,” Dad said. “And values are changing out there.”

  As soon as I passed the phone to Lil, I grabbed the key to the shop and headed toward the door.

  “Where ya goin’, Dewey?” Vince gave me a smirk. He knew, and I knew, that I was going to the barn. I had a wad of cash to bring in.

  16

  VINCE CAME BACK FROM THE MORNING SEA Camp delivery whistling. He bounced right out to the paddock and picked up the difficult job he’d been working on the day before. No swearing.

  Meanwhile, I’d taken my triage theory in a little different direction. I gave Vince the harder jobs (without mentioning to him that I knew he was the better mechanic). I knocked off the standard stuff more quickly by lining up the similar jobs and getting on a roll. I also got into the shop right after morning chores—no Angus-and-Eva drop-off. Vince did better focusing on the couple of jobs a day. And I didn’t feel like a tyrant.

  Well, except for the times I nagged him about the parts. True, we had a very loose system for keeping track—maybe no system at all. We’d never really needed one. But now that we were busy, I was trying to stay on top of it. Vince seemed to have no idea what he used.

  I’d stand there looking at the shelves and ask him, “How many brake assemblies did you go through yesterday?” Or, “Wasn’t there another roll of Teflon cable? Did you take a box of twenty-seven-inch tubes outside?”

  For the first time in his life he couldn’t come up with a short answer. He barely answered at all. He’d say, “No. Uh, no. I don’t think I used that.” But he sounded more like he was asking a question.

  I had no time to go back through orders checking and rechecking. Not with so many repairs still waiting. My strategy was to go forward—with my brother Vince, the spaced-out bike-mechanic genius.

  I kept telling myself it was okay. I was getting an earlier start now, and I was even setting myself up with the parts the night before.

  Who’s the genius?

  “In the zone,” I said to myself. I fired up the compressor and hissed air into three tires in a row. “Oh yeah!”

  Suddenly Lil was at my elbow.

  “What?” I said.

  And don’t bother me about the shop being too full of bikes when we’re having a good morning here and I’m perfectly in charge…

  “I want that,” she said. She pointed to the compressor and gave me an only slightly apologetic look.

  “Don’t let her have it!” Vince warned from the paddock door. “She’ll flatten it with the sledge and glue it to the barn.” He had a point. Lil thought everything on the planet had something to do with her art. Things went missing, then turned up sort of re-created.

  “Back! Back!” I said, and I aimed the air hose at her.

  “Puh-leese! I’ve started lots of detail work and I want to see if I can throw a lot of paint at the barn all at once,” she said. “But I also need to be able to aim. And Dad said this would work, and I found the paint-sprayer attachment….” She paused and showed it to me. “I just need today to learn how to use it and then maybe a day or two more. Can’t you manage without it?”

  “Ye-sss,” I said. I flipped the hose out of my fingers.

  So there went the compressor on its cart, rolling out the door.

  Vince and I listened to Lil run it off and on for the next hour or so. Tough as she is about most things, Lil admits to being “shy of machines.” There were a lot of stops and starts. In between, we could hear paint hitting the side of the barn.

  I stopped Vince as he came through the shop on his way out to pick up Angus and Eva. “Does it sound like she has that pressure set kind of high?” I asked.

  “Like artillery,” Vince said. King of the short answer.

  He might have been gone ten minutes when I heard a sudden loud pop and a yelp. I dropped my work and ran around to the back. The dogs galloped beside me.

  The first thing I saw was the greasy blue paint shining on the side of the barn. Test splotches, I thought. Then I saw Lil. She was blue. Painted blue. Mostly down one arm and leg. A piece of wood she was holding was also partly blue. She was otherwise all right. She stood there looking at me with her eyes wide.

  “Oh! Dewey! Did you see that? W-what did it do?”

  I shook my head. I looked at the compressor and the sprayer head. Then I looked at Lil. Then I knew.

  “It painted you,” I blurted. I started laughing. Hard. I could barely speak. “The compressor holds a reserve even after you shut it down. There’s pressure in there, Lil! Did you have the sprayer propped on the fence post?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, it’s on the ground now. It must have landed on its trigger.”

  “Oh, my heck. What are the chances…” She looked down the length of her arm then up at me again.

  “Nice color!” I cheered.

  “This,” she said, “is pretty permanent stuff.”

  I laughed again. “At least it didn’t get you in the face,” I said, and I brought her a rag from her bucket. “Hey, check out your stunt double,” I said. I pointed to her headless silhouette on the barn. It was a pretty clean image. The plywood scrap in her hand made it look like she was holding a book out to an invisible someone.

  Lil drew a big breath. “Oh. Yes! Yes! Good little scary mac
hine,” Lil said, and she ran up to the compressor and gave it a pat. “See?” she said, looking back at the side of the barn. “It’s perfect! Just what I wanted.”

  “You wanted to stencil yourself onto the barn?” I asked.

  “Well, not me. But—”

  I made wide eyes and stared back at her for a few seconds. “Goodie, Greatie!” I called. “Run for your lives!”

  17

  LIL KEPT EXPERIMENTING. I KEPT WORKING. I was wheeling finished bikes out to the front for pickup like nobody’s business. For the first time in days, the spindle where we’d stuck all the quick-fix jobs was clear. I did a victory dance all the way to the house. I poured a cold drink of water and wet my head under the faucet. I made a bunch of come-and-get-it phone calls to customers. Back in the barn, I picked an order from the Parts or Problems spindle. These were usually Vince’s jobs. “And where in the heck is he anyway?” I mumbled. He’d been gone for over an hour. It just didn’t take that long to fetch Angus and Eva.

  Suddenly, I was ticked off. I’d bent over backward to make the bike shop bearable. Mostly by getting him out a lot. I missed my morning rides to Sea Camp. Well, maybe I didn’t miss the slowpoke rides there. But I sure as heck missed the all-out sprints back home.

  Vince would never forget our twins. But he could easily lose track of time afterward. He was probably soaking up some sun. Playing on the beach with Angus and Eva. Or just freewheeling his way home with them so as to avoid work.

  “Vince, you snake,” I said. And then, because timing is everything, I heard a chain slipping a gear. Greatness stood up and Goodness followed. Somebody was coming down the path between the yards.

  I stepped out of the barn. It was Vince. No doubt about that. He was pedaling. Strangely. He was holding Eva on his lap, huggy-bear style. He had one arm wrapped around her. He steered the bike with his other hand. Eva bumped from side to side over his knees. As they came along, I could see Angus sitting on the rear rack, backward, his heels propped up on the edge. He held Eva’s feet, one wedged under each of his arms. His eyes were closed with the effort of holding on.

  “Vince!” I yelled. “What are you doing?” I jogged toward them.

  “Doing—the best I can,” Vince strained. “Little help?” He let the bike coast into the yard. His fingers looked stiff as he stretched them to squeeze the brake. I met him and caught the handlebars. Vince was out of breath. He stood on tiptoe balancing the bike while Eva cried, almost silently, into his chest.

  “Is she hurt?” I asked.

  Vince shook his head no. “I’ve got the bike,” he said. “Get Angus down. Please.”

  I swept Angus from the back of the bike and let him down to the grass. Then I reached for Eva. She unpeeled slowly from Vince’s chest then hung limp in my arms. “Put her down,” Vince said. “She’s tired. Her grip is all gone.”

  I sat in the grass and cradled my little sister between my knees. I carefully unbuckled her helmet. “What happened to you guys? Where are your bikes?” I asked.

  Eva cried harder. Vince shook his head at me. Angus looked at me with huge, wide eyes. “Our bikes got stole,” he said.

  “Somebody stole your bikes? Both of them? You’re kidding.” I looked at Vince. “For real?”

  “Gone,” he said. “They left the helmets. That’s it.” He let the bike slide to the ground.

  Eva sobbed. “And my arms and legs have knots in them,” she said.

  Vince collapsed flat on his back. He rubbed his bicep and elbow, then stretched the arm up over his head. “Me too, Eva,” he said. “I got knots too.”

  “Angus? You okay, buddy?” I asked.

  “I’m okay, except my butt is asleep.” He squeezed his cheeks and picked a wedgie. “But I helped. I held on to Eva’s feet,” he said.

  “Yes, I saw you,” I said. “You were awesome.” I tried to think what Mom and Dad would say to them if they were here. Eva looked up at me.

  “Nobody ever stole our bikes before!” she said. She made hiccupping sounds then erupted again. “I was right down at the beach! I-I didn’t see a robber.”

  I looked at Vince. “Where did you leave the bikes this morning?”

  “At the side of the pavilion,” he said.

  “So just like always?” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Vince. “Only things are no longer just like always.”

  Lil came around to the yard. We gave her the bad news. “Oh! Horrible!” she said. “Horrible! Who could be so low as to—”

  “Hey, Lil.” I showed her my palm, tried to get her to back off. It just didn’t seem like it was going to help to have the big sister all upset too. Lil knelt down in front of Eva.

  “And you had to ride three of you to one bike? The whole way home?” She wiped Eva’s cheeks with her thumbs.

  “We’re all in cramps,” Vince said. He pulled one leg behind him to stretch his thigh.

  “Vince, you could have called us,” Lil said.

  “Yep. My fault.”

  “No, I don’t mean it like that.” She reached and tagged his shoulder apologetically.

  “But I forgot the phone. Mattie called the police as soon as we found out the bikes were missing. But it took them forever to show up.”

  We could have guessed that part. We knew that most of the force were on bikes or electric carts these days. I knew of only one department wheelie pod. Besides, a pair of stolen junior bikes was hardly a high priority.

  Vince went on. “Pop was out on the boat. Mattie still had afternoon campers.”

  “And we wanted to come home now,” Eva spoke up.

  “Sea Camp is bad.” Angus shook his head.

  “No, no, no!” Lil reached for Angus. “Sea Camp is not bad! Oh, Angus, baby, please don’t say that!” Lil grabbed him up, hugging him hard. “Our Mattie is there! You have a good time with her.”

  “Our bikes got stole,” he said again. He twisted his face up—ugliest look I’d ever seen on my little brother. Lil tucked his head under her chin and rocked him.

  “I didn’t know it’d be so hard to carry two,” Vince said.

  “You did a great job,” Lil said. “Everyone did a great job.”

  We were all quiet for a few minutes. Then Angus said, “Lil?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why do you have blue on you?” He patted her painted hand.

  “Oh!” Lil laughed. “By mistake! I accidentally spray-painted myself.”

  “I like it,” said Eva.

  “Yeah, me too,” said Angus.

  “Thank you,” said Lil.

  “Can I get blue too?”

  “Well…maybe,” Lil said. “Here’s what I was thinking…” She began to talk about her mural. “I keep thinking about the gas being all gone,” she began, “and it makes me wish we all could fly…just spread our arms like birds and go up.”

  “I wish Mom and Dad could,” said Eva.

  “I wish I could,” said Angus. “Because if I had wings I wouldn’t take them off. Then they couldn’t get stole.”

  We were still sitting on the grass when Runks and Macey came up on their copsicles.

  “Hello, Marrisses!” Runks called. “So sorry, all! So sorry about the missing mini Marriss bikes. We heard about it from dispatch.”

  “Oh, thanks for stopping,” Lil said.

  Officer Macey hopped off his copsicle. “Couldn’t believe it when I found out it was you guys,” he said. “Hey, look what I brought.” He stooped down and offered two lollipops to our tear-stained twins. “Come on now. Gotta cheer up. Huh?”

  “So, I suppose you’ll let us know if you hear anything or find anything? About the bikes?” Lil said. But she didn’t sound hopeful.

  Runks nodded. “It’ll be difficult,” he admitted. To me, that meant we had little chance of getting them back.

  “I’ll put some extra time on it when I can,” Macey said.

  “Well, that’s nice, but I’m sure you have bigger problems out there these days,” Lil said.

  Fo
r some reason that made me think about the day I’d picked her up on the highway—how she’d said, Weird times, civilian rule. Just how big was that? What would I do if I came upon those two small bikes somewhere? Would I take them back? Would that be stealing from two more little kids, or would I be reclaiming something for my family? For Angus and Eva? Questions without answers.

  “I’d like to see those bikes returned,” Macey said.

  I turned to the twins. “Vince and I will start collecting parts to build two new bikes for you guys.”

  “Absolutely,” said Vince.

  “It’ll take a while. But we’ll do it. I promise,” I said.

  “I wish it could be my real bike,” said Angus. “And I just wish it was time for Mom and Dad to call.”

  Pop and Mattie showed up while the officers were still with us. I was glad to have everyone around, but Lil seemed bothered. “Oh, my gosh. Hey, everybody. Not to worry. We’re all right. Really. We’re even lucky enough to have a carrier these guys can ride in.”

  “I just feel so bad,” Mattie said. “My campers have always left their bikes by the pavilion and they’ve never locked them up. Never!”

  I remembered how Dad had said anything valuable is subject to theft. But stealing junior bikes seemed especially mean somehow.

  “It’s happening everywhere,” Runks said, and he shook his head.

  Pop and Mattie had brought scallops and crabmeat, and they wanted to stay and have dinner together. Lil spoke up again. “Oh, you don’t have to feed us,” she told them. “We’re fine, fine, fine!”

  “Are you sure?” said Pop. “Because you’re looking a bit blue.” He grinned and grabbed her painted hand and shook it. He leaned toward her and begged, “Please don’t make me bike that seafood back home.” Lil finally gave up a small grin, and I knew they’d be staying.