Whales on Stilts! (10 page)

Lily couldn't sleep that night. She felt like little gyroscopes were spinning around in her wrists and ankles. She pulled back the covers and sat on the edge of her bed. Her room was dark. She could hear her father and mother talking quietly in the other room. No words, just muttering.

After a while Lily got up and padded down the stairs. She took the phone out of its cradle and went out on the porch. It was an early spring evening but not too cold. She sat on the wicker love seat and called her grandmother in Decentville.

“It's me,” said Lily when her grandmother answered.

“Hello, beauty,” said her grandmother. “It's eleven. That's when I watch my surfing videos.”

“Grandma,” said Lily, “there's something awful that's going to happen.”

“What is it, darling?” said her grandma. “I'm going to go into the living room and sit down.” Lily could hear a door slam on the other end of the phone. With a puff her grandmother plopped down on the sofa. “It's an invasion of some kind, isn't it?”

“Whales,” said Lily.

“Oh, honey,” said her grandmother. “At least the waiting is over.”

Lily told her about what had happened so far. (If you're interested, you can go back to the beginning of the book and read all the way through to this point again.)

When Lily was done with her story, she said, “What am I going to do?”

“Why don't you fight them with your magic sword?”

“I don't have a magic sword.”

“In the world of make-pretend, you can have anything you want, darling.”

Lily felt tears gather in her throat. “Grandma, this isn't pretend.”

Her grandmother didn't argue. “I wish games could go on forever,” she said soothingly. “I remember, Lily...” She laughed.

Lily loved the sound of her grandmother's chuckle. She held the phone closer to her ear.

Her grandmother said, “The games we played when I was little lasted for days. We would be running around in the fields down by Tinker's Point like crazy people. We would hide in the grass. We jumped off the rocks, and I'm afraid we bumped up our knees sometimes.”

Lily smiled.

“I remember the fireflies always being out,” said her grandmother, “but probably that was only once or twice.” Sadly, she added, “You know how, when you're remembering, you put beautiful things everywhere? You spread them out, and they fill the whole memory. Even if there weren't fireflies every night we played there, those were firefly times, Lily.”

Lily just sat on the wicker and listened to her grandmother. She had curled up so that her knees were under her chin. Even just the sound of her grandmother's voice made her feel quiet and safe.

“Everyone wants to get back to the place they know best,” said Lily's grandmother. “When you are old, though, sometimes that place is not just far away on the map but far away in time. How do you get to home, then, when home is in another era?”

Lily said, “I don't know, Grandma.”

But something was clicking in Lily's brain.
Everyone wants to get back to the place they know best.

“Grandma ...,” she said. “Grandma, I think you might have given me an idea.”

“That's sweet, darling,” said her grandmother. “I was a little worried that you had fallen asleep or were calling from the john. Your cousin Sid does that, you know. He goes to the
bathroom with the phone. I'm his granny; I can tell. Sometimes he grunts while he's talking.”

“You've really helped me, Grandma.”

“Can I say the other thing about Sid? He can't figure out how my front door works. Whenever he visits he goes around to the side, so he won't have to admit it.”

They talked for a little while about Sid-talking like two girls about a boy—and Lily, curled in the wicker love seat, smiled for the first time in a while.

Finally she had a plan.

The next day—the day before the whales invaded North America—Lily, Jasper, and Katie had a powwow over breakfast at the Aero-Bistro.

“It's deuced difficult to do anything,” said Jasper, “when we can't convince any adults to help us.”

Katie groaned, “No one will believe us.”

Lily looked around carefully at the other diners and the android waiters. She whispered, “I think ... Okay... I think I have a plan. Something we can try, anyway.”

“Top-notch, Lily!” said Jasper. “But there's no need to whisper.”

“Well—” started Lily.

“No need to whisper,” declared Jasper, “because I just invented
these.”
He lifted up three metal masks with no eyeholes and what looked like bicycle horns coming out of where the mouth and ears would be. “They're Secret Planning masks. You slip them over your head,” he said, demonstrating, “and then when you talk about a secret plan, only other wearers of a mask can hear.”

Katie lifted one off the table and looked at it uncomfortably. “Wow, Jasper,” she said. “These sure do have... a lot of rivets.”

“Just a little something I cooked up,” said Jasper proudly.

“Wouldn't it be easier for Lily just to keep her voice down?” Katie suggested.

“Come along! Give it a try!” said Jasper.

They all put on the masks. Their faces now were gray, with bicycle horns coming out of their mouths and ears.

“Hokay,” said Katie. “Let's roll.”

“Now, Lily, you just tell us the plan like you would normally,” said Jasper. “We'll be able to hear perfectly, but no one else will be able to.”

“I just...talk?”

“Right-o.”

“And the masks will just block out what we say when we're planning?”

“Check.”

“Okay.” Lily took a deep breath. “What I'm thinking is [

].”

“Hmm, yes,” said Jasper. “Devilishly clever.”

“[

]”

“And you really think that's the best way to get them to [                      ]?” asked Katie.

“[                                       ],” said Lily “[

].” She used her hands to illustrate. “So then when [
                      ]”

“And meanwhile,” said Jasper, getting excited, “I could [

], and when they falter, I'll be there to [

].”

Katie asked, “Is anyone else finding that their breath is like pooling right under your chin? In this gross wet pool?”

“It's a fine plan, Lily,” said Jasper.

“Does that mean we can take these off?” asked Katie.

Lily nodded her big clunky metal head.

“Good-o, then,” said Jasper. “I'll order the Aero-Bistro androids to start [

].”

Lily said, “And I'll [

                                                                ].”

“And Katie,” said Jasper, “you can [

].”

Lily said, “But don't forget [                    ].”

“Right-o,” said Jasper. He lifted off his mask. The others lifted theirs off, too. Katie's face was all red and wet. She panted for air.

“Thank goodness,” she said. “Planning makes it hard to breathe.”

If you want to guess their plan, you're welcome to.

Here's your clue: Later that afternoon Lily and Katie went to their favorite used-record store. It was a great used-record store, underground in the basement of a lounge-upholstery repair shop. There was fake tiger and leopard skin hanging from the walls, and all the pipes were painted red. The employees had hair that stuck out in different directions. Whenever Katie and Lily would go in to look for used CDs, someone would say, “Heya! It's the woosome twosome!”

Which didn't make any sense, but it's just nice to have people say something about you sometimes.

Katie and Lily looked through a big bin of vinyl records.

They chose a stack of them.

They went to the register.

They paid. They got $4.01 in change.

It was all part of the plan.

The next morning the sun rose around dawn. Nothing seemed unusual about the day: The dew was on the grass. People walked their dogs. The
Pelt Observer
featured stories about bake sales, weddings, and movies. Cereal boxes tipped toward bowls. Orange juice spilled on kitchen counters. Seagulls paced up and down the piles at the dump.

And yet, it was the day that whales invaded North America.

Jasper was talking to Lily on the phone before she left for school. Jasper called from his Marvelous Subaquatic Zephyr.

“I don't see hide nor hair of the whales down here. It will be a super ruckus, though, when we finally get to biff them.”

“Did you go where you saw the squid target practice?”

“Yes indeedy. I'm there right now. Nothing left but the burned-up wooden squid. Rotten luck that you have to go to school. It would be ace if you and Katie could join me.”

“I would stay home from school, but I'm in trouble with my dad. He found out I called the Coast Guard and the army and told them about Larry.”

“I'll keep looking for our old pal Lares, and for his dastardly cetacean scoundrels. They must be on the move.”

“I'll try to get out of social studies when they show up,” said Lily. “So that we can get to ... you know... carry out the plan.”

There was a silence as they both thought about the trials of the coming day.

“I'm frightened,” said Lily. “Really frightened.”

“Tosh! Don't worry about a thing. Your plan is genius,” said Jasper.

“I'm not so sure. If something doesn't work out—”

“What's wrong, Lily?”

“Everything could burn.”

“We have faith in your plan.”

“I know,”
said Lily in the smallest voice she had.
“That's what's so frightening.”

“Lily,” said Jasper, “we're going to do the best we can. Don't fear. Not everything will burn.” There was silence on the line for a minute. Then he said, “For example, things that aren't flammable. Rocks, Lily.”