Chapter Sixteen, in which a rabbit's foot brings us luck

I was walking to Weirdo's house one Saturday when I saw him poking around in the woods that separated our neighborhoods. He was kicking around dead leaves and looking all over the ground. I entered the woods and approached him.

"What are you looking for?"

"I dropped a twenty dollar bill a little bit ago, and I can't find it."

"Why did you have your money out in here?"

"I was going to pay the woodland faun to teach me some spells."

"You what?"

"I said, I was going to nail it to this tree."

"But I thought you said you were going to pay a woodland faun."

"Oh, so you did hear me the first time? So are you going to help me find it, or just pretend to be deaf all day?"

Weirdo pointed to the other side of the woods and said he hadn't looked over there yet. So I went to that area and slowly walked around looking just in front of my feet. We looked for at least thirty minutes and found no money. We did, however, find a lot of other interesting things.

We made a small pile by the big tree in the middle of the woods. There were: three old lighters (two yellow ones and a blue one), a dirty shoelace, a few soggy pages from a newspaper, a plastic fork with one prong broken off, a torn piece of flannel cloth, an empty peanut butter jar, six soda cans (three diet pepsis, two regular, one dr pepper, and one generic cola), a thin metal rod, a ripped envelope and our favorite... a black bowling ball with a big chunk broken off.

I steered clear of the old bucket Weirdo used for his BM, but Weirdo assured me he checked inside it twice already. My neck was getting sore from looking down. I finally said to Weirdo, "I don't think we're going to find it. We've looked this whole place over twice."

"Three times a charm, my friend."

So we scoured the woods for another twenty minutes. We found some more items: another diet pepsi can, a long rusty nail, a tangled ball of yarn, a piece of a tennis ball and the missing prong from the plastic fork. No twenty dollar bill.

"Man alive, that was fun! It probably wouldn't be so much fun if I actually had lost a twenty dollar bill."

My mouth dropped open.

"What, you mean you actually thought I lost a twenty dollar bill. You are something else."

"Why did we just spend an hour looking for something that you knew wasn't there?"

"It was a treasure hunt, except that you didn't have to pretend, because you really believed there was money to be found. You should thank me."

"Thank you for wasting an hour and putting a kink in my neck?"

"My grandpa says that if you can't make lemonade out of lemons, then you don't deserve any lemonade at all."

"What?"

"Are you pretending to be deaf again? Come on, let's go get a bag from my house to put all this cool stuff in."

We turned to leave the woods and saw Blake Wilson coming in. He treated us much nicer after he put his hand in Weirdo's BM that day, but he was still a jerk.

"What are you losers looking for, your barbies?"

"No," Weirdo said, "they're at home. I lost a twenty dollar bill and we couldn't find it."

"Are you serious, a twenty dollar bill?"

"Yeah, you can have it if you find it."

Blake left us alone and immediately started searching for the money. We heard a voice from the other side of the woods.

"What are you guys looking for?"

It was Eric. He lived in the house behind mine and played with us in the woods sometimes. When he came near I said, "We lost a twenty dollar bill. You can have it if you find it."

Weirdo and I left the woods laughing to ourselves. Erik and Blake were searching carefully for the money.

"Weirdo, don't they look like dopes looking for something that's not even there?"

"Yeah, but not as dopey as you looked. Because I didn't even tell you that you could have it if you found it."

I thought about that for a moment, then heard Erik's voice cry out, "I found it!"

Weirdo and I turned to see Erik running towards us with a dirty twenty dollar bill. Weirdo punched me in the arm.

"Ow, what is that for?"

"You told him he could have it if he found it."

"You told Blake that he could have it if he found it!"

"Do you worry about everything, or just dumb stuff?"

Erik stopped in front of us and put the bill in his pocket and pulled out a green rabbit foot key chain.

"Boy, this rabbit foot sure is lucky. Thanks guys, I'm going to buy a new Nintendo game with this. See you later."

Erik ran across the woods towards his house. He stopped for a moment near Blake, who was still searching, and said, "Watch out for that bucket over there. It looks like someone took a dump in it."


* * * * *


I told Weirdo that I had a lucky rabbit foot at home.

"Why didn't you go get it when I told you I lost a twenty dollar bill?"

"But you made that up."

"You always get hung up on the details, don't you? Go get it anyway, I lost a baseball in the field next to my house. Let's see if your's really is lucky."

We ran home and got the rabbit foot. Mine was purple, but I lost the chain part so it wasn't a key chain anymore. Weirdo grabbed it from me and we went to his house. We looked around in the field next to his house for only two minutes before finding an old baseball in some brush.

"Wow, your's really is lucky too! This is awesome!"

I remembered the baseball I lost in my neighbor's garden. They lived behind us and had a huge garden separating our yard from their's.

"Let's go find my baseball!"

"What are we waiting for?"

We ran to my backyard and started poking around my neighbor's garden. We found the ball almost right away.

"Wow, not only did we find your baseball, but we found about a hundred strawberries too!"

I looked at Weirdo and he had red juice running down his chin. I knew we weren't supposed to eat my neighbor's strawberries, but now that Weirdo had one I might as well have one too.

I picked a nice red one and pulled the stem out. As I put it to my lips I heard my neighbor, Mr. Shepherd, open the sliding door at the back of his house. I pulled the strawberry away from my mouth, but it was too late.

"What do you think you're doing?" Mr. Shepherd stood at the edge of his garden with his hands on his hips. He wore just a pair of gray sweatpants and his bedroom slippers.

Weirdo and I stood speechless, caught in the act. I tried to drop my strawberry so Mr. Shepherd wouldn't see.

"Well you might as well eat it now. It won't do anybody any good laying there in the dirt. I sure as hell won't eat it after it was on your lips.: He walked halfway across the yard to us. "Who told you you could eat my strawberries?"

I shrugged my shoulders and looked down at the strawberry I dropped.

"Did I tell you you could eat my strawberries?"

We shook our heads.

"Then who told you you could eat my strawberries? Oh, you must have made that decision on your own. That's funny, they're not even your strawberries and you decide who gets to eat them."

"We're sorry Mr. Shepherd. We won't eat any more."

Weirdo was hiding one behind his back, and I was trying not to look at it. Mr. Shepherd shook his head and walked back inside. He stood at the door and looked at us through the glass until we left the garden.

"Boy, your neighbor sure is a grouch. But your rabbit foot sure is lucky. We found two baseballs, and we got to eat a bunch of strawberries."

"I didn't get to eat any."

"You see, that's the problem with you. You just aren't aggressive enough. Come on, let's go back over to my house. We lost the remote to the downstairs TV. I bet we can find it with the rabbit foot."

We walked back over to Weirdo's. He ate the strawberry as we went and when we got to his house we went to the basement.

"Here, give me your rabbit foot."

"I don't have it. I thought you had it."

Weirdo folded his arms and pursed his lips.

"I do not have it. I remember giving it to you when we went to your backyard."

"And I remember giving it back to you right before we got caught by Mr. Shepherd."

I checked all my pockets again for the foot. Nothing.

"Great," Weirdo said, "what do you use for luck when you're looking for a lucky rabbit foot?"

Uncle Jake, who we didn't notice laying on the sofa, said, "You get yourself a rabbit trap, some carrots and a gun. When the rabbit enters the trap you shoot it."

"Why would we shoot a rabbit?"

"Because that way it won't hurt the rabbit when you cut its foot off."

"Why would we cut its foot off?"

"Because it's a rabbit's foot you want, right?"

"Yeah."

"Then where do you think you get a rabbit foot? From a pig?"

"You mean those things are real rabbit feet?"

"If they weren't real you would buy them off the shelf for five bucks. You get them for a quarter in the gum ball machine because rabbits are free you dummy. Fake rabbits cost money."

Weirdo and I looked at each other and frowned. I wiped my hand against my pants. I had no idea lucky rabbit feet came from actual rabbits.

Weirdo said, "Well, what else is lucky? Uncle Jake, you said you got lucky last night. What did you have? A dragon scale or something?"

Uncle Jake sat up on the couch slowly and stretched. He pulled at his whiskers and smiled. "I grew a lucky beard. Works every time."

Weirdo and I both felt at our naked chins. Then we noticed that Uncle Jake had been laying on the remote. Weirdo reached for it but Uncle Jake slapped his hand away.

"You lost your lucky rabbit foot. I guess it ain’t your lucky day."

Weirdo got mad at that. He scrunched his eyebrows and stared hard at Uncle Jake. Suddenly, Weirdo reached and yanked out a piece of Uncle Jake's beard out and ran up the stairs.

"Owwww! Grow your own you little twerp!" Uncle Jake held his fingers over the little bald spot on the side of his chin and looked at me. He held his chin up to me and sighed, "Well, you might as well make it even."

I smirked and reached out. I yanked at his beard and ran up the stairs laughing with a bunch of whiskers between my fingers. Uncle Jake yelled out behind me, "Oww! Not so much! I doubt if you can handle that much luck!"