A Boy Called Duct Tape Read online

  I did a Google search, my fingers nervously tapping the keys. There were thousands of sites, and I scrolled down the first page of results. My cursor stopped at a site called VINTAGE COINS. I muttered the words on the screen before me. “Vintage gold and silver coins can be traced as far back as the Greeks in the years before …”

  Not this one, I thought.

  I clicked on the next site: COLLECTIBLE COINS. I read the summary under my breath. “Collectible coins dating back to the Middle Ages are thought to be …”

  Nope.

  Then it hit me. What are you thinking, dude?

  I changed my search words to $20 Gold Piece.

  The screen flickered before my eyes. The first listing read: A GUIDE TO U.S. COINS.

  The website was divided into seven categories. Each one showed pictures of various antique coins. I began reading CATEGORY 1, which described the many coins that had been minted during the English colonial days of the 1750s. There were pictures of each coin. A chart listed the value of each coin based on its condition. There were four classifications: GOOD, VERY GOOD, FINE, and VERY FINE.

  My eyes widened. Many of the coins in VERY FINE condition were worth hundreds of dollars, and a strange tickling of excitement crawled over my skin.

  I continued to scroll.

  CATEGORY 2: QUARTER DOLLARS

  CATEGORY 3: HALF DOLLARS

  CATEGORY 4: SILVER DOLLARS

  The faster I scrolled, the faster my heart thumped.

  CATEGORY 5: $3 GOLD PIECES

  CATEGORY 6: $4 GOLD PIECES

  When the cursor reached CATEGORY 7 the flesh on my arms bubbled up. The title jumped off the screen at me: $20 GOLD PIECES.

  Yes!

  There were pictures—front and back—of different $20 gold coins minted from 1848 until 1933.

  I glanced around the Media Center. It was occupied by several other students, but none of them were paying much attention to me. Besides, there was no one at any of the other computers. I pulled Pia’s coin out of my pocket and held it up to the computer screen.

  Looking for a match, I began to scroll down CATEGORY 7.

  Pia’s gold piece didn’t match the first picture, and I compared it to the second. It wasn’t a match, either. The third one was a bust, too.

  When I compared Pia’s coin to the fourth picture my breath got stuck in my throat like a wad of bubblegum. On one side of the coin on the screen were the words UNITED STATES OF AMERICA written around its rim, and an Eagle with its wings spread. Beneath the Eagle were the words TWENTY DOLLARS.

  Just like Pia’s coin!

  A second picture showed the opposite side of the $20 gold piece, and I turned Pia’s coin over, hoping it would match the one on the screen.

  The computer picture showed an engraving of a woman’s face. She was wearing a crown. The word LIBERTY was written across the front of her crown. Tiny stars circled the rim of the coin on the computer screen. I counted thirteen.

  Just like Pia’s coin!

  The $20 gold piece began to tremble in my hand.

  I directed the cursor to the bottom of the page where the value of each coin was listed by date and condition. I took a big gulp of air and scrolled until I found a listing for Pia’s coin: $20 GOLD PIECE – 1879 – VERY FINE.

  I stared at the dollar amount for the longest time. I thought maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me. I looked away for a few seconds, and then turned back to the screen.

  No, my eyes were not playing tricks. The amount read: $6,250.

  I tried to draw a full breath, but all the air had been sucked out of the room.

  That was more money than Mom made in four months.

  My mind spinning out of control, someone came up from behind and whispered in my ear, “Hey, Duct Tape!”

  I flinched and jammed Pia’s coin into my pocket.

  It was Jimmy Coleman, captain of the Jamesville Middle School basketball team. Jimmy was with Sara Miller, a cheerleader and the prettiest girl in school. She was the one kneeling at the top of the human triangle they always formed at halftime.

  “Yo! When you gonna buy some new sneakers, Duct Tape?” Jimmy gave Sara a wink and told her, “This dude is in desperate need of new rides.” When I didn’t reply, Jimmy grinned around his dimples and asked me, “Cat got your tongue?”

  “No,” I said. “Besides, duct tape is in. Haven’t you ever heard of the grunge look?” I thought that was a pretty good comeback on such short notice.

  Jimmy laughed. “Pablo Perez—the king of grunge.”

  I pushed my duct-taped sneakers further under the computer desk.

  Each August, since fourth grade when Dad was killed by a drunk driver, Mom would remind me that money was tight and my new Walmart sneakers would have to last the school year. They never did. Duct tape to the rescue.

  Jimmy stooped down and gazed under the table at my feet. He jabbed a finger at them. “Dude, those bad-boys are lame!”

  I glanced at Sara and gave her a clumsy smile.

  “Oh, leave the poor boy alone, Jimmy,” Sara said. “And I do mean poor.”

  I felt the heat rise in my face.

  Sara giggled and grabbed Jimmy by the sleeve of his letter jacket. “Come on. Let’s find that article for science.”

  “So long, Duct Tape!” Jimmy said. He and Sara sailed down to another computer.

  I glanced under the desk at the shoes that had earned me the nickname I hated, and for a few moments I forgot all about the gold coin in my pocket worth $6,250.

  4

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, so I asked Mom to repeat it.

  “I said your cousin Kiki will be staying with us for two weeks.”

  “Kiki Flores?”

  “How many cousins do you have named Kiki?” Mom asked, giving me one of her best impatient glares before passing the meat loaf across the table to Pia. “Her mother is going on a business trip to California with her father, and please put your napkin on your lap, Pablo.”

  “Kiki Flores! She’s stuck up!” I said, unfolding the paper napkin and laying it across my lap.

  “I like Kiki,” Pia said, a smile skipping across her face. “She always sends me a birthday card.”

  Kiki also sent me birthday cards—real ones, not those online things I’d heard so much about—but I wasn’t about to admit I liked them.

  “Do I have to hang around with her, Mom?”

  We were seated at the baby-sized table in the baby-sized kitchen of our baby-sized mobile home.

  “You have to show her the same respect she would show you if you visited her in St. Louis,” Mom said. “And if I’m not mistaken, Kiki showed Pia and you a wonderful time when you were there two summers ago.”

  “She took us to the St. Louis Arch,” I moaned. “Big deal.”

  “I liked it,” Pia said. “From the top of the Arch you could see all the way to Jamesville.”

  I shot my sister a frown. “Could not.”

  “Could to,” Pia said, nodding her head like a bobble doll. “I could see the top of the courthouse steeple.”

  “Pia, it’s 300 miles from St. Louis to Jamesville.”

  “So?”

  I gave a sad groan. It was pointless arguing with a little sister.

  “You can take Kiki to the Outlaw Days Festival,” Mom said, giving me a little smile. “She’ll like that.”

  “Kiki’s thirteen and from a big city, Mom,” I protested. “Outlaw Days would be like … like Hicksville to her.”

  “I think you might be surprised, Pablo,” Mom said. “Kiki isn’t like that.”

  I blew out a big breath, but said nothing.

  The Outlaw Days Festival was held at the Jamesville city park each year over the Memorial Day weekend. The festival celebrated one of the town’s most famous guests: Jesse James. According to legend, Jamesville had been named for Jesse after he and his gang began using the caves in the area as hideouts.

  “Remember what your father used to say about the future, Pa
blo?” Mom reminded me. “Only a fool pretends to know tomorrow.”

  “I remember,” I said, recalling my father’s words almost as if he’d spoken them yesterday.

  “Kiki might surprise you.”

  “But where will she sleep?”

  “Kiki will sleep in your bed,” Mom said. “I’ll make a place for you on the couch.”

  I breathed a big sigh and rubbed my face. It was definitely a sad beginning to my summer vacation.

  “What did the website say about the coin?” Pia asked, gazing down the road for the school bus early the next morning. A clap of thunder rolled in from the south.

  “It said the coin was worth some money,” I said. “Provided it’s in Very Fine condition.”

  “Huh? What’s that mean?”

  “It’s the way coin dealers judge a coin’s value—like if it’s worn smooth or not,” I explained. “The better the condition, the more a coin is worth.”

  “So, how much is it worth?”

  I didn’t hesitate. “Sixty dollars.”

  If I told Pia the truth, everyone in town would know about it before lunch. I’d tell her later. Maybe. Besides, I still had some doubts about the true value of the gold piece. A GUIDE TO U.S. COINS might be wrong. I’d have to do more research.

  “Sixty dollars! Awesome! Maybe that will help fix Mom’s car!”

  “Maybe,” I replied.

  Mom’s 1995 Buick Skylark was in bad shape. Something about a cracked block.

  As Pia and I waited for the bus, it began to sprinkle. The raindrops made little moon craters in the dusty road that ran in front of the Ozark Mobile Home Park.

  “Is it still hidden?” I asked.

  “Is what hidden?”

  “The coin! Duh!”

  “Yeah, and I’m not telling where,” Pia announced.

  “I don’t care where. Just don’t lose it, that’s all.”

  I glanced down at my sneakers. One side of my left sneaker had blown out again, and I had added a fresh strip of duct tape that morning. I hoped I didn’t run into Jimmy. It was bad enough that I had to wear sneakers wrapped in duct tape. It was doubly bad when Jimmy broadcast it to the whole world.

  “Wait for me as soon as you get home from school today,” I said. “I have an idea about finding more coins.”

  “What idea?”

  “Just be at the trailer. I’ll tell you then.”

  “Tell me now,” Pia argued.

  “Just be at home, okay?” Sometimes Pia could wear me down.

  The school bus rounded a curve and came into sight, a plum of purple fumes sputtering from the rusty exhaust. The bus was just in time because the rain was pouring in big, cold drops.

  “And don’t tell anyone about your coin,” I cautioned.

  “You think I’m stupid or something?” Pia asked, using her backpack as an umbrella.

  “No, you just like to talk a lot.”

  Pia made a smug face. “All women like to talk a lot.”

  Pia and I met at home that afternoon. It was the last day of school and we had been let out early. We quickly changed into swimming suits.

  My idea for finding more gold coins in James Creek was simple. All we needed were a couple of inner tubes—there were several hibernating under our mobile home—and two drinking glasses. We grabbed them and set off on the 15-minute bike ride to Harper’s Hole. The weedy trail began at the edge of our trailer park and twined its way through the forest to James Creek.

  My plan was simple: float down the river on the inner tubes, the drinking glasses partially submerged in the water. By looking through the drinking glasses, we could see images on the river bottom. I was sure there were more coins in James Creek.

  By that afternoon the morning rainstorm had moved north, and the skies were dotted with puffy white clouds. Pia and I splashed through the mud puddles as we sped down the path on our dirt bikes. When we reached Harper’s Hole we laid our bikes against the cottonwood tree and hiked upstream for a half-mile or so, the inflatable tubes in one hand, drinking glasses in the other.

  “Do you really think we’ll find more coins?” Pia asked, the inner tube dragging through the shallow water behind her.

  “It’s worth a try.”

  “The next one we find will be yours, Pablo. Then we’ll both have one.”

  It took about an hour to float back to Harper’s Hole. We recovered several items from the river bottom, including a mayonnaise jar, a ballpoint pen, a brass button, a Lincoln penny, and two beer bottles.

  But no gold coins.

  As I lay in bed that night, my mind spewing clues to the mystery of where to find more gold coins, it suddenly came to me why I had found the $20 gold piece at the bottom of Harper’s Hole.

  I sat up in bed with a wide smile.

  It made perfect sense.

  5

  I stood with Mom and Pia beneath the metal awning outside Lyda’s Café, a Jamesville restaurant known as much for the storytelling of its owner, Lyda Loudermilk, as for its catfish dinners. The café was located on the south side of the Jamesville Square and also served as a Greyhound Bus terminal. Although it was a little after eight o’clock in the evening and the sun had slipped below the horizon, the heat and humidity of the day hung over Jamesville like a sticky web. Summer had definitely arrived.

  “Bus is late,” I noted, glancing up at the big clock on the courthouse steeple across the street. I’m sure Mom could hear the cheerfulness in my voice.

  “Buses are always late,” Mom said, fanning herself with a thin paperback book. Mom loved to read when she had the time, and she always had one in her purse.

  “Maybe it’s not coming,” I said. The idea of spending the first two weeks of school vacation with my cousin from St. Louis was not a happy thought.

  “It’ll be here, Pablo,” Mom insisted.

  When the St. Louis Express finally emerged five minutes later from behind the county courthouse on the far side of the square, Pia gave a squeal. “There’s Kiki’s bus!”

  I shuffled my feet and mumbled “Oh, great” under my breath.

  “Pablo, remember that Kiki is your primo, your cousin,” Mom said, stowing the paperback in her purse. “Please try and be nice.”

  The bus circled the square and stopped in front of the café. In a few seconds the door swished open and a girl with short brown hair and a backpack draped over one arm bounced down the bus steps. She paused on the sidewalk to get her bearings.

  I glanced at her for an instant. She was totally gorgeous in her fancy flare jeans and a T-shirt that read Global Warming Is the Real Deal. I guessed she was about 16 or 17. She was wearing sandals.

  My gaze shifted away from the girl to the next passenger filing off the bus—a chunky cowboy in a rhinestone-studded shirt, an old guitar slung over his shoulder. He was chewing on a toothpick and listening to his iPod.

  Trailing the cowboy was an old Latino man with a pencil-thin mustache who carried his belongings in a beat-up suitcase. Next came a middle-aged woman in a beehive hairdo who stumbled on the bottom step but caught herself with a gasp on the open door.

  Most of the passengers filed into the café. A few others drifted off into the evening shadows. I didn’t see anyone resembling my cousin and a feeling of elation swept over me. Hah! My cousin had missed her bus! Even better, she had decided not to come after all!

  Hallelujah! Let the summer games begin!

  “Aunt Anna?”

  The question had been asked by the girl in sandals—the gorgeous one.

  “Kiki?” Mom asked, taking a tentative step toward the girl.

  “Yes, I’m Kiki,” the girl said in a raspy voice, the corners of her mouth framing a perfect smile.

  “My heavens,” Mom exclaimed. “I didn’t recognize you.” With outstretched arms, Mom strode over to where Kiki stood at the curb. “But I do recognize that husky voice.”

  My 13-year-old cousin set her backpack on the sidewalk, and she and Mom embraced.

  “You’re
all grown up,” Mom said, holding Kiki at arm’s length and surveying her five-foot six-inch frame. “I’ll swear. You’re as tall as Pablo.”

  “Sorry my bus was late.”

  I could see that Pia was working out something in her head. She looked up at me, her face crinkled with confusion. “That’s Kiki?” she asked in a small voice. “What happened to her braces?”

  I’ll have to admit I was confused too. Bewildered, actually. My cousin from St. Louis had changed big-time over the past two years. It was more than not having braces. Much more.

  Kiki came over to where Pia and I stood beneath the café awning. She gave each of us a big hug.

  “Welcome to Jamesville, the cultural capital of Missouri,” I said, a jumpy twitch in my voice, a shaky smile growing on my face. I’m not sure why I was so nervous. I tried to hold the smile, but it slid right off my face.

  “Night, kids,” Mom said, shuffling down the hallway toward her bedroom.

  “Night, Mom,” Pia and I replied.

  “Good night, Aunt Anna,” Kiki called out.

  “Be sure and turn out all the lights before going to bed, Pablo,” Mom said.

  Kiki had changed into walking shorts and a yellow tank top. She was the best-looking girl I’d ever seen. Hot was the word. And she wasn’t nearly as stuck-up as I’d remembered.

  The three of us were seated on the living room floor around Kiki’s Smart Phone.

  Kiki had gone to the Google Earth site and found a satellite photo of Jamesville. She zoomed in on our mobile home park. The detail was precise, and our trailer was clearly visible.

  “That is way too cool!” I blurted.

  “Awesome!” Pia seconded.

  “Is this your mobile home?” Kiki asked, touching an image on the screen.

  “Yeah, I think so,” I said.

  “What are those, uh, those round black things on the roof?” Kiki leaned in for a closer look.

  “Yeah, well, those are car tires,” I said, my face red with embarrassment.

  “I hate to ask, but why are car tires on your roof?”

  “So the roof won’t blow away,” Pia explained. “You know … when it’s really windy.”

  “Classy, huh?” I said.

  Welcome to Hicksville, primo.