Philip and the Fortune Teller (9781619501317) by John Paulits Read Free Book Online

two.”
    “Ha, yeah. Right, Dad. Good thing,” Philip
said, trying hard to smile back in a normal manner.
    The topic changed, and the boys hurried
through their dinners. They knew from the looks they gave each
other they had to talk.
    “Okay if we go over Emery’s a while? Still
lots of daylight left,” Philip said.
    “Sure, go ahead. Your mother and I will clean
up here. Maybe we’ll take a nice walk later, honey?”
    Philip’s mother smiled in response, and the
boys pushed their chairs back and left the house. They walked and
talked.
    Philip grumbled, “A gypsy, a pharaoh, a dead
guy who visits his parents, and now a pack rat hoarder.”
    Emery threw his arms out and said, “How could
the old lady know the box was missing? What’d she do? Climb up on
things like a mountain goat and check? She’s gotta be like a
hundred years old.”
    “She saw us, too. Does she know you?”
    “I don’t think so, but she knows you. She
called your house, right?”
    Philip’s stomach spun in great circles.
    “Before, yeah. But she didn’t call my house
yet for this.”
    “Maybe she saw two boys but couldn’t see who.
We did try to hide, you know.”
    “Boy, I hope so.”
    “Don’t worry. She would have called your
house already if she knew it was you.”
    “Suppose the police ask other houses if they
saw two boys. Other people might have seen us. They might know us.
We weren’t trying to hide from the other people. And our
fingerprints!! Emery, did we touch anything in the garage?”
    “Touch anything? We touched everything ! We both touched the doorknob before we
left.”
    “Oh, Emery. We’re sunk if the police really
investigate.”
    “They will investigate. They’ll have to. What
are we gonna do?”
    They’d reached Emery’s house, but they kept
walking. They could take no chance of being overheard by any
grownups.
    “Oh, man,” Emery groaned. “I wish the old
lady had her box back, and I hope the stupid gypsy and the pharaoh
get arrested.”
    “If they don’t, we might. Our
fingerprints, remember?”
    Emery had a thought. “If the police come to
arrest us, we can tell them about the gypsy and the pharaoh.”
    “Emery, you think anybody’s going to believe
we were so stupid to believe we’d get three wishes if we robbed the
old lady? Besides, the circus is leaving day after tomorrow.”
    “You sure the wishes are fakes? I got a
circus ticket wish come true. I wished for dinner now, and
your mother called us down right away.”
    “We already talked about that. Forget wishes.
We have to find some way to get the box back to the old lady so the
police stop looking for us and before they check for fingerprints
or ask if anybody else in the neighborhood saw me and you.”
    “How?”
    “You tell me how.”
    “No, you tell me how.”
    “I can’t tell you how. I don’t know how.”
    “I can’t tell you how, either. I don’t know
how, too.”
    Emery often made Philip’s stomach tighten up,
and this was one of those times. They walked a while in silence
before Philip came up with a meager idea.
    “We still have a day and a half. Let’s think
of something when we go to sleep tonight.”
    Emery frowned. “How can we think when we’re
asleep?”
    “We don’t think when we’re asleep. What’s
wrong with you? Before we fall asleep, we lay in bed and think when
we’re awake.”
    “Oh. I thought you meant we’d dream an
answer.”
    “How could we dream an answer? Tell me, how?
How could you think I meant we’d dream an answer?”
    “Stop yelling.”
    Philip rubbed his stomach to quiet it.
    “Let’s just go home,” Philip said. “Come for
me tomorrow morning. We gotta think of something.”
    The boys finished their walk and separated,
Philip deciding he’d better go to bed early so he’d have plenty of
time to think.
     
     

Chapter Nine
     
    Saturday morning found Philip and Emery
walking the streets, grumpy with one another after a night of
tossing and turning in bed, looking for a