Philip and the Case of Mistaken Identity and Philip and the Baby (9781597051095) Read Free Page B

door.
     
     

 
     
     
     
Four
    Two people were walking down the sidewalk
towards them. The first was an old man. He took a long look at
Philip and said, “Well, hello, Howdy Doody. Great freckles.” He
gave the boys a thumbs-up and passed by.
    Philip turned to Emery. “Howdy Doody? What
did he mean by that?”
    “I don’t know,” said Emery. “Uh-oh. Here
comes Leon the loser.”
    “Just keep walking. Maybe he won’t recognize
us,” said Philip.
    Leon was Emery’s cousin and a boy who rarely
had the slightest piece of good luck. He tripped. He fell. He lost
things. He messed up in school. Nothing ever went right for
Leon.
    Leon smiled his chip-toothed smile at
them—he’d been jumping up and down on his bed and missed, he’d told
them—and said, “Hi, Philip. Hi, Emery. I’m going to the store for
my mom.” He walked by without stopping.
    Philip and Emery paused, turned, and looked
after him.
    “How’d he know us?” Philip asked in
amazement. “That’s means everybody will know us.”
    “No, it doesn’t. Maybe he saw us come out of
my house. Yeah, that’s probably it. The people at the supermarket
who don’t know us won’t know us.”
    Philip turned to look at Emery. “What did you
say?”
    “I said that Leon probably...”
    “No, the second part.”
    “I said that the people at the supermarket
who don’t know us won’t know us.”
    “What does that mean?” Philip said in a loud
voice. “Of course the people at the supermarket who don’t know us
won’t know us. If they don’t know us, they wouldn’t know us whether
we were in disguise or dressed regular.”
    “But the second time they see us, you
know, later, they won’t know it was us when they saw us in
disguise. When they call the police and report they were followed
by two people who look like us, they won’t know it was us because
then we won’t look like us.”
    “Who will we look like?”
    “We’ll look like us.”
    “Huh?”
    “Us regular instead of us disguised.”
    Philip thought it over a minute. “I think I
get it. You mean when they see us now, they don’t really see us
because we’re not us right now. So the next time they see us and
we’re really us, they won’t know us because it’s really us.”
    Emery looked at him. “What are you talking
about?”
    “I’m just repeating what you said,” Philip
said in a louder voice. Sometimes Emery made him want to shout just
to be sure his words got into Emery’s brain.
    “You mean anyone who sees us now doesn’t
really see us and when they do really see us they won’t know it’s
us that they see?”
    Philip could feel his stomach muscles
gathering into a nervous knot. As quietly as he could he said,
“Emery, let’s just keep going and get to the supermarket.”
    Emery nodded but for the rest of the walk
Philip could hear him saying under his breath, “If they see us
now... No, when they see us later... No...”
    The supermarket was two streets away in an
outdoor mall that was just a long line of stores in the middle of a
giant parking lot. The only store in the mall that Emery and Philip
ever used was the movie rental store. The two boys paused on the
sidewalk in front of the supermarket. People were walking by, some
pushing carts full of bags toward their cars, others pushing empty
carts toward the store entrance.
    “Grab a cart,” said Emery.
    Philip spun a cart around and, with him
pushing the right side and Emery pushing on the left, they headed
for the store entrance.
    When they started up the first aisle, the one
filled with paper goods, Emery whispered, “See, nobody noticed your
ear.”
    Philip nodded, trying to look at everybody
sideways so they wouldn’t see his two ears at once.
    “Who shall we follow?” Philip whispered
back.
    “I don’t know. Let’s keep looking.”
    Up and down the aisles Philip and Emery
searched. They rejected a man carrying a quart of milk and a box of
diapers. He was moving too quickly. Then they rejected