Summer of Twelve - Chapter 3
In which Donny and Chris come to my house while our moms visit with each other and then we have a surprise sleepover
The next time I saw Donny and Chris was the middle of the next week at my house. Their mom brought them with her when she came to visit with my mom, so I wasn't even babysitting. It was a weekday afternoon, after my mom got home from work.
Ms. Martin introduced Donny and Chris to my sister and my brother. My mom, in turn, introduced my sister, Lisa, who was nine, a couple of months older than Chris, and my brother Michael, who went by Mikey, because he had only just turned five.
Mikey was about two inches taller than Donny, but nowhere near as husky. They probably weighed about the same. They had similar coloration, because Mikey's dad was half Bengali and his mom was half Choctaw.
Lisa was average sized for a girl her age, which put her a couple of inches taller than Chris, and she clearly outweighed him. It's not that she was chubby, it's just that Chris, like me, was short for his age and light for his height. Heck, she weighed about as much as me even though I was four inches taller than her.
Donny and Mikey hit it off pretty good, right away. Lisa and Chris... not so much. Chris was still very much of the opinion that girls had cooties, although he would never say anything like that to a girl's face. Lisa, for her part, seemed to have a sense that she was far too mature to hang out with a boy her own age. After a few minutes of polite but cool conversation, she gravitated to my mom and Ms. Martin. That was fine with me, because it meant I could hang out with Chris.
We went to the bedroom I shared with Mikey. It was set up with a bunk bed in the middle that was built into the room to serve as a divider, so at least I had a little bit of privacy from Mikey for my big boy fun. Mikey and Donny were in his half of the room, so we didn't stick around for very long, opting to go out front and play catch with a foam football.
After a while, Lisa came outside also, apparently kicked out by the moms so they could have some grownup talk. I felt sorry for her, because she was the odd kid out, but it was pretty much her own choice, so I only felt a little bad for her. After a few more minutes, I stopped feeling sorry for her at all, because she started being mean, like she sometimes did when things weren't going her way. I could see which way this was headed, so I asked a few questions that I was pretty sure I already knew the answers to.
"Hey Lisa," I said, "do you wanna go bike riding around the neighborhood with me and Chris?"
"Uggh! No!" she said. "I don't want to get all sweaty."
"Then can Chris borrow your bike?" I said.
"Is it a girl's bike?" Chris said, then flushed because he realized he was tacitly admitting he was worried about cooties.
"You don't have to worry about it," Lisa said, "because I'm not gonna let you ride it anyway!"
"Okay, we'll see if Mikey will let us borrow his bike." I said, my plan having worked perfectly.
Mikey was an agreeable kid, so he had no problem with that. He would have wanted to come riding with us himself, because we had only taken the training wheels off his bike the previous week, but he was engrossed in playing with Donny.
I gave Chris the choice to use my bike or Mikey's. I didn't mind riding Mikey's bike, even if it was a little kids bike, because it was zippy and maneuverable. Chris ended up choosing my bike.
The moms were fine with Chris and me going out riding, much more concerned with their girl talk, each getting to the bottom of a glass of white wine.
I showed Chris around the neighborhood a little. Technically it was his neighborhood too, but with the streets being so maze-like, his knowledge of the ins and outs was a little lacking. Then I showed him how to get down into the drainage canal that ran across the back of the neighborhood, dividing it from the undeveloped land where the tree house was. There was a gate so maintenance crews could get equipment down into the canal, and it was half off its hinges on one side, so you could get a bike through the gap.
It had rained the previous day, so there was still some water in the canal. Not heavy runoff, just a series of puddles linked by little criss-crossing rivulets. With the humidity from the rain, and the summer heat, and the fact we were down in a canal where the breeze couldn't much reach, we would have got all sweaty. But the fact we were deliberately riding through the water, seeing how much of a rooster tail we could make, rendered the sweatiness a moot point. Before long, both of us had a wide stripe of muddy water from the tops of our heads down to our butts in back, and plenty of random splashing in front. We had a blast!
After an hour and a half or so of that kind of fun, I was feeling thirsty, and starting to think about supper. We didn't need to talk about it, we both just kind of came to the conclusion and started heading back to my house. We were in the garage, oiling the chains on the bikes when Lisa came through the utility room and poked her head in. The space was thick with the scent of sweaty boys, creek water, and WD-40.
"Oh my gosh," she gasped, as much at our odor as our appearance. "I'm telling!"
"Are we gonna be in trouble?" Chris asked.
"Nah," I said "the worst that'll happen is my mom will make us take a shower in the utility room."
"I can handle that." he said.
I was wrong about the worst that could happen. It was very common for my mom to require me to shower in the utility room if I was too wet or dirty to be allowed in the house, but that's not how it went that afternoon.
"Christopher J. Akter!" my mom said, "You are not setting foot in the house in that condition. When you're done oiling the chains, you march your butt around to the backyard, rinse the worst of the mud out of those clothes, then strip naked and rinse yourself off before you even think of coming inside."
"Christopher J. Martin!" Chris's mom sputtered for a moment. "Everything Ms. Akter just told Chris to do, you do too!"
A grin crept over Chris's face after they left. "Is this the second worst thing that could happen then?" he asked, slyly.
"I dunno," I said, giggling. "She's made me come in through the utility room a hundred times I bet."
"Have you ever been naked in your back yard before?" he asked.
"Nope." I said, "but I guess that changes in about five minutes."
We closed the big garage door then went out the side garage door and made our way to the gate to get into the back yard. There was a five foot stockade fence all the way around the back yard, so we had some privacy from that. But there were more than a few two story houses in the neighborhood. There was nowhere you could be in the backyard that you couldn't see someone's second story window.
But boys should not be modest, so Chris and I did as we were told. We took turns holding the hose for each other so we could rinse the worst of the mud and silt off our clothes before we even took them off. The moms watched through the big window by the kitchen table, sipping at what had to be at least their second glass of wine
After our clothes got clean enough, we went ahead and stripped naked, like they had said. We were squeezing the worst of the water out of our clothes when our two little brothers, came boiling out of the house, also bare naked, with squirt guns in hand. Mikey was circumcised, like Donny.
About two minutes later, even my sister Lisa came outside similarly armed and ready, though she had taken the time to change into her one-piece bathing suit.
What followed was a half-hour naked water fight. Well, except for Lisa, she wasn't naked. It was still daylight and we made enough noise that it wouldn't have been surprising to see someone look out one of those second story windows that overlooked my backyard. But after the first few minutes, I was having too much fun to care. There were all sorts of shifting alliances at first, but it quickly settled to Lisa, Donny, and Mikey versus Chris and me. The younger boys were willing to have Lisa as their leader, but Lisa did not want to be on the same team as Chris.
It had rained the night before, so the back yard didn't need to be watered. But it got watered anyway. The grass was pretty squelchy by the time Ms. Martin came to the back door with a big towel for Lisa.
"Lisa, honey" she said. "Lula... your mother, I mean, said you should go take a bath."
Lisa wrapped herself in the towel like a princess and disappeared into the house.
Donny got all eager at the mention of a bath. "Are we all gonna take a bath together?" he chirped.
She tousled his wet hair. "No, silly!" she said gently, "Girls need their privacy. Besides, all you boys had your baths, just now. Rinse the wet grass off your feet and stay here on the patio until you drip dry. Pizza will be here in about half an hour."
"Pizza!" was the cry from all four of us boys.
I showed them how to shake like a dog. Well, how to shake like a boy trying to shake like a dog. It was moderately effective in drying our hair which was long enough on all of us to fling back and forth with a little centrifugal force. It was less effective in drying our bodies, mostly only resulting in some very bouncy boy bits as we tried to hurry up and dry off without benefit of towels.
My mom came to the door and ushered us inside after a few more minutes. We smelled of wet grass, that plastic garden hose scent, and boy sweat. None of us had touched a bar of soap for 36 hours or more. "Stay off the furniture!" she yelled, as we swarmed past her into the house.
I got handed the chore of putting Chris's clothes and my own in the washing machine. They weren't enough for a load by themselves, so first I had to go around gathering up enough dirty clothes and anything else that needed washing to make it worthwhile to run the washing machine. Chris went around with me to help. Our first stop was the room I shared with Mikey. We found Donny and Mikey playing some game that involved smashing plastic dinosaurs together while making roaring sounds. No intelligible speech was involved but they seemed to be enjoying themselves. Getting dressed was the last thing on their minds, so neither of them noticed when Chris inadvertently scooped up Donny's clothes from the floor where they were commingled with Mikey's from when the two had hastily stripped to initiate the water fight. I was busy pulling clothes out of our dirty clothes hamper, and all I cared about was getting enough for a washer load, so I didn't say anything about it either.
We presented the expanded pile of clothing and got the nod from my mom. I stuffed everything in together, poured my guesstimate of the right amount of soap powder over top, and popped out the knob to start the washer filling. Bad timing.
About a minute later I could hear Lisa shrieking out the bathroom door "Hey! I'm trying to take a shower in here!"
My mom made me run and shut off the washing machine until Lisa had finished her shower. Fifteen minutes or so later, Lisa emerged from the bathroom. Her hair was wrapped in a towel like some exotic headdress. She had another towel wrapped around her chest, up under her arms, covering the breasts she did not yet have. She was more than a little annoyed with me, so I apologized, but it was hard to seem very sincere about it. I was just about to go back to the utility room to re-start the washing machine when the doorbell rang.
"Go and pay the delivery boy." My mom said, handing me a couple of bills. "Tell him to give you five dollars in change, the rest is his tip, then bring the pizzas and things to the kitchen."
I hadn't answered the door in my birthday suit since I was seven or so, but I figured that a delivery boy seeing me that way wouldn't be a problem for either of us. The flaw in my assumption was that the pizza was not delivered by a boy.
When I opened the door, wearing nothing but a smile, the person standing on the other side was a teen-aged girl that I recognized. My mom had apparently ordered from a local, family-owned pizza place, La Migliore Pizza in Città ! We ate there often enough to be considered regulars and knew the names of some of the family members. The girl standing there with a stack of boxes in her hands and a surprised look on her face was Sofia, the middle daughter. She did a little bit of everything around the restaurant, depending on how busy they were and which task needed an extra pair of hands.
"I have a pizza delivery for Ms. Akter." She said, turning a bit so the stack of pizza boxes were less in the way so she could look me up and down.
"That's my mom." I said. "You got the right place." I tried to offer her the money but she wasn't paying much attention to what was in my hands.
"Oh, Chris!" she said. "I didn't recognize you with no clothes on."
She hadn't actually looked at my face yet, but it seemed counter-productive to point that out. "I didn't know you guys delivered." I said.
"We do now," she said. "You can get a motorcycle-only license when your turn 14." She moved aside from the door, tore her eyes off me, and pointed with her chin at the small motorcycle sitting in our driveway, up on it's stand, behind Ms. Martin's car.
We soon figured out that we needed one more pair of hands to effect the transaction. I was about to just take a partial load into the kitchen then come back for the rest when Chris came around the corner into the entryway.
"Oh, here," Sofia said, "your little brother can help."
I did not feel any compulsion to correct her, and Chris and I shared a big grin. We got the pizzas transferred and Sofia started to make the required change. About that time my mom came to the door, followed shortly by Ms. Martin.
"What's taking so..." my mom started to say, but then "Oh, hello Sofia. I didn't know it would be you doing the delivery."
"I got a motorcycle." Sofia said, proudly.
"Boys, don't stand there gawking at her... motorcyle." Ms Martin said. "Take the food to the kitchen. We'll take care of the money."
Chris and I took the stacks of boxes to the kitchen and sat them on the table. We high-fived at being mistaken for brothers. A few moments later, the moms called us back to the door. We returned to see Sofia looking questioningly between the two older women.
"Are you sure?" she said.
"Don't worry about it." My mom said. Then she turned and beckoned to me to come stand in front of her. She put her hands on my shoulders and turned me to face Sofia. "This one belongs to me."
Ms. Martin had moved similarly to my mom and put Chris on display likewise "And this one is mine." She said.
Sofia looked us both over again, her eyes seldom getting any higher than our chests. "They look so much alike, even their..." she didn't finish the sentence and blushed furiously.
Ms. Martin turned Chris around pointing away from the front door. "Go get your little brother and tell him pizza is here." She gave him a swat on the butt to start him on his way. Chris yelped, but giggled as he sped away.
"I'll go tell Mikey and Lisa." I offered, trying to sidle away, my hands moving behind me to protect my butt from a matching swat.
"No you don't, mister." My mom said with a sharp laugh.
"But maaahhm!" I whined, drawing out the word at least five times its normal length.
"But nothing." She said. "I kept one of your father's belts. Do I need to go get it?"
"No ma'am." I said. I could see Ms. Martin snickering with a gleam in her eye
"Now face away from the door and put your hands on the back of your head."
I did as she said, grimacing and tucking my butt under me defensively, clenching my cheeks for the expected swat.
"Me?" Sofia said. "Really?"
An agonizing few seconds later, the swat landed. It barely stung, but I pelted down the hall as fast as I could, the sound of laughter chasing me out.
Fifteen minutes and three slices of pizza later, I had put the incident at the door behind me. Chris and I asked to be excused while the moms and siblings finished their food at a more civilized pace. We went to the bedroom I shared with Mikey and climbed up to my bunk. We sat side by side on the edge with our feet hanging down, our inside knees touching. We were quiet for a few minutes, idly foot-wrestling as we swung our feet in the air. I could smell the pepperoni on his breath when he spoke.
"It's weird." Chris said. "Every time before now you always had to take care of Donny, keep him happy, but once he went to sleep we could do anything we wanted. Now it's like... we don't gotta worry about him `cause he's playin' with Mikey, but we can't do any of our special fun stuff because there's a bunch of other people in the house."
"Yeah," I said, "Ridin' bikes was a blast, but look where it got us."
We both had a giggle at that.
"Do you think the moms would let us go out ridin' again today?" Chris said. "If we promised to stay on the streets and sidewalks only?"
"Maybe," I said, "It's worth a try."
"And we could find someplace to stop where no one can see us so we can get in a little practice?" he said.
"Oh man..." I said. "I don't even wanna think about that yet, it'll give me a boner."
We hopped down from the bunk bed and hurried back to the kitchen table.
"Mom,canChrisandmegooutbikeridingagain?"
"Slower, and in English, please."
"Mom, can Chris and me go out bike riding again? It's still daylight. We promise to stay on just streets and sidewalks. Pleeeaaase!"
The moms looked at each other and snickered. It did not lend me confidence.
"Yes, of course!" my mom said. "You can head out as soon as you get dressed."
Chris offered me a high five in celebration, but I had just remembered. "Oh cra... crud!" I said, "I never started the washing machine back after Lisa's shower."
"We had a bet about when you would remember." Ms Martin said. "I believe I won."
"Yes, fair and square." My mom said. "I'll pay up as we agreed."
"No hurry." Ms Martin said, "It's not the sort of debt that goes stale."
My mom nodded to Ms Martin, then turned to me. "If you re-start the washing machine right now, it will take about half an hour to finish," she said, "then you can put the clothes in the dryer. That takes about 45 minutes. Of course by then it will be dark, and you shouldn't be riding bikes at night with no lights."
"But I'm s'posed to ride my bike home from babysitting in the dark." I countered.
"You make a good point." She said. "So here's the offer I'll make you: Since your forgetfulness has left both Donny and Ms. Martin's Chris temporarily bereft of clothing, you can go bike riding as long as you're wearing the same clothes they are."
"But the only one in this house whose clothes would fit Chris is Lisa!" I complained.
"I'm not gonna wear girl clothes." Chris said flatly.
"I'm not letting him wear my clothes anyway!" Lisa objected.
Ms. Martin spoke to her son. "You never have to wear clothes you don't want to. You can always go naked instead."
"So, you boys are welcome to go bike riding, right this very moment." My mom said. "Just don't wear any clothes. Simple, right?"
Chris and I started to trudge back to the bedroom I shared with Mikey.
"Are you forgetting something again?" my mom said.
"Ah heck!" I said, headsmacking myself. Then I went to the utility room and popped the knob out to re-start the washing machine. When I came back, everyone was getting up from the table.
"Chris," my mom said, "I need you to clean up the kitchen, now that we're all done eating." She spoke to Mikey and Lisa then. "You kids go and wash the grease off your hands."
Mikey grabbed Donny's hand and dragged him off to the bathroom with him. Lisa followed. My mom offered Chris's mom another glass of wine, but she declined since it was a weeknight. My mom went ahead and poured one for herself and they headed for the family room to find something to watch on TV.
I started cleaning up the kitchen and Chris just naturally helped me. "You don't gotta do my chores with me, you know."
"I know." He said, "but it's still hangin' out with you, so I wanna."
It was delivery pizza, so there weren't many dishes to do, it was mainly a question of putting all the leftover pizza pieces in one box in the fridge, then throwing away all the empty boxes and paper plates and napkins and stuff. The pizza boxes were too big for the trashcan under the kitchen sink, and it was full anyway, so after we finished the dishes and wiped down the table and countertops, we took out the trash. We passed through the utility room to the garage. From the garage we went out the side door where the outside trashcans were kept.
"We're naked outside again." Chris said, grinning.
I looked around and nodded. "But this little space doesn't seem near as exposed as the backyard." I said. "Somebody could drive by on the street and if they didn't look this way at exactly the right time, they wouldn't even notice us."
As if I had summoned it, a car did come by at that moment. There was a kid sitting in the back seat looking out the window and we made eye contact. Chris and I laughed like idiots and scampered back into the garage.
"Wanna sneak in a little bit of practice?" Chris said.
"I dunno." I said. "Donny is a blabbermouth. He's not mean but he can't keep a secret."
"Donny loves playin' with Mikey." He said. "I'm sure they won't come out here."
"Yeah, but Lisa would." I said. "And she's such a tattletale. She loves to get me and Mikey in trouble."
"Girls! Ugh!" Chris said.
"Yeah, sometimes I swear they're aliens." I said. "But I bet she wouldn't look for us outside..."
"You mean..." Chris said, looking at the side garage door.
It did not take us long; two boys on a naughty, risky mission. We stood in front of the back gate, each with our left hand on the other's shoulder, our right hands crossing in front to reach down and tug out a quicky for the other boy. I have no idea if anyone saw us. A parade could have gone by in the street during that few minutes and I would not have noticed it.
When we got to the family room where the TV was, everyone seemed to have settled in for the night. Some kind of grownup show was on TV, but it wasn't on very loud. The moms were sitting at either end of the sofa talking. Lisa had changed into her sleep clothes, which consisted of a long t-shirt with a picture of Sleeping Beauty on it, underneath she wore a pair of pink panties with lace trim. The coffee table was pushed out of the way so that Lisa could sit on the floor in front of Ms. Martin. Lisa was sitting cross legged, leaned back against the sofa between Ms. Martin's legs while Ms. Martin brushed out her hair. Donny and Mikey were sitting together in the reading chair and Mikey was `reading' a book to Donny.
"I didn't know Donny could read already." Chris said.
"He's not really reading." I said. "that's one of his books he's got memorized. He even knows where to turn the pages."
"Did you move the clothes to the dryer?" my mom asked.
"The washer is still running." I said.
"Then it looks like you boys are all stuck in your birthday suits for a while yet." My mom said.
Lisa's laugh had an edge to it.
Chris and I sat down on the love seat. It was turned 90 degrees to the TV, so we sat at the far end, angled to face the TV, with Chris leaning against me comfortably. It felt good to have him close like that, where I could feel the warmth of his skin on mine. I tried to make sense of what was on TV. It seemed to be some kind of documentary, but the topic was lost on me. Even the moms weren't paying it much attention.
"I wish I had a girl too." Ms Martin said. "This is nice, being able to brush Lisa's hair."
"Thanks, Ms. Martin." Lisa said, trying to be part of the adult conversation.
"Eh... Boys are simple creatures." My mom said. "Girls are more complicated. Of course you know you could try one out..."
"Mmm, I don't know. There are financial considerations." Ms. Martin said
"Do you want to trade kids for a while?" my mom said.
"Interesting... Let me think about that for a bit." Ms. Martin said.
Since the moms weren't paying much attention to the TV, I took a chance. "Mom, can I change the channel?" I asked.
"Chris, you know better than to ask that." My mom said. "If you don't like what's on the TV then go get a comic book or something."
I left Chris on the love seat, while I went to my room and thumbed through my collection of comic books. It took a few minutes, but I found several issues of Mighty Guy that were worth a re-read.
When I came back, comics in hand, the seating arrangement had changed. Apparently, Ms. Martin had finished brushing Lisa's hair. The coffee table was back in its usual place, and Chris had been evicted from the love seat. Lisa was stretched out there instead, reading a book. Chris was sitting astride the ottoman in front of the reading chair, seeming not quite sure what to do with himself.
"Will you read us stories?" Donny asked. "Mikey can't read any more books."
"Do you wanna learn about big boy comic books?" I said.
There could never be much doubt about what Donny did or did not want to do. Apparently learning about big boy comic books was on his YES list. A few minutes later, the seating arrangements had changed again. We four boys were stretched out, laying face down on the carpet, all bunched together to read the same comic book. We had appropriated some of the throw pillows to lay our chests on while we read. Donny and Mikey were happily sandwiched between their big brothers. We were not facing the TV, rather using the light from the flexible branch of the floor lamp that stood beside the reading chair, but we were all on an axis of observation from either the couch or the love seat, angled across the room. The little boys were not at all shy about overlapping their big brothers or each other, so it was no problem for all of us to look at the same comic book. It would have made a pleasing spectacle to anyone who liked that sort of thing: four bare boy butts all squeezed into the space of three. From behind, from left to right it was Chris, Mikey, Donny, and me.
It was fun showing Donny all the pictures in the comic book and reading it for him. Mikey understood the idea of written words, but I showed him how to tell the difference between a speech balloon and a thought bubble. Chris read the captions in his radio announcer voice, and Mikey and Donny both did the sound effects when I pointed to the words and told them what to say. I felt good and right and safe and warm, laying there in a puppy pile with my little pack of brothers from other mothers. I got a happy boner. It wasn't the kind where I felt an urge to do anything about it, it was just a barometer of my mood. I lifted my hips up so it could point at my chin like it wanted to, then lay back down on it, pressed into the shag carpet.
We weren't quite through the issue where Mighty Guy got swarmed and captured by Westy Witch's flying monkey minions before Donny popped his thumb in his mouth and dozed off. It was only twilight, but that time of year it stayed light pretty late. I rolled half up on my side and looked over my shoulder, waved my arm to catch Ms. Martin's attention. "He's sleeping." I said quietly, after she looked my way.
She nodded and turned to my mom. "About that offer to trade kids..." she said. "I don't think Donny is ready to not wake up in his own bed just yet. He'd have a melt down and the whole rest of his day would be terrible."
"I understand." My mom said.
"But Mikey is a wonderful influence on him. He's been great this afternoon, just being a regular little kid." Ms. Martin said.
"Thanks."
"So I wonder if I could borrow Mikey for tonight. I'll just tuck them both into Donny's bed and see how things work out in the morning."
"Mikey," my mom said. "Would you like your first sleepover to be at Donny's house tonight?"
Mikey half rolled up and and looked at our mom. He yawned, but smiled and nodded then rolled back and snugged into a half cuddle with Donny.
"Well, that was easy." My mom said. "Do you want me to keep your Chris for tonight?"
"Sure. That will make it easier in the morning." Ms. Martin said.
"How come the boys get to have a sleepover and I don't?" Lisa whined.
"Lisa, honey..." my mom said. "It just worked out this way. We didn't plan it."
"But it's not fair!"
"Sweetheart..." My mom sighed. She looked tired and a little drunk and just didn't have any fight left in her. "I'll tell you what. Get on the phone quick, before it gets too late. Call around to any of your friends you can think of and see if any of them can do a sleepover on such short notice."
Lisa bounced off the love seat and ran to her bedroom. She had her own phone extension.
"If you don't mind," Ms. Martin said, "I'm going to call it a night. Do you think Donny's clothes are dry?"
"Oh, shoot!" I said. I hopped up, boner and all. "I never put the clothes in the dryer!"
My mom just shook her head. "Boys..."
"Stand up for a second, Chris." Ms. Martin said.
Chris did as he was told. I guess happy boners are as contagious as the regular kind.
"Who needs clothes?" my mom said. "We can carry Donny and Mikey out to the car just like they are."
And that's what they did. Donny and Mikey weren't even very much exposed. They were both hugging their respective mom around the neck facing them with their legs wrapped around their waists. Even their butts were mostly covered because that's where the moms were holding them up. Chris and me stood watching from the open front door. They got the two boys laid down in the back seat and my mom saw Ms. Martin off with a hug and a quick kiss.
My mom came back in the house and closed the door behind her. At just that moment Lisa came running around the corner from the hallway. She stopped and pointed at Chris and me and said "Ummmm!!"
"Lisa..." My mom said. "Not tonight, okay? They're boys. They can't help it. Did you find someone you can spend the night with?"
"Yes!" Lisa said.
"Okay, put some pants on or something and get your things together." My mom said. "I'll drive you over."
"Oh, that's the best part" Lisa said. "You don't have to drive. Molly's just going to hop the fence."
"What do you mean?"
"She lives in that two story house that's diagonally behind us from the back yard."
{To be continued...}