Free The Zippy Fix by Graham Salisbury Page A

somebody’s hedge.
    “Why’d you stop?” Julio spat.
    “Look.”
    I dipped my head toward Maya’s cat, sprawled in the middle of the street.
    Julio looked at me like, Are you nuts? “You caused a wreck because of Maya’s
cat
?”
    Willy yanked himself and his bike out of the hedge and studied the scratches on his arms.
    “Sorry,” I said.
    Willy waved it off. “I’m okay.”
    Julio stared at me.
    “What?” I said. “It’s a black cat.”
    “It was black yesterday, too. And last month and last year. So what?”

    “Well, Rubin said—”
    Julio threw up his hands. “Not Rubin again.”
    “No, but… it’s … well.”
    Willy held his front tire between his legs and straightened out his handlebars. “They
must
be bad luck. Look how we crashed.”
    “That was Calvin,” Julio spat. “Not the cat!”
    I chewed on my thumbnail and considered the furry black mass lying in the middle of the road. His name was Zippy, but zippy he wasn’t. He was lazy as a slug. Not very smart, either, because any cat that lounges in the middle of the street is looking to get run over by a car.
    “You’re right,” I said, trying to shake Rubin’s warning out of my head. “It’s just superstition.”

    We got back on our bikes and coasted toward Zippy, circling him twice. Zippy stretched, his claws flashing out like knife blades.
    Julio stopped and studied Zippy. “You are the laziest cat I’ve ever seen in my life, no question.”
    I got off my bike and kicked down the stand. “Come on, Zip.” I scooped him up. “You stay out here in the street, some car’s going to flatten you.”
    Zippy purred in my arms. I bet he weighed like a hundred pounds. “You should be out in the jungle chasing down the rodents of Hawaii.”
    Zippy gave me a lazy blink.
    I set him down in the shade of a plumeria tree in Maya’s yard. The grass was warm and soft, way better than the street. “I just don’t want to see you get squashed, okay?”
    Zippy gave me dirty looks.
    I laughed. “You’re something, Zipster.”
    “Laters!” Julio called from the street, heading home.
    Willy jumped on his bike. “Me too.”
    I waved and turned back to Zippy. “Don’t you give me bad luck, now. I did this for your own good. You listening to me, Zip?”
    I scratched under his chin and left when he started purring again. I had no idea what a bad listener Zippy was.

3
BOOOOM
    M om’s car was in the garage when I coasted into our driveway standing on the pedals. I skidded to a stop, dumped my bike on the grass, and went inside.
    “What’s going on?” The screen door slapped behind me.
    Mom and my little sister Darci were in theliving room digging into a shopping bag from Macy’s, where Mom worked in the jewelry department.
    Mom looked up, smiled, and laid a silky green dress over the back of the couch. “Hi, sweetie, how was school?”
    “Fine, but why are you home?”
    “Last time I checked, this is where I live.”
    “Yeah, but you’re supposed to be at work and Darci’s supposed to be at Mrs. Nakashima’s.”
    “I decided to take the day off.”
    I looked at Darci. “I thought you were sick.”
    Darci gave me an excited grin. “We bought a dress for Stella.” I guess shopping cured her.
    Mom picked up the green dress. “Isn’t this stunning, Cal?”
    Stunning? A hurricane is stunning. An explosion is stunning. A car crash. “Yeah, sure. What’s it for?”
    “Stella.”
    “She doesn’t have a dress?”
    “It’s a special dress. A boy asked her to a dance.”
    “No joke?”
    Mom pinched my cheek and kissed my head. “No joke.”
    Stella was almost sixteen and lived with us. She’d come from Texas and had been here about a month. We took her in because Stella’s mom was my mom’s best friend in high school.
    Also, a couple years ago, my dad, now known as Little Johnny Coconut, the kind-of-famous singer, had split from Mom and moved to the mainland, where he lives with his new wife. Now Mom had to work six days a week