Free Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins Page A

with the curtains drawn and waking up in mid-afternoon to the aromas of the beginnings of dinner: onions and celery softening in melted butter. It wasn’t a bad way to wake up. There was still some afternoon and a full evening ahead. Working day shift, you got home around this same time, but you could be too tired to enjoy it. That was just his opinion. Leon opened his bedroom door and walked the two steps to Lenny’s open doorway.
    “Good morning,” he said. The afternoon light was dim and indirect on this side of the house, but it was enough to make him squint as his eyes adjusted. The movement of squinting triggered the tumbling down of a few more locks of dark hair onto his forehead.
    “Good morning,” said Lenny. He had to grin at his dad’s face, unshaven and puffy with sleep, eyelids hunched together to keep out the brightness that wasn’t even bright.
    “You didn’t get enough beauty sleep,” he said. “You better go back to bed.”
    “I don’t think it would do any good,” said his dad. “Listen, we have some time before dinner, can you give me a hand getting that old washing machine out of the cellar? There’s a guy at work who wants it. He fixes them up and sells them.”
    “Sure,” said Lenny.
    They went down into the basement, which was more of a solid than a space. It was a Chinese puzzle made out of a haphazard accumulation of snow tires, lawn chairs, suitcases, cases of unreturned pop and beer bottles, picnic coolers, furniture and boxes of dishes from Lenny’s grandmother’s house that Edie didn’t like but Leon couldn’t bear to get rid of, along with boxes no one had even peeked in for years. Who knew what all was in there? The washing machine was roughly in the center of the whole mess, its shiny, rounded surface glinting out from under a couple of rolled-up carpets and clothesline props. Extricating it without causing the entire arrangement to collapse would be like pulling out the middle pickup stick. A really heavy pickup stick. Lenny and Leon studied the situation.
    “We should get rid of some of this stuff. Clean this place up,” said Leon.
    “You think so?” said Lenny.
    “We could make a nice TV room down here,” said Leon.
    “Yup,” said Lenny. He didn’t bother thinking about this idea; he had heard it before and he knew it wasn’t going to happen. “I think I can climb up and roll those carpets back a little and push the dresser sideways a couple inches, turn the bikes so they’re straight. Then we only have to move the boxes in front out of the way and we can drag the washer right out.”
    “Let’s give it a try,” said his dad.
    Leon was strong, and Lenny was starting to get strong, too. Together they hefted the washing machine up the narrow cellar steps, one at a time.
    “Does anyone still even use this kind?” asked Lenny, during a pause. It was a wringer washer, with rollers.
    “I guess someone does,” said Leon. “I told him what it was, and he said he’d give me twenty bucks for it. I figured it was worth it just to get it out of here.”
    They banged out through the screen door and set the heavy monster down on the stoop before the final heave and shuffle over the gravel and up onto the bed of the pickup. With a final grating screech, they shoved it toward the cab, then secured it with a complex arrangement of rope.
    “Success,” said Lenny.
    Through her open window, Debbie could hear their voices and all the banging, shuffling, and scraping noise, but none of it registered. She was doing homework, and she was absorbed in thought.
    She didn’t know his middle name—that could be the tiebreaker. She was doing FLAME with her name and Dan Persik’s name, where you write down your names, cross off the letters that are in both, then count the letters that are left and see where it takes you on the word FLAME. For example:
    D EBBIE
D AN
leaves seven letters.
FLAME
12345
67
L
stands for Lovers. However,
DE BR A
DA NI E L
     
    leaves only five