Free 18th Emergency by Betsy Byars

Benjie.” She opened the door. “Come on in and don’t mind me. I’m cooking.”
    “I guess I’m early.”
    “Well, that’s good. You can play checkers with Papa. Come on in. He’s so lonely these days. That man—”
    Mouse interrupted. “I’m really not very good at checkers. I’ve hardly played since fourth grade.”
    He suddenly wanted very much to sit in the warm kitchen and watch Mrs. Casino cook. She had a comforting manner about her. If he had said, “Mrs. Casino, some boys are going to kill me,” she wouldn’t have wasted time asking, “Why?” and “What did you do?” She would have cried, “Where are those boys? Show me those boys!” She would have yanked on her man’s sweater, taken her broom in hand and gone out into the street to find them. “Show me those boys!”
    He had a brief, pleasant picture of Mrs. Casino cornering Marv Hammerman in the alley and raining blows on him with her broom. “You (pow) ain’t (swat) touching (smack) my (zonk) Benjie (pow, bang, smack, swat, zap) !” There was nothing comforting about sitting with Mr. Casino. Mouse had already told him about the boys being after him and gotten no reaction at all.
    Mouse could see Mr. Casino sitting in the other room. He stood in the doorway with Mrs. Casino. He hesitated.
    As he was standing there he thought of something that had happened at school the past week. Mrs. Tennent had brought movies of her Christmas vacation to school and had shown them to all her classes. And when she had shown everything that had happened to her and her sister in Mexico, then she reversed the film and they got to see everything happen in reverse. They got to see Mrs. Tennent walking backward into the hotel and into the bullfight. They got to see her sister walking backward through a market place. They got to see a funny looking taxi driving backward, and people eating backward, and a man diving backward up onto a high cliff. They had all laughed because there was something about people walking backward in that bright, skillful, cheerful way that was funny.
    Suddenly that was what Mouse wanted to happen now. He wanted to walk backward out of the Casinos’ apartment. He wanted to walk backward to the basketball court, and then to school, reversing everything he had done in a bright, cheerful way. He wanted to move backward through Thursday too, and he especially wanted to walk all the way back to when he had come out of history class and paused by the prehistoric man chart. He wanted to stop everything right there. He would have paused a second, and in that second he would not have lifted his hand to write Marv Hammerman’s name. Then the world could go forward again.
    He felt Mrs. Casino urging him into the room. He said reluctantly, “I haven’t played checkers in years. I’m not sure I even remember how.”
    “You’re good enough. Go on.” Mrs. Casino took him firmly by the shoulders and pushed him into the room where Mr. Casino was sitting by the window. “Papa’s just learning checkers over again anyway,” she said.
    Mouse crossed the room, dragging his feet. He said, “Hi, Mr. Casino,” in a low, unenthusiastic voice because he wanted to be with somebody. He was lonely. I, Mouse Fawley, do hereby swear that I feel very lonely. He thought he would have to make a declaration of it to make people understand. “How are you, Mr. Casino?” he asked in the same flat voice.
    “He’s fine, aren’t you, Papa?” Mrs. Casino said. She patted Mr. Casino on the shoulders as she passed behind his chair. Mouse sat down. Mr. Casino was in an armchair, and the bottom had sunk so low that Mouse in his straight chair was the taller of the two.
    “Here you go.” Mrs. Casino brought out the checkers, the oldest set Mouse had ever seen, and set it on the table. The black and red board had been worn white where the checkers had been moved across it. When she put the set down, Mr. Casino, reached out slowly with one enormous hand. His fingers