Any Which Wall by Laurel Snyder Page A

murky brown reservoir they swam in at home. None of them had ever gone swimming in their clothes before, and they laughed when their shirts filled with big air bubbles. But when a dark shark fin broke the surface of the sea only about twenty feet away, they all climbed quickly back onto the sand, licking the salt from their lips.
    Meanwhile, Henry and Sam arrived in the cornfield side by side. They eyed each other up and down, with their hands still firmly plastered to the wall.
    Henry wasn’t someone who believed in thinking too hard about things, so he moved quickly. As soon as he saw that they were back home, he grabbed Sam,toppled them both to the ground, and held the man down for about twelve seconds. Unfortunately, Sam was more than twice his size and rolled Henry off in no time, pushed himself back to standing, and dusted off his britches.
    Henry frowned. He only knew one way to overpower a grown-up, and that was by tickling, a technique he often practiced on his dad. He’d never imagined the skill would come in handy in an actual fight, but he was ready to try anything. He jumped to his feet and gave a battle cry. With his hands outstretched and his fingers flexed, he charged and tickled the would-be pirate mercilessly so that Sam fell back onto the ground.
    “No, no, hee heee heee, ho, help!” cried Sam. “It’s just what all the sea dogs used to do. Oh, help, help, he-eh-eh-elp. Please, please stop!” he called out breathlessly, laughing hysterically in that not-really-happy way that accompanies a serious tickling session.
    “Promise you won’t jump up?” shouted Henry as he tickled. “Promise you’ll stay put? Promise—on the pirate’s code!”
    “I promise, I promise, I promise!” panted Sam.
    Henry stopped tickling, but as soon as he stopped, Sam lunged at the wall again. Henry dove after him and barely had time to touch the wall before Sam called outin a rush, “I wish I was in a bank full of gold!”
    Suddenly they were in a small room, surrounded by stacks and stacks of money. Neither Henry nor Sam was willing to take his hand from the wall, but Sam reached down and groped in a bag at his feet. When he drew out his hand, his fingers were wrapped tightly around a bundle of old-fashioned-looking money. He cackled, “Now, this is fun! I could loot all day! At last I understand why my mean old papa ran back to the sea and the ships and the suckers!”
    Henry eyed Sam angrily without taking his hand from the wall. “You promised,” he said, “on the pirate’s code.”
    Sam shrugged, sniffing his handful of bills. “You can’t hold me to that. There
is
no such thing as the pirate’s code.”
    “Oh,” said Henry. “I thought there was.”
    “Nope, and if there were a pirate’s code, it would probably be ‘Do what you want, and never mind about the mess.’ Plus, you were tickling me, and that’s downright unfair. You can’t expect someone to keep a promise they make when they’re being tickled.”
    “That might be,” said Henry, “but you deserved it for stealing the wall from us. Why did you do that?”
    “I was being a pirate,” Sam said matter-of-factly. “What do you think pirates do? They steal stuff from people, and you’re people.”

    “But that’s crummy,” said Henry, who had never considered what it might feel like to be pirated from. “That’s not adventurous or exciting or glorious. That’s just being a bully.”
    “Well, sure!” said Sam with a laugh. “And just imagine what a bully I could be! With that wall, I could be the ultimate pirate without ever getting seasick. I could steal from everyone, work from home, and never even get sunburned. A whole new breed of pirate! My papa would be so proud.”
    Henry thought this was actually kind of clever, but it didn’t really change anything. “You could have stranded us there forever,” he said. “With no food or water. You
have
stranded Roy and Susan and Emma! Do you want to be a pirate badly enough to