Sammy Keyes and the Skeleton Man by Wendelin Van Draanen

about—I was thinking about the candlesticks. Then I realize she must have been watching me do laps in her shoe department.“No.” I look down at my Marsh Monster shoes. “And if I don’t find a pair soon, my grams is going to force me to go to the
mall
.”
    CeCe wrinkles her nose in sympathy and then looks over the counter at my feet. “Too bad they’re worn out. That’s a beaut of a color.”
    I look at her and start to laugh, but then I can tell she’s serious so I switch the subject. “How long have you had these candlesticks?”
    She looks at them through the bottom part of her glasses, and her eyebrows disappear under her bangs. “They’re new. Why do you want to know?”
    I’m trying to come up with something that isn’t a complete lie, when CeCe looks at me straight through the middle of her glasses and says, “Ah-ah. Out with it.”
    I take a deep breath and say, “It’s important. They might’ve belonged to a friend of mine.”
    She chews on this a minute. “Wouldn’t know about that. They were a donation. Got dropped off in the box outside.”
    Hearing that gets my heart thumping around a bit. “Was there anything else with them?”
    She squints at me, then nods toward the appliance table. “They were in a sack with a toaster. Sucker had a loose wire’s all. Fixed it up and buffed it out. It’s good as new.”
    Now my brain’s whirring and clacking, thinking
Rats!
because if she hadn’t cleaned it up maybe there’d be fingerprints. “Which toaster was it?”
    She walks over to the table and picks one up. “You act like a cop, you know that?”
    I look it over and see an $8.50 sticker on the side. “Can I borrow this and the candlesticks for a day?”
    She tosses her head back and laughs. “Oh, that’s a good one. I suppose next you’re going to tell me they’re stolen property. I’ve heard
that
one before.” She goes back to the register and settles onto her stool. “And no, I won’t come off the price any.”
    So I stand around trying to figure out some way around paying for stuff I don’t even want, when she taps the ALL SALES FINAL sign behind her. “Don’t be gettin’ any bright ideas, girl.”
    I sigh and say, “Look, I’ve only got about nineteen, and with tax—”
    She perks right up. “Cash? Forget the tax. I’ll refigure. We’ll call it an even nineteen, if that’s all you’ve got.”
    She tucks the money away in one of her polyester pockets, puts the candlesticks and the toaster in a paper sack, and says, “Come back anytime!”
    It didn’t take me long to figure out that I’d been an idiot for giving CeCe all the money I had. Now I couldn’t ride the bus. Instead I had to trudge along Broadway with my green shoes and nineteen-dollar sack of junk.
    The whole time I’m walking, I’m thinking. And what I’m thinking is, before I go home or even over to Hudson’s, I’ve
got
to go to Chauncy’s and see if this is his stuff. So when I get over to Stowell Road, I hang a right and keep on walking until I get to Miller Street. Then I walk and walk and walk some more until finally there’s Orange Street.
    And I walked down Orange Street like I didn’t have a care in the world. I picked up a stick and ran it acrossChauncy’s neighbor’s picket fence, slapped the FOR SALE sign with it, and then poked my way through the bush tunnel and right up to Chauncy’s door like I’d done it a hundred times before. My heart wasn’t thumping, my knees weren’t bumping; I just pounded on the door and hollered, “Chauncy! Open up! Hey, Chauncy, it’s Sammy! Open up!”
    But he didn’t open up. And pretty soon I’m tired of banging my fist on his splinters, and I’m thinking that maybe he can’t hear me because he’s out back watching Fuzzball.
    So around back I go, ducking branches and thorns like I own the place, and, sure enough, there’s Chauncy, up to his forehead in binoculars. And since the rusty old chair he’d used the last time I visited was