Fancy Pants (Wynette, Texas #1)(168)

NO NUKES

Francesca saw it first. And then Dallie. Gerry, who had reluctantly ended his embrace with Holly Grace, smiled when he spotted it and gave her a quick kiss on the nose. Then he lifted his handcuffed wrists to the sky, tilted back his head, and balled his hands into fists. “Way to go, Teddy!” he cried.

Teddy!

Francesca and Dallie looked at each other in alarm and then began running across the lawn toward the entrance to the statue.

Holly Grace shook her head at Gerry, not sure whether she should laugh or cry, knowing only that she had an interesting life ahead of her.

“It was too good an opportunity to pass up,” he began to explain. “All these cameras—”

“Be quiet, Gerry, and tell me how I go about getting you out of jail.” It was a skill that Holly Grace suspected she would be making good use of in the years to come.

“I love you, babe,” he said.

“I love you, too,” she replied.

Political actions weren't unknown at the Statue of Liberty. In the sixties, Cuban exiles chained themselves to Liberty's feet; in the seventies, anti-war veterans hung an upside-down Hag from the crown; and in the eighties, two mountain climbers scaled the surface of the statue to protest the continued imprisonment of one of the Black_Panthers. Political actions weren't unknown, but none of them had ever involved a kid.

Teddy sat by himself in the hallway outside the statue's security office. From behind the closed door, he could hear his mom's voice and occasionally Dallie's. One of the park rangers had brought him a can of 7-Up, but he couldn't drink it.

The week before, when Gerry had taken Teddy over to Naomi's to see her new baby, Teddy overheard Gerry and Naomi arguing, and that was how he learned about Gerry's plan to parachute onto the island. When Gerry had taken him home, Teddy questioned him. He felt like a hotshot when Gerry finally confided in him, even though he thought it might have been just because Gerry was feeling sad about losing Holly Grace.

They had talked about the No Nukes banner, and Teddy begged Gerry to let him help, but Gerry said he was too young. Teddy hadn't given up. For two months he had been trying to think of a social studies project spectacular enough to impress Miss Pearson, and he realized this was it. When he tried to explain that, Gerry had given him a long lecture about how political dissent shouldn't be undertaken for selfish reasons. Teddy had listened closely and pretended to agree, but he really wanted an A on his social studies project. Dorky old Milton Grossman had only visited Mayor Koch's office, and Miss Pearson had given him an A. It defied Teddy's imagination to think what she might do to a kid who helped disarm the world!

Now that he had to face the consequences, however, Teddy knew that breaking the window in the crown had been stupid. But what else could he have done? Gerry had explained to him that the windows in the crown opened with a special key some of the maintenance people carried. One of those people was a friend of Gerry's, and this guy had promised to slip up into the crown as soon as the President's security people left and unlock! the middle window. But when Teddy got to the crown, all sweaty and out of breath from having climbed the stairs as fast as he could to get there ahead of everybody else, something had gone wrong because the window was still locked.

Gerry had told Teddy that if there was a problem with the window he was supposed to climb right back down and forget about the No Nukes banner, but Teddy had too much at stake. Quickly, before he had time to think about what he was doing, he had snatched the metal lid from a trash can and banged it against the small center window a few times. After four tries, he finally broke the glass. It had probably only been an echo in the crown, but when the glass broke, he thought he could hear the statue cry out.

The office door opened and the man who was in charge of security came out. He didn't even look at Teddy; he just went right on down the corridor without saying anything Then his mom was standing in the doorway, and Teddy could see she was really mad. His mom didn't get mad too often, unless she was really scared about something, but when it did happen, he got a sick feeling in his stomach. He swallowed hard and slid his eyes down, because he was scared to look her in the face.

“Come in here, young man,” she said, sounding like she'd just eaten icicles. “Now!”

His stomach did a somersault. He was really in trouble. He'd expected to get into a little trouble, but not this much. He'd never heard his mom sound so mad. His stomach seemed to be turning upside down, and he thought he might have to throw up. He tried to stall for time by dragging his good shoes as he walked toward the door, but his mom caught his arm and pulled him into the office. The door shut hard behind him.

None of the statue people were there. Just Teddy, his mom, and Dallie. Dallie was standing over by the window with his arms crossed over his chest. Because of the sunlight, Teddy couldn't see his face too well and he was glad about that. On top of the Empire State Building, Dallie had said he loved Teddy and Teddy had wanted to believe it so bad, except he was afraid that Dallie had said it just because his mom had made him.

“Teddy, I'm so ashamed of you,” his mother began. “What in the world made you get involved in something like this? You vandalized the statue. How could you do that?” His mom's voice was quivering a little bit, like she was really, really upset, and her accent had gotten thicker than normal. He wished he wasn't too big to be spanked, because he knew a spanking wouldn't hurt as much as this did. “It's a miracle they're not going to press charges against you. I've always trusted you, Teddy, but it will be a long time before I'll be able to trust you again. What you did was illegal....”