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whistle.
    “What if someone accidentally bumps the dial and turns it on? Your butt is right next to it!” Socko grabbed his friend’s arm and jerked him away from the oven door.
    They tried to pry the back off Socko’s baby picture frame to sandwich the check between the photo and the board—but there was too much tape.
    Damien came up with genius idea number three. He pulled a box of Corn Chex cereal out of a cabinet and hid the valuable piece of paper inside. “Chex … check. Get it?”
    Socko was still uneasy. What if they accidentally ate the check? Okay, okay. That was stupid, and he didn’t have a better idea.
    When they finally heard Delia in the hall, they rushed the door and fumbled the locks open. “It came!” they said together.
    “My gosh … oh my gosh!” Delia triple-locked the door behind her before letting them retrieve the check from the cereal box.
    “Great god in heaven!” She kissed the check, and then tested the locks. “Put it back in the cereal!”
    Damien looked as if someone had slapped him. “You got the check, next you get the house. And after that—you’re gone.” He turned to Socko, like Socko could make it not happen.
    Ever since he’d told Damien about the offer, Socko had assured his friend he was working on his mom. And he was. He hadn’t made anyprogress, but until the check arrived Socko had really believed there was a chance to convince her. Now he knew there wasn’t. Not with all those zeroes.
    “I wish he didn’t know about the check,” Delia said after an unexpected knock from below had summoned Damien home.
    “Come on, Mom. He won’t steal it! He’s my best friend!”
    “No, but he’ll talk. You know the way that kid runs his mouth!”
    She was right. Even when he had nothing to talk about, Damien suffered from diarrhea of the mouth.
    Delia took the cereal box down and teased the check out and held it in both hands. “This is our new life, Socko.” She hid the check under the plastic tray in the silverware drawer, then picked up the papers scattered on the floor. “And this is what we have to do to live it.”
    She sat down at the table and put on the drugstore reading glasses she wore, not because she needed them but because she said they made her feel smarter. Peering over the tops of the glasses, she read the contract that outlined the General’s “terms and conditions” three times before signing.
    Socko didn’t sleep much that night. He woke up once from a brief stretch of unconsciousness and heard his mother humming. When he came out from behind the thirteen original colonies, Delia was standing at the window, silhouetted by the flickering blue from the neon sign across the street.
    “Mom?”
    “I moved the check again,” she whispered. “So don’t freak when you open that drawer and it’s gone.”
    “Where to?”
    “Don’t worry about it. You can’t spill what you don’t know.”
    “You don’t trust me?”
    “I don’t even trust
me
. This is too big.”

7
MESSAGE FOR THE BLIMP
    Socko and Damien were hanging around the apartment hiding out from Rapp just like they had for the last few days. But today was different. Today Delia was there too, driving them crazy singing about “house-buying day!”
    When they couldn’t stand it anymore, they decided to take a chance. “We gotta be safe by daylight on a busy street,” said Damien as they carried their skateboards into the elevator—it was temporarily working.
    They didn’t see Rapp until they skated around a corner and almost ran into him. He didn’t say a word, just narrowed his eyes and pointed a finger at Damien.
    Stepping on the tail of his skateboard, Damien did a fast kick turn and jetted away. Socko did his own clumsy version of the maneuver and lit out after his friend.
    “It was like he was holding a gun!” Damien gasped when they were back in the elevator at the Kludge. He punched the button for his own floor. “I can’t take all the happy-happy at your