by Linda Davick
Double Trouble
Our Experiments
Monday we were supposed to describe our science fair experiments to the class.
Hunter and Sofie stood up first. “Our experiment is called Rat Race,” said Hunter.
Sofie continued: “There’s something I’ve always wondered about. Does practice really make perfect? I practice ballet all the time. And sometimes I can’t tell if it makes any difference at all.”
“Same here,” said Hunter. “Only baseball is my thing.”
Sofie reached into Cheerio’s cage. She gently picked up the little rat. “Cheerio, our class rat, and Rufus, the rat next door in Ms. Kay’s class, will be our assistants. They’ll help us find out whether or not practice matters.” Sofie kissed Cheerio and set him back in his cage.
“I made a maze out of Legos,” said Hunter. “In the shape of a baseball diamond. We’ll carve home plate out of cheese.”
We waited to hear what came next. Hunter looked over at Sofie, but she was sound asleep. “Sofie, wake up!”
“I’m sorry,” said Sofie. “I had a ballet recital last night and… Where were we?”
“Spring training,” Hunter prompted her.
“Oh yes. So we’ve started spring training for Cheerio and Rufus every day during lunch. They practice exploring the maze together. But we’ve been allowing Cheerio twice as much time to practice. He has spring training without Rufus after school while we clean his cage.”
“At the Spring Thing we’ll find out whether Cheerio’s extra practice helps him find home plate before Rufus does,” said Hunter. “Any questions?”
Boris raised his hand. “If Cheerio scores first and eats home plate, will Rufus still get a piece of cheese?”
“Oh yes,” Sofie assured him. “There will be plenty of cheese for each rat. And you can have a piece too if you’d like.”
Tonya and Yoshi stood up next. Tonya began. “Our experiment is called Is It Hair or Is It Fur? I think about hair a lot. And one thing I’ve always wondered—and I’m sure you have too—is this: Are hair and fur actually the same thing?”
Yoshi held up his microscope. “We’re going to collect hair samples and fur samples, and then examine them using my microscope.”
Everyone clapped politely. “Any questions?” Yoshi asked. I raised my hand.
“I found one of Marvin’s whiskers on the floor yesterday. I can donate it to science if you’d like, Yoshi.”
But Yoshi ignored my question.
“That would be very nice, Mimi,” said Tonya.
When it was Boris’s and my turn to describe our experiment, my heart wasn’t in it. I was so upset about Yoshi ignoring my question that I let Boris do all the talking. He stood up on a stool and described our Proof Is in the Pudding experiment. Everyone laughed, including Mr. Dayberry.
Sofie Calls a Meeting
Two days later, on Wednesday after school, Sofie called a meeting of the Gum Club. She was carrying her flashlight. I was sure she wanted us all to work together on our tunnel, and I was eager to start digging.
After we each had cranked a gum ball out of Boris’s machine, we made a huddle and yelled:
“Six members loyal,
six members true.
We’ll stick together,
whatever we do!”
But Sofie didn’t lead us out to the tunnel. She led us up the spiral staircase to the landing outside my apartment.
She pointed to the door in the ceiling. “Does that lead to the attic?” she asked. “If it does, I wondered if we could fix it up to be my apartment. Then I’ll have a place to stay when the tunnel is finished.”
“That would be fun!” I said. I climbed to the top of the spiral stairs and pushed the door aside so Sofie could see.
“But you can’t stand up in there. The ceiling is too low.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t need to stand,” she said, shining her flashlight into the tiny space. “We could make it into a dorm room. I could lie down and sleep up there!”
“There aren’t any windows,” said Boris. “It’s really dark.”
“That’s okay. I have my flashlight.”
Hunter took a peek. “There’s an old card table in my basement. Even if there’s not room to sit up, maybe you could play cards underneath it. I’ll bring it over. That’s what they do in dorms. Play cards. And you could sleep under the table, too.”
I thought about how much fun it would be playing cards in the reformatory dormatory when I grew up.
“May I take a look?” asked Tonya, bouncing up the stairs.
“Tonya, is your leg better?” asked Sofie. “You’re not limping anymore. But you’re still wearing your bandage.”
“It’s better,” said Tonya. “I wear the bandage to remind me I’m moving out after the Spring Thing.”
“Tonya,” Sofie whispered. “You know I don’t want you to move out. But if you do, maybe I could have your apartment.”
Tonya fiddled with her bandage and pretended not to hear.
Yoshi scrambled up last. “If we saw a hole in the roof, I’ll set up my telescope and make an observatory. Then we can lie down and star watch in the winter.”
The Gum Club took a vote. We all agreed that fixing up Sofie’s dorm room was an excellent idea.
Hunter left for baseball practice, and I had treasure on the brain. “Yoshi, would you like to dig with me and Sofie?” I asked.
But Yoshi said he didn’t feel like it.
A Sorry Apology
Yoshi had not run up and given the secret knock one time since we had studied for the spelling bee.
At recess we had always played together on the swings. When we got as high up as we could go, we’d let go and see who could jump the farthest.
But the swing beside me had been empty every day this week. On Friday Sofie sat down on the empty swing.
“Mimi, are you sad?” she asked.
“No. Why?” I wound my swing up as tight as I could and spun around. Maybe Sofie wouldn’t see the tear creeping down my cheek.
But it was no use trying to lie to Sofie. So I explained about Yoshi holding the flash cards up in front of my eyes, and how I told him it was a stupid thing to do.
“Oh no,” said Sofie.
“But it’s been almost a whole week! And he’s still mad!” That’s when Sofie said something brilliant.
“Did you apologize?”
After the bell rang, Yoshi was out the door and down the steps before I caught up with him.
“Yoshi, wait! Don’t you want a ride home?”
“No. I’m walking.”
I ran around in front of him and stopped him. “Yoshi, I have something I’d like to say to you.”
Yoshi pushed his glasses up on his nose and looked at me for the first time in five days.
“I’m sorry I said what you did was stupid.” Yoshi’s face softened. “But you shouldn’t show me a flash card when you’re asking me to spell a word!”
“So you’re sorry or you’re not sorry?” asked Yoshi.
“I am sorry, but it ruins everything if you show me the word I’m trying to spell.”
“You don’t sound sorry,”
Yoshi said as he walked away.
Bringing Out the Pudding
The week before the Spring Thing dragged by. I dug in the tunnel every day after school, and at night I read Treasure Island to Marvin before he fell asleep. There were no secret knocks on my door, and I still hadn’t found one speck of treasure.
On the morning of the Spring Thing, Boris and I needed help. Chef Pepper had stood by as we multiplied our ingredients by one hundred, and used his humongous mixer. And now there were two big vats of pudding ready to go, one caramel and one chocolate. Chef Pepper handed Boris a giant box of wooden sample spoons.
We found Mr. Bosco out by the bouncy castle, getting ready to secure it in place.
“Mr. Bosco, could you please give us a hand? We need to move our pudding out of the cafeteria and Chef Pepper can’t le
ave his turnovers.”
Mr. Fogarty had predicted blue skies for today. But dark clouds rolled in and the wind began to blow as Mr. Bosco helped us wheel the pudding out.
Before the spelling bee began, I saw Yoshi sneak off. He hid under the bleachers. I reached between the benches and waved to him, but he ignored me.
Tonya’s tiara popped off when she misspelled “spaghetti.”
“It’s not fair! I don’t even like spaghetti!”
The bee wore on. I spelled “bubble” and “kibble.”
Later Mr. Dayberry said, “Mimi, please spell ‘trouble.’ ”
“Trouble,” I repeated. “T-R-U-B-B-L-E.”
Sofie spelled “trouble” correctly, and finally won with the word “ballet.” She would go home with the six-color pen for the second year in a row.
Was it right for one person to own two six-color pens? I wasn’t so sure.
Tonya Stomps Off
The little kids had to wait until the breeze died down to play inside the bouncy castle. Ms. Marzipan, our music teacher, was prepared. She rounded them up and they had a blast swatting at the big sun-shaped piñata. The school band marched around them playing “Here Comes the Sun.” The sky grew darker and darker.
“That piñata may be the only sun we see today,” said Mayor Kale. “Mr. Fogarty, couldn’t you have helped us out a little with the weather?” Mr. Fogarty laughed. The mayor took his arm. “Shall we begin our rounds?”
Mayor Kale scanned the science fair. She raised her megaphone. “Is everyone ready?”
Then in her normal voice she asked, “Tonya, before we begin, do you have all your equipment set up?”
Tonya nodded.
“Then what’s that pretty pink suitcase doing under your table?”
“I’m moving. Right after the Spring Thing is over.”
“Well, I didn’t know that. We’ll miss you,” said the mayor.
The judges’ first official stop was at the vomiting volcano. At least that’s what Boris called it. One of the big kids had put it together. As she warned the judges to stand back, something caught my eye.
“Mr. Fogarty’s tie clip!” I gasped.
“What about it?” asked Boris.
“It’s made out of a gold doubloon!”
“I saw that in the lighthouse gift shop,” said Sofie.
“Do you think Mr. Fogarty gets a discount on things in the gift shop?” I asked.
“If you’re the lighthouse keeper,” said Boris, “I bet you can borrow stuff from the gift shop anytime you want.”
“If I don’t get accepted at the reformatory, I’m taking over Mr. Fogarty’s job when he retires,”
I announced. It was starting to look like the only way I would ever get my hands on any treasure would be to borrow it from the gift shop.
Boris was reassuring. “I think you can count on a free pass to the reformatory after you’ve worked in the gift shop a few days. You can have your cake and eat it too.”
Then Sofie whispered, “Mimi? You know I don’t want you to move to the lighthouse. But when you take over Mr. Fogarty’s job, could I have your apartment at the Periwinkle Tower? Then I could stand up.”
We were all nervous. It was our first science fair. Tonya kept pulling her long white gloves on and off. Then she picked up Yoshi’s telescope and shoved it underneath the table.
“We won’t be needing this. We’ll be using the microscope, not the telescope.”
“But it’s scientific. And it means something to me!” Yoshi moved the telescope back onto the table.
“But it has nothing to do with hair!” Tonya stowed it back under the table behind her pink suitcase.
When Yoshi set the telescope back on the table, Tonya’s tiara popped off. She picked up her white gloves and stormed away.
The Bouncy Castle
The judges found themselves in front of the gigantic Lego maze. Sofie gently lifted Cheerio out of his cage and kissed him. “This is Cheerio, our class rat,” she said.
“And this is Rufus, who we borrowed from Ms. Kay’s class,” said Hunter, cradling the spotted rat in his baseball glove.
The wind blew a bunch of Tonya’s hair samples into our pudding vats. Boris had a fit. “I recognize this one,” I said, pulling a white strand out of my chocolate pudding. “It’s Marvin’s whisker!”
I laid the whisker back down on Tonya’s black velvet along with the other hair and fur samples. Boris and I did our best to fish the rest of the hairs out of our pudding.
“And Cheerio beats Rufus by a landslide!”
we heard the mayor announce over her megaphone.
The judges wandered from table to table, listening and taking notes. When they reached our table, Boris handed them each two of the tiny spoons.
“You know I’m a vegetarian,” said the mayor. We assured her that the pudding was safe. The judges took their time tasting.
They peered into both vats and Mayor Kale scribbled something on her clipboard.
Then they moved to the table where Yoshi was sitting all by himself.
“Well, this looks interesting,” said the mayor. “What in the world?”
“Our experiment is called Is It Hair or Is It Fur?” said Yoshi. “Tonya thinks about hair a lot. And one thing she’s always wondered—and I’m sure you have too—is this: Are hair and fur actually the same thing? We were able to use my microscope to find out.”
“Where is Tonya?” asked Mayor Kale. “She hasn’t moved away already, has she?”
“I don’t know,” said Yoshi. “Has anyone seen her?”
“She’s upset,” said Sofie. “She said she wanted some alone-time in the bouncy castle before all the little kids took over.”
Boris asked if he could borrow Mayor Kale’s megaphone.
“TONYA!”
Sure enough, she appeared at the window of the castle. She didn’t exactly smile, but she gave us one of those royal waves like the queen of England.
Suddenly, there was a huge gust of wind. All the hair and whiskers blew off the table and the castle itself began bouncing across the playground. Then the castle rose into the sky, with Tonya inside!
We were speechless.
Mr. Dayberry dialed 911.
Mr. Bosco slapped his forehead.
“I was getting ready to secure the castle when I got interrupted to move pudding!”
The Chase
After we finished being speechless, we screamed. Chef Pepper climbed up into the tower on top of the school and began ringing the bell. Yoshi grabbed his telescope and stood on top of the jungle gym. Everyone swarmed around below him.
We all wanted to know where the castle was headed. We heard sirens. Mr. Dayberry switched his phone to speaker. He held it up, so Yoshi could report what he saw to Captain Wolfenbarger in her squad car. “It just bounced off the roof of the candy store!” shouted Yoshi. More sirens.
“Now it’s floating over Dr. Furr’s office!”
“Hold on,” said Captain Wolfenbarger. “We’re getting reports of a UFO sighting.”
“It’s not a UFO,” Yoshi assured her. “It’s a bouncy castle.”
Yoshi was quiet for a moment. And then: “It’s headed straight for the reformatory!”
I jumped up and down. “That’s where I’ll be in ten years! I wish I were there already so I could welcome Tonya!”
“It just got snagged on the barbed wire fence,” reported Yoshi. “It’s losing air! Oh no. Tonya just fell out into the reformatory courtyard.”
Sweat ran down Mr. Bosco’s face. “Does it look like she’s okay?” he asked Yoshi.
“She looks angry.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Bosco,” said Boris. “She always looks like that.”
Tonya’s Other Leg
“Uh-oh.” Yoshi adjusted his telescope. “Captain Wolfenbarger’s car is up on the sidewalk outside the reformatory.… A guard is unlocking the gate.… And now Captain Wolfenbarger is helping Tonya into her car.”
With her
lights flashing, Captain Wolfenbarger drove Tonya back to school. She carried Tonya straight into the first-aid tent.
It started to drizzle and then to pour. Almost everyone left. But the five of us Gum Club members huddled together outside the tent to wait for our sixth member to come out. When Tonya appeared, she had a bandage on her other leg.
Then she saw us. And even though it was raining, I could tell she got teary. We all glommed on to her and gave her the most gigantic hug in the history of the world.
“You all waited for me? In the rain?”
“Of course we waited,” said Sofie. “We were worried about you. Don’t you remember:
Six members loyal,
six members true…?”
We all shouted the last part together:
“We’ll stick together,
whatever we do!”
Tonya smiled.
“Can you walk to my car all right?” I asked. “I loaded your suitcase into the trunk when it started to sprinkle.” I took off my hat. “Here. Put this over your hair.”
When we reached the car, I put the top up.
“Where would you like to go?” I asked, holding my breath.
“To the tower.”
“Which tower? The pink tower? The yellow tower?”
“Home,” she said, “to the Periwinkle Tower.”
Boris Hosts a Gum Club Dinner
That evening Boris hosted a special dinner meeting for the Gum Club. Tonya had decided not to move out and we were celebrating. I helped Boris make Tonya’s favorite dish.
She smiled when Boris set the tub of ambrosia on the table. He scooped a gigantic serving of the pink and green marshmallow goo onto Tonya’s plate.
Hunter opened a bag of peanuts and tossed them to Tonya.
“Peanuts with ambrosia? No, thank you.” Then she actually said: “I know I can be bossy sometimes. Thank you all for helping save me, and then waiting for me in the rain.”
