by Ellen Potter
“Wow, what flavor did you have?” I asked.
“Oh, that’s just the pickle and cream cheese from between my teeth,” he said.
Yecch, again.
“Now, when you press the button, the Bubble Blaster will blow a bubble,” Mr. Hooper said.
Frankly, it seemed like a lot of work for nothing. Our jaws were hurting and our fingers were all spitty from loading the blaster.
The doorbell rang.
“Go on, boys,” Mr. Hooper said as he went to open the door. “Let’s see how these babies work.”
Perry and I each pushed the button and … WOW!
Instead of blowing bubbles, the chewed-up gum shot out of the blaster like a cannonball. Perry’s piece knocked over a coffee cup and a lamp, and landed SPLAT! against the window.
My piece flew clear across the room, through the door that Mr. Hooper had just opened, and landed SPLAT! on Cat’s glasses.
I know it was rude, but she looked so funny with that big blob of gum on her glasses I started laughing. That’s when Boris decided to shoot his bubble gum right into my mouth.
For the record, pickles with cream cheese tastes just as revolting as it sounds.
As it turned out, Cat is pretty touchy about things getting stuck to her glasses. For a second it looked like she was going to brain me. But then I showed her Boris’s revolting gum and told her that it had landed in my mouth, and she cheered right up.
Mr. Hooper wasn’t so happy, though. “Bummer! Looks like this box is full of duds.” Then he took Cat’s glasses in the kitchen to scrape off the gum for her.
We all stared at Cat. Without her glasses she looked like Master Shifu from Kung Fu Panda.
“What are you looking at?” she asked us.
Perry and I had enough sense to keep our mouths shut, but of course Boris didn’t.
“You know who you look like without your glasses?” Boris said.
“Who?” Cat said.
Perry and I looked around the room for something to hide behind.
“You look like my cousin, Brenda,” Boris said.
We breathed a sigh of relief.
“And a little like Master Shifu from Kung Fu Panda,” Boris added.
We waited for things to start flying. But Cat just rolled her eyes and said, “Anyway. I have good news, guys. I found the perfect old guy for our homework.”
“What homework?” I asked.
Like I said, once I leave school all memory of what happened inside those walls is completely erased.
“Our homework to interview an old person about their career. Sheesh!” Cat said. “Mr. K said that we could interview someone as a group, so I thought we could all go talk to Mr. Rollo on the fourteenth floor.”
The thought of sitting in some old guy’s house while he clipped his yellow toenails gave me the jim-jams. Which is worse than the heebie-jeebies.
Cat must have seen my expression because she added, “Mr. Rollo used to be a New York City police officer.”
Well, that sounded better. If you have to watch an old guy clip his toenails, there might as well be a few car chases and bank robberies thrown in.
Even Perry wanted to come along, and he didn’t even have ANY homework. His dad homeschools him.
I once suggested to Mom that she homeschool me.
Her reply was, “How do you expect me to teach you long division when it took me five years to teach you not to pee in the pool?”
* * *
When Mr. Rollo opened the door, I was glad to see that he wasn’t too crusty. And he kept his shoes on the whole time we interviewed him, which was a big relief, toenail-wise.
It turned out that Mr. Rollo had been a cop for only one day. That was disappointing. But on the positive side, there was this big bank robbery on that one day and Mr. Rollo was right in the middle of it.
“Those robbers came running out of the bank, shooting their pistols. Bullets were flying all over the place! One flew right by my left ear. Another flew over my head. I tell you, I’ve never been so scared in my life. I quit the police force that day. I still have nightmares about the whole thing.”
Mr. Rollo looked all shook up just telling us the story.
“So that’s why I became a ladies’ shoe salesman,” he said.
Then he started telling us all about ladies’ feet. No kidding. He told us about different sorts of lumps on ladies’ feet, and a woman with feet the size of a loaf of bread and another woman who had a miniature foot growing right on top of her big toe. It was all so disgusting that I started to get this weird feeling in my belly. I looked over at Perry. He looked like he was feeling the same way. Even Boris had this strange expression on his face.
Then I realized that it wasn’t ladies’ feet that were making me feel funny.
It was the Belly Button Popper. The thing was starting to vibrate in my belly button.
I glanced over at Perry. He looked back at me, his eyes wide. Then he pointed at his belly.
I know, I mouthed.
“Dudes!” Boris shouted. “I’m vibrating!” He yanked up his shirt. I thought he was just being dramatic, until I saw Perry yank up his shirt, also. Then I remembered. That’s what you were supposed to do when the Belly Button Popper started to vibrate. So I yanked up my shirt, too.
“What are you doing!?” Cat shrieked at us.
Mr. Rollo just looked confused.
Perry’s Belly Button Popper went off first. It started with a loud tsssssss sound, then a BANG! And it shot straight out of his belly button and flew right over Mr. Rollo’s head, leaving behind a trail of smoke.
My popper shot out next. Maybe because my belly button is so deep, my popper had a little extra oomph. Tsssss … ba-ba-BA-BANG!! It zoomed right by Mr. Rollo’s left ear. He screamed and covered his head with his arms.
“Cut that out!” Cat demanded.
But it was too late. Boris’s popper started the tsssss noise and then it burst out of his belly button. BANG! It didn’t shoot straight out like ours did. His flew high up in the air, almost to the ceiling. Then it started to plunge back down, with smoke trailing behind it. The really awful thing was that it was headed directly for Mr. Rollo. And the really, really awful thing was that it was covered in Boris’s belly-button hair.
“Hit the deck, Mr. Rollo!” Cat yelled.
But Mr. Rollo was such a wreck that he just froze. It must have brought back all those memories of his day as a police officer. So Cat launched herself out of her seat and caught the hairy popper while it was in midair. It was pretty impressive. Mostly because she actually touched the thing.
After that, Mr. Rollo had to go lie down on the couch with a cold washcloth over his face.
Out in the hallway of the fourteenth floor we noticed that a brand-new Tidwell Tidbits had just been posted above the elevator buttons. The Tidwell Tidbits is a newsletter about things that go on in our building. It’s written by this lady named Miss Yabby, who probably has nothing better to do.
So of course we headed straight to 29G.
There was a group of kids already gathered outside the Frackas apartment. They did not look happy. A few of them were slumped against the wall and others were sitting on the floor.
“Forget about it,” one boy told us. “Mrs. Frackas won’t let anybody in.”
I figured that would be the end of that. But Perry just marched right up to apartment 29G and rang the doorbell.
“Go away!” a lady inside yelled back.
“It’s Perry Hooper, Mrs. Frackas,” Perry said.
You wouldn’t believe it, but the door opened right away. Grown-ups just love Perry, no kidding. I mean he does the same bad stuff that we do, but grown-ups don’t seem to notice.
The other kids tried to sneak into the apartment behind us, but Mrs. Frackas slapped them back with a flyswatter.
Sid’s room was at the end of the hall. You could tell it was Sid’s room right away because there was this big sign taped to the door:
So of course we jus
t walked right in.
What we saw made us all go, “Whoa!” The entire room was filled with a giant shark’s head made out of Legos. There was a desk inside the shark’s head that was covered with Legos, and sitting at that desk was Sid Frackas.
“Don’t come any closer!” he shrieked. His hand was hovering over a metal box on his desk with a big red button. “When I press this button, the shark’s jaws will snap shut and its razor-sharp teeth will slice you all to pieces!”
Then he pressed the red button. The shark’s mouth really did begin to close. The only thing was, it closed so slowly that we just stepped right over the teeth and into the mouth, no problem. It took a few more minutes for the jaws to close all the way.
“You’re lucky. You made it just in the nick of time,” Sid said.
It was pitch-dark in there, so he didn’t see us all roll our eyeballs.
“What are you working on, Sid?” Perry asked.
“Why should I tell you?” Sid replied.
“Because Miss Yabby is going to give us twenty bucks if we find out,” Perry said.
“Ha! Twenty bucks?” Sid snorted. “That’s peanuts compared to the five hundred dollars I’m going to get if I win the Crazy Vehicle Lego Contest.”
Then Sid said, “Oops.”
“Thanks for the tip, Sid!” Perry said happily. “We’ll be on our way.”
But Sid didn’t open the shark’s mouth.
“Come on, Sid, pop the lid already!” Cat said. “It smells like asparagus in here.”
“No can do,” Sid replied. “Now that you’ve found out my top-secret project, I can’t let you leave. These Lego bricks are superglued together. You’ll never see the light of day again!”
Being locked inside Sid’s room really freaked me out because I’m afraid of the dark. It’s because of something that happened back when we used to live in Hog’s Head. For a whole month, I kept hearing noises in my room at night. SLUUUUURP! SLURPITTY-SLURP … SLUUUUURP! When I told my parents about it, they said it was just our old house creaking. But then one morning Mom went to get something from my closet and she found Grandma Loretta sleeping in there, surrounded by a bunch of empty strawberry Frosty shakes. It turns out she was escaping from the nursing home at night to drink strawberry Frostys in my closet. Since then I’ve had a phobia about dark rooms. And I’m not too crazy about strawberry Frostys, either.
Now, in Sid’s pitch-black room, my heart was pounding like crazy. I got all sweaty and started breathing so fast that I was making this hee-hee-hee sound.
“Who’s laughing like that?” Sid demanded. “Is that you, Perry?”
“No,” Perry said.
I was embarrassed to say it was my scaredy-cat breathing so I didn’t say anything. I just kept going, “Hee-hee-hee.”
“Well, quit it, whoever it is!” Sid said. “You’re creeping me out!”
I was getting really frantic now. Then I remembered that red button on Sid’s desk. I stuck my hands straight out in the darkness and started feeling around. After a minute or so, I smacked into something hard. The desk! Perfect!
I jabbed my finger into the blackness, poking at things until I finally felt something big and round. I stabbed my finger into it.
“HEY!!!” Sid screamed. “Who just stuck their finger in my ear??!!”
That’s when someone farted.
“You know what?” Sid said. “You guys are disgusting! Get out of here!” He must have pressed the button because the shark’s mouth started opening very slowly.
We ran out of there, and didn’t stop running until we got to the elevator. Out in the hallway, Perry gave me a high-five.
“That creepy laugh was awesome,” he said.
“Right?” I replied.
As you can see, I am not above taking credit for things that I really shouldn’t.
Still, I do like to be fair. So I added, “But it was Boris’s colossal fart that really did the trick.”
“That wasn’t my fart,” Boris said.
“Well, it wasn’t mine, either,” said Perry.
We all looked at Cat. She smiled back.
That girl is full of surprises.
After we collected our twenty bucks from Julius, we had Mr. Hooper give us change for it. We each got $5.00. I now had $25.00 in my piggy bank, since Grandma Loretta had sent me a twenty-dollar bill for my birthday a while back. Well, really Grandma Loretta sent me a squished bug in an envelope. That’s what she sends Gunther and me every birthday. I think it’s because she thinks boys like bugs. Which I do. Only I suspect she mails the bugs alive and they get squished on the way. This year it was a squished earwig. But Mom always throws the bug in the garbage and gives us a twenty instead.
I went back home. The second I walked into my apartment, I knew something was wrong. It was because Gunther was sitting on the living room couch, looking happy. That was just weird. I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Okay,” I said, “did you fill my socks with mayonnaise again?”
“Nope.”
“Then why do you look so happy?” I asked.
“Because Pandora is coming to visit this weekend,” he said.
I groaned. Pandora is only slightly better than putting your foot in a sock full of mayonnaise. She’s Gunther’s girlfriend, which right away tells you that there is something massively wrong with her. She still lives in Hog’s Head. One of the many strange things about Pandora is that she’s always scratching at her scalp. Maybe she’s raising a colony of ants on her head.
“Well, she’s not sleeping in my room,” I said, imagining that scabby scalp on my bed.
Mom wasn’t home. I guessed she was down at Diablo’s apartment, talking to his owners about his “raisins.” She says that Diablo’s problem is that he still has his raisins. She says he needs to go to a vet and have them removed. I didn’t know what she meant at first. Gunther explained it to me, and HOLY NACHOS, that was disturbing!
Honestly, I don’t think Mom should be going around telling people whose raisins need to be removed.
Anyway, I took Mom’s laptop into my bedroom. I’m only allowed to use it for homework, so I booted it up and wrote the first line of my report:
I knew he wasn’t exactly a hero cop, but I felt bad about scaring him with our Belly Button Poppers.
After that I Googled “Crazy Vehicle Lego Contest.” There it was! Build a motorized Lego vehicle. First prize was $500.
I could do a lot with $500.
Like buy more Lego sets.
You had to bring your Lego entry to the Livingstone Museum of Science in Manhattan that upcoming Saturday. That didn’t leave me much time, so I started thinking up ideas right away.
I considered a helicopter with a dragon head on it. Or a dune buggy that could do backflips. All of a sudden, though, I knew exactly what to build. A hovercraft! One that would really fly. I took out my sketchbook and started to draw up the design.
Suddenly I got the feeling that I was being watched. That’s been happening a lot lately.
“Okay,” I said. “Where are you?”
I checked under my desk. I looked in my toy basket. I checked the garbage can, and looked under my dresser.
Nothing.
Grrr.
It was when I sat down on my bed that I saw him. He was squatting on my pillow, staring at me with that spooky, blank expression.
“All right, Smoochie, scram!” I told him.
But he just kept staring at me.
In case you don’t know, Smoochie is Gunther’s pet rat.
This summer Smoochie fell off our thirty-fifth-floor terrace and parachuted down in a Fritos bag. Which may have been my fault, but that’s beside the point. Anyway, ever since then he keeps sneaking into my room and staring at me. It might be because he’s brain damaged from the fall. Or he might just be trying to freak me out for revenge.
“Okay, Smoochie, you asked for it,” I told him.
I went to my bookshelf and took down my secret anti-Smoochie weapon. His
name is Bob the goldfish. I bought him off a girl on the third floor a few weeks ago. Smoochie is terrified of him, no kidding. I held Bob’s bowl up to Smoochie’s face. That’s all it took. Smoochie squealed, jumped in the air, and shot out of the room.
My theory is that when Smoochie sees Bob the goldfish it gives him a flashback of when he used to live in a pet store and no one wanted to buy him. Sort of like Mr. Rollo’s flashback when our Belly Button Poppers went off, only in rat version.
Which made me wonder if one day something really bad would happen to me, and I would get flashbacks, too.
This isn’t really a chapter. It’s just a helpful tip: You should never wonder stuff like I just wondered in the last paragraph, because it’s practically a guarantee that bad things will happen. Which they did.
In school the next day a nurse came into our classroom to talk to us about good hygiene.
“But we learned that stuff in kindergarten,” said Trevor McBride.
“It won’t hurt to refresh your memory,” the nurse said, giving him a hard look.
I’m guessing she heard about Trevor eating the Starburst off the bottom of his sneaker.
First she asked us who uses hand sanitizers. A bunch of kids raised their hands, including me. I don’t actually use hand sanitizer, but I didn’t want people to think I was unsanitary.
Boris looked at me, horrified. “What do you use that gunk for?” he asked.
“To clean my hands, what do you think?” I said.
“You don’t need hand sanitizer to clean your hands,” he said. “Just lick them.” He actually licked his hands till they were all slimy. “Human saliva has special cleaning germs in it.”
“That’s dog saliva,” I said.
He snorted and smiled while shaking his head. “Where do you hear this crazy stuff, man?”
