Downright Dangerous

by Ellen Potter

  “Okay, class. Look at your hands,” the nurse continued. “Do they look clean?”

  “Yes!” we all said.

  “Well, they may not be as clean as they look.”

  That sounded pretty menacing. The nurse pulled this gel out of her bag. She went around the room squirting it on our hands, then told us to rub it in. After that, she went up to one of the boys in the front of the class and shined this little flashlight on his hands. His hands turned blue and had loads of glowing white splotches on them.

  “Those white splotches are bacteria,” the nurse told us.

  We all made barfing noises. I mean, I sort of felt sorry for the kid, but honestly, it looked like he had just been splashing around in the boys’ toilet.

  The nurse didn’t yell at us for making fun of him, which should have been a tip-off. But we were too busy fake-barfing to notice.

  “Now let’s see how many germs the rest of you have,” the nurse said.

  That shut us all up real quick.

  As it turned out, the other kids were completely disgusting, too. Their hands were glowing so much they looked radioactive.

  By the time the nurse got to me I was feeling pretty confident. I’m not the cleanest guy in the world, but I had JUST gone to the bathroom and luckily I remembered to wash my hands. I held out my palms. The nurse shone the light on them.

  Then everyone started making barfing noises.

  Because guess what? My perfectly clean hands had a billion glowing spots on them.

  “This is such a SCAM!” I yelled. “My hands are squeaky clean!! This is just a trick to embarrass us!! Don’t you nurses have something better to do than humiliate kids?”

  The nurse did not look very happy with me.

  “Settle down, Captain Mayhem,” Mr. K said.

  I may have overreacted. But I don’t always remember to wash my hands after I go to the bathroom, and I think I should at least get credit for it when I do.

  After that, the nurse shined her flashlight on Boris’s hands.

  You won’t believe this, but there wasn’t a single glowing spot on either of his hands. Not one. Even the nurse looked surprised. She held the light closer to his hands, then farther away.

  No spots.

  “Hmm. Those are the cleanest hands I’ve ever seen,” she said.

  “I licked them clean,” Boris said proudly.

  She laughed because she thought he was kidding.

  After the nurse finished grossing us all out, she showed us how to wash our hands properly.

  Then she said we shouldn’t eat things that were stuck to the bottoms of our shoes.

  After the nurse left, Mr. K told us that this week we were going to learn about different jobs.

  “Who knows what they want to be when they grow up?” he asked.

  Cat raised her hand. “A bounty hunter.”

  “Not surprising. Anybody else?”

  One kid wanted to be a veterinarian. Another kid named Jeffers said he wanted to be a sound-effects guy for movies. He said he already figured out how they make a sound effect in Star Wars.

  “If you hold one end of a Slinky up to your ear and wiggle the other end, it sounds just like a Star Wars blaster,” he said.

  This girl named Myra said she wanted to either drive the truck that picks up roadkill or open her own burrito stand.

  Note to future self: Never buy a burrito from anyone named Myra.

  I didn’t raise my hand. The thing is, I have no idea what I want to be. You would think I’d want to be a Lego designer or something like that. The problem is that when someone tells me I have to do something, I wind up not wanting to do it. I’m worried that being a Lego designer would make me hate Legos, and that would be tragic. I figured I should choose a job that people would tell me I shouldn’t do. I even made a list of those jobs:

  But most of these jobs end in injury or death, and as you know, I am a giant coward. So I figured I should rethink things.

  Boris’s hand shot up.

  “Yes, Big Chunks,” Mr. K said.

  “I’m going to go into the family business,” he said.

  Now this interested me, because I know nothing about Boris’s family. I’ve never even seen them. The only thing I know about them is that his mother makes good spaghetti and his father likes to pretend that his green beans can talk to each other. I know this because Perry once had dinner at their house.

  “What is your family’s business?” Mr. K asked.

  “They’re worm farmers,” said Boris.

  Note to self: Never eat spaghetti at Boris’s house.

  As it turned out, Boris’s family doesn’t actually eat the worms on their farm, which is called Red Wiggler Ranch. They sell the worms to people to use in compost bins. And once in a while people buy them to feed to their frogs.

  Boris told the class that the worms were called Red Wigglers, and that they have no ears and no eyes, but they have five hearts.

  “The better to love you with,” Boris said.

  I wished he hadn’t brought up the whole worm farming thing, though, because guess what they served for lunch in the cafeteria? Spaghetti and tomato sauce! It was impossible to eat it without thinking of those Red Wigglers. Cat took my spaghetti and gave me her box of raisins. But after I ate the first one, I started thinking about Diablo’s raisins, so I couldn’t eat those things either. I just went straight to my dessert.

  It was a bowl of rice pudding with a big blob of whipped cream on it. I’ll eat just about anything if you put whipped cream on it. Maybe even Red Wigglers. I stuck my spoon into the bowl and suddenly …

  SPLOOOOSH!!!!

  The rice pudding exploded. Actually EXPLODED! It splattered all over me. There was rice pudding on my face, in my hair, and down the front of my shirt. To make matters worse, I screamed when it exploded. I have a very high-pitched scream. Okay, I’ll just say it. I scream like a little girl on the teacup ride.

  Everyone in the lunchroom was staring at me. But I ignored them because I was staring down at something else. Sitting in the middle of my rice pudding bowl was a Lego Minifigure. It was a skeleton with an angry face, and he was holding something. I looked at it more closely. It looked like a turkey drumstick.

  “Did you enjoy your rice pudding, Otis?” said a voice behind me.

  I swung around and saw Sid Frackas. He was laughing. His tongue flopped all the way out of his mouth while he laughed and waggled around like a flounder.

  “You!” I cried. “How did you do that?”

  “Trade secret,” Sid said.

  “But how did you get it into my rice pudding?” I asked him.

  “Let’s just say I’m friends with the right people.”

  “You mean Flora the Lunch Lady?” I said.

  “That’s none of your business!” Sid’s ears started turning red. “Look, if you know what’s good for you, Otis Dooda, don’t even THINK of entering that Lego contest. This time it was only rice pudding. Next time it will be something ten times worse.”

  That freaked me out. Being covered with rice pudding in the middle of the school lunchroom was already pretty bad.

  Cat stood up and put her face so close to Sid’s that their noses touched. “Bring it on, Frackas,” she told him. “Otis isn’t afraid of you.”

  I really wish she hadn’t said that.

  “Hey, Sid.” Boris was holding up the Minifigure. “Why is this guy holding a turkey drumstick?”

  “That’s not a turkey drumstick,” Sid said. “That’s a club.”

  Cat looked at it again. “Nope. It’s a turkey drumstick.”

  “It’s a club!” Sid was getting really mad now.

  “Let me see,” said Cat, and took it from Boris.

  “Yeah, Sid. It’s definitely a turkey drumstick,” she said. “A skeleton holding a turkey drumstick isn’t scary, you know.”

  “Unless you’re a turkey,” said Boris.

  Just then the cafeteria monitor came up to us and asked me why I had food
all over me.

  “The rice pudding exploded,” I told her.

  “Okay, Mr. Funny Man, come with me,” she said.

  I told her that I preferred Captain Mayhem, but she pretended not to hear me.

  They sent me to the nurse’s office to get cleaned up. The nurse must have remembered my “scam” outburst about the germy hands, because she didn’t look happy to see me again. She looked even less happy when I told her that my rice pudding had exploded.

  “Did you win Troublemaker of the Year award at your old school, Mr. Dooda?” she asked me.

  “No,” I said. “I won Most Amazing Lunch Box of the Year award,” I said.

  In fact, I got that award back in Hog’s Head three years running.

  After I took a shower in the back of her office, the nurse gave me a fresh shirt to put on for the rest of the day. The only problem was the shirt was for someone much, much smaller than me. It didn’t even cover my belly button. Also it had a picture of a skunk on it and the words “I’m a Li’l Stinker.”

  I asked the nurse if she had any other shirts and she said she only kept clothes for kindergartners because they were usually the only ones who had “accidents.”

  I don’t think she meant the kind of accident that involved rice pudding, either.

  Unfortunately, gym was right after lunch. During jumping jacks I kept trying to yank the Li’l Stinker shirt down as far as it would go, but every time my arms went over my head, it pulled all the way up.

  Myra kept staring at me. Then she started waving her hand at the gym teacher. “Miss Danvers, Miss Danvers! How come Otis gets to wear a sports bra to gym?”

  Miss Danvers told her to keep jumping and mind her own business.

  By the time we got back to our class, people were really snickering at my shirt. Mr. K took one look at me, pulled out his own nylon jacket from the closet, and gave it to me to wear for the rest of the day.

  I think he may be the nicest teacher I’ve ever heard of.

  * * *

  After school, when Mom came to pick me up, she was walking Diablo and a new dog. It was a white greyhound with a cast on its front leg.

  “Oh no,” I groaned. “What’s this one’s problem?”

  “He chased a car and broke his leg,” Mom said.

  “No, I mean what’s his problem?” I said.

  Every dog that is enrolled into Horrible Hounds Academy is seriously demented in some way.

  “Oh, Archie is a sweetheart,” Mom said happily. “He just needs a few basic obedience lessons. Why are you wearing that shirt, Otis?”

  I didn’t tell her about the rice pudding. She wouldn’t have believed me anyway. I just told her I had an accident.

  She looked at me, very concerned.

  “You haven’t had an accident since kindergarten. And how do you have an accident on your shirt? I’ve never even heard of someone having an accident on their shirt!”

  Luckily a dog walked by just at that moment and Diablo went ballistic. Mom handed Archie’s leash to me. Then she did her usual embarrassing thing where she rolled Diablo on his back, put her teeth on his throat, and growled.

  That’s when the real chaos happened!

  It turned out that Archie did have a problem: Whenever he got nervous, he whizzed.

  The second Archie saw what was going on with Mom and Diablo, he started getting all jumpy. Then he lifted his leg to whiz. The only problem was that the cast on his front leg made him wobbly. While he was whizzing, he tottered and lurched and stumbled. He was spraying all over the place—on the window of a store, on some guy’s shoes, and then on Mom. She jumped right up, and her shirt had a big whiz splotch on it.

  “Now you’ve heard of two people who’ve had accidents on their shirts,” I said to her, pointing at the splotch.

  I got the Stink Eye for that one.

  After I finished my homework I headed over to Perry’s apartment.

  “Just in time, Otis!” Perry said when he opened the door. “Dad and I are going to test out some more of his party equipment. Want to help?”

  Testing out Mr. Hooper’s party equipment nearly always ends badly for me. In fact, like crocodile wrestling, it’s the kind of thing most people would tell me NOT to do.

  “Sure,” I said. “What are we testing?”

  “It’s an Invisibility Vest,” Mr. Hooper explained as he pulled two puffy orange vests out of the BOY STUFF box.

  “Come on, Mr. Hooper,” I said. “You don’t really think those vests will make us invisible, do you?”

  “Put them on, boys!” Mr. Hooper said excitedly, handing us each a vest. “And there’s more…”

  He rummaged through the BOY STUFF box and pulled out two weird-looking hats. They were big square pieces of black metal with straps on them. After he strapped them onto our heads, he attached some tubes and wires to the hats and the vests.

  This was already starting to feel like a bad idea. I glanced over at Perry. He didn’t look nervous at all.

  Perry has total faith in his dad.

  In all other ways, though, he is very intelligent.

  “These hats are actually solar panels,” Mr. Hooper said, “so we’re going to have to go outside to try them.”

  “But, Mr. Hooper,” I said as we headed toward the elevator, “how are we going to be invisible while wearing bright orange vests and solar panels on our heads? I think we’ll be the opposite of invisible.”

  Mr. Hooper just smiled.

  He stopped smiling, though, when he saw Julius the doorman in the lobby.

  Julius looked us over with a grim expression on his face.

  “Yes.” Mr. Hooper looked scared.

  “Make sure these boys come back with all their limbs intact, Mr. Hooper,” said Julius.

  “I will.”

  “And without their eyebrows missing from their faces,” Julius warned.

  Mr. Hooper hesitated.

  That made me even more nervous.

  Finally he said, “Sure thing, Julius.”

  As he hurried us outside, I caught a glimpse of Potted Plant Guy staring at us through the leaves. And laughing.

  When we were outside, Mr. Hooper said to us, “Question … what would you do if someone was shooting gum at you with the Bubble Blaster?”

  “I’d run away,” I said.

  Perry said, “I’d do a front flip, then I’d karate chop the Bubble Blaster right out of his hands.”

  He would, too. Perry has some crazy ninja skills.

  “Wrong!” Mr. Hooper cried. “You would use your Invisibility Vest!” He whipped out a piece of paper from his back pocket and started reading instructions out loud.

  “‘Flip on the switch in the front of the vest,’” he read.

  Perry and I looked down at our vests, found the switches, and flipped them on.

  “‘Next, flap your arms like a chicken,’” Mr. Hooper read.

  “Are you sure, Dad?” Perry said.

  “That’s what it says.” Mr. Hooper waved the instructions at us.

  Perry shrugged, then started flapping. I started flapping, too.

  You would think people would stare at two kids who were wearing solar panels on their heads and flapping like chickens. But mostly people didn’t pay much attention to us. At first, anyway.

  After a minute or so something odd began to happen. Green smoke started to seep out of a tube in the back of our vests.

  “Um, Dad. I think we’re on fire,” Perry said.

  We did. But now it was looking like we wouldn’t come back with our eyebrows still on our faces.

  “Hey, Otis,” Perry said. “Is it my imagination, or does this smoke smell bad?”

  I took a sniff.

  “Uggggh! It smells like clam chowder and body odor!”

  The green smoke started getting thicker. People were beginning to stare.

  “Holy cow, what did you two eat for lunch?” one guy said as he walked by, holding his nose. “You’re tooting green smoke!”

  �
�That’s a Texas Bean Bomber,” a guy told him. “I read about them in a medical book.”

  “Nah, that’s a Thunder Dumpling,” a lady said. “My grandfather used to do those after Sunday dinner.”

  “Don’t stop flapping!” Mr. Hooper shouted. “Just think … if someone had a Bubble Blaster, they wouldn’t be able to find you in all that smoke!”

  More people were staring now. Most of them were laughing.

  All I kept thinking was:

  Right about then, I spotted two of the Pony Tag girls from school walking up the street toward us.

  “Oh no,” I squeaked. I flapped my arms faster so that I could become “invisible” quicker. But when I saw the girls just a few yards away, staring at the green smoke, I panicked and started to run. The only problem was, I couldn’t see where I was going with all that smoke.

  I slammed into something. Luckily it was soft-ish. I think it might have been a lady. I’m pretty sure that she was fine, though, because I heard her say,

  Finally all the street noise stopped, so I figured I was inside a building. Since I’d stopped flapping my arms, the smoke gradually began to clear. My eyes stung a little, so it took a minute to see where I was. You’ll never believe it, but by some miracle I had made it back to the Tidwell Towers lobby and was standing right next to Julius.

  I felt for my eyebrows. They were still there.

  “Good news, Julius!” I said. “I still have all my limbs and my eyebrows!”

  I knew he wasn’t going to be too happy about me stinking up his lobby, so I wanted to keep things positive. But the look on Julius’s face wasn’t the look I was expecting. Instead of looking mad, he looked terrified.

  “DON’T DO IT!!” he yelled.

  “Don’t do what?” I asked.

  But Julius wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at Potted Plant Guy.