by Lorri Horn
“Look, Karen. I don’t love the idea of Alaska any more than you do. But this is my chance to finally get out from under his thumb—really make it mine, you know? And Alaska is beautiful. It will be an adventure. Clean air. The Northern Lights. Bears! Eagles! Whales!”
“But, Don. That’s a vacation, not our home. I know this is a tremendous opportunity, and you’ve been frustrated to say the least, but are you so unhappy with how things are that you’d really relocate us all to Alaska?”
“What awe you doing, Dewey?” Dewey felt hot breath on his face. Pooh Bear had climbed under the bed with him and whispered so loudly in his face that she might as well have spoken it aloud.
“Nothing. I lost something. I was looking for it.”
“I couwd hewp, Dewey. What did you wooze?”
“I wost . . . Argh! I lost a nickel. See it anywhere?”
Pooh Bear looked all over beneath his bed and found a pencil eraser and a marble he really liked and was glad to have back.
“Thanks,” he said. “That’s OK. I have another nickel.”
“I have a nickew in my woom. You couwd use it if you give it back,” and she ran out to go get it for him. She really can be kind of sweet, he reflected, when she isn’t bugging the bajeepers out of me.
Shoot. She’d only be gone for a few minutes and Dewey needed time to think. He hadn’t gotten a lot of helpful information. He had recorded it though, so at least he could replay it later and see if he’d missed anything that might be helpful.
Right now he needed to get back to work on Georgina’s case. He hoped Pooh Bear would sidetrack herself along the way. He really didn’t have time to hang out with her now. He climbed out from under the bed.
“Deewweyyy. I think I have a nickew,” she said, and she proceeded to dump coins from a jar the size of her head all over his bed, and began to dig through them.
“Hewe you go!” she said, handing him a quarter.
“Thanks,” said Dewey. He dug out two dimes from her pile and handed them back to her.
“Here’s your change.”
Rhinotillexomania
So, Georgina’s dad was what you’d call a real nose picker, alright.
Dewey followed him around for a few days and all the stuff Dewey had been taught as a kid to stop doing—belching, yawning loudly, and sure, he’d admit it, nose picking—this guy dished them out like a preschooler during story time.
From his spot in the closet, Dewey had a clear view of Georgina’s dad at his desk. First there was the sideways thumb pick. Dewey spied him in front of the computer with his thick left thumb up the side of his left nostril. As his right hand rested on the mouse and flipped through the day’s news stories, the left thumb, supported by the pointer and middle fingers against the side of his nose and his cheek, would start its work—up to the top and slide down . . . up to the top and slide down . . . up to the, ah! Got one. Pull, pull, pull with the left thumb until he’d slid out his morsel. Then he would mindlessly roll and roll it and . . . drop it onto the carpet.
He’d go back again until he’d made an entire sweep of his left nostril and then, crossing his left arm over to his right nostril, continue to work the mouse with his right hand and sweep the sides of his right nostril for boogers.
Dewey noted he’d stop his “work” if the phone rang or someone came in. But then he’d go right back to it.
Georgina’s dad punctuated the end of each nose picking session by a pinch to his nostrils with his thumb and forefinger three times, and then he’d rub under his nose with his pointer finger.
It went the same way each and every time he sat down in front of a computer or television—he’d sit down and, bam, reach for the stars. Dewey took extra care to wipe the bottom of his shoes before going back in his own home.
Car rides had an entirely different style of picking. Dewey discovered this by actually following him to work. Clara sat on four pillows to make herself tall enough to reach the steering wheel of her Buick station wagon. The dashboard was covered in toy frogs she’d collected, which had attached themselves from years in the sun.
She wore big sunglasses—each lens was the size of the magnifying glass in Dewey’s science kit. She looked like some sort of alien-fly-bug creature, but she had been riding in cars almost since the advent of them, and she knew how to handle the road . . . even in a station wagon!
Dewey held onto his hat as they hit the curves and sat in the back, slouched down in his seat with his own dark glasses on and his notebook out, observing Georgina’s dad.
“Look at that, Clara. The car ride pick is a full finger insert,” he commented as he attempted to take notes while the car bumped along. “More of an excavation than a sweep. Looks to be some wet stuff along with the boogers he’s, eww, great! Rolling up it in little balls for a while—wait, I’m starting the clock—before actually setting them free on the highway,” he narrated from the back seat. “Three minutes on that one!”
“Get over a lane, would ya, Clara? I need some cars between us for cover.”
Dewey put his binoculars up to his eyes just in time to catch Georgina’s dad wiping lingering snot from his fingers onto a tissue in a nearby Kleenex box. As far as Dewey could tell, though, Georgina’s dad didn’t actually remove the tissue from the box, but instead just wiped it on the one still in there. Dewey made a mental note to never use tissues at Georgina’s house.
When he got home at the end of the day, that man was still at his picking. Dewey wondered how on earth one man could actually produce so many nuggets to pick.
“Eww! Nuggets?” Seraphina cried when he reported his findings so far.
“I’m sorry,” Dewey feigned a formal, nerdy voice. “I should have said ‘dried up nasal mucus.’”
“Not helping!”
“You’re too picky.”
“Ha!”
“Seriously. Don’t be a snot bag about this. I need help.”
“Dewey!”
“OK, OK. I’ll snot. I mean stop!”
Seraphina was laughing as Clara came in with a fresh batch of what looked like brownies.
“Brownies?” asked Dewey in surprise.
“Yes, I decided to try something bar shaped for a change. Do you approve?”
“This is higghly irreeeglrar,” he glugged, his mouth full of brownie and milk.
But he went back for more, so Clara took that as an affirmative and went back to her baking. If these went over well, she planned on doing the next batch with Tootsie Rolls as the chocolate base, though that probably meant poor Michael would never try one!
“So, next steps?” asked Seraphina as she reached for another brownie.
“Honestly, this one has me a bit stumped. I think I’ll let it percolate a bit and move on to his burping and see where that takes me. He yawns really loudly, too, sometimes—like, too loudly. Georgina didn’t mention it, but I think it might be part of the picture here.
“Anyway, he seems like a nice enough guy. Just some advice for you. If you go over to Georgina’s house, I’d keep your shoes and socks on.”
“Why?” asked Seraphina.
“Can’t really say more. Client confidentiality and all. Just trust me on this one.”
“OK,” she replied. “Any updates on your life?”
“Nope. Last I heard we’re set to move to Alaska this summer and nothing, not even my mother, the person who gets cold when the temperature drops below seventy degrees, is going to be able to stop it from happening.”
✀
Dewey stayed up late that evening replaying the tape of his parents’ conversation and making some notes.
Dad wants to go, not Mom
Mom said Dad “unhappy”
Also said “frustrated”
Dad said “get out from under thumb”
Why is Dad frustrated? Whose thum
b? What’s in Alaska?
Dewey felt like throwing over the chair in his room. Why did Pooh Bear have to come in and interrupt? How was he going to get the answers to these questions? He needed to think like Dewey, the parent-problem solver, not like the client. He sat down in the chair and put his face in his hands. Then he took out the sheet he’d filled out for Clara and tried to look at it as if he were Dewey Fairchild, PPS, not the guy whose parents were causing him problems.
OK. Step one: he needed to follow Dad around at work and see what was going on there. But how could he go unnoticed? He couldn’t. He wished he could just bug him with some spy device. Wait. He couldn’t go, but maybe Seraphina could! He’d send her in as a dental patient and have her spy for him. Maybe Colin, too.
Yes! That could maybe work as a start. With that idea he could finally breathe easier and head off to bed without too much tossing and turning.
The whole thing seemed so unreal. He wasn’t really sure what to do, but at least he felt like he’d be trying to do something now.
