by Lee Wardlaw
“Philip!” a female voice called from the kitchen. “What’s the trouble, are you swearing at the customers again, don’t make me come out there!”
Cold worms slithered down my neck.
That voice. It sounded uncomfortably familiar . . .
“Do not trouble yourself, my leetle cheeken wing!” Pierre called, panic strangling his words. “All eez under control!”
“Did you squash another hat, you’re only issued four a month, they don’t grow on trees, I don’t want to dock your pay, but as assistant manager—”
Pierre frantically ironed his hat with his hands. He wrenched it onto his head. “My ’at eez fine, Juliette! Every-zing eez fine.”
“Don’t call me Juliette,” ordered the voice, distaste saturating her tone. “And I am not your little chicken wing! When you’ve finished with that customer, get back here on the double, I’ve got two club meetings I’m late for and this grease trap isn’t going to clean itself!”
“Oui, my leetle sweet beak!” Pierre crooned. He glared at us and skittered from view. I heard slicing and scooping and pouring, then the roar of ice-grinding blenders. He reappeared and thrust three overflowing “peech smoozies” across the counter. “Zay are, ’ow you say, on zee house. Take zem and go! Queek-lee. And pleeze—” Pierre glanced over his shoulder again and whispered, eyes desperate: “Do not breethe a word of zis to Goldee.”
I zipped my lips. “Your secret is safe wis us.”
“Zank you for dining at Lee-kee-tee Spleet Cheek, sir! Do come visit us again”—he lowered his voice to a growl—“over your dead bodeez!”
I handed two smoothies to Hiccup, grabbed mine, and headed to the booth where Joonbi waited. I elbowed Hic to sit beside her, but his face paled as if stung. He scooted next to me instead.
“Is one of those mine?” Joonbi asked.
I elbowed Hic again. He inched Joonbi’s cup across the table, never taking his eyes off her.
“Thank you!” She plunged in a straw.
“Hic!” said Hic.
My brain floundered for something to say besides Nice weather we’re having and Pardon the drool, but my friend is in love with you.
“So tell us,” I began, “why were those hapkido students taking your picture and asking for autographs?”
“Truth?” Joonbi sucked a long slurp and dabbed her mouth with a napkin. “You two really don’t know?”
I shook my head.
“That’s so refreshing, I’m not sure I want to tell you!” she said, but she smiled.
“We could talk about something else. Like . . . Hector! Hector is an amazing artist. Tell Joonbi about the graphic novel you’re drawing, Hector.”
Hiccup hic-choked on his smoothie.
Joonbi removed the straw from her drink and licked it. “Okay, you twisted my arm. Here’s the thing. Father and my harabujy, grandfather, are taekwondo grandmasters in Korea. They’re world famous. Best of the best. If you’re serious about taekwondo, you want to train with them.”
“Are you famous too?” I asked.
“My sisters and I are. Were. As a team. There are six of us. I’m the youngest.”
“That’s just like Hector,” I said. “Except he has five older brothers, right, Hector?”
Hic hick-nodded.
“My sisters and I, we’ve studied with Father and Harabujy practically since we somersaulted out of our cribs,” Joonbi went on. “My entire life, I’ve done nothing but train, travel, compete; train, travel, compete! Until now.” She slurped more of the frosty drink.
“Why did you stop? Were you injured?”
Joonbi twisted the straw. “In a way. My stomach is giving me trouble. The doctors say stress, the pressure of competing, blah, blah, blah. They’re running all kinds of tests on me.” She made a face. “Last week, I had to drink the most awful, chalky stuff!”
Hiccup straightened. “Barium,” he said. “A metallic powder. When mixed with hic! water and imbibed, it coats the inside of the upper and lower GI tract, making the intestines visible via hic! X-ray.”
“That’s the stuff! How did you know?”
“As a youngster,” Hiccup went on, “whenever my older brothers hic! found me to be interminably annoying, they would lock me out of the house. My mother finally proffered me my own key. She instructed I should keep it somewhere safe. So I hic! did.”
Joonbi laugh-dribbled smoothie juice, then grimaced as if something jaggedly metal was inching down her throat. “Truth?”
I nodded. I’d never forget the key incident because immediately afterward, Mom started letting Hiccup hang out at our house whenever he liked.
“I can top that story!” Joonbi said. “Once, during a training stunt, my harabujy swallowed a chopstick. It was stuck inside of him for twenty years!”
“Did he get splinters?” Hiccup asked.
“Worse,” Joonbi said with an impish smile. “Termites.”
Hic grinned. “Did the doctors perform surgery? Or . . . hic! fumigation?”
Joonbi cracked up.
Gee, these two were made for each other! Maybe I should take this opportunity to disappear . . .
“Anyway,” Joonbi continued, “medical tests take time, so the doctors advised I slow down, enjoy some R and R for several months. I didn’t want to quit studying martial arts completely, though. It’s like breathing to me! So I switched to hapkido. It’s not easier. But it is a less competitive discipline. Already my stomach’s a teensy bit better. But until the doctors know for sure what’s wrong, we’re staying put. No traveling, no competing.”
“Here hic! good,” Hic said.
“Yes, but now I’ve got a different kind of stress.” Joonbi ripped open another straw, twisting that one too. “My sisters are furious with me! Like I’m doing this stomach thing on purpose just to break up the act. Umma, my mom, she understands. Father is . . . disappointed. But he keeps it mostly to himself. Not my sisters! They love the limelight and the paparazzi and the fans and the traveling and the boys. So they remind me, every single day, that I’ve ruined their lives. It makes me feel so guilty . . .”
“Hector’s brothers use him like a personal punching bag,” I said. “That’s why he signed up for hapkido, isn’t it, Hector?”
“Inhic! deed,” he answered. “But a physical defense is not always enough. Verbal attacks can be more painful, as Joonbi is aware.”
“But I found something to help ease that pain!” Joonbi unzipped her bag and dug deep. “Don’t worry, it’s not barium.” Then, with a yip of delight, she held aloft a tattered, handmade booklet. “I found this in the house we’re renting. It was rammed into a corner closet. Whenever my stomach hurts, and especially when my sisters are torturing me, I lock myself in my room and read this from cover to cover. It’s hilarious! I laugh so hard I can’t help feeling better—for a while, anyway. Too bad it wasn’t written about sisters. Take a look!”
Hiccup didn’t have to. I didn’t either. We both recognized the thin, stapled pages, the red construction paper cover . . .
“He hic! author,” Hic said, pointing at me.
“What?” Joonbi asked.
“He said I’m the author,” I confessed.
“What do you mean?”
“I wrote it.”
“You wrote what?”
“The book.”
“What book?”
“That book.”
“This book?”
I nodded.
“You wrote this book? You wrote 101 Ways to Bug Your Parents ? You are Stephen J. Wyatt? TRUTH?”
I nodded again.
“Oh!” Joonbi gasped, her eyes aglaze. “I think I love you!”
Chapter Fifteen
Five minutes later, Hiccup stomped like a tantrum-throwing toddler down the street toward the bus stop.
I waved good-bye to Joonbi and hurried after him.
“Wait up!” I yelled. “What’s wrong?”
He hurled the accusation in my face: “You’re secretly writing anot
her book!”
“What are you talking about?”
“As if you did not know!”
“I don’t!”
“You do!”
I didn’t.
Back at Lickety-Split Chick, we’d just finished our smoothies when Joonbi spotted her mom’s car zipping past the window toward Hapkido Family Fitness. “Early, as usual!” she groused, scooting from the booth. “That’s number fifty-two on her list of 101 Ways to Bug Your Youngest Daughter.”
“We should trade mothers,” I said. “Even if Mom swears she’ll pick me up in exactly one hour, I always have to multiply that number by a factor of four. Don’t I, Hector?”
He pursed his lips, but a gruff hic! escaped.
“Truth?” Joonbi twisted her hair back into its spiky ponytail. “How buggable!”
“She doesn’t do it on purpose,” I explained. “Mom’s a scientist who also has ADHD, so she gets distracted easily. Dad too. That’s one reason I wrote 101 Ways to Bug Your Parents—to get their attention.”
Joonbi hoisted her gear bag. “I have a million questions about your book! How you researched it, how you wrote it, did you test every suggestion? My favorite is number nine: Laugh with a mouthful of milk until some squirts out your nose. I accidentally tried that last Sunday morning while eating a bowl of Rice Krispies. Snap, crackle, yuck! Umma didn’t notice, but my sisters were so grossed out they steered clear of me for half an hour. Best thirty minutes of my life—till now!”
Another gruff hic! from Hic.
“After hapkido tomorrow,” Joonbi said, “want to get together again for smoothies? My treat. I can’t believe it! Usually I’m the person people are in awe of. But I’ve met Stephen J. Wyatt: author, inventor . . . my hero!”
Then she’d buzzed off to meet her mom—but not before blowing me a kiss.
Eep.
“Your feigned innocence is futile,” Hic continued now, “and an insult to my intelligence. It is clear you are writing a new book entitled 101 Ways to Bug Your Friends. And number one on that list is: Steal your best friend’s girl!”
I would’ve laughed if he didn’t look so murderous. “I didn’t steal your girl. How could I? She’s not even yours! And it’s not like I tried to make her like me.”
“I witnessed, firsthand, your brazen, blatant flirtations!”
I touched my cheek where the invisible smooch had landed. “Trust me, Hic. I wasn’t the one flirting.”
“Then please explain your flushed expression.”
“Joonbi’s gushiness is embarrassing!”
“Then why encourage her with all that smiling?”
“That’s called acting friendly.”
“And all those questions?”
“Somebody had to ask her questions, Hic! Why didn’t you jump in? Didn’t you notice how I kept steering the conversation your way?”
“Yes, of course. Did you not notice Joonbi’s and my humorous interchange? Things were going swimmingly, until—”
“Ha. Did you bother to utter more than a couple of sentences? More than a couple of syllables? NoooOOOOooo.”
“I had the hiccups,” he defended. “I was awaiting their termination before engaging in a lengthy discourse.”
“Yeah,” I muttered, “like that was going to happen in this century.”
Without even checking for graffiti or gum wads, Hiccup flung himself onto the bus stop bench. He held himself tight as if wrapped in MM’s cape against a chill.
“Maybe we should trade mothers,” he mimicked. “How dare you do this to me, your best friend! Joonbi and I, we are a perfect match! She likes hapkido. I like hapkido. She has five annoying sisters. I have five annoying brothers. She has medical issues and I have—”
“Hiccup, read my lips.” I thunked beside him and focused on his zit-freckled face. “I’m. Not. Interested. In. Joon. Bi.”
“Why not? What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing’s wrong with her!”
“Is she not beautiful? Brilliant?”
“Sure!”
“Brawny?”
“She could toss you across the street farther than I could spit, but that doesn’t mean I like her.”
The bus arrived. The doors flumped open.
Hic toddler-stomped up the steps.
I started after him.
He whirled on me and said through gritted teeth, “Take the next bus.”
“What?”
He dropped his bag and snapped into a fighting stance. His eyes blazed a ferocity I’d only seen in his drawings. “These hands are not officially registered, but make no mistake: They are lethal weapons. Take the next bus. I no longer wish to be best friends. I no longer wish to be friends, period.”
“Fine!” I shot back. “Who needs friends like you? Not when you’re working on a ‘bug your best friend’ list of your own! Not when number one on that list is: Offer to take care of his pets while he’s on vacation—then murder them! ”
The blaze in Hic’s eyes sputtered, shrank—and died.
“Door’s closin’, boys,” the bus driver said.
“Endeavor to keep your trousers on, sir!” Hiccup snapped.
Then, voice thin, he said, “Stephen. I already apologized. What more can I do? What happened to the Guys was an accident. I offered recompense, a sincere gesture of atonement. How did you respond to my overtures? With revenge!” Embers smoldered again in his eyes. “So I swear—no, I vow—on the sacred cape of MM: Joonbi is the only love of mine you will ever steal from me!”
That night, alone in my room, I tried to do my first-day-of-high-school homework. This was difficult because:1. I hadn’t retrieved my chem and trig books from where Marcos the Moke tossed them into the hall at Patrick Henry
2. The phone kept interrupting me. I didn’t want to talk to anyone unless it was Hiccup calling to apologize (which it never was), so I asked Mom and Dad to tell people who called me that I’d been forbidden to chat until my homework was finished (which it never was—see numbers 1, 2, and 3)
3. I was too busy worrying about:a. How to prevent Marcos and his goons from finding me again at PHHS and using my sore nose as their personal golf bag
b. Hiccup hating my guts and every other organ in my body (as if I cared!) because of his mistaken assumption that I’d stolen Joonbi
c. The heart-wrenching hurt and disappointment Hayley would feel if “Cullen” didn’t send her an e-mail
I stared at the empty aquarium and sighed. In the olden days (three months ago!), whenever I had a problem and Hiccup wasn’t around, I consulted the Guys. They’d been perfect confidants, expert listeners who never argued with me, never accused me of stealing their little fishy friends . . .
But now—
I hoisted the tank and shoved it into a moldy corner of my closet (where my failed invention Flapjacks in a Can had oozed through its aerosol nozzle). Into it I flung everything I could find of Hiccup’s: a hypoallergenic sweatshirt; two early editions of Medicine Man comics; rough drafts of the cover drawing for 101 Ways to Bug Your Parents; stubs of stray colored pencils; and a half-empty box of surgical masks.
Last, I tossed in the container of fish flakes, and slammed the door so hard my window rattled.
The Nice Alarm tsked-tsked.
“It’s just the two of us now, kiddo,” I said, “so no scolding.”
I sank into my desk chair and pulled from my pack the notebook in which I’d scribbled and scratched ideas for Cullen’s e-mail to Hayley.
Ugh. Even worse than I remembered.
“Why is this so hard?” I asked the alarm. “Maybe I’m not as good at writing as I am at inventing. Or sneezing. But I’m a clever wordsmith. Everyone says so. Mom. Dad. My teachers. Hayley. Even the great Mr. Sterling Patterson!”
I traced the outline of the Nice Alarm’s toad-like body with a finger.
“That’s how I got the interview with him at the convention. I wrote a humdinger of a letter as president of a phony invention company. Remember how surprised
and impressed he looked when I waltzed in with you?”
The alarm tsked-tsked again.
“Yeah, too bad he wasn’t as impressed with what you can do. But when I told him I’d written and sold 101 Ways to Bug Your Parents to earn extra money for my trip, he asked for a souvenir copy! He asked for my ‘Bug Your Teachers’ list too. So if I can write well enough to impress—and fool!—a man of Mr. Patterson’s intelligence, stature, and experience . . .”
Do-it, do-it, do-it, ticked the Nice Alarm.
“Okay, okay. Don’t rush me!”
I switched on my computer, clicked into my e-mail program, cracked my knuckles, and typed:TO:[email protected]
FROM:[email protected]
SUBJECT:Homework assignment ;-)
Dear Hayley,
How are you? I am fine.
Ugh. That was the kind of letter Cullen would’ve written in second grade—to his grandmother.
You can do better, Steve. Think “Cullen.” Think “Hawaiian.”
Howzit, Hayley!
The first time I saw you, I got chicken skin.
My brain turned into a whoosher. That’s what a cute wah-hee-nay like you does to a Hawaiian lug like me. I wish you could be my kwee-poe.
But I don’t have enough koa to stand up to your dad.
I don’t want to talk stink about him, but he thinks I’m a moke (rhymes with Coke) and you’re a kaykee.
So to stay out of peeleekeeya, we’ll just have to be satisfied being pen pals.
Aloha, Cullen H.
Double ugh. Hayley’s SOS would spot this fake faster than you could say forgery. And if Cullen ever read it (perish the thought!), he’d sic the goddess Pele on me with a volcanic vengeance.
I nibbled a fingernail.
How in the name of Thomas Alva Edison did people compose love letters?
My brain rewound to the creation of the Nice Alarm and my bugging books. All three required two crucial elements: research and experimentation.
I’d already tried experimentation—and failed. So maybe research . . .
