101 Ways to Bug Your Friends and Enemies

by Lee Wardlaw

  “No—thanks—” I gasped. “I’m—good. For now.”

  It was another twenty minutes before my heart beat normally again.

  When I finally made it home, the kitchen phone was ringing.

  “Steve?” Mom’s muffled voice called from the downstairs bathroom. “Quick, get the phone! It’s for you!”

  How does she know that?

  My hand hovered, trembling, above the receiver.

  Don’t answer it. There isn’t anyone you want to talk to right now.

  Truth, as Joonbi would say. The only people who could be calling me were: Goldie, to gossip about Hiccup, Pierre, July, Joonbi, Marcos—or all five; Pierre, to cuss me out with multiple, vehement carottes! for leading Goldie the Fox straight to his chicken coop of love; Joonbi, wanting to wheedle more bugging ways out of me to seek sisterly revenge; or Hayley, to gush even more over “Cullen’s” eloquent letters.

  “Sweetheart, answer the phone! I told him you’d be home by now!”

  Him? Had the King of the Goons discovered where I lived?

  I approached the receiver as if it were a rattlesnake. Lifted it slowly to my ear. Uttered a wary, wavery “H-hello?”

  “Is that you, Stephen!” a voice boomed, nearly puncturing my eardrum. “Sterling Patterson here! You might not remember me, but we met a couple of weeks ago at the Invention Convention®! Ring a bell?”

  “Sure, yeah, yes!” Geez, how could he think I’d forget?

  “I have a proposition for you, Stephen!”

  My ear winced, but my heart and hopes leaped. “You’ve changed your mind? You want to buy the Nice Alarm?”

  “Not at all! Clever item. Ingenious! But not right for Patterson Enterprises. No, it’s your books I’m calling about!”

  “My . . . books?”

  “I passed them along to a New York friend of mine! Fess Garrison, editor in chief at Ridiculous Reads! They specialize in goofy gift books. He thinks yours could be the start of a terrific series! He wants to offer a contract!”

  The bathroom door flew open with a slam. Mom burst-waddled into the kitchen, flapping her wet hands. “Who is it, is it Mr. Patterson?” she asked. “Did he tell you the great news?”

  “I don’t understand,” I said into the phone. “A contract for what?”

  Mr. Sterling boomed even louder, if that was possible. “To publish 101 Ways to Bug Your Parents and 101 Ways to Bug Your Teachers!”

  My mouth went dry. My tongue went wooden. I looked at Mom and croaked: “C-c-con-twact!”

  She bobbled her head. Grabbed my arms. Then whispered, “How much? Ask him how much!”

  I licked my lips. “How much would I have to pay?”

  He laughed. “They pay you, Stephen! I can’t speak for Garrison, of course, he’ll be the one to negotiate terms with you and your parents! But you’ll receive an advance against royalties somewhere in the vicinity of—”

  He named a monetary figure that made my knees buckle.

  I repeated it to Mom. She clutched her belly and did an awkward jig. “College!” she whispered. “That’ll pay for college!”

  And my inventions.

  My mind reeled.

  No more buying nicked nuts and bent bolts from the bargain bin at the hardware store! No more struggling to save every penny I earned at Gadabout! Sure, I’d still work there for fun. I’d never leave Gadabout—except on occasion to promote the Nice Alarm—because now I didn’t have to search for a novelty company to produce it. I could afford to produce it myself!

  “Are you there, Stephen!” Mr. Patterson boomed. “May I give Garrison your phone number so he can discuss contract details with your parents?”

  Yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes!

  I cleared my throat. Tried to sound calm, professional, as a good inventor should. “Yes, that will be fine, Mr. Patterson. What about Hiccup?”

  “Hiccup?” A pause. “Say again! I think we have a bad connection!”

  “Oh, sorry. Hector Denardo. He’s my—he’s the guy who did the illustrations for 101 Ways to bug Your Parents. Would they like his phone number too?”

  “That won’t be necessary! Ridiculous Reads won’t be offering a contract for Denardo’s cartoons.”

  “They—won’t? Why not?”

  Mom stopped jigging. Her gaze fixed on mine, brows crimping with the same confusion and apprehension I felt in my stomach.

  “Ridiculous Reads prefers to hire from their own stable of illustrators,” Mr. Patterson explained. “Their artists are professionally trained! They have years of experience in the world of publishing!”

  “But Hiccup’s drawings are half the book,” I said. “No one at my school was interested in buying 101 Ways to Bug Your Parents until we added Hector’s drawings. They’re what made my lists so funny and real!”

  “Garrison is firm, Stephen!” Mr. Patterson said. “He doesn’t like Mr. Denardo’s drawings. He wants only you for this series!”

  I closed my eyes.

  I couldn’t believe what I was about to do. Mom wouldn’t believe what I was about to do.

  “Then all I have to say is—” I swallowed. “Sorry. Not interested .”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  On Friday afternoon, I found a copy of The Jeffersonian Times, Jefferson Middle’s newspaper, wedged into my locker. A pink sticky note, embellished with From the Desk of Goldie Laux, was attached to it. The note said:See what happens when I don’t get the

  Exclusives I’m promised?

  When you’re ready to spill your guts, give

  me a call! -G.

  My stomach clenched as I opened the newspaper and saw what splashed across the front page:BIGWIG BUYS BRAINY BOY’S BUGGING BOOKS!

  by Goldie Laux, The Snoop with the Scoop

  Ridiculous Reads, a publishing company that specializes in goofy gift books, has offered Stephen “Sneeze” Wyatt a six-figure contract for 101 Ways to Bug Your Parents and three sequels. The hilarious but handy self-help booklet, written by Wyatt and illustrated by former sidekick Hector “Hiccup” Denardo during summer school last year, would’ve been the first of a four-book series, including: 101 Ways to Bug Your Teachers, 101 Ways to Bug Your Brothers and Sisters, and 101 Ways to Bug Your Friends and Enemies. “Would’ve been?” you ask. Yep! For reasons known only to him, Wyatt has reportedly turned down the deal. This reporter’s comment to Sneeze: ARE YOU CRAZY?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

  Mom had uttered a similar comment after I ended my call with Mr. Patterson.

  “Stephen, are you insane?!?!?!?!?!”

  Then she slumped onto the kitchen stool, patting her belly with one hand, fanning herself with Hiccup’s dish-towel blossom with the other. “I’m sorry, honey. That was my hormones screaming. This is your decision. But such an important one! Don’t you think we should’ve discussed it before you said no? Think of your future! It’s money for college—and beyond! Help me to understand . . .”

  Ha. I barely understood it myself. I mean, Hiccup and I weren’t even friends anymore! Why hadn’t I just taken the money and run?

  Because . . .

  Because as I stood there—shocked and silent with the phone in my hand, Mr. Patterson waiting for my answer—the words Hiccup threw at me the other day at the bus stop kept whirlpooling inside my head:

  Joonbi is the only love of mine you will ever steal from me!

  I knew what Hic’s drawings meant to him. What getting them published meant to him. He loved his art way more than he loved Joonbi (though he might not know it). His work was a huge part of what made him Hector, just as the Nice Alarm and my inventions (and yeah, even my writing) were a huge part of what made me me. So I couldn’t sell 101 Ways to Bug Your Parents without his illustrations. It wasn’t wholly mine to sell. We’d done that book together. It was us. What used to be us.

  After a long discussion at dinner, Mom came to understand my reasoning. Dad too. They patted my back and told me how proud they were, how I’d made the right decision and what a true-blue friend of Hiccup�
��s I was. Double ha. If only they knew that friendship had turned black-and-blue . . .

  “Goldee’s words are as sharp as zee guillotine, oui?” Pierre said from behind me now, interrupting my thoughts. He flung open his locker, flung in four books, grabbed three others, and flung shut the metal door with a fierce bang. “Zey can make you sick like zee poisoning of ptomaine.”

  “Pierre, you’re actually talking to me?” I asked. “I figured after I blew your cover with July, you’d never speak to me again.”

  “Eye must admeet, at first eye wuz fureeous wis you,” he said, fingering the faded moosetache beneath his nose. “But now eet eez Goldee ’oo raises my ’ackles! Now eet eez Goldee eye refuse to speek to!”

  “Goldie? Why?”

  “Zat carotte! Zat feemale Robespierre! She ’as told zee entire school of my fooleeshness!” He flicked a finger at the newspaper, his face reddening. “Read Goldee’s Gosseep and weep—eef you daire!” He clicked his heels together, bowed, pulled his beret down over one side of his face—and fled.

  With a gulp, I opened the paper again.

  Goldie’s Gossip

  continued from Page One

  by Goldie Laux, The Snoop with the Scoop

  KITCHEN KING FALLS FOR QUEEN OF THE CLUBS!

  Oo-la-la! Finicky food snob Pierre Noel recently traded his chef’s hat for a cashier’s badge when he took a counter job at Lickety-Split Chick. Pourquoi? you may well ask. Because he stumbled upon something there even hotter than the jalapeño wings: July Smith (former member of 50 extracurricular clubs at Jefferson Middle), to be egg-zact! Alas, Pierre’s attempts to cook up a love potion filled with sugar and spice and smoothies-with-ice failed to ruffle even one of Mademoiselle Smith’s feathers. Her hard-boiled response to Pierre’s confession of amour? “Le yuck!” Now that July has flown the coop, Pierre is a mere shell of himself, left with nothing but scrambled dreams. This reporter’s advice to Pierre: If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the love kitchen!

  Oh, man. No wonder Pierre wasn’t speaking to her!

  HYPOCHONDRIAC STUNG!

  According to the latest buzz, Hector “Hiccup” Denardo was stung by the love bug while taking martial arts lessons from “the Bee,” aka Joonbi Park, new student at JMS and a world-famous black belt in Hop-key-doe. But Hector got the anaphylactic shock of his life when long-time best bud Stephen “Sneeze” Wyatt turned waspish and stole the Bee right out of Hiccup’s hive! Sneeze continues to drone on, denying any intentional involvement; but when pressed, he blurted: “None of your beeswax!” Sources close to the love triangle hint that Hiccup tried to eliminate his rival with the Vulcan Neck Pinch, but Sneeze is obviously built of sterner snot. This reporter’s advice to Hector: Try to develop your sweet side. You’ll catch more bees with honey than with a punch in the nose.

  Poor Hic. All the hapkido-instilled confidence in the world might not squash this kind of humiliation.

  GOOFY GEEK GOADS GOLF TEAM

  I didn’t bother to read that article. Ha. I was still reliving it all too clearly in my nightmares (and every moment Cullen wasn’t by my side at Patrick Henry).

  TEE FOR TWO?

  During the first week of school, if you whispered to Hayley Barker the name of the Hawaiian god from the PHHSVG team, you’d count more dimples on her face than on a golf ball! But now Miss Barker, manager at Gadabout Golf, seems to have pushed her affections for Cullen Fu Handsome to the back nine . . . or is she merely sending false reads to throw inquiring minds off the scent? This reporter’s advice to Hayley: Forget Cullen and let him play through, honey! You simply can’t hope for someone this handsome to swoon over you if you aren’t up to par!

  Ouch.

  I hoped Hayley’s crush hadn’t changed her so much that she’d lost her nerves of titanium.

  She hadn’t.

  “Do you honestly think I care what that weasel-ette writes about me?” she demanded the next day at Gadabout when I asked her about Goldie’s column. “Besides, we obviously succeeded in throwing her off the scent of Cullen and me. That’s all that matters.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, thinking it a fine coincidence that we were talking about Goldie at the same moment I was peering into the odiferous bilge of the Pirate Ship. “Pee-yew! Hayley, hold the flashlight a little higher, will you? And hand me that wrench. I need to tighten these bolts.”

  “I feel kinda sorry for Pierre, though,” Hayley went on.

  “He’s an insufferable snob, but still! Goldie didn’t need to strew pieces of his broken heart for the whole school to see. And poor Hiccup! He’s taken to his bed, did you know?”

  I shook my head. Despite his moment of thawing at Lickety-Split on Wednesday, and a few curt greetings since then, we still hadn’t reconciled.

  Hayley snorted. “You two are acting ridiculous. You should call him. I did. Last night. But Mrs. Denardo wouldn’t let me talk to him. She said he won’t be at school next week. He’s got a bad case of shingles. Huh. If you ask me, it’s actually a bad case of chagrin. He must be mortified everyone knows about his crush on Joonbi.”

  I sidled the subject of Hiccup by asking: “Are you sure you’re not bothered by what Goldie wrote? You know, about you not being up to Cullen’s par?”

  Hayley snorted again. “Shows how much Goldie knows! If she read even one of my letters from Cullen—”

  I dropped the wrench. It landed on my big toe, but the pain was nothing compared to the white-hot panic that seared my stomach. “Hayley! You’re not actually going to let Goldie read—”

  She snorted a third time. “Never ever. You’re the only person I’ve shared his letters with.” Eyes dreamy, she sank onto the turf, her back against the ship’s hull. “His letters . . . they just keep getting better and better and better . . .”

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. On one hand, I reveled in Hayley’s compliments. But on the other, it was kinda weird being my own rival and all.

  “. . . he’s been writing me for four days now. Don’t you think it’s time I wrote him back?”

  “What?” I said. “What? NO!”

  Hayley’s dreaminess evaporated, narrowed into an SOS. “Why. Not? His letters are so beautiful. They deserve a response! Besides, I want to do more than just read. I want to write to Cullen, talk to Cullen, let him know what I think and how I feel.”

  “But he asked you not to write him, Hayley!”

  “I know, but—”

  “You haven’t even known him a week!”

  “I know, but—”

  I kneeled in front of her. Stared directly into the depths of her ice-cream-cold blue eyes. “Promise. Promise me you won’t do anything stupid.”

  “Stupid?” Her chin tilted. “Is it stupid to want a two-way conversation with someone you like? How else are people supposed to get to know each other!”

  “I’m sure Cullen knows what he’s doing,” I said. “Wait a bit longer. Play it safe. You don’t want your dad finding out.”

  “You’re really worried about that, aren’t you? That’s . . . nice.” She gave me a quick hug. Her peach scent penetrated even the noxious fumes of the bilge.

  My head swooned.

  I picked up the wrench again, polishing it furiously with a rag so she couldn’t see my face. “I just don’t want you getting hurt,” I said.

  And that was the tricky part. I couldn’t, shouldn’t keep up the charade much longer. Hayley had fallen harder than ever for Cullen—and all because of me! But how could “he” end things with Hayley without causing her to suffer? It seemed my clever little plan had totally imploded . . .

  “Ho! What’s da haps, Steve?” Cullen said the following Thursday as he lumbered into CAD. He stowed his pack and settled into his chair. “You been working round the clock on da drawings for da Nice Alarm?”

  “Yep. How did you know?” I said with a wide yawn. I closed my eyes, laid my head on the desk. The hum of the computers created muffled, lulling ocean sounds, like when you hold a seashell to your ear.

  “Mebbe �
��cuz you look buss up, ready to crash.”

  Ha. Mebbe ’cuz along with working on the alarm the last five days, I’d been:1. Fretting about Hayley

  2. Plotting unique and furtive ways to get around Patrick Henry without Marcos the Moke and his Goon Brigade ambushing me (so far, so good)

  3. Spraining and straining every muscle every afternoon in hapkido to (ironically) avoid the discomfort and inconvenience of PE

  4. Avoiding the evil clutches of a gossip-crazed girl who lurked behind every bus, bush, and baby carriage to get her ears on the “real” reason I turned down a four-book contract

  And let’s not forget impersonating you, Cullen Fu Hanson, by spending an hour or two every night writing WOOn-derful love letters to Hayley.

  “What was the question again?” I asked with another yawn.

  Cullen chuckled.

  “Actually, the Nice Alarm drawings are easy as pie,” I said. “It’s my trig and and chem classes that are killing me.”

  “Need any help, brah? Neva wen take trig. But t’ree years ago, I got one A in chem. I could tutor you dis weekend. Come for dinner, eh? Auntie make ono—delicious—huli huli chicken.”

  Man this guy is nice, I thought with a guilty wince. I really shouldn’t accept his offer. But I really, really, really needed help.

  “That’d be great,” I said. “Does Saturday work for you? I’m going to a birthday party in the afternoon, but it should be over by five. My mom could drop me at your place after that.”

  Cullen shook his head. “No can. Big golf tournament dat day. If we win, we move on to da state championship. Coach going like fo’ take us out fo’ grinds afta da game to celebrate. How ’bout Sunday?”

  “Sure.” We exchanged addresses and phone numbers. “Mahalo, Cull.”

  He formed a fist with his thumb and pinkie finger sticking out. “Shaka, brah,” he answered.

  Late that night, after I finally finished 1.) working on the Nice Alarm’s cyber-drawings; 2.) oiling the Nice Alarm; 3.) writing three Cullen-letters to Hayley; and 4.) brushing my teeth, I had just hopped into bed and turned out the light when my computer beeped.