by Mo O’Hara
Rescue Frankie Plan—Part Two: Actually rescue the fish. Nearly check.
I had my hand on the doorknob of the bathroom door when I heard that horrible sound again.
I heard the toilet flush.…
I ran into the bathroom and saw the water spiraling down the toilet bowl.
“Frankie, no!” I shouted, but he was already gone.
Then I heard a splash outside. I looked up and saw the open bathroom window. I climbed up on the toilet and looked out. There was Frankie, rolling his plastic bag out of the puddle on the garage roof. Then he rolled himself along the gutter, dropped down onto the rain barrel and, with a final dismount, flumped onto the grass.
I punched the air. He was safe. But I was dead meat when Mark found out the fish was gone.
Maybe I could convince Mark that I’d flushed Frankie? No, he’d never buy it. And he’d kill me anyway, just because he could. I’d be better off escaping with Frankie.
I was just about to climb out the window and follow him when I heard the next noise. It sounded like someone falling down the back steps, bouncing off the little trampoline, and crashing into a sandbox. That couldn’t be Frankie making that noise. But if it wasn’t Frankie, then who was it?
I ran downstairs and out the door. Mark was lying facedown in the sandbox, groaning. The little trampoline had been put at the bottom of the steps, which were smeared with white chocolate.
My first thought was: I’m really good at guessing stuff just from sounds.
My second thought was: White chocolate? It’s gotta be Sami.
“Again! Again!”
I heard the giggling voice from behind me.
Sami was carrying a bowl of chocolate and licking her fingers. She started bouncing on the trampoline. “You were funny,” she said to Mark. “Again! Please? Again!”
Mark just groaned.
Pradeep came running across the garden toward us. He stopped when he saw Sami. “Sami, you’re supposed to be inside with Mom.” Then he looked at the steps and back at her hands. “Sami, did you…?”
“Frankie must have hypnotized her to do it,” I said.
Sami smiled. Her hands were still covered in chocolate but her expression was normal. She didn’t look hypnotized anymore.
I waved my hand in front of her face to check.
“Hi, Tom,” she said, and waved back at me.
She definitely didn’t have the goldfish stare anymore. But she also didn’t have the goldfish.
“Where’s fishy?” I asked her in an “I’m trying not to panic but really starting to panic” kind of way.
“Swishy little fishy,” she said, still bouncing. “Fishy rolled away.”
We looked around for Frankie. Under the trampoline, around the bike shed, under the shrubs. No good.
Mark’s groans started to become words. Things like “Stupid morons,” and, “They’ll be sorry,” and, “I can smell chocolate.” He was starting to move too.
Then Sami squealed again, “Swishy little fishy!” and pointed to the top of the jungle-gym slide.
There was Frankie. He was rolling his plastic bag onto Mark’s skateboard. The skateboard was pointed down the slide, straight at the sandbox and straight at Mark’s head.
Frankie’s eyes were bright glow-in-the-dark green and his tail was swishing hard back and forth in the water.
The goldfish was set on revenge. I looked at Mark lying at the bottom of the slide. My fists clenched at the thought of him trying to hurt Frankie, but could I really stand by and let Frankie hurt him?
“Um, your goldfish is trying to kill your brother!” Pradeep shouted.
“Not if I can help it,” I said. And then I did the second most dangerous thing I’ve ever done in my life. I tried to stop Frankie.
Frankie swished his tail hard, and the skateboard started to roll down the slide, picking up speed as it went.
“Fishy! Wheeeeeee!” Sami yelled.
I raced to the bottom of the slide and threw myself between Mark and the skateboard.
I could see Frankie’s eyes as he rode the skateboard down toward me. They changed to a soft green and he swished his tail back and forth wildly. He wanted me to get out of the way.
I shook my head and held my ground. I closed my eyes, waiting for the skateboard to hit me. Concussion number two, here I come. Then I heard the skateboard jump off the side of the slide. I looked up to see it flip midair, like when the boarders at the park do half-pipes and twists.
Except this was a goldfish in a plastic bag, not a skateboarding kid. And the thing about goldfish in bags is that when the board goes upside down they have no way to hang on. The skateboard flew over me and Mark and then Frankie started to fall. He must have been ten feet in the air.
I rolled over onto my back and held out my hands to catch him. The bag hit my hands but I couldn’t hold it. It splatted on my chest and the bag burst open. Water sprayed everywhere and Frankie was left flip-flopping around on my T-shirt.
“No!” I shouted. “Frankie!” I jumped up, cupping him in my hands. “I’ve got you, Frankie,” I said as I turned to Pradeep. “Get some water! Quick!”
Frankie’s goldfish mouth was opening and closing as if he were gasping for breath. His eyes were still the soft green color. He flicked his tail and wriggled, and then he stopped moving completely. “Hang on, Frankie!” I screamed.
Pradeep ran over to the slide with a watering can full of rainwater that he had grabbed from next to the shed. I dropped Frankie into it.
Pradeep, Sami, and me all sat around the watering can and stared at Frankie, unmoving in the water. “You turned the skateboard on purpose, didn’t you? You didn’t want to hurt me,” I said.
Mark was still lying in the sandbox, moaning, “The goldfish? My skateboard? Why am I wet?”
Frankie floated belly up in the watering can. He didn’t move a fin.
“Swishy little fishy?” Sami said, sniffling. Her bottom lip started to wobble again. Not in a Richter-scale-level tantrum kind of way but in a sadder than a little kid ought ever to feel kind of way.
“He’s gone,” I said. The millipedes that were swimming in my stomach curled up into a big heavy millipede lump.
“I’m sorry,” said Pradeep.
“Not swishy?” whispered Sami. A tear rolled down her cheek and dripped off her snotty nose into the watering can.
And that’s when it happened. Frankie started to swish his tail. Just a little at first, then his gills started flapping and his mouth opened and closed and then he flipped over and started swimming in circles around and around.
“Fishy!” said Sami, and hugged the watering can.
“Frankie, you’re back!” I said, hardly able to believe that he was swimming around again. “Who’s a good zombie fish?” I said, and stroked him gently behind the gills.
“Hey, you know what we just discovered?” Pradeep said.
“I know!” I said. “That the one thing more powerful than a battery for bringing a fish back to life is…”
Pradeep said with me at the same time, “Toddler snot.”
Beep, beep.
We heard Mom’s car pull into the drive.
“Oh no!” I said.
Pradeep and I quickly ran over to Mark and helped him sit up. He was still holding on to his head where he had banged it when he fell into the sandbox.
Sami just sat there, still hugging the watering can.
Mom came straight around the back of the house and ran over to us. She could tell there was something wrong. Moms have this thing where they know stuff that should be impossible to know. Like that you didn’t eat your carrot sticks at lunch, or that it was you who put the ham slice in the CD player to see what ham sounded like, or that your undead zombie goldfish hypnotized your neighbor’s daughter and then tried to kill your EVIL SCIENTIST big brother but at the last minute changed its mind to save your life. You know, that kind of thing.
I took one look at Mom and was sure she would figure it out. It was s
o obvious what had happened.
But the first thing she said was, “What on earth happened here?”
“We were just playing,” Pradeep said right away. “Um, the game got a little messy, um … and wet and um…”
He was talking really fast and looking really guilty. Mom was definitely going to get that something was up.
“Fishy is swishy!” Sami shouted. “Yaaaay!”
“Oh, that’s sweet. You let Samina play with your fish, Mark,” Mom said. “But why do you have the fish outside in a watering can?”
“It needed some fresh air,” I said, which Mom is always telling us that we need, so it must be true for fish, too.
Although usually when Mom tells us to go outside, it’s because she wants to talk to Dad alone, or shout at Aunt Sarah on the phone.
“OK,” Mom’s voice said in a normal kind of way, but her face was really saying, What are they up to?
“Mark, are you all right?” she added.
Mark rubbed his head. He looked over at me and Pradeep, and then at Sami and the watering can.
“The goldfish tried to kill me,” he said. “I tripped and fell in the sandbox and then it aimed the skateboard at me.”
Mom went over to Mark and felt his head for bumps. She’s an expert bump finder after all these years. I bet she could be a doctor in bumps and stuff.
“You banged your head pretty bad, Mark.” She held her fingers in front of Mark and said, “How many am I holding up?”
“It tried to kill me,” Mark mumbled.
Mom looked over at me and Pradeep. “What happened?”
Then I heard myself say the most untrue thing ever: “Mark was being really nice, playing with Sami in the sandbox and on the trampoline.”
“Bouncy, bouncy, crash!” said Sami, now jumping on the trampoline with the watering can.
I leaned over and gently took the can from her.
“Then he did a trick bounce that made Sami laugh,” Pradeep said, which isn’t really a lie, because he did do that even though he didn’t mean to do it.
“He must have hit his head when he fell,” I said.
“Oh, poor you,” Mom said to Mark as she rubbed his head. “But what’s this about the goldfish?”
She helped him stand up, and he walked over to where I was standing with the watering can. He stared at Frankie. The goldfish started thrashing around in the water like mad again and his eyes went bright green.
“Mom, look at the goldfish,” Mark said, pointing wildly at the watering can. “It’s gone nuts. It really tried to kill me!”
Pradeep and I shot each other a look. We couldn’t say anything out loud, but our faces said that we needed a new color jelly bean code, because this was way beyond a Code Red.
Mom couldn’t look now. She’d see Frankie being all zombie fish. Then she would let Mark flush him for sure, or she’d send him off to some government place where they keep pets that have gone all supernatural and dangerous.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll look at the goldfish.” She marched over toward us.
We were doomed.
“Please, Frankie,” I whispered, as I peered into the watering can. “Mark’s not completely evil, really. I won’t let him hurt you, but you can’t try and kill him again. OK?”
Frankie stopped thrashing and looked up out of the watering can at me. His eyes stopped glowing and he got that goldfish stare back again.
Mom leaned over the watering can. “Is that fish staring up my nostril?” she said.
Pradeep and I looked into the can. “Phew … I mean, yes, I guess,” I said.
“You said the goldfish was trying to kill you, Mark?” Mom said, going back to him and feeling his head for bumps again. “Was that before or after you bumped your head?”
“Definitely after,” Pradeep said.
“Yeah, he started talking weird just after he fell,” I said.
“Bouncy, bouncy, bang,” Sami said, nodding her head.
“The kid was in on it. She was all goldfish starey and she was out to get me too,” Mark said, backing away from Sami.
Sami giggled. “Swishy little fishy.”
“Argh!” Mark yelled, and ran and hid behind Mom.
“OK, we need to go to the hospital to get them to look at your head. I think you’ve got a concussion.” She led Mark over to the edge of the sandbox to sit him down. “I’m going to go speak to your mom, Pradeep. I’m sure she won’t mind looking after you all until Mark and I get back from the hospital.” She took Sami’s hand. “You come with me, Samina, to see Mommy.” She turned to me and Pradeep. “I’ll be back in a second. You boys please look after him, OK? Keep him talking.”
Pradeep and I looked at each other nervously. It was like we were being left with a tiger that was just waking up and we knew he was going to wake up pretty mad.
“How you feeling, Mark?” I said quietly.
Mark growled in that EVIL SCIENTIST big-brother way. Then he jumped up and leaned over Pradeep and me.
“You morons and the stupid goldfish won’t win,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter, because as soon as I get home that fish is flushed and I’ll stick your moron heads down the—”
But he didn’t get to finish his threat. Frankie leaped out of the watering can, his eyes glowing a shining green. He started flapping his tail back and forth, whacking Mark across the face.
“Ow, ow, get it off! Get it off!” Mark said, and fell backward into the sandbox.
I scooped up Frankie in my hands and plopped him back into the watering can.
“I don’t think you’ll be flushing anything, Mark,” I heard myself saying in a really strong voice, like I was on some TV cop show or something. “I think you are gonna leave me and Pradeep and Sami and Frankie alone,” I said.
“Who’s Frankie?” Mark said.
“My goldfish,” I said, looking down at Frankie swimming around in the can. “And I wouldn’t mess with him, because he can kick your butt.”
Pradeep stepped forward. “Um, yeah, right. Like Tom said,” he mumbled, and smiled at me.
Mom raced back over from Pradeep’s house. “OK, boys, thanks for looking after Mark.” She winked at me and ruffled my hair. “You can act very grown-up sometimes, can’t you? When you put your mind to it.”
Frankie splashed in his watering can.
“I think we should get Frankie back into his bowl for the night,” I said. “He’s had enough air.”
“Pradeep’s mom said you can have your dinner there and then sleep over. It might be best. You never know how long the hospital will take. Remember when you had a concussion from running into that door? Why is it always my boys?” She shook her head. “Come on, Mark.”
She helped him up from the sandbox and took him to the car. He was still talking about the fish being out to get him. Mom just nodded.
“Oh, and Mark,” I yelled to him as Mom was pulling out of the drive, “don’t worry about the pictures for your experiment. We’ll take some good ones for you.”
The last thing I saw as Mom rounded the corner toward the hospital was Mark banging on the back window mouthing the words, “Moron … No!”
Pradeep and I went in and got Frankie’s goldfish bowl from upstairs, washed it out, and then headed over to Pradeep’s house for the night. We decided that Frankie deserved a sleepover too. And Sami wanted to play with him again. After dinner, we got into our pajamas and had the marshmallow-popcorn earths with the white chocolate melting ice caps. And we took lots of cool pictures of Frankie.
Mom phoned Pradeep’s house to say that she was staying with Mark because the doctors wanted to keep him overnight so they could keep an eye on him. I told Mom to make sure it wasn’t a very big eye if they could help it. He is my big brother after all. And I think from now on he’ll probably go back to just being mostly evil. As long as Frankie’s around—my big fat zombie goldfish friend (and bodyguard).
When Pradeep’s mom put Sami to bed, Pradeep and I got out our sleeping b
ags and told each other scary zombie stories. Telling scary stories is one of the top things about sleepovers. But THE top thing about sleepovers now is if we scare ourselves too much, we’ve always got a zombie goldfish nightlight to make everything seem brighter, and a bit green. How cool is that?
You know how your voice sounds different when you’re doing different stuff? Like, you have a “running” voice or a “jumping” voice or a “stuck in a pretzel shape because you tried to fit into a tiny box” voice? Well, I heard Pradeep shouting outside this morning and he definitely had an “upside down” voice.
“I’m a moron and you’re a genius,” he mumbled.
I looked out of the kitchen window as I filled up Frankie’s plastic bag in the sink, and there was Pradeep, hanging upside down off the jungle gym.
“Louder, moron!” Sanj ordered, sitting on top of Pradeep’s feet and dangling him off the metal railing. “And can you please articulate?”
“I am a moron and you are a genius!” Pradeep shouted, without mumbling this time.
“Come on, Frankie, it’s a Code Red situation! Pradeep’s in trouble!” I said, scooping Frankie out of the sink and into his bag. We ran into the yard.
“Good,” Sanj said, letting go of Pradeep’s feet. Pradeep slid through the monkey bars and splatted onto the grass.
“Ah look, your little moron friend has come to help,” Sanj said as he jumped down from the jungle gym. “And he’s brought his pet fish with him. How sad is that? The ugly little moron kid has an ugly little moron pet.” He smiled a creepy evil smile at Frankie.
Frankie desperately head-butted the side of the bag, trying to get out. His eyes lost their normal goldfish stare and instead glowed a bright, angry green. He was in full zombie attack mode.
“Pathetic morons,” Sanj said to himself as he strode off down the road.
I went over to Pradeep. “Are you OK?”
Pradeep was rubbing his head. “Yeah.”
