by Nancy Krulik
Unfortunately, the burp didn’t know how to get down from the basketball hoop. The trampoline was no longer there. Coach Trainer had moved it. Again. So the burp just left George hanging there.
George’s hands were getting sweaty. They were getting slippery. Any minute now he was going to crash to the floor.
Luckily for George, Alex was a much better friend than the burp was. He knew just how to help his pal. Quickly, Alex rolled a giant crab soccer ball across the gym floor. He set it right underneath George. And just in time!
George’s sweaty hands slipped their grip. He let go of the hoop and landed feetfirst on top of the giant crab soccer ball.
The ball started to roll—with George standing on top of it.
“George, get down from there!” Coach Trainer shouted as George ran on top of the ball.
George wanted to get down. He really did. But George wasn’t the one in control. So George kept running. And the crab soccer ball kept rolling.
George reached over and grabbed a hanging rope. The next thing George knew, he was climbing up the rope. His arms pulled, and his feet pushed. Pull. Push. Pull. Push. George climbed higher and higher. He was almost at the top. And then . . .
Pop! Suddenly George felt something burst in the bottom of his belly. Like someone had popped a balloon with a pin. All the air rushed out of him. The super burp was gone.
But George was still there, right near the top of the rope. So he did the only thing he could do. He pulled himself up a little higher, reached up, and rang the bell at the top of the rope.
Then he slid down and walked over to Coach Trainer.
“I’m finished,” George told the phys ed teacher.
“Yes, you are,” Coach Trainer agreed. “That was an unusual way to get through the stations. But you completed them all. And you were first. You get five extra points!”
“Thanks!” George exclaimed. He shot Louie a triumphant smile. Louie shot back a sore-loser glare. It was the best dirty look George had ever gotten.
“You still could still win,” George told Alex as they walked into the auditorium at the end of the school day. “You got through all of the challenges—even the rope-climbing. And I bet your questions were amazing.”
“I can’t believe I got to the top of that rope!” Alex said proudly. “I guess all my practicing paid off. Which is awesome, because I don’t think I’ve wanted anything more than this, ever.”
“You want this more than getting your picture in the Schminess Book of World Records for having the world’s largest already been chewed gumball?” Chris asked him. “You were pretty excited when that happened.”
“This is different,” Alex explained. “It was fun collecting all that ABC gum. But science is my life!”
George looked down and kicked guiltily at the ground.
Just then, Mrs. Kelly and Mrs. Miller walked onto the stage. Mrs. Kelly was holding a piece of paper in her hand.
“This is it!” Alex said. He crossed his fingers, his arms, and his ankles. For a second, George thought he saw Alex try to cross his eyes. Boy, did he want to win.
“We’ve gone over everyone’s questions and added up your scores,” Mrs. Miller said. “It was very close.”
“There were some remarkable questions,” Mrs. Kelly added.
George thought she looked at Alex when she said that. Alex must have thought so, too, because he sat up a little taller.
“But we can only have one winner,” Mrs. Miller said. “And one student had good questions plus a strong score on the physical challenge. And that student is . . .”
The kids all leaned forward in their seats.
“George Brown!” Mrs. Kelly shouted excitedly. “George, come on up here and take a bow.”
Mrs. Kelly didn’t have to ask twice. George leaped up from his seat and raced up onto the stage. The other fourth-graders clapped for him. Well, all except for Louie.
“No fair!” Louie shouted. “I could have finished the challenge first. But I got all woozy from George’s stinky feet. George only won because he took off his shoes.”
George knew Louie was half right. He hadn’t won all on his own. The magical super burp had actually helped him for once. But no one knew that, except Alex.
George glanced over to where Alex was sitting. He was clapping his hands and trying really hard to look happy for his best pal.
Which just made George feel more rotten about getting to the library before him.
But George couldn’t say anything about that. Or about the burp. Because that would mean telling everyone that he was a rotten friend who was followed around by a magical super burp. And there was no way George was doing that.
Ding-dong.
“I’ll get it,” George shouted. He raced down the stairs at top speed and peeked out the window to see who was there.
“Hey, Alex,” George said as he opened the door. “What are you doing here?”
“Hi,” Alex answered. “I had something I wanted to give you for your interview tomorrow.”
George looked down at the ground.
“It’s okay,” Alex told him. “If I couldn’t win, I’m glad you did.”
“Thanks,” George said.
“Anyway, I came over to give you these,” Alex said. He handed George a plastic bag filled with brownish-red candies.
“Um . . . thanks?” George was confused. What were those things?
“They’re ginger candies,” Alex explained. “There was a post on the Burp No More Blog that said ginger coats your stomach and stops gas from building up. And no gas means . . .”
“No burps,” George said, finishing Alex’s thought. He popped one of the candies in his mouth. “Ow!” he exclaimed. “That’s spicy.”
“I know,” Alex told George. “You can’t eat too many at once. But I figured if you ate a ginger candy right before your interview with Major Minor, you wouldn’t burp on camera.”
“I’ve been worrying about that,” George admitted.
“The interview is definitely the scary part,” Alex said. “I don’t think I could do it. Just knowing that the whole school was watching me would probably make me freeze.”
“But your questions were probably a whole lot smarter than mine,” George said.
Alex reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “Here are the questions I turned in. If you run out of things to ask, and there’s still time left, you can ask Major Minor one of these.”
“Wow!” George exclaimed. “Thanks. You want to come in and hang out?”
“Just for a little bit,” Alex said as he walked into George’s living room. “I told my mom I wouldn’t be . . . Hey, what’s that?”
George glanced in the direction Alex was looking.
“You’re the guy who checked out Spaced Out?” Alex demanded, staring at the book on the living-room table. “After I told you I was going to do that? Why would you do that to me?”
George didn’t know what to say. “I didn’t do it to you,” he mumbled finally. “I did it to Louie. He kept saying he was going to win, and then on his webcast he . . .”
George babbled on and on. But Alex wasn’t listening.
“Louie didn’t use his best friend’s idea to help him win,” Alex interrupted. “You did. You knew how bad I wanted to go to the Space Adventurers Program. You never even heard of it before the other day. That was a crummy thing to do, George.” And with that, Alex stormed out of George’s house.
George kicked at the ground as the door slammed. He felt really, really rotten. Alex was right. He was a crummy friend. The absolute crummiest.
George thought about Alex all night long. He was the guy who should be talking to Major Minor tomorrow. Not George. Alex had entered the contest because he was genuinely interested in space. Not just in winning some contest or
beating Louie Farley.
George turned off the light and climbed into bed. He shut his eyes and tried to sleep. But he couldn’t. His mind was racing way too fast. And he wasn’t just thinking about Alex. There were other things to worry about, too.
Like, George couldn’t believe his mom was making him wear a tie. A TIE! He wasn’t going to look like the perfect example of a fourth-grader. He was going to look like a geek!
What if he woke up in the morning with laryngitis, and nothing but squeaks came out of him?
Or what if a big pimple sprouted on his nose overnight?
Or what if he fell off his chair right when he was asking Major Minor an important question?
And the biggest what if of all—what if the ginger candies didn’t work and the burp exploded right in Major Minor’s face? What kind of trouble would happen then?
What if? What if?
What if?
Suddenly, George heard a strange whirring noise coming from outside. He opened his eyes and looked around.
There were green and red lights flashing through the windows. Which would have made sense if it was Christmastime. But it wasn’t.
What was going on?
George leaped out of his bed. He raced to the window. The red and green lights were spinning around and around. The whirring was getting louder and louder.
And then, suddenly . . . whoosh! The flashing lights and whirring noises disappeared. And so did George Brown!
“Get off me!” George shouted. He shoved the tiny green men who had planted themselves on his shoulder to the ground. Then he grabbed the one who was sitting on his head by the antenna and yanked him off.
“Get away!” George shouted again.
Wait a minute. Tiny green men? Antenna? What was going on here?
George looked around. This wasn’t his bedroom. It couldn’t be. There was no bed. Besides, George’s bedroom wasn’t round. It didn’t have big computer screens on the walls. It didn’t have all kinds of buttons and knobs on the desks. And it didn’t have hundreds of little green men running all around.
This was no bedroom. This was a spaceship! George was sure of it. He’d seen them in the movies a million times. Only they didn’t seem so scary then.
“AAAAAHHHHHH!” George screamed.
At the sound of George’s voice, hundreds of little green faces turned in his direction. Their red eyes began to glow. And they all started talking at once.
George couldn’t understand a word they were saying. To him it sounded like Mrs. Kelly giving a science lesson. Blah blah blah. Only their voices were squeakier than Mrs. Kelly’s. And they weren’t giving him gummy smiles.
“AAAAAHHHHHH!” George screamed again.
A group of little green men started climbing up on one another’s shoulders. They were making a little green tower. The little man at the top of the tower reached into George’s mouth and started counting his teeth. Weird. He was like a little green dentist!
At the same time, another little green man was counting George’s toes. At least he was, until he took one whiff of George’s stinky feet. That stink was so bad it even made an alien run away!
Another alien was counting George’s fingers, while another was listening to his heart with a teeny tiny stethoscope. Suddenly, George understood what going on. These little green men were trying to figure out what made George tick.
Or make that tickle. Because now one of them was poking George in the belly with his little green hand. And boy, did that tickle.
“Hahahahaha!” George laughed so hard it knocked the tower of little green men to the ground. They scattered around their spaceship and began pushing all sorts of buttons and knobs.
George took a deep breath. These little green men didn’t seem scary. They actually seemed friendly. They didn’t want to hurt him. They just wanted to learn about him.
Wait until Louie heard about this! The aliens didn’t want to study one of the Farley brothers. They wanted to study George—a perfect example of a fourth-grade boy.
George was kind of curious about the little green men, too. And about their spaceship. All those buttons and knobs seemed really cool.
Blah blah blah . . .
All of a sudden, a bunch of the little green men started speaking and pointing. But George had no idea what they were talking about until they jumped up on one of the desks and lined up to form a green arrow. The arrow was pointing to a knob.
They wanted him to push the knob. So that’s exactly what George did. A little door opened, and a bowl of chocolate ice cream slid out. Wow!
The little green arrow, made of little green men, shifted to the right. Now they were pointing to a switch. So George pulled the switch. Chocolate syrup rained down on the ice cream.
The little green arrow moved to the left. Now it was pointing to a lever. George pulled the lever. Suddenly something that looked like a laser gun popped out.
A laser gun? Gulp. What if George had been wrong? What if these little green men weren’t friendly? What if that laser was going to disintegrate George?
What if? What if? What if?
Whoosh! Just then, whipped cream shot out of the laser gun. It landed on top of the ice cream and chocolate sauce. Phew. A little whipped cream never hurt anyone.
A space-age sundae! George couldn’t wait to take a taste.
The space aliens couldn’t wait for him to take a taste, either. They were standing around with their bright red glowing eyes staring right at him.
Unfortunately, there was one thing missing: a spoon. But that didn’t stop
George. He just stuck his mouth into that ice-cream sundae and began slurping it up. What a fun way to eat a sundae!
What a messy way to eat a sundae! Ice cream, whipped cream, and chocolate sauce were dripping all over George’s face. George didn’t see any napkins, so he wiped his mouth on his sleeve. In space, no one can tell you to have manners.
George looked out one of the big round windows. He could still see his house. But it was starting to look far, far away. The spaceship was on the move. George was heading into outer space.
WHOA! Suddenly, George’s feet lifted off the ground.
BASH! His head banged into the roof of the spaceship. His body twisted and turned in the air. He tried to force his feet back down, but that just made him flip over and do a somersault in midair.
No matter what he did, George couldn’t touch the ground. That’s what happens when you travel around in zero gravity.
Which could only mean one thing. The spaceship was flying away. Out of the Earth’s atmosphere!
It was one thing when these space aliens wanted him to come onboard and share ice cream with them. That was fine, as long as George could still see his house from the spaceship window. But now his house just looked like a tiny little dot.
At least George thought that was his house. It was hard to tell. All the houses on the ground looked like tiny little dots.
Gulp. This was ba-a-ad.
What if the aliens wanted him to travel with them to their planet? That could take a long, long time. Living in space could be rough. Who was George supposed to talk to? He didn’t speak space alien.
What was he supposed to eat? Chocolate sundaes were delicious, but a guy could get tired of them eventually.
Speaking of tired, what if George wanted to go to sleep? There didn’t seem to be any beds on board the spaceship.
Worse yet, sooner or later, George was going to have to go to the bathroom. With all this zero gravity, George wondered, how do you pee in space?
“I WANT TO GO HOME!” George cried out suddenly.
The little green men all turned and stared at him. Their red eyes flashed. Their tiny mouths opened. And then . . . they all started laughing.
George shook his head. This wasn’t funny. Not at all.
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And it was about to get a lot worse. Those aliens wouldn’t be laughing if they knew that there was an uninvited guest on board their spaceship. The kind of guest that was bound to cause trouble. Bubble trouble!
Bling-blong! Pling-plong!
The super burp was back. And it wanted out! Already it was pouncing on George’s pancreas and belly-flopping onto his bladder. George couldn’t let the burp loose on a spaceship. There was no telling what it would do here. He had to squelch the belch.
But how?
If George were on Earth he might have stood on his head and hoped the bubbles would travel up into his feet. That had worked before.
Or he might have started spinning around and around until the burp swirled back down to his toes like water going down the drain. That had been a good belch squelcher, too. But would it work in zero gravity? George had absolutely no idea.
Plink-plonk. Zink-zonk! The bubbles were tickling his tonsils, tiptoeing their way up onto his tongue, and traipsing between his teeth. And then . . .
George let out a burp. A super burp. A burp so strong and so loud it could be heard on the moon—which was actually a lot closer to him now than it used to be.
The magical super burp was on the loose in outer space. George opened his mouth to say “Excuse me.” But that’s not what came out. Instead he shouted, “Loop de loop!”
The next thing George knew, he was doing cartwheels in space. Flip. Flip. Flip. George’s body spun around and around. And his feet never once touched the ground.
The little green men started chattering at once.
“Leapfrog!” George shouted suddenly. He started leaping over little green men. Hop! Hop! Hop!
The little green men scattered as fast as they could. But they weren’t fast enough. Before even George knew what was happening, he had reached out his hand and scooped up three of them.
