As she clomped over to them in her shiny red clogs, Daisy noticed the gecko tank.
“Berko!” she said. “Did you come back for a visit because you missed us? What a sweet gecko you are!”
“Actually, Daisy, I have a slight problem I need to discuss with you,” Billy began sheepishly.
“Oh,” she said in a hushed voice. “Was it something he ate? He tends to battle diarrhea.”
“No, his stomach was fine. At least from what I could see. The problem is that I can’t keep him.”
“Oh,” Daisy said. “Didn’t your friend like him?”
Billy glanced at Ruby, who had a confused look on her face. He motioned to Daisy to follow him down the aisle toward the gerbil section so that they could have a little privacy.
“That’s Ruby over there,” he whispered. “And she doesn’t know about my friend, so can we keep that part between us?”
“Oh.” Daisy smiled. “You have two girlfriends. You little Romeo, you.”
“No, no, it’s nothing like that. I just like to keep my pet interactions private. So can we keep this quiet?”
“I get it,” Daisy said with a wink. “Mum’s the word.”
Ruby had taken Berko over to visit Robert and was having a fine time with both animals. Berko sat at the edge of his tank, flicking his tongue up at Robert as if to say, “Nice to see you again, old pal.” When Daisy and Billy joined her, Ruby was laughing with the animals like they were old friends.
“Are you sure you have to give Berko back?” she said to Billy. “He’s really got a lot of personality.”
“The thing I’ve learned, honey,” Daisy said, taking Berko’s tank from Ruby’s hands, “is that all members of a family have to enjoy the pet or it just won’t work. So if Berko isn’t loved by everyone at Billy’s house, then perhaps it’s not the right home for him.”
“That makes sense,” Ruby agreed. “I had to give Harmony away because the crickets we fed her interfered with my sister’s creative process. She’s a bass guitar player and the crickets always chirped off the beat.”
Daisy took Berko to the reptile aisle and placed him back in his original glass tank next to Bruce the tarantula.
“I was hoping I could exchange him for another pet,” Billy said. “Something really low maintenance.”
“Well,” Daisy said, “the only thing lower maintenance than Berko would be a fish. Let me show you three or four kinds of fish so you can make a decision.”
One whole wall of Fur ’N Feathers was devoted to the aquariums. Some held iridescent neon tetras, some had exotic tropical fish like angelfish and clown fish. One tank was divided into two separate compartments, each one holding only one fish: a bluish-white one and an orange one. They seemed to be staring at each other through the glass in a very unfriendly way.
“I know what those are,” Ruby said. “They’re Siamese fighting fish. If you put them in the same tank, they’ll fight to the death.”
A fighting fish sounded like it had a lot of spunk in it, and Billy thought Hoover would like that. The Hoove prided himself on his spunk, so it seemed like the perfect match. Besides, Billy could only buy one, which meant that it wouldn’t be a lot of work to take care of. Drop a few fish flakes in there every day, change the water occasionally. Even an irresponsible guy like the Hoove could manage that. It sounded to Billy like an easy A in Responsibility to Others.
“I think I’d like the orange Siamese fighting fish,” he told Daisy. “He seems really cool.”
“I could exchange that fish for Berko,” Daisy said, “and you’d still have a little money left over to buy some food. These fish eat a special kind of flake made from bloodworms and mashed shrimp.”
“Sounds delicious,” Ruby laughed. “Remind me to sprinkle some on my cereal.”
“Siamese fighting fish like to stare through the bowl and watch humans going about their business,” Daisy said. “It’s very stimulating to them. So this fish will need company.”
“Oh, no problem there,” Billy said. “My friend … I mean my family … will haunt him night and day. You can be sure of that.”
“Then he’s yours!” Daisy said. “I’ll get him ready for the trip home.”
“Thank you so much, Daisy,” Billy said, “for everything you’ve done for me. By the way, does my new fish have a name?”
Daisy shook her head.
“Good. I think I’m going to call him Kung Fu. Because he’s a fighter.”
“That’s perfect,” Ruby said. “I love kung fu movies.”
While Daisy scooped Kung Fu out of the aquarium and placed him in a plastic bag filled with the water he just came out of, Ruby went over to Robert’s perch and tried to teach him a new Beyoncé song.
“Come on, buddy,” she said to him. “You’ve got to get a little more current with your musical tastes.”
But poor Robert just couldn’t shake his tail feathers.
As for Billy, his mind was racing with excitement about finally having a solution to the Hoove’s problem. Every bit of logic told him that Kung Fu and the Hoove were a perfect match.
Which just goes to prove that logic isn’t always right.
When Billy and Ruby got home, Sophia was waiting on the front lawn. And she was fuming mad.
“Where have you been?” she asked Ruby. “Our rehearsal ended ten minutes ago and mom’s been calling constantly. She needs us to give the dog a tomato juice bath because he got sprayed by a skunk again and the whole house reeks.”
“That crazy Buster,” Ruby said with a laugh. “He never learns. He keeps chasing skunks and they blast him every time.”
“You won’t be laughing fifteen minutes from now when your nose is filled with skunk stink.” Sophia started down the sidewalk. “Come on, Ruby. I’m not going to wash that mutt by myself.”
Ruby said good-bye to Billy and Kung Fu.
“Call me later and let me know how Mr. Fu is doing,” she said to Billy. He couldn’t believe his ears.
“You want me to call you?” It was the first time any girl had ever suggested that. “Sure I’ll call. Sure. Sure. Sure.” He didn’t mean to say sure three times, but somehow the words tumbled out of his mouth all by themselves. He heard his voice getting higher with each sure, so by the third one, he sounded like a squeaky mouse.
After watching Ruby and Sophia disappear down the block, Billy walked up the flagstone path to the front door. He couldn’t reach into his pocket for his key and hold on to the plastic bag while balancing the fishbowl and mini net he got from Daisy, so he turned his back to the door and knocked with the heel of his shoe.
“Somebody open the door,” he called out.
“Open it yourself,” came Breeze’s voice from inside.
“I would if I could, but I can’t so I won’t,” he yelled back.
“You are such a helpless toad,” Breeze shouted.
“Hey!” Rod’s voice boomed from next door. “Can you turkeys keep it down out there? Some people are trying to watch cartoons in here.”
“Mind your own business, Brownstone,” Billy and Breeze yelled in unison. They could fight all they wanted between themselves, but when it came to Rod Brownstone calling them names, they were a team. No matter how much Breeze admired Rod Brownstone’s big muscles, she didn’t admire his big mouth. Billy gave one more kick on the door with his heel, and this time, it opened. But it wasn’t Breeze standing there. In fact, no one was there except a detached hand floating on the doorknob.
“What’s with the hand only, Hoove? Haven’t you gotten control of your invisibility yet?”
“Hey, don’t give me a hard time. The door is open, right?”
Billy walked past the Hoove’s hand and said, “Come with me. I have something for you.”
“It better not have a forked tongue.”
Billy hurried into his bedroom before the Hoove could get a good look at Kung Fu.
By the time Hoover floated down the hall and reached Billy’s room, he had grown two legs and a
neck. He was forty-seven percent there.
“You know, if I didn’t know you better, you’d terrify me,” Billy said. “You have to admit it’s creepy seeing a floating neck with no head.”
“Don’t say another word for the next two minutes,” the Hoove answered. “I’m going to focus my majestic powers of concentration and produce the rest of my body. Trust me, just being a neck is not my idea of a party.”
While the Hoove took himself into the corner to concentrate, Billy went into the bathroom and filled the fishbowl with water. Returning to his room, he submerged the plastic bag in the bowl, so that Kung Fu would adapt to the temperature of the new water. After a few minutes, Billy opened the plastic bag and released Kung Fu into his new home. The fish spread his fins and swam around the bowl, defiantly nipping at the glass.
“There you go, boy,” Billy said. “That’s the way to strut your stuff.”
“Thank you. Stuff strutting is my calling card,” the Hoove answered, thinking Billy was talking to him. “You say Hoover Porterhouse, and people say, there’s his stuff being strut.”
Hoover’s powers of concentration must have worked because when he floated over to Billy, his whole body had materialized, except for his left ear, which always proved to be a problem.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Billy said to him. “I was talking to Kung Fu. Your new fish friend. Here to help you demonstrate to the Higher-Ups that you are more responsible than a troop of Girl Scouts.”
“Got to give you credit, Billy Boy. You’re a determined little go-getter.” The Hoove peeked around Billy to get a look at the fishbowl. “Okay, let’s take a gander at your second colossal failure.”
Billy held up the bowl, and the Hoove stared at Kung Fu, who by now had flared his colorful orange fins so wide that he appeared twice his size. The Hoove circled the bowl, checking out the fish from every angle.
“Now this is a pet worthy of the Hoove,” he said.
“He’s a Siamese fighting fish,” Billy said. “Daisy at the pet store told me that in Thailand, they call them ikan bettah, which means ‘biting fish.’”
“I like it,” the Hoove said as he started karate chopping the air. “I like it a lot. What’s he got in that mouth of his? Fangs?”
“Now you sound like Bennett,” Billy said, “wanting to check out everyone’s dental situation. I don’t know what he’s got in there. I haven’t pried his mouth open.”
The Hoove pressed his face up to the glass and studied Kung Fu carefully. At first, the fish stayed completely still, as if he was sizing up his enemy. Each time the Hoove moved, Kung Fu’s eyes followed him with a laserlike stare. When the Hoove put his hand on the rim of the bowl, Kung Fu took a fighting stance, shooting out his fins to their full extent and letting them ripple in the water as if he were flexing his muscles.
“Hey, we’re a lot alike, you and me,” the Hoove said. “We’re tough and extremely good-looking.”
Billy was relieved to see that the Hoove had taken an immediate liking to Kung Fu. He seized the opportunity to educate him about everything he’d have to do to take good care of him.
“He doesn’t require much maintenance,” Billy began, “which I think is a great place for you to start. I got some mashed-shrimp-and-bloodworm flakes from the pet store, and you just have to drop a few into his bowl every day.”
“That’s certainly better than handling a cricket,” the Hoove said, nodding.
“And of course you have to clean his bowl and change the water once a week.”
“Change the water? You mean after he pee pees in it? That part is not so appealing. Maybe I can hire your mother to do it for me.”
“That’s exactly the point, Hoove. Being responsible means taking care of things yourself, not putting them off on other people. You have to clean the bowl and change the water yourself. Now, I know you don’t like that idea, but if you think about it, it’s not much of a sacrifice to make in exchange for your freedom, is it?”
“Okay, but I’ve got to wear rubber gloves.”
“On what, exactly? You don’t have hands!”
“What are you, the official hand monitor?”
Billy didn’t answer. Now that the Hoove was showing interest in taking care of a pet, he wanted to keep the mood light and friendly. He was taking no chances on setting off the Hoove’s hot temper.
“Hey, we need to give Fuey here a welcome party,” the Hoove was saying. “Give me a couple of those fish flakes. I’m going to give them to him personally.”
Billy handed the Hoove the cylinder of fish flakes. The lid was sealed tight, and in an effort to pull it open, the Hoove dropped the container, and the flakes spilled all over the rug. He bent down and picked up a pinch of them.
“Wait. You’re going to give him food from the floor?” Billy objected.
“First of all, he’s a fish, he’s not going to notice. And second of all, the way your mother keeps this house clean, you could eat off the floor.”
The Hoove dropped a few of the flakes into the bowl and watched them float on top of the water. Kung Fu circled the biggest flake, and then suddenly attacked it, snapping it from the surface.
“Don’t you just love the way he moves through the water?” the Hoove said. “Sleek like a speeding motorcycle. I’ve got to try that.”
And before Billy could utter a sound, the Hoove turned to smoke and dove into the fishbowl like it was his personal swimming pool. Immediately, he shrunk to the size of a goldfish, doing the breaststroke around the bowl with his dark hair streaming out around him like thousands of tiny wiggling worms. With a powerful dolphin kick, he somersaulted right up to Kung Fu’s startled face and blew a steady stream of bubbles at him, as if to say, “Hey, pal, you want to play?” But Kung Fu, unlike his name, was no fighter. He took one look at the transparent, ghostly face in front of him, and using the full force of his elongated fins, propelled himself straight up into the air and out of the bowl. He hung there in space for a split second, which seemed like an eternity to an amazed Billy. Then, without further ado, Kung Fu fell through the air and landed in a belly flop on the rug. Billy gasped.
The Hoove poked his head out of the glass fishbowl.
“Hey, where do you think you’re going?” he called out. “Come back here, little fishy. I’m here to take care of you!”
“You’re not taking care of him!” Billy screamed. “You’re scaring the pants off him!”
“Well, excuse me. I didn’t notice he was wearing pants.”
There was no time for Billy to explain that it was just an expression. A petrified Kung Fu was dragging his fishy body across the rug as fast as his fins could take him. He was heading for the door, undoubtedly trying to get back to the unhaunted safety of Daisy’s store.
The Hoove spun out of the bowl and hovered in the air. “Come back here,” he called to Kung Fu. “Once you get to know me, I’m going to knock your socks off.”
Kung Fu turned his head in the direction of the Hoove’s voice, and glanced back at him.
“That’s right! Come to Papa.” The Hoove smiled. “I’ve got some yummy bloodworms right here.”
Kung Fu’s eyes bulged, and he scooted toward the door like his life depended on it.
“I have to rescue him,” Billy said, grabbing the mini net Daisy had given him.
“Give me that,” the Hoove said, reaching for the net. “I’ll do it.”
“You can’t! He’s terrified of you, Hoove! Don’t even think about going near him.”
“I thought you said he was my pet. I’m supposed to take care of him. If he just gives me a chance, we’ll be pals.”
There was no time for any more discussion. Kung Fu had been out of the water too long. His fins were growing limp, and he needed to get back in the bowl so he could breathe again. Billy grabbed the net in his right hand and, lunging forward, scooped Kung Fu off the carpet. Pivoting like a basketball player, he skyhooked the little fish into the bowl just in the nick of time. Kung Fu sank to the
bottom while both Billy and the Hoove held their breath, hoping he would be okay.
After about ten seconds, his orange fins started to spread out and Kung Fu balanced himself on his tail. From the bottom of the bowl, he stared up at Billy, as if to say, “Can somebody please get me out of here?” He looked miserable.
The Hoove, relieved that his pet was seemingly back to normal, pressed his face up against the bowl and saw the same expression Billy did.
“That is one unhappy fish,” he said. “Look at him. He’s giving me the stink eye.”
“I don’t think he’s ever been around a ghost before, Hoove. I’m sure it’s nothing personal.”
“Do you think if we give him time, I’ll grow on him?” the Hoove asked softly.
The answer was clear. As soon as Kung Fu saw the Hoove’s face, he immediately darted to the other side of the bowl and cowered as far away from the Hoove as he could get.
“You know what, Hoove,” Billy said. “Maybe it’s not going to work out between you and Kung Fu.”
The Hoove was silent, and for the first time, Billy actually felt sorry for him.
“But don’t worry,” Billy continued, trying to make his voice sound bright and peppy. “We’ll find the right pet for you. I’m not going to give up.”
Billy picked up the bowl and headed for the door. The Hoove hovered quietly in the hallway, trying to assume a casual air. He was sad to see Kung Fu go, but in his usual fashion, he wasn’t about to show it.
“Hey, take care, Fuey. Even if you don’t like my style, I like yours. Give my regards to all the lady fish at the shop.”
He laughed as Billy headed for the front door, but Billy could tell it was a forced laugh, the kind the Hoove used to cover up hurt feelings.
Billy couldn’t blame him. It was tough being rejected by a Siamese fighting fish. With a deep sigh of frustration mixed with a little sadness, Billy left the house and headed to Daisy’s shop for the last time.
When Billy got home from Daisy’s Fur ’N Feathers shop, he was petless and idealess. His once great plan for helping the Hoove by getting him an animal to take care of and learn from had fizzled out like three-day-old ginger ale.
How to Scare the Pants Off Your Pets Page 5
