Return to the Scene of the Burp

by Nancy Krulik

  George frowned. There were a lot of places in Beaver Brook where the shopkeepers wouldn’t want George around. Like Mabel’s Department Store, where he went up the down escalator and made a mess of the boys’ department. Or the pizza parlor, where pizza dough had landed on his head. Or the ice-skating rink, where . . .

  “There’s gotta be a way for us to get into Ernie’s kitchen,” Alex said, interrupting George’s thoughts. “And fast. Before Farley’s Flying Floats puts him out of business. Otherwise you could be stuck with that burp forever!”

  George couldn’t believe his eyes.

  Just one second ago he’d been watching Outer Space Cowboy, his favorite Friday night TV show. But now . . .

  George was watching Louie Farley dance around in an ice-cream cone costume!

  Louie was starring in a commercial for Farley’s Flying Floats. He was wearing a giant ice-cream cone costume, topped off with a white hat with a big red pom-pom. George figured the pom-pom was supposed to be a cherry on top of the ice cream.

  But Louie’s costume wasn’t the weirdest part of the commercial. The weirdest part came when Louie started dancing.

  He moved his arms up and down. He kicked his feet from side to side. He turned around and around in a circle. When he stopped, he looked a little dizzy.

  Then he started rapping.

  “Chocolate, vanilla, strawberry:

  topped with nuts and a big cherry.

  Ice cream flies down from the sky,

  with all the toppings money can buy.

  So bring your dollars and your silver.

  When it comes to fun, Farley’s drones dilver.”

  That last bit made George laugh. Dilver? That wasn’t a real word.

  Louie must have meant deliver.

  Too bad Louie hadn’t realized till the end of his rap that no actual words rhymed with silver.

  Rrring. Just then, George heard the phone. He hurried over and picked it up.

  “Hello,” George said.

  “Did you just see that?” Alex asked.

  “You mean Louie?” George said. “That was the funniest thing ever!”

  “It wasn’t funny at all,” Alex argued.

  Huh? “Were you watching the same commercial I was?” George asked. “The one where Louie was wearing that red pom-pom on his head?”

  “That’s the one.” Alex sounded very upset.

  “Don’t tell me you’re worried people will make fun of Louie for dancing around in an ice-cream cone,” George said. “He’s done way weirder stuff. He’s Louie.”

  “I’m not worried about Louie,” Alex assured George. “I’m worried about Ernie’s Ice Cream Emporium. Ernie doesn’t have the money to run commercials on TV. He can’t compete with Farley’s.”

  “You’d think with all that money, Mr. Farley could have hired a better rapper than Louie,” George said.

  “This isn’t about Louie,” Alex reminded him. “It’s about Ernie keeping his business. And about finding you a burp cure. Which is why I figured out a way for us to get into Ernie’s kitchen to look at the ingredients.”

  “How?” George asked. “Are we going to sneak in a window?”

  “Nope,” Alex said. “We don’t have to sneak in at all. I can go in the kitchen at Ernie’s anytime I want. I work there.”

  “You work there?” George asked. “Since when?”

  “Since tonight, when I asked Ernie if I could help him out by sweeping and setting up the tables on Saturday mornings,” Alex replied.

  “Oh, kind of like what I do at Mr. Furstman’s pet shop,” George said.

  “Exactly,” Alex said. “So here’s the plan. Tomorrow, you come over to Ernie’s early in the morning—before you go to the pet shop. I’ll let you in.”

  “Won’t Ernie mind if you let someone in before his ice cream parlor opens?” George wondered. “Especially if that someone is me?”

  “Ernie told me he does paperwork in his office in the morning,” Alex said. “I’ll be the only one in the front of the restaurant. We’re free to investigate. Ernie will never know you were there.”

  Investigate. George liked the sound of that. It made it seem like he and Alex were kid detectives on a big case.

  Which they kind of were.

  The Case of the Baffling Burp.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  Early the next morning, George knocked on the glass door at Ernie’s Ice Cream Emporium. Alex hurried to let him in.

  “Perfect timing,” Alex whispered. “Ernie’s got the office door closed. He’ll never know you’re here—as long as we’re quiet.”

  “Oh, I will be,” George said. “I don’t want to get in trouble for snooping around where I don’t belong. Especially since Ernie hates me.”

  “He doesn’t hate you,” Alex said. “He probably doesn’t even remember what happened that night.”

  “How could he forget?” George asked. “It’s not every day someone jumps up onto a table and does the hokey pokey.”

  Alex didn’t answer. George figured that was because he knew George was right.

  “Here, put this on.” Alex pulled two hats out of his backpack and handed one to George.

  George looked at the hat. It looked sort of like a baseball cap, except it had a brim in the front and in the back.

  “What kind of hat is this?” George asked Alex.

  “A detective hat,” Alex told him. “Like the one Sherlock Holmes used to wear.”

  “Sherlock who?” George asked.

  “Sherlock Holmes,” Alex repeated. “He was a famous detective. He solved all kinds of mysteries. Wearing these hats will give us inspiration.”

  George didn’t need any extra inspiration when it came to solving this mystery. But he put the hat on, anyway.

  Alex handed George a big magnifying glass. “You’ll need this, too,” he said. “Some of those ingredient labels are hard to read.”

  George held the magnifying glass up near his eye. Suddenly he was face-to-face with a giant cockroach.

  “Ernie’s got to clean this place more often,” he told Alex.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Alex said. “Just get looking.”

  “What am I looking for?” George asked.

  “I don’t know,” Alex admitted. “Any weird ingredient you’ve never heard of.”

  George opened the refrigerator. There were bottles and bottles of cold root beer piled up in there. He held the magnifying glass up to one of the labels.

  “Cherry tree bark?” George read. “There’s tree bark in root beer?”

  Alex nodded. “A lot of them have that. I doubt you’re allergic, because you probably drank root beer with cherry tree bark plenty of times before the burp. Same for sassafras. It’s found in lots of root beer, too.”

  George laughed. “Sassafras. That’s a funny word.”

  “It’s a tree that’s pretty common,” Alex said. “Especially here in . . .”

  Alex kept talking about sassafras, but George couldn’t pay attention to what he was saying. Not while there were so many sassy bubbles bouncing around in his belly.

  Already the bubbles had cling-clanged past his kidneys and ping-ponged their way onto his pancreas.

  Uh-oh! The burp was back!

  Roing. Rong. The bubbles ripped through George’s ribs.

  Boing. Bong. They bounced up his backbone.

  George zipped his lips. Tight. The bubbles were strong. But he was stronger. If he could just keep them from bursting out . . .

  The bubbles tickled his trachea. They trampled his tongue. They . . .

  George let out a burp so loud, and so powerful, it shook the leaves of sassafras trees for miles around and sent his hat flying.

  “Dude, no!” Alex exclaimed.

  Dude, yes! The super burp was free. And
now, whatever the burp wanted to do, George had to do.

  The first thing the burp wanted to do was play with whipped cream. So the next thing George knew, he was spraying whipped cream all over himself.

  He made himself a whipped-cream beard.

  And a whipped-cream bracelet.

  And a whipped-cream crown that went all the way around his head.

  “Cut it out!” Alex grabbed the whipped-cream container from George’s hands.

  But the burp didn’t want to cut it out. It wanted to shout.

  So George shouted, “I scream. You scream. We all scream for ice cream!”

  George’s feet ran toward the giant freezer. He flung the door open and raced inside.

  George opened a huge container of ice cream. He scooped out a handful of vanilla and rolled it into a ball.

  “Ice-cream-ball fight!” George shouted.

  “Dude, cut it out,” Alex said. “You’re gonna get me fired.”

  George threw the ice-cream ball at Alex’s head.

  “What’s going on in here?!” Ernie yelled as he raced into the kitchen.

  Slam! Alex shut the freezer door. Now George was alone in the freezing-cold room.

  Well, not all alone. The burp was in there with him.

  But burps aren’t very good company. And they don’t usually stick around when they get caught.

  Pop! At just that moment, something burst in the bottom of George’s belly. It felt like someone had stuck a pin in a balloon down there. All the air rushed out of him.

  The magical super burp was gone.

  But George was in the freezer.

  Covered in whipped cream.

  George knew Alex had locked him in the freezer so Ernie wouldn’t know he was there. Which was a really nice thing for his friend to do.

  But it was really cold in the freezer.

  George’s eyes were watering. His nose was leaking. His teeth were chattering. George couldn’t stay in there much longer.

  “Hey, let me out of here!” George shouted. He banged on the freezer door.

  Finally, the door opened. George came face-to-face with Ernie. Well, face-to-belt, anyway. Ernie was pretty tall.

  “You again!” Ernie shouted angrily. “What are you doing in my freezer?”

  Gulp. George didn’t know what to say.

  “He was helping me clean up,” Alex told Ernie quickly. “But he saw a cockroach, and he freaked out. He locked himself in the freezer to get away from the roach.”

  Alex wasn’t exactly lying. That was sort of true. Only the cockroach hadn’t caused the freak-out. The burp had.

  Just the word cockroach was enough to freak Ernie out. “We can’t have roaches!” he exclaimed. “Alex, we have to really scrub this kitchen. Now.”

  “I’ll get right on it,” Alex said.

  “Good.” Ernie turned to George. “And you get out of here. I have enough problems with the new ice cream parlor across the street. I don’t need the added worry that something bad might happen to you here.”

  George frowned. Might happen? Something bad had already happened to George in this ice cream parlor. The burp had struck there—twice.

  Ernie didn’t have to worry about George sticking around. There was no way George was waiting for the burp’s third strike. Because everybody knew what happened after three strikes.

  You were out.

  Which was right where George was headed. Out the door.

  And fast.

  That night, George sat and stared at the e-vite on his computer screen. He couldn’t believe it. Louie was inviting George to be his guest at his dad’s ice cream parlor on Sunday afternoon? How weird. Louie never invited George to anything.

  At least, not unless he had to.

  And the Farleys never gave anything away for free. This had to be a gag.

  George hurried to the phone to call Alex.

  “Hey, Alex,” George said. “Did you just get an e-vite from Louie?”

  “Yeah,” Alex replied. “But I’m not going to have ice cream at that place.”

  “But it’s free,” George said. He paused for a moment. “I wonder why Mr. Farley is giving away free ice cream.”

  “Word-of-mouth advertising,” Alex replied. “If a bunch of kids like the ice cream, they’ll come back with their parents. And they’ll tell other kids.”

  “That’s pretty smart,” George said.

  “It’s pretty sneaky,” Alex told him. “Ernie’s is usually packed on Sundays. But tomorrow every kid we know will be at Farley’s. Except us of course.”

  “What do you mean us?” George asked. “I’m going.”

  “But you hate Louie,” Alex said.

  Alex had a point. Still . . .

  “I never turn down free ice cream,” George finally said. “Even if I have to put up with Louie to get it.”

  Putting up with Louie wasn’t easy. Especially when he was bragging.

  “This is going to be the most popular place in all of Beaver Brook,” Louie boasted as he sat at the head of a long table at Farley’s Flying Floats on Sunday afternoon. “Soon you won’t be able to get in without waiting on a really long line.”

  George looked around the room. The fourth-graders were sitting at Louie’s table. There was a long table of middle-school kids sitting with Louie’s big brother, Sam. Another table was filled with Louie’s parents and their friends. The place was definitely crowded. Then again, they were giving away free ice cream.

  “When’s our ice cream coming?” Chris asked Louie. “I’m hungry.”

  “Me too,” Julianna agreed. “I can practically taste that banana split.”

  “It takes a long time to make the perfect banana split,” Louie said. “But in the meantime, check out this new remote-control race car my mom bought me.”

  Louie reached down and pulled a model car from under the table. The car was bright red and had the number one painted on its side.

  George had to admit that was one nice car. George loved remote-control cars. And he would have liked to have one just like that. But George would have had to spend his own money to get it. Louie’s mom just gave it to him.

  “You should see this thing turn corners,” Louie said as he grabbed the remote control.

  But before Louie could turn the car on, Max started bouncing up and down in his seat.

  “Look!” he shouted. “Here come the drones!”

  “I saw that drone first,” Mike told him. “I just didn’t say anything.”

  “You did not!” Max said.

  “Did too,” Mike argued.

  A drone flew up beside Julianna. She reached over and took her banana split.

  “Hey!” she exclaimed. “There’s no banana in here.”

  “I guess the banana split,” George joked.

  “I only got six sprinkles on my sundae,” Sage said. “I get hundreds of sprinkles when I’m at Ernie’s.”

  Louie scowled. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you not to complain when you’re getting something for free?” he asked Sage and Julianna. “Besides, you gotta admit the drones are cool.”

  “They are,” Julianna admitted.

  “At least the ice cream is good,” Sage said. “Although it’s hard to mess up vanilla.”

  Louie smiled. “So, anyway, as I was saying,” he continued as he turned on his remote-control car. “You should see how this thing takes corners. It’s amazing!”

  Louie pushed a button on the remote control. The engine on his toy car revved up. Then he pushed another button and—

  Splat! One of the drones flipped over on its side, dropping a chocolate-marshmallow ice cream sundae right on Chris’s head.

  “Hey!” Chris shouted. “I have a marshmallow in my ear.”

  “Pull it out,” George told him.

&
nbsp; “What?” Chris asked. “I can’t hear you with this marshmallow in my ear.”

  Splash! Another drone turned and spilled a whole root beer float on Max’s lap.

  “What’s wrong with the drones?” Julianna wondered.

  “It’s Louie’s remote control,” George said. “It’s making the drones go all crazy.”

  “That’s impossible,” Louie said angrily.

  “No, it’s not,” George argued. “I was reading about drones online last night. Some of the cheaper ones work by regular toy remote controls. These must be that kind.”

  Louie’s face turned bright red. It almost looked like steam was coming out of his ears. “Are you saying my dad’s cheap?” he demanded.

  Splunk. A drone zoomed around the corner and dumped a big strawberry sundae on Sage’s lap.

  “Oh no!” Sage shouted. “My new dress.”

  “Louie! Turn that thing off,” Julianna shouted.

  “I’m trying!” Louie said. He began frantically pushing buttons on his remote.

  But the more buttons Louie pushed, the crazier the drones got.

  Two of them crashed in midair. Ice cream rained down from above.

  “Mmmm . . . pistachio,” Julianna said as she scooped a big glob of green ice cream off her lap and into her mouth.

  George opened his mouth just in time to catch a cherry.

  “Good one,” Julianna told him.

  “Thanks,” George replied.

  Louie’s mother came racing over to the table. She stopped right in front of George and glared at him.

  “What’s going on here, George Brown?” she demanded.

  George frowned. Mrs. Farley always thought that everything that went wrong was George’s fault. Not that he blamed her. After all, it usually was his fault.

  But not this time.

  “Louie’s remote control is making all the drones go nuts,” George told her.

  “Wet nuts,” Julianna said as a big glob of nuts landed on Mike’s head. “Real ones.”