by Nancy Krulik
“Louie!” Mrs. Farley shouted. “Turn that thing off.”
“I’m trying, Mom,” Louie said, frantically pushing more buttons on the remote.
“Pull the batteries out,” George told him.
“Why should I listen to you?” Louie demanded.
“Because he’s right,” said Louie’s big brother, Sam. He leaped up from his seat, yanked the remote from Louie’s hands, and pulled out the batteries.
“Dad told you not to bring that stupid toy with you today,” Sam grumbled.
Louie looked like he was about to cry.
The drones turned in midair and went back into the kitchen. Everyone just sat there, covered in ice cream—and stared at Louie.
“Lou Lou Poo!” Mrs. Farley exclaimed. “What have you done?”
“But . . . I . . . It wasn’t my fault,” Louie stammered. “The remote went wacko.”
George grinned. It was fun watching someone else get in trouble for a change. Especially when that someone was Louie Farley.
“It was hilarious,” George told Alex later that afternoon, while the boys were hanging out in George’s living room. “Mrs. Farley had this big glop of chocolate sauce hanging off her nose. Just hanging there. Like a chocolate booger.”
Alex laughed. “That had to be really funny.”
“It was,” George said. “I guess Mr. Farley’s plan for getting kids psyched up for his ice cream parlor didn’t work too well.”
“Not this plan, anyway,” Alex agreed. “But you know the Farley family. They’re bound to come up with some other sneaky way to get everyone to go to their place instead of Ernie’s. Which is why we have to find out what caused your burp as fast as we can—just in case Ernie’s Ice Cream Emporium really does go out of business.”
“It was pretty empty in there today, huh?” George asked.
Alex nodded. “I think Ernie was actually crying in his office at one point. His eyes were all red.”
Wow. George had never seen a grown-up cry before.
“Were you able to look at any more ingredients after I left yesterday?” George asked Alex.
“There’s nothing out of the ordinary in Ernie’s root beer floats,” Alex told him.
“That’s why I keep telling you the burp is magic,” George said. “It was that dumb shooting star.”
“I’m not so sure,” Alex told him. “I still think there’s a scientific explanation. And I may have figured out a way to solve this mystery.”
George sat up excitedly. “You have? What is it? Tell me!”
“I don’t know if you’re gonna like it,” Alex said.
“Oh, come on,” George insisted. “It can’t be any worse than spicy ginger candy or drinking gallons and gallons of warm water or—”
“This plan’s a little different,” Alex told him. “You’re gonna have to return to the scene of the burp.”
“I’m gonna have to what?” George asked.
“Return to the scene of the burp,” Alex repeated. “They do it all the time in mystery books. The police make everyone reenact the crime exactly as it happened. That’s when the real criminal gets revealed.”
“What criminal?” George wondered. “My problem is a burp.”
“In this case, the burp is the real troublemaker. The thing that caused all your problems in the first place,” Alex told him.
“Well,” George admitted, “I guess when you put it that way . . .”
“I’m gonna be there, watching everything,” Alex assured him. “I want to see if there’s anything weird that happens when you wish on a shooting star. Anything out of the ordinary that might give us a clue about how the burp got into you. Then we can use that information to help us get the burp out of you.”
“The burp gets out of me all the time,” George reminded him. “That’s the problem.”
“You know what I mean,” Alex said.
“But what if wishing again makes things worse?” George asked him.
“How much worse can it get?” Alex replied.
That was true.
“Okay. So you and your folks come to Ernie’s tomorrow night,” Alex said. “You order the same root beer float, and you make the same wish.”
“Tomorrow?” George asked nervously. “Ernie is still mad at me from yesterday. Can’t we wait a week?”
“Nope,” Alex said. “I saw in the newspaper that there’s going to be a meteor shower tomorrow night. That means lots of shooting stars. You have to sit at the same table and make the same wish. Everything has to be exactly the same.”
But George knew everything wasn’t going to be exactly the same. It couldn’t be. Because now, wherever George went and whatever he did, the burp was with him. Just waiting to cause as much bubble trouble as it possibly could.
“Can we sit outside?” George asked his mom and dad as they walked over to Ernie’s Ice Cream Emporium Monday night. “I want to see the sky.”
That wasn’t exactly the truth. But it wasn’t like George could tell them about the whole return-to-the-scene-of-the-burp thing—especially since he hadn’t told them about the burp in the first place.
“I’m surprised you wanted more ice cream after yesterday,” George’s mom said. “It took me an hour to get the chocolate sauce out of your shirt.”
“I’m really in the mood for a root beer float,” George told her. Which wasn’t exactly the truth, either.
“We better make this fast,” George’s dad said as they sat down. “It’s almost nineteen hundred hours and you still have homework.”
George knew nineteen hundred hours was seven o’clock at night in army-talk. It was getting dark. If everything went according to plan, there would be a shooting star overhead soon.
“It’s not really crowded here tonight, is it?” George’s mom said as she looked at the menu.
“A lot of people are at Farley’s Flying Floats,” George’s dad pointed out, looking across the street.
There was definitely a line outside Farley’s. But at least Ernie’s wasn’t completely empty. There were people sitting at a few of the tables.
In fact, George recognized some of Sam Farley’s middle-school friends sitting with their parents. He guessed they didn’t like having ice cream dumped on their heads yesterday.
“Oh look, there’s Alex,” George’s mom said. “I wonder why he’s wearing that funny hat.”
George looked over at a stool near the counter. Alex was wearing his Sherlock Holmes hat and taking notes on a pad, just like a real detective on TV.
“He’s all alone,” George’s mom continued. “You should go ask him to join us.”
“We can’t ask him to sit here,” George said quickly.
“Why not?” his mom asked.
The real reason George couldn’t invite Alex to join them was because everything had to be exactly the same as it had been that first night when the burp arrived. Alex hadn’t been sitting with them then. So he couldn’t sit with them now.
But George couldn’t say that. So instead he answered, “Alex works here. I don’t think he’s supposed to sit with the customers.”
Before George’s mom could reply, a waitress came roller-skating over to George’s table.
“Hi,” the waitress greeted them. “What can I get for you folks?”
“I’ll have a root beer float,” George said. “With two scoops of chocolate ice cream.”
That was exactly what he had ordered when he and his family had come there before.
“I’ll have vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce,” George’s mom told the waitress.
George smiled. That was exactly what his mom had ordered the last time they were all at Ernie’s. Perfect.
“And I’ll have a banana split with—” George’s dad began.
“No, you can’t have that!” George shouted suddenly.
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“Why not?” his dad asked him.
“Um . . . well . . . because you always like rocky road ice cream sundaes,” George said. “Why don’t you get one of those?”
“Tonight I want a banana split,” his dad explained.
“Come on, Dad, you know you want that sundae,” George said. “I bet they’ll put three cherries on it if you ask them for it.”
George’s dad gave him a strange look. Then he said, “Okay. That actually sounds pretty good.”
Phew. For a minute there, George thought his dad was going to order the wrong thing. That could have ruined everything.
“Okay, I’ll get your order for you right away,” the waitress said.
As the waitress skated off, George looked up at the sky. It was really dark now. Those shooting stars would probably arrive soon.
So would George’s root beer float. Everything was in place.
There was nothing left to do but wait.
“Here you go,” the waitress said as she placed the root beer float in front of George. “Drink up.”
George started feeling really nervous as the scent of chocolate and root beer wafted up toward his nose. He hadn’t had a root beer float in a long time. Not since . . .
“Hey! Look up!” George’s mom shouted suddenly. “It’s a shooting star. Quick. Make a wish.”
George wanted to tell the star to wait. He wasn’t ready. He hadn’t even taken a single sip of his root beer float—the way he had that fateful night.
But there was no time. Shooting stars move too fast. And you can’t stop them. George was going to have to make his wish . . . again. Right now.
“I want to make kids laugh—but not get into trouble,” George whispered quietly.
And with that, the star was gone.
George sat there. Waiting. He wasn’t sure what he was waiting for. But he figured something would happen. After all, he’d just made the same wish, at the same table, with the same star overhead. Well, maybe not the same star. But a shooting star, anyway. And now . . .
Nothing was happening. Nothing at all.
George looked over at Alex.
Alex shrugged. He wrote something in his little note pad.
George put a hand on his belly. Nope. No bubbles there.
“Aren’t you going to have your float?” George’s mom asked him. “Your chocolate ice cream is going to melt.”
“Um . . . sure,” George said. He picked up his long, skinny spoon and dug it into the ice cream. He opened his mouth and then . . .
Splish-splash. Flish-flash.
Suddenly, George felt something move inside his belly.
Ping-pong. Bing-bong.
Uh-oh. There were bubbles in there. Hundreds of them. The super burp was back.
The bubbles were bombarding George’s bladder. They were leaping on his liver.
“What’s wrong, soldier?” George’s dad asked him. “Is there a problem with the float?”
George couldn’t answer his dad. That would mean opening his mouth—and then the burp might slip out.
The bubbles were moving really, really fast. They thrashed at George’s throat. They licked at his lips. They . . .
George let out a burp. A big burp. A super burp. A burp so loud and so strong it made the table shake.
“George, what do you say?” his mother asked, surprised.
George wanted to say excuse me. But George wasn’t in charge any more. The burp was. And what the burp wanted to say was:
“GOOD EVENING, LADIES AND GERMS!”
The next thing he knew, George had jumped up out of his seat. Everyone at Ernie’s turned to stare. “Stand down, soldier,” George’s dad ordered. “Take a seat.”
But the burp didn’t want to stand down. The burp wanted to tell jokes.
“Do you know how to make an elephant float?” George loudly asked his mother.
George’s mother just stared at him with surprise.
“Drop two scoops of elephant into some root beer,” George said.
Two little kids at the next table started to laugh.
George hurried to their table. “Do you know what you call a flying monkey?” he asked the kids.
“No, what?” one of them replied.
“A hot air baboon!” George shouted.
The kids laughed harder. So did a bunch of teenagers nearby. So George raced over to them.
“How do bees brush their hair?” he asked one of the teenagers.
“How?” she wondered.
“With a honey comb!” George answered.
Now everyone at Ernie’s was laughing—even George’s parents. And the burp still had more jokes to tell.
“Why did the duck cross the road?” George asked two old ladies who were sipping coffee in the corner.
“Why?” one of them said.
“It was the chicken’s day off!” George replied.
“You’re a very funny boy,” the old lady told George.
George turned to a man with a long red beard and a big mustache. “Do you know who shaves ten times a day and still has a beard?” he asked.
The man shook his head.
“A barber!” George said.
People were laughing really hard now. And then . . .
Pop! Suddenly, George felt something burst in the bottom of his belly. All the air rushed out of him. The super burp was gone. But George was still there. In the middle of Ernie’s. Surrounded by a bunch of laughing people.
Huh?
There were no broken dishes.
No messes to clean up.
And nobody was angry with him. Not even his parents.
The burp had struck at Ernie’s a third time. But no one was throwing George out.
George couldn’t believe it. This couldn’t be real.
George held out his arm. “Somebody pinch me,” he said.
One of the teenagers gave George’s arm a good, hard pinch.
“Ow!” George cried out.
That settled it.
This was no dream.
It was a dream come true.
“Last night was one strange night,” George remarked as he and Alex walked onto the school playground the next morning. “I didn’t even get a chance to drink a sip of my root beer float before the burp hit again. So we’re no closer to finding out what caused it.”
“We’re a little closer,” Alex disagreed. “Now we know that the root beer float didn’t cause your burp.”
“I’ve been telling you that,” George insisted. “The burp is magic. So the cure will have to be magic, too.”
Alex shook his head. “And I keep telling you that there’s no such thing as magic.”
“Well, at least I didn’t get in trouble this time,” George said. “That’s really something.”
“Maybe the burp is mellowing,” Alex suggested.
“Can burps do that?” George asked.
Alex opened his mouth to answer. But before he could say a word, a loud shout came from the other end of the playground.
“Oh, Georgie!”
It was Sage. She was running toward them, with Chris and Julianna right behind.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were doing your act last night?” Sage asked George. “I would have been there to cheer you on. My cousin Willow was at Ernie’s. She thought you were hilarious.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about your act,” Chris added.
“Well, it was . . . um . . . kind of . . . spur of the moment,” George explained.
“Let us know when you’re doing it again,” Julianna said. “We’ll all come.”
“You heard about it, too?” George asked her.
“Yeah,” Julianna said. “My sister babysits for these people who were at Ernie’s last n
ight. They came home and told her you were hysterical.”
“I’ll tell you what’s hysterical,” Louie said as he, Max, and Mike joined the other fourth-graders at the edge of the playground. “My new commercial for Farley’s Flying Floats. Did you guys see it?”
Julianna chuckled. “Oh, I saw it.”
“Me too,” Sage said.
“I don’t think I’ll ever forget it,” Chris added with a laugh.
“Why?” George asked. “What happened?”
“You mean you didn’t hear my new song?” Louie asked. “It was awesome.”
“Super awesome,” Max agreed.
“The superest awesomest,” Mike added.
Louie grinned. “I wrote it myself. It goes, ‘Farley floats are number one. Flying ice cream’s really fun. Get it in a float or buy it by the pint. It’s so good you’ll finish every bite!’”
George shook his head. “That doesn’t even rhyme,” he told Louie.
Louie ignored him. “And then I did this really cool tap dance,” he said. “I kicked my legs to the front. Then I kicked them back and . . . Whoops!”
Louie tripped over his shoelace and landed on his butt.
George started to laugh.
“I don’t know how you missed my commercial,” Louie said as he scrambled to his feet. “My dad ran it on every channel last night. It cost a fortune. But advertising is important.”
“Georgie missed your commercial because he was doing his stand-up comedy act at Ernie’s,” Sage said.
Louie gave George a look. “Ernie’s? Nobody goes there anymore. Nobody cool, anyway.” He laughed. “Then again, you’re not cool.”
“Are you kidding?” Sage asked Louie. “Georgie is so cool he could freeze the sun.” She smiled at George. “You can use that in your act if you want.”
George frowned. The joke was pretty dumb. He’d never use that in his act—if he actually had an act. Which he didn’t. It was the super burp that was doing all the joking around last night.
BRRRRIIIIINNNNGGG! Just then, the bell rang.
