by David Lubar
“No thanks.”
He waggled the tongs and gave me a goofy smile. “Trust me.”
I sniffed. Nothing. “It doesn’t stink. Cool—you’ve got something that kills odors?” I wouldn’t mind dipping my hands in that stuff if it kept me from stinking.
“No. Better. Look closely.” He raised the ball to my eye. “Encased. Brilliant? Yes?”
I squinted at the cotton ball. Tiny rainbows shimmered across the surface. I touched it. Weird. It was covered in a superthin film of some kind. “Plastic?” I asked.
“Yes, polymer,” he said. He pointed at my head and then lowered his hand toward my feet. “Covered. Head to toe. No more stink.”
“Uh, yeah.” I thought about getting my body coated in plastic. It didn’t seem like a great idea. Rotting didn’t seem like a great idea either, but I had no idea what the plastic would do to me. What if it started to shrink? Or what if I could never get it off? “I’ll think about it.”
I left the lab. Mr. Murphy met me outside and took me back up to his level. Before I returned to the museum, I dropped in on Dr. Cushing.
“Any luck with the bone machine?” I asked her. She’d been working on a machine that would make my bones absorb calcium so they wouldn’t break so easily.
“I’m making progress,” she said.
“So the test pig isn’t exploding anymore?” The bone machine had a bit of a bad—and messy—side effect.
“No. Not the whole thing. Just the head.”
“Well, I guess that’s progress,” I said. “What about this?” I held up my hand and wrinkled my nose.
“I have some ideas,” she said.
“But no solution yet?”
“No. I’m sorry. I know this is hard on you. I wish I could just flip a switch and fix everything. Science doesn’t work that way.”
“I know that for sure,” I said. “I have Abigail around to remind me. But I guess I’m pretty lucky to have both of you working on my problems.”
“And we’re pretty lucky to have such a brave subject,” she said.
“I’m not that brave,” I said. “I really don’t have much choice.”
“Nathan, I’ve seen what you can do. You’re the bravest young man I’ve ever met. Even most adults would give up if they were in your situation. Don’t ever think you lack courage.”
“Thanks.” It’s a good thing zombies can’t blush.
We chatted for several more minutes. Then I left. On the way home, I kept staring at my hands. And I kept sniffing them. Rotting.
I remember hearing kids shout, “You stink!” at other kids. That was something lots of kids said. I’m sure I’d yelled it often enough. But in my case, it was going to take on a whole new meaning.
I went back home and sat in bed, staring at the wall. Then I got up and wandered around my room. There was something behind my bookcase. Right. I’d forgotten all about it.
I pulled the notebook out and flipped through my drawings. Back when I first became a zombie, I’d wanted to use my powers to become a superhero. I’d even come up with a costume. But real life, and my role as a spy, had taken over. Still, it was fun to look at the sketches and imagine saving people from burning buildings or floods. It took my mind off my rotting flesh for a while.
14
Let’s Not Be Shellfish
Mom didn’t leave for work early the next morning. When I came down, she was just sitting at the breakfast table, sipping tea and looking sad.
“Don’t you need to get ready for the big day?” I asked.
She shook her head. “It’s not going to be that big, thanks to me.”
“Come on, you’ve got all sorts of cool bears. I really like the baseball one. Philly Bearster—that’s an awesome name.”
“You think so?”
I nodded. “Totally.” That was one of the costumes she’d gotten right. “There are tons of Phillies fans around here.”
She took a sip of tea. “It is kind of nice. I think we’ll sell a lot of them. I just wish we weren’t stuck with all those mistakes of mine.”
“It will work out,” I said. It felt so strange saying parent-type stuff to my mom. But she and Dad had done that for me all my life, even when I’d messed up really badly, so I guess it was nice I had a chance to return the favor. Not that anything I did could make a difference.
“Thanks, Nathan,” she said when I headed out.
“Sure.”
Mookie acted weird from the moment I saw him outside of school. He kept looking at me and grinning.
“What?” I finally asked him when we were heading to the cafeteria.
“I’ve got a big surprise for you after school,” he said. “It’s huge. Gigantic. Enormous. The best thing ever.”
“Tell me about it.”
“We’re going to— Hey, wait. You can’t trick me that easily. If I tell you now, it won’t be a surprise.”
I looked over at Abigail. She shrugged. I guess she didn’t have any idea what it was either.
I tried to get it out of him a couple more times, but he just kept saying, “Sorry. I’m going to clam up.” Then he’d laugh, like that was some sort of joke.
Finally, after school, he said, “Come on. It’s not far.”
He jogged off down the sidewalk toward town. Abigail and I followed him.
“Any ideas?” I asked her.
“Not when Mookie is involved,” she said. “It could be anything from a birthday party to a giant hole in the ground.”
“It’s not my birthday,” I said.
“I don’t think that matters when Mookie is involved,” she said. “Maybe his mom won more cupcakes.”
“I hope not. They’d probably be made with lettuce or something like that.”
Mookie was half a block away. He looked back and waved us forward. “Come on. We’re almost there.” He went around the corner.
He was waiting for us by a parking lot near the next corner.
“No way,” I said when I saw the sign.
“Come on,” Mookie said. “You can win. And the prize is five hundred dollars.”
I looked at the sign in front of the seafood store. OYSTER-EATING CONTEST! BIG CASH PRIZES!
“Mookie, do you remember what happened when you talked me into the chicken-wing-eating contest?”
He nodded. “Yeah. That was awesome.”
“Awesome? Are you kidding? I went around for a week with sixty-three wings rotting in my stomach. And then I nearly killed a whole gym full of parents. I wouldn’t call that awesome.”
“I would.” He pointed at the sign. “It’s oysters. There’s no way they’d get stuck inside of you.” He turned toward Abigail. “Right?”
“They are sort of slimy,” she said. “I guess they’d slip out as easily as they went in. Especially if you didn’t chew them.”
“No! Not you, too. You can’t think this is a good thing.” I figured she’d help me convince Mookie this was a terrible idea.
“It’s easy money,” she said. “You can buy an awesome video game system with it, and some cool games, and a second controller so you can play games with your best friend in the universe. And you’ll even have some money left over for chocolate.”
“And licorice,” Mookie said. “Pretzels, too.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but Abigail held up her hand. “Think about it logically for a second. The oysters slide right in. Later, they slide right out. What could go wrong?”
“Yeah,” Mookie said. “It’s perfect. I even checked the rules. There’s no junior division. So when you win, you get the big prize.”
I guess Abigail had a point. The only reason I had trouble with the wings was that the meat got jammed inside me and I couldn’t get it out. But oysters wouldn’t be a problem. Back when I was alive, I never would have eaten one. Not even for five hundred dollars. But now, I barely tasted stuff. And nothing made me feel sick. Mookie was right—that money would be enough to get an awesome gaming system and a bunch of games. “Sure. Let’s do it.”
I went into the store and signed up for the contest. The guy stared at me, but didn’t stop me. I saw some of the same people who’d been at the chicken-wing contest. I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise. It took a special kind of person to stuff his gut over and over. Speaking of which, down at the competition table, I spotted the biggest guy I’d ever met.
“Hey, kid,” Bubba Chompsketski said. He waved and pointed to the seat next to him. “Good to see you.”
I went over. “Hi, Bubba. Been doing a lot of this?”
He nodded. “Every contest around. Not only do I make good money, but I also get lots of free food. Do you like oysters?”
“Not really,” I said.
He shook his head. “Me neither. But every athlete has to make sacrifices for his sport.”
The judges put a plate of oysters in front of me. I still couldn’t believe people thought of them as food. They reminded me of something you’d find splattered across your hand after a really hard sneeze. When the contest started, I began slurping oysters as fast as I could. Abigail was right—they slid right down without any trouble. The pile of empty shells in front of me grew into a mountain. Next to me, Bubba was keeping up the pace. It was close. But when they blew the whistle and counted the shells, I’d won by seven and a half oysters. I’m happy to say, I wasn’t the one who ate a half.
“Nicely done,” Bubba said, holding out a hand dripping with oyster juice.
“Thanks.” We shook. My hand vanished inside his hand, but he didn’t squeeze hard.
As soon as I got my prize money, in the form of five hundred-dollar bills, I turned to Mookie and Abigail. “Okay—let’s get this stuff out of me.” My stomach bulged against my pants, but the button didn’t break.
“See, it was a great idea,” Mookie said when we left the store. “You can tell me I’m brilliant. I won’t let it go to my head.”
I had to admit he was right. For once, his idea had been perfect. “You’re brilliant, Mookie.”
“I know,” he said. “It’s a gift. But one I plan to use to help others.”
“The sun was shining brightly,” Abigail said as we headed for the playground behind Borloff Lower Elementary. “Shining with all its might.”
I gave her a puzzled look, because it was actually sort of cloudy, but she kept on talking. I realized she was telling us a poem about oysters. It was actually pretty cool.
When we reached the playground, we went to the monkey bars. As I climbed up, I could feel gravity trying to pull me to the ground, along with all the oysters. That was good. In a moment, once I’d flipped over, gravity would drain the oysters from me.
I hooked my legs over one of the bars and hung down. Then I opened my mouth and nodded. Mookie and Abigail put their hands on my stomach and started pushing.
Please work, I thought. There was nothing more awful than the idea of having tons of oysters stuck in my stomach. I had a feeling they’d smell way worse than chicken if they started to rot.
Plop!
Something hit the ground beneath me with the sound of a wet washcloth smacking a shower floor. Good. It was working.
Plop-a-plop-a-ploppity-plop.
More stuff hit. Mookie and Abigail pushed harder. Oysters poured out of my mouth. I felt like a fountain.
“See? It’s working just fine,” Mookie said.
“No trouble at all,” Abigail said.
“I think that’s the last one,” Mookie said. “I should have brought a video camera. I’d bet we could have sold a video of that. It was almost like a magic trick. Hey—imagine how awesome it would look if we played it backwards.”
“Squawk,” Abigail said.
Squawk? No, it wasn’t Abigail. I saw motion out of the corner of my eye.
“Seagulls!” Mookie screamed.
“Land gulls,” Abigail said. “Not that it matters.” She ducked and covered her head as the birds swooped down. In seconds, the gulls dived at us from all over the sky, tearing into the pile of oysters. I wrapped my arms around my head to protect my eyes.
It was like being inside a giant feather pillow in the middle of a pillow fight.
I was surrounded by flaps and squawks. But above all that, I could hear Mookie’s and Abigail’s shrieks.
Finally, the birds fluttered off. I looked at the ground beneath me. All the oysters were gone. But the birds had left something else behind. I stared at Mookie and Abigail for a moment. Then I checked my own clothes. All three of us were splattered from head to toe. We had a lot of feathers stuck to us, too.
I got off the monkey bars.
What could go wrong? That’s what Mookie had asked. I glared at him.
He shrugged. “I never thought—”
“Shut up,” I told him.
“Maybe we could go to a car wash,” he said.
I looked over at Abigail. I expected her to turn this into some sort of science lesson. But she just shuddered and said, “I need to go home.”
“We all do,” I said.
I figured I could get home before my parents, but Dad was already there. He stared at me for a moment. “What happened to you?”
“I tried bird-watching,” I said. “It seemed like it would be interesting.”
“Oh. Was it?”
“Nah. It was sort of messy. I think I got too close.”
“I can see that. You’d better wash up before your mom gets home.”
“Good idea.”
He sniffed. “I didn’t think bird droppings smelled that bad. Make sure you scrub.”
“I will.” I sniffed. I could smell it, too. My own rotting stink was outsmelling whatever the land gulls had produced. And they ate garbage and fish guts. So, basically, my hands smelled worse than digested garbage. It didn’t get much lower than that.
I headed for the stairs. But then I turned back. “Mom’s really upset about this costume stuff.”
Dad nodded. “She loves her job. This is pretty hard on her. But she’ll get over it. We just have to be supportive.”
“Do you think they’ll fire her?”
“I hope not.”
“Yeah. Me, too.” As much as the whole bear thing was way too cute for me, I knew it was important to my mom. “Did you see the big pair of pajamas?”
“It was definitely large,” Dad said.
“I didn’t laugh. Not even once, the whole time she was showing stuff to me.”
“Good boy.”
I went upstairs and took a long shower. I also spent a long time thinking. I realized I had to decide whether to take Professor Quirlian up on his offer to coat me in his plastic formula, at least until Abigail and Dr. Cushing figured out a better solution. I didn’t want to do it. But if I hoped to keep people from figuring out I was dead, it might be my best choice.
When I came back downstairs, Mom was home. I thought she’d be moping around. But Sad Mom had been replaced by Annoyed Mom. This was not a good trade. She gave me that stare. I’d done something wrong. I thought back through the day. As far as I could remember, I hadn’t done anything bad. I’d folded my clean clothes and put them away last night. I’d made my bed. I hadn’t left my schoolwork on the kitchen table. I definitely hadn’t sneaked any snacks. I was totally innocent. But there was no need to wonder—she’d tell me what it was soon enough.
15
It’s a Wrap
“I went to get your pills so I could renew your prescription.” Mom held up a half-full pill bottle.
Uh-oh. I’d stopped taking my asthma medicine. I didn’t need my inhaler. And I definitely didn’t need my pills. I was supposed to take one every night. But a kid who doesn’t breathe can’t have an asthma attack. “I guess I forgot. I’ve been feeling real good. I’ve been jogging and everything.”
I thought she was going to get angry. Instead, she nodded and said, “I understand. You’re feeling good. But you can’t take risks. That’s how asthma is. The medicine builds up in your body over time. If you stop, you could have a bad attack.” She held out t
he bottle.
“I’m sorry. I’ll do better.” I took the bottle. I realized I’d have to keep taking the pills. Except I wasn’t going to swallow them. Nothing got digested anyhow. I didn’t want to end up with a belly full of pills. But I had to swallow one, because Mom handed me a glass of water, then stood there and waited for me to do it. I figured one little pill in my stomach wouldn’t be a problem.
Right after dinner, the doorbell rang. It was Abigail and Mookie.
“I figured something out,” she said. “Can we come in?”
“Sure. Let’s go up to my room.”
When we got up there, Abigail said, “I have a theory. You always stink a little, right.”
“Yeah. Thanks for reminding me.”
“But sometimes it seems like you stink a lot.” She grabbed my hand and sniffed it. “There’s just a little smell right now. Do you see what that means?”
I took a guess. “Something makes me stinkier?”
Abigail gave me the same smile my teachers use when I come up with the right answer. “Exactly. So there’s a trigger of some sort. Think about the times when you really stank.”
“Every time he played sports before he became a zombie,” Mookie said. “Nathan totally stank.”
Abigail ignored him. “At lunch, when you handed Adam his burger, and in my room, when you picked up Mr. Fangle. When else?”
I thought back over the past week. I’d been smelly at home, right after I found out my show was canceled, and in the park with Mr. Murphy after he set off the sparks in my house. In the cafeteria, I’d been complaining about our table. And on the way to Abigail’s room, I’d been annoyed with Mookie and his imaginary light saber.
I snapped my fingers. Carefully. “Got it. It happens when I’m angry.”
“Perfect explanation,” Abigail said. “Everything fits. Let’s test it out. Your breath stinks, your nose is too big, and everybody hates you.”
Those words sounded familiar. “That’s exactly what you said back in your uncle’s lab when we were trying to see if the Hurt-Be-Gone worked.” I wasn’t angry, because none of it was true. Though I guess my breath would start to stink pretty soon, along with the rest of me.
