The Possum Always Rings Twice

by Bruce Hale

  “I hate waiting,” said Natalie.

  “Me, too.”

  A few more minutes limped along.

  “I know how to pass the time,” said Natalie.

  “Lay it on me,” I said.

  “What do you get when you cross a fly with an elephant?”

  I just shook my head.

  “A zipper that never forgets!” Natalie squawked. “Fly . . . zipper . . . get it? Okay, how do you spot an elephant hiding in a bowl of M&M’s?”

  After what felt like a century later, Natalie had run through all her elephant jokes. I peeked over the roof’s edge.

  All clear.

  School was deserted. It was as quiet as a monster movie graveyard just before the zombies come to life.

  “Showtime,” I said.

  Natalie glided to the grass, and I slid down a pole to join her. From way down the hall came the skritch-skritch of the janitor’s raking.

  We hotfooted it over to the library.

  So far, so good.

  I tried the library door. Locked. And the keyhole was too small for me to pick the lock with my tail tip.

  Drat.

  Natalie peered through a window. “Empty. You sure that note is for real?”

  “Real as the ten pages of homework I’m avoiding right now,” I said, casing the joint. “So how are these goons getting into their meeting?”

  “Breaking in?” said Natalie.

  “Naw . . . too messy. Cool Beans wouldn’t stand for it. Hmm . . . Cool Beans . . .”

  “What about him?”

  A picture sprang to mind—a sneering possum telling Cool Beans about a book club meeting.

  “I’ve got it!” I said.

  “What?” said Natalie. “Parasites?”

  “Not exactly. Bubba Ganoosh—Cool Beans’s nephew. He has the key, and he’s supervising this book club. So if we catch him first . . .”

  “We get the key.”

  Natalie and I settled into the bushes on either side of the door and waited. Soon, an off-key whistling grated on our ears.

  I peered between the leaves.

  Bubba Ganoosh sauntered up the pathway. He wore a sneer like it was his natural expression (which, come to think of it, it probably was). The possum’s fur was matted and gray, and his backward baseball cap advertised his rebel attitude.

  As he approached, I realized something important: Natalie and I had no plan for neutralizing Bubba. We also had no net, no sack, no handcuffs.

  That left trickery.

  I stepped out from the shrubbery. “Hey, ace. Am I glad to see you!”

  “You are?” Bubba frowned. “Who are you?”

  “Chet Gecko,” I said, “friend of your uncle’s. Remember?”

  Recognition dawned in his mud brown eyes. “Oh, yeah. The dweeb. What were you doing in the bushes?”

  Glancing over his shoulder at Natalie, I thought fast. “Oh, uh . . . hiding. Yeah, see, there’s this . . . um, psycho on the loose.”

  “Psycho?”

  “Yeah,” I said, making a shooing motion at Natalie. “He’s really dangerous and uh, deranged.”

  Bubba eyed me. “You sure he’s the deranged one?”

  Natalie crept backward toward the edge of the library, watching us.

  “Oh, uh, ha-ha,” I said. I leaned closer. “Yeah, he’s on the loose, alrighty, and headed this way. They say we’re all supposed to hide.”

  “I dunno,” said the possum. “Sounds like a load of horse hockey.”

  He started turning toward the door, with Natalie still in plain sight.

  “It’s true!” I grabbed his arm. “In fact, I can hear the psycho now.”

  Bubba cocked his head. “I don’t hear nothin’.”

  “Yeah,” I said, glaring at Natalie. “There it is again!”

  She nodded and uncorked the longest, creepiest psycho laugh I’d ever heard. “Mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-hee-heeee!”

  The possum’s eyes went wide. He whirled, looking for the source of the noise, but Natalie had slipped around the corner.

  “Quick!” he hissed. “Inside!”

  Bubba fumbled with the keys. A possum in panic mode still moves slower than the last minutes of a parent-teacher conference.

  I glanced around, afraid that the book club members might catch us.

  “Let me,” I said, grabbing the keys.

  Natalie cackled again, for good measure.

  “Hurry!” said Bubba.

  I hustled the possum indoors. “That was close!” I said. “Why don’t you hide someplace safe, and I’ll keep watch.”

  He scanned the library. “Where should I go?”

  I remembered the back hall. “Isn’t there a storage room that locks?”

  “Good idea!” said Bubba. He scooted for it at the speed of paint drying.

  I glanced at the wall clock above the ballot boxes.

  It was 3:25. Glog’s goons could show up at any moment.

  Putting a shoulder to Bubba’s back, I hurried him into the storeroom.

  “I’ll stand guard,” I said. “Whatever happens—whatever you may hear—don’t budge.”

  “I’ll play possum,” said Bubba.

  I locked him in. The next door in the hallway opened with a creak: the conference room. I flicked on the lights.

  Where could I hide the tape recorder?

  Under the table? Too risky. On the ceiling? Too exposed. I slipped the machine into a supply drawer, turned it on, and left the drawer ajar.

  Now, to make my getaway . . . I stepped into the hall.

  Click. The library door opened.

  A sudden chatter of voices sent adrenaline sizzling through my veins like the sugar rush from a ten-foot-tall chocolate bunny.

  Too late to escape.

  Glog’s gang was here.

  16

  Gopher Broke

  With seconds to spare, I darted back into the meeting room, lunged for the recycling bin, and dived inside. Quietly I lowered the plastic lid.

  Footsteps scuffed in the hallway.

  “Didn’t see him,” said a sultry voice. “But I’m sure he’s around.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” an oily voice replied. “He opened the door; that’s his main job. The poor fool actually thinks we’ll make him one of us.”

  “Some lead, some follow,” said Sultry Voice, with a chuckle.

  That voice sounded maddeningly familiar, but I couldn’t place it. All I could tell was, both speakers were girls. Other footsteps and voices followed as more kids shuffled into the room.

  The contents of the recycling bin pressed in on me. Papers prickled my nose. A wet soda bottle dug into my leg. A sharp object poked my back; it felt like someone was hoping to recycle a cactus.

  But I couldn’t budge. Any move would give me away.

  “Is everyone here?” Oily Voice asked.

  “Everyone except Dum-Dum and Ben,” rasped a boy’s voice.

  “Let’s begin,” said Sultry Voice.

  A sharp flick, and the perfumy smell of incense drifted on the air. A wild buzzing filled the room, like a rattlesnake taking a percussion solo. Then it died away.

  “Oh, Most Secret and Powerful One, we gather in your fuzzy name,” chanted Sultry Voice.

  “Glog!” the group responded.

  “We ask your help, to do your dread work, and purify this school.”

  “GLOG!” chanted the group, louder.

  “Help us, guide us, stand by us as we act to make our dreams reality!”

  “GLOG!” the gang roared.

  “So be it, and so it be,” said Sultry Voice.

  I itched to burst out and confront them. (I also itched from the stupid paper tickling my nose.) But I had to wait until I got the incriminating words on tape.

  A distant door banged. Heavy footsteps pounded into the room.

  Was it Glog?

  “Sorry I’m late,” boomed a rough voice. Ben Dova.

  “We wuz held up cuz the gecko stole our message,” said a high
, tight voice. Dum-Dum Dumbrowski?

  “No matter,” said Sultry Voice. “We will deal with him later. Now, how goes the takeover?”

  Raspy Voice responded. “Splendidly, O Exalted One. Glog will seize power tomorrow. All that’s left is to stuff those boxes.”

  “Are you sure we need to do that?” said Oily Voice. “With only the frog and that ridiculous gecko left in the race, our boy may have already won.”

  Ridiculous gecko? Ooh, I was gonna love busting these guys.

  “You bet yer bottom boots I’m winnin’,” said a corn-fried voice. Perry?

  “We take no chances,” said Sultry Voice. “Ben, Dum-Dum?”

  “Yes, Nadia.”

  Nadia? I could barely restrain myself. Sultry Voice was Nadia Nyce, Perry’s campaign manager? This got better and better.

  “Go into the other room and bring the ballot boxes here,” said Nadia.

  “Will I be a member after this?” whined Ben. “You promised if I supported Perry and helped Dum-Dum and dropped out of the union—”

  So that explained the split between Rocky and Ben.

  Nadia’s voice sharpened. “When our goal is won, Glog will reward those who helped gain the victory.”

  Ben and Dum-Dum left the room.

  “Fool,” said Oily Voice. The others chuckled.

  “It was so easy to trick him into dropping out,” said Nadia.

  My itch was nearly unbearable. Something crawled over my feet. The sweet smoke made my nose twitch in a most alarming way. I gritted my teeth.

  Just a little while longer . . .

  Footsteps returned. The door closed. Several objects thumped onto the table.

  “Who has the new ballots?” said Oily Voice.

  “Here,” said Raspy Voice. A bag rustled. “How do you—”

  The world turns on if onlys. If only Cool Beans had kept his recycling bin cleaner. If only it hadn’t attracted red fire ants.

  And if only one ant hadn’t chosen that very moment to chomp on my tail.

  Hard.

  “YeeeOWWWW!” I screamed, launching up from the paper and plastics like a recycling rocket.

  I landed on the cool tile floor. Around me a dozen faces gaped—Ben, Dum-Dum, Perry, Nadia, the tough-guy rats, Miss Flappy, Spy-Girl Barbie, and a mean looking assortment of weasels and badgers.

  “Give up!” I cried.

  My entrance had showered papers around the room and some came to rest against the incense sticks. Smoke swirled, tickling my nose worse than a dozen big brothers.

  “The play-ay-ayce is surrounded,” I said. “We’ve got you dead to ri-hi-hi-CHOO!-ights.”

  My supersonic sneeze scattered the pile of ballots on the table. Oops.

  “Is that so?” said Nadia. The mink wore a goofy headdress bristling with horns, feathers, fringes, and spangles. She looked like Sitting Bull as a Las Vegas showgirl.

  “I think we’ve got you,” said Miss Flappy with a wicked grin.

  I scanned the room. She was right. They did.

  Where was Natalie when I needed her?

  The furry gang closed in on me.

  “So,” I said, “which one of you is Glog?”

  Chuckles all around. “Ya nitwit,” sneered Burly Rat. “We’re all Glog.”

  “Huh?”

  A smile teased Nadia’s lips. She pointed to a gopher statue with candles on its head. “The Grand and Loyal Order of the Golden Gopher. That’s GLOGG, smart guy. And we’re going to rid this school of your kind.”

  Before they grabbed me, I scanned desperately for a weak link. I found it.

  “Dum-Dum!” I cried, pointing past his left shoulder.

  “Behind you!”

  True to his name, he looked.

  I darted past the badger and dived onto my belly, sliding under the table. On the far side, I popped up.

  “So long, suckers!” I sprang for the exit.

  The members of GLOGG roared in rage.

  “Get him!” cried Nadia.

  Gangly Rat vaulted the table and blocked the door.

  Dang!

  Trapped, I leaped for the wall. Paws clutched at my tail, but I scrambled upward.

  Whap! A thrown book just missed my head.

  I glanced down. Burly Rat hurled a coffee cup—kahssh!

  “Tsk, tsk,” I said. “Cool Beans won’t like that.”

  “Don’t let him escape!” cried Nadia.

  The group fanned out across the room. I checked their number. All were mammals—not a bird or a lizard in sight. That meant no wall climbers.

  “I can hang out on the ceiling all day long,” I said. “Come and get me, you furballs!”

  Smoke rose to meet me. Snarls and frowny faces greeted my taunt—except for one ugly face: The bat was smiling.

  And then I remembered. Bats can fly.

  “Foolish Gecko,” she said, flexing her wings. “Say nighty-night. You’re going down.”

  And with a flap, she launched herself straight at me.

  17

  Bite the Ballot

  What happened next is still somewhat of a blur, like a runaway preschooler at bath time. But here’s what I remember.

  A deafening BEEP-BEEP-BEEP went off near my head, almost making me lose my grip. Hard on its heels came a pssssh, as a half-dozen ceiling sprinklers dumped their water all at once.

  The bat caught a snootful of spray and tumbled back onto the table like a lead bumblebee.

  “Aaugh!” cried the GLOGGers.

  Nadia tried to shield the bogus ballots with her body, but it was too late. Streams of water soaked the pile of paper.

  Boom! The door banged open.

  “What in the blue blazes of bop is goin’ on here?” Cool Beans demanded.

  The massive possum stood with hands on hips, surveying the wreckage. Even through his shades, the librarian’s eyes were shooting fire.

  Natalie peered around him. “Looks like a ballot box stuffing party gone bad.”

  I climbed down from my perch and retrieved the damp tape recorder from its drawer. Luckily, it was still running.

  “And we’ve got the whole thing on tape,” I said.

  Cool Beans took the machine. “Crazy,” he said. “This recording is gonna make the top ten on Mr. Zero’s Hit Parade.”

  I looked around at the bedraggled plotters, and I knew who’d be getting the hits. Mr. Zero does love his spanking machine.

  While Cool Beans called our principal and dealt with the soggy members of GLOGG, I squelched homeward with Natalie.

  “If you and Cool Beans hadn’t blown in, I’d have been all washed up,” I said.

  “You mean, more than you already are,” said Natalie.

  I wrung out my sleeves. “So how’d you know to come in after me?”

  “I hung around outside,” she said. “And when I saw those mugs going in, I figured you were cornered.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  We passed through the parking lot and onto the peaceful street.

  “So I found Cool Beans waiting in the teachers’ lounge for his nephew to call,” she said.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “Bubba.”

  Natalie waved a wing. “He was worried, ’cause Bubba was supposed to give him some signal that everything was okay with the book club.”

  “What signal?”

  “He calls and lets the phone ring a couple times.”

  “Ah,” I said. “The possum always rings twice.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Go on.”

  “I told Cool Beans about the fake book club, and he hustled over to break it up.”

  Shaking water off my hat, I asked, “What took you guys so long?”

  Natalie raised an eyebrow. “Ever try to hurry a possum?”

  “Point taken.”

  We ambled up the street in silence awhile. The sun slanted through the trees.

  “Hey,” said Natalie. “Speaking of possums, whatever happened to Bubba?”

  I
gave her a half smile. “He’s, uh, still playing possum.”

  Natalie frowned. “And when are you going to let Cool Beans know where he is?”

  “All in good time, birdie. All in good time.”

  The next day, the GLOGG caper was big news all over school. Apparently, these goofballs had formed their secret society to establish the rule of mammals. They had scared off Viola, broken up my speech, and bombed the bathroom.

  They had even thrown me off their trail by having the rats warn me away from Ben, making me think the wolverine was behind it all.

  If we hadn’t stopped the plotters, GLOGG would’ve tried to turn Emerson Hicky into a mammals-only school. Personally, I felt they deserved each other. But I had a few more years left at the dump, and I’d gotten used to it.

  Natalie and I were eating sack lunches under the scrofulous tree when some other news arrived, in the shape of a yellow-and-green bouncing ball.

  “Hey there, hi there, ho there!” cried Popper, all aquiver.

  “Hey, peewee,” I said. “What’s shaking? Other than you, I mean.”

  “Haven’t you heard?” she said.

  “Heard what?” asked Natalie.

  Popper’s eyes grew wider than a hippo’s belt. “A bunch of rotten-dirty rotten cheaters tried to get that Porry-Perry guy elected.”

  “We know,” I said. “We stopped ’em.”

  “And so Mr. Zero envela . . . invala—uh, didn’t count his vee-vi-votes!”

  “What’s that mean?” asked Natalie.

  The little frog hooked a thumb at her chest. “I’m the new pippity-president!”

  My jaw dropped open. I stared into her mile-wide grin. “You?”

  “Me!”

  Natalie turned to me. “I don’t believe it.”

  “There’s more, more, more!” Popper pogo-ed up and down in a blur.

  “More?” I asked.

  “The runnity-runner-up gets to be vice president!”

  I held up a palm. “Hang on,” I said. “If Viola and Ben dropped out, and Perry was disqualified, then who’s left?”

  “You,” said Natalie.

  “No way.”

  “Yup, yeah, uh-huh,” said Popper. “You got two votes. See ya at studity-student council!” And she vibrated off.