Phineas L. MacGuire . . . Gets Slimed!

by Frances O'Roark Dowell

  “You know, this is giving me a great idea for a new comic book,” Ben said, handing me another piece of slimy bark. “Slime Man—‘Don’t Look Now, But You’re About to Get Slimed!’”

  Don’t ever let anyone tell you science does not get the creative juices flowing.

  The last thing we did was collect some slime-free bark. The night before I’d read about an experiment where you could make your own slime mold in a plastic container. I could hardly get to sleep thinking about it—I could grow slime mold in my very own room.

  All you have to do to grow your own slime mold is put a piece of paper towel in a plastic container, place some bark on top, cover the bark with water, and cover the container with plastic. Next day you dump out the water and re-cover the container. You have to wait a few weeks, but eventually you’ll have slime mold growing in your room, your bathroom, on top of your TV, wherever you feel like.

  By the end of the morning we had everything we needed for the start of an excellent mold museum, if not an entire mold empire.

  Now all I had to do was everything else. Come up with a speech for Ben and pound out my overdue book report. After Ben left, I went up to my room to get to work. Just as I was about to write the first line of the speech—something brilliant, like “Hello, my name is Ben Robbins, and I am running for president of Mrs. Tuttle’s fourth-grade class”—there was a knock on my door.

  Just what I needed, a visit from Sarah Fortemeyer, Teenage Girl Space Alien. “Go away, I’m busy!” I yelled.

  “I’ve got something I think you’ll want to see,” Sarah singsonged through my closed door.

  “I doubt it,” I said. She was probably just dying to show me her whole collection of fingernail polish, a million bottles of Dust Bowl Orange and Atomic Raygun Red, Putrid Pink Peonies and Wilted Wildflowers.

  Actually, for nail polish, that stuff didn’t sound so bad.

  It’s when they call it Purple Passionflower that a scientist has got to keep his guard up.

  “I mean it, Mac,” Sarah said. “You won’t believe what I found.”

  She’d probably gone through my mom’s bottom dresser drawer, the one where my mom keeps scarves and feathery and furry things. It’s the stuff she puts on when she’s going out for a big night with Lyle and wants to look like somebody no one around this house even recognizes. It’s sort of scary.

  But not as scary as that stuff would look on Sarah Fortemeyer.

  “I’m doing my homework,” I told her, still not opening the door. In fact, I was wondering if there was a quick way of barricading my room so that I would be safe until my mom and Lyle got home.

  Too late. The doorknob turned. I stared at the wall in front of me, determined not to turn around and look. I was pretty sure seeing Sarah Fortemeyer in one of my mom’s weird boa things would stunt my growth.

  For life.

  “Look,” Sarah said. She walked across the room to my desk and shoved her hand under my eyes, which I immediately closed. “I found twelve of them. There were a whole bunch out by the swing set.”

  Slowly, very slowly, I opened my eyes. In Sarah’s hand were twelve dried-up worm carcasses. One of them was almost torn in two, so it didn’t count, but the others were in pristine condition.

  “You found these by the swing set?” I asked her.

  “Yeah,” she said, dumping the worms on my notebook. “You know, where your mom threw out all those worms last year? The ones you gave her for … oh. Sorry. I bet most of them are just fine, though. I mean, there were hundreds of those suckers when she dumped them. So if I only found twelve, the rest are probably still just dandy, Andy.”

  I nodded. And felt like a dupe. Why hadn’t I ever thought of looking by the swing set? It was a brilliant, maybe even a genius, idea.

  I looked up at Sarah Fortemeyer with new respect. Well, I almost did. But just as I was about to communicate my scientific regard for her worm geniosity, I noticed she was wearing pink and purple feather earrings, two per ear.

  There are not enough dried worms on the face of the Earth to make up for that.

  As of this morning, scientists everywhere can add Ben Robbins and Aretha Timmons to the amazing list of famous chemical reactions. This list includes, among many other things, baking soda and vinegar, which together produce carbon dioxide gas, and diluted hydrochloric acid mixed up with sodium sulfide, which makes a stinkazoid rottenegg smell in no time.

  Now it includes Ben and Aretha.

  By themselves they’re just two ordinary human beings.

  Together they are a Ben and Aretha Explosion.

  This morning Mrs. Tuttle’s class listened to the presidential candidates’ speeches. I did not have high hopes, even with Aretha on the ticket. First of all, as the head speechwriter, I knew just how lousy Ben’s speech was. When you are writing a speech at the same time your mom is standing behind you ranting and raving, well, it can be a little hard to concentrate.

  I’d been sitting at my desk, chewing on my pencil, completely unable to find a good way to say “Ben is not as crazy as you think,” when my mom burst into my room. She was wearing her bathrobe and had on this funny pink plastic cap she wears when she’s going to take a shower but doesn’t want to wash her hair.

  Which is when it hit me: We’d completely forgotten about the mold samples getting jump-started in my mom’s shower.

  I was doomed.

  “I’m not sure where you got the idea my shower stall is a science lab, buster, but you are sadly mistaken,” my mom said, waving a hairbrush around in the air. Just because my mom is Miss No Spanking, Just Lots of Boring Lectures doesn’t mean she won’t make you nervous that maybe she’s changed her mind. “Did you really think I was going to let you use my shower to grow mold?”

  “We were going to take the mold out before you got back,” I tried to explain. “I guess I sort of forgot. Besides, it wasn’t even mold. It was just potential mold.”

  My mom pointed the hairbrush at me. “Well, it’s mold now, Mac.”

  “Really?” I couldn’t believe it—our experiment had worked, at super warp speed! “That’s great!”

  My mom stared me down. She used her best I am your mother and buy all your clothes and food and pay your doctors’ bills and work hard each and every day and you are in so much trouble you can’t even believe it look.

  “Your shower stall was kind of moldy already, Mom,” I said, hoping to reason with her. “Really, a few more mold spores aren’t going to make that big of a difference.”

  If my mom had been a cartoon character, this would have been the point where steam started coming out of her ears.

  “I can’t believe Sarah let you do this,” she said, starting to pace back and forth across my room. “I always thought she was so responsible, but now I have to wonder.”

  I couldn’t believe it. I had never heard my mother doubt the complete wonderfulness of Sarah Fortemeyer before. Were Sarah’s days as Teenage Girl Space Alien babysitter numbered? Would we get a normal babysitter instead? Maybe we’d get one of those old lady babysitters who were always baking cookies and telling you to run along and watch TV.

  I liked this idea. I liked it a lot. In fact, I sort of started daydreaming about it right then. The old lady babysitter would never wear purple clothes or feather earrings, and she would wear one of those sweaters with pockets. Pockets filled with candy. Lots of candy.

  I sighed. Even with my mom steaming behind me, I was feeling sort of peaceful and relaxed, thinking about this new old lady babysitter tossing around peppermint patties and Hershey’s Kisses left and right.

  And then I remembered the worms.

  All twelve of them, hunted down by Sarah Fortemeyer in the backyard. Eleven of them in pristine condition.

  “Sarah didn’t know anything about it,” I told my mom. “Ben and I set up the experiment while she was putting Margaret to bed. We sort of snuck around her.”

  My mom harrumphed. And then she made me spend an hour washing out her shower stall
with a scrubber and some stinky bleach solution, even though no mold was actually growing anywhere on the tiles in her shower stall, at least not mold that I personally was responsible for.

  So anyway, by the time I got around to finishing the speech, I wasn’t exactly at my most energetic best.

  The second reason I didn’t have high hopes was that as Ben’s best friend, I knew just how bad Ben was at making speeches.

  Third, as a human being alive on this planet, I knew that even with Aretha’s help, Ben still had about a 0 percent chance of winning this election.

  But here is the brilliant scheme Ben came up with: He convinced Mrs. Tuttle to let Aretha give his speech with him. They would speak last, after Roland, Stacey, and Chester had all had their turns. I couldn’t decide if this was a good or bad thing. On the one hand, by the time Ben and Aretha made their speech, everyone might be sick of speeches. But maybe because their speech was the last speech, it would be the speech everyone remembered.

  Too bad it was such a lousy speech.

  Fortunately, Roland Forth had a lousy speech too. The thing about Roland is that he is a hummer. Wherever he is— sitting at his desk, playing kickball during recess, or eating a peanut butter sandwich at lunch—he’s always humming. Sometimes it’s sort of funny, like when he is humming and kicking the kickball at the same time. Mostly, though, it’s the most irritating thing that ever happened to you. Try taking a geography test while a kid in the third row of your class is humming “The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round” and you’ll see what I mean.

  What happened during Roland’s speech is that he would say a sentence, and then he would hum a little. Sentence, hum, sentence, hum. After a while it was totally impossible to concentrate on what he was saying because you were too busy waiting for the humming to start again.

  Next came Chester. I was afraid his speech would be so funny that people would just automatically vote for him right then and there, even though the election wasn’t until Thursday. Chester, in my opinion, will be the hardest person to beat. Unlike Roland, he is normal; unlike Stacey, he is nice; and unlike Ben, he would make a good president.

  But what I thought could never happen in a million years happened. Chester gave an unfunny speech. You could tell he wanted everyone to see his serious side. I guess that’s a problem for naturally funny people—nobody even knows they have a serious side.

  The problem with Chester’s serious side was it was sort of boring. He said a lot of stuff about rules he would make, like no spitting out gum in the water fountain, which he personally found really gross, and no do-overs in kick-ball just because the pitcher had rolled a bouncy pitch.

  After Chester gave his speech, I looked around the classroom. Everybody’s mouth was hanging open, like they were thinking, When did the space aliens come trade out Chester’s personality for the personality of the most boring person who ever lived?

  Stacey’s speech was about good manners and respecting the teacher and getting more pizza parties. When she finished, all her friends chanted, “Go, Stacey! Go, Stacey!”

  If she wins class president, I will be automatically transferring to another school.

  When it was time for Ben to make his speech, Aretha came and stood beside him. What I didn’t know is that they had worked up a routine. Ben didn’t exactly give the speech. He had written it out on big poster sheets and illustrated each poster with cartoons. So the speech started with Ben holding out a poster with a picture of his face on it that said: HI, MY NAME IS BEN ROBBINS AND I AM RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT OF MRS. TUTTLE’S FOURTH-GRADE CLASS.

  Then Aretha stepped forward. “Why vote for Ben? That’s a good question. It is a question I have asked myself many times, especially now that I am running for vice president on Ben’s ticket. Here is the first good reason: You should vote for Ben because he was smart enough to ask me to be his vice president.”

  Ben pulled out another poster. This one had a picture of Aretha on it. Beneath the picture Ben had printed out, ARETHA TIMMONS IS MY VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE. BESIDES BEING ONE OF THE SMARTEST PEOPLE IN OUR CLASS, SHE IS ORGANIZED AND FAIR.

  Aretha nodded. “That’s right, folks, a vote for Ben is also a vote for me. Now, let me tell you some other reasons to vote for Ben. He is a creative problem solver. He thinks we need more snacks and a longer recess. He won an honorable mention in the fourth-grade science fair, which shows he is a good student.”

  The speech went on from there. Every point that Aretha made was illustrated in Ben’s artistic-genius style. She said stuff in a way that made you think she was 100 percent correct. Even though the speech I had written was pretty boring, Aretha made it sound interesting. Ben’s pictures almost made you feel like you were watching Saturday-morning cartoons.

  You could tell just by looking around that people were starting to feel like a Ben and Aretha presidency would be a fun and exciting experience that they would want to be a part of. In fact, after the applause following the speech had died down, a bunch of kids went up to Aretha and asked how they could help with the campaign.

  I felt sort of famous just because Ben was my best friend.

  “That was awesome!” I told him when he came back to his seat. “You guys did a great job!”

  Instead of looking excited, though, Ben looked sort of worried. “What’s wrong?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess when I was up there and everybody really liked what we were doing, it sort of felt like we were tricking them.”

  “Politics is a tricky business,” I pointed out. I don’t actually know what that means. It’s just something my dad says a lot during election years.

  “I guess,” Ben said. But he looked unhappy. “It’s just, now if people vote for me, it’ll be because of that speech.”

  “Isn’t that the idea? You give a good speech, people vote for you.”

  “But what they liked is how we gave the speech,” Ben said, chewing on a fingernail. “Not what we said. I want them to vote for me and my ideas. Otherwise it’s just some stupid popularity contest.”

  It had never occurred to me that Ben would actually care why people voted for him. I thought he just wanted their votes, for whatever reason, just so his dad would be happy that Ben was class president.

  Scientifically speaking, it looked like the political process was turning Ben into a serious human being.

  Which was a little frightening, if you want to know the truth.

  Aretha leaned over and popped Ben on the arm with her pencil. “Don’t look so glum, chum. I think we are going to win this election.”

  Ben nodded. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “It’s pretty cool.”

  But you could tell he didn’t mean it.

  On the bus home after school, I came up with three reasons Ben didn’t seem very excited about everyone liking his speech so much.

  He was worried that because he was running on the same ticket as Aretha, people in our class would think he wanted to marry her. This is a big problem with even talking to a girl in fourth grade. Everyone thinks if a boy is halfway nice to a girl, he must be in love with her. Sometimes you end up being mean to girls you don’t even hate just so no one gets the wrong idea.

  He had suddenly realized that a successful career as a politician would make a serious dent in the amount of time he spent watching cartoons on TV in his pajamas.

  For some reason he didn’t really want his dad to come visit.

  The third reason seemed pretty unlikely to me. So did the first reason, since Ben never acts like he cares all that much about what people think of him. And the second reason was dumb, even for Ben.

  So, scientifically speaking, I had no idea what was wrong with him.

  When I got home, I checked my mold first thing, even before checking in with Sarah Fortemeyer, Teenage Girl Space Alien. It was just too exciting knowing there was a room full of slime mold in the house to worry about following the rules. Every great scientist has to go his own way, even if that means missin
g out on valuable fingernail polish viewing time.

  We all have to make sacrifices in the name of science.

  I have always loved my room. So far in my life I’ve lived in three houses, and in each house my room has been the best place for me to be. My latest room is the best room ever, especially since my mom has thrown up her hands and said I could decorate it any way I want to. In my last room my mom did this whole sailboat and teddy bear theme, and even though I was only six at the time, I knew it was dumb to have little teddy bears in sailor suits all over my wallpaper. I knew it was even dumber to have matching pajamas, but fortunately, I had a growth spurt and my mom couldn’t find the same pajamas in a bigger size.

  Now my walls are covered with posters. I have three solar system posters, one periodical table poster, which is all the chemical elements known to humankind in one simple-to-read chart, and a five-foot-tall poster of Albert Einstein with his hair sticking out all over the place. Everywhere I look, I find something awesome to look at. Not to mention that there are snacks, books, crumbs, and little messes everywhere.

  And now there is mold.

  I have never been so happy in my life.

  I checked on my molds and took notes. The mold terrarium was looking pretty steamy, and inside the Cheerios had already started to wilt. No mold yet, but I figured it would only take a day or two more before it was a wonderland of mold spores in there. And while it would take another couple of weeks before my slime molds began growing, the yellow slime mold Ben and I had captured in the wild looked very happy in its new environment, which was a plastic bag on top of my bookshelf.

  I thought about cleaning off my desk and my dresser so I could spread my mold samples out a little bit, but it was clearly a job that would take at least two hours, maybe a week. I decided to call Ben instead and give him a mold update.