by Steve Cotler
Bonus!
She had left her bedroom door ajar. Now was my chance to swoop into her room again and recapture the book.
She was reexamining her makeup with the bathroom door open. Bummer! If I dashed by, she’d see me.
“Now would be a perfect time for your squirt gun Great Idea,” I muttered to Georgie.
Remember how Georgie sometimes dresses up as The Great Georgio and does magic tricks? Well, what happened next was as magical as anything he had ever done.
1. Georgie turned toward the open bathroom door, holding his arms up like he was holding a squirt-gunny water cannon.
2. He aimed his imaginary blaster at Goon.
3. He pulled an imaginary trigger at the exact moment Goon turned on the sink faucet.
4. My amateur plumbing job exploded and water shot out, splashing Goon right in the face!
Goon let out a huge squeal! Dad and Granpa came running.
Noise! Water! Chaos!
I do not remember thinking about what I did next. I just did it. I sprinted into Goon’s room, grabbed the book, and ran back to my room. I hid it under my pillow just as Granpa, on his knees, turned the little knobs under the sink. That shut off the water, but the noise continued. Goon was wailing. Her dress was wet. Her hair was ruined. She stomped back to her room and slammed the door.
For the next several minutes I was given a major verbal spanking by: first Dad, then Granpa, then Mom. When I explained why we had taken the sink apart and when Georgie showed the ring, Dad quieted down and Granpa seemed a little impressed.
“You two know less than nothing about plumbing,” he said, “but I give you aces for the way you—”
“No!” Mom interrupted. “No aces for anybody! You two may have ruined June’s day.” Mom was steaming. “Georgie, your mother will learn about this. And Ronald, you will be punished.”
Then she went into June’s room to console her, fix her hair, and help her find a new outfit.
The wedding went off as scheduled. And I have to admit Georgie and I looked extremely cool in our tuxedos. And we both did our jobs very excellently. I got everybody to sign the guest book. And when it was time for the ring, Georgie acted very serious as he pulled it out of his pocket and handed it to his dad (not flinging it like last time!). I know Ms. D was expecting the fake ring, so when Mr. Sinkoff slipped the real gold one (much heavier, remember?) onto her finger, she was surprised. She couldn’t help herself. Right in the middle of the ceremony, she turned to Georgie, held up her finger, and said, “What’s this?”
Georgie grinned, gave a gigantic fist pump, and whooped, “Solid gold!”
With all the excitement, Goon never noticed the book was missing from her shelf.
I took Mrs. DeWitt’s book to school on Monday. Before class started, Lana and Oddny came running up to me and Georgie.
“Mrs. Collins in the office said the cable news people are coming this afternoon, and you two will be on national TV,” Lana said. “I’m so excited for you!” Then she totally embarrassed me right in the school corridor in front of everyone by giving me a hug.
At lunch, Georgie asked, “How are you going to get the book into the time capsule?”
I had no idea.
Georgie leaned across the lunch table and whispered, “You could just keep it, you know. Nobody would find out for a hundred years.”
I shook my head. “Goon would see it was missing from her shelf. And anyway, if I did that, I’d be just what I thought Goon was … a thief. And what if we’re alive then because people are all living longer? I do not want to be an old guy known as Cheesie the Book Crook.”
Immediately after school, all the students gathered out on the field in front of the construction site. The custodian had set up a sort of stage. On it was the stainless steel time capsule, a microphone stand, and chairs for the very cool, important people: Mr. Stotts, Mayor Raglan, Mr. Hernandes, Georgie, and me.
We were all sitting and ready to go, and kids were waving to us from the crowd, but everything had to wait until the cable news guys turned on their cameras and gave a signal that it was okay to start.
“Look,” Georgie said, pointing to the side of the crowd. My mom, dad, and grandfather … and Georgie’s mom and dad were standing there. His mom was waving.
Mr. Stotts went first. “Our school sits on a very important part of this continent. Some of the early explorers …”
I can’t remember the rest of what he said, because I was thinking hard how to get Mrs. DeWitt’s book, which was in my backpack under my chair, into the time capsule.
Then Mayor Raglan gave her talk. “Gloucester, the oldest seaport in the United States …”
I can’t remember the rest of what she said, either. Same reason.
Then came Mr. Hernandes. “Why do we have museums? It’s because they preserve and exhibit artifacts like these two boys found right over there.”
I can’t remember the rest of what he said, because Georgie and I were next, and I was thinking about what I was going to say.
Mr. Hernandes was just finishing up his short talk when I noticed the cable news reporter lady holding a cell phone to her ear and making signals to her crew. Suddenly the video cameras went off. The lady with the cell phone walked up to Mr. Stotts and said something I couldn’t hear. Mr. Hernandes stopped talking, and we all watched the crew rapidly moving equipment into their van.
In less than two minutes, the entire cable news team had packed up and driven away. I had no idea why, and I didn’t find out until evening.
Then it was my turn to speak.
Georgie and I walked to the microphone. He lowered it to my height, and then stood next to me while I told everyone how we found the Captain John Smith compass thingie. All the time I was talking, Goon stood right in the front of the crowd of kids, pretending to hiccup. She was trying to get me to embarrass myself again, but it didn’t work! I decided to embarrass her back. But with my parents watching, this was going to be very tricky.
“Mr. Hernandes,” I said, “would you please unlock the time capsule? I have one more item to go in it. Georgie, would you get me my backpack?”
Mr. Hernandes was surprised, but he got up from his chair and unlocked the box while Georgie pulled my backpack out from under my chair and brought it to me.
I cleared my throat. “Being chairperson of the Time Capsule Committee is a position of trust. And Mrs. DeWitt entrusted me to care for her very valuable book. She made me promise never to let it out of my sight. So that’s what I did.” I pulled the book out of my backpack. “Here it is.”
I lifted the lid of the time capsule and took out Goon’s book. I held both of them high in the air. “Mrs. DeWitt’s book is signed by J. K. Rowling. It’s authentic.” I waved the book in my left hand, then lowered it and waved the other. “This other book is a fake. It has a fake signature. It was never signed by J. K. Rowling. It was fake-ily signed by my sister. This fake book was what has been in the time capsule.”
Goon’s face turned red. She looked both angry and embarrassed. I looked at my mother. She looked angry, too. Now came the tricky part.
“So I thank my sister, June Mack, vice president of the RLS eighth grade, and member of the Time Capsule Committee, for the use of her duplicate book. It enabled me to keep my promise to Mrs. DeWitt. With my sister’s help, I sort of never let this book”—I lifted up my left hand—“out of my sight.”
Kids on both sides of Goon congratulated her with pats on the back. Her angry face disappeared. I looked at my mother. She was applauding.
Victory.
I had embarrassed Goon and un-embarrassed her. I decided to give myself no points. The score was still 741–707.
After dinner that evening Granpa shouted, “Hey, boys, that whale we saw is on the news!”
Georgie and I ran into the TV room. The lady reporter who had been at our school was talking.
“… because this immense fin whale carcass, which washed up on a Gloucester beach yesterday,
has begun to decompose, creating a dreadful smell and a potential health hazard, local officials have authorized a cleanup squad to cut it into pieces, cart it away, and bury it.”
On screen, a bunch of workers in protective clothing were working on the dead whale with chain saws. A Cat backhoe loader was lifting hunks of whale into a truck. The big fat redheaded guy from our construction site was operating it.
“Now you know where your camera crew went,” Granpa said. “When it comes to choosing between you and a stinking pile of whale blubber, I guess you’re not exactly famous.”
So that’s the end of my fourth adventure. Afterward, here’s what happened:
1. Georgie’s brothers left. He now has a mom and a big sister in his house.
2. Mom gave me a huge punishment for my bad plumbing. I was grounded until Halloween, and I had to do all my sister’s chores. It cost me sixteen points. The Point Battle score was 741–723. It was a huge loss for me, but I’m still ahead, so totally worth it.
3. Granpa took Georgie and me to the Harvard Museum, where we saw our compass thingie in a glass case. Just like Professor Solescu promised, our names are on the wall next to it. So maybe, in a sort of way, we are kind of exactly famous.
4. Marlon is going to give one of the kittens to Georgie as soon as it is old enough to leave Squirrel. It’s a boy. Georgie named it Captain John Smith. Georgie says he is going to train it to climb trees and catch sewer rats.
As you probably know, you can tell me whether or not you liked this adventure by going to my website. If you want to, please do it right away because I didn’t even finish writing this story before another adventure began, so this will be the last chapter of this book because I have to start on my fifth book right away before I forget everything that happened.
Whew!
I’m not going to give away what happened in my fifth adventure, except I will tell you that it has a lot to do with Halloween.
If you have read all four of my books, you’ve gone through about nine hundred pages. That’s a lot of reading.
Whew!
And it’s almost 160,000 words. That’s a lot of writing.
Whew!
All this writing kind of makes me thirsty, so I’m going to go downstairs and make another smoothie. And this one I’m not sharing with anyone.
Except you! Take a sip.…
Then go to my website and tell me if you liked my smoothie … or this book … or whatever.
Signed:
Ronald “Cheesie” Mack (age 11 years and 4 months)
CheesieMack.com
(Even though this is …) The End
(… there’s more on the next page about my website.)
What You’ll Find at CheesieMack.com
1. Rules for the Point Battle. (this page)
2. If you do or don’t like this book or just want to say something to me. (this page)
3. Granpa reciting the alphabet forward and backward without the vowels. (this page)
4. Glenn explaining the speeds of light and sound and how to tell the temperature using crickets. (this page)
5. Favorite cheers. (this page)
6. Caterpillar earth-moving machines. (this page)
7. Do you like sushi? (this page)
8. Explaining my mom’s tricky questioning. (this page)
9. Gloucester City Hall and famous buildings you’ve been in. (this page)
10. What are the Seven Seas? (this page)
11. Your suggestions for what to put in the time capsule. (this page)
12. What you’ll be doing in the future. (this page)
12¼. Interesting and weird facts about metals. (this page)
12½. Explaining my video game story. (this page)
12¾. My mockingbird report for science class and music class. (this page)
13. What are you superstitious about? (I just had to make this one number 13.) (this page)
14. What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever brought to show-and-tell? (this page)
15. Tell me if you liked my smoothie … or this book … or whatever. (this page)
Acknowledgments
I greatly appreciate all the librarians and media specialists who invited me into their schools and libraries. I could not write in an eleven-year-old voice without those periodic immersions in full-contact kid-speak. And, as ever, thanks indeed to editor Jim Thomas and agent Dan Lazar for their handholding and excellent advice.
is a retired Little League catcher who’s also been a shoe salesman, telecom scientist, singer-songwriter, Apollo 1 computer programmer, Hollywood screenwriter, Harvard Business School MBA, investment banker, and door-to-door egg man. He lives with his wife and writes in Sonoma County in Northern California’s wine country. He thinks he is and always will be eleven years old.
is the illustrator of many notorious series for kids, including Super Chicken Nugget Boy, Planet Tad, Zack Proton, Zinc Alloy, and Bike Rider. Slowly but surely he is putting together a new, all-ages graphic novel, Clementine Hetherington and the Button-Forbes Race, co-created with critically acclaimed comics writer Jen Breach. If the Internet is on your computer, so is Douglas at www.skullduggery.com.au.
Visit Cheesie online at CheesieMack.com.
Visit Steve at SteveCotler.com.
