by Nancy Krulik
“Hey, dude,” Alex said. “I’m just checking on how the papaya cure is working.”
“Well . . . ,” George said slowly.
“Did you burp?” Alex asked.
“No,” George told him. “But . . .”
“But what?” Alex said. “It’s been hours since you ate all that papaya. And you haven’t burped. So it’s a cure.”
“Maybe, but it’s a pain, too,” George said.
“Why?”
“Well, you know how you said it was good for my digestion?” George asked.
“Yeah, that’s the point,” Alex said.
“Well, it’s really good,” George said. “Too good. I’ve been in and out of the bathroom all afternoon long. The papaya makes you go—a lot!”
“Oh,” Alex said. “That’s a problem.”
“Tell me about it,” George said. “Do you know how hard it is to do your homework when you have to stop every five minutes to go to the bathroom? And it really stinks in there now.” George paused for a minute. “I gotta go,” he told Alex.
“To do your homework?” Alex asked.
“No,” George said. “I mean I gotta go. It’s the papaya . . . again.”
George didn’t wait for Alex to say good-bye. He just hung up the phone and ran for the bathroom. It was gonna be a long night.
Ping!
A little while later, just as George was finishing his essay, the e-mail alert on his computer sounded. The e-mail was from Louie. It said:
George was definitely curious. He clicked the link that Louie had sent him.
“Welcome to Life with Louie!” the computer shouted as Louie appeared on the screen, sitting at his kitchen table and smiling for the camera.
“This is the show that’s all Louie, all the time!” Louie announced. “I’m the star of this show. All of me. Not just my hand.”
George frowned. He knew Louie had said that especially for him.
“Tonight for dinner, I am having steak, broccoli, and a baked potato,” Louie continued. “Let me show you how perfectly my personal chef has cooked this steak.” Louie picked up his knife and began to cut the steak.
George rolled his eyes. Why would anyone want to watch this?
“Hey, get a shot of how I chew with my mouth closed,” Louie shouted to his off-screen cameraman.
George laughed. Louie might have known how to chew with his mouth closed, but right now he was talking with his mouth full. Bits of Louie’s chewed-up meat were being broadcast all over the Internet.
The camera started shaking. A pair of blue sneakers appeared on the screen.
“Hey! You’re supposed to be filming me,” Louie shouted. “Not your feet.”
“Oops, sorry,” George heard Max say off-camera. “I had to scratch.” Max shifted the camera and started filming Louie again.
“You’re not supposed to talk!” Louie yelled, showing off the chewed meat bits that were stuck to his tongue.
“How about I film you putting butter on your potato?” Max asked. “I could back up a little and get your whole plate on the screen and—”
“Watch where you’re walking!” Louie shouted at him. “You’re gonna trip over that stool and—”
CRASH!
The picture went blank. But the sound was still working. George heard Louie shouting. “Look what you did! You spilled my chocolate milk all over my broccoli. Why would I want to eat chocolate broccoli?”
George started laughing. Life with Louie was actually pretty funny.
A second later, Louie was back on the screen. He looked the same except now he had a big chocolate-milk stain on his shirt and a piece of broccoli in his hair.
“Follow me into the bathroom,” Louie told Max. “I’m going to wash my hands.” He smiled at the camera. “Did you know that you are supposed to wash for as long as it takes for you to sing ‘Happy Birthday’? I sing every time I wash. So you guys are in for a real treat . . .”
Just then, George’s dad called to him from the living room. “Son, it’s eight o’clock. Did you finish all your work?”
George clicked off Louie’s webcast. Mrs. Kelly’s big dance debut was about to hit the screen. And there was no way George was missing that.
“Welcome to Dance Your Pants Off!” the TV announcer said cheerfully. “I’m Guy Smirks. This is the new show where local dancing stars compete for a ten-thousand-dollar prize and the Dance Your Pants Off championship crown.” The studio audience began to cheer.
George frowned. He wouldn’t exactly call Mrs. Kelly a dancing star.
“Our first contestant is from nearby Beaver Brook,” Guy Smirks continued. “She’s a fourth-grade teacher at Edith B. Sugarman Elementary School. Please welcome Mildred Kelly!”
Mildred? George started to laugh. He’d always figured that Mrs. Kelly had a first name—and that it couldn’t be Mrs. But Mildred?
Mrs. Kelly had done some strange dances in school—there was that “Walk Like an Egyptian” thing they did the other day and the alley cat and even a hula. But tonight’s dance was stranger than all of them put together.
Mrs. Kelly flung her arms up in the air and stood stick straight. She kicked her leg in front of her and started wiggling her hips all over the place. Then she turned around so her rear end was to the audience, bent over, and peeked between her legs.
“This is just embarrassing,” George said with a groan.
“Mrs. Kelly does have a unique dance style,” his mother said.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” his dad agreed.
George laughed.
Mrs. Kelly did a somersault, then finished off her dance with a split. Well, sort of a split. Her back leg was bent instead of straight.
“That was interesting,” Guy Smirks said as Mrs. Kelly struggled to her feet. “Let’s see whether the judges will put you through to the next round.”
“I think Mrs. Kelly will be back in school tomorrow,” George said. “No way any of the judges liked that.”
“Mildred, that was very unique choreography,” the first judge, some man named Anthony, said. “Where did you study dance?”
“Well, I’m not exactly a trained dancer,” Mrs. Kelly told him. “I just dance what I feel.”
“Dance is about a feeling,” the second judge, a small woman named Lily, said. “I remember once when I was dancing on the stage in Boise, Idaho, I started to change the choreography right in the middle of the performance because I felt something.”
“Something in the music?” Guy Smirks asked her.
“No, something on my arm,” Lily said. “A fly. I decided to try and swat it. For the rest of the dance I chased that fly around the stage. I never caught him, though.”
“I thought Mildred’s dance was fascinating,” the third judge, an English guy named Cecil, said. He was nearly jumping out of his seat with excitement. “I vote to bring you back.”
“I do, too,” Lily, the fly-swatting dancer judge, agreed.
“I’ll make it three,” Anthony said. “We’ll see you Thursday night.”
George stared at the TV. The judges were sending Mrs. Kelly through to the next round after seeing that dance? How was it even possible?
“Did you see that last night?” Alex asked as George walked into the schoolyard on Tuesday morning.
“Oh yeah,” George said. “And I couldn’t believe it.”
Just then, Louie came rolling over on his sneakers with wheels. “My webcast was awesome, wasn’t it?”
“We were talking about Mrs. Kelly on Dance Your Pants Off,” George told Louie.
Louie frowned. “Why is everybody talking about that show? There are a million dance-contest shows on TV. But there’s only one webcast that stars me.”
“Yes, but Danc
e Your Pants Off is the only dance show that our teacher was on,” Julianna reminded Louie. “That was one strange dance,” she added, turning to her friends.
“I can’t believe you all turned off my webcast to watch Mrs. Kelly,” Louie continued. “You missed me doing my long division.”
“Yeah,” Mike said. “And that was a really interesting thing to watch. Louie is great at long division.”
“Definitely,” Max agreed. “He only missed the answer by two. That’s real close.”
George, Alex, Sage, and Julianna ignored Louie and his two Echoes.
“It would be cool if Mrs. Kelly won,” Julianna said. “We’d be the only kids in the whole world to have a champion dancer for a teacher.”
“We’d be famous,” Sage added. “Sort of, anyway.”
“Yeah, but do you really think she has a chance?” George asked.
“Last night the judges kept her alive. But now it’s up to the people watching the show to vote for who they think danced best,” Alex said. “And I’m not sure too many of them will vote for Mrs. Kelly . . . unless we help her,” he added with a smile.
George knew that smile. He’d seen it before. Alex was coming up with a plan.
“How can we do that?” Chris asked.
“We could start a campaign to get people to vote for Mrs. Kelly,” Alex suggested.
“That’s a great idea!” Julianna agreed. “I could talk about Mrs. Kelly on my sports segment during morning announcements.”
“Yeah,” George said. “And we could make posters and put them up all over town.”
“I bet everyone around here would help,” Alex said.
“Yeah!” Max added.
“You can’t help,” Louie told Max. “You and Mike are going to be very busy helping me with my next Life with Louie webcast. It’s going to be amazing. I’m going to show everyone my complete collection of fungus trading cards. You can buy them in the gift shop at the Beaver Brook Science Center. Each picture is of a fungus you can find at the Farley Family Fungus Room.”
George laughed. Louie was always bragging about the room his family had donated to the museum. He was really into fungi. Which made sense, since Louie was kind of like a fungus—annoying and really, really hard to get rid of.
“So don’t forget to watch Dance Your Pants Off tomorrow night and vote for our own Mrs. Kelly!” Julianna said into the camera during Wednesday’s morning announcements. “Let’s make Edith B. Sugarman Elementary School famous!”
Louie looked at the closed-circuit TV in the classroom and frowned. “That’s not fair,” he said. “How come Julianna gets to pick which shows to tell kids to watch?”
“Maybe because it’s her sports broadcast,” George said.
“Dancing’s not a sport,” Louie insisted.
“It is the way Mrs. Kelly does it,” Sage said. “She kicks her leg like in soccer. She wiggles her rear end like a batter at the plate in baseball. And she jumps up in the air like a basketball player taking a shot.”
“I never saw any basketball player land in a split,” George whispered to Alex.
Alex laughed. “You crack me up, dude,” he said.
But Mr. Trainer wasn’t cracking up. “Is something funny, you guys?” he asked George and Alex.
George stopped laughing. He was still trying to be the new and improved George. And that meant no more jokes about his teacher.
“There’s something to what Sage is saying,” Mr. Trainer told the kids. “Lots of athletes take dance classes to learn to move better. Boxers and football players take ballet, for instance.”
George imagined a big football player dancing around in ballet shoes. It made him start to laugh all over again. But he stopped really quickly after Mr. Trainer gave him a look.
“Now that the announcements are over, let’s get to work,” Mr. Trainer told the class. “I think today we will start with math.”
Mr. Trainer taped a poster with seven pictures on it to the board. The first five pictures just looked like whirls and squiggles, while the sixth one was of a frog, and the last one was of a man sitting on his knees.
“What does this have to do with math?” Louie asked Mr. Trainer.
“These are the hieroglyphic picture words that the ancient Egyptians used for numbers,” Mr. Trainer explained.
George thought about asking Louie if he was going to use those pictures to do long division on his webcast.
But he stopped himself. George thought it was pretty funny thinking about Louie being wrong by just a frog and a squiggle.
But he had a feeling Louie and Mr. Trainer wouldn’t agree. And George didn’t want any extra homework tonight. There was way too much to do after school.
“Hi, Mom!” George greeted his mother as he walked into her craft store, the Knit Wit, after school.
“Hi, honey,” George’s mom said. She looked up from the register and smiled at Julianna, Alex, Sage, and Chris. “Hi, kids.”
“Hello,” Julianna, Alex, Sage, and Chris all said at once.
“Do you mind if we put this sign in the store window?” George asked. He held up a piece of paper. It had a drawing of Mrs. Kelly on it and said:
“That’s a great sign,” George’s mom said.
“Chris drew it,” George told her proudly. “He’s an amazing artist.”
“It wasn’t a big deal,” Chris insisted. “Mrs. Kelly’s easier to draw than a superhero. She doesn’t wear a cape or tights.”
“Let’s hope not,” Alex said.
George had to agree with that. Mrs. Kelly in tights was definitely not something he wanted to see on TV—or anywhere else for that matter.
Julianna taped the sign to the store window. “Okay, guys, come on,” she said. “We have to put these things up all over town.”
“Thanks, Mom,” George called as the kids got ready to leave.
“No problem,” she answered. “I’ll see you at home for dinner.”
“Where should we go next?” Julianna asked. “Tyler’s Toy Shop?”
“How about the Pizza Palace?” Chris suggested. “I’m starving.”
George frowned. He’d had some really bad burp attacks in both of those places.
“How about I take a sign to Mr. Furstman’s pet shop, since I work there?” George suggested. Mr. Furstman never seemed to get mad at anything the burp made George do.
“I’ll go with you,” Alex said. “And after that we can go to Mr. Stubbs’s Barbershop.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Julianna said. “Chris and I can go to Mabel’s Department Store after we stop at the pizzeria. We’ll cover a lot more ground if we split up into teams. What do you want to do, Sage?”
“I’m going with Georgie,” Sage said, doing that creepy blinking-her-eyelashes thing again. “Maybe you could show me how you fed that gecko, since I didn’t get to see your commercial at the theater.”
George looked to Alex for help.
“No time for that,” Alex said. “We have a lot of signs to post.”
“Okay. Then I can come by the store on Saturday when you’re working and you can show me then,” Sage said.
Grrr. Sage was as annoying as the super burp. And almost as hard to get rid of.
“Hi, Mr. Stubbs,” Alex greeted the barber as he, George, and Sage walked into his shop a little while later.
George loved Mr. Stubbs’s Barbershop. There were two barber chairs set up facing the mirror. On the shelf were scissors and combs for haircuts and shaving cream and razors for giving shaves. Best of all, by the window there was a pole with red, white, and blue stripes that whirled around and around, so it looked like the stripes were moving up the pole and then down again.
“Hello, Alex,” Mr. Stubbs said. “Are you here for a trim?”
Alex shook his head. “Nope. We’re here to help Mrs. Kelly.”
Mr. Stubbs looked around. “Mrs. Kelly?” he asked. “Does she need a haircut? Where is she?”
“Dancing,” Sage said. “On TV. And she needs your help.”
Mr. Stubbs seemed very confused. “My help? I can’t dance. I’ve got two left feet.”
George looked down at Mr. Stubbs’s feet. They looked pretty normal to him. One left foot and one right.
But then George noticed something totally not normal. And definitely not right. BUBBLES. And they were bing-bonging and ping-ponging all over George’s belly.
The bubbles hadn’t popped out since Alex had given George all that papaya two days ago. But they were back now. And they were stronger than ever. Already the bubbles had crisscrossed over his colon and pounced on his pancreas.
Suddenly, George remembered the special signal he and Alex had set up for when the burp was starting to bubble over. The minute Alex saw it, he was supposed to run over and get George away from where he was, before trouble could happen. George didn’t always have a chance to signal to Alex before the burp burst out. But he did this time!
George rubbed his belly and patted his head. But Alex was too busy talking to Mr. Stubbs to notice.
The bubbles ricocheted off George’s ribs and hip-hopped over his heart.
George patted his belly and rubbed his head. But there was still no help from Alex.
The bubbles tap-danced on George’s tongue, twisted their way around his teeth, and then . . .
Bubble, bubble, George was in trouble!
“Dude, no!” Alex cried out, finally noticing George.
Dude, yes! The super burp was free, and it wanted to play.
George opened his mouth to say “excuse me.” But that’s not what came out. Instead, he shouted, “Shave and a haircut, two bits!”
Suddenly, George’s hands reached out and grabbed a can of shaving cream. Pssshhhh. White foam sprayed under George’s nose and all over his chin.
