Fizzopolis: The Trouble With Fuzzwonker Fizz

by Patrick Carman

  Dr. Fuzzwonker was super busy creating a brand-new product: furry candy. It was going to be the smash-hit follow-up to Fuzzwonker Fizz. Not only was furry candy going to come in a thousand flavors, it was going to be FURRY! Very exciting, if you ask me.

  “Maybe Floyd should sleep in my room tonight,” I suggested.

  Dr. Fuzzwonker didn’t even look up from his furry candy work when he answered.

  “Make sure no one sees him. And keep him away from my sock drawer.”

  It would have been wise to imagine what might happen when Monday morning showed up. That was only one day away, and I would have to go back to Pflugerville Elementary School.

  Fizzy-sized trouble was just around the corner.

  I finished my work in Fizzopolis on Sunday, and when Floyd was using the bathroom, I ran to the elevator. I rode to the kitchen and ate pancakes and peanut butter, washing it down with an orange-flavored Fuzzwonker Fizz. After a respectable eleven-second burp that could be heard all the way out on the street, I looked at the clock.

  I’d only left Floyd alone for nine minutes, but it had seemed like a lot longer.

  “I’ll go check on him. See how he’s doing,” I said to myself.

  When I arrived in Fizzopolis, my dad was waiting for me. “I was coming up to find you.”

  “How’s Floyd doing?” I asked.

  Dr. Fuzzwonker moved out of the path of the door and turned toward the open expanse of Fizzopolis.

  “He might have missed you.”

  Floyd was bouncing all over the place, fast as a laser beam, breaking everything he banged into. Bottles of Fuzzwonker Fizz were flying everywhere. The conveyor belts were spinning out of control. Fizzies were running for their lives!

  “Floyd!” I yelled.

  Floyd heard my voice and stopped on a dime, hanging from the ceiling overhead. His eyes got big and excited.

  “Better run for cover,” I said. “This isn’t going to be pretty.”

  Dr. Fuzzwonker nodded, moved three paces to the left, and put his hands in the pockets of his white mad-scientist lab coat.

  Floyd zoomed through the air like an arrow shot from a crossbow! He landed on my face, and together we tumbled end over end.

  When I sat up, Floyd was on my shoulder, whispering in my ear.

  “What’d he say?” Dr. Fuzzwonker asked.

  “He missed me.”

  Dr. Fuzzwonker nodded. “As I suspected.”

  I looked at Fizzopolis. The place was a mess.

  I didn’t know what to do. Neither did Dr. Fuzzwonker. It seemed like an impossible problem to solve, even for a food-mad scientist and a talented ten-year-old helper.

  “I don’t think we can keep you home from the fourth grade,” Dr. Fuzzwonker said. “You’ll have to go to school one way or another.”

  Floyd said something else into my ear, and I shook my head. Then Floyd put his whole arm inside my ear, which didn’t feel great.

  “Floyd thinks I should take him to school with me,” I said.

  Dr. Fuzzwonker looked at us both. “Outrageous!”

  Floyd yanked my ear closer to his head.

  “He says he’ll be as quiet as a mouse. And he’ll stay in my backpack at all times. We can handle it, Dad. No problem!”

  Dr. Fuzzwonker looked at Fizzopolis. It was in bad shape.

  “Are you absolutely positively sure beyond a shadow of a doubt you can keep Floyd a secret?”

  I didn’t think that was remotely possible, but I looked at Floyd, who was standing on my shoulder, and couldn’t bring myself to let my little buddy down.

  “We can do it.”

  “You’ll need to be extra careful around Garvin Snood,” Dr. Fuzzwonker said.

  Garvin Snood. My archenemy! Garvin was Mr. Snood’s son, and Mr. Snood owned the Snood Candy Factory. They made crummy candy at the other end of town in a weird factory. The Snoods were constantly searching for the secret Fuzzwonker Fizz recipe. And their head spy, Garvin Snood, would be in my fourth-grade class. It was going to be tricky keeping Floyd a secret.

  Dr. Fuzzwonker nodded and began walking back to his laboratory.

  “Let’s get this place back into tip-top shape, shall we?”

  “Will do!” I said.

  Thinking about school the next day, I was about as nervous as I’d ever been, especially as I listened to the questions Floyd was asking.

  “What will I wear? Who’s this Snood character? What’s the teacher’s name? Have you got any extra pens? And paper. I’m going to need paper. And pants!”

  So now you know who’s been drawing all over my journal—it’s my best good buddy Floyd!

  He even went back and drew all over the pages that were there before he started stowing away in my backpack. So now it’s our journal of every adventure we have together.

  Best. Journal. Ever!

  Monday morning I rode my red bike to Pflugerville Elementary School with my usual reckless abandon. I arrived at the bike racks about twelve seconds before the bell went off.

  There’s Floyd, peeking out of my backpack. This is an incredible day for him. It’s the first day of school in his entire life. And there’s the Snood Candy Factory off in the distance. See it? It’s that lame-wad building with the smokestacks and the word SNOOD on it.

  The Snoods only make one thing. It’s called Flooze, but they package and shape Flooze into about a million different products. There are Flooze ropes, Flooze bars, Flooze gum, Flooze fake teeth, Flooze rings, Flooze juice, and a lot of Floozy things in brightly colored packaging. Every single Flooze product tastes like a gloppy ball of sugar at the bottom of a cereal bowl.

  And like I said before, the Snoods are dying to get their hands on the secret recipe for Fuzzwonker Fizz. Which is why it’s so important they never find out about Floyd or the Fizzomatic machine. If they found out about the Fizzies and everything else going on under our house—whoa!—that would be a fizzy-sized catastrophe.

  It turns out a lot can go wrong on the first day of school, especially if you’re four inches tall, you’re green, and you’re confined to a backpack. It gets dull as dirt fast in a backpack. Just ask your books, they’ll tell you. It’s a real snooze in there. Besides drawing all over my awesome journal, there’s not much for Floyd to do. So Floyd said exactly what you’d expect him to say about five seconds after I sat down at my desk.

  “It’s boring in here. I ate my waffle. I’m thirsty. I’m so bored. Boooooored.”

  He repeated these things several times, but Floyd has a very small voice. He could scream and burp like a champ, but his voice was tiny. That’s probably why he likes sitting on my shoulder so much. From there, his head lines right up with my ear.

  I couldn’t hear Floyd talking about how bored he was in my backpack, but he told me about it later.

  Luckily for Floyd, he had packed a ball of rubber bands for situations like this one. He peeled open the backpack flap, loaded a rubber band in his stumpy little finger, and fired.

  It missed me by a mile and hit Garvin Snood in the nose instead.

  “HEY!” Garvin said. “What’s the big idea, Fuzzwonker?”

  “Huh?” I said.

  Garvin had a gigantic nose, so it wasn’t all that surprising that it had gotten in the way of Floyd’s rubber band.

  Garvin leaned closer to me.

  “You better watch it, bub. I’ve got my eye on you.”

  The girl sitting on the other side of me, who was new at the school, piped in.

  “Who you callin’ bub, bub?”

  It was the same girl who had cheered me on when I jumped my dad’s car and face-planted with a milk shake.

  What a disaster! The new kid and the Snood family candy spy in a fight. And I was sitting between them. I was attracting way too much attention.

  “Zip it, newbie,” Garvin Snood said to the girl.

  “The name is Sammy, not newbie,” she said. “Figure it out, GLarvin.”

  I laughed. Garvin glared at me. He glared at Sammy. A
nd then another rubber band hit him in the nose.

  “FUZZWONKER!” Garvin yelled, holding his hand over his face.

  “Now, boys,” the teacher said. It was Miss Yoobler. She had also been my third-grade teacher. She had moved up to the fourth grade with me just like a student at the school, so I knew what to expect. Miss Yoobler was usually nice but sometimes not so much. She was especially not-so-much-nice when boys goofed off in class.

  “He shot me in the face with a rubber band!” Garvin said.

  “He did not!” Sammy said. “I was sitting right here. You shot yourself in the face with a rubber band!”

  “That’s not even possible!” Garvin said.

  “Garvin,” Miss Yoobler said. “Sammy is new. Be nice. And stop shooting yourself in the face with rubber bands. It’s disrupting the class.”

  “But . . .”

  Miss Yoobler put one finger in the air, a sign that she meant business. She took three steps toward Garvin and held her hand out. Sammy jumped up, collected the two rubber bands, and handed them to Miss Yoobler.

  From his hiding spot, Floyd watched Miss Yoobler put his rubber bands into a box on her desk. It was a good-sized box, like a double-wide toaster. Miss Yoobler called it the misfit box.

  It was full of all the things kids were not supposed to bring to school. I looked down and saw that Floyd was peeking out of my backpack, looking at the box, his eyes two little slits.

  “Now, class,” Miss Yoobler said, and then she turned to the whiteboard and started writing out a math problem with a red pen. “Let’s pay attention or we’ll never make it to the fifth grade! You’ll be stuck here forever. Eyes this-a-way.”

  Garvin Snood leaned toward me and said, “This ain’t over, Fuzzwonker.”

  Miss Yoobler’s voice sounded like a hair dryer blasting information across the room. It seemed like a good time to check on Floyd, so I leaned over and pulled the flap on my backpack. I peered inside. It was kind of dark in there, but there was one thing that was 100 percent for sure not in the backpack.

  Floyd.

  Sammy saw Floyd at the same time I did. He was working his way under desks like a secret agent.

  He looked like a real idiot, but he was having a very good time. Sammy could tell I was in trouble and bolted into action before I could stop her.

  “Look!” she said, pointing to the window facing the playground. “It’s a monkey!”

  Everyone in class turned to the window.

  “Where?” Miss Yoobler asked.

  “Right there!” Sammy said, pointing as hard as she could.

  Floyd saw his moment and ran out from under Jeff Flasky’s desk. He zoomed to the front of the class, bounced off the wall, and landed on Miss Yoobler’s desk. Then he slowly lifted the lid on the misfit box and jumped inside. It closed with a bang.

  Miss Yoobler heard the box shut and turned with a confused look on her face. Then she looked at the class.

  “There are no monkeys at this school, I assure you,” she said.

  “I guess it was a very hairy teacher,” Sammy said. “Sorry. I thought it was a monkey.”

  Garvin was on full alert. I was sure his dad, Mr. Snood, had already told him this was the year. This was it! The fourth grade was the year that the Snoods would finally discover the secret recipe for Fuzzwonker Fizz. Garvin’s sneaky spy brain was running through the situation: rubber bands being shot out of nowhere, monkey sightings, and the sound of Miss Yoobler’s misfit box shutting on its own. Maybe it was all connected to the Fuzzwonker secret. There was certainly something going on. I had to be super-extra-double careful.

  “Weird lizard you got there,” Sammy said, leaning in toward me. “Does it bite?”

  Red alert! Red alert! I thought. My hands started sweating.

  “He’s over there,” Sammy said. “In that box on Miss Yoobler’s desk. He’s fast!”

  “I know!” I whispered.

  “He took off when the monkey showed up.”

  I turned to my left and saw that Garvin was staring at me.

  “What are you up to, Fuzzwonker?”

  Floyd told me later on that he was having the time of his life inside the misfit box. Miss Yoobler had been putting things in there since dinosaurs roamed the earth. She carried it from class to class. There were two comic books, a Slinky, a yo-yo, and three toy cars inside. And a squirt gun. Also a bottle of grape-flavored Fuzzwonker Fizz. Plus two rubber bands. There wasn’t a lot of room to play, but there was just enough light seeping in through the cracks in the box so Floyd could kick back and read superhero stories.

  “We need to get your lizard back, huh?” Sammy asked.

  “Um, yeah. My lizard. Should we try the monkey again?”

  “Nah. I have a better idea,” Sammy said. Then she smiled and stood up.

  Sammy spoke in a slow, sleepy voice.

  “I think my bear is in the gumball machine. Over at the milk shake shack! How’d you get in there, silly bear?”

  Miss Yoobler turned around as Sammy moved like a zombie toward the back of the room.

  “What’s up with the weirdo?” Garvin asked.

  “No one get near her!” Miss Yoobler said. “She must be sleepwalking! We must handle this carefully, kids. It’s a delicate situation.”

  “Let’s throw water in her face!” Garvin said.

  “Garvin Snood, zip it,” Miss Yoobler said.

  Everyone watched Sammy as she zombie-walked, talking gibberish. “Come on, little bear, you’ve had enough cotton candy for one day. We need to brush your teeth and drive a hamburger before Mom gets home!”

  “She’s loopier than loopy,” Garvin said.

  Miss Yoobler walked past my desk and followed Sammy, which was my big chance to get Floyd out of the misfit box. I was up in a flash.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Garvin asked, putting his foot out just as I went by. I tripped, wobbled, and pitched forward onto Miss Yoobler’s desk. Garvin laughed so hard he snorted like a pig.

  I opened the misfit box and found Floyd finishing off the bottle of grape-flavored Fuzzwonker Fizz.

  “Oh no,” I said.

  My back was to the class, so I grabbed Floyd and put my hand over his mouth. His eyes were getting bigger and bigger. He really needed to burp.

  “It’s okay,” Miss Yoobler said, standing next to Sammy. “My dog is also a sleepwalker. I have experience with this sort of thing. You’re going to be fine.”

  “How am I going to get you out of that gumball machine?” Sammy asked in a sleepy voice. “I know! I’ll hit it with a hammer!”

  “I’m going to clap three times fast,” Miss Yoobler said. “And when I do, you will be wide-awake.”

  “Slap the gumball machine three times with a blender,” Sammy said. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  Miss Yoobler clapped three times fast.

  Floyd loaded up a rubber band he’d picked up in the misfit box and pointed it at me. I blocked him with my hand, and that meant there was nothing covering his mouth anymore.

  My back was to the class when Sammy woke up. “Did someone see a monkey? I thought I saw a monkey.”

  Then I heard Miss Yoobler. “Mr. Fuzzwonker! Get back to your desk this instant!”

  Floyd’s stomach had expanded to about three times its normal size.

  “You gotta be kidding me,” I said.

  “Harold! Did you hear what I said?” Miss Yoobler boomed.

  And that was when Floyd let loose with a huge Fuzzwonker Fizz burp.

  “BBBRRRAAAAAAAAAAOOOOEEE—”

  The room shook like an earthquake had just struck.

  “EEEAAAAAAARRRRR—”

  A picture fell off the wall.

  “UUUUAAARRRCCHHHRRRAAAUUUUUUUGGGGHHHH!”

  Finally, after sixteen seconds, Floyd’s burp ended. I was facing away from the class, so they all thought it was me. He smiled happily and I stuffed him in my pocket. The class cheered and laughed.

  “Everyone back to your desks! We’v
e got math to learn!” Miss Yoobler said.

  Garvin watched me like a hawk. It was another ten minutes before I could safely transfer Floyd from my pocket to my backpack. I made a mental note to bring comic books the next day so Floyd would have something to do. And to never, ever—under any circumstances—bring Fuzzwonker Fizz to school.

  After school, Garvin followed me toward the bike rack. He was careful to stay out of sight, hiding behind large objects like trash cans and teachers, but I saw him.

  I cut between a gaggle of students and ducked into a classroom.

  “Let’s wait here for a second and make sure he doesn’t try to follow us home,” I said.

  Floyd poked his head out of my backpack, and the flap hung over his head like a fedora.

  I could hear his small voice from there, but all he did was ask if I could have a pizza delivered to my backpack.

  “No way,” I said. “You’ll get cheese all over my books. We’ll be back in Fizzopolis before you know it. You can eat then.”

  Floyd complained about being hungry and shut the flap. I could hear him using a marker in there, making grumbling noises as he scribbled all over my journal.

  I had been super-extremely-tremendously careful not to take my backpack off for the rest of the day. Wearing it was best, because:

  a) I wouldn’t leave it on the playground by accident (I have done that about ten million times).

  b) Floyd could ask me things like “When’s lunch?” and I could hear him.

  c) Garvin Snood couldn’t get his grubby hands on my backpack if I was wearing it.

  I arrived at my bike and looked every which way.

  “No sign of Garvin,” I said. “Must have lost him. I’m going to set you on the ground for just a second while I unlock my bike.”