by David Lubar
“Not since you became a zombie,” Abigail said. “Since then, you’ve been a winner, a hero, and a great student. So one little failure really sticks out. Get over it.”
“I’ll try,” I said. But I was already worried about what Mr. Murphy would ask me to do next. Abigail was right—I wasn’t used to failing anymore.
6
Great Gumballs of Fire
I brought you this.” Mom handed me a chocolate bar when she got home from work. “Thanks. I’ll eat it later.”
“How’s your foot?”
“It’s totally fine.” I wiggled my ankle. “Look, it didn’t rot and fall off.”
“Let me see the scratch.”
I sat on a chair and pulled off my right sneaker and sock. Mom knelt down and studied my foot.
“Oh, dear. It doesn’t seem to be healing. I’m so glad I made an appointment with the doctor. This could be a symptom. I hope you don’t have something serious, like one of those horrible staph infections. Maybe I should take you there right now, even if we don’t have an appointment.”
“It’s fine. Really.” She was right, of course. The scratch wasn’t healing. But it didn’t matter. “I don’t even need to see the doctor. It’s a waste of time.”
I guess I’d pushed too hard. Mom’s eyes started to reshape themselves into laser cannons. I braced myself for a blast. Luckily, I was saved by the doorbell.
“That must be the plumber,” Mom said.
It definitely was the plumber. Nobody else walks around with a pipe wrench in her belt, dressed in green overalls, carrying a gigantic toolbox. The name shelly was stitched over her pocket in gold thread. She had orange fingernails, long hair as nice as Shawna’s, and a smile even nicer.
“Mrs. Abercrombie?” she asked. “It’s Michelle Stone. You called about gunk in the pipes, right?”
Mom pointed to the kitchen. “It came out of that faucet, and the upstairs shower.”
Shelly nodded. “Sorry I’m late. But I’ve had a lot of emergency calls today. I’ve been hopping around like a toad on a hot plate. Let’s take a look.” She headed for the kitchen, then stopped and glanced back over her shoulder toward Mom. “My dad taught me the business. Everybody is curious about that.”
She got busy under the sink. I got busy up in my room. About fifteen minutes later, I heard her go into the upstairs bathroom. A bit after that, I heard her tell Mom, “Everything checks out fine, Mrs. Abercrombie. Pipes are clean. Drains are running the way they should. I can’t explain it. I wish I could. But if I were you, I’d keep an eye on that willow tree in your front yard. They love water. The roots can go right into your pipes.”
She left. I stayed in my room. Mom wasn’t going to be happy about the plumbing not getting fixed. But maybe the goop wouldn’t show up again.
After dinner, I headed over to Abigail’s place, which was just four blocks away on Zackerly Street. She and her mom had finally moved into their house. Mookie was already there, up in Abigail’s room.
“Here.” I handed her the chocolate bar I’d brought. “My mom got it for me. I guess she felt bad about taking me to the doctor.”
“Thanks. Ooooh—with cashews. She must feel really bad.” Abigail opened the wrapper and took a bite.
Mookie looked like he was going to ask her to share, but I could see he’d brought two bags of pretzels and a handful of licorice whips with him.
Abigail pulled a bottle and a jar from her backpack and handed them to me. “I think I found everything I needed.”
I glanced at the labels. The words on them were really long. “What is this stuff?”
“Just some common chemicals.”
“The last time I got near chemicals, they killed me,” I said.
“You don’t have to worry about that happening again,” Mookie said.
“I guess not. But I don’t want to do anything else bad to myself.”
“I got the most harmless chemicals I could find,” Abigail said. “A lot of exothermic reactions involve strong acids or bases. That wouldn’t be good. This will be much milder.” She fished around in one of the backpack’s pockets and pulled out a thermometer.
I watched as she poured a little bit of the powder onto a dish. Then she put a couple drops of the liquid on it. The mixture fizzled and hissed. Abigail held her hand several inches above it and nodded. “Warm.” She touched the tip of the thermometer against the mixture, waited for a moment, then said, “Great. This should work beautifully.”
“I can’t sit there and sprinkle stuff in my mouth,” I said. “Dr. Scrivella’s eyes aren’t that bad.”
“I’ve got it covered,” Abigail said. She reached into the backpack again and pulled out a handful of large gumballs.
“Jawbreakers!” Mookie shouted.
He reached out, but Abigail smacked his hand. “This is our delivery system. I’ll cut one in half, hollow it out, put the powder in one side, cover it with a small piece of plastic wrap, put the liquid in the other side, then glue the halves back together. All Nathan has to do is bite down on it, and the reaction will start.”
“Cool,” Mookie said. “That’s like the poison pills the spies use.” He clamped his jaw shut, twitched violently, then flopped his head over like he’d just swallowed cyanide.
“Will the gumball hold enough of the chemicals?” I asked.
Abigail nodded. “Sure. It will be in an enclosed space. Just keep your lips over the thermometer. We’ll run some tests.”
Abigail split one of the gumballs with a small kitchen knife and started putting everything together. “Here. Try it,” she said when she was done.
I stuck the gumball in my mouth and bit down. A second later, something started foaming out from between my lips.
“Mad dog!” Mookie screamed. “No—it’s even worse. Mad zombie!” He waved his hands in the air and ran around the room in circles.
Abigail’s mother peeked in right when Mookie banged into a wall. “Oh, I see your friends are here. How nice.”
I waited until she left, then spat the crushed gumball in the trash can and wiped my arm on my sleeve.
“Maybe I’ll try using a little less this time,” Abigail said.
“You think?”
It took three more tries. But she finally figured out the right amount of the mix so it wouldn’t fill my mouth and pour out from between my lips.
“See?” Abigail said as she plucked the thermometer from my mouth and pointed to the display. “You’ve got a normal temperature. I’ll make up three or four of these so you have spares.”
“Great.” So we had one thing worked out. Maybe I could actually get through my exam, as long as Abigail solved the other problems before tomorrow afternoon. I hoped they were just as easy. “Hey, as long as you’re solving problems, how can I hide a scratch from my mom?”
“That’s easy. Any girl could figure that one out. Wait right here.” She dashed off down the hall.
Any girl? I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like this.
Abigail came back a minute later with a small bottle.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Concealer,” she said.
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“Me either,” Mookie said. “But if it can conceal farts, I want a bottle.”
“Nothing could conceal that,” Abigail said. She turned to me. “Take off your shoe. Let’s see that scratch.”
I did what she told me, then waited while she painted some liquid over the scratch and rubbed it with a cotton ball.
“All done.” She tossed the cotton ball into the garbage.
I took a look. “Cool. It’s like the scratch disappeared. What are you doing with that stuff?”
“It’s not mine. I got it from my mom’s makeup kit.”
“Makeup? . . .” I looked at my foot, then at the bottle. “Don’t say anything!” I yelled at Mookie.
But he’d already collapsed on Abigail’s floor. Okay, he could go ahead and laugh. If I had to use makeup t
o hide the fact that my scratches didn’t heal, I didn’t care.
We hung around a little longer and helped Abigail put up posters. On one wall, Albert Einstein stared across the bedroom at a painting Abigail told me was done by a guy named Monet. The painting was sort of fuzzy, but also kind of cool. I guess you could say the same thing about Einstein. Except for a new computer, Abigail still didn’t have a lot of stuff to replace what she’d lost in the fire.
“It must be tough losing so much,” I said.
“It’s kind of nice not having my closet crammed with things,” she said. “It’s just stuff. It’s not important.” She sighed and looked over at her desk. There was a photo there. It was burned at the edges, and stained with water. I guess it had been in the fire. It showed Abigail maybe three or four years ago, in pigtails and a blue dress, with a guy who looked a little like her uncle Zardo, except he didn’t have crazy eyes or crazy eyebrows.
“He could help you,” she said. “If anyone could find a cure, he could.”
“Your dad?”
Abigail nodded. “He could do anything. If he was here, you wouldn’t need a fake pulse or temperature. He’d bring you back to life. He’d just go to his lab and not leave until he’d figured out a cure.”
“What happened?” I asked. I knew her father had died, but I didn’t know how.
I wasn’t sure whether she was ready to talk. But after a moment, she said, “He was in Bolivia, studying slime mold.”
“Slime mold?” I glanced over at Mookie to make sure he didn’t start laughing. But he actually seemed to realize that this wasn’t a time for jokes.
“It’s a fascinating life-form.” Abigail’s face lit up as she talked. “Dad taught me all about it. It used to be classified as a fungus, but most scientists have changed their minds about it. Dad was an expert in cell biology. He was pretty awesome with chemistry, too.”
“What happened?” I had this horrible image of someone falling into a huge puddle of slime.
“His guides took him down a river. There was an accident with the canoe. That was it. He was gone.”
“He’d be proud of you,” I said. “You’re so smart.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Sure he would. You already figured out how to make it look like I have a normal temperature. You’re brilliant. That’s the truth.”
“Thanks.” Abigail turned to Mookie. “Mad zombie. That was pretty funny.”
“Not as funny as Nate wearing makeup on his foot,” Mookie said.
They both started laughing.
“How’s your research going?” Abigail asked Mookie.
“Really good. I’m working my way through the alphabet,” he said. “I’ve seen every zombie movie so far from A through Y.”
“So you’re almost done,” I said.
Mookie shook his head. “Nope. I’m about halfway through.”
“Oh, right,” Abigail said. “Lots of Zs. Was there a movie called Mad Zombie?”
“Not yet,” Mookie said. “Lots of mad scientists. No mad zombies. Maybe we should make one. We’ve already got our star.” He started laughing again.
When we headed out, Mookie was still laughing. “Mad zombie . . . makeup . . . oh, man—I love hanging out with you. It’s always fun.”
That night, when I went to brush my teeth, something started to squeeze out of the water faucet. At first, I thought it was one of those globs of goop. I almost called Mom. But it didn’t look wet enough. And it wasn’t really shiny. I took a sniff. No smell. Then, when about half of it came out, including four legs, I realized it was a spider. A really big spider. It looked like it could eat small birds. I think I would have been happy to see goop instead. I was glad I hadn’t touched it.
I stepped back, not sure what to do. I like spiders. I wasn’t going to kill it. But Mom would totally freak out if she saw it. It was so big, I think Dad might freak out, too.
The spider crawled to the top of the faucet and started to spin a web between the sink and the mirror. It worked really fast. I didn’t know spiders made webs that quickly. I thought it took hours.
“Oh, great,” I muttered when I realized what was going on. Obviously, Mr. Murphy had read too many children’s books. The spider was spinning me a message.
7
Some Things Are Hard Pick
The spider had only spelled out “Borloff Lo” when it fell off the web and broke into pieces. I hate to admit it, but I was actually a little disappointed when the pieces didn’t explode or burst into flames.
The unfinished message was good enough. I knew where to go. Borloff Lower Elementary. As soon as my parents were asleep, I slipped out to meet Mr. Murphy for my second training session. He was waiting at a picnic table behind the school, with a large suitcase.
“Nice spider,” I said.
“Thank you. We just developed it last week.”
“I thought it was goop at first.”
“Goop?”
I told Mr. Murphy about the gunky sludge in the pipes. I figured he wasn’t really interested in my problems, or even in East Craven’s problems. Sometimes when I talked to him, it seemed he was just waiting for me to stop so he could tell me the stuff he thought was important. But I noticed he was actually listening to me.
When I was finished, he said, “This could be significant.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure yet.” He took a notebook out of his pocket and jotted down a couple sentences. “But let’s get to work.” He flipped to an empty page, wrote something else, and ripped it out. “A well-rounded spy should have a knack for secret codes. Let’s start with an easy one, just for a warm-up.”
“Sure. I love codes.” My dad had showed me how to use lemon juice to write invisible messages. When you heated the paper with an iron, the message appeared. And way back in second grade, Mookie and I had learned Morse code so we could tap out messages to each other. Except Mookie only learned the code for E, A, T, and S, so his messages were pretty limited to stuff like “Eat.”
Mr. Murphy handed the page to me.
I read the message: NTHN BRCRMB. It didn’t make any sense. “Northern breadcrumbs?” I guessed.
“Try harder, Nathan,” Mr. Murphy said. “This is important.”
Maybe each letter stood for another one. I noticed that both words started and ended with the same letter. But that didn’t help at all. There were probably millions of words that would fit the pattern.
“Try really hard, Nathan Abercrombie,” Mr. Murphy said.
Why did he keep mentioning my name? I stared at the page. The letters did look sort of familiar. Oh. Now I saw it. “It’s my name without the vowels. Right?”
“Perhaps codes aren’t one of your strengths,” Mr. Murphy said. “No problem. Let’s try something I think you’ll be really good at. Ready?”
“Sure.” After failing at following and at codes, I was definitely ready to be great at something.
He opened the suitcase. It was filled with locks—padlocks, combination locks, and even some doorknobs with locks on them.
“Don’t you usually lock a suitcase from the outside?” I asked.
“Very funny.” He lifted one of the padlocks from the suitcase and handed it to me. “A good spy can find a way into any place, no matter how well it’s protected. Locks are never a problem. With your steady hands, you should be a natural at this.”
“Cool.” He was right—I should be really good at this because my hands never shook. I imagined myself breaking into places. I’d slip into the bad guys’ hideout and steal their computer files without them even knowing I was there. As long as I didn’t have to follow them someplace.
Mr. Murphy held up one of the tools and explained how to use it. Then he handed me the tool and a lock. “Give it a try. Be gentle. You have to feel very carefully for the tumblers when you insert the pick.”
Feel? My hands might be really steady—so steady that I was awesome at video games—but feeling st
uff was not my best thing. I’d gotten splashed with the Hurt-Be-Gone because I wanted to stop having hurt feelings. Instead, the formula had gotten rid of a lot of my ability to feel actual stuff.
I slid the pick into the keyhole and tried to feel what was going on. Nothing. I moved it around. I wouldn’t have done any worse if I were wearing mittens.
“It’s no use.” I handed the lock and the pick back to Mr. Murphy. “I can’t do this.”
“Don’t give up so quickly. Let’s try a combination lock,” he said. “Those are easier.” He gave me one, and explained what to feel for.
“Forget it,” I said. “I won’t be able to do it.”
“Just try.”
I tried. No luck.
Mr. Murphy sighed and started to close the suitcase. Then he paused, reached down, and pulled out a cardboard tube. “Let’s talk about your doctor’s appointment. If the world knows about you, you become much less useful.
You might even be in danger. My people have been working on the problem.”
So have mine. I didn’t think I should tell him about Abigail—especially right after he mentioned protecting my secret. There was no way he’d understand that the two people I trusted the most in the whole world were fifth-graders. People never believe kids can be as good as adults at things like keeping secrets, solving problems, or saving the planet from evil bad guys.
He pulled a paper from the cardboard tube, unrolled it, and held it up. I looked at the drawing. It was a round plastic ball with a bunch of tubes and wires running out of it.
“What’s that?”
“Artificial heart,” he said. “It’s brilliant. Battery operated.”
“Did Dr. Cushing make it?”
He shook his head. “No, this came out of our research department. Dr. Cushing’s specialty is medical evaluation.”
I pointed at the drawing. “How does it work?” I didn’t think I could hide it under my clothing, since Dr. Scrivella would probably ask me to take off my shirt.
