by Paul Tobin
Then Liz said, “Nice.”
And she hung up.
Before I could put my phone away, I got a text from my brother, Steve, wondering why I’d sent him some tea. I texted back that I hadn’t. And then I got a text from Stine Keykendall, wondering why I’d sent her tea. And then Ventura León texted to thank me for the tea. And I got a “thank you” text from Mrs. Isaacson, my homeroom teacher, and then I got a three-second video from Liz of her winking while holding up a piece of paper with “Nate” written on it, and then I got a gushing text from Tommy Brilp, who’s had a crush on me ever since I can remember. He assured me he loved the tea and was drinking several cups of it.
I texted back, I didn’t send any tea. I thought about adding more than that, but I couldn’t think of what else to say, so I just put my phone away, wishing I could convince Nate that it was okay to tell my friends the truth. But I could hardly convince Nate to trust other people if I went behind his back and recruited Liz and Ventura and the others to the task of finding the parts of the formula that Nate had hidden all over Polt. I suppose in one way, I understood why he was acting like this—his shyness about grabbing more of our classmates. After all, they always ignored him in school. They never talked to him. Never invited him to anything. They didn’t even say hello in the halls. So why should he trust them now? That said, trust is a two-way street, and until Nate understood that friendship isn’t about science, it would be hard for others to trust him, too. And I wasn’t completely sure if I wanted to involve Liz, anyway. What if it went wrong?
Nate asked me why I was sitting so quietly when—according to him—I charted in the upper-ninety-sixth percentile of people who like to speak their minds, no matter what. I suppose that means that this was one of those four-percent times, because all I could think of were the warning signs of my friends becoming involved with the Red Death Tea Society. The cult was clearly letting me know that they knew who my friends and family were, where they lived, and so on. And while I am generally considered reckless (I would probably rank in the upper-one-hundredth percentile), it’s one thing to put myself in danger and another thing to involve everyone else I knew, especially if they didn’t happen to have an incredibly smart genius handy.
So, for a few moments I squirmed in my seat, thinking of the world’s deadliest assassins putting those bags of tea on all those porches, and knocking on all those doors.
“They’ll be okay,” Nate said. He reached over and squeezed my hand. I guess he probably knew what I was thinking. Probably had charts. Mathematical predictions. Maybe he could even read minds. If so, then he could see that I was thinking of a terrier in a parking lot who was struggling to keep a giant cat from escaping, much like the way time was escaping from me.
“We should get going,” I told Nate. “Four more formula codes to go.”
And he started the car.
chapter
6
Forty minutes later I was at the Polt Zoo where Kip Luppert was supposed to be working. However, I was not looking at Kip.
To be precise, I was looking at a hippopotamus.
To be even more and quite unfortunately precise, I was looking at a hippopotamus from inside its pen, from only about five feet away.
This was not where I wanted to be.
A hippo is one of the most dangerous creatures in existence. Its mouth is large enough to swallow precisely two and a half Delphine Coopers whole. They have hideous breath and horrible tempers. And nothing short of an elephant or a superhero has more muscle. Unfortunately, there were no superheroes along with me in the enclosure. There was just me. With my shaking knees. And with three hippos. Three big mouths. Three dreadful tempers. And one shirt that Kip Luppert had stupidly left behind.
Nate and I had raced to the zoo to find that Kip wasn’t at his usual station, handing out program guides for the Daily Soar, an event where the zoo’s mascot, an eagle named Baron Feathers, would start at the back of an auditorium and fly over the amazed audience to the stage below and the waiting arm—and offered fish—of its trainer.
“Where is Kip?” Nate said. “He’s supposed to be here. He has a schedule.” If you want to irritate a genius, do something off the schedule.
Through a hurried series of investigations we were able to discover that Kip had been asked to help catch some loose rabbits near the petting zoo, and that he’d then gone on break, but his break had been cut short when he’d been called to help out with the giraffes, and as the minutes were relentlessly ticking by we’d discovered that Kip had helped deliver bales of food to the hippos (seriously, actual bales of food for three hippos, and Dad yells at me if I have too many cookies before dinner), and then Kip had gone home for the day, but then Nate’s scanner picked up a reading and … beep beep beep … it was coming from the hippo enclosure.
There was an official zoo volunteer shirt hanging from a low branch next to the bales of food.
It was Kip’s shirt.
He’d taken it off while working and then simply forgotten it. The molecule must have gotten onto it, somehow. That was lucky for us. Nate and I stood at the edge of the enclosure looking at the shirt. There was a fence that went up to my waist, and then a twenty-foot drop to a moat, and then an island where the hippos were lounging. The shirt was there, on the island, with them.
“One of us needs to get that,” Nate said. As he spoke, the closest of the hippos looked up at me. I’m not especially talented at reading hippo expressions. Not enough practice. Some things are obvious, though, and the look that hippo gave me was, “I dare you.”
I told Nate, “It’s going to be me, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes. It just makes sense. You’re stronger and faster and better under pressure, and it doesn’t take a genius to pick up a shirt.”
“So, I’m doing this because I’m not as smart as you?”
“Because you’re stronger and faster and better under pressure.” Nate gulped as he spoke, which I believe illustrates that he is not good under pressure.
I sighed.
Another hippo looked up at me. I could almost hear it say, “I double dare you.”
I told Nate, “Get out your shrink ray. Let’s shrink those hippos. You do have a shrink ray, right?”
“Are you serious? Do you know how many scientific problems there are with a shrink ray?”
I said, “Millions, probably.”
“Three that I haven’t yet solved. And if I had a shrink ray, I would have used it by now.”
“Right.”
There were eighty-seven minutes left until Bosper was too tired to hold off Proton’s rampage. I looked at the fence. A twenty-foot drop. A twenty-foot drop to a moat. A twenty-foot drop to three hippos, the last of which was looking up and clearly thinking, “Delphine Cooper, I triple dog dare you.”
“Piffle!” I said, vaulting the fence.
I have to say that the first part of my plan went splendidly. I’d planned on falling twenty feet down into the water, and that’s exactly what I did. Straight down, with no monkey business.
A few frogs panicked when I hit the water, which wasn’t part of my plan, but wasn’t any great interference. I did think it odd that I (at eighty-one pounds) was scaring the frogs when they were roommates with hippos (each of which, if my math is correct, weighed infinite pounds) but that was a discussion for another day. I had a more immediate problem.
“Urggh! Slime!” I said, surfacing from the water, which was full of slime, and now also full of Delphine Cooper.
“Oh, just … just yuck! Yuck!” My clothes were covered in slime. I was shaking it off my arms, trying to kick it free from my legs, wishing that I could do that thing dogs do when they shake their whole bodies. Maybe Bosper could teach me the trick. If we survived the day.
“Gross!” I said, stepping out of the water and onto the island. “This is the worst! It’s in my hair! Just … ewwww!”
There were gasps of surprise from up above, where the crowd was gathered. There were oohs and ah
hs and some murmurs of concern, such as I’m accustomed to hearing when tests are passed out in class, although in this case I was the only one being tested, and it’s entirely possible that I’d failed the test when I’d let Nate convince me to jump into the exhibit.
“All part of the show!” I said, waving above. They applauded, which was nice, but I was still covered in slime, which was not nice, and then—
Something moved in front of me.
I could provide several hints as to what this moving object might have been—such as that it looked, smelled, and sounded like a hippopotamus—but I’ll just save time and say it was a hippopotamus.
It said, “Runnnk!” The noise was a cross between that of a cow and a pig and a giant movie monster.
I said, “Eek!”
Nate yelled, “Get the shirt!”
“Get serious!” I yelled. I wasn’t going to make any sudden moves. I wasn’t sure about making any moves. For all I knew the hippos had grown attached to the shirt and wanted to keep it. And they definitely didn’t want me in their pen.
“I’ll use the friend ray!” Nate said. I looked back at
him. He pulled one of his strange mechanisms out of his shirt. It looked like several metal pencils held together with rubber bands.
I said, “The … friend ray?!”
One of the hippos said, “Runnnk!”
Another one roared.
They both moved closer. The third hippo was rubbing his butt on one of the bales of food, not paying any attention to me. He was my favorite.
Nate said, “Yes! It’s a ray that recalibrates moods. I should be able to use it to make the hippos friendly.” He flipped a switch on the strange mechanism and it began to make a glook glooook sound and emit several colors in concentric circles.
I said, “What the piffle, Nate! You had a friend ray?”
“Uh, yes?” Nate said, as if everyone has a friend ray and it’s so obvious that why would it even be a topic of conversation?
I asked, “When I was joking about the shrink ray, did it not occur to you to say that you had a friend ray?”
“Uh, no?”
I glared at him. I thought about telling him that he might have to use that ray on me if he kept doing dumb things. I was so mad that it was very possible I was emitting colors of my own. All reds. They would have all been reds.
“Is it working?” I asked, looking at the hippos, but before Nate could say anything the answer became obvious. The hippos began … smiling? I guess?
It was kind of like smiling, anyway. And all the tension was gone from them, even though it wasn’t all gone from me, because to be honest a smiling hippo has a startling resemblance to a hippo that is about to eat me, so even though the three of them were now acting very friendly, I was moving as slowly as possible, taking baby steps, reaching out my hand toward the shirt, barely breathing, edging cautiously closer and closer, and …
“Oh, the heck with it,” I said. “I’m never going to get this chance again.” With that, I leaped up onto the back of the nearest hippo. I’ll admit it was a rather impulsive thing to do, but I don’t think it would have come as a surprise to Mom, Dad, Liz, or any of my other friends, or any of my teachers, etc., etc., etc.
“Look at me!” I yelled up to Nate. “I … am … riding … a … HIPPO! Isn’t it awesome?”
“Yes,” Nate said. He wasn’t as enthusiastic as I thought he should’ve been. He had a friend who was riding a hippopotamus. Such things should be celebrated.
“We really need to get that shirt,” Nate said. “Time is running out.”
“True,” I admitted. Bosper was depending on us. So was the entire city of Polt.
“Giddyap,” I told the very friendly hippo, nudging it forward like the chubbiest of all horses. “I’ll call you Lightning!”
Lightning ambled forward with a ponderous waddle, heading toward Kip’s shirt, which was hanging from the branch. The other two hippos were giving Lightning looks that I could only surmise were that of jealousy, since he and I were going to be best friends forever. I felt very good about myself. I would’ve positively wept if I’d missed an opportunity to be the first sixth grader in Polt Middle School history to ride a hippopotamus. The day wasn’t so bad after all. I reached out and grabbed the shirt.
“I’ve got the shirt!” I told Nate. I held it up in the air. It was another moment of triumph for Delphine Cooper.
“Yes!” Nate said, pumping his fist.
And the friend ray shot out of his hand.
It arced high into the air.
Nate tried to catch it. He fumbled for it. The device thunked off the back of his hands, rebounded off his chest, smacked onto the top of the railing, and then …
… fell
… into the moat
… below.
Where it made a fzzzzt sound as it released a short, solitary burst of electricity, then sank beneath the water.
I said, “Nathan Bannister, did you just drop the friend ray into the water?” I spoke this all in one breath. One breath was all I had.
He said, “Yes.”
Still on that one breath, I said, “Do you … have another one?”
He said, “No.”
I said, “Okay.” By then I was squeaking. I’d used up the last of my breath and was afraid to take another one.
My faithful steed, Lightning, looked back over his shoulder to where I was perched on his back.
He said, “Rrr-RUNK?” I’m just going to go ahead and say that it didn’t sound friendly.
Nate said, “You should probably get out of there as fast as you can.”
I said, “You think?”
And at that moment Lightning went a little crazy. He began trying to shake me off, an experience that I can only liken to being attacked by an enormous blob of vibrating jelly. I flopped forward and grabbed his ears and held on for all I was worth, and Lightning bucked and shivered and bellowed, and I was trying to remind him of all the really wonderful times we’d shared, and the other two hippos were rushing forward with their Delphine-swallowing mouths and their Delphine-crushing teeth, and I was not in a very good mood.
Lightning jumped into the water.
He submerged.
Hippos, incidentally, are very good under the water and you should never challenge one to a breath-holding contest.
I said, “Blllooorrble!” (I was trying to yell “Nate!” but it came out wrong.)
Lightning began rolling in the water, trying to shake me free. I let go of one of his ears and thumped him on the head. Amazingly, this did nothing to improve my predicament. Instead, Lightning was now trying to scrape me away on the sides of the pool or get me in a position to bite me or keep me under the water for so long that I drowned. None of these were options I favored. Lightning was worse than any bucking bronco I’d ever seen in any rodeo, and to add to all the frenetic moves he began to spin.
His tactic was very effective.
My hand began slipping off his ear.
I was really trying to hold on.
But … no. I lost my grip.
Thrown by Lightning’s sheer force, I whooshed through the water, and even up and out of the water. I was in fact hurled way up into the air. Like a rocket. I went five feet into the air. Ten feet into the air. Fifteen feet. Even twenty.
And down below me was the waiting mouth of what was about to become the first Delphine-Cooper-eating hippopotamus in history. The glint in the creature’s eyes was that of extreme satisfaction.
I began to fall.
I whispered, “Piffle.”
Nate reached out from the railing and caught me.
I yelled, “Yay!”
He heaved backward and hauled me to safety.
In a quick second I was standing next to him, amazed at the turn of fate, happy to be alive, though not quite as happy to be so thoroughly covered in slime.
“Ha!” I yelled over the railing, down at Lightning, who looked supremely disappointed by this turn of events.
I shook the shirt at him, then turned and hugged Nate and (quite impulsively) kissed him on the cheek.
“Yuck!” Nate said. This was not the reaction I expected.
“Yuck?” I said. “Seriously? Is my kiss that horrible? I mean, it’s not like I slobbered or anything, and I—”
“Sixty-three minutes left!” Nate yelled, looking at his phone. “We have to go!” He grabbed Kip’s shirt from me, squeezed out of my hug, and started running off. Then, about thirty feet in front of me, right next to the monkey exhibit, which was totally where he belonged, he stopped.
He said, “Oh, and Delphine?”
“What?” I said. I was irritable.
“I meant yuck because of the slime.” He gestured to his clothes.
“You covered me in slime.”
“Oh.” It was true. I’d covered him in slime when I hugged him. Oops.
Nate turned a bit red, then added, “The slime was gross but the kiss was okay.” With that, he turned and began running for the car again. The monkeys were all clapping and hooting and howling at Nate. I ran past them, racing after my friend.
“We’re not dating,” I told the monkeys, just in case they were starting any rumors.
In the car, I said, “Nate. You made a friend ray.”
“I’m sorry! I should have let you know right away.”
“It’s not that. I’m just wondering, how do you make a friend ray? What kind of … research did you do?”
“Oh,” he said. He was looking down, and wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“Oh?”
“You meant, what does someone like me know about having friends?”
“Yeah. I guess I did.” I felt bad, but at the same time it was true, though not in the way he meant. I reached out and gave him a friendly punch in the shoulder, so he would know I wasn’t making fun of him.
Nate said, “To tell the truth, I watched you. The way you make friends so easily, it’s so amazing! People always like you, so I distilled the sound of your laugh, incorporated a mathematical formula based on the curvature of your smile, and the scent you wear when you’re—”
“Nate, none of that means anything.”
