by Nancy Krulik
And every poster would say the same thing: BEWARE OF BURPER.
“Your shoe is untied,” Alex told a fifth-grader named Casey. “That’s a safety hazard.”
George stood on the side of the playground on Monday morning, watching as his best friend spoke to the older boy.
“Thanks for telling me,” Casey said.
He bent down and began to tie his shoelace.
“You can’t bend over like that in the middle of a crowded playground,” Alex told him. “Someone might trip over you. Tripping people is against the rules!”
“How am I supposed to tie my shoe if I don’t bend down?” Casey asked him.
“Alex is really going crazy with this safety monitor thing,” George said to Sage, Chris, and Julianna. “I think he’s memorized every school rule there is.”
“What’s he writing in that notebook?” Sage wondered.
“He’s putting Casey on report,” Chris answered.
“On what?” Sage asked.
“Report. They do the same thing in the army,” George explained. “My dad told me about it. It’s when they tell your commanding officer that you did something wrong.”
“Isn’t that tattling?” Sage asked.
George shrugged. “Sort of,” he agreed. “But I guess it’s different when it’s your job.”
“I didn’t know school safety monitors did that,” Julianna said. “No one has before.”
“Alex does,” Chris said.
“Take that hair out of your mouth,” George heard Alex tell a second-grader named Charlotte. “You’re not supposed to eat hair in school.”
Charlotte pulled the clump of hair she’d been chewing out of her mouth. Then she twirled the spit-covered curl around her finger while Alex scribbled her name in his report notebook.
“I didn’t know that was a school rule,” Julianna said.
“I think you probably shouldn’t eat your hair anywhere,” George said. “Not just in school.”
“Yeah,” Sage agreed. “It’s gross.”
George pointed across the playground. “Speaking of gross,” he said, “Louie’s here.”
Louie strolled up to where George was standing. His pals Mike and Max were right behind him—as usual.
“You shouldn’t be calling me gross,” Louie told George. “I’m not the Beaver Brook Junior Basketball League’s champion dribbler!”
Max and Mike both started laughing.
“Get it?” Max asked George. “Dribble. Like drool. Because you drooled at your basketball practice.”
George rolled his eyes. Then he smiled at Louie.
“Gee, Louie, that joke wasn’t half bad,” George said.
Louie stared at him in surprise. So did Chris, Sage, and Julianna.
“It was all bad,” George continued.
George’s friends began to laugh. So did Max and Mike—until Louie glared at them.
“Yeah, well . . . uh . . . um . . . ,” Louie stammered. “You’re a weirdo freak.”
“Great comeback,” George said sarcastically.
Louie shot him a cruel smile. “A weirdo freak who is about to be my butler,” he added.
“Why would Georgie be your butler?” Sage asked Louie.
“Didn’t he tell you?” Louie asked. “George and I bet on whose team is going to win when we play each other in basketball. The loser has to be the winner’s butler for a week.”
“We’re not going to lose,” George insisted. At least he hoped not.
Brrriinnngg. Just then the school bell rang. It was time to go inside.
As Louie skated off toward the building on his wheelie sneakers, George frowned. It was too bad there wasn’t any school rule against being a total jerk. Because then Alex would definitely have someone to put on report.
There wasn’t a bigger jerk in the whole school than Louie Farley.
“Georgie, Georgie, he’s our man! If he can’t do it, no one can!” Sage shouted as she leaped up in the air and waved her hands wildly.
George turned beet red and stared at his tuna hoagie. Everyone in the school cafeteria was staring at him.
“Did you like my cheer, Georgie?” Sage asked him.
George groaned. “Not really,” he muttered under his breath.
“I’m going to come to every one of your games and cheer for you,” Sage told George. Then she looked over at Julianna.
“And for the other Fighting Ferrets, too, of course,” she added quickly.
“Why don’t you cheer for a team that’s gonna win?” Louie asked her. “My team. The Legal Eagles.”
“What kind of name is that for a basketball team, anyway?” Julianna asked him.
“My dad’s law firm is sponsoring our team,” Louie explained. “They’re paying for our uniforms and everything. So we’re the Legal Eagles. We were going to be the Farley Legal Eagles. But that didn’t fit on our uniforms.”
“They’re cool uniforms,” Max said. “Really legal.”
“The legalest,” Mike added.
“That’s not even a word,” George told him. “Besides, it’s not the uniforms that make the team. It’s the skill on the court. And we’ve got plenty of that. Julianna scored six three-pointers during practice yesterday.”
Julianna grinned. “I was kind of on fire, wasn’t I?” she asked.
George nodded. “Oh yeah!”
“Well, my coach said I was amazing at playing offense,” Louie boasted.
“You are,” Mike told him. “You’re the most offensive player in the whole junior basketball league.”
George laughed so hard, pieces of half-chewed tuna flew out of his mouth.
“Are you out of your mind?”
Just then someone started shouting in the middle of the cafeteria.
George turned around. The shouter was a fifth-grader named Patrick. He was yelling at Alex—who was busy writing in his report notebook.
“The Edith B. Sugarman Rule Book clearly states that you can’t wear two different-colored socks. It’s against the dress code,” Alex told him.
“What dress code?” the fifth-grader asked. “What rule book?”
“This rule book,” Alex said, pulling a small, wrinkly book out of his back pocket. “It was written in 1907.”
“That’s, like, a hundred years ago,” the fifth-grader said.
“A rule’s a rule,” Alex said. “No matter how old.”
A few minutes later, Alex came over to the table with his lunch tray. He squeezed in between George and Julianna.
“Sheesh,” Alex complained. “You’d think kindergartners were above the law or something.”
“What are you talking about?” George asked him.
“That kid over there,” Alex said, pointing to a little girl who was crying in the corner.
“The one with the pigtails?” Julianna wondered.
“The one with uneven pigtails,” Alex answered. “You’re not allowed to have one pigtail higher than the other. It’s in the rule book I found last Friday behind the radiator in the library.”
“What were you doing behind the radiator?” George asked him.
“Looking for dust bunnies for a science experiment I’m doing at home,” Alex said. “My mom is such a neat freak, we don’t have any dust. But I have plenty now. This book was buried under at least fifty years of dust.”
George was about to ask what kind of experiment needed dust bunnies. But before he could, Julianna shook her head and looked angrily at Alex.
“Oh, come on,” Julianna said. “You’re gonna report a kindergartner for something that stupid?”
“Rules are rules,” Alex told her. “You wouldn’t believe how many school rules we never knew about before. I spent the whole weekend reading this book.”
“But you made that littl
e girl cry,” Sage said.
Alex opened his mouth to speak, but Louie interrupted him.
“Can we get back to talking about how great I am at playing basketball?” Louie demanded.
George groaned. Louie really hated when the conversation was about anything other than him.
“I thought we were talking about how offensive you are,” George recalled.
Julianna and Sage giggled.
“Actually, we were talking about how the Legal Eagles were the best team to cheer for, because we’re winners,” Louie boasted.
“And what are we?” Julianna demanded. “Chopped liver?”
“No,” Louie said. “You guys are losers. Or you will be when we play you.”
George shook his head. Louie was getting on his last nerve.
“You know what, Louie?” George said. “You’re such a lousy basketball player that from now on, I’m gonna call you Cinderella.”
Louie gave him a strange look. “Why would you do that?”
“Because you always run away from the ball,” George answered with a chuckle.
The other kids started laughing, too. Even Max and Mike—at least until Louie threw them an angry stare.
“Joke all you want, George,” Louie said. “But I’m gonna have the last laugh. You’ll see.”
Click!
George pulled out his dad’s camera and snapped a quick selfie as he walked into the gym Saturday afternoon. George had brought his camera to every practice this week. But what he really wanted were pictures of his teammates on game day.
Of course George couldn’t take pictures during the game, because he would be playing. And it’s hard to dribble, pass, and shoot a basketball with a camera in one hand. But he could take plenty before the game started.
A minute later, Alex walked in, carrying his gym bag. George turned and took a picture of him, too.
Alex blinked a few times at the flash. “Cut it out, dude,” he said. “You’re blinding me.”
“Oh, sorry,” George said, tucking the camera into his gym bag. “I just want to have a lot of pictures of our first game.”
Just then, Julianna came running over, dribbling a basketball. “We’re gonna win this one, I can feel it!” she told the boys.
“I sure hope so,” Alex said.
“It would be great,” George said. “But the game we really have to win is next week’s—when we play Louie’s team.”
“We have to win every game, George,” Julianna told him. “Otherwise, how are we going to be the champions?”
George didn’t answer. There was no talking to Julianna when she got this way. Julianna was very competitive. And she liked winning. A lot.
“So you can’t horse around in the game like you did during practice, George,” Julianna continued.
George looked down at the ground. He knew that his horsing around hadn’t been his fault. It was the burp’s fault. But he couldn’t say that.
“I promise we’re all going to stay focused,” Alex assured Julianna. “No one’s going to goof around during a real game.”
“Great!” Julianna said happily. “I’m going to practice my free throws. You guys want to come?”
“In a minute,” Alex told her. “I just want to show George something first.”
As soon as Julianna ran off, George shook his head. “How could you promise Julianna that no one would goof around today? You know I can’t promise that. I never know when my super burp is going to show up.”
“Well, it isn’t going to show up today,” Alex assured him.
“How do you know?” George asked.
Alex reached into his gym bag. He pulled out a pair of basketball shorts. “Because you’re going to be wearing these,” he told George.
George took the shorts and held them up. “These things are huge,” he said.
“Exactly,” Alex replied. “I read all about it on the latest Burp No More Blog entry. Wearing tight pants forces gas up from your stomach and out your mouth. So to stop burping, you have to wear loose clothes.”
George looked at the giant shorts.
“I don’t know,” George said. “None of the other cures from that Burp No More Blog have ever stopped the super burp.”
“Trust me. This one will work,” Alex said. “It makes perfect scientific sense.”
George hoped Alex was right. But he wasn’t exactly counting on it.
If there was one thing George knew for sure, it was that nothing about the super burp made any sense. Scientific or otherwise.
Bounce. Bounce. Bounce.
George dribbled the ball down the court toward the basket, running as fast as he could.
As he got closer to the basket, he heard Coach Hooper shouting at him from the sidelines. “Shoot, George! Shoot! You’re clear!”
George wanted to shoot the basketball into the hoop. He really did. But he couldn’t. He needed two hands to shoot. And right now he had to keep one hand on the top of his giant shorts. Otherwise, they were going to wind up around his ankles.
So he just stood there, dribbling the ball with his one free hand.
Bounce. Bounce. Bounce.
“Georgie, Georgie, he’s our man!” Sage cheered from the crowd. “If he can’t do it, no one can!”
George tried not to hear her. He just kept dribbling.
Bounce. Bounce. Bounce.
Whoosh! Just then one of the Terrifying Tigers swooped in and grabbed the ball right out from under George. He passed it to his teammate, who began dribbling toward the basket.
“Georgie, Georgie, he’s our man!” Sage cheered again. “If he can’t do it . . .”
The Tiger player scored a three-pointer.
“Never mind,” Sage said. She plopped back down in her seat.
“George, why didn’t you take your shot?” Julianna shouted angrily as she hurried back up the court.
George didn’t answer her. He couldn’t. Because if he did, he was going to give up a lot more than a basket. He would give up a burp! A great big super burp.
Ting-tong. Zing-zong. The bubbles were back. Already they had started parading onto his pancreas.
Fling-flung. Sting-stung. Some bubbles were slipping up his spine and ricocheting off his ribs.
George had to do something! He couldn’t let the burp out now. Not in the middle of a basketball game. He had to stop it. But how?
George was going to have to spin those bubbles back down to his toes, like water swirling down a drain. It had worked before. Hopefully it would work now.
So George started spinning around and around.
Everything swirled and whirled inside him.
Clink-clank. Rink-rank. But the bubbles kept climbing. Now they were tickling his trachea and trampling onto his tongue.
So George spun faster. And faster. Spin. Spin. Spin.
George was getting really, really dizzy. But he didn’t stop. He just kept spinning and spinning and . . .
Suddenly, the bubbles started to sink back down, away from George’s mouth! The bubbles slid down his throat and hopped below his heart. It was working!
“George, cut it out,” Julianna said. “You’re gonna make us lose!”
“George, if you don’t stop, I’m going to bench you,” Coach Hooper warned.
But George kept spinning. Spin. Spin. Spin.
The bubbles knocked past his knees and kicked his calves. They angled around his ankles and . . .
Pop! Suddenly, George felt something burst in his belly. All the air rushed out of him. The magical super burp was gone! George had squelched that belch!
He raised his fists in victory.
Drop! As George’s hands went up, his giant shorts went down.
There he was, standing in front of everyone in his tighty whities.
“Georg
e Brown, you’re benched for the rest of this half!” Coach Hooper shouted.
George frowned. He’d had a feeling that was coming.
Still, it could have been a lot worse. Being benched beat a burp any day.
“I hope you go all crazy again during Sunday’s game,” Louie told George during lunch on Monday afternoon. “I’m getting really tired of tying my own sneakers. I need a butler to do that.”
“Then you better hire someone to do it,” George told him. “Because when you’re my butler, you’ll be so busy carrying around my skateboard and backpack, you won’t have time to tie your own shoes.”
Louie laughed. “Never gonna happen,” he told George. “Everyone at school heard about your pants falling down in the middle of last weekend’s game.”
“So what?” George asked him. “We still won, didn’t we?”
“Yeah, but the Tigers don’t have me on their team,” Louie said. “I’m a Farley. And Farleys never lose.”
“Except for that one time George beat you at thumb wrestling,” Max reminded him.
“And that other time when George won the chance to lead the Halloween parade,” Mike added.
“And then—” Max began.
Louie glared at him. Max shut his mouth, quick.
“None of that matters, because I’m a basketball superstar!” Louie exclaimed. “I can win all by myself. I don’t even need the rest of the team.”
George groaned. Louie wasn’t a star. He was more like a black hole. A black hole that sucked the fun out of everything.
George turned his attention away from Louie and watched as Alex pulled out his notebook and began to put a second-grader’s name in his on-report notebook.
George shook his head. “Alex is getting a little rule-crazy these days,” he said.
“Ya think?” Julianna said sarcastically. “He’s the most feared person in the whole school. And that includes Principal McKeon!”
“Yeah, well, I’m the most feared person on the basketball court,” Louie said, bringing the conversation back to himself—as usual.
