by Gary Urey
Super Schnoz and the Booger Blaster Breakdown
Gary Urey
Pictures by Keith Frawley
ALBERT WHITMAN & COMPANY
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
For Steve Casino—G.U.
Big honking thanks to Michelle, Genevieve, Rachel,
and Kaelin. Without you, life would STINK!—K.F.
CHAPTER 1
STRANGE SCENT
“Schnoz, what’s that weird smell?” Jimmy asked me one day while TJ, Mumps, Vivian, and I were cruising on our bikes down Main Street.
I flared my nostrils and inhaled the luscious, intoxicating scent. My nose hairs tingled with joy, my olfactory bulbs throbbing with delight. The wonderful smell had been wafting in the crisp autumn air of Denmark, New Hampshire, for weeks, and my nose could barely contain its excitement.
“That smell isn’t weird,” I answered. “It’s Strange, as in Jean Paul Puanteur’s Strange.”
“Huh?” TJ grunted.
“Strange is the name of an extremely popular unisex perfume,” Vivian said, steering her bike toward Dr. Wackjöb’s Gecko Glue® and Snore Cure Mist® factory. “Every teenager and adult in town wears it.”
“Schnoz, let me give you a piece of advice,” Jimmy razzed. “Don’t let the other guys in school know you like perfume. It could be seriously bad for your honker health.”
TJ laughed. “Perfume’s for girls.”
“Don’t tell that to my dad,” Mumps said. “He’s been spraying himself with Strange every morning for a month.”
“Like Vivian said, the perfume is unisex,” I replied.
“What’s ‘unisex’ mean?” Jimmy asked.
I hit the brakes, and my bike skidded to a stop. “It means the perfume is suitable for both sexes, male and female.”
“My mom loves it too,” Vivian added. “She goes through a bottle every two weeks.”
“Jean Paul Puanteur is the greatest perfumer in the world!” I proclaimed. “He’s the Mozart of odor, the Picasso of aroma—”
Before I could finish, one of Dr. Wackjöb’s delivery trucks whizzed past us. His Gecko Glue® and Snore Cure Mist® products were selling like hotcakes around the world. In fact, they were so successful that Filthy Rich Review had featured the company on the cover of its October issue. But the best thing about the business was that it employed hundreds of local people. My mom even got a job there as a quality control supervisor.
“I don’t care what anyone thinks,” I said to Jimmy after the truck had turned the corner. “I’m not just a one-sniff pony who only likes the smells of dog poop, armpits, and rotting roadkill. I’m a connoisseur of the sweeter scents in life too, you know.”
“The art of mixing herb oil, spices, and tree resins to make different fragrances goes all the way back to ancient Babylon,” Vivian said. “Perfuming is as old as civilization itself.”
TJ rolled his eyes. “Ancient or not, I still say perfume is for girls.”
“Stop being a sexist!” Vivian yelled and then held up her fists. “Do you want a bop on the chin?”
“I’m not six!” TJ fired back. “I turned eleven two months ago.”
“I said you were a sexist, dork butt. A person who stereotypes people based on their gender.”
“She’s right, TJ,” I said. “Apologize. Vivian’s smarter and tougher than all of you Not-Right Brothers put together.”
TJ kicked a rock with his sneaker. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t mean anything by it. I just assumed only girls wore perfume, that’s all.”
“Well, now you know different,” Vivian said. “Let’s hurry up and get to Dr. Wackjöb’s office. I’m starving.”
Every Wednesday, students were released early from school so the teachers could have meetings. We got out at noon and, weather permitting, rode our bikes to Dr. Wackjöb’s office for lunch. As we made our way down the street toward the factory, I deeply inhaled the overpowering smell of Strange. Distinguishing among the perfume’s different ingredients proved difficult at first, but soon my powerful olfactory receptors downloaded the parts directly into my mental scent dictionary. The perfume’s base was ethyl alcohol and distilled water—typical for most perfumes. Next, I sniffed a tantalizing blend of essential oils like lavender, jasmine, sandalwood, and bergamot. I could tell the perfume was of the highest quality because all the ingredients were natural, not one synthetic fragrance in the mix.
The security guard opened the factory gates, and we rolled into the parking lot. I leaned my bike on the rack and took one step toward the office door, and that’s when I sensed another extremely subtle, barely detectable ingredient in the Strange concoction. The odor stopped me in my tracks. My nose lifted into the air, huffing like a crazed bloodhound at the scent particles floating on the wind.
“What’s wrong, Schnoz?” Vivian asked. “You look like you just smelled a ghost.”
“I smell something, all right,” I said, my heart thumping. “And I have no idea what it is.”
“But you know practically every smell on earth,” Mumps said.
I scanned my mental scent dictionary front to back, starting with the pungent odor of a crushed ant and ending with the cheesy aroma of baked ziti. There was nothing, not one tiny whiff of the Strange scent.
CHAPTER 2
FRENCH JASMINE
Dr. Wackjöb was chatting on the phone when his secretary escorted us into his office. The overwhelming stench of fresh hákarl blasted up my nostrils. I loved the smell of fermented, urine-soaked shark meat, but the Icelandic delicacy made Vivian and the Not-Right Brothers nearly gag.
Jimmy pulled his T-shirt up over his nose. “Why does Dr. Wackjöb have to eat that disgusting hákarl every single day for lunch?”
“I don’t like the smell either,” Vivian said. “But we have to give the guy a break. The doctor was a laughingstock in his native Iceland and had to flee. Hákarl reminds him of home.”
“Hákarl reminds me of an unflushed toilet,” Mumps said with grimace.
“So nice to hear from you, Pierre, and I hope to speak with you soon.” Dr. Wackjöb said and then hung up the phone. He pointed to three large pizza boxes sitting on a conference table. “One is plain, one is pepperoni, and the other is black olives and mushrooms. Please, help yourselves.”
Vivian, the Not-Brothers, and I tore into the pizzas like starving rescue dogs. Dr. Wackjöb tied a bib around his neck and popped slices of hákarl into his mouth. He chewed very slowly, savoring every shark-pee-flavored bite.
While the gang munched away, my nose drifted off to the mysterious smell locked inside Strange. The fragrance resembled vanilla, but the unknown aroma was way more earthy, funky, and bold than any variety I had ever come across during my scent-gathering expeditions. Only a master like Jean Paul Puanteur could confuse my world-class sniffer like this!
Most kids my age have posters of actors, musicians, and athletes hanging on their bedroom walls. As for me, I have only a small, eight-by-ten framed picture of Jean Paul Puanteur. I clipped the photo from a National Geographic magazine article about the art and science of making perfume. He is standing in a field of extremely rare and expensive French jasmine, wearing a black tuxedo with bright red Converse sneakers, a brilliant orange sun high in the sky. The man is a scent artist of the highest order.
A set of greasy fingers snapped in front of my face.
“Earth to Schnoz,” Vivian said, ripping me out of my French jasmine daze. “You’re staring blankly into space. What are you thinking about?”
“Strange,” I said.
TJ fanned the air in front of his face. “I wish I had a bottle of Strange right now. I’d spray it around the room to
get rid of the hákarl stink!”
Dr. Wackjöb laughed. “Iceland’s secret shark recipe goes all the way back to the time of Vikings. What is this Strange you speak of?”
“Strange is a ridiculously popular perfume,” Mumps answered. “Everybody’s wearing the stuff.”
“I’m a huge fan of the perfuming arts,” I said. “But there’s one ingredient in Strange that my snuffer can’t sniff out.”
Dr. Wackjöb raised his white, bushy eyebrows. “You, the one and only Super Schnoz, cannot recognize a scent? I don’t believe it. Your nose is to smells what Einstein’s brain was to physics.”
“Well, this is one odor equation I have yet to crack.”
“I don’t know anything about the perfume business,” Dr. Wackjöb continued. “But just as my company has a secret ingredient—synthetic setae developed from the sticky pads on a gecko’s feet—I would assume perfumers use secret ingredients as well.”
I shrugged. “You’re probably right, but if I don’t figure out that smell and add it to my scent dictionary I’m going to blow a booger!”
“Perhaps I should call back Pierre and ask him.”
“Who’s Pierre?” Vivian asked.
“He’s the gentleman I was talking to on the phone as you arrived for lunch. He’s a Frenchman, an old friend of mine from when I studied geology for a year at the University Lille Nord de France. I hadn’t spoken with him in thirty years. He phoned me out of blue after reading about my successful business in Filthy Rich Review.”
“Why would this Pierre person know about secret ingredients found in perfume?” I asked.
“Gríöarstór Nef, my old friend’s full name is Pierre du Voleur, owner of the Français Scent Company, makers of fine perfumes and fragrances.”
I sat up in my seat, nose hairs quivering with excitement. “Can you ask him about the mystery ingredient in Strange?”
“That won’t do any good,” Vivian said.
“Why?”
“Strange is made by Jean Paul Puanteur, a completely different company. Coke would never give up its secret soda formula to Pepsi. Why would two rival perfume companies share ingredients?”
“She’s right, Schnoz,” Jimmy said. “If you want to figure out that smell, you’ll have to huff it out for yourself.”
The scent receptors inside my honker deflated a little. The task would be daunting, but I had never met a smell my nose couldn’t defeat, and Strange was not going to provide the first.
CHAPTER 3
ODOR-BLINDNESS
The mysterious odor molecules inside Strange teased my nose during the day and haunted my dreams at night. How could I not know what that last scent is? For the next week, I put myself through a vigorous set of smell exercises. Just as a bodybuilder pumps heavy weights to make their muscles grow, I attempted to expand my olfactory senses by immersing myself with the smelliest things in town.
I spent a hot and humid Saturday locked inside the overflowing port-o-potty at the high school football field. The overwhelming reek of liquefied poop, sopping toilet paper, and stale urine made my eyes water and nose hairs curl. After that, I shoved one of my dad’s rancid running shoes over my nose and mouth like a surgical mask. The foot fungus rot penetrated my nasal cavity and absorbed into my sinuses. I then took a midnight dip in the wastewater treatment pond.
Other than an extremely itchy red rash, I got nothing from the sewer plant splash or any of my other odor-immersion experiments. My smelling confidence sunk to an all-time low. The secret scent of Strange was slipping further away from my dictionary of scents.
“Have you figured out the Strange smell yet?” Mumps asked me one afternoon when Vivian, the Not-Right Brothers, and I were hanging out in our top-secret hideaway, the Nostril.
“No,” I said. “And I don’t feel like talking about it.”
“But you’re a smelling prodigy!” Jimmy proclaimed. “Your superhuman snoot is capable of detecting over a trillion scents.”
“This reminds me of when the Thing spontaneously reverted back to human form and lost all of his Thing powers.” Mumps said.
“I’m not losing my superpowers!” I growled. “I defeated greedy polluters and a giant nose rocket from outer space that was intent on destroying Earth!”
Vivian grabbed my nostrils and forced me into a chair. “Schnoz, settle down before you blow a snot bubble. We know this Strange aroma has been tough on you. Let’s all put our noses together and think of what to do.”
I let out a frustrated sigh. “I’ve tried everything. The smell in Strange resembles some kind of spicy vanilla, but it’s nothing my sniffer has ever encountered before.”
“Well, there’s one good thing about the smell,” Jimmy said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It doesn’t stink. In fact, the smell is kind of nice.”
“This isn’t about whether the smell is good or bad,” Vivian said. “The odor is personal for Schnoz. Smelling is his whole identity. Just imagine if you suddenly couldn’t smell your favorite foods like pizza, hamburgers, or—”
“Or bean burritos!” Mumps interjected. “Mexican food is my favorite even though it gives me really stinky gas.”
“TMI—too much information,” Vivian said, rolling her eyes.
TJ, who had been silent the whole time, looked up from his laptop. “Schnoz may have anosmia.”
“Huh?” I grunted.
“While you four were bickering,” TJ continued, “I’ve been researching and have come across a medical condition called anosmia.”
“I don’t have insomnia,” I said. “Since the aliens stopped harvesting my snores, I sleep like a puppy at night.”
“A-nos-mi-a,” TJ pronounced slowly, accenting each syllable. “Not insomnia.”
“What’s anosmia?” Vivian asked.
“It’s a medical condition sometimes referred to as odor-blindness.”
“I don’t even know what odor-blindness means,” I blurted out.
“When someone can’t tell one color from another, it is called being color-blind,” TJ explained. “Anosmia is the same thing only with smells.”
“What’s the cause?” Mumps asked.
TJ clicked a link on the anosmia web page and started reading. “‘Anosmia can be caused by a severe inflammation of the nasal passages due to allergies or a cold virus; severe blows to the head causing a concussion or head trauma; deviated nasal septum or crooked nose; nasal polyps; tumors; different medications,’ and a hundred other reasons.”
My heart sunk into my chest. I felt the blood drain from my face. The room started spinning; my breath came in quick huffs. Tears formed in my eyeballs, but I didn’t want Vivian or the Not-Right Brothers to see me cry. This was the moment I had been dreading since discovering my proboscis powers. At one time or another, every superhero—Spider-Man, Superman, the Invisible Woman, Green Lantern, Human Torch, Wolverine, and dozens of others—lost all of their super powers.
“Without my supersized snort detector, I’m just a mortal kid with a big nose ripe for ridicule,” I said with a shaky voice. “Everybody at school will start picking on me again.”
“Nobody will pick on you,” Jimmy said and then held up his fist. “If any kid makes fun of your nose, I’ll give them my five-fingered sandwich.”
Vivian gently patted the bridge of my nose. “Just because you can’t detect one single ingredient inside a bottle of perfume doesn’t mean you have a smell disorder,” she said. “There has to be an anosmia test you can take.”
“There is such a test,” TJ said. “A company called Sniffsonics sells a product called OINK—the Odor Identification Nasal Kit. It’s self-administered and perfect for people who think they may have anosmia.”
“Then order the kit,” Mumps said. “How much is it?’
“We can get one for the bargain price of four hundred and ninety-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents, plus shipping and handling.”
“Ugh!” I groaned. “We don’t have that kind o
f money.”
“We don’t have that much money,” Vivian said. “But we know someone who does.”
“Who?” TJ asked.
Vivian slipped on her bicycle helmet. “Come on, guys. We need to take a ride and have a little chat with Dr. Wackjöb.”
We all hopped on our bikes and pedaled to the Gecko Glue® and Snore Cure Mist® Factory.
CHAPTER 4
SNIFFING STICKS
“Gríöarstór Nef needs four hundred and ninety-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents for what kind of test?” Dr. Wackjöb asked after we burst into his office.
“Plus shipping and handling,” Mumps chimed in.
“Anosmia,” Vivian said. “Some people call it odor-blindness.”
Dr. Wackjöb stared long and hard at my honker. “Are you having some kind of smell difficulties?”
“Yes!” I exclaimed. “It happened for the first time when we were all standing in this very room. Don’t you remember—the secret ingredient in Strange? I can detect over a trillion smells, but that single, vanilla-like odor is leaving my snot maker high and dry.”
“We’re afraid Schnoz might have a scent disorder,” TJ said. “We have to buy a test called the Odor Identification Nasal Kit. Sniffsonics is the only company in the world that sells it.”
A look of worry washed over Dr. Wackjöb’s face. “My friend, your snuffler is not only a gift from the heavens above, but an American treasure. We must do everything possible to keep it in proper working order.” He grabbed a pen and wrote a check for the entire amount.
The kit arrived in the mail a week later. Vivian, the Not-Right Brothers, and I gathered inside the Nostril and opened the box.
“I can’t believe this thing was so expensive.” Jimmy groaned. “It’s just an instruction booklet, a blindfold, and a bunch of fancy-looking markers.”
“Those aren’t markers,” Vivian said as she skimmed through the instructions. “They’re called sniffing sticks.”
“What’s a sniffing stick?” Mumps asked.
