Then she stopped. She pulled back her right leg and her body flailed around. Ali bit her fingernails. Through the earring on Boris’s shirt, we heard Nanny X shout “Kee-yah!” She swung her right foot and kicked the beetle off the monument and into the sky.
“Noooooooooooooo!” screamed Ursula. She tried to move closer to the monument as the bug plummeted down, but she was handcuffed to the Segways. Ursula and the Segways fell over like dominoes. But that didn’t stop her. At the last second, Ursula took off her fishing hat and held it out in her uncuffed hand.
Sshhhhhpppp. She snagged the bug just before it hit the ground. Forget about art. Ursula would have been an amazing baseball player. Except instead of the catch being an out, the catch meant her bug was safe.
We looked back up at Nanny X, who was making her way, slowly and steadily, down the side of the Washington Monument.
“How did I do?” she asked Boris when she reached the ground.
“Very spry,” he said.
We waited for the Capitol Police to come and get Ursula. I felt kind of sorry for her. Destroying national treasures plus threatening the president was going to put her in jail for a long time, even if the only person she had hurt was me, when her bug bit my pinky.
“Perhaps you could teach art in prison,” Nanny X said. “I hear it’s very therapeutic.”
I remembered Mr. Huffleberger’s review, where he said she should go back to doing arts and crafts with the Girl Scouts. The other inmates weren’t going to be Girl Scouts, but it sounded like a start. I wasn’t sure what kind of art material they had in jail, but I hoped they had something she could sculpt with, even if it was just butter or mashed potatoes.
“One question,” said Nanny X as the sirens came closer. “Why?”
It was a question I had, too. Why threaten the president? Why destroy stuff?
Ursula dropped her head so we could barely see her face. “I wanted my art to be appreciated,” she said.
I didn’t want to tell her, but that wasn’t what was happening in the president’s bowling alley.
“I can’t believe you let a schlump like Huffleberger make you crazy,” said Nanny X. “But if it makes you feel better, I think you made him a little crazy, too.”
“My career peaked at the county fair,” Ursula said. “But it’s not over yet.” She turned to Nanny X. “By the way,” she said, “how high are your ceilings?”
Before Ursula got into the squad car, she arranged for Nanny X to take control of the fish statue. The police mumbled something about it being too big to keep in their evidence room anyway, and that photos would do until the trial. If they needed the statue in person, Nanny X said she’d be happy to bring it in.
I guess I knew what we’d be tying to the minivan instead of the canoe.
“You know something?” Ali said, after the police had taken Ursula away. “She’s kind of a genius.”
“An evil genius,” I said.
“But maybe not forever,” Stinky added. “You know something else? I’ll bet we could find a way to use Ursula’s bug power to save the world. We could set them loose in the dump and they could eat trash instead of art.”
“That would take a lot of bugs,” Ali said. “They only ate one painting—even if it was a surrealist painting. You remember what Ursula said about their digestion.”
“I know,” said Stinky. “But maybe we could change that.”
Maybe we could change a lot of things.
We made it back to Lovett just in time for my baseball game. I’d been wet all day, so standing in the wet grass of left field didn’t bother me.
It felt good to be part of two teams—my baseball team and my special-agent team. I wasn’t sure I’d have time to keep doing both, but Nanny X told me about Moe Berg, who was a baseball player and a spy during World War II. Plus he was on quiz shows. I wonder if his specialty was knowing freaky animal facts?
My own secret-agent team watched me play from the stands. Nanny X even let Howard stay. He was still wearing Eliza’s bonnet when he caught a foul ball in the third inning.
When the game was over, we all drove Howard back to the David T. Jones Primate Sanctuary in Nanny X’s minivan. The giant fish sculpture was on top.
21. Alison
Nanny X Puts a Fork in It
My parents called to check on us during dinner, which was late because Jake’s baseball game lasted forever. Stinky and Boris had come over, and we were eating hamburgers—the lentil kind, which weren’t so bad with ketchup—and sweet-potato fries. For dessert we had soft molasses cookies, my grandmother’s recipe.
“How’s Grandma?” I asked my mother when it was my turn to talk.
“Home and hurting but hobbling around,” my mother said. “Did you do anything special today?”
I chose my words carefully. “We caught a criminal who threatened the president of the United States with a statue of a wolf fish,” I said. “That about sums it up.”
“Alison,” said my mother. “Let’s not start.”
“We went fishing and saw some art and the Washington Monument,” I told her.
“I’m so glad Nanny X is teaching you about the finer things,” my mother said.
I was glad, too. Of course, everybody has a different idea about the finger things.
To some people they are paintings.
To some people they are sculptures of fish.
To Stinky they are a clean planet, to Howard they are a bunch of bananas, and to Jake they are the sound of a baseball when you crack it with a bat.
And to me? To me, the finer things are running around Washington, D.C., chasing criminals with a nanny who wears mirrored sunglasses, a motorcycle jacket and pink bunny slippers that just happen to turn into roller skates.
Name the Artwork
By Alison and Jake Pringle
Look at a piece of art from a distance. Decide whether you think it’s modern, ye olde, impressionistic or realistic. Give it a name. When you get closer, see how much of the name you got right.
If you guess the whole title right, it’s ten points.
If you guess the idea of the title (like if you say Galaxy and the painting is really Solar System or you say Bronze Statue No. 5 but it’s really No. 14) you get five points.
If you guess part of the title (like if you Bronze Statue #3 but it’s really Bronze Statue #12, or if you say Girl with Trees but it’s really Girl in Wind), you get five points.
You are only allowed to guess Untitled twice per gallery visit.
Nanny X’s Skating Tip No. 12:
How to Stop
With your knees wide and over your feet, turn your toes in and squat low. Now dig hard with your edges (that’s the sides of your wheels) and squeeze your thighs. That’s a plow stop. The idea is to stop before you plow into somebody. Unless you happen to be in roller derby—which I am, Tuesday nights at eight.
Nanny X Returns Page 8
