by Bill Myers
Good ol’ Brock (or was it Burt?). Thank You, God.
“I’ll be down a little later,” I called.
“Good. Oh, and a couple guys were here looking for you this afternoon.”
“Guys?” I asked.
“Yeah, from the NBA or CIA or something like that.”
“You don’t remember which?” I asked.
“Nah, they all sound alike. But they wore fancy suits and kept on speaking into their sleeves like them Secret Service guys on TV. Kinda cool.”
I frowned. “What did they want?”
“Didn’t say, but I bet you’ll find out.”
My frown deepened. Unfortunately, he was right . . . righter than either of us would know. . . .
Chapter 5
“Anybody Got a Rolaid?”
The next morning I didn’t know which was worse . . . being invisible, or having had a grand total of 23.8 seconds of sleep the night before. I don’t want to say that sneaking into the movie affected me, but every time I closed my eyes I saw furry pink bunny slippers nibbling my toes, or making plans under my bed to take over the world, or breaking into Burt and Brock’s room to gobble them up in one swift gulp. (Okay, maybe not every dream was bad, but you get the picture.)
No wonder I spent the next day practically sleepwalking through school . . . which would explain my stumbling into a kid in front of me, falling down, and causing a forty-seven-student pileup in the middle of the hallway . . . or clearing out the entire cafeteria when I fell asleep. (Actually, it wasn’t the falling asleep that cleared everyone out, it was my head dropping onto one of the table’s pepper shakers, causing me to have a sneezing attack.)
“ACHOO!”
“God bless you,” Kid 1 at the table said.
“I didn’t sneeze,” Kid 2 at the table said.
“ACHOO! ACHOO!”
“Well, I didn’t sneeze,” Kid 1 at the table said.
“ACHOO! ACHOO! ACHOO!”
“Well, if you didn’t sneeze and I didn’t sneeze, then who—”
“ACHOO! ACHOO! ACHOO! ACHOO!”
Soon every eye in the cafeteria was turning to me . . . well, at least, to my vacant seat. And I don’t suppose I helped matters much by suddenly reaching for a napkin and . . .
HOOOONKA!
blowing my nose.
“Augh! Augh!” Kid 1 screamed.
“A ghost! A ghost!” Kid 2 screamed.
To which I immediately leaped to my feet, crying, “Where?! Where?!”
To which everyone in the place pointed in the direction of my floating napkin and unexplained voice and screamed, “THERE! THERE!”
Later, of course, Wall Street tried to smooth things over by saying it was the ghost from the haunted house that had come to pay us a visit. And if they didn’t believe her, they could swing by the place tonight right after the game. “Just a mere $7.95 admission (seniors and babies half price).”
Good ol’ never-miss-a-buck Wall Street.
Unfortunately, that was about as good as things got. (You don’t even want to hear about the kid trying to use the same stall as me in the boys’ room.) Then there was fifth-period math class. . . .
“Wally,” Opera whispered as we entered the room. “Where are you?”
“Right here,” I whispered beside him.
“Listen, you gotta give me a hand.”
“How’s that?”
“Neil Anderthol, over there.” He pointed to Bruiser Boy from yesterday’s football practice. “He’s been rubbing my head all day saying I better give him luck to pass this math test or there’s going to be trouble.”
“Trouble?” I asked.
“Yeah, like broken bones or the removal of my vital organs.”
“What can I do?” I asked.
“If you’d just sneak the answer sheet off Miss Finklestein’s desk and somehow let him see it—”
“Opera!” I whispered. “That’s cheating!”
“Yeah, I know, but this time it’s for a good cause—the SPCO.”
I took a wild guess. “The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Opera?”
“Bingo,” he said, glancing over at Bruiser Boy, who was giving him his best this-better-work-or-you’re-dead-meat sneer. “Please, Wally, I really need your help, just this once.”
“Opera . . .”
“If he doesn’t pass the test, he’ll get kicked off the team and I’ll get kicked halfway to Neptune. Please, Wally, please . . .”
Now, look, I know what you’re going to say— cheating is wrong, and after sneaking into that movie and after that little matter of getting turned invisible by OOPS, shouldn’t I have learned my lesson? Well that, dear reader, I can answer in one simple word—
“No, not yet!”
(All right, that was three simple words,
but I’m a writer, not a mathematician.)
So, even though I knew I shouldn’t, once Miss Finklestein called roll (for which I was again absent), and once she passed out the test, I went to work.
Actually, it was pretty easy. I just strolled up to her desk, waited until she wasn’t looking, opened the folder, and pulled out the answer sheet. Then it wasn’t too hard to quietly lower it to the floor out of everybody’s sight and scoot it toward Bruiser Boy’s desk. After that, all I did was tap him on the shoulder to get him to look the other way while I quietly slipped it onto his desk.
Now, it was just a matter of getting him to turn back to his desk and
gurgle . . .gurgle .. . gurgle .. .
Uh-oh. My stomach was starting in again. I’d been doing a pretty good job of fighting off the hunger with plenty of water from the drinking fountain and some clear chicken broth I found in the cafeteria. Yum. Unfortunately, by the sound of things, it wasn’t quite . . .
gurgle . . .gurgle .. . gurgle
good enough.
Some of the nearby kids looked in our direction and snickered at the sound. Bruiser Boy glanced around. Unfortunately, he still hadn’t seen the paper. My stomach grew
gurgle . . . gurgle . . . gurgle
louder. There was more laughter as more eyes looked in our direction as I continued to
gurgle . . .gurgle . . .gurgle
even louder, causing them to laugh even harder, causing Miss Finklestein to look up from her desk. “Neil? Are you okay?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
gurgle .. .gurgle ... gurgle
“Are you sure you don’t have to go to the rest room?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Unfortunately, it was about this time that he finally glanced down and spotted the answer sheet on his desk . . .
causing his eyes to widen to the size of saucers . . .
causing my nervous stomach to really let loose . . .
gurgle . . .gurgle . . . gurgle
causing him to accidentally knock the paper to the floor . . .
causing Miss Finklestein to rise to her feet . . .
causing him to unsuccessfully reach for the paper with his foot . . .
causing Miss Finklestein to quickly approach . . .
causing him to try even harder with his foot . . .
gurgle ... gurgle .. .gurgle
causing Miss Finklestein to arrive and pick up the paper . . .
causing Bruiser Boy to mutter, “Oh, boy” . . .
causing Miss Finklestein to exclaim, “Why, Neil Anderthol, I’m shocked” . . .
causing him to whine, “I don’t know how it got there” . . .
causing Miss Finklestein to escort him to the principal’s office . . .
finally, causing our star lineman on the football team to be expelled from school and from being able to play in tonight’s big . . .
gurgle . .. gurgle . .. gurgle
game.
Ah, yes, the game . . .
When it finally rolled around the massacre wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. It was nearly halftime, and we were only behind 54-0. But the good news was, nobody had gotten too hurt or needed too many organ transplants
. . . yet. Though Jerry Bingham, that nice guy who’s our quarterback, was sure getting hit
“Oaff!”
and tackled
“Oaff! Oaff!”
a lot
“Oaff! Oaff! Oaff!”
“Wally,” Opera whispered to me from the sidelines, “you’ve got to do something. They’re killing Jerry. Without Neil Anderthol to block for him, he has no protection.”
I looked out to the field. At the moment, five or six players were climbing off Jerry. At least I thought it was Jerry . . . it was hard to see over the rim of the big Jerry-shaped crater they’d just left in the field.
I knew it would be cheating again, but the guy definitely needed my help. Besides, wasn’t I the one who’d gotten Bruiser Boy expelled in the first place?
So, reluctantly, I headed out onto the field.
“Ready,” Jerry yelled. The team got into position. “Set . . . Hike!”
The ball was snapped to Jerry, and he headed back to make a pass. It would have been a good play except for the four body crushers breaking through the line and heading straight for him. He cocked his arm, trying to throw the ball, but it was obvious he wasn’t going to make it. So, utilizing my mighty McDoogle mind (a scary process in the best of times), I leaped up, grabbed the ball out of his hand, and started running with it.
I knew it wasn’t my brightest move . . . especially when the entire stadium gasped in astonishment (something about footballs floating across the field by themselves can look kinda odd). So, spotting the closest player to me, I figured I’d slip it into his hands. A good idea, except for the part in which he was so freaked out seeing the ball floating toward him that he screamed, turned, and ran for his life.
“Wait,” I shouted, racing after him. “Take this with you, take this with you!”
By now everyone on both teams had stopped and was staring. Well, everyone but the guy I was trying to give the ball to. He just kept on running down the field screaming his head off, and I just kept on chasing after him shouting, “Take this with you, take this with you!”
But there was no reasoning with him. He just kept running and screaming and looking over his shoulder until he entered the end zone and
K-THUD!
slammed into the goal post head-first.
The big guy didn’t fall right away. He sort of stagger, stagger, staggered to the left, then stagger, stagger, staggered to the right. This almost gave me enough time to catch up to him before he fell face-first into the mud . . . almost. But that didn’t stop me. No sir, I didn’t run all that way wheezing my lungs out for nothing. Instead of giving up, I brought the ball to a stop, hovered over him a second, then bent down and stuffed it into the back of his pants.
Everyone on the field watched in stunned silence. Come to think of it, so did everyone in the stands. Then finally, after a couple of lifetimes, one of the refs slowly raised his hands and halfheartedly tweeted his whistle. “Touchdown,” he mumbled, shaking his head in disbelief, “I guess . . .”
The crowd cheered, and the band began to play.
Well, now, I thought, still gasping for breath and trying not to pass out, that wasn’t so hard. I glanced at the scoreboard—54-6. Only eight more touchdowns to go.
A moment later, the halftime whistle blew, which meant the fun and games were over for a while. At least for the players.
Unfortunately, for me, they’d just begun. . . .
Chapter 6
Suit Guys Say, “Hi”
Down in the locker room at halftime Coach Kilroy was giving the football team their usual pep talk:
“I’ve never seen such a bunch of losers . . . no, make that such a bunch of untalented losers . . . no, make that such a bunch of lazy, untalented losers . . . no, make that such a bunch of—”
Well, you get the picture. Apparently, he never quite grasped the difference between discouragementand encouragement. (Hey, one prefix is as good as another, right?) So, now everybody sat on the bench breaking into uncontrollable sobs, having nervous breakdowns, or calling for their mommies, when suddenly:
gurgle . . .gurgle .. . gurgle
Coach came to a stop. “What was that?” he asked.
Call me overcautious, but given my last run-in with this sound, I immediately sprinted toward the bathroom and locked myself in a stall where nobody could hear me. Halftime wouldn’t last forever. And when it was over, I’d get back out onto the field and make another couple hundred touchdowns.
Until then, with plenty of time to kill, I grabbed a nearby roll of toilet paper, pulled out a pen, and went back to work on my superhero story.
When we last left SuperSlob, he was out on the streets looking for the frantically fiendish and foolishly fraudulent . . .
(more scary music, please . . . )
Neat Freak! More important, he was looking for a way to stop Freak’s millions of microscopic robots from tidying up the world so we won’t have to wash out the tub when we’re done taking baths and can leave our shirttails untucked.
In a flash of super inspiration (along with the incredible imagination of a very close writer friend of his) SuperSlob reaches to his Superhero wrist band (just $19.95 at Superheroes-R-Us stores everywhere) and presses the button marked:
“PRESS THIS BUTTON
TO FIND BAD GUY’S
ROBOTS”
Immediately, a magnifying glass flips down from his Superhero baseball cap (sold at those same Superheroes stores), allowing him to see one of the pesky little machines crawling up his arm. Not only can he see it, he can actually hear it.
“Danger, Danger,” it shouts. “Warning, Warning!”
“Hey,” SuperSlob calls.
“Danger, Warning, Warning, Danger.”
“Aren’t you the robot from that old Tossed in Space TV series?
Immediately the little robot stops. “Why, yes, I am.” He clears his throat hopefully. “Are you a fan?”
“Weren’t you a lot bigger in the series?”
“I was sick awhile back and lost some weight.” Then, continuing, he adds, “Would you like an autographed picture? I have some in the trunk of my car.”
“Uh, maybe later,” SuperSlob says. “But tell me, what are you doing in my story?”
“There’s not much call for TV robots these days, so I work where I can.”
“But you’re working for a bad guy.”
“Yeah, but he’s got good medical benefits, and I get two weeks’ paid vacation.”
“Yeah, but——”
“Look, I’d love to talk, but coffee break isn’t for another hour, so if you’ll excuse me, Warning, Warning! Danger, Danger!”
Suddenly he fires his laser arm at one of SuperSlob’s freckles.
Zap!
“Ow! What are you doing?!”
“Just rearranging some of these freckles so we have a nice straight——
Zap!
“Ow!”
——line.”
“You can’t do that!” SuperSlob cries.
“I can do whatever I want. This is the goofy superhero story, remember?”
“I know, but——”
Zap!
“Ow!”
And then, suddenly, before there are any more rearranged freckles——
The door to my stall flew open, and there stood two FBI guys. The same two fellows who had been watching us from the stands the day before. And how could I tell they were FBI? It wasn’t easy, but there was something about the way they both stood with their guns aimed at me . . . then, of course, there were their dark blue Windbreakers with the giant letters “FBI” printed on them. Other than that it was just a lucky guess.
“Freeze!” they both shouted.
No problem, I was already frozen . . . in terror. “Put down that toilet paper and come out with your hands up!” the head guy ordered.
I obeyed and set down the toilet paper roll I was writing my story on.
“Slowly . . . ,” he said, pointing his gun in the direction he tho
ught I should be, “slowly . . .”
“L-l-l-ook,” I squeaked, “if this is about helping Neil Anderthol cheat . . .”
“Be quiet and keep those hands up.”
Of course, he couldn’t see if my hands were up or not, but that didn’t stop me from obeying. As I stepped out, I saw Opera, standing nearby with another agent as well as the lady scientist who had taken us on the tour of the OOPS laboratory.
“Wally,” Opera called in my direction. “They know what happened.”
“They do?” I croaked.
“That’s right,” the head guy said, “and we want to help you.” Then turning to the science lady, he added, “Isn’t that right, Ms. Simpson?”
She gave a nervous twitch that looked like it was supposed to be a smile.
“I said, ‘Isn’t that right, Ms. Simpson?’”
She glanced around nervously and finally croaked out a feeble, “Yes.”
Head Guy turned back to me. “There, you see, everybody is on your side. We all want to help.”
But that was all Science Lady could take. Suddenly she shouted, “No! It’s not true!”
Head Guy turned back to her and shouted, “We had a deal!”
“He’s just a boy!”
“Simpson, we had a—”
But she kept right on talking, squeezing in as many words as possible before they could stop her. “They want to use you as a secret agent, Wally! Don’t listen to them! They want to—”
“Shut her up!” Head Guy shouted to the third agent.
“They want you to sneak around the country and do all sorts of—”
“Get her out of here! Take her and Tub-O, there, and get them out of here!”
Third Agent Guy grabbed her and Opera’s arms and half-dragged, half-pushed them toward the door. But not before Science Lady managed to shout:
“Don’t listen to them, Wally! Meet me at the lab. I’ll be there tonight! I can help you! I can—”
That was all she said before they slammed the door shut behind her.
I glanced around. Coach Kilroy and the team had already headed back out onto the field. It was just me and my two new agent pals.
“Now get on the floor with your arms spread,” Head Guy barked.
