Scab for Treasurer? Page 2

  Doyle deflates into his desk. “I was so sure it was an eight. . . .”

  “Forget it,” I say, but we both know he won’t.

  Neither of us will. Because next Friday we’ll have to play Crash and Burn all over again.

  Vroom, vroom, sor-reeeeee.

  CHAPTER

  2

  No Spitting, Scratching, Swearing, or Pickles

  I bounce the basketball. One. Two. Three times.

  I jut my chin out and back. I do this three times, too. I spit on the ground once to the right of my right shoe, once to the left of my left shoe, and once on the ground in front of me. I hope my sister isn’t watching. Isabelle will tattle to our parents, for sure. It’s her hobby—tattling on me, I mean. That, and reminding me of how brilliant she is because she got to jump ahead a grade this year. She is in the fifth grade instead of the fourth with me. My hobby is seeing how many earthworms it takes to fill up her ballet shoes. It takes nineteen per shoe, by the way. My sister has HUGE feet. Isabelle may be the smart one, but I’ve got more worms. (Don’t worry, I always put all the earthworms back in my mom’s herb garden when I am done with my experiments.)

  Anyway, I’m not supposed to spit on our driveway. It is one of my mother’s rules. It’s a silly rule. It’s not like my spit is going to eat through the concrete.

  “Are you done yet?” Will’s got his hands on his hips.

  “Quiet.” I crouch down. I lift my arms and aim for the basket. I pump the ball three times.

  “I only have a half hour to play, you know.”

  I shake my head. It’s no good. He’s broken my focus. I will have to start over. I dribble the basketball three times. I jut my chin out and back. Out and back. Out and back.

  “Oh, man,” says Will.

  “Put a lid on it or he’ll never shoot,” I hear Doyle say to him.

  I get into aiming stance. I pump the ball three times.

  * MY MOTHER’S RULES *

  * No eating in my room.*

  * No sticking out my tongue, especially when Aunt Judith serves dead fish with the eyes staring at me.

  * No singing around Isabelle’s Girl Scout troop, even if they request my special song, “If You’re Happy and You Know It . . . Slap Your Butt.”

  * No swearing, burping, nose-picking, or spitting in public.

  * No pretending to find beetles in the bean salad at the Happy Troll Buffet.

  *If my mom is worried about the food attracting bugs, mice, and stuff . . . uh . . . too late. I already have my own ant farm, and it isn’t in a fiberglass box, if you know what I mean.

  “What’s the point of all this hocus pocus stuff?” asks Will.

  I let the ball fly. It makes a perfect arc. I smile at Will. The ball hits the backboard. I throw my arms up. “It brings good luck,” I shout as we watch the ball spin around the rim three times. And bounce off.

  “Usually for me.” Doyle grins.

  Will snags the ball. “Can we pass and shoot like normal before I have to go?”

  “Sure,” Doyle and I say.

  Will takes the ball to the back of my driveway. He goes left then right before passing off to Doyle. My best friend dribbles a few times as he heads toward the basket. He tosses the ball to me. I run into the center, dribbling all way. At the last second, I swing the ball out to Will on my left, who gets off a beauty of a layup. Swish!

  “Two in the hole!” shouts Doyle.

  “Sweet!” I yell.

  “Woof!” barks my dog, Joe. He’s on the grass with his favorite toy, a piece of knotted rope. Joe is sitting up, which means he wants to play.

  “In a minute, Joe,” I say. I rebound and we start again at half court.

  “What did you do for your 3-D nature art project?” Doyle asks me.

  “I’ve got something in mind.”

  “In mind? You mean, you haven’t started it yet? It’s Sunday, Scab. It’s due tomorrow.”

  I chuck the ball to him. “Thanks for the reminder, Mom,” I say, which makes Will laugh. “It’ll be easy,” I explain. “I’ve got almost everything I need in my lab. All I have to do is put it all together.” Now that I think about it, being an artist isn’t that much different from being an inventor. It’s all about original ideas, right? And my art project is going to be the most original thing Miss Sweetandsour has ever seen. Guaranteed!

  “I hope it’s not going to be like your science project last year,” says Doyle, dribbling past me.

  “What? My meteorite was cool.”

  “You mean, hot, don’t you? Good thing Mrs. Dewmeyer had that fire extinguisher.”

  “Fire extinguisher?” asks Will. He wasn’t in our class last year.

  “It was no big deal,” I say. “I was trying to get it to smoke like a real meteorite and it—”

  “Caught fire?” gasps Will. “You started a fire at school?”

  “No, no, no. There was a little smoke, that’s all. Doyle, are you ever going to pass the ball?”

  He leans toward Will. “It was a fire, all right. He torched Mrs. Dewmeyer’s white purse. The thing looked like a giant burned marshmallow.”

  “Whoa!” says Will.

  “And he got her world globe, too. Totally fried the Arctic Circle.”

  “Whoa!”

  “Not the whole thing,” I correct. “Just a little of Greenland and Canada. You can hardly tell. Canada is a big place.”

  “Don’t forget about Iceland,” says Doyle.

  “What about Iceland?”

  “You wiped it off the globe, Scab.”

  “Did not.”

  “Did so.

  By the time we finish arguing about whether I melted Iceland or not, it’s time for Will to go. Doyle and I have homework, too, so we say good-bye. After they leave, I don’t go inside right away. Instead, I play tug-of-war with Joe. I always let him win. It’s fun to watch him do his victory lap around the yard with that piece of frayed rope hanging out of his mouth. “Good boy.” I rub behind his ears and under his collar.

  “Scab!” It’s Isabelle. “Get in here.”

  Joe cocks his head. “Arr?”

  “We could ignore her, but she’ll only get louder,” I tell him. “Come on, Joe, let’s run.” I slap my thigh. He beats me to the porch, as usual.

  “Wipe his paws!” Isabelle hands me the towel we keep by the door. “Why is there peanut butter and mayo all over the kitchen counter?”

  “I don’t know.” I pretend she is telling a joke. “Why is there peanut butter and mayo all over the counter, Izzy?”

  “You’d better clean it up before Mom gets home from the store or I’m telling—”

  SCAB’S RIPPIN’ PB AND M (AND B AND R AND BBQ) * SANDWICH *

  your favorite kind of peanut butter (I’m a crunchy guy, myself)

  six banana slices

  twelve raisins

  seven barbecue potato chips

  Toast two slices of bread. Spread mayo on one slice of bread and peanut butter on the other. Add bananas, potato chips, and raisins to the peanut butter side. Slap the mayo side on top. Slice crosswise to make two triangles (cut off the crusts if you hate ’em). Chow down!

  “Wasn’t me.” I kneel down to clean Joe’s paws with the towel.

  “Really? Is that your story? Because we all know who eats weird food around here. It isn’t Mom or Dad or me. And it sure isn’t Joe.”

  * SCAB NEWS *

  BY ISABELLE C. MCNALLY

  (TWO-TIME CHAMPION OF THE RIVER ROCK ELEMENTARY HISTORY BEE)

  * 4:14 p.m. Scab spit on the driveway. Yuck!

  * 5:20 p.m.: Scab threw a germy sponge at me. Yuck times two!

  * 5:27 p.m.: Scab hasn’t finished his art project. He said it was top secret, which means it isn’t done. It’s due tomorrow.

  * 5:29 p.m.: Scab took food to eat in his room, even when I told him not to.

  * 7:48 p.m.: Scab won’t let me in his lab. Something weird is going on in there. I hear a drill.

  This concludes Scab News fo
r today. Isabelle Catherine McNally reporting.

  “Woof!” barks my dog at the sound of his name.

  “Power down, will you, Izzy? I’ll clean it up in a minute.”

  Isabelle waits for me to finish toweling off Joe. She follows me into the kitchen. She watches me scrub down the counter. “Your art project is due tomorrow.”

  Why does everyone think I don’t know what day it is?

  “What are you making?” she presses.

  “It’s top secret.”

  “You haven’t taken anything of mine for it, have you?”

  “Me?” I rinse out the sponge.

  “Answer the question, Scab.”

  I pretend to think about it for a long while. “No, I haven’t taken anything of yours for it. Happy?”

  “Suspicious.” Isabelle clicks her tongue against her teeth. “Just what are you up to, Scab McNally?”

  “About four-foot-five.” I toss the sponge to her. “And a half.”

  I grab a big jar of dill pickles from the fridge. I whistle for Joe—not that I need to. He shadows me everywhere. “We’ll be in my lab, so don’t bug us.”

  “Where are you going with that? You’re not supposed to eat in your room, you know.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Then why do you need the pickles? Scab? I’m putting that in my news report to Mom and Dad!”

  CHAPTER

  3

  Refrigerator Art

  Isabelle and I ride bus number 18 to school. I am by the window. She is on the aisle. Usually, Isabelle sits several rows behind me with her friends, Laura Ling and Kendall Peters. For some reason, she has decided to park herself beside me today. I am holding the reason—a shoebox. Isabelle is trying not to look at the box, but she can’t help it. My know-it-all, sneaky sister is dying to know what I have done for my art project. Naturally, I am not going to tell her.

  “What’s that smell?” asks Isabelle.

  It’s paint, glue, wood stain, spray shellac, and pickle juice. But I don’t say a word.

  “It’s coming from your box.”

  “It is an old shoebox,” I say.

  My sister wrinkles her nose. “Even your shoes don’t stink that much.”

  I lift my foot. “Want a fresh whiff?”

  “Not again.” Isabelle gags and takes off down the aisle to be with her friends.

  “No standing while the bus is in motion,” says Ms. Rigormortis, our driver. I am pretty sure Ms. Rigormortis is a zombie. Her pale blue skin barely stretches over her skeleton body. She rarely changes expression. I have discovered, however, that Ms. Rigormortis is pretty nice, considering she is one of the undead.

  Doyle meets me as I get off the bus. His eyes go right to the box. “Can I see it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Okay,” he says quietly. I have hurt his feelings.

  “It’s not ’cause I don’t trust you,” I say, looking around for Mrs. Zaff. “I don’t want anyone else to copy me. I’m going to turn it in right now. Want to help?”

  STINKY SOCKS EXPERIMENT . . .

  * PEEE–EWWWW! *

  HOW MANY DAYS IN A ROW CAN A PERSON WEAR THE SAME PAIR OF SOCKS?

  * Day one-three: So far, so good. Nobody notices, though Cloey does make an odd face at me.

  * Day four: Doyle and Will hold their noses while we’re playing basketball. (Try it, it isn’t easy!)

  * Day ten: I ask Isabelle to sniff my feet. Her eyes roll back and she almost faints.

  * Day thirteen: Joe sniffs my feet. His eyes roll back and he does faint!*

  * Day nineteen: My sister holds me down while my mother pulls off my socks and throws them in the washer. Or the trash. I’m not sure which. I can’t see. Isabelle was sitting on my head at the time.

  * Conclusion: You’ve got nineteen days before your family turns on you.

  *Joe’s okay

  “Sure. How?”

  “Clear the way. I don’t want to stop for anything or anyone.”

  He gets in front of me. “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  We march up the walkway. Doyle holds the door open for me. Once we’re inside, he rushes to take the lead. We walk as fast as we can without running. We don’t want to get a speeding ticket from Mr. Fipps. Seriously, he does that. He comes up behind you and makes a siren sound, like he’s the police pulling you over on the freeway. He even writes out a pink detention slip as if he’s a cop. I’d say Mr. Fipps needs help, but he’s our counselor, so technically, he is help. Fortunately, today Officer Fipps is nowhere in sight.

  Doyle and I motor safely down the hall and into Room 242. The first bell hasn’t rung so there are only a few kids in our class, which is good. Miss Sweetandsour is at her desk grading papers. She is wearing a light green dress. It reminds me of the lettuce that comes in a ball.

  I set the box in front of her. “Here’s my art project.”

  She takes off her white plastic reading glasses. “Right on time. Thank you, Scab.”

  My heart starts booming. I can’t wait to see her look inside the box. I can’t wait to see her smile at me the way she smiled at Never Missy on Friday. I can’t wait to see her pretty green eyes crinkle at me. Here it comes. Miss Sweetandsour is lifting off the lid. She’s peeking inside. . . .

  Miss Sweetandsour’s chair flies backward. It makes a loud squeak. I’m not worried. My teacher probably wants to get a better look at my work from a distance. My mom makes us go to a lot of museums so I know that’s how people look at art. You’re supposed to stand waaaaaay back, so you can see the whole painting or statue or whatever it is. My mom calls it “soaking up art.” I don’t get why a bunch of bald dollheads stacked in a pyramid is art, but I have learned not to argue with my mom about it. I can see by the way my teacher is tipping her head to the right that she is soaking up my art. Boy, she sure can soak for a long time.

  Finally, Miss Sweetandsour says, “It’s a . . . it’s a . . .”

  “Frog,” I help her.

  “I . . . I . . . see that.”

  “And a centipede, a cricket, and a potato bug.”

  Doyle peers into the box, which I have lined with aluminum foil. “Are they all glued to that piece of wood?”

  “Yep,” I say. “I tried to screw them in but that didn’t work too well. See, I painted the frog bright blue and black to look like—”

  “A poison dart frog!” finishes Doyle. “It looks exactly like the one in my Amazing Amphibians of the World book. This is great, Scab. Really great.”

  “Thanks.” I look to Miss Sweetandsour to hear her praise, too.

  Miss Sweetandsour swallows so hard, I see a lump go down the collar of her lettuce dress. “Uh, well, Scab, your frog and insects are certainly quite lifelike.”

  “Actually, they’re deadlike.”

  She looks up at me. “D-dead? Are you telling me these are dead animals?”

  “Uh-huh. But I didn’t kill them. They were dead when I found them. Let’s see—the frog died in our garden hose cart. I found the centipede under the porch, the cricket in the windowsill, and the potato bug . . .” I smile slowly. “I found that guy Friday, on the floor under my desk. Pretty lucky, huh?”

  Miss Sweetandsour opens her mouth but she doesn’t say anything.

  “How come they’re so shiny?” asks Doyle.

  “Shellac spray. Three coats.”

  He twitches his nose. “Is that what smells so funky?”

  “It’s probably the combo of paint, shellac, stain, glue, and pickle juice,” I say.

  “Pickle juice?” Miss Sweet and sour’s face is starting to blend in with her dress.

  “I figure the stuff keeps pickles around forever, so why not my dead artwork, too?”

  My teacher slams the top back onto the box. “Oh, my . . . uh . . . thank you, Scab. I think we should put this in the, uh . . . the staff room refrigerator. Yes, that’s far enough away—I mean, that should keep it, uh . . . safe.”

  * AMAZING BUT DEADLY *

  POIS
ON DART FROGS LIVE IN THE RAINFORESTS of Central and South America. They are small—less than four inches long! They come in lots of cool patterns and colors, like red and blue, and yellow and black. But beware! Just touching the skin of a poison dart frog can kill an animal or human. Ditto for my sister’s orange marmalade cookie bars. I am renaming them poison dart bars.

  The refrigerator? I frown. Shouldn’t it be displayed on the back table with the other 3-D nature sculptures? “Are you sure?” I ask. “What if someone eats it for lunch?”

  But Miss Sweetandsour is already scurrying out the door. She is holding my box straight out in front of her. “Don’t worry,” she calls over her shoulder.

  “Great job.” Doyle punches me. “It’s way better than Lewis’s dumb old piggy bank or my crummy birdhouse,” he mutters. I follow Doyle’s gaze to the back table.

  Sometimes, I could smack myself for not paying attention. “Hey, is that your birdhouse? Nice work.”

  He fiddles with some papers on Miss Sweetandsour’s desk. “Nah. Not compared to your dead art.”

  “Sure it is,” I say, but the truth is, Doyle’s birdhouse looks like a hurricane tore through it. The roof is tipped steeply to one side. The perch is hanging by a thread of glue. The crooked walls are decorated with birdseed, except there are several bare spots. A trail of seed stretches out the door of our classroom. Something tells me I could follow it all the way to Doyle’s bike clamped onto the bike rack.

  * SCAB’S TIP #29 *

  YOU CAN FIND THE BEST dead insects under your deck, under your porch, and under my sister’s pillow. (Shhh—she hasn’t found the dead stag beetle I left there yet!)

  “No way!” shouts Doyle. “No WAY!”

  “Okay, okay,” I say. “Maybe I would have used a little more glue on the seed—”

  “Look at this, Scab! Just look.” He is pulling me around our teacher’s desk. He waves a sheet of paper in front of my nose. “Look!”

  “I would if you’d hold still!” I grab his wrist. Doyle’s holding the sign-up sheet for class officers. At the top, Miss Sweetandsour has written the word, president. Under that, I see the name—oh no! Only one person in the world turns the o in her name into a happy face.