Mom, There's a Dinosaur in Beeson's Lake Read online

  April 5—Doyle caught a three-inch minnow. Will caught a six-inch brook trout. I caught a nine-day cold.

  April 12—Same old story. Zip. Nothing. Empty hook-o-rama. Will I ever catch anything?

  Suddenly, air is whooshing from my lungs. I am flying backward.

  Eeeeeeeak! I hear the squeak of soleless tennis shoes against old wood—my tennis shoes. The waistband of my jeans is digging into my stomach. It burns. I taste tuna on sourdough with pickles and olives. I swallow hard to keep it down. Will’s sandwich is not something you want to taste (or see) twice on the same day. I open my eyes. Doyle is hauling me back by my belt loops. Will’s hands are wrapped around mine, steadying my fishing pole. “Reel!” He screams. “Reel, Scab!”

  I do what he says.

  “Woof!” Joe cheers us on. “Woof, woof, woof!”

  “It’s enormous!” shouts Doyle. He’s got both arms around my waist to anchor me to the dock. “I’ll bet it’s a channel catfish.”

  “Or a rainbow trout,” hollers Will.

  “Could be a kokanee salmon.”

  “Or a coho.”

  “Chinook!” they shriek together.

  “It’s got to be a fifty-pounder.”

  “No such thing as a fifty-pounder in Beeson’s Lake—”

  “Until now!” I yell. I am about to catch the biggest fish of the year—maybe of the decade!

  “Whatever you do,” yells Doyle, “don’t let that thing get—”

  Crack! My pole breaks. The line snaps. Will and I topple backward. Will nearly goes into the water.

  I fall on Doyle. I see a flash of brown. And something else. I think.

  “—away,” moans Doyle from under my butt.

  For a long time we lay sprawled on the dock. Nobody says a word. Joe is licking my face like it’s a scoop of double-chunk chocolate fudge ice cream. He does that when he is worried about me.

  “We were this close,” Doyle finally croaks, sliding out from under me.

  “This close,” echoes Will.

  “We gotta come back here next week—”

  “I’m in,” says Will.

  “How about you, Scab?”

  Did someone say something?

  “Scab? Are you hurt?”

  “No.” I pat Joe’s head. “I’m all right, boy.” He stops licking but doesn’t move an inch. “I’m all right,” I say again.

  “You did it, buddy.” Doyle pounds my knee with his fist. “You made the perfect bait.”

  Clutching what’s left of my pole, I stare into the choppy water.

  “We’ll catch him next time. We’ll all bait our hooks exactly the way you did today and we’ll get that big boy—”

  “With my olives? You want to use my olives, too?”

  “That’s what ‘exactly’ means, Will.”

  “I’ll bring tuna on sourdough with pickles and olives for everybody.”

  “If you have to,” groans Doyle. He picks up his gear and heads down the dock.

  Will follows him. “But you said . . .”

  My pole is toast. The top third is gone. The crank is bent. My uncle Ant gave me this pole for my birthday last year, and I’m sure sad to lose it. But that’s not what’s bothering me. Not really. I’ve been fishing with my dad and uncle since I was four years old. I’ve seen just about every kind of fish there is. I’ve seen fish with ridges and spines and bulges and feelers, but I’ve never seen a fish like this. I have never in my life seen a fish with a . . . a . . . a neck!

  That’s what I saw, all right—a long, chocolate brown, leathery neck.

  Maybe.

  I kneel down and whisper into Joe’s ear, “What do you think?”

  Joe tips his head, thumping his tail against my knee.

  “I’m not sure either,” I say.

  “Scab?” Doyle is calling from the shore. “You coming?”

  “Yep. Come on, Joe.” Tucking what’s left of my pole under my arm, I grab Joe’s leash and my tackle box. We head down the dock. Before I step onto the dirt, I glance back.

  I see clumps of grasses and cattails.

  I see blankets of lily pads.

  I see one tippy dock leading to the calmest, blackest waters on Earth. And that’s all I see. Good.

  Good.

  CHAPTER

  5

  The Password Is: “Doomed”

  Scab!” My doorknob rattles. “I want to talk to you!”

  More rattling.

  Joe’s head pops out of a stack of my clothes—pile number three, to be exact. He’s got one of my socks in his mouth. I think it’s a clean sock. Hard to say. I forget which piles are clean and which ones are dirty.

  “Don’t worry, it’s double locked. Isabelle can’t get in.”

  Joe cocks an ear. He dives back into the clothes until all that’s visible is one golden flag of a tail waving back and forth. I laugh.

  I’m mashing unsalted sunflower seeds, unsalted peanuts, and cereal bran flakes to make Scab’s Trail Mix for Hamsters. It’s for Will’s red teddy bear hamster, Donald Trump. Actually, Donald is a girl. We didn’t know he was a she until he/she had six babies with Jay Leno—that’s Will’s blue hamster. We were going to change her name to something girly, but after Donald ate two of her babies, we figured it was okay to let it slide.

  I was pretty excited when Will told me that Donald and Jay had babies, because you figure a red hamster and a blue hamster are going to have purple kids, right? Wrong. Turns out “red” really means light orange and “blue” means gray. Bummer. I throw a handful of dried peas in the bowl. Then I take some out because I remember Will said too many vegetables can give hamsters the runs.

  RODENTS ON THE GO

  HAMSTERS ARE NOCTURNAL, WHICH MEANS they like to sleep during the day and stay up at night. They have tons of energy and can run up to five miles a night! No wonder Will has a big hamster wheel. I wonder if he’ll let me put an odometer on that thing! Hamsters have sharp front teeth for gnawing. Their teeth keep growing throughout their whole lives. Did you know girl hamsters can have up to eighteen babies in one litter? Once, a hamster had twenty-six babies! That’s a lot of kids to name.

  SCAB’S NEED-TO-KNOW

  GERMAN PHRASES

  Guten Morgen.

  Good morning.

  Ich heisse ____________.

  My name is ____________.

  Ich muss jetzt pinkeln!

  I have to whiz now!

  Mach die Tür auf, Eidechsenlippen.

  Open the door, Lizard Lips.

  Meine Schwester ist ein Hamsterkopf.

  My sister is a hamster head.

  *Did you know “hamster” is a German word that means “to forage and hoard”? My sister hoards peanut butter cookies. She hides them in the head of her Hairdo Heidi. Heidi doesn’t have a body. She’s just a giant head full of cookies. Let me know when you’re hungry and we’ll pop her skull.

  Speaking of the runs, Isabelle is still outside my lab. She is pounding on the door. “Mach die Tür auf, Eidechsenlippen.” My sister likes to show how smart she is by using big words. Or German words. Or big, German words. Ignore her. I do.

  “Scab, I’m telling Mom.”

  “What’s the password?” I tease.

  “Dragonfly.”

  I stop mashing. I open the door to find one scowling sister with her hands on her hips. “Better watch it, Izzy, or your face is going to freeze like—oops, too late.”

  She sticks her palm out. “Hand it over.”

  I pull on my front belt loop. “What?”

  “You know what.”

  “I don’t know what.” I hop from one foot to the other. “And who says I have it even if I did know what?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No.” I can say this easily because I don’t have her barrette. Anymore.

  “What about Joe?”

  At the sound of his name, my dog’s head pops out the side of pile number three. He’s got a pair of my underwear on his face. His nose is sticking out
of a leg hole.

  “Look at him,” she accuses. “He chews up everything. I don’t know how many times I’ve caught him ripping my shoes to shreds.”

  I bite my lip.

  Isabelle starts for my dog. “I bet Joe took my—”

  I jump in front of the pile and put up both hands. It’s one thing to mess with me. It’s another to mess with my dog. “He didn’t.”

  She frowns. “How do you know?”

  “He likes to chew on soft stuff, like socks and slippers, not barrettes. Joe wouldn’t take it. He didn’t take it,” I say firmly. I feel like a lawyer.

  “Ruff,” says my client.

  “I guess you’re right.” Isabelle turns away. She rubs her forehead. “It’s just so strange. I always keep it in the top drawer of my dresser between my butterfly clip and ladybug headband. What could have happened to it?”

  I shrug, and start strumming my teeth with my fingernail.

  “If I lost it at school, I’ll never find it. . . . I bet that new girl, Gwyneth, took it—she’s always taking things out of my desk without asking. . . .” Her voice breaks. Her shoulders shake. “I really loved that dragonfly barrette. Great-Aunt Sarah gave it to me, you know, before she died.”

  Ah, geeeeez. Is she crying?

  Isabelle sniffs. “It was the last Christmas present I ever got from her, and now—”

  “Okay, okay,” I say. “I took it.”

  She whirls around. “I knew it.”

  What an actress! Her cheeks aren’t even wet. I should have known. “No fair, Isabelle.”

  “Yes fair, Scab. I knew you were lying. I can always tell what you’re up to because you give it away.”

  “I do not.”

  “Want to bet? When you fidget, it means you’re lying. When you bob your eyebrows up and down, it means you’re up to no good. Let’s see, what else? Oh, when your ears turn red, it means you know you’re in deep trouble and you’re trying to figure out how to get out of it. I know all of your tricks.”

  MEET MY TWIN SISTER:

  ISABELLE CATHERINE MCNALLY

  Description: brown hair, blue eyes, mutant brain, permanent scowl, birthmark on her leg that looks like an accordion (You’ve got to see it!)

  Personality: stubborn, but can be nice when you are sad or sick

  Weird talent: instantly knowing when her stuff is missing

  Favorite food: frozen cookie dough (She pretends she’s going to make cookies for me, but only three cookies ever make it out of the oven.)

  Favorite activity: it’s a tie between lecturing me about how I’m supposed to behave and tattling to my parents about how I have behaved

  “I know yours, too. Now bark, roll over, and play dead.”

  “Woof, woof!” Suddenly, Joe is flying toward me. He rolls onto his back, and sticks his paws in the air.

  “Looks like Joe wins the contest.” I laugh.

  My sister, however, is not laughing. “Hand over my barrette.”

  I wrap my arms around Joe and sink to the floor. “I . . . uh . . . I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t . . . exactly . . . um . . . have it.”

  “What do you mean? Where is it?”

  “It’s sort of . . . I kind of accidentally . . .”

  Her lips disappear. “Where. Is. It.”

  I lower my head into the safety of Joe’s soft neck. “In Beeson’s Lake.”

  “What? I can’t hear you.”

  I look up. “I said, ‘In Beeson’s Lake.’”

  She lets out a shriek. “You threw my dragonfly barrette in the lake?”

  “Not on purpose. See, Will, Doyle, and I were fishing, and I was trying out my new Fish Buffet Bait—that’s where you put a whole lot of stuff on the hook to get the fish to bite—but I needed something glittery that looked like a bug—”

  “You didn’t!”

  “I was going to bring it back, but the monster grabbed my hook. It took all three of us to hold on to him. We would have caught him, too, if my pole hadn’t snapped—”

  SCAB NEWS

  BY ISABELLE C. MCNALLY

  (HISTORY CLUB PRESIDENT)

  8:47 a.m. I caught Scab speed skating on two sheets of paper down the hallway before school. He was racing Doyle. They knocked over the book rack outside the library. Mr. Corbett sent them to the principal’s office.

  8:52 a.m.: That worm Scab wriggled his way out of trouble again. I knew he would!!

  4:13 p.m.: I discovered my dragonfly barrette was missing. I went to interview the main suspect.

  4:29 p.m.: Scab confessed to stealing my dragonfly barrette to use as a fishing lure. It’s now at the bottom of the lake! Mom, tell him he needs to pay for a new one.

  4:37 p.m.: Scab threw me out of his lab (how rude!) and locked the door.

  6:13 p.m.: Weird noises are coming from inside Scab’s lab. And it isn’t the usual sounds, if you know what I mean.

  This concludes Scab News for today. Isabelle Catherine McNally reporting.

  P.S. If you want to know why the dryer is making that kerklunkityplop noise, ask Scab about his marble experiment.

  “Monster?” She rolls her eyes.

  Did I say that?

  “I . . . I meant ‘fish.’ Yeah, yeah, fish. That’s what I meant.” Will you look at that? My knee is twitching. Isabelle may have a point about that lying thing. I clamp my hand over my knee. “It could have been an alligator. Whatever the thing was, it was huge—”

  “I want my barrette, Scab.”

  “But I told you—”

  “If it is at the bottom of Beeson’s Lake, then I guess you’d better pay close attention in swim class tomorrow so you can go get it.” She stomps toward the door.

  “Swim class?”

  “Have you forgotten? We’re going to the deep end of the pool to dive.”

  The Deep End? I jump up. Panic washes over my body. Then I realize Isabelle is teasing me. She has to be. “No, we’re not. Ashlynn didn’t say anything last week—”

  “Did so. She said that after the first class we’d be working in the middle and deep end for the rest of the session—oh, that’s right, you were hiding out in the boys’ locker room in your squirrel suit.” She giggles. “Well, now you know.”

  I feel a lump in my throat. Yep. Now I know.

  “And you also know I’m not kidding. I want my barrette. Or else.” My sister stalks out of my room.

  Isabelle is kidding. She has to be. I am sure only the older kids, the Dolphins and Orcas, swim in the Deep End.

  “Don’t you want to know ‘or else what’?” Isabelle is back.

  “You’ll tattle to Mom and Dad in your weekly news report,” I say, pushing her out of my lab.

  “I’m also going to tell them why the dryer makes that funny noise when you put it on the fluff cycle—”

  “Fine. Go write a rough draft.” I shut the door behind her. I bolt the lock.

  I clear the trail mix off my desk. I have no time for silly stuff like skinny hamsters or lost barrettes or broken clothes dryers. This is serious. I sit down at my desk. Glassy, brown eyes are begging me to play. Joe’s got his favorite toy, a squeaky hot dog, in his mouth. “Can’t right now, boy,” I say, scratching his neck under his collar. “We’ve got a problem.”

  Joe drops the toy. He lies down next to my chair. He puts his chin on top of my foot. He likes to do this when I am working on a new invention. I like it too. I put my head down on my desk. What am I going to do? I have less than twenty-four hours to figure out how to keep from going into the Deep End.

  Where I can’t touch bottom.

  CHAPTER

  6

  One Toe-riffic Class

  Ick!” Cloey Zittle is standing by the shallow end of the pool. “Scab, what happened to your foot?”

  “Motorcycle accident.” I hobble toward her. “I did a wheelie on Hangman’s Bridge.”

  “Ohmigosh, really?”

  “I sliced through my big toe. See where it’s kind o
f green? They had to sew that part back on—”

  Cloey’s orange flip-flops make a sharp U-turn on the concrete. “Mooooooom.”

  I hide my grin. This is going to be easier than I thought. My dad dropped us off today and my mom is picking us up after class so there are no parents to worry about. However, Tattletale Isabelle is here. She hasn’t come out of the girls’ locker room yet.

  “Scab, what’d you do to your toe?” Doyle asks.

  I retie the string of my swim trunks. “I . . . uh . . . tripped in the water trap while trying to set a new record on the Mighty Maze.”

  “Tough nuggets.” He leans over to examine the big toe on my right foot. I edge back a little to make sure he doesn’t get too close of a look. Doyle knows me from the bones out.

  Lewis Pigford stops picking his nose. “Wicked toe, Scab.” He sounds jealous.

  Kids from our class are circling me. Emma winces. “Is it broken?”

  “Can you bend it?” Juan wants to know.

  “Does it hurt?” asks Henry.

  I ignore the first two questions and answer no to Henry’s, which is the truth. My real big toe, under the painted clay toe I’m wearing, is fine. I can’t take credit for the whole brilliant plan. It was mostly Joe’s idea. Yesterday, after he got tired of warming my toes, my pup started gnawing on them.

  SCAB’S TRICK TOE

  One cap from a tube of pump toothpaste (or any cap that fits snugly over your toe)

  One mound of clay the same color as your skin

  Glue

  Red, green, purple, and black acrylic paint

  One self-adhesive bandage strip

  Pencil

  Cover the cap in clay and shape it to look like the big toe you want to cover. Etch in a toenail and joint ridges using a pencil tip. Let the clay harden. Paint your toe with red, green, purple, and black paint to make it look bloody, bruised, and infected. Go heavy on the green to really creep out the girls. Glue the toe on over your real toe and secure with the bandage. When you walk, don’t forget to limp!

  I was trying to wrestle my foot away from him before he drew blood, when it hit me: a trick toe! Talk about the perfect solution. Who is going to want to get into the pool with someone who’s got a swollen, bloody, bruised toe? Answer: nobody! It took me most of last night to make the thing. But it was worth the effort. This plan will definitely keep me out of the Deep End. Just looking at the trick toe makes my stomach do a back flip and I know it’s not real. I love my dog! I’ve got to remember to thank Isabelle. After all, she is the one who convinced my parents that I was responsible enough to take care of a dog. Every now and then it turns out my sister is good for something. Who knew?