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

  By the way, where is my sister?

  Ashlynn sees my foot. “Oh, Scab. That looks terrible. Are you in pain?”

  “I’m okay,” I say bravely.

  “Is it infected?” calls Cloey. Her orange flip-flops are going splick-splack, splick-splack as she rushes this way. Her mother is peering over the railing of the bleachers where the parents sit. Cloey waves a pink towel. “You shouldn’t get in the water if it’s infected. He shouldn’t get in the water, Ashlynn . . .”

  Our teacher nods. “I’m afraid you’ll have to sit this one out, Scab.”

  I let my shoulders droop. “O-kay.” This is too easy.

  “Sorry,” says Ashlynn. “Also, I’ll need a note from your doctor giving you the all-clear to swim next time.”

  Sweet! My trick toe could get me out of two, maybe three, classes.

  SECRETS OF THE MALE SALMON*

  AN ORIGINAL POEM BY SALVATORE W. MCNALLY

  Juan pees in the swimming pool,

  Lewis flings snot in there too.

  Doyle throws in earwax balls,

  Henry pops a zit or two.

  With all the stuff we’re tossing in,

  It’s a wonder anyone can swim!

  *Don’t tell the girls.

  My teacher blows her whistle. “Salmon, in the shallow end, please. Scab, you can sit by the edge and learn the breaststroke on dry land, all right?”

  “If I have to,” I say, my voice oozing disappointment. Brilliant and a good actor.

  “And whatever you do, Scab, keep your flip-flops on,” says Cloey. She takes a wide path around me like I’m contagious.

  There’s Isabelle! Finally. She’s barreling straight for me. “My strap broke, and I had to get a safety pin—what’s wrong? Why aren’t you in the water?” She sounds like our mother.

  I cover my trick toe with my left foot. “I banged my foot. Ashlynn said I should stay out of the pool today—”

  “Let me see it.” She’s Mom again.

  NO! I want to shout it, but I can’t. Kids are watching. Parents are watching. Teachers are watching. Isabelle kneels in front of me. She reaches out. I grimace. Any second now she is going to discover my secret. Her hand is inches from my fake toe—

  “Isabelle?”

  Thank you, Ashlynn!

  “Join the rest of the Salmon in the water, please.”

  Slowly, Isabelle stands up. She doesn’t say anything, but she also doesn’t take her gaze off me as she backs away toward the pool.

  After warm-ups, Ashlynn shows the class how to do the circular arm movements and breathing for the breaststroke. Push arms outward. Head down. Pull arms inward and underneath the chin. Bring head and shoulders above the water. Breathe. Start again. Arms out. Head down. Arms in. Head and shoulders up. Breathe. It’s easy. At least, on land.

  “Cloey, don’t throw your arms out quite so far,” says Ashlynn. “Don’t forget to come up for air, Beth. . . . Nice, even strokes everyone. . . . Let it flow . . .”

  My class spends almost the entire hour in the shallow end. I knew my sister didn’t know what she was talking about. I want to kick myself (with my good toe) for wasting my brilliant invention on today’s class. Finally, Ashlynn blows her whistle. “Salmon, swim to the middle ladder. Line up along the edge. Scab, come with me.”

  I follow her around the pool deck. I almost forget to do the limp. Almost.

  When everyone is in place, Ashlynn says, “We’re going to learn the frog kick that goes with the breast-stroke. Think about how a frog uses its legs and you’ll get this in no time.” Standing, Ashlynn lifts one leg, moves it outward in a circle, and brings it back to the middle. “That’s all there is to it, except that you are going to use both legs. Scab, you don’t have to—”

  “I can do it,” I say. I collapse onto the concrete on my stomach. I do the frog kick exactly the way Ashlynn showed us.

  “Great,” says my teacher. “Everybody, watch Scab. That’s what you want—a strong, steady snap to help you glide through the water.”

  “Scab, say, ‘Ribbit, ribbit,’” hollers Lewis.

  SCAB’S TIP #18

  WHEN SHOWING OFF, ALWAYS make sure your sister is nearby, otherwise you’re wasting good bragging rights.

  Everyone laughs. I don’t care. I like having the class watch me. And look at me go. Push out to make a circle. Then snap. And together. Push out. Snap. And together. Isabelle, eat my tidal wave! I put my arms and legs together and do the whole stroke. When Ashlynn sees how well I can do it, she’ll want the whole class to watch me again.

  Push out. Snap. And together.

  Is Ashlynn watching?

  Push out. Snap. And together.

  Is Isabelle watching?

  Push out. Snap. And—

  “Eeeeeeeeeewwwww!”

  I scrape my chin against the cement. What was that awful noise? I look around. Everybody else is looking around too—everybody except Cloey. Probably because she is the one screaming. Cloey is thrashing her arms all over the place in a very unbreaststroke-like way. She’s pointing to something, but I don’t see any—

  My legs freeze midsnap. I squint. There is some-thing in the water. It looks a bit familiar, almost like . . .

  Can it be?

  Wuh-oh.

  “Scab’s big toe!” shrieks Cloey.

  I swing my head around. My trick toe is gone, all right.

  “Where is it?” shouts Juan.

  “There! In the water by Emma—”

  “Aggggghhhh!”

  “Everybody out of the pool!”

  Suddenly people are splashing and fighting and kicking to get away from the purple-red-green-black blob bobbing among them in the waves.

  I try to right myself, which isn’t easy. I’m a potato bug on its back.

  Isabelle gulps water as she thrashes. “My brother’s toe!”

  “I’ll get it,” calls Ashlynn above the hysterics. “Clear the way!”

  “No!” I yell, but nobody is listening.

  Ashlynn dives in. For a small girl, she sure makes a big splash. I get drenched.

  Kids are flinging themselves over the side of the pool. Arms and legs are everywhere. I get kicked in the back. Everything goes dark. A towel is covering my head. Splick-splack, splick-splack. I hear Cloey’s flip-flops running by. “We’re all going to die of infection,” she screams at the top of her lungs. “Scab’s toe is going to kill us all!”

  CHAPTER

  7

  Fish Tales (With Extra Tartar Sauce)

  My mother is glaring at me in the rear-view mirror. I hunch down, but it is no use. I can’t escape her icy gaze. That mirror is huge. After a few minutes of arctic silence, my mother asks the question no kid on Earth can answer. “Salvatore Wallingford McNally, what were you thinking?”

  I tap my heels against the bottom of the seat. “I don’t know.”

  Isabelle is in the seat next to me. She is studying me. Her lips are screwed up on one side of her cheek. It’s the same face she makes when she’s working on a tough math problem. I look out the window. I sure wish Joe were here.

  Part of me wants to tell the truth. But I know what will happen if I do. My mother will start quoting Eleanor Roosevelt. She will say, “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.” She will make me go back to the pool. Parents are big on forcing you to do things that scare the beans out of you. I don’t want to stop and look fear in the face. I want to run the other way. So I don’t tell her the real reason for making my trick toe. Instead I say, “Swim lessons are lame.”

  “It’s important for you to learn how to swim.”

  “I know how to swim.” In the shallow end.

  “Let’s hope so, Scab, because they are talking about banning you from Little Creek for good.”

  “Banning him?” Isabelle springs forward. “They can’t do that. It was a harmless joke—”

  SCAB’S MYSTERIES

  OF THE UNIVERSE
/>   HOW IS IT THAT NO MATTER WHERE SHE IS in the world, your mom knows the second you . . .

  chug milk straight from the carton?

  break a window?

  forget to wash your belly button?

  feed your limp broccoli to the dog?

  spill anything on the carpet?

  Another unsolved mystery of the universe!

  “A harmless joke?” My mother takes a hard left into the driveway of Captain McGillicutty’s Fish House. My sister and I grab our door handles and hang on. My mom swings the SUV into the drive-through. We are in line behind two cars. “Let’s take a body count, shall we?”

  I slide down a little more.

  “Poor Emma Wilkins fainted on the pool deck. Henry Mapanoo is on his way to the doctor to have that gash in his arm looked at. Beth Burwell twisted her ankle—thank goodness she’s all right. And did I mention that Mrs. Zittle is making them clean the pool because Cloey is convinced that was your real toe? They are going to have to drain the pool from top to bottom . . . ?”

  Isabelle leans over to me while our mother goes on. “It was a joke, wasn’t it?”

  “Of course,” I hiss. “What else would it be?”

  She is looking at my feet. They seem to be twitching without my knowledge.

  I make them stop. It’s not easy.

  “. . . we can only hope banning you from the pool is the worst they do.” My mother is still talking. She inches the car forward. “We’ll be lucky if we don’t get sued.”

  “Sorry,” I mumble. I hadn’t meant for things to get so crazy. But, on the up side, I did accomplish my goal. If I am banned from the pool, I certainly can’t take lessons. No lessons, no Deep End. No Deep End, no problem.

  “No swimming lessons, no fishing this summer,” corrects my mom.

  I am about to protest, when it hits me: I did not say that out loud! Bug spit! My mother can read my mind.

  I fly up. “You promised I could go fishing with Uncle Ant if I took the Salmon class—”

  “I said you could go if you passed the class. There’s a big difference.”

  “But Mom, that’s no—”

  “Scab, if I were you, I would choose my words very carefully right now. Your father and I have yet to discuss your punishment for this stunt.”

  I flop back in my seat.

  “What if he said he was sorry?” asks Isabelle. “You know, what if he said it to the whole class? They’d have to let him back in then, wouldn’t they?”

  My mother throws her hands up. “Who knows?”

  Isabelle faces me. “Scab, just say you are sorry—”

  “No.” I fold my arms. “Why should I?”

  “So you can come back to class.”

  “Who says I want to come back?”

  My mom rolls the SUV forward. Finally we are at the enormous anchor that holds up the menu board. A green octopus crackles with static. “Aye, aye, matey, welcome to Captain McGillicutty’s Fish House. May I take your order?”

  My mom leans out her window. “We’ll take a halibut special with extra tartar sauce, a two-piece fish basket with fries . . .”

  “Don’t forget the chowder, Mom,” says Isabelle. She elbows me and whispers, “I know you want to go back.”

  “Do not.”

  “Do so.”

  I grit my teeth. “Do not.”

  She looks down. My knee is jiggling. I make it stop. My sister grins. “Do so.”

  “Meow, meow.”

  Joe lifts his head from my chest.

  “Meow, meow.”

  “It’s the secret doorbell,” I remind him.

  I rigged it up last year after I got grounded for building a flying saucer. I made it out of one of the hubcaps from my dad’s SUV, Isabelle’s ladybug headband, and the garage door opener. I’d show you how, but I’m already grounded for three weeks thanks to my trick toe. Plus, my spaceship never did work right. Now neither does our garage door.

  I built the doorbell to stay in touch with Doyle while I’m on restriction. The meowing is coming from one of my sister’s old stuffed animals, a yellow cat named Abalard. He’s missing one eye and most of his fur, but he still talks. To make my doorbell, I gathered a bunch of stuff—Abalard, a gumball machine, some dominos—what else? Oh, and my plastic apatosaurus dinosaur, Ralph. He got his name after spewing toxic applesauce in a wrestling match with Barbie’s little sister, Kelly. Boy, did Isabelle go nuclear over that. I guess applesauce and doll hair are not a good combo.

  SCAB’S SECRET DOORBELL

  HOW IT WORKS

  WHEN YOU TUG ON THE PING-PONG PADDLE, IT jerks on the cable, which pulls down the handle of the gumball machine on the inside of my windowsill, which releases a megamarble, which knocks over a row of seven dominoes, which hits my mini red Ferrari 250 LM racer, sending it down the racetrack into a wall of blocks, which collapses into a bucket, which tips to release Ralph the apatosaurus (now glued to a skateboard), who rolls down a ruler over a hill of comics and smashes into my mom’s cookbook, Smile and Say Goat Cheese!, which falls and lands on Abalard’s right paw, which causes him to do one of three things: meow, purr, or cough up a furball.

  Even after a couple dozen shampoos, Kelly still looks like she got sucked into an F5 tornado.

  Anyway, I connected everything together (see my notebook). To hook up the actual doorbell, I tossed an old computer cable out my window. I ran it down the corner of the house and tucked it behind the drainpipe. I wrapped the cord around a Ping-Pong paddle, hiding it behind the bayberry bushes. Now all Doyle has to do is crawl through the bushes, find the Ping-Pong paddle, and tug! Less than a minute later, Abalard lets me know my best friend is outside. Sweet, huh?

  It’s Saturday morning, about ten o’clock. On my way to the window, I grab Ralph to reset the doorbell. Looking outside, I see fishing poles and tackle boxes littering our side yard. My stomach twists into a cinch knot—that’s what we use to tie fishing hook to the line. It’s killing me not to be able to go fishing with the guys. Yesterday I gave Doyle the recipe to my Fish Buffet Bait so the two of them could go after the—whatever it is—in Beeson’s Lake. I really wanted to tell him the truth about what I saw, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. He’d think I’m a Fruit Roll-Up. So Joe and I have made a pact to forget we ever saw that long, leathery brown neck slip under the water. I open my window. Joe sticks his head out and barks at Will and Doyle.

  “Shhhhhhh.” I pull him to me. “How’d it go?” I whisper loudly, but not too loudly. I am not supposed to be talking to my friends at all while I’m grounded unless I am at school. Isabelle’s room is next to mine. If her supersensitive dolphin ears are nearby, it’ll be another week tacked on to my month in jail.

  “We didn’t catch

  Zenobia,” Doyle hisses. “But something is—”

  “Ze-what?”

  “Zenobia,” says Will. “That’s what we named the big fish.”

  Doyle bobs his head. “Except there’s—”

  “You named it?”

  Will grins. “Uh-huh. Zenobia. Doyle’s idea.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know—it didn’t look like a Steve,” flips Doyle. “I have a great-aunt Zenobia with spooky, big fish eyes, okay? If you’d zip it for a minute and let me finish.”

  With one quick motion I zip my lips.

  “Something weird is going on at Beeson’s Lake.”

  Instant goose bumps. No need to add water. I take a breath. “Weird how?”

  My best friend scratches his head. “You’re going to think we’re Fruit Roll-Ups.”

  Now I’ve got to know. “I won’t.” I hold my hand up to swear.

  “We saw something,” croaks Doyle, looking around nervously.

  ENORMOUS APATOSAURUS

  THE APATOSAURUS WAS ONE OF THE LARGEST animals ever to roam the Earth! This plant-eating dinosaur lived more than 130 million years ago. With its sweeping tail, long neck, and tiny head it looked like a giant lizard; the word Apatosaurus means “deceptive lizard.�
�� Its brain was barely the size of an apple! Many of these dinosaur fossils have been found in western North America (gulp). Scientists figure the average life span of an apatosaurus was about one hundred years. But they don’t know for sure (double gulp).

  APATOSAURUS FACTS

  Weight: up to thirty tons

  Height: up to thirty feet

  Head to tail length: up to ninety feet (thirty-foot tail, twenty-foot neck, two-foot head)

  “Yeah?” I say coolly, real coolly, as a thousand new goose bumps pop to life on the back of my neck.

  “I don’t know exactly—this thing.” He stretches his arms out. “And it had this kind of thing . . . with a long thing and a tiny thing. . . . I can’t describe it exactly. . . .”

  “It looked round, kind of like a beach ball,” blurts Will. “A brown beach ball with a neck and a big tail—”

  Did he say it? Did he actually say the word?

  He did! He did say it!

  “No, no, no,” says Doyle. “It was more of an oval . . . like a football . . . and it had a long tail like a dragon, but it wasn’t a dragon. . . . It looked like . . . like . . .” His hands are flying all over the place.

  “Like that,” blurts Will. He is pointing up. He is pointing up at my dog.

  I laugh. “Joe? Zenobia looked like Joe?”

  “No.” He moves his finger to the right. “Like that.”

  He can’t mean it. Not this? I lift up my plastic apatosaurus.

  This time there is no arguing. Both of my friends are nodding.