Beware the Fisj

by Gordon Korman

“I’ll stay here,” offered Elmer quickly. “I wouldn’t want to jeopardize the expedition. Four people may be noticed more easily than three.”

  “Good thinking,” replied Bruno. “All right, Elm. You stay here and mind the store. Boots, Sidney, let’s go.”

  Bruno and Boots climbed easily out the window and stood flush against the wall. Sidney tumbled out after them, going head over heels across the sill and landing flat on his back in the shrubbery.

  Boots flashed his roommate a look of hopelessness as the two of them picked Sidney up. They hustled him across the campus, and with only one further mishap, when he caught his foot in the fence, they finally reached Miss Scrimmage’s. Cathy and Diane were already at the window. Pushing Sidney ahead of them, Bruno and Boots climbed up the drainpipe and into the room.

  “Hi,” Cathy greeted them, “Who’s your friend?”

  “This is Butterfingers Rampulsky,” Bruno said. “He breaks things a lot — usually his own neck.”

  The girls greeted Sidney in a friendly manner.

  “What happened to you two?” Diane asked. “Miss Scrimmage said she turned you over to The Fish. He must have been boiling!”

  “Oh, he was,” replied Bruno, “but mostly at Miss Scrimmage. He went easy on us — we just got a day’s confinement.”

  “How did you people do with those suggestions?” asked Boots. “How do we make the Hall famous?”

  “Most of the girls are pretty stupid,” said Cathy. “They suggest that you rob a bank and stuff like that. Then when you get caught you’ll get your names in the paper.”

  “Small minds think alike,” Bruno muttered. “We got a lot of that from the guys too. Don’t tell me that’s the best you can do.”

  “Not to worry,” she announced brightly, “because I, Catherine Elizabeth Burton, using my very own personal brain, thought up the idea that’s the answer to your problem.”

  “What is it?”

  “Not so fast,” said Cathy, smiling broadly. “What’s in it for me?”

  “Our undying thanks,” said Bruno.

  “And a potted philodendron,” added Boots, “courtesy of Elmer Drimsdale.”

  “It’s a deal. Here’s my idea. If you guys could set a world record at something you’d get into the papers and on TV — and you’d get Macdonald Hall into the Rankin Book of World Records.”

  “That’s a great idea!” exclaimed Bruno. “We’ve got so much talent at the Hall, it’ll be a cinch!”

  “I agree,” said Sidney shyly.

  “I don’t know,” objected Boots. “People who make the record books are mighty hard to beat. Like roller-skating, for instance. The world record holder skated all the way from Victoria to St. John’s, almost eight thousand kilometres. I can just see The Fish allowing us to do something like that.”

  Cathy looked crestfallen. “Do I still get my philodendron?”

  “You sure do,” said Bruno enthusiastically. “We’ll find something we can set a record at. Thanks a million!” He turned to the others. “All right, men, let’s go.”

  “Wait a minute,” Diane interrupted. “Don’t you want me to get you some food?”

  “We don’t need any more, thanks,” Bruno declined. “We’ve got our snack back. I think The Fish was shamed when he caught us with a food parcel from here. Anyway, thanks a lot for the idea. We’ll be back with your philodendron.”

  Bruno and Boots swung themselves over the sill and began to climb down the pipe. Sidney followed them.

  “He’s not so clumsy,” Cathy commented to Diane.

  Suddenly they heard an all-too-familiar voice.

  “Halt!”

  The two girls ran to the window and leaned out. Bruno and Boots stood below, illuminated in the beam of Miss Scrimmage’s flashlight. Sidney, still undetected, was only part way down.

  “What’ll we do?” whispered Diane.

  “I know. I’ll create a diversion.” Cathy was always at her best in an emergency. She inhaled, reared back and burst into loud, sustained shrieking.

  Startled, Sidney lost his grip on the drainpipe and fell a full two metres, landing on Miss Scrimmage. Her shotgun and flashlight flew into the air.

  Sidney scrambled to his feet and ran, leaving Miss Scrimmage in a heap screaming, “Assault! Assault!” Bruno and Boots tore off after him, the Headmistress’s shouts and Cathy’s screams ringing in their ears. The three boys did not stop running until they were safe in the bushes under the window of room 201.

  Elmer helped the three gasping boys into the room. “What in the world happened?” he asked.

  Bruno was the first to find his voice. “I don’t believe it!” he said, outraged. “She did it again! She caught me! Me! Who does she think she is?”

  “She thinks she’s dead,” gasped Boots. “Or attacked anyway. Bruno, she thinks we attacked her!”

  Bruno ignored him. “That was some quick thinking, Sidney. You really saved our skins! What loyalty! What self-sacrifice!”

  “Yeah,” said Sidney uncertainly. He rubbed his tail-bone. “But I think I hurt myself.”

  “Are you going to be punished?” said Elmer, horrified.

  “No,” said Bruno.

  “Yes,” said Boots.

  “Either way,” said Bruno, “we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us. A world record, remember?”

  “We might have one already,” snapped Boots. “Most times caught by a crazy lady with a shotgun. Will that do?”

  “Don’t rub it in,” moaned Bruno. “I’ve suffered enough. Sidney, Larry must be asleep by now. Go home so we can all get to bed. But first …” He walked over to Elmer’s PIT broadcasting system.

  * * *

  “Calm down, Miss Scrimmage,” said Mr. Sturgeon into the telephone. “I can’t understand a word you’re saying … Yes, that’s better … My boys attacked you? Physically? … Impossible! My boys are capable of a lot of mischief, but not that … Miss Scrimmage, I’m very sorry you were assaulted, but no one from Macdonald Hall would do such a thing. No one! … Yes, well, since you put it that way, I suppose I am, in a way, calling you a liar. I do beg your pardon. Goodnight.”

  He went to the living room and sat down. “Mildred, you simply won’t believe what that ridiculous woman has accused us of this time!”

  “What is it, William?” she prompted.

  “She says that a whole gang of our boys were over there terrorizing her tender young ladies, and when she caught them they jumped on her and beat her up!”

  “That’s not possible,” exclaimed Mrs. Sturgeon. “Not one of our boys would do such a thing! It’s barbaric!”

  “If it happened at all,” said the Headmaster grimly. “Personally I think Miss Scrimmage has been acting a little peculiar lately.” He glanced at the dark television set. “How was the Late Show, Mildred?”

  “Oh, I had to turn it off,” she said in annoyance. “That dreadful fish was back again.”

  Chapter 5

  Room 13

  The town of Chutney, population 3100, is located on Highway 48, eleven kilometres north of Macdonald Hall. It has the usual doctor, dentist, police station, undertaker and combination motel-gas station. It also has, on the main street, television station CHUT, serving Chutney and surrounding territory.

  It was early Tuesday morning. In room 13 of the Chutney Motel, Sergeant Harold P. Featherstone, Junior, of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had already cut himself twice trying to shave with cold water. Finally, in disgust, he towelled the shaving cream off his face, left the bathroom and switched on the TV. He was just in time for the morning news.

  The picture was of poor quality — and he just might have to watch it all day, he reflected glumly. Deputy Chief Bullock had assigned him to investigate some reports about a strange fish that people in the area were seeing on their screens. Special Division thought it might be the work of a terrorist group. More likely someone playing a joke, Featherstone muttered to himself. But that was before he saw the Fish.

  It happened at 8:45.
Suddenly the newscaster’s face was replaced by the large fuzzy image of a fish. A loud voice shouted, The Fish Revolution has begun! The Fish is everywhere! Beware the Fish!, followed by maniacal laughter. Then the newscaster returned.

  Shocked, Featherstone reached quickly for a pad and pencil.

  * * *

  Bruno Walton flicked the switch, deactivating Elmer’s system. “Love it!” he exclaimed, dressing like a whirlwind. It was his custom not to get out of bed before 8:45, and being on time for nine o’clock classes was not easy.

  “C’mon, hurry up,” Boots prodded, waiting at the door. “We don’t want to be on report. The Fish is probably mad enough at us for last night. When I think of what Sidney did to Miss Scrimmage …”

  “He didn’t do anything,” objected Bruno. “It was just an accident. Cathy shouldn’t have screamed like that.”

  “Cathy was just creating a diversion to help us get away. It was quick thinking.”

  “It was definitely quick,” agreed Bruno, pulling a T-shirt over his head, “but I’m not sure it was thinking. Anyway, Miss Scrimmage doesn’t know it was us. Let’s go. What are you waiting for?” The two boys ran off to class.

  * * *

  “Men,” said Bruno over the lunch table, “I now call upon your powers of ingenuity to save Macdonald Hall.”

  “Cut the drivel,” snarled Wilbur Hackenschleimer. Ever since the school’s austerity program had begun he had been in an indescribably foul mood. “What is it you want us to do this time?”

  Bruno was undaunted. “We’ve decided that the best way to bring publicity to the Hall is to get ourselves into the Rankin Book of World Records.” He slammed a thick paperback book onto his tray. “Here’s the book. All we have to do is take a record and beat it. Do I have a volunteer?”

  There was absolute silence.

  “I’m very disappointed in you,” said Bruno. “Okay, let the bulldozers come and flatten everything! Let them pave our lawn and put up a parking lot! I’m the only guy who cares, and I can’t do it by myself!”

  “Oh, Bruno, shut up!” sighed Boots. “We’d like to save the school, but world records are hard to break. I was going to go to the Chutney Fair and try to break the record for riding the ferris wheel. Then I looked it up and found out that the guys who hold it rode for more than four weeks! I can just see me asking The Fish for four weeks off school so I can go ride a ferris wheel!”

  “Hey, I know,” said Pete Anderson brightly. “Wilbur could set an eating record. Anything anybody else can eat he can eat more of.”

  “I’m out of training,” Wilbur replied sadly. “I haven’t had a square meal in so long that my stomach is probably shrunk down to nothing.”

  “How about apple peeling?” suggested Sidney Rampulsky. “When Chris Talbot peels an apple he peels it all in one piece and so thin that one time I’ll bet it was more than three metres long!”

  Bruno riffled through the book. “Apple peeling — here it is.” His face fell. “The longest apple peel is fifty-two metres. Chris is a little short.”

  “How about showering?” asked Larry Wilson. “Perry Elbert spends half his life in the shower. Mort says that when Perry gets upset he gets into the shower and stays there half the day.”

  Boots grabbed the record book and turned to the appropriate listing. “No good,” he said. “It says here the record is something like eight days. Not even Perry could get that upset.”

  “Read us some,” Pete suggested, “and we’ll see if they can be done.”

  Boots handed the book back to Bruno, who thumbed the pages. “Let’s see — gold panning, grape catching, grave digging, guitar playing …”

  “Boots could do that,” said Sidney.

  “I don’t think so,” answered Bruno glumly. “He’d have to play for more than a hundred and eleven hours and fifteen minutes to beat the record. I don’t think The Fish would be too thrilled with that. And the teachers wouldn’t be so happy about having their classes set to music either.” He turned a few pages. “Let’s see. What else is there? Piano smashing, plate spinning, pogo stick jumping …”

  “I could do that,” offered Sidney. “I’m really good with a pogo stick.”

  There was general laughter, punctuated by Larry’s snort of disgust.

  “If you can beat forty-two thousand hops in six hours and six minutes, speak up,” said Bruno. “Hmmm — pole sitting. Let’s see … Forget it. The record is two hundred and seventy-three days.”

  He flipped another couple of pages. “Hey, look at this! The biggest ball of string is four metres in diameter — no, we haven’t got enough time to collect something like that. How about talking? No, a hundred and thirty-eight hours is a little too long. The Fish wouldn’t allow it. If it weren’t for The Fish, you know, we could set all kinds of wonderful records!”

  He glanced down the page. “Hot gazoobies, this is it! Tin can pyramid! The record is a pyramid with a base almost two and a half metres square. It was four and a half metres high and used twenty-two thousand one hundred and forty pop cans. The base was forty cans by forty cans.” He whistled. “That’s pretty good, but we can beat it. We’ll make one with a base forty-five cans square. Elmer?”

  Elmer chewed thoughtfully on a dried fig. “Such a structure,” he said, “would be 5.38 metres high with a base 2.97 metres square, based on the dimensions of an average soda-pop can. We would require thirty-one thousand three hundred and ninety-five cans.”

  “No sweat!” exclaimed Bruno. “Everywhere you look there’s a pop can lying around.”

  “The Chutney recycling centre must be full of them,” added Wilbur.

  “Forget the recycling centre,” said Boots. “That place is locked and guarded at night. But don’t worry. The town dump will have plenty of cans too. And if we can’t find enough there, there must be millions around Toronto.”

  “In this case,” said Sidney, “the litterbug is our best friend.”

  “If we can get everyone in the school scavenging for pop cans, and all the girls at Scrimmage’s too, we can get enough.”

  “We’d have to go off campus,” warned Boots. “And we can’t have everybody requesting leave on the same day. I take it we don’t want The Fish to know about this.”

  “You take it right,” agreed Bruno. “He’d probably tell us to stop our foolishness and concentrate on our studies. The way I see it, we can all walk to Chutney Friday night and from there we’ll catch buses all over the place — Gormley, Stouffville, Uxbridge — and a lot of us can even go into Toronto. We’ll all trickle back sometime Saturday.”

  There was a wild babble of protest.

  Bruno stood up and pounded the table. “All right, you guys, I know it’s risky, but there’s safety in numbers. The Fish won’t be able to expel all six hundred of us. And if we don’t do it, then we might as well go home anyway because pretty soon there won’t be any Macdonald Hall.”

  The protest died.

  “How about this?” challenged Boots. “Where are we going to keep thirty thousand pop cans?”

  “I thought of that already,” replied Bruno smugly. “We can hide them in Dormitory 3. Nobody even goes near there since they closed it up. It’s the perfect place.” He paused. “Well, what do you think?”

  “Let’s do it,” said Pete. “We’ve got nothing to lose that we won’t lose in the long run anyway.”

  The other boys at the table murmured their agreement.

  “Good,” said Bruno. “We’ve got until Friday to spread the word. I want every kid in this school to know what’s expected of him. Tell them we’re aiming for sixty cans per person — more if they can manage it.” He grinned with satisfaction. “Don’t worry. We’ll pull it off.”

  The boys began to file out en route to their afternoon classes.

  * * *

  Sergeant Harold P. Featherstone, Junior, was watching television. As a matter of fact, except for a twenty minute lunch break at Willy’s Hamburger Emporium and half an hour for dinner at the dine
r across the road, he had been watching television all day. Disappointingly, there had been no fish broadcast since 8:45 that morning.

  He lay down on the bed with his voice recorder to make his report. “Investigation Fish,” he began, “Field Report Number One — Sergeant Harold P. Featherstone, Special Division, reporting.”

  He recorded the details of the 8:45 incident, and then wracked his brain for something else to say.

  “I am convinced,” he continued, unsuccessfully suppressing a yawn, “that something very significant may be taking place here. The Fish — uh — as it were — may be …” His voice trailed off and he fell asleep, snoring gently. The recorder continued to hum, capturing his peaceful slumber.

  Next door in room 14, a tall, cadaverous man crouched with his ear pressed against the wall, trying in vain to hear what was being said in Featherstone’s room.

  * * *

  “Bruno, Boots — you guys must be crazy to come here after what happened the last two times!” exclaimed Diane Grant as the two Macdonald Hall boys entered through the window.

  “Is the old girl all right?” asked Bruno.

  “Oh, she’s fine,” said Cathy. “Don’t worry about Miss Scrimmage. She’s immortal. Mad, too. When she called to complain, The Fish didn’t believe her.”

  “So that’s how we got away with it! Anyway, here’s your philodendron.” Boots placed a potted plant on the desk.

  Bruno laughed. “At first Elmer was reluctant to part with one of his little friends. But we told him either to fork it over or come here and personally explain to you why you couldn’t have it. After that he donated it with an open heart. You really made an impression on him.”

  “We try,” said Cathy modestly. “What’s happening with the world records?”

  “Plenty,” replied Boots. “Bruno’s got the whole school in an uproar over it.”

  “Terrific,” exclaimed Cathy. “I love uproars. Can we help?”

  “Yes,” said Bruno, “as a matter of fact, you can. We’re going for the world’s largest pop-can pyramid record and we need some cans.”

  “How many?” asked Diane.

  “Oh, no more than thirty-two thousand,” said Bruno casually.