Jasper nodded.
“I’m going to tell you about one of my favorite episodes.”
Jasper listened.
“Marcel was out on a boat when a storm blew up,” Dad began.
“He doesn’t get motion sickness,” Jasper said.
“So you already know that.”
“I know because he loves it when I swing him on the so so long string. He doesn’t throw up.”
Dad said, “The time that I’m telling you about? His boat actually sank. But Marcel’s a tricky one. Quick, quick, he grabbed the cheese out of the cargo hold and shaped it into a ring.”
“A life preserver?”
Dad sat back and looked at Jasper. “Jasper John, you astound me.”
Mom had been listening in the doorway. She came and sat on the sofa, too, and put Jasper’s feet in her lap.
“Was Marcel okay?” she asked.
“Marcel was not okay. The smell of the cheese and the smell of the mouse brought a shark.”
“Oh, no!” Mom said. “What did he do?”
Dad said, “Oh, he’s a tricky one! He stuffed cheese up the shark’s nose!”
“Really?” Jasper said with a laugh.
“Really. And while the shark was thrashing around with its cheese-stuffed nose, that tricky mouse grabbed his suitcase, opened it like a boat and caught an ocean current. He washed up on a beautiful island where the mice wore grass skirts and played tiny mouse instruments.”
“He didn’t drown?”
“No,” Dad said.
Jasper realized something then. “Dad! He can’t drown. He’s made of plastic. He floats.”
“You’re right, Jasper!” Mom said.
“So you see, Jasper? No matter what kind of trouble Marcel gets into, it always turns into an adventure. His show always ended the same way, with Marcel closing his suitcase and slapping a sticker on it. It was a sticker of the place he’d visited in the episode.”
“You mean Marcel might not be lost?” Jasper asked. “You mean he might be on a trip?”
“That’s what I think,” Dad said. “What do you think, Jasper?”
Jasper sat up on the sofa and grinned. “I think you’re right!”
Chapter 7
On Saturday after soccer, Mom suggested they go to the library. “Let’s find out where Marcel Mouse is headed.”
They got on their bikes and rode to the library. While Mom and Dad locked the bikes in the rack, Jasper went inside and over to the desk where the librarian sat like a hen in a nest. He told her the whole story.
“Marcel Mouse was my dad’s mouse. He wore him on a string around his neck. He never took him off.”
“Never?” the librarian asked, just as Dad joined them.
Jasper turned to Dad. “You did take him off. How else did he get in the box at Nan’s?”
“I grew up, Jasper,” Dad said.
“Until he grew up,” Jasper told the librarian, “he always wore Marcel Mouse. Then my Nan put Marcel in a box and forgot all about him until last week when she found the box in her storage room. She gave Marcel to me and I never took him off either. Except when I went to bed, because it’s Very Dangerous to wear a so so long string around your neck when you’re asleep.”
The librarian nodded.
“And at school,” Jasper said. “At school Marcel napped in a tissue box in the sickroom.”
“We’re looking for an atlas,” Dad told her.
The librarian said, “I’ll help you in a minute, sir. This patron hasn’t finished telling me his story.”
Jasper had to whisper the song because you aren’t supposed to sing in the library where people are reading. He did the dance, waving high and low and turning in a circle. Then he told her about the terrible thing that had happened.
“Flushed down the toilet!” The librarian shook her head and clucked her tongue, just like a hen. Then she came out from behind her desk and led them to the shelf where the atlases were.
An atlas is a book of maps. They took down the biggest one. When they opened it, Jasper remembered something.
“We have an atlas at home,” he said.
“A small one,” Dad said. “We need one big enough to figure out where Marcel is headed. We need one that shows the ocean currents.”
Mom came over with some cookbooks. She needed more recipes for Nan’s party. They sat together at a table and turned the pages of the atlas until they found a picture of the whole world. In the blue parts of the picture, the ocean parts, arrows showed which way the oceans flowed.
“According to this,” Mom said, “Marcel could be heading to Alaska.”
“Alaska!” Jasper said. “Nan went to Alaska!”
“If Marcel is lucky, he might even catch a ride on a cruise ship,” Dad said.
Jasper had gone to see Nan off when she left on her cruise. The ship was huge. It looked like an apartment building lying on its side, except it was white and it floated. It had a swimming pool, a ballroom and ten restaurants. Ten restaurants on one ship! Nan had told Jasper all about it.
“Marcel would have a lot of fun on a cruise ship,” Jasper said.
Dad traced his finger on the map. “And from Alaska, it looks like the next place he’ll end up is Japan.”
Dad named other countries after that. Jasper hadn’t even heard of some of the countries where Marcel Mouse was headed. But the last country he had heard about: Australia.
“Australia? That’s where Uncle Tom lives! Do you think Marcel will see Uncle Tom?”
“Well, it’s a big country,” Mom said.
“But maybe he’ll look up all the Dooleys in the phone book. Maybe he’ll find Uncle Tom and ask him to bring him back.”
Mom and Dad looked at each other. Then Dad said, “While we’re here, I think we should find out exactly how a toilet works.”
They went to find a book about toilets.
That night, instead of reading stories before bed, Jasper and Mom and Dad read the book about toilets. They learned all the parts of the toilet and how a toilet flushed. They saw pictures of toilets from other countries in the world. In Japan, they had toilets that squirted water like a fountain. They had toilets with heaters in the seats.
“Marcel is going to be so so so surprised if he makes it to Japan,” Jasper said.
On Sunday morning, Jasper went over to Ori’s house across the alley and one house down. He rang the doorbell, but nobody answered because of the wa-wa-wa coming from inside. It was Rachel, Ori’s baby sister. They called her the Watermelon. That was what she looked like before she was born, like a watermelon stuffed under Ori’s mom’s shirt.
Jasper opened the door and called hello.
Ori’s head popped out of the Watermelon’s room. He said, “Come and help.”
The baby was on the change table, kicking her legs and waving her fists and going wa-wa-wa. Ori and his dad were on either side, Ori holding her down, his dad wrestling with a diaper. It looked like they were trying to wrap a very angry birthday present.
“Why is she crying?” Jasper asked.
“She hates having her diaper changed,” Ori said.
Ori’s dad told the Watermelon, “Hold still. How can I get a clean one on you when you’re squirming so much?”
Jasper came over and looked down at the Watermelon. He liked her little purple face and the way her tongue pushed back in her gummy mouth.
“Watermelon?” Jasper told her. “You know where we’re going this afternoon? To the sewage treatment plant!”
At the sound of Jasper’s voice, the Watermelon stopped crying and lay still. She gazed up at Jasper with her big eyes.
“Do you know what a sewage treatment plant is, Watermelon? It’s where all the dirty toilet water goes before it’s allowed back into the ocean.”
As quick as he could, Ori’s dad
folded the diaper around her, and he and Ori closed the tapes.
“You sure have a way with this baby, Jasper,” Ori’s dad said. He lifted the Watermelon off the change table. She smiled at Jasper.
“Why are you going to the sewage treatment plant?” Ori asked.
“Marcel Mouse got flushed down the toilet!”
“What?” Ori said.
“We think he’s leaving on a trip. Do you want to come with us and see him off?”
“Where the dirty toilet water goes?” Ori wrinkled his nose and took a step backward. “The thing is, my mom’s out, and I have to help look after the Watermelon.”
“Take this,” said Ori’s dad, holding out the Watermelon’s diaper.
“Yuck!”
Jasper ran away, back across the alley and one house down.
The drive to the sewage treatment plant was long. They stopped for ice cream on the way. When they finally arrived, they parked and got out of the car for a closer look. Jasper stuck his hands through the wire fence and stared at the big concrete building.
“What’s treatment?” he asked.
“It means the water gets cleaned,” Mom said. “So there aren’t any germs.”
“Marcel’s face got washed with hand sanitizer,” Jasper said.
“Similar,” Mom said.
The building was enormous. It was the size of five schools. “Do you think he’ll know how to get out?”
“I know he will,” Dad said. “He’s been through worse trouble than this. He’s probably out already. Let’s go look.”
They got back in the car and drove for a few minutes until they came to a park by the ocean. People were walking in the sunshine and throwing Frisbees to their dogs on the beach.
Jasper and Mom and Dad went for a walk, too, down a long, narrow road. It was the funniest road Jasper had ever seen because it was built on top of the water and it didn’t go anywhere. No cars were allowed, just people and dogs and bikes. When they reached the end, Dad explained that under the road was a long, long pipe. Cleaned-up water from the sewage treatment plant flowed through the pipe and into the ocean.
“This is where Marcel Mouse will start his trip,” Dad said.
They sat on the bench near the water and watched for something small and orange with big ears and big feet, trailing a so so long broken string. After a while, they decided that Marcel Mouse had already caught a current. He was already on his way to Alaska.
Jasper asked Mom for a tissue. She took one from her purse and gave it to him. Jasper stood on the bench and waved the tissue. “Marcel Mouse!” he sang. “Marcel Mouse! Come home soon!”
Chapter 8
At school on Monday, Patty was the Star of the Week. It was hard for Jasper to focus on her Show and Tell. He wanted to tell everybody what had happened to Marcel.
Patty had brought a caterpillar that she kept in a glass jar with holes punched in the lid. Its name was Kitty Cat.
“I named my caterpillar Kitty Cat because I really want a kitten. But I’m allergic,” she told the class.
She passed around the jar and everybody got a chance to see Kitty Cat up close munching on the leaves in the jar. Kitty Cat was green.
Ms. Tosh asked if anybody had questions for Patty.
Paul C. asked, “If you had a cat, would you name it Caterpillar?”
Ori asked, “If you had a cat, would you feed it leaves?”
Jasper waved his hand around.
Ms. Tosh said, “Patty told us a lot of interesting things about caterpillars. Can anybody remember one of those interesting things? Jasper?”
Jasper was waving his hand so that he could tell the class that Marcel Mouse got flushed down the toilet. Now he had to tell Ms. Tosh an interesting thing about caterpillars. He didn’t know any because he’d lost focus while Patty was talking. But he did know an interesting thing not about caterpillars.
“I know a so so so so so interesting thing,” he said.
“Go ahead and tell us, Jasper.”
“If you pour a cup of water into the toilet, the amount of water in the bowl will stay the same.”
“Pardon me?” Ms. Tosh said.
“You can even pour two cups or three cups or four. You can pour three hundred cups of water into the toilet and the amount of water will stay the same.”
Nobody said anything at first. Then they started to laugh. Everybody fell over their tables laughing. Some kids — Leon and Paul C. — fell right off their chairs and onto the floor. Ms. Tosh had to clap her hands to get them to settle down again.
“What does that have to do with caterpillars?” Ms. Tosh asked Jasper.
“Nothing.”
“Is it true?” somebody shouted.
“Is it?” somebody else shouted.
“Is it? Is it? Is it?” everybody wanted to know.
“I’m not sure,” Ms. Tosh said. “Should we do an experiment?”
Everybody, including Patty, shouted, “Yes!”
Ms. Tosh asked Patty to bring cups from the art station. They all marched down the hall in a neat line. When they got to the bathrooms, Ms. Tosh said, “Kids, we have a problem.”
She pointed to the girl symbol on one door and the boy symbol on the other.
They talked together about the problem before deciding to separate into two groups. Ms. Tosh took the girls into their bathroom first. The boys waited in the hall.
While the girls were doing the toilet experiment with Ms. Tosh, the boys were supposed to stay in the neat line and not make noise. But Ori broke away and snuck over to the Lost and Found box. He opened the lid and rooted around inside.
“What’s that?” Paul C. asked when Ori came back with the game that bleeped.
Ori showed him. He asked everybody, “Is this yours? Did you lose it?” Nobody had, so Ori said, “I’m borrowing it.”
The boys clustered around Ori and the game. Ori turned it on and the game chimed its tune, then went, “Bleep!” Ori didn’t know what to do next, but Leon did. He had the same game at home.
“Press this. Now choose a game. Now play.”
“Bleep! Bleep! Bleep! Bleep! Bleep!” went the game.
When they heard the toilet flush, the boys fell back in line. Ori stuffed the game down his shirt. It looked like the start of a watermelon, except it was a rectangle.
Next the girls waited in the hall while Ms. Tosh took the boys into their bathroom to do the toilet experiment.
“Ms. Tosh?” Ori said. “The thing is, you’re not a boy.”
“That’s a good point, Ori. But the janitor who cleans the bathroom at the end of the day isn’t a boy either. Any sort of adult is allowed.”
Ms. Tosh opened the stall door. All the boys checked the water level in the toilet bowl. Then, one by one, each boy went to the sink for a cup of water, came back and poured the water in. When Ori poured his water, the game under his shirt went, “Bleep!”
Ori jumped. He looked at Ms. Tosh, but she was busy making sure nobody spilled water on the floor.
No matter how much they poured in, the water level in the toilet stayed the same!
Ms. Tosh marched the boys out to join the girls waiting in the hall. They all marched back to the classroom. The whole way, everybody chattered excitedly about the magic toilet.
“It’s not magic,” Ms. Tosh said. But she couldn’t explain it. “I’m going to look it up. And Jasper? How did you find out this interesting thing?”
Finally!
Jasper said, “Marcel Mouse got flushed away!”
Chapter 9
After Jasper told the class about Marcel Mouse getting flushed down the toilet, he started to feel all watery inside. He’d brought Nan’s box of treasure to school to play treasure hunters, but now he didn’t feel like it. He felt like lying on the cot in the sickroom with the box of tissues
on his chest.
But Mrs. Jamil wouldn’t let him. He had to go outside.
So Jasper and Ori and Paul C. went to find Isabel and Zoë. They were playing hopscotch at the front of the school.
Jasper held up the long, flat box. The things inside rattled and slid. “Look what we have. Treasure!”
The girls dropped their hopscotch stones and came over. “What kind of treasure?” Zoë asked.
“Toy treasure,” Isabel said, reading the word on the side of the box.
From the expressions on their faces, Jasper could tell they were excited about the toys.
“We’re going to bury this treasure,” Paul C. told them. “At lunch, you can dig it up.”
“Whatever you find, you can keep,” Ori told them.
The girls’ eyes got wide.
“Really?” they said.
The boys nodded, then looked at each other and smiled.
Isabel and Zoë promised not to peek while the boys were burying the treasure. Just in case, Paul C. stood by the jungle gym with his arms crossed, watching for them. He even cleaned his glasses.
Jasper knelt in the sand and dug a deep hole with the plastic container. “When they find this treasure and see it’s soldiers, they’re going to be so so mad.”
Ori dug with the lid. They each dropped a pink soldier in the hole they had dug and cackled as they buried it.
After lunch, Isabel and Zoë followed the boys down to the jungle gym. They brought spoons from their lunches to dig with. They dug and dug until the sand around the jungle gym was all holey.
Jasper and Ori and Paul C. stood by, calling, “Not there!” and “Not even close!” and “Try again!”
Finally Isabel hit something. “Treasure!” she shrieked.
The boys looked at each other, and their mouths got small like they were sucking on a big burst of laughter.
Isabel pulled the treasure out. “A soldier? A pink soldier?”
“I found one, too!” Zoë hollered a second later. “He’s so cute!”
Jasper John Dooley, Lost and Found Page 3