by Carol Gorman
“Uh-oh is right, kid,” the ref said. “You’re in big trouble.”
I watched the rest of the game with Mary Ann, Zach, and Sam. Lisa had gone home crying that she’d been publicly humiliated and would never dance the hula again. Ginger had gone along to comfort her and to try to scrub the purple spots off her legs.
Everyone pounded me on the back and called me a hero for stopping Shannon from launching any more balloons. Little did they know how much I’d wanted to see Lisa covered with purple dye.
Mary Ann knew, though. She kept looking at me and smiling during the second half of the game. Finally she leaned over and mumbled, “Just think, if your conscience hadn’t been working so hard, Lisa would be a purple blob right now.”
I grinned at her. “That would’ve been fun.”
“Yeah,” she said. “You’ve changed. Last year you would’ve let her get splashed.”
“Yeah?”
Mary Ann nodded. “But you’re more mature now.”
“Is that why I had to stop Shannon?” I said.
“Sure,” she said.
So that was it. I’m getting more mature.
I thought about that on the way home in Dad’s car. I rolled down the window and closed my eyes while the fresh September breeze blew on my face.
Maybe Mary Ann is right, I thought. Getting my period, braiding my hair, putting on makeup, and starting middle school were all part of it.
And not letting Lisa get bombed with permanent dye.
It really was sort of miraculous that things like that just happen without your really thinking them out.
Maturity sneaks up on you.
But I couldn’t help but feel a little bit wistful. After all, I’d only just started middle school. I’d only had a few weeks to start maturing.
Seeing Lisa covered with ugly, permanent, purple dye would have been so cool!
17
I’d just finished reading the newspaper story of the game the next morning when the front doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it!” I yelled to Mom, Dad, and Sam, who were still upstairs.
I opened the door and my heart skipped a beat when I saw who was there.
“Hi, Zach.”
“Hi, yourself.” He stood outside the screen on the front porch. His bike was leaning against the railing. “Thought I’d go to Miller Lake and do some fishing. Want to come?”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll get my pole.”
I ran up to my room, grabbed my pole and tackle box, and ran down the stairs again. “Mom?” I yelled. “I’m going fishing with Zach at Miller Lake.”
“Okay,” Mom yelled back. “Have fun!”
I went out back to the garage, got my bike, and met Zach around on the front porch.
“Ready?” I said. Butterflies fluttered in my stomach a little, and it surprised me. Why was I nervous? This was just Zach. Good old Zach.
“Yep.”
We set off on our bikes, our tackle boxes dangling from one hand on the handlebars, the poles dangling from the other.
It felt good to be with him. I figured he wanted to talk about Lisa again. But for now, as we pedaled along, I pretended everything between us was just the way it had been last year.
It took about twenty minutes to get to the lake.
“Want to fish at our spot under the pine tree?” he asked.
“Sure. That’s the best place.”
He was still calling it our spot. That was nice. I was sure he’d have some places soon that would become his and Lisa’s spots, but at least for now we still had our own special spot.
We rode to the tall tree and leaned our bikes against the trunk.
“I got some worms,” Zach said.
“Great. They always work better out here than lures.”
We got ready and baited our hooks and settled down on the soft grass under the tree.
We didn’t say anything for a long time. It was a comfortable quiet. I breathed in the fresh lake air.
“It’s a beautiful day,” I said.
“The best since school started.”
“You have fun at the game with Lisa?” I said. “I mean, before halftime?”
“Oh, sure.”
“Good.”
“There’ll be another game in two weeks,” I said. “You can meet her there again.”
“Yeah.”
There was another long silence.
Then he said, “Lisa isn’t really like what I thought.”
“She isn’t? What did you think she was like?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Remember when we were down by the creek? And you asked me what Lisa’s interests were? And her talents and stuff?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it hit me last night,” Zach said. “We don’t really have a whole lot to talk about.”
“Oh.”
“I think I’m tired of her,” he said finally.
“Already? How long did that last? A whole week?”
“More.” He smiled a little. “Two. Maybe three.”
“Oh, well,” I said, “there’re lots of other girls at school. You’ll probably find someone else to like pretty soon.”
“Yeah,” Zach said. “Someone who likes the same stuff I do.”
“Yeah.”
There was a long pause. Zach stared at his fishing line in the water and looked very serious.
“Someone who doesn’t call other people ugly,” he said.
I looked over at him. So he believed me after all.
“Someone who isn’t so stupid about football,” he said. “So I won’t have to explain the game.”
I tried not to smile.
“And,” he said, “someone who can fish and pitch a no-hitter and has a dog—named Bob.”
I started grinning at him. He looked up at me. He grinned back while his ears turned bright red.
“So shut up and fish,” he said.
I laughed. “You know what, Walters?”
“What?”
“I really like what the aliens did to you.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind,” I said. “Like you said, shut up and fish.”
Turn the page to start reading the follow-up to The Miraculous Makeover of Lizard Flanagan
CHAPTER ONE
“NOW DO YOU BELIEVE ME, Lizard?” said my best friend, Mary Ann Powers. “I told you I saw it. Isn’t it fantastic?”
I unsnapped the chin strap of my bike helmet and stared at the poster. I wondered if I was dreaming. It seemed too good to be true. But there it was, hanging in the window of McCloud’s Sporting Goods, printed in big red letters on a piece of white posterboard:
ATTENTION YOUNG BASEBALL FANS:
Join us on a trip to Wrigley Field to see the Chicago Cubs play!
WHEN: September 28
COST: $25 (includes grandstand tickets and bus trip)
FOR MORE INFORMATION, contact
Shirley at City Park Recreation
Department. Phone: 555-5630.
Mary Ann had told me last night on the phone that the poster was in the window, but I had to see it for myself. We’d started out early for school, and we took a one-mile detour to stop at McCloud’s at the edge of Spring Pines Mall.
I leaned on my bike and reread the poster. “I can’t believe it. This is great, really great.”
Sports—especially baseball—are my life. I live for them. Mary Ann is a sports nut, too. We both played on the metro touch football and baseball leagues in elementary school, and we’re going out for the Truman Middle School baseball team in the spring.
Mary Ann and I are the Cubs’ biggest fans. But even though we live in Iowa, just five measly hours from Chicago, we’ve never seen a game in person at Wrigley Field. My brother, Sam, and I have been begging our mom and dad for three years to go, and they always say “Sure, sometime we’ll do that.” But it never happens.
Now I had my chance!
“We’ll all go,” Mary Ann said. “You, me, Sam, Zach,
Ed, and Stinky.” Zach is a fantastic athlete—last year he was voted MVP for the Raiders, our metro flag football team, and he shared the MVP award with me on our baseball team, the Hawks. He’s my best friend in the boy category. In fact, we’re going out. Ed and Stinky are great friends of ours, too, and they play in the elementary metro leagues with the rest of us.
Mary Ann’s smile got bigger. “Maybe Al will go too,” she said, her face turning pink. Mary Ann’s going out with Al Pickering, which I think is pretty funny. I mean, he’s a great guy, but he was our archenemy when he QB’ed for the Cougars last year. Middle school has a way of mixing up old loyalties.
“You have a piece of paper?” I asked her.
She pulled off her backpack and rummaged through it before handing me a piece of paper torn from a spiral notebook.
“How about a pencil?”
This probably sounds crazy and superstitious, but I didn’t want to move. I was afraid that if I budged even an inch, or looked away from the poster for too long, the spell would be broken and I’d wake up and realize it was only a dream.
I heard her pawing through her bag, and after half a minute more, she handed me a pencil whose point had been worn almost to the wood.
I copied the number and Shirley’s name and let out a breath. I’d gotten it down on paper, and I hadn’t awakened.
“I’ll call the lady at the rec commission right after school,” I said, folding the paper and shoving it into the pocket of my jeans. “This is so great! Come on. Let’s go tell everybody.”
“Yeah!”
I snapped the chin strap to my helmet, and we started off down the road. “How fast do you think I can go?” I called back to Mary Ann. “I bet I can do twenty-five miles an hour on this stretch.”
“No way.”
I grinned. “Just watch me, Powers, and don’t open your mouth, or you’ll eat my dust.”
“Fat chance.”
I pumped hard, standing on the pedals, keeping one eye on my new computerized speedometer. It’s a beaut. It tells me my current speed and keeps track of any new records I set. It even has a clock and an odometer. After a whole lot of talking and a fair amount of pleading, I’d convinced Mom and Dad to advance me the twenty-five dollars from my allowance to get it. Of course, that also meant that I had to promise to do some crummy chores like cleaning out the garage and the basement to help earn the money to pay them back. So far, I’d only cleaned a corner of the basement, but I was planning on doing the rest fairly soon.
I pumped the pedals and changed from ninth to tenth gear, watching the numbers on the speedometer climb higher and higher. Twelve miles an hour, 13, 14. I glanced back at Mary Ann. She was about thirty yards behind, but I kept pushing. The stretch ended about a half mile ahead.
I was up to eighteen miles an hour now, and the grass along the curb was a green blur as I raced over the road. Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one miles an hour. This was the fastest I’d ever gone. I’d told Mary Ann I could go twenty-five miles an hour.
Mary Ann saw the truck before I did.
“Lizard!” she screamed behind me. “Watch out!”
I looked up and saw a truck pull onto the street ahead, not fifteen yards away.
I squeezed my brakes for all they were worth, jerked the handlebars to the right, and spun around, my back tire sliding out from under me.
The driver of the truck saw me and jammed on his brakes just in time.
I heard the breath whoosh out of me as I hit the pavement, scraping my chin as I turned my head. I ended up on my side, just inches from the truck’s back wheels.
The driver jumped out and bounded over to me.
“You okay?” His eyes were wild with fear.
I wasn’t sure if I was okay or not. I moved my arms, then my legs. “Uh, yeah,” I said. Actually, I was hurting all over and blinking back tears. I hadn’t bawled in front of anyone since I was ten, though, and I wasn’t going to let myself cry now.
“Lizard! Oh my gosh, I thought you were dead for sure!” Mary Ann stopped her bike in front of me. She was breathing hard. “Are you okay?”
“Sure.”
I pulled myself to my feet, aching all over, and the guy’s face suddenly changed from scared to angry. “What were you doing, trying to get yourself killed?”
I was about to say, No, that’s generally not a goal I set for myself, but Mary Ann jumped right in.
“You know,” she said to the man, “you pulled into traffic without making sure the street was clear, and my friend here is legally allowed to travel the speed limit, which is twenty-five miles an hour on this stretch. How fast were you going, Lizard?”
“Twenty-one.”
The man waved angrily, marched back to the driver’s seat and slammed the door behind him. Then he moved off down the road.
Mary Ann turned back to me and glared. “What were you doing, trying to get yourself killed?” she hollered. “Are you crazy?”
I was shaking all over, and my knees felt rubbery. It was a stupid thing to do, I knew that now, and I didn’t plan on trying it again.
“I know, it was dumb,” I said. “But I’m okay.”
“Good thing you were wearing your helmet,” Mary Ann said.
“I didn’t hit my head.”
“You could have split it right open, just like a watermelon.”
I didn’t want to think about that. “Come on, let’s go.”
My bike was scraped, but it worked. I climbed back on and started off down the road. I’d probably need to get the brakes adjusted, but for now I could get to school with no problem.
“Your chin’s bleeding,” Mary Ann said, coming up from behind. “Your arm is too. And your jeans are torn.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ll clean up at school.”
Mary Ann didn’t say any more. Maybe she knew I was more shaken up than I let on. She has a special radar for that kind of stuff.
We got to school and parked our bikes.
“Hey, Lizard! Mary Ann! Over here!” It was Ginger Flush, my locker partner.
Everybody at Truman Middle School shares a locker with one other person of the same sex. It’s according to the alphabet, so my locker partner is Ginger because her last name begins with Fl, just like mine. She’s also—and I don’t admit this to very many people—going out with my brother, Sam. What he sees in her is one of the biggest mysteries of my life.
Ginger hurried over. Standing nearby was Lisa St. George, the most sickeningly gorgeous girl in the sixth grade. Ginger is Lisa’s sidekick. You know, like Robin is to Batman. Whenever you see Lisa coming into a room, you know that Ginger’s not far behind. It’s funny, though; even though Ginger’s the sidekick, she talks a lot more than Lisa.
Ginger stopped in front of me. “We’re all making guesses on who—” She stopped and stared at my chin. “Hey, Lizard, do you know you’re bleeding all over the place?” She pointed to a spot of blood on my shoulder. “Gross!”
I shrugged. “My bike fell out from under me.”
She frowned. “Bruises and scars for sure.”
Lisa stepped forward, looking impatient. “We’re all making guesses about who will make the first cut to model in the Spring Pines fashion show. We’re making lists of everyone’s guesses, then tomorrow after school when the names are posted, we’ll find out who was right.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
Ginger’s eyes got big. “You mean you haven’t heard about the fashion show? Everybody at school has been talking about it for weeks!”
I shrugged.
“It’s the biggest event of the year!” Ginger said. “Almost every girl in school sent in a head shot—that’s a close-up picture of your face—and a bio telling about her interests and stuff. My sister said lots of girls in the high school did too. First, about twenty-five girls will get picked to go on to the interviews. After that, fourteen girls—two from every grade, sixth through twelfth—will be chosen to model in the fashion show. They’ll each get fifty dolla
rs, and the best model in the show will be picked as Spring Pines Mall’s Supermodel. She’ll get a hundred dollars!”
“So we’re guessing who’ll be on the first list?” Mary Ann asked. Ginger’s head waggled up and down.
“I’ll make a guess,” Mary Ann told Ginger.
“I’m going inside to clean up,” I said to Mary Ann. “If I see the guys, I’ll tell them about the Cubs game.”
I started off toward the building and heard Mary Ann say, “I bet you’ll be chosen, Lisa.”
“That’s eighty-three guesses for me,” Lisa said. I could hear the smugness in her voice from ten yards away.
I walked stiffly through the crowd of kids waiting to get into the school, trying not to limp. My right leg felt as if someone had slammed it with a baseball bat. My jeans were torn clear through at the knee, but the skin wasn’t even scraped. I pulled open the door to the school building.
“Hey, Lizard!” I recognized Zach Walters’s voice.
“Hi, Zach.” I turned and grinned at him, then let the door swing closed again. “Boy, do I have great news for you.”
“For me?” He walked over, followed by my twin brother, Sam, Ed Mechtensteimer, and Stinky Porter.
“Great news for all of us. We’re going to Chicago to see a Cubs game!”
“We are?”
“What are you talking about?” Sam asked.
“Hey, Lizard,” Zach said, looking at my chin. “What happened? You’re bleeding.”
“I fell off my bike,” I said. “Some guy driving a truck practically killed me. And I was about to break my all-time speed record, too. If the guy hadn’t cut me off, I could’ve made it up to twenty-five miles an hour for sure!”
Sam’s face didn’t change. “The trucker may not have killed you, but Mom will when she hears about it.”
I ignored my brother. “Hey, listen, there’s going to be a trip to Wrigley Field in a couple of weeks to see the Cubbies play!”
“You’re kidding!” Zach said.
“The Cubs? The Chicago Cubs?” Ed said. “You’re sure?”
“No way,” Stinky said. “You’re making that up.”
“I saw the poster with my very own eyes. It’s hanging in McCloud’s window. The trip costs twenty-five dollars, and that’s for box seats and the bus ride. I suppose we have to bring extra money for Cokes and hot dogs and stuff to eat along the way. You have to call someone named Shirley at the City Park Recreation Department to sign up. Here, I have the number.”