“Wrong. Some of us are working at camp because we actually like kids,” Luis said. “Dr. Comfrey should have never put you in charge.”
“Who was she going to put in charge then? One of you? If you like kids so much then go be a kindergarten teacher.”
Ava scowled and sat on a step. She removed one of her lab notebooks from her bag and started writing.
“Dylan, don’t you think I deserve more than this?” Madison asked.
Dylan glanced up from his smart phone. “You know I do, Madison.” He frowned and dropped his gaze.
“You guys can stay here with Ava. I have work to do.” Madison walked away, clutching her clipboard to her chest.
Susan snorted. “Like we are going to take Dylan’s word for it. Madison could tell him the moon was made of popcorn, and he’d believe it.”
“No, I wouldn’t.” Dylan half-grinned. “It’s made of cheese, right?” He ran after Madison.
Susan groaned. “Oh, hey, Ava, tell your mom I said thanks. She did a great job getting that tar stain out of my favorite pair of jeans.”
Ava’s jaw twitched.
Luis held up two fingers. “Two questions. One, how did you get tar on your jeans, and two, what does Ava’s mom have to do with it?”
“The first one is a long story, but Ava’s mom is my family’s maid.” She smiled brightly at Ava. “She must be so proud of you for making it into Discovery Camp. What an achievement!”
Ava looked up from her notebook. “Does it surprise you that I’m smart when my mother’s a maid?”
Susan turned bright red. “No, of course not. I didn’t mean it like that.”
Ava slammed her notebook. “Then how did you mean it?”
Susan didn’t answer.
Ava stood. “Not all of us have rich parents. The only chance I will have to go to a college like this one is with a scholarship. Don’t rub it in my face.”
Susan’s mouth fell open. “Ava — ”
“I’m going to the library. Don’t come with me.” She stomped away.
“Nice work, Susan,” Luis said.
“I was trying to be nice. I thought she would like to hear something nice about her mom. Ava’s not the easiest to talk to.” She folded her arms. “She reminds me of Madison.”
Luis shook his head. “Let’s go. We can hang out by Colburn, and maybe find out if there will be camp tomorrow.”
The two college students walked away from the library.
“What are you two staring at?” a voice asked behind Colin and me.
We both jumped.
Polk stood a few feet behind us. Curie sat at his feet. Her leash lay on the ground. The beagle waddled in the direction of the dumpster.
I swallowed, looking at Polk differently now that I knew about the previous campus explosion.
“Hi, Polk,” Colin squeaked.
He smiled. “You were listening to those kids, weren’t you?” His shoulder sagged. “They must think I caused the accident this morning. Everyone else on campus does.”
“They didn’t say anything about you,” Colin said. “They were complaining that they still have to work today when most of the kids went home.”
Polk snorted. “I’m used to kids like Madison. Entitled.”
Behind Polk, I just saw the hint of black and white fur around the corner. This was bad.
I cleared my throat. “Umm, Polk, you’d better get Curie. I saw a baby skunk over here this morning. She might get in trouble.”
All three of us headed to Curie to pull the dog away from the baby skunk’s hiding place. Curie happily snuffled the ground. We were within three feet of Curie when the skunk came around the corner, but it wasn’t the little baby skunk that I had seen before. It was the big mama, and she wasn’t happy. She turned tail and hit us with both barrels. I covered my face in the nick of time. From his screams, Colin wasn’t so lucky.
CASE FILE NO. 16
Curie began to howl. I lowered my hands. The smell was overwhelming. The beagle had taken the brunt of the skunk’s spray, but the rest of us hadn’t been spared. I gagged. “What do we do now?”
“Let’s go to my house,” Colin said with his hand over his nose and mouth. “Polk, you should come too.”
The older man looked down at his dog. “Poor Curie. I get off work at three. I don’t think the boss will care if I take off a little bit early under the circumstances. It’s not like I can clean any of the buildings in this condition.”
“How are we going to leave campus without walking by the science building?” I asked. Colburn was the closest building to the main entrance. “There are police and campus officials there. They are sure to see us, and if they can’t see us, they are sure to smell us.”
“There is a ser vice exit we can use. It’s closed to students, and the university uses it for deliveries,” Polk said. “Get your bikes and follow me.”
The walk to the Carters’ house was terrible. We smelled awful, and we knew it, and we were constantly reminded of it as drivers rolled up their car windows to block the smell.
“This is a new low,” Colin said as we stumbled up his driveway.
Bergita threw open the front door. “You’re ho — Yack! What a stink!”
I hung my head. “Skunk.”
“I can smell it,” she said in a muffled voice because she covered most of her mouth. “To the backyard with the four of you. Don’t even set foot on this porch.”
We stumbled down the driveway to the backyard. I unlatched the fence.
Jackson and Bergita appeared at the house’s back door. Jackson took two steps into the backyard, lifted his nose, and bolted between Bergita’s legs back into the house. Bergita started giving orders. “Colin, grab the kiddie pool we use for Jackson’s baths. It’s leaning against the back of the garage.”
“What’s the kiddie pool for?” Polk asked.
“You,” Bergita said.
Colin rolled the blue plastic wading pool into the middle of the yard and dropped it.
“Get in, all of you. I’ll be right back.” Bergita disappeared into the house. Seconds later, she returned with a manual can opener in one hand and three extra-large cans of V8 and one can of stewed tomatoes in the other. A wooden clothespin pinched her nose closed. “This was all I had, but it will get you started.” She pulled up short. “Why aren’t you in the pool?” Her voice sounded stuffy because of the clothespin.
Colin and I hopped into the pool. Polk, holding Curie, lowered himself in. We settled into our spots. It was a tight fit, but we made it work.
Bergita started opening the cans of V8. “You might want to take your phones out of your pockets.”
We all emptied our pockets, and Bergita poured V8 on our heads.
“Yow!” Colin shivered. “That’s cold!”
Polk wiped V8 from his deep-set eyes. “This is not the way to deal with a skunking. What you need is hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and liquid soap. Tomato juice will only cover the smell.”
Bergita poured an entire can on Curie. The beagle howled. Polk had to keep a firm grip on her.
Bergita shook the last drop from the can of stewed tomatoes. “How do you know?” Bergita asked.
Polk swallowed. “I — I saw it on television.”
Bergita cocked her head. “I’m willing to give it a try if it will work. But I don’t have enough hydrogen peroxide in the house for this job. You all sit there and marinate for a while. I’m going to have to run to the market. I’ll pick up some tomato juice too just to be safe.” She eyed us. “When I get back, you are going to tell me how you got into this predicament.”
After Bergita left, I turned to Polk. V8 dripped from my nose. “How do you know about the hydrogen peroxide, Polk? I don’t believe it’s from television.”
The older man shifted uncomfortably.
Curie shook her head and tomato juice flew into the air. Curie. I had never thought about her name before. “You named your dog after Marie Curie, the scientist.”
; Polk wiped V8 from the wrinkles on his cheek. He still had a firm grip on Curie with his other hand. “Why, yes, I did.”
“Because you used to be a chemist,” I said. “You were the chemistry professor at the university a long time ago.”
Polk frowned. “How do you know that?”
“We asked a friend,” Colin said.
Curie wiggled in her master’s lap and pulled Polk’s glove from his wrist in the process. I got just a glimpse of a scar on the back of his hand. “It’s okay, girl. This will take the smell away.”
I swallowed. “Is that scar from the explosion in the chemistry lab when you were a professor there, and a student died?”
“Who told you that?” He yanked up his glove and tightened his grip on Curie.
She whimpered.
He relaxed. “I’m sorry, old girl.”
“Mr. Finnigan at the historical society told us.” Colin shook tomato juice from his glasses. I bet he wished he had thought to take them off before Bergita started pouring the V8.
Polk nodded. “Yes, Patrick would know. He knows everything about everyone in the town.”
“So it’s true?” Colin said.
“I won’t deny it. That event made me the person I am today.” His voice dropped. “For good or ill.”
“The student who died was Kip’s father.”
He nodded. “I see you’ve done your homework. Kip never liked me because of his father’s death. Now, he believes he has the ammunition to get rid of me for good. Before you ask, I had nothing to do with the accident in Meg’s lab. I wouldn’t do anything that might put Meg in jeopardy like that. She is a talented chemist and has a bright future. I don’t want hers to be stolen like mine was.”
“Is she a relative of yours?” Colin asked.
The older man shook his head. “No. But she is kind, and when she learned about what had happened to me she opened the lab to me. She said I could visit as much as I liked. I appreciated that. For so long, I was told to stay away from the chemistry lab. To be welcomed back was a nice change. Of course, I had been in the lab many times in the intervening years as part of my job, but to be welcomed back not as the help but as a colleague, as someone to be consulted with over lesson plans and lab experiments — it was wonderful. I felt like my old self again, something I had lost all those years ago when a mistake destroyed my life.” He sighed. “And I know I am not the one who suffered the greatest loss. Doug, the student who died, and his young wife and baby son, Kip did. He was a bright student, and I mourned his loss too.”
As Polk spoke, his grasp on Curie must have loosened because before we knew it, the dog wiggled out of his grasp and dashed for the gate Bergita had left open in her haste to buy more tomato juice. As Curie ran, stewed tomatoes and droplets of V8 juice trailed behind her. She disappeared through the gate.
Polk, Colin, and I scrambled to our feet, but the tomato-slick kiddie pool was too slippery, and we landed in a heap. Finally, I was able to roll out of the pool onto the grass and landed on my back like a turtle. My shoelace caught on the lip of the pool. It took me precious seconds to unravel it.
Polk didn’t wait and hurried through the gate by the time I made it to my feet.
“Are you okay?” Colin asked.
“I’m fine. Go find Polk and Curie.” I quickly tied my shoes, which wasn’t that easy with laces coated in tomato.
Colin shot through the gate.
CASE FILE NO. 17
By the time I got out on the driveway, Polk, Colin, and Curie were gone, but it wasn’t hard to see which way they went. I just had to follow the tomato paw prints. They led me to the end of the street and a house on the corner. Polk watched the house anxiously.
I caught my breath as I stared at the house. “What’s going on?”
“Curie is under the porch, and Colin went under there after him.”
“Have the owners come out?”
He shook his head and a stewed tomato went flying into the grass. “Colin knocked on the door to see if they were home, but no one answered.”
I dug my fingernails into my palms. Colin should have waited for me and let me crawl under the porch. There was bound to be all sorts of things he was allergic to under there. I didn’t want him to have an asthma attack. I peeked under the house. “Colin?”
“I’m okay,” he wheezed. “I have Curie. We’re coming out.”
The white of his tomato-streaked sneakers caught the light as he wiggled backwards toward the opening. His feet and legs appeared. He was about halfway out when I saw Curie’s muddy head. Someone was going to need a bath. That was for sure.
“Hold on,” I said. “Wait right there for a second.” I ran back to Polk and grabbed Curie’s leash from him. I clicked it on her collar and pulled her out the rest of the way. “I got her. Come on out.”
Colin wriggled backwards and rolled onto his back. His hair was plastered to his head. Mud and tomato juice covered his arms and legs. I could barely see the camp logo on his T-shirt.
I started to giggle. “You look like you mud wrestled a tomato.”
Colin picked a stewed tomato out of his hair. “The tomato won.”
Polk knelt beside Curie. He gave the dog a bear hug. “Shhh, shhh, you are okay, girl. You’re just fine.”
The dog gave him a big sloppy kiss up one side of Polk’s face and down the other, and the former chemist laughed. It was a deep belly laugh, and it hit me like a slap. It sounded so much like my father’s laugh, I staggered backward.
“Are you okay, Andi?” Colin’s face was streaked with tomato and mud. I couldn’t have looked much better.
I shook thoughts of my parents away. “I’m okay.”
Colin brushed his bangs off of his dirty glasses and blinked at me from behind the dirty lenses. “Are you sure?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked a little too quickly.
Colin frowned. “Bergita’s not going to be happy.”
Polk stood and placed a hand on his back. “Maybe I should leave. I don’t want to cause trouble for you with your grandmother.”
“You have to come back,” Colin wheezed. “She will want to make sure Curie is okay for herself, and what about all the tomato juice and hydrogen peroxide she is buying?” He wheezed again. This wasn’t good.
I scrunched up my face and studied Colin. “You feel okay? Maybe you should take some puffs of your inhaler.”
He tapped his shorts pocket and his shoulders drooped. “It’s back in the yard. I took it out of my pocket to save it from the tomato juice.”
“We’d better head back then,” I said.
“All right, we will come.” Polk petted Curie’s head. “I hope your grandmother is back with the ingredients we need.”
The dog was covered in mud and tomato. A bath was in order for all of us. At least it was a hot summer day, and I wouldn’t mind getting soaked again.
We headed back to the house. Bergita stood in the middle of the driveway with hands on her hips. Two crates of tomato juice and the largest bottle of hydrogen peroxide I’d ever seen sat on the driveway beside her. “What on earth is going on?”
“My apologies, Bergita. It is my fault. I let Curie loose, and she ran to a neighbor’s house. She crawled underneath their porch. Colin got her out for me.”
Bergita’s typical sunny expression clouded over. “Colin did what? Who knows how many allergens could be lurking under a house — mold, dust, just to name a few. Not to mention, the heat can set off an asthma attack.” She held up his inhaler, “You are running around and I find this in the backyard.”
Colin coughed and took the inhaler from his grandmother. He took two quick puffs. Seconds later his shoulders relaxed.
“What do you have to say for yourself?”
“I’m sorry,” Colin winced. “Andi reminded me to take it.”
“Good. I’m glad one of you has some sense. I don’t mind the skunk attack, but asthma attacks are a whole different story. I won’t tolerate one of those, young man,
especially when they can be avoided with a bit of common sense.”
“I’m sorry,” Colin muttered.
Bergita gave a curt nod. “Apology accepted, but I don’t want to hear about you doing something like that again. Understand me?”
“Yes,” Colin squeaked.
“Good. Now, take this tomato juice and hydrogen peroxide to the backyard and get into the pool. I will grab some baking soda, soap, and towels from inside the house. Then I will start up the grill for our cookout. I want everything to be relatively normal by the time your aunt gets home, Andi.” She paused. “And you still don’t smell so good.”
An hour later, I sat on Bergita’s back porch, toweling my hair dry. After the tomato juice and hydrogen peroxide mixture soaking, Bergita thought I smelled okay enough to run over to my house and shower. I lathered up with half a bottle of my sister’s favorite Bath and Body Works body wash. She would be mad, but I would buy her another bottle. The regular soap I typically used wasn’t going to cut it. At the moment I smelled like Japanese Cherry Blossom with just a hint of skunk. Polk had been right. The hydrogen peroxide mixture worked much better than the tomato juice. I hoped the smell would all wear off in time for camp tomorrow — if there was camp tomorrow.
Colin was inside his house cleaning up, and Polk sat on another patio chair wearing a borrowed T-shirt and sweatpants from Colin’s dad’s closet. Despite the heat and the fact that they were soaking, Polk wore his leather gloves.
Curie, who suffered the direct hit, still smelled a little funky, but we silently agreed to ignore it. She lay in the now empty kiddie pool.
Colin came through the back door. His hair, which was usually in his face, was damp and slicked back.
Bergita piled hamburgers from the grill onto a plate. “Everyone go ahead and dig in. Bethany called while you were all cleaning up to tell us not to wait and eat. She and Amelie were going to grab something at the mall.”
That was probably for the best.
I poured glasses of lemonade. “It’s not just Bethany. They went there to pick up Bethany’s best friend from back home, Kaylee.”
“That’s even better.” Bergita nodded. “I know Bethany misses her old life. It will be good for her to see her friend.”
Andi Under Pressure Page 8