“Principal Ramsey? Is it true? Are fleas taking over the whole school like teeny-tiny flesh-eating zombies?” I tug a tiny bit at his suit, just in case he didn’t notice my voice.
He leans down to me with a serious look. “Just between you and me, Quinny, this is the worst lice outbreak I’ve seen in my two decades at Whisper Valley Elementary.”
Just hearing those words makes me feel itchy.
During language arts, I get to tell Mrs. Flavio my new how-to topic. I show her the title and the whole table of contents that Hopper and I did together.
HOW TO HAVE YOUR TONSILS OUT
WITHOUT FREAKING OUT
By Hopper Grey and QUINNY BUMBLE
Table of contents
(Just a rough draft. We still need to fix and fancy this up.)
1) Tonsils 101: Open Wide! Here, Hopper draws the inside of your mouth and throat. What’s really in there, anyway? A whole lot of slime, to be honest.
2) How Well Do You Know Your Tonsils Trivia? Play a little game of True or False and find out.
3) Ask an Expert: Dr. Merkle has been an ENT doctor for eighteen years—that’s a lot of tonsils!
4) What Really Happens at the Hospital? Here we show the inside of the operating room and interview some extra experts, like Nurse Chuck and anesthesiologist Dr. Parva.
5) Been There, Done That. Here we interview a kid who survived a tonsillectomy—and you will, too! Then he draws what it was really like with his own awesome set of charcoal pencils.
6) Ice-cream Word Search Time! Here are two, because we couldn’t decide which one to use.
7) Hate Bunnies? Enter our design-your-own-hospital-gown contest! Guest judge is fashion designer and president of ViP Fashions Victoria Porridge, but we still have to ask her.
8) Last but not least: What to Do with Leftover Tonsils! Imagine if you could actually keep your tonsils. Here are just some of the endless possibilities for what you could do with these special slimy souvenirs. (We put this in because laughter is the best medicine.)
I wait for Mrs. Flavio to read the whole thing and be impressed, but after only a few seconds, she looks at me. “Eleanor, what is the meaning of this?”
“The meaning is, it’s a table of contents—”
“Don’t get smart with me. Each student is required to do his or her own work.”
“I did, and so did Hopper—”
“Hopper is absent—”
“Oh, he’ll be back soon! He lives next door to me. That’s how we did this together.”
Mrs. Meanie Sub checks her big teacher book. “I see you’re already late in turning in your topic. As you’ll learn, I’m a firm believer in following directions and respecting rules.”
“I had a topic on time! I really did! But I didn’t want to hurt Piper’s feelings, and then Victoria stole my chickens, and then, over the weekend, I was playing with Hopper and—”
“Enough!” Mrs. Meanie Sub booms.
The whole class looks over at us. My face feels swollen now.
“Eleanor—back to your seat. Please find a coherent, suitable topic of your own by tomorrow, or you get a zero.”
A zero? I don’t even know what coherent means.
“Everybody else, line up. It’s time to go outside.”
Everybody lines up, all excited for recess.
But for my recess, Mrs. Flavio makes me stay inside and sit in a chair.
I slump at my desk. I press my hands on my ears so I don’t hear all the excitement.
I am not going to cry. It’s okay to cry in school if you need to, but I don’t want to cry in front of Victoria. (Whenever I’m upset, she stares so hard I think her nosy eyes might explode.)
Maybe one or two tears leak out anyway.
“You can have the chickens back.”
I rub my face and look up. Victoria is hovering over my desk. “I’m going to write ‘How to Build a Fashion Empire’ after all. It turns out chickens are not my kind of animal.”
Grrrr. No kidding. I could have told her that before she stole those chickens.
“They’re stubborn,” says Victoria. “And way too poopy. They’re all yours.”
She puts a piece of candy on my desk. It’s maple candy, my favorite.
For every two or three awful things Victoria does, she does one nice thing. Sometimes that girl is even more confusing than Hopper.
“Victoria, back in line, please,” Mrs. Flavio calls out. “Time to go.”
Then that meanie sub catches me chewing Victoria’s candy and makes me spit it out. Of course she does. Because that’s the kind of rotten-lucky day I’m having.
My room used to be my favorite place in the world. But now that I’ve been trapped in here, like Mom’s priSONer, for the last few days, I miss school. Even the loud parts.
And I never want to see another Popsicle again as long as I live.
“Hopper, how are you feeling?”
It’s Mom at my door again. With a Popsicle and this look on her face, like I’m not resting enough. But I don’t feel sick anymore. My throat feels better, and I’ve been working on the tonsils book. I’ve got six panels of illustrations done and several more sketched in.
Still, when Mom walks in, I hide my sketchbook and lie there like she wants me to.
“Are you resting, sweetie? Would you like another Popsicle?”
No and no. I would like a rest from being forced to rest.
Mom tells me she has to drive the twins to soccer because their carpool family got lice. “But Mrs. Porridge will be right downstairs if you need anything. And I’ll be back soon, and you can always call my cell if you—”
“Mom, relax. He’ll be fine.” Ty comes up behind her, wearing his soccer clothes.
“Yeah, Ma. Leave him alone,” Trevor adds. Then he says to me, “Wanna use the Xbox?”
I shake my head. The last few days, Ty and Trevor have been acting so strange that I can’t believe they’re the same brothers who used to toss me around like a beanbag.
Who are these people, and what did they do with my real brothers?
“Try to get some rest, okay?” says Mom.
I let her hug me good-bye. Then I watch from the window as they drive away.
I also see Mrs. Porridge out in the yard, weeding our vegetable patch. She waves up at me and asks if I’m hungry—I shake my head no. She asks if I feel like playing cards—no. She says that in that case she’ll be out there weeding my mother’s sorry excuse for a vegetable patch because it pains her to look at such an unkempt garden.
This means that, right now, I have the whole house to myself.
I go out into the hall and into my parents’ room. I dial a number on their phone.
“Dr. Merkle’s office,” says Trudy’s voice on the phone. “How may I help you?”
“Can I please speak to Dr. Merkle? This is Hopper Grey. He took my tonsils out.”
“Oh, hello there, Hopper. Dr. Merkle is with a patient. Can I help you with anything?”
“No thank you. I just need to talk to him.”
“Is everything okay, sweetie?”
“Yes, but can you please tell him it’s important?”
I hear a noise from downstairs. I don’t want Mrs. Porridge to know what I’m doing, so I hurry off the phone and back to my room, but in the hallway I bump into Quinny.
“Hopper, what were you doing on the phone?”
Seeing Quinny startles me. I keep going to my room, but a second later she barges in and flops onto my beanbag chair, which I didn’t give her permission to do.
“You’re supposed to ring the doorbell before you walk into someone’s house.”
“Mrs. Porridge said I could come in. Now, brace yourself—I have some tragic news. Mrs. Meanie Sub kicked me off the tonsils book, so I can’t do it with you anymore.”
“What?”
“She’s making us do our own separate how-to assignments—no sharing.”
“But a lot of the ideas in there are yours.”
“She doesn’t care.”
“If they kick you off, then I’m kicking myself off, too.”
“You can’t kick yourself off—they’re your tonsils.” Quinny slouches. “I should have known that meanie sub would never let me do this. She hates me. I bet if Victoria asked to do the book with a partner, she would say ‘Yes, of course, Victoria, do anything you want.’ Oh, Hopper, when are you coming back? I like school so much better when you’re there!”
My stomach backflips to hear her say this. I like any place better when Quinny is there, too. But I don’t actually tell her this. It’s scary enough that I think it. My feelings feel breakable and private, and I’m not going to holler them out into the world.
Who knows what people would do with my feelings if they knew about them?
There are people in the world like Victoria, who will chew your feelings up and spit them out. There are people like Alex Delgado, who I’m talking to more at school, but still, he’s only friendly sometimes and he calls people names like moron and idiot. I know he’s got those ugly words inside him like a weapon, and who knows when he’ll aim them at me?
There’s another boy at school, Caleb, who moved here from California, and Quinny thinks he’s nice. But Caleb plays soccer in the same league as my brothers, and he’s becoming friends with Alex Delgado, too. That’s not a great sign.
Quinny’s really the only one I can trust. But I’m not going to tell her that.
“What if we still did the tonsils book together?” I say.
“Ha. I’d get a zero.”
“Not for school or anything. Just to do it.”
Quinny’s eyes shine. “You mean, like, for fun?”
“And to help other kids. Did you know that eighty thousand people get their tonsils taken out every year, just in the United States? And most of those people are kids.”
“Wow, Hopper, that’s a lot of tonsils! So a comic book, a coloring book, AND a magazine book about tonsils all rolled into one. By kids, for kids. So you know it’s honest.”
“We could give it to Dr. Merkle.”
“Ooh, and the school librarian!” yells Quinny.
“I was thinking about it today. I called Dr. Merkle to interview him for the book. I have an appointment with him on Friday, and we could show it to him then. Maybe he’ll even put it in his waiting room.”
“Hopper, you mean Dr. Merkle might publish your book?”
“Our book. And no, silly—he’s an ear, nose, and throat doctor, not a book publisher.”
“Why can’t he be both?”
I think for a second. “I don’t know.”
“Or I could publish it!” Quinny declares. “There’s a copy shop on the way to that college where my mom works—”
“Quinny, you’re not a publisher, either. You’re just a kid.”
“So what? It only costs a dime to publish a page on the machine at the copy shop. I went there with Mom to copy Piper’s birth certificate so she could start kindergarten early because she’s an evil genius. By the way, how much money do you have?”
“Quinny—”
“And how many total pages do you think our book will be when it’s done?”
“Quinny—”
“I think we should keep it short and funny. Nobody likes long books—”
“Hey, I like long books—”
“A short book with lots of jokes, and we can sneak in the serious information—”
“Quinny, can I talk, too? Or are you going to keep having a conversation by yourself?”
“Of course you can talk! It’s not my fault you never jump in.”
“Okay, let’s do this,” I jump in. “Let’s figure it out.”
“YAYYYYYYY! But Hopper, if we want that tonsils book ready to show Dr. Merkle by Friday, we’ve got to act fast! We don’t have time to wait for the Brain Expo. We should go back to the hospital to interview Nurse Chuck and Dr. Parva and find those tonsils right away. I’m free this afternoon!”
“Very funny.”
“It’s not too far. The hospital is just a few blocks past school. Imagine if we had a picture of you holding a jar with your real-life tonsils. That book would be a best-seller.”
“My parents won’t let me go anywhere until my throat is totally healed.”
Quinny looks out the window. “Well, they aren’t home right now, are they?”
I look out at Mrs. Porridge in the garden, too. “There’s no way she’ll take us there.”
“I know,” says Quinny. “But he might.”
“He?”
“Listen.” She puts a hand to her ear and gestures out to something in the distance.
I listen. But all I hear is the faraway sound of someone hammering.
I lead Hopper out to Mrs. Porridge in the garden, all careful and polite. “Oh, hello again, Mrs. Porridge. It’s so lovely to see you. How are you doing today?”
There is a smudge of dirt on her face as she looks up from under her sun hat, which is almost the size of a beach umbrella. “What are you up to now, Quinny?”
“Absolutely nothing! We’re just going to say hi to the chickens if it’s okay with you.”
“Hopper, you feeling okay?” Mrs. Porridge looks at him kind of closely.
“He feels great,” I answer for him. “But he could use some fresh air. Right, Hopper?”
Hopper looks a little queasy, which I think proves my point.
“Hmmp, well, okay,” says Mrs. Porridge. “But don’t stay too long. Ten minutes. That stubborn old coot is still over there hammering away, trying to build the Taj Mahal.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Porridge!”
I take Hopper’s hand and pull him away. All we have to do is go tell the stubborn old coot—I mean, Grandpa Gooley—about our tonsils book and how we need to interview Nurse Chuck and Dr. Parva (and find those leftover tonsils!), and that Hopper is feeling A-okay to take a little drive over to the hospital quick-quick before his parents even notice.
But just as we get to Mrs. Porridge’s yard, Grandpa Gooley drives off in his truck.
“Grandpa Gooley!” I chase after him. “Grandpa Gooley, stop!”
Without Grandpa Gooley, there’s no way for us to get to the hospital.
“Wait a sec….My daddy’s bike is in the garage,” says Quinny. “And it has a sidecar for Piper, and I’m great at pedaling, and we’ll be back before anyone finds out, I promise.”
“Are you nuts? That’s dangerous, and we’ll get in trouble.”
I argue with Quinny. She argues back. She pulls me over to her garage and shows me her dad’s bike. But that bike is way too big for Quinny. The sidecar is too tiny for me.
No way am I agreeing to this. Never in a million years.
A few minutes later, I’m curled into a ball and bumping along in the tiny, windy sidecar as Quinny pedals her dad’s giant bike down the street. Cars whizz by us.
Quinny has a way of getting people to do crazy stuff, I guess.
I picture the look on Mrs. Porridge’s face when she finds the note Quinny left for her on the chicken porch, saying we’ll be right back from the hospital.
I picture the look on Dad’s face when Mrs. Porridge tells on us.
I feel a little sick to my stomach, and it’s not from the bumpy ride.
We get to the hospital, and Quinny turns to me. “Okay, now what? Do you remember where the throat department is?”
“There’s no such thing as the throat department.”
“We’ll look for Nurse Chuck, then. I bet he knows where they keep the body parts!”
Quinny hides the bike in some bushes and drags me inside the lobby of the hospital.
She smiles at the man behind the front desk.
“Hello and good afternoon, sir! We’re here to see Nurse Chuck and Dr. Parva in the throat department, because Hopper just had his tonsils out and now we’re writing a tonsils book that’s going to help millions of kids everywhere. Can you please give us directions?”
The man looks confu
sed. “Where are your parents?”
“Oh, my mom is just…parking the car. Yes, that’s it.”
“Have a seat until she arrives.” The man points.
“Okay, great, thanks…but we really have to use the bathroom. It’s an emergency.”
The man points again.
“Thanks,” says Quinny. “We’ll be back in two seconds, super quick.”
By the bathroom doors, there is a big rolling bin and Quinny yanks me to duck behind it, so no one can see us. “Hopper, I just had an idea for where those tonsils-in-a-jar could be. I bet they’re down in the basement! They always keep creepy stuff like body parts in basements. Look, there’s an exit sign for the stairs. Let’s just go down there and look—”
“We’re not allowed to go into the basement.”
But Quinny drags me through that exit door. And down the stairs.
The door at the very bottom is locked and reads NO ADMITTANCE—HOSPITAL STAFF ONLY.
“Phooey,” says Quinny. “I guess there’s nowhere to go but up. Do you remember what floor you were on for your operation? Let’s try that floor next.”
“Quinny, no, we have to get back home before Mrs. Porridge gets worried.”
I pull her back up the stairs. She argues the whole time, but I keep going.
I push through the door to the first floor. But then I realize something’s wrong. Everything looks different. This isn’t the right hall, or the same floor we were on.
“Quinny? Where are we?”
“The hospital, silly.”
“But this doesn’t look like the first floor. Or were we on the ground floor?”
I lead Quinny down the hall and turn the corner. This still doesn’t look right. We need to get back to the stairs. I look around some more.
We’re lost. We’re by ourselves, breaking all the rules. My heart is pounding.
I see a tall security guard standing by some elevators, but she doesn’t notice us.
“Oh, oh, Hopper, look! Look right over there!”
I turn to look, hoping that maybe Quinny found Dr. Parva or Nurse Chuck.
“It’s a vending machine!” she cries. “I love those—do you have any coins? And look, there’s a whole entire cafeteria here, too.”
Quinny & Hopper: Partners in Slime Page 7