by Mo O’Hara
Once I’d filled up the bag with water I scrambled out onto the roof.
“I guess you’re coming with me then,” I said as I scooped up Frankie from the puddle and plopped him in the bag. I tied a knot in the top and held the bag in my teeth as I climbed down the side of the garage. My feet felt for the top of the compost bin. Got it! From there I jumped down onto the lawn. Escape Route 5 was a success (even carrying a fish). Result!
I ran around to the front of the house and peeked through the window. I could see Pradeep’s back. He was sitting in a chair and Mark was standing in front of him showing him his chemistry set. If Pradeep could just keep Mark downstairs for a bit longer, then Frankie and I would be back before he noticed. In seconds I was at Pradeep’s back door, inching it open.
His mom was inside making popcorn. Popcorn kernels popped and banged so loudly, she didn’t hear the door open. She rolled some popcorn pieces in green marshmallow fluff and rolled some others in blue marshmallow fluff and then squished them into little round globes. Then she poured melted white chocolate over the top of each of the little earths. It took me a second, but then I got it. Melting polar ice caps. Cool.
“Samina,” she called out, “can you come and help Mommy take out our party plates?”
Sami burst through the kitchen door dressed in mermaid pajamas with a blue-and-green tail swooshing behind her. The tail got caught in the door, yanking her onto the floor with a thud. I covered my mouth so she couldn’t hear me laugh.
And before you say anything, laughing at little sisters doing stupid things is totally not evil; it’s not even mostly evil. It’s just regular.
As Pradeep’s mom went over to help her, Frankie and I moved over to the cupboard where all the party stuff was kept. I crouched low behind the counter and put Frankie on the floor in his bag so I could open the cupboard and reach inside.
“Samina, would you like to lick the chocolate bowl?” Pradeep’s mom asked as she put Sami back on her feet and turned to take the chocolate-and-marshmallow popcorn balls out into the living room. I heard the kitchen door shut behind her.
Sami toddled over to the counter that we were hiding behind. “Bowl,” she announced in that really serious way tiny kids have of saying stuff. She stuck her hands in the bowl, smeared them around and started to lick the chocolate. Then she squealed, “Fishy! Fishy!”
I peered around the corner to see Sami jumping up and down on the spot and Frankie swishing his tail in circles and paddling his front fins at the same time to roll the bag toward her. How did he figure out how to do that?
“Fishy! Fishy!” Sami shouted again.
I jumped out from behind the counter. “Shhh, Sami!”
Her bottom lip started shaking in that earthquake warning—this tantrum is going to be a nine on the Richter scale—kind of way.
I scooped up Frankie off the floor in his bag and handed him to Sami. She gripped the top with her chocolatey fingers.
“I mean, shhh, quiet little fishy,” I whispered.
“Shhh, little fishy.” She giggled. She stared at Frankie in the bag. “Swishy little fishy,” she said.
I ran back to the cupboard and searched. Flour, sugar, sprinkles, icing, tiny little icing polar bears … Aha! Food coloring. I grabbed the little green bottle and ran back to Sami and Frankie.
Sami was still holding the bag, but she was much quieter now. She just whispered “swishy little fishy” over and over. Frankie stared at her with his big green bulging eyes and she just stared ahead. What was with this goldfish? He could survive toxic gunge, jump out of windows, and now he could make the noisiest little kid on the planet go quiet. As I looked at Frankie a little lightbulb went on somewhere in the back of my head.
Frankie’s glowing green eyes. They looked like the “Undead Gaze” that the zombies in Mark’s comics used to hypnotize people. And Sami’s stare! One of her eyes was looking at the wall and the other one was looking up my left nostril at the same time.
It was a goldfish stare!
Maybe I hadn’t saved Frankie’s life at all when I shocked him with the battery? Maybe I brought him back from the dead … and now Frankie was a Big Fat Zombie Goldfish! And somehow he had hypnotized my best friend’s sister.
I had to get back to Pradeep. He’d know what to do. Maybe they’d learned about hypnotized little sisters in Cub Scouts? I grabbed Sami’s slimy, chocolatey hand and headed for the back door just as Pradeep’s mom came back into the kitchen.
“Oh, hello, Tom. I thought you and Pradeep were playing at your house. Isn’t Pradeep with you?”
“Um, hi, Mrs. Kumar, um, Pradeep asked me to come and get Sami ’cause my mom said she could play with the new goldfish we got,” I mumbled. “Is that OK?”
“Swishy little fishy,” Sami said again.
“Tell your mom that’s fine, but Pradeep should bring Samina back in half an hour for dinner. Would you like to come as well? I can—”
“OK,” I blurted out, pulling Sami by the hand. Pradeep’s mom was still talking as we ran out the door and around the back of my house. I pushed Sami through the dog flap in the kitchen door (Escape Route 14) and then squeezed through myself.
Sami was still doing the freaky goldfish-stare thing and I knew I had to get Frankie back up the stairs and into his bowl with clean green water or Mark would completely kill me. I peeked around the corner into the living room, but Mark and Pradeep were gone. Then I heard Mark’s mumbling voice upstairs.
Frankie started thrashing around in the water like mad at the sound of Mark’s voice and I swear his eyes started glowing more than ever. I quickly pushed Sami and Frankie back into the kitchen.
“Just wait here,” I said. “And remember, shhhh.”
Sami put a chocolatey finger to her lips as she held the bag in the other arm like a baby doll. “Shhhh,” she said.
OK, I know that it might seem strange to leave my friend’s hypnotized little sister alone with the zombie fish that hypnotized her, but I don’t know how to explain it, I just kind of knew she wouldn’t be in danger with Frankie. I also knew, even back when my brother was mostly evil, Pradeep would totally be in danger with Mark. Zombie goldfish are like Code Blue in jelly bean terms, but EVIL SCIENTIST big brothers are definitely Code Red.
I snuck upstairs and slowly peered around the corner into Mark’s room. Pradeep was on the floor. Oh no, I was too late! I could see his feet but not his body or his head, because Mark’s desk was in the way. Pradeep wasn’t moving at all. Mark must have knocked him out. He’d gone completely evil now. The millipedes in my stomach were having a squirming party.
Mark stood in front of Pradeep and looked at the goldfish bowl. “Fine,” he said. “If you won’t tell me where my experiment is, then you won’t say nothing at all.”
Then I saw Pradeep’s foot wiggle and heard him trying to talk.
“Mmanything,” he mumbled.
He sounded like he did the day we had the green cupcake–eating contest at his mom’s and he was trying to say “No more cupcakes, please” with a mouth completely squashed full of cupcakes.
“Shut up,” Mark said, and kicked Pradeep’s foot as he went out toward the bathroom. “I’m gonna put more water in the fishbowl. Stay put, moron.”
I ran into my room so Mark wouldn’t see me. When I heard him turn on the tap on the bathroom sink, I jumped up and tiptoed back to the doorway of Mark’s room.
I had to get Pradeep’s attention to check he was OK, so I made our secret “I need to get your attention to check you’re OK” call, which is a cross between a snake hiss and a dolphin click.
Pradeep sat up as soon as he heard. He shuffled forward from behind the desk. His arms were stuck behind his back. Then I saw his face. His mouth was completely taped up with Scotch tape from ear to ear in one direction and right down his nose to his chin in the other. Just his nostrils were tape free. He even had little crossways bits of tape going across his cheeks and jaws. That’s gotta hurt. I guess maybe telling Mark about what
’s in a crocodile’s stomach wasn’t such a great idea after all.
I gave him the thumbs-up sign and held up the little bottle of green coloring for him to see.
I think Pradeep smiled a little then. But it was pretty hard to tell for sure, with all the tape. Then Pradeep shook his head really hard.
That’s when I felt the thwack to the back of my head and I saw the carpet in Mark’s room come up to meet my face.
While my face was kissing the carpet, Mark pulled my arms back behind me and tied them together. Everything seemed a bit hazy after that, but he must have dragged me over to where Pradeep was sitting and put us back to back. He had piled up some comics and stuff next to us and there was a shadow of something over our heads. The next thing I knew, he was tying us together with the belt from his white coat. A classic EVIL SCIENTIST move.
Something dripped onto my face. It smelled disgusting. “Pradeep, what is that?” I asked as I wiped my chin on my shoulder.
“Mmark’s mmot mma mmishmmowl mmilled mmoo ma mmop mmith mma mmoxic mmunky mmater mmalanced mmover mmour mmeads,” Pradeep mumbled.
I looked up to see the goldfish bowl sitting on a wobbly tray balanced between two towers of comic books. Water was sloshing out of the bowl with every little move we made.
“Mark’s got the fishbowl filled to the top with the toxic gunky water balanced over our heads?” I said, translating Pradeep’s cupcake talk.
“How do you do that, moron?” Mark interrupted. “No, shut up. Don’t tell me that. Tell me where the fish is!”
He leaned in so his face was right up against mine. I should have said something really cool like, “I guess they don’t make EVIL SCIENTIST breath-freshener then?” But instead I just stared back at Mark, trying really hard to ignore the millipede feeling all over my body. Still, I didn’t tell him where Frankie was.
“Fine.” Mark stood up. “Morons, prepare to be gunged.”
Then I heard a quiet voice say, “Swishy little fishy.”
Sami was standing at the door of Mark’s room with Frankie in the bag in her arms. His eyes were bright green and his tail was thrashing wildly. He was staring right at Mark.
Sami was looking mega–goldfish starey.
“Little moron?” Mark said. “Hey, she’s staring up my nose and at the wall. It’s freaking me out. Make her stop.”
“It’s the fish,” I said. “He’s hypnotized her and he can do it to you.”
Pradeep mumbled, “Mma mmish mmas mmypmomized mmy mmister?”
“Yeah, sorry, I was going to tell you when—thwack. You know,” I said.
Mark bent over to look more closely at the fish in the bag. Frankie’s eyes glowed and Mark was starting to look a bit goldfish starey himself, when he suddenly took a pair of protective science-experiment goggles out of his EVIL SCIENTIST coat pocket and put them on. I had no idea EVIL SCIENTISTS had so many accessories.
“Like that’s gonna work on me,” he snorted. “Cool, the fish has come back with evil powers.”
“He’s not evil!” I shouted.
“Mma mmomminmmation mmof mmoxic mmemicals mmand mma mmattery mmock mmust mmave mmiven mmim mmecial mmowers,” Pradeep said.
“I guess the combination of toxic chemicals and the battery shock must have given him special powers, Pradeep, yes,” I said.
“Can you stop doing that?!” Mark stomped his foot. “I already figured that out. I’m the EVIL SCIENTIST here, not your moron friend. Does he have a white coat? Nooooo. Is he even evil? Nooooo. So shut it!”
That was the most words Mark had ever said to me in his entire life.
Mark paced in front of us with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his coat for a minute. Then he stopped and looked at Frankie.
“OK, Fish, now you’re my zombie goldfish. Just think of all the people we can hypnotize.”
Frankie thrashed his tail and suddenly Sami lunged at Mark. She dropped the bag and tried to attack him. (As much as a three-year-old dressed in a mermaid suit flailing around can be called an attack.) “Swishy little fishy!” she squealed.
Mark just picked Sami up and wedged her, bottom first, into his Star Wars waste-paper basket. Her mermaid tail flapped helplessly against Chewbacca’s face as she struggled to get free. But instead of screaming the house down, she just stared the fishy stare. Wow, Sami was really zombied out.
“You need better minions, Fish,” Mark said as he picked up the bag from the floor. “Now, let’s see if we can make the whole school into fish zombies.”
“You won’t get away with it, Mark,” I said, pulling at the white belt tying Pradeep and me together. “You may be an EVIL SCIENTIST, but you’re still only twelve. Mom will be home soon and she won’t let you hypnotize the school, or toxic-gunge us, or take Frankie anywhere.”
Just at that moment Mark’s phone rang. “Hi, Mom. No, Tom’s fine. He’s playing with his moron friend and his moron sister.” Mark stopped to listen.
“OK, his little friend and his little sister. No, you stay and have coffee with your friend.” Then he paused again. “Oh, sorry, no, Tom can’t come to the phone right now—he and Pradeep are kinda tied up.”
Mark covered the phone with his hand. “Mwahahaha,” he laughed. Mark was getting way too comfortable with this new evil-laugh thing.
Then he spoke again. “I’m fine. I’m just finishing my science homework.”
He hung up the phone and went to put it in his pocket. As he did, Frankie twisted and shook free from Mark’s grasp. The bag landed on the carpet and Frankie started to roll for the door. Yes! Frankie was escaping.
Mark walked over to Pradeep and me and tapped the goldfish bowl above our heads. “Fish!” he called. “Say good-bye to the morons.”
Frankie paused and looked back at us.
“Go, Frankie!” I shouted. “Get away now!”
I felt Pradeep’s body go all tense as he prepared for the gunge to hit us, but the glow in Frankie’s eyes faded as he looked at me.
I shook my head and mouthed the words, “Frankie, go!” But Frankie stopped thrashing in his bag and stayed still.
“Good choice, Fish.” Mark walked over and scooped up the bag. “Remember, if you won’t help me, then it’s flush time for you.”
“Noooo!” I shouted.
“Mmnooo!” Pradeep moaned.
“Fishy!” Sami squealed and held out her hands.
“Now, let’s get ready to hypnotize Mom when she gets back,” Mark said as he strode out of the room clenching Frankie’s bag tight in his fist.
Mark slammed the door. We looked up to see the bowl balanced above our heads rocking back and forth. It was going to fall!
I felt Pradeep trying to reach up to grab the knot in the belt around us, but his wrists were tied too tight. The bowl wobbled more with every move we made. Green slimy water dripped on the back of my neck. Pradeep stretched his fingers as far as he could but it wasn’t enough. I squashed closer to him to try to give the belt some slack so he could reach.
“Mmearly mmot mmit!” he said as his fingers pulled on the knot behind his back. “Mmyes!” He loosened the knot and I felt the belt drop away.
“Roll!” I shouted as we both rolled in opposite directions just as the goldfish bowl slammed on to the carpet between us, spilling toxic water across the floor.
I ran over to Pradeep and pulled the tape off his mouth, leaving sticky pink stripes across his face.
“Thanks, Pradeep. How did you do that?” I asked as I pulled the last loop of belt off my wrists.
“We did knots at Cubs last week. That was a quarterman’s noose—not too tricky to undo if you know how,” he answered.
Then we went to help Sami out of the trash can. She hugged Pradeep around the neck as I eased Chewbacca off her bottom.
“Now to get Frankie,” I said.
That’s when we heard it—a sound that I never found terrifying until that day. We heard a fatal flush.
We all ran to the bathroom door to listen.
“
You see, Fish,” we heard Mark say, “that’s where you’re going unless you help me.”
Then we heard water splashing.
“That must be Frankie sploshing around in his bag,” I said. “He hasn’t flushed him yet.”
“Swishy little fishy,” Sami chanted. She was still all zombie-fish eyes.
“We have to get Mark out of there,” Pradeep whispered.
“His phone,” I said. “He’ll answer his phone. You take Sami back home and call him from your house. Tell him you’re gonna tell your mom and he’ll come over to try and stop you.”
“What will you do?” Pradeep asked.
“I’ll run in and grab the bag with Frankie in it while Mark’s gone.”
Pradeep took Sami downstairs. I heard the dog flap slap shut and waited behind the bedroom door so Mark wouldn’t see me when he came out. It seemed like hours of millipedes doing laps in my stomach before I heard Mark’s phone ring.
“Mwahahaha—mwahahaha.” He had changed his ringtone to his evil laugh! That was hardcore EVIL SCIENTIST stuff.
Then I heard him speak. “Yeah? Moron? No, you talk, you die.” He stormed out of the bathroom and slammed the door behind him. I stayed where I was. I heard him go into his bedroom and kick the goldfish bowl on the floor. “Stupid morons’ stupid trap,” he grunted. He trudged down the stairs and I heard the front door slam shut behind him.
Yes! It was working.
Rescue Frankie Plan—Part One: Mark on his way to Pradeep’s to stop him from telling his mom Mark’s EVIL SCIENTIST plans. Check!
I just had to hope that Mark wouldn’t actually kill Pradeep if his mom was there. I crossed my fingers and even my toes inside my sneakers.