My Rotten Life

by David Lubar

  Abigail smiled at me from across the table and pointed at an empty seat. “Hi. Want to join us? There’s lots of room.”

  “Did you talk with your uncle?”

  “I sent him an e-mail. But I didn’t hear back yet.”

  I smacked the table with my fist. “You have to find him. I need to get in touch with him. Right away. Like now. Immediately. If not sooner.”

  “You’re babbling,” Abigail said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Everything is fine. Absolutely perfect. Couldn’t be better.”

  “Something’s wrong. Maybe I can help,” she said.

  “Nothing’s wrong!” I shouted. Snail Girl grabbed her lunch box and scurried to a different table. Ferdinand crawled out from his hiding place and slithered toward the door. The remaining kids turned away. “You can’t help. Nobody can help.”

  “Aha! If nobody can help, then there has to be something that requires help. So something is wrong,” Abigail said. “I knew it.”

  I felt like I’d been grabbed by a bulldog. My brain must be as dead as my body if Abigail was outsmarting me. She wasn’t going to let go until I gave her an answer. I leaned forward, placed my hands on the table, and said the first thing that came to mind. “I think my parents are getting a divorce.” It was a total lie, but I figured it would satisfy her.

  “That’s a total lie. If that was your problem, you wouldn’t need to talk with my uncle.” Abigail leaned across the table. “Something is wrong with you. You haven’t blinked once since you got here. And you still have little holes in your nose from Mookie’s fork.”

  “I’m a slow healer.”

  She leaned even closer. I could see small dark flecks in her light brown eyes. “And you also don’t feel pain.”

  “Are you crazy or something? Of course I feel pain.”

  Abigail moved back a step, then pointed at my arm. There was a fork stuck in it.

  “Ow!” I leaped away, yanked out the fork, and pretended it hurt.

  “Nice try,” she said. “But you’re a lousy actor. Come on. Just tell me the truth. Maybe I can help.”

  There was no point trying to hide this from her. Next, she’d probably stab me with a knife or smack me with a sledgehammer.

  “Okay—ever since your uncle spilled that stuff on me . . .”

  I stopped. I didn’t want to say it again. I didn’t want it to become real.

  “I was afraid of this.” Abigail came around the table and patted me on the back. “Take your time.”

  “Ever since I got splashed with Hurt-Be-Gone, I haven’t felt anything. And I sort of don’t seem to need to breathe. Or eat.”

  “No pulse, either.” Mookie had walked up behind me. He slid his finger across his throat and made a slashing sound.

  “And your uncle isn’t here to tell me how to fix things,” I said. “He’s running around the country, hiding from the police. It’s hopeless.” I dropped down in a chair.

  “Actually, by now he’s probably out of the country. The last time he got in trouble this big, he hid out in Argentina for six months.”

  “Argentina? This just gets better and better.” I banged my forehead on the table.

  Hard.

  It didn’t hurt.

  “It looks like it’s up to me to help you,” Abigail said.

  “That’s a nice offer,” I said, “but I need a scientist.”

  “Uncle Zardo told me all about his work.”

  “Yeah, right . . .” I tried to find a way to say what I was thinking without hurting her feelings.

  Mookie erased that problem by blurting out what he was thinking. “Come on, Abigail, you’re too stupid to understand science.”

  She ignored him. “You don’t think I’m very smart, do you, Nathan?”

  There was no safe answer to that question. Abigail kept staring at me. Finally, I said, “You don’t even take notes in class.”

  “That’s because I don’t need to.”

  “Yeah, right,” Mookie said.

  “What did we talk about in math this morning?” she asked him.

  “Something about numbers,” Mookie said. “I’m pretty sure numbers were involved. Lots of them. Big numbers. Or maybe it was small ones. Or both. That’s it. Both.”

  “To make a mixed fraction from an improper fraction, use division.” Abigail turned back toward me. “What about science?”

  “Plant stuff,” I said. “Producing food from sunlight.” That was as much as I remembered.

  “Photosynthesis,” Abigail said. “Plants use chlorophyll to convert solar energy and carbon dioxide to food, producing oxygen as a by-product.”

  She kept going. “In social studies, we learned about the Louisiana Purchase, which happened in 1803. During opening announcements, they played a selection from a Haydn string quartet, which he wrote in 1793. The first five prints on the wall of the art room, next to the door, are by Chagall, Picasso, Escher, Bookbinder, and Cassatt. Enough? Did I prove my point?”

  “Yeah . . .” I stared at her, trying to see Abigail as a really smart kid, and not the slacker I thought she was. “But, why?”

  “Smart girls get picked on,” she said. “A girl can be pretty. A girl can be athletic. But if she’s smart, she’s treated like a freak. Kindergarten and first grade were a nightmare for me until I learned that. Nobody was interested in the stuff I wanted to talk about. Everyone mocked me. Besides, what do you think my life would be like if I knocked Eddy Mason out of his spot as the smartest kid in the class?”

  “Rotten,” I said. Eddy wasn’t just smart. He was also mean, and very competitive. I could imagine what he’d do to Abigail if she dethroned him.

  “You bet. So, I sit in class and I learn what they teach, but I don’t show off. I’ll save that for college.”

  A small glimmer of hope shone through the layers of doom that had fallen on me. “Are you smart enough to help me?”

  “I’m smart enough to be your best chance,” she said.

  I turned toward Mookie. “What do you think?”

  “One question,” he said.

  “What?” Abigail asked.

  “Would you do my homework for me?”

  9

  Back to the Lab

  We headed for the lab right after school. “Are you sure we can just walk right in? Even if your uncle isn’t there?”

  “No problem,” Abigail said. “It’s a community college. It’s open to the public.”

  Sure enough, we went right up to the lab. The door was unlocked. Everything was just the way we’d left it.

  “Now we need to find Uncle Zardo’s notes.” Abigail headed across the room to a computer.

  I watched over her shoulder as she scrolled through a bunch of files. Then I turned my attention to keeping Mookie from playing with the bottles of chemicals on the shelves, or any of the dangerous-looking lab instruments on the tables. Just as I was prying his hands off some kind of high-powered blender, and explaining to him that there really wasn’t any way we could use it to make milk shakes right now, Abigail shouted, “Got it!”

  I ran back over to her. “What’d you find? ”

  “I know his main ingredient. Ohmygosh! He’s using something called the corpse flower.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” I said.

  “It isn’t. No wonder he got in trouble. It’s a protected species. He was supposed to be using the corpus flower. It’s entirely different.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  Abigail looked out the window. Then she looked at the floor. Then she said, “I sort of helped him come up with the formula.”

  “Sort of?” I knew she was smart, but I couldn’t imagine what kind of help she could give a scientist.

  “I guess I actually helped him a whole lot. To tell the truth, it was all my idea. Except for using the wrong ingredient. I love neurobiology.”

  “What are you—some kind of scientific genius?” I asked.

  “I guess that would be an accu
rate description. Though I don’t like to brag. Anyhow, we didn’t come here to talk about me. I’m pretty sure your problem is caused by the corpse flower. According to what I just read, it has some properties that aren’t very well understood. It comes from a place called Bezimo Island, way out in the Atlantic Ocean.”

  “Never heard of it,” I said. “Have you?”

  “No. I’m going to need to do more research. And then I’m going to need to run some simulations of the relevant molecules on the computer. Some proteins are incredibly complex. This could take awhile. Why don’t I meet up with you guys later?”

  “Sure. Where?”

  “Your place?” she asked. “My place is a bit messy right now.”

  “Okay.” I told her my address. Then Mookie and I headed out.

  “Who’d ever have guessed that Abigail was so smart,” Mookie said. “She did a great job hiding it. I wonder if she’s hiding her height, too. Maybe she’s just pretending to be that short. If she’s really smart, she could probably figure out a way to do that. Optical illusions, or mirrors. Maybe even lasers.”

  By the time we got to my house, Mookie had convinced himself that half the kids in our class were hiding something. I guess I couldn’t really argue, at least as far as my own secret.

  We headed up the stairs to my room. “Beat you there,” Mookie shouted. As he squeezed past, he accidentally stomped on my foot.

  “Ouch!”

  Ouch?

  I hobbled to the top of the stairs, then looked at my foot. “I felt that. Maybe the Hurt-Be-Gone is wearing off.” If that was true, it would be great.

  “Let’s see.” Mookie stomped on my other foot.

  “Yeouch! Stop that.”

  “You’re cured. Yay—I helped.” He threw his hands in the air and did a victory dance. “I cured Nathan, I cured Nathan. I’m a hero, I’m a hero.”

  I ran my hands down my legs. I had no feeling until right below my knees. Everything above that was dead. The weirdest part was touching my living legs with my dead hands.

  “It only splashed on my upper body,” I said. “It’s not wearing off. I think it’s spreading.” I had no idea how quickly that was happening. I went into my room, rolled up my pants leg, ran my fingernail across my skin until I found the exact place where I could first feel anything, and drew a line with a black marker.

  “Tattoos!” Mookie said. “Awesome. Draw one on me.”

  I gave him one while we waited. At least it stopped him from dancing.

  Abigail rang my bell an hour later. She was panting, like she’d jogged all the way from the college. “I’ve got good news and bad news,” she said.

  10

  Tipping the Scales

  What’s the good news?” I asked.

  “There’s a cure.”

  I wanted to jump and shout, but I needed to hear the rest. “And the bad news?”

  “The cure only works if the transformation isn’t complete.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “My legs are still alive.”

  “Watch.” Mookie stomped on my toe. “See?”

  “Ow! Stop that!” I limped away from him before he decided to give Abigail more evidence.

  “Cool,” Mookie said. “You really look like a zombie when you limp.”

  “I’m not a zombie!” I yelled.

  “Sure you are,” Mookie said.

  “Zombies rise from the dead,” I said. “They eat brains. They drool. They snarl and growl. I’m not a zombie!”

  “The brain thing is from the movies,” Abigail said. “According to myth, zombies rise from the dead. But according to science, living people can be turned into zombies.”

  Mookie reached out and touched my chin. “No drool. But you’re sort of snarling.”

  “Knock it off,” I said.

  I didn’t feel like arguing about zombies. I was more interested in the cure. I expected Abigail to be happy that I wasn’t totally dead. Instead, she said, “I guess you’ll want to hear the other bad news.”

  “Not really.” I’d had a lifetime’s worth of bad news in the last couple days. “But go ahead.”

  “The cure is only available on Bezimo Island. You know, the place where the corpse flower comes from.”

  “How far away is that?” I asked.

  “One thousand six hundred thirty-five miles,” Abigail said.

  My heart sank as soon as I heard the word thousand.

  “Can we order it on the Internet?” Mookie asked.

  Abigail shook her head. “The cure is made from the scales of a rare tropical fish called the Lazarus mullet. It’s not exactly something people sell online.”

  “People sell everything online,” Mookie said. “My mom bought an autographed photo of Julius Caesar. It’s a collector’s item.”

  Abigail and I both stared at him for a moment, but neither of us bothered to point out the problem with that.

  “You can’t use some other fish?” I asked.

  “No,” Abigail said. “It has to be that one.”

  I flopped down on my bed. “It’s over. I’m doomed.”

  “You mean, you’re dead,” Mookie said.

  “Right. Thanks for pointing that out.” My feet throbbed where Mookie had stomped them. I realized that as long as I still had any feeling, I couldn’t give up. There had to be some way to get the cure. “What about an aquarium? Would there be one of those fish there?”

  “That’s not a bad idea.” Abigail looked around my room. “Where’s your computer?”

  “I don’t have my own.” I led her downstairs to the family room. “We all have to share it.”

  Two steps into the room, Abigail froze. “Why do you have so many dead plants?”

  “It’s my Mom’s hobby.” I was so used to it, I never paid much attention to the dried brown leaves and wilted stalks. There were three shelves filled with flower pots along the wall next to the window. The pots were filled with plants, most of which were not looking very healthy. There was a whole shelf of plant stuff in the garage, too. “She loves to raise plants, but she’s so busy at work that she doesn’t have a lot of time for that kind of stuff. And she sort of forgets to water them. I call it ‘death row.’ ”

  Abigail shuddered, then sat at the computer. I walked over to the shelves and examined the latest victims. Sometimes, when a plant was mostly dead, Mom would cut off the living part and replant it. There were a couple of those survivors on the bottom shelf, totally unaware that their doom was just being delayed.

  “I guess it’s a good thing your Mom doesn’t want to raise kittens or puppies,” Mookie said. “You’re lucky she didn’t let you dry up when you were little—or starve to death.”

  “The way my mom cooks, that might have been less cruel.”

  About a minute later, Abigail said, “Hey, they have a Lazarus mullet at the Hurston Aquarium.”

  “That’s not far,” Mookie said.

  Abigail scrolled the Web page. “They’re open late tonight.”

  “It’s nowhere near the bus routes. How are we going to get there?” I asked. “My parents are working.”

  “My mom lost her license,” Mookie said. “And Dad doesn’t know how to drive.”

  “Can your mom take us?” I asked Abigail.

  “Our van’s kind of messy,” she said.

  “And I’m kind of dead,” I said. “And it’s kind of your fault.”

  “Good point. I’ll call my mom. Just promise not to say anything about the mess.”

  I left a note for my parents, telling them I was doing a school project. Abigail grabbed a plastic bag from my kitchen and asked me to find a pair of tweezers.

  “Are you sure there’s no easier cure?” I asked while we waited for her mom.

  “I’m sure. A solution isn’t like a piece of clothing. You can’t always find one that fits the way you want.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Abigail, Mookie, and I were seated in the back of Mrs. Goldberg’s van, flying down the highway toward the Hurston Aqu
arium. We were sort of wedged in the middle row. The back was crammed with magazines, cans, boxes, and bags. I couldn’t even tell whether there was a seat under the stuff. There were even a couple small appliances, including a Crock-Pot with a frayed power cord, an old toaster with a cracked case, and a vacuum cleaner with a broken handle.

  “I’m so happy my little Abigail has some school friends,” Mrs. Goldberg said. “She spends far too much time up in her room with her books. I’ve been telling her for years that she needs to learn to be more social, or she’ll end up like her uncles. Those men just don’t do well in the real world.”

  Abigail shot her mother a frown, but it seemed to go unnoticed. Next to me, Mookie thumbed through a stack of magazines that looked like they’d been published before we were born. “So, you collect stuff?” he asked.

  I rammed him with an elbow, but Mrs. Goldberg just said, “Oh, certainly. I can’t bear to throw out something that might come in handy someday. People are so wasteful, it’s a shame. Everything is a treasure to someone.”

  She pulled up to the entrance of the aquarium and said, “I need to go to the recycling center. I’ll be back here in two hours to pick you youngsters up. Have fun.”

  “Now what?” I asked Abigail as her mom pulled away.

  “Simple. We find the fish. Then you sneak into the tank and pluck a couple scales from it. Don’t worry—you won’t hurt the fish.” Abigail handed me the plastic bag.

  It didn’t sound simple. But I was ready to do whatever I had to. I paid for our tickets and we went in. I was glad the place wasn’t crowded.

  “It’s in the tropical tank,” Abigail said after she’d checked the guidebook.

  The tropical tank filled one huge wall of a room just past the main hall. It must have been twenty or thirty feet long. I stared at what seemed to be a half-million different fish. “How will we spot it?”

  “That’s the one.” Abigail pointed to a pudgy brown lump resting on the bottom. All the other fish were bright and lively. It figured that mine would be dull and lifeless.