My Rotten Life

by David Lubar

  12

  Shroooooom!

  Abigail’s mom dropped us off in the parking lot by the east side of Ackerman’s Woods. “It’s so nice you kids want to go for a hike. Most young people just care about video games and loud music. Or they stay in their rooms reading books. I’ll be back at five thirty.”

  Abigail dashed ahead, then stopped and waited until we caught up. “I love the woods. Don’t you?”

  “I was a Boy Scout,” Mookie said. “Well, actually, I was a Cub Scout. Sort of. I was going to join, but they didn’t have a uniform my size. I was a lot bigger when I was little.”

  “What’s this mushroom look like?” I asked.

  “It’s small, with a silvery brown cap and white spots. It mostly grows in the shade. I think I know a good area to search.” She reached into her backpack. “I brought chocolate. It’s the perfect energy food for hiking. Did you know it contains theobromine, which is good for asthma?”

  Mookie snatched a bar from her hand. “Thanks!”

  “You’re welcome.” She pulled out another bar for herself, and one for me.

  “No thanks.” I liked chocolate, but it wasn’t worth another trip to the parallel bars.

  We followed Abigail along the path, and then down the side of a steep hill lined with fir trees and something that might have been maples or oaks. I’m not all that good at trees.

  “Are you totally sure about this?” I asked Abigail as we headed up the next hill.

  “I’m sure. A solution isn’t like a piece of clothing.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I know. You can’t always find one that fits the way you want.”

  Abigail nodded. “Exactly.”

  We must have walked for almost an hour. Abigail and Mookie talked the whole time, but not really to each other.

  Abigail pointed overhead. “Look—a red-tailed hawk.”

  “I wanted a Mohawk this summer,” Mookie said. “Dad told me he’d give me one, but Mom said we shouldn’t steal other people’s cultures. Whatever that means.”

  “Those ferns are amazing.”

  “I don’t like ferns. Fern Westmire punched me in the nose in second grade.”

  “That rock formation was probably deposited here during the last glacial period.”

  “Got any more chocolate?”

  I just followed along behind them. I wasn’t feeling very chatty. And I was worried about my thumb. I think I’d messed it up, or maybe even broken it. I could still move it, but it flopped around. And the bone looked like it was trying to poke through the skin. As much as it creeped me out, I couldn’t help wiggling it like a loose tooth.

  “Isn’t this beautiful,” Abigail said when we reached the top of another of the endless hills we’d climbed. “It’s my favorite place to come when I want to do some real thinking. Look at that view. It’s breathtaking.”

  “And the mushroom?” I asked.

  Abigail pointed to a fallen tree. “There’s a good place to start.” She walked over and peered under the trunk. “I think I see one. Yeah. Got it!”

  “Is that the last ingredient?” I asked.

  “I hope so.” Abigail headed back down the hill.

  Not as much as I do. As great as it felt to win field day, I was ready to get back to my wheezy, unathletic existence as a living kid who could stuff his face with chicken wings and sleep late on weekends.

  Abigail’s mom was waiting for us when we reached the parking lot. “Did you kids have a nice hike?” she asked.

  “It was great,” Abigail said. “We went all the way to the overlook. We saw a hawk, a groundhog, and five different varieties of moss.”

  “And look what I saw,” Abigail’s mom said. She pointed to a box on the front seat. “I know you and your friends like science.”

  I read the cover: LITTLE GENIUS CHEMISTRY SET. It showed a smiling kid holding a test tube with a mushroom cloud coming out of the top.

  “Thanks, Mom.” Abigail picked it up, then said, “Ohmygosh. This is dangerous. It has mercury and cadmium. And radium! They shouldn’t give that to kids.”

  “They wouldn’t sell it if it wasn’t safe,” her mom said.

  Abigail slid the box under the seat. I had a feeling it would stay there. I wedged into the back of the van with Mookie. My feet were tired from the walk. I was glad I could feel them, but I was worried about how little of me was still alive. I stared at my thumb. Is this all I had to look forward to? Would I slowly break apart? I hoped Abigail wasn’t wrong about the cure.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” I said when we reached my house.

  “Absolutely,” Abigail said.

  “You won’t be there,” her mom said. “You have a dentist appointment.”

  “It’s just a checkup. Can’t I skip it?” Abigail asked.

  “Not with your sweet tooth,” her mom said.

  Abigail sighed and unwrapped a chocolate bar. “I’ll see you guys at lunch.”

  Mookie got off at my house. “You know,” he said as we headed inside, “my dad is always telling me how important it is to plan ahead. Mostly, I guess, because he always forgets to. Maybe you should think about stuff you could do if this cure thing doesn’t happen.”

  “I’d rather not.” I’d already spent the whole van ride thinking about how awful my life would be if I had to stay half dead.

  That didn’t stop Mookie. “You could do all kinds of things. Hey—you could be a food taster for a king, because poison wouldn’t hurt you. How awesome is that?”

  “And how would I know if the food was poison?” I asked.

  “You’d . . .” Mookie scratched his head. When that didn’t produce an answer, he scratched his butt. Still nothing. “Okay, maybe not a food taster. But you could be a bodyguard. Nobody can hurt you.”

  “I don’t think bodyguards are supposed to be breakable.” I wiggled my thumb again and imagined trying to tackle someone who was running at me with a gun. I could almost hear my shoulder snapping.

  “Wait, I know! You could get a job as an actor in zombie movies.” He held his arms out and shuffled a couple steps. “You wouldn’t even need makeup. How’s that for a great idea?”

  “Perfect,” I said. “Just perfect.”

  “And maybe you could make extra money as a food taster for the real actors.”

  I didn’t bother to answer. When we got to my room, Mookie said, “Let’s play checkers.”

  “How about something else?” Every time we played checkers, we seemed to make exactly the same moves. It got kind of boring.

  “Please. I love checkers. It’s the only game where I don’t have trouble telling the pieces apart.”

  I realized Mookie had stuck by me all this time, and he hadn’t asked for anything. The least I could do was play what he wanted. “Sure. I just have to find the board.”

  I looked under my bed and all through my bookshelves. No luck. Then I looked through my closet. That was a pain, since Mom had crammed a bunch of my stuff in these big plastic bins that were pretty hard to lift.

  “Let’s do something else.” I was tired of lifting boxes and sorting through stuff.

  “How about crazy eights?” Mookie asked. “Or war?”

  “Sure.” I grabbed the deck of cards from my desk. That is, I tried to. It fell right out of my hand. “Oh, no . . .”

  “What’s wrong?” Mookie asked.

  “I lost my thumb.”

  “Is this some sort of weird thing like ‘got your nose’?”

  “No. I’m serious.” I held out my right hand to show him. “My thumb is gone. I think it got sort of broken when I was twisting around on the chin-up bar. It must have snapped off or gotten snagged somewhere when I was lifting stuff.” If anything could have made my stomach feel sick, this would have been it. I didn’t want to look at the spot where my thumb had been.

  “Isn’t that what makes us human?” Mookie said. “I think that’s what I heard. We have thumbs, but kangaroos don’t. That’s why we can build cars and make bombs and stuff,
and kangaroos can’t. So I guess you’re only half human now.”

  “Knock it off. Just help me find it.”

  We started to search my room.

  “Found it!” Mookie cried from under my bed.

  As I rushed over, he said, “No, wait. My mistake. It’s just an old piece of hot dog.” He held it out. “But if we can’t find your real thumb, maybe we can—”

  “Just keep looking!” I slid open my screen. Then I grabbed the piece of hot dog from Mookie and threw it out the window. A couple seconds later, the neighbor’s dalmatian, Spanky, raced across the driveway onto our lawn and gobbled up the treat. I watched for a moment to make sure he didn’t keel over. He just licked his muzzle and trotted away.

  I went back to searching and finally spotted my thumb wedged between two of the large boxes in my closet. I held it in place against my hand, but it wouldn’t stay. My life just kept getting worse and worse.

  I was still holding the thumb when it moved. I screamed and dropped it.

  “What’s wrong?” Mookie asked.

  I made a fist with my right hand and pretended to flex my thumb. On the floor, my thumb curled. I straightened it. Then I bent it again. I could still move it, even though it wasn’t attached to me. “This is too freaky,” I said.

  “Hey, I’ve been watching you walk around for the last couple days without a heartbeat. Compared to that, this is nothing.”

  As I flexed and straightened my thumb, it moved across the floor like an inchworm. I crawled it to my door, and then back over to me.

  “That is so cool,” Mookie said. “You’ve got a wireless thumb.”

  “I guess it’s good it still works.” I picked it up and tried not to flex it while I was holding it.

  “All you have to do is glue it back on,” Mookie said.

  “You think?”

  “Yeah. I’m pretty sure you don’t want to sew it on.”

  “No way.” I pictured my body held together with stitches. It wouldn’t hurt, but the thought creeped me out. I’d be like some kind of walking rag doll. “I don’t know if glue is enough.” I thought about my dead flesh. Then I thought about that stuff my mom used for her plants. It was crazy, but I guess it was worth a try.

  “Come on. I have an idea.” I headed for the garage. I found a pile of small foil packets on my mom’s plant-supply shelf. “This is rooting powder,” I told Mookie. “My mom uses it when she want to plant something. You can take a piece of a plant stem, and this will make it grow roots.” I figured, right now, I was more like a plant than a person, anyhow.

  “What about the glue?”

  “We have lots of that.” I looked on the shelves at all the different types, then picked up a small bottle of Elmer’s. “I think it has milk in it. Can’t hurt.”

  “Yeah. Milk’s good for bones.”

  I unscrewed the top of the glue and poured in the powder. Then I mixed it with a long screwdriver. “Let’s go outside. The light’s better.” I didn’t want to end up with my thumb glued on all crooked. When we got to the driveway, I put some of the glue on the end of my thumb and pressed it in place.

  “Yeeooowwww!”

  I was definitely wrong about the “can’t hurt” part. A searing pain shot through my thumb like I’d just used it to plug a leak in a volcano.

  In the middle of my third or fourth scream, I noticed the pain had stopped. I pressed my thumb against my hand for a while longer, so the glue could set. Then I flexed it to make sure it still worked.

  “We did it!” I said.

  “High five!” Mookie said. He lifted his hand.

  “High five!” I yelled, giving his hand a hard slap. I yelled something else as I watched my thumb sail through the air.

  As I chased after it, I heard Spanky barking. He shot past me. I put on a burst of speed and dived for my thumb. I got there just ahead of him. As I grabbed the thumb, he clamped his teeth down on the back of my hand. An instant later, he whined and ran away. I guess I tasted worse than a piece of mummified hot dog.

  “Maybe let it dry a bit longer,” Mookie said as I put more glue on the end.

  The pain was just as awful this time, but at least I was expecting it. I hoped I didn’t break off any more pieces.

  I waited until I was sure the glue had set, and then finally flexed my thumb. It bent just fine. I pressed on it gently. It seemed to hold. I gave it a little twist. No problem.

  “Better?” Mookie asked.

  “Yeah. It’s good.”

  “All right. High five! Oops—never mind.”

  13

  Star Athlete

  Speedy!”

  “Flash!”

  “SuperNathan!”

  “Iron Arms Abercrombie!”

  It started the moment I got to school. Everyone was thrilled about our field day win and the promise of pizza from Mr. Lomux. Mookie stuck as close to me as he could, trying to soak up some of the glory.

  “I’m his trainer,” he said to every kid who came near us. “We’re going to get a sneaker deal.” Nobody paid any attention to him. He didn’t seem to mind.

  In a way, the small slice of glory was nice, though this wasn’t the best time in my life to be getting noticed. I was looking a lot paler than usual, and I had to try to remember to blink once in a while so I wouldn’t creep people out. But it was definitely a new experience for me to be any sort of star athlete. I figured I should try to enjoy it, since it wasn’t going to last.

  Kids waved at me from a couple different tables when I went into the cafeteria. But I took my tray right to the Table of the Doomed. I needed to talk with Abigail, and I really didn’t care where I sat. The dead zone on my legs had almost reached my ankles. There wasn’t a whole lot of living meat between me and permanent zombiehood. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life—I mean, my death—gluing pieces back on.

  “Got it?” I asked.

  Before Abigail could answer, Mookie said, “Uh-oh. Intruder alert.” He pointed at Shawna, who was heading right for us.

  “I wonder what she wants,” Abigail muttered.

  “It can’t be good,” Mookie said.

  “I’m having a Halloween party tomorrow night, Nathan,” Shawna said.

  Good grief. Did she forget that she’d already pulled that joke on me? I guess she didn’t bother keeping track of her victims. I thought about ignoring her, but even that would give her too much satisfaction when she told me I wasn’t invited. So I beat her to it. “I know. I’m not invited. Ha, ha. Now go away.”

  Shawna frowned like I’d just spoken to her in Portuguese. “Of course you’re invited. All the cool kids are coming.” She held out an envelope. My first name was written on it with very curly letters. When I didn’t take the envelope, she placed it on the table and walked away.

  I watched out of the corner of my eyes as she left. The girls at her table whispered and giggled, but it didn’t sound like mocking laughter. I stared down at the envelope. “Probably some sort of cruel joke.”

  “I’ll see.” Mookie flipped the envelope over with his fork, then held it down and slipped his knife under the flap, smearing the envelope with brown gravy from his turkey sandwich.

  “Why are you doing that?” I asked.

  “There might be a bomb,” he said.

  “And how exactly is silverware going to save us?” Abigail asked.

  Mookie ignored her and cut open the envelope, revealing an invitation. “Cool. Look at this. She’s having games and a DJ.” Mookie started reading all the stuff on the invitation. “Six-foot sandwiches! Wow. I wonder if each guest gets one?”

  “I think it’s one or two sandwiches for the whole party,” I said.

  Abigail leaned over and looked at the invitation. “She’s going to have a chocolate fountain!”

  “What’s that?” Mookie asked.

  “It’s a fountain with melted chocolate,” she said. “You dip fruit in it.”

  “Forget the fruit,” Mookie said. “I’d swim in it.”

 
; “Chocolate is actually good for your skin,” Abigail said.

  “You’re so lucky, Nate,” Mookie said. “I wish I was going.”

  “I’m not lucky,” I said. “And I’m not going to her party. She only invited me because I won field day. My body might be different. But inside, I’m the same person she was mean to last week.”

  I picked up the invitation and walked over to Shawna’s table. All the way there, I imagined what I’d tell her. You’re spoiled rotten. No, that was me. You’re mean and cruel. Yeah. That was true. But if I called her names, wasn’t I being mean and cruel?

  I decided to keep it simple. I dropped the invitation in front of her and said, “Sorry. I can’t make it.”

  I didn’t even bother to wait for her reaction. It was reward enough for me to know I’d shocked her.

  “What did you do?” Abigail asked when I got back.

  “I told her I didn’t want to go. Forget about that. Is the cure ready?”

  Abigail stared up at the ceiling and tugged at the end of her hair for a moment, as if thinking about a whole lot of stuff at once. It must be tough being so smart. “Almost.”

  “Almost?” I put my foot on my chair, pulled up my pants cuff, and pushed down my sock. “I’m down to here,” I said, pointing to the spot above my ankle where life and death met. “That’s all I’ve got left.”

  “Trust me. I won’t let you down. There’s just one element remaining. I’m positive. Based on my calculations, you’re not in danger until late Friday night. You’ve got a day and a half.”

  “I’m already in danger in other ways.” I told her about my thumb, and about the rooting powder. “How could it move by itself?”

  “The same way you can move. I believe the answer is buried in the deepest mysteries of physics and biology. It might even involve quantum mechanics.” Abigail spread her hands and smiled. “Or magic.”

  I had a more important question for her. “Why do you think it hurt?”

  “I’m not sure.” Abigail looked up at the ceiling again. I guess all the answers in the universe were written there in some kind of ink that was visible only to really smart people. “Maybe the nerves came back to life, but just for a moment. The zombie part of you took right back over. But the cure will fix that.”