Mississippi River Blues

by Tony Abbott

  Just as my yawn made a return visit, Mr. Wexler’s eyes lit up with excitement. He scampered over to a small display in the center of the room.

  On the display were two things: a book and a watch. The book had a crusty green cover and looked old. The watch was one of those ancient pocket types that people used to have before they invented wrists or something. Right now, the top of the watch was flipped open, but the watch wasn’t ticking.

  “Class, this great classic adventure is one of the centerpieces of the display,” Mr. Wexler said, picking up the book carefully. “It is called Around the World in Eighty Days. It’s a fabulous story published in 1873 by the French author Jules Verne. Few of us get to go on a journey around the world, but we can get a sense of what it’s like by reading this classic book.”

  “Why is there a watch on display, too?” I asked.

  “Good question,” said Mr. Wexler. “To find out the answer, all you have to do is …”

  “What?” said Frankie.

  “Read the book!”

  “Not fair,” I grumbled.

  Mr. Wexler put the book down. “Now, please follow me. We have only about an hour and twenty minutes—oh! That’s funny! Eighty minutes. Let’s take our tour around the world of books in eighty minutes! Eighty days, eighty minutes? Get it?”

  We got it. It wasn’t all that amazing.

  “And … here we go!” he said. He marched off to the first display table. The other kids followed him.

  The pain was too much for my head. I turned to my friend. “Eighty whole minutes? I can’t do booky things for that long. My head starts to explode. I say we head straight for the food.”

  “What food?” asked Frankie.

  I pointed to a table outside the workroom in the corner. On it was a big pink box. “Doughnuts, my friend, doughnuts. My nose can spot them a mile away.”

  Frankie grinned, glanced at Mr. Wexler, then stepped slyly up to the book display. “Devin, I’ll pretend to examine this old busted watch while you pretend to read this old book. With Mr. Wexler thinking we’re working, we’ll take our own little field trip to Doughnutville.”

  “Frankie, I love how you think. Let’s do it!”

  I picked up the book and held it as if I were reading. Frankie took the watch, and pretended to be amazed at the cool oldness of it. We headed for the pink box.

  When we got near, we heard low voices coming from the workroom. Peeking in, we saw Mrs. Figglehopper and a guy in blue overalls standing in front of the zapper gates.

  “What’s going on?” Frankie asked.

  “Mrs. F and some work guy,” I whispered.

  Then, before our shocked eyeballs, the work guy pulled a screwdriver from his tool belt, knelt down, and began to take the zapper gates apart!

  Chapter 2

  Frankie gasped. “Who is he, and what is he doing?”

  “He’s wrecking our zapper gates!” I hissed. “Frankie, we owe our only good grades to those gates! Can we let him do this?”

  “Shhh,” she said. “Mrs. Figglehopper is saying something—”

  We snuck through the open door, hid behind a crowded bookshelf, and listened closely.

  “There’s something wrong with the gates,” Mrs. Figglehopper said. She placed a sheet of blue paper on the table next to the guy. “It’s all in the work order.”

  “I’ll check them out right away,” he said. “Give me about an hour and twenty minutes. I’ll be done then.”

  She glanced at the clock on the wall. “Good. Eighty minutes is perfect,” she said. Giving a cheery nod to the guy, she left the room.

  I nudged Frankie. “She never even saw us—”

  But Frankie was watching the repairman unscrew a panel on the side of one gate. He tugged out a bunch of colored wires and began to untangle them.

  Frankie clutched my arm tightly. “Devin, he’s going to wreck the gates forever. That means no more dropping into books. We need to stop this guy—”

  Suddenly, my head lit up with an idea. “If I know work guys, he won’t be able to resist the call of the cruller.” Stepping out from behind the shelf, I walked over to him. “Um, excuse me, sir?”

  The guy didn’t look up. “Yeah?”

  “I know you’re busy, but did you know there’s a box of doughnuts just outside this room?”

  He stopped working. “Powdered?”

  “Oh, yes. Lots of them. Right outside this door.”

  Plink! His screwdriver hit the floor. Fwit! He shot out of the room. Slam! Frankie shut the door behind him.

  We scrambled over and read the blue work order.

  “‘Complete overhaul?’” Frankie read with a gasp. “‘Something funny going on? Fix blue light? Short circuits! Rewiring!’ Devin, according to this, the repair guy is going to turn our incredible zapper gates into nothing more than a set of dumb old security gates!”

  “He’ll mess up the gates forever!” I said. “No more falling into books. No more good grades. All those books we’ll have to read! What should we do?”

  “You hide the work order!” she said.

  “And you hide the tools!” I said.

  But the moment I reached for the work order was the same moment Frankie reached for the tools. We collided, and the book, the special copy of Around the World in Eighty Days that I had been holding, went flying out of my hand. And right between the zapper gates.

  KKKKK! The whole room lit up like fireworks. A sizzling, crackling, flaming burst of blue light shot out from between the gates and bounced around the room.

  “I can’t believe it’s happening again!” cried Frankie.

  “It’s different this time!” I said. “The guy already messed with the wires. The gates are acting funny. We shouldn’t go near them—”

  “Too late,” she said. “Something’s—got—me!”

  Even as we tried to back away, the zapper gates sparked more wildly and hummed more loudly, and we found ourselves being pulled toward them.

  “What’s going on?” Frankie cried, holding on to the file cabinet.

  It was only too clear what was going on.

  Frankie and I were being sucked into the blue light coming from the crack in the wall! It pulled and yanked and dragged us toward it. The light flooded over us. It flooded through us, too.

  “I’m electric!” I cried, almost entirely blue now.

  “And … I’m … I’m …” cried Frankie.

  Everything went dark. And there were no more bookshelves. No more zapper gates. No more workroom. No more library.

  Frankie and I found ourselves outside rolling over and over a bunch of knobby cobblestones on some old street somewhere.

  We bounced and tumbled and tumbled and bounced—“Ouch! Oof! Hey!”—until we stopped at the feet of a little man in a tight, little suit.

  He bowed sharply to us.

  “Good day!” he chirped. “Are you Fogg?”

  Chapter 3

  He was a short guy with a smudgy, thin mustache and a bright, cheery look in his eye. But what he said didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

  “Are you Fogg?” he repeated, smiling politely.

  “Fog?” said Frankie. “Sometimes Mr. Wexler says Devin’s brain is in a fog—”

  The man shook his head vigorously. “No, no. I mean Phileas Fogg. I am the new servant of Mr. Phileas Fogg whose house is at Number Seven, Saville Row! Passepartout is my name. It is pronounced Pass—par—too! I am French, from France. In fact, I am a Parisian from Paris.”

  “I’m a Devin,” I told him. “This is a Frankie. We’re Palmdale Middle Schoolians from Palmdale Middle School. It’s a long way from here.”

  “By the way,” said Frankie, “where is here?”

  “London, of course!” the man replied.

  “That’s England, right?” I said.

  “Of course!”

  “Dude,” I said to Frankie. “I got one right.”

  Frankie made a face at me. “Excuse him, Passepartout, but what year is it?”
>
  “Eighteen hundred and seventy-two!” he said brightly. “Now, if you will be so good as to help me find Mr. Fogg’s house, I would thank you.”

  Frankie and I both shrugged at each other. There was no denying it. We had landed in a book again. The same book that was sitting on the sidewalk in front of me. Around the World in Eighty Days. I picked it up and flipped to the first page. “Here we go again,” I said.

  “Okay, Passepartout,” said Frankie. “Let’s go.”

  “Good,” he said, heading down the street. “I cannot be late. The agency that hired me has told me that Mr. Fogg is very punctual, very exact. He fired his last servant because he heated Mr. Fogg’s shaving water two degrees lower than requested! And shaving water to an Englishman such as Mr. Fogg is a very serious matter!”

  Horses and carriages clip-clopped by us. Everyone was wearing old-fashioned clothes, the men in suits and women in long dresses and hats. Lots of umbrellas.

  Finally, we turned the corner onto a wide street of brick and stone houses. The sign said SAVILLE ROW.

  “Mr. Fogg, they say, is very rich,” Passepartout went on. “He spends much of his time playing cards with his friends at the Reform Club, a very famous club of the richest gentlemen in London! This is the sort of person my new master is!”

  “Sounds a little dull,” said Frankie.

  “I want dull!” said Passepartout. “After spending many years as a circus juggler and acrobat, bicycle racer, and street singer, I am looking to work for a quiet man! I yearn for rest.”

  “I love to rest!” I said. “It’s my specialty, in fact.”

  “And what restful activities do you prefer?” asked Passepartout.

  “English class,” I said. “It’s a good place to sleep.”

  “Well, here we are,” said Frankie, pointing to a green door with a gold knocker on it.

  “Let’s knock,” said Passepartout. “How do I look?”

  “Cool,” I said.

  “I do not feel cool,” he said. “I feel very nervous!”

  Using the knocker, Passepartout announced that we were there. A moment later, the door opened and there stood a well-dressed man. He was tall and thin, and had a neat, short beard. He was about the age of my dad, maybe a tiny bit older.

  The guy had no wrinkles anywhere on his clothes. He looked like one of those store dummies, except that his eyes looked smart, and he obviously had a lot going on inside his dome.

  “I am Phileas Fogg,” he stated.

  “Good day, sir!” said Passepartout. “I am—”

  Mr. Fogg held up his hand abruptly. “What is the proper temperature for shaving water?”

  “Man!” Frankie whispered to me. “A quiz already?”

  Passepartout blinked. “Eighty-six degrees.”

  “Correct,” said Phileas Fogg. “You may enter.”

  He waved his hand and we passed through into the entrance hall of a very quiet and very neat house.

  “I’m Frankie,” said Frankie going in. “This is Devin.”

  Taking us into his living room, Mr. Fogg said, “I am exact. I am settled. I am quiet. My life is one of unbroken regularity. I have my routines. I wake every morning at precisely eight o’clock.”

  Passepartout nodded sharply. “Yes, Mr. Fogg.”

  “I have toast at twenty-three minutes past eight.”

  “Yes, Mr. Fogg.”

  “I shave at thirty-seven minutes past eight.”

  “Yes, Mr. Fogg.”

  “I do not like turbulence in my household. Is this understood?”

  “Yes, Mr. Fogg!”

  “Good,” the man said. He pulled a watch from his pocket. “What time do you have?”

  “Twenty-two minutes past eleven,” said Passepartout.

  “You are four minutes slow,” Fogg said.

  “My watch is set on Paris time,” said Passepartout.

  “You are in London now,” said Mr. Fogg.

  “Then I shall change to London time!” said Passepartout. He twisted a knob on his watch. “There.”

  “Good,” said Fogg. “From this moment, twenty-six minutes after eleven A.M., Wednesday, October second, you are my servant.”

  “Thank you, sir!” said Passepartout. He leaned forward as if he were going to hug Mr. Fogg, but his new master swiftly put up his hand to stop him.

  “Now, Passepartout,” he said, “there are exactly one thousand one hundred fifty-one steps from my door to the door of the Reform Club, and I have exactly three minutes and forty-two seconds in which to traverse that distance. Therefore, I must now leave.”

  Without another word, Phileas Fogg took his hat in his hand, put it on his head, and slipped through the front door, closed it behind him, and was gone.

  “Wow,” I said. “He’s very … very …”

  “I know!” said Frankie, peeking out a front window.

  As Fogg left the house and crossed the street, an out-of-control carriage dragged by two wild horses shot right by him. Fogg kept walking at the same pace.

  “That carriage almost ran him down!” I said.

  “He didn’t even notice,” said Frankie.

  “The man is a machine!” said Passepartout.

  “A robot,” said Frankie.

  “A fast robot!” I said, as we watched Phileas Fogg walk quickly down the street.

  Buy What a Trip! Now!

  About the Author

  Over the last two decades, Tony Abbott has written dozens of mysteries, comics, and adventure books for young readers aged six to fourteen, with series including Danger Guys, the Time Surfers, the Weird Zone, Underworlds, Goofballs, and the long-running fantasy series the Secrets of Droon. He is also the author of the fantasy epic Kringle and the realistic novels Firegirl (winner of the 2006 Golden Kite Award for Fiction), The Postcard (winner of the 2008 Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery), and Lunch-Box Dream. Among his latest novels is The Forbidden Stone, the first installment of the twelve-book saga the Copernicus Legacy. Tony has taught on the faculty of Lesley University’s MFA program in creative writing, is a frequent conference speaker and visitor to schools, and presents workshops to creative writers of all ages. His websites include www.tonyabbottbooks.com, www.thecopernicuslegacy.com, and the literary blog www.fridaybookreport.com.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2002 by Tony Abbott

  Cover design by Connie Gabbert

  ISBN: 978-1-4804-8688-1

  This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

  345 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com

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