Zero to Hero

by Lin Oliver

  The moment the Hoove spotted him, he zoomed over to the television and flicked it off.

  “Hey,” Rod grunted, and flicked the TV back on with the remote.

  It wasn’t back on for a second when the Hoove pulled the plug out. Brownstone sat there clicking the remote over and over, but of course, the TV did not go on.

  “Who keeps messing with the TV in here?” he shouted to no one in particular.

  When the big lug got up to see what was wrong with the TV, the Hoove zipped over to the bag of chips lying on the coffee table. He picked it up and, with an impish grin, dumped its contents out. When Rod turned around, he saw his favorite chips strewn all over the rug, and their bulldog, Rambo, happily scarfing them down.

  “What’s going on in here?” Rod said to himself.

  “I’m just getting warmed up,” the Hoove bellowed, even though Rod couldn’t hear him. “I’m going to teach you never to mess around with my buddy Billy Broccoli.”

  Just then, Mrs. Brownstone happened to walk into the living room on her way to put Rod’s clean laundry on his bed. When she saw the mess on the carpet, her face turned bright red. She kept a very tidy house, and the sight of crushed chips and dog slobber on her new carpet did not sit well with her.

  “Rodney Richard Brownstone, you know the rules about eating in the living room. Go get the hand vac right now and put it to good use.”

  “Mom, I’m right in the middle of my favorite show.”

  “No, you’re right in the middle of my living room, and you’re going to clean it up immediately.”

  Rod made a face at his mother, but she didn’t see it because she was already heading to his bedroom. Angrily, he marched into the kitchen, where the hand vac hung on a hook next to the refrigerator, along with the brooms and a dustpan. The Hoove was right on his tail. As Rod reached for the hand vac, the Hoove reached for the broom and, assuming his best baseball stance, swatted Rod directly on his behind. Rod wheeled around and saw Amber sitting at the table, with the broom lying on the floor next to her.

  “What’s the big idea?” he yelled at her.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And stop screaming. People do not yell at princesses.”

  “I can scream all I want. You just hit me with the broom!”

  “I did not. You threw the broom over here at me.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “No, you’re the liar.”

  Hoover was pleased to see the argument grow. Getting under Rod’s skin was the most fun he’d had since 1988, when he watched the World Series on TV and saw Kirk Gibson hit that home run for the Dodgers. He must have watched the reruns of that five hundred times.

  “I’m going to tell Mom on you,” Amber was saying. “You’re going to be grounded until forever.”

  Hoover didn’t think being grounded forever was long enough for Rod Brownstone. He didn’t feel even a little bit bad for him, just as Rod hadn’t felt bad about being so mean to Billy. The Hoove’s Rule Number Sixty-Two was “The energy you put out is the energy you get back.”

  Getting Rod in trouble at home was amusing, but it didn’t totally satisfy the Hoove. It didn’t fix what Rod had done to Billy. Taking that tonsil to school was such a bully thing to do, and if there was one thing Hoover Porterhouse did not tolerate, it was a bully.

  Back when he was alive, there was a kid named Clive McGraw who always used to pick on Sally Huerta, who was born with one leg a little shorter than the other. She wore a special shoe with a thick sole so she’d be able to walk like the other kids. But Clive used to make fun of her and imitate the way she ran. Some of the other kids would laugh at his antics, but never Hoover Porterhouse. In fact, he made it a point to strike out Clive McGraw every time that bully came up to bat. Eventually, he confronted Clive.

  “What is your problem?” he had said to Clive. “What exactly does Sally do to you that is so terrible? I want you to look me square in the eye and tell my why you enjoy picking on that girl. Come on, let’s see how tough you really are.”

  Clive couldn’t come up with any answer, not even a syllable. After that conversation, Clive stopped bothering Sally, and eleven years later, after Hoove had been dead for a good decade, Sally and Clive wound up as husband and wife. As a ghost, the Hoove had always felt proud of his role in their destiny.

  The Hoove watched with pleasure as Rod stomped into the living room and started vacuuming up the mess he’d made. He held the hand vac to the spot on the rug where the chips had crumbled into the shag of the carpet. Rod hated cleaning. He hated the dust that was shooting up his nose. He hated losing all his chips. When his mother came back from his room, carrying the empty laundry basket, he glared at her.

  “I don’t see why I have to do this,” he growled. “It’s ruining my afternoon.”

  “Well, perhaps your bad attitude is ruining my afternoon,” his mother answered. “After you’ve finished there, I think you should go to your room and take a nap so you don’t bring that sour behavior to the dinner table.”

  “I’m not six. I don’t need a nap.”

  “Then just lie there in your room and think about the way you’re acting. Don’t come out until you can put a smile on your face.”

  The Hoove was way ahead of Mrs. Brownstone. While Rod was walking to the kitchen to hang up the hand vac, the Hoove hurried into Rod’s room to check out what kind of misery he could cause him in there. He saw some real possibilities. He could empty his underwear drawer into the wastebasket. He could short-sheet his bed. And he could even sprinkle water on the bottom sheet, so when Rod laid down on it, it would be soaking wet.

  When Rod came in, the Hoove was floating on the ceiling, watching to see what the big jerk would do first.

  Rod closed the blinds and looked around to make sure no one was watching. Then he put a chair in front of his door and crept over to his bookshelf. He moved three volumes of the Guinness Book of Sports Records, reached behind them, and took out a wooden box.

  It had a word chiseled on the front, and when the Hoove read that word, he knew he had Rod Brownstone right where he wanted him.

  CHAPTER 11

  The word chiseled on the box was BLANKIE.

  Rod had carved it with his Boy Scout knife when he was ten years old to earn a badge in woodworking. He was too embarrassed to show it to anyone except the assistant scout leader who gave out the badges. Rod had made the box as a special hiding place for his favorite possession — a dollar-size swatch of blue satin, the last remaining piece of the baby blanket he had carried around with him every minute of the day. Once, when he was almost four years old, he had forgotten Blankie at home on a family ski weekend in the mountains north of Los Angeles. He cried so hard and for so long that they finally had to turn the car around and drive over a hundred miles back home so he could be reunited with his blanket.

  Over the years, Blankie had suffered a lot of rips and tears from being dragged around. The only thing left was the corner piece of satin trim and an inch of soft, furry blanket. But no matter how ragged it had become, Rod was attached like glue to his blankie. He took it out every night when he went to bed, holding it in his right hand and rubbing it back and forth on the tip of his nose. He couldn’t fall asleep without it. And on occasions when he felt especially upset or nervous, like before a big football game, he’d take Blankie out for an emergency nose rub.

  Rod had never told anyone about the existence of his blankie. It was his deep, dark secret. He would die if any of his football buddies knew that he couldn’t go to sleep without it.

  Hoover, a student of human nature, immediately understood how important it was for Rod to keep his secret deep and dark. He watched with glee as Rod took the tattered blanket piece out of its wooden box. He howled with laughter when Rod flopped on the bed, folded his pillow in half, and put the piece of blue satin against his nose and whispered, “Okay, Blankie. Do your stuff.”

  The Hoove circled the room, doing an invisible victory dance in
the air. His mind raced with all the possibilities of what that little piece of fabric could do. If used correctly, it would give Billy a perfect opportunity to put the Brownstone goon in his place.

  Ah, Hoover thought. Revenge is sweet.

  The Hoove waited impatiently for Rod to nod off into the nap he hadn’t wanted to take and didn’t feel he needed. Just to pass the time, Hoover amused himself by turning a few of the football pennants on the wall upside down and tying the laces of all of Rod’s shoes together into a ball. After a few minutes, Amber stomped in.

  “Mom wants you to set the table for dinner,” she said, waking Rod up.

  “You do it,” he said with a yawn. “You need the practice.”

  “It’s your turn, dingbat,” she said. “And by the way, what is that in your hand?”

  “Nothing,” Rod answered, immediately shoving the blankie into the two halves of his folded pillow.

  “It’s not nothing. It’s something. Otherwise you wouldn’t have shoved it under your pillow. It looked like one of my doll blankets.”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Rod snapped. “What would I want with a stupid doll blanket? Now get out. The sign on the door says ‘private’.”

  “I know what it says,” Amber answered, putting her pudgy hands on her hips. “I can read. In fact, I can even read your pennant upside down. It says ‘Chargers Go!’ ”

  “What are you talking about?” Rod said. “It’s not upside down.”

  “Take a look, Mr. Know-It-All.”

  Rod glanced at the wall. His “Go Chargers” pennant was indeed upside down.

  “You did that just to annoy me, didn’t you?” he snarled at Amber.

  “I wouldn’t come into your room for a million dollars,” Amber said. “I have better things to do than watch you poke around in other people’s lives with your spy cam.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you? I gather intel.”

  “No, you don’t. You just spy.”

  The Hoove was thoroughly enjoying the conversation. Little Amber was a firecracker, and he was developing a real liking for her.

  Feeling satisfied that she had won the argument, Amber left. As soon as she was gone, Rod snatched his blankie from under the pillow and stuffed it back in the wooden box. Holding the box behind his back, he crept over to the bookshelf and put it in its secret hiding place behind the Guinness records books. The Hoove could hardly wait to get his hands on it. It was all he could do to keep himself from pouncing on that blankie box. As soon as Rod left the room, he swooped over to the bookshelf and grabbed it.

  “Oh yeah,” he said to the box. “You and me, we’re going to make some beautiful music together.”

  He tucked the box securely under his arm and shot through the wall, making it to the other side. However, in his excitement, he had completely forgotten that although he could travel through walls, earthly things made of matter could not. He found himself outside of the Brownstones’ house, empty-handed. Looking through the window, he saw the wooden box lying on the rug where it had fallen when he passed through the wall.

  Diving headlong through the stucco, the Hoove went back into Rod’s room, glancing around to make sure he hadn’t returned. The only activity he saw was Rod’s Siamese fighting fish swimming around his bowl in alarmed circles.

  “Hey, don’t worry about it, big fin,” the Hoove said to him. “I’m not after you. Ghosts like fishies.”

  The Hoove picked up the blankie box from the carpet and zoomed over to the window. Throwing it open, he escaped into the evening air with his prized possession in his hand.

  CHAPTER 12

  Billy was in his room, working out with dumbbells, when the Hoove burst in through the wall.

  “Put those things down right away,” he ordered Billy. “I have big news. A Bingo-Rama for the good guys.”

  “I can’t put them down,” Billy said, continuing to curl one weight at a time. “If I do, I won’t be able to lift them up again. Besides, I have a rhythm going.”

  “Trust me. This is worth it.”

  “And trust me. My biceps are screaming for help. I can’t ignore them now.”

  The Hoove hovered a few inches off the ground, getting right up in Billy’s face.

  “What am I holding behind my back?” he asked Billy. “Guess.”

  “I don’t have to guess,” Billy answered, the veins in his neck sticking out from his last set of curls. “I can see right through you. It’s a box. What’s so great about that?”

  “Feast your eyes, Billy Boy, on a little bit of magnificence.” With a flourish, the Hoove brought the box out from behind him. He opened it very slowly as if it contained the most valuable object in the world.

  “Okay, okay. Cut the drama. I’ll look,” Billy said. As he leaned down to place the dumbbells on the floor, their weight pulled him off his feet and he almost stumbled right into the box.

  “Will you try to remain standing?” the Hoove said. “This is serious business.”

  “I didn’t mean to fall. I’m just a little weak, which is why I’m lifting these stupid weights in the first place.”

  “Where you have been weak in the past, you will now be strong,” the Hoove declared. “For in this box is the answer to all your problems. A magic carpet ride, so to speak. What do you see?”

  Billy glanced into the open box.

  “I see a little piece of an old blanket. Big deal.”

  “Right here we have an example of the main difference between you and me,” the Hoove proclaimed, pointing one of his pale fingers at Billy.

  “Other than the fact that I’m alive and you’re dead? I’d say that’s the main difference. Oh yeah, and breathing. That’s another difference.”

  “Billy Boy, you are focused on the wrong things, as usual.” The Hoove lifted Rod’s blankie out of the box and waved it in front of Billy. “The difference,” he went on, “is that you see a blanket before you. And me, I see possibilities.”

  “To do what? Go into the ratty old blanket business?”

  “What if I told you that this piece of cloth used to be Rod Brownstone’s baby blanket and that he still takes it to bed with him every night?”

  Billy laughed at the very idea. “I’d say that could never happen. He’s too tough to need a blankie. That’s more my style.”

  Billy bent down to pick up his dumbbells again, but the Hoove reached out to stop him.

  “Just this afternoon, I happened to witness Rod rub this exact piece of cloth against his nose as he curled up in his beddy-bed,” the Hoove explained.

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. And it gets even better. No one, not even his little sister, knows it exists.”

  Billy considered what the Hoove was telling him. Little by little, it began to dawn on him why the Hoove had presented his discovery of the blanket with so much drama. He was thinking of revenge, of getting even. And this piece of blanket held the key.

  Billy’s mind didn’t naturally go to thoughts of revenge — that wasn’t his nature. But the Hoove was showing him another path, a way to stand up for himself, and as his mind embraced the idea, his eyes lit up.

  “I think I’m getting it,” he whispered. “What you’re holding in your hands is Rod’s deepest secret and worst nightmare.”

  The Hoove let out a howling laugh.

  “Just imagine, Billy Boy, what some of those cute girlies at your school, such as Ruby Baker, would think if they saw Mr. Football Hero’s baby blankie run up to the top of the flagpole.”

  A smile spread across Billy’s face. The Hoove went on.

  “Or how about if your mom came on the loudspeaker and announced that Rod’s baby blanket had been turned in to the Lost and Found, and he could come pick it up whenever it was convenient for him.”

  “How would she know it belonged to him?” Billy asked.

  “How did Ruby know that tonsil was yours? There was a note attached.”

  Suddenly, Billy was loving this conversation. His mind shi
fted into gear, and all kinds of spectacular revenge possibilities burst into his head, like a fireworks display on the Fourth of July.

  “We could put up flyers all over school, announcing that it’s lost,” he began.

  “Go on.” The Hoove nodded. He was grinning broadly. “You’re getting it.”

  “Or put it in the display case where the football trophies are,” Billy went on. “We could tape a note to one of the trophies with an arrow that says, I am Rod Brownstone’s baby blankie. He loves me more than football.”

  The Hoove laughed even harder. He was feeling victorious that finally Billy was getting some of the Porterhouse Attitude. Maybe there was hope for this kid yet.

  “I like the train of thought you’re riding on,” he said to Billy. “Put it on full throttle and blow the whistle.”

  “Okay, how’s this for the best idea yet?” Billy said. “We could spread the word about Rod’s baby blankie and then charge admission to see it. Anyone who wants to take a look has to cough up a dollar.”

  “Brilliant,” the Hoove said, snapping his suspenders the way he did when he felt everything was going his way. “We humiliate Brownstone just like he did to you AND we put some extra cabbage in our pockets at the same time.”

  Billy suddenly stopped laughing and looked perplexed. “Wait, Hoove. Why would we want to put a vegetable in our pockets?”

  “Cabbage … you know … as in moolah. Money. What’s the matter, don’t you speak English?”

  “Sure I do. Just not hundred-year-old English.”

  “You make a good point, ducky. Sometimes I forget I’m a hundred and thirteen. So what’s it going to be? Flagpole? Flyers? Cabbage?”

  Billy didn’t know. He and the Hoove had come up with so many revenge plots so quickly that his head was spinning.

  “I have to take a break, Hoove, and clear my mind,” he said. “I’ll be back in a sec. I need some Gatorade.”