“Sure, go on in, kids,” said an agent, and he opened the door for us.
Holding our big #1 fingers in front of our faces, we walked in. We had made it!
Now all we had to do was grab the mustache and the whole thing would be over.
Then Fako turned toward us and smiled.
“Ah, Lenny Junior! And Miss O’Rodeo! What a pleasure it is to see you again! Especially you, Jodie.”
He was on to us.
“Go!” shouted Lenny.
We lunged for the mustache.
The Secret Service agents grabbed us before we even got close.
“You—” I shouted before someone put his hand over my mouth.
Fako walked over and whispered to us, “These guys are the real thing. Not even brainwashed. Just doing their job. Be careful.”
As he whispered, the mustache was so close to me it was almost tickling my ear.
I tried to get a hand free to grab it. But I couldn’t.
“Oh, guys, we’ve got so much to talk about,” Fako said. “But could I trouble you to wait just a second?”
e all stood there and waited.
Then came a roar! A tremendous noise from way over our heads. Coming through layers and layers of concrete. A yelling and a stomping that went on for three or four minutes. Then it was gradually replaced by “FAKO FAKO FAKO FAKO . . .”
“Well, that’s that,” said Fako. “The TV just announced the closing of the polls. I’m the next president of the U.S. of A.”
He sat down in a folding chair and seemed to be thinking about things.
“Oh, I’m sorry, guys. I didn’t mean to leave you there like that. Guards, I think you can let these kids go. I think they understand that if they try to attack the duly elected president elect, you will shoot to kill. And that if they say too many bad things about me, I’ll have them tried for treason.”
The guards let us go.
I made a move for Fako, but two Secret Service agents right behind him leveled their guns at me.
“What are you thinking, Miss O’Rodeo?” said Fako. “These Secret Service guys will shoot you. And I don’t want that. I want to be friends again . . . Maybe more than friends with you, Jodie.”
“Forget it!” Lenny and I both shouted.
“That’s hurtful. Listen, are you still hung up about the mustache? We’re past that now. There’s been an election. The people have voted.”
“You stole their votes!” I shouted.
“Don’t you get it?” Lenny yelled at the Secret Service guys. “He stole the election. He cheated.”
Fako sighed. One of those sighs that adults make when they think kids are too stupid to explain something to.
“These officers aren’t the Federal Election Commission,” he said, with a smirk that showed he thought he was being funny. “Look, guys, game over. You got some points here and there, but I won. It’s over. It’s history. I mean, it’s literally going to be in the history books. I won. I’m in charge now.
“All I have to do is say the word and the CIA ships you off to Brownwater Base in Antarctica with all the other wackos who are a danger to this fine country.
“But I don’t want to do that. I’m going to give you another option . . . Just admit that it’s over. Admit that I’m the new president. And then I’ll let you walk out the door.”
Lenny and I looked at each other. What could we do?
“I’ll go up there and make my speech and I’ll tell everyone that you’re not the Evil One, Lenny. And I’ll tell them that Jodie O’Rodeo has been cleared of all suspicion. No one will ever bother you again.”
Lenny opened his mouth to say something, but Fako cut him off.
“Jodie, Lenny ... remember. I can’t tolerate treason or threats against our democratic process. If you say anything other than ‘OK, Mr. President,’ you’ll both be silenced and taken away and that will be it.”
“OK,” we both grunted.
“OK, Mr. President” Fako insisted.
“OK, Mr. President,” we mumbled.
i, it’s me, Lenny Jr. again. Here to tell you the rest of the story.
The streets were jammed with cars, and the sidewalks were full of people headed to the stadium. They were all rushing to hear Fako’s victory speech.
Everyone but us was yelling and hollering. Everyone but us was happy.
We didn’t say anything. We just kept walking.
We were hardly even paying attention to where we were heading. I didn’t even know where I was going to go. Home? Yeah, I thought, I guess it’s finally safe to go home without my parents wanting to have me arrested.
Then I had this odd thought. If I go home, I’ll have to go back to school. And if I go back to school, my best friend won’t be there anymore. Weird.
We passed a bench at a bus stop and I sat down. Jodie sat down next to me and put her arm around me. She leaned over and was about to whisper something.
I jumped up and yelled: “That guy’s riding my bicycle!!!”
“What?”
“That guy there! He’s riding my bicycle! Hey, dude! That’s my bike!”
The guy stopped. I saw now that he was the guy I had seen at Sven’s way back when. The nut with a wispy mustache ... and a huge rifle. Well, he didn’t have the rifle at Sven’s, but he had it now. I really wished I hadn’t yelled at him.
“Oh, hey . . . person!” he said in a European accent. Not exactly French but sort of French. “Oh, hey, cowgirl. Nice to see you again.”
He turned back to me. “I am very sorry for taking your bicycle. It was wrong and I am apologizing. I shall return it to you in just a few minutes after I take vengeance upon the person that has stolen my mustache! The blood of my blood and hair of my hair! No election can change that. He must die! He will die! And the mustache shall be mine again! See you later!”
And he rode off toward the stadium, snaking between the gridlocked cars.
“I forgot all about that guy!” said Jodie.
“You know him? Who is he?”
“He’s a nut with some kind of obsession with Fako’s mustache.”
“We’ve got to stop him!”
“Why?” Jodie asked. “I mean, not that I want anybody to kill anybody, but why should I try to help Fako?”
“Fako’s not real. He’s Casper—my best friend. At least, before I met you, he was. My only friend. I’ve got to get back there and warn him.”
“How are you going to do that?” Jodie said. “That guy has your bicycle and he’s already halfway there. The only way you could beat him would be with—”
“NEIGGHHHH!”
A horse came galloping through the crowd. Right toward us!
“Soymilk!” shouted Jodie, jumping to her feet. And the horse stopped as she threw her arms around its neck. I recognized the horse from Jodie’s show!
“Oh, sweetie,” said Jodie. “Have you been looking for me all this time?”
“Neighhh!”
“Wow! Lenny, this is Soymilk! And—do you really want to try to save Casper?”
“Yes,” I said, although I wasn’t sure exactly why. I guess it’s hard to give up a friend. Even a friend who’s a huge pain in the behind sometimes.
odie jumped up onto Soymilk’s back. I had to climb aboard from the back of a bench.
“Hold on,” Jodie called over her shoulder.
“Wait—hold on to what?”
“To me, I guess.”
“Uh, where?” This was the most embarrassing thing I’d ever said in my life, but I really didn’t know what to do. I think Jodie was as embarrassed as I was, because she pretended not to hear me.
“Hey-YO-yo-te-do, Soymilk! Away!”
I held on! I’m still not sure exactly where. Everything became a blur. I really mean a blur. We were moving that fast. Dodging and weaving with Jodie shouting, “Hey, there!” and “Look out!” and “Yee-ha!”
Meanwhile, I was getting jostled around so much I thought either my brains or my behind was going
to break. “It’s going too fast!” I yelled.
“What is?” Jodie yelled back.
“The horse. It’s going too fast!”
Jodie looked back just long enough to glare at me.
“Don’t ever—ever!—call Soymilk an it! She is a she!”
“Sorry, Soymilk!”
She didn’t reply—she just kept on galloping toward the stadium.
We hadn’t walked all that far, so it was a pretty short trip back. Soymilk hurtled over an orange construction fence, and we were in the parking lot, crashing into TV reporters and knocking over lights and stuff.
Then a jump over a concrete barrier and I could see the stadium bouncing around dead ahead.
“Stop! We order you to stop!” someone was shouting.
“Things are about to go nuts,” Jodie shouted. “Just lean when I lean.”
She leaned and I leaned, and Soymilk seemed to lean too. We seemed to be changing direction, but the back of the horse seemed to be doing it a little differently from the front.
“Other way!” Jodie yelled. And we did it again on the other side.
“Now duck!”
Suddenly, there was a lot of beeping. I looked back and realized we had just bolted through a metal detector. I saw a guard raising his gun, but the crowd was too thick for him to shoot. There were people everywhere, and for a moment we got bogged down.
So Jodie and Soymilk (and me too, I guess) did that Lone Ranger thing. You know, where Silver the horse rears back and waves his front legs in the air. What I didn’t realize is that it’s very hard to keep from falling off when that happens. But I held on. Again, I can’t say exactly to what.
The Lone Ranger thing worked, and the crowd parted for us a little bit and we pushed our way through a big gateway and we were inside the stadium. The noise was insane. The people in the stands must have been screaming their heads off. That probably meant Fako was giving his victory speech, which meant he was an easy target for the sort of French mustache assassin.
“Look!” I yelled to Jodie. There was big orange tape blocking a low hallway that didn’t have any people in it.
Soymilk bolted for the tape. Suddenly, a woman in a yellow vest leaped in front of us.
“OK, everyone, we need to clear a path here. Please have your horse clear the path!”
It was the crazy annoying lady from in front of the Chinese restaurant again.
Soymilk tried to stop, but she slipped on the tile floor of the hallway and crashed right into the lady, who went sprawling into a bin of unwashed football jerseys.
Soymilk had cleared a path.
Soymilk got her feet under her again and plunged down the tunnel-like hallway. The hallway was shorter than I thought, and at the end was ... an escalator.
still don’t know how you ride a horse down an escalator. But we did. It was an up escalator too.
All I know is we hit the bottom and we saw a big opening ahead, with noise and light pouring through.
Then we were out under the lights and surrounded by 132,453 people. We raced across the field, which was real grass, not Astroturf. We came up behind a big stage that had been set up for Fako’s speech. It was surrounded by TV equipment trucks and, unfortunately, about twenty-five Secret Service agents.
“There’s an assassin in the stadium!” I yelled. “A sort of French guy! With my bike and a big gun!”
But they weren’t listening to me. They were drawing their own guns.
We were too fast for them, though. Jodie and I leaned and Soymilk turned in a split second, just like the champion rodeo horse she used to be. Soymilk jumped over a huge tangle of cords.
And—hey, wait, was that my bike propped up against an equipment truck?
We leaned again as Soymilk rounded the back of the truck and burst into an area of dozens of anchorpeople all saying: “And now let’s go live to Fako Mustacho’s victory speech.”
We zigged and zagged between them, bumping a few along the way.
Up ahead, several Secret Service agents were waiting for a chance to shoot us without hitting an anchorperson. But Jodie was pointing.
“There he is!” she screamed, and at first I thought she meant Fako, who was standing on the stage with his arms outstretched. But then I saw the sort of French guy standing at the front of the crowd, aiming his rifle at Fako.
I don’t know what the Secret Service agents did next. I hardly even know what Jodie did next. I let go with one hand to grab the very last thing I had to fight with: the Ultra-Sticky-Stretchy Grabber Hand.
Unfortunately, that’s when Soymilk made a leap for the stage. I lost my grip with my other hand.
I could feel myself falling.
In two seconds everything was over.
f we were watching it in slow motion, here’s what happened in that two seconds:
I have a glimpse of Fako standing on the stage with his arms raised. Confetti and water bottles are falling from somewhere up above.
As Soymilk’s front hooves hit the stage, I lose my hold and start to fall. Soymilk just seems to move out from under me, and Jodie urges her forward toward the sort of French guy, who is squeezing the trigger.
In my right hand is the Ultra-Sticky-Stretchy Grabber Hand. Even as I’m falling and putting my left hand out to break my fall, my right arm is in motion. My wrist is flicking, my index finger is tightening its grip on the long stringy part, and my thumb is loosening its hold on the hand.
BANG! The sort of French guy’s gun goes off.
And ZZZZZZTTTTT, I whip the sticky hand out like lightning. It flies out and out—not toward the gun but toward an invisible point in space where it meets the bullet with a soft, sticky thwack.
I’m landing on the stage. The side of my head hits the floor—hard. But I’m yanking back on the sticky hand. It’s pulling on the bullet, but the bullet is strong and mean and keeps going.
There’s Fako looking a lot like Casper. Scared. Too scared to move or duck or even put his hands down. It’s happening too fast for him.
The bullet races on. But the sticky hand is slowing it down. It’s been stretched too far. It’s pulling back now with amazing strength. Of course, any normal sticky hand would just snap in two. Even a deluxe sticky hand would break. But not this. This is Hank Heidelberg’s masterpiece!
The bullet gets closer and closer to Fako, and the hand pulls harder and harder. I’m holding on as tight as I can.
The bullet has lost most of its speed now. It’s no longer a killer. But it hasn’t spent the last of its energy yet. Just another inch. Another centimeter. Another micron. And it hits Fako. Right in the mustache.
Fako falls backward. The sticky hand snaps back at me so hard that it shatters the bones in my hand.
Before the pain hits me, I look down and see, attached to the sticky hand, the bullet and the mustache.
With my good hand, I grab the mustache, put it between my teeth, and rip it in two. Then I swallow it, and the twirly handlebar parts go down my throat like nasty lukewarm hairy noodles.
The mustache is dead.
Then a water bottle falls on my head and knocks me out.
hat’s the slow-motion replay as I see it in my head. The one they show on TV is a lot different. I’m sure you saw it. They showed it a million times on every channel.
But in case you forgot, here’s what it looks like:
We see Fako with his arms up and his mustache looking perfect. Confetti and water bottles are falling all around him. Then the camera jerks wildly and blurrily and zooms in on the right side of the stage.
A sort of French guy is aiming a rifle. Suddenly, a horse appears in the background. You can dimly see a figure falling off the horse, but the TV news anchors say that it’s nobody important.
It was me.
The important person is still riding the horse. It’s Jodie O’ Rodeo—America’s teenage rodeo queen and, now, America’s heroine.
The sort of French guy’s gun fires. Don’t worry, viewers, it’s just a
wild shot. Investigators never even found where the bullet went. But look! Freeze-frame: He’s cocking the gun again! He’s going to shoot again, Jim!
Suddenly, Jodie O’Rodeo is standing on top of the horse!
Just look at her, Nancy, she’s standing on the horse!
Now Jodie’s leaping off the horse onto the speaker tower and grabbing the sort of French guy. They tumble to the ground. O’Rodeo is grabbing a speaker cord on the way down.
The sort of French guy lands first. Jodie lands with a knee in his back and with one, two, three motions of her arm, hog-ties the would-be assassin.
The camera jerks back to the podium. Fako is gone? What happened? We’ll never know.
Every person, including every cameraman and every camerawoman, was watching O’Rodeo take down the assassin. No one saw what happened to Fako. And no one ever saw him again.
The platoon of Secret Service agents and police officers that rushed the stage found only two local Hairsprinkle schoolkids. One with a broken hand and one with a busted lip.
“One of them may have been the figure we saw fall off the horse, but who really cares, Jim?”
“I know I don’t care, Nancy, what I want to know is, when will the new season of the Jodie O’Rodeo show start?”
“That’s what we all want to know, Jim.”
woke up feeling the strangest sensation. Something warm and soft on my lips.
I opened my eyes.
It was Jodie.
“I wasn’t sure you were going to wake up,” she said. “So I tried the Sleeping Beauty thing on you. It worked!”
“I’ll say!”
I looked around. There were police and official-looking people everywhere. I saw some questioning Casper, who was holding a bloody handkerchief to his mouth.
“His mustache disappeared! They don’t realize he’s Fako,” she whispered in my ear.
“Don’t tell them!” I whispered. “They’d lock him up forever.”
“They probably should,” said Jodie.
“Maybe, but still . . . don’t tell. Not yet. And leave me out of it too. We can always tell the full story later.”
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