by Mo O'Hara
Frankie peered out of the top of the paint pot and looked at me.
“We did say we’d help Sami make the missing-tortoise posters,” I said to him.
Frankie sighed and shrugged his shoulders. Actually I’m pretty sure goldfish don’t have shoulders, but there was a definite shrugging of something. He flung himself out of the pot again and splashed the paper with his tail four times underneath the semicircle he had already made. I had to admit, for a goldfish he had pretty good artistic flair.
Frankie turned into a zombie goldfish when Pradeep and I shocked him back to life with a battery after my Evil Scientist big brother, Mark, tried to murder him with toxic gunk. Ever since then, Frankie has mostly been into trying to get Mark back by kung fu fish-slapping and hypnotizing people. I didn’t get to see his artistic side much. It made a nice change.
Pradeep sat typing away on his laptop at our kitchen table. He looked down at the wet poster on our kitchen floor. “Wow, that really does look like Toby, our cousin’s tortoise. Good job, Frankie!”
Frankie waved his fin in thanks and then jumped into the water bucket to swish all the paint off his scales.
Sami held up one of the posters.
“Tom, you write one more word?” Sami asked.
“Sure,” I said, picking up the marker pen again, “if it helps find Toby.”
“Toby telepopping tortoise!” she said in her “I’m being serious even though I know this sounds very cute” voice.
I shot Pradeep a look to see if he could translate.
“She means ‘teleporting tortoise.’” He smiled. “Our cousin Joe always said that Toby must be able to teleport because he can be right behind you one second and the next he’s clear across the garden, heading for the fence.”
“Has Toby run away before?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Pradeep said, “but not since they fixed the fence.” He clicked on the keyboard of the laptop again. “I just hope we find him before Joe gets back from holiday tomorrow. All we had to do was watch him for the weekend and feed him a bit of lettuce now and then.” Pradeep sighed. “I shouldn’t have let Sami take him out in the garden.”
“Toby telepopped bye-bye,” Sami said, and kissed the little green painted tortoise on the poster. Which of course made her lips green. At least they matched the rest of her.
“Any luck on that lost-pets website?” I asked as I squeezed the word ‘teleporting’ on to the posters.
“I’ve been searching on Pet Find, Where’s My Pet.com and something called Paranormal Pet Link, but nothing has come up,” Pradeep said, closing the laptop. “There seem to be lots of other local pets missing too. Some of them for a few days or more. Cats, hamsters, rabbits, snakes … even some rare birds.” Then he looked at Sami. “But I’m sure Toby will turn up soon. Let’s get the posters up around the neighborhood and maybe someone will spot him.”
“Frankie, do you want to come and put up posters?” I said, lifting up the bucket that was now filled with greenish water. An orange face peered up at me. Frankie shook his head, splashing me, and dived back under the green liquid, blowing bubbles across the surface.
“I think he just likes swimming around in that green water and doesn’t want to get back in his bowl,” Pradeep said.
“OK,” I said to Frankie. “I’ll put some bath toys in the bucket with you and you can pretend you’re stalking the rubber ducky again if you want.”
“Mark’s out and we’ll only be gone a few minutes anyway,” Pradeep said. “Frankie’ll be fine.”
We headed out of the kitchen door with a roll of tape and the posters, ready to hit the trees and lampposts along our street. But what we saw made us stop in our tracks.
CHAPTER 2
AN AWFULLY “NICE” EVIL PLOT
Pradeep and I looked at each other. I had never seen so many missing-pet posters in all my life. Every lamppost and tree was already covered in pictures of missing kittens, rabbits, birds, snakes, gerbils, lizards, stick insects and guinea pigs.
Then one poster caught my eye.
I pulled the magic marker I had used on our posters out of my pocket and wrote the number on my arm.
Then I shot Pradeep a look that said, “If there’s an evil kidnap plot, then you know who has to be behind it!”
“This has Mark written all over it,” Pradeep’s look answered.
Mark’s Evil Scientist track record is pretty much one hundred percent for being behind all the evil plots we’ve ever uncovered—from toxic-gunking Frankie and trying to flush him to taking over the school or faking wild-animal attacks and hypnotizing TV stars. When you think about it, he’s had a pretty busy evil year so far.
We grabbed Sami and raced back home. As we neared the kitchen door I screeched to a halt and whispered to Pradeep, “What if Mark is in there now? What if he’s after Frankie? Maybe he’s been waiting all day for us to go out so he can sneak in and grab him? We have to use the element of surprise!”
Pradeep and Sami nodded.
Pradeep counted down silently using his fingers. Then on zero or “fist with no fingers up,” we stormed through the kitchen door and Sami shouted, “Surprise!”
“Um … that’s not quite what we meant, Sami,” Pradeep started to whisper, before realizing that Mark was in the kitchen after all.
“What’s with all the missing pets?” I yelled. “We know you have something to do with it, so you’d better confess now!”
At the same time as I yelled this I noticed something was definitely wrong. Mark was wearing his white Evil Scientist coat, but instead of threatening to pummel us into the ground, like he usually did, he was sitting at the kitchen table quietly drinking a cup of tea!
He set his teacup down gently on its saucer.
“Good morning, Tom,” he said with a smile. “Good morning, Pradeep.” Then he turned and grinned down at Sami, who stared at him as if he had just landed from Planet Zog. “And how are you today, you little cutie-wootie?”
Sami squeaked and hid behind Pradeep’s leg.
I immediately checked the bucket to see if Frankie was OK. He was thrashing around in the green water as if he was upset, but he wasn’t jumping out and trying to zombie thrash Mark like he normally did. Something was really wrong here. It was as if we’d walked into a parallel dimension where Mark and Frankie didn’t hate each other. Urggghh!
“I don’t know what you’re up to, Mark,” said Pradeep suspiciously, “but where are the pets?”
“I’m very sorry, but I don’t know what you mean,” Mark said. “But you all look very upset. Shall I make you a soothing cup of tea?”
Pradeep and I shot each other a look that said, “If he’s bluffing, then he’s a lot better at it than he used to be!”
“Mark, it’s no use trying to fool us. We know what you’re up to,” I said.
“Yeah, I mean you even have on your Evil Scientist coat!” Pradeep added. “Your outfit gives you away!”
Mark looked down at his coat. “Do you like it?” Then he brushed away a tiny piece of fluff from the sleeve. “White is so hard to keep looking sparkling clean though, don’t you think?”
Sami peeked out from behind Pradeep’s leg and blew a raspberry at Mark.
“Now that’s not very polite, young lady,” Mark said, looking stern. Then his face softened. “You look so darn cute when you do that I just can’t get mad at you. Go on—do it again!”
Sami ducked back to the safety of Pradeep’s leg.
“What happened to you, Mark?” I said sitting down at the table with him.
“I don’t really remember. I came in and I saw your lovely cute little goldfish here, and then I suddenly felt all happy and desperately wanted a cup of tea.”
Pradeep and I both looked at Frankie.
“Frankie, did you do some kind of hypno-thing to Mark?” I asked.
Sami peeked out and pulled on my pant leg. “Mark not ‘swishy fishy,’” she said, doing a pretty good impression of what someone looks like when they’v
e been zombified by Frankie. She should know—she’s been zombified enough times herself.
“You’re right, Sami,” said Pradeep. “He doesn’t look as if Frankie’s hypnotized him. But then why is he acting so weird and polite?”
“It’s like he’s gone from being nearly totally evil to being nearly totally nice,” I said.
Frankie jumped out of his bucket and flicked a fin. Splashes of greenish water went from his bucket in a straight line to the door. Then he acted out a whole fishy mime that looked something like a fight scene and involved a lot of pointing a fin at the door and then at Mark. I couldn’t really get exactly what he meant, but one thing was clear.
“Has someone else been here, Frankie?” I asked.
CHAPTER 3
A VERY FISHY PHONE CALL
Frankie fell backward into his bucket with a sigh of relief.
“Who?” Pradeep asked.
Frankie jumped up and yanked Pradeep’s sweater with his teeth so that it pulled up over his face.
“Moh, mmmas mmme mmmaring mma maalmeeclava?” Pradeep mumbled from under his sweater.
“Huh?” Sami and I said together.
“Pardon?” Mark echoed.
Pradeep pulled down his sweater as Frankie fell back into the water with a splash. “Oh, was he wearing a balaclava?” Pradeep repeated. “Was that what you meant, Frankie?”
Frankie nodded.
Pradeep picked up the home phone. “If Mark’s not to blame, maybe the levitating-budgie owner might know what’s going on. After all, he’s the only one apart from us who thinks it’s an evil kidnap plot. Now we can add evil brainwashing into the mix.”
I held out my arm so Pradeep could read the number from the poster.
Pradeep dialed. The phone rang twice and then a voice answered.
“Password?” it said. It sounded young.
“Sorry?” Pradeep said.
“Passsssswordddd?” it said again, sounding kind of irritated. “On the sign.”
Pradeep thought for a moment. “Evil kidnap plot,” he said finally.
“OK,” the voice said.
“That’s technically a ‘pass phrase,’ you know…” Pradeep started to say.
“Do you want me to hang up?” the voice countered.
“No!” I grabbed the phone. “We want to know what happened to the missing pets.”
“I’ll meet you in the street by my lost-budgie sign in five minutes. How will I know it’s you?” the voice answered.
“Well, there’ll be me and Pradeep, a toddler dressed as a mermaid, a twelve-year-old in a white Evil Scientist coat … oh, and a goldfish in a bucket. I’m pretty sure you’ll know it’s us,” I said. “What do you look like?”
But the voice had already hung up. Or rather, the person with the voice had hung up. Voices don’t have hands that can hang up phones.
“Let’s go,” I said to Pradeep.
“Are we taking Mark with us?” Pradeep asked.
“Well, we can’t leave him here for Mom to find,” I answered. “She’ll think he’s got a concussion again and take him to the hospital. He’s never this nice.”
“I really want to help, guys,” Mark interrupted. “I can’t imagine all those pets out there. Lonely, lost—” he started tearing up—“just wanting a cuddle.”
Then he broke down in tears.
“Seriously, do we HAVE to take him?” Pradeep said.
Sami stepped out from behind Pradeep’s leg and gave Mark a gentle pat on the back. “There, there,” she said.
“Let’s just get out there and see what this kid has to say about the missing pets. Maybe he’ll know what happened to Mark too,” I said, picking up Frankie in the bucket.
Mark wiped his eyes with a hanky. He was actually using a hanky!
Then he looked into the bucket and Frankie growled at him. “Somebody got up on the wrong side of the fishbowl this morning!” sniffed Mark. “You look like you need a hug…” and with that he reached into the bucket.
Frankie leaped up and kung fu fish-slapped Mark right across the face!
“Mark, I think that was Frankie’s way of saying that he doesn’t want a hug,” I said, pulling the bucket out of reach. “Now let’s go.”
We headed out of the door to the lost-levitating-budgie sign, but when we arrived there was nobody there. Pradeep looked closely at the sign. There was an arrow drawn on it, pointing right.
“I’m sure that wasn’t there before,” he said.
We followed the arrow and it led to a sign for a lost hamster. This one had another arrow drawn on it, pointing straight ahead.
“I think the kid is leading us to him,” Pradeep said.
“It’s like a treasure hunt. Oh, what fun!” Mark clapped his hands.
Frankie poked his head up out of his bucket and glared. I think the new ultra-nice and polite Mark was getting on his nerves too.
The next arrow led to a sign for a lost gerbil that pointed left, then to a missing snake, which sent us back in a U-turn to where we’d started. Eventually the directions led us to the door of the convenience store.
“It can’t be here, can it?” I said.
There was a sign on the door that said: “Only two schoolchildren at a time,” so we left Mark and Sami outside playing pat-a-cake. We brought Frankie with us as the sign didn’t say anything about fish and I thought it was safer than leaving him with Mark, just in case Mark tried to hug him again.
When we went inside, Mrs. Martin was standing behind the counter along with a girl sitting on a big stack of newspapers.
The girl looked us up and down and pushed her fringe out of her eyes. “Where’s the mermaid and the kid in the white coat?” she demanded.
CHAPTER 4
PETS WITH POWERS
I pointed to the sign about school kids. “Outside,” I said. “It’s just us and the fish.”
“You’re the kid with the missing budgie?” Pradeep said. “You’re a girl?”
“Nothing gets past you, does it, Sherlock,” she replied. “And you’re a dweeb, but don’t worry, I won’t hold it against you if you can help me get my budgie back.”
“I didn’t mean…” Pradeep stuttered and suddenly found something on the floor that he had to look at for a long time.
“Sorry,” the girl said. “I’m just worried about Boris.”
We must have both given her a look that said, “Who?” because she said, “My budgie. Come on—try to keep up, people!”
“We want to help,” I said. “I’m Tom and this is Pradeep.”
The girl raised an eyebrow. “My hacker handle is Geeky Girl,” she said. “Better you don’t know my real name.”
She jumped down off the stack of papers and shouted to Mrs. Martin, “I’m just gonna hang with my friends for a bit, OK, Mom?” Then she motioned for us to come through the doorway to the back of the shop. “Better bring the others too. I’ve got something to show you all.”
We brought in Mark and Sami and, after Mark had complimented Mrs. Martin on her new hairstyle, discussed the weather and reached up to a high shelf to get down some cans of beans she needed, we headed into the apartment behind the shop.
“Welcome to Lost Pet HQ,” Geeky Girl said as she brought us into her room. It was absolutely full of computer stuff. Pradeep was looking around like a kid in candy land.
There were keyboards, screens, cameras and wires. A lot of wires. There were also pictures up on the walls of all the missing pets and pieces of string connecting them all like a giant pet web.
“Wow, it’s like one of those boards they have on TV crime shows,” I said.
“It’s my incident board for missing pets.” She smiled. “And I’ve done a lot of research online too.”
Pradeep was sitting at one of her laptops now, scrolling through pictures. “I was on this website earlier,” he said. “Lots of pets are missing in a very concentrated area.”
“Exactly. They’re all from in and around this neighborhood,” she said, “bu
t there’s a more obvious connection. All the missing pets have special powers.”
“What?” we all said at the same time.
Then Mark said, “Oh, sorry to talk over you. You first!”
“The pets that have been kidnapped had all been named online by their owners as having powers.” She tapped away at another keyboard and pictures came up on a big screen, with names and descriptions underneath.
“Toby telepopping tortoise!” Sami said, pointing to a picture of Toby.
Pradeep and I saw the girl’s look and both said at once, “Teleporting tortoise!”
“That’s from the website. Someone must have posted something about the tortoise’s power,” she said.
“I think my cousin put something about it on his SmileBook page,” Pradeep said.
“It’s all connected,” she said darkly.
Another picture came up on the screen. This one showed a serious-looking green-and-yellow budgie.
“That’s Boris, my levitating budgie,” she said.
“Doesn’t that just mean he can fly?” Pradeep said “I mean, he is a bird.”
Geeky Girl glared at Pradeep in the same way that Frankie had been glaring at Mark.
“So all these pets are supposedly super-pets?” I said. “That’s even stranger. Why kidnap a bunch of mildly super pets?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t figured that bit out yet. I was hoping that you guys would have some information.”
“Well, my brother Mark, who is usually incredibly evil, has been turned incredibly nice,” I replied. “I don’t know if that’s related.”
“If there’s one thing that you learn from reading all the papers every day, it’s that nothing happens by chance,” she said.
“There’s one more thing that we should probably tell you about too,” I went on. “There’s definitely something special about our goldfish.”
CHAPTER 5
ZOMBIE HIDE-AND-SEEK
“Have you posted anything online about him?” Geeky Girl asked, frowning.