“Don’t worry, Cheerio,” I said. “I still love you and I always will.”
Cheerio put his head in my lap and made a sound that I swear sounded like, “I’m sorry, Rosa.”
CHAPTER 23
SEVEN THINGS THAT HAPPENED THAT AFTERNOON THAT ARE KIND OF BORING (OKAY, VERY BORING) SO YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP THIS LIST
The rest of that day was, well, let’s just say regular. I mean, after a birthday party where your pet tarantula chases a crowd of people around your favorite pizza parlor, you have to admit that an average afternoon is not going to seem all that exciting. But I promised you a list, so here it is.
I hung up my jacket. I’m not going to tell you which closet because then you’d be so bored, you’d close this book and never pick it up again, which I don’t want you to do because there are exciting things coming.
My mom helped me work on a report about Why Tugboats Are Known As the Weight Lifters of the Sea. I won’t tell you why they are, because…well…see Number One above.
My dad watched Jeopardy! and got in a bad mood because he missed the Double Jeopardy question where you had to name a small town at the base of the Matterhorn Mountain in Switzerland. (In case you’re wondering, the town is called Zermat, a boring but true fact.)
Emily cleaned Katherine’s cage and insisted on putting the dirty newspapers in my wastebasket instead of hers, which stinks up my room for a week.
We had garlic tofu burgers for dinner, which stinks up the kitchen for a week.
I went to bed hungry.
I fell fast asleep, but here’s where I’m going to end this boring list because what happened next was not boring in the least. Read on. I know you, and I’m sure you’re going to find it very exciting.
CHAPTER 24
When I went to sleep that night, I had the best dream of all time. It was so real that I swear, I thought I could reach out and touch it.
I couldn’t have been asleep for more than three minutes when a giant baby came floating in through my window and pushed on my cheek with its finger to wake me up. But this was no regular giant baby, no sir. He was so tall, his head bumped against the ceiling of my room as he floated over to me. He was as big around as a blimp, and he seemed to be made of giant, squishy, white marshmallows. All he was wearing was a diaper and a gigantic smile.
“Hankie, come with me,” the humongous baby said, holding out his roly-poly marshmallow hand.
It seems weird now, but in my dream I wasn’t scared at all. I just put my hand in his, which felt soft and sticky. He pulled me over to my window and pointed to the lights of New York City below.
“We go there,” he said.
“Whoa, big baby,” I answered. “Some of us humans don’t fly. And I’m one of them.”
“You safe, Hankie. Come now.”
And without even deciding to go out the window, suddenly I was floating, hand in hand with the baby, over the west side of New York. It was so beautiful from up there. I felt light as a feather and powerful as Superman all at the same time. I was laughing so hard that I almost let go of his hand, but luckily I couldn’t because it was so marshmallow-sticky.
Suddenly, the big baby swooped down from the sky. It felt like we were on one of those very fast elevators that shoots down from the 44th floor of a skyscraper. Your body is on the ground floor, but your stomach is still on the 44th. It took a minute for me to get my stomach out of my mouth and push it back down where it belonged.
The baby was pointing to something below.
“Hankie, look!”
We were hovering over 79th Street, where there is a big hill that takes you down to Riverside Park and the Hudson River beyond. The wind comes up off the river, and during the winter, that wind is icy cold. But it didn’t seem to bother us. Here I was, flying around in my Mets pajamas in the middle of winter, and I was as warm as a cup of hot cocoa with a spoonful of whipped cream.
I looked at where the baby was pointing, and my heart started to beat really fast. I don’t know why, but I could feel that something terrible was about to happen. A dad was pushing a stroller down 79th Street toward the park. I heard a little song in the distance, and then I realized it was his cell phone ringing. He let go of the stroller for a split second to answer his phone. In that instant, the wind came up and pushed the carriage down the hill. It took off as if it were a race car coming down the straightaway.
“Hey, Mister,” I yelled. “Get off the phone. Your baby’s flying like a rocket down the hill.”
The man continued chatting on the phone and didn’t even notice that the carriage had gotten away from him and was heading down 79th Street, picking up speed as it went along. I kept trying to alert him, but no matter how loud I yelled, the man still didn’t hear me.
“Marshmallow Baby,” I said. “He’s not listening!”
“Only Marshmallow Baby can hear you,” he said to me.
I looked down again, and what I saw made my heart beat like a drum. A delivery truck filled with fruits and vegetables was making its way along West End Avenue. It looked to me like it was going to reach 79th Street just at the same time the baby carriage was going to shoot off the curb. I didn’t even want to think about what would happen next!
“We have to save the baby!” I yelled.
“I not want to,” the Marshamallow Baby giggled. “I sleepy.”
“You better wake up and wake up now,” I said to the baby. “We have work to do. Let’s go and take care of business.”
The baby looked at me and wrinkled up his pudgy nose.
“I mean it,” I said to him. “I’m older than you, and I know what I’m talking about.”
I must have sounded like a guy in charge, because with that, Marshmallow Baby swooped down toward the out-of-control stroller. It felt like we were speeding down the steepest part of a roller coaster. We had wasted so much time that I wasn’t sure if we were going to reach the stroller in time, even though we were going at breakneck speed. It was quite a chase. As we finally pulled alongside the carriage, I looked inside and saw a little girl with a pink bonnet whose eyes were wide open in terror.
“Have no fear, the Hankster is here!” I called to her.
The little baby just looked at me. She was too scared even to cry.
“Marshmallow Baby,” I yelled. “Get me as close to the stroller as you can!”
Marshmallow Baby extended his arm as far as he could, which brought me next to the speeding carriage.
“Now hold on to my hand as tight as you can,” I called to him, “because I’m going to try something. Whatever you do, don’t let go!”
Marshmallow Baby grabbed on tight to my hand. While he was holding on to me, I reached out as far as I could, straining to grab hold of the carriage handle just before it reached the bottom of the street where it was heading for the delivery truck. I stretched out until I thought my body was going to snap like a wishbone. The very tips of my fingers finally made contact with the handle of the stroller, but I couldn’t really grab on to it.
“Marshmallow Baby,” I called. “I need another inch. You’re made of marshmallows, so try to stretch as far as you can. Think elastic. Think gooey. Think longer.”
To my amazement, the baby’s hand began to stretch way out, like when you take chewed bubble gum out of your mouth and pull it into a long, pink string. That allowed me to get close enough so I could get my hand completely around the handle of the stroller. I pulled with all my might and at the same time Marshmallow Baby stopped in mid-air, as if he had stepped on a magical brake. The carriage came to a halt just before it reached the street.
Whoa! That was close.
I looked up and saw the fruit and vegetable truck whiz by so fast that I could feel the air whoosh behind it and the heat from its tailpipe.
“Don’t worry, little girl,” I said to the baby in the stroller. “You’re safe now.”
The dad came running up, completely out of breath.
“I’m so grateful to you!” he said. “I do
n’t know how to thank you.”
“No thanks necessary,” I told him. “I really like helping babies out. Don’t you feel the same way, M.B.?”
“It feel good,” Marshmallow Baby laughed.
And before the man could say another word, we had shot back up into the night sky, leaving a white flash of marshmallow goop trailing behind us. We were heading across town, flying over the Museum of Natural History.
“Hey, M.B.,” I said. “Have you ever seen the gigantic whale hanging from the ceiling in there?”
“Me scared of it,” M.B. said.
“There’s nothing to be scared of,” I reassured him. “It’s not real. Besides, whales are very nice creatures. They’re mammals, you know.”
Wow, look at me. I was teaching this guy science facts. I don’t know much about animals and things, certainly not nearly as much as my sister Emily or her nerdling boyfriend, Robert, but I knew a whole lot more than this baby. That felt pretty good. Hank Zipzer, science teacher. At your service.
We flew over Central Park, banking left (or maybe it was right) over the boathouse that sits by the side of Central Park Lake. Looking down, I saw a boy about my age, who was putting his baby brother, or maybe it was a sister—I couldn’t tell—into a rowboat. Silvery moonbeams were streaking across the water, and lit up the baby like a…well…like a moonbeam. The boy was about to set foot in the boat and had just untied it from the dock. What a nice big brother, I thought to myself. Taking the new baby for a rowboat ride around Central Park Lake.
Suddenly, from out of nowhere, a glowing green Frisbee shot across the park and landed on the dock right next to the rowboat. I know this sounds weird, but hey, it’s my dream and I’m telling it just the way it happened in my brain. Anyway, this Frisbee landed on the dock and the boy jogged over to pick it up. While his back was turned, the rowboat started to drift away from the dock and toward the center of the lake. The baby screamed, holding its little arms out for its big brother.
Wow, I wonder if our new baby will hold its arms out for me?
Marshmallow Baby and I saw this happening at exactly the same time. I looked over at him and said, “You know what to do, M.B.”
He swooped down to the lake and got behind the boat, but I couldn’t reach it. This time, I held on to M.B.’s diaper to give me the most stretch room. Reaching out as far as I could, I was able to grab the boat and give it a gentle shove toward the dock. Slowly, the baby drifted back to its big brother, who grabbed the rope and quickly tied it up onto the dock. The big brother reached out and picked up his baby brother. When he turned around, I was astonished to see that he looked just like me.
“Hank! Hank!”
Was that my mother’s voice? What was she doing in my dream?
“Hank! Wake up!” the voice called again.
I opened my eyes and there was my mom, sitting on the edge of my bed, smiling down at me.
“What were you dreaming about, birthday boy?”
“Babies,” I said.
“Oh. Was it a good or bad dream?”
“Surprisingly enough, Mom, it was a great dream.”
“So you think maybe you’re getting used to the idea of a new baby in the house?”
I thought about her question for a long time before I answered.
“You know, Mom,” I said at last, “I think there’s a lot that baby is going to need me for.”
“I agree, sweetie,” she said. “You’re going to be a fabulous big brother.”
“Like what if the baby is speeding down a hill toward the Hudson River in a runaway stroller? I could stop it before it ran into traffic.”
My mom laughed and tousled my hair.
“I don’t think that’s going to happen, Hank.”
“You never know, Mom. You never know.”
“Why don’t you get dressed, honey. We have a little birthday surprise for you.”
“I know,” I said. “We already discussed this. The quiet family day at home, followed by the quiet family dinner…at home.”
“Just get dressed,” she said. “And by the way, make sure you pick out a clean T-shirt.”
I had no idea why it mattered so much that I had to have a clean T-shirt to walk from my bedroom to our living room for a quiet family day. But moms are moms, and they like you to do what they say. So I did.
CHAPTER 25
When I got to the living room, no one was even there. I walked into the kitchen, and there was no breakfast cooking. Man, they had said this was going to be a quiet day, but this was ridiculous. Where was everyone?
Pretty soon, my dad came into the kitchen with my Mets sweatshirt and my jacket.
“Here, Hank, put these on,” he said.
“Hey, Dad, isn’t this kind of overdressing for a quiet day at home?” I said.
“There’s been a change of plans. We’re going for a walk.”
“Your father and I decided that a walk would build up a nice appetite for dinner later,” my mom said, coming into the kitchen and pulling on her furry red coat.
“It’s a scientific fact that exercise stimulates the appetite,” Emily chimed in as she came in carrying her pink parka with a giraffe on it that she got at the Bronx Zoo.
A walk wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but when the Zipzer family is going forward, there is no way of reversing its direction. So I put on my Mets sweatshirt and jacket and we left the apartment.
My dad led the walk, setting a brisk pace up Amsterdam Avenue.
“What’s the rush?” I asked him, taking big steps just trying to keep up with him.
“No rush,” he said, walking even faster.
“You’re father’s just excited,” my mom said. Wow, it must be really dull to be a grown-up, if going for a walk down Amsterdam Avenue is something that gets them all excited.
When we had walked about seven blocks, my dad started to slow down right in front of the entrance to McKelty’s Roll ’N’ Bowl.
“How about if we stick our heads in for a minute,” my dad said.
“Good idea,” my mom said, sounding a little weird. “Papa Pete might be practicing.”
“He never bowls on Sunday morning,” I said. “He rests his bowling fingers on Sundays.”
“Let’s take a look, anyway,” Emily said. “You never know.”
My family was definitely acting strange, but then, the Zipzer family can be that way some of the time. Okay, most of the time.
We walked up the stairs, and my dad held the door to the bowling alley open for me.
“You go first, Hank,” he said. “See if Papa Pete is in there.”
I walked in and looked around. The bowling alley seemed dark, and very quiet. The usual sounds of balls rolling down the polished wood alleys and people yelling about their gutter balls were completely missing.
“Hello!” I called out. “Anyone here?”
Suddenly, the lights went on and a crowd of familiar faces jumped out from behind the shoe desk and the bowling ball racks and the video games. Everyone I knew was there. Papa Pete and Frankie and Ashley and their parents and Heather Payne and Ryan Shimozato from school, and my Aunt Maxine and Uncle Gary and their maniac twins. Even Mrs. Fink was there—she had her false teeth in, uppers and lowers! Wow, this really must be a big occasion.
“SURPRISE!” everyone yelled at once. “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HANK!”
I turned around to look at my family. They were all smiling and clapping and Emily was even jumping up and down.
“You got me!” I said to them. “Wow! Wowee wow wow. Did you ever get me!”
“Happy birthday, honey,” my mom said, giving me a big kiss on the cheek. I was so overwhelmed by the surprise that I didn’t even care that she kissed me in public.
“Your mother has been planning this surprise party for weeks,” my dad said.
“I helped, too,” Emily said. “I made the party favors.”
Okay, so the party favors were little handmade books called 101 Fascinating Facts about Reptiles, written
and illustrated by Emily Grace Zipzer. But trust me, I didn’t care that those party favors were the only lame part of the party. Hey, it’s the thought that counts. And the rest of the day couldn’t have been more fantastic.
It was the greatest Surprise Birthday Bowling Brunch Party anyone would want. We had bowling and root-beer floats and present opening and video-game playing. The only thing that would have made it more perfect would be if we had played pin the tail on the donkey and the donkey was Nick McKelty.
I was totally one hundred percent surprised.
Oh, yeah, and I was totally one hundred percent happy, too.
Frankie and Ashley told me that they got a huge kick out of the fact that they were able to keep such a great party a secret. Turns out they had never planned to go shopping in New Jersey for the new baby. And they had spent all day Saturday setting up the decorations for the party. They made it a magic theme, with top hats and magic wands for decorations and a black cape for the tablecloth.
Everyone brought presents and their goodtime party attitudes, even Robert, who did find it necessary to point out that the birthday cake was invented by the ancient Greeks, who baked it in the shape of the full moon in honor of their moon goddess, Artemis. Everyone stood there for a moment in silence, wondering if my mother had baked a cake that tasted like moon rocks. Luckily, Robert’s fact was not a total party killer, because right after that, Papa Pete challenged me to a bowl-off.
Everyone cheered for me and stomped their feet when I won. Hey, it was my birthday. I have a feeling Papa Pete let me win, which is what grandfathers do on your special day.
When the cake and bowling and presents were over, I stood up to make a little speech. I told everyone how happy I was, what a great birthday I’d had, and thanked my parents for giving me such a special celebration. And then, to my total surprise, this came out of my mouth.
Who Ordered This Baby? Definitely Not Me! Page 8