And now, I had messed up. I had totally and completely messed up, just because I couldn’t read numbers moving so fast on the screen.
My stupid brain, I thought. I hate it. Honestly and truly, I hate every cell of it.
I’ve known Frankie Townsend since before we were born. Our mums always tell stories about how they used to walk in the park together when they were pregnant with us.
We’ve been through lots of tough times together. When Frankie fell off the jungle gym in preschool, he didn’t want to cry in front of everyone. I stood in front of him so the other kids wouldn’t see him cry. When I wet myself in kindergarten just before the Thanksgiving pageant, Frankie gave me the extra pair of trousers he kept in his cubbyhole. And he never told anyone about my accident.
We’ve had a few fights, like the time we were camping and I ate a whole 3 Musketeers bar and didn’t save him a bite. I tried to tell him I saved him the wrapping because it was made out of real silver, but he didn’t go for it. Still, in all our ten years together, I had never seen Frankie Townsend as mad as he was that night.
I tried to explain what had happened, how the numbers on the television were going too fast for me. In the middle of my explanation, he picked up his sleeping bag and stormed out of the room.
“Where are you going?” Ashley asked him.
“I’d rather sleep with the twins than stay in here with him,” he said.
If I didn’t know before how angry he was, that clinched it. Our friendship was over. I started to pace around the room.
“He’s never going to talk to me again,” I said to Ashley. “Every time he sees me from now on, he’s going to ignore me.” I stopped pacing. “What happens if we’re in the lift together? We’re just going to stand there in total silence looking at the floor numbers change.”
“Hank,” Ashley said, “would you like me to try to talk to Frankie?”
“It won’t do any good, Ash. I’ve just lost my best friend.”
“I’ll be your best friend,” Robert said. Why was that not helping? “Hey, want to get a slice of pizza and a Coke after school on Monday?” the clueless one went on.
“Robert, do I have to draw you a map?” I said. “I can’t have this conversation right now, and besides, you’re not best friend material.”
“I think he is,” Emily said.
“Fine,” I said. “Then you and Robert can be best friends. Have fun counting iguana scales. And think of me, because my life as I know it is over.”
“Hank,” Ashley said. “Frankie is just angry. He really, really, really wanted to see that film.”
“Rub it in,” I said. “Don’t you think I know that?”
“Give him some time to get over it,” Ashley said. “He’ll cool down, you’ll say you’re sorry, he’ll say, ‘Hey, that’s OK, Zip,’ and everything will be back the way it was.”
What Ashley didn’t understand was that to me, this was about more than taping a film for Frankie. This was about Frankie realizing that he couldn’t trust me. Why would anyone want a best friend he couldn’t trust? I always knew this was going to happen – that one day, Frankie would finally see I wasn’t a friend worth having. He’s so smart, he can do everything. And what can I do?
I mean, what can I do?
My brain was going a mile a minute, and I must’ve said something like, “What can I do?” out loud, because when I looked up, Emily was answering me.
“You can ask me to help you next time,” she said. Could this be? My sister was offering first aid to me. “Really, Hank, if there’s something you can’t do and I can, why not ask for help?”
This was Emily Grace Zipzer talking.
“Easy for you to say,” I answered her. “Do you know how hard it is to live with Miss Perfect? It’s embarrassing for me to admit that I need help from you when you’re seventeen months younger than me. I would look like a complete idiot.”
“I’m not perfect, Hank,” Emily said. She actually sounded nice.
“I think you are,” Robert piped up. I think he surprised himself, because as soon as he said it, his ears turned bright red, like he was wearing two beetroots attached to his head.
“Robert, do you really think so?” Emily said. She was doing that maple syrup thing with her voice again.
“I’m going to find Frankie,” I said.
“I’ll come with you,” said Ashley.
“Listen, Ash, I think I need to talk to Frankie by myself.”
Ashley nodded. I knew she’d understand, even if it meant she had to stay alone in the TV room with Mr Nerd and Miss Nerdess. She’s the kind of person who’ll do a thing like that for a friend.
I went upstairs looking for Frankie.
He wasn’t in any of the upstairs rooms, so I went back downstairs. Finally, I found him in his sleeping bag under the dining-room table.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Frankie said. “What do you want?”
“I want to say I’m sorry,” I told him.
“Sorry doesn’t help,” he said.
I didn’t answer.
“It was so easy, Hank,” he said. There was a lot of frustration in his voice. “I waited so long and it was so easy. All you had to do was punch in three numbers and push the record button. Anybody can do that.”
“I can’t,” I said. “Just because it’s easy for you, doesn’t mean it’s easy for me.”
“Can we not talk about this now?” Frankie said.
“When can we talk about it?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Later. Sometime. Whenever.”
“When?”
“When we get back to the city. All right? Good night.”
I wanted to go on, but Frankie pulled his sleeping bag up over his head in a way that left no doubt that he was done with talking.
“Good night, Frankie,” I said.
He didn’t answer.
I tried to go to sleep, but I couldn’t. So I made a list:
EIGHT THINGS THAT ARE HARD FOR ME AND EASY FOR FRANKIE
1. Spelling, especially hard words like what you call the person who lives next door to you. You know, your next-door naybour or is it neibour or neyber? I don’t know, so don’t ask me. (Frankie is a dictionary with a mouth.)
2. Remembering words to songs. (Frankie is a human karaoke machine.)
3. Learning how to play an instrument, except for the tambourine and who wants to play that? (Frankie plays the sax and knows ten songs by heart.)
4. Finding my backpack. (Frankie’s backpack is where it belongs, on his back.)
5. Remembering phone numbers. (Frankie not only remembers phone numbers, he remembers area codes too.)
6. Reading a map. (Frankie is a human compass.)
7. Writing a letter. (Frankie is the King of Thank-You Letters.)
8. Reading the programme guide on the television screen. Obviously, I am a total flop at that.
We got up early the next morning, had some breakfast and then loaded into the minivan for the ride back to the city.
Let me tell you about the ride home. First, I want you to stop reading and just listen. Do you hear anything? Well, neither did I. Our car on the ride home was about as quiet as a metal box covered in cement and buried way under the ocean floor halfway to China.
What I’m trying to say is that Frankie didn’t say one word to me. Zilch. Zip. Nada.
He gave me the Big Freeze and, man, was I cold.
After we got home, Frankie went up to his flat without saying so much as “I’ll meet you later in the clubhouse”. I’m sure Ashley was feeling caught in the middle of our fight, because she tried to be cheerful and make us laugh. It didn’t work, though. You couldn’t have made Frankie Townsend laugh if you had tickled him under the arms with a twenty-foot feather. Ashley even offered to bring blueberry muffins for our walk to school the next morning, but Frankie just shrugged and said, “Thanks, Ash, but I don’t think I’ll be hungry.”
Robert ask
ed if he could go with Emily and my father to pick up Katherine from the pet shop. He said he was looking forward to a chance to spend some quality time with our iguana. What kind of kid wants to spend time with an iguana? If you think about it, what kind of kid wants to spend time with my sister?
I was pretty stressed from all that had happened and was hoping I could just kick back and lie on the sofa, which is one of my favourite things to do. So after I picked up Cheerio from Mrs Fink’s flat, I flopped down on the sofa and put him on my stomach for a big belly scratch. That is one of his favourite things to do. It’s so cute the way he looks up at you and yaps like a little puppy. His other favourite thing is licking the bricks on the fireplace. Don’t ask me why he does that; I told you he was slightly nuts.
I hadn’t even been flopped on the sofa for two minutes when my mum unflopped me.
“Up and at ’em,” she said, holding out her hand to pull me up.
“Mum, I just got comfortable.”
“Well, you can be comfortable later, because there’s a little thing called your science project waiting for you. Your topic is due tomorrow, and you promised…”
“I know, I know,” I said. She was right. I had given her my word that I’d pick the topic over the weekend. I gave my word to Frankie too and where had that got me?
I went into my room, sat at my desk and looked at the chart on the wall.
“Science Project” it said in the space for Monday. I stared at the square. Nothing happened. Then I swivelled in my chair and looked at the other wall. I stared at that for a while. There were no ideas there, either. Only white space. Empty white space.
My brain often doesn’t work when I want it to, but now it was definitely on snooze. I knew what the problem was. I was really worried about what had happened with Frankie.
Maybe you know the feeling. You’ve got to think of a topic for your science project, which is due the next day. But you’re having a humungous fight with your best friend and you absolutely positively cannot concentrate. I have trouble concentrating when I’m not having a fight with anyone, when everything is perfect. It takes a lot of work to focus my brain. But when I have something really big on my mind, it’s hopeless.
I stared at the wall some more. The only science project that occurred to me was how to send an electro-wave from my brain to Frankie’s to make him forget that he was mad at me.
I sat there. It seemed like hours went by. I heard my dad and Emily come home. I heard my mum’s footsteps in the hall. She was on patrol, circling around to see that I was doing my work. If she was any closer to my bedroom door, she would be inside. Occasionally, she was or at least parts of her were. Like her mouth.
“How’s it coming along?” she asked.
“It’s coming,” I said.
She casually strolled over to my desk and glanced at my notebook. I had nothing written there. She raised an eyebrow.
“Hey, this takes time, Mum. You can’t hurry science. It’s not a subject you can speed through.”
The truth was that what I kept thinking about was what had happened at Aunt Maxine’s house. I kept seeing that wall of video equipment with all the numbers and dials and lights flashing at me. I played it over and over in my mind, seeing the television screen with the programmes and channels running by, starting at the bottom of the screen and racing to the top. The words and numbers had gone by so fast. If only there had been a way to slow them down. There must be a million kids like me who can’t follow them, I thought. I’m not the only slow reader in the world … am I? No, no way.
Wait a minute. Wait just a minute.
That was it! The idea of the century. I’d invent a way to slow down the words and numbers crawling across the television screen. I would be the hero of problem readers around the world.
It was a science project to be proud of. It was the King of All Science Projects. Hank Zipzer, I love you, I thought. I sprang up from my chair and danced around my room. I gave myself kisses up and down my arms.
What an idea! What a breakthrough! Way to go, Hank!
At dinner that night, I told my mum and dad about my idea. I told them that I was going to find a way to make the programme guide on the television screen easy for kids like me to read. I explained that this would help kids around the world and possibly even as far away as Neptune.
“There must be kids with learning difficulties on Neptune,” I said. “I’m sure they need help too.”
“That’s a lovely thought, Hank,” said my mum. She always tries to help people in need, like giving the leftover food from the deli to the homeless shelter. I could tell she was happy that I was trying to help the kids with learning difficulties on this and every other planet.
“How exactly are you planning to do this?” asked my father.
“Experimentation, Dad,” I said, trying to sound really clever. “The way all science is created.”
“Hmmph.” He grunted. “Sounds messy.”
“Do you think Thomas Edison’s dad worried that he was making a mess when young Tom invented the light bulb?” I asked. “No, absolutely not. His dad probably just said, ‘Tom, don’t forget to wear gloves so you don’t cut yourself on the glass.’ ”
“Thomas Edison was thirty-two when he invented the light bulb in 1879,” said my father. “I don’t think he was living with his parents at the time.”
When you argue with someone who is a crossword-puzzle nut, they pull out their facts at the drop of a hat. Someone with facts can be pretty frustrating when you’re trying to make a point.
“Oh, you’re right, Dad. It was his wife who reminded him about the gloves.”
“You’re making that up,” Emily said through a mouthful of vegetarian lasagne. She pulled a piece of courgette from the lasagne and handed it to Katherine, who was sitting on her shoulder looking particularly ugly.
“I happen to know that Thomas Edison was very happily married,” I said to Emily.
“Oh yeah? What was his wife’s name?”
“Mrs Edison,” I answered.
That made my mum laugh.
“Well, whatever you do,” my dad said with a yawn, “make sure you put your name on the paper.”
“Thanks for the tip, Dad.” I wasn’t being sarcastic, either. It was actually a good suggestion since most of the time I forget to put my name on the paper and my teacher, Ms Adolf, takes half a point off my mark.
My parents were so tired from the trip that they went to bed straight after dinner.
“Don’t stay up too late,” my mum said, giving me a kiss. “Tomorrow’s a school day.” Like I could forget something like that.
I went to my room and tried to write a few notes about my science topic. The more I thought about my invention, the more excited I got about it. I even picked up the phone to call Frankie and tell him my idea. But then I remembered that he wasn’t speaking to me. That made me sad, because when you have a best friend, you want to be able to tell him when you have a good idea.
After a couple of minutes I heard my dad snoring from his room. Then I heard my mum click off her reading light.
I got up and headed for the living room. I needed to check out the cable box to see if I could figure out how it controlled the speed of the words on the TV screen. This was going to take some serious investigation.
Cheerio was asleep on my bed. He lifted his head and started to wag his tail. Sometimes that means “I love you” but most of the time that means “I’m about to go nuts and start chasing my tail and spinning around like a top.” I needed his co-operation so I could work without being disturbed.
“Stay, boy,” I whispered.
I took my pillow and put it gently under his head. Cheerio loves to sleep on my pillow or my clothes or anything that smells like me. You’ve got to love him.
I went out into the hall and the floor creaked. I froze in my tracks and counted to twenty-seven. My dad was still snoring, and there was no light coming from under my parents’ door, so I figured it was OK to
go on. When I reached the living room, I could move around more freely because the carpet covered the sound of my footsteps.
I picked up the cable box that sits on top of the TV. I couldn’t see it very well. The outside told me nothing about how it worked. That meant one thing. I was going to have to go inside the box. It was Thomas Edison time.
I tried to separate the top and bottom of the box with my fingernail, but there was no way to get the cover off without a screwdriver. We keep our tools in a red metal toolbox under the kitchen sink. Quietly, I crept into the kitchen, found the toolbox and opened it. I picked out a small screwdriver with a grooved end called a Phillips head screwdriver.
Suddenly, the kitchen light came on. I spun around, and there was Emily with Katherine perched on her shoulder.
“What are you doing with that?” Emily demanded, eyeing the screwdriver in my hand.
“Stuff,” I answered.
“What kind of stuff?”
“Science stuff.”
“What kind of science stuff?”
“Emily,” I said, “when I want you to know, I’ll tell you.”
“What’s the big secret?”
“What are you doing up?” I asked her. If she could play twenty questions, so could I.
“I’m worried about Katherine,” she said. “She’s acting strange.”
“Of course she’s acting strange,” I said. “She’s your iguana.”
Katherine looked at me, shot her tongue out and hissed so loudly it sounded like air gushing out of a tyre. She even lifted her lip – or at least where her lip would be if she had lips – and flashed her teeth. That was strange. Katherine’s usually in a pretty good mood, at least as far as iguana moods go.
“She keeps pacing back and forth across the room like she’s nervous,” Emily said. “I think she’s had a nightmare.”
“Maybe they had The Mutant Moth That Ate Toledo on at the pet shop and it gave her the creeps,” I said.
The World's Greatest Underachiever and the Mutant Moth Page 4