by Tom Birdseye
I could really do without this just now.
“There’s a school rule against eating food anywhere except in the cafeteria,” Murray reminds me. “Only you would think of something as rattlebrained as eating bananas in stall number 1 of the boys’ bathroom.”
I still haven’t taken my foot out of the toilet. He’s going to go tell Mrs. Caldwell. I know it, I just know it.
“I’m going to go tell Mrs. Caldwell. We’ll see what she thinks of this stupid world-record business!”
I knew it. I just knew it.
“Hold it a minute, Murray,” I say in a steady voice. “I want to talk to you.”
It’s time for Commando Mucho to get out of the toilet and out of stall number 1.
“We have nothing to talk about, Arlo,” Murray says as I come out into the open to face the enemy. My left foot and shoe are soggy. My pant leg is wet halfway to the knee. “Tell your story to Mrs. Caldwell. Tell her about eating seventeen bananas in less than two minutes. You can’t do it anyway.”
I look the enemy in the eye. No one tells me I can’t.
“You want to bet? Huh, Murray? Do you want to bet on it?” I ask, feeling angry again. “I’ll bet you anything I can break the record.”
“Anything?” Murray asks.
“Yeah, anything.”
“You sure about that, Arlo?”
“Yes, Murray, I’m sure,” I say, my eyes drilling into him.
“OK, Arlo.” Murray sneers. “You asked for it. Here’s a bet for you: if you can’t break the world record for eating bananas, then you have to never speak to Laura McNeil again. Ever.”
“What?”
“That’s right, never speak to her again. But first you have to tell her why: because you’re a flop at breaking world records and not worth her time.”
“You’re weird, Murray,” I say.
“I thought you wanted to bet, Arlo,” he taunts me. “What’s the matter, scared you might lose? Afraid Laura might rather talk to me?”
Someone should do the world a favor and send Murray to Antarctica in a dill pickle jar. He’s lucky I’m not a violent person.
I put my hands in my pockets and squint my eyes. “OK, Murray,” I say in my toughest voice. “It’s a bet. And what if I break the world record? What do you have to do?”
Murray grins. “If, by some strange stroke of luck, you break that stupid record, then I’ll do the same thing: not speak to Laura. She’ll be robbed of the only real man to be had at Lincoln Elementary School.”
“It’s a bet, then?” I ask.
Murray nods. “Yeah, it’s a bet.”
“And you’re not going to tell Mrs. Caldwell about me eating a banana in the boys’ bathroom?”
“I guess not. Why should I waste my energy getting you in trouble? You seem to have done a pretty good job already,” Murray the Nerd says with a laugh, looking at my soaked shoe and pant leg. “After all, what are friends for? Huh, Arlo?”
Friends? Blaggh.
CHAPTER 17
“Hemfroph, Mrz. Munoh.”
—MIKE SNEAD
Life is hard. I’m sure about that. People like Murray Wallace help to make it that way. My bus driver helps, too. I should have known she’d notice my wet pant leg and shoe. I should have known she’d bring it to the attention of everyone on the bus by asking loudly where I’d found such a big puddle to step into.
“That’s such a funny sound,” she said. “Squish, thunk, squish, thunk. That’s what it sounds like when you walk with one wet shoe and one dry shoe.”
So now I’m squish-thunking my way across the wreckage of my bedroom. I’ve got to clean this mess up … someday. But right now my mission is clear—I’ve got to get out of my squish-thunk shoes and pants and get ready for banana practice. Mom is at work, so we are having practice here instead of at Ben’s.
Ah … here are my favorite “indestructo” jeans. I keep them tucked back behind my football helmet. Mom doesn’t like these jeans. She says I look like a poor orphan with them on. She just doesn’t understand. Or maybe she does. But these are the best jeans I own. They’re specially equipped with holes in the knees. This allows my bionic kneecaps to see where they’re going. These jeans also have a secret pouch inside of the left front pocket. This is perfect for keeping maps and my Case XX pocketknife.
These jeans and I have been through a lot together. They know me. They’re good luck. That’s why I pulled them out of the garbage when Mom threw them away. That’s why they live secretly behind my football helmet in the closet. I only wear them for good luck and when Mom is not around. And today I seem to need all the good luck I can get.
“Hi, Arlo. When does practice start?” Kerry asks. My curly-headed wonder of a sister stands in the doorway with her hands in her pockets.
“Hi, Kerry. Ben said he’d be right over. We’ll start when he gets here.”
“Good,” she says. “I’m ready. Today is the day I spit a melon seed twenty feet!”
“Twenty feet?”
“Yeah,” she says, moving over to my bed and absent-mindedly sitting down on my wet school pants. “I made a wonderful discovery at noon recess today. If I throw my head back and then snap my neck forward when I spit, I get twice the distance out of a melon seed. It’s all in the snap of the neck.”
I yank the wet pants out from under her and put them on the floor where they belong. “Sounds dangerous to me—snapping your neck. Besides, twenty feet isn’t even near your goal. You’ve got to be able to spit over sixty-five feet, right?”
“Yeah, but my new discovery in technique will make all the difference,” she says, realizing the seat of her pants is now wet. “You wait and see, Arlo. I can do it.”
Seems to me I’ve heard that before. Sisters don’t ever learn.
We’re all in the kitchen now—Kerry, Ben, Mike, and me. We moved the table with the plastic orange tablecloth out of the way. Then we began.
I ate two bananas in just over fifteen seconds. Mike gave me a standing ovation. Ben ate two lemons in a little under twenty-five seconds. That’s a slower time than he had in the cafeteria a week and a half ago. He said he was just feeling off his best form today. He went home to watch the old reruns of Leave It to Beaver and Bonanza. Kerry says Ben looks sick to her. “Green around the gills” was how she put it.
Kerry is spitting watermelon seeds across the kitchen. She stands in the hallway door, throws her head way back, arches her body, and then lunges forward in one giant spit. The force of the motion pulls her feet right off the ground and sends the seed zooming across the kitchen and into the living room.
I must admit that I’m impressed with her progress. This neck-snapping method seems to work. She keeps grinning like a dog at a picnic and shouts, “Red alert! Red alert! Melon-seed missile at twelve o’clock.” Still, she’s only spitting about twenty to twenty-five feet. That’s hardly a world record.
Mike has been over by the refrigerator doing jumping jacks and toe touches. He says that warming up is essential to his ice-cream-eating. “If I don’t get warmed up first,” he reminds me, “I might freeze my stomach with all that ice cream.”
Mike has asked for “quiet on the set” so he can concentrate on his speed eating. He is sitting at the kitchen table, staring at a quart of chocolate-chip mint ice cream. I’ll time him on Dad’s stopwatch.
“OK, Mike,” I say, “ready when you are.”
He raises his spoon and waves it at me. This is the signal that he’s ready.
“Take your mark … get set … go!” I shout and click the watch on.
Wow. Mike is shoveling huge bites of chocolate-chip mint into his mouth. It makes my teeth shiver just to watch him.
“Go, Mike, go! You can do it.”
Kerry is Mike’s cheering section. All she needs is a couple of pompoms and a megaphone.
“Eat, Mike, eat!… How much time, Arlo?” she asks.
As timekeeper, I must stay cool and observant. “Sixteen seconds and counting.”
/> “Yahoo!” Kerry shouts. “Eat em’ up, Mike!”
But as a cool and observant timekeeper, I have failed to notice the time of day or the fact that Mom is now home. Home and standing in the kitchen doorway.
“Hi, Mom,” I say, trying not to panic.
“Eek!” says Kerry.
“Hemfroph, Mrz. Munoh,” says Mike, greeting my Mom through a mouthful of chocolate-chip mint ice cream.
“Didn’t I throw those jeans away, Arlo?” Mom asks, setting two bags of groceries on the counter.
“Well … uh,” I stutter, “gee … I’m not sure, Mom.” I’ve been caught in two crimes.
“Dinner will be ready in twenty minutes.” She’s giving me that look again. I’m caught red-handed. “I have a meeting tonight with Mrs. Gorman. I’ve got to hurry, so supper will be whatever I throw on the stove. Help me with these groceries, please.”
Mike is slowly backing toward the door. He still has a huge spoonful of chocolate-chip mint ice cream almost to his mouth. Kerry has snuck into the living room and is frantically picking melon seeds out of the carpet and putting them in her pockets.
“I’m sure I threw those jeans away. You look like a street bum with them on,” Mom says with what might be a smile on her lips.
Street bum? I thought I looked like a poor orphan child. And why is she not saying anything about what we were doing? I’m sure she saw us.
“And don’t forget, Arlo …”
Mike has made his escape. I’m not sure if I’ve made mine.
“It’s your turn to set the table …”
Again?
“After you throw those jeans away.”
CHAPTER 18
“This is the twentieth century, Mr. Macho.”
—LAURA MCNEIL
Weekends sure are sneaky. It’s almost like being on vacation and driving through a little tiny town out in the middle of nowhere. All you have to do is blow your nose, or spit out your old gum, or pull the crust off your sandwich, and zip, you missed it. Missed an entire little town, including a gas station with a bathroom.
Last weekend went by like that for me. One minute it was Friday, then all of a sudden, zip, and the weekend was gone.
So now I sit in room 11, Mr. Dayton’s fifth-grade classroom. It’s Monday, September 19, and I have five days left before the big day. Five days of Positive Brain Approach. Five days of banana practice. Five days until I, Arlo Moore, break the world record for eating bananas and win my bets. My ship is coming in.
Laura turns around in her chair. “Arlo, I need to talk to you.”
“Sure. What about?” I ask, gazing at that lovely face, that beautiful hair, those blue eyes that make me dizzy.
“About the bet you and Murray made,” Laura says, not smiling.
“The bet?”
“Yes, the bet on who is going to talk to me and who isn’t.”
There’s something about the tone of her voice that makes me nervous. “Oh, that,” I say.
“Yes, that. It’s true, then?” she asks pointedly.
“Well, sort of …”
“Sort of!” Laura looks a bit angry. “Is it or isn’t it?”
“Uh … yeah …” I stammer, shifting uneasily in my chair.
“Well, listen to me, Arlo Moore!”
Yep, she’s definitely angry.
“I am not a prize!”
People are looking over this way.
“Ssh, not so loud, Laura,” I whisper, pleading.
“Don’t shush me! I am not a prize. No one wins the right to talk to me in a bet. This is the twentieth century, Mr. Macho. Women talk to who they want to …”
Oh, boy. I’ve really blown it.
“… when they want to …”
Thank you, again, Murray the Nerd.
“… and where they want to!” She glares at me, turns, and picks up her pencil.
There she goes, the girl of my dreams—mad as a bee at a bear.
I’m embarrassed, red as a sunburned baby. I want to shrink to the size of an ant and make a quick getaway.
“Excuse me, Arlo.”
It’s Mr. Dayton.
“Yes sir,” I answer dismally.
“Sorry to interrupt you while you’re working so hard on your math. You were working on your math, weren’t you?”
“Uh … well …”
“I just received a note from Mrs. Caldwell,” Mr. Dayton says. “She would like to see you in her office.”
“Mrs. Caldwell? The principal?” I ask like some kind of idiot. What other Mrs. Caldwell would want to see me in her office?
“Yes, Mrs. Caldwell, the principal,” Mr. Dayton replies.
“In her office? Me?”
“Yes, in her office. Now.”
This could be bad news on top of bad news.
“Did I do something wrong, Mr. Dayton?”
“I don’t know, Arlo. Did you?”
I look at the ceiling and then back at Mr. Dayton. His mustache twitches at me.
“Not that I know of,” I say.
“Well, why don’t you just go find out what it’s all about? I’m sure it’s not the end of the world.”
Somehow I’m not so sure about that.
CHAPTER 19
“I have information …”
—MRS. CALDWELL
Sitting in the office waiting to see the principal is like having Christmas backward—there’s going to be a surprise for me, but I don’t think it’s going to be a good one.
Mrs. Oatley, the school secretary, is typing at her desk. She’s really fast. Every couple of minutes she looks over the top of her glasses at me. I look at something else when she does that. I act interested in the picture of Lincoln Elementary hanging on the wall, or the photocopy machine, or the garbage can in the corner. Then she looks back at her work and begins typing, and I can watch her again.
I think I might learn to type like that. It looks like fun. I could sit down and bang out letters, and books, and … maybe even a world record. Yeah, I’d be the fastest typist alive. I’d type 800 words in one minute. I’d write my life story, and how I became famous. I’d be admired around the globe for my skill. My fingers would dance across the typewriter keys. Laura McNeil would realize what a wonderful person I am. She’d fall in …
“Arlo Moore.”
Aiyee, it’s Mrs. Caldwell.
“Please come in and have a seat,” she says, her voice sounding like a truck in low gear.
I knew it. I can tell. It’s Christmas backward. My time has come. Goodbye, cruel world. Slowly I enter her office. Step by step, inch by inch.
“We seem to have a problem, Arlo,” she says, sitting down at her desk. I keep standing up. I’m too nervous to sit down.
Mrs. Caldwell still looks like a Japanese sumo wrestler with a dress on. She’s been the principal here for eighteen years. I wonder if she’s always looked that way.
She stares hard at me with eyes that make me sweat. “I have information that you and a few other students are planning to break world records,” she says.
“Well …, yes, Mrs. Caldwell. Is that a problem?” I ask, glancing nervously around her office. The walls are covered with pictures of students and teachers. A rose sits on her desk in a glass vase.
“No,” she answers. “Not in and of itself, it’s not. Arlo, please sit down. You don’t have to stand. Relax.”
Why do adults always seem to ask kids to do the impossible? I sit down anyway and try to relax.
“The problem is this, Arlo,” she continues. “Benjamin Hamilton is sick.”
“Ben? Sick?” I ask. I didn’t know that. I thought he had gone to Portland with his mom for something.
“Yes. He’s not at school today because of stomach problems,” Mrs. Caldwell informs me. “His mother called. It seems that Ben has been eating large quantities of lemons, including the seeds and skin, in an attempt to train for this world-record-breaking event you have scheduled. All of these lemons have made him sick. Too much acid, I think. I
t’s very unhealthy.”
“Poor Ben,” I say, more to myself than to Mrs. Caldwell.
“Yes, poor Ben,” she agrees. “Also, there is a problem in that Mike Snead is absent from school today.”
“Mike, too?” I ask.
“Yes, Mike has a headache. It seems he tried to eat a quart of ice cream in the bathroom this morning before breakfast. His mother reports that he ate so fast that he fainted from lack of oxygen and the cold ice cream. He hit his head on the bathtub and had to have three stitches in his forehead.”
“Poor Mike,” I mumble.
“Yes, poor Mike,” Mrs. Caldwell agrees again. “This, too, I believe, is a result of an attempt to break a world record.”
I can feel the winds of doom blowing my way. I’d better try to talk my way out of this. “Mrs. Caldwell, I think—”
“Also,” she interrupts like a cannon, “there is a problem in that there is gambling in Lincoln Elementary School.”
“Gambling?” I ask. What is she talking about?
“Yes, gambling,” she answers. “I have information that there are bets on whether or not you, or Ben, or Mike, or even your sister, Kerry, can succeed at breaking these records.”
I look directly at her for the first time. “Really? People are betting on us?”
“And I have information that the betting is spreading.”
“Spreading?” I ask with a shiver. Where is she getting her information?
“Yes, spreading! Over thirty students at Lincoln Elementary are betting on the world-record attempts.”
“Mrs. Caldwell, I didn’t know—”
“Well, now you know, Arlo,” she says. I hear anger in her voice. “Now you know that we are not just talking about a world-record attempt. We are talking about students getting sick and hurt. We are talking about gambling at Lincoln Elementary. And we are talking about an activity that is interfering with the main reason you are here—to study and learn. Therefore …”
Here it comes. I can feel it.
Mrs. Caldwell leans forward in her chair. Her nose is about eight inches from my nose. I can smell her perfume. “There will be no more betting on attempts at a world record.”
“But—” I almost whisper.