“You are a master of useless facts,” she said, irritated.
“Thank you,” Nipper replied.
Samantha hadn’t meant it as a compliment, but she gave up on the conversation.
She took another look inside the crate and saw three sheets of scratch-and-sniff stickers—the ones she had given Uncle Paul months ago. She ran her hand along the top page, being careful not to scratch. Near the bottom, the strawberry sticker was missing, of course. Uncle Paul had placed it on the letter he left for her in Edfu, Egypt. She felt the empty outline of the berry and looked next to it at the sticker of a tomato.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Nipper.
“What?” she asked.
“You’re wondering if a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable,” he replied. “Fruit.”
He flashed a smile.
Samantha scowled.
“So’s a chili pepper,” he added. “Did you know that the Scoville scale is how scientists measure—”
“A pepper is most definitely not a fruit,” said Samantha.
She flipped through the three pages of stickers. On the third sheet, between a banana and a cranberry, she saw a chili pepper.
Nipper crossed his arms and flashed her another big smile.
“I’ve had it with you!” she shouted, and stood up.
She felt her right toe poke through the hole in her sock.
“You know every kind of stupid fruit there is, but you’re too stupid to NOT press the stupid button on a stupid rocket before I’m strapped in!”
Nipper stopped smiling.
“I’m going home,” she said, rolling up the sticker sheets and stuffing them into her pocket.
She stepped onto the slowest-moving conveyor belt.
“I’ll see you in Seattle,” she said. “If you can manage to get there without doing something incredibly dumb.”
Samantha stepped quickly to the farthest, fastest Seattle slidewalk. She caught her balance and watched Nipper recede into the distance.
Then she stomped on a bubble and zoomed away.
Nipper watched his sister slide out of sight.
He didn’t feel great. Not after she’d said “stupid” four times.
He hopped onto the first conveyor belt leading to Seattle.
“Ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five,” he counted as he moved from slow to fast and even faster.
When he reached forty-five miles per hour, he wasn’t sure what to do. Samantha had already popped a bubble and triggered the fastest belt, so it whizzed by at supersonic speed. Nipper figured it would be an hour before the belt slowed down. He wasn’t good at waiting.
He hopped onto the speeding belt.
Pow! Pow! Pow!
He landed, breaking three bubbles. Immediately, three inflatable shells burst upward, slammed into each other, and launched Nipper into the air. He landed ten feet back and set off more bubbles.
Pow! Pow! Poppity-poppity! Pow!
He bounced from bubble to bubble as the conveyor belt raced toward the tunnel.
Poppity-pow!
Another patch of bubbles exploded under Nipper, flinging him off the slidewalk completely. He tumbled onto the floor of a hallway beside the slidewalk. He stood up, ready to try again; then a ladder caught his eye. There was one word stenciled on the wall beside it:
KOMODO
He was already off the belt, so he decided he might as well have a look around.
Nipper climbed the ladder and reached a metal panel at the top. Holding the ladder with one hand, he pushed upward with the other. The panel flipped open and light streamed in.
Nipper pulled himself up…onto a pink, sandy beach.
He stood up and brushed sand the color of bubble gum off his legs. He was alone on a beach, not a street or sidewalk in sight. In front of him was a dense jungle. Beyond the trees, jagged peaks rose into the sky.
“A mountainous island,” Nipper said to himself thoughtfully.
Waves gently lapped against the shore, and he heard a seagull cry. He took in a whiff of warm, salty air and gazed out over the water, but he didn’t see any birds. A thick veil of fog rose from the water. He couldn’t see more than a few feet past the shoreline.
“In a mist-covered ocean,” said Nipper.
He closed his eyes and thought about the poster he’d seen in his mother’s office.
Twigs snapped behind him and he opened his eyes. He heard rustling leaves. Something moved through the dense vegetation along the jungle’s edge.
“Hello?” he called out. “Samantha?”
Of course, his sister wasn’t there. He’d seen her stomp on a bubble and go home. But what was it? No one—and nothing—answered.
“’Mantha?” he called. “Is that you?”
Something burst from the bushes. Before Nipper could react, it raced up to him, hissed, and stared.
It looked like a small alligator, about three feet long, with a short, flat head, kind of like a snake’s. It had wrinkly, greenish-gray skin and a thick tail as long as its body. A forked tongue flicked in and out of its mouth.
Nipper stared into beady black eyes.
“In a mist-covered ocean far, far from home,” he said breathlessly, “there’s a mountainous island where…”
His voice trailed off.
He gazed at the animal in wonder.
A baby dinosaur!
“SUN-rise!” shouted Chuckles J. Morningstar. He adjusted his top hat and tried to concentrate. Five soldiers stood before him. Their faces were pale. Their hair was wild. Their uniforms were wrinkled. Of course, they were clowns.
He sniffed three times. Two short snorts, then a long one. Even through his odor-minimizing nose filter, he could tell that several of the soldiers reeked of cumin and chili pepper.
“It was a routine seek-and-annoy mission, boss,” said a pancake soldier standing near the left corner of his desk.
“Routine?” asked Chuckles. “What was the routine, Sergeant Hotcakes?”
“We found the secret underground conveyor belt you told us about,” he answered. “We rode to Mali and started the flippy-floppy super-sticky flapjack prank. We started hitting folks with the rubber pancakes. It was hilarious, but we never got to the part with the super-glue syrup.”
Chuckles tapped one of his enormous shoes on the floor impatiently.
“Yeah,” said the other pancake soldier, raising his spatula. “We looked out in the crowd and saw a girl with a red umbrella. The red umbrella.”
He waved his spatula and accidently bumped his partner’s shoulder, releasing a puff of brown dust.
“We tried to follow her,” he continued. “Then a super-annoying…ahh-annoying boy— Ahhhh-choo! Ahhhh-choo!”
The soldier’s odor-minimizing nose filter came loose on the second sneeze and fell off. He quickly bent down and picked it up. Wheezing loudly, he reattached the bright red ball to his nose.
Chuckles waited for him to stop wheezing. Then he waited a little longer, just to make the soldiers extra nervous.
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” he said finally. “This is a total disaster, Private Griddles.”
“Um, sir”—the extra-nervous soldier raised his spatula—“I’m Captain Griddles.”
“Not anymore!” barked Chuckles. “That umbrella holds the Super-Secret Plans to the whole world. You had a chance to grab the complete map of hidden tunnels and secret transportation everywhere…and you blew it!”
He pounded his fist on the metal desk. The sound of a dozen mousetraps snapping rang out from inside one of the drawers.
Four out of five soldiers flinched. The giant woman with duck feet stood at attention.
“This is what you are all going to do now,” Chuckles said, leaning forward.
He took off his hat and pointed its flat t
op at them.
“Get on your unicycles and pedal to the map department, pronto.”
Sergeant Hotcakes and Private Griddles stared at the top hat. They both nodded.
“You will tell them everything you saw in Mali,” Chuckles continued. “They will tell you where to go next.”
The pie soldier raised a goo-covered hand.
“But, boss,” she protested. “The map guys are fools. They’re worthless. It’s like their brains are made out of cotton candy. They wouldn’t know a secret staircase from a porta-potty.”
“Not. Remotely. Interested,” Chuckles said forcefully. “Now leave, before I send you to practice the barefoot-booby-trap routine…in Antarctica.”
The soldiers looked at one another helplessly and slunk out of the room.
“You stay here,” he said, pointing at the tall woman with the duck shoes.
Chuckles listened for the sound of squeaking wheels. He opened the top drawer of his desk and rummaged through a dozen shiny, red plastic balls. He picked one up and studied it. Still fresh. He removed his odor-minimizing nose filter, tossed it on the floor, and replaced it with the new one. Then he fished around in the drawer, found his phone, and dialed.
A high-pitched noise squeaked from the phone.
“Major Helium!” he barked. “Those worthless fools in the map department actually got something right, for once. Dressing up like police officers and spying on that Spinner family paid off.”
The phone squealed.
“Yes,” he answered. “The magtrain isn’t the only way to get around. The kids led us to a system of conveyor belts.”
He listened to more squeaks on the phone.
“No, Major Helium,” he replied. “Nobody found the guy in the green plaid pajamas. But they saw the umbrella.”
Chuckles stood up and walked around to the front of his desk.
“I’m sending you someone who can identify the kids who have it,” Chuckles said, looking up to make sure the tall woman was listening.
His phone squeaked and squealed.
“Yes, yes, Major. The kids got away,” he answered. “But I’m glad they did. We’ll keep following them, until they find their uncle for us.”
With a soft crunch, he stepped on the used nose ball and ground it into the concrete floor with one of his massive shoes.
Samantha rose from under the fire hydrant by the Volunteer Park Conservatory.
She walked home slowly, as she only had one shoe and didn’t want to step on anything sharp. Even more than that, she was exhausted.
It was going to take Nipper a while to catch up, so she headed to her bedroom for a nap. She hung her purse on the back of the door and stowed the umbrella under her mattress. She spent ten minutes struggling with her hairbrush before giving up.
“PSST,” she said, dropping the brush on her dresser. “Puzzled, sore, shoeless, and tired.”
Samantha looked at her clock. It was only two p.m., and she had already been around the world. Literally. All the way around the world. Super-secret travel was tiring, especially when you were also running from clowns.
She flopped down on her bed and tried to take a nap.
Her mind was full.
She thought about Buffy’s crazy play and Cleopatra’s Needle.
She thought about slidewalks and tables piled high with spices.
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
Her muscles relaxed.
She drifted….
Screee! Screee! Zicky zicky zicky scree-dleeee!
She sat up quickly. Out in the hall, a chinchilla had let loose a piercing squeal. It made Samantha’s teeth hurt, but she was too exhausted to get up. She lay back down and closed her eyes again.
She thought about Seydou, with his big smile and his cool hat with the secret-map visor. She pictured him on his motorcycle, leading away the tiny car full of clowns.
Horrible clowns. Were they the SUN that Uncle Paul warned her about?
How did they know about the umbrella? And how come they all sneezed and fell down when they smelled spices in the market?
Did they follow her there? Or had they been in Mali before?
Samantha sighed. Too many questions. She stretched her shoulders.
Zicky zicky zicky scree-dleeee!
She tensed up again. A chinchilla had found a brand-new way to irritate her. She turned sideways and tried to ignore the sound of the shrieking rodent. She clenched both fists.
Zicky. Zicky. Zick—
The noise stopped suddenly. Samantha waited for the chinchilla to start shrieking again. But it didn’t. Everything stayed quiet. Dead quiet.
“Whatever,” she whispered.
Samantha started thinking about Uncle Paul and the stickers.
She pictured glowing yellow letters A, L, I, and M, spinning around and around.
Her hands relaxed. She breathed deeply and drifted off to sleep.
Samantha awoke to thumping and banging across the hall. She sat up and looked at her clock. It was eight a.m. She’d slept all afternoon and night!
She’d had no intention of sleeping so long…but she felt great. She stood up and stretched. She took a quick shower, got dressed, and then headed across the hall to make sure her brother had made it home safely.
Samantha walked through Nipper’s open bedroom door and into his room. He was crouching in front of his dresser, pressing hard on the bottom drawer with both hands.
“Oh. Hi, Sam,” he said, looking up at her. “Mom and Dad came by last night, but you were snoring so loud, they let you sleep.”
Samantha frowned.
“I don’t snore,” she said. “Well, maybe I was so tired that I— Wait. When did you get home?”
“Uh…a while ago,” he said, standing up.
She sniffed. He still smelled like spices. Dried powder streaked his shirt. She glanced down. He had spices on his pants, too.
She looked farther down to see he was pressing one foot against the drawer.
“And what’s in the dresser?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he answered quickly.
Nipper glanced down at the bottom drawer, then back to her.
“I think I…need some socks,” he said, looking around the room. “Oh, right here.”
While keeping his foot pressed against the bottom drawer, he opened the top drawer of the dresser.
Everything about this seemed very strange to Samantha. Stranger than regular kid-brother strange, and that was already strange. She sniffed again.
“Did you really sleep in your spices?” she asked.
One at a time, Nipper pulled socks from the drawer and used them to wipe away powdered spices from his body.
“I’m kind of like a chinchilla, Sam, if you think about it,” he said. “I’m taking a dust bath.”
“Or…you could just take a real bath and put on clean clothes,” she replied.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll get to it tonight.”
Samantha looked at him, then at the sock drawer. It was almost empty. Socks were scattered all over the room now.
Still holding the bottom drawer of the dresser closed with a foot, he reached into the back of the sock drawer and pulled out a rolled pair of tube socks.
“Gotcha,” he said. “I always keep a special emergency pair in the back.”
“Really?” asked Samantha. “Since when?”
Nipper whipped the socks in the air to unroll them. Something flew out and clattered to the floor. He bent down and picked up a shiny silver object. It was a coin from 1913 engraved with a woman’s head surrounded by stars. He turned it over. There was a big letter V on the back.
“My lucky nickel!” he shouted.
Uncle Paul had given Nipper the coin a year ago.
Samantha remembered h
er uncle telling Nipper, “She’s one of a kind. Look after her,” and then giving Samantha a wink. Her brother lost track of the coin a few hours later.
“It’s a sign,” said Nipper, waving the coin at her. “Today is a lucky day.”
“Maybe,” said Samantha.
She thought about the last time Nipper invoked the Lucky Day.
A little over two years ago, Samantha’s parents threw her a deluxe birthday party with a magician, a pirate, and a clown. Their dad did lightbulb tricks and put on a super-bubble science show. Uncle Paul dressed up in his “formal” tuxedo T-shirt and made snow cones for all the kids in the neighborhood.
Right before the magic show started, Nipper picked a clover. He told everyone it had four leaves and that this meant it was his lucky day.
Uncle Paul offered him a sour-cherry snow cone, but Nipper insisted he make it extra-super sour. Uncle Paul doubled the syrup. When no one was looking, Nipper poured the rest of the bottle on his snow cone.
Then Nipper tasted the extra-extra super-sour snow cone. He screamed and flung it across the yard.
It splatter-painted half the kids bright red and knocked the hat off the magician’s head. The magician had been hiding a pet rabbit in the hat, and Dennis chased the terrified animal around the backyard for an hour, knocking over kids and Samantha’s cake. The party ended early that day. After all the guests left, Samantha took the clover from Nipper and counted five leaves.
Samantha ignored the silver coin her brother was waving in her face.
“Lucky, huh?” she asked him. “Should I move everything out of the way?”
“No, this really is a lucky day and things are going to go my way,” he insisted. “You keep using your big brain to figure out what ‘Watch out for the SUN’ means and where we should have gone instead of Africa. While you do that, I’m going to go and get my Yankees back.”
Nipper tucked the coin into his pocket, put on the tube socks, and forced on his dusty shoes without untying them.
“Lucky day,” he said one more time, and headed downstairs.
The sun blazed high in the sky. The view of mighty Mount Rainier, fifty-nine miles to the south, was crystal clear. That’s usually another sign that it’s a lucky day in Seattle.
Samantha Spinner and the Spectacular Specs Page 12