The Rizzlerunk Club

by Leslie Patricelli

  “That’s Jill’s house,” she says.

  “Wow, it’s huge,” I say.

  “It’s still their house,” she tells me. “Mom told me that they haven’t sold it yet.”

  Suddenly an upstairs window opens wide, then shuts. But no one is there!

  “Did you see that?” Darby yells. “Jill is a ghost!”

  “I saw it,” I say. “But it was probably just a person looking at the house to buy it. Anyway, you have to be dead to be a ghost.”

  “Maybe she is dead,” Darby says.

  “No, she’s not, Darby. That’s ridiculous,” I assure her.

  But I didn’t see anyone at the window either.

  We keep pedaling, then Darby points to the shore at Pine Lake Park. There are two giant fir trees growing out of a big slab of dirt. I can see the roots sticking out of the edge of the slab. It looks like a giant picked up the trees from somewhere else and dropped them there.

  “There’s the top of Captain Rizzlerunk’s island!” she says. “I told you it floated to the shore. I’ll show you where the bottom of the island is when we get there.”

  “I’ll believe that when I see it,” I say.

  We keep pedaling. We don’t say anything, just look at the sun shining on the water. We see a fish jump. Suddenly Darby points down toward the bottom of the lake.

  “See!” she says. “It’s shallow! That’s the bottom of the island.”

  I look down and it is shallow, maybe only three feet deep, even though we’re still far from shore.

  “I wouldn’t want to swim over that,” I say, looking at the algae reaching toward the surface.

  “I did once, and something grabbed my ankle,” says Darby. “It was probably Captain Rizzlerunk.”

  “Darby, I know you’re making all this up just to scare me,” I say.

  “No, I’m not! Like my dad always says, ‘The truth is stranger than fiction!’”

  Finally we get to my dock. I tie up the boat. Now I know how to do a cleat hitch, too! I get our wheelbarrow, and we start collecting sticks, rocks, pinecones, and leaves to make houses for the frogs. We build five tiny little tepees and pick some dandelions to put outside for decorations.

  “I wish we could shrink down and live in there!” I say, imagining the inside looking just like my turtle shell.

  “Then we could live right next door to each other,” says Darby. “That would be so much easier than living all the way across the lake. It’s too far to pedal!”

  Finally the houses are ready. We go back to the boat to get the frogs. It looks like they’re all sleeping now. I guess they got tired from trying to jump out of the bucket. We carry the bucket to shore, then take them out one by one and put them in their new houses. They stay! Then a loud, rumbling sound echoes across the lake.

  “The bullfrog!” I say.

  All at once, our frogs hop back into the water and start swimming back toward Darby’s house.

  “Lily,” Darby says, “that bullfrog must be huge to make a sound like that! Let’s find it!”

  We look everywhere along the shore. No bullfrog.

  “So you’ve never seen it?” Darby asks.

  “No,” I say.

  “Has anyone in your family seen it?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know what that means?” she asks.

  “No.”

  “It’s a ghost!” she says.

  There’s a sudden gust of wind. I get a chill down my spine and shiver.

  After listening to the bullfrog through Saturday night, Abby and I spend all of Sunday searching for it, but we don’t find it. We even go out in the boat with Mom and Dad at night with flashlights. We can hear it, but we don’t see any trace of it. Mom thinks it must be as big as an elephant to make a noise that loud!

  But if it were that big, wouldn’t we be able to find it?

  I tell Darby about our search on Monday morning. “See, I told you it’s a ghost!” she says.

  “It’s not a ghost, Darby,” I say. “It’s a frog.”

  “Ghost,” she says.

  “Frog,” I say — although after seeing the dead grass in front of Darby’s pump house and the mysteriously moving window, I don’t know what to believe anymore.

  “SHTV, everybody!” Mrs. Larson calls.

  “SHHH! TV!” everyone shouts.

  “Once again, that was not necessary,” Mrs. Larson says, raising an eyebrow. We’re all quiet for SHTV until they announce the Mystery Kid of the Week.

  “The Mystery Kid of the Week,” says the announcer, “has a four-year-old brother named Frankie and a cat named Fluffy. He is in fourth grade, got second place in the spelling bee last year, and loves to ride his BMX bike at the pump track.”

  “It’s Mikey!” shouts José Alvero. “I know, because I ride bikes with Mikey, plus I know Frankie and Fluffy!”

  “Mikey’s brother is named Frankie Frank?” I whisper to Darby.

  Then we both get the giggles so bad that Darby pees her pants a little and has to excuse herself to go to the bathroom. Luckily our bathroom is right outside the classroom by the coatroom, so Mrs. Larson is nice about letting us go most of the time. We don’t have to get a hall pass like I did at my old school.

  I write Mikey Frank’s name on a piece of paper and bring it to Mrs. Larson. If Mikey is the Mystery Kid of the Week, it means he has to go on SHTV on Friday. I would never want to be the Mystery Kid of the Week for exactly that reason.

  At lunch recess, Darby and I get the last dodgeball out of the bucket to play four square. Gabriella and Sonja are right behind us.

  “Now we don’t have a ball,” Gabriella says.

  “Ya snooze, ya lose!” Darby says, which seems kind of mean.

  Neither of them has talked to me since the first day of school, but since we have a ball with no partners, and since they are partners with no ball, I decide to really “go out on a limb,” as Mom would say.

  “What? No! Eww,” says Gabriella.

  “Yeah, eww,” says Sonja.

  Gabriella sticks out her tongue at us, grabs Sonja’s arm, and walks away. I see them join Tillie by the monkey bars.

  “They were so nice to me on the first day of school, and now they’re so mean!” I tell Darby.

  “Don’t worry about the Jilly Beans,” Darby says.

  “The Whos?”

  “The Thems!” Darby says, pointing at them.

  “Why are they the Jilly Beans?”

  “It’s a club,” Darby says. “I started it with Jill in second grade. Jill was the president, but it was more like she was the queen because she ruled everybody. Now they still call themselves the Jilly Beans — even after Jill moved!”

  “Why aren’t you still in the club?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “They just stopped playing with me. Maybe because Jill was so bossy, they think that I’m the same way. Hey . . . you know what?”

  “What?” I ask her.

  “I think frogs make better friends than people sometimes. Except you. You’re better than a frog.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “You’re better than a frog, too.”

  I watch the Jilly Beans for a minute. They’re all standing together playing a clapping game. I’ve never been in a club. It looks kind of fun.

  “Maybe we could join the Jilly Beans together,” I say to Darby. “You could just tell them that Jill was the bossy one, but that you and I aren’t bossy at all! They’d probably let us in.”

  “Nah,” Darby says. “I don’t want to be friends with them anymore. They aren’t that nice, and Gabriella’s just as bossy as Jill.”

  “Maybe we should start our own club, then,” I say. “We could call it the Rizzlerunk Club!”

  “Rizzles sizzle,” Darby says, putting her thumb on her butt and making a sizzling sound.

  “I’ve never even been in a club,” I say. “What do we do?”

  “Well, we need to have an initiation!” she says. “Like eating worms or something.”

&
nbsp; “I’m not eating worms!”

  The bell rings before we can discuss it any further.

  After school Darby comes home with me, and we plan our initiation. “Okay, so no worms. How about dog food?” Darby says.

  I pretend-gag.

  “I know!” she says. “I used to play this blindfold game with Jill. One person got to make a mix of whatever they wanted from the kitchen, and the other person had to eat it without seeing it. Only Jill would always make me go first, and then she wouldn’t play anymore! I call going first — but I swear that I’ll do my turn.”

  “You swear?” I ask.

  “I swear on Captain Rizzlerunk’s grave,” she says, crossing her heart.

  I find a bandanna in the ski box in the laundry room, and she ties it around my head so I can’t see, then starts mixing something. I can hear cabinets opening and shutting.

  “Ready or not, here it comes,” she says. “Open up!”

  First, I taste something really sour like lime juice. Then salt and pepper, then . . . “What is that? Ow!” I yell.

  “Tabasco!” says Darby.

  I rip off my blindfold and hop around, fanning my mouth. It’s not really that bad, but Darby is laughing so hard that I keep acting. I gulp down a glass of water. “You’re the first official member of the Rizzlerunk Club!” she says.

  “You’re dead,” I say, rubbing my hands together. I wrap the blindfold around Darby’s eyes.

  “Nothing poisonous!” she says.

  Now comes the fun part. Darby found stuff in the fridge and the spice cabinets, but she completely forgot about our pantry. Our pantry is filled with nothing but health-food grossness!

  I go into the pantry and shut the door. I find red- and green-pepper jellies that someone gave Mom as a gift (weird gift), and mix them in the glass with some pickled-pepper juice. I sniff it — it burns my nose. Perfect! I add honey, a packet of yeast, tomato juice, and three different types of vinegar. Then I stir in some ground coffee, olive oil, fleur de sel (that’s fancy salt), and diet tonic water. When I add the tonic water, the whole mixture foams and overflows on the pantry floor. Done!

  “You didn’t add laundry soap and stuff, did you?” she asks. “I heard you in the laundry room.”

  “I’m not going to kill you, Darby! You’re my newest bestest friend! Now open up!”

  Darby opens her mouth, and I feed her a spoonful of my concoction. She rips off her blindfold, then her lips get really thin and white.

  “Swallow it!” I say.

  She swallows it — then she spits on the floor.

  “Darby, what are you —”

  She jumps out of the chair and runs to the bathroom. I follow her. She slams the door. I think she’s barfing! I don’t go in, and after a while I don’t hear anything.

  “Are you okay?” I ask her.

  “What do you think?” she says.

  “I think that you can be president of the Rizzlerunk Club!”

  The next day at school, Darby and I are so excited about the Rizzlerunk Club, we can hardly wait until recess.

  “We need to have a clubhouse!” Darby whispers to me. Mrs. Larson raises her eyebrow at Darby.

  “We need to have uniforms!” I whisper.

  Mrs. Larson raises her eyebrow at me, then instructs us to open our science books to page fifty-eight. It’s all about frogs!

  Darby and I look at each other and smile. Mrs. Larson asks for someone to read out loud, and Darby raises her hand, all excited. Mrs. Larson calls on her.

  “‘Frogs use their strong, sticky tongue to catch and swallow food,’” Darby reads. “‘Unlike humans, a frog’s tongue is not attached at the back of the mouth, but at the front. This allows the frog to stick its tongue out much farther.’”

  Immediately, we all start sticking out our tongues, trying to touch the tips of our noses. Mikey can just touch the tip of his nose.

  “Mikey wins!” Darby says, then she turns red.

  It’s obvious that Darby has a big crush on Mikey, and I see Gabriella glare at her. Then Mrs. Larson sticks her tongue way out — and halfway over her nose! “Look, I’m part frog!” she tells us.

  Everyone starts cracking up. I love it when teachers act silly.

  David has been raising his hand ever since Darby started reading, and Mrs. Larson finally calls on him.

  “Did you know that frogs shed their skin every week and then they eat it?”

  “My leopard gecko does that!” shouts José.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Larson says. “There are many similarities and many differences between amphibians and reptiles. Shedding skin and ingesting it is one of the similarities.”

  Ethan Jackson raises his hand. “Yes, Ethan?”

  “I stopped biting my nails, and now I eat the skin around them instead! Does that mean I’m part amphibian?”

  “No, Ethan,” says Mrs. Larson. “That does not mean that you’re part amphibian.”

  After we read more about frogs, we all get to draw pictures of frogs and write down three of our favorite frog facts. I think my drawing is pretty good, but Mrs. Larson says she was looking for something more realistic, since this is science.

  I can’t help it. I love to draw cartoons a lot more than I love to draw real things. Cartoons are just more fun, plus they’re harder to mess up. If you mess up when you’re drawing, you can just turn it into something else. Darby loves to draw almost as much as I do, except she says I’m a lot better than her. (Not to be mean or anything, but it’s kind of true.)

  Finally first recess comes, and Darby and I run outside. We find a spot in the far corner of our playground by the cyclone fence.

  “This is a perfect clubhouse,” Darby says.

  “How is this a perfect clubhouse?” I ask her. “There’s no clubhouse!”

  “That’s why it’s so perfect,” she tells me. “It’s an invisible clubhouse! This way, no one will ever try to come in!”

  She opens the invisible door, steps inside, and sits in the dirt. I sit down next to her.

  “Ooh, comfy chairs!” I say, imagining some big, fluffy red velvet chairs.

  Then I look toward the four-square court and notice that Gabriella is looking at us. She’s saying something to Sonja and Tillie. I feel kind of embarrassed. I might be pretending to be in a big, fluffy chair — but I know we’re actually sitting in the dirt. I look at Darby. She doesn’t seem embarrassed, or maybe she doesn’t notice them.

  “The Jilly Beans are looking at us,” I tell her. “I think they’re laughing at us.”

  Darby looks up.

  “They’re looking behind us, dummy!” Darby says. “They can’t be looking at us. We’re in an invisible clubhouse, which makes us invisible!”

  Darby just doesn’t seem to care what anyone thinks.

  “As official president of the Rizzlerunk Club,” she says, sitting up straighter, “I, Darby Dorski, will lead our meeting. First on our agenda — the secret handshake!”

  We get up and start slapping hands, knocking fists, and bumping hips. High five, low five, bump left hips, bump right hips, bend over, and slap hands. Then Darby puts her thumb on her butt and makes a sizzle sound.

  “The Rizzle Sizzle!” Darby says. “It’s a perfect way to end the handshake.”

  “Can Rizzlerunk the frog be our mascot?” I ask her.

  “Of course!” says Darby. “Now we need a pledge. Something we have to say every day, like the Pledge of Allegiance.”

  Darby puts her hand over her heart.

  “I pledge allegiance to the Rizzles, of the United Club of Rizzlerunk, and to the invisible clubhouse for which it stands, best buds, under frogs, with loyalty and honesty for all.”

  We say it together.

  “Now we need uniforms,” says Darby. “Something like my friend Jill wears to school in London.”

  “I’m not wearing a necktie or a skirt!” I say. “What about something easy like a friendship bracelet?”

  “No. Everyone has those. But . . . maybe we c
ould make a bracelet out of something else.”

  Darby pulls her hand out of her coat pocket. It’s filled with garbage. Mostly candy wrappers.

  “Let’s make bracelets out of candy wrappers!” she says. “That’s perfect, since candy is the main ingredient for Insta-Friends!”

  “We can buy candy after school and make them at my house,” I tell her. The bell rings. We jump up to head back to class.

  “Oh, wait!” says Darby. “Gotta lock the door!”

  She pretends to lock our pretend invisible clubhouse door with a pretend invisible key.

  “You’re weird,” I tell her.

  “I know!” she says. “It’s fun being me.”

  “We’re going to need a lot of candy to make really cool bracelets,” I whisper after we sit down.

  My mouth is watering.

  “We can get every kind of candy there is!” Darby says. “And we’re in luck. My mom gave me a twenty the other day for lunch and forgot to ask for the change, so I’m rich!”

  “Mrs. Larson! Mrs. Larson!” says Billy Ditsch, who everyone calls Billy Snitch because he tattles all the time. “Darby’s whispering!”

  “Billy,” says Mrs. Larson firmly, “informing me of Darby’s actions is not necessary. You don’t need to tell me what other students are doing unless you have good reason.”

  Then she looks at us.

  “Please stop whispering,” she whispers.

  We can barely keep quiet about our uniform plan until after school.

  When we get off the bus with Abby, the three of us sprint full-speed past Zach, who jumps at the fence and barks and whines like a crazed coyote.

  As soon as we get in the door, I tell Mom that we’re doing a project and that we need to go to the store to get lots of candy.

  “Nice try,” she says. But I convince Mom that it’s the wrappers we’re after and not the candy and that it’s for a creative project. She gives us a look, but then says it’s okay to walk up to the store. She even gives me some money.