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 spin around like a top.” I needed his cooperation 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 gotta 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 okay 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 loud it sounded like air gushing out of a tire. 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 had a nightmare.”
“Maybe they had The Mutant Moth That Ate Toledo on at the pet store, and it gave her the creeps,” I said.
There it was again, just when I thought I had stopped thinking about it. Obviously, I had mutant moths on the brain.
“Is Frankie still mad at you?” Emily asked.
“Big-time.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Emily was trying to be nice. “Katherine and I are very good listeners, aren’t we, Kathy?” She nuzzled Katherine.
“That’s okay,” I said. “You and Katherine go to sleep. She needs her beauty rest.”
Emily started to leave, then she turned around. “I think Katherine would like a nuzzle from you,” she said. “It would make her feel loved.”
Oh brother, the things a guy has to do to get a little privacy around here. I reached out and gave Katherine a pat on the head. She hissed and flashed her teeth at me again. That’s gratitude for you.
I decided to take the cable box into my room so I could work on it in private. I disconnected the box from the TV, which wasn’t hard. I took it in my room and sat down. I noticed that there were four screws holding the top to the bottom. I unscrewed them and put them on the floor.
No, Hank, I thought. You are going to lose these if you leave them here, and then you’ll never be able to put the box back together again.
I got up and put all four screws in a little plastic box I keep in my desk drawer. I usually keep my special clear marbles in there, but I took those out and put them into another compartment.
I jiggled the top of the cable box, and it came off very easily. Wow, things were going well.
When I lifted the top off, the inside was not at all what I expected. It was jammed with circuit boards and microchips and lots of wires tangled up together.
I took everything out of the box and separated the pieces, laying all the parts down on my rug. There sure were a lot of parts. I got so involved taking the box apart and inspecting every single piece that I lost all track of time. The next time I looked up, two hours had gone by. That happens a lot to me. Either I can’t focus at all, or I focus so hard I shut everything else out.
Suddenly, I heard a toilet flush, then footsteps. They were coming toward my room!
“Hank?” my dad whispered from the hall. “What are you doing up?”
I had to do something fast. I knew he’d come in, and my dad is not the kind of person who would be happy to see his cable box in a million pieces on my floor. I don’t know your dad, but I bet he’s not that kind of person, either.
I flung myself down on the rug so my body covered all the parts. I heard a couple of things crunch under my butt. There was no time to check them out. I barely had enough time to hit the ground before my dad opened the door.
“Hey, Dad,” I said, in a very casual voice, like I always stay up until midnight on a school night lying around on my rug. “What’s up?”
“You are,” he said. “Go to bed.”
“Thanks for the suggestion,” I said, “but I’m not all that sleepy.”
“Head on pillow, Hank. Now.”
“Okay, Dad. I’ll be in bed in one second.”
He clicked the door shut. I could tell he was standing outside, waiting for my lights to go off. I scooped up all the parts of the cable box in my hands.
“N-O-W,” came my father’s voice, as he spelled out the word. When my father spells out words, that is a clue he means business.
“Right n-o-w, Dad,” I spelled back.
I opened my desk drawer and quickly tossed all the pieces in. Chips, circuits, wires, and other parts scattered everywhere. I kicked the top and bottom of the cable box under my bed and hopped under the covers just as my dad turned the doorknob and stuck his head inside.
“Sleep fast,” he whispered. “It’s late.”
“I’m trying, Dad, but someone keeps opening my door.”
He left, and I tried to close my eyes, but all I could see in my head were the bits and pieces of the cable box crammed in my top drawer. I had a bad feeling that box was never going to come together in the same way again.
CHAPTER 14
I MUST HAVE FINALLY fallen asleep, because my dad’s voice woke me early the next morning.
“Out of bed, Hank. Breakfast in five,” he called, knocking on my door.
Usually, it takes several warnings to get me out of bed, but I jumped up and yelled back, “I’m way ahead of you, Dad.” I went to my desk drawer and pulled it open. Nothing had changed overnight. The chips and circuit boards and wires were lying there exactly as I had left them the night before. How come in fairy tales, magic elves arrive in the night and put everything back the way it was? I ask you, where are those elves when a guy needs them?
I imagined the punishment that would come down on me if my dad saw that mess. My dad always says the punishment should fit the crime, and I had a horrible feeling my punishment for taking away his television would be that he’d take away mine, whenever it was finally working again.
“No TV for a month,” he’d say. Or maybe even, “No TV for a year.” My head spun! I had to get that cable box fixed before he found out about it.
I was safe for a while, because no one in my family turns on the TV until the nighttime. But at six thirty ev
ery night, my Dad watches the nightly news, followed by Hollywood Squares. I’m not too good at math, but I figured I had something like twelve hours to get our cable up and running.
But how?
I didn’t need magic elves. I needed Frankie Townsend. If anyone could put that box back together, it was Frankie. He is a boy genius with electronic stuff. I happen to know firsthand that he’s had a subscription to Popular Electronics since he was eight years old. And he reads it, too. Cover to cover.
I thought about my situation at breakfast. I had to find a way to apologize to Frankie that he’d accept. I needed him to help me fix the cable box by the time my father plopped in his chair and flicked on the nightly news.
After breakfast, I raced into my room to get my backpack, but before I left, I took out a piece of paper.
“KEEP OUT!” I wrote. “SIENSE PROJECT IN PROGES.”
I don’t think I spelled too many of the words right, but it got the message across, just in case my dad or anyone else felt like snooping.
I taped the sign on my door, and closed it tight. I considered pointing out the sign to my dad, but I really didn’t need to. My dad is a major-league sign reader. All you have to do is walk down Amsterdam Avenue with him and he will read every sign he sees—out loud.
“Harvey’s Pizza—a dollar a slice. Kim’s Korean Market, fresh roses today. Big Apple Laundromat, Free Dry with Wash. Manhattan Bagels, two free when you buy a dozen.” His sign reading habit was great when I was a little guy and couldn’t read. But now that I’m older, it’s pretty annoying. And now Emily’s starting to do it, too. Maybe there’s a gene for annoying oral sign reading. I hope I don’t pass it on to my kids.
“I’ll meet you downstairs, Dad,” I called. He was walking us to school, but I wanted to get down there early and see if I could talk to Frankie before we set out.
When I got to the lobby, only Ashley and Robert were there.
“Where’s Frankie?” I asked. “We’ve got to talk. I’m going to buzz his apartment.”
“Hank,” Ashley said, stopping me from going back inside. “Frankie already left. He didn’t want to walk with us.”
“He’s still that mad?” I gulped.
“I don’t know,” Ashley answered. “He just took off with his dad.”
“Listen, Ashley, we’ve got to figure out how to get Frankie to talk to me again.”
“Give him a day or two, he’ll get over it,” she said.
“I don’t have that much time,” I said. “I need him now. He’s got to help me fix my cable box-by tonight.”
“I can fix a cable box,” said Robert.
“Can you really?” I asked him.
“Sure,” he said. “Call the cable company and ask for a new one.” Then he laughed.
Great, now Robert was developing a sense of humor. Just when I needed him to be the nerd he’s always been, he’s turned into Captain Wisecrack.
“Actually,” he said, “anyone can get a new box. My mom just got one for the TV in her room.”
It was the perfect solution. I’d call the cable company right after school and ask them to bring over a new box.
My dad and Emily arrived downstairs with Cheerio on a leash. When it’s my dad’s day to walk us to school, he always brings Cheerio along for the exercise. He likes to sniff the sidewalk and curbs—Cheerio, that is, not my dad. We headed down Amsterdam Avenue, and I was already feeling much better. It’s great when you find a solution to a problem. It’s like someone has lifted a huge sack of potatoes off your back.
“Robert,” I whispered. “You’re an all right guy, even if you do wear a white shirt and tie to school every day.”
He reached out with his scrawny little arm and threw me a fake punch in the arm. Boy, is that kid weak.
“By the way, buddy,” he said, “It costs fifty-eight dollars.”
“What does?”
“The cable box. Actually, fifty-eight dollars and forty cents.”
“Robert, why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“You didn’t ask.”
“But I only have ten dollars,” I said. “That means I’m thirty-eight dollars and forty cents short.”
“Make that forty eight dollars and forty cents,” Robert said.
In case you haven’t noticed, my math isn’t any better than my spelling.
This was not looking good for the future of my television privileges.
CHAPTER 15
WHEN WE REACHED SCHOOL, I saw Frankie standing outside on the steps. I went charging up to him and launched into my apology.
“Frankie! Listen, I’ve been thinking about what happened and I’ve got to tell you that—”
Before I could even finish my sentence, Nick McKelty appeared on the steps next to us. Nick McKelty doesn’t care if you’re in the middle of an apology. He just blurts out whatever he has to say, which is usually something loud and obnoxious. Correction. It is always something loud and obnoxious.
“Hey, Townsend,” he hollered at Frankie, not even paying the slightest attention to me. “What did you think of The Mutant Moth That Ate Toledo. Was I right or was I right?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Frankie answered, giving me a dark stare. “I missed it.”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t see it?” McKelty said, his big mouth hanging open in surprise. “The part where the moth ate the policeman’s guts and grew to the size of an apartment building was awesome. A total gross-out.”
“I wish I had seen it,” Frankie said quietly, staring at me until I thought his brown eyes were going to pop out of their sockets. “Someone I know was supposed to tape it for me.”
McKelty, who is generally not the brightest bulb in the lamp, put two and two together for the first time in his life.
“Hey, sounds like Zipzer screwed up again.” He smirked. “What did you do, Zipper Face? Forget what the ON button looks like?”
I must have looked like someone punched me in the stomach. McKelty saw me flinch. He could tell he had found a sore spot, and now he was going to go for the knockout.
“Yeah, those ON and OFF buttons are really hard to push,” he said, putting his huge face right up to mine. His breath was like a dragon who had eaten six onions for breakfast.
“Back off, McKelty.” I could only take so much. “This is none of your business.”
McKelty grinned, and I noticed he still had some of his breakfast lodged in that big space between his two front teeth. I’m guessing it was waffles, but I couldn’t entirely rule out cinnamon toast.
“Did I tell you girls that my dad is getting the original poster of The Mutant Moth movie for me,” he bragged. “Not a copy, either, but the only one they ever made.”
There it was. The McKelty factor at work. That guy exaggerates everything. We call it truth times one hundred.
“And did I mention that it’s signed by the moth himself?” he said, blasting me with another giant dose of his dragon breath.
“What’d he do, sign it in wing dust?” I shot back.
Frankie laughed. That was a good sign.
“You’re funny, Zipzer,” said Nick. “Retarded, but funny.”
Ordinarily, if he hadn’t been so mad at me, Frankie would have jumped to my defense. But he didn’t say a word. He just pulled his Yankees hat down over his eyes, so he wouldn’t have to look at me. McKelty sensed that Frankie wasn’t talking, so he fired off another insult.
“Listen, zippety zipper man. Maybe you can come over sometime and I’ll teach you how to work a VCR. Oh, and when we’re done with that, I’ll teach you how to tie your shoelaces. I remember you had trouble with that in kindergarten. You were never too swift, were you, pal?”
“That’s enough, McKelty,” Frankie said.
Yes! Frankie had spoken! I hoped that meant that he wasn’t mad anymore.
Before I could find out, Principal Love came out onto the steps. Actually, I heard him before I saw him appear. You can’t mistake the squeak, squeak, squeak of his Velcro sne
akers. He’s the only grown man I know who wears white Velcro sneakers with a navy blue suit and tie. Maybe he had trouble learning to tie his shoes in kindergarten like I did.
Principal Love started to gather up the kids who were still standing around.
“Everybody inside,” he said in his voice that sounds like he’s on the public address system, even without a microphone. “You know what I always say—a classroom without students is like a bird without a song.”
Principal Love says things that almost make sense, but then when you think about them, don’t make any sense at all. What’s even worse is that he likes to say these things twice.
“Mr. Zipzer,” he said, pointing at me. “Are you on your way to class?”
Before I could answer, Nick butted right in. “I am, sir, and I’m looking forward to school today.”
The one true thing you can say about Nick McKelty is that he never, ever misses an opportunity to suck up.
Principal Love gave Nick a friendly slap on the back. “Yes, sirree, a classroom without students is like a bird without a song.”
Frankie and I bolted for the door and headed upstairs, trying like crazy not to have to walk with Nick McKelty. It wasn’t a problem, though. He was hanging back with Principal Love, trying to score a few extra points.
“Nick’s probably telling him how much he enjoys his announcements on the loudspeaker,” I said.
Frankie almost laughed as we took off up the stairs.
“Does this mean we’re okay again?” I asked.
“I’m thinking about it,” Frankie said.
“Well, can you think about it fast, because I’m calling an emergency meeting after school. Four o’clock, in the club house. I really need you there.”
“What’s up?” Frankie asked.
“I can’t even begin to explain to you what a pickle I’ve gotten myself into.”
“Give me a hint.” I had gotten him curious at least.
“Imagine your cable box.”
“Got it.”
“Now imagine it in, let’s say, fifty pieces.”
“Got it.”
“I got it, too. And it’s under my bed.”
“You didn’t.”
The Day of the Iguana Page 5