How to Tame a Human Tornado

by Paul Tobin

  “These are just numbers,” Liz said, taking the phone from me and looking at it. Kip slid closer to her and we all looked at the phone. Then, all together, we looked up to Nate, shook our heads, and shrugged.

  “Oh,” Nate said. “I forget that not everyone speaks Math.” Nate considers math to be a language.

  “What that means,” Nate said, “is that the Red Death Tea Society has finally realized I’ll never join them.”

  “That’s good news!” I said.

  “So they’ve decided to trigger an earthquake that will destroy Polt, obliterating the entire city and annihilating every living creature, including myself, thereby eliminating my threat to their continued plans.”

  “That’s . . . bad news,” I said.

  So, the next thing on our agenda was to sit around and stare at one another in horror. We each tried to think of something to say.

  Kip managed to say, “Wh-wh-what?”

  Melville landed on my shoulder and said, “Bzzz?” which translated into exactly what Kip had said.

  Liz told me, “I’m starting to wish you wouldn’t have told me all these secrets.”

  I just said, “Piffle,” but I said it enough times that I was the most vocal of us all.

  Nate just sat on the couch, writing equations on his pants.

  “Okay!” I finally said. “We can only deal with one problem at a time, and right now there’s a zebra standing on my foot.” Melville swooped through the air and gave it a sting on its rump, which made the zebra buck a bit, but by then my bee had it fairly well trained (except for the “don’t stand on Delphine’s feet” part) and the zebra quickly rejoined the others.

  “That’s one problem solved,” I said. “But we still have zebras and we should not have zebras. Raise your hand if you can solve this.” Liz did not raise her hand. Kip put his hands in his pocket. We all looked to Nate.

  “Okay,” he said. “But we can’t let them know they’ve been zebras, either. So, before I cure them, we’ll need to use this.” He reached into his shirt and brought out a dart gun.

  “Ooo!” Liz said. “Me! I will shoot the dart gun!” She snatched the dart gun away from Nate, bounding as excitedly as Bosper so often does. I looked around for the terrier again. Where was that dog?

  “Okay, ready?” Nate said. He had a bright pink pill in his hand.

  “Yes!” Liz said, excitedly waving the dart gun. Then, only a moment later, she said, “Oops!” . . . because she’d accidentally triggered a shot. A tiny dart whooshed across the room, bounced off the lemonade pitcher, and then hit the ceiling fan, from where it ricocheted off and sank into Kip’s arm.

  “Guhh?” he said, already leaning to one side, starting to go unconscious. Liz hurried over and propped him up as his eyes flickered, and then closed.

  “No problem, here!” Liz said. She was struggling to keep Kip from toppling onto the floor, and also to keep a zebra from eating his hair. “Totally ready!” she said.

  “Okay,” Nate said, because he nearly always takes people at their word. “Here goes!” He held out the bright pink pill for one of the zebras. It looked at the pill with interest, then licked it off Nate’s hand and swallowed.

  The zebra’s eyes went wide.

  It trembled.

  Steam started billowing off the zebra and then there was a strange blorrrrrrk popping noise, and suddenly there was a grad student in Mexican American history in my living room. He was a bit over six feet tall, wearing black jeans and a jealousy-inducing T-shirt depicting Moby Dick jousting against Godzilla. The grad student had blue eyes, blond hair, and an impressive mustache.

  “Where am I?” he said. His mustache twitched.

  “You’re in the firing line!” Liz said, enthusiastically dramatic. She did a somersault and fired a shot from the dart gun. The dart whooshed past the grad student and stuck into one of the zebras, which shivered and then slumped to the floor.

  “Hmm,” Liz said. “It turns out you were a little to the left of the firing line. But now . . . hahh!” She fired another shot. The dart embedded in Moby Dick. Meaning the grad student’s chest.

  “Hahh?” he said. Then his eyes rolled up and he started to topple.

  “Ooo!” Nate said. “Catch him!”

  “Got him!” I said, because if Liz was going to be on the dart gun, I had to do something. So I reached out and tried to catch the grad student, which did not go very well in either the “planning” or “execution” stages.

  Basically he fell on me.

  “There!” I said. “I cushioned his fall. Exactly as I planned.” I was crawling out from underneath the grad student, who was heavier than he looked. Maybe it’s because he had a whale on his shirt?

  “Well done!” Liz applauded. She clapped her hands together, which is an admirable thing to do when your best friend could use an ego boost, but not so smart if you happen to be holding a dart gun in your hands. Which Liz was.

  So she triggered another shot.

  Luckily, it only sank into the wall.

  Unluckily, it hit less than an inch from Melville, who’d been taking a rest from an exhausting regimen of zebra-stinging.

  “Bzzz!” she said, because Melville has a hair-trigger temper and decided she’d been attacked.

  “Grgargh!” Liz yelped, as my bee stung her left arm.

  “Stop!” I told Melville, leaping to my best friend’s defense, tossing my entire body in front of Liz just as my bee struck again, getting me this time.

  “Huh?” I said, confused. Because the bee sting hadn’t hurt.

  “The nano-bots in your system should have nullified the pain,” Nate said. “Did it work?”

  “Yeah! It didn’t hurt at all. I barely felt it.” Liz was apologizing to Melville and Melville was buzzing her embarrassment over being so hotheaded. Nate had that smug look he has when one of his experiments turns out the way he expected.

  “Fantastic!” Nate said. “To be honest, I wasn’t sure if that was going to work. It actually had a thirty-seven percent chance of making the pain a lot worse.”

  “Really?” I said, wearing a smile. I wasn’t smiling. I was wearing a smile. There’s a difference.

  I said, “As it turns out, it did make the pain worse.”

  “Huh?” Nate said. And then I said, “Your pain!” And then he said, “Unghh!” This was because I’d punched his arm, which is something of a hobby of mine. I am getting to be very good at it, because of an old tire I’ve roped to an oak tree in the middle of my adventure training course. The tire is labeled “Nate’s arm,” and I practice punching it every day, building up my muscles and my accuracy.

  It’s important to be prepared.

  The grad student wandered out of my house, completely oblivious to all that had happened. I knew this was because of the way Nate had erased part of his memory, but at the same time I’ve met quite a few college students and I have to say that “completely oblivious” is really their natural state.

  Kip was still asleep.

  “How long will he be out?” I asked.

  “A few hours, likely,” Nate said. “I configured these sleeping darts for zebras, so it will take longer for it to wear off with Kip. He’s smaller.”

  We put the slumbering spy on the recliner against the wall, and we covered his head with a blanket, so that the zebras wouldn’t eat his apparently delicious hair.

  The zebra in the dart-induced slumber was the mailman. I had to push one of the bright pink pills through the zebra’s teeth, where it was Slobber Central. A few seconds later the transformation was complete, and Nate touched his cell phone to the back of the man’s neck. There was an arc of electricity, and the man quickly stood, his eyes bright and alert.

  “Time to get back to my mail route,” he said. “Meanwhile, I should keep in mind that nothing out of the ordinary has happened.” He quickly walked out of the living room and then down the short hall to the front door, passing Dad, who was on his way upstairs. Neither of them noticed the other.
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  “This is what your life’s been like?” Liz asked me.

  “This is what my life’s been like,” I said.

  “Ready?” Nate asked Liz, with one of the pink pills in his hand.

  “Super-ready,” Liz said. She was in the shooting stance we’d learned back when we were cowriting Detective Cat-Fist, our play about a feline detective who uses guns that shoots fists instead of bullets.

  “Here goes,” Nate said. He fed the pill to one of the three remaining zebras. Five seconds later, a burger chef from Popples was standing in the middle of my living room, looking as bewildered as she had when she was a zebra.

  “How did I get here?” she said.

  “Detective Cat-Fist strikes!” Liz yelled, and fired a dart. It made a little thoook sound when it stuck in the woman’s arm. She was in her late twenties. Tall. Her nose had big fat freckles and her hair was in a bun. Her Popples uniform had a few grease stains that no laundry detergent would ever defeat. She had rings on each of her fingers.

  Her whole body twitched.

  I didn’t try to catch her. I’d learned. Instead, I just pushed her toward the couch.

  “Excellent,” Nate said, looking at the slumbering chef. “My ‘Mind-Reorganizer’ pill works much better when people are sleeping.” He was touching his phone to the back of the woman’s neck.

  “And have you done . . . extensive tests of this mind reorganizer on sleeping people?” Liz asked. Melville flew closer and buzzed in curiosity.

  “Wait!” I yelled. “Nate, I know you’re forced to tell the truth right now, so . . . before you answer Liz’s question, I want to ask one of my own. Do you think it would be for the best if you didn’t answer her question? If you didn’t tell us about how many times you’ve ‘reorganized’ the minds of Polt’s slumbering citizens?”

  “Yes,” he immediately said, leaving Liz and me in our beautiful ignorance, as a burger chef wandered out of my house.

  “Only two zebras left,” Liz said. “Which one’s next?”

  “This one,” Nate said, giving a bright pink pill to one of the zebras. It chomped up the pill in a single gulp, meaning it was far more likely the zebra was Steve rather than Susan, because Steve eats like a garbage truck.

  “What the heck?” Steve was soon saying, looking all around the living room. “How’d I get home? Is that . . . is that a zebra?” My brother is sixteen years old. His light brown hair is full of waves, swooping all around. He thinks it makes him look enigmatic. I say “piffle” to that, and he knows what I mean. He has a roundish face and he’s compulsively checking for zits, for underarm odors, for stains on his clothes, and for ketchup on his nose, the last one because of an incident where he got ketchup on his nose at the Ballyhoo Burger Joint and then tried to flirt with three college girls . . . without knowing about said ketchup on his nose . . . despite how his sister (whose name I will not mention) could’ve told him about it at any time, and didn’t.

  “Delphine,” Steve said. “Is this your doing?” He was pointing to the last of the zebras as if he’d always suspected me of harboring zebras and he’d finally caught me in the very act. “You are in so much trouble!” he said.

  “Give me that,” I told Liz, holding out my hand.

  “Of course,” she said, slapping the dart gun into my open palm.

  It made a thook sound when I shot Steve with a sleeping dart.

  All five times.

  “Oh, you’re that weird guy,” Susan Heller said when she was no longer a zebra, having been returned to her usual far more annoying self.

  Nate was stricken.

  “That . . . weird guy?” he said. Melville buzzed in sympathy.

  “He’s an awesome weird guy!” I said in his defense.

  “Who are you?” Susan asked me, even though we’ve been in the same classes for several years.

  “I’m the daughter of this house,” I said, using the same dramatic voice I’d used when playing the lead in Liz’s production of Lady Kickface, the play that was never actually staged because of a strange outbreak of broken noses that were not my fault. “I am Delphine Gabriella Cooper. You will fear me, Susan Heller. You will know the true horror of . . . of . . . hmmm. Oh geez, Nate, will you stop acting so dreamy-eyed?” I’d stopped because Nate had recovered from his momentary understanding of how unpleasant Susan could be, and was again staring at her with his usual idiocy.

  “Seriously, Nate. Count of three . . . and then I have Melville sting you.” I pointed at Nate and said, “One. Two. Thr—”

  “What are you weirdos talking about?” Susan said. “This isn’t making any sense! How did I get here? I’m supposed to be shopping!”

  “Want me to dart her?” Liz asked.

  “In a second,” I said. Then, “Susan, I was only having some fun being extra dramatic because you won’t remember any of this.”

  “Are you some idiot?” she said.

  “And . . . three!” I said to Melville, but instead of pointing at Nate I changed over to Susan. Melville stung her on the butt. At the same time, I pointed to Susan with my other hand, and Liz did an amazingly dramatic roll and fired a shot. The move was exactly like one that I’d practiced on my adventure training course, and I have to say that it appeared as though Liz should probably start training with me, because she certainly could’ve used the practice.

  She shot herself in the back of the leg with a dart.

  “Oh piffle,” she said.

  “Hey! That’s my word!” I said, catching her. Luckily, she was much lighter than a grad student, so I was not crushed for a second time. She just slumped in my arms, the dart gun falling to the floor and triggering a shot just as Snarls, my mom’s cat, came slinking into the room, finally having heard enough noise to consider it of interest.

  “Thook.” That was the sound of the dart striking home in Snarls’s chest.

  “Hssst!” That was Snarls.

  “Fwwwww.” Snarls, again, now toppling to one side.

  So now I had an unconscious best friend in my arms and an unconscious cat in the doorway and an unconscious spy on the recliner and an unconscious brother on the floor. Everything was going grand. I wondered how many darts were left in the dart gun and how many people lived in Polt. Given time, I was fairly certain we could get them all. By accident, of course.

  “You people are crazy,” Susan whispered. It was difficult to argue her point. Luckily, I enjoy a little craziness in my life. It keeps things from getting boring.

  “Catch!” I told Nate.

  “Okay!” he said, and he put out his hands to catch the dart gun, because he knew we needed to dart Susan before she left, and she was already turning in a huff (which is really the only way she ever turns) and racing for the door. Unfortunately for Nate, I was not throwing a dart gun, I was throwing a Liz Morris, which took him entirely by surprise and sent him tumbling to the floor and sliding for a bit, sending Snarls (still unconscious) skidding along the floor like a hockey puck and tripping up Susan in turn.

  She fell with a satisfying kerplunk.

  “Oh no!” she said, scrambling to all fours.

  “Oh yes,” I said, looking at her crawling away from me, meaning her stupid butt was the biggest target in the world.

  As it turns out, the dart gun had four shots left.

  I counted.

  I crossed my arms.

  Nate grimaced.

  He knows what it means when I cross my arms, just as he knows what it means when I’m scowling, or nodding meaningfully, or judgmentally toe-tapping, as these are skills that I’ve been forced to develop when dealing with Nathan Bannister.

  “Umm,” Nate said. We were in my room, where I’d agreed that we could stash Kip in the closet. We’d sprawled Steve in his own bedroom and arranged Snarls on the living room windowsill where the cat usually sleeps for hours anyway, so nobody would notice any difference.

  As for Susan, we’d sent her stumbling on her way, totally brainwashed, which I’m just going to mention didn’t ma
ke any difference in her overall intelligence.

  But now Nate wanted to leave Liz behind as well.

  I crossed my arms a bit more, raised my left eyebrow, and scowled.

  “Umm,” Nate said again. I was making him nervous. Or even nervouser than that.

  “Nathan Bannister,” I said, taking a step closer. He took two steps back and thumped against my dresser, toppling a standing picture frame that displayed an image of Liz and me wearing bikinis and jumping off from Don’t Jump Off from Here Rock, the huge boulder that juts out a good thirty feet over the lake outside town, and which is basically named like a dare.

  “Umm,” Nate said.

  “How many important things do we still need to do?” I asked him. It was a discussion we’d been having for the last few minutes.

  “Three,” he said. “Including stopping the Red Death Tea Society from triggering an earthquake that would destroy the city.”

  “Which is important,” I said.

  “It is. And we also have to find a way to save Chester Humes from basically running himself to death.”

  “Also important,” I said. Nate swallowed heavily, because he was about to mention the third thing that we very much needed to do, and since there were only two of us, and there were three things that needed to be done, it only made sense . . . mathematical sense . . . that we wake Liz and ask her for help.

  “Saving Chester is also important,” Nate agreed. “And, uhh, thirdly, we need to recover all the science vials I stashed around town.”

  “That we do,” I said. “So wake up Liz, because we need help.”

  “Umm,” he said.