The spider moved up past them on its dragline. Then it paused. It reached out with two of its long, hairy yellow-and-brown legs and pawed the air. Then the spider crossed over to the thread the Umbubble was hanging from!
Andrew looked at Judy. He put his finger up to his lips. Judy nodded.
They stayed as still as they could. They barely breathed.
Andrew looked over at Thudd. His eyes were closing. Oh no! thought Andrew. He’s going to start snoring!
“Schnurm …” Thudd snored. It was so loud, the Umbubble trembled!
“Schnurm … schnurm … schnurm …”
Andrew looked at Judy. Judy looked at Andrew. Her eyes were round and her mouth was saying a silent “Eeek!”
The spider stopped in its tracks. It turned and started scrambling down toward the Umbubble.
It was no use being quiet anymore.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” Andrew said.
“If we bounce up and down, maybe we can get the Umbubble to pull away from the spider silk,” said Judy. She started to bounce.
Andrew looked down. “Even if we end up in the drain, it’s better than being eaten by a spider,” he said. He started bouncing, too.
meep … “Whazzit? What happen?” said Thudd, waking up.
“Uh, nothing, Thudd,” said Andrew. He didn’t want to make Thudd feel bad about attracting the spider’s attention. “But the spider is coming at us, so we’re trying to get loose from this thread.”
The spider’s hairy face was just outside the Umbubble. It was like a huge cat staring into a tiny fishbowl.
“Eeeeyyyiiiiiii!” came a yell from below. Andrew and Judy turned to see a wall of tree trunks speeding toward them!
THIS TRIP STINKS!
“Mrs. Scuttle’s got a broom!” Judy screamed.
The broom smacked the Umbubble, smashed through the web, and hit the bathroom wall. Whaaap!
The Umbubble whizzed through the air like a tiny baseball.
Then, in a few seconds, the Umbubble began to slow down. It drifted gently through the air.
“Whew!” said Judy. “At first it was like being in a speeding car. Now it’s like a hot-air balloon ride!”
They were getting close to the edge of the shower curtain.
Andrew leaned forward. “What are those spots on the shower curtain?” he asked. “They look like little black islands.”
“It’s just dirt,” said Judy.
meep … “Fungus,” said Thudd.
Little currents of air dragged the Um-bubble closer to the shower curtain. The black spots began to look like something else.
“It looks like a forest of black trees,” said Judy.
meep … “Fungus not plant,” said Thudd. “Fungus special kind of living thing. Watch out! Stay way from fungus!”
“Oh, come on,” said Judy. “A mushroom is a fungus. There’s nothing dangerous about a fungus.”
meep … “Fungus roots turn Drewd and Oody into juice and suck them up,” said Thudd. “That how fungus eat!”
“Super yucky!” said Andrew.
The Umbubble touched the thin black branches at the top of the fungus.
“Cheese Louise!” said Judy. “I am not going to get turned into people juice by a stupid fungus!”
Judy shoved her legs through the Umbubble and gave her biggest soccer kick. The Umbubble bobbled away from the fungus.
“Whew!” sighed Judy. “Now that we’re small, it seems like everything is alive—even specks on shower curtains.”
They were drifting over the edge of the tub and past the shower curtain.
“Super duper pooper-scooper!” said Andrew. “We’re away from the bathtub! And there’s the window over the toilet! It’s open! Now we just have to get into Harley’s ear and find the helicopter.”
Mrs. Scuttle was on her feet again, standing by the sink. She had Harley by the collar and was wiping his ears with a washcloth.
Judy looked toward the window.
“Wait a minute!” she said. “Maybe we don’t need the helicopter! If we could find a way to steer the Umbubble … Hmmm. Uncle Al said to look at things in unusual ways. And he said we have everything we need in our pockets. Andrew, you’ve got more pockets than a herd of kangaroos. You check your pockets and I’ll check mine.”
Andrew was still looking through his pockets when Judy pulled a pen out of one of hers.
“That’s interesting,” she said.
She opened the pen and pulled out the ink cartridge. She poked the hollow tube of the pen through the wall of the Umbubble. Then she started to blow through it.
The Umbubble bobbled forward! She moved the tube down and the Umbubble went up. When she moved the tube left, the Umbubble went right.
“YES!” Andrew cheered. “Now we can steer the Umbubble. We can float ourselves back to the Atom Sucker!”
“Yup,” Judy said, smiling. “I think this will work.”
As Judy blew, they floated slowly away from the tub. They watched Mrs. Scuttle pull a pink towel from a shelf piled high with towels. The whole pile tumbled to the floor!
“This is the worst day of my life!” moaned Mrs. Scuttle.
Harley ran over to the laundry basket near the bathroom door and started to shake himself dry. A hurricane of water drops flew up into the air!
meep … “Get hit by water drop, Um-bubble crash!” said Thudd. “Like when Drewd get sunk before.”
“I’m trying to get us away,” said Judy, puffing hard into the tube.
“Stop that!” Mrs. Scuttle yelled at Harley.
She shook out the towel and threw it over him.
“HARLEY!” screamed Mrs. Scuttle. “Don’t you dare! NOOO!”
A gusty breeze from the tossed towel caught the Umbubble and sent it tumbling toward the ground.
“Eek! Errrgghh! Ooof.” cried Thudd and Andrew and Judy as the Umbubble crashed on the hard white tile of the bathroom floor.
“I feel like a tossed salad,” Judy said. She sniffed the air. “Peuuuw! What’s that smell?”
OOPS!
meep … “Poop!” said Thudd. He pointed to a monster brown mound beside the Umbubble.
“Cheese Louise!” said Judy. “It’s the Himalayas of doo-doo! The Mount Everest of poop!”
“Now you’ve done it, mister!” yelled Mrs. Scuttle. “Pooping on the floor! Bad dog! I’ve a mind to send you to the animal shelter. You won’t be seeing much of that Judy girl you like so much!”
“Oh no!” said Judy. “I love Harley! We’ve got to rescue him!”
“I guess we’ve got to rescue ourselves first,” Andrew said.
Suddenly the light in the bathroom seemed to flicker. Andrew looked up. At first he thought the ceiling was falling, but then he realized what was happening.
“Uh-oh!” he said. “Mrs. Scuttle’s got toilet paper and she’s coming at us!”
In the next second, the toilet paper plopped down over them and swooped them—and the poop mountain—off the ground. The sticky Umbubble was stuck to the bottom of the toilet paper. They were going up, up, up! Andrew watched the tiles of the bathroom floor get farther and farther away.
Clunk!
“You know what that sound is?” asked Judy.
“Um, no,” said Andrew.
“It’s the lid of the toilet clunking against the tank,” said Judy. “Mrs. Scuttle is getting ready to flush us!”
“Uh-oh!” said Andrew.
meep … “If Umbubble get flushed, end up in big cement tank deep, deep underground,” said Thudd.
“I know,” said Judy. “I used to make plumbing for my dollhouses when I was a little kid.”
Now they were right above the toilet bowl! Mrs. Scuttle’s hand was reaching for the handle of the toilet!
“Cheese Louise!” said Judy. “This is the worst thing ever!”
“At least we’re inside the Umbubble,” said Andrew. “We’ve got plenty of air, so we won’t drown if we get flushed.”
“It’
s not if we get flushed,” said Judy. “We’re going to get flushed. In about one second!” She pulled the empty pen tube out of the wall of the Umbubble and put it back in her pocket. The Umbubble sealed itself up. “We don’t want any leaks!” she said.
Crrrunk! Mrs. Scuttle pulled down the handle of the toilet!
A whirlpool of water churned below.
meep … “What is red and white on outside, gray on inside?” asked Thudd. “Campbell’s Cream of Elephant soup! Hee hee!”
Oh no! thought Andrew, remembering Uncle Al’s warning about elephant jokes.
Before anyone could say another word, the toilet paper, the Umbubble, and the poop were zooming toward the whirlpool below!
TO BE CONTINUED IN ANDREW, JUDY, AND THUDD’S
NEXT EXCITING ADVENTURE!
ANDREW LOST
IN THE KITCHEN!
In stores November 26, 2002
TRUE STUFF
Thudd knows a lot, and what Thudd says is true! Thudd wanted to say more about what happened in the bathroom, but he was getting a little rusty. This is what he wanted to tell you:
The skin of a bubble is a soap-and-water sandwich—soap on the outside and water on the inside. Bubbles break because the water part of the bubble dries out. People have kept bubbles “alive” for almost a year. How long can you keep a bubble alive?
When you chew gum, you’re chewing sticky sap from trees!
Bacteria reproduce by splitting in two. They can split every hour. So if you start with one bacterium, in an hour you’ll have two bacteria. After two hours, you’ll have four. Guess how many you’ll have in 24 hours? (Find the answer at the bottom of the page.)
Spiders don’t have teeth, so they can’t chew their food. Instead, spiders squirt juices into their prey that turn its insides into goo. Spiders eat by sucking out the goo!
There are spiders as big as a human hand! Some of them catch and eat small lizards and birds. These spiders bark!
The biggest living thing on earth may be the humongous fungus in Oregon. It’s larger than Rhode Island and almost as big as Delaware!
Bacteria and fungi (say “FUN-guy”) recycle everything that dies and all kinds of waste. Without them, the earth would be piled high with poop!
You can find out more about bubbles and bacteria—and many other things!—at www.AndrewLost.com.
16 million! Use a calculator to prove it. But most of them die! (Lucky for us!)
WHERE TO FIND MORE TRUE STUFF
There’s weird stuff all around you! You may not be able to see it, but you can read about it in these books:
MicroAliens: Dazzling Journeys with an Electron Microscope by Howard Tomb and Dennis Kunkel (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993)
Hidden Worlds: Looking Through a Scientist’s Microscope by Stephen Kramer, with photographs by Dennis Kunkel (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001)
Would you like to blow a bubble as big as you are? Want to find out who kept a bubble going for almost a year? Check out:
The Unbelievable Bubble Book by John Cassidy with David Stein (Palo Alto, CA: Klutz, 1995)
If you don’t believe soap and water are interesting, take a look at these books:
Soap Bubble Magic by Seymour Simon (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1985)
Soap Science: A Science Book Bubbling with 36 Experiments by J. L. Bell (Toronto: Kids Can Press, 1993)
Do you want to find out more about insects and spiders? Find these books:
Micro Monsters by Christopher Maynard (New York: DK Publishing, 1999)
Megabugs by Miranda MacQuitty with Laurence Mound (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1995)
You can learn a lot about bugs from this book—and it’s funny, too!
Ugly Bugs by Nick Arnold (New York: Scholastic, 1998)
Turn the page
for a sneak peek at
Andrew, Judy, and Thudd’slnext adventure—
ANDREW LOST
IN THE KITCHEN!
Available November 26, 2002
TOILET BOWLING
When you wake up in the morning, thought Andrew , you never think about getting flushed down the toilet!
Andrew, his older cousin Judy, and Andrew’s robot, Thudd, were stuck inside the Umbubble. The Umbubble was whirling round and round a toilet bowl. Their neighbor Mrs. Scuttle had just flushed the toilet!
“Cheese Louise!” said Judy. “It’s like we’re at the top of a water tornado!”
The Umbubble picked up speed, and the light above them faded away. It was as dark as a bad dream!
GLOOGGGUHHH! The toilet roared.
meep … “Hope Umbubble not leak,” Thudd squeaked into the darkness.
“If this thing springs a leak,” Judy said, “I’m using Andrew’s head to plug it!”
Then the Umbubble slammed to a stop.
“Yergh!” said Andrew.
“Oof!” said Judy.
“Eek!” said Thudd.
“I think we’re stuck,” said Andrew.
Suddenly the big purple button in Thudd’s middle started blinking! The button popped open and a beam of purple light shot out.
At the end of the beam floated an image of Uncle Al.
“Uncle Al is back!” said Andrew.
Uncle Al was smiling. But Andrew could tell he was worried.
“Hey there!” Uncle Al said. “I’m on my way! Where are you guys now?”
“We got flushed down the toilet!” said Andrew. “Now we’re stuck in the drainpipe.”
“Good golly Miss Molly!” said Uncle Al. “This is serious. But I have an idea. The pipe that leaves the toilet connects to all the other pipes in the house. You should be able to find a pipe that leads up to a sink.”
“I’ll get my mini-flashlight,” said Andrew. He unhooked a little flashlight from his belt and turned it on.
The Umbubble was surrounded by mounds of gooey jelly! Stringy things were floating in the goo. And little blobs were squirming through it!
“We’re in some kind of jam!” said Andrew.
“A seaweed-and-blob jam!” Judy said.
Uncle Al nodded. “Sounds like slime,” he said. “The seaweedy stuff is fungus and the blobs are—”
Suddenly Uncle Al started disappearing. First his feet disappeared, then his legs. Finally, all that was left was his shaggy hair.
“Uncle Al!” Judy yelled. “Don’t go!”
But it was too late. Uncle Al’s hair disappeared, too!
Text copyright © 2002 by J. C. Greenburg. Illustrations copyright © 2002 by Debbie Palen. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.randomhouse.com/kids
www.AndrewLost.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Greenburg, J. C. (Judith C.)
In the bathroom / by J. C. Greenburg ; illustrated by Debbie Palen.
p. cm. — (Andrew Lost ; 2)
“A stepping stone book.”
SUMMARY: After being shrunk by a shrinking machine and ending up on a dog having a bubble bath, Andrew, his cousin Judy, and a tiny robot try to survive encounters with insects, soapy bubbles, and bathtub and toilet drains.
eISBN: 978-0-307-53203-9
[1. Size—Fiction. 2. Bathrooms—Fiction. 3. Bubbles—Fiction. 4. Adventures and adventurers—Fiction.] I. Palen, Debbie, ill. II. Title.
PZ7.G82785 In 2002 [Fic]—dc21 2001048982
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks and A STEPPING STONE BOOK and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc. ANDREW LOST is a trademark of J. C. Greenburg.
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