No Other Story

by Dr. Cuthbert Soup

  “We sure are. Come on.”

  “It reminds me of Shattuckton,” said Big, brushing her hand across the tall stalks as Ethan led the group through the field toward the growing sounds of traffic. Where the wheat stopped abruptly, there was a road and several dozen buildings.

  “What’s that?” asked Catherine.

  “That,” said Ethan, “is Southwestern North Dakota State University.”

  “Where you first met Mom,” said Jason.

  “Exactly.”

  It was summer session and the place was practically a ghost town, with only a few students walking about.

  “I haven’t been back here since I retired,” said Professor Boxley.

  “I haven’t been back here since I graduated,” said Ethan. “Seems so much smaller now.”

  He and the others hurried across the road and walked through campus, past the library, the science building, and Melvin Stadium, home of the SWNDSU Fighting Paper Clips. The arena was named after Cyrus Melvin, a wealthy alumnus who had donated the money for the stadium from the enormous fortune he had amassed by inventing the trapdoor on the bottom of the toaster that helps get rid of the crumbs.

  “Is that where you played football, Dad?” asked Jason.

  “That’s where the team played,” said Ethan. “I wasn’t very good, so my playing time was somewhat limited.”

  “Nonsense,” said Professor Boxley. “You were a wonderful athlete. It’s just that football is a game of lightningquick reactions, and you’ve always been one who needs to think things through. You should’ve taken my advice and tried out for the bowling team.”

  They crossed another road, walking past the ivy-covered brick buildings of fraternity row, then entered a courtyard, at the end of which sat the Student Union Building, or SUB for short. Ethan was now looking upon the very place where he had first laid eyes on his beautiful bride.

  He stopped at the door and took a deep breath. “Okay, Pinky. You and Digs wait here. We’ll be right back.”

  “I’ll stay with them,” said Big. “This is not for me. It is for your family.”

  “But you are part of the family, Big,” said Catherine.

  “I’ll wait here,” she insisted.

  “Me too,” said the professor. “You guys go ahead. This is your moment.”

  “Okay,” said Ethan. “Thanks.”

  Even though he and Olivia had been married for seventeen years, Ethan felt the need to check his hair in the reflection of the window. He dragged his fingers across his tongue and pushed down on a cowlick with absolutely no success. Giving up, he took another deep breath and opened the door. As much as he wanted to rush inside and scoop up Olivia in his arms, he held the door for the children to go ahead.

  The first time Ethan had met Olivia it had been during a student dance, and the place was dark, noisy, and packed with people. Now, as Ethan stepped in, he saw that it was bright, quiet, and empty, except for one person. That one person was the janitor, listlessly sweeping the floor.

  “She’s not here,” said Catherine, carefully scanning the room, though it would be hard to miss somebody in such a rectangular room and in broad daylight. “Why is she not here?”

  “Maybe she’s late,” said Simon.

  “Your mother’s never late,” said Ethan, his heart sinking to the floor, in danger of being swept up by the janitor.

  “You’re right,” said a voice from behind them. Not since the Bolshoi ballet last performed Swan Lake had a group of people spun around so quickly in unison. There she stood near the door to the restroom, her long auburn hair gleaming in the summer sun that poured in through the skylight directly above her. She smiled and looked at her watch. “But you’re twenty minutes late.” Then she began to cry.

  Ethan and the children rushed to her and nearly suffocated her with hugs. “What’s wrong?” asked Ethan. “Why are you crying?”

  Olivia shook her head. “When I woke up this morning and you were gone, I thought I might never see you again,” she said between sobs of joy and relief. “And when I got here and the place was empty, I started to think the worst.”

  “But I promised you we’d be back before we left this morning,” said Ethan. He blinked hard and gave his head a shake. “Wait a minute. What did I just say?”

  It was then he realized that, not only did he remember everything that had happened over the last two years after Olivia’s death, he also remembered something new—every occurrence over the two years after they had saved her life. For an entire two-year period, he and the children had lived two lives at once, and had full memory of each. They remembered Captain Jibby and his crew, the witch hunters, Sullivan and his Neanderthal wife, and the T. rex named Trixie. But they also remembered life on the run with both their mother and father, including many narrow escapes and several near-death encounters of their own. In two years’ time they had experienced four years of living.

  “It worked,” said Catherine. “We’re us again. And we’re all together.”

  And together is how they walked out of the SUB and into the warm glow of summer, where Big, the professor, Pinky, and Digs were waiting and were overjoyed to see Olivia with them. “I told you it would work out,” said Big as the smiling girl wrapped her arms around Jason’s neck.

  Pinky ran to Olivia, and Olivia bent down to greet the dog with a scratch behind the ears. “You know, I think I like you even better without hair, Pinky,” she said. “It’ll make it easier to keep the house clean.”

  Pinky responded with a low, steady growl.

  “Uh-oh,” said Catherine. “Pinky senses danger. We’d better get out of here.”

  Pinky snarled and barked and seemed to be directing her hostilities toward Olivia’s purse.

  “Mom, there’s something in your purse,” said Jason, snatching it away from her.

  “Careful,” said Catherine.

  Jason moved away from the others and turned his back to them, using his body to shield them from any possible explosions. Slowly, he unclasped the purse and opened it. He peered inside and chuckled at what he saw. “Pinky wasn’t growling at danger,” he said, turning back toward the group. “She was growling at this.” He reached in and pulled out a brand-new, freshly knitted sock puppet named Steve.

  “You finished it!” Simon squealed with delight. “I knew you would.” He ran to Jason and snatched the puppet from his brother. He slipped it onto his right hand and gave it a try.

  “Hey, everybody, I’m back,” squeaked Steve.

  Everyone but Pinky gave Steve a warm welcome upon his return to the land of the living. Even Gravy-Face Roy seemed to embrace the puppet he had once seen as an adversary.

  It was then that Olivia noticed the old man standing nearby. “Is that … Professor Boxley?” she said.

  “Olivia,” he responded with a smile. “It’s so good to see you again.”

  “I haven’t seen you since graduation,” she said, greeting the professor with a warm hug.

  “I wanted to come to your wedding, but I was accepting the Nobel Prize for physics,” he replied. “Anyway, I hope you got some good use out of that lamp I sent you as a present.”

  “Yes,” said Ethan. “We got some very good use out of it.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you at first,” said Olivia. “It’s just that you look so …”

  “Old?” said the professor.

  “That’s not what I was going to say at all,” said Olivia.

  “It’s okay,” said the professor. “I’m here from fifteen years in the future, so I can understand if you thought I look older than I should.”

  Something suddenly occurred to Jason. “Hey, Dad—how is Professor Boxley going to get back to his own time?”

  “The LVR,” said Ethan.

  “Are you sure?” asked Professor Boxley.

  “We don’t need it right now,” said Ethan. “And we have the technology, so we can always build another one.”

  “I don’t want you to build another one.”
Simon pouted. “Because then we’ll have to go on the run again.”

  “I’m afraid we’ll have to go on the run whether we build a new LVR or not,” said Ethan. “Those people aren’t going to give up until they’ve got the technology.”

  This was not at all what the children wanted to hear. This was evident by their suddenly slumping posture, which very much resembled that of their Neanderthal friends, Gurda and Stig. Ethan looked at Olivia. What kind of life had they created for their children? And could they, in good conscience, ask them to continue living such an existence?

  “If they won’t give up until they get it,” said Simon, “then maybe we should just give it to them.”

  “Don’t be simple,” said Catherine. “Once Plexiwave gets their hands on it, there will be nothing stopping them from taking over the world. So, like it or not, we have to go back on the run.”

  “Well,” said Ethan. “There is another option, I suppose.”

  “You mean we could stay and fight back?” said Jason.

  “Yes, but in our own way,” said Ethan. “By exposing Plexiwave for what they are and doing our best to warn others about them. We can tell our story so that no one will ever have to go through what we’ve had to endure.”

  Simon looked up at his father. “Tell our story? Wait a minute. So, are you saying …?”

  Ethan pulled the business card from his pocket. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “But you told that lady that we weren’t interested.”

  “I said you never know what the future holds. And, well, here we are in the future, with two choices. We can either change our names and go back on the run, or we can go to Hollywood.”

  After some consideration, Simon said, “Can we go to Hollywood and change our names?”

  Ethan laughed and gave Simon’s hair a much overdue scruffing up. “I think that’s pretty much expected.”

  “Then call me Duke Tigerman,” said Simon.

  Catherine scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Duke Tigerman? Really?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Olivia, “but what’s this all about?”

  “Central Studios,” said Jason. “They want to make a story about our lives. Or at least they did two years ago.”

  “Well, that explains this,” said Olivia. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a business card identical to Ethan’s. “I found this on the windshield of the car this morning. Apparently they’re still interested.”

  “Yes!” said Jason, with an enthusiastic pump of his fist. “So what do you say, Mom? Can we go?”

  Olivia pursed her lips, narrowed her eyes, and tried to imagine what life in Hollywood might be like for the Cheeseman family. Under normal circumstances, she would be vehemently opposed to the idea. But circumstances had been nowhere close to normal for a very long time. “Well,” she said, “we are just about out of money. And I’m as tired of running as you guys are. But if we do this, our lives could end up being crazy in a completely different way.”

  “I’m okay with that,” said Catherine.

  “Me too,” said Jason. “Wow, I hope they get a really famous actor to play me.”

  “I hope they get a really famous sock to play me,” said Steve.

  While the Cheeseman children were beside themselves with excitement, the significance of all this was entirely lost on Big. “I don’t understand,” she said. “What’s a Hollywood? And what is a movie?”

  “I’ll tell you all about it on the way,” said Jason. Then something occurred to him that hadn’t before, and his heart skipped a beat. “You are coming with us, aren’t you?”

  Big chuckled and shook her head. “Considering I’ve followed you through time and space, do you really need to ask?”

  “No,” said Jason, his heart returning to a steady rhythym. “I guess not. But I wanted to be sure, that’s all.”

  “Okay, gang,” said Ethan. “We’ve got a long drive ahead of us, so we’d better get moving.”

  “Dad?” asked Duke Tigerman with a tug on Ethan’s shirtsleeve. “Before we go to Hollywood, can we go for ice cream? Like we used to?”

  Ethan looked at his watch. “Well, I don’t know,” he said. “It is getting kind of late. I think maybe we should …”

  “We should go for ice cream,” said Olivia. “It’s about time we did something normal for a change.”

  “You’re right,” Ethan agreed. “We should go for ice cream.”

  “Yes!” said Simon. “I want chocolate flavor.”

  “I want bubble-gum flavor,” said Steve.

  “I want gravy flavor,” said Gravy-Face Roy.

  “That’s disgusting,” said Catherine.

  “I wonder if that place we used to go to by the physics lab is still here,” said Ethan.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” said Olivia. “Professor? Would you like to join us?”

  “I would be honored,” said Professor Boxley.

  Ethan took Olivia’s hand in his, Jason held tightly to Big’s, and Catherine put aside her contempt for filthy socks and grasped her little brother’s hand. If their anatomy had permitted them to do so, it’s quite certain that Pinky and Digs would also have held hands as the group made its way across campus. Professor Boxley had no hand to hold, but he was happy nonetheless, just to be in the presence of such a fine group of human beings, on their way to get chocolate, bubble-gum, and gravy-flavored ice cream.

  And that, my friends, is the end of the story.

  About the Author

  Due to a remarkable physical resemblance, Dr. Cuthbert Soup is often mistaken for the acclaimed writer Gerry Swallow, who began his career as a stand-up comic, making numerous appearances on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Dr. Soup’s doppelgänger then turned his attention to writing movies, including the blockbuster hit Ice Age: The Meltdown.

  Other than the aforementioned uncanny likeness, Dr. Soup has absolutely nothing else in common with Mr. Swallow, who lives with his wife and children in a very tiny mansion, whereas Dr. Soup lives in a huge mansion with his dog, Kevin, his pet snails, Gooey and Squishy, and his parents, Filbert and Roberta Soup.

  Footnotes

  a The Monkey Mobile was an automobile that ran entirely on monkey sweat and created absolutely no air pollution (unless you consider the smell of sweaty monkeys to be a pollutant).

  Also by Dr. Cuthbert Soup

  A Whole Nother Story

  Another Whole Nother Story

  Text copyright © 2012 by Dr. Cuthbert Soup

  Illustrations copyright © 2012 by Jeffrey Stewart Timmins

  All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise

  make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means

  (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying,

  printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the

  publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication

  may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  First published in the United States of America in September 2012 by Bloomsbury Books for Young Readers

  Electronic edition published in September 2012

  www.bloomsburykids.com

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Bloomsbury BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Soup, Cuthbert.

  No other story / by Dr. Cuthbert Soup.

  p. cm.

  Sequel to: Another whole nother story.

  Summary: When Mr. Cheeseman and his three smart, polite, and relatively odor-free children journey to the not-so-distant past, they meet something utterly surprising—the alternate versions of themselves.

  [1. Time travel—Fiction. 2. Inventions—Fiction. 3. Family life—Fiction. 4. Humorous stories.] I. Title.
/>   PZ7.S7249No 2012 [Fic]—dc23 2012009589

  Book design by Donna Mark

  ISBN: 978-1-5999-0935-6 (e-book)