And the humiliating third grade bathroom incident.
Okay, here’s what happened: We were all lined up in the hallway after lunch, waiting to use the bathroom. And I noticed my shoe was untied. So I bent down, and while I was busy tying, the line moved forward. When I stood up and turned to say something to Noah, I found myself nose to nose—
—with Sam Zawicki.
I whipped back around so fast that as my mother would say, I let a windy.
Or, as Noah said, his eyes all big: “Wow. You really ripped one.”
Or, as the whole third grade chanted, while my windy echoed through the hall: “Beans, beans, the musical fruit, the more you eat ’em, the more you—”
I stopped. Stared at my Beanboy drawing.
It was the most famous fact about beans, the one thing everyone, even if they’d never heard another single bean factoid in their lives, knew by heart: The more you eat ’em, the more you . . . toot.
Tooting, a.k.a. passing gas, a.k.a. cutting one, was not normally considered a virtue. But that’s only because nobody had ever harnessed its power for good.
It’s universally acknowledged that there are different categories of, well, farts: the loud, embarrassing kind that honestly don’t smell that much, and the quiet killers, silent but deadly.
The first could power Beanboy’s flight:
And the second could be the ultimate superhero weapon:
I hunched over my notebook and drew, dizzy with creativity—or maybe marker fumes—amazed that nobody had thought to elevate farting to a superpower before.
It’s surprising how cheerful excess gas could make me. Noah sat two seats over. I caught his eye and flashed him a thumbs-up. His face knotted in a confused frown. I’d have to bring him up to speed on Beanboy’s skills after class. If anyone could appreciate the transformation of an awkward bodily function into a superpower, it was my friend Noah Spooner.
I was so cheerful, before I even knew what I was doing, I glanced over at Sam Zawicki.
Again.
My eyes were clearly out of control.
She was sitting in her desk, furiously scribbling notes.
Except she wasn’t scribbling in her notebook. I squinted. She was scribbling on a small yellow square of paper. She peeled it loose, opened her binder, and carefully lined it up on the inside cover, in a row of other yellow squares. She ran her finger over the top to make sure it stayed put, then carefully closed her binder again.
Sam Zawicki had her own sticky note system.
Fifteen
The bell rang and I darted upstream, a salmon swimming against the current of middle schoolers fleeing for the exits. I made it to the art room and settled into my desk in the far corner.
Other Art Club members wandered in in clumps, laughing and talking, and pulled out their projects. Art activity buzzed around me.
Mrs. Frazee made a couple Art Club announcements (mainly involving the dangers of dumping clay down the sink). Then she caught sight of me.
“Let’s get you started,” she said.
She dragged me across the room, propped her glasses on the end of her nose, and began shuffling through the art books on the shelves behind her desk. Her face, tanned and wrinkled, puckered as she read through the titles. Her loopy turquoise earrings swayed beneath her wild red hair. One by one, she pulled out a mountain of books, all about drawing comics.
She loaded them in my arms, then led me to the art supply closet, unlatched the lock, and threw open the door.
And at that moment I swear angels started to sing. A golden light burst from within the closet, and I felt the very breath rush out of me. I almost dropped my stack of books.
Because for a comic book artist like me, this was a closet of wonder: shelf after shelf of bottles and tubes, brushes, pens, pencils and erasers, stacks and heaps and mountains of paper, lined up in rows and neatly labeled.
“Bristol board can get expensive, so I don’t bring it out for everyday projects. But for something like this, it would be much better than our usual drawing paper. Much harder surface.” She thumped her finger against a stack of thick white paper. Her bracelets jangled. “Gives you nice crisp lines.”
I stared at her. Bristol board? She was letting me use real Bristol board?
I had no idea what Bristol board was, but it had to be better than what I’d been using: computer paper swiped from my mother’s printer. Plus my health notebook. And pizza toppings.
Mrs. Frazee balanced several sheets of the board on top of my stack of books and tucked a black drawing marker behind my ear.
“There.” She gave a nod. “That should get you started.”
“Thanks,” I said.
I crunched across the art room floor, gritty from old ceramics projects. Other Art Club members were bent over their desks. Pencils scritched against paper. Paintbrushes clanked against water jars. A grubby radio with a bent antenna blared a tinny tune from a shelf in the corner.
To me, it sounded like the angels were still singing.
I unloaded my pile on my desk, then climbed onto my stool, took a deep breath of turpentine-flavored art-room air, and squared a sheet of Bristol board on the tilty desktop in front of me. I ran my hand across the board. Mrs. Frazee was right. It was smooth and shiny, perfect for a superhero.
I was almost afraid to draw on it. I didn’t want to mess it up.
But I also couldn’t wait to get started.
I pulled the marker out from behind my ear. Hunkered down behind my stack of books. Snapped the lid off the marker.
And started to draw.
And suddenly, it was like I was in the zone. I don’t think I’d ever been in the zone before, so I couldn’t be positive, but it sure felt like the zone, with my marker gliding across the Bristol board, all these great sidekick ideas gliding across my brain cells, and music from the bent-antenna radio gliding into my ears.
I kind of hated to jinx myself by thinking about it, but the future of the Tucker MacBean universe was—suddenly, and for the first time in a really long time—looking bright.
Sixteen
I left Art Club a little early. Just in case. Raced home.
And didn’t find Beech on the porch. Which was a good sign. A sign that somebody had met his bus. Maybe Joe or Samir. They were always trying to scrounge up money. They’d probably babysit Beecher for some cash.
I climbed the staircase. Eased the door open.
And saw Beech sitting at the kitchen table, pillowcase tucked into his shirt like a cape, hands folded in his lap . . .
. . . watching a girl cook something on our stove.
Remember all that stuff I said about being in the zone?
I’d spent only a very brief time in the zone, but it was long enough to learn the most important fact: Zones aren’t permanent. Zones have no loyalty. Zones will lull you into thinking that the world is finally spinning in the right direction, that the universe is finally on your side, and then they’ll turn around and smack you in the head without warning.
The girl wore combat boots and an army surplus jacket. Her straggly brown hair flew out from her head like flames.
She scraped something out of the skillet with a spatula and flipped it onto a paper plate.
It was a grilled cheese sandwich. A slightly crooked grilled cheese sandwich, a little burnt on one side, with raisins fried right into the bread and potato chips tucked into the top corners for ears.
“Face!” Beech looked up at her, eyes wide with admiration. “You made happy face!”
Sam Zawicki glanced up. Caught me watching her from the doorway.
“Close your mouth, Beanboy. You look like a guppy.”
Beech pointed a stubby finger at me. “You a guppy.” He giggled. “Sam funny.”
Yeah. Hilarious.
“So.” I closed the door behind me. “You’re, um . . . babysitting.”
Maybe not the most genius thing I’d ever said.
Sam narrowed her eyes. The spatula quivered in her
white-knuckled fist.
And honestly? Standing there in the glare of the overhead kitchen light, with the sink dripping and the radiator rattling and Sam Zawicki shooting death rays from her eyeballs, all I could think was: Why? Why was she always so mad? All I did was walk into my own house. Quietly. And found . . . her.
If you ask me, I should be the one who was mad.
So many things were just so completely wrong about this.
“About time you showed up.” Sam’s bark shot across the kitchen, raspy and harsh, like she’d gotten a piece of sandpaper wedged in her throat.
“I—what?” I looked at her. “I’m not even late.” I flung a hand toward the clock on the microwave. “I’m early.”
“Yeah. And that’s not going to happen again.” She jammed her hand into her jeans pocket. Fished out a wad of yellow paper. Uncrumpled it and slapped it on the table—bam, bam.
“Notes!” Beech ran a finger over the wrinkled yellow squares, then looked up at Sam, admiration beaming from every subatomic particle of his face. “We note, too.”
He pointed at the fridge, at the sticky note I’d stuck there this morning, next to the babysitting money.
I snatched the note from the refrigerator. Everyone had a bathroom, I guess. But the whole world didn’t need a visual aid of our hygiene issues. Plus I’d drawn a heart at the bottom.
“See?” Beech grabbed my wrist and held it up. The little corners of yellow paper poked through my clamped fingers. “Note!”
Sam looked at him, and the death rays dimmed a little. Her teeth unclenched. Her wood-grinder voice spun down to low. For just that second, her elbows didn’t even look all that pointy.
But just for that second, and then she was all spikes and sandpaper again.
“Here’s the deal, Beanboy.” The teeth re-clenched. “If I’m going to keep helping you—”
Help? Did she seriously think—
“Wait.” I stopped. “Keep helping? You mean . . .”—I blinked—“you’re coming back?”
“Yeah. I’m coming back.” The death rays gunned me down. “I promised your mother. What do you think, I’m irresponsible or something?”
Well . . . yeah.
She jabbed a finger at the first sticky, then crossed her bony arms over her chest.
I squinted at her handwriting, smaller even than Noah’s, neat and precise, like little soldiers marching across the sticky note:
Tell anybody at school? Was she crazy? In a thousand million wadzillion light years I would never tell anyone Sam Zawicki had been in my house. Not even Noah.
Not even me. That was true. I would wipe the data from my brain and never think of it again. That’s how much I would never tell a single soul that Sam Zawicki had been here babysitting Beech.
“No problem,” I said.
“No problem,” said Beech.
“And you can’t tell anybody, either,” I said. Just so she’d know she wasn’t the one in charge around here.
She rolled her eyes. Jabbed the second note.
Bony-butt? Sam Zawicki was calling me bony-butt?
And plus, we’d had plenty of babysitters before, mostly Rosalie, and not once did I ever keep any of her money.
Also, this was my house. Sam Zawicki couldn’t boss me around in my own house. On a sticky note.
She pushed away from the counter, snatched the babysitting money from under the refrigerator magnet, and stalked out of our apartment, muttering something that sounded like: “I unclogged your toilet.” The door banged shut behind her.
I stood there for a second watching it quiver from the impact.
“You tare her.”
I looked at Beech. “Tear her?”
“No. Tare her.” He gave me a hard look. Trying to drill the information into my brain with his eyebrows, I guess. Then, in pure exasperation, he gnarled his fingers into monster claws, bared his teeth, and let out a “Rahhhrrrr!”
I blinked. “Scare her?”
He dropped his monster claws to his sides.
“I promise you, Beech-man, there is no way I could scare Sam Zawicki.”
He looked at me.
“Nobody can. She’s unscareable.” I pushed his glasses up.
He shook his head and picked up his grilled cheese sandwich. He started to take a bite, but one of the potato chips fell off. He studied the one-eared happy face for a minute, then set the sandwich back on the plate, climbed down from the table, and trudged from the kitchen.
“Tare her,” he muttered as he clomped down the hall to his room.
Seventeen
“What is wrong with you?”
I jumped. Snapped my gaze toward Noah. “What?”
“See?” He thumped his lunch tray on the table. “That’s what I mean.” He settled into his chair and unfolded his napkin on his lap. “You’ve been sneaking around all week. Peeking around corners. I say something to you, and you about jump out of your skin. Plus, I’m sorry to bring this up, but you’ve been spending way too much time staring at”—he lowered his voice—“her.” He cut a quick look toward the far table under the EXIT sign, where Sam and Dillon Zawicki always sat by themselves. “It’s like you’re obsessed or something.”
“I—ob—wha—?” I sputtered.
Because—no. Just—no. Not obsessed. Okay, maybe a little. But not because I was obsessed. Because I was creeped out. You would be too. So would Noah. Because Sam Zawicki had been at my house, she was coming back—often—and there was nothing I could do about it.
I had to go to Art Club. I had to. And Sam Zawicki was my best option.
Noah was still looking at me.
“Okay,” I said. “Maybe I glanced at her. Once. Or twice. But only for research.” I picked up my fork. Stabbed at my chicken and noodles. “For, you know, possible arch villains.”
He kept looking at me.
“I’m serious,” I said. “If you were creating a villain, who would you use for research?”
“Sam Zawicki.”
“Okay then.” I shoveled the noodle into my mouth and started to chew.
Fifth Rule of Lying: Anyone can do it if they’re desperate enough.
When I walked into the art room that afternoon, Mrs. Frazee reached into the depths of the art supply closet and pulled out a crisp new pencil with light blue lead.
“It’s non-repro blue.” Mrs. Frazee handed it to me. “You’ll like it.”
Wow. A non-repro blue pencil. I ran my thumb over the tip. I did like it. I had no idea what it was, but I liked it.
I liked it even better once Mrs. Frazee explained how it worked.
“You do your sketch with the blue pencil, then ink your drawing right over the sketch. You don’t have to erase the sketch lines because the printer won’t pick up this particular color of blue. Non-repro means it doesn’t reproduce. It should save you some time and aggravation.”
I settled into my tilt-top desk in the corner and started drawing.
And I had to admit, Beanboy was coming along. Having the Power of the Bean was like having a jet pack, only better because it was built in. Kind of made you wonder how other superheroes attained flight.
I sketched out the comic book panels with my blue pencil.
Take Superman. Everyone thought he had some kind of born-in-another-solar-system thing going on. But what if he didn’t? What if the planet Krypton had nothing to do with it?
I started inking over the blue pencil lines.
What if he was secretly using the whole musical fruit system, too, and was just too embarrassed to admit it?
Beanboy wasn’t embarrassed. Beanboy was tooting to save mankind.
Still, I couldn’t help wondering if the Power of the Bean gave my comic book what it needed to win the contest.
As cool as it was, excess gas just might not be enough.
Eighteen
I clomped up the steps after Art Club and pushed through our door. In our kitchen: nobody. Except a half-eaten teddy bear pancake that stared up at me from
a pool of maple syrup.
Weird. Beecher never left a pancake half eaten.
I heard voices down the hall, coming from Mom’s room. I started after them.
First I stopped to take off my sneakers.
Because sneakers aren’t that great at sneaking. They thump and shuffle and give you away. They’re excellent for storing paperwork, but to sneak, what you really need is a dependable pair of socks. And if I wanted to find out what Sam Zawicki was doing, I needed to sneak.
I placed one foot in front of the other, next to the wall where the floorboards didn’t creak.
“You tool, Sam.” Beecher’s voice floated out from Mom’s room. “You rot.”
“You showed me this stuff, kid.” Sam’s bark floated out, too, most of its sharp edges filed down. “You’re the one who rocks.”
“No. You rot, Sam. Really.”
“Not as much as you.”
Oh, brother. Hard to stay quiet when you’re trying not to hurl the Skittles you chowed during Art Club.
I reached Mom’s door, inched my head around the door jamb, and pretended I was part of the woodwork.
This was just weird. I mean, Superman doesn’t go all Man of Steel while relaxing in the Fortress of Solitude. Batman doesn’t throw the Batarangs when he’s hanging in the Batcave with Alfred. But here I was, calling up my Power of Invisibility in the MacBean Family Apartment.
Sam was sitting on my mom’s rug, her back toward me. Beech sprawled beside her on his stomach, chin resting on his hands, watching whatever fascinating thing she was doing.
Which looked like writing. Or no—drawing.
My mom had this giant sewing box Grandma had given her. She only ever used it to make Halloween costumes or mend something Beech had ripped, but it was filled with all kinds of stuff—thread and needles and pins and buttons and this weird thing that looked like a pizza cutter for really tiny pizzas, plus all these old patterns in their crispy, yellowed envelopes.
The Adventures of Beanboy Page 6