“Uh, excuse me,” I said to the lieutenant governor, “but if the governor resigns, I thought that it was your job to take her place.”
“Where’s my Jell-O?” he snarled.
walked back to the trolley stop in a daze.
Casper had me beat every step of the way. Now it wasn’t just my word against his; it would be my word against the governor’s!
What could I do? How could I stop him?
I might as well give up and go home. I’d have to wear the Jodie O’Rodeo disguise for a while, but Casper would probably forget all about me soon. I was too insignificant and pathetic and tiny to cause him any trouble.
I got on the trolley and found a seat. I was so burdened by the weight of being the lone voice against an evil madman that I didn’t notice that someone was glaring at me.
“Who the ding-dang-day are you?” she said.
“I’m Jodie O’ Rodeo,” I said. “Preteen cowgirl queen.”
“The hot heck you are! I’m Jodie O’Rodeo,” she snarled. “And now I’m a TEEN cowgirl queen, thank you not so very much!”
It really was her. She was wearing an outfit just like mine, except with real cowboy boots.
And she was beautiful. She had been cute when her show was filmed a couple years ago. But now ...
“Wow,” I said. “You’re beautiful.”
“Well,” she said, without so much snarl. “Thanks, but I’m afraid you’re not. Your makeup looks terrible, and your hair looks like one of those awful wigs from the Heidelberg Novelty Company.”
“It is.”
“Well, that’s OK,” she said, sitting down next to me. “I’m flattered that you’re going to be me for Halloween tonight. The truth is that most kids have forgotten about me now that my show is in reruns. They all want to be Roxy Diamond this year.”
“Actually, I forgot it was Halloween tonight,” I said. I knew it was risky to tell her my big secret, but at the same time I knew it wasn’t. I could just tell that I could trust her. “I hope you don’t mind, but . . . I’ve been in disguise as you all day because a mad lunatic has been sending his brainwashed henchmen to try and catch me.”
“Oh, you must mean Fako Mustacho,” she said.
“Yes! But how did you know?” I whispered, looking around to see if anyone was listening. The rest of the passengers, who all seemed to be bodybuilders, were just staring blankly out the windows.
“It’s simple,” she said. “Nobody ever heard of Fako Mustacho until a few days ago. Now he’s rich, famous, and all over the TV. They even preempted one of my reruns with a special report about him. But he’s nothing but a giant liar. He’s just a kid with a fake mustache. I’ve been trying to tell my parents that ever since he showed up on TV. And not only is he a kid with a fake mustache, he’s the same kid with a fake mustache who robbed all those banks.”
“Wow,” I said. “It’s great to finally meet someone else who isn’t fooled by his mustache.”
“It really is,” agreed Jodie. “Unfortunately, we’ve been fooled by something else. Look!”
looked out the window.
I saw old brick warehouse-type buildings that I had never seen before. We weren’t rolling down Hair Avenue through the heart of downtown Hairsprinkle.
“They switched the track on us!” said Jodie.
“This must be one of the abandoned freight lines that used to run to the factories down by the docks,” I said. “We’ve got to get off.”
The other passengers, who really were bodybuilders, stood up and growled at us.
“Sit down, Evil One!” said a guy with tattoos and a long ponytail. “We know that one of you is the Evil One and the other is a famous preteen cowgirl queen, but we don’t know which one is which.”
“Don’t get us wrong,” chanted the rest of the bodybuilders. “You are both pretty as a picture, but one of you is pure evil. So sit down!”
We sat down and they sat down.
There was some clacking and lurching and the trolley turned off onto a side track. The track led right up to a great big factory. The biggest one I’d ever seen.
There were giant letters on the side of the factory that read HEIDE BE G NOVELT C MPA Y.
“Jodie, I’ve got to get out of here,” I whispered. “If Fako catches me, there’ll be nobody to stop him.”
“What about me? Maybe I can stop him.”
“You shouldn’t get involved. They’ll let you go when they discover you’re the real Jodie.”
The driver blew the trolley whistle, and big, thirty-foot-high doors in the side of the factory slid open. The trolley started to roll inside. That gave me an idea. A crazy idea. A million-to-one idea. But at least it was an idea.
“I’ve got a crazy, million-to-one idea,” I told Jodie. “Stay here and brace yourself against the seats. I’m going to force my way up there, throw myself against the control lever, speed up the trolley, and crash through whatever is waiting for us up ahead. In the carnage and confusion, I’ll slip out the door. Oh yeah—when I push the control lever, I’m also going to open the door handle. And I guess I’d better—”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” said Jodie. “Why not just let me pretend to be you and you keep pretending to be me? That way they’ll let you go. And if I get in any real trouble, I can easily prove that I’m really me, not you pretending to be me.”
This was so confusing I could barely follow it. I was just starting to understand when the trolley passed through the big doors and stopped inside a cavernous room stacked with thousands of boxes.
Jodie stood up and announced, “I’m the Evil One. Please escort me to the front of the trolley so I can meet my fate like a man.”
“Thank you,” I whispered. “You’re amazing. I hope I get to meet you again someday.”
“Me too,” she said. “I’d give you a good-bye hug if it wouldn’t be so weird to hug somebody who looks like me. Or actually, I mean someone that I’m pretending to look like.”
I didn’t understand that either, but that may have been because I went into shock when she said the word “hug.” I may have had a vague crush on TV Jodie, but it had turned into something a lot bigger for the real-life Jodie.
“Wait a second,” said one of the bodybuilders. “How do we know this one isn’t Jodie O’Rodeo and the other one isn’t the Evil One?”
A collective “Duhhh, I dunno,” went up from the bodybuilders. If all this was confusing to me, it was clearly even more confusing to the bodybuilders, who, on top of spending too much time in sweaty places, were also brainwashed.
Jodie was way ahead of them.
“For one thing,” she said, “my hair is just a wig.”
She took off her cowgirl hat, and, lo and behold, her long braids were just as fake as mine. Her real hair was short and purple. Pretty cute, I thought.
“And for another thing,” she said, “the real Jodie can yodel. Can’t you?”
“Sure,” I said. And I yodeled just like Jodie does on TV.
“Yo-day-low-day-yoda-lady-who, yo-day-low-day-yoda-lady-who. Yoda-lady-who. Yo-do-diddley-do, do-day-lady-day-do, diddle-di-dodo, diddley dodo, day. Little old lady who. Little old lady who. Little old lady, little old lady, little old lady who. Old lady, old lady, old lady, moo, old lady, too, old lady foo. Yoda hoda, biddli mocha, armadillo, too. Fiddle-dee-do-de-day di diddle dee way, no way, way. May, fay, hay, day—DAY! Diddle-dee-do-da-DAY! Diddledeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-DO-DAY! Hey!”
The bodybuilders applauded wildly.
he bodybuilders asked me very nicely to wait on the trolley, and then they took Jodie away. The trolley driver
just sat there. I guess the problem with using brainwashed henchmen is that they just sit around like idiots after they’ve done their job. Either that or the trolley driver really was an idiot.
I cleared my throat. I yodeled a bit more. I stood up. I moved one seat back. The driver never budged.
So I just got up and went out the back door.
Like I said, the loading room was stacked to the rafters with cardboard boxes. In between piles of boxes there were little trails and paths. In some places the path was more like a tunnel through the boxes.
I ran for one of the tunnels and crawled out of sight. In a few minutes those bodybuilders were going to be back down here looking for me.
You may have noticed that I didn’t run away like Jodie told me to. There were two very good reasons.
First, I wanted to be sure that Jodie got out safely. I wasn’t so sure that Casper-Fako was going to just let her go.
Second, if I left, I’d be no better off than I was before. Fako would be taking over the world and I would be on the run.
What I needed to do was use this chance to spy a little. Find out what his next plan was and figure out a way to stop it.
But if I was going to stay there, I couldn’t keep wearing the Jodie O’Rodeo costume. But if I took it off, I’d be recognized as the real Evil One.
What I needed was a new disguise, I decided. Where could I get one?
That’s when I noticed that every box around me was labeled HEIDELBERG NOVELTY COMPANY. I found a box that was sort of loose and carefully pulled it out of the stack. It was kind of like playing Jenga.
I opened it up: plastic scrambled eggs.
The next box: blue monster fingers.
Then green monster fingers in the one after that.
I found stink bombs, T-shirts that said MY PARENTS WENT TO HAIRSPRINKLE AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT, voting machines, trick gum, a pooh-pooh noise whistle and, at last, a deluxe teen werewolf costume.
It was pretty nice. It had fake eyebrows, fake ears, fake sideburns, a fake goatee, fake fur-covered mittens, and fake teeth. It even had a fake cardigan sweater, because teen werewolves are supposed to wear sweaters for some reason.
It didn’t seem like a perfect disguise, but it was Halloween, after all, so if I got caught I could always pretend to be a trick-or-treater.
And I was glad to get out of the Jodie O’Rodeo outfit.
I looked at my watch. It was already 3:30. I had been a girl for more than seven hours!
heard a ruckus out in the main part of the room. I crept forward just enough to see what was going on.
The bodybuilders were back, along with three mimes.
“Where’s the Evil One?” one of the mimes shouted at the trolley driver.
“Uh, the bodybuilders took him.”
“No, you fool,” shouted another mime. “That wasn’t the real Evil One. The real Evil One was sitting here on your trolley and you let him get away.”
“Sorry.”
“You’d better be,” snarled the third mime.
The bodybuilders immediately started searching. I realized that sooner or later they would find me and I would look pretty suspicious hiding in the middle of all these boxes.
I had to do something. I realized that all day long I had been running and hiding, while Casper had been playing it cool and coming out ahead every time.
So I decided to try Casper’s way.
I stood up and walked out from the rows of the boxes. I went right up to the three mimes. “Have you caught the Evil One yet?” I asked.
“No, these idiots let him get away. They brought us a washed-up former celebrity cowgirl instead.”
“I guess you had to let her go, huh?” I asked.
“We will, but first we’re going to plant a camera in her cowgirl hat. If she meets up with the Evil One again, we’ll catch him for sure.”
“Wow,” I said. “You guys are really smart.”
headed for the doors I had seen them take Jodie through earlier. I came out into a long, empty hallway. There was an elevator partway down the hall. I pushed the button. While I was waiting, I decided to peek through the big double doors across the way.
Inside was a huge factory floor with lots of machines and wires and conveyor belts. There was this big system of chutes that seemed to be carrying liquid snot. A machine nearest me had doors that slammed closed every few seconds. Then there’d be a whooshing sound. Then the doors would open again, and a whoopee cushion would fall out onto a conveyor belt.
It was awesome. I could have looked at it all day, but the elevator doors opened behind me, and I ran back across the hall and got into the elevator.
I pushed the close-door button, then took a moment to look at my options. There were buttons for floors one through four and a basement. I figured the important offices would be on the top floor, so I pressed four.
When the doors opened again, I stepped out into a brightly lit hallway with people crisscrossing to and from rooms on either side. A few glanced at me, but I guess it takes more than a werewolf costume to attract attention in a novelty factory.
A sign on the door of the first room I came to said WHOOPEE CUSHION TESTING DEPARTMENT, and sure enough, lots of nasty noises were coming out. The next room said VOTING MACHINE RIGGING DEPARTMENT. I peeked through the window and saw a whole room full of geeks drinking Red Bull and messing with computers.
The next door said FAKO MUSTACHO, CEO. PRIVATE. KEEP OUT. CLEARANCE LEVEL ZED ALPHA ONLY. I tried to act cool and walk through the door like I belonged there. But the door was locked. And I felt kind of dumb.
The next room said RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT. This door was open and the room looked empty—empty of people, at least. It was crammed full of mad scientist-type stuff. I decided to check it out.
I walked in and suddenly—ZAMMO!—something hit me right between the eyes. I dove for cover and felt my face with my hand to see if I was bleeding. No blood, just a sticky residue and one furry eyebrow. The other teen werewolf eyebrow was gone.
“Ah, looks like I caught me a wolfman,” cackled a voice that sounded like a toasted gravel sandwich.
I looked up and saw an ancient, three-foot-tall man walking toward me.
“Sorry to scare you, wolfboy,” he said, “I was just testing out the new Ultra-Sticky-Stretchy Grabber Hand. I got your eyebrow from twenty-seven feet away whilst hiding behind the jukebox. Would you like it back?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, and tried to stick it back in place.
“How do you do,” the man said, offering his hand, “I’m Hank Heidelberg.”
“Wow, you mean Heidelberg . . . like the Heidelberg Novelty Company? Did you start this company?”
“Yes, I did. Seventy-two years ago, my brother, Tito, and I were just kids like you peddling rusty kazoos on the streets of Nairobi. Then I invented the first sticky-stretchy hand. And the rest is history.”
“Look,” I said. “I’ve got one of your sticky-stretchy hands myself.”
“Ah! You’re a guy who knows a quality sticky-stretchy hand when you see one. Yes, that one was good, but I’ve never stopped working to perfect my invention. Please check out my latest version.”
He made a small movement with his real hand, and I saw a neon purple blur as the sticky hand shot across the room and grabbed a pink piece of paper. Then the sticky hand snapped back, bringing the pink paper with it.
“And look at this,” he said, peeling the pink paper loose from the hand and showing it to me. “Just look at this . . .”
Then he started sobbing.
I looked at the paper. It said:
DEAR DR. HINK HIDDLEBURG,
FAKO MUSTACHO, THE NEW OWNER, PRESIDENT, AND CEO OF THE HEIDELBERG NOVELTY COMPANY, HAS ASKED ME TO INFORM YOU THAT YOUR SERVICES ARE NO LONGER REQUIRED. YOUR LAST DAY OF WORK WILL BE OCT. 31. PLEASE LEAVE THE BUILDING BY 5 P.M. OR OUR VERY RUDE SECURITY PERSONNEL WILL ESCORT YOU OUT.
YOURS TRULY,
BRAINWASHED HUMAN RESOURCES AS
SISTANT #5
“My stars,” I said, “Casper ... I mean, Fako . . . has really changed. For years he had nothing but the highest respect for novelty product inventors. And now he’s treating you like fake dog poo.”
“I’ve been so busy in my lab, I hadn’t even heard about this new owner. Do you know him?”
If Dr. Heidelberg hadn’t seen Fako on the news, perhaps I would be able to tell him the truth.
“Fako Mustacho is just a kid wearing one of your fake mustaches. He’s used it to rob banks, brainwash people, and get himself made governor!”
“Hmmm. A fake mustache, you say? Was it the Heidelberg Handlebar Number Seven, by any chance?” asked the old man.
“YES! How did you know?”
“I always feared that the Heidelberg Handlebar Number Seven was too good. My brother was at the height of his talents when he made it. It is one of a kind, you know. There is only one Number Seven. Tito died after making it—his life’s work was complete. It was his masterpiece. But it was woven from the hairs of a very bad man who gave up his mustache unwillingly.”
“Unwillingly?”
“Yes, he was a professional assassin, famous in the European criminal underworld for his perfect record of three hundred kills and for his perfect mustache. Then he was betrayed by a beautiful woman and arrested. When he arrived at prison, they shaved his mustache.
“I’m a scientific man, but still I felt that such a mustache would be better off in the trash. But my brother insisted on using it. ‘It is too beautiful, too perfect,’ he argued. ‘Yes,’ I would say, ‘it is too perfect and it will be too powerful, especially if it falls into the wrong hands.’”
“It has fallen into the wrong hands,” I said. “Fako Mustacho seems unbeatable. My best hope was to sneak in here and try to find out his secret plans. But his office was locked.”
“You mean the CEO’s office just down the hall? That used to be my office. I think I still have the key.”
He pulled a key ring out of his pocket. Have you ever seen someone who has a lucky rabbit’s foot on their key ring? Well, Dr. Heidelberg had some kind of white furry foot on his key ring, but it was way too big to be from a rabbit. I was afraid to ask what it was. A polar bear maybe? Or a yeti? Really gross.