“What?” Andy asked.
“Kermit did it deliberately. He knew what that blue mixture would do. He knew it would shrink Conan’s shirt. Kermit wanted me to get pounded by Conan. He did the whole thing to get me in trouble with Conan.”
“How do you know?” Andy asked.
“The smile,” Evan told her.
“Huh? What smile?”
“The smile on Kermit’s face. You know that twisted little smile he has where his two front teeth stick out? That’s the smile he had when he helped me back to the house.”
Andy tsk-tsked.
Evan finished the section of tuna fish sandwich. “Is that all you’re going to say?” he snapped.
“What can I say?” Andy replied. “Your cousin, Kermit, is a weird little dude. I think you should teach him a lesson. Pay him back.”
“Huh?” Evan gaped at her. “How do I do that?”
Andy shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe you could… uh…” Her dark eyes suddenly flashed with excitement. “I know! Doesn’t he have a snack after school every day? You could slip some Monster Blood into his food.”
Evan gulped and jumped to his feet. “Hey—no way! No way, Andy!” he shouted.
Several kids turned to stare at Evan, startled by his loud cries.
“Don’t even think it!” Evan shouted, ignoring the stares. “No Monster Blood. Ever! I never want to hear those words again!”
“Okay, okay!” Andy cried. She raised both hands, as if to shield herself from him.
“By the way,” Evan said, a little calmer, “where is the Monster Blood? Where did you hide it? You didn’t take any of it out—did you?”
“Well…” Andy replied, lowering her eyes. A devilish grin spread across her face. “I put a little bit of it in the tuna fish sandwich you just ate.”
5
Evan let out a cry so loud, it made two kids fall off their chairs. Two other kids dropped their lunch trays.
His eyes bulged and his voice rose higher than the gym teacher’s whistle. “You—you—you—!” he sputtered, grabbing his throat.
Andy laughed. She pointed at his chair. “Evan, sit down. I was only joking.”
“Huh?”
“You heard me,” Andy said. “It was a joke. The Monster Blood is home, safe and sound.”
Evan let out a long sigh. He sank back into the chair. He didn’t care that he was sitting in the milk he had spilled.
“Annndrea,” he said unhappily, stretching out the word. “Annnndrea, that wasn’t funny.”
“Sure it was,” Andy insisted. “And don’t call me Andrea. You know I hate that name.”
“Andrea. Andrea. Andrea,” Evan repeated, paying her back for her mean joke. He narrowed his eyes at her sternly. “That new can of Monster Blood your parents sent you from Europe—it really is hidden away?”
Andy nodded. “On the top shelf of a closet in the basement. Way in the back,” she told him. “The can is shut tight. No way the stuff can get out.”
He stared hard at her, studying her face.
“Don’t look at me like that!” she cried. She balled up the sandwich tinfoil and tossed it at him. “I’m telling the truth. The Monster Blood is totally hidden away. You don’t have to worry about it.”
Evan relaxed. He pulled the Fruit Roll-Up from his lunch bag and started to unwrap it. “You owe me now,” he said softly.
“Excuse me?”
“You owe me for playing that stupid joke,” Evan said.
“Oh, yeah? What do I have to do?” Andy demanded.
“Come with me after school. To Kermit’s,” Evan said.
Andy made a disgusted face.
“Please,” Evan added.
“Okay,” she said. “Kermit isn’t that bad when I’m around.”
Evan held up the sticky Fruit Roll-Up. “Want this? I begged my mom not to buy the green ones!”
* * *
After school, Evan and Andy walked together to Kermit’s house. It was a gray day, threatening rain. The air felt heavy and wet, as humid as summer.
Evan led the way across the street. He started to cut through the backyards—but stopped. “Let’s go the front way,” he instructed. “Conan might be hanging out in back. Waiting for us.”
“Don’t say us,” Andy muttered. She shifted her backpack to the other shoulder. She scratched her arm. “Ow. Look at this.”
Evan lowered his eyes to the large red bump on Andy’s right arm. “What is that? A mosquito bite?”
Andy scratched it some more. “I guess so. It itches like crazy.”
“You’re not supposed to scratch it,” Evan told her.
“Thanks, Doc,” she replied sarcastically. She scratched it even harder to annoy him.
A few sprinkles of rain came down as they made their way up Kermit’s driveway. Evan opened the front door and stepped into the living room.
“Kermit—are you here?”
No reply.
A sour smell attacked Evan’s nostrils. He pressed his fingers over his nose. “Yuck. Do you smell that?”
Andy nodded, her face twisted in disgust. “I think it’s coming from the basement.”
“For sure,” Evan muttered. “Kermit must already be in his lab.”
“Kermit? Hey—Kermit, what are you doing down there?” Evan called out.
Holding their noses, they made their way quickly down the stairs. The basement was divided into two rooms. To the right stood the laundry room and furnace; to the left the rec room with Kermit’s lab set up along the back wall.
Evan hurried across the tiled floor into the lab. He spotted Kermit behind his lab table, several beakers of colored liquids in front of him. “Kermit—what’s that disgusting smell?” he demanded.
As Evan and Andy ran up to the lab table, Kermit poured a yellow liquid into a green liquid. “Uh-oh!” he cried, staring down at the bubbling mixture.
Behind his glasses, his eyes grew wide with horror.
“Run!” Kermit screamed. “Hurry! Get out! It’s going to BLOW!”
6
The liquid swirled and bubbled.
Kermit ducked under the lab table.
With a cry of horror, Evan spun round. Grabbed Andy’s hand. Started to pull her to the stairs.
But he had only taken a step when he stumbled over Dogface, Kermit’s huge sheepdog.
“Oof!” Evan felt the wind knocked out of him as he fell over the dog and landed facedown on the tile floor. He gasped. Struggled to choke in a mouthful of air.
The room tilted and swayed.
“It’s going to BLOW!” Kermit’s shrill warning rang in Evan’s ears.
He finally managed to take a deep breath. Raised himself to one knee. Turned back to the lab table.
And saw Andy standing calmly in the center of the rec room, her hands at her waist.
“Andy—it’s going to BLOW!” Evan choked out.
She rolled her eyes. “Evan, really,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Did you really fall for that?”
“Huh?” Evan gazed past her to the long glass table.
Kermit had climbed back to his feet. He was leaning with both elbows on the table. And he had the grin on his face. That grin.
The twisted grin with the two front teeth sticking out. The grin Evan hated more than any grin in the world.
“Yeah, Evan,” Kermit repeated, mimicking Andy, “did you really fall for that?” He burst into his squealing-high laugh that sounded like a pig stuck in a fence.
Evan pulled himself up, muttering under his breath. Dogface hiccupped. The dog’s tongue tumbled out, and he began to pant loudly.
Evan turned to Andy. “I didn’t really fall for it,” he claimed. “I knew it was another one of Kermit’s dumb jokes. I was just seeing if you believed it.”
“For sure.” Andy rolled her eyes again. She was doing a lot of eye-rolling this afternoon, Evan realized.
Evan and Andy stepped up to the table. It was littered with bottles and glass tubes, beakers and ja
rs—all filled with colored liquids.
On the wall behind the table stood a high bookshelf. The shelves were also jammed with bottles and jars of liquids and chemicals. Kermit’s mixtures.
“I was only a few minutes late getting here,” Evan told Kermit. “From now on, don’t do anything. Just wait for me.” He sniffed the air. “What’s that really gross smell?”
Kermit grinned back at him. “I didn’t notice it until you came in!” he joked.
Evan didn’t laugh. “Give me a break,” he muttered.
Andy scratched her mosquito bite. “Yeah. No more jokes today, Kermit.”
The big sheepdog hiccupped again.
“I’m mixing up something to cure Dogface’s hiccups,” Kermit announced.
“Oh, no!” Evan replied sharply. “No way! I can’t let you give the dog one of your mixtures to drink.”
“It’s a very simple hiccup cure,” Kermit said, pouring a blue liquid into a green liquid. “It’s just maglesium harposyrate and ribotussal polythorbital. With a little sugar for sweetness.”
“No way,” Evan insisted. “You’re not giving Dogface anything to drink but water. It’s too dangerous.”
Kermit ignored him and continued to mix chemicals from one glass beaker into another. He glanced up at Andy. “What’s wrong with your arm?”
“It’s a really big mosquito bite,” Andy told him. “It itches like crazy.”
“Let me see it,” Kermit urged.
Andy eyed him suspiciously. “Why?”
Kermit grabbed Andy’s hand and tugged her closer. “Let me see it,” he insisted.
“It’s just a mosquito bite,” Andy said.
“I have some of that blue shrinking mixture left,” Kermit announced. “The stuff I shrank Conan’s shirt with.”
“Don’t remind me,” Evan groaned.
“It’ll shrink your mosquito bite,” Kermit told Andy. He picked up the beaker.
“You’re going to pour that stuff on my arm?” Andy cried. “I don’t think so!”
She tried to step away.
But Kermit grabbed her arm. And poured.
The blue liquid spread over the mosquito bite.
“No! Oh, no!” Andy shrieked.
7
“My arm!” Andy shrieked. “What did you do to me?”
Evan lurched to the lab table, nearly stumbling over the dog again. He grabbed Andy’s arm and examined it. “It—it—” he stammered.
“It’s gone!” Andy cried. “The mosquito bite—it’s gone!”
Evan stared at Andy’s arm. Perfectly smooth, except for a few drips of the blue liquid.
“Kermit—you’re a genius!” Andy cried. “That mixture of yours shrank the mosquito bite away!”
“Told you,” Kermit replied, grinning happily.
“You can make a fortune!” Andy exclaimed. “Don’t you realize what you’ve done? You’ve invented the greatest cure for mosquito bites ever!”
Kermit held up the beaker. He tilted it one way, then the other. “Not much left,” he said softly.
“But you can mix up some more—right?” Andy demanded.
Kermit frowned. “I’m not sure,” he said softly.
“I think I can mix up a new batch. But I’m not sure. I didn’t write down what I put in it.”
He scratched his white-blond hair and stared at the empty glass beaker, twitching his nose like a mouse, thinking hard.
Dogface let out another loud hiccup. The hiccup was followed by a howl. Evan saw that the poor dog was getting very unhappy about the hiccups. Dogface was a big dog—and so he had big hiccups that shook his sheepdog body like an earthquake.
“I’d better get to work on the hiccup cure,” Kermit announced. He pulled some jars of chemicals off the shelf and started to open them.
“Whoa. Wait a minute,” Evan told him. “I told you, Kermit—I can’t let you feed anything to the dog. Aunt Dee will kill me if—”
“Oh, let him try!” Andy interrupted. She rubbed her smooth arm. “Kermit is a genius, Evan. You have to let a genius work.”
Evan glared at her. “Whose side are you on?” he demanded in a loud whisper.
Andy didn’t answer. She unzipped her orange-and-blue backpack and pulled out some papers. “I think I’ll do my math homework while Kermit mixes up his hiccup cure.”
Kermit’s eyes lit up excitedly behind his glasses. “Math? Do you have math problems?”
Andy nodded. “It’s a take-home equations exam. Very hard.”
Kermit set down the test tubes and beakers. He hurried out from behind the lab table. “Can I do the problems for you, Andy?” he asked eagerly. “You know I love to do math problems.”
Andy flashed Evan a quick wink. Evan frowned back at her. He shook his head.
So that’s why Andy is being so nice to Kermit! Evan told himself. It was all a trick. A trick to get Kermit to do the math test for her.
Kermit could never resist math problems. His parents had to buy him stacks and stacks of math workbooks. He could spend an entire afternoon doing all the problems in the workbooks—for fun!
Dogface hiccupped.
Kermit grabbed the math test from Andy’s hand. “Please let me do the equations,” he begged. “Pretty please?”
“Well… okay,” Andy agreed. She flashed Evan another wink.
Evan scowled back at her. Andy is going to get in trouble for this, he thought. Andy is a terrible math student. It’s her worst subject. Mrs. McGrady is going to get very suspicious when Andy gets every problem right.
But Evan didn’t say anything. What was the point?
Kermit was already scribbling answers on the page, solving the equations as fast as he could read them. His eyes were dancing wildly. He was breathing hard. And he had a happy grin on his face.
“All done,” he announced.
Wow, he’s fast! Evan thought. He finished that math test in the time it would take me to write my name at the top of the page!
Kermit handed the pencil and math pages back to Andy. “Thanks a lot,” she said. “I really need a good grade in math this term.”
“Cheater,” Evan whispered in her ear.
“I just did it for Kermit,” Andy whispered back. “He loves doing math problems. So why shouldn’t I give him a break?”
“Cheater,” Evan repeated.
Dogface hiccupped. Then he let out a pained howl.
Kermit returned to his lab table. He poured a yellow liquid into a red liquid. It started to smoke. Then it turned bright orange.
Andy tucked the math test into her backpack.
Kermit poured the orange liquid into a large glass beaker. He picked up a tiny bottle, turned it upside down, and emptied silvery crystals into the beaker.
Evan stepped up beside Kermit. “You can’t feed that to Dogface,” Evan insisted. “I really mean it. I won’t let you give it to him.”
Kermit ignored him. He stirred the mixture until it turned white. Then he added another powder that made it turn orange again.
“You have to listen to me, Kermit,” Evan said. “I’m in charge, right?”
Kermit continued to ignore him.
Dogface hiccupped. His white furry body quivered and shook.
“Let Kermit work,” Andy told Evan. “He’s a genius.”
“Maybe he’s a genius,” Evan replied. “But I’m in charge. Until Kermit’s mom gets home, I’m the boss.”
Kermit poured the mixture into a red dog dish.
“I’m the boss,” said Evan. “And the boss says no.”
Kermit lowered the dog dish to the floor.
“The boss says you can’t feed that to Dogface,” Evan said.
“Here, boy! Here, boy!” Kermit called.
“No way!” Evan cried. “No way the dog is drinking that!”
Evan made a dive for the bowl. He planned to grab it away.
But he dove too hard—and went sliding under the lab table.
Dogface lowered his head to the dog dish an
d began lapping up the orange mixture.
Evan spun around and stared eagerly at the dog. All three of them were waiting… waiting… waiting to see what would happen.
8
Dogface licked the bowl clean. Then he stared up at Kermit, as if to say, “Thank you.”
Kermit petted the big dog’s head. He smoothed the white, curly fur from in front of Dogface’s eyes. The fur fell right back in place. Dogface licked Kermit’s hand.
“See? The hiccups are gone,” Kermit declared to Evan.
Evan stared at the dog. He waited a few seconds more. “You’re right,” he confessed. “The hiccups are gone.”
“It was a simple mixture,” Kermit bragged. “Just a little tetrahydropodol with some hydradroxilate crystals and an ounce of megahydracyl oxyneuroplat. Any child could do it.”
“What a genius!” Andy exclaimed.
Evan started to say something. But Dogface interrupted with a sharp yip.
Then, without warning, the big sheepdog sprang forward. With another shrill yip, Dogface raised his enormous front paws—and leaped on to Kermit.
Kermit let out a startled cry and stumbled back against the wall. Bottles and jars shook on the shelves behind him.
Dogface began barking wildly, uttering shrill, excited yips. The dog jumped again, as if trying to leap into Kermit’s arms.
“Down, boy! Down!” Kermit squealed.
The dog jumped again.
The shelves shook. Kermit sank to the floor.
“Down, boy! Down!” Kermit shrieked, covering his head with both arms. “Stop it, Dogface! Stop jumping!”
The excited dog used his head to push Kermit’s arm away. Then he began licking Kermit’s face frantically. Then he began nipping at his T-shirt.
“Stop! Yuck! Stop!” Kermit struggled to get away. But the big dog had Kermit pinned to the floor.
“What’s going on?” Andy cried. “What’s gotten into that dog?”
“Kermit’s mixture!” Evan replied. He dove at the dog, grabbed Dogface with both hands, and tried to tug him off Kermit.
Dogface spun around. With another high-pitched yip, he bounded away, running at full speed across the basement.