The Neighborhood Stink Read online

  My theory, on the other hand, is that Lance just loves saying Uranus, and he’ll say it any chance he gets. Everybody in our class at school thinks Lance is the funniest thing since sliced bread. His best jokes include saying Uranus all the time, making loud fart noises when it’s real quiet, and playing “The Star-Spangled Banner” with his armpit. And when he’s really on a roll, he can burp the alphabet all the way to the letter R. Ha, ha, ha. I can be pretty funny, too, but my best jokes usually aren’t heard because of all the armpit racket.

  Anyway, before I reach the door, Peekaboo starts barking like some pocket-size killer. I stand there shaking my head. This dog must be kidding! It’s no bigger than a forty-two–ounce can of soup and looks like it will fall apart if you look at it funny. Match Peekaboo up against a salamander, and I’d bet on the lizard.

  “Quiet, Peekaboo! Relax, boy, or your eyes are gonna bounce across that floor like marbles!” I scream through the door.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have used his name, because this seems to make Peekaboo go even more wild. Maybe Mr. and Mrs. Moriarty left town weeks ago without leaving any food for their soup-size pet. Maybe the dog’s eyes have already popped out, and that’s causing the barkathon. Maybe Peekaboo is being attacked by a mouse that’s bigger than he is.

  Whatever the reason, two things are clear: The Moriartys are not at home, and their home security system is dangerously close to losing its eyesight.

  “Sorry, Peekaboo,” I shout through the door. “I’ll be going now.” As I back away from the door and marvel at the thunderous yelping, I wonder if a boy my age might go to jail for blinding a neighbor’s pet.

  But my worries of a long prison sentence are interrupted by a deep voice coming from behind me—

  “Don’t move a muscle, Sherlock, or this dog will attack for sure.”

  Chapter Ten

  A Man’s Best Friend?

  Preparing for the worst, my butt tenses up so much that I’m sure it would crack a walnut.

  If there’s anything more terrifying in the world than waiting for a dog to bite you in the behind, I don’t know what it is. I’ve heard that when you get really terrified, your blood turns ice-cold, but I don’t feel that way. I feel more like my brain has slipped down into my body and gotten stuck somewhere between my lungs and my bladder.

  I can’t think. I can’t run. And, I’m sorry to say, I even let out a little squeak of fear.

  Then I hear an odd snorting sound. When I whip my head around, ready to meet Ranger’s fangs up close and personal, I find myself facing…Lance! Just Lance, standing there and laughing in a fake, deep voice.

  “Where’s the dog?” I squeak again, looking around wildly.

  “I was just kidding,” Lance says, shaking his head.

  “Don’t ever do that again!” I snap.

  “Okay! Okay! Don’t be so sensitive, Shirley,” he snorts.

  “My second case has gone from bad to badder!” I shout. “And now it’s gone from worse to worser!”

  “Hey, Sherlock, forget your dumb case. Let’s go play some games at your house,” he says.

  “I thought you were going to play Vengeance in Venice! at your house after your grandma finished watching her super squirrels,” I say, trying to catch my breath.

  “Well, that was the plan,” he mumbles. “But the next show was about three-legged bullfrogs, and my grandma got all interested. So here I am with my best game and nowhere to play it.” He pulls the game out of his backpack to prove his point.

  If you haven’t already guessed, the only thing Lance likes to do more than watch TV is to play his Vengeance in Venice! video game. In the game, you basically run around in this flooded city and hop from canoe to canoe trying to catch an evil frog and save the city from drowning. No matter how hard I try, I always fall into the putrid water and get eaten alive by a giant shellfish named Bernie. Lance loves Vengeance in Venice! because nobody can beat him, but I think all that game playing is making him “a bit daffy.”

  “Forget that game and come help me with my case,” I plead. “I get ten bucks for solving it, and I’ll give you half.”

  “That’s sounds like a lot of knocking on doors, jumping fences, and snooping around for clues, so I don’t think so,” he says, putting on his backpack. “Sounds sort of boring.”

  “What? C’mon, Lance, I could use some help,” I beg.

  “Maybe tomorrow,” he says over his shoulder as he heads back to his house.

  “Hurry, or you’ll miss the show about the North American yellow-bellied spineless chicken!” I call after him, but I don’t think he hears me.

  One thing is for sure. Detective work can give you a headache. And it was about to get a whole lot more painful.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Pooper Strikes Again

  “Sherlock, Mrs. Fefferland is on the phone,” my mom informs me as I open the front door.

  “Hello, Mrs. Fefferland,” I say, taking the phone from my mom.

  “Sorry to wake you from your nap, Mr. Rip Van Winkle!” she wheezes and clacks on the other end of the line.

  “Nap?” I say. “What nap?”

  “While you’ve been snoring in your cozy bed, another steaming pile of dog evidence has been planted on my lovely lawn,” she huffs.

  “I-I wasn’t sleeping,” I sputter as I pull out my list of suspects. “I’ve been eliminating suspects.”

  “While you’ve been eliminating suspects, the real culprit has been eliminating on my lawn,” she grumbles. “I’m not very satisfied with the results so far.”

  “Sorry, Mrs. Fefferland,” I say. “I’ll catch this mutt before my mom serves dinner. Next I plan to—”

  “Now that’s more like it, Sherlock,” she says, and hangs up on me.

  “Uh…thank you, Mrs. Fefferland,” I say into the dead phone, so my mom doesn’t know Mrs. Fefferland hung up on me. “I’ll see you later. Bye.”

  I don’t remember anyone ever hanging up on Sherlock Holmes in any of his movies. But I guess they didn’t have phones back then. His old maid was always bringing him little notes on a silver tray. Maybe I need a maid.

  Already I’ve stepped in fresh dog poop, been ignored by my family, and almost been eaten by a three-hundred–pound dog—and I may have blinded a pocket-size pooch. Oh, and I’ve been scared out of my brain by my best friend.

  Sherlock Holmes would have run home crying by now. But not me. I’m as stubborn as a zebra. And I still need to earn my stripes as a detective—especially if I ever want to get myself a maid with a silver tray.

  “I’m ready, boss,” my little sister says, suddenly entering the room. She’s wearing safety goggles, a swimming cap, a raincoat, rubber boots, and yellow dishwashing gloves. “If we find any more poopy evidence, I’ll collect the samples. You just watch my back. Now let’s hit the streets!”

  “You watch too much TV,” I sigh. This case is turning into a stinker.

  Chapter Twelve

  What’s at Stakeout?

  In just about every detective movie ever made, there’s always a stakeout scene. Here’s what happens on a stakeout: Two guys sit for hours in a car, drinking coffee and scarfing down tons of raspberry donuts. They usually just sit there getting to know each other better. They keep scarfing donuts until they’re ready to barf their guts out. Then they suddenly sit up, spill their coffee all over the place, and follow a suspicious-looking guy who has just emerged from hiding in a suspicious-looking apartment.

  I have a few problems with the basic stakeout concept. One: I don’t drink coffee (it smells like burning hair). Two: I don’t have any money to buy donuts. Three: I don’t have a car to sit in while I stuff my face with gross coffee and expensive jelly-filled donuts. So, with no money, no car, and no donuts, I’m forced to do the best I can as a detective on his second official case…. I slowly starve behind Mrs. Fefferland’s neatly trimmed hedges. Even worse, the only person I have to talk to is my little sister.

  “This is more boring than Grandma
’s house,” Hailey groans.

  Ever notice how often detectives in movies bring a little sister along during a stakeout? The answer is NEVER! Now I know why.

  “Did you ever notice that your nostrils are too big for your face?” she asks. I just ignore her.

  “I can wiggle my ears!” she says. “Sherlock, look at my ears. Seriously.”

  “Would you be quiet?” I plead.

  Hailey squirms and fidgets and sighs loudly several times. “Okay,” she whispers, “I’m thinking of a number somewhere between zero and infinity…. Guess what it is.”

  I hold my head in my hands and moan.

  “You’ll never guess anyway,” she says. “The number is three hundred twelve. Math has never been your best subject.”

  “I can count one pain in the neck,” I murmur. A few moments pass in magnificent silence. We both stare out at the lawn.

  “Can you make bubbles with your spit?” she asks.

  That’s one thing about the great Sherlock Holmes: He never had to bring his irritating little sister along. I think that’s why he solved so many dang cases—nobody was messing with his razor-sharp concentration skills.

  “My leg is asleep,” she whines. “And I think my left butt is, too!”

  “Hailey, you’re driving me bonkers!” I explode. “Just go home and get us something to eat! I’m so hungry, I can’t rub two thoughts together.”

  “You might have to carry me,” she gasps as she struggles to her feet. After tottering around in circles a few times on her sleeping leg and left butt, she limps off, shouting, “Good luck on the secret stakeout, Sherlock!”

  Now that everybody in the country knows where I’m hiding for my stakeout, I decide to move. Sadly, the stakeout spot I choose next is the worst decision I’ve made in my nine and a half years of life on this earth.

  Chapter Thirteen

  My Pants Are Alive!

  At first I think my legs are falling asleep like Hailey’s. But no matter which way I fold them, my legs still feel way weird. It’s dark in the shadows under the stinky bush where I’m hiding, so it takes a few minutes for my eyes to adjust and confirm my worst fear: My pants have come to life!

  I blink hard and look again. Sure enough, my pants are moving and my legs are not. “Aaaaaaagh!” I shriek, slapping at my pants like they’ve burst into flames. I jump out of the bush and see that my pants are covered with ants. Thousands of ants. Million of ants. Grillions of ants! Then I freeze in terror…. They’re IN MY PANTS, too!!!

  I should point out here that I get totally freaked out by ants. I’ve been this way since I chose to sleep with my ant farm one night when I couldn’t find my favorite teddy bear, Hank the Humming Bear. During the middle of the night, I woke up covered with ants and ran screaming right into my closet, where I cracked my head open on the bar you’re supposed to hang your clothes on. Thirteen stitches later, my dad vacuumed up my ant farm, and we haven’t discussed the incident since. So you can see how I might be a little touchy about the whole ants-in-my-pants business.

  The next few minutes are a blur. But I fall onto Mrs. Fefferland’s driveway and rip off my pants just as Mr. Fefferland turns into his driveway after a long trip to Singapore. Somehow I manage to stop screaming in terror long enough to wave hello.

  Mr. Fefferland seems to take the whole wacko scene in stride.

  “Is everything all right, Sherlock?” he asks as he steps out of his car with his trusty briefcase in hand. Nothing like returning from a business trip to find a wild-eyed kid in your driveway with no pants on.

  “It’s sort of a long story,” I croak. “I’m working for your wife.”

  “I see,” he says slowly. “Does she pay you a lot for this sort of thing?”

  He asks this like he’s in some kind of business meeting. I’m not sure how to respond because I’ve never been to a business meeting.

  “I was helping her out with her poop problem,” I stutter.

  “I wasn’t aware she had one,” he replies. “And is this dance of yours helping her with her pooping?”

  Even in my panic, I know that this is not going well. To make matters worse, I’m wearing my Inspector Wink-Wink underwear.

  Inspector Wink-Wink was my favorite detective in the first grade, and I watched his cartoon show every chance I got. I even had cool Inspector Wink-Wink bedsheets until my sister washed them in her Girl Chat Sleepover washing machine and turned them flamingo pink.

  So there I am, a fourth grader wearing goofy little-kid underwear, standing in my neighbor’s driveway, breaking the bad news about his wife’s poop problem. If my life were a TV show, this would be a great time to go to a commercial.

  “I’ll go and get some pants without ants!” I shout, hurrying down the driveway like some kind of pantless lunatic. “I’ll be back to explain later.”

  “I can’t wait to hear it,” Mr. Fefferland calls after me.

  As if this whole episode isn’t bad enough, I’m sprinting back to a house that’s been locked tight from the inside by its unofficial gatekeeper. I don’t know it yet, but I’m about to cross paths with my always-annoyed, eye-rolling, brother-bugging big sister, Jessie.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Fort Sherlock and the Wicked Gatekeepers

  “Jessie, open up!” I demand while standing on the welcome mat in my Inspector Wink-Wink briefs.

  “Whatever it is you’re selling, we don’t want it,” I hear her say from behind the door, and then laugh with my little sister like twin hyenas.

  One of Jessie’s most favorite hobbies is locking me out of the house. If it were 190 degrees outside and I were dying of thirst, she would lock me out of the house and think it was the funniest thing ever to happen on Earth since a hairy caveman somewhere in France discovered the practical joke.

  I press the doorbell over and over, even though it broke several months ago. I’m sure my dad will get around to fixing it right after he mows our overgrown lawn.

  “You’ll be sorry,” I threaten, but this just makes them laugh harder.

  I jump back when the door’s mail slot squeaks open and a sandwich slides through and drops onto the welcome mat. At least my assistant remembered to get me something to eat! I snatch up the sandwich and peel back the top slice of bread. Peanut butter. “Wha’?” I say stupidly. “Hailey, you know I’m allergic to peanut butter!” I shout at the peephole. The howling laughter that erupts from behind the door is so thunderous, I think they might pass out from lack of oxygen.

  I rest my forehead on the cool door and think of the utter inconvenience of a peanut allergy. I’m sure the great Sherlock Holmes never had to worry about his head swelling up like a hot-air balloon if he ate a peanut. I’m even more allergic to bee stings. In fact, if I ever got stung by a bee while eating a peanut-butter sandwich, I would surely explode.

  It’s at a time like this that you wonder what life would be like with brothers instead of annoying sisters. “Probably pretty dang normal,” I mumble to myself.

  Sometimes I imagine that I have two brothers, with real tough names like Shane and Buck. They teach me how to chop wood, track wild boars through the woods, and spit really far. I imagine that me and my two brothers dress like cowboys and rid our neighborhood of crime and bullies. We hold Olympic-style games in our backyard and improve our athletic abilities to almost genius levels. We build an air-conditioned tree house that—

  “Hi, Sherlock,” a voice suddenly says from behind me.

  For the first time ever, my blood really does turn cold. Ice-water cold. Antarctica cold. No matter how bad life gets for me in the future, this will be one of the true low points. Why? This giggled greeting came from Sharon Sheldon, the smartest kid in my class and probably the most popular girl in our whole entire school.

  “I’m sort of busy, Sharon,” I say without turning around to face her.

  “Yeah, it looks like it,” she snickers. “Did you lose your house keys when you lost your pants?”

  “What pants?” I say, a
s if it’s perfectly normal to stand on your welcome mat in your underwear.

  “Or are you trying to unlock that door with your sandwich?” she asks, really enjoying herself now.

  I wish this day could start all over again.

  “That’s not Inspector Wink-Wink underwear, is it?” she says quietly.

  On second thought, perhaps I should start my entire life over again.

  At this point, I still haven’t turned around, and you would think someone as smart and popular as Sharon Sheldon would get the hint that I don’t feel like casual chitchat at the moment.

  “Uh,” I say, like some sort of underwear-wearing Frankenstein. “Uh, I’m on a case—”

  “My brother loves you!” screeches Hailey through the mail slot. She screams this so loud, I almost lose my breath. “Sherlock wants to marry you!” comes another mail-slot screech. More laughing and giggling from the other side of the door. I will never be able to leave the house again.

  “That’s just my dopey sisters,” I say, spinning around quickly. But Sharon Sheldon is gone. She’s vanished. There’s no trace of her. She has probably ridden off on her bike to report a hot story for tomorrow’s gossip column in the Baskerville Daily News.

  That’s when I remember a forgotten doorway into our house that I’m sure my sisters have forgotten to lock. There is no time to waste. I have a case to solve by dinner…and my legs are getting cold.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Human Cork