Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder (6 page)

“Hmm,” Nilly said. “That sounded like an A. I have perfect pitch. Just check with your tuning fork.”

“You're not only tone-deaf, you're deaf!” Mr. Madsen sputtered, shaking and spitting in agitation. “Shut that door again and don't ever come back here! Surely you don't think any band would take someone so small that … that …”

“That there isn't even room for the stripe on the side of his uniform pants,” Nilly said. “So short that his band medals would drag on the ground. So teensy-weensy that he couldn't see what was on the music stand. Whose uniform hat falls down over his eyes.”

Nilly smiled innocently at Mr. Madsen, who was now rushing straight toward him in long strides.

“So he can't see where he's going,” Nilly continued. “And suddenly he finds himself on Aker Street while the rest of the band is marching down Karl Johan Street.”

“Exactly!” Mr. Madsen said, grabbing hold of the door and flinging it shut right in Nilly's face. Then he stomped back over to his music stand. He noted the big grins on Truls and Trym's faces before he raised his baton.

“So,” Mr. Madsen said. “Back to the national anthem.”

That Night, in a Sewer Beneath Oslo

THERE ARE BIG animals in the sewers that run every which way beneath Oslo. So big that you probably wouldn't want to bump into them. But if you pick up a manhole cover on one of Oslo's streets and shine a flashlight down into the sewer world, it just may happen that you'll see the light catch the teeth
in the jaws of one of the huge, slimy beasts before it scurries away. Or before it sinks its teeth into your throat. Because they are quite speedy beasts. And we're not talking now about the regular, innocent
Rattus norvegicus
, i.e., little Norwegian rats, but about properly beastly beasts. Like Attila. Attila was an old Mongolian water vole who'd lived for thirty-five years and weighed more than thirty pounds. If you want to read more about water voles, turn to page 678 in
Animals You Wish Didn't Exist
.

As it so happened, Attila liked to eat a little
Rattus norvegicus
for breakfast, and it was the king of the Oslo Municipal Sewer and Drainage System. That is to say, Attila thought it was, until now. Attila's reign had started many years ago, but this water vole hadn't always been king. When Attila was a few months old and was a cute, tiny fur ball weighing only a few ounces, it had been bought in a pet store by a family in Hovseter, Norway. They bought the Mongolian water
vole because the fat little boy in the family had pointed at Attila and yelled that he wanted a rat like that. And his parents had done what the little boy ordered. They had fed Attila fish balls, the worst thing Attila knew of, and put a metal collar on the rat with the name
ATTILA
engraved on it, and the fat little boy had tormented the poor water vole every single day by poking sticks into the cage. Every single day, until the day Attila had gotten so big from eating fish balls that it needed a new cage while it could still fit out the opening of the old one. Attila had been looking forward to this day. And when the boy stuck his hand into the cage to drag Attila out, Attila had opened its mouth as wide as it could and sunk its teeth into the delicious, soft, white human meat. This was a totally different kind of meatball! And while the little boy screamed and his blood gushed, Attila was out of the cage, as fast as a Mongolian water vole could go, out of the apartment, away from the above-ground part of Hovseter and
down into the sewer. And from there the water vole had found his way to downtown Oslo, where its beastly behavior had quickly earned the water vole respect. Attila was feared by Norwegian rats citywide, from the manhole covers at Majorstua subway station to the sewage treatment plant at Aker.

But on this night, deep beneath Oslo, while Lisa and Nilly were sleeping like babies, it was Attila who was gripped by fear. The vole was sitting in the corner of a sewer pipe, shaking. Because in a flash of light it had seen something right in front of him. A glimpse of teeth. Teeth even bigger than its own. Could the legend he'd been hearing for all these years in the Oslo Municipal Sewer and Drainage System be true after all? Attila felt its Mongolian water vole heart pounding in fear and it was so dark, so dark. And for the first time, Attila realized it actually smelled pretty bad down here in the sewer and that it really would prefer to be anywhere else besides this sewer
pipe right now. Even its old cage in Hovseter. So Attila tried to comfort itself. Obviously the legend must be made up. An anaconda? What bologna. An anaconda is a boa constrictor that is found in the Amazon, where it lives off of huge water voles and such, not here deep beneath Oslo, where there aren't any water voles at all. Apart from the one, that is. Attila contemplated this briefly.

And while the water vole was thinking, something moved toward Attila. It was huge, like an inflatable swim ring, surrounded by jagged teeth the size of ice-cream cones, and it was hissing and had such bad breath that the rest of the sewer smelled like a flower bed in comparison.

It was so frightening that Attila quite simply squeezed its eyes shut.

When the vole opened them again, something was dripping and dripping all around. And it was excessively dark. Just as if Attila weren't sitting in
a sewer pipe but inside something that was even darker. And it was as if the walls were moving, pulling in closer and slithering. As if the water vole were already inside the stomach of … of …

Attila screamed at least as loud as that fat little boy he had bitten so long ago.

Nilly Does Simple Math

WHEN LISA WALKED out the door the next morning, Nilly was standing across the street with his backpack on, kicking rocks.

“What are you waiting for?” Lisa asked.

Nilly shrugged and said, “To see if anyone walks by who's going the same way as me.”

“No one's going to come by,” Lisa said. “This is a dead-end street and we live at the end of it.”

“Well then,” Nilly said, and they started walking down Cannon Avenue together.

“Proctor invited us to come over after school for the Last Big Powder Test,” Nilly said. “Are you coming?”

“Of course,” Lisa said. “Are you excited?”

“As excited as a little kid,” said Nilly.

When they'd made it almost all the way down to the main road, Lisa stopped and pointed at the house at the bottom of Cannon Avenue.

“That's where Truls and Trym live,” she said. “If I see them come out, I usually wait here until they're gone. If I don't see them, I run quickly past. Come on …”

Lisa took Nilly's hand and was about to run, but Nilly held her back.

“I don't want to run,” he said. “And I don't want to wait, either.”

“But …,” Lisa began.

“Remember, there's two of us,” Nilly said. “There's just as many of us as Truls and Trym. At least. It's simple math.”

So they walked past Truls and Trym's house. Nilly was walking really, really slowly, Lisa thought. She could still tell that he was a little scared, though, because he was constantly looking over at the house. But luckily neither Truls nor Trym came out, and Lisa looked at her watch and realized they must have gone to school already.

“Do you know what time it is?” she exclaimed in alarm, because she was a good girl and wasn't used to being late.

“I don't have a watch,” Nilly said.

“Mrs. Strobe is going to be super pissed. Hurry!”

“Aye, aye, boss,” Nilly said.

And they ran so fast that they got there in the time it took you to read from the beginning of this chapter to here.

UNFORTUNATELY, TIME DIDN'T pass as quickly the rest of the day. Nilly was so impatient to get home for the Last Big Powder Test that he sat there in the classroom counting the seconds as he watched Mrs. Strobe's mouth moving. He wasn't paying attention, so when he suddenly realized that Mrs. Strobe was pointing at him and that everyone else in class was looking at him, Nilly figured that Mrs. Strobe had probably asked him a question.

“Two thousand six hundred and eighty-one,” Nilly said.

Mrs. Strobe wrinkled her brow and asked, “Is that supposed to be the answer to my question?”

“Not necessarily,” Nilly said. “But that's how
many seconds have passed during this class. Well, now four more have gone by, so now two thousand six hundred and eighty-five seconds have passed. It's simple math.”

“I understand that,” Mrs. Strobe started. “But Nilly …”

“Excuse me. That isn't the right answer anymore,” Nilly said. “The right answer is now two thousand six hundred and eighty-nine.”

“To me, it sounds like you're trying to talk your way out of what I asked you about,” Mrs. Strobe said. “Because you heard what I asked you, right, Nilly?”

“Of course,” Nilly said. “Two thousand six hundred ninety-two.”

“Get to the point,” Mrs. Strobe said, sounding a little irritated now.

“The point,” Nilly said, “is that since there are sixty seconds in a minute and forty-five minutes in
each class, I won't have time to answer your question, since sixty seconds times forty-five is two thousand seven hundred seconds, and that means the bell is going to ring right …”

No one heard the rest of what Nilly said, because the bell started ringing right then, loud and shrill. Mrs. Strobe tried looking sternly at Nilly, but when she yelled, “All right, everyone out!” he could see that she couldn't quite help but smile anyway.

AFTER LISA AND Nilly had spent sixteen thousand and two hundred seconds together in the classroom and two thousand seven hundred seconds on the playground, they ran away from the school as quickly as they had run toward it. They parted on Cannon Avenue, each opening their own gate, each running up their own front steps, and each flinging their backpack in their own hallway. Then they met again in front of Doctor Proctor's gate.

“I'm almost dreading it a little,” Lisa said.

“I'm almost looking forward to it a little,” Nilly said.

Then they stormed into the yard and through the tall grass.