Going, Going, Gone! With the Pain and the Great One (5 page)

“I know it, sweetie.” Charlie petted my head like I was Fluzzy. She doesn’t have permission to call me
sweetie
. Only Mom is allowed to call me that. But I was glad she was there, so I didn’t say anything. I didn’t even tell the Great One to take her hand off my arm.

Next Dr. Itchee said, “Can you lie back and hold very, very still?”

“Maybe,” I said.

Dr. Itchee pulled on doctor gloves. I held Bruno against me. I was scared but not
that
scared. First Dr. Itchee looked up my nose with a light.
“Aha!”
she said. She sounded like the magician who came to Dylan’s birthday party. He was always saying “Aha!”

“It’s really up there,” Dr. Itchee said. She put her light away. “Okay, Jake … I’m going in now.” It sounded like she was going to shrink herself into a teeny, tiny doctor and crawl up my nostril.

But then I saw the long, pointy tweezers heading for my nose and I shoved them out of the way. “No!” I yelled.

Dr. Itchee said, “I can’t do this unless you keep still.”

“He’s scared,” the Great One said.

“I think this might be easier if you both waited outside,” Dr. Itchee said to Charlie and the Great One.

“But I
need
them!” I told Dr. Itchee. “They have to stay.”

“All right,” Dr. Itchee said. “But your sister has to be quiet. Can you be quiet?” she asked the Great One.

I would have laughed except I was too scared. For once, the Great One didn’t say anything. She just nodded.

“This won’t hurt if you hold still,” Dr. Itchee told me. “And it will only take a minute. That’s sixty seconds. Can you count to sixty?”

“Of course he can count to sixty!” the Great One said. “He’s in first grade.”

Dr. Itchee shot the Great One a look. The Great One covered her mouth and said, “Oops!”

I held on to Bruno and squeezed my eyes shut.

Then Dr. Itchee said, “You can start counting now. Don’t forget to say ‘one hundred’ between each number.”

The Great One counted with me.
“One–one hundred, two–one hundred, three–one hundred.” I felt something cold inside my nose. I held Bruno tighter. “Four–one hundred, five–one hundred, six–one hundred …”

Then I felt the cold thing come out of my nose and Dr. Itchee said, “Got it!”

That’s when Mom came rushing in with Dylan and Justin right behind her. Mom gave me a big hug. “Sweetie,” she said. “You’re so brave!” She kissed me and kept patting my head.

“He’s not
that
brave,” the Great One said.

Justin and Dylan gave me high fives. Then Dr. Itchee sat on the edge of my table.

“Okay, boys,” she said. “I want you to listen carefully to what I’m going to say.” She looked from Dylan to Justin to me. “Are you listening?” she asked.

We all nodded.

“Never, and I mean
never
, put anything up your nose that doesn’t belong there.”

“What belongs there?” Justin asked.

“Maybe nose spray,” Dr. Itchee said. “But only if the doctor prescribes it. And never put anything in your ears, either. Not even a Q-tip.”

“How about between your toes?” Dylan said.

“Between your toes is okay,” Dr. Itchee said. “There’s no place for it to get lost. But never put anything in any of your bodily orifices.”

“Body
offices
?” I started thinking about having offices inside my body. And every day tiny people would go to work there.

“Orifices,” Dr. Itchee said.

“They don’t know that word,” Mom told her.

“Even
I
don’t know that word,” the Great One said. “And I know a lot of words.”

“It means openings,” Dr. Itchee said. “And in this case it means bodily openings.”

“You mean holes?” Justin asked.

“Yes,” Dr. Itchee said. “Nothing goes in any of your—”

“Holes!” Dylan sang. Then the three of us laughed.

Dr. Itchee sighed. “Let’s call them bodily openings, okay?”

“What about food?” Justin asked. “Food goes into your mouth and that’s a—”

“Hole!” Dylan sang again.

Mom said, “Boys—listen to Dr. Itchee. She’s trying to tell you something important.”

“Thank you,” Dr. Itchee said to Mom. “Jake was lucky today. But I’ve seen kids who weren’t so lucky. So I want you all to promise you’ll never do that.”

“I promise,” I said.

“Me too,” Dylan said, “even though it was a fun game!”

Justin said, “I already knew not to put anything up my nose because my dad’s a doctor.”

Dr. Itchee looked surprised. “Then why did you do it?”

Justin shrugged. “Because my friends did.”

“Just because your friends do something doesn’t mean you should.”

Justin’s face turned red. He looked like he was going to cry. Mom said, “I think Justin knows that now. I think they all understand. Right, boys?”

We nodded. Then I said, “Can we go home now?”

Dr. Itchee said we could.

“And can I take that furry booger with me?” I asked.

“Euwww …” the Great One said. “That would be
so
disgusting!”

“I like being disgusting,” I told her.

“And you’re really good at it!” she said.

“Thanks,” I answered.

“You’re not welcome.”

I laughed with my friends. Then we all went out for ice cream.

KAPOOIE ONE

Yesterday it snowed. The first snow of the season. We built a snowman and put Dad’s old rain hat on top of his head. But last night it rained and made a mess of the snow. It’s still raining. A rainy December Sunday. Not that Dad’s rain hat is helping our snowman. I watched out the window as he melted away.

When he was just about gone, Dad
called, “Who wants to go to a movie at the mall?”

“I do,” the Pain shouted. “I want to see
Fried
.”

“No fair!” I said. Because who wants to see a stupid movie about a bunch of robots
trying to fry each other? “I want to see
Unicorn
.”

“Unicorn?”
the Pain said. “That’s a
girl
movie!”

“Is not!” I told him. “It’s about two boys and a girl.”

“But it’s still a
girl
movie!”

“We’ll only go if you can compromise,” Dad told us.

“What’s compo … what’s that word?” the Pain asked.

“Compromise,” Dad said. “It means decide together. It means if Abigail wants red and Jake wants blue …”

Before Dad could finish I called, “We choose purple!”

“Good thinking, Abigail,” Dad said.

I smiled. I like being a good thinker.

Then Dad added, “But that’s not necessarily the way it works, because maybe there is no purple. Maybe you have to decide on either red or blue because those are the only choices.”

“I know,” I said to Dad. “You can take the Pain to see
Fried
and Mom can take me to see
Unicorn
.” I knew
that
was good thinking!

But Dad said, “Mom needs the afternoon off to catch up on work.”

“Okay,” the Pain said, just like that. “I’ll see the unicorn movie.”

“You will?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Because I’m a good compo …”

“Compromiser,” Dad said.

That made me mad. “How come you didn’t give me the chance to prove what a good compromiser I am?” I asked Dad.

“I’m sure you’ll have the chance to prove how well you can compromise very soon.” Dad checked his watch. “Go and get ready. We’ll have lunch at the food court.”

“Yay, the food court!” the Pain shouted. “I want pizza!”

“I want burritos!” I shouted louder.

“Pizza!”

“Burritos!”

“Children,” Dad said. “It’s time for another compromise.”

“So soon?” I asked.

“I told you you’d get the chance to prove how well you can compromise,” Dad said to me.

But before I could say anything, the Pain sang, “Okay, I’ll have burritos.”

“Yay … burritos!” I sang.

“Not so fast, Abigail,” Dad said. “You got to choose the movie. Jake gets to choose which kind of food to have.”

“But Dad … he only eats white food. Doesn’t that make it unfair?”

“There’s no restaurant in the food court that serves only white food,” Dad reminded me. “So I don’t think you have to worry about that.”

The Pain was smiling that sly smile of his.

“Okay,” I said. “Pizza.”

The Pain shouted, “Yay … pizza!”

The mall was crowded. Holiday music was
playing and there were decorations everywhere. A big cardboard Santa held a sign pointing to Santa’s Workshop. That reminded me of something. So I started telling Dad this story about when I was little and Aunt Diana took me to Macy’s to see Santa and I cried because when I sat on Santa’s lap he kept
ho-ho-ho-ing
in my face and he had the most disgusting breath ever.

Dad said, “Was Jake there too?”

“Jake isn’t in this story,” I said.

“Who wants to be in your boring old story?” the Pain mumbled.

My story got longer and longer because one thing led to another and Dad finally said, “How does this story end, Abigail?”

And I said, “It ends … it ends when … um …” And then I looked over at the Pain but he wasn’t there. I turned and checked behind me. He wasn’t there either. I looked all around. But he wasn’t anywhere. So I tugged Dad’s arm and said, “Where’s the Pain?”

“I thought you said Jake isn’t in this story.”

“Dad—I mean he’s gone. One minute he was next to me and then
kapooie
—just like that, he wasn’t.”

Dad looked in every direction. Then he ran up and down the mall, calling “Jake … Jake … where are you?”