My Rotten Life by David Lubar

Author:David Lubar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

11

Keep Your Chin Up

Shark!”

I looked through the tank. It was like watching a television that had way too much blue in the picture. But the show was definitely an action comedy. Mookie was running around in front of the tank, waving his arms in terror and screaming. “Help! Shark!”

The guy dropped the bucket and ran toward him. Mookie kept screaming as he raced into the next room. The guy chased after him.

“Knock it off, kid!”

I jumped into my clothes and went back through the door.

“Got it?” Abigail asked.

“Yup.”

“Maybe we’d better leave. We can meet Mookie in the parking lot.”

“Good idea.” We went outside, and I handed her the bag.

“Great. That’s plenty. Now we just have to mix it with the other ingredients and let it sit.”

“Sit? How long?” I’d figured she’d whip up some kind of formula right away.

“I’m not sure. At least overnight. I have to extract the collagen fibrils from the calcium salts.”

“We need to hurry. Can’t you do it faster?” I could almost feel death creeping down my legs.

“You’ll be fine,” Abigail said.

“And don’t come back until you learn how to behave!”

I looked over at the door, where Mookie was being ejected from the aquarium.

“Thanks,” I said when he joined us. “You really saved me. I owe you one.”

“Just keep that in mind when you become mindless and get an urge to eat brains.”

“I’m not going to eat brains!” I shouted.

“I’ve got two kidneys,” Mookie said. “I guess you could have one of those. But not my liver. I’m pretty sure I only have one. You probably wouldn’t want it, anyhow. I’ll bet even zombies don’t eat liver.”

I stopped listening.

When Mrs. Goldberg picked us up, she had even more stuff crammed in the van. I guess she went to the recycling center for the opposite reason than most people do. We wedged ourselves in and rode back to town.

“Thanks for the ride,” I said when Mrs. Goldberg pulled up at my house.

“I’ll get right to work on our science project.” Abigail gave me a wink to let me know she meant the cure.

“We have a science project?” Mookie screamed. “Nobody told me. When’s it due?”

I pushed him out of the van. “He’s such a kidder,” I said to Mrs. Goldberg.

I got out and waved as they drove off.

“It’s great that Abigail is helping you,” Mookie said after I’d explained to him that he wasn’t about to flunk science.

“Yeah. I just wish I didn’t have to wait for the cure. My parents are going to get suspicious if I don’t eat dinner.” I could see my mom dragging me to all sorts of doctors.

“That’s no problem,” Mookie said. “Just do what I do when my mom makes macaroni with clams and cheese. I push my food around and pretend I’m chewing something. The real trick is that I squish everything to one side so half my plate is empty. She never notices that I don’t put anything in my mouth.”

“That’s not a bad idea. I’ll give it a try.

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