Bully-Be-Gone by Brian Tacang

Author:Brian Tacang
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2006-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

When Millicent got home from school, she saw flashes of light coming from the basement windows and heard pops and bangs. Uncle Phineas was working. Curious about what he was doing, she snuck over to a window and peeked in. Her uncle was surrounded by rolls of tape, his head in the sink under a stream of water. She’d seen enough sinks for the day. She tiptoed across the porch, shivering in her drenched, icy-cold clothing, and turned her key as quietly as she could. She crept upstairs, showered, dressed in her fuzzy bathrobe, wrapped a towel around her head, and crawled into bed. She felt like such a failure.

A knock rattled the door.

“Millicent, is that you? Are you home?” asked Uncle Phineas. “I felt the water pressure drop. Were you showering?”

She didn’t want to answer.

“Millicent?” he called again.

“Yes, Uncle Phineas,” she said softly. “I’m home.”

“May I enter?” he asked.

“Okay.”

The door opened and in walked Uncle Phineas, daylight from the window glinting off his bald head. He’d shaved it while Millicent was in school. A strip of tape ran across the center of his head from where his hairline would be to the base of his skull.

“What’s that?” she asked, pointing at his scalp.

“An experiment,” said Uncle Phineas, sidling up to her bedside. He sat and continued. “A new product, Diffollicle Mohawk Tape. Orange. Think of the possibilities: stripes, geometrics, bull’s-eyes, labyrinths. Why, an industrious person with a working knowledge of textiles could even do a plaid, yes?”

“That’s nice, Uncle Phineas,” she said glumly.

“Some reaction to a product bound to shake up the cos-metological universe,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said, her expression vacant.

“Will I have to tickle the source of your depression out of you?” he asked, his fingers poised, “or will you offer it freely?” She didn’t reply, so he scooted her over and lay down next to her. “It must be pretty bad, yes? You’re home early and you appear healthy.” He knew her so well.

She didn’t respond.

“Well, seeing that I’m conversing solo, I’ll tell you a story which may be of assistance in what I assume is your hour of need.” He gave her a sidelong glance. She smiled limply. He was silent for a moment. “Where was I?” he asked.

“You were going to tell me a story,” she said. “You hadn’t begun yet.”

He grinned broadly. “So, you were listening,” he said.

She nudged him with her elbow.

“The year was 1989,” he began, propping his arms behind his head, “or was it 1984? Maybe it wasn’t the eighties at all. Anyway, your mother was freshly graduated from college. Oh. It had to be the eighties. That’s when she graduated, yes. I’d graduated ten years before and had started my own company, Vaccu-Matic Carpets Limited.”

Millicent sat up. She’d never heard the Vaccu-Matic Carpet story before.

“I thought, and rightly so,” he continued, “that vacuum cleaners were archaic mechanisms, doomed to go wherever outmoded appliances go. So I invented the Vaccu-Matic Carpet with Autosuck Technology. Instead of using a vacuum cleaner to

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