Cheesie Mack Is Not a Genius or Anything Read online

  Georgie and I have been Little Guys for the last four years. This year we would still be Little Guys, but our cabin would be the oldest of the Little Guys, which is terrific. We’d get to be in charge of Little Guys campfires, movie nights, the skit and talent show, color war, and lots of other great stuff. Next year we’ll be the youngest of the Big Guys. Not so good.

  Granpa’s ex-wife owns both the boys’ camp and the girls’ camp. She is not my grandmother because she married Granpa fifteen years after my father was born, and they got divorced long before I was born. Everyone at camp calls her Aunt Lois, and so do I.

  “This ruins the whole summer,” Georgie muttered softly, and then we sat in our clubhouse without talking. Finally I said something I didn’t really even think about before I said it.

  “If you can’t go to camp, then I won’t go, either.”

  After I said it, I wasn’t sure I really meant it.

  Georgie lifted his head slowly and stared at me for a long time.

  “You serious?”

  Was I? Summer camp in Maine was my most favorite thing I did all year.

  I looked at my best friend. He looked awful.

  I felt terrible.

  I swallowed hard, then gave a big nod. I knew I had made the right decision.

  The Mouse Plot

  My decision not to go to camp was huge news in my house that night. Here’s what Mom, Dad, Granpa, Goon, and Deeb said:

  “Ha-ha.”

  “No way you two are staying home alone. Unless Georgie has adult supervision, you’ll go down to the limo garage every day.”

  Said nothing. Tried to make me laugh with a squinty-evil-eye, but I didn’t even smile.

  “Woof.”

  “We’re going to have a lot of fun without you.”

  (I mixed them up. Can you guess who said what? The answers are on this page.)

  Then I got an idea. Sometimes I get an idea that I know is terrible, but I have to say it out loud because even though I think I know the idea is terrible, maybe I’m wrong, and it’s a good idea.

  “Granpa? Maybe you could let Georgie go to camp for free. You know, like getting a scholarship.”

  Remember I mentioned how Granpa likes to argue and get mad? Well, I shouldn’t have been surprised by his reaction.

  “That’s a dumb idea. That’s a dumb idea six different ways!” He was talking loudly. “Dumb Idea Number First.” He held up one finger and waved it around. “I don’t know a blue-blessed thing about how Lois runs her camps. Money-wise, I mean. Scholarship? Forget it. She doesn’t tell me anything. I’m just a hired gun.”

  “Dumb Idea Number Second.” He stuck up two fingers in a V and jerked them around so fast that I leaned backward a little bit to get out of the way. “I happen to know that Lois is almost broke, very cash-short, out of money. Dumb Idea Number Third—”

  “Hey, Pop,” Dad interrupted. “Your Dumb Idea Number First totally contradicts your Dumb Idea Number Second. How can you not know a blue-blessed anything and also know that she’s out of money?”

  Granpa ignored the interruption.

  “Dumb Idea Number Third. If Georgie doesn’t pay, camp won’t mean as much to him, and he’ll just goof off all summer.”

  “But I get in free because you’re the director,” I said, “and I don’t goof off all summer.”

  Granpa ignored me, too. “Dumb Idea Number Fourth …” There was a pause while Granpa waved both hands excitedly. Finally he said, “I can’t remember. And Fifth and Sixth, I found out this week that I’ve got two empty slots on the camp staff that’ll cost Lois extra money to fill. The camp nurse just got a job on a cruise ship, and your counselor from last year has decided to bicycle across Canada.”

  Granpa stared at me like it was my fault.

  I have to admit I was having trouble concentrating on what Granpa was saying because he was holding up only five fingers, but he was already up to Dumb Idea Number Sixth. And I was also thinking about Scott Dutcher, my last summer’s counselor. He was the bicycle-across-Canada guy. Dutcher was this awesome athlete who could do eleven one-armed push-ups, tell very scary lights-out stories, and eat an entire, full-size hot dog, with mustard and relish and tons of goop dripping off of it, in one bite.

  At camp we called that “doing a Dutcher.” Me and all the other campers really liked him. Normally I would have been upset that my favorite counselor wasn’t coming back, but since I wasn’t going to camp unless Georgie got a scholarship, and Granpa had pretty much said that Georgie wasn’t getting a scholarship, it didn’t matter.

  Plus my mother had just served a late dessert: rice pudding, my favorite.

  I really like rice pudding with raisins, which is the way my dad makes it, but he doesn’t cook very often. My sister hates raisins, so Mom makes it without them and gives me a bunch on the side to stick in. But it’s not the same. When you cook raisins inside rice pudding, they get all plumpy. Otherwise, they’re sort of dried and hard. I was poking them into my pudding when Goon interrupted.

  “What’re those? Dried roach brains?”

  Granpa jumped in. “You want to know about roaches? Let me tell you about the bugs underneath Fenway Park. I’m talking cockroaches the size of trombones! I was seventeen, selling ice cream at the ballpark, and—”

  Just then the back door opened, and conversation stopped.

  Everyone (even Deeb, who looked up, yipped softly, and put her head back down) knew it was Georgie because no one else comes in the back way.

  I totally expected him to still be upset about not going to camp, but he was grinning, bouncing from foot to foot, and carrying a paper bag. I waited for him to speak, but he just gave me eye signals to come with him somewhere else. I picked up my rice pudding, yelled “Doin’ a Dutcher!” and slid the whole thing into my mouth.

  Goon yelled, “Slob!”

  My mom shook her head.

  Georgie and I ran upstairs to my room. Deeb bounded after us.

  “I have the greatest plan,” Georgie announced.

  I was trying to pay attention, but I was having trouble swallowing.

  He opened the bag. It was filled with white mice! I coughed, almost choked, and spewed a few globbets. Deeb, who had been sniffing at the bag, immediately licked them up.

  (The rice pudding that I spewed really looked like whatever globbets would be if globbets was really a word, so I convinced the people who publish this book to leave it in. But I made globbets up, so don’t use it in school writing. Your teacher won’t understand.)

  “After you went home, I went downtown with my dad.” Georgie was talking fast. “And while he was in the hardware store, I went into Corvi’s pet shop. You know, across from the library, just to look around. They sell mice for snakes to eat. Today they had way-too-way many, so Mrs. Corvi gave me these for free.”

  There must have been a dozen in the bag. But I didn’t have a clue what this had to do with anything, and to be honest, I was surprised that Georgie, who had been so miserable about not going to camp, was now so excited. I must have looked confused. And anyway, my cheeks were all puffed out with pudding.

  “You don’t have a snake,” I plorfed through my pudding, then swallowed. (I’m having fun making up words!)

  Georgie began knocking his knuckles on my skull. “Hello? We take the bag to school. Let them go during graduation. Screaming. Yelling. Get it?”

  There was a one-second pause of dead silence, then the two of us were screaming and yelling. We stopped suddenly when we saw Goon standing in my doorway. She was smiling.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” she said sweetly, and walked away.

  “Do you think she heard us?” I asked.

  “Who cares?” Georgie replied. “This is the best idea I have ever had.”

  The next morning Georgie, holding his bag of mice, walked in my back door almost an hour early. I was finishing breakfast, already dressed and ready. Mom never even had to remind me. I was that excited. And not about grad
uation.

  My mom is very intelligent. I should not have gotten ready so early. She suspected something. So when Georgie wanted to whisper about the mice, I gave him a shut-up look, glanced over my shoulder at Mom, and changed the subject as we headed up to my room.

  “I looked in the phone book for someone named Prott,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s good,” Georgie replied, staring into his bag of mice. I could tell he had forgotten not only about camp but also all about the heart necklace, the 1909 coin, and the hidden Eureka word we’d found.

  “There’s a G. J. Prott who lives right here in Gloucester,” I said.

  “But the letter came from California.”

  I picked the phone book up off my desk and opened it to the Ps.

  I pointed to a name: “Prott G J 207 Eureka Av Glou.”

  “So?”

  “So? Eureka!” I almost shouted. “Eureka! It’s the hidden word. This has to be the right Prott. The heart necklace? The coin? Remember?” I let that sink in while I scribbled the address on a page I tore from the phone book. It was the page that went from “Tobacco” to “Toilet Seats.” Since nobody smokes in my house, and we already have a seat on every toilet, I was pretty sure that no one would ever notice that it was missing.

  I stuffed the T–T page into my jacket pocket. “Where’s Eureka Avenue?”

  Georgie shrugged an I-don’t-know, held up the bag of mice, and whispered, “Come on. We can find that stuff out later. Right now we’ve got to do our most excellent plan.” Then he grinned the most evil grin I have ever seen.

  We hustled downstairs.

  “What’s in the bag?” Goon demanded when we got to the back door. Middle school was already out for the summer, and she was mad that she had to go to my graduation.

  We ignored her. She was talking to Alex Welch’s brother, Kevin. He’s in Goon’s grade. She thinks he is her boyfriend. He goes to our camp every summer and is really good at sports. After one of Goon’s soccer games, she dared Kevin to prove that he was strong enough to toss me into the Dumpster behind the gym. You can probably guess the rest. I could write a book about why I don’t like him. But don’t worry, I’m not going to. Alex Welch is our suspect for the bike seat dog-pooper. He’s a dork.

  “Georgie and I are going to ride to school!” I yelled to Mom. “We’ll meet you there!”

  “Feed your dog first!” she shouted back. “And stay clean for graduation!”

  My dog is a springer spaniel with big, floppy ears. We got her when I was three. Her actual name is Pandora, but because mythology says that some lady named Pandora let demons out of a box that she wasn’t supposed to open, I gave my Pandora the nickname Devil, which somehow got changed to Deeble, then Deebie, and that’s how we ended up with Deeb. She is a terrific dog, except that she really smells like a dog. I don’t mind it much, but visitors sometimes complain.

  Deeb was waiting on the back porch, where we keep a plastic barrel of kibble. I could tell she was hungry because she was jumping all four feet off the ground over and over. I poured some food in her dish, knelt down, and pretended to eat it. She stopped jumping.

  “You are gross,” Georgie said. “And so is your dog.” He was holding his nose.

  I ignored him. When Deeb tried to come close, I growled at her and showed her my teeth until she backed away. Then I “ate” some more, making lots of chewing, slurping, grunting sounds. When I was finished, I stood up and looked at Deeb. She looked at me, then the dish of food, then back at me. I waited a couple of seconds, then nodded and made a small grunt. Deeb ran to the dish and chowed down.

  This is not exactly a book on dog training, but I know something that is really important if you’re a kid with a dog.

  In the wild, dogs live in packs, so they naturally expect to run around with lots of other dogs. It’s in their genes, I guess. Most pet dogs, however, live with only humans for company. So, even though humans sometimes think their dogs act almost human, IMO it’s actually the dogs that think their humans are some kind of giant dog. There has to be a leader of every dog pack. It’s called the Alpha Dog. I read about it on the Internet. So you should want the leader of the pack in your house to be a human … unless you want your dog to be the boss of your whole family.

  In the woods or the jungle, the Alpha Dog always eats first. So I make certain Deeb knows that I am the Alpha Dog in the best way that her dog brain can understand. I pretend to eat the food until I’m “full.” Then it’s her turn.

  You should try it. It really works. I’ve got a great dog.

  Kevin’s father drove up. Alex leaned out the window, stuck his thumbs in his ears, and waggled his fingers. We ignored him. Goon and Kevin walked by us on their way to the car.

  “What’s in the bag?” Goon asked again. She didn’t even wait for me not to reply.

  I brushed kibble dust off my good pants. Georgie wrapped the top of his bag of mice around a handlebar grip. And we took off toward school. The Mouse Plot was under way!

  Answers: 1. Goon 2. Mom 3. Dad 4. Deeb 5. Granpa

  Capt. Chee Seemak licked his lips, brushed the worm powder off his uniform, then stood and pushed the dish away. He stared at the Taug, then nodded. The beast, a thick smell oozing from its oily fur, unrolled its long black-and-orange tongue and licked up the scraps.

  Sinko Jorsh came lumbering into the chamber, took one look, and muttered in disgust, “Grarq.”

  “A man has to eat something,” Chee said. “It’s crazy to pass up nutrition, no matter what it is.”

  The worldwide famine had made real food almost nonexistent.

  Jorsh moved his metallic mouth into something that was almost a smile and held up a transparent spacebag. In it was a scurrying mass of small creatures. The Taug, by nature an intensely curious beast, flicked its tri-forked tongue toward the spacebag, but Jorsh lifted it out of reach.

  Chee’s eyes widened. “Great work, Jorsh! You may have found the answer to the food crisis. Let’s get those mini-clones to the university.”

  Moments later they were astride their sprocket-rockets heading for the Enlargement Lab.

  *

  Okay, this book is not science fiction. But just now I got to thinking how I would write this whole narrative—my dad says that’s what you call a story if someone like me is telling it—if it really was science fiction. So I wrote the paragraphs above to show you. Of course, it would still be about me, but I wouldn’t be called Cheesie. It’s a great name for a kid, but not for a space hero. (Actually, I might decide to call myself Chee when I get to high school.)

  And in the science fiction version of my story, Georgie Sinkoff (Sinko Jorsh) would be a half-human and half-robotic giant or something else strong. And I’d have Jorsh’s dad building death-ray lasers instead of microwave stuff.

  The Taug (Deeb) would have six legs. Maybe more.

  Granpa would run a training camp for space warriors. My dad would own and pilot a small fleet of passenger spaceships. And my mom would still be an air-traffic controller, except now she’d work at the Glah Star Spaceport instead of Logan Airport.

  Goon would be a hideously deformed mutant.

  Because it’s science fiction, I call this Chapter 4α. That’s not an A, by the way. It’s an alpha, the first letter of the Greek alphabet. I guess that’s why we have an ALPHAbet. Duh. Mom said that Greek letters are used all the time in science, so I figured they’d be good for science fiction, too.

  Maybe my next book will be sci-fi.

  The Haunted Toad and the Runaway Rodents

  Georgie and I have been riding our bikes to school for about two years. Before that, our parents said we were too young, even though we are both very excellent bike riders.

  Although Gloucester is right on the ocean, it is very hilly—something to do with immense glaciers that pushed huge rocks thousands and thousands of years ago and left them right here. About halfway to school we bike by The Haunted Toad. Then we twist and turn downhill for several blocks past a bunch of stores
and stuff until we get to the street our school is on.

  The Haunted Toad is a big, old, dark green-gray house with a nose-high fence—my nose, not Georgie’s—that goes all around the front yard. We didn’t always call it The Haunted Toad. At first we just called it The Toad because its outside looked dry and warty, and Georgie and I thought it looked like a huge, squatting amphibian, which is what toads and frogs are.

  Toad, frog … what’s the difference?

  1. Toads have dry, warty skin. Frogs have smooth, wet skin. (Frogs are not slimy. I have held them. I know.)

  2. Toads are toothless. Frogs have little teeth. (Their teeth are really tiny. I have touched them and have never been bitten.)

  3. Toads have shorter hind legs than frogs. (I do not have personal knowledge of this. I read about it. But if I ever get a toad and a frog together, I will measure and put the results on my website.)

  4. Toads lay eggs hooked together in long strings. Frogs lay one egg at a time in clumps on the surface of the water. (I have seen clumps of frog eggs in the creek between my house and Georgie’s. Lots of times.)

  5. Toads have poison sacs behind their eyes. Frogs are harmless. (Deeb bit a toad once and spit it out immediately!)

  And you cannot get warts by touching either a frog or a toad. I have held frogs lots of times and a toad once, and I have zero warts. It’s a myth.

  Even though we passed The Toad twice every school day, going and coming home, neither Georgie nor I had ever, never seen any sign of life. No lights. No mailman. No gardener. Not even that bluish glow that comes from a television set. So we decided it was deserted. But we didn’t exactly think there was anything weird about it … not yet.

  Then one day about a year ago, maybe near the end of fourth grade, we were biking home from school when I suddenly jammed on my brakes just as we were passing by The Toad. I stopped so fast that Georgie almost crashed into me. I was staring up at the old house … and I wasn’t saying anything.