29 - Monster Blood III

“The Monster Blood! It’s growing again!” Evan Ross stared at the quivering
green blob in his driveway. It looked like an enormous wad of sticky green
bubble gum, and was bigger than a beach ball. Bigger than
two
beach
balls!

The green blob trembled and shook as if it were breathing hard. It made
disgusting sucking sounds. Then it started to bounce.

Evan took a step back. How did the sticky goo get out of its can? he
wondered. Who left it in the driveway? Who opened the can?

Evan knew that once Monster Blood starts to grow, it can’t be stopped. It
will grow and grow, and suck up everything in its path.

Evan knew this from painful experience.

He had seen a giant glob of Monster Blood swallow kids whole. And he had seen
what had happened when his dog, Trigger, had eaten Monster Blood. The cocker
spaniel had grown and grown and grown—until he was big enough to pick up Evan in his teeth and bury him in the backyard!

A small chunk of Monster Blood had turned Cuddles, the tiny hamster in Evan’s
class, into a raging, growling monster. The giant hamster—bigger than a
gorilla—had roared through the school, destroying everything in its path!

This gunk is dangerous, Evan thought. It may be the most dangerous green
slimy stuff on Earth!

So how did it get in Evan’s driveway?

And what was he going to do about it?

The Monster Blood bounced and hiccupped. It made more disgusting sucking
sounds.

As it bounced, it picked up sticks and gravel from the driveway. They stuck
to its side for a moment, before being sucked into the center of the giant wet
ball.

Evan took another step back as the ball slowly started to roll. “Oh, noooo.”
A low moan escaped his throat. “Please. Noooo.”

The Monster Blood rolled over the driveway toward Evan, picking up speed as
it moved. Evan had tossed one of his Rollerblades by the side of the house. The
green goo swallowed up the skate with a loud
thwoccccck.

Evan gulped as he saw the skate disappear into the bouncing green ball. “I—I’m next!” he stammered out loud.

No way! he told himself. I’m getting out of here.

He turned to run—and went sprawling over the other skate.

“Ow!” he cried out as he fell hard on his elbows and knees. Pain shot up his
arms. He had landed on both funny bones.

Shaking away the tingling, he scrambled to his knees. He turned in time to
see the seething goo roll over him.

He opened his mouth to scream. But the scream was trapped inside him as the
heavy green gunk splatted over his face.

He thrashed both arms wildly. Kicked his feet.

But the sticky goo wrapped around him. Pulling him. Pulling him in.

I—I can’t breathe! he realized.

And, then, everything turned green.

“Evan—stop daydreaming and eat your Jell-O,” Mrs. Ross scolded.

Evan shook his head hard. The daydream had seemed so real. His mother’s voice
still sounded far away.

“Evan—hurry. Eat the Jell-O. You’ll be late.”

“Uh… Mom…” Evan said softly. “Could you do me a really big favor?”

“What favor?” his mother asked him patiently, pushing back her straight blond
hair into a ponytail.

“Could we never have
green
Jell-O again? Could you just buy other
colors? Not green?”

He stared at the shimmering, quivering green mound of Jell-O in the glass
bowl in front of him on the kitchen counter.

“Evan, you’re weird,” Mrs. Ross replied, rolling her eyes. “Hurry up. Kermit
is probably wondering where you are.”

“Kermit is probably busy blowing up his house,”

Evan replied glumly. He pulled the spoon out of the Jell-O. It made a gross
sucking sound.

“All the more reason for you to hurry over there,” his mother said sharply.
“You are responsible for him, Evan. You are in charge of your cousin until his
mom gets home from work.”

Evan shoved the green Jell-O away. “I can’t eat this,” he murmured. “It makes
me think of Monster Blood.”

Mrs. Ross made a disgusted face. “Don’t mention that slimy stuff.”

Evan climbed down from the stool. Mrs. Ross pushed a hand gently through his
curly, carrot-colored hair. “It’s nice of you to help out,” she said softly.
“Aunt Dee can’t really afford a babysitter.”

“Kermit doesn’t need a baby-sitter. He needs a
keeper
!” Evan grumbled.
“Or maybe a trainer. A guy with a whip and a chair. Like in the circus.”

“Kermit looks up to you,” Mrs. Ross insisted.

“Only because he’s two feet tall!” Evan exclaimed. “I can’t believe he’s my
cousin. He’s such a nerd.”

“Kermit isn’t a nerd. Kermit is a genius!” Mrs. Ross declared. “He’s only
eight, and already he’s a scientific genius.”

“Some genius,” Evan grumbled. “Mom, yesterday he melted my sneakers.”

Mrs. Ross’ pale blue eyes grew wide. “He
what
?”

“He made one of his concoctions. It was a bright yellow liquid. He said it
would toughen up the sneakers so they would never wear out.”

“And you let him pour the stuff on your sneakers?” Evan’s mother demanded.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Evan replied unhappily. “I have to do everything
Kermit wants. If I don’t, he tells Aunt Dee I was mean to him.”

Mrs. Ross shook her head. “I wondered why you came home barefoot yesterday.”

“My sneakers are still stuck to Kermit’s basement floor,” Evan told her.
“They melted right off my feet.”

“Well, be careful over there, okay?”

“Yeah. Sure,” Evan replied. He pulled his Atlanta Braves cap over his head,
waved to his mother, and headed out the back door.

It was a warm spring day. Two black-and-yellow monarch butterflies fluttered
over the flower garden. The bright new leaves on the trees shimmered in the
sunlight.

Evan stopped at the bottom of the driveway and lowered the baseball cap to
shield his eyes from the sun. He squinted down the street, hoping to see his
friend Andy.

No sign of her.

Disappointed, he kicked a large pebble along the curb and started to make his
way toward Kermit’s house. Aunt Dee, Kermit’s mom, paid Evan three dollars an hour to watch Kermit after school every afternoon. Three
hundred
dollars an hour would be a lot more fair! he thought angrily.

But Evan was glad to earn the money. He was saving for a new Walkman. Trigger
had mistaken his old Walkman for a dog bone.

But Evan was earning every penny. Kermit was impossible. That was the only
word for him. Impossible.

He didn’t want to play video games. He didn’t want to watch TV. He refused to
go outside and play ball or toss a Frisbee around. He didn’t even want to sneak
down to the little grocery on the corner and load up on candy bars and potato
chips.

All he wanted to do was stay downstairs in his dark, damp basement lab and
mix beakers of chemicals together. “My experiments,” he called them. “I have to
do my experiments.”

Maybe he
is
a genius, Evan thought bitterly. But that doesn’t make him
any fun. He’s just
impossible.

Evan definitely wasn’t enjoying his after-school baby-sitting job watching
Kermit. In fact, he had several daydreams in which Kermit tried one of his own
mixtures and melted to the basement floor, just like Evan’s sneakers.

Some afternoons, Andy came along, and that made the job a little easier. Andy
thought Kermit was really weird, too. But at least when she was there, Evan had someone to talk to, someone who didn’t want to talk about
mixing aluminum pyrite with sodium chlorobenzadrate.

What is Kermit’s problem, anyway? Evan wondered as he crossed the street and
made his way through backyards toward Kermit’s house. Why does he think
mixing
is so much fun? Why is he always mixing this with that and that with
this?

I can’t even mix chocolate milk!

Kermit’s house came into view two yards down. It was a two-story white house
with a sloping black roof.

Evan picked up his pace. He was about fifteen minutes late. He hoped that
Kermit hadn’t already gotten into some kind of trouble.

He had just pushed his way though the prickly, low hedges that fenced in
Kermit’s yard when a familiar gruff voice made him freeze.

“Evan—were you looking at my yard?”

“Huh?” Evan recognized the voice at once. It belonged to Kermit’s next-door
neighbor, a kid from Evan’s school.

His name was Conan Barber. But the kids at school all called him Conan the
Barbarian. That’s because he had to be the biggest, meanest kid in Atlanta.
Maybe in the universe.

Conan sat on top of the tall white fence that separated the yards. His cold
blue eyes glared down at Evan. “Were you looking at my yard?” Conan demanded.

“No way!” Evan’s voice came out in a squeak.

“You were looking at my yard. That’s trespassing,” Conan accused. He leaped
down from the high fence. He was big and very athletic. His hobby was leaping
over kids he had just pounded into the ground.

Conan wore a gray muscle shirt and baggy, faded jeans cutoffs. He also wore a
very mean expression.

“Whoa. Wait a minute, Conan!” Evan protested. “I was looking at Kermit’s
yard. I
never
look at your yard. Never!”

Conan stepped up to Evan. He stuck out his chest and bumped Evan hard, so
hard he stumbled backwards.

That was Conan’s other hobby. Bumping kids with his chest. His chest didn’t
feel like a chest. It felt like a truck.

“Why
don’t
you look at my yard?” Conan demanded. “Is there something
wrong with my yard? Is my yard too ugly? Is that why you never look at it?”

Evan swallowed hard. It began to dawn on him that maybe Conan was itching for
a fight.

Before he could answer Conan, he heard a scratchy voice reply for him.
“It’s a free country, Conan!”

“Oh, noooo,” Evan groaned, shutting his eyes.

Evan’s cousin, Kermit, stepped out from behind Evan. He was tiny and skinny.
A very pale kid with a pile of white-blond hair, and round black eyes behind big red
plastic-framed glasses. Evan always thought his cousin looked like a white mouse
wearing glasses.

Kermit wore enormous red shorts that came down nearly to his ankles, and a
red-and-black Braves T-shirt. The short sleeves hung down past the elbows of his
skinny arms.

“What did you say?” Conan demanded, glaring down menacingly at Kermit.

“It’s a free country!” Kermit repeated shrilly. “Evan can look at any yard he
wants to!”

Conan let out an angry growl. As he lumbered forward to pound Evan’s face
into mashed potatoes, Evan turned to Kermit. “Thanks a lot,” he told his cousin.
“Thanks for all your help.”

“Which way do you want your nose to slant?” Conan asked Evan. “To the right
or to the left?”

“Don’t do it!” Kermit shrieked in his scratchy mouse voice.

Conan raised a huge fist. With his other hand, he grabbed the front of Evan’s
T-shirt. He glared down at Kermit. “Why not?” he growled.

“Because I have
this
!” Kermit declared.

“Huh?” Conan let go of Evan’s shirt. He stared at the glass beaker Kermit had
raised in both hands. The beaker was half-full with a dark blue liquid.

Conan let out a sigh and swept a beefy hand back through his wavy blond hair.
His blue eyes narrowed at Kermit. “What’s that? Your baby formula?”

“Ha-ha,” Kermit replied sarcastically.

If Kermit doesn’t shut up, we’re
both
going to get pounded! Evan
realized. What is the little creep trying to do?

He tugged at Kermit’s sleeve, trying to pull him away from Conan. But Kermit ignored him. He raised the beaker close to
Conan’s face.

“It’s an Invisibility Mixture,” Kermit said. “If I pour it on you, you’ll
disappear.”

We should
both
disappear! Evan thought frantically. He let his eyes
dart around the backyard. Maybe I can make it through that hedge before Conan
grabs me, he thought. If I can get around the next house and down to the street,
I might escape.

But would it be right to leave little Kermit at Conan’s mercy?

Evan sighed. He couldn’t abandon his cousin like that. Even though Kermit was
definitely asking for it.

“You’re going to make me invisible with that stuff?” Conan asked Kermit with
a sneer.

Kermit nodded. “If I pour a few drops on you, you’ll disappear. Really. I
mixed it myself. It works. It’s a mixture of Teflon dioxinate and magnesium
parasulfidine.”

“Yeah. Right,” Conan muttered. He peered at the liquid in the beaker. “What
makes it blue?”

“Food coloring,” Kermit replied. Then he lowered his squeaky voice, trying to
sound tough. “You’d better go home now, Conan. I don’t want to have to use this
stuff.”