Dodger for Sale (10 page)

But Dodger jumped backward. He was clearly shaking his head again. He pointed at Lizzie.

She got mad. “Wait, you want ME to use mouthwash before I kiss YOU? I’ll have you know I have very fresh breath. In fact, I just rinsed my mouth with toothpaste in this very bathroom just a few minutes ago. But here: If it will get this over with faster, I’ll be glad to oblige your ridiculous, pigheaded request.”

She grabbed the mouthwash and took a big swig. “Um, not to be too technical about it or anything,” I said, “but I think it was actually a frog-headed request.”

Apparently, that wasn’t the right time to make a joke, because Lizzie and Dodger both gave me dirty looks again. Then, before any of us had time to think, Lizzie grabbed Dodger with one hand, lifted him to her lips, and gave him a kiss. She put him down on the counter. Then she washed her mouth out about fifty times, and scrubbed her hands with hot water and tons of soap.

Just as Lizzie turned to get a hand towel from the rack, there was a loud POP! All of a sudden, the frog on the counter turned into a blue chimpanzee. A four-and-a-half-foot-tall chimpanzee. His head whacked into the bathroom ceiling with a terrible hollow thump, like what you’d get if you whacked a coconut with a board. His one visible eye rolled up into his head, and he fell straight backward off the counter.

I hurled myself toward the edge of the countertop and tried to catch Dodger, but he outweighed me by at least sixty pounds, so we both went tumbling over the edge of the tub. Dodger landed on top of me so hard that I couldn’t breathe. While I struggled to get some air into my lungs, Lizzie started shouting, “Oh, my goodness! Dodger, are you all right? And Willie? Willie, can you hear me? Please, Willie, say something—anything!”

I felt Dodger stirring. Slowly, he pushed himself up and off me. Then he turned, grabbed me by the arms, and hoisted me out of the tub. I looked at him. Lizzie looked at me. He looked at Lizzie. Although he was still looking kind of dazed and was rubbing the top of his head with one hand, he sounded like he was back to normal as he said, “So, Lizzie, am I a great kisser, or what?”

She elbowed him in the ribs and said, “I swear to you, Dodger, if I get warts on my face from this, I’ll—”

“Wait a minute, you two!” I said. “Dodger, what happened? Where’s my sister?”

Just then, there was a POOF! and Rodger appeared next to Lizzie. The bathroom was getting rather crowded. “Dodger,” he said, “did you send out a distress call? Are you all right, safe, A-Okay, peachy-keen, hunky-dory—?”

Dodger put his other hand on his head and sat down next to me on the edge of the tub. “No, I’m not okay. Dudes, it was horrible! I tried to protect Amy, but they zapped me too fast. And there were so many of them. They burst into the house without even knocking. They were screaming and yelling at each other, blowing whistles, barking orders that didn’t make any sense as they came clumping up the stairs. Amy was in her room, and they stormed straight in there and started bossing her around. I tried to talk to them, but they wouldn’t listen to anyone but themselves. They had no mercy. They had no pity. They had really clunky, old-fashioned footwear!”

“Oh, no,” Rodger exclaimed. “It can’t be! Willie’s sister has been kidnapped—by a bunch of elementary-school principals?”

“Worse than that, Rodger.” He took a deep, shuddering breath, and I could see Rodger wondering what in the world could be scarier than a pack of principals.

Then Rodger said, “Lunch ladies?”

Ugh. That
would
be worse. But Dodger shook his head.

“No, bro, I
wish
it had been lunch ladies. But it’s even more totally horrible-riffic than that.”

“Dodger,” Lizzie said, “I don’t think ‘horrible-riffic’ is a word, actually.”

“Can we please focus?” I asked. “Dodger, just tell us: Who took my sister?”

Dodger shuddered and said, “Sprites, Rodger. The dreaded sprites.”

“Sprites? Amy was kidnapped by a group of sodas?”

Lizzie chimed in. “No, Rodger. Sprites are mythical woodland creatures. You know, pixies, elves, fairies …”

“Leprechauns,” Dodger added.

“All right,” I asked, “so what’s so scary about the leprechauns? They’re only, like, a foot and a half tall.”

Dodger fired back, “The leprechauns might be small, but they’re totally tough. And tricky—if you look away from one for even a second, he goes POOF!”

Yes, we had already noticed that. “All right, so what happened after they came in?”

“I told you, they zapped me and I turned into a frog. They also cast a Shoe Spell on your mom.”

“A Shoe Spell?”

“Yes, the dreaded Curse of the Comfortable High Heel. Your mom is sitting downstairs now, staring at a magical, perfectly comfortable high-heeled shoe—hypnotized. Don’t worry, she’ll be fine once we wake her up, although she may develop a strange dissatisfaction with all of her dress shoes. Anyway, then they grabbed Amy. Their leader guy kept saying, ‘She is the chosen one! She is the chosen one!’ She was kicking and yelling, but they did some kind of magic spell thing and she fell asleep. The next thing I knew, like, twelve of the little dudes picked her up on their shoulders and carried her out the door. I tried to go after them, but I couldn’t turn the doorknob!”

“So what DID you do?”

Dodger looked a little sheepish. “I, um, ate a fly.”

Lizzie’s eyebrows shot up. “You ATE a fly?”

“Dude, for your information, flies happen to be delicious. They have this thin, crunchy outer coating, and then on the inside there’s this juicy, zesty burst of flavor!”

Lizzie just looked at him.

“What? Was I supposed to just let him fly around annoying everybody all day? And waste all those essential vitamins and minerals?”

I cleared my throat, and they both looked at me. “Okay, so what are we going to do about this?”

“Um, wash it down with some fruit juice?”

“No, Dodger, what are we going to do about the fact that ANGRY FAIRY CREATURES HAVE MY SISTER?”

“Oh, that,” Dodger said. “Why didn’t you say so? Uh, the way I see it, all we have to do is find their place of power, round up some magical weapons, attack, and get Amy back. No problemo.”

“I see,” I said through clenched teeth. “All we have to do is attack the leprechauns in their headquarters. Even though we’re totally outnumbered and don’t know what the heck we’re doing. Or where the headquarters even
is.
”

“Sure, when you say it like
that
, it sounds pretty bad. But we totally know where their hideout is.”

Lizzie and I both said, “We do?”

“Duh—at the end of the rainbow.”

“So all we have to do is wait for it to rain, hope the sun comes out at the perfect time, and go for it?”

“Well,” Dodger said, “that would work. But it’s not the easiest way.”

I stomped my foot. “NO FOOLING!” I shouted. “But do you have a better idea?”

“Sure, we could just walk there in, like, ten minutes flat.”

“What are you talking about? It isn’t even raining.” I couldn’t believe we were even talking about this like it made some kind of sense. But my life is just kind of weird like that, I guess.

Dodger took a deep breath and said, “Can you name the colors of the rainbow, Willie?”

“Yeah, we learned them in art class. Red, orange, yellow, green … ummm …”

Lizzie took over: “Blue, indigo, violet.”

“Right. And what color is the Field of Dreams?”

“Blue,” I said. “So what?”

“So if we just go to the Field of Dreams, and then go to the next, next field, that’s where the leprechauns will be.”

“The next field?” Lizzie asked.

“No, not the next field—that would be indigo. We have to go to the
next
, next field. Boy, do I have to explain everything? Two colors after blue is violet. And that’s the end of the rainbow. So all we have to do is get to the purple field.”

I swear, if Dodger ever
starts
making sense to me, I think I’ll go get my head examined. But hey, if we were going to go get ourselves into a huge mess of trouble and danger, at least the location was convenient.

“All righty, then,” I said. “All we have to do is walk over there with some—what do you call ’em?—magical weapons, attack the leprechauns, and save my sister. Good thing that’s not a completely terrifying idea or anything.”

“Dude, you don’t need to worry.”

“I don’t?” I asked.

“He doesn’t?” Rodger asked.

“Nope,” Dodger said with a goofy grin. Then he said the five scariest words in the English language: “I totally have a plan!”

S
O NOW YOU KNOW
how I ended up on a snowboard with Dodger, flying off a ski jump and over the rainbow in order to save my sister. It was a crazy ride. I think I would have had trouble just riding a regular board down the magical mountain that Dodger had created in the middle of the Field of Dreams. But when the board was painted with flying potion, and I had a hyperactive chimp clinging to my back, things got really difficult.

Somehow we didn’t wipe out on the downhill, although that meant we had developed some seriously terrifying speed going into the slalom course. Before I even knew what was going on, Dodger started leaning sideways and shouting, “Right! Now left! Now right again!” in my ear. I twisted my body one way, then the other, then back again, and—miraculously—we made it through the slalom flags, too.

Which only left the scariest part of all: the jump. “All right, Willie!” Dodger yelled. “We just have to make sure we get enough height to go over the rainbow. If we hit it—”

I could feel him shudder even in the middle of zipping down the ramp. “What happens if we hit the rainbow?”

“Um—let’s just not do that, dude. Okay?”

Yikes. We went down the rest of the ramp so fast that it felt like the skin on my face was going to peel off. I leaned forward as hard as I could, even though every nerve in my whole body was screaming STOP! at full volume. I knew we only had one shot at this, and I had to rescue Amy.

Going off the end of the ramp was the most nauseating thing that’s ever happened to me. It was like my stomach had dropped straight down through my body and tumbled away into space. Only worse. We flew upward so hard that my feet were getting crushed against the board. We were higher than the treetops of the forest. We were nearly as high as the clouds! Then, just when I felt like I might faint, we reached the top of our arc through the air—and started drifting downward. There was a rainbow about fifty feet ahead of us and maybe twenty feet down. I couldn’t tell whether we were going to clear the top of it.

“PULL UP!” Dodger yelled. Whatever that meant.

I tried hard to lift my front foot in its strap, and that seemed to add a little lift to our glide. Then we were maybe twenty feet from the rainbow and ten feet above it. I pulled up even harder, and felt Dodger bouncing on the end of the board behind me. The front of the board angled even higher, and we cleared the rainbow by maybe six inches, at the most.

Whew. I didn’t know what happens when you hit a rainbow on a snowboard, but I was glad this wouldn’t be my day to find out. “What now?” I asked Dodger over the roar of the wind in my ears.

“Now comes the crash landing! Hang on!” Yeah, like he really needed to tell me to hang on. Although, come to think of it, what was I supposed to hang on
to
? I didn’t have long to wonder, because the next thing I knew, we were losing altitude faster than ever. Suddenly, the bottom of the board was smashing through branches. Then we were tumbling forward. I did at least three somersaults when I hit the ground, which hurt pretty badly. Then Dodger landed on top of me, which hurt even worse.

I groaned, spat out a twig, and sat up. Dodger climbed off my back and said, “Cool, huh?” Strangely, it
was
kind of cool—not that you should try it at home or anything. But then I looked up. The scene in front of me was unbelievable: There were approximately thirty leprechauns standing around a bonfire. Sitting in a wooden chair in front of the blaze was my sister, Amy. Her eyes widened when she saw me. All the leprechauns were staring, too. Then one, who was even shorter than the others, stomped up to us and said, “I am Tim Tuttle, the Improbably Large. I rule this land. Ye dare to invade our magical glade with only two warriors? Are ye insane?”

“Dude, who said there were only two of us?” Dodger said. At that exact moment, Lizzie and Rodger came plummeting from the sky on the Magic Carpet of Khartoum and landed on top of Tim Tuttle. As a tiny bump under a carpet, he didn’t look so improbably large at all. His voice was pretty big, though. “ ’Et ’e oug ub here!” he shouted through the thick rug. “ ’Et ’e oug ub here!”

“What’s that you say? Get you out of there?” Rodger said. “I think we can grant you that wish, perform that task, render that service. Hang on!” Rodger and Lizzie jumped off the carpet, then reached down and lifted the edge.

Tim Tuttle climbed out from beneath the rug, spitting out dust bunnies and sneezing. Then he said, “Leprechauns! Attack! Attack! At-choo!”

The leprechauns were standing around looking confused. “Who’s At-choo?” one of them asked. “And why would we attack him?” asked another. Finally, Big Pat Clancy stepped out of the throng and said, “A-ha! I should have known it was ye, Dodger! And ye, Rodger! And ye, Willie of the Stinky Sneakers!”

“And me,” Lizzie said, stepping toward him. “Lizzie of the Melted Boot!”

I stepped up next to her. “Let my sister go,” I said in my strongest, steadiest voice.

“Who’s your sister, Stinky?”

I pointed to Amy. “That’s her, right there! The one you’re holding hostage. We tried to be friends with you before. We tried to be nice and reasonable. But if you want a fight, I’ll fight every single one of you to get my sister back!”

Amy jumped up. “You will?” she asked, sounding surprised.

Truthfully, I was kind of surprised at what I’d said, too. But as soon as I had said it, I’d known it was true. “I will!” I said, raising my fists.

“Wait a minute,” Tim Tuttle said. “Your sister is our new queen?”