The Power Potion

1.
A Warning

2.
A Potentially Perilous Situation

3.
Goats

4.
A Three-Pronged Fork in the Road

5.
A Sticky Situation

6.
Vinnie Gets Grilled

7.
A Terrifying Tug-o’-War

8.
Sticky Feels the Hate

9.
Opening the Power Gates

10.
A Quick Backtrack

11.
Suckerooed

12.
The Wink of a Wicked Eye

13.
Welcome Home

14.
Shut Out

15.
Things That Go Bwa-Ha-Caw in the Night

16.
Sticky Gets the Shaft

17.
A Terrifying Tank of Tarantulas

18.
Inside the Pirate Chest

19.
The Inner Sanctum

20.
Trapped!

21.
Trail of Tarantulas

22.
Itchy-Yitchy-Yah-Yah

23.
An Unexpected Parade

24.
Buzzy Bee Power

25.
Showdown!

26.
A One-Sided Duel

27.
Circling the Wagon

A Guide to Spanish and Stickynese Terms

It began as an ordinary after-school afternoon for Dave Sanchez. He pulled on his red Roadrunner Express sweatshirt, clipped on his bike helmet, and pedaled away from Geronimo Middle School to the sneers and jeers of Lily Espinoza and her sassy, saucy girlfriends.

“Hurry, hurry! You don’t want to be late,
delivery boy
.”

“Have fun
couriering
packages!”

“Don’t forget to say please and thank you!”

Dave ignored them and pedaled like mad to put distance between him and his alter-life as a dork. This was not just because it’s humiliating and intimidating and incredibly
infuriating
to
be sneered at and jeered at by sassy, saucy girls.

Oh no.

It was also because the behavior of Lily and her friends made it terribly tempting for Dave to throw down his bike and say, OH YEAH? and give away a secret so secret that “top-secret” didn’t even begin to describe it.

It was more a tippity tip-top secret.

A zippity zip-lip secret.

A spill-the-beans-and-you’ll-lose-everything sort of secret.

Fortunately for Dave, he did not spill the beans. Instead, he pushed the pedals. And before long he was downtown, picking up his first delivery envelopes at City Bank.

“Here you are!” Ms. Kulee said, handing him three large envelopes. Ms. Kulee had given Dave his start in the business and took real pride in Roadrunner Express’s success. “They’re all places
you’ve delivered to before,” she said as Dave looked over the addresses.

Dave thanked her and started to move away but stopped and pulled from his pocket a pickup request that had come in from a new customer. “Do you know where Moongaze Court is?”

Ms. Kulee thought a moment, then shook her head. “But I can look it up for you,” she said brightly.

“That’s all right,” Dave said. “I’ll just look it up at the gas station.”

“Are you sure? It’ll only take me a minute to punch it into my computer.”

But Dave, being an impatient thirteen-year-old boy, did not have time to waste on what would surely become ten minutes of unexpected interruptions and “quick” phone calls. Instead, he said, “No, that’s okay,” and hurried out the door and down the steps to his bike.

Dave, you see, often looked up addresses on a map posted in the office window of a gas station
that was located in the old industrial part of the city (a route he took to avoid downtown gridlock). It wasn’t so much a gas station as it was an old-fashioned service station. One with a tired old dog in the office, a soda machine that held glass bottles, and a side lot full of broken-down cars.

So, after completing his downtown deliveries, Dave rode over to the service station.

Unfortunately, the map posted in the office window was about as old as the axle-greased man who ran the place. “Back again, eh?” the man said as he rubbed his greasy hands on an even greasier red cloth. “Which one’s got ya befuddled this time?”

Dave glanced away from the map, taking in the old man’s oval name patch. His gray shirts were always the same, but the name patches were
never
the same.

Not yet, anyway.

Today, the old man was Hal.

Last time, he’d been Gary.

The time before that, Fred.

The time before that, Steve.

The time before…Well, you get the picture. The point is, there was a body of evidence to support the fact that, despite his consistently
axle-greased appearance, the man did, in fact, change his shirt.

No, actually, that isn’t the point at all. The
real
point is that the name patch switcheroo was one of the things that drew Dave back to this forlorn service station.

It was a sort of curiosity magnet.

The other thing was the man himself. He was helpful and friendly and seemed to have enough knowledge to span ten lifetimes.

He also wriggled his alarmingly hairy nose when he thought, and seemed to have absolutely no embarrassment about his frequent and flamboyant flatulence (or, if you prefer, firecracker farting).

Perhaps he felt it was part of the full-service gas station experience.

“I’m looking for Moongaze Court,” Dave told him, pointing to the outskirts of town on the map. “I found Moongaze Boulevard, Street, Avenue, Road, Way, and Place…but there’s no Court.”

“They do that,” the man said. “They keep carvin’ up an area and don’t have the brains to come up with somethin’ creative to name the new streets.” He joined Dave’s finger on the map’s grid with his own, his nose twitching like a rabbit’s. “Chances are, it’s somewhere thereabouts,” he said after a few moments. “That’s residential, though. And in Gypsy Town.”

Dave looked at him. “Gypsy Town? What do you mean?”

“Ah, well!” the man said, letting out a battery of butt blasts. “Before the city grew and swallowed everything up, gypsies were said to rule that part of town.” He gave Dave a sly grin. “If you’d be wantin’ your fortune told or your pocket picked, that’s where you’d go.”

“But…I’ve never even heard of that.”

“People are too polite,” the man said with a mighty pop out his backside. “Me, I like to tell it like it is.”

“But…
gypsies?
Around here? No way.”

“Ah, sonny,” the man said with a gentle shake of the head. “Times may have changed, but the ways carry on.” He tapped the glass. “If that’s where you’re goin’, be careful.”

Still, Dave (being an all-knowing thirteen-year-old) did not believe a word of it. What was a gypsy, anyway? Someone with a lot of scarves and a crystal ball? Someone who could put a curse on you?

Who believed that?

It was like believing in witches or warlocks, and Dave, you see, did not believe in sorcery of any kind.

Which was curious, really, given the nature of his tippity tip-top, zippity zip-lip secret.

But still, he did not.

And so he simply said thanks to the axle-greased man with the changeable name and pedaled away, barreling blithely toward Gypsy Town.

Gypsies (or, as many prefer to be known, Romanies) are simply a wandering people who (because they were not welcomed into more established societies) learned to survive by telling fortunes, entertaining, and (yes) swindling. A certain romantic air surrounds their reputation, as does an uncertain fear.

This fear is, in large part, a fear of the foreign, a fear of the unknown.

Especially among adults.

Now, as Dave left the main road (named, humorously enough, Jackaroo Avenue) and entered the area the axle-greased man with the changeable name had called Gypsy Town, there
was
a distinct change in scenery.

The roads narrowed.

The sidewalks disappeared.

The houses first shrank, then stacked into multistoried dwellings with business shingles that dangled from first-floor eaves or awnings and said things such as ALTERATIONS, CLOCK REPAIR, ANTIQUES, and FORTUNES.

The trees grew larger.

Broader.

Shadier.

The ambient temperature dropped.

Slowly.

Steadily.

Dave, however, did not notice these things. His attention was wholly and solely on the street signs. He’d turned left from Jackaroo Avenue onto Moongaze Boulevard, then left again onto Moongaze Street, and left twice more onto Moongaze Avenue and Moongaze Road. And now, spotting Moongaze Way, he turned left
again
.

With each new street, Dave questioned whether he’d made the correct turn. But then he’d come upon the next street, where he would again turn (and again wonder if he’d made the correct choice).

The road at this point was barely wide enough for a car to drive along, and it was here that Dave started noticing goats.

Big, hairy white goats with long, broad horns.