The Trouble with Fuzzwonker Fizz

  Dedication

  For Harold Floyd, the most amazing

  stunt kid in the world

  —P.C.

  For Joni,

  My Love.

  My Life.

  My Laughter . . .

  —B.S.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Excerpt from Fizzopolis: Floozombies! Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  About the Author and Artist

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Hi, I’m Harold Fuzzwonker. I’m the one with the zippy striped shirt, the huge grin from ear to ear, and the really long arm. I’m riding one of my favorite things in the world: my red bike.

  “I’m coming in hot!” I screamed, pedaling like a wild banshee. In one hand, I held a milk shake.

  I could hear the assembled crowd of two people talking about me as I raced by.

  “That Fuzzwonker kid is a real airhead,” Jeff Flasky, an annoying neighbor of mine, said.

  A girl I’d never met before came to my defense. I’d seen her at my last event, though. She was new in town.

  “Not true!” she said. “Harold Fuzzwonker is the most dangerous daredevil in Pflugerville. I saw him jump over a swimming pool last week.”

  “It was a kiddie pool,” Jeff Flasky said. “And it was filled with pillows.”

  “He’s gonna make it!” the girl shouted as I approached the ramp.

  She was sitting on a green bike with a banana seat and a sissy bar. If it was my bike, I’d call it the Dill Pickle.

  “If you say so,” Jeff Flasky said. He shrugged his shoulders and his giant head wobbled back and forth. Flasky’s got a real noggin on him.

  It’s at least two sizes too big for the rest of Jeff Flasky.

  I took a sip of the milk shake and pedaled even faster.

  “He really is coming in hot,” the girl said.

  “Like a blowtorch,” Flasky agreed.

  “And one-handed. The real deal.”

  Those were the last words I heard as my front wheel hit the wobbly ramp, and I was airborne. The world went into slow-mo as I glided above my dad’s car. Everything was going exactly like I had planned until I sailed over the handlebars and landed on the pavement in a pool of milk shake.

  “Whoa!” the girl yelled.

  “What an airhead,” Jeff Flasky said.

  I stuck my tongue out and licked some of the milk shake off the driveway.

  The next thing I remember, I was lying in bed with an ice pack as big as a watermelon balanced on top of my head. I popped the top on a bottle of Fuzzwonker Fizz and guzzled the contents down in one gulp. Then I burped for nine seconds in a row.

  “What a dud,” I said, looking at the bottle.

  My dad, Dr. Fuzzwonker, invented this amazing soda pop that will give you the biggest, longest burps in the world (it’s super-popular stuff, as you can probably imagine). He adopted me when I was a teensy-weensy bundle of baby. We live together in the town of Pflugerville in an ordinary-looking house. My dad spends a lot of his time in the top secret basement. I haven’t been down there. It’s that secret.

  “You tried to jump over the car again, didn’t you?” Dr. Fuzzwonker asked.

  “I did.”

  We both looked out my bedroom window, where Jeff Flasky and the girl I didn’t know were standing on the sidewalk. Flasky was holding a sign that said Harold = Stoopid. The girl had a sign, too. That one said Do It Again!

  “Your fans?” my dad asked.

  I shrugged and the watermelon-sized bag of ice almost fell off my head. “I’m a polarizing figure, Dad. What can I say? It’s part of my persona.”

  My dad’s gaze landed on the pavement. “Is that my milk shake?”

  I smiled like a goofball.

  “I’ll get you another one!”

  I could see the wheels turning in my dad’s head. He was imagining me jumping over a row of garbage cans and crashing through the front window of our house.

  “Isn’t nine a little young for a daredevil?” he asked me.

  “Dad, I’m ten,” I said. “How else would I have these huge muscles?”

  I sat up in bed and flexed, producing a tiny bump in the middle of my noodle arm. It was about the size of a marble.

  Dr. Fuzzwonker moved swiftly to my bed for a closer look at my mega monster muscle.

  “Good gravy gobblers, you are ten! You’ve got some real live muscle there. Do you realize what this means? It means something BIG. I’ve been saving a present for your tenth birthday. And here you are, already ten!”

  I’ve gotten used to the idea that Dr. Fuzzwonker is brilliant but scatterbrained. He sometimes forgets things (like how old I am).

  “I get to drive the car!” I yelled.

  “Not a chance,” Dr. Fuzzwonker said. He folded his arms across his chest and acted like I would never guess what it was.

  I took the bag of ice off my head and pulled my hat down close to my ears, thinking. I never take my hat off unless I go scuba diving or waterskiing (two things I have never done), or when my dad makes me take a shower. I’m not a fan of showers. I wish Dr. Fuzzwonker would use a water bazooka and hose me down in the backyard in my polka-dot Bermuda shorts.

  “You got me a dinosaur!” I yelled.

  “We’ve talked about this a thousand times,” Dr. Fuzzwonker answered. “You can’t have a dinosaur until you’re twelve. It’s a big responsibility.”

  I scratched my hat. I was running out of ideas. “A flying motorcycle?”

  “Not even close!” Dr. Fuzzwonker said, his eyes growing wide with excitement.

  “How about a titanium robot that fights evil space lobsters?” I asked. “Is that it?”

  “You know I haven’t finished the Lobstrobot yet.”

  “Argh. Is it a Homework Completor 4000? I’ve been asking for one of those for at least ten thousand years.”

  “Still working on it.”

  “What is it? Tell me!”

  Dr. Fuzzwonker leaned in close and paused and smiled and raised his eyebrows.

  “I’m giving you something better than all those things put together. I’m giving you . . . a JOB!”

  I had a vision of standing on an assembly line, making loopy women’s earrings or sorting through a conveyer belt of rotten fruit or cutting the grass on a football field with a pair of fingernail clippers.

  “I’m only ten!” I shouted. “You can’t give me a job!”

  But Dr. Fuzzwonker wasn’t done telling me everything about my long-awaited present.

  “Come along, my freshly minted ten-year-old. Your job is in the basement.”

  That was when I jumped out of bed like a monkey struck by lightning.

  Here’s a little bit about Dr. Fuzzwonker before I go on with the basement situation.

  While Dr. Fuzzwonker may look like a normal doctor, he is not. He’s a food doctor. I know what you’re thinking. Dr. Fuzzwonker fixes broken French fries and performs surgery on donuts.

  No! What Dr. Fuzzwonker does is even better than that. He invents weird stuff to eat and drink. Like Fuzzwonker Fizz, the most popular kids’ pop in the world. Fuzzwonker Fizz packs twenty essential vitamins and minerals into a sweet-tasting, totally sugar-free celebration for your taste buds.

  But that’s not why everyone in Pflugerville loves it so much.

  Fuzzwonke
r Fizz is so popular because it makes the longest burps in the history of ever. They last, on average, fourteen seconds.

  The longest, loudest Fuzzwonker Fizz burp ever officially recorded was produced by Lucy Detmyer when she was ten. Lucy’s burp lasted twenty-seven seconds and sounded like a lawn mower.

  It was bubble-gum flavored. Lucy got a Fuzzwonker Fizz endorsement deal for that burp. And her own flavor: Lucy Lemon.

  Another famous recorded burp came from Carlyle Spunkman. He was driving in the car with his mom when he downed a whole bottle of Fuzzwonker Fizz and “AAARP!” The loudest burp in all of recorded-history-since-before-the-Romans came out of his mouth. Although it’s only a rumor, some people say the car windows exploded. Another unconfirmed rumor about Carlyle’s burp: The family cat was in the car and has since gone completely deaf from the magnitude of that amazing moment of burpdom.

  Dr. Fuzzwonker gave Spunkman his own flavor, too: Spunky Strawberry.

  So I was jumping up and down on my bed, and my head was almost hitting the ceiling. I was that excited to finally see the super-secret-Fuzzwonker basement.

  “I need to finish some taste testing,” Dr. Fuzzwonker said. He looked at his watch. “Meet me in the kitchen in thirty-seven point three seconds.”

  I did a bunch of somersaults and cartwheels down the hallway and arrived in the kitchen four minutes late.

  Dr. Fuzzwonker waited for me next to the refrigerator. He was swirling up some kind of crazy vegetable drink in our Blend-O-Matic. There were two glasses, and he poured half of whatever this stuff was into each one. It was lumpy, orange, and foamy.

  “I’m going with waffles,” I said, grabbing a cold one from a stack on a plate. “You can have my half. I don’t mind.”

  “Why, thank you,” my dad said, and then he chugged both glasses in two seconds flat.

  He opened the refrigerator door and reached way back, past a cantaloupe, around a teetering stack of chocolate donuts, back, back, and still back farther, where a very old bottle of hot sauce was hiding in the farthest corner.

  He turned toward me, suddenly as serious as an Oxford dictionary.

  “Everything you see, from this point on, is a Fuzzwonker family trust. It’s secret. This is not a little secret, it’s a BIG one. The biggest one there is! Even people in the Pentagon don’t know about this stuff. Even the Navy SEALs and the president can’t know about it. Even if aliens arrive and blow everyone away with lasers and only you and one other person remain on the planet, you still can’t speak a word about what’s hidden in the basement. EVEN IF—”

  “I get it,” I interrupted. “Don’t tell my buddies at school.”

  “Exactly!”

  I nodded and picked up another leftover waffle from the counter. I’d better fill up the tank in case my dad makes me work for five hundred hours without a break. It could happen.

  Dr. Fuzzwonker twisted the bottle of hot sauce. Three times one way, then back again twice.

  “Hot SAWCE,” he said, then jumped back, slammed the door of the refrigerator shut, and picked up his coffee mug.

  I put an entire waffle in my mouth and reached for the door.

  “Better not touch that,” Dr. Fuzzwonker said, sipping his coffee. “It’s dangerous.”

  I needed some milk, badly, but we didn’t have any in the fridge. The waffle was drier than a mouthful of powdered soap and it was clogging up my windpipe, so I turned on the water at the sink and leaned over the counter. My mouth felt like it was full of wet cement, but I didn’t mind. I was going to the basement!

  When I turned back, the refrigerator had moved four feet to the left. I reached down and picked up a purple sock covered in dust bunnies.

  “I’m guessing this belongs to you?” I asked.

  Dr. Fuzzwonker took off his left shoe.

  “Socks are so hard to keep track of, don’t you agree?” Dr. Fuzzwonker said.

  Dr. Fuzzwonker put his lost sock back on and then put his shoe back on, and then the wall opened up like an elevator door.

  “Go ahead, get in. We’ve got work to do!” Dr. Fuzzwonker said.

  And so it was that I, Harold Fuzzwonker, was introduced to my dad’s secret elevator, which led to an even secreter secret.

  “You’re going to want to start chewing this,” my dad said, handing me a foot-long stick of gum. It was the biggest piece of gum I’d ever seen.

  “Oh yeah! Is this a new product test? Hmm. Let’s see. Well . . .”

  “Keep chewing.”

  “Dad, this is just regular bubble gum,” I said, but the wad of gum was about the size of a baseball, so it came out like, “Phap oof egg bubb mmmmm?”

  “We’re not conducting a taste test today, newly minted employee,” my dad said. “Also you’re slobbering on my shoe.”

  I was very interested in whatever gross, weird, irresponsible shenanigans were going on in the basement of the Fuzzwonker house. My job was going to give me a peek into the super-secret laboratory where Fuzzwonker Fizz was created! Maybe I wouldn’t have to do any work at all. Maybe I’d get a lab coat and test new candy and bigger burps. Yeah! That had to be it!

  “Keep chewing,” he reminded me again.

  And so I did.

  Dr. Fuzzwonker got into the elevator with me and stared at the buttons. I read the words above each level of the basement.

  Way down there.

  Wow, this is really far under the house.

  Holy dirt mouse, Fuzzwonker! Much farther and you’ll hit China!

  “Please spit your gum into your hand,” Dr. Fuzzwonker said. “You’re going to need it to bypass our first security protocol.”

  I started to ask what to hold on to, because the elevator was nothing but four walls, three buttons, and a ceiling. Dr. Fuzzwonker grabbed a huge glob of previously chewed gum off the side of the elevator and stuck it to his shoe.

  What the heck?

  He nodded for me to do the same. The second I got my giant wad of gum on my shoe and stuck it on the floor, he hit button number three, and it was like someone had cut the rope that held up the elevator. I screamed. My arms flew up into the air, but my foot stayed glued to the floor.

  “What if my shoe comes off?” I yelled.

  “Curl your toes, newbie. You’ll be fine,” my dad said calmly.

  Down the elevator went, faster and faster, until it passed Wow, this is really far under the house with a pleasant ding!

  “Almost there,” Dr. Fuzzwonker said.

  When the elevator came to a stop and I was sure we weren’t going any farther, my stomach crawled down from my throat.

  Dr. Fuzzwonker and I took the gum off our shoes and stored both wads on the wall.

  “This is super gross,” I said.

  “I know. Isn’t it the best?” Dr. Fuzzwonker smiled.

  I had to agree. It was totally awesome.

  “Remember now,” Dr. Fuzzwonker said. “Everything behind this door is seeeeeecret.”

  I gulped like there was a boiled egg caught in my windpipe.

  I was finally going to see the basement.

  I waited for the doors of the elevator to open and thought about what might be hiding on the other side. Dr. Fuzzwonker had always been unpredictable when it came to inventing things, and this made me nervous.

  Once, when I was four, Dr. Fuzzwonker made a ball of saltwater taffy almost as big as the house. He made it in the backyard, where it spread out and ate my tricycle, my jungle gym, and three cats.

  It took an hour and a half to get the cats out, and we had to shave all three of them bald to keep them from sticking to the furniture.

  That ball of taffy darn near ate me when I got too close and tried to touch it. We were lucky it didn’t roll down the street and eat some cars and garbage cans.

  “Are you ready for your first day of work?” Dr. Fuzzwonker asked.

  “I have no idea,” I said as I thought about the house-sized ball of taffy and shivered.

  “Prepare to be wowed,” Dr. Fuzzwonker said.
“You are about to see . . . FIZZOPOLIS!”

  The doors opened and I looked out over Fizzopolis for the first time. It was a vast underground habitat filled with color and light.

  Conveyer belts zigzagged in every direction, carrying Fuzzwonker Fizz bottles. In the middle of the space was a gigantic machine with pipes and tubes and buttons and levers.

  “That’s the Fizzomatic machine,” Dr. Fuzzwonker said.

  “You’ve been busy down here,” I marveled.

  Dr. Fuzzwonker grabbed a bottle of Fuzzwonker Fizz rolling by, popped the top, and guzzled it down. He burped for twelve seconds.

  “Good one,” I said.

  Dr. Fuzzwonker looked at the bottle. “One of my greatest inventions, don’t you think?”

  A furry creature about the same size as me waddled by. It made a fizzy sound as it went, and little bits of neon green confetti trailed behind it.

  I was starting to get used to the idea that Fizzopolis was going to be full of surprises, but I still threw my hands in the air and ran around in circles like an idiot.

  “This is nuts!” I said, because you know, an ALIEN CREATURE had just walked by.

  I took a closer look around and realized there were furry creatures everywhere.

  What the—

  “The Fizzomatic doesn’t just make Fuzzwonker Fizz,” my dad said. “It also makes Fizzies.”

  “Fizzies?” I asked. “What’s a Fizzy?”

  “Why sure, Fizzies. Walk with me.”

  Dr. Fuzzwonker talked while we walked.

  “I began my work as a food-mad scientist when I was ten, just like you. I loved to mix potions and make poofs of smoke and produce small zaps of lightning.”

  We passed under a big tree with looping limbs.

  “Did you learn that stuff from your dad?” I asked.

  “Actually, it all started with my dad’s dad, Fuzzwonker Senior. He owned a restaurant that specialized in noodles. It was called Seldoon. That’s “noodles” spelled backward. Seldoon had every kind of noodle imaginable, and I was a noodle experimenter from the start. I made all sorts of gizmos and gadgets that helped Fuzzwonker Senior create the best noodle dishes in town. We made the longest noodle in the history of the world—seven miles—which I ate in one sitting.”