The Trouble with Fuzzwonker Fizz Read online

  I set the bag down while Floyd asked me what the thing on a stick was they’d served in the cafeteria for lunch and when could he make some in Fizzopolis because he was sure all the Fizzies would like whatever it was.

  “It was a corn dog, silly,” I said. “You really need to get out more.”

  When I turned to grab my backpack, Garvin rode by on his mountain bike and snatched it.

  “Hey!” I said.

  “Hey is for losers, loser!” Garvin laughed. Garvin’s bike was way, way too big for a fourth grader, and he swerved back and forth down the sidewalk like a total dork. But it was a fast bike with lots of gears. He was wearing my backpack on one shoulder and his own on the other. And he was getting away with the Fuzzwonker family trust!

  Sammy raced by on her green bike with the banana seat and the sissy bar.

  “Come on! We gotta get your lizard back!”

  I was on my bike in nothing flat, pedaling like a maniac. If there was one thing I was good at, it was riding my red bike. I raced all the way even with Sammy, but we weren’t gaining on Snood yet.

  “Say, you’re fast!” Sammy said. “But can you do this?”

  Sammy turned sharp to the right, hopped the curb, and rode right through a front yard, cutting the corner and gaining on Snood. I followed right behind, taking the curb and the yard, no problem.

  “Nice move back there,” I said. “We’re gaining on him!”

  We pedaled on, faster and faster, until we came to the curvy stretch of the neighborhood. Garvin wobbled like crazy as he made the turns, and Floyd was leaning out of my backpack, looking inside Garvin’s backpack. I could tell my little buddy was thinking about jumping.

  “Stay put, Floyd!” I yelled.

  “Who’s Floyd?” Sammy asked.

  “I’ll tell you later. Follow me!”

  I weaved off the road and dodged the trees lining the sidewalk with Sammy close behind. It was straighter in the front yards, and we came even with Garvin, who was barely holding it together on the turns.

  “I have an idea!” Sammy said. “Here, take one of these. Uncork it!”

  “I can’t believe you eat this stuff,” I said. Sammy had a tube of Snood’s Flooze in her hand, the yuckiest candy on earth.

  “I don’t eat it,” Sammy said. “I use it for gluing macaroni to cardboard and fixing the sole of my shoe when it comes unstuck at the toe.”

  The Snood’s Flooze she had was packaged like a tube of toothpaste. I heard it tasted like a bowl of flour soaked in syrup, but that was just a rumor because I’d never tried it.

  “Come on! We’re ahead!” Sammy said.

  She turned sharp for the sidewalk, bunny-hopped over a stray cat, and narrowly avoided a mailbox before entering the street in front of Garvin.

  “Start squirting!” she yelled. I followed Sammy over the cat and around the mailbox and pointed the tube of Snood’s Flooze behind me. Then I squeezed the tube as hard as I could.

  Sammy did the same, filling the road with a sticky coat of Flooze. When Garvin’s tires hit the Flooze, his bike started to slow down.

  We slammed on our brakes and waited. Garvin’s wheels were covered in Snood’s Flooze, and the tires were sticking to the pavement. By the time he cleared the pool of Flooze, Garvin’s tires were soaked in sticky sludge. It got to where he was pedaling as hard as he could, but he was barely moving. An old lady with a walker passed him on the sidewalk.

  I pulled up along one side, and Sammy pulled up on the other. We leisurely rode with no hands and had a little conversation.

  “Nice day, right?” I said.

  “Not bad. I could do with a little rain,” Sammy said. “Big fan of rain.”

  Garvin was pouring sweat. He pedaled harder than he’d ever pedaled in his life. Finally, when he was so winded he couldn’t even speak, he pulled his bike over to the sidewalk and flopped over like a dead fish.

  “Here you go,” Sammy said, picking up my backpack and handing it to me.

  “Thanks!” I said.

  “I just hope your lizard is okay.”

  Garvin started to catch his breath and sat up as we rode away.

  “FUZZWONKEEEEEEEEEEER!”

  When we were safely down the street, I decided to check on Floyd. I stopped, opened the backpack, and searched inside. I moved all my books back and forth. I pulled this journal out. I turned it over and dumped everything onto somebody’s front yard.

  “This is impossible!” I screamed.

  Sammy looked at me like I was losing my marbles, but this was about as big a deal as big deals get.

  Floyd was not in my backpack.

  I made a fateful decision then. I decided to let Sammy in on the Fuzzwonker family trust. Taking Floyd to school was going to be harder than I thought. If today had been a sample of days to come, there was no way I could hide Floyd from sneaky Garvin all by myself. I needed a friend.

  “Floyd is not a lizard,” I said.

  “You mean the little green guy who lives in your backpack?” Sammy asked. “I wondered about that.”

  I put everything back into my backpack, and we started riding to where we’d peeled off from Garvin. While we rode, I told Sammy everything. I used my super-fast voice because that’s the voice I use when I’m worried. And boy was I worried. I gave her the entire story of Fizzopolis in one breath.

  “So that’s where Floyd came from?” Sammy asked.

  “Yeah, that’s where Floyd came from. He got attached to me and when I’d leave, he sort of—”

  “Freaked out?” Sammy suggested.

  “Yeah. He can be a troublemaker.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “But he’s my best good buddy! I have to take care of him. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about Fizzopolis or Floyd. But I need a friend. This is a really big responsibility.”

  We arrived where Garvin had been, but he was gone. And there was no sign of Floyd.

  “Say no more,” Sammy said. “If Floyd is your best good buddy, then I’ll be your super-duper palomino.”

  I nodded because having a super-duper palomino sounded like something every person should be lucky enough to have.

  “There’s one more thing,” I said. “The Snoods are serious trouble. They’ve been trying to steal the Fuzzwonker Fizz recipe forever, so Garvin is always spying on me. If he has Floyd, he’s going to wonder where my best good buddy came from. It’s going to get ugly.”

  “Well, he’s nowhere around here,” Sammy said. “Are you sure he stayed in your backpack?”

  I thought about chasing Garvin Snood, and that’s when I remembered Floyd peeking into Garvin’s backpack. He must have seen something he liked in there.

  “He’s in Garvin’s backpack!” I yelled.

  Sammy spun a wheelie on her bike and rode around in a circle. When she landed her front wheel, she stopped.

  “Then we better follow this.”

  Sure enough, there was a trail of goopy Snood’s Flooze from Garvin’s bike tires.

  And looking off in the distance, I saw that it seemed to be leading to the far end of town.

  “The Snood Candy Factory!” I yelled.

  “Come on, super-duper palomino,” Sammy said. “Let’s go get your best good buddy back.”

  Garvin was obviously winded on his way to the Snood Candy Factory because the trail wobbled back and forth and looped all over the place. There was a winding hill of a driveway at the bottom of the Snood property, and here it appeared that he’d taken a break and leaned his bike against a gnarly old tree. There were signs everywhere: BEWARE OF DOGS! DON’T COME IN HERE! PRIVATE PROPERTY!

  “Looks like he stopped here,” Sammy said.

  A couple of squirrels stared at us from the limbs of the tree, but I didn’t see Floyd up there. I didn’t see Floyd anywhere.

  “Let’s keep going,” I said. “But stay quiet. By the looks of these signs, they have guard dogs.”

  “I like dogs,” Sammy said. “I hope you’re right.”

&n
bsp; I didn’t think these would be the kind of dogs Sammy would like. If the Snoods did have guard dogs, they’d be the kind with big barks and bigger teeth.

  We took it slow and soon the narrow road was covered with a canopy of tangled tree limbs. They hid us from the sun, but little shafts of light broke through. We went through a long covered bridge that was even darker inside. A sludgy stream ran under the bridge.

  “The Snoods really know how to make a girl feel welcome,” Sammy said.

  “Shhhhh. They probably have this place wired.”

  Sammy looked at me and all I could see were the whites of her eyes. “You’re being paranoid. It’s not like they’re watching us or anything.”

  Right after Sammy said that, a huge voice boomed and echoed through the covered bridge.

  “WHO DARES ENTER THE PRIVATE PROPERTY OF THE SNOODS WITHOUT PERMISSION?”

  I felt like the Wizard of Oz was yelling down at me.

  “Come on!” Sammy said. “It’s only a little farther!”

  I raced out in front and we cleared the other side of the covered bridge. The Snood Candy Factory loomed up before us, dark and forbidding. It was tall and square with billowing smokestacks and one set of big doors. There were windows along the walls, but they were all too high up for us to look through.

  “There!” I said.

  Sammy saw it, too. Floyd stared down at us from one of the windows. With a smile on his face, he was eating a glob of Snood’s Flooze.

  I waved for him to come out, but he just pointed to the Snood’s Flooze like he couldn’t believe how much free candy there was inside the factory.

  “He’s not going to come out on his own,” I said. “We’ll have to go in and get him.”

  We rode to the far side of the factory and leaned our bikes against the brick wall.

  “DON’T MAKE ME SEND OUT THE DOGS!” the voice boomed again.

  “That must be Mr. Snood yelling,” I said. “He doesn’t come out. Ever. He just stays in there and makes lousy Floozy candy.”

  “I hope he sends the dogs,” Sammy said. “I love dogs.”

  “Sammy, I don’t think you’re going to like these ones.”

  “Of course I will. Why wouldn’t I?”

  I looked down the long wall of the Snood Candy Factory. It was nothing but bricks and locked doors and windows—nowhere we could sneak in.

  “Come on, let’s try going around the back of the building,” I said.

  We left the bikes behind and quietly tiptoed to the edge of the factory. There were more trees back there, lots of them. And we found a little door. It was only about two feet tall.

  “There’s no handle on this weird door,” Sammy said as she stepped closer.

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” I said. “I don’t think that’s a door for people.”

  Mr. Snood’s voice blared into the forest behind the factory again. “DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU!”

  And then the door opened up. Sammy leaned her head inside like it was no big deal. Then she looked at me.

  “It’s dark in there. Like really dark.”

  I peered inside with her and wished I’d brought a flashlight.

  “Do you hear that?” I asked.

  “Hear what?”

  It sounded like a couple of Rottweilers running through a dark passageway toward two kids poking their heads through a small door.

  “RUN!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. I didn’t have to tell myself twice. I have a mortal fear of being chased by giant dogs. It happened to me once on my paper route. There I was, just minding my own business and trying to earn a few extra bucks, when a dog the size of a hippopotamus started chasing me down the street. It bit the heel right off my brand-new pair of high-tops. I have half a shoe to prove it.

  I was all the way to the farthest end of the Snood Candy Factory when I finally turned back. Sammy wasn’t anywhere in sight. She hadn’t followed me. Or she had followed and the dogs had grabbed her and dragged her out into the woods like a play toy!

  What I wanted to do was run for my bike and hightail it for home, but there was no way I could leave both my super-duper palomino and my best good buddy behind. So I slowly walked back toward the small door. I used my softest footsteps, but it didn’t matter. There were a lot of dead leaves and twigs on the ground, and it was impossible to miss them all.

  “Sammy?” I whispered. She didn’t answer, so I kept going until I was back at the door, staring inside. I said Sammy’s name again and my voice echoed softly, dying about two feet into the darkness.

  “Whatcha doin’, super-duper palomino?”

  I jumped four feet into the air, did three flips, and landed on my butt. There was also some screaming.

  “Don’t sneak up on me like that!” I said. “I almost had a heart attack!”

  Sammy was standing between two ginormous dogs. Their heads were the size of prize-winning pumpkins.

  And the teeth! They were bigger than my whole arm! Okay, not that big. But they were still huge. Both dogs had slobbery sticks in their mouths. Sammy patted them on their heads, took the sticks, and chucked them behind her.

  “I love dogs,” she said as the dogs tore off into the woods behind the factory.

  I brushed all the nature off my butt and stood up. “Sammy, you are incredible.”

  Sammy crouched down in front of the doggy door and peered inside. “We could go this way. Whaddaya say?”

  “I say sure. And let’s close the door behind us. The dogs probably want to stay out and play awhile.”

  “Good plan.”

  We crept into the darkness and closed the doggy door. The passageway wound around like a garden hose, but after a while, we could see some light.

  “I think we might have just made it inside the Snood Candy Factory,” I said.

  “Cool,” Sammy whispered. “I wish the dogs could have come with us.”

  We came to the edge of the passageway and stared out into the wacky weirdness of the factory.

  The Snood Candy Factory was cast in yellow and orange light, and there were giant vats with squishy green gross stuff sloshing over the edges. Conveyer belts rolled all over the place and made squeaky sounds like they needed oiling. They carried slabs of Snood’s Flooze that looked like blocks of gray bubble gum. There were robot arms grabbing the Flooze, wrapping them in colorful packaging, and stuffing them in boxes.

  “Hey, isn’t that your little buddy up there?” Sammy said.

  She pointed to one of the conveyer belts, where Floyd held two bars of Flooze, biting into them one at a time like chicken legs. He was being carried up and up into the top section of the factory. I followed the long line of the conveyor belt to see where it was headed. It looked like it would reach a high point and then slant downward toward a wrapping station.

  “My best good buddy is about to get packaged and shipped!” I said. “We gotta move fast.”

  I took a mental picture of the whole place, including: Mr. Snood, standing on a catwalk way over our heads. There were all sorts of knobs, levers, and buttons in front of him. There was also a big horn that extended out into the middle of the factory like a snake with a king-sized round head. Mr. Snood controlled everything, moving back and forth at lightning speed.

  Several alarms sounded all around him, and he was obviously distracted.

  Garvin Snood was sitting in a corner of the factory, leaning back on a chair, reading a comic book. He looked like he was about to fall asleep.

  Floyd was getting dangerously close to the top of the conveyor belt and heading down toward the packaging station.

  “Garvin!” Mr. Snood bellowed into the horn. “Stop reading that comic book and let the dogs back in! Those kids must have run off.”

  Mr. Snood laughed maniacally, like he was really happy he’d chased off a couple of Pflugerville’s finest. Shaped like a pear in his white scientist coat, he was splattered with Flooze. He looked like a much older version of Garvin: big nose, round eyes, and a shock of dark ha
ir.

  “Come on, Dad,” Garvin complained. “Let ’em chase that dumb Fuzzwonker kid awhile longer. It makes me happy.”

  “Garvin!” Mr. Snood yelled.

  Garvin got up like a sloth. “Okay, okay. I’m going already.”

  That was when I noticed the last and possibly most important thing of all. Next to the opening of the passageway, there was a button that said Doggy Door.

  “Can you control those two monsters?” I asked Sammy.

  “You mean the dogs? Sure I can. Easy.”

  I nodded, reached my hand into the factory, and slammed my hand down on the button. Sammy whistled behind me, but the factory was so loud Mr. Snood didn’t hear her. She had a good aim with her whistle, and it flew down the long tube until it reached the dogs. A few seconds later, I could hear them racing toward us, barking and banging into the walls as they each tried to take the lead.

  “There goes Garvin,” I said. He’d reached the only doors into the place and unlatched the lock.

  “I’ve got the dogs ready,” Sammy said. “What do you want them to do?”

  I turned around and both dogs licked my face. Each tongue, I’m telling you, was like the size of a wet tennis shoe.

  I wiped all the slobber off my face.

  “We need a diversion,” I said.

  “Got it!” she said. Sammy turned to the dogs and spoke to them like they were her children.

  Floyd had reached the top of the conveyor belt and he was heading down, right toward the robot arms and the packaging!

  “Off you go,” Sammy said, and both dogs took off at a run into the factory.

  The dogs ran up a long flight of metal stairs and arrived at the control tower for the factory. They showered Mr. Snood with affection, which included leaping up into his face and barking with reckless abandon.

  “Follow me!” I said.

  I ran farther into the factory, ducking to avoid low-hanging beams and conveyor belts and leaning around robot arms. I leaped onto a conveyor belt heading up and started running to the top with Sammy close behind.