Iggy Loomis, A Hagfish Called Shirley Read online

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  Copyright © 2014 by Jennifer Allison • Illustration copyright © 2014 by Mike Moran

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Allison, Jennifer.

  A hagfish called Shirley / by Jennifer Allison ; illustrated by Mike Moran.

  pages cm — (Iggy Loomis ; book #2)

  Summary: “When Iggy flushes a pet down the toilet, Daniel has to convince him to use his alien powers to save the day and keep everyone out of trouble”— Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978-0-698-17581-5

  [1. Brothers—Fiction. 2. Family life—Fiction. 3. Fishes—Fiction. 4. Extraterrestrial beings—Fiction. 5. Mutation (Biology)—Fiction. 6. Science fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.A4428Hag 2014 [Fic]—dc23 2014010763

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Version_1

  To Max, Marcus, and Gigi, my favorite book lovers and pet owners!

  –J.A.

  To Kristin –M.M.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  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

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Acknowledgments

  “I CAN’T WAIT TO SEE Awistair’s new pet!” my little brother, Iggy, shouted.

  Iggy was super-excited because Alistair had just called to say that he had caught some kind of “amazing creature,” and that we should come over to see it right away. As we walked to Alistair’s house next door, Iggy kept running back and forth across the sidewalk and nearly crashing into me each time he passed.

  “Alistair doesn’t have a new pet, Iggy,” I said. “It’s probably a creature he’s studying—one of his science projects.”

  Alistair is always catching all kinds of insects and bugs and observing them in his home laboratory, so I figured this new creature he wanted to show us was also one of his “specimens.” Whatever it was, Alistair was very excited about it. “You’ve never seen anything like this before!” he had practically shouted over the phone.

  “Maybe Awistair get a monkey!” Iggy said.

  “I doubt it, Iggy,” I said, although I secretly thought that if there was anyone in my neighborhood who could get a pet monkey, it would probably be Alistair.

  “I HOPE AWISTAIR GET A MONKEY!” Iggy jumped up and hung from a tree branch, then swung from it with his feet dangling over the sidewalk.

  “Cut it out, Iggy!” When Iggy gets too excited, it’s just a matter of time before something goes wrong.

  “Or maybe Awistair get a toowantoowa!” Iggy hoisted his feet up and over the tree branch like an acrobat.

  “You mean tarantula,” I said, watching Iggy walk along the tree branch as if it were a balance beam.

  Uh-oh, I thought, holding my breath. What dumb move was Iggy going to make next?!

  Iggy paused and then scampered farther up the trunk of the tree like a large squirrel. (By now, you’ve probably noticed that my little brother isn’t the average preschooler.)

  “IGGY!” I shouted up into the tree branches. “GET BACK DOWN HERE, AND I MEAN IT!”

  Leaves rustled. I heard giggling, but I couldn’t see Iggy.

  I glanced around to see if any of our neighbors had noticed Iggy up in the tree. (Alistair and I are the only kids who know the truth about Iggy, and it isn’t easy to keep everyone, including my parents, from finding out our secret.)

  “IGGY!” I shouted again. “IF YOU DON’T GET DOWN FROM THERE RIGHT NOW, I’M GOING TO ALISTAIR’S HOUSE WITHOUT YOU, AND YOU WON’T GET TO SEE ALISTAIR’S NEW ANIMAL THAT’S PROBABLY A MONKEY!!”

  That got Iggy’s attention.

  “WAIT FOR ME, DANO!!” Iggy burst out from the tree branches and into the sky, like a giant bird. He had sprouted giant dragonfly wings!

  I tried not to panic as I watched Iggy soar through the air. I had seen him do this before, and I always worried that he might fall.

  As it turned out, Iggy seemed to know exactly how to use his dragonfly wings. I breathed a sigh of relief as I watched my little brother glide gently down to the sidewalk.

  HERE’S THE THING about my little brother, Iggy: Whenever he gets either super-angry or way too excited about something, weird changes happen. Basically, his body starts growing insect parts, like wings, antennae, stingers, and even little bug fangs or claws.

  The worst part is that there’s no way to predict which insect traits will pop out each time he changes.

  Sometimes Iggy becomes part ladybug or butterfly. . . .

  Sometimes Iggy is part wasp, yellow jacket, or honeybee.

  Sometimes Iggy is part mosquito, ant, flea, or housefly.

  And sometimes—like now—he becomes part dragonfly.

  And whenever Iggy’s bug traits pop out, I have to give him his “Human Normalizer” to turn him back to a regular human kid before anyone notices.

  What, you ask, is the Human Normalizer?

  It looks like an ordinary pacifier, but it does something amazing: It turns Iggy back into a regular kid after he starts changing into a bug boy.

  “Here, Iggy,” I said, sticking the Human Normalizer into his mouth as I glanced around once more to make sure nobody had seen his dragonfly wings. “Get calm before someone sees those wings of yours.”

  With the Human Normalizer in his mouth, Iggy sat at the foot of the tree and closed his eyes. I watched his dragonfly wings grow smaller until they disappeared.

  “Come on, Iggy,” I said, after Iggy had rested for a few minutes. “Time to go to Alistair’s house.”

  Iggy rubbed his eyes and nodded. “Awistair get a monkey!” he said as he marched up the steps to Alistair’s front door.

  BEFORE WE COULD even knock, Alistair appeared in the doorway. “I thought you’d never get here!” he said, even though we had just talked on the phone about fifteen minutes ago. Alist
air is usually pretty calm and quiet, but today he seemed way more excited than usual.

  “Hurry!” Alistair said, leading Iggy and me down the hallway toward his room. “She can’t wait to meet you!”

  “Who can’t wait to meet us?” I asked.

  Alistair didn’t answer; he just led to his room, which looks more like a weird science lab than a regular kid’s bedroom.

  He has tanks and containers of all sizes filled with things like beetles, slugs, ladybugs, centipedes, hermit crabs, frogs, and snails.

  “YOU SO LUCKY-DUCK, AWISTAIR!” Iggy shouted as he ran around Alistair’s room, looking at all the creatures. “YOU GOTS SO MANY PETS!”

  Lately, Iggy and his twin sister, Dottie, have been begging our parents for a pet, but Mom and Dad just say, “If it poops or needs to be fed, the answer is no!”

  “I WISH-TED I CAN KEEP ALL DESE ANIMOS!” Iggy shouted, still running around Alistair’s room.

  “Iggy, if you like those life-forms,” said Alistair, “wait until you see this one!” Alistair pulled away a sheet that covered a large glass aquarium. “Ta-da! Meet Shirley!”

  A snake-like creature twisted itself in coils at the sandy bottom of the tank.

  “That’s Shirley?!” I don’t know what I was expecting, but I guess the name “Shirley” made me picture something a little cuter.

  “WOW!” Iggy ran to the tank and pressed his face against the glass. “What dat snake doing?”

  “It isn’t a snake,” Alistair said. “Shirley is a hagfish.”

  I squinted into the aquarium. “She doesn’t look like any fish I’ve seen before.”

  “Exactly!” said Alistair. “If you could combine a fish and a worm into one creature, you might get something like Shirley.”

  “You mean, you created her?” I pictured Alistair using his lab equipment to combine a fish and a worm into one completely new animal. From what I knew about Alistair’s science experiments, it was the sort of thing he might actually be able to do.

  “Daniel, I don’t go around making new life-forms! You know that’s against the rules.”

  Are you sure about that, Alistair? I thought, glancing at Iggy.

  “Hagfishes live at the bottom of the ocean,” Alistair continued. “Last weekend, my parents took me to the beach, and I decided to do some scuba diving. That’s where I found Shirley.”

  I’m used to hearing about the amazing things Alistair can do, so I wasn’t even too surprised about his “undersea expedition.”

  “So you caught this thing,” I said, pointing at the hagfish, “and then you decided to name it Shirley?!” For some reason, I just couldn’t get past that name.

  Alistair smiled into the tank and waved at Shirley. “I thought she looked like a Shirley. Isn’t she cute?”

  Shirley wiggled the tentacle-whiskers around her funnel-shaped mouth. If you ask me, she was the opposite of cute. But maybe she looks cute to Alistair, I thought.

  After all, I reminded myself, Alistair isn’t human.

  I’M GOING TO LET YOU IN on a huge secret, okay?

  Alistair and his parents are actually aliens from a distant planet called Blaron. All three members of his family look completely human on the outside, but it’s just a disguise. Their true form looks more like something related to a squid or maybe an octopus, only way bigger and a whole lot weirder. Believe me, it’s not a pretty sight. In fact, when you consider what the average Blaronite looks like, I guess it makes sense that Alistair thinks Shirley is “cute.”

  I’m the only human who knows the whole truth about Alistair’s alien identity. I mean, Iggy and Dottie know that Alistair can travel to a place called “Planet Blaron”—in fact, Iggy’s even been there himself—but grown-ups never really believe the weird stuff pre-schoolers say.

  “But if anyone else discovers that aliens have been living right here in their own neighborhood,” Alistair once told me, “my family could either end up dead or locked in some government laboratory.”

  I hated the idea of losing my best friend, so I promised Alistair I’d help keep his true identity a secret.

  Of course, I had no idea how complicated things were going to get after Iggy met that hagfish called Shirley.

  “WHAT DEY EATS?” Iggy pressed his nose against the glass hagfish tank.

  “They eat whatever they find dead at the bottom of the ocean,” Alistair said, pointing to the hagfish’s mouth, which was shaped like a funnel. “Instead of regular teeth, Shirley has rows of sharp rasps that she uses to gnaw a hole through the surface of the fish. Then she crawls inside and eats the animal from the inside out.”

  Alistair explained all of this in a happy tone of voice, as if he were telling us how Shirley enjoys licking lollipops and chocolate ice-cream cones.

  Next, Alistair told us how Shirley is “practically blind.”

  He explained how she uses the tentacle things on her head to smell and touch her surroundings:

  And then he explained how Shirley “absorbs nutrition through her skin.”

  “Speaking of ice cream and intestines,” Alistair said, “I should feed Shirley now.”

  Alistair removed the lid from Shirley’s aquarium. He reached down into the water and gently grasped the squirming hagfish. “It’s okay, Shirley,” Alistair said. “It’s just me.”

  “I want hode Haggie!” Iggy jumped up and down and reached for the hagfish as eagerly as if it were a kitten or a puppy.

  “You can hold Shirley after she’s had her lunch.” After putting Shirley back in her aquarium, Alistair opened a container packed with ice and tossed a very large, dead fish into the hagfish tank. Shirley jumped onto that fish so fast you would have thought it was a delicious cheeseburger.

  We watched as Shirley gnawed a hole into the side of the dead fish, then wriggled her way inside her dinner until we couldn’t see her anymore. Now all we could see was a dead fish, flopping around at the bottom of the tank.

  “See?” said Alistair. “Shirley’s eating the trout from the inside now.”

  For some reason, I felt a little queasy watching that dead trout twitching around with Shirley gnawing on its insides. I guess I had a gut feeling that something was about to go wrong.

  “HAGGIE ALL DONE wif lunch!” Iggy announced, pointing to the aquarium, where Shirley swam through the bones of the fish she had just eaten. “NOW I hode Haggie!”

  “You can hold Shirley if you’re very careful,” Alistair said.

  Iggy nodded. “I touch Haggie gently.”

  Alistair scooped Shirley into a net then dropped her into a plastic bucket filled with water. “Iggy, if you want to hold Shirley, you have to go stand in the bathtub, okay? The carpet in this room will get ruined if you try to hold her in here.”

  I thought it was a little unusual for Alistair to worry about his carpet getting ruined since he keeps so many weird creatures, not to mention gooey chemicals in his room, but I didn’t say anything. Iggy and I followed Alistair from his bedroom to the bathroom across the hallway.

  “Okay, Iggy,” Alistair said. “Now climb into the bathtub.”

  “Oh boy!” Iggy eagerly climbed into the bathtub. “I going hode Haggie!!”

  Alistair reached into the bucket and gently grasped the hagfish. “Take it easy, Shirley,” Alistair said. “I’m right here. It’s your buddy, Alistair.”

  I had never heard Alistair use phrases like “Take it easy” and “It’s your buddy, Alistair.” Owning a hagfish seemed to bring out a whole different side to his personality. I guess he seemed more human.

  Alistair lifted the squirming hagfish from the tank. “It’s okay, girl. Iggy is going to hold you for just a minute.”

  Iggy jumped up and down and clapped his hands with excitement.

  “Be careful, Iggy,” Alistair warned. “Whatever you do, don’t drop her!”


  “Okay!”

  Holding Shirley, Iggy looked as if he had just received the biggest Christmas present of his life.

  But then something really strange and incredibly gross happened: thick slime poured from the hagfish’s skin in long, gluey sheets.

  “WHOA! HO HO HO!” Iggy was thrilled with the hagfish slime. “Haggie blowded his noses wif eleventy-sixty boogers!!”

  “That is a lot of slime,” I said.

  It was hard to believe that all that slime came from one animal. All I can say is, if you’re the kind of person who wants to own the slimiest pet in the world, a hagfish might be the one for you.

  “It’s mucus, not slime,” Alistair said, correcting me.

  “It’s very slimy mucus,” I replied.

  Iggy’s face was one big smile. His shirt was covered in hagfish slime. “Look, Dano!” he said proudly. “Haggie like me!”

  “It doesn’t necessarily mean that she likes you,” Alistair replied. “That mucus is how Shirley defends herself.”

  Alistair told us all about hagfish slime.

  “So in other words, Shirley’s trying to slime you to death, Iggy,” I teased.

  Iggy’s eyes grew wide.

  “Exactly,” said Alistair, very seriously. “Hagfish slime is a very effective defensive weapon.”

  “OH, DAT SO AWESOME, AWISTAIR! I GOING USE DIS HAGGIE FOR A WEAPON WHEN WE PLAY HIDE-AND-SEEK—”

  “No, Iggy,” Alistair said. “Shirley is NOT a weapon. She’s . . . She’s . . .”

  “She’s what?” I asked.

  Alistair’s face broke into a smile. “She’s my pet!”

  Alistair seemed so surprised and happy about the idea of having a pet; I figured the whole idea must be new to him.

  But then Alistair’s smile disappeared as if he suddenly remembered something that worried him. “I mean—” he said. “I just hope—”