Iggy Loomis, Superkid in Training Read online

  “I want to meet your little brother and sister,” he said.

  This seemed pretty weird to me. But I guessed that I had to be nice about it if I wanted to be invited back to Alistair’s house again.

  “Sure, I guess we can go play at my house,” I sighed. So much for my afternoon escape from Iggy, I thought.

  As we crossed the front lawn, heading toward my house, Alistair paused to pick up a dead bug that looked like a gigantic fly with bulging eyes.

  “It’s a cicada,” he said. “They live underground for seventeen years. Then they come out, climb up a tree, and start singing to attract a mate. Hear that buzzing sound in the trees?”

  The trees had started making a weird, buzzing sound a few days ago, but I had gotten so used to it, I didn’t really notice it anymore.

  “That’s the sound of cicadas.” Alistair unzipped his backpack and dropped the dead cicada into one of those jelly-filled tube-containers.

  “Why do you keep so many dead bugs in there?” I asked. I wished Alistair would let me take a closer look; he seemed pretty secretive about the little containers in his backpack.

  “I put each one in a special substance that separates out some of the bug’s DNA. That way I can study the bug’s genetic code,” Alistair said.

  “Huh.” I kind of knew what he meant, sort of.

  “DNA is what determines whether you become a plant, a bug, an animal, or a person. Change the DNA code and you might get a whole new creature.”

  My mom greeted us as we walked through the front door. I had a feeling she would ask Alistair about a hundred questions, since he was new in the neighborhood, and I was right.

  Alistair suddenly acted as if he had been brought down to the police station for questioning. Nobody likes answering my mom’s boring questions about school, but Alistair seemed weirdly surprised by them. I got the feeling he had never even thought about going to school before.

  Then Alistair made a sudden announcement: “I’ll go to Daniel’s school tomorrow!”

  If you ask me, it sounded as if he had just now made that decision. “I’ll be in Daniel’s class,” he added.

  This seemed to make my mom happy. “Oh, how nice!” she said.

  “Are we free to go now, Mom?” I asked.

  “Of course,” said Mom. “And Alistair, I’ll invite your parents over for coffee sometime soon.”

  “I don’t think they can drink coffee,” Alistair said. “For health reasons.”

  “Can they drink tea?”

  “Well . . .”

  I was worried that Alistair would start talking about his family’s broccoli diet, which might give my mom ideas about replacing some of my favorite foods with vegetables. I needed to get him out of there fast. “Come on, Alistair,” I said. “Let’s go to my room.”

  “Oh, Daniel,” Mom said, “can you and Alistair keep an eye on Iggy and Dottie while I get dinner ready?”

  I sighed. “Can’t Dad watch them?”

  “Dad is having his ‘Quiet Time’ in the bathroom.”

  When my dad has Quiet Time in the bathroom, we don’t see him for a while. He says a locked bathroom is the only place in the house where he can hear himself think.

  Just then, Iggy and Dottie burst through Dottie’s bedroom door and ran toward Alistair. The two of them were so excited to meet Alistair, you would have thought Santa Claus himself had come to visit our house.

  Before I could steer Alistair away, Iggy and Dottie dragged him into Dottie’s room to show off their babyish toys.

  I figured Alistair would get bored with that stuff pretty quickly. Instead, he acted weirdly interested in everything Iggy and Dottie showed him. I mean, you would have thought he had never seen stuffed animals and dolls before. Alistar listened to Iggy’s completely dumb and wrong descriptions of cartoon characters like Squidboy, the Blue Freaks, and a made-up character called “Pinkie Horse” that Iggy and Dottie invented.

  Alistair listened to Dottie’s descriptions of her “booful party dresses” her “booful dollhouse,” and her “twirlie-twirl balloring tutus.”

  Iggy showed Alistair his collection of superhero underpants.

  Iggy and Dottie climbed on Alistair’s back for a horsey ride.

  It seemed like Alistair was never going to get tired of playing with Iggy and Dottie! I needed to think of something to distract him.

  Just then, my mom peeked into the room. “Thanks for playing so nicely together, everyone! I just need to run to a neighbor’s house to borrow an egg for a recipe I’m making. Daniel and Alistair, can you make sure everyone behaves for a couple minutes until I get back?”

  “Sure, Mom,” I said.

  I suddenly realized that I had a great opportunity: With Mom out of the house and Dad having his bathroom Quiet Time, I had the perfect chance to sneak a few toys from the Gobblebox without anyone noticing. If I show Alistair my awesome Planet Blaster stuff, I thought, he’ll lose interest in Iggy and Dottie pretty fast.

  “Pssst—Alistair!” I whispered. “Follow me; I want to show you something!”

  “I’ll be right back,” Alistair told Dottie and Iggy, who were still busy entertaining him with their fascinating objects. I guessed the two of them had never met anyone who found them so interesting before.

  “Come on,” I whispered, leading Alistair upstairs, toward my parents’ bedroom. I figured the Gobblebox was in my mom’s closet, exactly where she always hides it. “I’ll show you the Gobblebox.”

  “What’s a Gobblebox?” Alistair asked.

  I told him it was the place my parents hide our toys when we get in trouble. “We can sneak some Technobloks out of the Gobblebox,” I said, “and then you can help me build one of those cool robots.”

  We tiptoed into my parents’ room and turned on the light. The first thing we discovered was a big mess. It’s kind of funny that my parents have a messy room, because when a messy room belongs to a kid, it suddenly drives them crazy. Everywhere I looked, I saw piles of dirty socks.

  “I bet the Gobblebox is in Mom’s closet,” I whispered. “That’s usually where she hides stuff.”

  Alistair nodded.

  When I pushed open my mom’s closet door, we both froze.

  Mom had used a felt-tip marker to decorate the box with sharp teeth and an evil smile.

  Just as I reached into the box to grab one of my favorite Planet Blaster models, I heard Dottie yelling downstairs: “IGGY! WHAT YOU DO DAT FOR! DAT SO MESSY AND GWOSS!”

  Uh-oh, I thought. What have they done now?

  “My research equipment!” Alistair turned and ran from the room.

  I followed Alistair down the stairs and back into Dottie’s bedroom.

  Alistair and I just stared. Because what we discovered in that room wasn’t pretty.

  IGGY SAT ON THE FLOOR holding a bunch of dead bugs in his hand, including the big cicada Alistair had found in my yard. There were empty tubes and glass containers all around him on the floor. Worst of all, his face and hair were covered with sticky, multicolored jelly—the weird-looking substance Alistair used to extract DNA from bugs. A ladybug, a fly, a centipede, and a bunch of other squished bugs were stuck in the gluey stuff on Iggy’s cheeks.

  “Taste YUCKY!” Iggy said.

  Alistair looked pale as he pulled a cloth from his backpack and toweled off Iggy’s face. He pried the slimy, dead bugs from Iggy’s fist and put them in a container. “Did you put any of these bugs in your mouth, Iggy?” Alistair asked.

  “No,” said Iggy, “just da bug candy.”

  Alistair looked like he might faint. “‘Bug candy’??”

  “That isn’t candy, Iggy!” I said. “How many times have Mom and Dad told you not to put stuff you find in your mouth? And you aren’t supposed to open other people’s backpacks, either.”

  “It look like bug candy
,” Iggy said. “Like when Mom made dat Jell-O wif bugs!”

  Now I remembered what Iggy was talking about. Last Halloween, my mom made green and orange Jell-O with gummy worms and other candy bugs floating inside. It was one of the best desserts she’s ever made. I could sort of understand why Iggy thought the chemical-covered bugs in Alistair’s backpack might taste like Jell-O or gummy worms. But still. How could a kid get in so much trouble in only two minutes?

  Mom will be so mad at me, I thought, remembering how she had asked us to “keep an eye on Iggy and Dottie.” And she would be especially mad if she knew I was upstairs trying to sneak toys from the Gobblebox right when Iggy was eating bugs.

  But maybe she doesn’t need to know, I thought. Maybe Iggy is fine, and we can keep this little mistake secret.

  Alistair rushed around the room putting the lids back on his jars and tubes. He kept pointing to different containers and asking Iggy about them: “Did you put this one in your mouth?”

  Iggy nodded yes. “Dat one yucky.”

  “How about this one?”

  “Yup! Dat one super-duper yuck-o!”

  Each time Iggy said, yes, Alistair looked more worried. I worried, too. What if Iggy had been poisoned? In that case, I would be in HUGE trouble. We’d have to take Iggy to the emergency room, and then my parents would definitely find out that I had been sneaking upstairs.

  “Do you think he needs to go to a doctor?” I whispered to Alistair. “Should I get my mom?”

  We both looked at Iggy. He certainly looked fine. In fact, he looked healthier than ever.

  “The stuff he ingested isn’t toxic,” said Alistair. “Although there might be some unpredictable effects.”

  “‘Unpredictable’ sounds bad,” I said.

  Alistair walked over to Iggy and looked at him more closely. “Open your mouth, Iggy,” he said.

  Iggy opened his slimy, bug-stained mouth for Alistair and stuck out his tongue, which looked very gross with bits of insect legs and wings stuck to it.

  Alistair didn’t seem to mind how gross Iggy’s tongue looked. He just pushed a button on his watch and shone a beam of blue light into Iggy’s mouth. Then he flipped open a little dome on his watch and began pressing a bunch of buttons very quickly as if he were typing a message.

  “Alistair, what are you doing?” I asked.

  “I’m checking some data. The good news is that Iggy seems to be fine. At least for the moment.”

  “How do you know? Alistair, it’s cool that your watch has a flashlight, but you’re not a doctor, and—”

  “We don’t need to panic, Daniel. I’ll fix this.”

  “Fix what?”

  “I’ll explain tomorrow. Now I have to go back to my house to make a few calls.” Alistair quickly gathered his belongings and hurried out the door.

  Then he paused and walked back to me more slowly. “Daniel, don’t tell your parents about this, okay?”

  The last thing I wanted to do was tell my mom what happened. But what if Alistair had no idea what he was talking about? What if Iggy was actually not okay?!

  “I promise he’ll be okay,” said Alistair, sensing my worries.

  I wanted to believe Alistair. “Okay,” I said. “But if Iggy starts acting sick, then I’ll have to tell them.”

  “Okay,” said Alistair. “Good!” He hurried down the front steps just as my mom returned from the neighbor’s house, carrying an egg.

  “Leaving already, Alistair?” Mom asked. “Are you and Daniel going to walk to school together tomorrow?”

  “School?” Alistair paused on the sidewalk, looking confused. “Oh, yes. School. Daniel, I will see you tomorrow to walk to school!”

  I watched Alistair hurry back to his house. Was this new kid a genius and a great new friend? Or was he completely crazy?

  And how worried should I be about Iggy?

  I WATCHED IGGY all through dinner, looking for signs that he might be sick after eating that bug-DNA serum. If something looks wrong, I told myself, I’ll tell Mom and Dad what happened, even if it means getting in trouble.

  I noticed that Iggy ate lots of vegetables without even being told, but other than that, he seemed fine.

  By bedtime, I had pretty much decided there was nothing to worry about.

  I was lying in bed in the dark, reading a Squidboy comic book with my flashlight when Iggy suddenly bounced up into the top bunk next to me.

  He startled me; I wasn’t used to seeing him in my room at night yet. I also suddenly had the eerie feeling that Iggy had actually jumped into my bed without using the ladder.

  But that’s impossible, I thought. My bed is at least five feet off the ground, so there’s no way Iggy could get up here without the ladder. Then I reminded myself that I should be relieved that Iggy is strong and healthy after eating Alistair’s bugs earlier in the day. That was a close one, I told myself.

  “Hi, Dano,” said Iggy, putting his face close to mine. He wore one of Dottie’s Cinderella nightgowns, and also had a pacifier in his mouth.

  He grinned and pointed at Dottie’s nightgown: “Look, Dano! Cinderella!”

  “Cinderella isn’t even cool, Iggy.” Iggy still doesn’t get the basic fact that some clothes are for girls and some are for boys. He’s also not supposed to suck on his pacifier anymore, but he hides them in secret places, like under furniture. Every time Mom takes one away, he finds a replacement.

  “Squidboy!” Iggy shouted when he saw my comic book. “Cool!”

  Iggy crawled under the covers next to me, and we looked at the Squidboy comic book together. He smelled like baby shampoo and his pacifier made a squeak, squeak, squeak sound that was weirdly comforting. I admit it: it actually felt kind of nice having him curl up next to me—like having a soft little animal sleep on my bed.

  Maybe that’s the key to sharing a room with Iggy, I thought. I’ll just pretend he’s my pet. I’ll pretend he’s a new breed of animal that’s part dog and part kangaroo.

  I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew, I awoke to the strange feeling of something on my body—something warm and wet.

  I realized that Iggy had wet the bed. “Ewww! Wake up, Iggy!”

  Iggy sat up. “I need to go potty.”

  “MOM! IGGY PEED IN MY BED!”

  A minute later, my mom and dad came into my room with their puffy middle-of-the-night faces. My dad took Iggy into the bathroom. My mom changed the sheets on my bed while I changed my pajamas.

  “I can’t believe Iggy peed on me!” I complained.

  “It probably happened because he isn’t used to being in a new bed,” said my mom. “It was an accident, so don’t make him feel bad, okay?”

  What about MY feelings? I thought. In one day, I had gone from a boy who had a bunch of cool Planet Blaster stuff in his bedroom to a pee-soaked boy with nothing in his room. Nothing except a baby roommate named Iggy.

  I climbed back into bed and listened to my parents trying to convince Iggy that it was time to go back to bed, and not yet time for “bweakfast.”

  “You can’t wear that, Iggy; you peed on it.”

  “I want wear it!”

  “How about your Squidboy PJs?”

  “I want CINDERELLA!”

  As my mother and Iggy argued about whether Iggy could keep wearing Dottie’s Cinderella nightgown, I lay in bed and worried about my life with Iggy. If Iggy is going to be my pet, I thought, maybe his bed should be a pile of newspapers in the corner. Better yet: maybe Dad could build a little “Iggy house” outside, in the backyard.

  “NO DIAPER!” Iggy screamed. “I big boy!”

  “I know, honey, but you just went pee-pee in your bed.” Now Mom was trying to convince Iggy to wear a pull-up diaper “for extra nighttime protection.”

  “No diaper!” Iggy insisted. “I sleep naked.”

&nb
sp; “Stop it, Iggy! Here—put your Squidboy underpants over the diaper. Now you still look like a big kid,” said Mom.

  Iggy shuffled back toward our bunk bed, wearing his pull-up diaper covered by Squidboy underpants, and dragging his favorite snow-bunny blanket on the floor behind him.

  Was it my imagination, or was Iggy taller than he had been just a few hours earlier?

  “Good night, sweetie.” My mother kissed Iggy and tucked him into the lower bunk bed.

  “Good night, Daniel.”

  Mom reached into the top bunk to straighten my covers.

  “Um, can I have my toys back, Mom?”

  “You know the rules about the Gobblebox, Daniel.”

  “Isn’t getting peed on punishment enough?”

  “You’ll get the toys back when you and Iggy are ready to share. And I’m sure you’ll both do better tomorrow.”

  I hoped she was right, but I wasn’t so sure. For some reason, I had the feeling that something very strange was about to happen to Iggy and me.

  In my nightmare, Iggy grew so big that the entire bunk bed came crashing to the ground. We were trapped in the bedroom because Giant Iggy was too big to fit through the doorway. He blocked my only escape from the room.

  I look up at Iggy’s pudgy face. He was chewing on something

  Giant Iggy didn’t answer. Instead he swallowed.

  It was a little scary looking up at him. His chubby hands were the size of pillows.

  Iggy grabbed a handful of my Technobloks and stuffed them into his mouth as if they were potato chips. He chewed them with a crunching sound.

  Iggy reached down with his chubby hand and grabbed me. He laughed as I struggled to escape from his grip. I tried to kick his fingers, which were now the size of baseball bats, but he only grinned. I screamed as Iggy lifted me higher and higher, toward his massive baby teeth.