Phineas L. MacGuire . . . Blasts Off! Read online

  “Do they still do that?” I asked, sort of worried. As a future astronaut, I was willing to put up with a lot of discomfort, but I wasn’t sure I was willing to put up with floating dog spit.

  Mrs. Z. handed me my book. “I don’t think so. Now they send monkeys.”

  I imagined a space shuttle filled with monkeys. I wondered if I was allergic to monkeys. I am allergic to thirteen things, including all nuts, cats, yogurt, and lipstick. If I had to guess, I’d say I’m allergic to floating monkeys, too.

  Being an astronaut was going to be a lot more demanding than I’d ever thought.

  chapter seven

  It didn’t take long for the slobber thing to get out of control.

  Part one of the slobber adventure was pretty simple. Test Lemon Drop’s saliva at different times to see how it changed. All that was going to take was three jars and some Popsicle sticks.

  “And crackers,” Ben said when we were sitting in his room coming up with our slobber plan. “I had this idea that Lemon Drop could eat some crackers, and I could eat some crackers, and then we’d collect slobber from both of us and compare it.”

  “You’re going to spit cracker-spit in a jar?” I asked. I don’t know why, but the idea of studying Ben’s spit kind of grossed me out. Dog slobber was cool. Human slobber? I don’t think so.

  “Yeah,” Ben said. “Compare and contrast, like Mrs. Tuttle is always telling us to do.”

  The whole time we’d been talking, Ben had been working on his latest comic book, “Derek the Destroyer and the Slime Creatures from Outer Space.” I am happy to report that the Slime Creatures are good guys who help Derek the Destroyer out. I leaned over and pointed to one of the slime guys who needed a little more green. “That’s when we’re writing stuff for language arts,” I said as Ben inked the spot I’d pointed to. “Like compare and contrast soccer and football, or compare and contrast spring and fall.”

  “Exactly!” Ben exclaimed. He put down his marker. “And compare and contrast my spit and Lemon Drop’s.”

  I had to think fast. I am a scientist, not a grossologist. “I think it would be more scientific to compare Lemon Drop’s slobber with the slobber of other dogs. Different breeds of dogs. The only problem is I don’t know any other dogs personally.”

  Ben grinned. “I’ve got an idea.”

  First things first: Lemon Drop. After school the next day Ben and Aretha rode the school bus home with me. Aretha claimed she still was not interested in slobber. However, she felt she might be able to fulfill some requirements of her Pet Care badge by spending time with Lemon Drop.

  “We do not have pets in our home,” Aretha explained to me and Ben as we got off the bus. “My parents have busy professional lives, and my sister and brother and I have too many important extracurricular activities to responsibly care for a pet.”

  “So you’re going to try to pass off Lemon Drop as your dog so you can get a badge?” Ben teased her.

  “No, I am not,” said Aretha. If Aretha were the sort of person to punch another person in the arm, I think she would have whacked Ben at that moment. However, Aretha is not a puncher. She is a scientist. “I am going to bond with Lemon Drop, and after we bond, we will participate together in a number of activities that will enable me to honestly report I have a relationship with a canine creature. Just because I don’t own Lemon Drop doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.”

  Aretha’s first activity with Lemon Drop was to get him to drink a bowl of water so we could get a sample of watery slobber for our experiments.

  “Okay, nice doggie,” she said, grabbing Lemon Drop by his collar and dragging him to his water bowl on Mrs. McClosky’s deck. “I hope you’re thirsty.”

  At first Lemon Drop seemed more interested in sniffing Aretha’s knees, which were completely new to him, than drinking from his water bowl. Mrs. McClosky, who had been watching from her back door, came out with a box of doggie treats.

  “Here, Athena, dear,” she said, handing the box to Aretha. “Give him one or two of these. My Lemon Drop is always thirsty after he has some treats.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. McClosky,” Aretha said, taking a few treats from the box. She turned to Lemon Drop. “Here you go, Lemon Drop, a treat from me to you.”

  Lemon Drop jumped up and nuzzled Aretha’s hands to get the treats, which made Aretha giggle, which is not a typical Aretha thing to do. “I had no idea bonding would be this much fun,” she said, sounding surprised.

  Just like Mrs. McClosky had predicted, as soon as Lemon Drop had eaten his treats, he lapped up his bowl of water.

  Now all I had to do was get him to spit in the jar I was holding.

  Ben held his camcorder up to his eye and started to talk in a loud whisper, like he was doing a voice-over for a TV show. “Okay, everybody, here’s the world-famous scientist Phineas L. ‘Mac’ MacGuire, about to get a bunch of slobber from Lemon Drop, the amazing Labrador retriever. Can he do it? Can he make Lemon Drop spit up some good old saliva in the name of scientific research?”

  At first I thought the answer to that was a big, fat no. I held out the jar under Lemon Drop’s mouth, but Lemon Drop wasn’t interested. He was too busy making goo-goo eyes at Aretha, probably hoping she would give him another treat.

  And while he was making goo-goo eyes, thick drops of slobber were dribbling off his lips. Every time I tried to catch them, he’d fling his head around, and instead of getting slobber in the jar, I got it all over my shirt.

  And ears.

  And face.

  I didn’t know whether to try to catch the slobber in midair or to go home and take a bath.

  And then I had a scientific-genius sort of thought.

  If I could get Lemon Drop to lick the inside of the jar, some slobber was sure to fall in there.

  “Mrs. McClosky, could I have just a little piece of a treat?” I asked, holding out my hand.

  “Why, certainly, Thaddeus,” she said, and broke off a corner of one, which I dropped into the jar.

  “Come get a treat,” I called to Lemon Drop, holding out the jar to him. It was a clean mayonnaise jar, and Lemon Drop would have to stick his tongue all the way in and smush it around to get the doggie treat out. By the time he figured out how to do it, the jar was a quarter-way full of slobber.

  “Brilliant work!” Ben said in his loud voice-over whisper.

  I quickly screwed a lid on the jar. The slobber inside was pretty slobbery, with crumbs of dog treat mixed in. I would have liked to get a pure sample, but sometimes you have to make compromises, even in scientific research.

  Aretha volunteered to take Lemon Drop on his walk. I was going to get another sample of slobber after Lemon Drop had exercised for thirty minutes, and a last sample after we’d fed Lemon Drop ten saltine crackers. Now that I knew the trick to getting Lemon Drop to slobber in a jar, it was all going to be a piece of cake. Sure enough, at the end of the afternoon I had three labeled jars full of slobber, ready to be examined under a microscope and tested for gooeyness and stretchiness and all sorts of other interesting characteristics.

  After Aretha’s mom picked her up from Mrs. McClosky’s house, Ben helped me carry the jars to my house. “I think I got some great footage today,” he said. “Especially when Aretha dropped Lemon Drop’s leash and had to chase him into the pond.”

  When we got to my house, Ben handed me the jars. “Okay, now remember, meet me at nine tomorrow morning at the park behind my apartment building. Bring plenty of jars. I’ll supply the doggie treats.”

  I spent three hours that night experimenting with Lemon Drop’s slobber. It was fascinating. I thought maybe I’d devote my life to the study of dog saliva, it was that interesting to me. I dipped Popsicle sticks into each jar, measuring how far each slobber sample stretched (the exercise sample stretched the farthest). I used my mom’s food scale to see how much each sample weighed. I studied a sample from each jar under my microscope to see which one had the most stuff in it, which sample was the clearest, and which one
was the cloudiest. I also examined each sample to see which one was just out-and-out grossest.

  Definitely the cracker sample.

  I have to say now, it was one of the most satisfying episodes in my scientific career.

  I had no idea that by the following afternoon I’d never want to see another jar of slobber as long as I lived.

  chapter eight

  “I do not have a good feeling about this, Mac.”

  Aretha and I stood at Ben’s front door, each of us carrying plastic bags filled with jars, ready to do some serious dog duty. We both were wearing old jeans and T-shirts.

  What we were about to do was going to involve more slobber than we ever knew existed.

  Aretha leaned toward me in a confidential way. “I don’t even like dogs that much. I am more of a cat person.”

  “So why are you doing this?” I asked her. I mean, someone like Aretha Timmons must have had a thousand other things she could be doing on a Saturday morning.

  Aretha straightened up. “The badge, Mac. It’s all about the badge.”

  Ben answered the door dressed in a camouflage jacket and sunglasses. “I hope you’re ready for business,” he said. He picked up his camera and a box of dog biscuits and closed the door behind him. “First up, Mrs. Klausenheimer.”

  Ben’s mom is the manager of an apartment building where mostly old people live. Which means Ben is living in a situation where it’s like he has forty extra grandparents. They’re always slipping sugar-free candy into his pockets and pinching his cheeks. And a bunch of them, it turns out, have dogs.

  “There are a lot of miniature poodles and Chihuahuas here,” Ben told us as he led us to apartment 2-D. “But Mrs. Klausenheimer has a German shepherd, and Mrs. Leonard has a bulldog, and Mr. Torres’s dog is a mix of bassett hound and English sheepdog. So I think we’re going to see some interesting slobber today.”

  I have to admit I was pretty nervous about trying to get a saliva sample from a German shepherd. Most of the dogs I’ve known in my lifetime besides Lemon Drop have been on the small side. Bigger than loaves of bread, smaller than tricycles. I am mostly used to dogs you don’t have to be afraid of because if they started to attack you, you could run away from them, no problem.

  A German shepherd is another story.

  You could probably get two feet away from a German shepherd before it ate you like a prelunchtime snack.

  “Benny, is that you?” Mrs. Klausenheimer called out after Ben rang her doorbell. “I’ve been expecting you and your little friends,” she said as she opened her door. “I made brownies, no nuts.”

  The idea that there were brownies without nuts inside calmed me down right away. Since I am allergic to nuts, I am always missing out on treats that people’s moms bring to school for special events. So you won’t be surprised that Mrs. Klausenheimer automatically became one of my favorite people.

  That is, until the barking started.

  “Killer! Quiet down, now! It’s just Benny and his little friends.”

  I got a shaky feeling in my knees. “Killer?”

  I don’t know who started backing away from the door faster, me or Aretha.

  Mrs. Klausenheimer smiled. “He’s not really a killer, dear. Why, he’s Mommy’s sweetum-peetums, that’s what he is. I named him Killer to scare away the ax murderers.”

  She turned around and whistled. “Come here, my sweetie pie face, and show these children what a softy-wofty you are.”

  Killer galloped to the front door and stuck his head out.

  He did not look like a sweetie pie face to me.

  He looked like a dog with more teeth than were absolutely necessary.

  “Now, you children come inside and we’ll see if we can’t get Killer to salivate for you. He’s not the most—what was your word for it, Benny?”

  Ben put his camera up to his eye and began recording. “Slobbery. He’s not a real slobbery dog. But I bet if we give him a dog biscuit, he’ll work up some slobber, won’t ya, Killer?”

  Killer made a noise between a bark and a growl before turning around and heading down a hallway. Everybody followed him into Mrs. Klausenheimer’s living room.

  “Okay, Mac, you get a biscuit out of the box, and Aretha, you get a jar ready,” Ben said, handing me the doggie treats, aiming the camcorder at Killer.

  That’s when I made an important discovery. The scariest German shepherd in the world will be your friend if you just give him one dog biscuit.

  I mean, like, your best friend for life.

  I mean, when I held up the biscuit and said in pretty much a half whisper, “Here’s a doggie biscuit, Killer,” he knocked me to the floor, sat on me while he inhaled it in about two seconds, and then started licking me all over my face.

  “Oh, Killer likes you, I can tell,” Mrs. Klausenheimer said. I didn’t say anything back. I was too busy getting licked to death.

  “Quick, Aretha, hand Mac a jar!” Ben said, coming in closer with his camera to where I was sprawled on Mrs. Klausenheimer’s scratchy rug. Aretha, who clearly was not going to get any closer to Killer than she had to, rolled a jar across the floor to me.

  Getting Killer’s slobber into the jar was not a problem.

  Getting Killer off of me was.

  I was really hoping the next dog we gathered a sample from would be a Chihuahua.

  One thing we definitely learned that afternoon is a lot of dogs aren’t that slobbery at all. Chihuahuas will give you a teaspoon of slobber if you’re lucky. Miniature poodles, same thing.

  A dog that’s part bassett hound, part sheepdog, on the other hand, well, let’s just say bring out the buckets, because it’s about to rain saliva.

  “Sheila here is a drooler,” Mr. Torres told us first thing. “I think it’s the bassett hound in her, isn’t it, girl?” Mr. Torres leaned down and scratched Sheila behind her ears. A long string of slobber immediately started running down her chin.

  “Does she do that every time you scratch her ears?” Aretha asked, sounding half fascinated and half disgusted.

  Mr. Torres nodded proudly. “Just about. If there was a drooling contest, my Sheila would win it.”

  We filled four jars with Sheila’s slobber.

  We didn’t need four jars, but once you figure out you can make a dog drool buckets of slobber just by scratching behind her ears, it’s hard to stop.

  After Sheila, me and Aretha were pretty much slobbered out. We’d gotten saliva samples from thirteen dogs. Our T-shirts and jeans were soaking wet. We had started smelling sort of bad after dog number seven, a golden retriever named Chucky. The skin on our fingers was all wrinkly.

  It was time to go home.

  “You should do a comic book about slobber,” I told Ben as we walked back to his apartment. “Like, ‘Derek the Destroyer Battles the People from Planet Slobber.’”

  “I’m thinking about giving up comic books,” Ben said. He held up his camcorder and gave it a couple pats like it was his trusty sidekick. “There’s a lot more future in making documentaries. That’s what my dad told me when I talked to him on the phone last night.”

  “Documentary films are very popular right now,” Aretha agreed.

  Ben give up comic books? I stared at him. “Why can’t you do both?”

  Ben scuffed the toe of his tennis shoe against the pavement. “Well, I guess I could. But I was telling my dad about this movie that we’re doing, and he sort of said that there was a really good private school near where he lives in Seattle. I might be able to get a scholarship there if I could make a brilliant documentary. They like it when kids do creative projects that use technology. So I probably should just focus on the documentary right now.”

  Ben’s dad lives in Seattle, Washington, which is pretty much on the other side of the country. Ben doesn’t get to see his dad very much, since they live so far apart from each other. If Ben went to private school in Seattle, he’d get to see his dad all the time.

  But if Ben went to private school in Seattle
, I’d probably never see him again.

  And if Ben lived near his dad, he’d probably never draw another comic book, just to make his dad happy.

  But I was pretty sure it would make Ben miserable.

  chapter nine

  My teacher, Mrs. Tuttle, is very big on making lists. She says lists help to organize your mind, keep you on track, and help you not to forget things that are important to you. She says it is funny how we forget important things, but that’s just the way the human brain is. There is a lot going on in there, and some stuff gets lost in the shuffle.

  Last night I woke up at 2:23 a.m., according to my alarm clock, and had this thought: Make a list first thing in the morning.

  It was like my brain had sent me an instant message.

  What kind of list? I wondered.

  And then I fell back to sleep.

  This morning I woke up seven minutes and thirteen seconds early, without even trying. It was exactly enough time to make a list.

  And I knew what kind of list I had to make.

  A Remember What Things Are Important Right Now list.

  So far this is what I have:

  1. Do not let Ben move to Seattle.

  2. Do not let Ben stop drawing comic books.

  3. On the other hand, do not stop Ben from being his genius artistic self and doing good work on our Lemon Drop documentary and scientific experiments.

  4. Do get another job so I can go to Space Camp.

  I had been avoiding number four for two weeks, but now I had to face the facts: I was making thirty dollars a week walking Lemon Drop. One hundred twenty dollars a month. Times that by five months and I would have six hundred dollars.

  In other words, not enough to go to Space Camp.

  Even if the Lemon Drop documentary was great, we probably weren’t going to sell it. Probably the best we could hope for was to show it at a school assembly. Maybe people could make donations afterward.