“Didn’t you love the way he chopped that cabbage? He sure can handle a knife!” added a weird-looking guy who was eating potato chips.
“Yes! But my favorite part was when he warned us of the Evil One, a desperate bank-robbing criminal mastermind who is living in Hairsprinkle disguised as a boy named Lenny.”
“It’s terrifying to think the Evil One may be in Hairsprinkle right now!”
“It sure is,” I said.
I couldn’t believe it! Fako Mustacho—I mean, Casper—had somehow convinced everybody that I was the bank-robbing bad guy, not him, even though he was the one with the mustache!
I knew that my parents never missed Good Morning Hairsprinkle. But surely they wouldn’t be fooled by Casper and his fake mustache and his lies about me . . . right?
hen I got to my house, I saw that it was surrounded by cable installers. I could tell because they all had clipboards, tool belts, and big loops of coaxial cable.
“Halt, who goes there?” one of them said to me.
“It’s me, Jodie O’Rodeo, preteen singing sensation and star of the recently canceled TV show The Jodie O’Rodeo Showdeo.”
“Was that on cable?”
“Yes.”
“Basic cable or premium?”
“Premium.”
“You may pass.”
I went into my house. My parents and two cable guys were watching a Good Morning Hairsprinkle special bulletin and sobbing.
Nancy, the anchorwoman, was saying something like this:
“Heidelberg CEO and stylish hard-nosed businessman Fako Mustacho is on his way to address the governor and state lawmakers about the Lenny Junior crisis. Meanwhile, the crime wave has spread from Hairsprinkle to eight more cities, where teams of lumberjacks have robbed billions in cash and equipment from banks, jewelers, and dentist offices.”
My mother wailed. “Oh, Lenny Senior, I can’t believe our own son was really a master criminal disguised as our son.”
“That makes no sense at all,” said my father sharply. “He is our son. It just turns out that he’s an evil bank-robbing creep.”
“Oh, I thought he was just pretending.”
“He was pretending,” my father insisted. “Pretending to not be an evil bank-robbing creep!”
“Well, whichever, Mr. Smart Guy! Either way, he’s broken my heart.”
“Mine too, darling. I wish we had never named him Lenny Junior. He’s a disgrace to the proud name Lenny Flem.”
“Oh, Lenny Senior, why is TV star Jodie O’Rodeo in our living room?”
“I don’t know, darling, I can only assume she was sent here by Fako Mustacho.”
“Yes, that’s right,” I said. “Fako Mustacho sent me here to collect evidence.”
“What sort of evidence?”
“Oh you know, Lenny Junior’s cell phone, his wallet, some clean socks and underwear—that sort of thing.”
“You go right ahead and take whatever Fako needs, little cowgirl! But first, can we get an autograph for our daughters . . . our beloved daughters, who are at a ballet lesson and are not robbing banks like their no-goodnik brother . . .”
I tried not to let all this hurt my feelings. They were brainwashed or hypnotized or something, after all.
I went up to my room and got all my stuff, like my cell phone and wallet. And I changed my socks. I like to have fresh socks whenever possible. I got my backpack, threw out my school stuff, and put in more socks and some makeup I stole from my sisters’ room to make me look more like Jodie.
Then I went down to the kitchen and stuffed all the beef jerky and Vienna sausages we had into my backpack.
My parents were too busy watching news reports about me to notice.
f you weren’t paying attention in school, you may not know that Hairsprinkle is our state capital. The governor has her mansion and her office here, and the state lawmakers meet at a big Chinese buffet restaurant on the far side of town. They used to meet in our fancy gold-domed capitol building, but they kept trashing the bathrooms and got kicked out.
So now they meet in the back of Winston’s Emerald Crown Buffet. Casper and I both went there on a field trip last year. We got to see the lieutenant governor eating these big cubes of Jell-O with chopsticks. He was really good at it. But we didn’t actually see any laws get made or anything.
The TV had said Fako Mustacho was going to talk to all the government people at once. I figured he would probably do it there. So I hopped on the first crosstown trolley I saw.
I didn’t know what I would do when I got to Winston’s, but at least I wouldn’t be two steps behind Casper this time.
I was getting used to being Jodie O’Rodeo. The surprising thing was that nobody seemed surprised to see a hot-pink cowgirl on the trolley. Maybe they’d seen more cowgirls on the trolley than you’d think or maybe they were half hypnotized.
It’s a long ride all the way across Hairsprinkle to Winston’s. First, I checked my text messages on my cell phone. Most of my messages come from Casper and I didn’t expect to have any from him. But I did have one!
Y U NOT @ CURLING PRACTIC 2DY?
I had forgotten all about practice. Casper and I are both on a local rec league curling team. I’m not so good, but Casper is the best slider in the state.
My first thought was, I’d better get down to the practice hut. But then I realized that Casper wasn’t really at curling practice, he was on TV pretending to be Fako Mustacho. Wasn’t he?
Or was it possible that he really was at curling practice and Fako Mustacho was someone else?
No, I reminded myself, it’s impossible. Well, not impossible. But if Casper wasn’t Fako, then where did the money come from? Or the limo? Or any of that stuff?
A much simpler solution was that Casper had sent this text message to fool me. He was good at fooling people, I realized. He fooled the police, my parents, the newscasters, and he was probably going to fool the governor next. I had to be careful and not get fooled too.
I’m the only one who seems to be immune to Casper’s mustache power, I thought to myself, because I’m the only one who knows it’s a fake.
For the rest of the ride, I checked out my new Superlative Deluxe Grabber Hand. It really was a lot better than the old one. I used it to pick up some trash from the floor of the trolley. Mostly breath-mint wrappers, but I got this one piece of paper about the size of a business card that said “Winston’s Emerald Crown Buffet Platinum Club. Buy 364 buffet lunches and get ONE FREE.”
It had only been stamped once. I guess whoever got it hadn’t wanted to eat there every day for a year just to get a free lunch.
hen the trolley got to the Winston’s stop, I got off—but I couldn’t see Winston’s. There were so many people and police cars and T-shirt vendors and signs in the way.
It didn’t take long to discover that every single one of these people was trying to get into Winston’s and that they were all Fako fans.
They had buttons and T-shirts and umbrellas and temporary tattoos with Fako’s picture on them.
How was it possible, I wondered, for all this stuff to have been made already? I stooped down to pet a dog wearing a THIS DOG’S FOR FAKO! doggy sweater. While the owner wasn’t looking, I looked for the tag. It was sticking out near the dog’s tummy.
“Does doggy want a belly rub?” I said loudly, and rolled the dog over. I read the tag. Just as I suspected!
“Made in Hairsprinkle, USA, by the Heidelberg Novelty Company. Do not dry-clean.”
Actually, I didn’t suspect the “do not dry-clean” part, but I had started to suspect that all this stuff had been cranked out by Heidelberg! It was just like when Heidi Timkin ran for class president and her father ordered six hundred hats that said TIMKIN on them in sparkly letters and everybody voted for her because her opponent, Sweaty Howell, didn’t give out anything. The sad thing was: Sweaty would have been a great president.
Anyway, Casper-Fako was using the same idea to turn himself into a celebrity. Ever
y T-shirt, every doggy sweater made him seem like more of a superstar. And every person who thought he was a superstar would want to have a T-shirt, and on and on.
But I couldn’t see the point to it. He wasn’t going to run for class president, was he?
o there I was in the big crowd, dressed like a cowgirl. How was I going to get inside?
Just then a really, really, really, really, really annoying person came along.
“OK, everyone, we need to clear a path here. Sir, could you clear a path here? Clear a path, please. We need to keep a path open. Clear a path, please. A path must be kept open. Ma’am? Clear a path, please. Have your dog clear the path, please.”
And on and on and on. She never stopped talking. And no one cleared a path. So she’d really get in somebody’s face and then they’d move over a foot, and she’d move on and they’d move back.
Finally, she got to me.
“Clear a path.”
“I’m Jodie O’Rodeo.”
“Please clear a path, Judy.”
“No, it’s Jodie! I’m famous! I’m a TV star!”
“You’ll have to clear a path.”
“What’s the path for?”
“The path, which must be cleared, is for the governor, the state lawmakers, the media, and members of Winston’s Emerald Crown Buffet Platinum Club.”
I showed her my card.
“Can you clear the path for me, please?” I asked.
“With pleasure,” she said, an evil gleam in her eye.
If she was annoying before, she was dangerous now. She wasn’t just clearing a path for the sake of having a path. She now had a sacred duty to get me through the crowd to the restaurant. She dropped her phony politeness and started shoving people out of the way. She bulldozed a path for me all the way to the door.
It was really crowded inside. There didn’t seem to be any chance of getting near the food. The line for egg drop soup looked about a mile long. I saw two old guys fighting over a chicken wing.
Just then a cook came out with a big tub of crab rangoon. That’s my favorite. He was headed to the buffet with it. I knew I had to act fast or all that tasty deep-fried fake crabmeat would be gone in a second. But I couldn’t get anywhere near the cook.
I figured I was about nineteen feet away. Luckily, the Superlative Deluxe Grabber Hand stretches twenty.
My first flick was perfect, but a famous TV news anchor walked in the way at the last second. The Grabber Hand bounced off her shellacked hairdo and came back empty.
There was time for only one more shot.
“Hey, Nancy from Good Morning Hairsprinkle! Watch out!” I shouted.
She leaned back just as the Grabber Hand shot past her, landed securely on a crab rangoon, and zipped back into my hands.
“Thanks, Nancy,” I shouted. “My mom’s a big fan of yours.”
“And my niece is a big fan of yours, Jodie!” she called back.
We exchanged autographs and I split my crab rangoon with her.
Then I realized I was talking to a powerful TV journalist. If I could convince her that Casper was just a kid with a fake mustache, she could tell the whole world!
But at that moment a trumpet sounded.
“Make way! Make way for Fako Mustacho!” someone with a British accent shouted.
Fako himself was coming through the front door. He sure looked stylish and rich. And tall! Short for an adult but awfully tall for Casper. I craned my neck to get a look at his shoes. They were cowboy boots with six-inch soles. He could barely walk in them, but since he was surrounded by bodyguards on all sides, he didn’t fall over.
I took a good look at the mustache. It really did look good, but maybe a tiny bit crooked. Maybe I’d be able to convince Nancy.
“Look, Nancy,” I said. “That’s a fake mustache!”
“Actually, Jodie, it’s pronounced FAH-koh Mus-TOSH-oh. Excuse me, I think I see a chance to get some sweet pork on a stick. Want me to get you some?”
“No thanks,” I said, too depressed to eat anything else.
ear ye, hear ye!” shouted someone in a really deep, official-sounding voice. “The state legislature is now in session. The Honorable Fako Mustacho now presiding. Oopsie! I mean, the Honorable Governor Barbara Broom presiding . . . for now. Please take your seats in the back room. And, please, when visiting the buffet, take all you want, but eat all you take.”
Luckily, I wasn’t all that far from the hallway that led to the back room, so I was able to get a place to stand. It turned out to be right next to Lieutenant Governor Ken Wickle’s table. He was shoveling Jell-O cubes into his mouth with chopsticks again.
“You’ve got to stop Fako Mustacho,” I said. “He’s a criminally insane kid with a fake mustache that robs banks.”
“The fake mustache robs banks?”
“No, the insane kid robs the banks.”
“But that’s not what you said. You said, ‘a fake mustache that robs banks.’ Even a cowgirl like you should know that grammar always counts.”
“OK, fine. He’s a criminally insane kid that robs banks.”
“Oh, you mean Lenny Flem Junior.”
“No, Lenny Flem Junior is innocent, Fako Mustacho is guilty.”
“Guilty of robbing from himself?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, little lady, don’t tell anybody yet, but the offices of the Heidelberg Novelty Company were robbed this morning. The thieves took seventeen billion dollars!”
“What? Why would the Heidelberg Novelty Company have seventeen billion dollars in their offices?”
“Well, it wasn’t safe to keep it in the banks anymore, was it? They’ve got to keep it somewhere.”
Hmmph! I wasn’t buying it. It sounded like a clever trick on Fako’s part. Now that he was a victim too, nobody would believe that he was the real bad guy.
The Heidelberg Novelty Company probably didn’t even have seventeen billion dollars, unless it was money Fako had stolen.
“Greetings, my friends!”
I knew that voice well, even though Casper was trying to make his voice deeper than it really was.
“Greetings, Fako Mustacho,” said the entire room, except me. Then the room became instantly silent. It didn’t gradually die out as people finished sentences or cleared their throats. Just total silence.
I looked around. The people looked like zombies. The lieutenant governor had dropped his Jell-O cube and just sat there with the chopsticks dangling from his fingers.
I scooted over a little bit until I could see between the tall people.
Wow! Fako Mustacho ... so stylish... so brilliant... so hirsute ... so trustworthy ... I wish to serve him ... so that all mankind may know the glory of his mustache. . . .
“WAIT!” A voice in my head screamed. “The mustache! It’s fake! FAKE!”
That snapped me out of it. I turned away. The power of the mustache really was strong. I was afraid to look at Fako again.
So I just listened, and helped myself to the rest of the lieutenant governor’s Jell-O. He didn’t seem to mind.
irst, Fako Mustacho told the crowd that seventeen billion dollars had been stolen from his office that day.
“As you know, the Heidelberg Novelty Company is vital to the economy of Hairsprinkle, the United States of America, and the whole world. We’re too big to fail. I was wondering if the state lawmakers would be willing to give us another seventeen billion dollars so we can stay in business.”
A dude with a gavel jumped up. “All in favor say “aye!” he called.
Everyone in the room but me said “aye,” even though half of them weren’t state lawmakers.
“All opposed say ‘nay,’” whispered the gavel dude.
I thought about saying “nay,” but it would have made Fako suspicious of me, and all these brainwashed politicians would probably have torn me to pieces. So I just sat there.
The governor got up and wrote Fako a check on the spot.
“Thank
you, governor. Thank you, my friends.”
He put the check in his pocket.
“Now, let me first say a few words about Lenny Flem Junior.”
The people around me started to shake and tremble. The lieutenant governor dropped his chopsticks.
“Evil One . . . Evil One . . . Evil One . . .,” the people whispered.
“Now, wait—wait just a second,” said Fako. “I know that every piece of evidence points to Lenny Flem Junior being guilty of the string of crimes that has wiped out banks, companies, and governments. I know that every reasonable person who has watched the news believes that Lenny Flem Junior is guilty.
“But not I. I believe that in this great country of ours no one is truly guilty until they have been convicted in a court of law.”
The crowd applauded and murmured about Fako’s wisdom and goodness.
“So, until a judge passes judgment, let us not call Lenny Flem Junior a depraved monster heck-bent on destroying America, democracy, freedom, and the Heidelberg Novelty Company. Instead, let us catch him as fast as we can so we CAN convict him!”
“HOOOOWAAARRGGGHHHHH!” is about as close as I can get to putting into writing the sound the crowd made after that.
When people finally settled down, Fako continued. “The governor is a close friend of mine,” he said. “I respect her and admire her. However, she hasn’t been able to get the job done. She hasn’t been able to catch Lenny Flem Junior.”
“I’m really sorry,” said the governor.
“I know you are,” Fako said. “Would you mind resigning?”
“Not at all,” she said, and she leaned forward and spoke into the microphone. “I hereby resign as governor of this great state. I have done my best to—”
“Hey! Let Fako talk!” somebody hollered.
“Quit hogging the mic, Babs!” shouted the lieutenant governor.
So Fako started up again, and in a few minutes he had been appointed governor by a unanimous vote of the state lawmakers.
Everybody but me cheered, and then Fako’s bodyguards escorted him out of the building.