Potterwookiee

  It took a little while to shove him into my backpack because of how fluffy he’d gotten.

  Hairy was silent, but I heard a strange noise coming from the other side of the fence. There was the rustling of leaves as something moved around in Janae’s front yard. My heart almost passed out. I could see something gazing back at me from one of the spaces at the top of the wall.

  Someone was watching me.

  CHAPTER 8

  SAVED BY THE BELLE

  The eye quickly disappeared, but I could hear whatever it was moving around on the other side of the fence.

  I flung my backpack over my shoulder and ran across the yard. With a tug, I yanked open the back door and raced through my house. I placed my backpack behind the couch and dashed out the front door.

  I ran through my front yard toward Janae’s house.When I got to the side of her driveway, nobody was there.

  I pretended for a second that it had just been Janae looking at me. I mean, maybe she likes me and just wants to get a secret glimpse.

  Sadly, I knew that wasn’t the case—the eyeball had been much bigger than Janae’s. In fact, if she really were that big and scary, I don’t think I would feel the same way I do about her.

  I ran over to Trevor’s house to tell him about the eye. As I was running up to his front door, Trevor sprang out and we collided.

  We both went down hard. I twisted my right leg, and Trevor’s glasses flew off and hit the ground. To make things worse, as I was getting up, I stepped on them.

  Trevor picked up his broken glasses, told me to hold on, and then went back inside. When he came out again, he was wearing his scratched and ugly backup pair.

  I was familiar with Trevor’s backup glasses. He had worn them a short while last year after he had sneezed so hard that his regular glasses flew off and into the street, where a car drove over them.

  The reason Trevor had been running out the door was because he thought he had figured out how to get Hairy to snap out of the spell. When Trevor asked me why I had been running, I told him about the strange eye staring at me through the wall.

  The eye story made Trevor a little uneasy. Trevor liked mysteries and excitement, but he preferred them to come in book form. A strange peeper peeping into my backyard felt like the beginning of something sinister.

  We returned to my backyard, and I showed him where the eye had been spying on me. As I was talking I heard the noise again.

  I normally wouldn’t be freaked out because I don’t really believe in things like zombies, but it wasn’t very long ago that I didn’t believe in creatures like Wonkenstein and Potterwookiee either.

  The sound of someone moving along the outside of the wall grew louder. The noise stopped, and both Trevor and I held our breath. We could hear a scraping noise and then a dark shadow rose up over the back wall and jumped down. It was Wilt.

  Wilt loved to call me Dumbo. Years ago he discovered that my middle name was Columbo. And since Dumbo rhymed so well, that’s what he usually called me.

  Wilt punched his fist into his palm and growled. Even though it was my yard, I felt like I had just been busted and now needed an excuse to be out there.

  Even Wilt wasn’t dense enough to buy that excuse. Trevor told him we were playing hide-and-seek and then closed his eyes and began to count.

  Unfortunately, when Trevor opened his eyes, Wilt was still there.

  Wilt stepped closer to both of us and looked me in the eye. I tried not to shake, but I was so nervous my hands were sweating.

  I looked over at Trevor in his backup glasses. Amazingly, he wasn’t frightened of Wilt. His mom and dad had taught him all sorts of things about personal safety and being cautious. If he were an action figure, he’d be something boring like …

  Trevor didn’t fear bullies. His mom had always told him that they were nothing but …

  So Trevor wasn’t scared, and he was now saying things to Wilt that sounded just like his mom.

  I put my hands over my face and wished I were dead. I couldn’t even look because I was scared Trevor might be trying to hug Wilt.

  Wilt said something about how I had actually “given” my bike to him. He then demanded to know what we were being so secretive about back here.

  Once again, Trevor was messing things up. Plus, his backup glasses made it hard to take him seriously. Wilt stepped closer and punched his right fist into his left palm. For a second, I thought about just beating myself up to get it over with. Wilt opened his mouth, laughed, and then said to me …

  I suddenly wished I had a lightsaber. Wilt probably would have made good on his threat if it hadn’t been for my sister. Libby came out into the yard to get her camera and pictures. She didn’t know Wilt, so naturally she assumed he was a thief who was there to steal the pictures she had taken of herself.

  Wilt wanted nothing to do with Libby and her screaming. He scrambled back over the fence. Libby grabbed her stuff and stormed inside without saying another word. And just like that, Trevor and I were alone again.

  We went inside, and I retrieved my backpack from behind the couch. Both of us then went into the garage. Trevor filled me in about the “undoing” spell he had found in Harry Potter. It was in the first book, and I was mad that I hadn’t spotted it myself. I propped Hairy up on my dad’s old golf clubs, took his wand from his hand, and repeated the words Trevor thought would work.

  The tip of Hairy’s little wand burned red, and a small spark shot out. Hairy started to shake, and his eyes blinked and rolled back into his head. His feet jiggled and then, while belching, his body jerked upward. He jumped down off of the golf clubs and wiggled his arms.

  Trevor and I clapped and cheered. I thought Hairy was going to thank us for freeing him, but instead he said …

  Hairy also made a few remarks about how dumb a hiding place the beanbag had been. I apologized, and Hairy explained how he had accidentally put himself under the spell while trying to fight off that owl. I apologized a second time for not being a better reader and figuring out how to free him sooner.

  The three of us hung out in my bedroom for the rest of the afternoon. Hairy really wanted to know what house he was in. When I told him “mine,” he laughed. It turned out he was talking about a different kind of house, the kind you’d find at Hogwarts. Well, that would take a sorting hat, and since I didn’t have a real sorting hat, I had to improvise.

  Trevor was pretty pleased that Hairy was there. He had liked Wonkenstein, but he seemed even more fascinated with Hairy. There was something odd and almost hypnotizing about the creature. The way he moved and spoke was cool. While we were studying him, my mom knocked on my bedroom door. Trevor shoved Hairy up the front of his shirt to keep him hidden.

  Mom opened the door and stared at Trevor. She seemed more interested in his ugly glasses than in what was under his shirt. She informed me she was taking Libby and Tuffin shopping.

  My mom stared at us and looked like she wanted to say something, but instead just shook her head. Trevor’s stomach growled.

  My mom told us there was bread in the bread box and suggested we make some sandwiches.

  Trevor and I watched out my bedroom window until we saw her drive off with my brother and sister. Trevor took Hairy from under his shirt and handed him to me. Hairy hung on my arm smiling.

  It was not the smartest question to ask, seeing as how I knew he hadn’t eaten anything for a while. Hairy made me feel better by asking Trevor something stupid.

  Trevor explained his glasses as we all headed to the kitchen to make something to eat.

  I had never met Trevor’s aunt, but if those had been her glasses, she probably wasn’t.

  CHAPTER 9

  MAKING PLANS

  I brought Hairy out into the kitchen and set him on the counter. I wasn’t worried about my mom coming back soon. Whenever she and Libby went shopping, it usually took hours. I also wasn’t concerned about my dad popping in. He hardly ever came home early from work. And even when he did, he always—and I mean a
lways—honked the horn twice before turning off his car. He says that “beep beep” in car language means …

  There had been only a few times in my life that I could remember when my dad had not double-tapped the car horn when pulling up to our house. One of those times had been when they brought Tuffin back from being born, and the other had been when I was eight. My dad had just gone through a particularly bad parent-teacher conference with my teacher.

  I guess my dad had been a little too concerned to honk when we got home. But I had gotten over my chalk problem, and I couldn’t remember a time since then that he hadn’t double-tapped upon arrival.

  I fixed Hairy a peanut butter and ham sandwich as Trevor talked about what we were going to do for our Average Chef tryout.

  We had talked with our friends earlier about what they wanted. Jack thought we should make spicy pancakes with some actual explosives in them. Aaron wanted whatever we made to have cheese. Rourk thought our meal should include a toy, and Teddy believed that whatever we cooked up would be a joke if it wasn’t …

  I had tried to explain to them that all we needed were a few basic recipes that we could use with whatever the average ingredients ended up being. I had seen the show enough times to know how it worked. So Trevor and I had gotten some good recipes out of my mom’s cookbooks. My friends had come over yesterday, and we had practiced cooking a few things. It had gone pretty well. Still, the tryouts were in two days, and I needed to improve my cooking skills. Hairy was more than willing to help.

  I loved when the Potter part of Hairy spoke. He had such a cool British accent. It made everything sound much more important than it was. Not that the Chewbacca part of him wasn’t just as interesting. When I set him down in the kitchen, he jumped up into the curtain and began shooting marshmallows at Puck.

  I pulled him down and gave him one of the recipes. He read it aloud so we knew what we were supposed to do. He was pretty helpful, but sometimes we couldn’t understand him at all.

  It felt great to be in the kitchen preparing for Average Chef and hanging out with a Potterwookiee. I still missed Wonk, but having Hairy made things a lot better. In between his telling us what to do, we would ask Hairy questions about himself and why he was here. He didn’t have too many answers, but he kept saying …

  Our cooking started to get a little messy, so we put on a couple of my mom’s aprons. I even found a small one from one of Libby’s old dolls for Hairy to use. We mixed all the ingredients together in a big casserole dish and put the food in the refrigerator. The doorbell rang.

  I hid Hairy in the bread box and answered the door. It was Jack and Aaron. They were standing there looking stunned.

  Judging by their hair, I could tell that both of them had recently been talking to Wilt. Wilt loved to lick his hand, smack your forehead, and then swirl it around your head until the front of your hair looked like a stringy bird’s nest. He always pretended he was just fixing your hair, but we all knew better.

  The worst part about Wilt-Whirls were that they were almost impossible to comb out. One kid at my school had to shave the middle of his hair just to correct what Wilt had done. It was like a reverse Mohawk.

  Jack and Aaron came into the house and sat down at the dining room table. Both of them had such long hair to begin with that their whirls looked higher than any I had seen before. I asked them what had happened.

  Aaron told us how Jack had spilled the beans. He said Jack had told Wilt about my closet and how I was probably hiding a creature of some sort.

  Jack said that Wilt wanted me to meet him at Temon Cemetery tonight in the clearing by the single tree. He said I was supposed to bring Hairy and that if I did, I would get my bike back and avoid being beaten up.

  I was so mad at Jack for ratting me out. I also thought it was weird that Wilt wanted to meet at the cemetery. Trevor cleared things up by reminding me that Wilt’s dad was the caretaker and that they lived in a house on the back edge of the cemetery. I wasn’t sure what to do. Trevor suggested …

  I looked at Trevor and shook my head—we needed to handle this ourselves. I figured if I got all my friends, it would be six against one, and together we could take Wilt down. Believe it or not, Trevor, Jack, and Aaron seemed to think this was a good idea. We all headed out to the island to fetch Rourk and Teddy and see if we could come up with a plan for getting my bike back and teaching Wilt a lesson. I was so mad and so pumped up that I forgot I had left Hairy hidden in the bread box.

  On the island we brainstormed and came up with a way to get my bike back and not get beaten up. We would surprise Wilt, quickly wrap him around the single tree in the cemetery, and then grab my bike.

  After going over all the details, we saw my dad drive up the street and pull into my driveway. He double-tapped the horn and got out.

  I waved across the street at him and then turned my attention back to my friends. My dad went into the house to make his afternoon snack and relax after a hard day.

  CHAPTER 10

  THINGS

  Our idea to get my bike back wasn’t perfect, but we really hoped it would work. I was so nervous and excited that I was buzzing.

  The second I stepped back into my house, however, my brain handed me a reminder.

  Hairy! I ran to the bread box and threw it open. He wasn’t there. I dashed around the kitchen, frantically throwing open cabinets and drawers. Nothing. I could hear the TV on in the family room, and when I looked around the corner, there was my dad sitting on his favorite chair and eating the last bite of a sandwich while watching one of his shows.

  There was no way my dad could have gotten bread without seeing Hairy. I stepped in front of the TV.

  My dad’s eyes lit up.

  For some reason, my dad loved it when his kids wondered. He always hoped that we were wondering about grand things like the universe or playground equipment. Of course, he was usually let down when the things we were wondering about weren’t quite that important.

  My dad looked pretty disappointed. He reported on his sandwich but didn’t say anything about having seen a small creature in the bread box. I asked him if there was anything besides bread in the bread box.

  I shook my head and asked him if there had been anything besides bread or bagels. He said that the only other thing in there had been one of Tuffin’s stuffed animals. He added that he had taken the stuffed animal out and tossed it into Tuffin’s room.

  I was too busy running to Tuffin’s room to wonder about Tuffin’s shoving habits. I groaned, worrying about Hairy and how messy Tuffin’s room was. My little brother hates it when people touch his stuff. He won’t even let my mom clean his room. He stacks everything he owns in piles and covers most of the piles with blankets and sheets to make it look like a mountain range.

  I knew that if Hairy had been thrown into Tuffin’s room, there was a good chance that he was now uncomfortable and disoriented. I pushed open Tuffin’s door, expecting the worst.

  Hairy wasn’t lost or disoriented. He was standing on a pile of junk and doing some sort of spell. Tuffin’s toys and blankets were flying around the room. I stepped in and quickly closed the door as a plastic dragon flew by me followed by a toy Millennium Falcon. Hairy was smiling and chanting something in Latin. I looked on in awe until a basketball slammed me in the face.

  I tumbled and fell backward, landing on Hairy. Everything dropped to the ground as the two of us rolled down one of Tuffin’s junk piles.

  I brought Hairy to my room and told him all about our plan. I told him how Wilt would be by the single tree in the clearing at the Temon Cemetery at nine p.m. I told him how we were going to wear robes for disguises and tie a bunch of sheets together to make a long rope. I told him how when Wilt showed up, Rourk would signal with a duck call, and we would run around the tree and wrap him up it so that I could take my bike back.

  Hairy spotted a problem—if Wilt didn’t bring my bike to the tree, then I still wouldn’t have it. I smiled and told Hairy how seeing him fly those things around
Tuffin’s room had given me an idea.

  I didn’t want to bring Hairy with me, but it seemed like he was just what we needed. I explained my new idea to Hairy, and he asked me all kinds of questions about Wilt. He was confused at first. Then I told him that Wilt probably would have been in Slytherin or fighting with the Empire, and he seemed to understand. I explained bullies and how it was necessary for us to teach Wilt a lesson because he made everyone miserable.

  Hairy seemed incredibly willing to help.

  Hairy and I talked until my mom came home and called me to come to dinner. I put Hairy into my pillow to keep him hidden while I ate.

  For dinner my mom had brought home tacos from a fast food place. The food was pretty good, but the conversation was painful. My mom and dad kept insisting that I include Tuffin on my team for the Average Chef tryouts. They kept trying to convince me that he had some really good ideas. I politely told them no way.

  I also tried to explain that Tuffin was too young. I thought I had them with that argument, but then, Libby ruined it.