“I don’t want her to do anything. Celery wants to do it,” Hyacinth carefully clarified.
“Ferret bungee jump!” Bard and Herman screamed in unison.
“Awesome,” Fitzy called out, pumping his fist in the air.
“Thanks, Fitzy! I think you’re totally awesome, too! I’ve always wanted a ginger-haired bestie, and now I have one!” Hyacinth said as she shimmied up the tree with Celery on her shoulder.
Once on the branch, Hyacinth began to fret over Celery’s safety during the jump.
“This is safe, right? Because Celery is my number one bestie, the bestie of all besties, so she better not get hurt. As a matter of fact, I would be super grateful if you let her borrow a helmet.”
“We don’t believe in helmets, seat belts, or air bags. They slow down the fun,” Fitzy stated definitively.
“Fun!” Bard and Herman grunted loudly, pumping their fists in the air before refocusing their attention on the ropes.
“Fitzy, I wouldn’t let Theo hear you talk about safety like that; it’s kind of his religion, if you know what I mean,” Hyacinth explained. “Now, in light of everything, I am going to have to insist on fastening my hankie into a harness and my watch into a helmet for Celery.”
“A ferret harness and helmet? Cool,” Fitzy said with a nod.
After creating a harness out of her hankie and wrapping her watch around Celery’s head, Hyacinth attached the rope. Planting a quick kiss on the animal’s furry cheek, she let go. And while Hyacinth couldn’t say for sure, she could have sworn Celery pumped her little ferret fist as she fell.
“Good thing Celery went first; that rope is way too long,” Hyacinth said to Fitzy as her ferret landed a mere three inches from the ground. “You would have cracked your head open, maybe even died.”
“No way,” Fitzy said before a momentary look of concern washed over his flat, pancake-like face. “By the way, Bard thinks Celery is totally cool. If you’re into it, he’d like to stuff her when she dies and keep her as a pet.”
“That’s sort of creepy; I need to rethink being besties with Bard.”
A short while later Hyacinth bounded into the Contrary Conservatory’s crowded kitchen, eager to share the news of Celery’s jump with the other School of Fearians. Theo, Madeleine, Lulu, and Garrison were in the middle of searching the cupboards for food when the pantsuit-loving girl and her ferret arrived.
“Besties! I have the most amazing news!” Hyacinth squealed as Celery sat with windblown fur on her shoulder.
“You found Toothpaste?” Madeleine asked enthusiastically.
“You found food?” Theo inquired, holding up a carburetor.
Most bizarrely, Basmati did not keep a single particle of food in the kitchen. All the cabinets and even the refrigerator were chock-full of automotive parts, everything from fan belts to transmissions.
“Oops! I totally forgot to ask about the bird. But on the bright side, I have good news about a ferret: Celery bungee jumped! Isn’t that amazing? She’s the first ferret to ever do it! Talk about a trendsetter!”
“Actually, Hyacinth, I think it’s rather inappropriate to allow a ferret to engage in an extreme sport like bungee jumping,” Madeleine responded in a most unyielding manner.
“Yeah, I’ve got to agree with Maddie,” Garrison said, pushing his blond locks from his overly tanned forehead. “That’s pretty uncool, even for you.”
Hyacinth’s face dropped dramatically as she realized her friends did not approve of her behavior. As she had always loathed the sensation of disappointing others, she immediately deflected all accountability.
“Don’t blame me! It was Celery’s idea! She begged me to let her do it! I had no choice; she’s absolutely desperate to get into the Guinness World Records. You have no idea how hard it is to deal with a fame-obsessed ferret,” Hyacinth babbled while Madeleine, Lulu, Garrison, and Theo looked on with mounting condemnation.
“Hyacinth, you need a lesson in personal responsibility. You agreed to drop your pet ferret, an animal incapable of understanding the ramifications of her actions, off the top of a tree. That’s messed up,” Lulu said emphatically.
“Lulu’s right; your behavior is shameful,” Madeleine offered critically as she adjusted her shower cap.
“If I ever hear that you’ve allowed anything like this to happen again, I’m sending Celery straight to the Pet Protection Program. She’ll get a new name, a new owner—an all-around new leash on life,” Theo rambled dramatically.
“The Pet Protection Program doesn’t exist and you know it,” Lulu admonished Theo while rolling her eyes.
“Um, thanks for blowing my cover! What’s next? Are you going to report me to the IRS for not declaring my paper route?” Theo retorted with visible annoyance.
“Besties,” Hyacinth said softly, “I’m really sorry. You know how important it is to me to be a good friend.”
“Sometimes being a good friend is about saying no, about trying to do what’s best for your friend regardless of what they say,” Madeleine explained seriously.
“Guys, let’s get back to what matters: the bird. We have only two days left to find Toothpaste, or School of Fear’s over,” Garrison proclaimed forcefully. “And since coming out and asking the boys didn’t work, we need another new plan.”
“I say we covertly follow them. Eventually they’ll have to check on Toothpaste, at least to give him food and water,” Lulu suggested.
“Covert just happens to be my middle name,” Theo boasted before pausing to clarify. “Well, technically it’s Murray, but you know what I mean.”
“You can’t even follow yourself covertly, let alone those boys. Maddie and I will handle this; we’re the most discreet and the least likely to sing,” Lulu said, looking conspicuously at Theo and Hyacinth.
“I don’t know; I’m not very keen on being outdoors because of all the spiders and such,” Madeleine said meekly.
“Maddie, you slept in the basement last night. There must have been thirty or forty spiders in there alone. If you can handle that, you can handle this,” Garrison stated assuredly. “Plus, you wouldn’t want me to think you were a pansy, would you?”
“All right, we’ll start immediately after lunch,” Madeleine acquiesced with a giddy grin.
She’d had no intention of smiling, but in truth, Madeleine simply couldn’t stop herself; she was utterly delighted to share an inside joke with Garrison.
EVERYONE’S AFRAID OF SOMETHING:
Diplophobia is the fear
of double vision.
Lunch turned out to be a rather perplexing affair, served on a handcrafted Norwegian table dating from the late 1800s. Paper plates and plastic cutlery adorned the grand table, which was stationed smack-dab in the middle of Basmati’s Japanese sand garden. Seated in tall-backed, gold-leafed chairs, Mrs. Wellington, Schmidty, Abernathy, Basmati, and the School of Fearians waited impatiently for the arrival of the Contrarians.
“You’re lucky you don’t have any cats,” Theo said absentmindedly, looking at the sand. “They’d turn this place into one big bathroom.”
“Honestly, Theo, this is hardly an appropriate conversation to have around food,” Madeleine said with exasperation.
“I disagree!” Basmati rebuked Madeleine firmly. “We shouldn’t hide the painful truth from food. It deserves to know that it will soon be eaten and discarded as waste.”
“You want us to discuss what happens to food after we eat it? And during a meal, no less?” Madeleine asked incredulously. “I realize that I’m British and perhaps a smidge stodgier than the rest of you, but you cannot be serious.”
“Serious about what?” Basmati asked, lifting his lone eyebrow.
“About discussing bodily functions at the table!” Lulu blurted out.
“How vile!” Basmati responded with a look of total abhorrence. “Honestly, Edith Wellington, I would have expected you, of all people, to impart manners to your students.”
“Speaking of manners, where
are your students? We’ve been waiting for more than ten minutes,” Mrs. Wellington shot back with barely stifled aggravation.
“Wrong!” Basmati snapped. “It’s only been nine minutes and thirty-seven seconds, which just happens to be exactly how long I like to wait before starting without them.”
Upon hearing this, Theo lobbed half of his sandwich into his mouth. Instantly overwhelmed by the potent taste, he struggled to identify the contents. Never in all his years of extensive eating had he come across this particular flavor combination, which he soon recognized as peanut butter and asparagus on whole-wheat bread.
“You know how you can like both ketchup and ice cream individually, but hate them as a couple?” Theo whispered quietly to Lulu as she took her first bite of the sandwich.
Within half a second, Lulu wholeheartedly understood Theo’s analogy. While not as revolting as the offensive-tasting Casu Frazigu, the sandwiches were far from delicious, except to Basmati. He considered asparagus the perfect complement to peanut butter. Then again, he also deemed chocolate the ideal sauce for spaghetti and meatballs.
“Is there any salt?” Theo asked Basmati, desperate to try to improve on the gastronomical aberration.
“Why would you want salt? Are you trying to imply my food is bland? That I’m a bad cook?”
“No, not at all! I’ve always been a fan of innovative cuisines,” Theo babbled nervously. “I just happen to like salt.”
“I hate salt,” Basmati responded venomously, uncomfortably holding Theo’s stare.
“Well, I certainly can’t deny that salt raises your blood pressure and causes you to retain water,” Theo said, patting his stomach.
“I’ll let your comments about salt pass this time, but be warned, if you insult pepper, I won’t stand for it. I may sit for it, but that’s only because I have arthritis in my knees,” Basmati admonished Theo before returning to his sandwich.
“I don’t know about you, but I am having a great time,” Lulu whispered sarcastically to Madeleine. “It’s almost as much fun as hanging out with Munchauser.”
“Do you think Garrison was right about all those spiders living in the basement? Is it possible that being outdoors is safer than inside?” Madeleine asked Lulu seriously, clearly preoccupied with the notion of human/creepy-crawly cohabitation.
Lulu began mentally preparing a spider pep talk, which was to center around a single fact: less than one percent of spiders are poisonous. This information, along with a plethora of other useless tidbits, came courtesy of Theo. Lulu often wondered if he moonlighted as an employee for Wikipedia. There was simply no other explanation for his vast knowledge of random facts.
“Heeeelllloooo,” a familiar voice wafted faintly through the air.
“Did you hear that?” Theo asked the others as his stomach turned, most likely a result of eating an asparagus-and-peanut butter sandwich.
“Of course! Who could miss the sound of you masticating your food?” Mrs. Wellington snapped. “It’s like a cow chewing a hundred pieces of gum at once!”
“Well, excuse me for not having a pair of soundproof dentures, unlike someone I know!”
“Are you implying I wear dentures?”
“Please,” Theo said, performing a Lulu-worthy roll of the eyes, “don’t even try to deny it; I can smell the Poligrip from here!”
“I’ll find my way in there soon enough,” the voice continued breathlessly from beyond the fortress wall, prompting all but Mrs. Wellington to turn their heads with alarm.
“Oh, dear,” Schmidty said as he pushed away his asparagus-and-peanut butter sandwich.
“Don’t tell me you can smell the Poligrip, too?” Mrs. Wellington huffed.
“Madame, didn’t you hear her voice?” Schmidty asked, perplexed that his hearing was superior to the old woman’s.
“Whose voice?” Mrs. Wellington asked as Abernathy looked directly at her and snarled.
“Oh, stop acting like such an animal!”
“You’re the one who treated me like an animal, making me wear a collar!”
“You were a child, and I was afraid you’d get lost!”
A strange amalgamation of sniffing, grunting, and squealing outside the wall quickly grabbed everyone’s attention.
“That pig is worse than a cold sore; absolutely impossible to shake!” Mrs. Wellington snapped as she angrily banged her fist down on her sandwich.
“This place will only make my story all the more likely to win the Snoopulitzer! I’ll find a way in there, just you wait and see! I’m not afraid of a little moat or barbed wire!”
Sylvie’s comment crawled uncomfortably beneath Basmati’s fair skin, irritating the man to his very core. He pulled at his half-mustache aggressively as he stared directly at Mrs. Wellington.
“As is the case with you, privacy is a necessity to do my job well. So it should hardly come as a surprise that I don’t take kindly to reporters lurking around my school. You better make sure that woman stays outside the wall, or you’ll have more than Abernathy to contend with,” Basmati whispered harshly to Mrs. Wellington before standing and skipping back to the house.
It was a most abnormal manner in which to exit considering his sour mood and advanced age, but Basmati wasn’t normal.
“I can smell your secrets from here, and soon I’m going to share them with the whole world,” Sylvie called out with the kind of mouthwatering excitement usually reserved for Theo in a bakery.
“She really does have some nose,” Lulu said with equal parts disdain and awe.
“I agree. If she was smart she’d work airport security, although I’d hate to see any German shepherds out of a job in this economy,” Theo added sincerely.
“How close is the pig? We mustn’t let her get over the wall. Our situation is precarious enough,” Mrs. Wellington worried aloud.
“By the sound of it, I don’t think she’s crossed the moat yet,” Garrison assessed, his upper lip growing sweaty at the thought of water nearby.
“Why don’t we ask the boys if they can see Sylvie? They have a better view than anyone from way up there,” Hyacinth said as she pointed to Bard, Herman, and Fitzy, who were standing on the highest point of the Contrary Conservatory’s roof.
“What are you doing up there?” Theo howled as he jumped to his feet, alarmed by the boys’ proximity to the edge.
“We’re going to fly!” Fitzy screamed excitedly.
“People cannot fly! At least not without paying a few hundred dollars to an airline, which, as an aside, doesn’t even include checking a bag anymore,” Theo yelled in response.
“Don’t worry; we built jet packs,” Fitzy explained before high-fiving both Bard and Herman.
“I love a good high five,” Hyacinth mumbled to Celery as a large rock flew over the fortress wall, landing mere inches from Schmidty.
“Was that an asteroid?” Mrs. Wellington asked seriously.
“No, Madame. It most certainly was not.”
“You can’t escape me or my story!” Sylvie hollered disturbingly before being drowned out by chanting.
“Jet packs! Jet packs!” Bard and Herman repeated animatedly.
“Wait! Please! Just wait!” Theo screamed at the Contrarians before turning to his lunch mates. “As a hall monitor I cannot sit by and allow this to happen. I have a duty—a duty to safety.”
“Theo, I totally support this whole hall-monitor thing, but the roof is pretty high. I’m worried you’ll get vertigo and fall off or something,” Garrison answered, pushing his hair out of his face.
“Celery thinks this is a bad idea, seeing as you’re super clumsy on the ground; she doesn’t even want to know what could happen on the roof,” said Hyacinth.
“Don’t do it. They can handle this kind of thing; you can’t,” Lulu added with a frightened expression. “You could really hurt yourself, like, permanently.”
“Now I know how soldiers feel heading off to war,” Theo said dramatically, dabbing his eyes with his sausage-like fingers.
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“Mister Theo, you really don’t need to do this—those boys are not your responsibility,” Schmidty said genuinely.
“Oh, you’ll be fine. Just remember to ask them about the bird,” Mrs. Wellington whispered to Theo, completely disregarding the warnings of Schmidty and the others.
“I will do my very best,” Theo stated stoically before saluting Mrs. Wellington and marching off.
Theo darted around the side of the Contrary Conservatory, where Bard, Herman, and Fitzy had leaned an extended ladder against the structure. But as the house was so very tall, the ladder didn’t quite reach the area of the roof where the boys were standing. This left a large portion of the wall for Theo to scale with neither a harness nor a safety net. If he fell, he would definitely injure himself, perhaps even require a trip to the emergency room. However, as Theo was miles from civilization without access to a phone, reaching a hospital would be nearly impossible.
“What am I doing, risking my life for these hooligans?” Theo muttered, assessing his highly perilous position atop the ladder. “Have I lost my mind?”
As the clammy-handed boy prepared to back down the ladder, he caught a glimpse of his hall-monitor sash, which stopped him dead in his tracks. Theo had to at least try to stop the Contrarians, or he wouldn’t be able to live with himself. Or even if he could live with himself, he wouldn’t be able to maintain his hall-monitor status. And frankly, Theo wasn’t sure life was worth living without a sash.
After pausing to catch his breath, Theo ventured cautiously off the ladder and onto the wall. Although visibly petrified, he was also deeply impressed by his uncharacteristically brave behavior. It certainly wasn’t every day that Theo threw precautions by the wayside, but since he had become a hall monitor he could no longer ignore the safety illiterates of the world. He now saw it as his job to educate them, regardless of the danger to himself.
Small ledges of unevenly laid bricks were all Theo had to hold on to as he slowly made his way up the wall. White-knuckled and sweaty-palmed, he maneuvered carefully from one spot to another. The already-perilous scenario disintegrated quickly when the brick beneath Theo’s left foot dislodged. Pins and needles pricked his left leg as he grappled to find another step. Hysteria took hold, blurring Theo’s vision and incapacitating his muscles. Thoughts of broken bones, internal bleeding, and hospital food passed frantically through his mind. He was spiraling out of control and would soon lose his grip, both literally and figuratively, if he didn’t do something. Unable to back down the wall and afraid to climb higher, Theo paused to release a whimper. Only it wasn’t a whimper that came out, it was a song.