Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder (7 page)

“There you guys are!” called the doctor joyfully in his remarkable accent. He was sitting at the picnic table under the pear tree. In front of him lay three tablespoons and a teaspoon, an ice hockey helmet, two knee pads, a mason jar full of powder, a pair of motorcycle pants, and a two-foot-long, rectangular, homemade Jell-O bathed in caramel sauce. “Are you guys ready for the Last Big Powder Test?” he asked.

“Yes!” Lisa and Nilly shouted in unison.

“But first, Jell-O,” said the doctor.

They sat down around the table and each grabbed a spoon.

“On your mark, get set …,” Doctor Proctor said.

“Go!” Nilly yelled, and they flung themselves at the Jell-O. If Nilly had been counting, he wouldn't have gotten any further than thirty seconds before the two-foot-long Jell-O had vanished completely.

“Good,” Nilly said, patting his stomach.

“Good,” Lisa said, patting her stomach.

“I've made a few tiny adjustments to the powder mixture,” Doctor Proctor said.

“I'm ready,” Nilly said, taking the lid off the mason jar.

“Hold on!” the professor said. “I don't want you to ruin your pants again, so I made these.”

He held up the motorcycle pants. They were very normal, aside from the fact that the seat of the pants had a Velcro flap.

“So the air can pass through unobstructed,” the doctor explained. “I remodeled my old motorcycle gear.”

“Niiice,” Nilly said once he'd put on the pants,
which were way too big for him. Lisa just shook her head.

“These, too,” the doctor said, and passed Nilly the hockey helmet and the knee pads. “In case you get knocked over again.”

Nilly put everything on, then crawled up onto the table and over to the mason jar.

“Only one teaspoon!” Doctor Proctor yelled.

“Yeah, yeah!” Nilly said, filling the spoon he was holding in his hand and sticking it into his mouth.

“Okay,” the doctor said, looking at his watch. “We'll start the countdown then. Seven. Six.”

“Doctor Proctor … ,” Lisa said warily.

“Not now, Lisa. Nilly, hop down from the table and stand over there so you don't ruin anything. Four. Three,” the doctor continued.

“He didn't use the teaspoon,” Lisa practically whispered.

“Two,” the doctor said. “What did you say, Lisa?”

“Nilly used that big tablespoon he ate his Jell-O with,” Lisa said.

The doctor stared at Lisa with big, horrified eyes. “One,” he said. “Tablespoon?”

Lisa nodded.

“Oh no,” Doctor Proctor said, running toward Nilly.

“What now?” Lisa whispered.

“Simple math,” Nilly yelled happily. “Zero.”

And then came the bang. And if the earlier bangs had been loud, they were nothing compared to this. This was as if the whole world had exploded. And the air pressure! Lisa felt how her eyelids and lips distorted as she was peppered with dirt and pebbles.

When her eyes settled back into place, the first thing Lisa noticed was that the birds had stopped singing. Then she noticed Doctor Proctor, who was sitting in the grass with a confused look on his face. The leaves from the big pear tree wafted down around
him as if it were suddenly fall. But she didn't see Nilly. She looked to the right, to the left, and behind her. And finally she looked up. But Nilly was nowhere to be seen. Then the first bird cautiously started singing again. And that's when it occurred to Lisa that she might never, ever see Nilly again and that that would actually be almost as sad as Anna having moved to Sarpsborg.

The Fartonaut

WHEN NILLY SAID “zero,” he felt an absolutely wonderful tickle in his stomach. It was as if the fart was a giant, burbling laugh that just had to get out. Sure, he had seen Lisa's worried expression and Doctor Proctor coming running toward him, but he was so excited that it hadn't occurred to him that
something might be wrong. And when the bang came, it was so delightfully liberating that Nilly automatically shut his eyes. The previous farts had been short explosions, but this one was more drawn out, like when you let the air out of a balloon. Nilly laughed out loud because it felt just like he'd blasted off from the ground, like he was an astronaut who'd been shot up and propelled into space. He could feel the air rushing past his face and hair and it was as if his arms were being pressed in against his body. It felt totally real. And when Nilly finally opened his eyes, he discovered that it was very real in reality too. He blinked twice and then he understood that not only was it very real, it was utterly, incredibly real. It was as if he were sitting on a chair of air that was shooting upward. The blue sky arched above him, and below him he saw a big cloud of dust in what looked like a tiny copy of Doctor Proctor's garden. The fart howled like a whole pack of wolves, and Nilly realized he was still going up, because the landscape down below was starting to look like a smaller and smaller version of Legoland.

Then the fart turned into a low rumbling, the chair of air disappeared from underneath him, and for just a second Nilly felt like he was totally weightless. A crow turned its head as it flew by, staring at him with astonished crow eyes.

Nilly tipped forward and then felt the descent begin. Headfirst. Slowly at first, then faster.

Uh-oh
, Nilly thought, no longer finding any reason to smile.
Hockey helmet or not, I'm never going to survive this.

Legoland got bigger and bigger, and with perilous speed it started to resemble the Cannon Avenue that Nilly had just left. And things very surely would have gone really badly for our friend Nilly if he hadn't been such a quick-witted little guy and remembered what it was that had sent him up in the first place. Because
although the fart was no longer howling like a pack of wolves and was now just a tame sputtering, it was still going. And remember that when I say sputtering, that's compared to an enormous bang and not compared to one of your farts. Because even if you've been eating unripe apples and think you just farted the loudest fart anyone has ever farted, it would be considered a gentle breeze compared to the tamest sputtering caused by Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder. Once Nilly had thought about all this, he swung himself quickly back into the sitting position he'd been in when he'd flown up. And once the seat of his pants, with the open Velcro flap, was pointed straight at the ground, to his relief he immediately started slowing down, thanks to the air pressure of the fart. But he also knew that the fart was going to be over soon and there was still a ways to go until he was back on the ground. Nilly tried as hard as he could to keep it going, because even a twenty-five-foot fall is very high for such a
small boy. And that's exactly how high he was above the ground when the fart finally came to an end.

“NILLY!” LISA YELLED.

“Nilly!” Doctor Proctor yelled. They were still looking around for him like crazy.

“Do you think the powder exploded him into smithereens?” Lisa asked.

“If so, the pieces must be so small that we can't see them,” Doctor Proctor said, adjusting his motorcycle glasses and studying the ground where Nilly had been standing when the fart happened. All of the grass was torn up and there was a little pit there.

“We're never going to see him again,” Lisa said. “And it's my fault. I should've noticed that he was holding the tablespoon.”

“No, no. It's my fault,” Doctor Proctor said, getting up again. “I should never have tinkered with the formula.”

“Nilly!” Lisa yelled.

“Nilly!” Doctor Proctor yelled.

“What's all the commotion?” someone complained from over by the fence along the road. “And what are you doing here, Lisa? Dinner's on the table.”

It was Lisa's father, the Commandant. He looked gruff.

Doctor Proctor stood up. “My good sir, the whole situation is hopeless—,” he started, but was interrupted by a voice barking from behind the fence at Nilly's house.

“What's all the commotion?” It was Nilly's mother. She looked mad. “Dinner's on the table. Has anyone seen Nilly?”

Doctor Proctor turned to face her. “My good ma'am, the whole situation is hopeless. You see, your son, Nilly, he … he …”

Then Doctor Proctor was interrupted for the third time, and this time by a high-pitched boy's
voice that came from above: “He's sitting up here wondering what's for dinner.”

All four of them looked up. And there, on top of Doctor Proctor's roof, stood Nilly with his arms crossed, wearing a hockey helmet, knee pads, and leather pants with the bottom flapping around.

“Don't move,” called Professor Proctor, running into the cellar.

“What in the world are you doing up there, Nilly?” his mother squealed.

“Playing hide-and-seek obviously,” Nilly said. “What's for dinner?”

“Meatballs,” Nilly's mother said to Nilly.

“Fish au gratin,” Lisa's father told Lisa.

“Yippee!” said Nilly.

“Yippee!” said Lisa.

“You guys can go back to playing after dinner,” Lisa's father growled.

“But not up there,” Nilly's mother said. “Get down here right now.”

“Yes, Mom,” Nilly said.

The professor came running back out of the cellar with a ladder that he immediately leaned up against the wall of his house so that it was resting against the gutter. Nilly crawled to the ladder and then down the rungs, smiling and as proud as an astronaut climbing down from his spaceship after a successful landing following an expedition to somewhere in space where no one—or at least very few people—had ever been before him.

And three minutes later, which a little simple math can tell you is the same as a hundred and eighty seconds, Lisa was sitting with freshly washed, completely clean hands, eating fish au gratin, and Nilly, with pretty clean hands, was eating meatballs. Neither of them had ever eaten so fast before.

* * *

WHEN THEY GOT back to Doctor Proctor's yard, the professor was sitting on the bench, reviewing everything as he jotted some things down and did some calculations on a piece of paper. Nilly looked at all the numbers and squiggles. This math wasn't quite so simple.

“With the new formula the effect of the powder is seven times stronger,” Proctor said in his heavy accent. “That's why I said you should use the teaspoon, not the tablespoon.”

Nilly shrugged. “It worked out fine. The fart ended when I was on my way down, just as I reached the roof of your house.”

“Hmm,” the professor said, looking at the numbers. “But I'm puzzled about why you took off like a rocket.”

“It was a looong fart,” Nilly said. “It was like sitting on a column of air that was pushing me up. And it
was the same column that slowed me down on the way back down, too.”

“Hmm,” the doctor said, scratching his chin. “Because of the new formula, the powder seems to have a much longer reaction time. Interesting.”

“Maybe we should go back to the original formula,” Lisa suggested hesitantly.