Middle School: How I Got Lost in London (4 page)

I mean, I
really
yummed it up.

And Miller turned greener and greener. The muscles in his face and neck began to twitch. His chest started to heave like there was an alien creature inside him.

“Yum-yum!” I said.

His cheeks bulged.

His head pecked forward.

He clamped a hand over his mouth.

“
Delicious!
” I said.

And then Miller heaved and barfed. Puke spurted through his fingers. Beside him Jeanne Galletta shouted, “EWW!” and tried to get away. But it was too late, because Miller the Killer was unleashing a full-on gusher.

A chunderstorm.

A hurlicane.

A barfquake registering one hundred on the sick-ter scale.

And unlike me he didn’t have a sick bag. Instead, he just kept his hand clamped over his mouth. But it couldn’t contain the fountain of cookie-toss that was forced through his fingers.

His hand acted like a shower head and the vomit sprayed far and wide. It went all over Jeanne next to him and all over the kids who sat in the seats in front. And—in a way—it went all over everyone around him. Because even though it didn’t
physically
touch everyone…that’s when the chain reaction began.

Barf!

Hurl!

Bleck!

Rurk!

A tsunami of spew.

A tsunami is a big wave, right? And what do waves do but roll right over you.
Engulf
you.

“You,” in this case, being all of the passengers in the section. “All of the passengers in the section,” in this case, being the members of the Hills Village Living History trip to London.

Pretty much all of them lost their lunch.

Yes, I think I’m right in saying that with the exception of the teachers (who must need strong stomachs to work at Hills Village anyway—probably an essential qualification for the job), all the kids blew chunks.

Some made it into sick bags. Some didn’t.

And we were on a plane. You can’t just open the windows and let the smell out. It circulates. It hangs in the air. And, I’m telling you, there isn’t an air-filtration system in the world that can deal with the combined spew-smell of ten puking kids.

It was a loooong flight.

YOU’D HAVE FIGURED
that zero friends means none to lose.

If, for example, you were the one responsible for beginning a chunder chain that turned a nine-hour transatlantic flight into a living nightmare, then at least you couldn’t be less popular than you already were. Right?

Wrong.

It turns out you
can
be even less popular than you were. Take my classmates. Not only did they hate me for beginning the chunder-fest, but they hated me because I’d riled Miller.

Miller’s a bit like a big dog—ugly, vicious, but as long as you did nothing to upset him, you had nothing to fear.

But I had done something to upset him. And he wasn’t going to take it out just on me.
Oohh no
.

“Better get out of my way, turdbreath.”
SNARL!

“I’ve got a Chinese burn with your name on it, snot-for-brains.”
BARK!

He was going to take it out on the rest of the trip too.

You ever hear the expression
persona non grata
? Meaning when nobody will talk to you? That was me. Imagine the pecking order of pain: Miller the Killer at the top. My classmates in the middle. Every single one of them looking down on me…right at the bottom.

So. A mission—Operation: Popularity. I’ll be the first to admit it wasn’t much of a title, but it wasn’t designed to win awards. It was designed to return me to the good books of my fellow Living History trippers. Or at least get me out of their bad ones.

Now to come up with some half-decent ideas for the operation.

Some half-decent ideas for Operation: Popularity:

Banana-eating contest
You know how we always get bananas in our lunch, right? And you know how the bananas get all soft and sweaty and nobody wants to eat them? So my idea was: Start a banana-eating contest with all the unwanted bananas.

It would be
hilarious
. Food-eating contests are always funny and the sight of me eating banana after banana would bring the house down.

A possible repeat of the chunderstorm on the flight over. Okay, let’s face it—an almost
inevitable
repeat of the chunderstorm on the flight over.

Being kind and generous to all my classmates

Not only would I make friends—I’d make proper friends. Lasting friends. I’d have friends.