My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish (7 page)

 

Frankie's eyes were bright glow-in-the-dark green and his tail was swishing hard back and forth in the water.

The goldfish was set on revenge. I looked at Mark lying at the bottom of the slide. My fists clenched at the thought of him trying to hurt Frankie, but could I really stand by and let Frankie hurt him?

“Um, your goldfish is trying to kill your brother!” Pradeep shouted.

“Not if I can help it,” I said. And then I did the second most dangerous thing I've ever done in my life. I tried to stop Frankie.

Frankie swished his tail hard, and the skateboard started to roll down the slide, picking up speed as it went.

“Fishy! Wheeeeeee!” Sami yelled.

I raced to the bottom of the slide and threw myself between Mark and the skateboard.

I could see Frankie's eyes as he rode the skateboard down toward me. They changed to a soft green and he swished his tail back and forth wildly. He wanted me to get out of the way.

I shook my head and held my ground. I closed my eyes, waiting for the skateboard to hit me. Concussion number two, here I come. Then I heard the skateboard jump off the side of the slide. I looked up to see it flip midair, like when the boarders at the park do half-pipes and twists.

Except this was a goldfish in a plastic bag, not a skateboarding kid. And the thing about goldfish in bags is that when the board goes upside down they have no way to hang on. The skateboard flew over me and Mark and then Frankie started to fall. He must have been ten feet in the air.

I rolled over onto my back and held out my hands to catch him. The bag hit my hands but I couldn't hold it. It
splatted
on my chest and the bag burst open. Water sprayed everywhere and Frankie was left flip-flopping around on my T-shirt.

“No!” I shouted. “Frankie!” I jumped up, cupping him in my hands. “I've got you, Frankie,” I said as I turned to Pradeep. “Get some water! Quick!”

Frankie's goldfish mouth was opening and closing as if he were gasping for breath. His eyes were still the soft green color. He flicked his tail and wriggled, and then he stopped moving completely. “Hang on, Frankie!” I screamed.

Pradeep ran over to the slide with a watering can full of rainwater that he had grabbed from next to the shed. I dropped Frankie into it.

Pradeep, Sami, and me all sat around the watering can and stared at Frankie, unmoving in the water. “You turned the skateboard on purpose, didn't you? You didn't want to hurt me,” I said.

Mark was still lying in the sandbox, moaning, “The goldfish? My skateboard? Why am I wet?”

Frankie floated belly up in the watering can. He didn't move a fin.

“Swishy little fishy?” Sami said, sniffling. Her bottom lip started to wobble again. Not in a Richter-scale-level tantrum kind of way but in a sadder than a little kid ought ever to feel kind of way.

“He's gone,” I said. The millipedes that were swimming in my stomach curled up into a big heavy millipede lump.

“I'm sorry,” said Pradeep.

“Not swishy?” whispered Sami. A tear rolled down her cheek and dripped off her snotty nose into the watering can.

And that's when it happened. Frankie started to swish his tail. Just a little at first, then his gills started flapping and his mouth opened and closed and then he flipped over and started swimming in circles around and around.

“Fishy!” said Sami, and hugged the watering can.

“Frankie, you're back!” I said, hardly able to believe that he was swimming around again. “Who's a good zombie fish?” I said, and stroked him gently behind the gills.

“Hey, you know what we just discovered?” Pradeep said.

“I know!” I said. “That the one thing more powerful than a battery for bringing a fish back to life is…”

Pradeep said with me at the same time, “Toddler snot.”

 

 

Beep, beep.

We heard Mom's car pull into the drive.

“Oh no!” I said.

Pradeep and I quickly ran over to Mark and helped him sit up. He was still holding on to his head where he had banged it when he fell into the sandbox.

Sami just sat there, still hugging the watering can.

Mom came straight around the back of the house and ran over to us. She could tell there was something wrong. Moms have this thing where they know stuff that should be impossible to know. Like that you didn't eat your carrot sticks at lunch, or that it was you who put the ham slice in the CD player to see what ham sounded like, or that your undead zombie goldfish hypnotized your neighbor's daughter and then tried to kill your
EVIL SCIENTIST
big brother but at the last minute changed its mind to save your life. You know, that kind of thing.

I took one look at Mom and was sure she would figure it out. It was so obvious what had happened.

But the first thing she said was, “What on earth happened here?”

“We were just playing,” Pradeep said right away. “Um, the game got a little messy, um … and wet and um…”

He was talking really fast and looking really guilty. Mom was definitely going to get that something was up.

“Fishy is swishy!” Sami shouted. “Yaaaay!”

“Oh, that's sweet. You let Samina play with your fish, Mark,” Mom said. “But why do you have the fish outside in a watering can?”

“It needed some fresh air,” I said, which Mom is always telling us that we need, so it must be true for fish, too.

Although usually when Mom tells us to go outside, it's because she wants to talk to Dad alone, or shout at Aunt Sarah on the phone.

“OK,” Mom's voice said in a normal kind of way, but her face was really saying,
What are they up to?

“Mark, are you all right?” she added.

Mark rubbed his head. He looked over at me and Pradeep, and then at Sami and the watering can.

“The goldfish tried to kill me,” he said. “I tripped and fell in the sandbox and then it aimed the skateboard at me.”

Mom went over to Mark and felt his head for bumps. She's an expert bump finder after all these years. I bet she could be a doctor in bumps and stuff.

“You banged your head pretty bad, Mark.” She held her fingers in front of Mark and said, “How many am I holding up?”

“It tried to kill me,” Mark mumbled.

Mom looked over at me and Pradeep. “What happened?”

Then I heard myself say the most untrue thing ever: “Mark was being really nice, playing with Sami in the sandbox and on the trampoline.”

“Bouncy, bouncy, crash!” said Sami, now jumping on the trampoline with the watering can.

I leaned over and gently took the can from her.

“Then he did a trick bounce that made Sami laugh,” Pradeep said, which isn't really a lie, because he did do that even though he didn't mean to do it.

“He must have hit his head when he fell,” I said.

“Oh, poor you,” Mom said to Mark as she rubbed his head. “But what's this about the goldfish?”

She helped him stand up, and he walked over to where I was standing with the watering can. He stared at Frankie. The goldfish started thrashing around in the water like mad again and his eyes went bright green.

“Mom, look at the goldfish,” Mark said, pointing wildly at the watering can. “It's gone nuts. It really tried to kill me!”

Pradeep and I shot each other a look. We couldn't say anything out loud, but our faces said that we needed a new color jelly bean code, because this was way beyond a Code Red.

Mom
couldn't
look now. She'd see Frankie being all zombie fish. Then she would let Mark flush him for sure, or she'd send him off to some government place where they keep pets that have gone all supernatural and dangerous.

“All right,” she said. “I'll look at the goldfish.” She marched over toward us.

We were doomed.

 

 

“Please, Frankie,” I whispered, as I peered into the watering can. “Mark's not completely evil, really. I won't let him hurt you, but you can't try and kill him again. OK?”

Frankie stopped thrashing and looked up out of the watering can at me. His eyes stopped glowing and he got that goldfish stare back again.