My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish (9 page)

I looked out of the kitchen window as I filled up Frankie's plastic bag in the sink, and there was Pradeep, hanging upside down off the jungle gym.

“Louder, moron!” Sanj ordered, sitting on top of Pradeep's feet and dangling him off the metal railing. “And can you
please
articulate?”

“I am a moron and you are a genius!” Pradeep shouted, without mumbling this time.

“Come on, Frankie, it's a Code Red situation! Pradeep's in trouble!” I said, scooping Frankie out of the sink and into his bag. We ran into the yard.

“Good,” Sanj said, letting go of Pradeep's feet. Pradeep slid through the monkey bars and splatted onto the grass.

“Ah look, your little moron friend has come to help,” Sanj said as he jumped down from the jungle gym. “And he's brought his pet fish with him. How sad is that? The ugly little moron kid has an ugly little moron pet.” He smiled a creepy evil smile at Frankie.

Frankie desperately head-butted the side of the bag, trying to get out. His eyes lost their normal goldfish stare and instead glowed a bright, angry green. He was in full zombie attack mode.

“Pathetic morons,” Sanj said to himself as he strode off down the road.

I went over to Pradeep. “Are you OK?”

Pradeep was rubbing his head. “Yeah.”

Frankie thrashed in his bag and glared down the road after Sanj.

“Wow, he normally just does that when he sees Mark,” I said. “He's still holding a grudge over the whole ‘Mark trying to murder him with toxic gunge and flush him down the toilet' thing, but I think Frankie has just added Sanj to his hit list too.”

Pradeep bent down to talk to Frankie. “Look, I'm OK. Nothing broken.” He turned to me. “At least I'm taller now, so when Sanj drops me, I don't have so far to fall.”

“True.” I nodded.

It had been about six months since Pradeep's brother, Sanj, last dropped Pradeep off the jungle gym. He'd been away at some boarding school for “the gifted,” which just sounded like a great place to go to school.

Sanj had always been a genius, but yesterday he became an actual Evil Computer Genius when he got kicked out of the gifted school. He hacked into its super-encrypted un-hackable computer system and changed all the other kids' grades to zero and his grade to one gazillion.

Now, I know what you're thinking. A real-life actual Evil Computer Genius living next door to a real-life actual Evil Scientist like my big brother, Mark. What are the odds? Well, Pradeep figured it out yesterday afternoon. It is seven million, three hundred and forty-four thousand, six hundred and twenty-three to one. Which is about the same odds as winning five lotteries all at once and having the prize money delivered to you by a team of bicycle-riding chimpanzees. At least that's what Pradeep told me. He found the answer on the Internet.

Anyway, Pradeep's brother, Sanj, has a real IQ certificate to prove he's an actual genius. He used to make us look at the piece of paper a lot when he first got it. And, just to make sure we really
saw
it, he used to press our faces against it on the floor while he sat on us. He didn't need a certificate to prove he was mostly evil. We knew that already.

I grabbed my backpack and carefully packed Frankie inside, placing his bag in the bottom of a Tupperware box.

“You're bringing Frankie to school?” Pradeep asked.

“I can't leave him at home after he got all green-eyed and thrashy with Sanj. He might break out and zombie someone! What if Mom saw him like that? Or Mark came home early?”

You see, the last time they were at home alone together, Mark tried to deep-freeze Frankie. Luckily, I found him pretty quickly when I used the ice dispenser on the fridge door and got a zombie fish cube. You know, I don't actually think Frankie minded the freezer that much. He just didn't like being next to the fish fingers.

“Trust me, Pradeep,” I said as we headed off down the road toward the school, “Frankie is safer with us today.”

 

 

Pradeep and I got to school just before the breakfast counter closed. That's when I realized the difference between school breakfast and a big fat zombie goldfish. One is a scary green bulging lump, swimming in a pool of toxic gunge, and the other is a fish.

I stared down at my plate as I went through the cafeteria line, and my green lump jiggled as I moved.

The lunch lady tapped the protective lunch-lady glass with her fingernail. “More egg?” she asked. I shook my head and pushed through the line.

“It's an egg!” I said to Pradeep as I got to the cereal section of the counter.

“Ahhh,” he said.

Pradeep was getting his usual. He's eaten the same breakfast every day since he discovered it in first grade. Choc Rice Pops on toast. If there is ever a Choc Rice Pops shortage, then Pradeep's breakfast world will end.

“Should we get something for Frankie to eat?” Pradeep asked.

Ever since we've had Frankie, we've been trying to figure out what zombie goldfish eat. At first we were scared that it might be brains. I mean, that's what all the comic books and movies tell you, right? But the problem is:

a) Zombie goldfish only have a couple of rotten teeth;

b) Brains float;

c) Goldfish have no hands;

d) Even if they could hold the brain still … zombie goldfish only have a couple of rotten teeth.

Therefore …

e) Brains would make a zombie goldfish really mad.

What we eventually realized is that zombie goldfish like to eat anything green, like green breadcrumbs (the moldier the better), or green bits of algae scraped up from the side of the pond.

“I don't think Frankie's hungry,” I answered. “He had some green cupcake crumbs before school.”

My backpack started to wobble from side to side on my back. Frankie must have been thrashing around. I unzipped my bag to check on him.

“I'm still not sure it's a good idea to have Frankie in school,” Pradeep said.

“We had to bring him to school, Pradeep,” I said. “If we left him alone with Mark, it might be Mark who ended up in the freezer.”

“Hey, morons!”

I heard a chilling voice behind me, and Frankie swished his tail so hard that he made his plastic bag tip out of the Tupperware box. I turned him the right way up and re-zipped my backpack.

“Same stupid school, same stupid morons. Mwhahahaha.” Mark laughed his Evil Scientist laugh. No, it couldn't be. Not him? Not here? Not now?

“No way,” I said as I turned around.

“Way, moron,” said Mark, flicking up the collar of his Evil Scientist white coat. “I'm at your school today. I gotta do an important experiment in the science lab.”

“Why
our
science lab?” Pradeep asked.

“The lab in my school kinda blew up,” Mark said. Cue evil laugh again. “So I've been sent to this dump for the day.”

This wasn't good. Frankie was in school. Mark was in school. I had to think what to do, and fast.