Super Schnoz and the Booger Blaster Breakdown (2 page)

Other than an extremely itchy red rash, I got nothing from the sewer plant splash or any of my other odor-immersion experiments. My smelling confidence sunk to an all-time low. The secret scent of Strange was slipping further away from my dictionary of scents.

“Have you figured out the Strange smell yet?” Mumps asked me one afternoon when Vivian, the Not-Right Brothers, and I were hanging out in our top-secret hideaway, the Nostril.

“No,” I said. “And I don't feel like talking about it.”

“But you're a smelling prodigy!” Jimmy proclaimed. “Your superhuman snoot is capable of detecting over a trillion scents.”

“This reminds me of when the Thing spontaneously reverted back to human form and lost all of his Thing powers.” Mumps said.

“I'm not losing my superpowers!” I growled. “I defeated greedy polluters and a giant nose rocket from outer space that was intent on destroying Earth!”

Vivian grabbed my nostrils and forced me into a chair. “Schnoz, settle down before you blow a snot bubble. We know this Strange aroma has been tough on you. Let's all put our noses together and think of what to do.”

I let out a frustrated sigh. “I've tried everything. The smell in Strange resembles some kind of spicy vanilla, but it's nothing my sniffer has ever encountered before.”

“Well, there's one good thing about the smell,” Jimmy said.

“What's that?” I asked.

“It doesn't stink. In fact, the smell is kind of nice.”

“This isn't about whether the smell is good or bad,” Vivian said. “The odor is personal for Schnoz. Smelling is his whole identity. Just imagine if you suddenly couldn't smell your favorite foods like pizza, hamburgers, or—”

“Or bean burritos!” Mumps interjected. “Mexican food is my favorite even though it gives me really stinky gas.”

“TMI—too much information,” Vivian said, rolling her eyes.

TJ, who had been silent the whole time, looked up from his laptop. “Schnoz may have anosmia.”

“Huh?” I grunted.

“While you four were bickering,” TJ continued, “I've been researching and have come across a medical condition called anosmia.”

“I don't have insomnia,” I said. “Since the aliens stopped harvesting my snores, I sleep like a puppy at night.”

“A-nos-mi-a,” TJ pronounced slowly, accenting each syllable. “Not insomnia.”

“What's anosmia?” Vivian asked.

“It's a medical condition sometimes referred to as odor-blindness.”

“I don't even know what odor-blindness means,” I blurted out.

“When someone can't tell one color from another, it is called being color-blind,” TJ explained. “Anosmia is the same thing only with smells.”

“What's the cause?” Mumps asked.

TJ clicked a link on the anosmia web page and started reading. “‘Anosmia can be caused by a severe inflammation of the nasal passages due to allergies or a cold virus; severe blows to the head causing a concussion or head trauma; deviated nasal septum or crooked nose; nasal polyps; tumors; different medications,' and a hundred other reasons.”

My heart sunk into my chest. I felt the blood drain from my face. The room started spinning; my breath came in quick huffs. Tears formed in my eyeballs, but I didn't want Vivian or the Not-Right Brothers to see me cry. This was the moment I had been dreading since discovering my proboscis powers. At one time or another, every superhero—Spider-Man, Superman, the Invisible Woman, Green Lantern, Human Torch, Wolverine, and dozens of others—lost all of their super powers.

“Without my supersized snort detector, I'm just a mortal kid with a big nose ripe for ridicule,” I said with a shaky voice. “Everybody at school will start picking on me again.”

“Nobody will pick on you,” Jimmy said and then held up his fist. “If any kid makes fun of your nose, I'll give them my five-fingered sandwich.”

Vivian gently patted the bridge of my nose. “Just because you can't detect one single ingredient inside a bottle of perfume doesn't mean you have a smell disorder,” she said. “There has to be an anosmia test you can take.”

“There is such a test,” TJ said. “A company called Sniffsonics sells a product called OINK—the Odor Identification Nasal Kit. It's self-administered and perfect for people who think they may have anosmia.”

“Then order the kit,” Mumps said. “How much is it?'

“We can get one for the bargain price of four hundred and ninety-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents, plus shipping and handling.”

“Ugh!” I groaned. “We don't have that kind of money.”

“
We
don't have that much money,” Vivian said. “But we know someone who does.”

“Who?” TJ asked.

Vivian slipped on her bicycle helmet. “Come on, guys. We need to take a ride and have a little chat with Dr. Wackjöb.”

We all hopped on our bikes and pedaled to the Gecko Glue® and Snore Cure Mist® Factory.

CHAPTER 4

SNIFFING STICKS

“Gríöarstór Nef needs four hundred and ninety-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents for what kind of test?” Dr. Wackjöb asked after we burst into his office.

“Plus shipping and handling,” Mumps chimed in.

“Anosmia,” Vivian said. “Some people call it odor-blindness.”

Dr. Wackjöb stared long and hard at my honker. “Are you having some kind of smell difficulties?”

“Yes!” I exclaimed. “It happened for the first time when we were all standing in this very room. Don't you remember—the secret ingredient in Strange? I can detect over a trillion smells, but that single, vanilla-like odor is leaving my snot maker high and dry.”

“We're afraid Schnoz might have a scent disorder,” TJ said. “We have to buy a test called the Odor Identification Nasal Kit. Sniffsonics is the only company in the world that sells it.”

A look of worry washed over Dr. Wackjöb's face. “My friend, your snuffler is not only a gift from the heavens above, but an American treasure. We must do everything possible to keep it in proper working order.” He grabbed a pen and wrote a check for the entire amount.

The kit arrived in the mail a week later. Vivian, the Not-Right Brothers, and I gathered inside the Nostril and opened the box.

“I can't believe this thing was so expensive.” Jimmy groaned. “It's just an instruction booklet, a blindfold, and a bunch of fancy-looking markers.”

“Those aren't markers,” Vivian said as she skimmed through the instructions. “They're called sniffing sticks.”

“What's a sniffing stick?” Mumps asked.

I reached out to grab one of them, but Vivian cuffed the tip of my nose.

“Stay away, Schnoz,” she said. “These sniffing sticks are the main component of your smell test.”

“Excuse me, Miss Know-It-All,” I said sarcastically. “Then why don't you explain how this whole thing works?”

Vivian held up a DVD that came with kit. “Let's watch this first.”

TJ popped the DVD into his laptop. The narrator was an old guy who called himself Professor Stickle. He wore a white lab coat and big, round glasses that nearly took up his whole face. We were surprised to learn that Professor Stickle originally designed the Odor Identification Nasal Kit to test members of the armed forces with olfactory-sensitive jobs.

“I'm the test administrator,” Vivian said when the DVD was over. “Schnoz, just like Professor Stickle says, we need to find a quiet, odor-free space for testing.”

“The Nostril should be fine,” Jimmy said.

“The Professor said it must be an odor-free space,” Vivian countered. “Your sweaty armpits smell like you just ran a marathon. TJ smells like he just took a bath in a garbage can, and Mumps's breath reeks like he hasn't brushed his teeth in a month.”

I nodded my nose. “She's right, guys. You three stink pretty badly, but I kind of like it. In fact, Mumps's breath is so uniquely rancid that I'm going to add it to my scent dictionary.”

“Gross,” Vivian said with a grimace. “Schnoz, let's ride our bikes to the library and use one of the study rooms.”

We loaded the Odor Identification Nasal Kit into Vivian's backpack and then headed to the Denmark Public Library.

The library had three private study rooms, all of which were in use when Vivian and I got there. You could only use the rooms for an hour at a time, so Vivian and I had to wait twenty minutes for one to open up. Vivian killed the time by researching anosmia on the Internet. I browsed the comic book section, poring over superhero stories for some guidance about my loss-of-powers problem.

I found some comfort in an issue of Uncanny X-Men when Storm lost her ability to control weather. The government shot her with a weapon specifically designed to neutralize the powers of mutants. She eventually got her powers back by spending a year on a parallel Earth and making a machine that restored her powers. Where could I find a parallel Earth to solve my problem? The only planet outside our solar system that I knew of was Apnea, and those snore suckers wanted to kill me!

“Our room's opening up,” Vivian said.

We stepped into the study room and closed the door. The room did not offer complete privacy. Instead of four solid walls, one wall had a big window facing the reference librarian's desk. Anybody walking down the hall could see right inside.

“The librarian can see exactly what we're doing,” I said, plopping down at the table.

“So what?” Vivian remarked. “We're not doing anything wrong. Just doing a little smell test, that's all.”

Vivian unzipped her backpack and retrieved the Odor Identification Nasal Kit. The contents of the kit included sixteen different sniffing sticks, three sheets of paper with numbered little ovals to fill in like those on a standardized test, and a black blindfold.

“Why do I need a blindfold?” I asked.

“Because that's what the instructions say. Put it on.”

I slipped the blindfold over my nose and then around my eyes. Everything instantly turned dark.

“Now, pay careful attention,” Vivian instructed. “I'm going to hold a series of three different sniffing sticks up to your nostrils. Two of the sticks are the same smell and one is different—but extremely minutely. All you have to do is take a whiff of each stick and then tell me which one has the different smell. Got it?”

I took a deep breath. “Ready when you are.”

“Okay. When you give me an answer, I'll record the results on the data sheet. Here we go. Ready, sniff!”

With a big huff of my honker, the familiar scent of butanol, the basis for most French fragrances filled my nostrils.

Vivian then held up two more sniffing sticks to my nose.

“Which stick was different from the other?” she asked.

“Easy,” I answered. “I detect that Stick Two was not the same.”

There was a scribbling sound as Vivian filled in an oval on the data sheet. For the next forty-five minutes, Vivian held up different sniffing sticks to my nose. Each level of smell detection grew more difficult. When I had sniffed the last stick, my nose felt like it had been through a smell-a-thon.

As Vivian compared my responses with the test's answer key, my heart raced like a bunny rabbit at a falconry festival. The consequences were as clear as snot running out of my nose on a bad allergy day—if I'd failed the test, my super sniffing powers were slipping away forever.

“Done,” Vivian finally said. “Do you want to hear how you did?”

“Yes!” I cried out so loudly that the reference librarian pounded on the window and held a finger to her lips.

“A perfect score is one hundred. Schnoz, I'm sorry to inform you that your score was …”

Time stopped; Earth ceased to rotate on its axis. Beads of sweat formed on my temples. My nostrils throbbed like an exposed artery. The next word from Vivian's mouth would determine my entire future.

“One hundred!” Vivian screeched. “You got a perfect score. You don't have odor-blindness. According to this test, your nose is in perfect working order.”

The librarian pounded on the window again, signaling us to be quiet, but I didn't care. I raised my nose, sucked in a big nostril full of air, and let out the most joyful trumpet snort ever.

CHAPTER 5

THE BOY WITH A THOUSAND SCENTS

My booger blaster may have been in fine working order, but the secret ingredient in Strange was still unknown. I was beginning to think the smell might be one of the great mysteries of the universe. Like the origins of life or the cheeseburger Mumps keeps in his underwear drawer that still hasn't decomposed after eleven months.

Thankfully, my nose had no problem flying. Whenever I got depressed about Strange, I slipped on my Super Schnoz costume, turned my nostrils into massive hot air balloons, and floated into the clouds. I buzzed over the town of Denmark and into the White Mountain National Forest. The burned-out remnants of Dr. Wackjöb's Center for UFOs, Earthquakes, and Alien Abduction lay below me like a giant scar on the earth. Huge chunks of Apnean metal from when I blew up Robo-Nose littered the grounds. In less than a year, my nose had defeated an evil environmental company intent on destroying our town and saved the Earth from alien domination. Yet, one barely noticeable ingredient in a bottle of perfume was stopping my sniffer cold.

I was about to land and walk around the ruins of the compound when a familiar smell wafted into my nostrils. The scent was from an aerosol can of novelty fart spray. Just like the Gotham City Police Department uses the Bat Signal to summon Batman, the Not-Right Brothers and Vivian use the fart spray to contact me. I closed one nostril, banked sharply to the left, and flew as fast as I could to our secret hideout.

Dr. Wackjöb and the gang were waiting for me when I got there.

“We're going to New York City!” Jimmy exclaimed.