Zero to Hero (8 page)

Billy Broccoli … part of the group. Man, that felt good.

He was so busy having a great time that Billy didn’t notice Rod leaving the football team table and tucking his plaid flannel shirt under one arm. Rod walked over to where Ruby and her friends always sat, looked stealthily around, then unfolded the shirt and took out the glass jar with Billy’s tonsil in it. That morning, he’d attached a note to it that said:
Dear Ruby. Here is a little piece of me. Want to join my tonsil and me for lunch? Love, Billy Broccoli.

Quickly, Rod placed the tonsil jar and the note on the table in front of Ruby’s usual seat and rejoined his football friends.

Ruby and the girls continued to chat with the boys for a few more minutes, then carried their trays to their own table and sat down. Billy turned back to the conversation with the baseball team, when suddenly —

“Eeeuuuwwwwwwww!” It was Ruby, screaming at the top of her lungs. “What is that? Get it out of here!”

Everyone in the lunch pavilion stopped what they were doing and looked at Ruby. She hopped up from the table and danced around like her feet were on fire.

“Eeeuuwwwwww!” she screamed again. Then all the girls at her table joined in. “Eeeuuwww, eeeuuwww, triple eeeuuwwww!” they shrieked.

Every pair of eyes in the lunch area was focused on Ruby. No one knew exactly what had happened, except that something extremely eeeuuuwww-y had transpired.

“This is so not funny, Billy Broccoli,” she said, marching directly over to him. “I don’t want to have lunch with you or with that thing in the jar.”

Billy just sat there with his mouth open, his peanut butter, jelly, and potato chip sandwich suspended in midair. He had no clue what had just happened. Meanwhile, at the football table, Rod Brownstone was having himself the laugh of the century.

A bunch of kids had clustered around Ruby’s table to see what was in the jar that had her so
freaked out. Billy’s tonsil lay there at the bottom, suspended in its murky goo, looking in the daylight even more stringy and fleshy than usual.

“Check it out!” Sammy Park hooted. “It’s even got a label. ‘Billy’s tonsil. Removed at Sherman Oaks Hospital, April 7, 10:00 a.m.’ ”

“Ooohhhhhhhh, gross.”

It seemed like everyone in the lunch area was saying it at once. Billy was humiliated, ashamed, and angry beyond words. He jumped to his feet and charged toward Ruby’s table, where Sammy Park was holding his tonsil up to the sun and shaking it to make it wiggle.

“That’s mine!” he said, grabbing the jar.

He immediately wished he could take that back. How could he have confessed in front of everyone that this was his tonsil?

With a mighty rush of nervous energy, he tucked the tonsil jar under his arm and bolted out of the lunch area. He ran as fast as he could. But where could he go? There was nowhere he
could escape the awful embarrassment that filled his body from head to toe.

The last thing he saw as he left the pavilion was Rod Brownstone, fist-bumping his friends, taking full credit for the worst moment of Billy’s life.

Hoover Porterhouse was actually doing homework, which was almost unheard of in all his ninety-nine years of ghostly existence. Hanging around Billy’s room, with all its baseball gear piled up in the corner, had made him remember how much he missed the game and how much he longed to see the baseball fields of America. He knew he was never going to get there unless he brought up his grades. And although he was a procrastinator of the first degree, he had managed to fire himself up enough to work on one subject … Invisibility.

Hoover’s invisibility skills were inconsistent at best. To practice, he had forced himself to hang out at the Birthday Tree and whistle “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” for two solid hours. At first, he thought he saw improvement, but the last couple of times he tried it, only his
feet appeared. Hoover had been told by an older ghost, Bernie Highwater, who haunted the hardware store next to the movie theater, that invisibility was a matter of concentration. According to Bernie, the very act of whistling cleared your mind enough so that you could fully concentrate on making yourself visible.

It was that state of mind that Hoover was looking for.

He had been whistling that same stupid song most of the afternoon and was getting really sick of it and frustrated that only his boots were standing by themselves on the leafy ground under the tree. Occasionally, a knee popped up, but that was as far as he could get, visibility-wise. Hoover wasn’t sure how much more whistling he could do. His mouth felt like it was full of cotton balls. He was actually relieved to see Billy Broccoli coming home from school. Throwing himself into Swoosh mode, he rushed across the yard so he could beat Billy to the back door.

“Welcome home,” he said, holding the screen door open.

Billy looked at the Hoove, or at least the parts of Hoove that were visible, and jumped nearly three feet in the air.

“You’re kidding me,” the Hoove said. “I still scare you?”

“If you had big things on your mind and suddenly you were approached by a pair of boots and one knee, I think you’d jump, too.”

Billy pushed past the Hoove, or at least what was visible of the Hoove, walked into the kitchen, and yanked open the refrigerator, pulling the door so hard it made all the salad-dressing bottles clatter. He took out a bowl of leftover potato salad, took a clean fork out of the dishwasher, and started to shovel the food into his mouth without even remembering that he hated potato salad. Something about the crunch of the celery next to the mush of the potatoes repulsed him.

“This is anger eating,” the Hoove said to Billy. “And it’s unattractive on any human, living or dead.”

“Yeah, well, so is having one knee.”

“I’m working on that. In the meantime, why
don’t you spill the beans. I can tell, something is very wrong.”

“Wrong? What could possibly be wrong?” Billy answered, exposing some mildly disgusting clumps of potato salad on his tongue. “Just because everybody at school thinks I’m a total freak for keeping my tonsil in a jar? What’s wrong with that?”

“Are you telling me you took that disgusto fleshy thing to school?” Hoover asked. “Has your mind left the building?”

“Of course I didn’t take it. Rod Brownstone swiped it last night and put it on the lunch table right in front of Ruby and everyone else I might ever want to be friends with but now never will be.”

“Brownstone? That twit?”

“The very same.”

“He did that to you? I can’t believe it! This is totally unacceptable.”

“Tell me about it.”

The Hoove felt a rush of anger swell up in him.

“I never liked that twerp,” he fumed. “He’s a bad egg inside and out. But now he has crossed the Hoove’s line. I’m telling you, Billy, and hear me well: Anyone who messes with you, messes with me. Big-time.”

Suddenly, right in front of Billy’s eyes, the Hoove appeared, his whole body totally visible, newsboy cap, suspenders, and all.

“Whoa,” he said. “I’ve been working on that all day. Thank you, Billy Boy. You and your Rod story focused me, and lo and behold, here I am in my full greatness.”

“Good for you,” Billy said, reaching for the milk and taking a swig right out of the carton. “Your life … or whatever you call it … is fabulous. Mine is ruined. So if you’ll pardon me, I’m going to my room to hide in the closet for the next twenty years. It’s been nice knowing you.”

“Okay, but you might want to wipe that egg salad off your face before it forms a crust.”

“It’s potato salad.”

“Whatever it is, it should not be on your
face. It should be on a napkin, which should be placed immediately at the bottom of the garbage pail.”

The Hoove laughed to lighten the mood, but Billy’s spirits couldn’t be lifted.

“What is that?” he snapped. “Hoove’s Rule One Thousand and Ten? You know what, Hoove? I’ve had it with your rules and with your advice. There’s nothing that’s going to help me now. My life as I’ve known it is over. From now on, I’m just going to be known as the pathetic guy who keeps body parts as souvenirs.”

Billy didn’t even bother to put the potato salad or the milk back in the fridge. What did it matter if his mom got mad at him for messing up the kitchen? What did anything matter now? Without another word, he turned and left, stomping down the hall to his room and slamming the door behind him.

The Hoove did some serious stomping of his own. Without hesitation, he stomped out of the house, stomped across the yard, and stomped directly into the Brownstone house. Once inside, he threw himself into hyperglide, swooping
around their house, looking for the Brownstone twerp. He swept by Amber, who sat at the kitchen table, coloring dresses in her princess coloring book. He was moving so fast that the pages in her book actually flapped in the gust of wind he created. Amber looked up to see if anyone was there, and when she didn’t see anyone, she yelled, “Mommy, I’m not alone, but I don’t see anybody.” Her mother came in from the laundry room, looked around, and gave Amber a little kiss on the forehead.

“You have such an active imagination, honey,” she said. “You could be a writer when you grow up.”

Rod was sitting in the living room, doing his perfect imitation of a couch potato. He held the TV remote in one hand and a bag of flaming-hot spicy nacho chips in the other. He was staring at the fourth rerun of an episode of
Unsolved Parking Tickets,
the one about a cross-eyed guy whose parking meter ran out seven years ago. It was just his kind of entertainment.

The moment the Hoove spotted him, he zoomed over to the television and flicked it off.

“Hey,” Rod grunted, and flicked the TV back on with the remote.

It wasn’t back on for a second when the Hoove pulled the plug out. Brownstone sat there clicking the remote over and over, but of course, the TV did not go on.

“Who keeps messing with the TV in here?” he shouted to no one in particular.

When the big lug got up to see what was wrong with the TV, the Hoove zipped over to the bag of chips lying on the coffee table. He picked it up and, with an impish grin, dumped its contents out. When Rod turned around, he saw his favorite chips strewn all over the rug, and their bulldog, Rambo, happily scarfing them down.

“What’s going on in here?” Rod said to himself.

“I’m just getting warmed up,” the Hoove bellowed, even though Rod couldn’t hear him. “I’m going to teach you never to mess around with my buddy Billy Broccoli.”

Just then, Mrs. Brownstone happened to walk into the living room on her way to put
Rod’s clean laundry on his bed. When she saw the mess on the carpet, her face turned bright red. She kept a very tidy house, and the sight of crushed chips and dog slobber on her new carpet did not sit well with her.

“Rodney Richard Brownstone, you know the rules about eating in the living room. Go get the hand vac right now and put it to good use.”

“Mom, I’m right in the middle of my favorite show.”

“No, you’re right in the middle of my living room, and you’re going to clean it up immediately.”

Rod made a face at his mother, but she didn’t see it because she was already heading to his bedroom. Angrily, he marched into the kitchen, where the hand vac hung on a hook next to the refrigerator, along with the brooms and a dustpan. The Hoove was right on his tail. As Rod reached for the hand vac, the Hoove reached for the broom and, assuming his best baseball stance, swatted Rod directly on his behind. Rod wheeled around and saw Amber sitting at the
table, with the broom lying on the floor next to her.

“What’s the big idea?” he yelled at her.

She shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And stop screaming. People do not yell at princesses.”

“I can scream all I want. You just hit me with the broom!”

“I did not. You threw the broom over here at me.”

“You’re lying.”

“No, you’re the liar.”

Hoover was pleased to see the argument grow. Getting under Rod’s skin was the most fun he’d had since 1988, when he watched the World Series on TV and saw Kirk Gibson hit that home run for the Dodgers. He must have watched the reruns of that five hundred times.

“I’m going to tell Mom on you,” Amber was saying. “You’re going to be grounded until forever.”

Hoover didn’t think being grounded forever was long enough for Rod Brownstone. He didn’t
feel even a little bit bad for him, just as Rod hadn’t felt bad about being so mean to Billy. The Hoove’s Rule Number Sixty-Two was “The energy you put out is the energy you get back.”

Getting Rod in trouble at home was amusing, but it didn’t totally satisfy the Hoove. It didn’t fix what Rod had done to Billy. Taking that tonsil to school was such a bully thing to do, and if there was one thing Hoover Porterhouse did not tolerate, it was a bully.

Back when he was alive, there was a kid named Clive McGraw who always used to pick on Sally Huerta, who was born with one leg a little shorter than the other. She wore a special shoe with a thick sole so she’d be able to walk like the other kids. But Clive used to make fun of her and imitate the way she ran. Some of the other kids would laugh at his antics, but never Hoover Porterhouse. In fact, he made it a point to strike out Clive McGraw every time that bully came up to bat. Eventually, he confronted Clive.

“What is your problem?” he had said to Clive. “What exactly does Sally do to you that is so
terrible? I want you to look me square in the eye and tell my why you enjoy picking on that girl. Come on, let’s see how tough you really are.”

Clive couldn’t come up with any answer, not even a syllable. After that conversation, Clive stopped bothering Sally, and eleven years later, after Hoove had been dead for a good decade, Sally and Clive wound up as husband and wife. As a ghost, the Hoove had always felt proud of his role in their destiny.

The Hoove watched with pleasure as Rod stomped into the living room and started vacuuming up the mess he’d made. He held the hand vac to the spot on the rug where the chips had crumbled into the shag of the carpet. Rod hated cleaning. He hated the dust that was shooting up his nose. He hated losing all his chips. When his mother came back from his room, carrying the empty laundry basket, he glared at her.