A Whole Nother Story (2 page)

But as the weeks and months went by and Mr. Cheeseman and his three children moved from one town to the next, always keeping one step ahead of the coats, it soon became apparent that there was something very different about Pinky.

Pinky, it seemed, had somehow developed psychic abilities, which enabled her to sense danger and warn of disaster long before it happened.

Her knack for identifying perilous situations and individuals with evil intent was uncanny. It was quite impossible to watch a whodunit on television with Pinky in the room because the minute the bad guy appeared on the screen Pinky would give it away by narrowing her eyes and growling through clenched teeth.

Her unique abilities had saved Mr. Cheeseman and his children from many a close call, including this very night when she burst into Mr. Cheeseman’s room, jumped up onto the bed, and emitted a low growl that had become her trademark portent of doom.

“What is it, Pinky?” Mr. Cheeseman muttered.

“Grrrr,” Pinky answered.

“Are you sure?”

“Grrrrrrrr!”

“Okay, okay.”

Once the children were up and dressed and had packed their suitcases, Mr. Cheeseman ordered them to gather in the boys’ room and wait there while he prepared the car for their escape.

“It’s not fair,” said Saffron as she threw a paperback book across the boys’ bedroom, bouncing it off the closet door. This may seem like an odd thing to throw considering that books are not terribly aerodynamic. She threw the book because it was the only thing she could find to throw. Just about everything else—toys, clothing, school supplies, Barton’s baseball equipment, Saffron’s archery equipment, and Crandall’s collection of dirt clods shaped like famous people—had all been packed up and loaded into the family station wagon.

“I don’t want to move again,” Saffron continued, searching in vain for something else to throw. The only thing she could find was Crandall’s giant blob of pink, flavorless bubble gum still firmly affixed to his bedpost. Much stronger than her little brother, she yanked it from its perch and flung it across the room, where it stuck firmly to the wall about six feet above floor level.

“Hey, that’s my gum,” Crandall protested while running across the room, dragging his suitcase behind him, as the blob had landed well above his natural reach.

“Keep it down, you guys,” said Barton. “Dad’s got enough to worry about without listening to you fighting.”

“How’s he going to hear us?” asked Saffron. “He’s out in the garage loading up that stupid machine.”

“You shouldn’t say
stupid
,” said Crandall as he stood on the suitcase and, with his non-sock-puppet hand, peeled the bubble gum from the wall and then popped it into his mouth. “
Stupid
is a bad word.”

“Stupid is putting something in your mouth that has been stuck to a wall,” Saffron snapped back. For a moment, no one said anything. Then Saffron sat down on the bed and dropped her face into her hands.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know why we have to move.

I’m just tired, that’s all.”

“We’re all tired of moving,” said Barton.

“I liked this house,” said Crandall sadly as he sat beside his older sister. “I liked the way the driveway smelled when it rained.”

“I liked the plum tree out back,” said Saffron.

“I liked the fuzzy carpet,” said Steve.

“Don’t worry,” said Barton. “I’m sure the next house will have lots of nice things about it as well.”

“You never know,” said Saffron. “Remember the light blue house with the leaky roof and the people next door who yelled all the time? There was nothing good about that house.”

“Yeah,” said Crandall. “And what about that old farmhouse that got so cold at night and made those creepy noises?”

“At least we were only there for six weeks,” Barton reminded him.

The bedroom door popped open and Mr. Cheeseman walked in with Pinky on his heels. “Okay, gang. Let’s move out.”

Saffron gave her reflection in the bedroom window one last glance and decided her hair looked good enough for the purposes of escaping under cover of darkness. Her brothers, on the other hand, seemed to have no interest whatsoever in how their hair looked.

Barton at least had the decency to put on a baseball cap so his sheeply mass of black curls only stuck out from the sides and back. They matched in color, if not thickness, his recently arrived teenage mustache, of which Barton was very proud even though it was quite patchy and uneven and, from a distance, could be mistaken for crumbs of burned toast.

When it came to grooming, Crandall was another matter altogether. His short blond hair shot out in all directions and his big, round, spiky head reminded Saffron of something in a comic book when one character is hit in the head by another. Inside the jagged bubble, you might see the words
Kapow
,
Blammo
, or
Zoinks
.

To make matters worse, Crandall’s bald spot had not yet fully grown back. Less than a week before, Crandall had fallen asleep while chewing a wad of bubble gum roughly the size of a billiard ball, something his father had warned him against repeatedly. The following morning, Crandall awoke with Steve the sock puppet firmly stuck to his head, bonded tightly by the hardened pink goo, which had fallen from the boy’s mouth as he slept.

Following a two-hour operation involving peanut butter, scissors, and crying, Steve the sock puppet and Crandall the crying boy were no longer joined at the head, but each sported a bald spot roughly the size and shape of a silverdollar pancake. Now, nearly a week later, Crandall’s bald spot had partially grown back, though Steve, being a mere sock puppet, would have no such luck.

“Barton?” said Mr. Cheeseman. “What about your earmuffs?”

“Dad, I’m fine.”

“I’d appreciate it if you’d put them on just ’til we get rolling. I’d hate to have you fall over and break your arm on the way to the car.”

“I’ve been cured of that, Dad, really.”

Though interested in sports and very athletic, Barton often fell over due to an inner ear imbalance he had had since birth. To give you an idea as to how serious a malady this was, on one occasion he fell down a flight of stairs. It was an escalator going up and he kept falling for two hours until, finally, the mall closed for the night.

This is where having a brilliant scientist and inventor for a father can come in quite handy. Mr. Cheeseman developed a special set of earmuffs that send out inaudible sound waves to help maintain perfect inner ear balance.

Barton sighed and pulled the earmuffs from his pocket and put them on.

“Thanks. I appreciate that,” said Mr. Cheeseman. “Now, how about the rest of you? Are you sure you’ve got everything?”

“I’ve got everything,” said Crandall.

“Me too,” said Steve the sock puppet.

“Oh no,” said Saffron. “I think I forgot my hairbrush.”

“Who cares about your stupid hairbrush?” said Steve, to which Saffron replied by soundly bonking him on his patchy, one-eyed sock puppet head.

“Blammo!”

A BIT OF ADVICE FOR INVENTORS

W
hat separates us humans from the animals, besides indoor plumbing, the right to vote, and wrinkle-free slacks, is our capacity to invent things. Things like . . . wrinkle-free slacks.

Even monkeys, as smart as they might be, have never invented anything. It remains a cold hard fact that even the monkey wrench was invented not by a monkey but by a human. In addition, the dogsled, the bear hug, the crow’s nest, the fish-eye lens, and the catamaran were all invented by humans, not animals. Nothing has ever been invented by an animal, though there are those who, to this day, will argue that horseplay was indeed invented by horses.

Regardless, the point is that human beings are, by far, the planet’s most prolific inventors. Perhaps the greatest of these inventors was Thomas Alva Edison, who invented, among other things, the name Alva. To give you an idea as to the genius of Edison you should know that at the time of his death he held over twelve hundred patents, which was a lot of weight for a person his age to be holding and is most likely what killed him.

The patent is the one and only way an inventor can protect himself or herself from those who might wish to steal an idea. Without the benefit of a patent, it is entirely possible that an inventor could be denied any and all credit for a brilliant invention.

The wheel, for example, was one of the first inventions of early man that resulted in making him even earlier, provided he did not attempt to travel during rush hour.

The wheel is arguably the greatest innovation of all time, though the name of its inventor remains a mystery because in those days there were no patents. There were no patents because there were no lawyers. That is, until after the wheel was invented and ran over some people. Then there were lawyers everywhere.

And so my advice to any and all would-be inventors is to make sure you patent and protect your ideas if you wish to receive the proper credit. And, as in the case of Mr. Ethan Cheeseman, I would advise you to be extremely careful that you do not invent something so fantastically wonderful and useful that you become the target of corporate villains, international superspies, and government agencies so secret that their names are not known.

CHAPTER 2

“Okay, this is it,” said Mr. Cheeseman. He flipped off the light in the boys’ room, and when he did he saw something through the window that caused his eyes to narrow.

“What is it, Dad?” asked Barton. “What’s wrong?”

“They’re here,” said Mr. Cheeseman, his gaze fixed on a gray sedan parked out front, beneath the dull glow of a streetlight. “They’re already here.”

“Grrrrr,” said Pinky.

“What do we do now?” asked Saffron. In the two years they’d been on the run, this was the first time they hadn’t gotten away before the coats arrived.

“I can’t promise it’ll work,” said Mr. Cheeseman, nervously biting his lower lip. “But I’ve got an idea.”

Mr. Cheeseman led the children through the darkened house and into the garage, where the rusted white station wagon was loaded to the ceiling with all it could hold in the way of toys, clothing, dirt clods shaped like celebrities, and the LVR, disassembled into several large pieces and covered with a blue tarp.

As always, the car had been backed into the garage, its nose facing the door to help hasten a last-minute escape.

“Even if we do get past them,” said Barton, “won’t they just follow us?”

“I think they’ll try,” said Mr. Cheeseman. “But if all goes according to plan, they won’t get very far.”

“Why not?” asked Barton.

“A little invention I like to call the Inertia Ray,” said Mr. Cheeseman as he helped a very sleepy Crandall into the backseat.

“What’s an Inertia Ray?” wondered Saffron.

“I came up with the idea while working on the LVR, which operates on the principle that the speed of light can be manipulated to alter the speed of objects in its path,” Mr. Cheeseman explained. “Scientifically speaking, people who are struck by a beam of light traveling at several times the speed of light will be temporarily rendered motionless.”

“But how can light travel faster than the speed of light?” asked Barton. “That’s impossible.”

“Not necessarily,” said Saffron, not about to miss an opportunity to show off her oversized brain. “Light could be made to travel faster than the speed of light the same way a tortoise could be made to travel faster than the speed of a tortoise. By boarding a fast-moving train or an airplane.”

“Exactly,” said Mr. Cheeseman. “The Inertia Ray is to light as that jet airplane is to the tortoise.”

“I understand that,” said Saffron. “But how will it help us now?”

“Well, that’s obvious,” said Barton. “Tell her, Dad.”

“It’s simple, really,” said Mr. Cheeseman. “Last night, I hooked up the Inertia Ray to the high beams of the station wagon. Let’s hope I did it correctly because right now it’s our only hope of getting out of here.”

With that, Mr. Cheeseman fired up the engine. He took a deep breath and narrowed his eyes, then clicked the automatic garage door opener. Slowly, the door peeled away to reveal the gray car parked directly across the street.

“Keep your fingers crossed,” said Mr. Cheeseman. “Here we go.”

He hit the gas and the station wagon bolted from the garage. As the car neared the end of the driveway, Mr. Cheeseman hit the high beams, aiming them directly at the gray car. As Mr. Cheeseman turned left and drove past the car, the children looked out to see a man dressed in a gray suit behind the wheel, completely frozen in time, like a wax figure holding a cell phone, his mouth open in midsentence. In the passenger seat was another man dressed in gray, taking a bite of a sandwich, and he was likewise frozen in time.

“It worked!” said Barton.

“It sure did,” said Mr. Cheeseman, perfectly pleased with his latest invention. “It’s only a temporary effect but it should give us a good ten minutes or so before they snap out of it.”

Just then, with a squealing of tires, a little brown car turned from a side street and moved in directly behind them.

“Dad,” said Barton.

“I see them,” said Mr. Cheeseman.

“What do we do?” asked Saffron.

“What do we do?” Mr. Cheeseman repeated. “We hold on!”

With that, Mr. Cheeseman hit the gas, temporarily pulling away from the brown car. But the station wagon was a slow-moving car to begin with. Load it down with four people, a disassembled, nonworking time machine, several boxes of toys, books, clothing, and dirt clods and you’d be lucky to outrun a three-wheeled shopping cart.

Within seconds the little brown car regained its ground and pulled up directly behind them.

“Prepare for evasive maneuvers,” Mr. Cheeseman shouted to his children over his shoulder.

Their heads snapped to the left as Mr. Cheeseman cranked the wheel hard to the right, causing the tires to chirp loudly as the station wagon flew down a side street. The brown car made the same turn, but much more cautiously, thus giving the station wagon a good fifty-foot head start.

“Okay, everybody,” Mr. Cheeseman warned. “Hold on tight, ’cause here we go!”

As the brown car began to close the gap, Mr. Cheeseman stomped on the brake pedal while cranking the wheel to the left as far as it would go, causing the station wagon to fly into a violent spin, at one point rolling up onto two wheels.

When it finally came to rest back on all of its wheels, the station wagon was facing in the opposite direction, with the brown car speeding directly toward it.

“Dad, look out!” Barton shouted as he cowered behind the dashboard.

The driver of the brown car hit the brakes but it slowed only slightly as it skidded toward a head-on collision with the station wagon. Barton dug his fingernails into the dashboard. Saffron hid her face in her hands. Crandall and Steve hugged each other tightly, preparing for the worst.

With less than two seconds to impact, Mr. Cheeseman reached up and hit the high-beam switch, sending a stream of light traveling at several times the speed of light directly at the brown car. Instantly the car froze.

Mr. Cheeseman threw the station wagon into reverse and backed up a few feet before putting it in drive and screaming off down the street, leaving their pursuers in suspended animation.

Saffron uncovered her eyes. Crandall and Steve did not stop hugging each other. Barton pulled his fingernails from the dashboard.

Though he hid it well, Barton was secretly embarrassed by how he had reacted so cowardly in the face of danger. Silently he vowed that the next time he found himself in similar circumstances, he would respond bravely like his father, like a true man of action. “That was close,” he gasped, feeling as though he might pass out.

“It sure was,” said Mr. Cheeseman. “I must remember for future reference to install the Inertia Ray on the taillights as well.”

“Dad?” Crandall asked. “Is everything going to be okay?”

“I hope so,” said Mr. Cheeseman. “But only time will tell.”