Barfing in the Backseat (4 page)

“I got a call from your teacher today, Hank,” he began. “It seems she’s given you a rather substantial homework packet to complete over the vacation.”

Ms. Adolf, why are you following me here to the dinner table? Don’t you have anything
better to do than to make my life miserable?

“Stay cool, Zip,” Frankie whispered to me. “And remember to breathe. Oxygen is power.” Frankie’s mom, who’s a yoga teacher, taught him that, and it works for me most of the time.

I took a deep breath, then flashed my dad a very sincere and gigantic smile.

“No problem, dude,” I said to him.

I thought my dad’s eyes were going to pop out of his head.

“Dude?”
he said.

“Dad, I mean. No problem,
Dad
. Not dude. I’m on top of that packet.”

“Yeah, but sitting on it doesn’t count,” Emily piped up. “I saw it lying beneath your underpants in your suitcase. You haven’t even opened it.”

“First of all, what was your nosy nose doing in my suitcase? And second of all, I only got it today,” I snapped. “Just because I’m not like you and I don’t do my homework on the walk home from school is no reason to bark at me. That’s Cheerio’s job.”

Frankie and I both laughed. I have to admit, I crack myself up sometimes.

When Cheerio heard his name mentioned, he spun in a circle under the table and started licking my ankle. Without anyone seeing, I slipped him a big spoonful of my Rice Dream Supreme. He barked again, which I think meant, “If you eat enough of it, this stuff starts to taste like chalk.”

“Here is my rule, Hank, which is now your rule,” my dad said, giving me the big serious stare down he’s perfected over the years. “If that packet is not completed by the time we reach the Colossus Coaster Kingdom, there will be no rides for you. Not even the merry-go-round.”

“Now that’s an excellent rule, Dad,” Emily said.

“No, here is an even better excellent rule,” I said to her. “Little sisters should keep their mouths shut when they don’t know what they’re talking about, which is pretty much all the time.”

“Hank, don’t talk to your sister like that,” my dad said. “She’s just trying to help you.”

“Hankie,” Papa Pete said, giving my shoulder a big squeeze. “Just do a little bit every day, and before you know it, it’ll be done.”

“Easy as pie,” I said, flashing a thumbs up to my dad. “I’ll be on top of it, don’t you worry.”

I tried to look confident on the outside. But inside, I had this sinking feeling as I thought about all of those pages of schoolwork. What a rip-off. I was getting no break from homework, even on winter break. This was not a vacation—this was a
workation.

Oh, Ms. Adolf! Who invited you along on the Zipzer family road trip?

I
DON
’
T KNOW HOW
many of you have ever taken a road trip with an iguana in the car, but just in case you ever find yourself in that sorry situation, here’s something you need to know.

Iguanas are very fussy about where they sit.

At least, that’s what my sister Emily told us the next morning when we were ready to leave.

It was early Sunday morning, and my dad had brought the minivan to the front of our apartment building from the garage where we keep it a couple blocks away. It was freezing cold, so we loaded our suitcases into the back of the car in a big hurry. I couldn’t wait to get inside, where it was nice and toasty from the car heater.

“Okay,” my dad said once the suitcases were stacked neatly in the luggage compartment.
“Everybody in. Frankie and Hank, you guys sit in the middle seat. Emily and Katherine in the way back.”

“That’s not going to work for Kathy,” Emily said. “She gets carsick in the way back.”

“How do you know?” I asked. “She’s never even been in the car.”

“Oh yes she has,” Emily answered. “Remember that time we drove to Aunt Maxine’s out on Long Island? Katherine rode in the way back and she turned all green in the face.”

“That’s because she
is
green,” I said. Frankie started to laugh.

“Hank, why don’t you and Frankie sit in the way back and let Emily and Katherine have the middle seat,” my mom suggested.

“That’s not going to work for Kathy, either,” Emily said. “There’s a draft in the middle seat that comes in through a crack in the window. I don’t want Katherine catching a cold and getting a stuffy nose.”

“Neither do I,” I answered. “If her big snout blows, we’ll all get slimed by lizard snot.”

“Hey, then Katherine will be just like Robert,” Frankie said, laughing so hard he spit out a bite
of bagel he was munching on.

“You boys are disgusting,” Emily said.

“Oh, and your scaly iguana isn’t?”

I looked inside Katherine’s crate, just to check. She was just lying there on some clawed up newspaper, munching on a brownish piece of wilted lettuce. Yup, she was still disgusting, all right. No doubt about it.

“Emily,” my dad said, getting a little impatient with her, which is something that doesn’t happen very often. “Where do you suggest Katherine sit?”

“I think she and I should ride shotgun, next to you.”

“Oh no!” I shouted. “That’s definitely not happening. If anyone’s going to ride shotgun other than Mom, it’s going to be me. After all, I am the oldest child.”

“I’m making a decision,” my dad said, shivering from the cold and pulling his earmuffs down over his ears. “Hank and Frankie ride in the way back from here to Philadelphia. We’ll have lunch there, then after lunch, Emily and Katherine will ride in the way back until we get to Washington, D.C.”

“I think your father has made a very fair decision,” my mom said.

“Fine,” said Emily. “You can tell that to Katherine when she barfs in the backseat.”

Frankie and I climbed into the way back. Emily got into the middle seat, and put Katherine’s crate in the space next to her. My dad started the car and we pulled away from the curb. We were on our way!

“Hey, Em, fasten Kathy’s seat belt,” I whispered, just to drive my sister crazy. “In case of a sudden stop, we don’t want her to get lizardy whiplash.”

“Mom, did you hear what he said?” Emily whined.

“I thought I said no whining,” my dad hollered from the front seat.

“Hank started it,” Emily whined again.

“No, you started it when you invited your four-legged reptile along,” I shot back.

“That’s enough!” my dad yelled.

And just as quickly as he had pulled out, he steered the car back to the curb. We had gone about ten feet, maybe twenty max. So much for being on our way!

“Everybody out,” my dad said, opening the car door.

“But we just got in.”

“Stanley,” my mom said. “Really, is this necessary?”

“Yes, it is,” my dad answered. “I don’t want to spend the next week listening to them arguing. Now, if I hear any bickering for the rest of the day, I’m canceling the trip. Do I make myself clear, kids?”

The one thing you can say about my dad is that he makes himself
very
clear. When he says no, he means no. And when he says no bickering, it means keep your lips zipped if you don’t have anything nice to say.

We didn’t say a word all the way downtown. We rode in total silence. But as we entered the Holland Tunnel, which takes you out of Manhattan under the Hudson River, my stomach growled really loud. Not just a little
grrrrr
, but a long, loud rumbling that sounded like I had swallowed an actual lion. And then a miracle happened. Emily burst out laughing. Then Frankie cracked up and I did, too.

We laughed like hyenas all through the
tunnel, and by the time we came out of it and hit the New Jersey Turnpike, we were having the greatest time in the world.

My mom turned on the radio to her golden oldies station, and started to sing along to “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” in her loud rock ’n’ roll voice. Frankie and I joined in, and Emily, too. Get this: Even my dad started to sing. The only one who wasn’t singing was Katherine, but I think I saw her blinking her eyes in time to the music.

If you could have seen us, you would’ve thought,
Now there’s one nutty family.
But we didn’t care. We were on a road trip, and we were having fun.

P
HILADELPHIA DEFINITELY ROCKS.
At least the part that I saw.

We got there at about eleven o’clock in the morning. My dad said we should go directly to the Liberty Bell. I was pushing to go directly to Pat’s for cheesesteaks, but he said, “Learn first, eat second.”

As it turns out, the Liberty Bell is a pretty cool thing to see. It would have been cooler if I hadn’t been standing next to my know-it-all sister who blabbed Liberty Bell facts the whole time we were there. Her brain is like a sponge. It just soaks up information and never seems to get full. My brain soaks up infor-mation, too, but then it dribbles out like a leaky faucet.

“The Liberty Bell is made of seventy percent copper and weighs over two thousand pounds,”
Emily blabbed as we walked up to the glass building that housed it.

“So does a baby whale,” I said. I had no idea if that was true, but let her try to prove me wrong.

While we waited in line, we watched a video that told the history of the bell. It was made in London over two hundred years ago, and was then sent over to America to be hung in the Pennsylvania State House. Hey, I can throw a few facts around, too, if I watch them on a video. When information comes into my brain through my eyes, like when I’m reading, it doesn’t seem to stick around too long. But I usually remember most of what I see on TV or hear on a tape.

The video lasted seven minutes, which I know because Frankie was timing it on his digital watch. After it was finished, a guide led us into the room where the Liberty Bell is enclosed in a glass case. Frankie and I moved up real close to get a good look at it.

“Hey, that thing is cracked!” I said.

“If you were watching carefully, you would have learned that the bell cracked shortly after
its arrival in America,” Emily said. “It was repaired, but cracked again in 1846.”

Wow, I guess my mind must have wandered during that part of the video. Oh, yeah. I think it was when those pigeons flew up to the window and were looking in at us. I remember wondering if pigeons are really pigeon-toed.

“Who can read the inscription on the bell?” my dad asked. “Hank, why don’t you give it a try?”

There were a bunch of words carved on the bell. I looked at the first one. It started with a P, but after that, I didn’t have a clue what it said. I noticed a couple of teenage girls watching me through the glass. No way was I going to mess up in front of them.

“You know, Dad,” I said. “I think Frankie could use the reading practice more than me, so I’m going to turn the stage over to him. Take it away, Frankie Townsend.”

Frankie knew what I was doing, and like the true friend that he is, stepped right up to help. “‘Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof,’” he read. “Isn’t that
what it says, Zip?”

“I couldn’t have read it better myself,” I said.

And boy, was that ever true.

After we were finished checking out the Liberty Bell, we got back in the car and drove to Pat’s. Well, we didn’t drive right there. We got lost for about a half an hour first, going up and down narrow streets crowded with red brick row houses. My dad got a little snappy, like he always does when we get lost. My mom kept rolling down the window and asking random people for directions. But before they could answer, my dad would press the automatic window button on his side and roll up her window. He’d rather be lost than ask for directions.

“I know where I am, Randi,” he said.

Then he’d drive the wrong way on a one-way street and start tapping his fingernails on the steering wheel. That fingernail tapping is def-initely a sign that he’s about to blow.

My stomach was screaming for food by the time we finally arrived at Pat’s. But within ten minutes, my stomach was one very happy
camper. I’ve had plenty of sandwiches in my eleven years on earth, but this was far and away the best sandwich that has ever made the trip into my little mouth.

It all starts with a big, crusty Italian roll. Then they load it up with strips of delicious beef that has been grilled with a mountain of onions. Then comes the cheese. You can have your choice of American or provolone or Cheez Whiz. I got the Cheez Whiz, just like Papa Pete had suggested.