The Sasquatch Escape (The Imaginary Veterinary) (11 page)

“Breakfast!” his grandfather hollered.

Ben pushed the box deeper beneath the bed. His plan was to eat breakfast as quickly as possible, then dart over to Pearl’s.

“So?” Grandpa Abe asked as he poured milk
into his bowl of Sugar Loops. “Do you and Pearl want to come to the senior center? Everyone wants to meet my grandson, the storyteller. And today is pudding day. What could be better than that?”

“No, thank you,” Ben said as he sat at the kitchen table.

“What? You don’t like pudding? What kind of person doesn’t like pudding?”

“I like pudding,” Ben said. “But Pearl wanted me to meet her at the Dollar Store after breakfast.” Ben poured milk into his bowl. Then he stuffed his mouth with Sugar Loops so he wouldn’t have to keep answering questions.

“Well, I guess that’ll be okay.” Grandpa Abe tapped his spoon on the table. “Why would you want to hang out with a bunch of old people when you can hang out with a kid your own age? But just be careful. Like I told you, that girl’s a troublemaker.”

“Okay.”

The toaster popped, and the scent of warm
bread filled the air. “You want a schmear of cream cheese on your bagel?”

As Ben nodded, a knock sounded on the front door, followed by a high-pitched voice. “Yoo-hoo!”

Grandpa Abe groaned. Then he whispered, “That voice. I know that voice. Pretend we’re not home.”

“Who is it?” Ben whispered back.

“Martha Mulberry, the busiest busybody in Buttonville.”

Knock, knock, KNOCK.
“I know you’re in there, Abe Silverstein. Are you going to make me stand here all day? Because I will. I will stand here all day and knock until you open this door.”

“All right, already.” With another groan, Grandpa Abe grabbed his cane and hobbled across the kitchen. “Why, hello, Martha,” he said in a cheerful voice after opening the front door. “How nice to see you this morning. I was just saying to my grandson, Ben, that I should have such luck as to see Martha Mulberry this morning.”

Ben watched from the kitchen table as a woman
pushed her way into the living room, followed by a girl who was pulling a red wagon. They were dressed in matching red overalls and white sneakers. And they wore matching red baseball hats with the words
WELCOME WAGON
embroidered on the brim.

“Ben, get your
tuchus
over here and meet Mrs. Mulberry and her daughter, Victoria.”

Ben shoved another spoonful of Sugar Loops into his mouth—he’d need energy for the sasquatch hunt. Then he joined his grandfather in the living room.

“Hello, Ben.” Mrs. Mulberry’s hair stuck out from beneath her baseball cap like frizzy ropes of red licorice. “As the president of the Welcome Wagon Committee, I’d like to officially welcome you to Buttonville.” She shook Ben’s hand. When she smiled, her top gums showed.

“Hi,” Ben said after swallowing the Sugar Loops.

“And this is my daughter, Victoria.”

The girl frowned as she shook Ben’s hand. Her
eyes peered at him from behind superthick glasses. Her red hair was so frizzy it looked like it might explode from an overload of static electricity. Was this the girl Pearl had mentioned? The girl who couldn’t keep a secret?

“We would have come earlier this morning, but something got into our garbage can and made a real mess,” Mrs. Mulberry explained.

“Raccoons?” Grandpa Abe asked.

“No, I don’t think it was raccoons,” Mrs. Mulberry said. “I’ve never heard of raccoons sorting the garbage into colors. All the green stuff in one pile, the red stuff in another pile, and so on and so on. And it happened to six other houses on Cedar Street.”

“That’s very strange,” Grandpa Abe said.

Ben chewed on his lower lip as he remembered the sasquatch guidebook.
It enjoys puzzles and likes to arrange things by color.

“I was convinced that a misbehaving child did the damage,” Mrs. Mulberry said. “But my neighbor Mr. Bumfrickle found a big footprint in
the grass next to his overturned garbage can.”

A bigfoot print? Ben gasped and some spit went down the wrong tube.

“What’s the matter with you?” Mrs. Mulberry asked as Ben started coughing. “Are you sick?”

“Nothing’s the matter with me,” Ben said. He hurried into the kitchen and got a glass of water. As he drank it, he imagined the sasquatch
squatting in the Mulberrys’ front yard, sorting through the garbage. It was supposed to be sleeping in the forest, not wandering around Buttonville. What else had the creature done during the night? He and Pearl needed to find it ASAP!

“Ben,” Mrs. Mulberry called, “we have a present for you.”

As Ben returned to the living room, Mrs. Mulberry grabbed a wrapped package from the wagon. “Welcome to the town of Buttonville. We hope you have a long and happy stay.” She handed the package to Ben.

“Thanks,” Ben said. He set the present on the sofa. “Uh, I really need to get going.” But as Ben started for the door, Grandpa Abe cleared his throat.

“Ben, be a good boy and open your present.”

Ben sank onto the couch, untied the red ribbon as fast as he could, and yanked open the box. It held the following things:

“Thanks,” Ben said again.

Mrs. Mulberry stepped close to Ben. “It’s my job as president of the Welcome Wagon to know everything about everybody. I understand that your parents sent you here for the summer. Why did they do that?”

Mrs. Mulberry
was
a busybody, just like Grandpa Abe had said. Ben hoped she didn’t have too many questions. He turned away and looked out the window. Pearl was pacing along the sidewalk, her blond hair swishing with each
step. She must have finished her chores.

“Grandpa? Can I—”

“I see Pearl Petal is waiting for you,” Mrs. Mulberry said. “I noticed the two of you walking together yesterday. Are you friends?”

“I guess so,” Ben said. Seeing as he and Pearl shared some pretty big secrets, it looked like they’d become friends.

“I don’t like Pearl Petal,” Victoria said. Her blue braces sparkled. “I never play with her.”

“A wise choice.” Mrs. Mulberry patted the top of her daughter’s baseball cap. “That Pearl Petal is a troublemaker. You would be wise, Abe, to keep your grandson from playing with her.”

“Ben’s no dummy. He can choose his friends.” Grandpa Abe winked encouragingly at Ben. Then he opened the front door. “So nice of you to stop by, Martha,” he said with a forced smile. “I’m sure you have other things to do today.”

“Yes, indeed I do.” Mrs. Mulberry adjusted her baseball cap. “Someone has moved into the old button factory, and it’s my job to find out who that
someone is. Even if I have to wait outside the gate all day, I must know what’s going on over there.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” Grandpa Abe said. “After all, it’s your job to know everything about everybody.”

Victoria grabbed the wagon’s handle and followed her mother out the door. The wagon thumped down the porch steps. Victoria glared at Pearl as she passed by. Pearl glared back. Then Victoria and Mrs. Mulberry made their way along Pine Street, the wagon wheels squeaking.

“I thought they’d never leave,” Grandpa Abe said. He grabbed his cane and plopped a canvas hat onto his head. “Well, you and Pearl have fun. I’m off to the senior center to help set up the tables. Pudding day is our busiest day.” And off he went, tipping his hat at Pearl as he drove away.

After tucking the kit under his arm and closing the bedroom door, Ben joined Pearl outside. The cloudless sky glowed with summer sunshine. Barnaby sat on the sidewalk, pawing at a trail of ants. He’d squashed a bunch of them, and they lay
as lifeless as beads. Ben hissed a warning. “Stay away from my hamster or…” He leaned close. “Or I’ll feed you to the sasquatch.”

Barnaby ignored Ben. He flicked his black tail, then pounced on another ant.

“I don’t think sasquatches eat cats,” Pearl said. She glanced up and down the sidewalk. “I did my chores as fast as I could so I could get over here. Guess what I found out.” She looked around again. “I found out that the sasquatch broke into the diner last night and ate all the ketchup packets and chocolate syrup. It left a big footprint near the door.”

“And it got into a bunch of garbage cans and sorted the garbage by color,” Ben told her.

Pearl took a rubber band off her wrist and pulled her hair into a ponytail. “This is serious stuff. We need to catch it before anyone sees it. Where do you think we should start looking?”

“I’m not sure.” Ben shrugged. And that’s when a scream filled the air. “But that sounds like a good place to start.”

A
short way down the block they found the source of the scream—an elderly lady who was leaning on the handles of her walker, her eyes staring into space as if they were made of glass.

“That’s Mrs. Froot,” Pearl told Ben as they ran toward her. “She’s the oldest person in Buttonville. She doesn’t like me because I broke her garden gnome.”

“How’d you do that?” Ben asked. The contents of the Sasquatch Catching Kit jiggled with his
frantic steps. He was a bit worried the motion might activate the fog bomb.

“It was an accident,” Pearl explained. “I wanted to get a nest that was in Mrs. Froot’s tree to add to my nest collection, but it was way up in the top branch. So I climbed the tree, but then the branch broke and I fell right on top of the gnome. Its head came off.”

Mrs. Froot stood in her front yard next to her white picket fence. Dozens of colorfully painted gnomes dotted her yard as if they’d sprouted like weeds. The headless one still sat beneath the tree. Mrs. Froot’s bony fingers gripped the handles of her walker as she stared down the sidewalk.

“Hello, Mrs. Froot,” Pearl said. “We heard a scream.”

A strangled sound emerged from Mrs. Froot’s mouth, as if a word was trying to form deep down inside her. “Ssssss.”