Zoo Breath (12 page)

F
or the special occasion, Mr. Purdy brought his time-to-show-me-what-you’ve-got raised eyebrow to school. “All right, junior detectives, it’s presentation day! You ready?”

“Yes, Mr. Purdy!” we said.

Props were everywhere. Handmade posters,
photographs, books, all kinds of objects, and two living creatures—Streak, who smelled like toothpaste, which I’d rubbed onto her teeth at the last possible minute, and Ace’s parrot, BooBoo, in a cage in the back of the room. Julio had made our chart, which he was hiding until we were ready.

Mr. Purdy raised his hand. “Okay, listen up. I’m going to draw team names from my coffee cup. Whoever I draw is up.”

“Bring it on!” Rubin shouted.

Mr. Purdy reached into his cup.

I crossed my fingers. Not me and Julio, please, not us first.

Mr. Purdy looked up. “Ace and Doreen!”

I sat back, relieved.

Ace got his parrot and brought it to the front of the room. He held up the cage. “Say hello, BooBoo.”

“Hel-lo … blaaach … hel-lo.”

The class thought that was hilarious.

Streak’s ears shot straight up.

Mr. Purdy leaned back on the edge of his desk. “Tell us what your research question is, Doreen.”

“Ace thought of it,” she said. “He’s been teaching BooBoo how to talk. He can say ‘Hello,’ ‘Goodbye,’ ‘Awesome,’ and ‘Feed me.’ So our question was this: You can teach a parrot to talk, but can you teach it to sing?”

Ace set BooBoo’s cage on Mr. Purdy’s desk next to the terrarium that held our class pet, Manly Stanley, a centipede. Manly slithered under his rock, probably afraid BooBoo would eat him.

BooBoo squawked.

“BooBoo,” Ace said. “Sing ‘Happy Birthday.’ ”

“Squawk!”

“You can do it, come on.”

“Squawk! Achh!”

Streak barked once. I clamped a hand over her muzzle.

Ace dug into his pocket. “Here, if you sing I’ll give you some Fritos.”

Mr. Purdy laughed. “Your parrot likes Fritos?”

“Yeah. And sweet potato chips.”

“Acch! Squaaawk!”

“ ‘Happy birthday to you,’ ” Ace sang. “Come on, BooBoo, sing for us.”

“Hap-py bir-day to you … squawk!”

Amazing! The whole class stood up and whooped and cheered and generally went bonkers until Mr. Purdy hissed,
“Sssssss.”

We settled down.

Ace gave BooBoo a piece of a Frito.

“Terrific, Ace,” Mr. Purdy said. “You, too, Doreen. Did you both teach that to the bird?”

“Yeah,” Ace said. “Doreen is a good teacher, too.”

“Excellent.”

Ace and Doreen took BooBoo to the back of the room.

Mr. Purdy reached into his coffee cup. “Who’s next?”

I crossed my fingers. Not us, not us.

“Willy and Rubin!”

Rubin stood up so fast his chair fell over. He grabbed his box of props and ran up front with Willy.

Streak sat up, alert. I could imagine her thinking, This school stuff is so cool! Bring on the show!

“Start by giving us your research question, boys.”

Rubin swept his hand toward the box like a magician. “In this box we have two complete sets of something I got in Japan.”

He nodded to Willy. “Show them.”

Willy reached in and brought out two manga books, the Japanese graphic novels you read backwards.

“Our question is: Which is better, Naruto or InuYasha?”

“Naruto!” someone called out.

“No, no, InuYasha!”

“Ssssssss,” Mr. Purdy hissed. “Let them continue.”

Rubin grabbed a handful of Naruto books from the box.

“Naruto stories are funny and interesting. They make you want to keep on reading. Naruto is a boy about twelve years old, and he just wants to impress people. Then there’s Kakashi, who’s skilled in combat. And Gaara, who has the will to kill.”

Willy grabbed a few InuYashas.

“And InuYasha is about eighteen,” he said.

“He’s half demon and half a white-haired guy. Sometimes he’s good and sometimes he’s not. He wants to become a full demon by collecting shards of the Shikon Jewel. Once he gets all the shards he can piece them together and make the Jewel of Four Souls, and become a full demon.”

“I see,” Mr. Purdy said. “So what’s your conclusion, and why?”

Rubin pinched his jaw. “Well … Naruto is better. He’s not that smart, but he wants to be the best ninja ever … but InuYasha has better art.”

Mr. Purdy looked at Willy. “Is that your conclusion, too, Willy?”

“To tell the truth, Mr. Purdy, I’m still trying to figure out how to read backwards.”

The class roared.

I hugged Streak close. She didn’t stink at all. How could Mom and Stella think she did? They just didn’t want a dog, that was all.

Mom was going to make me find Streak another home. I just knew it.

I slumped in my chair as Willy and Rubin went back to their seats.

“Next up is … Shayla and Maya.”

“Aiy,” I whispered.

T
he class went wild over Maya and Shayla’s discovery question: “Why do boys have to smell everything? Or are they just weird?”

Ace pumped his fist and shouted, “Right on!”

All us guys stuck our noses up and started
sniffing the air. Even Mr. Purdy looked amused.

Shayla and Maya smiled and waited.

I remembered what Maya had said:
If I was you two I wouldn’t even come to school on Tuesday
.

Aiy-yai-yai.

Mr. Purdy held up his hands for quiet. “Proceed, girls.”

Maya and Shayla’s prop was a big poster. They’d taped newspaper over it so no one could see it before they were ready. Shayla uncovered it and stood it up.

Photographs.

Of me and Julio!

Mr. Purdy bent close to look, then grinned. “This should be interesting.”

I leaned over my desk and squinted at the photos.

Maya grabbed a pencil to use as a pointer. “Here we have Julio smelling his armpit.”

Even I laughed at that. Streak barked, too.

“Shhhh,” I said. “No barking in school.”

Then I thought: Wait! How did they get that picture? It was on our street. And I was in it, too.

“I wasn’t smelling my armpit,” Julio shouted. “I was scratching my nose with my arm!”

Shayla went on. “And here we have Julio and Calvin scooping up dog poop with a shovel, then smelling their hands.”

“Yeah, but you stepped in it,” Julio called from the back row.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Shayla said.

“Oh yes you do. You were hiding down by Calvin’s house. You were sneaking through the bushes where he throws all the—”

“And look at this picture,” Maya interrupted. “Calvin is kissing his dog.”

The class cracked up.

“No I wasn’t, I was smell—I was … ah, forget it.”

I was stuck. Smelling Streak’s breath would sound worse than kissing her.

“And here’s a picture of Julio smelling his fingers after throwing a dried-up dead toad down the road.”

Mr. Purdy grinned. “I remember flinging dried toads myself.”

I wondered: Did he ever capture a dog fut in a jar?

Maya and Shayla went on … and on … and on. After a while I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t even care that I won my bag-of-shrimp bet with Julio. So what? Boys smell stuff. Big deal. And anyway Maya and Shayla didn’t know that all that smelling was part of our research. When we told our story, we would take theirs apart.