Zoo Breath (5 page)

“New toilet!” I said.

Darci scrambled up. “I want to see!”

Stella tried to grab her. “You come right back, you hear? I haven’t got all day!”

Darci flattened Julio against the wall as she sped by. “I want to see! I want to see!”

Ledward eased the new toilet down in Mom’s bathroom. “These things are fragile, believe it or not.”

I squeezed into the bathroom next to Darci. “Can me and Julio help?”

“Of course,” Ledward said. “You boys should know how a toilet works.”

I grabbed a wrench out of Ledward’s toolbox and handed it to him. “Let’s do it.”

“First we got to turn off the water.”

Ledward turned the knob on a valve behind the tank. He flushed the toilet, then took the lid off the tank and sucked up the remaining water with a sponge.

“See this,” he said, pointing to a copper tube behind the tank. “That’s your water supply
line, how the water gets into the tank. After I disconnect it we can lift this beast out of here.”

Darci squatted for a better view. Stella scowled from the hall.

Ledward disconnected the water line, cranked off the tank bolts, and lifted the tank off the bowl. We moved back as he set it on the floor. “Now for the good part.”

He took a big rag from his back pocket and spread it out on the bathroom floor. “Okay, junior plumbers. Ready?”

“Ready!” we said.

Ledward squatted and unbolted the bowl from the floor. He handed me the wrench. “Here we go.”

Gently, he rocked the bowl back and forth. “Breaking the seal,” he said. He stood, got a good grip, and lifted the toilet bowl away.

We all pushed back.

“Sits on a gasket,” Ledward said, showing
us the goopy brown waxy stuff on the bottom of the toilet. “You don’t want to get this on your floor. Hard to clean up.”

He set the bowl on the rag, then squatted. “This is your sewer pipe.”

We squeezed close to look down the hole in the floor.

“Eeeww! Eeeww! Stink! Stink! Stink!” Darci gasped.

I yanked my T-shirt up over my nose.

Darci staggered back and crab-walked her way out of the bathroom.

“Ho, man!” Julio yelped.

Ledward pointed his chin. “Grab that big rag.”

I handed it to him and he balled it up and stuffed it into the sewer pipe. “That … is what’s under your toilet.”

Even with the rag in the pipe I could smell it through my T-shirt. I wanted to get out of there so bad my hands began to sweat.

Stella gagged in the hall. “Ack! Close your mouth, Calvin. I can smell your breath all the way out here.”

Julio laughed and I shoved him out of the bathroom. “Let me out!”

As we banged past Stella I huffed out a gust of my best zoo breath right in her face.

She staggered back. “You moron!”

We stumbled out the screen door and sprawled on the grass, laughing like fools.

“No stink can beat that one,” Julio said.

“Maybe, maybe not,” I said.

“What can be worse?”

“I’ve got ideas.”

W
e got up to check on Blackie. He was asleep, flies sitting on his closed eyes.

Streak sat nearby. She’d finished the fish head, bones and all.

“Go smell your dog’s breath now,” Julio said. “See if it’s worse than that hole.”

“Sure, right after you kiss her on the lips.”

Julio laughed. “That was so funny, what you did to Stella.”

“I’ll pay for it, too. But she started it.”

Julio raised his chin toward Blackie. “Look. The pig’s mouth is open.”

“So?”

“So this is your chance to smell pig breath. Go on, see if it’s more worse than your dog’s.”

I looked at Blackie. Julio was right. How often can you smell pig breath? I crept close and did it. Blackie slept on.

“Bad, but not deadly.”

We headed out to the street. Streak popped up and followed us.

“Now what?” Julio said.

Just then something moved in the bushes. A flash of color. Pink. And black. Streak’s ears shot up.

I bumped Julio over to the side of the road. “We got company,” I whispered.

“Where?”

“In the bushes. Don’t look.”

“Who is it?”

“Spies.”

He started to look, but I grabbed him. “Listen. When I say
now
, we turn and run right at them. They won’t have time to get away.”

“Who’s they?”

“I don’t know.”

“What if it’s Tito?”

“Tito doesn’t wear pink.”

“Pink?”

“Ready?
Now!
”

Whoever it was, was smart. The bushes shivered as the spies raced out toward the golf
course on the other side.

Streak barked and ran into the jungle. Julio and I stumbled after her. I held my hands up to block my face from low branches. Ahead I saw a pink shirt, and a black one.

“Who is it?” Julio called. “Can you see?”

“No, but there’s two of them.”

They were too far ahead to catch, but once we got out on the golf course we could see who they were. I hoped there weren’t any golfers, or worse, the jeep guys, who roamed the fairways looking for kids to chase off the course. “Streak!” I called.

She turned and came back. I grabbed her collar so she wouldn’t run out of the jungle. “Good girl.”

We stopped at the edge of the seventh green. A golfer was in the sand trap, waiting to hit out of it. But he and another guy were looking down the fairway at the two escaping spies.

Julio and I backed into the bushes. Streak growled. “Shhh,” I whispered.

“Did you see who it was?” Julio asked.

“I think so. Let’s get out of here.”

We headed back through the jungle and out onto our street. I let Streak go and she took off after a mongoose that scurried across the road down by my house.

“So who was it?” Julio asked.

“You’ll never in your whole life guess.”

“Tito?”

“Nope. Shayla and Maya!”

“For real?”

“Pretty sure.”

But was I? It wasn’t like Maya to spy on us.
Shayla, yes, but not Maya. “I wonder what they were up to.”

“Has to be their project. Why else would Maya be with Shayla?”

“Hey,” I said. “If they’re working on their project, then you owe me a bag of dried shrimp.”

“Okay, fine, but how come they were spying on us?”

“Maybe they weren’t. Maybe they were just hiding.”

“But … why?”

We headed to Julio’s house and sat on the grass in his front yard. From there I could see Maya’s house. Like always, Maya’s black cat, Zippy, was sleeping out in the street.

I leaned back on my elbows. “Sooner or later they got to show.”

“Sooner,” Julio said. “Look.”

Maya and Shayla were heading out of Maya’s garage, only they were dressed
different. “Huh,” Julio said. “I thought one was pink and one was black.”

Now I was worried. Was I wrong? No, I can tell those two from a mile away. “They changed.”

“Sneaky,” Julio said.

Maya and Shayla looked our way and waved.

“Sneaky is right. Pretending nothing happened.”

They headed up the street in the opposite direction. I could hear them laughing.

Something was up.