The McVentures of Me, Morgan McFactoid Read online

  And though the lid had blown off my heavy steel blender, the mighty mixer was still upright, its contents still inside.

  Echo was shaking, but safe in her cage, suspended high above the flooded floor. But my little tortoise was nowhere to be seen. I searched through the rubble for Taxi.

  “Taxi!” I called out.

  “Taxi!” Echo screamed.

  Then, in the far corner of the room, just above a submerged New Zealand, just below He (Helium, element #2), I spotted Taxi. He had somehow made his way onto a seat cushion, which had served as a flotation device, and he had drifted to safety. I waded over and scooped him up. His shell was filthy and smelled like a dirty sock.

  “You must’ve had a heck of a night, Taxi.”

  He tucked his head back into his shell. I could tell he was pretty tired. And shell-shocked.

  “Heck of a night, heck of a night!” Echo chimed in.

  I took the back of my sleeve and started to clean the excess mud off of Taxi’s back. As I was scrubbing him, I began to think that maybe I wouldn’t rebuild my lab, that maybe I should stop doing crazy experiments and take up a new hobby, like 3D photography or ghost hunting or kite surfing. Maybe I should give up trying to impress everybody—or one somebody—by inventing the impossible.

  As I was finishing my last thought, Chloe called out from the backyard below, “Morgan, are you up there?” She always sounded irked.

  “No,” I called back, to irk her some more.

  “Mom wants me to help you clean the attic,” she yelled. “But since you never ever let anyone in your precious lab, I’m sure you’re going to say you don’t need my help.”

  “For once, you’re right,” I yelled back.

  “Good,” she said. “That’s not all.”

  “What else?” I called out.

  “I’m tired of shouting. Come to the window.”

  I set Taxi on my footstool, sloshed my way through the floodwater and broken glass to the side window, and looked out. Chloe was standing with Robin.

  “You have a visitor,” Chloe said.

  A FUZZ-FINDING FRIEND

  I stared down, nervous, but pleased that Robin had come to my house, had come to see me, and that maybe, just maybe, we were about to speak again.

  She looked up. “I left my history book in the backseat of my mom’s car. And she left the window down. And because of last night’s rain, my history book is now . . . well, history.”

  “Nice pj’s, Morgan,” Chloe said, never missing a chance to humiliate me.

  “Could I borrow yours for a couple hours?” Robin asked.

  “My pj’s?” I asked.

  “Your history book, Jerkus!” Chloe said.

  Robin knew lots of people who she could have borrowed the history book from. Why did she ask me? Probably because you live across the street, Jerkus, I told myself.

  “Sure, I’ve got mine in here,” I said. “Come up.”

  I could have brought the book down to her, but I wanted Robin to see my special hideaway, even in its current condition. She bravely started up the ladder. Chloe shook her head and huffed off.

  I took Robin’s soft hand, carefully helping her ever so gently through the jagged windowpane and inside the attic.

  “I have some rain boots that—” I started to say. She stepped ankle-deep into the water. “You can borrow.”

  I thought I really blew it. I was waiting for her to get furious. One thing I do know about girls is that they care more about their clothes—especially their shoes—than anything else.

  “They’ll dry,” she said nonchalantly.

  “Sorry. Got sort of a swamp thing going on here,” I said.

  “Got sort of a yuck thing going on your face,” she said, staring at the purple paste still on my face.

  I had just won the Loser of the Year award. “It was an experiment. I was trying to—”

  “This is amazing,” she said, looking around the lab.

  “Was amazing,” I sighed. “The storm smashed the window, then the rain blew in and wrecked everything.”

  Robin ambled around, studying all my stuff.

  I turned from her and used my pajama top to wipe the purple off my face.

  She stopped in front of the Thomas Edison poster. “Edison was good, but you should have Benjamin Franklin up there, too. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the wood-burning stove—”

  “And swim fins,” I added. “We could use a pair of those in here.”

  She panned her eyes to the Thomas Jefferson poster. “Jefferson’s face is on a nickel,” she stated. “And if you built a column of nickels eight feet high, the stack would be worth three-hundred and eighty-four dollars.”

  “Jefferson is also on the two dollar bill.” I noticed that fact before the blender diced the bill as an ingredient in my failed anti-shaving brew.

  Robin sauntered over to Nixon’s cage. “You have a California Kingsnake!”

  “Don’t be afraid,” I said. “He’s not poisonous.”

  “I love snakes!” she said. “I also love football—playing it, not watching it—chopping wood, and doing the rope climb. Woman hath no limits.”

  “Woman hath no limits,” Echo squawked.

  “Who said that?” Robin asked.

  “Shakespeare?” I guessed.

  “No. I mean just now.”

  “Oh, Echo, my parrot. She’s the world’s smartest and sometimes most obnoxious bird.”

  “She’s beautiful!” Robin gushed.

  “You can feed her,” I said, handing her a stalk of celery.

  Robin placed the celery into Echo’s enclosure and Echo nibbled at it. They both cackled.

  “Did you know that it takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with?” I said.

  She ignored me.

  “Same with apples,” I perkily offered.

  “So, what do you do up here?” Robin asked.

  I had to think about my answer. “I dream.”

  “What do you dream about?”

  “I dream about everything.” (Including her, which I didn’t say.)

  I held up the steel blender. “In here was my special formula. I can tell you about it now. It’s no longer a secret.”

  “You’ve been trying to invent a solution to shaving,” she said. “Right?”

  “How did you know?”

  “You hinted at it the other day.”

  I liked that she was a good listener.

  “Last night, I conducted my final test. Had I succeeded, I would have been rich and famous. But I failed.”

  “Is that what you want to be?”

  “A failure? No.”

  “Rich and famous?”

  “Yes and yes.”

  I pulled my history textbook out of my waterproof backpack. “Here,” I said, handing her a dry history book. (The subject of history, however, is hardly dry.)

  “What’s that?”

  “Our history book.”

  “No. That!” She was pointing to Taxi.

  “Oh, that. That’s Taxi the Tortoise, heroic survivor of last night’s storm.”

  “What’s on his back?”

  “His shell.”

  “I mean what’s on his shell?”

  “We call it the carapace. It’s the top part of . . .” This wasn’t going very well. She made me so nervous I couldn’t think straight. I wished I were a cool dude. I thought I’d change the topic by wowing her with another one of my random and bizarre bits of information. “Taxis are yellow because it is the most easily seen color from a distance.”

  “Well, from this distance, Taxi has some kind of splotch on his back. And it isn’t yellow,” she said, crouching down next to him. “It’s red. And it looks like fur.”

  “He’s fine. Believe me, turtles don’t have fur coats.”

  “It’s a tiny, little red spot.”

  “There’s nothing there.”

  “I think you need glasses.”

  Yeah, g
lasses. That’s all I needed to go along with my red hair and freckles to achieve that total dweeb look. I bent down and picked up Taxi. To my amazement, I too noticed a tiny stain on his shell that I hadn’t seen before. “You mean this little patch?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s just dirt.” I tried rubbing it off with my pajama top, but the rust colored smudge wouldn’t budge.

  “Maybe it’s mold,” Robin said, standing very close to me. “Maybe Taxi’s sick.”

  I liked that Robin was concerned for Taxi. I gently placed him on the lab table and directed light from my gooseneck lamp onto his back. I grabbed my large magnifying glass and examined his shell closer. Robin leaned in, looking through the glass with me. Our heads were almost touching. I could smell her perfume. (The average human nose is capable of distinguishing over ten thousand different odors.) I wondered if she had put perfume on just for me.

  “That’s hair,” Robin said confidently, pointing to the spot.

  “Hair? Like real hair?”

  “Not like real hair. It is real hair.”

  “Can’t be,” I said with authority.

  “Definitely is,” she said with certainty.

  “Definitely not,” I said definitively.

  “Feel it.”

  I moved my finger across the tiny circle of fuzz. It felt thick, firm . . . like bristles. Actually, more like . . . stubble. “Tortoises don’t have hair on their shells,” I insisted.

  “Well, this one does,” Robin said flatly.

  I examined Taxi’s shell again, even more closely. The area of little fibers seemed to be a small plot of red hair follicles. It appeared that hair, actual hair, had grown on Taxi’s rock-hard shell.

  It was inconceivable. Incredible. Impossible!

  THE TORTOISE AND THE HAIR

  Robin and I took turns looking through the magnifying glass a couple of more times. Each time the answer was the same. Taxi had hair on his shell.

  “He never had hair before,” I said.

  “Before what?”

  I had to think hard. “Before last night,” I said.

  “Before the storm?” she asked.

  We looked at each other and then at Taxi, whose head peeked out from under his hood, as if to hear us better.

  “What did the storm have to do with it?” Robin asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Robin looked down at the water she was standing in. “Maybe Taxi drank some funky rainwater.”

  “I don’t think this happened from the inside out. I think it happened from the outside in,” I said.

  “Whatever you just said, whatever it is, it’s creepy,” she said.

  “Creepy, creepy,” cawed Echo.

  I didn’t think Robin would ever agree, but I decided to take a big chance. It wasn’t like asking her out for a date or anything, but it was close.

  “Wanna help me solve the mystery?”

  “What mystery?”

  “The mystery of the Tortoise and the Hair.”

  For the first time, a slight smile came to Robin’s lips. Deep dimples creased each of her rosy cheeks. Would she accept my offer?

  Before she could answer, her cell phone rang. Her ring tone was Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” My absolute favorite song.

  “Hello, Mom,” she said into her phone. “Okay.” Robin hung up, turned to me and said, “I have to go home and do my history homework.”

  I knew Robin Reynolds didn’t need any new friends. She had millions of them. But maybe, just maybe, she would consider getting to know me a little bit better. So, I took another chance. A really big chance. “Can you eight back here tonight at meet?” I asked, in some sort of Martian language.

  “Excuse me?”

  I was so nervous. I tried it again. In English this time. “Can you meet back here tonight at eight?”

  She hesitated, but then grabbed my hand, shook it hard and said, “A date at eight.”

  “A date at eight!” I repeated, like a parrot.

  Robin took the history book, climbed down the ladder into my backyard, and ran across the street to her house. I heard her call out, “Parting is such sweet sorrow. That’s Shakespeare!”

  She quoted Romeo and Juliet. I was in love.

  I took my recharged McCorder, which because of its rubber case had escaped harm from the storm, and spoke into it, “Message to me: first, do not have mud on your pj’s and purple paste on your face in front of girls. Second: whenever you’re afraid of taking a chance, don’t be.”

  I changed out of my muddy pajamas and shaved my purple face. I recovered quickly from my failure to create an anti-shaving cream. Instead, I had become fired up over the prospect of spending more time with my new . . . what do I call her? Associate? Colleague? Friend?

  Sometimes I think it’s better not to tell my parents certain things that might upset them. So I didn’t say anything about Taxi growing what appeared to be hair fibers. They would ask too many questions . . . freak out . . . quarantine Taxi . . . and get the garage fumigated. Poppy taught me that silence is sometimes the best answer.

  Before telling anyone about our discovery, I had to make sure that Taxi’s hair was real. Then, find out where the hair came from. Then, figure out what to do about it.

  At dinner that night, Chloe—as always—led the conversation. “How’s your girlfriend and pass the pepper.”

  “Morgan has a girlfriend?” Dad asked.

  “She’s a friend, who happens to be a girl,” I clarified.

  “Who Morgan happened to invite into the attic,” Chloe said, trying to embarrass me.

  My mom looked up. Before she could say anything, I injected, “She’s helping me with an experiment.”

  “Experimenting in the attic. Sounds innocent enough to me,” Chloe said sarcastically.

  “Our relationship is strictly intellectual.” I knew that would put a stop to any further speculation or inquiries. I added, under my breath, “She’s coming back after dinner.”

  “Experimenting after dark?” Chloe remarked. “Sounds strictly suspicious.”

  She couldn’t leave it alone. Dad was about to send her to her room, but instead asked me, “Is Taxi okay?”

  “Why?” I asked nervously.

  “I just saw him in the garden. He seemed wiped out from his ordeal last night.”

  “He’s just shy. He has to come out of his shell,” Chloe said, McCracking herself up.

  “Did you notice anything else?” I asked Dad tentatively. We locked eyes. I couldn’t tell if he had seen the patch of red fuzz.

  “No,” he said.

  I felt relieved, until Poppy said, “I did.” I turned toward Poppy. “There was something unusual about his shell.”

  “Like what?” Mom asked.

  “It seemed shinier than normal,” Poppy said.

  “Every part of his shell?” I asked, hesitantly.

  “Yep. It was so polished I could see my reflection.”

  “And Taxi could see his reflection in your bald head!” Chloe said.

  Everyone laughed except me.

  After drying the dinner dishes, I dashed to the backyard to check on Taxi. Sure enough, his furry spot had totally vanished! Not a single hair remained. His shell was smooth and slick, like the fuzz had never happened. How could this be? I rushed Taxi up to the lab for further inspection.

  A HAIR-RAISING FORMULA

  I had finished draining all of the rainwater out of the attic window through a garden hose. I had repaired most everything inside the McFactory and put everything back in its place. I nailed chicken wire over the broken window until we could get a new pane of glass installed. And I patched a gash in the ceiling with a tarp where most of the water had poured in. I also re-attached my posters to the wall and fixed the trapdoor.

  As I was spraying aftershave around the lab to freshen the air, I took my McCorder out of my pocket and switched it on. “Message to me: Don’t forget to—” Robin’s face appeared at the top of the trapdoor, right on time
.

  “Don’t forget to what?” she said.

  “Don’t forget to . . . I forgot.”

  “Were you talking to yourself, Morgan?”

  “No. I was talking to my recorder. I call it my McCorder. It’s how I remember things, like what I just forgot.” Whenever I was around Robin, I became instantly stupid—a colossal dork.

  “Wow, you cleaned up,” she said, looking around from the top of the stairs.

  “I showered and shaved.”

  “I meant your lab,” she said, stepping into the McFactory, carrying a Tupperware box covered in tin foil.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “I made some chocolate chip cookies.”

  “I love chocolate chip cookies. But they have to be eaten with milk,” I said.

  My mini-fridge just happened to be stocked with a carton of milk. I grabbed two sterilized stainless steel beakers, which worked perfectly for cups.

  I threw some sheets of bubble wrap over the wet couch. We sat down. It sounded like the Fourth of July under our rumps! Sitting there next to each other felt as if we were on a real date, even though I had never been on a real date. After a few awkward moments of listening to the plastic bubbles pop, I raised my beaker and said, “Hair today, gone tomorrow.” And I clinked her beaker.

  “What kind of toast is that?” Robin asked.

  “Taxi’s gone bald,” I said.

  “What?”

  “He lost his little patch of hair.”

  “Completely?”

  “Bald as a baby’s butt.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means babies don’t have hair on their butts.”

  “I mean why did Taxi lose his hair?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know how he got hair in the first place and I don’t know how he lost it in the second place.” I walked to my lab table and picked up a digital memory card. “But the answers should have been on this,” I said. “Whatever happened to Taxi in here last night would have been recorded.”