CHAPTER 3
OPERATION FISHY REVENGE
CLAUDIA
Here’s what I was thinking when I came up with Operation Fishy Revenge:
Reese had accused me of stinking up the cafeteria in front of everybody, which was completely untrue. So I figured if I made him stink FOR REAL, everybody would get grossed out and laugh at him, and he would realize how terrible it felt.
So it’d not only be totally appropriate, but also an important learning experience.
And the best way I could think of to make Reese stink was to hide a dead fish in his backpack.
He takes the backpack practically everywhere with him, so it’s almost as good as hiding a dead fish in his pants. And much less complicated.
The big question was where to get the fish. I wanted to go to Chinatown, because they have tons of fish for sale down there, and most of them are already dead. Plus their prices are very low. And you can get really exotic kinds, like octopus. Ed. Note: (not technically a fish)
But it was Monday night, and I have guitar on Tuesdays and Student Government on Wednesdays. So the earliest I could get to Chinatown was Thursday, and that was only if I could convince Ashley to take me there, because my parents won’t let me ride the subway alone.
This, by the way, is completely stupid, since A) the subway is actually very safe, because half of the scary-looking people sitting on the platforms are actually undercover cops in disguise; and B) I know how to hold my house keys in my fist with the points sticking out so I can gouge the eyes out of anybody who messes with me. But whatever.
And I wanted revenge sooner than Thursday. You know how people say, “Revenge is a dish best served cold”? They are totally wrong. If you ask me, it’s much better to get your revenge when it is still warm from the heat of your anger. Plus you don’t have to carry the anger around all bottled up inside you for too long, which is very unhealthy. So I decided to get a fish from Zabar’s because it’s right at Broadway and 80th Street and has tons of seafood.
So I decided to get a fish from Zabar’s because it’s right at Broadway and 80th Street and has tons of seafood.
Sophie was going to help me pick it out, but she couldn’t make it on Tuesday.
SOPHIE
Tuesday’s bad for me. I have ballet AND violin.
CLAUDIA
Sophie is way overscheduled.
Anyway, I brought $20 of my birthday money to school that day, and after Ashley picked me up from my guitar lesson, I told her I wanted to get a snack, but that it was totally fine for me to go to Zabar’s by myself, and I’d meet her at home.
Ashley was fine with that. This is the kind of thing that makes me question her judgment, but since it lets me get away with stuff like buying a dead fish to put in my brother’s backpack, I’m not complaining.
I ended up getting a porgy, because they look totally freaky and were only $5.99 a pound. The one I got was a pound and a half and cost $8.94 total.
On the way home, I sniffed the bag a couple of times, and it already smelled horrible. Which was perfect.
Getting the fish into Reese’s backpack was easy. When he comes home from soccer, he throws it in the coat closet by the front door. So I waited until he was taking a shower and Ashley was busy making dinner. Then I went to the coat closet.
I got out the pack, unzipped the little side pocket where Reese keeps his shin guards (which, BTW, smelled worse than the fish), and opened up the Zabar’s bag.
The fish was wrapped in paper inside a Ziploc, so getting it out without sliming myself was a challenge. Plus, my heart was beating really fast, and at one point Ashley banged a pot in the kitchen, which scared me so much I almost dropped the fish. But I managed to slide it in behind the shin guards, zip the pocket shut, and toss the pack in the closet.
Then I went into the building hallway and put the Zabar’s bag in the trash compactor chute to dispose of the evidence.
Mission accomplished!
All I had to do was wait until the next day, when the fish would start to stink in the middle of school and Reese would wind up humiliated.
I never once considered the possibility that my brother could be so clueless that he’d carry a rotting fish in his backpack for a whole week without noticing it.
But he was.
REESE
The thing is, I don’t use that pocket for anything but shin guards. And we didn’t scrimmage at practice on Thursday, so there was no reason to open it until Saturday.
It’s not like I was thinking, “Oh, man, I better check all my pockets just in case somebody smooged Ed. Note: not an actual word a dead fish in there.”
Anyway, the smell wasn’t too bad the first couple of days.
CLAUDIA
That is crazy. It stank right from the beginning. By the next morning, it had stunk up the whole closet so much I was worried I’d ruined all our coats. I could even smell it when everybody was hanging out in the cafeteria before school. But since nobody else seemed to notice, and I wanted people to figure it out for themselves and blame Reese, I kept my mouth shut.
When I got home from Student Government that afternoon, Reese had already put his backpack away in the coat closet. The stink was so awful in there that I actually moved my coats into my bedroom closet. I felt bad about leaving everybody else’s coats in there, but if I’d moved them, it would have looked totally suspicious.
That was Wednesday.
On Thursday morning, I avoided the closet completely, because I was too scared to see what it smelled like. But I could smell the fish the whole way to school on the bus, and also in the cafeteria that morning.
It seriously reeked.
Nobody else seemed to notice it, though. Which was starting to get very annoying.
REESE
I definitely started smelling something fishy at one point. But I just thought it was like when you go to the seashore and it’s stinky everywhere. I figured, New York’s close to the seashore Ed. Note: actually surprised Reese knows this. That’s why it stinks.
Other people smelled it, too. Like, I remember Mrs. Berner sniffing the air in English class on Thursday and going, “Okay, who stepped off a fishing boat?”
And that same day, Kalisha Hendricks, who sits behind me in math, poked me and said, “Is that you? That nasty smell?”
I sniffed my armpit, and I said, “Does it smell like a man?”
And she said, “Yeah, Aquaman.”
Then she sniffed the air and went, “DEAD Aquaman.”
That was pretty funny. Kalisha’s hilarious. Plus, she’s awesome at math. I actually wish she sat in FRONT of me, because then I could copy off her without turning around.
Anyway, the fish was definitely getting kind of reeky by Thursday. In the locker room after soccer, everybody got in a big fight over whose shoes were making the whole place stink.
But that was pretty funny, too.
CLAUDIA
By Thursday night, it seemed like Operation Fishy Revenge was backfiring. I could NOT believe how clueless my brother was.
And I was getting very worried about the rest of the coats in the hall closet.
So right before dinner, I secretly went and got Reese’s backpack—which was so rank I would have bailed on the whole thing and gotten rid of the fish, except that by then I was too grossed out to even unzip the pocket—and moved the backpack out of the apartment to our building’s emergency stairwell.
Friday morning, when I got up extra early to move it back to the closet again, the whole stairwell smelled like a fish store in Chinatown.
After Reese and I had left for school, Dad must have opened the coat closet for the first time since Tuesday.
MOM AND DAD (text messages)
(DAD) I think a mouse died in coat closet.
REALLY stinks in there
(MOM) Did you get rid of it???!!!
No time. Had to go to work. Left
message for Ashley to search closet
Did you take coats out???
Didn’t think of that
ERIC!!! Calling Ashley now
CLAUDIA
Friday morning in the cafeteria, I was sure Reese was going to get what was coming to him. But even though everybody could smell the stink by now, nobody nailed Reese for it.
People did seem to figure out it was coming from the general direction of the soccer idiots. At one point, Athena Cohen lectured them about their bad hygiene. But that was as close as anybody came to blaming Reese.
I tried to nudge people along. At one point, I said, “Reese, I think YOU might be what stinks.”
But then his stupid friend Wyatt went, “Whoever smelt it, dealt it, Princess Farts-A-Lot!”
So I had to back off.
SOPHIE
It was CRAZY smelly by Friday morning. We were cracking up about how nobody could figure out where it was coming from.
Actually, you weren’t cracking up. You were kind of mad about it.
CLAUDIA
I was, like, half-mad, half-worried. Because I didn’t know how it was going to end.
REESE
At one point in math class, Ms. Santiago brought in two other teachers to try and figure out what the smell was, and they were all wandering around the room sniffing things.
The same thing happened in English. But James Mantolini is in both of those classes with me, and I just figured it was him. He’s the kind of person you’d totally believe would smell like dead fish on purpose.
CLAUDIA
By the time I got home Friday afternoon, Ashley had emptied out the coat closet, and all the coats were in a couple of huge piles on the couch.
They all smelled like dead fish. Ashley had the windows open, but I was starting to freak out that this was going to end with me getting in a ton of trouble.
Fortunately, though, Reese had an early soccer game the next morning in Brooklyn. Since Wyatt’s mom was driving them to the game, Reese stayed overnight at the Templemans’, and he took his backpack with him.
REESE
Mrs. Templeman is kind of uptight, and she keeps their house super clean. So she started complaining about the smell pretty much the minute I walked in the door.
I left my backpack up in Wyatt’s room. Then we went down to the kitchen to get a snack, but all they had was fruit and some kind of organic popcorn that tasted like cardboard.
We were eating the cardboard when I heard Wyatt’s mom scream.
Then there was this “Ka-blam-ka-blam-ka-blam!” on the stairs, and a second later Mrs. Templeman ran through the kitchen yelling “AAAAAH!” and holding my backpack in front of her.
She went straight out the door into their back yard. Almost nobody in New York City has a yard, so you’d think it’d be totally cool that Wyatt does. But the Templemans’ back yard is mostly just plants and furniture, and whenever we try to play soccer out there, Mrs. Templeman yells at us.
So it’s actually not that cool.
Anyway, we followed Mrs. Templeman out there to see what the screaming was about. My backpack was sitting on the patio, and she was backing away from it with her hand on her mouth like she might barf.
Then she said, “Reese—what is that THING in your backpack?”
And I was like, “What thing?”
And she pointed at it and went, “THAT THING.”
So I went over and looked in the side pocket, and that’s when I saw the fish.
It was pretty nasty.
At first I was, like, “Eeew.”
Then I was, like, “Huh. That explains the weird smell.”
And then I was, like, “How did that fish get in my backpack?”
I thought maybe it could’ve jumped in. Except I hadn’t been that close to a river in a while.
Then Mrs. Templeman got a garbage bag.
Actually, no. First, she called Mom.
MOM AND DAD (text messages)
(MOM) Ellen T just called—smell in closet
likely from dead fish in Reese’s
backpack
(DAD) What???
Call me
Calling you now