On the way home Mom asked me the same old question she always asks.

“So what did you do at school?”

“I don’t remember,” I told her.

The thing is, after I’m finished with school, all my memories of the day leak out of my brain. I honestly can’t remember a single thing that happened. Like people who have been in a traumatic accident.

Mom was walking this Boston terrier named Diablo, which is Spanish for “devil.” Let me tell you, that dog lived up to his name. His owners enrolled him in Mom’s dog school, Horrible Hounds Academy, because he tries to bite anything that comes near his mouth. And you know what my mom does? She bites him back. No kidding. She flips him over and bites his throat.

While growling.

In public.

We had to stop about twelve times on the way home so Mom could bite Diablo.

When she wasn’t biting Diablo, though, she kept grilling me about what I did in school.

Finally, I said to her, “What did YOU do all day?”

She got all guilty looking and said,

When we went into the lobby of our apartment building, I fished around in my pocket, then pulled out a stick of gum and tossed it into a jack-o’-lantern bucket sitting by a potted plant. I could see Potted Plant Guy staring out at me from behind the leaves. He’s this kid who sits in a potted plant in the lobby. If you don’t put something in Potted Plant Guy’s pail when you walk into the building, he puts a curse on you. Seriously, you don’t want to mess with that crazy kid.

My mom tossed a fruit roll into his pail. She doesn’t actually believe the curse thing. She just does it because she thinks he’s adorable.

He’s about as adorable as a sharp stick in your eye.

We took the elevator up to the thirty-fifth floor. We live on the very top floor of Tidwell Towers, which is pretty cool. But my favorite thing about it is that my best friend, Perry Hooper, lives on the thirty-fifth floor, too.

When we got off the elevator, I spotted a big cardboard box right outside Perry’s apartment door. Knowing the Hoopers, there was something interesting in it. And possibly dangerous.

So of course I had to go investigate.

“Mom, can I go to the Hoopers’?” I asked.

At that moment the elevator door opened and the old lady who lives next door to us stepped out. Diablo made a lunge for her, and Mom answered me while she was biting Diablo, so it came out sounding like

Which I just assumed was yes.