All right, I should talk a bit more about my closet. After all, it is the reason for me keeping these notes and drawing these pictures. I do it for science. It’s so I’ll have documented proof of what has been happening. I think the world deserves to know. My closet used to have no character. Now it has piles of character. Just keep reading and turning the pages. You’ll see what I mean.
This is my closet:
This is my closet on books:
My closet has been locked up tight since Katfish splashed back into it. Kat had said that things were going to get weirder, but so far Beardy is keeping the door locked. It’s been over two weeks, and I haven’t heard any noises or seen any sign that the closet is about to open. I’ve actually tried to get Beardy to unlock the door and let me look inside. But Beardy’s not budging; he’s as stubborn as always.
Not only would I like to get into my closet for the creatures’ sake, but I would also like to take out some of the things that I put in there. I know my favorite basketball is inside and a couple of my Thumb Buddies. I’m missing at least three that I know of.
After dinner I went to my room to do my homework. I could still hear my dad talking enthusiastically in the family room about the trip and renting an RV. I was trying to be happy for him, but traveling with Kyle was not a pretty thought.
Every once in a while when my aunt goes to play bingo, I have to babysit him. And the last time I babysat, he burned some of my leg hairs off with his mom’s curling iron that he was pretending was a lightsaber.
He was even worse when he was with Tuffin. Tuffin did everything Kyle did. He wanted to wear what Kyle was wearing, talk like Kyle, and act exactly like him. Now the two of them were going to be trapped in our RV as we drove for hours. I really needed a reason not to go on the trip.
After I finished my homework, a really strange urge washed over me. I can’t explain it exactly, but for some reason, I felt like I wanted to write Janae a note. Sure, things had been so much better these last two weeks, but I didn’t think our relationship was ready for notes. That was a pretty serious step. Still, I couldn’t fight the urge to scribble out a few words and deliver them to Janae. I was planning to head to the island to work on filming Mustache and the Mighty Cool Adventure with my friends, but my brain was ruining things by telling me to write a note.…
I got out a pencil and a piece of paper—that part didn’t feel weird. I have been doing a lot of writing lately. I wouldn’t call myself a writer, but I’ve been writing these books, writing little movie scripts, and doing a lot of writing in my homework.
Now I was writing a note to Janae. Creating the note was easy. The words just seemed to come to me. My hand flew over the paper as my mind clicked and whirred. I almost wasn’t sure what I was writing. But after a few moments, my hand stopped and I looked down at my paper in surprise.
I couldn’t believe it. Not only had I written a note for Janae, I had written it in a rhyme. And not a very good rhyme. I didn’t feel like myself.
I wondered if this was how the great poets of the world got started. One day they woke up and felt compelled to send notes to the person they liked.
My thinking was interrupted by my best friend knocking on my window. Of all the people I hung out with, Trevor was my closest friend. He might have crooked glasses and weak basketball skills, but he was cool, and not quite as much trouble as my other friends.
My friends used my bedroom window instead of our front door. It didn’t make my mom happy, but it made things easier for us. It was like my own private entrance.
Trevor crawled through the window and into my room. He was excited and talkative as usual.
More than anything, I wanted to go out and work on the movie, but I was still a little worried about the note I had written and the feelings I had for Janae. I knew Trevor might laugh at me, but I had nobody else to talk to. I needed to brainstorm about what I should do with the note and figure out why I had written it. So I pulled it out of my pocket and gave it to him to read.
I told Trevor how I had felt like I had to write it, and he told me how he felt like he had to floss at least three times a day or else his gums would swell and bleed. I then told him to not tell me things like that, and he told me …
I tried to communicate that I knew what I had written wasn’t very good, but there was still a little bit of me that wanted to give the note to Janae. I figured she would think it was funny. She had liked the poem I wrote with Wonkenstein. She had also liked the song that Katfish had written and that she thought I sang. Actually, that song was what had caused Janae to forgive and kiss me. Heck, if those lame things had impressed Janae, this poem might get her to go on a date with me.
Trevor was right. As a normal middle school student, I was appropriately awkward. But when I added my closet to my life, I was poem-writing, cooking-contest, dance-ruining, girl-singing kind of weird.
I walked over and looked Beardy straight in the eyes. He didn’t blink. I grabbed him and tried for the thousandth time to pull him open. Trevor reached out and pulled with me. When that didn’t work, both of us took turns kicking. Still the closet door stayed locked. Trevor stopped kicking and asked,
I figured he wanted to dry himself off from the sweating the kicking had caused, but he had another reason. He had seen a show on TV about how some crooks had broken out of a locked room by heating the doorknob with a blow-dryer until the lock got so hot it clicked open.
It was worth a shot. I ran to the bathroom and got Libby’s blow-dryer. It was a really expensive one that she had warned me never to touch. I knew that if she understood how important this was she would … still not let me use it. So I didn’t ask. I brought the blow-dryer back to my room and plugged it in. I was worried that Libby might hear the blow-dryer, so I turned on my radio really loud. Trevor leaned down and put his ear by the knob to listen for it unlocking. I should have closed my window because Jack was out on the island and he heard the noise and came to investigate. I think he was confused by what he found.
I don’t know what song was on the radio, but it was awful. Jack climbed through the window acting like everything was normal. I turned off the blow-dryer and told him that we were trying to get into the closet. Before I could say anything else, he reached out and grabbed the now-hot Beardy.
It was a good thing that the music was loud, because Jack’s screaming was pretty bad. As soon as he calmed down, I rushed him to the bathroom, where we ran his hand under cold water. I knew it hurt, but Jack was trying to act like it was no big deal.
After running his hand under the water for ten minutes, he dried it off and we went back to my room. Trevor was still blow-drying Beardy, but it hadn’t done anything except fluff Beardy’s hair.
Trevor turned off the blow-dryer, and I turned off the music. Trevor looked around for something he could use to open the hot doorknob. He spotted Hairy’s scarf on my dresser and grabbed it. Using the scarf like a hot pad, he tried to open the door, but there was still no budge.
Jack was whining about his hand so I asked to see it. He turned it over, and we all gasped.
I think only Beardy was happy about what we saw. Jack had a perfect imprint of my closet doorknob on his palm. It was the reverse image of Beardy. It looked painful but also kind of cool.
Jack was interrupted by Libby coming through my door. She was not happy about me using the blow-dryer.
My friends left, and I spent the next couple minutes promising my mom and Libby I would never touch Libby’s stuff again. If our house had been an old-fashioned school, I would have run out of chalk writing down my apology.
