CHAPTER 3

t seemed like centuries, but actually only two weeks had passed when Jacob Two-Two’s mother and father came home. Happily, they smelled of cigars and champagne and perfume and everything else that was wonderfully bad for you. They had come with gifts, of course. Gifts that weren’t good for children. Real Kikuyu spears and shields for the boys. Tribal necklaces for the girls. Then, opening a cigar box, their father said, “There is also this.”

And out of the cigar box popped what appeared to be a green lizard.

“Oh, no,” Emma said, fleeing in one direction.

“How disgusting,” Marfa said, fleeing in the other direction.

“I found him on the shores of Lake Begoria,” their father said. “We were standing beneath a towering cliff, watching a furious steam jet, maybe twenty feet high. Suddenly the earth rumbled and shuddered, knocking us off our feet. The water jet from the underground stream burbled and bubbled, rising another hundred feet, and out of it shot this curious creature, which landed right on my chest. I smuggled him through customs for you.”

The lizard, or whatever it was, stood in the center of the living-room carpet, looking everybody over.

“Is he ever ugly,” Daniel said.

“Let me take him to my biology class,” Noah said. “I’ll bet my teacher would just love to cut him up.”

“Oh, no you don’t,” Jacob Two-Two said. “Oh, no you don’t! I like him. I’m going to keep him for a pet.”

Then, to everybody’s amazement, the lizard – or whatever it was – raced across the carpet, climbed into Jacob Two-Two’s lap, and sat there, his head dipping slightly to one side.

“I’m going to call him Dippy,” Jacob Two-Two said. “I’m going to call him Dippy.”