The sound I heard was like when a rabbit eats celery—or, as I like to say, when Bun-Bun eats snuffle sticks. I used to have an imaginary rabbit called Bun-Bun, and it ate a lot of celery, which I call snuffle. If I can imagine a pet bunny and its favorite snacks, there’s a chance I could be imagining this whole noisy blotch thing, and my armpit is just fine. I’m glad we’re friends because if we weren’t friends, I’m pretty sure you’d be saying to yourself, This Jenny character is a real pinhead. I think I’ll find a new friend. But you would never do that, right?
Let the investigation continue!
Did anything happen yesterday that could explain the terror in my armpit?
Let’s start at the breakfast table, where my two caveman brothers show up every morning and eat anything that’s not nailed down. I try to avoid this daily scene of food-eating mayhem as often as I can, but yesterday morning I was there while they ate seven bowls of cereal between them and fought over the last bagel like two hyenas. They’ve been pro wrestling fans since they were toddlers, so things quickly escalated into a Battle of the Bagel cage match. They nearly kicked a hole in the television, one of them did a flying jackhammer onto the sofa in the living room, and a perfectly good lampshade was crushed into my brother’s face. My brother’s face won.
On the bright side, I enjoyed the show while I ate the bagel they were fighting over.
Could a bagel cause an armpit rash? This seems unlikely, but I’m not ruling it out. Mr. Bagel, you are suspect number one!
While I was walking to school, Fen Stenson rolled up on his scooter and started yammering at my face. Fen is a new kid in town, and he always shows up on his scooter at the corner at the same time every morning. It’s like he’s watching me from a distance, and when I make the turn toward school, he kicks it into high gear and races over so he doesn’t have to enter the building all alone. Fen’s scooter has an annoying squeak from a recent accident, like one of those shopping carts at the store with a bum wheel. It’s possible Fen Stenson likes me.
Typical Fen small talk took place while the scooter squeaked annoyingly down the pavement.
“Jenster! How we doin’ today?”
“I’m Jenny. And you are?”
“Ah Jen-Jen, you crack me up.”
“No one here is called Jen-Jen.”
“So what we up to after school? I’m thinking we share headphones and sample the latest Swedish beats.”
“I barely understand what you just said, but I’m jumping over my mom’s car on my bike after school. You can watch if you want to.”
“Kid Lawn Dart rides again! I’m sure it’ll turn out better than last time.”
He’s talking about when I borrowed his scooter and tried to jump over a garbage can. The scooter ended up hanging from a limb in a tree—I still don’t understand how that happened—and it’s had that squeaky wheel ever since. Oh, and Kid Lawn Dart is my daredevil name. Because lawn darts are dangerous!
I don’t think talking to Fen Stenson is the cause of my problem, but I’m not going to check it off my list until I’m 100 percent sure. In case details about said suspect are useful, here is basically everything I know about Fen Stenson:
- He’s originally from Sweden, or at least his parents are.
- Fen is trying to introduce Swedish dance music at school. It’s not going very well.
- Fen dresses like a manga comic book cosplay, including styling his hair like famous manga character Kakashi Hatake (long, spiked, and blond).
- He occasionally covers his face with a mask, and often wears a headband.
- Fen will tag along on just about any adventure, a fun hang, low maintenance.
I can’t think of anything that happened at school that could have caused the terror in my armpit, so let’s jump right to the end of the day when I was walking back toward my house with another friend of mine, Barker Mifflin.
“Are we doing this or what?” Barker said.
“I don’t know, are we?” I asked.
“Gotta have total agreement about going in,” Barker said. “We’re out of the planning stage now, into the real deal.”
Barker Mifflin was talking about a plan to explore the old Colossal Chemistry building at the edge of town, something we’d been talking about doing for weeks. And he was right. The planning was long gone. We were just stalling at this point.
“Are you sure it’s cool?” I asked for the four hundredth time.
“I’m telling you, Jenny, we’re cool,” Barker said in his most assuring voice. “The place has been abandoned for over a year now. Aren’t you curious what they were doing in there?”
“They were totally sneakretive in that place,” I agreed.
“Sneakretive . . . Oh, I got it! Sneaky and secretive,” said Barker.
“You’re sure you have a way in that doesn’t break any rules?” I asked.
“One hundred percent. I’ve reconned the entire outer edge of the property. They’ve completely abandoned the place.”
“I do love a good adventure,” I said.
I looked at Barker and I was immediately reminded that he’s sort of an oddball. Barker Mifflin is an eleven-year-old survivalist wannabe who never leaves home without a go bag strapped to his back. It’s full of ropes and strange hand tools, water bottles and ziplocked containers of food rations. He wears army boots, camo pants, and fingerless gloves. And he’s probably the most suspicious kid I know. At the very top of Barker Mifflin’s list of suspicious things in the town of Nevermind is Colossal Chemistry.
While I was thinking about whether or not to sneak into the old Colossal Chemistry site, I heard a squeaky wheel approaching.
Fen Stenson rolled up beside me.
“Kid Lawn Dart!” said Fen. “Hey, Barker.”
“Hey,” said Barker.
Fen had only met Barker Mifflin once before and the two of them were still sizing each other up. I’d known Barker for years and knew he was nervous around new kids. It usually took some time for him to trust people. So here I was, stuck between two very different classmates. Fen Stenson, who was all about making new friends in a new place; and Barker Mifflin, who was more of a loner.
“Change of plans,” I said, because now there were three of us and three felt like the right number for exploring an abandoned chemistry lab. “I forgot my mom drove her car to work so the Kid Lawn Dart show will have to wait until this weekend.”
“That’s cool,” said Fen. His wheel kept squeaking until Barker couldn’t stand it anymore.
“I’m going to need you to step off the scooter,” Barker said.
“No problem!” said Fen. “Jen-Jen got it stuck in a tree recently, but it’s a good ride.”
“I’m Jenny,” I said. “We’ve talked about this.”
Barker dug around in his backpack full of weird tools and pulled out a hammer.
“What’s the hammer for?” asked Fen.
The hammer clobbered the front wheel of the scooter several times. Fen’s jaw dropped, but to his credit, he didn’t say anything as Barker got out some pliers and turned a screw. He squeezed something goopy looking from a tube into the center of the front wheel, then threw all his tools back into his pack and flung it over his shoulder.
“Let’s get a move on,” said Barker, “Time’s a wasting.” He started walking again.
Fen Stenson boarded the scooter and it wheeled along as silent as a soft breeze.
“Hey, you fixed the squeak!” Fen said. “I’m not gonna lie, it’s a better outcome than I expected. Where are we going again?”
Barker looked at me. “Can we trust this kid?”
“Oh, you can trust me,” Fen said. “I’m very trustable.”
This was my last chance to say no, but I nodded quietly and we picked up our pace as we passed the turn off to my house.
“It’s go time,” I said.
“Go time?” asked Fen. “What’s go time?”
And that’s when I said the words that I think might have something to do with the terror in my armpit.
“We’re sneaking into Colossal Chemistry.”