I made it to the end of the school day without anyone discovering the terror in my armpit. I know what you’re thinking. How did my super good friend Jenny accomplish this amazing outcome?
Let’s just say I got lucky. After recess, Ms. Yang decided to cash in her one and only Library Bonanza Ticket. What is a Library Bonanza Ticket, you ask? It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like. I know because I’ve seen the tickets when the school librarian, Mr. Glarfman, hands them out. Each teacher gets one for the year, and they allow a class to take over the library for an extended visit. And by extended, I mean the rest of the school day.
Ms. Yang said with only a few days of school left before summer break, she wanted to give us two full hours of library free time to test out books we might like to read over the summer. It was perfect because I found a quiet corner all by myself to read books while the terror in my armpit made increasingly weird noises in my backpack.
As soon as the bell rang, I ran for the exits without talking to a single person and burst out of the school doors into a sunny afternoon. The birds were singing, the sun was shining, and Fen Stenson was dutifully waiting for me with one foot on his scooter.
“Let’s roll!” I said as I ran past him toward my house.
“Rollin’!” Fen replied, kicking his scooter into gear and chasing after me.
Part of why I was moving like the wind was because the terror in my armpit had gotten bigger while I sat reading books in the library. My backpack was stretched to the point where the zipper was ready to snap right off.
I stopped running so I could catch my breath. “I’m gonna need you to hop off that scooter,” I gasped to Fen as he pulled up next to me. “I’m totally bonked.”
“Bonked?” Fen asked, stepping to the side so I could drop the backpack onto his scooter.
“Out of energy, hitting the wall, tired of carrying a large and heavy orange blob on my back . . . You know, bonked.”
“Got it,” Fen said as he looked at the backpack with some alarm. “Is that thing getting bigger? How’s your armpit doing?”
I thought about how to answer. All I knew for certain was that the bungee cord or hose or whatever it was connecting my armpit to the thing in the backpack had grown longer and stretchier. It had to be three feet long at this point.
“As long as I don’t get too far away from it, the ol’ armpit is doing fine,” I said. “Let’s get to the house before—”
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dork.”
Ugh. Naddy Burns had decided to drop by and taunt us. Of course she had. I gotta hand it to her; she has perfect timing when it comes to spreading misery. She sneered as she rode up on her fancy bicycle.
“We’re just passing through,” Fen said. “Nothing to see here.”
Naddy snickered. “I’ll say. Definitely nothing to see here.”
“Something I can help you with, Naddy?” I asked as politely as I could. “We really do have to be going.”
The backpack wobbled on the scooter and made some squishy noises.
Luckily, she didn’t seem to notice. “I saw you run out of the library when school was over,” she said. “What’s the rush? Gotta get home before you turn into a pumpkin?”
I fake laughed, hoping it would make her go away. “You got me there.”
“Come on, Jen-Jen,” Fen said. “Let’s motor.”
Naddy stared Fen up and down. “Last time I saw a face like yours was at the zoo. I fed it a banana.”
Fen looked confused. “They let you feed animals at the zoo here?” Fen asked. “Cool. That’s not a thing in Sweden. I’m from Sweden.”
Now Naddy looked confused. But she quickly regained her composure. “You’ve been buuuurrrrrrrned!” she howled and then she threw her head back and laughed straight up into the sky.
“She is really annoying,” Fen said.
“You have no idea.”
Naddy’s head snapped forward. She stared darts into our faces.
“Something’s going on with you two and I’m going to figure out what it is,” Naddy said. “You’re not smart enough to hide it for long.”
“Okay, bye then,” I said, and Naddy rode off on her bike looking for someone else to torment.
“Why are you on Naddy’s radar?” Fen asked.
“I might have gotten into an insult contest with her earlier today.”
“Are you sure that was a good idea?” Fen asked.
“In hindsight, I can see how it wasn’t great timing.”
The backpack lolled back and forth and fell off the scooter with a sloshy sound like grimy water glugging out of a garbage can. Then the zipper made a pop sound and a glob of orange fur poked out.
“Run!” I yelled. I picked up the backpack in a bear hug and broke into a sprint.
One of the limbs popped out of the backpack and wobbled around in the air and then the top of the backpack burst open and the giant furry eyeball stared up at me.
“Open the door!” I yelled.
We were at my house and Fen rode past me, threw open the door, and jumped out of the way.
“Coming through!” I screamed as the rest of the terror in my armpit started oozing out of the backpack like a giant glob of nacho cheese sauce.
I ran through the door and there was my dad, standing in the kitchen eating a bowl of cereal.
“Hey, kiddo, how was sch—”
“Heading upstairs to play video games with Fen!” I didn’t even break stride. I just kept running right up the stairs.
“Who’s Fen?” my dad said.
I took two steps at a time up the stairs and didn’t look back. When I reached my room. I flung the door open, threw the backpack onto my bed, and closed the door behind me.
“That was a close call,” I said, but Fen didn’t respond. “Fen?”
I looked around my room and realized I’d lost Fen somewhere in my house.
I opened my door and peeked out into the hall, but he wasn’t there. Then I heard voices drifting up from the first floor. After that, I heard laughter. I frowned. Holding my breath, I tiptoed to the top of the stairs, stretching my armpit hose to the limit.
“I’d go Fruit Loops a distant third,” Fen was saying. “Cinnamon Toast Crunch a close second, and Golden Grahams top of the heap.”
“I’m a Frosted Mini-Wheats man myself,” my dad replied. “Very filling.”
“I can respect that,” Fen said.
“Hey dad!” I yelled. “Sorry, had to use the bathroom! Is it okay if Fen and I hang out and play video games until mom gets home?”
There was a pause, then my dad appeared at the bottom of the stairs. He was still in his pajamas. In one hand he held a bowl of cereal. In the other he held a spoon. I felt a tug at my armpit hose, but I held my ground.
“No homework?” he asked.
“It’s the last week of school,” I said, trying to act cool and calm. “Ms. Yang let us watch a documentary and then we went to the library. When’s dinner?”
“Six thirty would be my guess. I’m on a deadline, so find me in my office if you need me.”
Under normal circumstances, I might have asked: If you’re on a deadline, then why are you eating cereal in the middle of the afternoon? But I forced a smile instead.
“Cool!” I said enthusiastically. “Enjoy that deadline. I’ll meet you for dinner.”
My dad looked puzzled. “You okay? Want me to bring you a snack?”
“No!” I half yelled. “I mean, no thank you—they gave us cupcakes at the end of the day. End-of-school-year stuff.”
My dad nodded and shoved a spoonful of cereal in his mouth.
Fen raced out of the kitchen. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Kim,” he said, hurrying past my dad up the stairs. “Let’s play video games!”
I had to give Fen credit; he was really selling the video game thing.
My dad wandered toward his office. Fen followed me as I darted back into my room and silently closed the door behind us.
“Oh, wow,” Fen said.
I didn’t really want to know what Fen was saying oh, wow about. I’d already had plenty of wow moments earlier in the day.
“Come on, Jenny,” I whispered to myself as I stared at the floor. “Buck up, you can do this.”
I gulped one more big breath of air and exhaled, then raised my eyes toward my backpack.
I wished I hadn’t.
The cord running from my armpit had grown to at least nine feet long. It was twisted and tangled in a heap on the bed. And the thing attached to the other end? It was bigger than a bean bag chair.