CHAPTER 2

Luna and I stepped out of our duplex into a perfect Los Angeles day. Well, it had been perfect before everyone decided I had to go into the lemonade-selling, sister-saving business.

I checked the time on my Batman watch. After I’d left the first one behind on one of my fantastic frame journeys, my uncle Cole gave me the one off his own wrist. What a great uncle. I hope you have your own version of Uncle Cole.

According to Batman, it was 2:24 p.m.

“Let’s make this quick,” I said to Luna. “Maybe I can still work on my invention before the hour of power.”

“That’s not until four o’clock,” Luna said.

“Viola said she wanted us to be there early today,” I reminded her.

“Oh, right. She told us that this week’s art adventure is really important.”

“I wonder what that’s supposed to mean,” I said as we headed down the driveway to the sidewalk.

I was ready to be annoyed with Maggie, but that changed when I saw her sad little lemonade stand. She was just sitting by the table, with a pitcher of gray-looking lemonade and a stack of paper cups in front of her. There was also a fishbowl she was using to hold the money. Only there was no money in it. I really felt bad for her when I saw her wiping tears from her eyes.

“Dunnn-da-da-daaaaa,” Luna sang. “We have come to save the day!”

“Oh,” Maggie said, pretending as if she hadn’t been crying. “Do you want to buy a cup of lemonade?”

“Not really,” I said, swishing around the icky-looking lemonade with a spoon.

She’d clearly made the stuff herself. I don’t know how much experience you’ve had with five-year-olds, but you don’t want to taste any drink they’ve made with their own grubby hands. Their drinks usually contain a secret ingredient, and that secret ingredient is never something you should swallow, such as tiny bits of shredded paper or a spoonful of mud.

“We’re here to help you get some customers for your lemonade stand,” Luna said, “so you can buy the toy you want.”

“Really?” Maggie’s eyes lit up. “Shop-Cool dolls are my favorite.”

“First things first,” Luna said to Maggie. “Let’s test your lemonade.”

She poured herself a cup of lemonade and brought it to her lips.

“Wait, don’t!” I yelled, but it was too late.

The stuff was already in Luna’s mouth. I watched as she swallowed, grabbed her neck, and tried not to throw up. Her eyes watered, and her entire mouth turned into a pucker.

“It’s interesting,” she said at last. “Something tells me you made it yourself?”

“Mommy squeezed the lemons, and I added the secret ingredients,” Maggie confessed.

“I see,” Luna said. She dipped her finger into the cup and pulled out some crumpled-up dead leaves.

“I didn’t put those leaves in it,” Maggie said. “It was that mean boy, Pooch. And then he set up his stand right on our street.”

I looked down the block and saw the competition. There were quite a few people at Pooch’s stand. He had a great sign and bags of ice, and I could see cartons of ready-made lemonade on his table. It was that sugar drink called Marty’s Lem-O that’s not really even lemonade. Maggie and I aren’t allowed to drink it because Mom says it would make our teeth fall out.

Helping Pooch was his horrible big brother, Cooper Starr. He calls himself Super Cooper, but Luna and I think his nickname should be World’s Number One Creep. He’s mean, and that’s on a good day.

“We’ll have to make some new lemonade,” Luna said. “And no offense, Maggie, but maybe we should try a different recipe. Tiger, why don’t you go grab lemons from the tree in the backyard? I’ll get some sugar and supplies from my house.”

The low-hanging lemons had already been picked, so I had to use a fruit picker to get to the lemons on the top branches.

I picked at least fifteen lemons and took them to our porch. Then I had to squeeze them. That was hard. You don’t actually squeeze very much juice from each lemon, and when you finally get some, you have to get a strainer to fish out all the seeds.

Then it hit me. I had invented a solution for this lemon-squeezing problem.

The Pocket Buddy! I had two perfectly good Pocket Buddy prototypes on my desk. (A prototype is what we inventor types call the early model of something we make.) I ran to my room and grabbed them both, then met Luna back on the porch. She had brought water, sugar, and a plastic pitcher from her kitchen.

“What’s this?” she asked when I handed her one of the prototypes.

“The newest and best time-saving device ever invented,” I bragged.

I showed her how to use the scissors to cut the lemons into wedges, and the sporks to remove the seeds that were floating in the juice. I had even installed a tiny FM radio on my newest prototype. I pulled out the antenna, and we listened to a couple of tunes while we finished the lemonade.

When the pitcher was full, we hurried over to Maggie’s stand.

“Good news, Mags,” I said, putting the pitcher on the table. “Now we have something great that you can sell.”

“All we have to do is advertise our product,” Luna said.

She ran into her house and came back with a piece of poster board and colorful markers. Luna collects art supplies the way I collect screws, bolts, and circuit boards.

“We’re going to make you a big sign,” Luna told Maggie. “First, we need a catchy name for your stand.”

“How about Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy?” I suggested.

Luna burst out laughing.

“But I want my name on the sign,” Maggie said.

“Okay, how about Lil’ Maggie’s Handmade Lemonade?” Luna said.

“I’m not little,” Maggie protested. “I’m big.”

Luna made a colorful sign that said BIG MAGGIE’S HANDMADE LEMONADE and stood it up on the table.

At 3:41 p.m., according to my Batman watch, we officially reopened for business.

Our first customer was metal-mouthed Cooper Starr, the king of jerkdom.

“I’ll take one cup of snot juice, if you please,” he said.

He laughed like he had just told the funniest joke in the whole world. He waited while Maggie poured a cup. Her eyes nearly bugged out of her head when he slapped a ten-dollar bill down on the table. “Can you make change for a tenner?”

Of course we couldn’t, but Maggie tried to figure it out, anyway, counting to ten on her fingers.

“Only babies count on their fingers,” he snorted.

“Does it make you feel good to tease a five-year-old?” Luna asked.

“You bet it does,” he answered. “This pipsqueak needs to close up shop right now. My brother, Pooch, runs the lemonade business on this street.”

Cooper put the ten-dollar bill back into his pocket, grabbed a handful of grass from the lawn, and was just about to drop it into our lemonade. He stopped when we heard a horn honking and saw a big white van rumbling down the street toward us. On its side, in large red letters, it said LOS ANGELES HOSPITAL.

“Cooper, your ride to the hospital for mutant research is here,” I said.

The medical van pulled up in front of Viola Dots’s house. The back doors swung open, and two emergency medical team members got out in a hurry.

“Watch out, kids,” they hollered as they lifted a wheelchair from the van. “We got a sick lady coming through.”

As they lowered the wheelchair onto the ground, I saw an old woman sitting in it. I gasped. It was none other than Viola Dots herself.