The next twenty minutes were pretty much a blur of chaos. Vega and the Bacteria heard Aunt Sarin’s yelp and came running up the stairs, the Bacteria’s ice cream spoon still hanging out of his mouth.
“What’s wrong?” Vega said. “What did you do, Arty?”
I tumbled in through my window. My shoelace hung up on the corner of a shingle, which pulled my shoe right off. The shoe thumped down into the yard, where Comet immediately snatched it up and took off across the yard with it.
“No! Comet!” I yelled, scrambling to get up. “I didn’t do anything,” I said to Vega, then turned back to the window. “Comet! Do not eat my shoe!”
The Bacteria stood on his tiptoes to look out the window, then chuckled in slow, one-syllable laughs around the dangling spoon. “Heh. Heh. Heh.”
“Get me a phone. Call Uncle Manny,” Aunt Sarin commanded.
Vega aimed her steely eyes at me. “Don’t act like you wouldn’t do something, Armpit. You do stupid stuff all the time.”
“Heh. Dog. Heh,” the Bacteria continued.
“I haven’t done anything stupid in a long time, Vega. Comet! Drop it!”
“Hello? A phone? You guys? Someone needs to call Uncle Manny.” Aunt Sarin grabbed her stomach.
My sister planted her hands on her hips and cocked her head to one side. “Using my eyeliner to draw a pirate mustache and eye patch on the dog?”
“That was Tripp!” I yelled. “And it was a superhero mask. There was no mustache. I told you that a thousand times.”
“There was so a mustache! I saw it myself!”
“Kids, I don’t want to interrupt, but I’d really like to use the phone now,” Aunt Sarin said.
“No,” I countered, putting my hands on my hips to match hers. “That mustache is Comet’s natural facial hair.”
Vega made an I’m-not-stupid face. “Dogs don’t have natural mustaches, genius.”
“Heh,” the Bacteria laughed. “Dog ’stache. Heh.”
“It’s not an actual mustache, it’s just his fur!” I yelled back. “Look at him!”
Together, Vega, the Bacteria, and I all turned to the window and leaned forward, craning our necks.
Just in time to see Comet gobble my shoe. My whole shoe. Laces and all, in one swallow. Gulp. Like a cartoon dog. It was unnatural and unsettling. And my only pair of shoes!
“No! Comet! Aw, come on! Couldn’t you have just peed on it?” Then, as if in answer to my question, Comet got up, walked over to Cassi’s swing, and lifted his leg. Well, at least I had that little consolation.
“Huh,” Vega said. “What do you know? His fur does look like a mustache.”
“Would somebody pick up the phone and call Uncle Manny, please? I’m having a baby over here!” Aunt Sarin screeched, and we all turned, sort of surprised to remember that she was still in the room with us.
Vega went into panicky overdrive. “You’re having the baby? She’s having the baby? Why didn’t you tell me she was having the baby? Oh no, oh no, I don’t know what to do. What do I do? Where’s the phone? What’s Uncle Manny’s number? How far apart are the contractions? What happens if the baby is born here? How will we get to the hospital? Should Mitchell drive you to the hospital? Should I call an ambulance? Baby? A baby? Right now, a baby?”
The Bacteria’s mouth dropped open, and the spoon plunked on my carpet. He ran out of the room, down the stairs, and straight out the front door, shutting it behind him with a house-rattling slam.
Vega and I looked at each other for a beat, and then we both raced to the phone in the hallway. She got there first, and Aunt Sarin recited Uncle Manny’s phone number for her. Vega started yelling into the phone, something about babies and ambulances and some other stuff that made me feel like I was going to throw up. If Aunt Sarin started doing half the things my sister was talking about, I might have nightmares forever. I paced in circles, one shoe on, one shoe off, trying to remember aloud the stars in order of brightness.
“Sirius, Canopus, Alpha Centauri, Arcturus, Vega, Rigel. Wait. No, Capella is brighter than Rigel. Or is it Procyon that’s brighter than Capella? Or is it Riccola? Wait. What am I saying? Riccola is a cough drop. It’s Sirius, Canopus, Alpha Centauri, Arcturus, Vega, Capella, Rigel, Procyon, uh … uh …”
“Armpit!”
I snapped my fingers, stuck my finger in the air. “Right! Betelgeuse! How could I forget that?”
“Armpit! Stop talking about stars for one second,” Vega said. “Get your things together. Uncle Manny is on the way.”
“Oh,” Aunt Sarin moaned as Vega helped her out of the chair. “Oh, kids, I’m so sorry. You should call your mother. Tell her what’s happening, see what she wants to do. Go to the guy next door. Your mom said he’d help in an emergency.”
Vega helped Aunt Sarin downstairs, and in minutes Uncle Manny’s car screeched into the driveway. He ran into the house and collected Aunt Sarin, his hands shaking as he grabbed her elbows.
“Easy, easy …,” he said. He helped Aunt Sarin into the car and then glanced back at Vega. “You guys okay?”
Vega nodded, and Aunt Sarin let out a howl from within the car. Uncle Manny looked panicked. “We’ll be fine,” Vega said. “We’ll call Mom. Everything will be fine. Go!”
But it turned out Mom didn’t think everything was fine at all. I could hear her screeching into the phone from all the way across the kitchen table. Vega held the phone away from her ear, okaying and uh-huhing and yeah-I-get-it-Mom-sheeshing, and then she hung up and set the phone on the table and looked at me.
“So basically Mom wants us to leave.”
“Leave? Where are we supposed to go? To Las Vegas?”
There was a knock, and the front door opened, the Bacteria stepping inside. “Aunt? Kid?” he grunted.
Vega shook her head. “No baby here. They went to the hospital.” She looked back at me, but she was kind of talking to both of us. “Mom and Dad are coming home as soon as they can get here. But in the meantime, we’re supposed to find someplace else to go. Mom said she’ll call Brielle’s mom and Cassi can just stay there for a couple of nights. I’ll go to my friend Anastasia’s house. And you’ll have to go to Tripp’s.”
“Tripp isn’t home.”
Even Vega looked surprised. “What do you mean, Tripp isn’t home?”
“I’ve been calling all day.”
“Are you sure? Tripp’s always home. If he’s not here, where else could he be?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s a mystery. He’s been missing a lot lately.”
Vega pressed her lips together. “What about Priya? I know she’s a girl, but she hangs out with you and Tripp all the time, so she’s kind of a boy.”
“Engineering camp. She won’t be back until the day after tomorrow.”
Vega stood up and huffed. “Well, do you have any other friends who are home?”
I hated that we all already knew the answer to that question. And that we also all knew that my standing around puffing my lips out, looking up, and tapping my chin thoughtfully, like I was going through my long list of social prospects, was a lie. But that was exactly what I did. “Nope,” I finally said.
“You’re kidding,” Vega said, swooshing her hair over one shoulder dramatically and stomping out of the kitchen. “Seriously, you can’t even have one friend, Armpit?”
I followed behind her. “I have two friends. They’re gone. It’s summer, Vega. People go places.”
She went into her room and began cramming things into a backpack, leaving the Bacteria to shuffle over to the pantry and scrounge for something to snack on while he waited. I stood in her doorway.
“So, what am I supposed to do?” she asked. “I am not taking you to Anastasia’s. There’s a limit to what a sister should have to do, and hanging out with her armpit of a brother at her friend’s house is definitely past that limit.”
“I’ll just stay home,” I offered.
She slammed a dresser drawer and laughed. “Yeah, right. Mom would kill me if I left you here alone. You’d probably fall off the roof and get eaten by Comet.”
Nah, I thought. Comet would never eat me.
Of course, I never thought he would have eaten my shoe, either.
She went into her bathroom, where I heard more drawers opening and closing. Soon she came out, zipping her bulging backpack as she walked past me and down the stairs.
“You’re just going to have to go … somewhere,” she said. “Come on, Mitchell.”
“Where?” I asked, but she and the Bacteria had already plowed out of the house. For a few minutes I just stood at the bottom of the steps. I would just stay home. I could handle it.
Cassi was gone, so she’d never know. Vega had bolted, so she’d never know. I wouldn’t answer the phone if Mom or Dad called. I’d have the whole house—and CICM-HQ—to myself.
I liked it. No. I loved it.
I walked over to the table and crinkled up the potato chip bag, tossed it in the trash, and closed the pantry door. See how responsible I was acting already? This would be no problem!
Just then the front door swished open and Vega stuck her head in. “Let’s go, Arty! I don’t have all day to wait around for you!”
Darn. She noticed.
“I don’t have anywhere to go, remember?” I said.
“Yes, you do. You’re going next door.”
I slumped. “To the Moneckis? Mr. Monecki always makes me clean out his lawnmower.” He also once had me sweep out his garage and is always saying, “Here, son, you wanna make a nickel? I gotta job for youse.” There were so many things wrong with that sentence I never knew where to begin and always ended up doing some huge chore for him.
This was going to be a horrible couple of days.
I trudged upstairs and got out my STUDYING STARS MAKES ME BRIGHTER overnight bag from space camp. (That acronym would be SSMMB, which doesn’t spell anything, either, so apparently it’s not easy, even for adults, to come up with stuff that looks good on shirts.)
“Nope,” Vega said, following me. “The Moneckis aren’t home. You’re going to the other guy.”
I froze in place. The other guy? She couldn’t possibly mean …
“No way. I can’t stay with that guy.”
She turned her palms up, exasperated. “There’s no choice! What am I supposed to do? Leave you here alone?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t do that. Mom would kill me.”
“She might kill you if you just … abandon me with him.” Especially if he eats my face.
“It’s not my fault you don’t have any friends,” Vega said. “Mom told us we could go to him if we had an emergency. It’ll be fine. Let’s go.”
I crept to my window and peered out.
There was Mr. Death, peering back at me through his window, the curtains parted just enough to show his two horrid, creepy eyes. We made contact, and the curtains snapped shut.
My heart beat wildly in my chest, and I swallowed a thousand times, trying to get my breath.
Check that. This wasn’t going to be a horrible couple of days.
It was going to be my last couple of days.