101 Ways to Bug Your Friends and Enemies (14 page)

“Hector's brothers use him like a personal punching bag,” I said. “That's why he signed up for hapkido, isn't it, Hector?”

“In
hic!
deed,” he answered. “But a physical defense is not always enough. Verbal attacks can be more painful, as Joonbi is aware.”

“But I found something to help ease that pain!” Joonbi unzipped her bag and dug deep. “Don't worry, it's not barium.” Then, with a yip of delight, she held aloft a tattered, handmade booklet. “I found this in the house we're renting. It was rammed into a corner closet. Whenever my stomach hurts, and especially when my sisters are torturing me, I lock myself in my room and read this from cover to cover. It's hilarious! I laugh so hard I can't help feeling better—for a while, anyway. Too bad it wasn't written about sisters. Take a look!”

Hiccup didn't have to. I didn't either. We both recognized the thin, stapled pages, the red construction paper cover . . .

“He
hic!
author,” Hic said, pointing at me.

“What?” Joonbi asked.

“He said I'm the author,” I confessed.

“What do you mean?”

“I wrote it.”

“You wrote what?”

“The book.”

“What book?”

“That book.”

“
This
book?”

I nodded.

“
You
wrote this book?
You wrote 101 Ways to Bug Your Parents
?
You
are Stephen J. Wyatt?
TRUTH?
”

I nodded again.

“Oh!” Joonbi gasped, her eyes aglaze. “I think I love you!”

Five minutes later, Hiccup stomped like a tantrum-throwing toddler down the street toward the bus stop.

I waved good-bye to Joonbi and hurried after him.

“Wait up!” I yelled. “What's wrong?”

He hurled the accusation in my face: “You're secretly writing another book!”

“What are you talking about?”

“As if you did not know!”

“I don't!”

“You do!”

I didn't.

Back at Lickety-Split Chick, we'd just finished our smoothies when Joonbi spotted her mom's car zipping past the window toward Hapkido Family Fitness. “Early, as usual!” she groused, scooting from the booth. “That's number fifty-two on her list of
101 Ways to Bug Your Youngest Daughter
.”

“We should trade mothers,” I said. “Even if Mom swears she'll pick me up in exactly one hour, I always have to multiply that number by a factor of four. Don't I, Hector?”

He pursed his lips, but a gruff
hic
! escaped.

“Truth?” Joonbi twisted her hair back into its spiky ponytail. “How buggable!”

“She doesn't do it on purpose,” I explained. “Mom's a scientist who also has ADHD, so she gets distracted easily. Dad too. That's one reason I wrote
101 Ways to Bug Your Parents
—to get their attention.”

Joonbi hoisted her gear bag. “I have a million questions about your book! How you researched it, how you wrote it, did you test every suggestion? My favorite is number nine:
Laugh with a mouthful of milk until some squirts out your nose
. I accidentally tried that last Sunday morning while eating a bowl of Rice Krispies. Snap, crackle
, yuck!
Umma didn't notice, but my sisters were so grossed out they steered clear of me for half an hour. Best thirty minutes of my life—till now!”

Another gruff
hic!
from Hic.

“After hapkido tomorrow,” Joonbi said, “want to get together again for smoothies? My treat. I can't believe it! Usually
I'm
the person people are in awe of. But I've met Stephen J. Wyatt: author, inventor . . . my hero!”

Then she'd buzzed off to meet her mom—but not before
blowing me a kiss
.

“Your feigned innocence is futile,” Hic continued now, “and an insult to my intelligence. It is clear you are writing a new book entitled
101 Ways to Bug Your Friends
. And number one on that list is:
Steal your best friend's girl!
”

I would've laughed if he didn't look so murderous. “I didn't steal your girl. How could I? She's not even yours! And it's not like I
tried
to make her like me.”

“I witnessed, firsthand, your brazen, blatant flirtations!”

I touched my cheek where the invisible smooch had landed. “Trust me, Hic. I wasn't the one flirting.”

“Then please explain your flushed expression.”

“Joonbi's gushiness is embarrassing!”

“Then why encourage her with all that smiling?”

“That's called acting
friendly
.”

“And all those questions?”

“Somebody had to ask her questions, Hic! Why didn't
you
jump in? Didn't you notice how I kept steering the conversation your way?”

“Yes, of course. Did you not notice Joonbi's and my humorous interchange? Things were going swimmingly, until—”

“Ha. Did you bother to utter more than a couple of sentences? More than a couple of syllables? NoooOOOOooo.”

“I had the hiccups,” he defended. “I was awaiting their termination before engaging in a lengthy discourse.”

“Yeah,” I muttered, “like that was going to happen in this century.”

Without even checking for graffiti or gum wads, Hiccup flung himself onto the bus stop bench. He held himself tight as if wrapped in MM's cape against a chill.

“Maybe we should trade mothers,”
he mimicked. “How dare you do this to me, your best friend! Joonbi and I, we are a perfect match! She likes hapkido. I like hapkido. She has five annoying sisters. I have five annoying brothers. She has medical issues and I have—”

“Hiccup, read my lips.” I thunked beside him and focused on his zit-freckled face. “
I'm. Not. Interested. In. Joon. Bi
.”

“Why not? What's wrong with her?”

“Nothing's wrong with her!”

“Is she not beautiful? Brilliant?”

“Sure!”

“Brawny?”

“She could toss you across the street farther than I could spit, but that doesn't mean I
like
her.”

The bus arrived. The doors flumped open.

Hic toddler-stomped up the steps.

I started after him.

He whirled on me and said through gritted teeth, “
Take the next bus
.”

He dropped his bag and snapped into a fighting stance. His eyes blazed a ferocity I'd only seen in his drawings. “These hands are not officially registered, but make no mistake: They are lethal weapons.
Take the next bus
. I no longer wish to be best friends. I no longer wish to be friends, period.”

“Fine!” I shot back. “Who needs friends like you? Not when you're working on a ‘bug your best friend' list of your own! Not when number one on that list is:
Offer to take care of his pets while he's on vacation
—
then murder them!
”

The blaze in Hic's eyes sputtered, shrank—and died.

“Door's closin', boys,” the bus driver said.

“Endeavor to keep your trousers on, sir!” Hiccup snapped.

Then, voice thin, he said, “Stephen. I already apologized. What more can I do? What happened to the Guys was an accident. I offered recompense, a sincere gesture of atonement. How did you respond to my overtures?
With revenge!”
Embers smoldered again in his eyes. “So I swear—no, I
vow
—on the sacred cape of MM: Joonbi is the only love of mine you will ever steal from me!”

 

That night, alone in my room, I tried to do my first-day-of-high-school homework. This was difficult because:

I stared at the empty aquarium and sighed. In the olden days (three months ago!), whenever I had a problem and Hiccup wasn't around, I consulted the Guys. They'd been perfect confidants, expert listeners who never argued with me, never accused me of stealing their little fishy friends . . .

But now—

I hoisted the tank and shoved it into a moldy corner of my closet (where my failed invention Flapjacks in a Can had oozed through its aerosol nozzle). Into it I flung everything I could find of Hiccup's: a hypoallergenic sweatshirt; two early editions of Medicine Man comics; rough drafts of the cover drawing for
101 Ways to Bug Your Parents
; stubs of stray colored pencils; and a half-empty box of surgical masks.

Last, I tossed in the container of fish flakes, and slammed the door so hard my window rattled.

The Nice Alarm
tsked-tsked
.

“It's just the two of us now, kiddo,” I said, “so no scolding.”

I sank into my desk chair and pulled from my pack the notebook in which I'd scribbled and scratched ideas for Cullen's e-mail to Hayley.

Ugh. Even worse than I remembered.

“Why is this so hard?” I asked the alarm. “Maybe I'm not as good at writing as I am at inventing. Or sneezing. But I'm a clever wordsmith. Everyone says so. Mom. Dad. My teachers. Hayley. Even the great Mr. Sterling Patterson!”

I traced the outline of the Nice Alarm's toad-like body with a finger.

“That's how I got the interview with him at the convention. I wrote a humdinger of a letter as president of a phony invention company. Remember how surprised and impressed he looked when I waltzed in with you?”

The alarm
tsked-tsked
again.

“Yeah, too bad he wasn't as impressed with what you can
do
. But when I told him I'd written and sold
101 Ways to Bug Your Parents
to earn extra money for my trip, he asked for a souvenir copy! He asked for my ‘Bug Your Teachers' list too. So if I can write well enough to impress—and fool!—a man of Mr. Patterson's intelligence, stature, and experience . . .”

Do-it, do-it, do-it
, ticked the Nice Alarm.

“Okay, okay. Don't rush me!”

I switched on my computer, clicked into my e-mail program, cracked my knuckles, and typed:

Ugh. That was the kind of letter Cullen would've written in second grade—to his
grandmother
.

Double ugh. Hayley's SOS would spot this fake faster than you could say
forgery
. And if Cullen ever read it (perish the thought!), he'd sic the goddess Pele on me with a volcanic vengeance.

I nibbled a fingernail.

How in the name of Thomas Alva Edison did people compose love letters?

My brain rewound to the creation of the Nice Alarm and my bugging books. All three required two crucial elements:
research and experimentation
.

I'd already tried experimentation—and failed. So maybe research . . .

I went online to my favorite search engine and typed:
How to write a love letter to a girl.

Page after page of websites appeared. I scrolled through dozens until my vision blurred and my mousing finger cramped.

At last—
Bingo!
—I spotted a site that looked promising because it claimed to be written
for
teen boys
by
a teen girl.

Huh. Surely there were exceptions? I mean, what did folks do if their fountain pen had been stolen or they were fresh out of Egyptian papyrus? Wasn't a computer-composed letter better than nothing?