Nanny X Returns (11 page)

Ursula froze, her eyes wide. “But I did try to destroy a tall thing,” she said. “Washington, D.C.'s tallest lawn ornament. It was the obvious choice.”

We all looked down the Mall and saw it towering in the distance. The Washington Monument. Of course.

“It looks okay from here,” I said.

Nanny X pulled out her baby-powder spyglass. She turned the dial. Then she turned it again, three more times. She looked at Ursula. “Hand me that remote,” she said.

“They don't work with my remote,” Ursula said. “They're automated. They just chew.”

Nanny X ran to the curb at Nanny X speed. She whistled for a pedicab, but none came. I guess they didn't like the weather. Then she spied a row of Segways leaning against the wall. The owners must have gone somewhere to get out of the rain, which had now stopped completely.

“Mergenthee,” said Eliza.

“Emergency,” agreed Nanny X. She pulled a card out of her bag and handed it to Boris. “Congratulations!” it said. “Your __________ has been borrowed by a Top Secret Government Agency. It will be returned immediately after __________. Thank you for your cooperation.”

Boris took a pencil out of his pocket and filled in the blanks:
Segway/We save the Washington Monument
. He attached the card to the wall above the Segways.

Nanny X unhooked Ursula's handcuffs. She handed her the helmet that was hanging from the handlebars. “Climb on.”

“Us too?” I said.

“You too.” Nanny X bent down and slid on her bunny slippers. They were still miraculously fuzzy, even after the rain and a day on the streets of D.C.

Boris gave us a Segway lesson. “Lean forward to go. Pull back to stop—but not too far back or you'll go in reverse. And don't let go of the handlebars.”

“Got it!” yelled Jake.

“Got it,” I said. I fastened my helmet and mounted my Segway, which I was way too young to drive unless the nation's most famous obelisk was in peril. I leaned forward. The wheels began to roll. I rolled, too, slow and shaky at first, but then straighter and faster as we followed our nanny to the Washington Monument. Ursula leaned right near Fourteenth Street and her Segway turned. Wait. That wasn't the way to the monument!

I'd been working on my whistling, which seemed like an important special-agent skill, so I puckered and made a sharp tweeting sound. Then more whistles joined mine. Jake and Stinky had been practicing, too. Nanny X skated back. She gave me Eliza's stroller as she and Boris made a fast turn. Yeti went with them, barking up a storm because, like I said, he's the best dog in the world. In seconds they returned with Ursula between them.

“I had to try,” Ursula said.

We got back in our single-file line, with Nanny X and Eliza leading the way again. Then came Jake and me and then Stinky and Ursula. Boris was last, keeping an eye on all of us. He rang his bell as we passed pedestrians with the wind in our hair and a nasal aspirator full of destructive beetles in Nanny X's diaper bag.

Here are some facts about the Washington Monument: It is 555 feet high and it is made mostly out of marble. That means that most bugs leave it alone. Ursula's bugs were different. “They have small digestive systems,” she said. “I'm sure they won't eat much.”

But small cracks from an earthquake shut down the monument for a long time. Sometimes a little damage was all it took. Besides, Ursula's beetles (plus a squirrel) had eaten an entire portrait of George Washington and half of a pitcher by Paul Revere. They could do more than a little damage. They might even be able to topple the whole thing!

Howard put his hand on the cold marble and tried to climb. But there were no nooks to hold on to.

Nanny X tipped back her head and looked up. The bugs were walking around as though they owned the place. She plunged her hand into the diaper bag and pulled out two
pairs of earrings with little pink balls on them. She clipped one pair to her ears and handed the other to Boris.

“We can keep in touch through these,” she said.

Next she grabbed a tube of Boffo's Baby Butt Cream, which is not Eliza's usual brand for diaper rash. Nanny X squeezed some into each hand. She smeared some onto the bottom of her shoes, which had replaced the bunny slippers again.

She reached up with her right hand and touched the marble wall. Her hand stuck there, as if it were attached by suction. She reached up with her left hand. Slowly our nanny made her way up the side of the Washington Monument, just like a superhero.

“Be good to my bugs,” Ursula called.

Nanny X reached the first beetle at about twenty feet up.
Shhhllllurp
. She sucked it into the nasal aspirator.

The next beetle was higher, and Nanny X kept climbing. We took turns watching through the spyglass. Ali took some pictures with Nanny X's diaper phone, to send to NAP. There was no way they would think she wasn't in special-agent condition now. Unless she fell.

Shhhllurp
. Another bug went into the aspirator.

We could feel a crowd gathering around us. The flags that surrounded the monument whipped and fluttered as two park rangers came up behind us. “What's she doing?” one of them said.

“She can't do that,” said the other.

“Yes,” Boris said, “she can. She's with NAP.”

He spoke into one of the earrings, which he'd fastened to his shirt collar. “X, are you okay?” he said. “Can you read me?”

“Loud and clear,” said our nanny.

And that's when my brand-new powers of observation
spotted something through the spyglass: One beetle, faster than the rest, had made it more than halfway up the monument. Nanny X would have to climb a long way to get it.

I passed the glass to Ali, whose powers of observation are better than mine, and she spotted something else: a small hole in the side of the aspirator. The beetles were eating their way through.

“Boris to X. We have a problem. Two problems. Do you read?”

“I read,” said Nanny X. “What problems?”

He told her.

“If I get you the aspirator, can you plug the hole?” asked Nanny X.

“I think so,” Boris said. “I'm coming up.”

“I've got this,” said Nanny X. “Watch Ursula and the children. Send Howard for the beetles.”

In no time, Howard had butt cream on his hands and feet. He climbed straight to Nanny X. He was a much faster climber than she was. His body didn't shake. He grabbed the nasal aspirator in his mouth and climbed back down to us. He put the aspirator on the ground near Boris's feet.

Stinky grabbed Nanny X's flowered umbrella, and was about to use it to squirt some goop inside the nasal aspirator.

“Wait!” Ursula said. “Don't destroy them. Please.”

She pointed to her bag, which wasn't half as big as Nanny X's. Boris had taken charge of it, in case there were weapons inside. He reached in and pulled out a metal box.

“Won't they just eat through it?” I asked.

“The inside is curved,” Ursula said. “They can't grab it with their teeth.”

I figured the bugs were going to be taken away as evidence, so her artwork would be locked up for a while, but I guess that was easier than seeing them squished or covered in goop. Boris squeezed the bugs out of the aspirator and into the box. He slammed the lid down. Ursula wrapped the box with a chain and locked it. It shook a little, but she was right; they couldn't escape.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Or course,” Boris said. He handed the box to Stinky.

“Guard these,” he added. Then he attached the teething ring hand cuff to Ursula's wrist. He attached the other half to the Segway, which was leaning against the flagpole.

Above us, the last bug was still free. Nanny X was still climbing. She was so high now that she looked like a bug herself.

Then she stopped. She pulled back her right leg and her body flailed around. Ali bit her fingernails. Through the earring on Boris's shirt, we heard Nanny X shout “
Kee-yah!
” She swung her right foot and kicked the beetle off the monument and into the sky.

“
Noooooooooooooo!
” screamed Ursula. She tried to move closer to the monument as the bug plummeted down, but she was handcuffed to the Segways. Ursula and the Segways fell over like dominoes. But that didn't stop her. At the last second, Ursula took off her fishing hat and held it out in her uncuffed hand.

Sshhhhhpppp
. She snagged the bug just before it hit the ground. Forget about art. Ursula would have been an amazing baseball player. Except instead of the catch being an out, the catch meant her bug was safe.

We looked back up at Nanny X, who was making her way, slowly and steadily, down the side of the Washington Monument.

“How did I do?” she asked Boris when she reached the ground.

“Very spry,” he said.

We waited for the Capitol Police to come and get Ursula. I felt kind of sorry for her. Destroying national treasures plus threatening the president was going to put her in jail for a long time, even if the only person she had hurt was me, when her bug bit my pinky.

“Perhaps you could teach art in prison,” Nanny X said. “I hear it's very therapeutic.”

I remembered Mr. Huffleberger's review, where he said she should go back to doing arts and crafts with the Girl Scouts. The other inmates weren't going to be Girl Scouts, but it sounded like a start. I wasn't sure what kind of art material they had in jail, but I hoped they had something she could sculpt with, even if it was just butter or mashed potatoes.

“One question,” said Nanny X as the sirens came closer. “Why?”

It was a question I had, too.
Why threaten the president? Why destroy stuff?

Ursula dropped her head so we could barely see her face. “I wanted my art to be appreciated,” she said.

I didn't want to tell her, but that wasn't what was happening in the president's bowling alley.

“I can't believe you let a schlump like Huffleberger make you crazy,” said Nanny X. “But if it makes you feel better, I think you made him a little crazy, too.”

“My career peaked at the county fair,” Ursula said. “But it's not over yet.” She turned to Nanny X. “By the way,” she said, “how high are your ceilings?”

Before Ursula got into the squad car, she arranged for Nanny X to take control of the fish statue. The police mumbled something about it being too big to keep in their evidence room anyway, and that photos would do until the trial. If they needed the statue in person, Nanny X said she'd be happy to bring it in.

I guess I knew what we'd be tying to the minivan instead of the canoe.

“You know something?” Ali said, after the police had taken Ursula away. “She's kind of a genius.”

“An evil genius,” I said.

“But maybe not forever,” Stinky added. “You know something else? I'll bet we could find a way to use Ursula's bug power to save the world. We could set them loose in the dump and they could eat trash instead of art.”

“That would take a lot of bugs,” Ali said. “They only ate one painting—even if it was a surrealist painting. You remember what Ursula said about their digestion.”

“I know,” said Stinky. “But maybe we could change that.”

Maybe we could change a lot of things.

We made it back to Lovett just in time for my baseball game. I'd been wet all day, so standing in the wet grass of left field didn't bother me.

It felt good to be part of two teams—my baseball team and my special-agent team. I wasn't sure I'd have time to keep doing both, but Nanny X told me about Moe Berg, who was a baseball player
and
a spy during World War II. Plus he was on quiz shows. I wonder if his specialty was knowing freaky animal facts?

My own secret-agent team watched me play from the stands. Nanny X even let Howard stay. He was still wearing
Eliza's bonnet when he caught a foul ball in the third inning.