The Power Potion (5 page)

Dave (being indirectly attached to the door via a monkey arm) was pulled forward and, in a moment of rash impulsiveness, pretended to fall against the door, shoving it hard. This caused Pablo to lose his balance (and his grip) and allowed the monkey to regain his balance (and release his grip).

Damien had, of course, lost both his balance and his grip ages ago, so he simply screeched, “Catch that monkey!” as the little rhesus escaped the mansion with a small satchel filled with Damien’s coveted premium blend slung across his chest. “Get my coffee back!” he commanded the Bandito Brothers. “NOW!”

So while Pablo, Angelo, and Tito charged outside to capture the monkey, Dave stood up and found himself grill to grizzled grimace with Damien Black.

“That’s mine,” Damien hissed, reaching for the cardboard tube.

“Yo! Not so fast,” Dave said, trying to project some thug swagger even though he was feeling quite jelly-kneed. “Wha’s yo’ name, man?”

“Damien Black,” Damien said, taking in Dave’s appearance with a disapproving sneer. “Wha’s
yo’s
?”

“Vinnie,” Dave said with a lip curl, flashing his grill. “Ya need ta sign fo’ da delivery.” He flipped open the folder and slapped a pen on the delivery order.

Damien hesitated, then grabbed the pen and (with great flourish) signed the paper, then snatched the tube.

Damien took one look at the return address and chortled. Soon little hiccups of laughter were
bubbling out of him until, at last, he threw his head back and released a devilishly diabolical laugh. “Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha! Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! BWAA-HA-HA-HA—”

“Hey, YO!” Dave said, flipping his hand out. “Delivery charge is ten bucks! And it’s a long way up here, so a little extra would be nice, huh?”

Damien’s demented laughter came to an abrupt halt as he took in the source of this impudent interruption.

Then, with a sneer and a snort, he simply shut the door in Dave’s face.

Dave and Sticky kept their eyes peeled and their lips zipped as they hurried back to the bike, but neither saw any sign of the Bandito Brothers or the monkey.

Once at their hiding spot, Dave quickly removed his bling, grill, and Vinnie shirt, spit-washed off his teardrop tattoos, clipped on his helmet, and skedaddled.

“Yo! I’m Vinnie!” Sticky mimicked as they zoomed down the road. He laughed. “You were
asombroso, señor
!”

Dave laughed, too, and said, “Thanks,” but he was still feeling a bit shaky about the whole operation. And after barreling along for a few more
minutes, he shouted over the wind, “What if he figures it out? What if he can tell the potion isn’t
the
potion?” He glanced at Sticky. “What do you think that stuff does, anyway?”

“I think it does something evil,
señor
. So you did a good thing, okay?” Then he grumbled, “It’s that monkey you should be worried about, not the potion.”

Now, perhaps you’re wondering why the monkey should be of any concern to Dave. After all, the rascally rhesus was surely racing through the forest focused wholly and solely on escaping the Bandito Brothers, right?

The answer is quite simple: The first time Dave freed the monkey from Damien’s diabolical clutches, the animal had somehow tracked Dave and scaled seven floors (via drainage pipes and hanging flower boxes) to slip him a strange key (and to brew himself some wickedly strong coffee). What the key unlocked was a mystery to
Dave, and, of course, the monkey couldn’t tell him. But it was, without question, a gift of gratitude.

So it wasn’t the monkey himself that worried Sticky (although Sticky did not find him to be cute or funny or in any way endearing). What worried Sticky was that the monkey might return and inadvertently lead Damien (or those bumbling, backstabbing Brothers) to Dave’s family’s apartment.

That evening, as the Sanchez family ate dinner, Sticky worried.

That night, as Dave sweated over his regular homework and his social studies project, Sticky worried.

All night, as Dave snoozed and snored and drooled, Sticky worried.

By morning, however, there’d been no eeeking or shrieking (or mysteriously brewed coffee). And so, as the Sanchez family went through their
usual get-to-school-on-time routine (involving gobbled food, spilled milk, hastily packed lunches, and a lot of hurry-it-upping), Sticky fell fast asleep.

“Psst!” Dave whispered behind his bookshelf when he was ready to go. But try as he might, he could not convince Sticky to get up, so, at last, he gave up. “Just stay out of trouble, then, okay?” he whispered, and raced off to school.

Now, had Sticky slept through the day, this would not have been such a tall order. Unfortunately, at around noon, Sticky woke up hungry.

Very hungry.

And so he went outside through the kitchen window (which was, for ventilation purposes, always left open an inch or two) and spent an hour or more hunting down such delicacies as meaty-legged grasshoppers and mealworms.

Then, feeling fat and quite happy, he scaled back up the wall to the Sanchezes’ flower box and
settled in for a nice, bone-warming bask in the afternoon sun.

Next door, Topaz the cat sat inside on the windowsill and watched.

“Hey, uuuuugly,” Sticky called with a stretch and a yawn, for he was safe from the squooshy-faced terror, as today the Espinozas’ window was also only open about an inch.

Topaz’s long white tail twitched, and her tiger-like eyes zeroed in on Sticky.

She began pacing along the windowsill.

Back and forth, back and forth.

She added mewing.

Pitiful, plaintive mewing.

Topaz was, by nature, an ill-tempered cat. And being on house arrest day and night did nothing to improve her disposition. She had little to do but sulk on the windowsill
wishing
for something to do. (Or, more precisely, something to stalk and kill.)

Mice in the building would have been nice.

Instead, there was a lizard.

A teasing, taunting, exasperating lizard.

One with a big, fat (and decidedly delicious-looking) tail.

Ah, poor Topaz.

She hated her plight.

Hated the monotonous (and often stale) kibble Lily left out for her.

Hated being alone all day.

Most of all, though, she hated the lizard.

Now, this was not because she understood “uuuuugly” when Sticky called her that. She was, after all, a cat, and cats don’t actually understand words.

Tone and sound, yes.

Words, no.

Her fenced-in feeling was what started the cat’s obsession with Sticky, and his taunting just added fuel to the feline’s fire. She watched for him
day in and day out, biding her ill-tempered time, pacing away the hours, hoping that someday, someway, she could escape her glass prison and catch him.

Now, had Topaz simply sat in the window, none of what I’m about to tell you might have happened. But Topaz didn’t just sit. Topaz hissed and paced and pawed and clawed, futilely reaching her long hooked nails through the opening in the window.

Sticky, as you might imagine, could feel the hate.

And feeling all that hate gave him a very naughty idea.

One he mistook for an
asombroso
idea.

One that got him up and running lickety-split into the Sanchezes’ kitchen, where he scraped together a nice little ball of leftovers from the bowl Mrs. Sanchez had used to mix up tuna for Evie’s and Dave’s lunchtime sandwiches.

One that involved fetching the hidden bottle of Moongaze potion and dripping two careful drops of it onto the tuna ball.

One that had Sticky scurrying over to the Espinozas’ flower box with the tuna on a white plastic spoon.

An idea that would, I’m afraid, show him just how potent and dangerous the pilfered potion could be.

Topaz went into a rage when she saw Sticky on her flower box. Her long white fur shot straight up, then she swiped and hissed and scratched and (in short) went ballistic.

Until, that is, she caught a whiff of the tuna.

“Atta crazy
gata
,” Sticky said, coaxing Topaz along. He had the plastic spoon under the window and was jiggling it to get the ferocious feline’s attention. “It’s yummy to the tummy—come on….”

Topaz’s fur slowly descended.

Her nose twitched over the fish.

Her whiskers quivered.

And then, forgetting all about the maddening
fat-tailed lizard outside, she quickly devoured the potion-laced fish that was inside.

Sticky watched.

And waited.

But the potion seemed to have absolutely no effect.

“Ay-ay-ay,” Sticky grumbled. “It’s a dud.” He frowned. “Or maybe it just doesn’t work on ugly cats.”

Topaz, too, seemed disappointed. After all, the tuna was gone.

Now, a stable cat might have mewed for more.

A stable cat might have remembered who’d brought the tasty treat.

A stable cat might have repaid the gift giver by showing him a little kindness. (Or, at least, aloof indifference.)

But Topaz was not a stable cat.

She was an angry cat.

One whose appetite for meaty morsels had just
been whetted and was now focused on the mouthwatering morsel taunting her from just outside her glass prison.

One who, at that moment, clawed through the opening with an angry hiss and, to her surprise, felt the window edge upward.

Now, for all the times Topaz had reached for Sticky, the window had never (believe me, ever) budged. Feeling it move now gave the frustrated feline hope, and after a short disbelieving moment she pushed farther.

To her delight, the window, once again, edged upward.

She really put her shoulder into it now, and the window edged upward some more!

Flashing through Sticky’s mind was one simple thought:

“Uh-oh!”

And before he had even zippy-toed over to the Sanchezes’ flower box, Topaz had strong-armed
the window up and was charging after him.

“Ay caramba!”
Sticky cried as he scurried under the Sanchezes’ window.

Ay caramba
, indeed!

The potion, you see, had not changed Topaz’s appearance (or disposition) in any way, but it had, in fact, given the cat an unfamiliar strength.

Now, I’m sure you’ve heard of incidents in which a mother somehow lifts a car to save the life of her child. Well, let me assure you that these stories are not tall tales or urban legends or (to put it less delicately) lies.

They are actual, factual (and impartially documented) events.

(Incredible, perhaps, but still, actual and factual.)

You see, scientists speculate that within the body (be it human, cat, or lizard), there are inhibitors that prevent you from exerting yourself to your full physiological potential. (In other words,
there’s always “superhuman” strength inside your body, but gates at the power source block it.) A crisis (such as a child pinned by a boulder or a car or a runaway Ferris wheel) triggers the gates to open, providing the body with an unfamiliar (and seemingly superhuman) strength.

So! Although the Moongaze potion was slightly sparkly and surprisingly stretchy, it was not some magic concoction or hocus-pocus potion.

Please.

It was a complex cocktail of rare and exotic ingredients (collected by gypsies in a remote region of eastern Romania), and it simply opened the body’s natural power gates, supplying a seemingly superhuman strength.

Unfortunately for Sticky, Topaz immediately realized that she was now more tiger than cat.

More fierceness than fur.

More power than purr.

And she was, as they say, lovin’ it.

“Reeeeeerrrrrr!” she roared as she ripped open the Sanchezes’ window and pounced inside the apartment. “REEEEEERRRRRR!”

“Holy guaca-tacarole!” Sticky cried, turbo-toeing out of the kitchen.

And so the chase began.