Brain Freeze! Read online

  “WHAT? It comes in liquid form? I never knew that!” I did what she said. I backed away.

  Then Wendy C. let loose with a gigantic evil laugh, which was surprisingly good for a nine-year-old girl. Sweaty had broken free from the fight with Grandpa and joined Wendy C. The two of them gathered the loot they’d stolen from banks and jewelry stores and bakeries. (Sweaty obviously enjoyed a nice cupcake now and then.) They shoved it all in a big sack and started climbing the bricks up the side of the building next to them. They looked like Spider-Man— you know, if he wore a lunch lady outfit. Sweaty yelled something about their “Grand Finale!”

  We heard chopper noises from the rooftop. Man, if those Crockers had a helicopter I was going to be mad. Why should the bad guys have all the cool stuff, while we’ve got a 1960 Nash Rambler? Anyhow, back to business.

  Before I knew it, those crooks were halfway up the building! I looked at Gramps. He tried to get up, but was hurt too badly. I could tell it was hard for him to be seen like this, but he managed to say, “It’s up to you, Irwin. Trust yourself.”

  Chapter 13

  Team Effort

  I unzipped my Superhero Survival Kit (still trying new names) and looked at my choices. I hadn’t tried a drumstick yet. Not sure if this was the right time for experiments, but we were running out of time. I unwrapped it quickly and chomped. The brain freeze hit hard. It hurt more than the others. That really got my attention. I started shaking, but didn’t feel out of control. The freeze pain slowed down. Up ahead, Sweaty and Wendy were still climbing away, faster than ever.

  Then I started climbing, too.

  With my drumstick-fueled superstrength, I scrambled up that building like a monkey on a mission, rapidly catching up to the villains. I was almost there . . . and my strength started draining. I started to slip! I fumbled for my pack; my other hand came off the wall! I shoved the drumstick in my mouth just as I was falling, and BOOM! Another burst. Grabbed back on and shot up the wall again.

  Man, that was quick. I only got a few seconds of power from the drumstick.

  I caught up to the Crockers as they reached the top of the building. I grabbed on to Wendy’s ankle right before she made it over the edge. It was the first time I had touched a girl intentionally—yech. I didn’t care for it.

  Wendy C. swirled her head around a few times, whipping her hair back to smack me in the face. Her stupid polka-dotted hairclip hit me right on the nose, too! My first superhero blood! I felt faint for just a second.

  Sweaty Crocker, who had already climbed over the edge, came back to help her granddaughter. Meanwhile, they had a chopper up there that was warmed up and waiting, its blades swinging around and around. It looked like it was made from a vendor’s cart as well. Man, this lunch lady was handy with a wrench. Sweaty came right at me. That mean old ex–lunch lady reached into her apron of evil, pulled out a HUGE spatula, and took a big swipe at me! Then Sweaty stopped to let loose a crazy, evil laugh (must run in the family)—and while her mouth was wide open, something zipped right in her stinkin’ pie hole.

  It was a cookie!

  I looked down at the street and there was Grandma Joyce! She’d flung one of her nasty cookies right at Sweaty. I think she turned one of her hair curlers into a slingshot!

  “Don’t mess with my boys, you witch!” Grandma yelled.

  Wow. I’d never seen Grandma Joyce mean before. It was a little scary. And who knew that all this time her cooking was actually ammunition, not food?!

  Now, anybody else would have spit out that nasty cookie, but Sweaty made the mistake of trying to eat it. The horrible taste stopped her in her tracks.

  This gave me enough time to reach for my Insulated Pack of Problems for Bad Guys (that one might be a tad long), but Sweaty quickly recovered before I could do anything. (I guess all those years of eating her own bad cooking made her immune.) Grandma kept launching cookies, but none hit their mark. Sweaty took another swipe at me with her deadly spatula (more like the Excalibur sword from King Arthur, really), but this time she went for my bag, and cut the belt.

  She knew where I was getting my superpowers!

  My Superhero Tool Belt of Doom/Macho Man Pack/Defender of Justice Bag plummeted to the ground below. There go my superhero abilities and our chances to stop the bad guys.

  As I watched it fall, Wendy C. leaned over and gave me a wet willie! I didn’t even know girls knew how to do that!

  “See ya, Junior! Bye-bye, Gus!” yelled Sweaty.

  She and the little lunch lady grabbed their stuff and headed for the hot dog chopper, which was only, like, thirty feet away. I tried to pull myself over the edge of the building, but I was exhausted, plus my ear hole was wet.

  My first big mission, and I had failed.

  I’ll bet they kick you out of the superhero club for this sort of thing. I guess I still had zombie-baseball-playing-surfer dream to fall back on. This was horrible. My arms ached from hanging on to the building, and now I didn’t have any source of new strength.

  I looked down to the sidewalk below to see where my fanny pack landed. Maybe I could climb down, lick the pavement, and still get powers from the puddles of melted ice cream?

  It was nowhere to be seen.

  Weird. There should have been frozen treats scattered on the ground five floors below. Man, NOTHING was going right.

  Suddenly something bonked me on the back of my head! What the heck could that be?!

  It was my pack! And Bert the pigeon was holding it in his filthy little doughnut-covered claws!

  “Need this?” he asked.

  “Bert! You came back to help! You really do care about us as a crime-fighting duo!”

  “Yeah, well, Al ran out of the good doughnuts. All he had left were the plain ones. Why bother?” Bert replied.

  He was one sarcastic sidekick.

  Chapter 14

  Can We Wrap This Up?

  I ripped into the pack and grabbed the last of the drumstick! It was a huge chunk. I got the biggest brain freeze yet! I shook my head and launched over the ledge onto the building’s rooftop! I had new energy! New focus! Nothing could stop me now!

  “Well, look who’s back for more!” yelled Sweaty.

  I looked around. Didn’t see anyone.

  “YOU! You little idiot! I’m talking about you!” she said.

  “Oh, right,” I answered. “And it’s time for justice to prevail!”

  Hey. I kind of liked the sound of that, but I needed a second opinion.

  “Did that sound like a good catchphrase to you, Ms. Sweaty?”

  “Eh, I’ve heard better,” Sweaty Crocker replied.

  Grandpa and Captain had rallied and were right behind me coming over the edge of the roof.

  “Step away from my grandson, Sweaty!” yelled Mighty Super Gus.

  The lunch lady reached down one more time into her apron. She pulled out a steaming pan of fresh meat loaf!

  “My word!” I yelled. “How much stuff does that apron hold?”

  “Stand back! I’m not afraid to use this. It sent one kid to the hospital just for smelling it,” she snarled.

  “Do what she says, butt-bag boy,” added Wendy C. “My grandma’s cooking is the worst!”

  “Thank you, dear,” said Sweaty.

  “Well, I’m not so sure. My grandma’s cooking is pretty rotten as well. But we can argue about that another time,” I said.

  Sweaty loaded up her serving spoon and hurled it at Gramps and Captain.

  WHAP! They both got hit with a meaty slice. I did the only thing I could do. I ran around screaming while I tried to get to my fanny pack.

  Gramps was struggling. I went to help him up, and turned my back on the bad guys for just a second. You should NEVER do that.

  “Watch out!” yelled Grandpa.

  Sweaty was holding a massive tube on her shoulde
r.

  “Here comes the hairnet launcher nine thousand!” she screamed.

  WHOOMP!

  We were trapped in a gigantic filthy hairnet! The thing smelled like my baseball socks, and that’s not pleasant. The Crockers had plenty of weapons, and we were empty. My pack was still on the ledge, twenty feet away, and Gramps was out of gum. Wendy C. took the opportunity to poke me with a stick she found on the roof. She was NOT going to be on my birthday party list.

  While we squirmed inside that funky hairnet, Sweaty Crocker pulled out a control box and howled:

  “MOCK CITY WILL NOW FEEL MY WRATH! I WILL DESTROY THIS PLACE WITH . . . CHOPTIMUS GRIME! THE MOST WICKED KITCHEN GADGET THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN!”

  Well, I gotta admit, that piqued my interest.

  Sweaty started furiously pushing buttons on the control box. Then she pointed her unwashed finger toward Mock City School, off in the distance.

  “Behold!” she cried.

  “What?” me and Grandpa both yelled. “We can’t see anything from down here.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” Sweaty moaned. “Quit whining.”

  “Well, we can’t ‘BEHOLD’ anything if we can’t see it!” replied Gramps.

  He made a good point.

  “Okay, fine, ya big babies,” said Sweaty. Then she and Wendy rolled us in our netting to the edge of the building for a better view.

  “Thank you,” I said out of habit.

  “No problem,” Wendy C. replied.

  I could see the top of my school. Wow, I’d never seen it from up above. Man, there had to be fifty soccer balls, red rubber balls, and footballs on that roof! Sweaty went back to her remote control box, still punching buttons furiously.

  “You made me lose my place,” she snapped.

  We started to hear noise: cracking and creaking, which actually wasn’t unusual for our school. The place was ancient. It was, like, built in the ’90s or something. The school building started to shake. Little bits of it crumbled off and fell to the ground. Then, from about where I figured the cafeteria was, something HUGE started coming through the roof. I couldn’t make out what it was . . . it was metal, and grease covered. Then Grandpa cried out,

  “It’s a giant oven!”

  And it was! It was a humongous oven! And it kept rising higher and higher above the school.

  The giant oven had to be five stories tall . . . most of it legs. Two red “preheat” lights glowed like scary little eyes. I could hear its angry fan come on. Its front door opened and closed and snapped like a monster, while flames shot out of its mouth!

  Bad enough, right? Just wait.

  Two giant arms sprang out from the sides of the oven, and both had twenty-foot-long knives in their hands. Good golly this thing was nasty . . . and amazingly cool as well. I mean, if this was a toy, I’d have been begging Mom and Dad for one. What a great way to get boys interested in cooking! Sweaty Crocker had turned the school kitchen appliance into a Transformer! And then Sweaty lifted her hairy-pitted, skin-flappy arms to the sky and yelled:

  “I GIVE YOU . . . CHOPTIMUS GRIME!”

  I had to give her style points for that. Very dramatic. But I also had to ask:

  “If you could build this, why the heck weren’t you teaching shop class?!”

  With her remote, Sweaty Crocker started maneuvering this scary yet totally wicked beast toward downtown. Smash! Crash! Choptimus Grime slashed power lines and trees with its knife arms, and stomped on buildings, crushing them to rubble. Cars alarms started blaring everywhere! People ran from their homes into the streets! Cell phones snapped pictures that went immediately to Facebook.

  “Mock City! This is what you get for putting horrible people in jail! Feel my wrath! Well, my cool monster’s wrath!” yelled Sweaty.

  Sweaty laughed with each crunch as the metal flame-snorting oven worked its way closer to where we were. She was going to crush the entire city that fired her and escape in her vendor cart chopper. If we were going to be any kind of superheroes, we needed to act fast.

  Grandpa and I struggled to break free from the smelly netting; I knew I had one last ice cream in my Pouch of Doom (kind of like that one) if I could only reach it. I looked around frantically for my trusty sidekick. Captain Corgi had gotten comfortable enough under the netting I could actually hear him snoring.

  “Bert! I need your help! Where are you?” I yelled.

  “Yo, Irwin. I’m over here,” I heard. He was back! I knew I could count on him! I saw my pigeon on the ledge, right next to my pack! Then I noticed he was busy polishing off the last ice cream I just mentioned.

  BURP! My sidekick hopped over to me.

  “Everything okay?” Bert asked. He had drumstick breath. “Looks kind of cramped in there.”

  “You gotta a beak, get us out of this hairnet,” I whispered.

  Sweaty and Wendy were way busy with their evil cackling and high-fiving and watching Choptimus Grime destroy Mock City. Bert went to work on the netting, and got it a little loose, when Wendy C. saw him.

  “Hey! No cheating!” she cried out. “Be cool, Irwin!”

  “Wendy! Go sit on them! I’m almost done here!” barked Sweaty. “Just a few more minutes to demolish Mock City! Bwahahahaha!”

  Wendy C. pinned us down, taking extra joy in rubbing her butt on me! She even made up a little song, which REALLY ticked me off . . . mostly because it was kind of catchy:

  “I’m rubbing my butt on Irwin, I’m rubbing my butt on Irwin. He’s a stinky doodyhead, and his face is turning red.”

  Great. Now I’ll have that song stuck in my head all day.

  Bert pecked at her. But Wendy C. did her hair whip and knocked him clear across the rooftop.

  Time was running out! I had to think. What could I do?

  Then it hit me . . . the ultimate defense against girls of any age.

  Of course!

  BOOGERS!

  I started wiggling my arm up close to my face. Grandpa looked at me, wondering what I was doing.

  “I’ve got a plan,” I whispered.

  “No talking, Irwin!” Wendy C. barked.

  I moved my arm slowly upward. Across my chest, under my chin, over my totally dry mouth . . . I was almost there. My nostril was so close. Just a little farther. I could see Choptimus Grime getting closer to us, and hear buildings crunch and Mock City citizens screaming for help. I made it to my nose. I dug in the right side, which is usually my go-to nostril. Dang! Not much there. I shifted over to lefty . . . and scored a gem!

  I pulled the snot out carefully. I couldn’t risk dropping it, this nose nugget just might save our city.

  I was inches from Wendy C.’s leg when I cried out, “Ohhh, Weeeendy! Looky what I got.”

  Wendy C. turned and saw my loaded finger

  “Back off, Wendy. I got nothing to lose. I’ll wipe this right on your . . .”

  “AAAAUUUUGGGGHHHH!” she screamed and ran across the rooftop.

  “BOOGER!”

  “WHERE?!” asked Sweaty. “Settle down, Wendy!”

  While Wendy C. was screaming and Sweaty was scolding, I managed to open the netting a little more and wiggle out. Then I pulled Grandpa through, too. Bert was getting back up on his chubby little legs, and Captain was stretching after a nice, solid nap under the netting. I chased after Wendy C. and just about ran right into Sweaty’s filthy apron. She hadn’t moved. She stood still and pointed at my finger.

  “Drop the booger!” she demanded.

  “Never!” I fought back.

  “Why are you doing this, anyway?” I yelled.

  “Because of little brats like you! Little brats who got sick from my cooking!”

  “So why not just get another job?!” I screamed.

  “Because the Crocker family cooks! That’s what we do! Do you know what it’s like to have a famous c
ooking sister?”

  “Who’s your sister?” I asked.

  “Betty Crocker! I think she invented instant mashed potatoes!”

  “Ooh. I love those,” I said. “But that’s no excuse for what you did! You nearly killed four kids! I think you deserved some punishment!”

  I was surprised at how I stood up to this archvillain. Sweaty was clearly getting angry. She reached into her apron for something to clobber me with, and in that one second dropped the remote. It tumbled across the roof.

  “Bert! Grab the remote!” I yelled. The pigeon swooped down and grabbed it! Sweaty cursed and reached up to grab it back, but Bert was too fast! I kicked her in the shin. She dropped to the rooftop, yelling at me for not being respectful to adults. Bert flew over and dropped the remote into Grandpa’s hands.

  “Good work, you two!” yelled Grandpa. “Now, anybody have a clue how to operate this thingee?” he asked as he stared at the remote.

  Grandpa started pushing buttons as fast as he could.

  “Nope. That one’s Facebook. Nope. That one turned on the monster’s MP3 player.”

  “Grandpa! Try the red one!” I yelled.

  He pushed it, and Mighty Super Gus shut down the monster right before it took out our city’s most valuable asset . . . the comics bookstore. Close call. Grandpa usually took quite a while to figure out gadgets. But that’s what makes him Mighty Super Gus. He comes through when he needs to. The police force made its way onto the roof right then. Sweaty Crocker got handcuffed, vowing even bigger revenge when she got out of jail.

  Mock City saved.

  Chapter 15

  Ending Junk