The Planetoid of Amazement. Mel Gilden

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СКАЧАТЬ to him. As Rodney took a peanut butter sandwich from a plastic bag, Waldo glanced at him, nodded, and went back to his book. “Nice hat,” he said.

      “Thanks,” Rodney said. “Want to see what’s under it?”

      Waldo closed his book on a finger and contem­plated Rodney. “I’ve seen your head,” Waldo said.

      Rodney showed him the sticker and told him the whole strange story. “I really miss the kazoo.” He sighed and brushed crumbs from his lap. He said, “The funny part is that I’m scared of two opposite things. On the one hand, I’m scared that the sticker is the beginning of an adventure. I don’t know if I can handle it.”

      “You can handle it.”

      “How do you know?”

      “You’re handling it already.”

      “Huh,” said Rodney, feeling a little better and enjoying the feeling while he chewed. But the realization came to him that adventures always got bigger, never smaller. The confident feeling went away.

      “What’s the other thing you’re scared of?”

      Rodney swallowed and said, “I’m scared that these stickers are just some crazy advertisement for glue, not the beginning of an adventure at all. I’ll end up like Mr. Weinschweig, writing the same movement of a symphony over and over again because I’m scared to continue. End up being jealous of my parents forever and hating myself because I know it’s all my fault. And not even having the comfort of the kazoo anymore.”

      “Would it be all your fault?”

      Rodney shrugged. His mood was gray and foggy. He’d felt like that before, just recently, though he couldn’t quite remember when.

      Waldo pulled on the sticker gently, as Mr. Trowsinger had earlier. “And they call me weird,” Waldo said.

      Rodney put the hat back on and chewed his peanut butter sandwich.

      Without looking up, Waldo said, “I can get it off for you.”

      “How?”

      “Science,” Waldo said mysteriously.

      They planned to meet in the boys’ bathroom after school. At that hour, nobody was likely to bother them.

      * * * * * * *

      The boys’ bathroom was down a short flight of steps. It was cold and full of chemical and biological smells. A light scent of cigarette smoke hung over the stalls. Waldo was studying himself in the mirror when Rodney came in. “We’re alone,” Waldo said. “I checked.”

      “Good. What are you going to do?”

      Waldo took a short, very sharp knife from his backpack and Rodney stared at it in horror. “That doesn’t look very scientific to me.”

      “I use this knife in biology class. Surgery is very sci­entific.”

      “Don’t touch me with that. You use it to cut up worms and frogs and stuff.”

      “Get a grip, Rodney. I sterilized it before I came down here. Besides, I’m not going to cut you. Just the sticker.”

      Rodney looked at Waldo dubiously. Just how badly did he want the sticker removed? It might fall off by itself that evening. On the other hand, it might be a permanent exhibit on Rodney’s forehead for years. “All right,” he said.

      “Come over here, then.”

      Rodney walked to Waldo and put his books and kazoo case on the floor. “Try to slice it off without killing me,” Rodney said.

      Waldo grunted as he studied Rodney, an artist studying an empty canvas. He held up the knife and leaned closer. Rodney closed his eyes. He felt Waldo tugging on the sticker. “What’s going on?”

      “This isn’t paper,” Waldo said. “It doesn’t cut.”

      Rodney started to shake his head but Waldo commanded him to hold still. “I’ll try slicing off a corner.”

      There was the tugging again, and suddenly Rodney felt dizzy. The floor opened away from him, and he fell toward the ceiling. He grabbed onto Waldo and held on tight. “Hey, watch it, man,” Waldo said.

      They stood like that for a minute while gradually the disorientation went away. The floor and the ceil­ing rotated back to their proper places. Rodney opened his eyes. “This isn’t going to work,” Rodney said. “That thing has probably welded itself to my nervous system.”

      “Maybe so.” Waldo sounded disappointed. “What are you going to do?”

      “I’m going to put on this hat and take the bus home. What about you?”

      “Yeah,” Waldo said. “I never claimed that science knew everything.”

      * * * * * * *

      At home the mail was the usual mix of bills and advertisements. One letter was selling guided trips to Tierra del Fuego. Another was offering him the chance to win five million dollars if he bought some designer luggage featuring the signature of Rocky Smith, Space Commando. A third advertised a fool­proof way to survive the coming invasion of killer ants “for fun and profit.”

      Then Rodney saw the envelope. It was like the one addressed to his father the day before, like the one in which the pad of stickers had come.

      But the interesting thing was, the exciting thing was, the thing that meant adventure was that where yes­terday the headline on the envelope had been just so many chicken scratches, today he could read the chicken scratches as if they were English. Whatever else it was doing, Rodney had the suspicion that the sticker was also doing its job. For a moment, the loss of the kazoo seemed a little less important.

      The headline said VISIT THE PLANETOID OF AMAZEMENT (RTE. HUTZENKLUTZ STATION).

      Rodney knew that he was really reading the writing and not just pretending, because every time he looked at it, it said the same thing. He shook the envelope. Something was inside. Whether it was more stickers or something else Rodney could not tell. He wanted desperately to open the envelope, but it was ad­dressed to his father in that same unsophisticated handwriting. Rodney would have to wait. He sat down on the steps.

      After a while, it occurred to him that he was miss­ing an important opportunity to check himself. He pawed through the papers on the telephone table and found the envelope from the day before. He could read these chicken scratches too! They said EXCIT­ING FREE OFFER! YOU MAY HAVE ALREADY WON A TRIP TO THE PLANETOID OF AMAZE­MENT! USE YOUR STICKER TODAY!

      No doubt about it now. The sticker had taught him how to read this weird language. But unless the Plan­etoid of Amazement was something really special, not just a video-game arcade or something, it was not much of a trade for playing the kazoo.

      Time walked by in no particular hurry. He picked up and shook a gray plastic box that had the Captain Conquer wings stamped on it and a metal antenna you could pull out till it was a few feet long. The communicator box rattled and made a twanging sound. Inside, Rodney knew, were wires and springs and electronic blobs. When he’d shown the inside of the communicator to Rodney, СКАЧАТЬ