Danger Guys on Ice

Danger Guys
on Ice

Tony Abbott

illustrated by Joanne Scribner

With love

for my mother and father

for starting off my life of books

—T. A.

Thanks to Nick Krenitsky and HarperCollins

—J. S.

ONE

It all happened in a flash.

It was my best friend Zeek's birthday. I was standing on his doorstep, trying to ring the doorbell.

Under one arm was some of my skiing gear. Skis, poles, and boots. Under the other arm was the rest of my skiing gear. Gloves, goggles, and ski hat.

In my teeth was a half-eaten Gold Bar Waffle Deluxe ice cream bar. The kind wrapped in gold foil.

I love waffles in any form. From plain waffles to waffle sandwiches to waffle cookies to waffle chips, waffles are my absolute favorite food.

Anyway, I was just working loose some fingers to press the doorbell.

Then it happened.

KA-FLOOOM!

The door blasted open, and I was suddenly on my back. Some bug-faced thing all dressed in ski gear flew right across my legs, out the door, and onto the front lawn. Snow sprayed up behind it.

“Mom!” called Zeek's sister, Emily, from the living room. “Zeek's being dangerous again!”

Ah, so it was Zeek! Yeah, he's dangerous. Well, I am, too. We have this danger thing. It just takes over, and we start doing incredible action stuff. It's the way we are.

“He almost killed Noodle!” she added.

Well, yeah, that's true, too. I looked down at the black ski marks across my jeans and the ice cream smear on my jacket.

But when you love danger as much as Zeek and I do, nearly getting killed is all part of it—part of being an official Danger Guy.

“Zeek-eek-eek! Pilinsky-insky!” he yelled across the lawn. “Gold-old medal-edal-edal!”

That's Zeekie. Amazing sports guy.

I scraped myself off the doorstep, picked up my stuff, and limped over to him.

He pulled up his bug-face ski mask. “Yaaaah!” he shouted, like a crowd cheering.

I finished what was left of my ice cream bar and folded the foil wrapper into a circle. I gave it to him. “Gold medal,” I said. “Happy birthday.”

“Thanks, Nood.” He smiled big and popped it into the pocket of his Danger Guy jacket.

“Check out what my mom and dad got me,” he said. “Aren't these skis cool? And this mask?” He pulled the green mask over his face, flexed his arms, and posed like somebody from a comic book. “I look like a superhero, don't I?”

“Yeah,” I said, “Bug Boy.” I laughed.

Zeek pushed the mask up to his forehead again, looked straight at me, and made a face.

That's another thing about Zeek. His faces crack me up. He can do this tiny smile that no one else can see. He does it in class a lot when our teacher, Mr. Strunk, isn't looking. It's like a secret code.

He was doing one of those smiles now.

Then he pointed up over the trees at the big purple-and-white mountain in the distance. “Look, Noodle. Snow. Lots of it. That's where my birthday ski party is going to be. My parents tried to keep it a surprise, but I figured it out.”

“Of course you did,” I said. “You can't surprise Danger Guys. We're ready for anything.”

“Yeah,” he said. “We save the surprises for bad guys!”

Zeek nodded at the skis under my arm. “Are you planning to build something, Noodle?”

I looked down at the chipped, brown boards I was holding. “These were my dad's skis when he was a kid,” I explained.

“Your dad is that old? They look like scrap lumber! And those boots have
laces
! Wow, are those, like, the first ski boots ever made?”

“Skiing is a very ancient sport,” I said. “Remember what Mr. Vazny used to say?”

Zeek froze. “
Mr. Vazny!
You mean our old science teacher? Before he sneezed his brain loose and tried to blow up our school?”

I nodded. “He said that people have been skiing since prehistoric times.”

I shivered, remembering how we found our teacher's secret laboratory under Mayville School and how he made us call him Dr. Morbius. When he tried to blow up the school, Zeek and I had to fly all over the galaxy in a rocket to stop him.

“The Sneezemeister!” Zeek whispered. “I'll
never
forget his face.”

Yeah. Wispy hair. Evil grin. Drippy nose. Mr. Vazny's sneezes were like nuclear explosions!

“He sure did have a sinus problem,” I said. “Now whenever anybody sneezes, I break into a sweat.”

“Me too,” said Zeek. “I even scare myself when I get a runny nose!”

I shivered again. “Good thing the army locked him up.”

“I hope they threw away the key.”

Beep-beep!
Zeek's dad pulled their minivan out of the garage. We ran over and helped to pack up.

Two hours later, we tumbled out of the van in front of a giant log cabin. Zeek's mom, dad, and sister, Emily, went inside to set up for the party.

I stayed outside with Zeek. There was a plaque on the front of the building. “‘Mine Mountain Lodge,'” I read. “Cool! It says this mountain used to be the site of an old mineral mine. And this lodge was the owner's house.”

I looked up. Smoke was rising from the chimney. It looked warm inside. It made me hungry.

“Let's go in,” I said. “Maybe they have food.”

“No way!” said Zeek, pulling me over to the bottom of the slope. A blast of cold air rushed down the mountain and hit me in the face. I could see my breath. It was going to be one freezing-cold day.

Zeek snapped on his skis. “Noodle, the good news is that if we jump on the ski lift now, we'll have time for one quick run before the party!”

Mine Mountain rose straight up like a giant snowy head. The ski-lift cable dangled like a skinny wire all the way to the top.

“And what's the bad news?” I mumbled.

Just then a man came running down from the ski lift. He was a little funny-looking. Well, a lot funny-looking. He wore thick pink glasses and had a fluffy black mustache and strange hair. It was bright red and growing straight up.

Bad hair day, I thought.

Besides that, he was squeezing his nose tight as if he had a cold. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that his nose was big and pink and round.

Zeek nudged me. “Probably a surprise clown my parents hired for my party,” he whispered. “Don't let on I figured it out.”

“Um, excuse me,” I said. “How's the skiing today?”

“Dangerous!” the clown muttered under his mustache. He turned away quickly and disappeared behind the lodge.

I turned to Zeek. “If he's a clown, how come I'm not laughing?” I started back to the lodge. “I'm going to eat some cake.”

I didn't move fast enough. Before I knew it, I was sitting next to Zeek in a little chair sailing high above the snow.

Zeek took a deep breath and gazed around. “Ah, what a great day!”

My stomach didn't think so. We were climbing higher and higher in that dinky little lift chair. I tried not to think about how high we were. Or how far away from the lodge we were going. After all, this was Zeek's day, and he was—

GRRR!
A motor growled and sputtered down below. We watched as the clown zoomed up the mountain on a sleek blue snowmobile.

“Hey, where's he going?” said Zeek. “Shouldn't he be tying balloons or something?”

POP!
A chunk of something fell off our ski lift. I think it was a chunk of ski lift.

“Zeek? This doesn't look good—”

ERRRCH!
The lift jerked to a stop.

It swung there for a second or two.

I looked at Zeek. He looked at me.

“Oh.” My voice went sort of weak. “Now I know what the bad news is.…”

KA-CHANK!
—The lift cable suddenly swung loose, and we dropped like stones to the icy ground below.

TWO

My whole life flashed before my eyes.

WHOOSH!

It didn't take very long.

By the time I started to scream—
Floo!
—I couldn't. My mouth was full of snow, and I was buried headfirst in a deep drift, a mess of skis and poles and arms and legs.

“I'm smushed!” I cried, yanking my head out.

But, as Zeek would say, that was the
good
news.

The bad news was—no Zeek.

His skis were resting on the snow close by, but he wasn't in them.

I pulled myself together, stood up in my skis on a little mound of snow, and looked all around. There wasn't anyone in sight. “Zeekie!” I yelled.

“Maa-rrrrmmmf!” came the answer.

I looked down. There was a little pink mouth sticking out between my skis.

“Maa-rrrrmmmf!” it said again.

“Zeek!” I stepped off the mound and started digging around the mouth. A minute later Zeek burst out of the snow.

“Wha-wha-what happened?” he cried.