Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder (4 page)

THE BIRDS WERE chirping and the sun was shining outside the classroom, but inside it was dead quiet. Mrs. Strobe nudged her glasses down her unbelievably long nose and peered at the new boy.

“So, you're Nilly, then?” she said in a slow, raspy voice.

“Yup, what of it?” Nilly responded.

A few people laughed, but when Mrs. Strobe did her signature move, slapping her hand against her desk, it got dead quiet again in an instant.

“Could you please stand up straight, Nilly,” her voice rasped. “I can hardly see you sitting there behind your desk.”

“I'm sorry, Mrs. Strobe,” Nilly said. “But I
am
sitting up straight. The problem, as you can see, is that I'm tiny.”

Now the other students were laughing even louder.

“Silence!” Mrs. Strobe fumed. She nudged her glasses even farther down her nose, which she could safely do because there was still plenty of nose left to go. “Since you're new, why don't you please tell us all a little bit about yourself, Mr. Nilly?”

Nilly looked around. “New?” he said. “I'm not new. If you ask me, you guys are the ones who are new. Apart from Lisa, that is. I've met her already.”

Everyone turned around to look at Lisa, who mostly wanted to sink down onto the floor.

“Besides, I'm ten years old,” Nilly said. “So, for example, if I were a pair of shoes, I wouldn't be new at all. I'd be extremely old. My grandfather had a dog who got sent to the old age home when she was ten.”

Mrs. Strobe didn't make any attempt to stop the snide laughter that followed, but just looked at Nilly thoughtfully until the laughter had subsided.

“Enough clowning around, Mr. Nilly,” she said, a thin smile spreading over her thin lips. “Considering your modest size, I suggest that you stand on your desk while you address the class.”

To Mrs. Strobe's surprise, Nilly didn't wait to be asked twice, but leaped up onto his desk and hoisted his pants up by his suspenders.

“I live on Cannon Avenue with my sister and mother. We've lived in every county in Norway, plus a couple that aren't in Norway anymore. By which I mean, they were in Norway during the Ice Age, but once the ice started melting, big pieces broke off and drifted away in the ocean. One of the biggest pieces is called America now, and over there they have no idea that they're living on a chunk of ice that used to be part of Norway.”

“Mr. Nilly,” Mrs. Strobe interrupted. “Stick to the most important details, please.”

“The most important,” Nilly said, “is playing the trumpet in the Norwegian Independence Day parade on May seventeenth. Because playing the trumpet is like kissing a woman. Can anyone tell me where I can find the nearest marching band?”

But everyone in the classroom just stared at him with their mouths hanging open.

“Oh, yeah. I almost forgot,” Nilly said. “I was there this morning when one of the world's greatest inventions was invented. The inventor's name is Doctor Proctor and I was selected to be his assistant.
We're calling the invention Doctor Proctor's Far—”

“Enough!” Mrs. Strobe yelled. “You can take your seat, Mr. Nilly.”

Mrs. Strobe spent the rest of the class explaining the history of Norwegian Independence Day, but none of the children in the classroom were listening. They were just staring at the little bit of Nilly they could see sticking up over his desk. Then the bell rang.

AT RECESS NILLY stood by himself watching the other children play tag and hopscotch. He noticed Lisa, who was also standing there watching. Nilly was just about to go over to her when two large boys with crew cuts and barrel-shaped heads suddenly stepped in front of him, blocking his way. Nilly already had an idea of what was coming next.

“Hello, pip-squeak,” one of them said.

“Hello, O giants who wander the earth with heavy
footsteps, blocking out the sun,” Nilly said without looking up.

“Huh?” the boy said.

“Nothing, pit bulls,” Nilly said.

“You're new,” the other boy said.

“So what?” Nilly asked quietly. Even though he already knew more or less what the answer to the so-what question would be.

“New means we dunk you in the drinking fountain,” the other boy said.

“Why?” Nilly asked, even more quietly. He knew the answer to that, too.

The first boy shrugged. “Because … because … ,” he started, trying to think of the reason. And then all three of them—the two boys and Nilly, that is—all exclaimed in unison, “
because that's just the way it is
.”

The two boys looked around, obviously checking if any of the teachers were nearby. Then the bigger of the two boys grabbed Nilly's collar and lifted him
up. The other one took hold of Nilly's legs, and then they carried him off toward the drinking fountain in the middle of the playground. Nilly hung there like a limp sack of flour between those two, studying a little white cloud that looked like an overfed rhinoceros up in the breathtakingly blue sky. He could hear how it got quiet around him as children joined the procession, mumbling quietly in anticipation. He watched them fight for a chance to plug the openings of the other fountains with their fingers so that only one, powerful stream of water was left, shooting almost ten feet into the air. Nilly felt himself being lifted up and could feel the cold gust of air next to the stream of water. People started cheering.

“We christen you … ,” said the guy holding Nilly's legs.

“Flame Head the Pygmy,” the other said.

“Nice one, dude!” the first one yelled. “Guess we'd better put out his flame!”

The boys laughed so hard, it made Nilly shake up and down. Then they held him over the fountain of water, which shot Nilly right in the face, hitting his nose and mouth. He couldn't breathe, and for a second he thought he was going to drown, but then the hands lifted him up out of the stream. Nilly looked around, at all the children near the drinking fountains and at Lisa, who was still standing by herself at the edge of the playground.

“More, more!” the kids yelled. Nilly sighed and took a deep breath. Then they dunked him down into the water again.

Nilly didn't put up any opposition and didn't say a word. He just closed his eyes and mouth. He tried to imagine he was sitting at the front of his grandfather's motorboat with his head hanging out over the side, so the sea spray hit him in the face. Nice.

When the boys were done, they set Nilly down again and went on their way. Nilly's wet red hair stuck to his head, and his shoes squished. The other kids crowded around and watched, laughing at him, while Nilly pulled his T-shirt up from between the suspenders.

“Weak drinking fountains you guys have here,” he said loudly.

It got quiet around him. Nilly dried his face. “At Trafalgar Square in London they have a drinking fountain that shoots thirty feet straight up,” he said. “A friend of mine tried to drink from it. The water knocked out two molars and he swallowed his own braces. We saw an Italian guy get his wig knocked off when he went to take a drink.”

Nilly paused dramatically as he rang out his wet T-shirt. “True, some people said it wasn't a wig, that it was the Italian guy's own hair that had been pulled right out. I decided to try sitting on the fountain.” Nilly leaned to the side to get the water out of his ear.

Finally one of the kids asked, “What happened?”

“Well,” Nilly said, holding his nose and blowing
hard, first through one nostril and then the other.

“What did he say?” one of the kids who was standing farther back asked. The ones who were standing in front said, “Shhh!”

“From up where I was sitting, I could see all the way to France, which was more than five hundred miles away,” Nilly said, shaking his bangs and sending out a spray of water. “That may sound like an exaggeration,” he said, pulling a comb out of his back pocket and running it through his hair. “But you have to remember that it was an unusually clear day and that that part of Europe is extremely flat.”

Then Nilly plowed his way through the crowd of kids and walked over to Lisa at the edge of the playground.

“Well,” she said with a little smile. “What do you think of our school so far?”

“Not so bad,” he said. “No one's called me Silly Nilly yet.”

“Those two were Truls and Trym,” Lisa said. “They're twins and, unfortunately, they live on Cannon Avenue.”

Nilly shrugged. “Truls and Trym live everywhere.”

“What do you mean?” Lisa asked.

“Every street has Trulses and Tryms. You can't get away from them, no matter where you move,” Nilly explained.

Lisa thought about it. Could there be Trulses and Tryms in Sarpsborg, too?

“Did you find a new best friend yet?” Nilly asked.

Lisa shook her head. They stood there next to each other in silence, watching the other kids play, until Lisa asked, “Was that really true, what you said about Doctor Proctor and the invention?”

“Of course,” Nilly said with a wry smile. “Almost everything I say is true.”

Right then the bell rang.

Nilly Has an Idea

THAT AFTERNOON, NILLY knocked hard on the cellar door at the blue house. Three firm knocks. That was the signal they'd agreed on.

Doctor Proctor flung open the door and when he saw Nilly, he exclaimed, “Wonderful!” Then he raised one bushy eyebrow and lowered another bushy
eyebrow, pointed, and asked, “Who is that?”

“Lisa,” Nilly said.

“I can see that,” the professor said. “She lives across the street there if I'm not mistaken. What I mean is: What's she doing here? Didn't we agree that this project was top secret?”

“Obviously it's not that secret,” Lisa said. “Nilly told the whole class about it today.”

“What?” the professor exclaimed, frightened. “Nilly, is that true?”

“Uh,” Nilly said. “A little, maybe.”

“You told … you told … ,” the professor sputtered, waving his arms around in the air, while Nilly stuck out his lower lip and made his eyes look big, as if he were on the verge of tears. This facial expression, which Nilly had practiced especially for situations like this, made him look like a tiny little, very depressed camel. Because everyone knows that it's absolutely impossible to be mad at a very
depressed camel. The professor groaned, giving up, and lowered his arms again. “Well, well, maybe it's not so terrible. And you are my assistant after all, so I suppose it's all right.”

“Thanks,” Nilly said quietly.

“Sure, sure,” said the professor, waving his hands at Nilly. “You can stop trying to look like a camel now. Come in and close the door behind you.”

They did as he said, while Doctor Proctor hurried over to the test tubes and glass containers that were bubbling and smoking with something that smelled like cooked pears.