Joe Sherlock Kid Detective 2 The Neighborhood Stink (5 page)

My Pants Are Alive!

At first I think my legs are falling asleep like Hailey’s. But no matter which way I fold them, my legs still feel way weird. It’s dark in the shadows under the stinky bush where I’m hiding, so it takes a few minutes for my eyes to adjust and confirm my worst fear: My pants have come to life!

I blink hard and look again. Sure enough, my pants are moving and my legs are not.

“Aaaaaaagh!” I shriek, slapping at my pants like they’ve burst into flames. I jump out of the bush and see that my pants are covered with ants. Thousands of ants. Million of ants.

Grillions of ants! Then I freeze in terror. . . .

They’re IN MY PANTS, too!!!

I should point out here that I get totally freaked out by ants. I’ve been this way since I chose to sleep with my ant farm one night when I couldn’t find my favorite teddy bear, Hank the Humming Bear. During the middle of the night, I woke up covered with ants and ran screaming right into my closet, where I cracked my head open on the bar you’re sup-posed to hang your clothes on. Thirteen stitches later, my dad vacuumed up my ant farm, and we haven’t discussed the incident since. So you can see how I might be a little touchy about the whole ants-in-my-pants business.

The next few minutes are a blur. But I fall onto Mrs. Fefferland’s driveway and rip off my pants just as Mr. Fefferland turns into his driveway after a long trip to Singapore.

Somehow I manage to stop screaming in terror long enough to wave hello.

Mr. Fefferland seems to take the whole wacko scene in stride.

“Is everything all right, Sherlock?” he asks as he steps out of his car with his trusty briefcase in hand. Nothing like returning from a business trip to find a wild-eyed kid in your driveway with no pants on.

“It’s sort of a long story,” I croak. “I’m working for your wife.”

“I see,” he says slowly. “Does she pay you a lot for this sort of thing?”

He asks this like he’s in some kind of business meeting. I’m not sure how to respond because I’ve never been to a business meeting.

“I was helping her out with her poop problem,” I stutter.

“I wasn’t aware she had one,” he replies.

“And is this dance of yours helping her with her pooping?”

Even in my panic, I know that this is not going well. To make matters worse, I’m wearing my Inspector Wink-Wink underwear.

Inspector Wink-Wink was my favorite detective in the first grade, and I watched his cartoon show every chance I got. I even had cool Inspector Wink-Wink bedsheets until my sister washed them in her Girl Chat Sleepover washing machine and turned them flamingo pink.

So there I am, a fourth grader wearing goofy little-kid underwear, standing in my neighbor’s driveway, breaking the bad news about his wife’s poop problem. If my life were a TV show, this would be a great time to go to a commercial.

“I’ll go and get some pants without ants!”

I shout, hurrying down the driveway like some kind of pantless lunatic. “I’ll be back to explain later.”

“I can’t wait to hear it,” Mr. Fefferland calls after me.

As if this whole episode isn’t bad enough, I’m sprinting back to a house that’s been locked tight from the inside by its unofficial gatekeeper. I don’t know it yet, but I’m about to cross paths with my always-annoyed, eye-rolling, brother-bugging big sister, Jessie.

Fort Sherlock and the Wicked Gatekeepers

“Jessie, open up!” I demand while standing on the welcome mat in my Inspector Wink-Wink briefs.

“Whatever it is you’re selling, we don’t want it,” I hear her say from behind the door, and then laugh with my little sister like twin hyenas.

One of Jessie’s most favorite hobbies is locking me out of the house. If it were degrees outside and I were dying of thirst, she would lock me out of the house and think it was the funniest thing ever to happen on Earth since a hairy caveman somewhere in France discovered the practical joke.

I press the doorbell over and over, even though it broke several months ago. I’m sure my dad will get around to fixing it right after he mows our overgrown lawn.

“You’ll be sorry,” I threaten, but this just makes them laugh harder.

I jump back when the door’s mail slot squeaks open and a sandwich slides through and drops onto the welcome mat. At least my assistant remembered to get me something to eat! I snatch up the sandwich and peel back the top slice of bread. Peanut butter. “Wha’?”

I say stupidly. “Hailey, you know I’m allergic to peanut butter!” I shout at the peephole.

The howling laughter that erupts from behind the door is so thunderous, I think they might pass out from lack of oxygen.

I rest my forehead on the cool door and think of the utter inconvenience of a peanut allergy. I’m sure the great Sherlock Holmes never had to worry about his head swelling up like a hot-air balloon if he ate a peanut. I’m even more allergic to bee stings. In fact, if I ever got stung by a bee while eating a peanut-butter sandwich, I would surely explode.

It’s at a time like this that you won-der what life would be like with brothers instead of annoying sisters. “Probably pretty dang normal,” I mumble to myself.

Sometimes I imagine that I have two brothers, with real tough names like Shane and Buck. They teach me how to chop wood, track wild boars through the woods, and spit really far. I imagine that me and my two brothers dress like cowboys and rid our neighborhood of crime and bullies.

We hold Olympic- style games in our backyard and improve our athletic abilities to almost genius levels.

We build an air-conditioned tree house that—“Hi, Sherlock,” a voice suddenly says from behind me.

For the first time ever, my blood really does turn cold. Ice-water cold. Antarctica cold. No matter how bad life gets for me in the future, this will be one of the true low

points. Why? This giggled greeting came from Sharon Sheldon, the smartest kid in my class and probably the most popular girl in our whole entire school.

“I’m sort of busy, Sharon,” I say without turning around to face her.

“Yeah, it looks like it,” she snickers. “Did you lose your house keys when you lost your pants?”

“What pants?” I say, as if it’s perfectly normal to stand on your welcome mat in your underwear.

“Or are you trying to unlock that door with your sandwich?” she asks, really enjoying herself now.

I wish this day could start all over again.

“That’s not Inspector Wink-Wink underwear, is it?” she says quietly.

On second thought, perhaps I should start my entire life over again.

At this point, I still haven’t turned around, and you would think someone as smart and popular as Sharon Sheldon would get the hint that I don’t feel like casual chitchat at the moment.

“Uh,” I say, like some sort of underwear-wearing Frankenstein. “Uh, I’m on a case—”

“My brother loves you!” screeches Hailey through the mail slot. She screams this so loud, I almost lose my breath. “Sherlock wants to marry you!” comes another mail-slot screech. More laughing and giggling from the other side of the door. I will never be able to leave the house again.

“That’s just my dopey sisters,” I say, spinning around quickly. But Sharon Sheldon is gone. She’s vanished. There’s no trace of her.

She has probably ridden off on her bike to report a hot story for tomorrow’s gossip col-umn in the Baskerville Daily News.

That’s when I remember a forgotten doorway into our house that I’m sure my sisters have forgotten to lock. There is no time to waste. I have a case to solve by dinner . . .

and my legs are getting cold.