Phineas L. MacGuire . . . Gets Slimed! (13 page)

When I got out of Mrs. Patino's office, lunch was almost over, and everybody in my class was on the playground. After I put my posters and my mold samples back in Mrs. Tuttle's room, I went outside and found Ben over by the jungle gym, planting some sticks in the ground.

“You can't make trees grow that way, you know,” I told him.

“I'm not growing trees,” he said. “I'm visualizing.”

“Visualizing what?”

“This scene I'm trying to draw in ‘Derek the Destroyer Meets the Amazon Volleyball Players.' The amazons are
chasing Derek through the jungle, and there's going to be this trap where a net falls down from some trees. Anyway, for some reason I've been having a hard time visualizing how the trap works.”

I sat down next to Ben. I was visualizing my hard work flushed down the toilet. I was visualizing a whole bunch of mold all dressed up with no place to go. In a few short days I had created a universe of mold—blue mold, green mold, snowy white mold, and speckled black mold—and for what? Instead of going into a museum to be admired by millions—or at least by the entire fourth grade of Woodbrook Elementary School— it would go into the trash.

Well, not the slime mold. The slime mold was staying in my room.

“Hey, Mac, didn't we have a deal?”

I looked up. Aretha was standing in front of me. She had her hand on her hip.

“If I recall correctly, you owe me some penicillin mold,” she went on. “My troop meets tomorrow. It would be nice to be able to make the penicillin before then so I can get my badge.”

I couldn't believe it. In all the excitement of the last few days, the big speech and the big presentation and now the big, huge, disappointing letdown of no mold museum, I'd forgotten all about the penicillium mold growing in our bathroom closet.

“I can bring what I have tomorrow,” I told her. “You know it's not going to be like some pink bubble-gum-tasting stuff in a childproof bottle, right? I mean, I grew the mold. I don't exactly know how to squeeze out the mold juice and turn
it into medicine. I guess that would be your part of the process.”

“Mold juice?” Aretha said. “Nobody ever said anything about mold juice.”

“That's what penicillin comes from,” I said. “Mold juice.”

“I don't know if the Girl Scouts will like that,” Aretha said.

“If they're like everybody else, they'll hate it,” I said. “They'll find it disgusting and gross and a health hazard. But it's just mold. It's part of nature's recycling project. You can use it for medicine or for blue cheese. What could be so wrong with it?”

“I love blue cheese,” Aretha said. “At least, I love blue cheese salad dressing.”

“It's mold,” I said with a sigh. “Just good old misunderstood mold.”

Aretha looked at me. “Let me guess.
Mrs. Patino said no to your mold museum idea.”

I nodded.

“Hey, you didn't tell me that,” Ben said. “That's really stinkazoid.”

“She said mold is a health hazard,” I said.

“Blue cheese is a health hazard?” Aretha folded her arms over her chest. “I don't think so.”

Then she turned to Ben. “Maybe we should make this part of our campaign. ‘A vote for Ben and Aretha is a vote for mold!' If we get elected, we could get everybody to sign a petition, and then Mrs. Patino would have to let Mac have his mold museum.”

“Um,” Ben said. He cleared his throat. “Um, there's something I need to tell you.”

Aretha eyed him suspiciously. “You have a problem with mold too?”

“Uh, no, that's not it,” Ben said. “It's just that I've decided not to run for president.”

“What? Why not?”

Ben looked at his sticks. “Because I think you should be president. You'd do a lot better job than I would.”

“But I don't want to be president,” Aretha said. “I don't even want to be vice president. All I want is twenty merit badges by December.”

“If you didn't want to be vice president, why did you agree to run on my ticket?” Ben asked.

“Because I didn't think you would win, quite frankly,” Aretha said. “Besides, I needed some help making penicillin, remember?”

“But now I probably am going to win,” Ben said. “Only, the only reason I'm probably going to win is because of you. When you and I made that speech, everybody saw that you're, like, a leader or something. I'm just an artist.”

“I do have natural leadership abilities, it's true,” Aretha admitted. “But I do not have political drive. The only time I really got excited about the election was when we made that speech together. Then it didn't seem like politics. It seemed like fun.”

“It's like Ben has the drive and you have the skills,” I said. “And together you make a team that people want to vote for.”

“We do make a good team,” Aretha agreed. “It's not something I would have predicted, but I have to admit it's a fact. And I guess after we made that speech, I did start to feel like being vice president would be interesting. Although, frankly, I would make a better president than vice president. Ben's right about that.”

A flash went off in my head. “So why don't you switch?” I asked.

“Switch what?” Ben asked.

“Why doesn't Aretha run for president and you run for vice president? Because Aretha would be a great president, which everybody knew the minute you guys started making your speech, including Aretha. But you'd make a good vice president, Ben. You're the one who would bring creativity and energy to your administration.”

Ben and Aretha looked at each other. They nodded.

A switch. What a brilliant concept.

Really, sometimes I amaze myself with my own geniosity.

The next genius idea came from Ben.

Which sort of surprised me, if you want to know the truth.

I mean, he's a great artist and everything, but his ideas aren't usually so hot. Like the time he decided to draw an entire Derek the Destroyer story on his bedroom walls.

Using permanent markers.

Specifically speaking, using Midnight Black permanent markers, which can
never ever be washed off, even if your mom has a total fit when she sees what you've done.

That's a pretty typical Ben idea.

His genius idea came after his dad's visit, after Ben and Aretha won the election on Thursday morning. Even though Ben was only vice president and not president, his dad still flew all the way from Seattle.

It turns out that Ben's dad thinks being vice president will look almost as good on Ben's résumé as being president.

Not that Ben has a résumé.

To be honest, I'm not even sure Ben knows what a résumé is.

When Ben's dad came to visit him the weekend after the election, he gave Ben his old video camcorder, since he'd just gotten a new mini-DV camcorder. He told Ben if he wanted to be an artist so much, he should at least be a video artist so he could make some money. Ben said he would think about it, which made his dad happy.

One day Ben's dad will accept him for being the comic-book artist genius that he is. But for now Ben is having a lot of fun taking videos of everything that moves.

Even stuff that moves really, really slowly.

Ever watched a video of slime mold?

Now you can, every day at lunch, in the basement of Woodbrook Elementary School.

Mr. Reid provides the snacks.

Not that too many of the people watching the video have really felt like eating snacks. I like to think this is because they are so in love with the slime mold that they are too enraptured to even think about eating.

But I'm pretty sure it's because they're grossed out.

It took three weeks to make the video. Every day Ben would come over to my house, and we would set up bright lights and film the slime mold race.

From day to day it was hard to see any progress. But when you looked at three weeks of tape all run together, you could really see the molds moving.

It's possible that slime mold racing will be the next big trend at Woodbrook Elementary.

Ben also videotaped me telling all the wondrous facts about mold, what it is and what it does. And Lyle lent me his digital camera so I could take lots of pictures of the mold I grew at home, as well as mold I found out in the woods and other places, such as my refrigerator and Ben's shower. I put the pictures into a slide show that Mr. Reid shows on his computer for anybody that's interested.