The Attack of the Aqua Apes (7 page)

“Noooooo!”
Kelly screamed and burst into tears.

Scott felt like screaming, too—when he saw Mac clap his hands with joy. Then the little ape leaped off the bed and darted across the floor—in plain view.

“Maybe you should go down in the kitchen and put some peanut butter in Kelly's hair,” Scott blurted out. He had to get everyone out of there—fast.

Kelly cried harder and his mother frowned at
him. “Really,” Scott said. “Glen got some gum in his hair once and that's how his mom got it out.” No one bothered to answer.

Mac stood between Kelly's bare feet, grinning up at Scott.

“I promise you, it'll grow back,” their mother said, trying to comfort Kelly.

Scott picked up one of the stuffed animals on Kelly's bed and hurled it at Mac. He missed. Mac waved at him.

“Leave my stuff alone!” Kelly wailed.

Scott's father glanced at him with angry, narrowed eyes.

“I can't even begin to imagine how this happened,” Scott's father began, trying to break the tension. “What were you doing? Having a wrestling match in your sleep?” he asked. He was trying to make Kelly smile. It wasn't working.

Scott gasped as Mac strutted toward his father's pajama leg.

“What?” Scott's father asked.

“Nothing,” Scott lied. He watched Mac crawl closer to his dad. “I just can't believe that Kelly's got to get her hair cut off, that's all.”

“Drop dead!” Kelly screamed. Then she shoved Scott off the bed.

This was his chance.

His only chance.

Scott fell to the floor. He sprawled out at his father's feet and stretched his hand out to grab Mac.

His eyes met Mac's for a moment.

Scott swore Mac winked at him. Then he scampered to the wall and slithered right down one of the large, open air vents.

Oh, no
, Scott thought.
Mac is running loose in the house—and I don't know what he'll do next.

He's out of control!

“H
e's running loose in my house!” Scott told Glen for the hundredth time. “We've got to get him out of there!”

Scott turned his bicycle into his driveway and hurried into the garage. Glen was right behind him.

All day at school Scott had asked himself the same question over and over: What is Mac doing now?

“I can't believe you didn't tell your mom about Mac,” Glen said, parking his bike.

“Do you know what kind of trouble I'd be in if she knew about Mac?”

“Yeah.” Glen nodded. “But what if she saw Mac running around the house today? Or what if he did something even worse? Just think how really mad she'll be. What are you going to say then?”

“We're going to play dumb,” he told Glen. “If something bad has happened, let me do all the talking.”

“Let's start looking for Mac in the den,” Scott suggested. “That's where the air vents in Kelly's room lead to.”

Scott turned the doorknob to the den. He hesitated for a moment. Okay, he thought. Now I'm ready—for anything.

But he wasn't ready for what he saw when he opened the door. Kelly stood in the den. Her hair was cut shorter than he'd ever seen it. It was almost as short as his hair.

“Doesn't Kelly's hair look nice?” his mother asked in a tone of voice that told Scott the only acceptable answer was
yes.

But Scott couldn't speak.

Glen picked up the slack. “Nice hairdo, Kelly.”

“Yeah. Nice hairdo, Kel,” Scott repeated.

That seemed to satisfy Scott's mother. “See,” she said to Kelly. “Didn't I tell you?”

Then she turned her attention back to Scott. “Kelly and I are going out for a few minutes,” she told him. “We have to go to the fabric store to pick up a little more material for Kelly's dress. We shouldn't be too long. Please behave while I'm gone.” She always said that last part before she left the house.

“Okay,” Scott answered. He couldn't wait for his mother to leave. He needed time to search for Mac.

When Scott's mother opened the door, she hesitated. “It looks like it's going to rain,” she said. “Maybe we shouldn't go now.”

“Mom,” Kelly whined. “We have to go. Puh-lease.”

“Okay, okay,” their mom gave in.

Kelly turned back to them before she stepped into the hall. “My dress is on the couch,” she said. “Don't you dare touch it while we're gone.” Then she slammed the door behind her.

Glen crossed over to the couch and touched the dress. “There. I touched it,” he said.

“It doesn't seem like my mom knows anything about Mac,” Scott said, relieved.

“If you're lucky, she'll never find out,” Glen replied. “At least he hasn't done anything bad since this morning.”

“We've got about an hour before my mom gets back. We've
got
to find him.” Scott headed out of the den. “Let's start with my room.”

As they passed the kitchen, Scott heard a noise. A loud, crunching noise. Glen heard it, too.

“What is that?” Glen asked.

“I don't know.” Scott walked slowly into the kitchen toward the sound. It came from one of the cabinets.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

“What is that?” Glen repeated.

“There's only one way to find out,” Scott answered. He reached out and grabbed one of the cabinet handles.

He really didn't want to open it.

He knew that there was trouble behind that door. Big trouble that started with the letter
M!

But he had no choice.

He had to open that door.

S
cott slowly swung the cabinet door open.

And Mac tumbled out—in an avalanche of cereal, pasta, beans, sugar, and flour.

“Look what he did!” Scott cried.

Every box in the cabinet had been clawed to shreds. And half-eaten food littered the cabinet everywhere—chewed-up cookies, gnawed macaroni, crunched Cruncho-Crispies—Kelly's favorite cereal—nibbled lima beans, chomped crackers, munched potato chips.

“He opened every single box and tasted everything,” Glen noted. “Except the prunes.”

It was true. The box of prunes remained untouched on the cabinet shelf.

Scott glanced around the kitchen. The food had tumbled out of the cabinet, onto the counter, and had spilled onto the floor.

And there was Mac. Standing in the middle of it. Covered in flour. He looked like the Abominable Snowman.

As he stomped around the crumbs, picking out cracker pieces, little clouds of flour puffed from his furry body.

“My mom's going to go crazy when she sees this!”

“Don't worry,” Glen told him. “We'll clean it up before she gets home.”

Scott hoped they would have time to do that. But first he had to figure out a way to get Mac under control. And he didn't have a lot of time to think about it.

There was only one thing for Scott to do. He was going to have to grab Mac quickly and find something to put him in. Something with a lid.

Scott knew that he had to move fast. He couldn't give Mac time to escape again. So, without any warning, Scott dove right at Mac, sliding on some flour and rice.

But, as usual, Mac was quicker than Scott. In
fact he was so quick it took Scott a minute to realize that he didn't have Mac in his grip.

“Get him, Glen!” Scott shouted as Mac tore across the kitchen floor.

Glen lunged for Mac. Only Mac was way too fast for Glen. He dodged him. And Glen went sailing across the floor right smack into one of the legs of the kitchen table. Head first.

“Oooooouch!”
Glen moaned. “I think I broke my head!”

“You did not break your head,” Scott groaned.

“Yeah, well it sure feels like it,” Glen shot back, rubbing his forehead. “My whole head is pounding.”

“If we don't catch Mac and clean this place up before my mother gets home, it's going to be pounding even more,” Scott said as he pulled Glen to his feet. “Because she's going to be screaming at us at the top of her lungs.”

Glen bolted out of the kitchen. “Come on,” he shouted. “If Mac ran straight when he left the kitchen, he should be in your father's study.”

Scott nearly choked at the sight in his father's study. Glen was right. Mac was in his father's study. Or at least he had been.

Papers and files and books covered the floor. The old-fashioned inkwell his father kept in the
center of the desk had been knocked over. And ink was dripping all over his father's fancy leather blotter.

“Your mother's not going to be the only one screaming at the top of her lungs,” Glen said as he stood staring at the mess.

“Tell me about it.” Scott's heart sank. He knew that there was no way in the world they would be able to clean up his father's study and the kitchen before his mother returned home.

“Wh-what are we going to do?” Glen stammered.

“First we have to find Mac,” Scott answered. “And we'd better find him fast—before he destroys the whole house!”

Scott took off down the hallway, with Glen right behind him. If Mac was still moving in a straight line, he was probably headed for the one room that was off-limits to everyone—the dining room!

“Hurry up,” Scott urged Glen. All of his mother's expensive china and crystal were displayed in the dining room. And if something happened to any of her “good stuff,” his mother would kill him. It was as simple as that.

Scott rushed into the dining room and glanced around frantically.

It took him a minute to realize that everything was okay.

Nothing was broken.

Mac hadn't been in the room.

“At least he's not in here,” Scott said, feeling incredibly relieved.

Only he wasn't relieved for long.

When he left the dining room and headed into the den, he saw something so horrifying that he wished Mac had broken all of his mother's fine crystal instead.

A pile of smashed crystal would have been a whole lot easier for his mother to forgive.

K
elly's dress. The dress for the dance.

The one that Scott's mother had been working so hard on for weeks . . . was ruined.

Scott covered his face. He couldn't stand to look at what Mac had done.

Both sleeves had been torn off. One of them was on the floor, ripped to shreds. The other was stuck to the side of the couch with pins.

There were gold beads tossed all over the room. But there wasn't a single one on Kelly's dress anymore. It had taken his mother days to sew on all those beads!

Worst of all, horrible stains covered almost
every inch of the material. Stains that looked like they had come from a thick black marker.

“Your mom is going to go ballistic if she sees this!” Glen shrieked.

“Yeah.” Scott uncovered his face and stared, dumbfounded, at the disaster. “And she's going to blame us.”

“Not if we fix it before she gets home. That's what we'll do. We'll fix it. You'll see. Everything will be okay. We'll fix everything.” Glen ran around the room trying to collect all the beads.