The Fantastic Family Whipple (23 page)

When both teams had taken their places, the booming voice made a surprise announcement.
“And now, rolling the first ball into play, please welcome the former captain
of the Indian National Team, Phoolendu Mahankali—and his elephant friend, Shiva!”

At the center of the arena, a third gate opened—and out strode the Panther-Man, sitting proudly atop the elephant’s back. Both were heavily bandaged—Mr. Mahankali with his arm in a sling and his head wrapped in gauze, Shiva with a brace on his front right leg and a huge bandage around his right ear.

Upon seeing the two famous figures enter the arena without assistance—battered but not broken—the entire crowd leapt to its feet, issuing an ovation louder than any it had yet given that day.

It was a fine match—perhaps the best Arthur had ever seen. In the last minutes of the final chukker, Cameroon pulled out a long-shot victory over Nepal, with a final score of 8 to 7
³
⁄
₄
. What’s more, there were only three tramplings and one goring this year—a substantial improvement over the previous year’s final, which had earned the competing countries the record for Bloodiest Match Ever Played.

But despite being witness to such a fine game of rhino polo, seeing Mr. Mahankali and Shiva had reminded Arthur of the other great casualty of the Birthday Cake Catastrophe: Sammy the Spatula.

In the days since the chef’s arrest, Arthur had done his best to uncover clues in the hopes of tracking down the mysterious clowns—but to little avail.

According to Gordon Carouser, the Whipple family’s party planner, there was no record of the disparately sized duo ever being at the Birthday Extravaganza. Somehow, they had managed to sneak onto the estate without an invitation and then slip off unseen—hardly a simple task for such a conspicuous couple.

But whatever unholy magic lay behind their apparent teleportation, Arthur remained optimistic. Given their extreme sizes, he figured they would not be able to hide from him forever. Because, honestly, how hard could it be to find a nine-foot-tall giant clown? Surely, as long as they had not fled the country or gone completely underground, it was only a matter of time before the dwarf and the giant crossed Arthur’s path again. And this time he’d be ready.

After filing out of the arena, the Whipples split off into two groups so that all the children might make their events on time. Mrs. Whipple and Mrs. Waite took Ivy and the octuplets off to compete in the Extreme Playground events—including extreme swing set, extreme seesaw, and extreme merry-go-round—while Mr. Whipple and Uncle Mervyn accompanied the older children as they made their way toward the Pogo Pavilion, where Arthur would be competing in his only event of the day: the junior division all-terrain rocket-stick race.

Though this marked the third year he had entered the competition, Arthur had not always been so familiar with
this particular unsafe sport. Indeed, the first time he had climbed onto a rocket stick, he had learned the hard way that—though a rocket stick looks very much like a large pogo stick—it actually contains an internal combustion engine just above its foot pegs. When the foot of a rocket stick strikes the ground, it is driven like a piston into a combustion chamber, where fuel is compressed and ignited, causing a small but concentrated explosion. This fires the piston down again and—with the aid of a sophisticated spring system—launches the stick and rider as high as fifteen feet into the air. This had come as quite a shock to Arthur at the time, who—being only four years old—had mistaken the thing for his own bouncy play toy. Terrified as he was, however, the thrill proved habit-forming, and he had spent the next five years attempting to qualify for the official race.

The event itself, of course, is conducted on a large spiraling track, with the starting line on the outside of the spiral and wide enough to accommodate the entire row of competitors, while the finish line is at the center of the spiral and only three riders wide. Arthur had always thought the word “track” was used rather loosely here. Once it was filled with boulders, logs, pits, and swamps, it looked hardly like a track at all but more like a massive rock garden—in hell.

As Arthur stepped under the banner marking the Pogo Pavilion’s entrance, he could no longer ignore the colony of killer butterflies that had begun to swarm in his stomach.

He had trained all year for this single race. Having competed in the event the previous two years with little success, he had much to prove that day—to himself, to his family, and to the world of unsafe sports.

In his first year of entry, Arthur had failed to complete the race at all, due to a nasty crash and a resulting equipment malfunction. The next year, he had not fared much better, ranking thirty-eighth out of thirty-nine participants—the only entrant behind him being Bonnie Prince Bobo, the pogo-sticking chimpanzee (who had subsequently vowed revenge on the boy for sending him to last place).

But this year would be different. Arthur had come a long way since his last defeat. He was another year older (a respectable 9 percent age increase over the prior year) and many of the top junior competitors had now graduated to the next division. Furthermore, he had since acquired new equipment (Henry’s old HopRocket RDX), and in one of his latest trial runs, he had only been two seconds away from matching the current world record.

“Good luck, lad!” Uncle Mervyn called as the boy emerged from the equipment locker with his rocket stick. “I’ve got a feeling about this one; Arthur Whipple will not be a name these spectators soon forget!”

“Thanks, Uncle Mervyn,” Arthur said with a nervous smile.

“Yes, Arthur,” added Mr. Whipple, trying his best to be encouraging, “I am confident in the possibility of you finishing this race without severe bodily harm!”

“Thanks, Father,” Arthur smiled again. Then, donning a beat-up crash helmet, he turned and headed toward the warm-up area.

As the competitors arranged themselves along the starting line, Arthur reached into his pocket and felt the corners of his magical domino. Rubbing the ebony tile for luck, the boy said a short prayer and promptly joined the others.

Looking about him, Arthur recognized many of his fellow contenders from previous years. Five riders to his left, at the center of the lineup, stood “Jump” Johnston—once the junior division’s biggest star, until last year’s race, when he had fractured his spine and been told he would never walk again. Fortunately, the prognosis hadn’t mentioned anything about his ability to rocket-stick, and—by some miracle—though still unable to walk on his own, Jump had re-taught himself to
ride
just in time for this year’s competition. Of course, he was only ranked thirty-second overall, but just to see him standing there on the starting line was truly an inspiring sight.

Six entrants to his right, Arthur spotted Andy Gravity—the rocket-stick prodigy poised to capture the crown from his debilitated predecessor. According to rocket-stick racing analysts, Andy was the one to beat.

Arthur looked at the next competitor—and shuddered. It was none other than his own simian nemesis: Bonnie Prince Bobo. Ever since he had bested the chimp in the previous
year’s race, Arthur had been receiving boxes of rotten banana peels through the post, with only a muddy monkey handprint for the return address. (Apparently, the Whipples’ address had been filled in by Bobo’s trainer, but it was hard to be too cross at
him
; if Arthur had managed to teach a chimpanzee to send things through the post, he’d probably not have been all that selective about what he sent out either.) Upon catching Arthur’s glance, Bobo flashed a freaky set of chimpanzee teeth at the boy, as if to say, “This year, you’re mine, chump!”

Arthur quickly looked past the primate toward the end of the line—at which point he noticed a girl who, though somehow familiar, he had not seen at any previous rocket-stick race. Recalling his own first experience in the event, Arthur couldn’t help but pity her. She really had no idea what she was in for.

Arthur then realized why the girl looked familiar. She was one of the Goldwin children who had introduced themselves at the Birthday Extravaganza—one of the ghost girl’s older sisters.

Suddenly struck by a related thought, Arthur shifted his gaze into the stands.

It took a few moments of scanning the crowd before he spotted her, but sure enough, there, leaning on the guard rail at the front of the steps, stood Ruby Goldwin. Her appearance, it seemed, had altered somehow since he’d last seen her—but as usual, she was already looking straight at him.

Even though he had almost expected to see her there, it proved no less of a shock. The last time he had seen Ruby Goldwin at one of his record attempts, it had caused him to spontaneously choke—though, to be fair, he
had
thought her a bloodthirsty poltergeist at the time. Since then, he had learned otherwise, and the two had actually shared some rather memorable moments together—but he still did not know exactly what to make of her. One thing was certain, however: this time, he would not let the Goldwin girl come between him and the finish line.

And so, as Arthur stood staring blankly back at Ruby—one foot on his rocket stick, one foot on the ground, unsure whether he was glad to see her or terrified, yet above all, determined not to be distracted by her once again—he was more than a bit dismayed to find himself the only entrant left at the starting line, suddenly engulfed in a cloud of dust.

Snapping his head to face forward, Arthur could just make out the flash of a green flag through a host of airborne rocket-stick riders before him. Wasting no time, the boy planted both feet on the pegs of his HopRocket RDX and sprang into action, already half a bounce behind his competitors.

His lack of readiness offset by a flood of adrenaline, Arthur sailed through the air for several seconds before touching down on a large, craggy boulder that many of his opponents had wisely avoided. Fortunately, the boy managed to hit the rock at just the right angle, so that the resulting launch carried him over the heads of half a dozen
riders at the rear of the pack and safely out of last place. Unfortunately, it also landed him within an arm’s length of his arch rival, the dreaded Bonnie Prince Bobo.

Immediately sensing Arthur’s presence, the chimp curled his lips into a menacing sneer, then burst into a flurry of unnerving grunts and shrieks. Arthur tried to remain calm—but he soon found himself under more than just a verbal attack.

As the two flew side by side through the air, the primate released the right side of his rocket-stick handle—and began swinging his free arm at the boy’s head.

“Ahhh!” Arthur cried as the chimp’s fingernails scraped against his helmet. (Hard as it was to accept at that moment, of course, Arthur knew the chimp’s tactics were well within the rules of rocket-stick racing, as they did not involve firearms or blades over two inches in length.)

The assault persisted for nearly a hundred yards—until the chimp veered inexplicably to the right, leaving Arthur alone and unbothered for the first time.

Relieved to find that Bobo’s battery attempts had finally ceased, the boy launched off a fallen tree—only to have the chimp pass directly in front of him a moment later, clipping his rocket stick and nearly wrenching it from his grasp.