Lice Check Read online

  For Amanda, for reasons only she will understand—NK

  For Deanna (finally), thanks for putting up with all of us for so long!—AB

  GROSSET & DUNLAP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Text copyright © 2014 by Nancy Krulik. Illustrations copyright © 2014 by Aaron Blecha. All rights reserved. Published by Grosset & Dunlap, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN 978-0-698-16759-9

  Version_1

  Contents

  Dedication

  Copyright

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  About the Author

  “My head itches,” George Brown said as he scratched hard at his scalp. “Bad.”

  “Mine, too,” George’s best friend Alex added. “I’m hoping it’s psychosomatic.”

  “Psycho what?” George asked him.

  “Psy-cho-so-mat-ic,” Alex repeated slowly. He scratched the back of his neck. “It means it’s all in your head.”

  “Which is where lice wind up,” George said. “On your head.”

  “Not on your head,” Alex explained. “In your head. When you hear someone say the word lice it makes you itch, even if you don’t have any.”

  George sure hoped Alex was right and he was just imagining the itchy feeling all over his head. The last thing he wanted was to be sent home with bugs in his hair.

  “I hate lice checks,” Julianna told George and Alex. “It always takes the nurse so long to go through my hair.” She scratched her head.

  Seeing Julianna scratch made George scratch. Which made Alex scratch. A lot of the kids waiting in the lice-check line were scratching. Sage was scratching so hard George thought she might make her scalp bleed.

  The only kid not scratching was Louie Farley. “I’m not worried about having lice,” Louie explained. “My brother, Sam, went through lice checks the whole time he was here, and he never once had them. Lice know better than to invade a Farley forehead.”

  “I guess brains know better than to invade a Farley forehead, too,” George whispered to Alex.

  Alex laughed as quietly as he could. “I’ll say,” he whispered. “No one is immune to a lice invasion—except maybe bald guys.”

  “I’d rather have lice than be bald,” George said. He scratched the back of his ear.

  This itching was awful. But not nearly as awful as the bubbling feeling George suddenly felt in the bottom of his belly.

  Bing-bong. Ping-pang.

  George gulped. Those bubbles weren’t just your usual, run-of-the-mill kind of bubbles. They were strong, powerful bubbles. Bubbles that slam-danced against his spleen and kickboxed with his kidneys. Bubbles that could burst out of him at any moment, and . . .

  George let out a powerful burp. A super burp. A burp so loud and so strong, it knocked a louse right off the head of a fifth-grader waiting in line to be checked. And, boy, was that louse surprised.

  “Dude, no!” Alex gulped.

  Dude, yes! The burp had been set free. And now whatever the burp wanted to do, George would do.

  The next thing George knew, he was on all fours, crawling all around the floor like a wild, crazy giant louse.

  “George! Get back in line and wait for your lice check!” his teacher, Mrs. Kelly, scolded.

  George wanted to get back in line to wait and not bug everyone. He really did. But he was powerless. The burp was in charge now. And it didn’t feel like waiting in line like a good student. It felt like crawling around like a lousy louse.

  So George crawled right down the lice-check line. Past Julianna. Past Sage. Past Max. Past Mike. He didn’t stop crawling until he was right in front of Louie!

  “Get away from me, you weirdo freak!” Louie shouted.

  George’s hand reached out and started tickling Louie’s tummy—like a louse tickling someone’s head. “Cut that out!” Louie complained. Then he started wiggling and jiggling, too. Only Louie wasn’t wiggling because of a burp. Louie was wiggling because he was ticklish.

  Tickle, tickle, tickle. George’s fingers tickled Louie’s armpits. George didn’t want to be sticking his fingers in Louie’s pits. But he couldn’t help himself. Tickle, tickle, tickle.

  “Cut . . . ha-ha-ha . . . it . . . ha-ha-ha . . . out!” Louie said.

  But George kept tickling. Tickle . . . tickle . . . tick . . . POP! Just then George felt something burst in the bottom of his belly. All the air rushed out of him. The super burp was gone.

  But George was still there. With his fingers in Louie’s pits. Yuck.

  “George Brown! Keep your hands to yourself,” Mrs. Kelly told him.

  George pulled his hands back. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. And he meant it. He was really sorry he had touched Louie’s sweaty armpits. Gross.

  “I’m glad this day’s over,” George said as he sat down at the table in Alex’s living room after school.

  “Yeah. That was a bad burp,” Alex said. “We gotta find you a cure before something really awful happens.”

  “Something really awful did happen,” George insisted. “I can’t believe I stuck my fingers in Louie’s pits,” he groaned. “I washed my hands three times, with soap, and they still stink.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like your super burp,” Alex said. “I’ve read all the scientific websites I could find, and I’ve never found documentation of a burp like that. Your burps are real record breakers.”

  Usually being told he was a record breaker would have made George happy. Especially coming from Alex, who was the only kid he knew who had made it into the Schminess Book of World Records. But having a record-breaking burp did not make George happy.

  It all started on George’s first day at Edith B. Sugarman Elementary School. George’s dad was in the army, and his family moved around a lot. So there always seemed to be some new school where he was the new kid.

  But this time, George had promised himself that things were going to be different. He was turning over a new leaf. No more pranks. No more being the class clown. He wasn’t going to get into trouble anymore, like he had at all his old schools. He was going to raise his hand before he spoke. He wasn’t going to make funny faces or goof on his teachers behind their backs.

  At the end of his first day, George had managed to stay out of trouble. But you didn’t have to be a math whiz like Alex to figure out how many friends being a well-behaved, not-so-funny kid will get you. Zero. Zilch. None.

  That night, George’s paren
ts took him out to Ernie’s Ice Cream Emporium. While they were sitting outside and George was finishing his root beer float, a shooting star flashed across the sky. So George made a wish.

  I want to make kids laugh—without getting into trouble.

  Unfortunately, the star was gone before George could finish the wish. So only half came true—the first half.

  A minute later, George had a funny feeling in his belly. It was like there were hundreds of tiny bubbles bouncing around in there. The bubbles bounced up and down and all around. They ping-ponged their way into his chest, and bing-bonged their way up into his throat. And then . . .

  George let out a big burp. A huge burp. A SUPER burp!

  The super burp was loud, and it was magic.

  Suddenly George lost control of his arms and legs. It was like they had minds of their own. His hands grabbed straws and stuck them up his nose like a walrus. His feet jumped up on the table and started dancing the hokey pokey. Everyone at Ernie’s Emporium started laughing—except George’s parents, who were covered in ice cream from the sundaes he had knocked over.

  The magic super burp came back many times after that. And every time the burp came, it brought trouble. Like the time it made him act like a dog and start barking during the fourth-grade field day. He’d even licked Principal McKeon’s hand! Blech!

  George never knew when a burp would strike or what it would make him do. He might dive-bomb headfirst into Principal McKeon’s lap during the school talent show. Or drop raw pizza dough on his head. Or literally dance his pants off on a live TV show. Millions of TV viewers had gotten a good view of George’s tighty whities that time!

  The only other person who knew about the super burp was Alex. Luckily, Alex was such a great friend that he was using all his scientific know-how to try to find a way to squelch that belch once and for all.

  “Don’t worry,” Alex told George. “We’ll find a burp cure. You’ll see.”

  George looked at the floor. He didn’t really feel like talking about the burp anymore. He’d rather talk about anything else. Even lice.

  “I’ve never actually seen a louse up close,” George told Alex. “Have you?”

  Alex shook his head. Then he started to type something on his computer.

  “Well, this is what they look like,” Alex said. He moved away from the computer so George could see the video image of the top of some guy’s head. There were bugs crawling around his part and white dots stuck to his hair.

  “It says that the white things are nits,” Alex told George. “Lice eggs, waiting to hatch.”

  “Whoa,” George said. Some of the little white eggs were hatching. George scratched his scalp. “You better turn that off,” he told Alex. “Just looking at those lice is making me itch.”

  George really hoped he didn’t get any bugs or nits on his head. It was bad enough having a magical super burp around. He didn’t need lice, too. How much trouble could one guy take?

  “How come you didn’t come to school with Chris today?” Alex asked George as the boys headed into their classroom Friday morning. “You guys always walk together.”

  “Yeah,” George said, “except when there are bugs walking around on Chris’s head.”

  “Oh.” Alex nodded. “Chris got lice, huh?”

  “Yup,” George told him. “A bunch of kids in his class had it. What’s worse is Chris gave lice to his sister and brother. All three of them are home today. His mom’s cleaning their whole house.”

  “Bummer,” Louie said as he walked by and sat down at his desk. He let out a little laugh. It didn’t sound like he felt bad for Chris at all.

  George scowled. Louie could be a real jerk. But today he was a real stinky jerk. George pinched his nose and moved his desk away from Louie’s. “You smell,” he said.

  “Yeah, what’s with the garlic?” Alex asked.

  Louie fingered the necklace of garlic he was wearing around his neck. “This will keep the lice away,” he announced in a voice so loud, the whole class heard him.

  Everyone turned and looked at Louie, which was exactly what Louie had been hoping for. Louie loved being the center of attention.

  “Garlic wards off lice,” Louie told the kids.

  “That’s for vampires,” Julianna said. “Not lice.”

  Sage nodded. “Julianna’s right. I saw it in a movie once.”

  “Well, actually, lice are sort of like vampire bats,” Alex said. “Vampire bats bite into cattle and suck their blood. Lice dig their claws into human scalps and then suck the blood right out.”

  “That’s what I told you guys,” Louie said.

  George laughed. That wasn’t at all what Louie had said. He probably had no idea what lice ate. But Alex did. Alex knew all kinds of scientific stuff.

  “Of course, there’s no evidence that garlic keeps vampire bats or lice away,” Alex continued.

  “Boy, Alex,” George said. “You’re going to be an amazing scientist when you grow up.”

  “Thanks,” Alex said with a smile.

  “He could be a mathemachicken, too,” Max pointed out. “He knows a lot of math.”

  “That’s mathematician,” Louie corrected Max. “And I could be one of those, too. Did you see how fast I did the long-division problem at the board yesterday?”

  “That was really amazing,” Max said. He gave Louie a big smile.

  George rolled his eyes. It wasn’t that amazing. Louie hadn’t even gotten the problem right.

  Mrs. Kelly stopped writing on the board and turned to smile at the class. “I’m so glad to hear you all discussing different careers,” she said.

  George looked at Mrs. Kelly strangely. They hadn’t really been talking about careers. They were mostly talking about vampires, bats, and blood. Cool stuff. But leave it to a teacher to find the lesson in anything.

  “After all,” Mrs. Kelly continued, “as you know, Career Day is coming up next Tuesday. So the more you think about what careers you want to learn about, the better. Becoming a mathematician or a scientist are both really great career options. But there’s no reason to decide now what profession you will have when you grow up. Not with so many to choose from.”

  Mrs. Kelly gave the kids one of her gummy smiles. George could see a big piece of yellow goo on one of her teeth. Apparently, Mrs. Kelly had eggs for breakfast.

  “I am very pleased that so many of your parents have agreed to come to school on Tuesday to talk to all the fourth- and fifth-graders about their careers,” Mrs. Kelly continued. “The whole gym will be filled with Career Day booths. You can walk around and see lots of presentations.”

  “Do we have to go around to all the booths?” Max asked.

  “You couldn’t possibly see them all. There will be too many,” Mrs. Kelly answered. “So you should pick the ones that seem the most interesting to you.”

  “Since we won’t have any classes on Tuesday, does that mean no homework Monday night?” Mike wondered.

  “Well, actually, you will each have a report to hand in Tuesday morning before you go into the gym,” Mrs. Kelly told him. “I want you to interview one of your parents about his or her career.”

  “I already know all about my dad’s career,” Louie said. “He’s a lawyer. He sues people.”

  “I’m sure there’s a lot more to it than that,” Mrs. Kelly said.

  “Oh yeah,” Louie agreed. “It’s hard work being a lawyer. My dad is exhausted from it. He comes home and collapses on the couch every night. You should hear him snoring.”

  George rolled his eyes. Louie didn’t make being a lawyer sound like much fun. Not that that was too surprising, coming from Louie. George figured Louie might grow up to be a vampire one day. He already knew how to suck the fun out of everything—even something as cool as Career Day.

  Grumble. Rumble.

  George was so
hungry that his stomach seemed to be talking to him. Feed me. Feed me, it grumbled. But his stomach was going to have to wait.

  “I can’t believe we’re having another lice check. And before lunch,” George complained. He scratched his itchy head and patted his empty stomach. “I wish Nurse Cuttaway would hurry up. I’m starving.”

  “I think it’s taking her so long because so many kids have lice today,” Alex told him. “Look over in the Lice Corner.”

  The Lice Corner was the part of the hall where the kids who had lice were forced to sit until their parents came and got them. There were twenty kids sitting there—and Nurse Cuttaway had only gone through about half of the school’s heads.

  George scratched his scalp again. He swore he felt something crawling around up there. He hoped he was just imagining it.

  “No! I can’t! It can’t be true!”

  George suddenly heard someone scream. He looked over at the lice chair and saw Sage. She was holding her hands over her face and sobbing.

  “I’m sorry, Sage,” Nurse Cuttaway told her. “But you’ll have to go home and wash your hair with Louse-Away shampoo.”

  “I can’t have lice. I can’t!” Sage cried. She suddenly leaped up from the chair and started running down the hall. She stopped when she reached George. “Georgie, help me,” she sobbed.

  Oh man. George hated when Sage called him Georgie. It was so embarrassing. What did Sage want him to do about this, anyway?

  Sage stopped crying long enough to flutter her eyelashes. “I need a hug.”

  Oh no. No way was that happening. George wouldn’t hug Sage on a good day—never mind a day when she had lice crawling around on her head. He had to get away from her.

  “I’ll go next,” George volunteered, pushing his way to the front of the lice-check line.