How Do You Pee in Space? Read online

  For Ian and Mandy: Never stop reaching for the stars!—NK

  For Faith—out of this world super agent!—AB

  GROSSET & DUNLAP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  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 978-0-698-19310-9

  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

  Chapter 10

  About the Author and Illustrator

  “Remember, class, we’re not the only school visiting the planetarium today, so I expect you to be on your best field-trip behavior,” Mrs. Kelly said as she led the Edith B. Sugarman fourth-graders into the Beaver Brook Planetarium. “Your very best field-trip behavior,” she added, looking straight at George Brown.

  George frowned. Teachers always looked at him when they said stuff like that. He sat down at the end of the row and stared up at the round ceiling. Mrs. Kelly had nothing to worry about with him. He wasn’t going to cause any trouble during the field trip.

  At least he was going to try not to cause any trouble.

  Just then, the lights went down. Bright stars twinkled overhead. A recording of a man’s deep, booming voice came over a loudspeaker.

  “The stars in our night sky have been burning for centuries,” he said. “The same stars we see now were viewed by the pharaohs of ancient Egypt and the philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome. Those people long ago noticed that the stars were grouped together in shapes, which we call constellations.”

  George frowned and squirmed around in his seat. Bo-ring.

  “These stars form the Big Dipper,” the voice continued, as lines connecting some stars appeared on the ceiling of the planetarium. “And these form the Little Dipper.”

  George wiggled around in his seat some more. Was this ever going to get more interesting?

  “And these stars . . .”

  The man on the loudspeaker was saying something else, but George wasn’t paying attention. He couldn’t. Not while there was something much more exciting going on—right inside his belly.

  Bing-bong. Ping-pong.

  There were bubbles in there! Not just your usual, run-of-the-mill kind of bubbles. Strong, powerful bubbles. Bubbles that slam-danced against George’s spleen and kickboxed with his kidneys. Bubbles that hip-hopped on his heart and leaped to his larynx. Bubbles that could burst out of him and . . .

  Just then, George let out a powerful burp. A super burp. A burp so loud, and so strong, it could knock the Big Dipper right out of the sky.

  Alex looked over at George. “Dude, no!” he shouted.

  Dude, yes! The magical super burp had escaped. And now, whatever the burp wanted to do, George had to do.

  “This constellation is Draco,” the recorded voice said. “The dragon.”

  “ROAR!” Suddenly the burp made George roar like a fire-breathing dragon. “ROAR!”

  A few of the kids in the planetarium laughed. None of the teachers did.

  “And this is Lepus, the hare,” the recorded voice continued.

  That was all the burp had to hear. The next thing George knew, he had leaped out of his seat and was hippity-hoppitying around the planetarium.

  “George, sit down!” Mrs. Kelly scolded.

  George wanted to sit down. But George wasn’t in charge now. The burp was.

  “And this is Pisces, the fish,” the recorded voice continued.

  Uh-oh! Suddenly the magical super burp made George’s whole body start flipping and flopping, like a fish out of water. George sucked in his cheeks and made a fish face. Then he leaped over the seats and planted a big, wet fish kiss right on Louie’s cheek!

  “Yuck!” Louie shouted. He wiped George’s spit from his face. “Get off of me!”

  Yuck was right. The last thing George ever wanted to do was kiss Louie Farley. Stupid super burp. It was going crazy. George was helpless to stop it.

  The kids from the other schools laughed hard. Their teachers tried to shush them.

  The kids from George’s school were laughing, too. But Mrs. Kelly wasn’t trying to quiet them. She was too busy trying to stop George.

  A teacher was no match for the burp. So George kept hippity-hoppitying and flipping and flopping, and . . .

  Pop! George felt something burst in the bottom of his belly. All the air rushed out of him. It was like someone had popped a balloon inside him. The super burp was gone. But George was still in the planetarium. And he was in trouble.

  “Young man!”

  George turned around to see a man in a blue uniform coming up behind him. He was wearing a little badge that read SECURITY.

  “You’ll have to come with me,” the security guard said. “You can wait for your class at the security desk.”

  Make that big trouble.

  As he left the planetarium, George looked up at the ceiling one more time. Stupid stars. They weren’t lucky for George at all. In fact, it was a star that had caused him all the trouble in the first place.

  It started when George and his family first arrived in Beaver Brook. George’s dad was in the army, so the family moved around a lot. By now, George understood that first days at school could be pretty rotten. But this first day was the absolute rottenest.

  In his old school, George had been the class clown. He was always pulling pranks and making jokes. But George had promised himself that things were going to be different at Edith B. Sugarman Elementary School. He was turning over a new leaf. No more pranks. No more whoopee cushions or spitballs shot through straws. No more bunny ears behind people’s heads. No more goofing on teachers when their backs were turned.

  But being the well-behaved new kid didn’t earn George any friends. None of the kids even seemed to know he was there. It was like he was the invisible George Brown.

  That night, George’s parents 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—but not get into trouble.

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

&n
bsp; 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 hopped 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 started laughing—except George’s parents, who were covered in the ice cream he’d kicked over while he was dancing.

  The magical super burp came back lots of times after that, and every time it did, bubble, bubble, George was in trouble. Like the time the burp burst out in the middle of Mr. Stubbs’s barbershop and made George spray mountains of sticky shaving cream all over the place.

  Or the time it made him paint a mural on the wall of the auditorium during the school art show. The burp hadn’t used paint; it used jelly-doughnut jelly. But it was George who had to clean it up—while everyone else went out for ice cream.

  None of the trouble had been George’s fault. The burp was to blame. But George didn’t tell anyone that. Who would believe him?

  The only other person in Beaver Brook who knew about the super burp was Alex. George hadn’t told him about it—Alex was just so smart that he figured it out himself. Luckily for George, Alex wasn’t just smart. He was a good friend, too. He’d promised not to tell anyone about it. And he hadn’t.

  Better yet, Alex had promised to help George find a cure to get rid of the burps once and for all. So far the boys had tried a lot of things—everything from minty candy canes to onion-flavored milk shakes—but nothing had worked. The burp had beaten them all.

  As he sat down next to the security desk to wait for his class, George stared down at the floor. A huge cockroach was crawling along it.

  George yawned. Watching the cockroach outside the planetarium was even more boring than watching the star show inside the planetarium.

  Still, it was probably a lot safer for him to be out here than around all those stars. After all, cockroaches might be creepy-crawly, but they didn’t cause a guy any trouble. How could they? Who would ever make a wish on a crawling cockroach?

  Blah blah blah blah blah.

  That wasn’t what Mrs. Kelly was saying, but it was pretty much what George was hearing. It was Tuesday morning, the day after the field trip, and Mrs. Kelly was assigning the vocabulary words for the week. Constellation. Meteor. Nebula. Blah blah blah.

  George wasn’t the only one who was having a tough time listening. He could tell when he looked around at the other kids.

  Sage was busy chewing on a strand of her hair.

  Julianna was staring out the window.

  Louie was pushing the button on the top of his pen up and down.

  Mike had his head on his desk. George was pretty sure he was snoring.

  The only person in the room who actually seemed interested in what Mrs. Kelly was saying was Alex. He loved science.

  But to George it still sounded like blah blah blah blah.

  That is, until Mrs. Kelly said, “Who would like to meet an astronaut?”

  Wow! Now that sounded cool. George’s hand shot up without him even thinking about it—and without the help of a magical super burp. Everyone else raised their hands, too.

  “I knew you would be excited,” Mrs. Kelly said. “That’s why I’m thrilled to tell you that Major Chet Minor, a real astronaut, is coming to our fourth-grade assembly Thursday. He’s going to tell us what it’s like to travel in space.”

  Whoa! George thought. A real astronaut! This was definitely not blah blah blah.

  “And to make it even more special, one fourth-grader is going to interview Major Minor on our school’s TV station during morning announcements,” Mrs. Kelly said.

  “I’ll do it,” Louie volunteered. “I’d be a great interviewer.”

  “What makes you a great interviewer?” George asked him.

  “I have a new suit,” Louie said. “Interviewers wear suits.”

  George rolled his eyes. Oh brother.

  “Actually, we’re holding a contest to choose the interviewer,” Mrs. Kelly told the class. “To enter, you have to submit three questions you would like to ask Major Minor. You should also try to do really well in tomorrow’s Statewide Physical-Fitness Challenge. Half of your score will be based on how strong your questions are, and the other half will be based on how well you do on the challenge.”

  George was confused. “What does the physical-fitness challenge have to do with anything?” he asked Mrs. Kelly. “You don’t have to be fit to do an interview.”

  “No, you don’t,” Mrs. Kelly agreed. “But you do have to be fit to go to the Space Adventurers Program. Major Minor is giving the winner a free scholarship for a week there.”

  “He’s taking one of us up into space?” Mike asked.

  “No,” Alex said. “The Space Adventurers Program is like a camp. The kids who go there get to do astronaut training just like the real astronauts do. They have flight simulators, and a multi-axis trainer and . . .”

  George grinned at his best buddy as he spoke. Alex sure made the Space Adventurers Program sound exciting. It would be really cool to spend a week there. It would also be pretty cool to get to interview a real-life astronaut. In fact, winning this contest would be totally out of this world!

  “I sure hope I win,” Alex said as he, Chris, and George took their trays over to the lunch table and sat down with the other fourth-graders. “I’ve been begging my parents to send me to the Space Adventurers Program, but they say it’s too expensive.”

  Louie laughed. “Space Adventurers Program,” he said. “Well, at least they named it right. S-A-P. That place is for saps.”

  “Don’t you want to learn what it’s like to be in space?” Alex asked Louie.

  “Sure,” Louie replied. “But I’m going to learn about space by being in space.”

  “You can’t do that,” George argued. “Only astronauts can go up in space.”

  “Shows what you know,” Louie told him. “You can do anything you want if you have enough money. There’s a company that’s building real space launchers and selling tickets on them to people like me.”

  “People like you?” Julianna wondered. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Rich people,” Louie replied. “I’m going to ask my dad to buy me a ticket on one of those launchers.”

  George looked at Alex. “Is there really a company selling tickets on a launcher?”

  Alex nodded. “And it will cost a lot more than a week at the Space Adventurers Program. But I’d be happy just going to the camp.”

  “And talking face-to-face with a real-life astronaut,” George added. “Don’t forget that part.”

  “Major Chet Minor is really famous,” Alex said. “I read about him in a science magazine. He spent time at the International Space Station. He’s even walked around in space.”

  “I wonder if he’s ever met any space aliens,” George said.

  Louie laughed so hard that he snorted and milk came out of his nose.

  “What’s so funny?” George asked him.

  “You are,” Louie answered. “There’s no such thing as aliens.”

  “How do you know?” George asked.

  “Because I’ve never met an alien,” Louie said. “Neither has my brother, Sam.”

  “What does that prove?” George asked him.

  “Think about it,” Louie said. “Sam’s the most popular kid in Beaver Brook Middle School. And I’m the most popular kid here. Everyone wants to be friends with a Farl
ey. So if aliens had landed on Earth, they would have made it their business to meet one of us.”

  George didn’t know how to answer that. There were so many ridiculous things about what Louie had just said he didn’t know where to start.

  “I’m going to start getting ready for the physical-fitness challenge right after school,” George said, changing the subject. “That means sit-ups, push-ups, climbing—”

  “The rope-climbing part of the Statewide Physical-Fitness Challenge is really hard,” Alex pointed out. “I’ve never been able to reach the top. If I blow it again this year, it could knock me right out of the competition.” He looked really bummed.

  “That was before,” George said. “You’re bigger now. And stronger. This could be the year you do it.”

  “I hope so,” Alex said.

  “Go ahead and practice,” Louie told George and Alex. “It won’t help. Because I’m going to win.”

  “You said the Space Adventurers Program was for saps,” George reminded him. “So why enter the contest?”

  “Because I can win. And there’s nothing I like more than winning,” Louie said. He smiled at George. “Especially if my winning means you lose.”

  George scowled. Louie was such a jerk. But the fact that Louie wanted him to lose so badly could mean only one thing. George had to win!

  “Here I go!” George shouted as he shinnied up a lamppost on his way home from school that afternoon. “Cl-climbing is h-hard,” he puffed halfway up the post. “I’ll never complete the rope-climbing challenge,” George added as he slid down.

  “But you can reach the top,” Alex said. “I saw you do it on that obstacle course when we visited your dad’s army base.”

  George frowned. He’d reached the top, all right. But he hadn’t done it on his own. “That was only because the burp burst out of me,” George said. “That burp can make me do anything.” He started to climb a stop sign.