Revenge of the Killer Worms

  For teachers—unsung heroes who pay it forward every day—NK

  GROSSET & DUNLAP

  Penguin Young Readers Group

  An Imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

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  Text copyright © 2015 by Nancy Krulik. Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Aaron Blecha. All rights reserved. Published by Grosset & Dunlap, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

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

  ISBN 978-0-399-53995-4

  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

  “‘Supersonic Man versus the Pickled Tomatoes’!” George Brown said as he read the title of the comic book. “This one looks awesome. The squirty red stuff looks just like blood.”

  It was Tuesday afternoon. George and his pals Alex and Chris were hanging out at the Made for Mutants Comic Book Shop.

  Chris shook his head. “I already have that one,” he said. “Supersonic Man defeats the tomatoes with garlic, the same way you would ward off vampires.”

  “Sounds like he’s making tomato sauce,” George said. “Maybe he should be called Supersonic Chef.”

  George and Alex started laughing. But not Chris. He took his comic books seriously.

  “They must have the one I’m looking for somewhere,” Chris said. He started thumbing through another stack of comics. “I just have to keep searching.”

  “Why don’t you ask Rodney?” Alex asked Chris. He nodded in the direction of the owner of the store.

  “Because looking for just the right comic book is half the fun,” Chris explained.

  George didn’t see what was so fun about searching through stacks and stacks of comic books. Sure, comics were fun to read, but this didn’t seem all that different from going shopping with his mother. And shopping was boring.

  “Hey, what’s this?” George asked suddenly. He pointed to a sheet of paper taped to the counter. The paper said Pay It Forward Day Sign-Up Sheet.

  Alex looked over George’s shoulder. “It’s the sign-up sheet for Pay It Forward Day,” he said.

  “I get that,” George replied. “But what’s Pay It Forward Day?”

  “Oh, right. You moved to Beaver Brook after Pay It Forward Day last year,” Alex remembered. “It’s a community-service day we have every year. People help out with things around town. Last year my family helped clean the park. The year before, we painted lampposts.”

  George looked at the sheet. There were a lot of things you could do on Pay It Forward Day—collect coats for needy people, plant flowers around City Hall, read to little kids in the library . . .

  “What are you doing this year?” he asked Alex.

  “We’re signed up to serve food to homeless families at the shelter,” Alex replied. “You want to come with us?”

  “Sure,” George agreed. Serving food sounded a lot better than collecting coats or planting flowers. Food was always fun.

  “You want to help at the shelter this year, too, Chris?” Alex called across the store.

  “Okay,” Chris answered without looking up from the stacks and stacks of comic books.

  “What is it you like so much about this Supersonic dude, anyway?” George asked Chris.

  “He’s cool,” Chris explained. “He has the power to travel through time and space, but he uses his mind to fight the bad guys. This one time, he was trapped in a basement with no way out. He found an old metal pipe and turned it into a torpedo. Then he blasted a tunnel and . . .”

  Chris kept talking, but George wasn’t listening anymore. He was too busy worrying about the disaster brewing in his belly. There were bubbles in there. Hundreds of them. And they were going crazy.

  That could only mean one thing. The magical super burp was back.

  George knew that trouble was on its way. After all, it had happened to him many times before.

  The burping battles started right after George’s family had moved to Beaver Brook. George’s dad was in the army, and his family moved around a lot. Which meant George had been the new kid in school lots of times. So he understood that first days could be rotten. But George’s first day at Edith B. Sugarman Elementary had been super-colossal rotten!

  In his old school, George was the class clown. But George had promised himself that things were going to be different this time. No more pranks. No more making funny faces behind teachers’ backs. Unfortunately, George didn’t have to be a math whiz to figure out how many friends a new unfunny kid makes on his first day of school. Zero.

  That night, George’s parents took him out to Ernie’s Ice Cream Emporium just to cheer him up. 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.

  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 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 the ice cream he’d kicked over while he was dancing.

  After that night, the burp came back over and over again. And every time it did, it made a mess of things. That was why George couldn’t let that burp burst out of him here in the comic book store!

  But the bubbles really wanted to come out and play.

  Bing-bong. Ping-pong. Already they were beating on his bladder and leaping over his lungs.

  George zipped his lips and pinched his nose. Bubbles couldn’t live without air, could they?

  Yes, they could!

  Bing-bang. Ping-pang. The bubbles trampled George’s tongue. They twisted around his teeth. And then . . .

  George opened his mouth and let out a burp. A huge burp. A supersonic burp.

  Now that the burp was free, George had to do whatever the burp wanted to do. And that was swing from the rafters, like Spider-Man swinging from his web.

  The next thing George knew, his feet were climbing a tall ladder near a stack of comic books. George
’s arms reached up and grabbed a wooden rafter. And then he began to swing!

  “George, get down from there!” Rodney shouted.

  George wanted to get down. But now the burp wanted to swing like a monkey in a tree.

  “Check me out!” George shouted as he swung from one beam to the next. “I’m Ape Man!” Except George wasn’t an ape. His arms weren’t as strong as a superhero monkey’s. Suddenly, George’s hands gave way. And then . . .

  Slam! George fell from the beam. He landed on the hard floor. Right on his rear end. Ouch!

  But the burp didn’t care that George’s butt hurt. All it cared about was playing around in the comic book store. Burps just want to have fun. So the next thing George knew, he was climbing up on the counter.

  “George Brown, get off the counter!” Rodney shouted.

  “Seriously, dude,” Alex said. “Get down.”

  For once, the burp did as it was told. George took a flying leap from the counter. He started flapping his arms up and down.

  “Look, up in the air!” he shouted. “It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s . . .”

  Pop! Suddenly, George felt something burst in the bottom of his belly. All the air rushed right out of him. The magical super burp was gone.

  But George was still there, flying in midair.

  Thud.

  George landed right on a pile of comic books. They scattered all around him.

  George opened his mouth to say, “I’m sorry.” And that’s exactly what came out.

  Rodney looked at the pile of comic books all over the floor and shook his head. “You have to leave,” he told George.

  George didn’t blame Rodney for throwing him out. The burp had really made a mess of things. He stood up and started for the door.

  Suddenly Chris shouted, “There it is! ‘Supersonic Man and the Beast from the East’!” He grabbed the comic book from the middle of the scattered pile and handed Rodney money.

  “You’re the best, George,” Chris said as he hurried to get his change and leave with his friends. “I never would have found this on my own.”

  George shook his head. He didn’t feel like the best. He felt horrible.

  George sure wished there was some superhero who could help him beat the burp once and for all. He could see it now. A special edition comic book:

  “Supersonic Man and the Battle of the Burps”!

  “It would be a community service if we could figure out a way to get rid of my burps,” George told Alex as the boys walked into their classroom together Wednesday morning. “I’d stop making a mess of every store in town.”

  “I’m working on finding a cure,” Alex assured him.

  Alex was the only other person who knew about George’s magical super burps. George hadn’t told him what made him act so weird sometimes. Alex was just so smart that he’d figured it out on his own.

  Lucky for George, Alex was such a good friend that he’d promised to keep the secret and even help George find a cure. So far nothing the boys tried had worked. But if anyone could find a cure, a science whiz like Alex could.

  As George walked past Mrs. Kelly’s desk, he dropped his writing journal on top of the pile. Every kid in the class had a journal. They were supposed to write in it every night. The journals were private. The only person who read them was Mrs. Kelly.

  George had spent a long time decorating his journal. He’d made a collage with pictures of all his favorite stars on the cover. There were photos of snowboard champion Dice Nieveson, skateboard superstar Joe Fovero, and action-movie star Dirk Drek.

  “Good morning, everyone,” Mrs. Kelly said as the kids took their seats. “I just signed up for this Saturday’s Pay It Forward Day. I’m going to be loading backpacks with school supplies to send to children whose families can’t afford pencils and notebooks. I hope all of you will be participating in this day, too.”

  “My family is serving dinner at the shelter,” Alex said.

  “My parents and I are doing that, too,” George added.

  “My sister and I are cleaning up the park,” Julianna said. “My parents are on an archaeological dig in Nepal, so they can’t be there. But my grandma will be.”

  “I’m signed up to paint lampposts and mailboxes,” Sage said. “But I can come by and help out at the shelter afterward. That way Georgie and I can serve dinner side by side.”

  George rolled his eyes. Oh brother.

  “How about you, Max?” Mrs. Kelly asked.

  “I don’t know,” Max said. “I was waiting to see what Louie signed up for.”

  “That’s what I was waiting for,” Mike said.

  Max and Mike really wanted to be like Louie Farley. George couldn’t figure out why, though. Louie was kind of a jerk.

  “I’m not signed up for anything,” Louie said proudly. “I’m a Farley. We don’t volunteer. We send money.”

  “Many charities need money,” Mrs. Kelly agreed. “But Pay It Forward Day is about coming together as a community. You might want to think about helping out somewhere on Saturday.”

  “Not this Saturday,” Louie insisted. “Because I have plans to meet Dirk Drek.”

  Everyone in the class stared at Louie.

  “How are you going to meet him?” George asked. “Dirk Drek lives in Hollywood. That’s where he makes his action movies.”

  “He may live in Hollywood now,” Louie says. “But he was born in Beaver Brook. Just like me.”

  “Like me, too,” Mike said.

  “And me,” Max added.

  “Like all of us . . . except George,” Louie said.

  George frowned. He hadn’t felt like the new kid in a while. Leave it to Louie to make him feel that way again.

  “I heard on the radio this morning that Dirk Drek is coming here Saturday for a special screening of his new movie, Revenge of the Killer Worms,” Louie continued. “And I’m going to meet him.”

  “You have tickets to the screening?” Mike asked excitedly.

  “Of course he does,” Max told him. “Who else would have them?”

  “Well, I don’t actually have tickets . . . yet,” Louie admitted. “But I will. They’re usually only for people in the magazine and newspaper businesses. But I’m sure my dad can get me one.”

  “Those sorts of tickets are tough to come by,” Mrs. Kelly warned Louie. “Maybe you should make other plans for Saturday. I could use help loading those backpacks.”

  “My dad can do anything,” Louie insisted. “And even if he can’t get me a ticket, I’m still going to meet Dirk Drek. There’s no way a movie star that big can come to town without meeting a Farley.”

  George tried really hard not to laugh. Louie was ridiculous.

  “Well, I wish you luck,” Mrs. Kelly told Louie. “Now, if you will all take out your vocabulary workbooks, we can get started on this week’s word list.”

  Mrs. Kelly said a lot of other things after that, but George didn’t hear any of them. He was too busy thinking about Dirk Drek. George was a huge Drek fan. He’d seen all his movies—twice. And he’d put his picture on his journal.

  All Louie had on the cover of his journal were pictures of expensive cars. It wouldn’t be fair for Louie to meet Dirk Drek instead of George.

  But George was signed up to help out at the shelter. And there was no way he could get out of it.

  Or was there?

  ‘

  “I’m telling you, Alex,” George said later as the boys sat down at a lunch table in the cafeteria. “We could pay it forward by cleaning out the movie theater.”

  “What kind of community service is that?” Alex asked.

  “The movie theater is a mess,” George said. “You know how much gum is stuck under the seats.”

  “That’s what the cleaning crew at the movie theater is for,” Alex reminded G
eorge.

  “But wouldn’t it be cool if we were cleaning the movie theater at the exact time Dirk Drek got there?” George asked.

  “Sure it would be,” Alex told him.

  George smiled.

  “But we’re signed up to work at the shelter on Saturday,” Alex continued. “They’re counting on us.”

  George frowned. That wasn’t the answer he was hoping for.

  “You’re right,” George said sadly. “It just stinks that Louie might get to meet Dirk Drek, and I won’t.”

  “Where is Louie, anyway?” Alex wondered.

  George looked around. The whole class was at the lunch table. But not Louie.

  “He said he had to do something,” Max said.

  “Must have been something very important,” Mike told him. “Louie’s never late for lunch on tuna hoagie day.”

  George focused on the tuna hoagie on his lunch tray. Canned tuna on bread was a lot more interesting than hearing Max and Mike talk about how great Louie was.

  A minute later, Louie appeared at the table with his tray of food.

  “Did you do what you needed to, Louie?” Max asked him.

  “Yeah,” Louie said. “Definitely.” He took a bite of his sandwich.

  Just then, Julianna slid over to where George and Alex were sitting. “Do you guys want to practice some soccer moves at my house after school today?” she asked them.

  “Sure,” Alex said.

  “Why not?” George agreed.

  “You mean you’re not skateboarding?” Louie asked George. “I thought you always worked on your skateboarding moves after school.”

  George gave Louie a funny look. “What do you care what I do after school?”

  “I don’t,” Louie agreed. “But I understand why you’re giving up on skateboarding.”