Slob - Ellen Potter [23]
“He will fail you guys, you know,” I warned them.
“Let him.” Jeremy smiled. “Mr. Shackly is going to be in for a little surprise tomorrow.”
I looked at the two of them. Arthur was writing away in the notebook.
“What are you two doing?” I asked suspiciously.
“Oh, we’re just drafting an e-mail, that’s all,” Jeremy said. She jabbed Arthur in the ribs and Arthur snorted and nodded. “Yes, just a simple e-mail,” Jeremy continued. “Which Arthur is going to send to all the major television networks tonight. We think the news shows will be very interested to know about this situation.”
I sincerely doubted that, but I didn’t want to be the one to burst their bubble.
“Arthur will be our television spokesperson, of course,” Jeremy went on to explain. That was even more dubious, since Arthur generally never said more than a few words at a time. “We’re actually hoping that she gets on Good Morning America or David Letterman or something. That way Arthur will actually appear in her own collection.”
At the mention of this, Arthur looked up from her writing and smiled. It was a nice smile. By the way, Arthur nearly always wears the same clothes every day, even though everyone teases her about it. It’s because she won’t buy girls’ clothes and her mother refuses to shop in the boys’ department for her. So she is stuck with one boy outfit that another GWAB member gave her out of pity—the red polo shirt and chinos.
“What’s her collection?” I asked.
“Arthur collects Retro TV Magazines," Jeremy explained.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“They give the TV listings, just like TV Guide,” Jeremy said, “but they pay the most attention to the retro shows. You know, plot summaries, trivia, stuff like that. Arthur’s had been collecting them since—how long, Arthur?”
“Since I was six.”
“Really?” I said. That was actually impressive.
Weird, but impressive.
I left them to their work, and went to my room and sat down heavily on the edge of my bed. I usually went right to work on Nemesis, but the day had taken a toll on me. I felt completely unmotivated. And it was all because of Mason Ragg. Who, I now reminded myself, would be eating my three Oreo cookies tomorrow unless I found a way to prevent it.
That got me to my feet.
I went to my desk, pulled out my yellow graph paper notebook and a mechanical pencil, and started to draw. At first it was really just crazy doodles—a huge guillotine hanging from the ceiling above my lunch sack, a dagger that shot out of my lunch sack the second someone touched it, stuff like that. I got it out of my system, then I really settled down to business.
Have you ever heard of Ockham’s razor? It’s a principle that says the simplest solution is always the best solution.
What I came up with was spectacularly simple.
Mason enjoyed eating my Oreos, so why not make eating my Oreos a lot less enjoyable?
I went to the bathroom and opened the little linen closet. Mom keeps all her oddball remedies on the top shelf: burdock tinctures, nettle capsules, tea tree oil. It took a while to sort through it all and find what I was looking for, but I did. It was shoved into the back corner. I think Mom was embarrassed that she had to use it, especially since it wasn’t natural or organic and it didn’t have any herbal junk in it.
Facial hair bleach.
It’s for those little moustaches that women sometimes get. I once caught Mom with the stuff slathered across her upper lip. It’s white and thick. Much like the middle of an Oreo cookie. I looked in the box. It even had its own little spatula to spread the cream with. How convenient. I shoved the box back to the corner of the cabinet. I’d be using it in the morning.
Obviously, I didn’t need to make any blueprints for this idea. Back in my room, I shut my graph paper notebook and opened the desk drawer to put it away, but I hesitated before I shut the drawer. I stared down at it for a moment, considering. Then I pulled the entire drawer out of the desk and put it on the floor. In the shallow gap between the runners and the bottom of the desk there was