By the Grace of Todd Read online

  I opened my mouth. “I . . .”

  She sighed and closed her eyes. “Forget it, Todd. It’s my fault—for thinking you were responsible enough to take care of another living thing. Clearly you’re not responsible enough to properly dispose of a piece of pizza.”

  She stalked over to my bed and grabbed the paper plate. The pizza flopped over, revealing a colony of blue fuzzy mold.

  “Ugh!” she cried, throwing down the plate.

  At that moment an ear-splitting CRASH! came from the kitchen.

  Mom groaned and put her hand on her head. “Never mind, Todd. Words are lost on you anyway. Meanwhile, I need to clean up whatever disaster Daisy’s wrought, because Lucy is coming over for her piano lesson in five minutes.” She pointed a finger at me and snarled. “If you don’t clean this up immediately, you can forget about going to the fair on Friday—and Duddy’s birthday party this weekend! Do you understand me?”

  “Don’t you think that’s a little—unrealistic?” I pleaded. “I mean, it took me years to make this mess. You think I can just pick it up in an afternoon?”

  DIIIING DOOONG. DIIIING DOOOONG.

  “JUST LET YOURSELF IN, LUCY!” Mom screeched, then bent down and handed me the trash bag that was crumpled up on top of a crusty clothes heap from the last time she told me to clean my room. She shoved it toward me and barked, “MAKE IT CLEAN—NOW!”

  She stormed out, slamming the door behind her. I sighed and walked over to the mound of laundry I’d affectionately named “Butroche Butte.” The smell that came up was gagadocious, but I took a deep breath through my mouth and held it while I crammed the clothes mountain into the hamper.

  When I couldn’t shove any more clothes inside, I sat on the hamper and looked around. I was surrounded by heaps of debris and dishes, candy wrappers, random clothes, an erector set helicopter that Daisy’d ripped the rotor off, video games . . . and those were just the first few things I could identify. Then there was my cluttered desk, dripping with paint. Where to make my first assault?

  Finally I got up and decided to see what was under my bed. Once I got that cleared out, I could jam other stuff under there.

  I lay on my stomach on my bed and hung my head over the side, peering into the dark. There was a ton of stuff piled up. A bunch of papers. (Maybe lost homework from the last five years?) A half-eaten cupcake from Daisy’s first birthday. (Seriously, I’d never finished that?) My baseball cleats, the lucky socks I’d worn all season still stuffed inside. (I never actually made contact with the ball except when it hit me, which was three times in the head and once in the nose. But if I hadn’t been wearing Lucky Lefty and Righty, who knows how many times I would’ve been beaned?)

  As I was about to reach out and see how stale the cupcake was, it happened.

  The thing that would change my life forever.

  Something sparked. I thought maybe it was static from the rug, but then it happened again. This time the flash was brighter. Was it the sun glinting off my glasses? I held my hands up on either side, blocking out the light.

  Spark. Spark. Spark.

  My hands were still on either side of my face, preventing the light from the window from entering my field of vision. Clearly, the spark wasn’t coming from the sun.

  Suddenly, it happened a third time. Spark. Spark. Spark.

  I gulped. I was right—it wasn’t coming from the sun.

  It was coming from my sock.

  CHAPTER 3

  The door to my room flew open with a bang. “Todd Galveston Butroche!”

  Dragging out the middle name three times in one day? Really? But this time it didn’t strike fear in my heart.

  That’s because it wasn’t my mom yelling. It was just Lucy.

  Lucy lived across the street and was Mom’s best piano student. Mom was always harping on me to be nice to her, and her reminders had only gotten more intense ever since she’d lost her teaching job and was solely giving private lessons.

  But being nice to Lucy usually meant letting her talk my ear off about what she’d learned that day. Lucy was too smart to go to school with the rest of us lame brains, so she was homeschooled by her mom. I’d been forced to “play” with her since we were little kids, and she’d only gotten weirder with time.

  Ignoring Lucy, I reached under the bed and pulled the sock closer, holding it up to my face. I heard a buzz and held it near my ear.

  “Oooooh!” sang a chorus of high, tiny voices.

  Okay, now I was really losing it. I pulled the sock closer. “Hello?” I whispered. But nothing happened.

  “Who are you talking to?”

  Yaaaah! I jumped about five feet and ended up tumbling off the bed. During my little get-to-know-you session with my sock, Lucy had sidled up and was just an arm’s length away.

  If Lucy noticed that she’d scared me enough to send me sprawling on the floor, she made no mention of it. “I know it’s not Pinchy. No, your mom told me what happened to Pinchy. Todd, how could you?”

  I scrambled up to all fours. “Um, Lucy, I’m kind of busy, so . . .”

  Lucy held up her hand and waved it like she was shooing away a fly. “It’s all good, Todd. Your mom sent me in here to visit while she puts the refrigerator upright. She said maybe I could help you. So what are you doing?”

  “Uh, you know, the usual.” I crawled back to my bed. The sock was laid on the rug, and I felt like it was looking back at me as I peered down at it.

  Lucy settled herself carefully onto the edge of my bed, looking at the mess below with a frank expression. “You know, Todd, it’s a good idea to change your sheets often”—she patted the mattress—“because you shed up to forty thousand dead skin cells an hour, which is approximately 2,240,000 dead skin cells in your bed a week, depending on how long you sleep and whether or not you take naps.”

  She stood up and ran a finger along the shelf over my desk that held my Dragon Sensei figures, then looked at the thick layer of dust on her fingertip. “Did you know that most of the dust in your house is really human skin cells that feed trillions of microscopic dust mites? You shed about eight pounds of dead skin a year. Neat, huh?”

  “Sure. Right.” I had to be careful not to act too interested, or she’d go on for hours. The last time Lucy and I “played,” she spent half an hour telling me about spontaneous human consumption or something and how moldy hay bales caught fire all by themselves.

  That’s when it hit me. Maybe you don’t want Lucy to leave—maybe you want her help! I got to my feet. “So, uh, you remember the other day when you were telling me about spontaneous consumption?”

  “You mean combustion? Mm-hmm. Isn’t it cool to think that people can burst into flames like that, through some internal chemical reaction, with no external heat source? It’s one of nature’s great unsolved mysteries, and most scientists are skeptical that it even happens.” She got way too close to my face and whispered, “But I believe. Do you?”

  I backed up a step. “Um, I’m not sure, but do you think it can happen to clothes?”

  “What do you mean? In some of these cases, the person is burned to a crisp but the clothes are still intact.” She got in my face again. “Isn’t that fascinating?”

  “Uh, yeah.” I headed to the door and shut it. “I need to show you something,” I said. I couldn’t believe I was doing this, but I had to know. “Have you ever heard of spontaneous sock combustion?”

  Lucy chewed on her bottom lip and scowled. “No, but remember what I said about moldy hay bales combusting due to the interface between dry hay and wet hay?”

  I didn’t remember the details, but I nodded.

  “What actually happens is, hay that is put away wet begins to sweat in storage, which produces heat when the live plant tissue respiration is coupled with bacteria and mold activity. There’s a lot more to it than that, but basically, if the heat isn’t able to es
cape and it comes into contact with dry hay . . . kaboom!” She made an exploding sound with her spit. Some of it landed on my cheek, and I wiped it off.

  Sweaty hay . . . sweaty sock . . .

  “Why are you asking?” Her dark eyes got real wide. “What’s brought on this sudden interest in science?”

  It was now or never. I reached down and picked the sock up off the floor, holding it out to Lucy. She might think I was a total nut job, but then, it’s not like she could rat me out to anyone at school.

  “I think something might be combusting on my sock.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Lucy eagerly took the sock and licked her lips. “Why? Is it smoldering?”

  “Uh, not exactly.”

  Just then Mom poked her head in the door. “How’s it going in here? Is it any cleaner?”

  Lucy pasted on an impressive parent-charming smile. “Getting there, Mrs. B. We’re just putting together a grand cleaning plan. Hey, how are things in the kitchen? Appliances all facing the right way?”

  My mom rolled her eyes. “For now, yes, thank you, Lucy. But I still have some cleanup to do. Would you mind if we made up your lesson some other time?”

  Lucy nodded. “No sweat, Mrs. B. We’re going to be pretty busy in here.”

  Mom smiled, looking relieved. “Good to hear it.” She disappeared, then came back a few seconds later, shoving a package of Oreos toward us. “Would you two like a snack? Lucy, these are Todd’s favorites.”

  As I reached for the package, Lucy pounced on the cookies like a starving hyena. She slammed one into her mouth and rolled her eyes back. “Mmmm, a delicious combination of corn syrup, canola oil, and chocolate. Thank you, Mrs. B,” she said through black teeth. “Just don’t tell Susan I ate it.”

  Lucy always called her mom by her first name. I had no idea why.

  Mom’s eyebrows had shot up. “Would you like some milk to wash that down?”

  Lucy nodded, then held up her hand and swallowed. “Wait. Would that milk be soy, almond, goat, or cow?”

  “Cow. Two percent is all we have.”

  “Can’t do bovine, Mrs. B. I’m totally lactose intolerant, especially if I mix dairy with sugar. Better make it H2O, yanno?”

  I couldn’t resist. “What happens if you drink cow’s milk?”

  “Extreme cramps that lead to complete intestinal evacuation, foul smelling, floating stools, and—”

  Mom had heard enough. “I’ll get you some water.” She split, and I pointed back at the sock.

  “So, can you help me with this?”

  Lucy lifted the sock to her nose, sniffed it, and jerked back. “That is definitely the most odious odor I have ever inhaled.” She shut her eyes and licked her lips, like she was flavor-testing or something. “A disgusting and musty blend of mushrooms, mildew, and damp dog produced by your dead skin tissues mixed with moisture.” Lucy took my hand and shook it. “Congratulations. It’s so dirty, I bet you could grow a plant from it.”

  Mom delivered the water and ducked out.

  I picked up the sock as gently as I could. “I think something is growing on it.”

  Lucy held her nose with one hand and pinched the sock between her thumb and finger with the other. “Fungi, most likely. Tinea pedis. Commonly known as athlete’s foot. It’s highly contagious. You wouldn’t have any gloves, would you? Nitrile and powder–free, preferably.”

  I scanned my room. “Uh . . . I’ve got a baseball mitt.”

  “Better than nothing.” Lucy laid the sock in the mitt and stuck her face right down next to it. “Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.” She put the sock and mitt on the dresser and grabbed my leg. “Now I need to examine the soles of your feet and between your toes.”

  I shook her loose. “Sorry. Feet are off–limits.” No one was going to pick my toes but me, and anyway, this seemed bigger than a case of athlete’s foot.

  I cleared my throat and said, “I think I saw sparks coming from it.”

  “Sparks? As in an electrostatic discharge?” She squinted and leaned in close to my face.

  I backed away from her, and right then the sock sparked. “There!” I yelled. “It did it again!”

  Lucy picked up the sock and examined it. “That’s strange. Clothes don’t usually emit ESDs unless they’re on people. My theory is that this sock has an overload of electrons it’s collected and needs to release the negative charge onto another object.”

  “You think that’s all it is?” I considered telling her about hearing voices on the sock, but figured that would be pushing it.

  “Mm-hmm.” Lucy gathered her sheet music. “Your sock is probably just a victim of an electron-proton imbalance. But from that stench, I have a feeling there’s also a fungus involved. Let me run home and get my microscope. I can’t see anything with the naked eye.”

  I figured Lucy would head out on her own, but instead she nodded at me as she walked to the door, leaving the sock on my desk. “You coming?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You think my mom’s going to let me out of this room?”

  Lucy just laughed. “Leave it to me.”

  As we passed through the kitchen, Mom had her head buried in the fridge while Daisy sat on the floor, inhaling string cheeses one by one. Lucy told Mom we were going across the street to grab something “crucial to our cleanup plan.” Mom just grunted something that sounded like “Fine.” We shot out the door before she could change her mind.

  “Did you know Oreos contain vanillin, an artificial flavor derived from petroleum?” Lucy asked as we walked.

  “What?”

  “Mm-hmm. It can limit the liver enzyme dopamine by up to fifty percent.”

  “If they’re so bad for you, why did you eat one?”

  “Because I am seriously junk-food deprived. Besides, the gas buildup in my GI tract from the sugar content will propel that chocolate rocket through my colon at warp speed. So any minute now I may shoot off into the stratosphere.” Lucy made a whistling noise and then giggled at her lame joke.

  I faked a chuckle and followed Lucy to her front door.

  The Pedotos’ house looked the same as ours from the outside, except where we had neat square shrubs, they had pampas grass and weedy–looking flowers sprawling everywhere. The inside was just as wild. Houseplants vined all over the place, and the animal–print furniture and wildlife pictures made you feel like you were on safari.

  When we came in, Mrs. Pedoto was stretched over an enormous pink ball doing something Lucy called “Pilates.” Funky Middle Eastern music played on the stereo. She shook her poofy red ponytail out of her eyes, then bounced up and jogged to the kitchen.

  “Well, hello, Todd,” Mrs. Pedoto said, sweeping a sleeping hairless cat off the counter. “Not up here, Fluffy.”

  “Fluffy” was a mutant straight out of Star Wars. He had enormous ears, bulgy green eyes, and wrinkled black-and-white skin. The beast saw me, hunched up, and hissed, then flopped on the floor and licked his bald belly.

  “How’s your summer been, Todd?” Mrs. Pedoto asked as she rummaged around in the fridge. “I suppose you’re back in school already. Lucy and I will begin our formal classes again next week, although we really never take a break from learning.” She turned and threw her arms wide. “Life is our classroom. What did you learn today?”

  I was saved from answering by Lucy. “Actually, Susan, that’s why we’re here. Todd needs some help with a science experiment.”

  Mrs. Pedoto grinned. “Well, now isn’t that peachy. I’ll fix you kiddos my special organic strawberry and soy shake to give you energy while you work.” She cleared the cat off the counter again and set a plate of brown lumps in front of us. “Try these carob and quinoa no-bake cookies. I’m allergic to oats and chocolate, you know. But these are healthy and completely gluten-free.”

  They were also completely flavor-free. But the shake made up for it. �
��This tastes just like McDonald’s,” I said.

  Lucy laughed and Mrs. Pedoto’s smile faded for a second, then flashed back. She pulled a stool up next to me. “What classes do you have this year, Todd? And how’s that darling Daisy doing? Has she got her one-year molars yet? Tell your mom the herbal teething tablets at the Health Hub are the best for fussy teethers.”

  “We have to get to work,” Lucy announced as she hopped off her stool and headed down the hall. “We actually just came by to grab my microscope. Todd’s working on an experiment in his room.”

  I hurried after her before Mrs. Pedoto could invite me to eat with them. I liked my food cooked and cat-free.

  Lucy’s room was basically a laboratory with a bed. There were science charts all over the walls, a chemistry set with glass bottles and burners in one corner, and a spinning solar system hanging from the ceiling. Even her dresser was covered in aquariums filled with plants and weird creatures. She had a Venus flytrap, some “dinosaur shrimp,” a couple of little green lizards, and tadpoles that she said had just gotten their legs. The ultraviolet lamps over the tanks gave the place a bizarre blue glow.

  “Is that a tarantula?”

  “Mm-hmm,” she said. “That’s Gerty. Got her for my birthday. She’s named after Gerty Cori, who won the Nobel Prize in 1947 for her work with glucose.” Lucy grabbed her microscope and turned to me.

  “Let’s go.”

  We were back across the street and in my room before Susan could look up from her blender. Lucy set up the microscope on my desk and slid the sock under the lens. “Here, take a look.”

  I wasn’t about to admit I didn’t know how to use it. “You go first. It’s your microscope.”

  “It’s your sock.” Lucy crossed her arms and squinted at me. I must’ve looked as dumb as I felt, because she said, “Don’t worry, I’ll show you what to do.”

  I leaned over, scrunched one eye shut the way she told me, and stared down the tube with the other one. “Everything’s fuzzy.”