Hot Dog and Bob: Adventure 2 Read online

  Adventure #2

  and the Particularly Pesky Attack of the Pencil People

  by L. Bob Rovetch

  illustrated by Dave Whamond

  For my dear friend Martha Weston whose

  wonderful laughter will always be with me —L.R.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Trouble

  Chapter 2: Be Afraid, Humans!

  Chapter 3: Pencilvania

  Chapter 4: Abnormal Human Beings?

  Chapter 5: A Quick Nap

  Chapter 5½: Juicy Hot Dogs

  Chapter 6: Bad Dog!

  Chapter 7: The Art Lesson

  Chapter 8: The Ibblerscray

  Chapter 9: The Plan

  Chapter 9½: Cool Rockin’ Tunes

  Chapter 10: Like Roses in Springtime

  Chapter 11: Stinky Party Poopers

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Trouble

  Want to know the freakiest day of my life? It was the day I opened my lunch box to find a superhero hot dog sitting on top of my pizza.

  “Hot Dog’s my name, fightin’ bad stuff’s my game!” said the talking wienie. “It’ll be me and you, stickin’ like glue. Partners till the very end!”

  The next thing I knew, my teacher, Miss Lamphead, had morphed into a huge alien pizza person named Cheese Face. Things got really weird when she turned everybody, including our class hamster, into mutant zombie pizza soldiers.

  To make a long story short, everything turned out okay in the end. My classroom went back to normal, Hot Dog went back to his planet, Dogzalot, and my best friend, Clementine, and I were the only ones who remembered that anything weird had even happened.

  We promised never to talk about Hot Dog or the whole scary pizza thing ever again. We tried as hard as we could to act like normal kids in a normal school, and if you ask me, we did a pretty good job—until last week, that is.

  “Mmmm! Yummylicious!” Clementine said with her mouth full. “Wanna bite?”

  I looked at her lunch. It was another one of her usual unusual creations: a peanut butter, banana, avocado, red pepper, onion, ham, chocolate chip, cream cheese, raisin, alfalfa sprout and extra hot horseradish on rye bread sandwich. Yummylicious? I don’t think so!

  “I seriously don’t get how you can eat those things without getting sick,” I said. But I knew better than anyone that Clementine had a stomach of steel. She could handle even the most repulsive foods.

  That’s when Clementine broke our sacred promise. She burped and said, “Hey, Bob, don’t you ever wish you could see Hot Dog again? You know, just for old times’ sake?”

  “No way!” I said. “The only time superhero hot dogs show up is when something terrible is about to happen. Asking to see Hot Dog would just be asking for trouble.”

  “Did someone say trouble?” a voice called out from my lunch box.

  “Oh, no,” I said, lifting the lid. “It can’t be!”

  But it could be—it was! Smushed between my carrots and my juice box. Looking up at Clementine and me with that crazy gotta-save-the-world kind of look that only superheroes get. Hot Dog was back. I glared at Clementine. If only she hadn’t mentioned his name!

  “Dude,” I whispered into my lunch box. “PLEASE tell me you just popped by to say hello.”

  “I won’t lie to you, partner,” said Hot Dog. “You got a heapin’ helpin’ of trouble on this planet of yours.”

  “Don’t tell me Cheese Face is back!” said Clementine.

  “No such luck,” said Hot Dog. “This mission is so tough the Big Bun almost sent two of us superhero hot dogs down from Dogzalot.”

  “Well, why didn’t she?” I asked nervously.

  “Oh, I convinced her that we could handle it,” said Hot Dog.

  “W-w-w-we?” I stuttered.

  “Between you and me and the little lady here,” he said, pointing at Clementine, “we’ve got it covered. No problem!”

  The end-of-lunch bell rang, and I hadn’t eaten a single bite.

  “Tell me this isn’t happening again,” I begged Clementine.

  “Okay, Bob,” she said, rolling her eyes. “This isn’t happening again.”

  But we both knew perfectly well that it was happening. And there was nothing either of us mere mortals could do about it.

  Chapter 2

  Be Afraid, Humans!

  “Hurry and take your seats, class,” said Miss Lamphead. “It’s time for our Thursday spelling test.”

  I slid my lunch box under my desk and held my breath.

  “The first word is boysenberry,” Miss Lamphead said. “The nice boy made boysenberry jam with his mother. Boysenberry.”

  “Yes!” I thought to myself. “That is so easy.” And I wrote down the word boysenberry. But when I double-checked, it said, “BE AFRAID!”

  “The next word,” said Miss Lamphead, “is history. The history of our country is so fascinating. History.”

  “Another easy one,” I thought. But when I wrote it down, it came out “HUMANS!”

  “What in the world?” I accidentally blurted out loud.

  Every single kid in my class turned around to look at me. I didn’t know what was going on with my pencil, but I knew it couldn’t be good!

  “Is there a problem, Bob?” asked Miss Lamphead.

  “No, no problem,” I answered, trying to look as unlike someone with a potentially possessed pencil as possible.

  “Very well.” She continued. “The next word is invitation. Geraldo gave Petunia an invitation to his birthday party. Invitation.”

  I tried as hard as I could to write invitation, but my pencil had a mind of its own. It went crazy, scribbling the words “PREPARE TO BE ERASED!!!” I struggled to tackle it. How could a measly little pencil be so strong? Finally I grabbed it by the bottom end, flipped it over and erased. But my messed-up spelling words just got all smudgy. Then everything got all slippery. My pencil was oozing slime all over the place. And to top it off, I could have sworn it was laughing at me.

  “Awesome!” said Barfalot, my least favorite person on the face of the Earth. “Bob just puked all over his spelling test!”

  “Awesome!” repeated Barfalot’s brainless bodyguard brothers, Pigburt and Slugburt. If there was ever a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for the meanest, dumbest fifth-grade bullies ever invented, nobody could even begin to compete with the Terrible Triplets.

  “Oh, dear, Bob!” said Miss Lamphead. “You’d better go straight to Nurse Bunyan’s office!”

  I grabbed my lunch box and left, only I didn’t go to the nurse’s office. I slipped into the janitor’s closet and opened my lunch box.

  “How come you didn’t tell me to watch out for scary slime-spewing pencils?” I asked Hot Dog.

  “That ambulance siren of a lunch bell cut me off,” said Hot Dog. “I was just getting ready to tell you about our mission when—”

  “Our mission?” I interrupted. “No way! Uh-uh. Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t want anything to do with your crazy interplanetary weirdness!”

  “Sorry, kid,” said Hot Dog. “But you’ve got no choice. If you back out now, the Big Bun’s gonna be hoppin’ mad. And believe me, Bobby boy, you do not want to make the Big Bun mad! Besides, she said you did such a swell job helping me get rid of Cheese Face she knows she can count on you.”

  “Really?” I asked. “She said that?”

  “Yes siree,” Hot Dog answered. “And she had plenty of nice things to say about your spunky little girlfriend, too!”

  “Clementine?” I asked.

  “She’s one smart cookie,” said Hot Dog. “Yes indeedy, that one’s a keeper. I betcha if y
ou play your cards right, wedding bells’ll be ring-a-ding-dingin’ for the two of you some day.”

  “Eww. Now I really am gonna throw up.” I gagged. “Clementine and I are just friends. That is so sick.”

  “Speaking of sick,” Hot Dog said, rubbing his tiny little hands together all excitedly, “where are you keeping that good-for-nothin’ pencil?”

  “I’m not keeping it anywhere,” I said. “It’s back in class, on top of my wrecked spelling test.”

  “You—you let him go? Tell me you didn’t just let him go! Oh, this is bad, buddy boy. This is really, really bad!” Hot Dog hopped out of my lunch box and started pacing around in circles. “That, I’m sorry to say, partner, was not just any old number-two pencil. That, my friend, was the Scribbler!”

  “The Scribbler?” I said.

  Chapter 3

  Pencilvania

  “That’s right,” said Hot Dog. “The Scribbler—the dastardly, dangerous and extremely pointy leader of the Pencil Snatchers gang. They’re out to take over the universe, one pencil at a time. They sneak into school desks and beam the ordinary pencils to Pencilvania. Once the regular pencils are out of the way, the pencil snatchers take their place.”

  “Hold on,” I said. “Isn’t Pennsylvania a state in America?”

  “Different Pencilvania,” said Hot Dog. “The Scribbler’s Pencilvania is a terrible planet where innocent pencils are forced to live in crowded pencil cases without any paper at all!”

  As I stood there in the dark, stinky janitor’s closet, trying to feel sorry for captive pencils on another planet, I heard footsteps.

  “Freeze!” I whispered to Hot Dog. “Someone’s coming!”

  The door blasted open. Mr. Spudbucket, the school janitor, reached his hand inside the dark closet. “Where’s that moldy old mop gone to this time?” he grumbled as he fished around. I tried to dodge his hand, but before I knew it, he was grabbing my hair and pulling really, really hard. I stifled a scream and shoved the mop in his direction. Luckily, he finally grabbed the mop, slammed the door shut and walked away.

  “Phew! That was close,” I said, rubbing my head. “Now, how about I go home and you save the world without me?”

  “Sorry, kid,” said Hot Dog. “The Big Bun wants you in on this deal. Did you forget? You’re the one who’s supposed to remember the plan!”

  In the old days, before I’d ever heard of superhero hot dogs and evil dudes from other planets, I was actually kind of proud of having a good memory. But ever since I met my so-called partner, Mr. No Memory, it didn’t seem all that lucky anymore.

  “If we don’t hurry back to that classroom,” Hot Dog said, climbing inside my lunch box, “you might not have a home to go home to!”

  I wanted to go back to class about as much as a turkey wants to be the guest of honor at a Thanksgiving dinner. But I went anyway, and everything seemed to be okay. The Scribbler was gone, and my desk was all cleaned up. Maybe the Scribbler had changed his mind and decided to go bug some other planet. Maybe Hot Dog could zip right back to Dogzalot and tell the Big Bun that there was no problem down here on Earth after all. Maybe everything was going to go back to nice, boring old normal at Lugenheimer Elementary. Maybe?

  Chapter 4

  Abnormal Human Beings?

  Miss Lamphead gave me a new pencil and let me redo the spelling test. This time the words came out like they were supposed to. But I could hardly breathe for the rest of the day. When the last school bell finally rang, I grabbed my stuff and made for the exit.

  “Bob! Wait!” Clementine called. “You gotta fill me in. That wasn’t really throw up, was it? Where did you go? Is Hot Dog still in your lunch box? Is everything okay?”

  “Evil pencil slime, janitor’s closet, unfortunately yes and who knows?” I answered.

  “Work with me here, Bob,” said Clementine. “A little more information might be helpful.”

  Since Clementine was the only other person in the world who knew about Hot Dog and remembered the whole horrible Cheese Face incident, I figured she deserved to know. When we got to the sidewalk, away from everybody else, I told her exactly what Hot Dog had told me.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Miss Lamphead threw your yucky pencil and paper into the trash can and had Barfalot take it outside. That means—”

  “The Scribbler could be anywhere!” I finished.

  “We have to tell somebody!” said Clementine.

  “No! No! Don’t tell!” Hot Dog’s muffled voice cried out.

  The little guy was jumping and kicking so hard it sounded like someone was popping popcorn in my lunch box. We cracked open the lid to hear what he was saying.

  “No one can know,” he panted. “This kind of information is simply too much for normal human beings to handle.”

  “So what does that make Bob and me?” asked Clementine. “Abnormal human beings?”

  “Well,” Hot Dog said. “Let’s just say you two aren’t exactly normal.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded.

  “Relax, partner, I’m just jokin’ around.” Hot Dog laughed. “Hey, that’s what we partners do. We joke around, right?”

  “Oh, yeah, right, good one!” I said, trying to act cool.

  But I couldn’t help wondering if Hot Dog knew some kind of top-secret information about Clementine and me. I mean, think about it. The Big Bun could have matched Hot Dog up with any partner on the planet. I know I sure wouldn’t be my first choice if I were looking for some Earthling to help save the world. I was so busy wondering about Hot Dog’s “joke” that I didn’t even see the water balloons coming.

  “Attack the puker!” Barfalot came running from out of nowhere.

  “Attack the puker!” repeated his brainless bodyguard brothers, Pigburt and Slugburt.

  “Too bad you puked all over the place, and yours truly had to take out your cootie-covered trash,” Barfalot blurted as he bombarded me with water balloons.

  “Yeah, too bad!” repeated Pigburt and Slugburt.

  “You guys are such jerks!” I yelled. “That wasn’t even puke! That was—”

  “Nothing!” Hot Dog yelped from inside my lunch box. “Didn’t you hear a word I just said? That is TOP-SECRET INFORMATION!”

  Just then a mega-huge water balloon exploded all over Clementine.

  “You can stick around if you want to, but I’m outta here!” she said, running away. “Just don’t forget to e-mail me tonight. I can’t wait to hear how Hot Dog does at your house!”

  “My house?” I thought. “Oh, no! I can’t take Hot Dog to my house!”

  Between my curious parents, my nosy little brother and my hungry basset hound, keeping Hot Dog a secret would be next to impossible. But what choice did I have? I scooped up my lunch box and ran home.

  Chapter 5

  A Quick Nap

  “Wow, you’re really wet!” my little brother, Bug, said when I got to my front door. “Why are you so wet?”

  “Rain,” I answered.

  “But it’s sunny outside,” said Bug.

  “An unusual natural weather pattern occurred,” I explained. “You’d have to be at least six years old to understand.”

  “Something’s going on,” said Bug. “I can tell something’s going on.”

  “Shhh! Nothing’s going on,” I said.

  “Oh, yes there is!” said Bug. “Did you do something bad? You did, huh? You did do something bad!”

  “I’m gonna do something bad if you don’t quit bugging me!” I threatened.

  While Bug went to tell on me (as usual), I went to my room.

  “Sheesh!” Hot Dog said when I opened my lunch box. “You people can make skyscrapers and rocket ships; you’d think you could make a comfortable lunch box.”

  He was looking a little woozy from all that bouncing around.

  “I could be wrong,” I said, “but I don’t think comfort is really something lunch box makers think about very much.”

  He climbed out and wobbled around
on my bed.

  “Not bad,” he said, poking my pillow. “This’ll do for tonight. But where are you going to sleep?”

  “Right here in my bed,” I said. “It’s about a thousand times too big for you!”

  “Well that’s a fine way to make your partner feel at home!” Hot Dog pouted.

  I dumped my card collection out of its shoe box and put in my softest old T-shirt to make a cozy little bed.

  “It’s not exactly a four-star hotel,” said Hot Dog, “but I guess it’ll do.”

  He climbed in and stretched out.

  “It’s been a big day.” He yawned. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll take a quick nap.”

  I hid his little shoe box bed under my big bed and pulled my bedspread all the way down to the floor.

  “How’s that?” I asked. “Are you comfortable in there?”

  I figured the answer was probably yes because all I could hear was snoring. Extremely loud hot-dog snoring.

  Chapter 5½

  Juicy Hot Dogs

  Dinner that night was a nightmare. Bug kept asking how come I’d come home so wet. He kept saying that he knew I was keeping some big, bad secret. I didn’t want to lie, but I couldn’t tell the entire truth either. Just think what could happen if people found out about Hot Dog. Reporters would follow his every move. Scientists would want to dissect him. And worst of all, the Big Bun would get really mad.

  “Hmm, that’s funny,” said my mom. “I just dropped a piece of potato on the floor and Chomper isn’t here to chomp it up.”