The Pizza Party Read online

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Do you ever wish that you had a superpower?

  Me too. Ever since I can remember. The first one I ever really wanted was the ability to eat metal. Don’t ask me why. I was only three, and for whatever reason, I thought my life would be perfect if I could just take little nibbles out of water faucets and car bumpers whenever I wanted. I even had dreams about devouring entire skyscrapers. . . .

  The next superpower I really wanted was the ability to smell fear. You know, like a dog can. Somehow I got it in my head that if I could smell fear, then no one would ever bother me or yell at me again, and I could chase away burglars and everybody would pet me and call me “good boy” and give me treats, and I could take the treats to my special place in the hallway and —

  I’m pretty sure I wanted that power because we’d just gotten a little puppy named Cheerio. He was a dachshund, one of those tiny little sausage dogs with cute pointy noses. I never did get fear-sniffing powers like Cheerio, but I did start trying to eat my food out of a bowl on the floor, and I did start trying to go to the bathroom on the . . . listen, I was four. OK? And soon after that infamous newspaper incident, my parents told me that Cheerio missed his old home and had asked to go back to his farm in the countryside so he could be with Grandma Cheerio.

  I’ve wanted all sorts of superpowers over my twelve years here on planet Earth. Most of the powers have involved the ability to sniff out something or to eat something that’s not actually food. But the one I’ve always wanted more than anything else is the power to be invisible. I know what you’re thinking — everybody wants that power. It’s the most unoriginal power you could possibly want. Everybody wants to sneak around and look through people’s stuff and maybe steal some precious jewels . . . but that’s not why I want it. You see, I do have something of a superpower: I always end up in crazy situations.

  Every time I look up, I’m in a crazy situation.

  I’m actually in one at this very moment. And I’d do anything for an invisibility cloak right now, and I mean anything. I’d even eat locusts.

  I am on the floor, flat on my stomach, underneath Miss Adolf’s desk. My nose is about six inches from Miss Adolf’s feet, and a moment ago — while I was telling you about poor little Cheerio — Miss Adolf decided to kick off her shoes and get comfortable. Her feet smell like damp cheese and — oh, no — I feel a sneeze coming on. It’s in my nose already. My face is starting to scrunch up. It’s going to happen. And since I’ll have only a few minutes to live after it’s out, and since my invisibility cloak is once again on the fritz, I might as well tell you how I got here.

  It all started with World War I.

  Three weeks earlier.

  When Miss Adolf asked for a volunteer to try on a gas mask, an authentic one from World War I, there was no question that I was going to be that volunteer. It all happened so fast. I don’t even think I raised my hand. One moment Miss Adolf was taking out the gas mask from her bag and the next moment, I was at the front of the class, the thing pressed against my face, with Miss Adolf tightening the straps to skull-crushing levels.

  “Too tight!” I gasped, to everyone’s laughter.

  “It’s got to be airtight. You don’t want to inhale mustard gas, do you?”

  “I want to get out of this thing!”

  “Notice, class, how difficult it is to speak wearing one of these gas masks,” Miss Adolf said, and yanked the strap tighter.

  “You’re crushing my ear!”

  “We can no longer understand anything Hank has to say. All we can hear is a low grunting sound.” The class was loving it, laughing and pointing. “So you can imagine how difficult it was for soldiers to hear their comrades in the trenches, surrounded by machine-gun and artillery fire.”

  I was starting to get a little woozy. The goggles had steamed up from all my breathing, and the thing smelled like one-hundred-year-old saliva, just like that spit valve in the music room’s trombone, the one that has been used by generations of kids.

  “Can I barf in this thing?”

  “Henry looks and sounds more anteater than human, don’t you think, class?”

  Through the steamy eye holes I saw that Miss Adolf looked quite pleased with herself for that one. She did that thing where it looked like she was trying to smile, but with her face so used to frowning and glaring all the time, it looked less like she was enjoying herself and more like she’d just eaten a bit of tainted meat.

  “You sure there’s no mustard gas left in there?” my best friend Frankie asked.

  Miss Adolf thought about it for a moment. “I’m mostly sure.”

  “If there’s mustard gas in there,” my other best friend, Ashley, said, “he could go temporarily blind and get diarrhea!” Ashley is, by the way, super interested in grisly medical stuff.

  Miss Adolf sighed. She loosened the straps, and I threw off the mask.

  “Now, Hank, what was it you were trying to say?”

  “I’m blind, Miss Adolf!” I flailed my arms around. “I can’t see. Let me touch your face! Oh, it’s so dark in my world! So dark!”

  For an instant, the class was laughing with me. But then Miss Adolf swooshed her fencing sword through the air and sliced the good feeling in two. She’s really quick with that thing. Ninja quick. I don’t even know where she pulled it out of. “Settle down. The Great War was no laughing matter! That’s something you’ll learn while working on your essay —”

  Everyone groaned.

  “Yes,” she said. “Your history project is to write an essay on life in the trenches of World War One. Five pages, single-spaced. No illustrations, no emojis, no late papers accepted whatsoever. You will also give a presentation. The presentation will account for only twenty percent of your final grade. So if you think you can get out of writing your paper with an art project or interpretive dance, think again. I’m looking at you, Henry.”

  Three weeks sounds like a long time, right?

  And it is.

  I had plenty of time to start reading about Prussian political alliances from 1907, plenty of time for my eyes to get all hazy and my brain all bored. That’s when I noticed a whole box of brand-new erasers, and since I had practically a thousand years to read about Prussian political alliances from 1907, I just started making a miniature Prussian army out of erasers instead. And I did a good job, too. Like with hand-drawn faces and paper clip bayonets. It took me a while to find just the right item for the little helmets, and for a while there, I was pretty stuck. Then I decided to take down everything from my bulletin board and use those metal pushpins for little helmets. They were adorable and perfect. I had a smartly uniformed army all standing in formation, and plenty of time, so I made a scale-model replica of the Palace of Versailles out of mashed potatoes and set it out in the sun to harden. When the palace started to smell, I still had plenty of time to plan and then launch a huge siege on the Palace of Stink with my Prussian army of erasers.

  And that leads us to now. Three weeks
are now a memory. And other than learning that there were indeed trenches in World War I, I have nothing. Strike that: I have less than nothing, because three weeks ago I had a new box of erasers.

  Well, looks like my brain has done it again. Come on, brain, why do you keep doing this to me? Huh?

  No answer?

  You know, brain, I listened to you for three weeks. I gave you nothing but fun little distractions. Now I’m here, and you owe me. I’m going to count to three, and you’re going to tell me exactly what to do. Or how I can get out of doing it. I need a miracle here. OK, ready?

  One . . . two . . . three!

  Fine, brain, be that way. I’ll do it myself. With no help from you.

  I shook myself all over, tugged my hair, mushed my face, widened my eyes, and let out one of my getting-down-to-business screams, which my downstairs neighbor, Ms. DeLillo, just loves. Feeling better, focused, and ready for action, I picked up the book and scanned the table of contents for trench warfare. The Origins of the . . . Otto Von Bismarck’s Four-Pronged Gambit . . . The Balkans and the rise of the . . . Powder Keg Europe . . . Doughnuts with Powdered Sugar . . . Chocolate Ice Cream with . . .

  I shut the book and wandered over to the kitchen. Time for a little snack. You know, a little brain food.

  Things were happening in the living room. Dad was packing his overnight bag, and Mom was sitting on the couch, nervously hunched over a book called Taking Your Child to the Hospital.

  I was fine, by the way. It was my noxious little sister, Emily — she was the one with all the mutant germs. She was going to the hospital the next day to have her tonsils taken out. It would be a pretty minor little surgery, I guess, but she would get to miss two weeks of school. Two whole weeks! Wait — something clicked in my brain . . .

  “Um, Mom,” I croaked, and swallowed with great anguish. I made my eyes look sickly and sad, too. “My throat is . . . gulp . . . it’s not . . .”

  “Make yourself some tea with honey, love,” Mom said without looking up.

  “But maybe I should . . . gulp . . . go to the hospital and get . . .”

  “Your tonsils surgically removed?” my dad said.

  “Yeah,” I whispered.

  “An unnecessary surgery?” my dad asked again, looking quite greenish all of a sudden. “You want doctors to reach into your mouth and cut out part of your body?”

  Of course I did. For two weeks of no school, they could cut whatever useless part of my body they wanted. Tonsils, appendix, nipples, brain — it was all the same to me.

  “I think I have to,” I croaked. “My throat . . . gulp . . . it burns . . .”

  “Not now, Hank,” Mom said from her book. “Tomorrow is a complex day for your sister. I need to keep this space calm and supportive.”

  Nobody in my family believed my little performance, but it was worth a shot. And my project wasn’t actually due for another day. But my parents were going to be at the hospital with Emily, and that meant Frankie, Ashley, and I would have the whole apartment to ourselves.

  Let that sink in.

  THE WHOLE APARTMENT TO OURSELVES.

  We’d been planning for weeks, saving up all our pocket money for the most extravagant pizza and ice-cream party in history. We were calling it Uncle Hank’s Grand Pizza and Ice-Cream Gala and Soiree. Mom thought it was a study session, and, obviously, I would need to get to my boring history assignment, but it was the whole apartment to ourselves!

  My heart just wasn’t in it for my sick-man act, but I didn’t feel like giving up just yet. I hobbled over to the sofa and sat myself down very gingerly. Mom gave me the eye. “How do you expect to write your essay from the sofa?”

  “I just need to . . . gulp . . . rest a little first.”

  “Hank, in this complex time, I need you to support your sister by finishing your history essay. Don’t you agree, Stan?”

  “I think you should put the book down for the night,” Dad said to Mom, reaching for it. “You’re starting to sound a little —”

  She yanked it away. “And I think you should focus on being brave for your daughter.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You know how you are around anything medical.”

  “Calm and supportive?”

  Mom flared her nostrils. “Stan, do you really want to get into it?” She reminded Dad that when it comes to blood, bruises, scabs, and even twisted ankles, he’s a huge baby. She also reminded him that while she was in labor with me, he was the one who needed to be sedated with laughing gas.

  When they really started getting into it, I saw an opportunity to sneak off for a taste of ice cream. It felt cool and soothing on my inflamed tonsils.

  “Hey! There she is!” my dad cried. “My brave little tiger cub! Raaaarrr!”

  Emily had just materialized from the shadows. She very calmly walked over to the door and set down two neatly packed suitcases.

  “How are you feeling, love?” Mom asked, shoving her hospital book under the cushions.

  “It’s only a tonsillectomy,” Emily replied. “It’s a very common and simple operation.”

  “I understand,” Mom said.

  “It’s not a big deal. It’s hardly an endoscopic bypass surgery or anything.”

  “No need to give all the medical details,” Dad said.

  “Well, love, I’m glad you’re so calm,” Mom said to Emily, raising an eyebrow at Dad.

  “I’m calm,” he said, sidling over to Mom and putting an arm around her waist. “We both are.”

  “And supportive,” Mom said. Then the two of them just looked at Emily with big, toothy fake smiles for what felt like forever.

  “I’ve packed some extra homework for myself,” Emily said, “and some light reading material for Katherine in her bag.”

  “Oh, love,” Mom said, getting down on a knee and taking Emily’s hand. “I know that your feelings must be very complex right now, and you know that your father and I would do anything to support you, but we can’t take Katherine with us.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she’s a lizard,” Dad said.

  From the kitchen, I snorted a laugh into my ice cream. Mom looked over and glared at me. “Hank, go to your room and support your sister. Now!”

  I went back to my room and sat at my desk. I took out five fresh sheets of paper, glared at all the white space for kind of a while, then got my courage together and wrote my name at the top.

  Hank Zipzer.

  It looked good, though a little plain. So I made the H a block letter and used the rest of the page to sketch out more variations of it.

  Pretty soon it was almost 10:00 p.m., and my eyelids were getting droopy. I found myself drawing a new type of Z — I’d made it into kind of a lightning bolt zapping all the rest of the letters to dust. It was time to call it a night.

  I hadn’t exactly gotten the world’s best jump on my essay. That was true. But I had everything ready, so I was all set to burst from the starting block — tomorrow. I had all day tomorrow. I mean, who starts a homework assignment more than twenty-four hours before it’s due?

  Crazy people, that’s who.

  I wasn’t worried that tomorrow I had school all day or that my evening was booked solid with Uncle Hank’s Grand Pizza and Ice-Cream Gala and Soiree. I’d find an hour somewhere to knock out my essay. Five pages is nothing. Usually takes me no longer than forty-five minutes to knock out five pages.

  I slept like a baby.

  The first thing I did the next morning was open my desk drawer and count the wad of money I’d saved and collected from Ashley and Frankie. Between us we had almost fifty dollars, enough for an epic amount of pizza, ice cream, soda, snacks, and dessert. And if we needed a little more money, I knew the combination to Emily’s lockbox.

  But wait, I know what you’re thinking: Isn’t ice cream the dessert?

  Of course we’d be having ice cream for dessert! But we’d also be serving it as an appetizer and during the main course.
It was all on the official menu:

  UNCLE HANK’S GRAND PIZZA AND ICE-CREAM GALA AND SOIREE

  Formal attire requested

  *****

  6:00 to 6:30

  Guests arrive. Refreshments on ice.

  6:30 to 6:45

  First course: mint-chocolate milkshakes

  *****

  6:45 to 7:00

  Second course:

  Hawaiian-style pizza from Fidel’s

  *****

  7:00 to 7:15

  Third course: more Hawaiian-style pizza from Fidel’s, side of ice cream

  *****

  7:15 to 7:45

  Parlor games

  *****

  7:45 to 8:00

  First dessert course:

  guests may choose from either a triple-scoop sundae or a triple-scoop banana split.

  *****

  8:00 to 8:30

  Music, dancing, festivities

  8:30 to 8:45

  Pizza-crust course: guests are encouraged to dip their crusts into melted ice-cream soup.

  *****

  8:45 to 9:00

  Second dessert course:

  ice cream with trick candles

  *****

  9:00 to ???

  Third dessert course: sugar!!!!!!

  I couldn’t wait. There was no way I was going to let a boring essay about depressing World War I spoil the night to end all nights!

  Teeth brushed, hair wild, uniform mostly on, I gathered a pile of early versions of my menu and my latest block letters, stuffed them into a folder marked “World War I,” and burst into the living room, ready to seize the day.

  “Hank can do it,” my dad said.

  “You know it!” I said, still thinking about day-seizing.

  “No, he can’t,” Emily said. “He can’t even look after himself.”

  “Of course I can do it,” I said to Emily.

  “You sure?” Dad asked.

  “It’s already done,” I said, and tapped my World War I folder, but nobody was paying much attention to me.

  “He doesn’t know the first thing about Lacertilia,” Emily said.

  “Sure I do,” I blurted out, without waiting for any input from my brain. “Wait, what’s this about a laser?”