The Pet War Read online

  “Oh,” I said in a tiny voice. “Kind of funny that I sold them, huh?” I gave a small smile.

  But I don’t think Mom thought it was funny at all, and I quickly stopped smiling.

  “What am I supposed to do now?” she demanded. “Why would I have so many apples in the house if they weren’t for something important?”

  I hung my head and looked at my socks and away from Mom’s eyes. Her eyes had a way of making you feel even guiltier than you did already, and I felt pretty guilty. “Sorry?”

  Mom took a deep breath. “Otto, I think it’s great that you’re looking for creative ways to make money. But not if it’s going to cost me more money, understand? You’re going to have to pay me back for those apples. Otherwise it wouldn’t be fair. How much did you sell them for?”

  “Ten cents each.”

  Mom’s frown grew more frown-ier. “Ten cents? What were you thinking?”

  “That I’d become an apple tycoon?” I whimpered.

  “I’m going to buy more apples and you’re going to pay me back every cent. But apples cost a lot more than ten cents each.”

  “But I’m trying to save five hundred dollars. Not spend five hundred dollars,” I whined.

  “Then you better start thinking of ways to earn money that doesn’t cost me any.” She walked away in a huff. Before she turned the corner she yelled back, “And hang up your jacket and put your shoes away! They don’t belong on the floor!”

  “Sorry!” I called again.

  Mom stomped off and I spied Lexi in the kitchen, smirking at me. I hated that Lexi smirk. I would knock it off her face all the way to Timbuktu, and everyone knows that’s really far away. I’m not sure where it is, exactly. Geography isn’t my best subject. But I don’t really have a best subject, unless you count lunch.

  I’d earn my pet dog money, and I’d wipe away Lexi’s snarky smiles like they were specks of dirt and I was a bottle of hand sanitizer. “Just you wait,” I mumbled as I brushed past her. She giggled back.

  That night, I called Malcolm and told him about my problems. That’s what friends are for — to help you think of moneymaking ideas and hear you complain about things.

  “You have to consider the cost of production. It’s simple economics,” he said.

  “Doesn’t sound so simple to me.” I stifled a yawn. I couldn’t think of too many things more boring than economics.

  “It is simple,” he insisted. “You have to figure out how much something costs. And then sell it for more.”

  “So selling our silverware for twenty-five cents a fork? Not a good idea?”

  “Probably not.”

  After we hung up I had plenty to think about. I grabbed a notebook from my desk and began filling it up with excellent ideas, each which cost practically nothing.

  I could sell dirt.

  I could sell air.

  I could sell soap scum.

  Okay, maybe not all my ideas were genius-level. But I kept writing new ones down. Eventually, I’d think of the perfect plan.

  I could sell dryer lint.

  I could sell the hopes and dreams of kids who just want a dog and not a stupid cat.

  I kept on writing.

  After school, I thought more about what Malcolm had been talking about. Think cost of production. Think smaller.

  There aren’t a whole lot of things smaller than cookies. They’re even smaller than apples, not including those enormous black-and-white cookies at Schnood’s Grocery Store. Mom only gets those on special occasions, which means not often enough. Apparently my getting a haircut isn’t a “special occasion.” But I usually get a lot of hair snipped off. That should count for something.

  Here’s a list of other occasions I think are cookie-worthy and Mom doesn’t:

  Dentist appointments

  I ate all my vegetables without complaining

  Lexi didn’t annoy me all day (it’s only happened twice, ever)

  Our soccer team won. Or tied. Or lost barely

  Just because

  People love cookies. The year before, the PTA threw a bake sale and earned more than a thousand dollars. The PTA lady got her picture in the school newsletter and everything. They were awful cookies, too. Most only had one chocolate chip in them. Some didn’t have any, which means technically they weren’t even chocolate chip cookies. Everyone knows a chocolate chip cookie is only as good as the number of chips stuffed inside it. But people didn’t complain because the bake sale was for a good cause.

  Now that I think of it, I bet those stingy, no-chip PTA cookie ladies were cat lovers.

  But I would make my cookies better. I’d include lots of chips in each. And I couldn’t think of a better cause than my getting a dog. I’d probably sell out of cookies in about five minutes. Cookie ingredients were pretty cheap, too. Right? I’d wash that Lexi smirk down the sink like a half-chewed spear of broccoli.

  I’d never baked anything before, but how hard could it be? Mom was upstairs on her computer, but I would show her how responsible I was by baking my fantastically perfect cookies by myself.

  We had all the ingredients sitting in the pantry. I just needed to mix them in a bowl and bake them. I’d have to be an idiot to mess this job up.

  But apparently you have to be a math genius to bake stuff. I found a recipe in a cookbook that looked easy but only made thirty-six cookies. I’d need at least one hundred cookies to make any real money. But thirty-six goes into one hundred how many times, carry the denominator, minus something or other, and assuming a train is traveling forty-five miles per hour in an easterly direction, and so on.

  So I didn’t know how much of everything I needed. But I was going to throw in plenty of chocolate chips — more than one for every cookie. Take that, cat-loving PTA ladies!

  The PTA called their cookies the “Amazing Curriculum Cookies” because the money went toward school curriculum. It was a lousy name, almost as lousy as the name Fluffernutter. Almost. Because there is no name worse than Fluffernutter.

  But I could do way better. Names are important. Like horseradish — you’d think it would taste like a horse and a radish, mixed up. They should name it Jelly Bean Sundae. Then maybe people would like it more.

  No. Scratch that. No one would like horseradish more, no matter what you called it.

  So I started thinking of cookie names.

  “Otto’s Chocolate Chip Cookies!”

  Boring.

  “Otto’s Amazing Chocolaty Chip Delights.”

  Better.

  “Otto’s Amazingly Delightful Chocolaty Chip Canine Cookie Confections.”

  Bingo!

  Everyone loves animal cookies almost as much as they love chocolate chip cookies. I could make chocolate chip cookies that looked like dogs. The idea was pure genius. I bet this is how Thomas Edison felt when he invented the lightbulb.

  When people think of great ideas in comics, they have lightbulbs drawn over their heads. What did people draw before Thomas Edison came around? Torches?

  Anyway, I didn’t have time to think about ancient history all day. I needed to get to work.

  Lexi wasn’t the only artist in the family. I would paint pictures of dogs on every cookie with Mom’s icing tubes. They’d be so artistically excellent that Lexi would be begging me to make her posters for her!

  “Otto’s Amazingly Delightful Chocolaty Chip Canine Cookie Confections. Two Chips per Cookie.”

  Two chips! Take that, Lexi.

  I looked at the recipe. I needed to melt butter. So I put two sticks in the microwave. I also took out the other ingredients: sugar, flour, vanilla extract, and, of course, chocolate chips. I removed Mom’s giant mixing bowl from beneath the counter and prepared to get to work.

  I’d make a hundred and one cookies. A hundred to sell, and one to eat. Or maybe ninety-nine to sell and two to eat. I’d play it by ear.

  Mom had a brand-new bag of flour. It was hard to open, so I had to tug the ends and give it a rip. You would think the flour people c
ould make bags easier to open. The entire side tore in half. Flour exploded everywhere: on the floor, on me, on the walls, and even on the ceiling. How does flour get on a ceiling? But ceilings are white, so you couldn’t really see it unless you squinted.

  I scooped what I could off the floor and into the mixing bowl. Luckily, flour comes in big bags, so there was plenty to scoop.

  Then the microwave beeped. I have some advice: If you microwave butter, use a bowl.

  Luckily, Mom had two more sticks.

  I dumped all the ingredients into the mixing bowl, except for the chips. I was saving those. The recipe called for two and a half cups of flour. I threw in six cups. The recipe called for a teaspoon of vanilla extract. I poured in four. Or maybe I put in four tablespoons, I wasn’t sure. The recipe called for a cup of sugar, but everyone loves sugar, so I just dumped in about half the bag. Sugar’s the best food ever.

  I mixed and stirred and then rolled the cookies into balls and flattened them onto our cookies sheets. Then it was time for the best part: my incredible dog pictures. After all, these weren’t just cookies. They were Otto’s Amazingly Delightful Chocolaty Chip Canine Cookie Confections. Two Chips per Cookie.

  The chips were the eyes, and since dogs have two eyes, that’s where the two chips came in. Brilliant, right? We had five different icing tubes and I used them all: red icing for the dog’s nose, green icing for its mouth, blue icing for its ears, yellow for its leash, and purple just to add purple.

  I know dogs don’t have blue ears or green mouths. In the art world you can do practically anything. It’s called artistic license. It’s not like a driver’s license, though. Moms don’t get mad if you draw stuff, but drive the car down the driveway and they ground you for two weeks.

  I want to know what genius designed icing tubes. It wasn’t Thomas Edison, that’s for sure. You have to squeeze hard, and then the icing plops out and makes a mess. My dog designs looked like blobs of random colors, with two chocolate chips in the middle.

  I would have to change the name, since there was nothing dog-like about my cookies anymore. I grabbed my notebook to write down new ideas.

  “Otto’s Amazingly Delightful Randomly Colored Cookie Confections.”

  “Otto’s Amazingly Delightful Kaleidoscope Colorful Cookies Except Those That Are Just Yellow.”

  “Otto’s Amazingly Delightful Cookies With Icing Splotches That Look Sort of Like Dogs If You Squint. Maybe.”

  I didn’t like any of those choices as much as my canine cookie name, but you do what you can. I put the cookie sheets with their cookie blobs in the preheated oven.

  Since I didn’t have a great dog theme, I’d make some great signs. Lexi would be way jealous, too. I walked over to the downstairs computer to get to work.

  I typed: “Otto’s Amazingly Delightful Rainbow Crazy Cookies. Two Chips per Cookie!”

  Not bad.

  I wanted the word Amazingly to look amazing, so I tried about a billion different fonts before finally picking just the right one. I thought every letter should be a different color, but I wasn’t sure which colors, so I tried a billion of those, too.

  It needed more stuff. Stuff people like. The list of things people like goes like this:

  Dogs

  Babies

  Chocolate chip cookies

  I put all three in my signs, which made them way better than any of Lexi’s posters, even if mine didn’t have glitter.

  I also added a picture of a rainbow. People love rainbows, although I don’t know why. If you see a rainbow, it means it just rained. If it rains, you can’t play outside. If you ask me, rainbows stink.

  I typed some catchy lines, too. “Be a cookie hog and I’ll buy a dog!” I also wrote, “Dogs are hairy. Buy as many cookies as you can carry. Maybe we’ll name our dog Larry.”

  I lost track of the time. Just when my signs were really looking great, I smelled something odd.

  Something burning.

  Oh, no!

  How long were the cookies supposed to cook in the oven, anyway?

  I ran back to the kitchen and opened the oven door. A dark plume of smoke filled the room. I waved away the vapors, but not before coughing about three thousand times. The cookies were burnt black, and the entire oven had a strong charred icing smell. Did the recipe say to put on the icing after they baked? Maybe. My wonderful modern art designs were now little pools of bubbling black liquid.

  The thick smoke surrounded my head like clouds in a thunderstorm, and then the smoke alarm went off.

  “What are you doing?” Mom yelled, running down the stairs. I could barely hear her under the nonstop siren wail. Mom held a broom and tapped a button on the ceiling alarm with the handle, and it stopped blaring. “I thought the house was on fire!” she shouted. The alarm was no longer beeping, so she really didn’t have to scream anymore. I think she just yelled because that’s what moms do when they’re angry.

  “No, only the oven was on fire,” I said as a joke, but Mom wasn’t in the mood for jokes. She opened the sliding glass kitchen door so smoke could seep out of the room.

  None of Otto’s Amazingly Delightful Rainbow Crazy Cookies were edible. I had to throw the entire batch away. I wanted to bake a second batch, but Mom said I was forbidden from using the oven again for the rest of my natural born life. I asked if she might change her mind when I was seventy-six years old, but she said there was a fat chance of that ever happening. Mom’s mood was as black as burnt cookies.

  “But I’ve made great signs!” I protested. “And I don’t need to put glitter on them, like some people I know. You wouldn’t want signs like those to go to waste, would you?”

  She would. Mom didn’t budge. She told me it was dangerous to burn food like that. It was irresponsible. And I was lucky she didn’t ground me for the rest of the month.

  “You can’t ground me! I need to earn five hundred dollars,” I complained. Mom kept her frown on. “I really like your hair today,” I said, changing tactics. “And I love your shirt!” That didn’t make her any happier, either.

  Mom said I couldn’t leave the house until I cleaned everything up, even the flour that was on everything, including me. She also told me to get the stepladder so I could wipe off the ceiling. I don’t know how she even noticed that.

  I held up one of the cookie sheets. “But instead of boring cookie sheets, we have Amazingly Delightful Kaleidoscope Colorfully Black Cookie Sheets,” I said.

  “I thought you said you could be responsible,” Mom snapped.

  “I am being responsible,” I argued. “I’m responsible for almost setting the kitchen on fire.”

  Angry moms have no sense of humor.

  I didn’t think things could get worse, but I was wrong. After Mom gave me one more lecture about kitchen safety, and while I was scrubbing cookie sheets, Lexi walked in the room. She had been studying with friends, one after another. I guess she was done for now.

  Burnt icing does not come off cookie sheets easily, by the way. Neither does burnt cookie dough.

  As I scoured, Lexi wore a gloating grin. “Interesting strategy.” She snickered. “Convince Mom to give you five hundred dollars or you’ll burn the house down.”

  “That’s not my plan,” I huffed, using a plastic scraper to get off a particularly stubborn, hard-crusted dough crumb. I doubt Mom would pay me five hundred dollars not to burn the house down, anyway. “I have lots of great ideas. This is just a small bump in the road to my fortune. You’ll see. We are not getting a cat.”

  “I’d take you more seriously if your hair wasn’t completely covered in flour, Snow White.”

  “I’m not Snow White,” I grumbled, chipping away at burnt food in the sink.

  “Maybe your friends the dwarves can help you. Just stay away from poisonous apples.” She laughed. “Oh, that’s right. You sold all of our apples yesterday!”

  “I am not Snow White!” I growled, shaking my head. Unfortunately, when my head shook, a cloud of flour erupted in the air. Lexi la
ughed harder.

  After I cleaned the kitchen, I had to shampoo my hair. Twice.

  I had soccer practice every Monday night — six thirty sharp and don’t be late! — so after dinner I rode my bike to the soccer fields behind the school. The spring season started in a few weeks. We came in second place last year and everyone on the team was back. We were aiming for the championship.

  After we warmed up by kicking balls back and forth, then stretching and running laps, Coach Drago split us up into two teams for a scrimmage: the starters versus the scrubs. I was on the first team, as usual, and Malcolm on the second team, as usual. I played horribly. I missed easy shots and kept kicking the ball to the other team. Meanwhile, Malcolm had really improved, thanks to my soccer lessons. Coach Drago kept on clapping when Malcolm had the ball, and yelling at me when I had it. He told me to get my head in the game. But it’s not easy getting your head in the game when you’re thinking about cats and sisters and big moneymaking ideas.

  We lost, and Malcolm’s team celebrated like they had won the World Cup.

  Coach Drago slapped Malcolm on the back and said in his thick Yugoslavian accent, “Great job. Keep up the good work and you’ll be starting!” Then he looked over at me with a sort of sad, disappointed look and shook his head before marching away.

  I walked off the field with my head hanging while the second teamers continued whooping and cheering.

  But I’d show Coach Drago that I was still the team soccer star. I just needed to earn a whole bunch of money first. Then I could worry about soccer, schoolwork, and the rest of my life later.

  I just hoped that later wasn’t too late.

  I was supposed to save money. That was the plan. But so far I’d spent more money than I’d earned. That was a million times horrible. But what made that a million, million times worse was Lexi.