Escape to Australia Page 10

Finally, he described a platoon of specialized, highly trained, stain-throwing mice.

  “Trained mice?” I asked.

  The Smear gestured to the backseat.

  I turned back around and stared at the road ahead. “This is going to get strange, isn’t it?”

  The Smear chuckled. “You have no idea.”

  Sticks and stones may break your bones, but mean names last forever!

  GET A SNEAK PEEK AT

  COMING JUNE 2017!

  The Blame Game

  When you’re Pottymouth and Stoopid, you get blamed for all sorts of stuff you didn’t actually do.

  Remember that disgusting lunch in the cafeteria?

  The mystery meat in the mushy sauce on a bed of rice that might’ve been moving? The one everybody called “When You Find Out What It Is, Don’t Tell Me”?

  Well, somehow, that was our fault.

  “Stoopid gave them the recipe,” went the rumor. “And Pottymouth told them to pour schnizzleflick all over it.”

  When the basketball team lost its first game, everybody blamed Michael.

  “Pottymouth called the other team fluffer-knuckles. That’s why we lost. He fired up the enemy with his pottymouthing!”

  Not true, of course, but the truth seldom has anything to do with a good Pottymouth or Stoopid story.

  For instance, did you know that I’m the one who opened the hamster cage in the fifth-grade classroom and set Scruffy free? Yeah, I didn’t know it either. From what I heard, I saw the word ham on the cage. I thought there was a sandwich inside and I was hungry.

  Then there was that disastrous field trip to the natural history museum. The trip when the whole Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton in the lobby toppled to the ground. They say I yanked out an anklebone so I could take it home to my dog.

  I don’t even have a dog, I told anybody who’d listen. Which would be nobody.

  When Anna started hanging out with us, she got blamed for stuff too.

  The power outage during the big vampire battle scene in the movie everybody was watching during study hall?

  “Anna Britannica pulled the plug on the extension cord,” proclaimed Kaya Kennecky. “She thought it was a bright orange Twizzler and tried to eat it.”

  And so it went. Day after day.

  Pottymouth did this. Stoopid did that. Anna Britannica did everything else.

  I realized that Michael and I had been Potty-mouth and Stoopid for so long, most of the kids at school didn’t know our real names.

  That was okay, I guess.

  Because we didn’t want to know their names either.

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