David Baldacci - Fries Alive

Chief Spanker stared at Freddy and pointed a fat finger at him. “I know something’s going on here, and I’m gonna nail you and that crazy father of yours, Funkhouser.” He turned to his son. “Come on, the parade’s starting soon. We’ll show these flunkies what a real float looks like.”

“Right, Dad.” Adam looked at Freddy and smiled. “So long, loser.” Adam and his father exchanged a wink.

An hour later Alfred and Nancy returned, and the start of the parade was at hand. Alfred gave Freddy a walkie-talkie. “You’ll be on the float with your sister, waving to the crowd, but we can still communicate with these.”

“Right, Dad,” said Freddy. “Where is Nanny Boo-Boo?”

“She’s on the float already, waiting for the great unveiling.”

From the large reviewing stand set up on Main Street, Norman Thackery, the honorable chief judge of the Pookesville Court, and a fair and reasonable man – meaning he was no friend of the Spanker clan – announced the commencement of the parade.

Using a megaphone he said, “All float participants, start your engines.”

Alfred was at the controls of the Burger Castle float. He called out, “Okay, Freddy, off with the cover.”

Freddy pulled the cover off the float. And then his jaw dropped. There was his sister against the tallest turret of the castle, dressed in a long-flowing gown and a peaked hat, and she had tied herself with rope to the structure. She looked like a witch about to be burned at the stake.

“What are you doing, Nanny-Boo-Boo?” he cried out.

“You thought you were going to stop me from performing by taking out my balcony, didn’t you, you little fiend? Well, I outsmarted the great brain this time.”

“Get down! You’re going to ruin everything.”

“To be or not to be, that is the question.”

“You’re going to be a complete and total freak if you don’t get down right now.”

“Sticks and stones can break my bones, but little nerds can never hurt me.”

Freddy stuck out his tongue at his sister and she immediately shot him a raspberry.

Freddy jumped on the float and they started off.

Freddy’s walkie-talkie crackled. “Oh boy, look behind us, Freddy,” said his father over the walkie-talkie.

Freddy’s heart sank. Positioned right behind them was the Patty Cakes float. It was three times the size of any other float and built of new and costly materials. As Freddy had guessed when he’d seen it in the warehouse, it was a complete reproduction of the Patty Cakes Restaurant, complete with the Patty Cakes theme park, roller coaster, Ferris wheel, splash ride, movie theater, video arcade, and much more. All put together now, it was far more impressive than Freddy realized it would be.

Standing on the float was the entire Spanker clan, including Adam, outfitted in their best clothes, although some of the family wore clothespins over their noses. Freddy could smell Adam from where he was standing. A huge loudspeaker attached to the float shouted out the Patty Cakes ditty: “Patty-cake, patty-cake, Spanker man, follow us, follow us to Spanker Land.”

“Wow,” said Alfred over the walkie-talkie, “their float’s going to be hard to beat.”

“That’s because they can afford some big-shot to build it for them,” Freddy shot back.

“It’s okay, Freddy, I still have a good feeling about today. Okay, here we go! Hold on tight, Nanny Boo-Boo.”

“It’s Nancy!” she yelled from the top of the turret.

The parade started off. All the floats in one long line glided down Main Street, passing in front of the reviewing stand where Judge Thackery would pick the winner.

The Burger Castle started off smoothly, but then the engine started sputtering.

“Something appears to be wrong,” said Alfred.

Up on top of the turret, Nancy was really getting into her performance.

“Hark you, Guildenstern, and you too, at each ear a hearer – that great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling-clouts,” she said in a deep voice while making many hand gestures.

One of Adam’s gang called out to her from the crowd. “What are you supposed to be, a gargoyle?”

Nancy’s face grew red, but she continued, “Happily, he is the second time tome to them, for they say an old man is twice a child.”

Another gang member yelled, “Hey, maybe if we’re lucky, lightning will strike and shut her up!”

Nancy took a deep breath and kept going, though her cheeks were very pink now. “I will prophesy he cometh to tell me of the players; mark it.”

The first gang member hooted, “What is this junk?”

Nancy finally stopped and screamed, “It’s Hamlet, you little moron.”

Just then the Burger Castle float took a sudden jolt and died. As Alfred stared in perplexity, bubbles started coming out of the engine.

The Patty Cakes float passed them on the left. As it went by Adam grinned at Freddy. Adam called out, “Oh, and just so you know, any float that doesn’t pass by the reviewing stand is automatically disqualified.”

Alfred and Freddy looked at the engine. Alfred snagged one of the floating bubbles and took a sniff. “It seems that someone poured a bottle of shampoo into our gas tank,” he said.

Freddy looked back at Chief Spanker. That bottle he’d been holding!

Adam yelled, “So long, loser!”

“What’s going on, Dad?” asked Nancy.

“I’m working on it, Nanny Boo-Boo.”

“For the last time, it’s Nancy! Now where was I? Oh, right. ‘O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou!’”

“Treasure this,” called out one of the Spanker gang as he nailed Nancy with a soggy tomato, right in the nose.

Freddy watched as his sister was getting bombarded, as his father worked on the sabotaged gas tank, and as the Spanker float drew ahead of them while the crowd cheered. It would be over for the Burger Castle. They would have to leave Pookesville. The Spankers would win.

And yet right in the middle of it all something clicked in Freddy’s big brain. The fight was not over yet. He grabbed his father’s walkie-talkie from the tractor cab and raced to the float.

Freddy opened the trapdoor underneath the Burger Castle float and stuck his head through the opening.

“Fries, we’ve got a problem,” he said.

“I know,” said Ziggy; “we’re not moving.”

“Spanker sabotaged our engine, and unless we do something they’re gonna win the competition,” explained Freddy. He looked at Si and Meese. “Okay, guys, you know how when you hold your breath it turns to helium? Well, we’re gonna use that little talent right now.” Freddy handed a walkie-talkie to Theodore and quickly explained his plan.

Everyone put their hands together and said, “One Fry for all and all Fries for one, plus Freddy.”

Freddy came out from under the platform, jumped in the driver’s seat of the tractor, and said, “Uh, Dad, you might want to move back.”

Alfred looked up from the tractor’s engine, bewildered, “What was that, son?”

“Hey, get that float out of here!” shouted all the people on the floats lined up behind the Burger Castle.

“Hit it,” yelled Freddy into his walkie-talkie.

Inside the Burger Castle float, Si and Meese took twin enormous breaths, filling up their hollow insides. After five seconds the air inside them turned to helium, the same gas used to fill balloons and make them fly. Inch by inch, the Burger Castle float began to rise into the air.