had started? Had they been as uncertain about their futures as he was? Had their hearts beat as loudly? Had they sweated as much? Rodney could hear himself breathing into the telephone.
“Listen, Rodney. If somebody wanted to murder any of us with an exotic poison, they could just have put the poison in the paper the instructions were printed on. You’d already be a goner.”
Rodney nodded.
“Are you nodding, Rodney?”
“Yeah, Dad, I’m nodding.”
“Besides, any adventure involves an element of risk. That’s one of the things that makes it an adventure. If I hadn’t taken a chance, I might still be shoveling Chocolatron into the atomic furnaces of those crazy aliens.”
“You’re right, Dad. But these stickers are for you. The envelope has your name on it.” Rodney hated himself for saying this. His dad was pitching him the chance of a lifetime, and Rodney was lobbing it right back.
“You’re my son. I’ve already had my adventure. I’m willing to give this one to you.”
“Thanks.” Right back in his court. Part of Rodney was horrified. A major part. But he knew if he didn’t apply that sticker right now, he’d never do it. He’d never do anything except play the kazoo and maybe write the first movement of a symphony over and over again. And he’d continue to be jealous of his parents. More jealous, probably, knowing they’d succeeded and he hadn’t. A terrible life.
Rodney set the telephone receiver on the table next to a folded cardboard model of the Great Auk and skidded his hands down his jeans to get rid of the sweat. He tore the top sticker off the pad. It came away easily. He looked at it. From this moment on, his life would be different. No more of this boring stuff. The excitement would never stop. He applied the sticker to his forehead and waited.
“Rodney?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Did you do it?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“How do you feel?”
“About the same. I don’t think these stickers do anything at all.” Rodney was aware of his lighthearted tone. He felt as if he’d just taken off a backpack full of bricks.
“It’s a strange sort of joke,” Mr. Congruent said.
“Maybe it’s not an adventure after all.” Rodney was disappointed that this was such a relief.
“Don’t give up so easily, Rodney. With adventures, you have to expect the unexpected. That’s something else that makes an adventure.”
“I suppose.”
“If you have time, call me and your mother when something happens. You have the number?”
“If I have time?”
“Adventures sometimes come swiftly. You’ll call?”
“Sure, Dad. If I have time.”
“That’s great. Anything else?”
They spoke for a few minutes more. Rodney asked Mr. Congruent to pass along his regards to his mom, and they hung up.
Rodney sat by the phone waiting to feel different. He felt a little nauseous, but that was probably because he’d eaten too many cherries. Nothing else. He was just some kid sitting next to a telephone with a square yellow sticker on his forehead. Rodney went lack upstairs and started his math homework. When fifteen minutes had gone by, Rodney figured he’d given the adventure his best shot. Besides, the skin under the sticker was itching. He lifted his hand to pull the sticker off.
“Yow!” he cried. Rodney’d expected the sticker to just about fall off in his hand. But it didn’t. Rodney pulled gently but firmly. The sticker stuck to his forehead as if it were a scab or something. He pulled harder. Nothing. He pulled hard enough to make his forehead hurt, but the sticker wouldn’t come away.
Rodney rushed to the bathroom. He rubbed soap all over the sticker, then baby oil. Nothing would loosen it. He looked at himself in the mirror, breathing hard from excitement and from the exertion of trying to pull off the sticker.
Whoever sent these stickers had had their reasons. It could still be poisoning him, or twining through his nervous system, or who knew what? Rodney thought of calling his parents but decided not to. His father had given this adventure to him. It was up to Rodney to figure out what to do about it. Even if it killed him.
CHAPTER THREE
UNDER RODNEY’S HAT
Rodney tugged gently at the sticker while he finished his math homework. Entire minutes went by when he didn’t even think about the sticker. It became just something to play with, like a callous or a hangnail. But at other moments he wondered when the sticker would begin to act, and what strange symptom he would notice first.
He wondered while he took his kazoo out of its case and plugged it in. He wondered while he set up his music stand and unfolded the music from the haircutting scene from Pastrami’s Samson and Delilah. He wondered while he hummed the first notes at the top of the page into his kazoo. His wonder suddenly turned to horror.
Experimentally, he hummed into his kazoo again. At first, because the sounds he was making were so awful, he feared he’d forgotten how to hum. Then he decided that the sounds themselves were not awful. They were the same as always.
But now, unaccountably, in a matter of hours, his taste in music had changed. He hummed a few more notes into his kazoo, and the sound—which earlier that day had been so soothing—now put his teeth on edge. Itchy things crawled over his body.
He tried to remain calm but was not successful. Giving up the kazoo in order to have an adventure was not ever what he’d had in mind. Competing with his parents was silly, anyway. He didn’t need to have an adventure just because they’d both had one. Of course, the yellow sticker didn’t seem to be giving him a choice.
He frowned. And then with determination, Rodney began to hum into his instrument again. He concentrated on the music, but that didn’t keep his skin from itching. He felt himself getting angry. By the time he’d finished the page, he was ready to tear phone books in half with his teeth.
Had the sticker changed his feelings only about kazoo music, or was it music in general? Rodney turned on the radio. A woman was singing a commercial about how everybody needed a credit card. The tune was trivial and the message insulting, but neither of them made Rodney itch. He turned off the radio and opened the “Latvian Sailor’s Dance.” The moment he began to play, jackhammers began pulverizing an old sidewalk inside his brain.
He sat in his chair sweating and breathing hard, the kazoo a dead weight in his hands. As far as he was concerned, the sound of a kazoo was now fingernails on a slate, cats howling, and the whine of a dentist’s drill all rolled into one. Rodney had never heard of a poison that made you hate kazoo music. There had to be more to it. Rodney would have to quit the orchestra. A yellow sticker did not seem like much to get in exchange.
Hoping to distract himself from the blackness closing in, Rodney put his kazoo away and went downstairs to watch TV.
*
