Pip Bartlett's Guide to Magical Creatures Read online

  * * *

  “So then he said that she didn’t have the stage presence to pull off the role, and she said that he wouldn’t know—what? Yes, I’m talking about him! No, not the guy who originated the part, the second one—yes—” Callie was on the phone. I wondered if whoever was on the other end of the line understood Callie. I sure didn’t.

  I sat at a table just over Callie’s shoulder, studying the Fuzzle. It was still contained in the little metal box, and had rolled itself over to a tiny water dish I put inside.

  Even though it was a pest, I didn’t think it should go thirsty.

  I’d gone through all Aunt Emma’s old magical veterinary school textbooks looking for information on Fuzzles, and hadn’t found a single sentence. I peered into the box and doodled some flames on the back of my hand.

  “Hey, Fuzzle?” I whispered. “Come on. Talk to me! Why are you here?”

  The Fuzzle didn’t answer. It just blinked at me, grumbled a bit, and then hummed. It sounded like this: grrrrrrrrrrrrr mmmmmmmmmmm. Except the “m” went on forever and ever and ever, until I gave up. I couldn’t tell if the Fuzzles didn’t want to talk to me or simply couldn’t. They didn’t really seem to have mouths, after all.

  “Did I just hear you talk to that thing? Because you know you’re not supposed to pretend you can talk to animals anymore,” Callie said, crossing her arms. She’d hung up and was now standing over me. She narrowed her eyes at both me and the Fuzzle, who was rolling itself back and forth happily. It was pretty cute for something that turned into a miniature inferno.

  “I was talking to myself,” I said, which wasn’t entirely untrue, seeing as how the Fuzzle hadn’t answered. Catching a glimpse of the old, sticker-covered computer at the front desk, I suddenly had an idea. “Do you think I could use the computer?”

  “Ha!” Callie said. “Mom has that thing so locked down with parental controls that it’s cruel and unusual punishment. She says—”

  “That the computer is just for work,” Aunt Emma finished the sentence, suddenly rounding the corner. She was holding a Jillymander by the tail. I didn’t think I’d like to be hung upside down, but the Jillymander was purring, so I guessed it was fine. She added, “Don’t roll your eyes at me, Callie. You’re on the computer plenty enough during the school year. It’s summer! Get out! Explore!”

  “By explore, do you mean the vast, uncharted terrain of the front desk?” Callie asked, crossing her arms.

  “Well … explore after hours, then,” Aunt Emma said, but I could tell she felt a little bad. She and the Jillymander vanished into an exam room just as the phone rang. Callie lunged for it.

  “Delynn? Did you watch the audition video? What? This isn’t Delynn? Yes, this is Cloverton Clinic for Magical Creatures. What? How is that our problem? No, we don’t treat them. Because they’re … they’re Fuzzles! We treat pets, not pests!”

  It was the first Fuzzle call. The first of many.

  By the time I’d fed Regent Maximus his lunch and taken Bubbles for a walk with Tomas, Callie had received fifty-seven Fuzzle-related phone calls.

  “It hasn’t stopped ringing!” she said shrilly when Tomas, Bubbles, and I walked back in the front door. Callie pointed at the phone like it had bitten her. It rang again in response.

  Fifty-eight Fuzzle-related phone calls.

  “Aunt Emma said they can produce three hundred FuzzleKits a week,” I told Tomas. “I guess that means the one in Regent Maximus’s stable wasn’t a stray.”

  “Three hundred Fuzzles?” Tomas rubbed his nose, as if already imagining an allergic reaction. “That’s a lot of fur.”

  We turned to look as a fire truck whizzed past the clinic, lights flashing and sirens loud.

  “That’s a lot of fire,” I added. “I wonder why the Fuzzles showed up all of a sudden? Aunt Emma said they’re usually very rare.”

  But by closing time, Fuzzles were no longer very rare—or, at least, they were no longer very rare at Cloverton Clinic for Magical Creatures.

  It turned out that no one in Cloverton knew what to do with the Fuzzles. The police suggested quarantining them in fireproof boxes, but no one had enough lying around. The fire department suggested dousing the Fuzzles in water so they’d burn slower, but that just created a lot of steam before the inevitable fire. Cloverton Animal Control didn’t know what to do with them, so they kept sending calls to us.

  At three o’clock, Aunt Emma suggested Callie simply take the phone off the hook. And it worked!

  For about thirty minutes, anyway. When people didn’t get an answer, they stopped calling and started showing up at the door with Fuzzles. Fuzzles in metal lock boxes. Fuzzles in empty coffee tins. Fuzzles in jelly jars. Fuzzles on glass cake platters, and even a few Fuzzles wrapped in tin foil like fuzzy baked potatoes.

  Aunt Emma and Callie ran to the store to buy more fire extinguishers. Tomas and I were charged with keeping the waiting room from burning down.

  “This is ridiculous!” Tomas said, throwing his hands in the air. I wasn’t sure what Tomas meant was ridiculous—the hundreds of Fuzzles or the big puffs of periwinkle-colored smoke that were coming out of his ears. I was beginning to think Tomas really was allergic to all magical creatures.

  I stood on the desk, holding a fire extinguisher. Every now and then, a Fuzzle would smoke, and I’d spray it down. It was working for now, but what were we supposed to do overnight? Take shifts?

  “Incoming,” Tomas warned as a car rolled up outside. The driver hopped out, ran to the front door, dropped a metal trash can full of Fuzzles on the doorstep, then squealed off.

  Not very noble.

  “Pip! Quick!” Tomas said. He pointed to a Fuzzle off to his left that was smoking. I aimed the fire extinguisher at it and blasted, but the spray didn’t quite reach. The smoke deepened in color.

  “Hurry!” Tomas said as I jumped off the counter and tiptoed through the sea of Fuzzles on the floor. I wasn’t going to make it in time! Tomas flung himself forward. He grabbed for the smoking Fuzzle, but he couldn’t quite reach. Fingers stretched, he grasped, his fingertips scratching across the Fuzzle’s blond fur—

  The Fuzzle stopped smoking.

  Tomas and I exchanged a puzzled look.

  I wound my way over. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing,” Tomas said. “I just—I guess I just sort of …” Reaching forward again, he scratched the Fuzzle on its head.

  The Fuzzle opened its eyes and looked up at Tomas happily. It began to trill. Like when you roll your tongue and sort of sing. That’s what the Fuzzle sounded like. It trilled faster and faster until the sound just became a hum.

  And then the humming was everywhere. All the other Fuzzles in the waiting room were harmonizing with the first.

  And better yet? They’d all stopped smoking. Well, except for Tomas. Puffs of allergic smoke still trailed from his ears.

  With a sigh of relief, I set the fire extinguisher down. “Well. That’s definitely something about Fuzzles that belongs in the Guide.”

  “But what about all the others?” Tomas said. “I mean, the ones out there?” He waved toward the front door and beyond. “People can’t go around petting Fuzzles all day.”

  “No,” I agreed. “But at least we won’t be stuck in another burning building.”

  Tomas nodded and scratched the Fuzzle’s head a little harder.

  * * *

  That night, after we’d sorted the Fuzzles into fireproof containers and double-checked the smoke detectors, I fell happily into my bed. I was almost asleep when someone opened my bedroom door. The silhouette looked like a gangly monster topped with a mushroom of fur. I sat up, confused, and realized it was Callie. She wore pink pajamas and her hair was all piled on top of her head.

  I didn’t say anything. I just stared at her and thought about her looking like a monster with mushroom hair.

  “Look,” Callie said. “Stop staring at me like that. I don’t really get this whole magical-creature-guide-knowledge-memorizing th
ing you do, but fine, whatever, because I want these Fuzzles g-o-n-e, gone.”

  I knew she’d told me to stop staring, but I couldn’t think of any other response.

  Callie reached down and turned my head to the side, so my eyes were pointed at the wall. “Just tell me—what do you need to know about them to make them go away?”

  To the wall, I said, “I’ve already gone through the Guide—”

  “I mean, what can I find for you on the …” Callie dropped her voice. “Computer?”

  I turned back to face her. “What about the parental controls?”

  “Please,” Callie said, looking smug. “I’m good for more than just a flawless line-by-line recitation of Romeo and Juliet. You really think I’d sit up there all day without the Internet?”

  The world suddenly opened up. Surely someone else had to know something more about Fuzzles, and surely that someone else had put it on a website.

  “Oh. Well … anything. Anything you can find out would help. Like, habitat. That means where they live.”

  “I know what habitat means,” Callie said scornfully. “Right. I’ll see what I can do.”

  The next day, I discovered there was a lot more to Fuzzles than I’d thought.

  The next day started with a scream. It was Callie, and it was not the scary kind of scream that would make you jump up from your breakfast. Instead, it was the kind that made me and Aunt Emma look at each other over the kitchen table. Aunt Emma’s eyes narrowed, and then she took another bite of her still-frozen toaster waffle. I drank my juice.

  A moment later, Callie stomped in. The ends of her hair were smoking. She held up a metal wastebasket that I recognized from her bedroom: It had pink flowers decaled on the side. Well, it previously had. Most of the decals were now melted off. More smoke erupted from the top of it.

  “I found another one!” Callie said, frenzied. “In my underwear drawer!”

  Aunt Emma looked sympathetic. “It must have come looking for the ones in the clinic. Fuzzles lump together, you know.”

  “Well, they’re not allowed to lump together in my underwear!” Callie slammed the wastebasket on the table. “Can’t we get rid of them?”

  “Callie, no trash cans on the table,” Aunt Emma said. “And I’m trying to think of a way to move them safely, but it’s tricky since everyone thinks of them as pests. I’ll need to rearrange some of my appointments to this afternoon, I think.” She gestured to the Fuzzle in the trash can. It was blinking at Callie. “Do you think you can take care of that one?”

  “One! One?” Callie echoed. She sounded a little unhinged. “Did you see what I took care of in the clinic yesterday? Millions! What’s one more! One! One!”

  I had seen Callie melt down on two family occasions before, and neither time had been pretty. I definitely didn’t want to be standing in such close range. Turning to my aunt, I asked quickly, “Can I go over to Tomas’s house? I want to talk to him about the Fuzzles.”

  “A brainstorm session?” Aunt Emma replied with a smile.

  I smiled back. “Yeah.”

  “That’s a great idea, Pip. Cloverton certainly could use all the Fuzzle help it can get.”

  “Oh, please,” Callie said, slamming the trash can around a little bit. “How about instead of brainstorming, we all go to the mall to buy me some new underwear? Oh, wait, we can’t, because then no one would be here to protect us from exploding furballs!”

  I hardly considered what the Fuzzles did to be exploding, but I certainly wasn’t going to say that out loud. I didn’t want Callie mad at me ever, and I definitely didn’t want her mad at me today, since I needed her help with the Fuzzle research. Getting up from the table, I took my plate to the sink. Callie folded her arms and gave the Fuzzle a look that should have made it catch fire again.

  “You little beast,” Callie said. “This is the worst summer I’ve ever had! I wish I lived with—with—dentists!”

  “Now, Callie—” Aunt Emma started.

  I hustled outside before I heard any more. As I made my way down the sidewalk to Tomas’s house, I hoped he wasn’t busy—I hadn’t gone over without calling before. It was hard to imagine him having hobbies, but it was possible that his family might have decided to go somewhere for the day.

  I quickly realized that at least a few of the Ramirezes were home, because as I knocked on the door, I heard shouting.

  One voice, sort of older and boyish and nervous-making, shouted, “I didn’t put it in there!”

  “Jorges?” This was an older voice, sort of mom-like.

  “It wasn’t me!”

  She shot out again. “Eric? I know it was you!”

  Tomas’s voice wailed out, high and reedy, “Eric’s at Asia’s house!”

  “Fuzzles don’t just appear in my underwear—”

  The door still hadn’t been answered. I noticed a doorbell and rang it. The door opened nearly at once, and Tomas stood on the other side with a Band-Aid on his forehead. The walls on either side of him were covered with one thousand little pottery things. Plates and stars and beads.

  “What happened to your head?” I asked. “An allergic reaction?”

  “I hit it on the fridge,” Tomas replied. “I was trying to get away from the cheese.”

  “Let me guess—you’re allergic to cheese.”

  He nodded grimly. Behind him, I saw two biggish boys gallop across the hall, laughing furiously. A voice—it had to be Ms. Ramirez—howled, “You boys come right back here and take care of this thing!”

  Tomas glanced furtively over his shoulder. “Mom found a Fuzzle in her underwear drawer this morning. She thinks one of my brothers did it.”

  “Callie found one in her underwear drawer!” I exclaimed. “Aunt Emma said they like to lump together, but maybe they also like tiny spaces. Or underwear.”

  “Then my bedroom should be full of them,” Tomas replied darkly.

  “Because you have a lot of underwear?” I asked, confused.

  “No, because I’m the youngest, so my room is the small—”

  Ms. Ramirez appeared behind him then, and he went quiet. She was short and plump. Her hair was in ringlets like Raindancer’s. A smoking Fuzzle dangled from her thumb and forefinger. “Tomas! Were you born in a gas station? Ask her in.”

  “Get in,” Tomas said, stepping back to let me in.

  “That is not any better,” Ms. Ramirez said. “You must be Pip. Lovely to meet you.”

  I was just trying to figure out what to say back when the Fuzzle in her hand burst into flame. Without any fuss or panic, she smacked it against a bare spot on the wall to put out the fire.

  “No, Mom!” Tomas said. “Tickle it! You’ve got to tickle it.”

  “I would just as soon tickle a rat,” Ms. Ramirez replied, looking disgusted. “Pip, your aunt is taking these things in, right?”

  “Um,” I replied, then “um” again because I wasn’t sure I knew how to talk to Ms. Ramirez. I looked at Tomas, who shrugged encouragingly, and finally I said, “Yes, she’s taking them in. Sort of.”

  Ms. Ramirez started down the hall. “Good. Tomas, you need to get some sun, anyway. I’m going to get you a pot or something for you to carry this over to the clinic. Don’t drop it! We haven’t had much rain and I don’t want you to burn down the neighborhood. JORGES, GET OVER HERE NOW. FIND ME A POT FOR THIS THING.”

  Then she vanished into another room. One of the big boys—Jorges, maybe?—galloped past again, looking like a giant, muscled version of Tomas. Then another boy came, who looked exactly the same, and then another, until I started to feel like I was watching the same part of a movie over and over.

  “Oh! Your brothers are triplets!” I realized. “That’s so cool.”

  “Cool if you’re a triplet,” Tomas replied. “They get to do whatever they want. They are tall enough to reach whatever they want to reach. They don’t have allergies.”

  I could tell he was feeling low about it, so I said, “They also don’t get to have adventures wit
h Pip Bartlett.”

  He smiled gloomily at me. Ms. Ramirez reappeared with a large nonstick saucepan. She’d put a glass lid on it, and we could see the Fuzzle crouched in the bottom. Crouched? Sitting. Lying. Piled. It was hard to tell since it didn’t have any legs.

  “You bring that pot back,” Ms. Ramirez warned Tomas. “I do my pork in that one.”

  As we stepped outside, I said to Tomas, “Don’t you think it’s funny that there were Fuzzles in two underwear drawers? Maybe we should ask some of the neighbors if they have found Fuzzles there too! Or at least warn them to protect their underwear.”

  Tomas rubbed his neck. “I dunno. That sounds kinda … awkward.”

  “But imagine how happy people will be to not have their underwear go up in flames! Plus it’ll be safer for the Fuzzles if we collect them all in one spot—they like to lump together, you know,” I said, repeating what Aunt Emma told me that morning as if I’d known it all along.

  Tomas sighed noisily. “Okay, but I’m not asking.”

  “I’m not asking!”

  “I’m not asking. You’re the one who keeps saying underwear.”

  We decided to draw up a flyer, since neither of us would ask. It only took a minute, long enough for the Fuzzle to travel around the inside of the saucepan twice, and when we were done, it seemed like it would do most of the explaining for us.

  Armed with the flyer and the giant saucepan, we traveled to the next-door neighbor’s and knocked on the door. Tomas mistrustfully eyed a bug next to the porch light until the door opened, and then he handed the old woman on the other side the flyer.

  “Tomas Ramirez,” she said. “What is this nonsense?”

  “It’s not nonsense,” I insisted. I felt particularly brave about talking at the moment, since I knew helping with the Fuzzles was the right thing to do. Plus, the flyer had started the conversation for me. I continued, “You should check your drawer. We’re trying to help.”

  She narrowed her eyes at us for a long moment, and then she turned away, leaving the door open. She stumped out of sight.

  “She thinks it’s a trick,” I told Tomas.

  He removed a marker from one of his pockets and wrote THIS IS NOT A TRICK on the bottom of the flyer.