Lunch Walks Among Us Read online

  1. Franny’s House

  2. Franny’s Room

  3. New at School

  4. A Proposal

  5. The Experiment Begins

  6. Back at the Lab

  7. Making Monsters

  8. A Transformed Franny

  9. Lunch Doesn’t Agree with Me

  10. That’s No Jack-o’-Lantern

  11. It’s Mad Science Time

  12. Ham, I Am

  13. The Final Inning

  14. Easy Come, Easy Go

  15. Back to the Grind

  16. Weird, but I Still Like Them

  For

  Griffin,

  Summer,

  and Mary K

  CHAPTER ONE

  FRANNY’S HOUSE

  The Stein family lived in the pretty pink house with lovely purple shutters down at the end of Daffodil Street. Everything about the house was bright and cheery. Everything, that is, except the upstairs bedroom with the tiny round window.

  That room belonged to Franny K. Stein, and she liked to keep it dark, and spooky, and creepy.

  Every few days her mother would come in and redecorate Franny’s bedroom with daisies, and lilacs, and pictures of lovely horses. It would always look so sweet and pretty.

  But by the very next day Franny would somehow manage to make it look dark, and creepy, and spooky again. That was how she liked it-like a dungeon, complete with giant spiders and bats.

  “Bats! Where does she get bats?” her mother would ask when she saw Franny’s room. “Is there a bat store around here or something?”

  Of course there wasn’t a bat store around. The bats just kept showing up. The bats liked Franny’s room, and Franny liked the bats.

  “They’re like rats with pterodactyl wings,” she’d say. “What’s not to like?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  FRANNY’S ROOM

  Franny’s bedroom was really something special. It had big steaming test tubes, strange bubbling beakers, and a whole bunch of crackling electrical gizmos that Franny had made all by herself.

  Franny’s room also had a giant tarantula cage, a snake house, and a tank where she raised a special breed of flying piranha. She couldn’t imagine why anybody would want daisies and lilacs when they could have poison ivy and Venus flytraps.

  “There’s no comparison,” she’d say, ducking one of her flying piranha.

  Franny thought her room was so great, and so wonderful, and so perfect for her that she almost never wanted to leave it. But she had to, of course, for things like going outside, eating dinner, going to school, and using the bathroom.

  Which is something Franny really liked to do.

  Whoops. That didn’t sound right. It was going to school that Franny really liked.

  CHAPTER THREE

  NEW AT SCHOOL

  Franny and her family had just moved to the house at the end of Daffodil Street, and she was new at school. She liked her teacher, Miss Shelly. She thought she would like the other kids, too. But they really weren’t very friendly toward Franny.

  The other kids weren’t mean; they just had never known anybody like Franny.

  Nobody else had a jump rope like Franny’s.

  Franny’s lunches didn’t look like the other kids’ lunches either.

  And when they played hide-and-seek, no one could find her.

  Franny could tell that the other kids were afraid of her, and that made her sad, because she really did want to make friends.

  Her teacher, Miss Shelly, noticed what was happening. And one day she asked Franny to stay after class.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A PROPOSAL

  Miss Shelly was the nicest, smartest teacher Franny had ever had. Franny used to think that if only she dressed differently and wore her hair another way, she would be perfect.

  “You’re a wonderful student,” Miss Shelly said.

  “Thank you,” Franny said. “I like school. Especially science. Especially the gooey parts of science.”

  “I like the gooey parts too,” Miss Shelly said, and they both laughed.

  “I’m a mad scientist, you know,” Franny whispered.

  “That must be very rewarding,” Miss Shelly said, but she didn’t really believe that Franny was a real-life mad scientist. Franny could tell.

  “But I wonder if you might be a little lonely sometimes,” Miss Shelly continued.

  “I am lonely, sometimes,” Franny admitted. “But I don’t understand the other kids, and I don’t know how to make friends with them.”

  “I think you can figure it out,” said Miss Shelly. “You’re smart.”

  Franny folded her arms. “I don’t know, Miss Shelly . . .”

  “Think of it as an experiment,” Miss Shelly said.

  Franny’s eyes lit up. A wide grin crawled across her face. An experiment was the one thing she just could not resist, and Miss Shelly knew it.

  “The experiment”—Franny pointed into the air the way mad scientists do when they think about conducting an experiment—“begins tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE EXPERIMENT BEGINS

  The next day Franny came to school prepared to start her experiment. Before class she observed some of the girls playing with dolls. Franny was delighted. She knew about dolls.

  She loved dolls. In fact she loved them so much that she had even made some special modifications to the ones she had at home.

  She was just about to tell the girls how Chompolina could bite the heads off their dolls when she noticed something. Their dolls were all kind of . . . sweet, and pretty. They all had long hair and flowery dresses. Not a single one of them oozed uck. They didn’t ooze anything.

  Franny made a note to herself: Pretty, non-head-biting dolls, it said. And less oozing.

  At lunchtime Franny sat down at a table with a bunch of kids. She was getting ready to take out her exquisitely delicious crab ravioli in pumpkin sauce when she made another observation.

  Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on her left, lunch-meat sandwiches on her right. As far as Franny’s eyes could see was a carpet of soft, white, squishy sandwiches.

  No casseroles, no stews, no shish kebabs; just sandwiches.

  “Is this all they ever eat?” she whispered to herself. And she made another note: Squashy sandwiches, it said. Franny stuffed her lunch into the trash.

  During recess the kids decided to play softball. “I have the ball,” one of them said.

  “But we need a bat,” another one said.

  A bat! Franny thought. Finally. Something I understand! She reached into her backpack to get one.

  Just then a little boy ran past her with a baseball bat. “Batter up!” he shouted.

  “Hmmm,” said Franny. “There’s more than one kind of bat.”

  As her classmates started playing, she took out her notebook and made another note: A bat can also be a big stick you use to hit things, she wrote.

  After school Franny picked up her backpack full of customized dolls, and spiders, and notes, and bats, and headed home to analyze the data she had gathered that day.

  CHAPTER SIX

  BACK AT THE LAB

  Back in her room Franny looked over her notes. She made some calculations and puzzled over her findings. “Nice kids,” she said finally. “Kind of boring, but really nice.”

  That night Franny dreamed about how much fun it would have been to play dolls with those girls or to trade sandwiches at lunch. Even softball looked like fun, in spite of the fact that they used the kind of bat that didn’t have cute, veiny wings.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MAKING MONSTERS

  Early the next morning, as she was getting ready for school, Franny pulled down her copy of A Treasury of Monster-Making Techniqu
es and turned to the chapter on transformations. In particular she studied the part that explained how to transform a little girl mad scientist into something else.

  WARNING

  We assume no responsibility if you actually

  create a real monster and it destroys your

  city and eats your stuff.

  “I know just what to do,” she said, and she began combining honey, vanilla jelly beans, and pink soda. She poured the formula into a tall, pretty glass decorated with a happy sheep holding a puppy wearing diapers.

  “Ugh,” she said. “How cute can you get?”

  She put the mixture into one of her inventions, and programmed in her notes. The machine began to hum and shake, and buzz and bake, and then finally it binged, just like a microwave when your microwave popcorn is ready.

  Franny gazed at the potion. She held her nose and drank it. She ran to the mirror and watched a strange transformation take place.

  When Franny came downstairs to breakfast, her mom took one look at her and dropped her toast. Her dad choked on his coffee. Her brother’s eyes almost popped out of his head.

  “Franny,” her Mother said, “you look so . . . nice.”

  Franny did look nice. Her hair was cute. Her dress was pretty. Her shoes were adorable. She didn’t really look like Franny anymore, but she looked nice–kind of.

  “Thanks, Mom,” she said. “Here’s a description of something I’d like prepared for lunch. It’s strange, and horribly exotic, but I’d appreciate it if you could give it a try.”

  Her mom looked at the recipe that Franny had given her. “This says ‘jelly and peanut butter between white bread slices,’ ” she said. “I’m pretty sure I can make this, Franny. I’ve been making it for years.”

  “Excellent,” Franny said, and she rubbed her hands together in a mad-scientist way.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A TRANSFORMED FRANNY

  Before school Franny met some of the girls from her class. Franny had a modified Chompolina with her.

  Now Chompolina played happy music and squirted perfume and glitter and came with her own nail polish and a rainbow-colored unicorn with a long tail you could braid.

  The other girls loved Chompolina and crowded around her.

  Franny thought it was fun playing with the girls, but deep down she missed the old Chompolina.

  At lunchtime Franny pulled out her PBJ sandwich. The peanut butter had been artfully smoothed, and the jelly had been applied equally from one corner to the other. The bread was so blazingly white that Franny needed sunglasses to look at it. Her mom had even trimmed the crusts, and the other kids, noticing this, smiled with approval.

  Franny took a bite and found it to be totally, completely, and incredibly . . . average, uninteresting, and no big deal. She had expected so much more.

  But her experiment seemed to be working, so she finished the mushy sandwich.

  At recess Franny suggested they play softball. She consulted her notes quickly and added, “I think it best we use a ball instead of a skull, or giant squid eyeball, or something gruesome like that.”

  Franny had fun playing with them, but deep down she knew the game would have been much more fun with a skull or giant squid eyeball.

  The other kids were a bit puzzled, but they agreed.

  After school the kids all said good-bye and a few even asked her to come over to their houses and play. It was great to be asked, but Franny had to hurry straight home and analyze her day. She was happy. The other kids liked her, even if it was only a transformed her.

  CHAPTER NINE

  LUNCH DOESN’T AGREE WITH ME

  The next day at school, while the kids were doing their math problems, Miss Shelly took Franny over to one side and talked to her.

  “How’s the experiment going?” she asked.

  “It’s great. I understand them, and I think we’re becoming friends. They seem to like me better if I just go along with the things they like.”

  “Are you sure that’s for the best?” Miss Shelly asked.

  “Well, that’s what the data seem to suggest,” Franny said, and showed Miss Shelly some graphs to back it up.

  “But I like the real you.” Miss Shelly was about to continue, when a piercing scream tore through the room.

  “The trash can!” a little girl shrieked. “It’s moving!”

  Franny’s mad scientist brain raced. That was the trash can in which she had dumped her crab ravioli in pumpkin sauce two days ago. But an old lunch, all by itself, was not enough to start a paranormal reaction.

  “Who else put something in that can?” Franny said.

  “I spit out my gum in there,” one girl said.

  “I threw a pair of old gym shoes in there,” another boy said.

  “I saw the janitor dump some trash in there,” another girl said.

  “Egad,” said Franny. “That was close. Well, as long as NOBODY put any unstable industrial waste in there, we should be fine.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said one little boy. “I forgot. I put some unstable industrial waste in there.”

  “Gadzooks!” Franny shouted. “That is the exact formula for a Giant Monstrous Fiend.”

  The other kids looked at her. They looked scared, not just of the mention of a Giant Monstrous Fiend, although the prospect of a Giant Monstrous Fiend was no comfort. They were also afraid of Franny. They were looking at her the way they used to, before they had become her good friends.

  “I mean,” Franny stammered, “that’s what I would think if I was a weird mad scientist-type little girl, which, of course, I’m not.”

  They all smiled at her again.

  Just then the trash can erupted like a volcano. As the smoke settled, the kids saw, for the first time, the type of Giant Monstrous Fiend that a mad scientist-type girl would have predicted.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THAT’S NO JACK-O’-LANTERN

  The Giant Monstrous Fiend stood there chewing gum and breathing angrily. Its head was a pumpkin, and its body looked like a crab’s. It was wearing the old shoes, and it was just dripping with industrial waste.

  Franny hoped it would just jump out the window and go away.

  And, to her surprise, the Pumpkin-Crab Monster jumped out the window and went away.

  Unfortunately it grabbed Miss Shelly before it left. With a crash and a scream, the Pumpkin-Crab Monster and her teacher were gone.

  The kids just stood there. They didn’t know how to help. A few tried crying. A few tried screaming. One tried wetting his pants, although later on he admitted he had no idea why he thought that might help.

  Some of Franny’s new friends hugged her and shrieked, but Franny didn’t shriek.

  Franny thought.

  Out the window the Pumpkin-Crab Monster was climbing the flagpole with Miss Shelly.

  There was no way that Miss Shelly was going to get away from that monster thing. It was holding her tight, and it was climbing higher and higher.

  Franny looked at her friends. She really liked them, and she was happy they liked her. She had hoped they would always be her friends, but still she knew what she had to do. Franny reached into her backpack and pulled out a vial. It said ANTIDOTE on it.

  “Uh, guys,” she said gently. “If you all get your lunches, I think I know what we might be able to do.”

  The kids ignored her. They just ran around in little circles, getting more and more scared and confused.

  “Guys, really. I think I know what we need.” Franny spoke a little louder this time, but they still ignored her.

  “We need a fireman,” one girl said.

  “We need a superhero,” one boy said.

  “We need dry pants,” said you-know-who.

  Franny stood up. Outside, lightning cracked.

  “What we need,” she said, “is a mad scientist. WHICH I AM.” She uncorked the antidote and drank it.

  She began to cough and sputter and spit. She fell on the ground and scrunched down in a little ball. She stood up
and felt herself return to normal.

  Franny, the little girl mad scientist, was back.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  IT’S MAD SCIENCE TIME

  Franny looked at the kids. They looked even more afraid of her now than they ever had before. She thought about trying to be sweet or less scary, but that just wasn’t going to get things done.

  “Do as I command!” she said in her most scary mad scientist voice. “Go get your lunches!”

  The kids stopped running in circles and ran to get their lunches. Mad scientists, even when they’re only four feet tall, can be very persuasive.

  “Put the bread in one pile and the lunch meat in another,” she barked.

  The kids did as they were told and quickly disassembled their sandwiches.

  Franny was busy examining the bottom of the trash can. “I think there’s just enough of this unstable industrial waste left to do the trick.”

  Franny worked fast. She told the kids exactly how to arrange the lunch meat and how to get the bread ready.

  They were afraid, but they did what she said, and they did it quickly.