Sven Carter & the Trashmouth Effect Read online

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1.0:  < value= [All Four Limbs Are Supposed to Remain Attached, Right?] >

  CHAPTER 2.0:  < value= [My Arm Takes a Walk] >

  CHAPTER 3.0:  < value= [It All Started with a Cake] >

  CHAPTER 4.0:  < value= [Please Don’t Call Me Trashmouth] >

  CHAPTER 5.0:  < value= [My Weird Doctor Wants to Kill Me] >

  CHAPTER 6.0:  < value= [Meat Loaf, Brussels Sprouts, and Misery] >

  CHAPTER 7.0:  < value= [The Science of Bullying] >

  CHAPTER 8.0:  < value= [I Have a Magnetic Personality] >

  CHAPTER 9.0:  < value= [I Commit a Felony] >

  CHAPTER 10.0:  < value= [I Go Dumpster Diving] >

  CHAPTER 11.0:  < value= [I’m Nearly Eaten by a Chihuahua] >

  CHAPTER 12.0:  < value= [We Have Lunch . . . with a Side Order of Pain] >

  CHAPTER 13.0:  < value= [I See What’s on Will’s Mind (Literally)] >

  CHAPTER 14.0:  < value= [For the Record, I Don’t Wet My Bed over This] >

  CHAPTER 15.0:  < value= [It’s Not My Underwear] >

  CHAPTER 16.0:  < value= [I Want My Mommy] >

  CHAPTER 17.0:  < value= [We Could Get Suspended for This] >

  CHAPTER 18.0:  < value= [Alicia Has a Better Idea] >

  CHAPTER 19.0:  < value= [Breaking and Entering (But Mostly Breaking)] >

  CHAPTER 20.0:  < value= [Will and a Half] >

  CHAPTER 21.0:  < value= [I Meet the Worst Thing Ever] >

  CHAPTER 22.0:  < value= [Knock, Knock. Who’s There? Death.] >

  CHAPTER 23.0:  < value= [I Really Get to Know Myself] >

  CHAPTER 24.0:  < value= [I’m Really Mean to a Woodland Creature] >

  CHAPTER 25.0:  < value= [I Change My Underwear] >

  CHAPTER 26.0:  < value= [It’s So Funny I Forgot to Laugh] >

  CHAPTER 27.0:  < value= [We Redecorate Alicia’s Place (Not in a Good Way)] >

  CHAPTER 28.0:  < value= [We Are the Schmidts] >

  CHAPTER 29.0:  < value= [A Meal to Remember] >

  CHAPTER 30.0:  < value= [I Freak Myself Out] >

  CHAPTER 31.0:  < value= [I Decide to Get a New Hobby] >

  CHAPTER 32.0:  < value= [The Sneeze to End All Sneezes] >

  CHAPTER 33.0:  < value= [I’m Saved by a Giant Toilet] >

  CHAPTER 34.0:  < value= [We Take the Barf Bus to Vomit Town] >

  CHAPTER 35.0:  < value= [We Hang Out at the Mall] >

  CHAPTER 36.0:  < value= [We Manage to Keep Our Brains] >

  CHAPTER 37.0:  < value= [Trespassers Will Be . . . What?] >

  CHAPTER 38.0:  < value= [I Don’t Know Art, but I Know What Stinks] >

  CHAPTER 39.0:  < value= [I’m as Good as Dead] >

  CHAPTER 40.0:  < value= [Oh, Right. That Guy.] >

  CHAPTER 41.0:  < value= [The Obligatory Boss Battle] >

  CHAPTER 42.0:  < value= [Ticktock] >

  CHAPTER 43.0:  < value= [I Get Inside My Head] >

  CHAPTER 44.0:  < value= [I Find Inner Peace] >

  CHAPTER 45.0:  < value= [I Meet My Inner Jerk] >

  CHAPTER 46.0:  < value= [I Feed My Head] >

  CHAPTER 47.0:  < value= [I Forget What This Chapter Is Called] >

  CHAPTER 48.0:  < value= [Road Trip!] >

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A Sneak Peek at Sven’s Next Adventure

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  For Joey, Max, and Immy.

  My three everythings.

  CHAPTER 1.0:

  < value= [All Four Limbs Are Supposed to Remain Attached, Right?] >

  “SVEN, THIS IS STUPID,” WILL said for the millionth time.

  And for the millionth time I ignored him.

  We slowed to a stop in front of what used to be the entrance to the old Mad Skillz and Spillz Skate Park. Weeds poked up here and there through cracks in the pavement and graffiti covered nearly every surface. Plus, it smelled like burned rubber and rotten eggs. But it would do.

  I yanked on the rusty, chained-up gate. Even Will wasn’t skinny enough to fit through there.

  “Seriously, dude,” Will complained, “you know why they closed this place, right? About fifty kids got messed up big-time going over the Wreckinator. Remember? That high school kid fell so hard, his legs actually got driven up through his body. Everyone called him Flatfoot McStumpy after that.”

  “That’s so not true,” I insisted. “His head got pushed down into his shoulders. And they didn’t call him Flatfoot McStumpy. It was Flathead McShorty.”

  “Whatever. The point is it’s dangerous. Besides, it’s closed. We shouldn’t go in.”

  I found a section of fence that had rusted away from its post. I pulled it back. “Doesn’t look closed to me.” I carefully lifted the item out of the milk crate attached to my bike. Then I squeezed through the fence.

  “Sven,” Will moaned. “This is a really bad idea.”

  I gently placed the item on the ground right in front of the Wreckinator, the biggest ramp in the place.

  “Come on.” I grinned as I got my bike and wheeled it through the fence. “It’s going to be epic. Just make sure you video it, okay? We’ll probably get a billion hits on YouTube! And when we’re YouTube celebrities, people will forget we’re the biggest losers in Schenectady. It’s called street cred. Look it up.”

  I pedaled about fifty feet away and turned around, psyching myself up to make the jump. Will pulled out his phone to record my awesome stunt and started fretfully touching a metal railing over and over again with each of his fingers in turn: thumb, index finger, middle finger, ring finger, pinkie, and back again the other way. It made me anxious just watching him.

  That was Will’s thing, though. He had what doctors call obsessive-compulsive disorder. OCD, for short. And it made him, well . . . a little different from most kids you might meet. When he got out of bed in the morning, he had to fold his blanket over four times, then make sure both his feet touched the floor at the same time at exactly 7:04. And then he would only leave his room after flicking the lights on and off forty-seven times.

  Between that, his flaming red hair, and his immensely big hands (they were about the size of Frisbees), he kind of stood out. At our school, standing out wasn’t something you wanted to do.

  Maybe that’s what made Will my best friend—and why he’d held the spot for the last seven years. We were both weird. I met him in this thing called the OCD Lunch Bunch at school and we really clicked. He never teased me for my, um . . . unusual eating habits. And, unlike everyone else at school, I never called him “Weird Willy.”

  I tried to tune out Will’s railing tapping and turned my attention back to the jump. Just before I started pedaling toward the Wreckinator, a pair of crows landed on the rim of a corroded garbage barrel about ten feet away and stared at me with their shiny black eyes. Their inky feathers were so dark, they seemed to swallow up the crisp April sunlight that fell on them. I hesitated. I remembered reading somewhere that crows were bad luck.

  “Shoo!” I yelled at the birds.

  They didn’t move.

  “What?” I called with a shrug. “You’ve never seen a kid jump over a three-layer wedding cake on his bike before?”

  Yes, the item was a wedding cake. Not just any cake, though. It was a cake my mom baked. Which meant it ranked right up there with some of the greatest horrors the world had ever known. I preferred to call it “item” instead of “cake,” since “cake” suggested something that was edible. This item? Definitely not fit
for human consumption. But really cool to jump your bike over and earn some serious Internet fame. At least that was the plan.

  The crows kept staring. I stuck my tongue out at them.

  Will shouted, “Dude, are you having a conversation with those birds? ’Cause that’s . . . a little odd.”

  “No! I’m just trying to, you know, psych myself up for the big jump.”

  I realized I was stalling. Because when I took a good look at that cake, yeah, it was pretty big. Three feet tall, at least. Not including the little plastic bride and groom perched on top.

  I sucked in a big lungful of air. You can do this, I told myself. And with one last glance at those stupid birds, I took off toward the ramp.

  Wind whooshed past my ears with a low, ominous moan as I pumped my legs and picked up speed. My heart pounded against my rib cage and a drop of nervous sweat trickled down the back of my neck. Time ground to a crawl as I closed in on the Wreckinator.

  With each slow second that ticked by, my fear grew, until, when I reached the foot of the ramp, the cake loomed like a hideously decorated three-story house.

  My stomach lurched with the sudden change in trajectory as my tires rolled over the scarred surface of the Wreckinator, lifting me higher and higher toward the lip of the ramp. I caught a brief glimpse of Will, holding up his phone to film me from what felt like a thousand feet below. Was the air thinner up here, or was it just me forgetting to breathe altogether?

  And that’s when I realized . . .

  I should have stopped.

  I really, really should have stopped.

  But it was too late.

  My wheels left the solid concrete behind and spun uselessly in the air as my bike and I tried to defy gravity just long enough to clear the cake.

  At first, I thought I was going to do it.

  Then I noticed that the cake still seemed awfully far away.

  Then I realized I wasn’t so much flying over the cake as falling into it.

  Then I knew this wasn’t going to be epic at all.

  My front wheel entered the cake at the precise place where the third layer met the second. And even though my mom’s cakes had the approximate density of lead, they were no match for a kid on a bike plummeting down to Earth at face-peeling-off speeds from the top of the Wreckinator.

  There was an explosion of frosting as the cake burst into a million little pieces. (Some of it might have even gotten into my mouth. YUCK!) But I couldn’t worry about that, because I still had a chance to nail the landing.

  You can do this, Sven! You can do this!

  Except I couldn’t.

  All thanks to that stupid plastic bride and groom from the top of the cake.

  They wedged themselves right into the spokes of my front wheel so that as soon as my bike made contact with the ground, it stopped dead.

  But I didn’t stop.

  I continued on, straight over my handlebars, over the shattered remains of the cake and on through the air. I was flying. Until a split second later, when I slammed into the ground.

  Will jogged up to where I lay sprawled out on the concrete, still recording me on his phone. “Dude! Are you all right?”

  Dazed, I looked up at him and blinked a few times. Normally, you’d expect a question like that to be simple—either you’re all right or you’re not all right. You know, ballpoint pen sticking out of eyeball: not all right. Eating big bowl of ice cream: all right. Crocodile jaws slamming shut on head . . . well, you get the idea.

  But at that moment, I honestly had to give it some serious thought. I wasn’t dead, so that was good. No pens or other sharp objects stuck out of either one of my eyes. And I wasn’t lying in a pool of blood.

  “I think I’m okay. I guess I didn’t make it?”

  Will shook his head. “Not even close.”

  He reached down and grabbed my arm to help me up. “You’re right, though. This’ll get a billion hits on YouTube. Man, when you were flying through the air I thought for sure you were goi . . .”

  I don’t think he actually meant to say “goi.” It’s just that was what happened to be halfway out of Will’s mouth when he lost the ability to speak.

  I looked up at him. In his hand Will held something kind of flesh-colored and about the length of my arm. Which made perfect sense, since it was . . .

  MY ARM!!! AND IT WASN’T ATTACHED TO MY BODY!!!

  CHAPTER 2.0:

  < value= [My Arm Takes a Walk] >

  I LOOKED DOWN AT MY left shoulder. All I saw was an empty sleeve. But with Will screaming and all the blood soaking my shirt, it didn’t take me long to understand what had happened—the crash had ripped off my arm!

  “Aaaaggghhhhh!” screamed Will, flailing my arm in distress. “AAAAGGGGHHHH!!!”

  I didn’t know what he was screaming about. I was the kid whose arm was six feet away from the rest of his body. As I watched Will shaking my arm like some kind of meat maraca, I started screaming as well.

  And then the pain hit.

  “Oh my God!” I cried, clenching my teeth in agony. “My arm! Will, call nine-one-one!”

  “Aaaaaggggghhhhhh!” he replied.

  “Will!” I tried again.

  His answer was the same. “Aaaagggghhh!”

  “Will, listen! Use your phone and call nine-one-one! Hurry!”

  Will’s scream faded to a moan, then a whimper. He took a deep breath, swallowed hard, and finally regained the ability to speak.

  “Okay,” he said. “Nine-one-one—I can do that. I think. How do I do that?” He looked at me with a blank expression. I think he was in shock.

  “Just give me the phone! Give me the phone!” I screamed.

  Will tossed the phone at me like it was a live electric eel. It tumbled through the air, bounced painfully off my head, and landed facedown on the asphalt.

  “Why did you do that?” I growled, clenching my teeth against the agonizing throbbing that radiated from my shoulder, arcing across my entire chest.

  “You said to give you the phone.”

  “I didn’t say throw it at my head!” I picked up the phone. A tangle of cracks covered the blackened screen. “Will! You broke it!”

  He looked like he was about to cry. “I—I—I—”

  “Just go get my parents!” I said as calmly as I could manage. Which wasn’t very calm at all. More like hysterical. My vision flickered as pain and panic tightened their viselike grip. “Hurry!”

  Will trained his wild eyes on me, nodded slowly, then proceeded to lie on the ground and curl into the fetal position. That was what he did whenever he started freaking out.

  “Will! Get up! You need to go for help! Please! Will!”

  I finally must have gotten through to him, because he stopped rocking back and forth and rose unsteadily to his feet. Then he stumbled toward his bike.

  “Wait!” I shouted after him.

  “What?”

  “Can you, um . . . you know . . . leave me my arm?”

  Will must have forgotten what was in his hand, because he suddenly turned even paler. He scampered over to me, holding the limb out like it was a dead rat or something (which, honestly, was kind of insulting) and placed it gingerly on my lap. Then he jumped on his bike and rode off, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

  And my arm. It was surprisingly heavy and warm. And gross.

  I wanted to look away from it, but I couldn’t. The idea that this thing in my lap was a part of me, with all the veins and stringy bits of stuff hanging out of it . . . yuck! I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I never really thought about what I looked like on the inside. But I decided I preferred how I looked on the outside.

  Frantic thoughts buzzed around inside my skull like a swarm of angry hornets as I sat on the cool, rough pavement. Was I going to die? Would doctors be able to reattach my arm? What would happen if I wanted to become a professional juggler?

  Just then my arm did something unexpected.

  It twitched.

  Then it seeme
d to wave at me.

  Then it started flopping around like a dying fish.

  It flopped right out of my lap and fell with a slap onto the pavement.

  In a moment, it began dragging itself toward me using its fingers—my fingers—like little legs.

  My skin went all cold and sweaty as I watched my arm dragging itself across the ground.

  “No, no, no!” I screamed at the arm, terrified beyond the point of reason. “Stop doing that!”

  I watched in horror as the arm grabbed the bottom of my shirt and managed to hoist itself halfway up my side. It paused for a second, just hanging there.

  “Get off! Down!” I commanded.

  It didn’t listen. Instead, it did a graceful little flip so that its bloody end slapped with a wet smack right back onto my shoulder.

  That’s when everything went black.

  CHAPTER 3.0:

  < value= [It All Started with a Cake] >

  SO, HOW DID I END up lying on the cracked pavement of an old skate park, temporarily missing an arm, covered in the world’s nastiest baked good?

  You can thank my mom for that.

  You see, making cakes was a second career for my mom. Well, technically it was a sixth career. Right after she got fired from her job at the real estate agency. Before that she was a photographer. And before that, a website designer, a sculptor, and a landscape architect. She always said she just had to find her thing.

  Cakes weren’t her thing.

  Take, for example, the cake that I had tried to jump over. It looked like it had been molded out of white papier-mâché by a six-year-old. A blind six-year-old. With hooks for hands. Which was why, a couple of hours earlier, the woman Mom had baked it for refused to pay for it, screamed, “Thanks for ruining my wedding,” and slammed the door behind her as she stormed out of the house.

  But if there was one thing about Mom’s cakes, it was that their ugliness was way more than skin deep. As bad as they looked, they tasted far, far worse.

  Everything she baked was “trendsetting.”  Those were her words, not mine. The words I would have chosen would have been “vomit-inducing.” Because lima beans and basil were never meant to go into cakes. Or orange slices and tuna. And definitely not garlic, mint, and curry. It was like she had a gift for making things taste bad. Only it wasn’t so much a gift as a horrible, nightmarish curse.