Mr. Chickee's Messy Mission by Christopher Paul Curtis Page A

for you. I'm not going anywhere near that mural again unless there's a real responsible person with me. Sorry, Bucko.”
    Steven couldn't say a word. When you've ridden a giantdog off a 250-foot-tall dam, you get a lot of remarks like this. And you can't really argue with them. You're just about what Great-great-grampa Carter's dictionary would call “defenseless.”
    Richelle said to Steven, “And what about you, why are you just standing here, did you already check the mural out?”
    “I … uh … I didn't want to leave Russ all by himself.”
    Richelle snatched the dictionary away from Steven and marched toward the mural. “I can't believe you two great big guys are afraid of a silly painting. I thought Flint people were supposed to be so hard and … whoa!”
    Richelle stared up at the gnome.
    She whistled and said, “Wow, I can see how that thing
could
scare somebody!”
    She set the dictionary on the ground under the painting and stood on it to get a closer look.
    Russell took a step back and turned his face away. “Be careful, Madam President, he's gonna show you his teeth, and it looks like him and Mr. Toothbrush haven't talked in a long, long time.”
    But the painting didn't move.
    Richelle reached toward the wall. She jabbed at the gnome and finally touched it and traced his head, even rubbing at his pipe and beard.
    “Russell, are you sure Rodney Rodent disappeared here? Couldn't it have been a really bad dream? This just feels like a regular wall with some scary paint on it to me.”
    Russell said, “No joke, Madam President, Rod-Rode sang that song Mr. Carter sang and, presto-change-o, he was gone.”
    Richelle said, “What was the song again, Steven?”
    Steven said, “Bow-wow-wow-yippee-yo-yippee-yay.”
    Richelle said, “I don't know …,” and before she could get another word out of her mouth, a thick-fingered pair of greenish orange hands popped out of the mural and grabbed each of her shoulders.
    The boys' mouths flew open as the gnome snatched Richelle off the dictionary and into the window. The last thing they saw before Richelle disappeared in the blackness behind the creature was the bottoms of her shoes. Then they were gone, and the boys heard something large and heavy crashing into a pool of water!
    The gnome slowly looked from Russell to Steven. As soon as he saw Steven, he smiled, showed a row of razorsharp, not-very-clean-looking teeth and bowed twice before he closed his mouth. Then, winking again, he turned back into a flat painting.
    The boys were in such a state of shock that instead of running off screaming like anybody with half a brain would have done, they stood there looking at each other with their mouths wide open.
    Russell finally said, “Hey, Bucko, did you see the fingernails on that thing? They were yellow and long and pointy, and it looked like he hadn't cleaned underneath 'em in a hundred years.”
    Steven shook his head a couple of times and said, “What just happened, Russell? Wasn't Richelle here a second ago?”
    Russell said, “Uh-oh, Bucko, I think you must have got dramatized too. That gnome grabbed her.”
    Steven said, “That's what I thought. Well, she's a pain in the neck, a know-it-all, a blabbermouth and a pest, but she
is
the president of the Flint Future Detectives, so you know what that means we have to do.”
    Russell said, “Yeah, run out of here like we've got half a brain. I was just about to get started!”
    Before he could turn around, Steven grabbed his wrist. “Uh-uh, Russ, we're Flint Future Detectives, we've got to protect each other no matter what.”
    “I know, Bucko, but I was thinking I could do a lot more protecting if I was at home.”
    “Russell, you know we've got to go in there after her to make sure she's all right.”
    “Man, Bucko, I never thought I'd say the same thing my mother said, but if Richelle Cyrus-Herndon jumped off a five-story building, I suppose you'd follow her then too?”
    Steven wrestled Russell over to