Having parted with $100 of her hard-earned allowance as a result of Mrs.
Krantz' linguistic vigilance, Mickie met with another trial upon leaving the
classroom after first period. Gathered to confront her were most of the kids
in Mr. Wald's class, with Binky and Mavis foremost.
"You're a lousy thief!" Mavis bellowed at her. "You stole our cartoons and printed them in the newspaper!"
Mickie smiled condescendingly. "I didn't steal anything. You don't have a copyright."
"What's a copyright?" asked Binky.
"It's the thing that comes after the title in a book," Mavis explained. "It means other people can't claim the book as their own."
"Oh, is that what it is?" Binky marveled. "I thought it was the machine they use to make copies of a book."
"That's a printing press," Mavis informed him.
"There's nothing you can do," said Mickie smugly. "I've already applied to the copyright office. Soon Spongebrain and all his friends will belong to me."
"We can sue you," said Binky. "Right, Muffy?"
"Not if she gets a copyright before you do," Muffy advised him. "And the person you should talk to about suing somebody is Van. His dad's a lawyer."
Mavis glared accusingly at Mickie. "You won't stop Binky and me from making more cartoons," she warned.
"Why should I want to stop you?" said Mickie with a chuckle. "I can just publish your cartoons as my own, and I wouldn't have to pay you."
"What a jerk," Francine grumbled.
"Was I ever that much of a snob?" Muffy asked her friends.
"Not only is she better than we are," Arthur complained, "but she has to rub it in our faces."
"I think we should call her Mickie Chanel, the Snob from Hell," Fern proposed.
"The next Spongebrain cartoon will appear in tomorrow's paper," Mickie notified her hostile audience. "I drew it by myself."
Seeing that no good would come from criticizing Mickie's actions, the kids dispersed and went their ways. As Arthur headed toward his locker, Francine caught up with him and grabbed his hand. The aardvark boy, who normally smiled pleasantly at such a show of affection, looked somewhat startled instead.
"I'd like to punch that stuck-up Mickie right in the kisser," Francine groused.
"Uh, yeah," Arthur replied semi-obliviously. "So would I."
"I need some cheering up," said Francine. "Kiss me, Arthur."
She jutted out her lips, and Arthur hesitantly pressed his own against them for about three seconds.
"You don't kiss me like you used to," Francine observed as she pulled her face away.
"Sorry about that," said Arthur, wiping off his lips with his fingers. "I've gotta go, Francine."
The poor monkey girl didn't feel cheered up at all. As Arthur disappeared from her view down a hallway, she wondered if the boy had lost his excitement about their relationship.
----
As Mickie had promised, her own Spongebrain cartoon appeared in the Times the next morning. Alan was reading it in a paper he had found abandoned on a bus seat, and concluded that it wasn't as funny as the Mavis/Binky strips, nor as true to the characters.
Around him were seated George, Fern, and April, who was explaining their plan to gather intelligence about Rick Portinari. "George and I will hide," she went on, "while Fern and Alan will use a false pretense to get inside Dr. Portinari's apartment. Once inside, they'll look around and take note of anything suspicious or unearthly."
"What if he catches us?" Fern asked her.
"If you don't report back in ten minutes," April answered, "I'll go in and rescue you." She briefly held up the glittering invisibility stone, and then replaced it in her pocket.
Throughout the five-mile bus trip to Portinari's location, Alan and Fern toyed with the possibility that they might be walking into a deadly trap. On the other hand, as long as they kept April busy investigating Portinari, she wouldn't be available to assist in Augusta's mysterious scheme.
They soon reached the intersection where Portinari's complex sat on one corner. "The apartment number is 105," April informed Fern and Alan. "Good luck."
Wondering why they had agreed to this stunt, they walked across the street toward the apartment building while George and April hid behind a tall hedge.
Inside apartment 105, Rick Portinari was inserting packing material into a square cardboard box. He whistled cheerfully, thinking of the wondrous evening he would enjoy when Augusta came to visit him. Then he heard an urgent knock on his door.
He opened it to see the grim-faced Alan with an arm supporting Fern, who was clutching her stomach and moaning miserably. "Please, sir, I need to use your phone," Alan pleaded. "My sister ate mushrooms, and I think they were poisonous."
"Oooohhh..." groaned Fern, rolling her eyes as if delirious.
Alarmed, Portinari took the poodle girl by the shoulders and carefully led her into the apartment, all the while telling himself that these were the most dissimilar siblings he had ever met. "The phone's in the bedroom," he told Alan, motioning with his large bulldog head toward a doorway.
The boy rushed into the bedroom, found the telephone on a nightstand, and picked up the receiver. The cord was flexible enough that he could pretend to make conversation with an imaginary dispatcher while quietly peeking into closets and opening drawers. Other than the fact that the good doctor seemed to have very little clothing, he found nothing remarkable.
Meanwhile, Portinari tended to Fern the imaginary invalid as best he knew how. "Ooohh, I'm sick," the girl complained. "I'm sick as a dog. I think I'm gonna throw up. Do you have a bucket or anything?"
Portinari, now more worried than ever, hurried into the nearby kitchen in search of a suitable receptacle. Alan, having heard Fern's well-acted lines, laid down the phone and came back into the living room. An opened cardboard box sat on a bare desk with a few small drawers; he deftly opened each one, looking for unusual items.
In the last drawer, he found something quite unusual.
It was a small, beige, box-shaped object with a button and six numeric dials embedded in one side.
Hearing Portinari's footsteps drawing closer from the kitchen, Alan slammed the drawer shut. Standing with his hands behind his back, he said innocently, "The ambulance is on its way."
The psychiatrist laid a blue mop bucket next to the couch where Fern lay feigning illness. "Thank you, doctor," said the girl weakly.
Portinari's eyes suddenly widened. "Doctor? How did you know I'm a doctor?"
From the bedroom, he could hear the phone beeping loudly as a signal that someone had left the receiver off the hook for too long without making a call.
Stricken with terror, Alan grabbed Fern's hand and pulled her up from the couch. The two kids ran with utmost haste through the door of Portinari's apartment and onto the sidewalk. The man chased them as far as the doorway, then stopped and glared, his jaw hanging open.
Fern and Alan didn't stop running until they reached the rendezvous point behind the hedge on the other side of the street.
"Is he an alien?" George asked curiously.
"What did you find?" April wanted to know.
"Not much," Alan replied. "He doesn't have many clothes, but maybe that's because he just moved here, and the rest of his stuff hasn't arrived. There was a box on his desk, and it looked like he was about to pack some things. Also, there was a little gadget in one of the desk drawers."
"What did the gadget look like?" inquired April.
"It was tan-colored," Alan described it. "On one side there were six dials with numbers in them."
It appeared to Alan, Fern, and George that the breath had just been sucked out of April. After a moment of shocked silence, the cat girl narrowed her eyes and scowled angrily.
"I'll be right back," she said darkly, pushing past the other three kids.
They watched in awe as April marched across the street, fists clenched tightly.
Another knock came at Portinari's apartment door. The doctor looked through the peephole this time, suspecting the same two children might have returned. Instead of them, he saw nothing.
Opening the door, he waved his head about as if to find those responsible for the joke. Then something pushed him forcibly backwards, almost causing him to lose his footing. It felt like hands...but nobody was there...
The next thing he realized, the drawers in his desk were opening by themselves, one after another. The object with dials levitated out of one drawer, and started to float across the room.
Now outraged, Portinari threw himself at the invisible presence that was making off with the gadget. He felt a brief sensation of fabric, flesh, bandages, and curly hair against his skin--followed by a sharp, stunning blow to the back of his neck. He landed helplessly on the floor, dazed and in pain.
Fern, George, and Alan were waiting breathlessly behind the hedge for April's return, when the girl suddenly materialized before them, clutching the gadget in one hand. "Yeah, that's what I saw," Alan verified. "What is it?"
"Never mind what it is," said April firmly. "We need to get to a phone."
She glanced repeatedly over her shoulder while making the two-block trek to a service station, but observed no sign that Portinari was pursuing. Upon reaching the pay phone, she inserted a quarter and dialed Augusta's number.
"Hello?"
"Augusta, this is April," the cat girl almost shouted. "I have the time reverser. Dr. Portinari stole it."
She was greeted with about ten seconds of silence on the line.
"Augusta? Are you still there?"
"Yes," came the woman's voice, which sounded emotionally shaken. "Come home right away. I'll get the crystal ready."
April looked somberly at the other kids while hanging up the phone. "You wanted to know what Augusta's plan is," she said. "You're about to find out."
TBC
"You're a lousy thief!" Mavis bellowed at her. "You stole our cartoons and printed them in the newspaper!"
Mickie smiled condescendingly. "I didn't steal anything. You don't have a copyright."
"What's a copyright?" asked Binky.
"It's the thing that comes after the title in a book," Mavis explained. "It means other people can't claim the book as their own."
"Oh, is that what it is?" Binky marveled. "I thought it was the machine they use to make copies of a book."
"That's a printing press," Mavis informed him.
"There's nothing you can do," said Mickie smugly. "I've already applied to the copyright office. Soon Spongebrain and all his friends will belong to me."
"We can sue you," said Binky. "Right, Muffy?"
"Not if she gets a copyright before you do," Muffy advised him. "And the person you should talk to about suing somebody is Van. His dad's a lawyer."
Mavis glared accusingly at Mickie. "You won't stop Binky and me from making more cartoons," she warned.
"Why should I want to stop you?" said Mickie with a chuckle. "I can just publish your cartoons as my own, and I wouldn't have to pay you."
"What a jerk," Francine grumbled.
"Was I ever that much of a snob?" Muffy asked her friends.
"Not only is she better than we are," Arthur complained, "but she has to rub it in our faces."
"I think we should call her Mickie Chanel, the Snob from Hell," Fern proposed.
"The next Spongebrain cartoon will appear in tomorrow's paper," Mickie notified her hostile audience. "I drew it by myself."
Seeing that no good would come from criticizing Mickie's actions, the kids dispersed and went their ways. As Arthur headed toward his locker, Francine caught up with him and grabbed his hand. The aardvark boy, who normally smiled pleasantly at such a show of affection, looked somewhat startled instead.
"I'd like to punch that stuck-up Mickie right in the kisser," Francine groused.
"Uh, yeah," Arthur replied semi-obliviously. "So would I."
"I need some cheering up," said Francine. "Kiss me, Arthur."
She jutted out her lips, and Arthur hesitantly pressed his own against them for about three seconds.
"You don't kiss me like you used to," Francine observed as she pulled her face away.
"Sorry about that," said Arthur, wiping off his lips with his fingers. "I've gotta go, Francine."
The poor monkey girl didn't feel cheered up at all. As Arthur disappeared from her view down a hallway, she wondered if the boy had lost his excitement about their relationship.
----
As Mickie had promised, her own Spongebrain cartoon appeared in the Times the next morning. Alan was reading it in a paper he had found abandoned on a bus seat, and concluded that it wasn't as funny as the Mavis/Binky strips, nor as true to the characters.
Around him were seated George, Fern, and April, who was explaining their plan to gather intelligence about Rick Portinari. "George and I will hide," she went on, "while Fern and Alan will use a false pretense to get inside Dr. Portinari's apartment. Once inside, they'll look around and take note of anything suspicious or unearthly."
"What if he catches us?" Fern asked her.
"If you don't report back in ten minutes," April answered, "I'll go in and rescue you." She briefly held up the glittering invisibility stone, and then replaced it in her pocket.
Throughout the five-mile bus trip to Portinari's location, Alan and Fern toyed with the possibility that they might be walking into a deadly trap. On the other hand, as long as they kept April busy investigating Portinari, she wouldn't be available to assist in Augusta's mysterious scheme.
They soon reached the intersection where Portinari's complex sat on one corner. "The apartment number is 105," April informed Fern and Alan. "Good luck."
Wondering why they had agreed to this stunt, they walked across the street toward the apartment building while George and April hid behind a tall hedge.
Inside apartment 105, Rick Portinari was inserting packing material into a square cardboard box. He whistled cheerfully, thinking of the wondrous evening he would enjoy when Augusta came to visit him. Then he heard an urgent knock on his door.
He opened it to see the grim-faced Alan with an arm supporting Fern, who was clutching her stomach and moaning miserably. "Please, sir, I need to use your phone," Alan pleaded. "My sister ate mushrooms, and I think they were poisonous."
"Oooohhh..." groaned Fern, rolling her eyes as if delirious.
Alarmed, Portinari took the poodle girl by the shoulders and carefully led her into the apartment, all the while telling himself that these were the most dissimilar siblings he had ever met. "The phone's in the bedroom," he told Alan, motioning with his large bulldog head toward a doorway.
The boy rushed into the bedroom, found the telephone on a nightstand, and picked up the receiver. The cord was flexible enough that he could pretend to make conversation with an imaginary dispatcher while quietly peeking into closets and opening drawers. Other than the fact that the good doctor seemed to have very little clothing, he found nothing remarkable.
Meanwhile, Portinari tended to Fern the imaginary invalid as best he knew how. "Ooohh, I'm sick," the girl complained. "I'm sick as a dog. I think I'm gonna throw up. Do you have a bucket or anything?"
Portinari, now more worried than ever, hurried into the nearby kitchen in search of a suitable receptacle. Alan, having heard Fern's well-acted lines, laid down the phone and came back into the living room. An opened cardboard box sat on a bare desk with a few small drawers; he deftly opened each one, looking for unusual items.
In the last drawer, he found something quite unusual.
It was a small, beige, box-shaped object with a button and six numeric dials embedded in one side.
Hearing Portinari's footsteps drawing closer from the kitchen, Alan slammed the drawer shut. Standing with his hands behind his back, he said innocently, "The ambulance is on its way."
The psychiatrist laid a blue mop bucket next to the couch where Fern lay feigning illness. "Thank you, doctor," said the girl weakly.
Portinari's eyes suddenly widened. "Doctor? How did you know I'm a doctor?"
From the bedroom, he could hear the phone beeping loudly as a signal that someone had left the receiver off the hook for too long without making a call.
Stricken with terror, Alan grabbed Fern's hand and pulled her up from the couch. The two kids ran with utmost haste through the door of Portinari's apartment and onto the sidewalk. The man chased them as far as the doorway, then stopped and glared, his jaw hanging open.
Fern and Alan didn't stop running until they reached the rendezvous point behind the hedge on the other side of the street.
"Is he an alien?" George asked curiously.
"What did you find?" April wanted to know.
"Not much," Alan replied. "He doesn't have many clothes, but maybe that's because he just moved here, and the rest of his stuff hasn't arrived. There was a box on his desk, and it looked like he was about to pack some things. Also, there was a little gadget in one of the desk drawers."
"What did the gadget look like?" inquired April.
"It was tan-colored," Alan described it. "On one side there were six dials with numbers in them."
It appeared to Alan, Fern, and George that the breath had just been sucked out of April. After a moment of shocked silence, the cat girl narrowed her eyes and scowled angrily.
"I'll be right back," she said darkly, pushing past the other three kids.
They watched in awe as April marched across the street, fists clenched tightly.
Another knock came at Portinari's apartment door. The doctor looked through the peephole this time, suspecting the same two children might have returned. Instead of them, he saw nothing.
Opening the door, he waved his head about as if to find those responsible for the joke. Then something pushed him forcibly backwards, almost causing him to lose his footing. It felt like hands...but nobody was there...
The next thing he realized, the drawers in his desk were opening by themselves, one after another. The object with dials levitated out of one drawer, and started to float across the room.
Now outraged, Portinari threw himself at the invisible presence that was making off with the gadget. He felt a brief sensation of fabric, flesh, bandages, and curly hair against his skin--followed by a sharp, stunning blow to the back of his neck. He landed helplessly on the floor, dazed and in pain.
Fern, George, and Alan were waiting breathlessly behind the hedge for April's return, when the girl suddenly materialized before them, clutching the gadget in one hand. "Yeah, that's what I saw," Alan verified. "What is it?"
"Never mind what it is," said April firmly. "We need to get to a phone."
She glanced repeatedly over her shoulder while making the two-block trek to a service station, but observed no sign that Portinari was pursuing. Upon reaching the pay phone, she inserted a quarter and dialed Augusta's number.
"Hello?"
"Augusta, this is April," the cat girl almost shouted. "I have the time reverser. Dr. Portinari stole it."
She was greeted with about ten seconds of silence on the line.
"Augusta? Are you still there?"
"Yes," came the woman's voice, which sounded emotionally shaken. "Come home right away. I'll get the crystal ready."
April looked somberly at the other kids while hanging up the phone. "You wanted to know what Augusta's plan is," she said. "You're about to find out."
TBC
