Phineas L. MacGuire . . . Gets Slimed! (9 page)

It has been a bad fall for dried worms.

When we got home, Sarah immediately turned on the TV to some talk show. I thought about watching, just because I never get to watch anything at my house besides
Polly Puppy and Her Puppy Friends.
But after one minute I learned a valuable lesson.

There are some shows even stupider than
Polly Puppy.

I know. It's hard to believe.

Besides, I needed to make some penicillin, and fast. Aretha said if I didn't have something growing by Monday, she wouldn't put her name on Ben's presidential ticket.

“I need to use the computer,” I told Sarah. “I have some scientific research to do.”

“Are you allowed to use the computer, Scooter?” Sarah asked. “I thought your mom had a ‘No computer' rule.”

“Actually, it's a ‘No computer on school days until after dinner, and then only if all homework has been completed
and all teeth have been brushed' rule,” I explained. “Besides, my mom has about two million filters downloaded. It's not like I can actually do anything fun on the computer.”

“Okay,” Sarah said. “As long as you can't have any fun, I guess that's all right.”

Sarah Fortemeyer and my mom are two peas in a pod.

I sat down at the computer on my mom's desk in the family room and typed “penicillin” in a search engine. In about two seconds I got a return of 6,140,000 hits.

Maybe I would need to narrow my search specifications.

I typed in “How to grow penicillin.”

I got 550,000 hits.

That would have to do.

The first thing I learned was that to make penicillin, you have to grow a mold called penicillium. Penicillium produces a liquid that is made into penicillin. All I needed was a lemon, a milk carton, and some dust.

In our house finding dust would not be a problem.

The lemon and the milk carton, on the other hand, would take a little more work.

I stuck my head in the fridge. I found a half-f plastic milk jug with no lid and not one single lemon. There was a carton of smushy, oozing cherry tomatoes, three chunks of cheddar just beginning to show green spots, and something in a plastic container that I couldn't recognize. There was even a plastic lemon that at one time had held lemon juice but was
now empty. But no real lemons or citrus fruit of any kind.

We would have to go to the store. That meant another car trip with the Teenage Girl Space Alien. Which meant more purple smells. More potential for red, scratchy hives breaking out all over my body.

I picked up the phone and called Ben. “You have to help me,” I said. “I need a lemon and a milk carton, and I need them fast.”

“No prob,” Ben said. “I'll be there in ten minutes, tops.”

Forty-five minutes later Ben showed up at my front door.

He had two plastic bags dangling from his bike handles. In one there were three cartons of milk. Full cartons.

In the other there were about forty lemons.

“The great thing about living in an apartment complex is that somebody always has what you need,” Ben said,
carrying the bags into the house. “Especially when about nine out of ten people who live there are senior citizens. Senior citizens have the best supplies. They're totally organized.”

“Why'd you get so much stuff?” I asked. “I mean, one lemon and one empty milk carton would have done it.”

“Yeah, I know,” Ben said. “Only, when Mrs. Markowitz heard that Mrs. Grimes was giving me a lemon, she swore she had an even better lemon, and Mr. Penderthal said he had the best lemons of all. It went on like that for about twenty minutes.”

“Well, all we need is one little lemon wedge,” I said.

Ben thought about this for a second. “Maybe we can donate the rest to charity,” he said.

We spent the next ten minutes drinking milk and eating cookies. Then I washed out the empty milk carton and sliced a lemon wedge.

“Step one,” I said, “is putting dust on the lemon.”

I swiped the lemon wedge on top of our fridge. It came back loaded with dust.

“Step two,” I said, “the lemon wedge goes in a plastic Baggie, and we add five drops of water.”

“And step three,” I said after I'd put the lemon wedge in the bag and Ben had used an eyedropper to drop five drops of water in with it, “is putting the Baggie in the milk carton and sealing the carton.”

“How long will it take the penicillin to grow?” Ben asked.

“A few days, I think,” I told him. “I'll
put the milk carton in the bathroom closet so it can get nice and steamy.”

Ben looked thoughtful. “You know, this science stuff is pretty cool. Not as cool as art, but almost.”

“I'm glad you think so,” I told him. “Because we've got a lot more work to do.”

There was mold to be made. Lots of mold.

Really, when you think about it, it was my kind of Friday night.

“Mold experiment number one,” I said, “bread mold. The world's most common mold, some would say. All we need is a slice of bread, a plastic Baggie, and some water.”

“I get to do the water drops again!” Ben yelled.

“Okay,” I told him. “You're good at that.”

Ben whooped. “All right!”

Sometimes it is ridiculously easy to make him happy.

The first trick was finding some bread in my house that wasn't already moldy. Finally I noticed an unopened bag of white bread in a cabinet that looked relatively mold-free. I took out a slice, and Ben dribbled some water on it.

“Now we leave the bread exposed to the air for about thirty minutes, pop it in the Baggie, put it in a closet, and wait for the mold to start growing. We ought to see something in three or four days.”

“And then what do we do?” Ben asked.

“Just look at it,” I said. “Just admire the wonder and beauty that is mold.”

“So we don't have to eat it or anything, right?”

“No way,” I said. “In fact, you're not even supposed to ever open the bag again. Some people are allergic to mold spores, so you don't want to let any out of the bag. Everything has to be destroyed.”

“That is so cool,” Ben said.

Next I found a nearly empty mayonnaise jar in the fridge. “We'll clean this out and use it for our mold terrarium. We'll put in four or five different kinds of food, spray on a little water, put on the lid, and wait for the fun to begin.”

Ben and I looked through the refrigerator and the cabinets and came up with one tomato slice, a piece of cheese, half a stale chocolate-covered doughnut, a handful of Cheerios, and a clump of macaroni. I turned the jar on its side
and put the different foods inside. Ben added the water. “I can't wait until all this mold starts growing,” he said. “It's just going to be like this zoo of fungus.”

That's when inspiration hit me. “Maybe we could jump-start it,” I said. “Give our mold experiments a steam bath to get them growing. Only, if we do it in my bathroom, Margaret will destroy everything.”

Ben frowned. “I'd say let's do it at my place, but my mom would just scream and throw everything out.”

And that's when I had inspiration number two. “But my mom's not here.
Her bathroom's going to be empty until tomorrow night. We can put all the mold up there now, run a hot shower for thirty minutes, turn off the water, close up the doors, and let the steam do its magic. Who'll know the difference?”