Tooth or Dare Read online

  Just one.

  He could easily overtake me in the next week.

  I have to do something about it.

  But what?

  Time for a list. Lists always help. I get a pen and paper out of my bag. . . .

  HOW TO MAKE MORE OF MY TEETH FALL OUT THAN RICK

  1. Go to Shark Park.

  Ummmm . . . then what?

  2. Go to Shark Park and climb the jungle gym using only my teeth!

  Bit ouchy. But . . . okay . . . no pain, no gain. What else?

  3. Dad’s putting up shelves in the garage on the weekend.

  So . . . ?

  4. I could offer to pass the shelves to him using only my teeth!

  But that’s not until the weekend and it might be too late by then. Think, Harry, think!

  5. I could turbo chomp my food all the time. That might loosen a few!

  6. Distract Mom while she’s cooking my trench toast in the morning so she burns it and makes it extracrunchy!

  7. Pretend I’m pouring milk on my bowl of Kelp Krispies and eat them dry. That’s bound to loosen a few. Those things are evil without milk!

  8. Offer to open the cans of marine-beans for Mom, and when she’s not looking, use my teeth.

  9. Dad has a whole box of supercrunchy toffees in his office left over from Christmas. I’ll sneak into Dad’s office, get the toffees, and loosen a dozen teeth with them, easy!

  I look back at the list. Surely, if I do all of them, I will beat Rick.

  “Harry-Warry,” I hear Mom calling up the stairs, “It’s time to come down for dinner!”

  “Okay, Mom,” I shout, darting off my bed and head for the door. Time to lose a few more teeth.

  I wonder what hard and crunchy food Mom has cooked for me tonight? Lobster still in its shell? Yes, I can loosen my teeth on that. I head down the hallway. Or maybe it’s mussels in coral gravy? Bunches of shells there for me to get my teeth into. I zoom down the stairs. Or whale steak, well done, with a lovely fat bone for me to crunch my teeth on. Yes! Losing those extra teeth and winning a ride on The Kraken is going to be a piece of fishcake!

  I skid into the kitchen, where Mom is dishing up food, and Dad is flicking through his octopiPAD.

  “Mom! Mom! What’s for dinner?” I ask excitedly. I can’t wait to sink my teeth into it.

  Mom puts a big steaming bowl onto the table in front of me. “There you go, Harry. Sea-cucumber soup to start, followed by soft-crab-egg salad, and lovely sea-strawberry pudding for dessert. Eat up.”

  Whaaaaaaaaaat?????????????

  My heart sinks so fast I think it might plop right out of my bottom!

  I have to think quickly. There’s no way I can just have soup, soft eggs, and pudding-they won’t help my teeth fall out at all. I look around the kitchen, desperately trying to find something to add to the soup to toughen it up. . . .

  Yes!

  I see a big bag of nuts on the table next to Dad. They’re not his usual brand, but I don’t care. The bag is too close to Dad for me to get them without him seeing, and there’s no way he’s going to give me his favorite after-dinner snack.

  I desperately try to think up a plan.

  Okay. This might work. . . .

  I swim up from the table, knowing Mom will tell me to go back and eat my soup.

  “Harry, get back to the table!” she says.

  Perfect.

  “But, Mom, I thought I heard someone at the door. It might be important. I should go and see.”

  “No, eat your soup. Hugo, will you go and see who’s at the door please?”

  Dad sighs as he puts down the OctopiPAD. “But I haven’t read everything they’ve written about me yet!”

  Mom gives him one of her hardest stares.

  Dad gets up from the table and heads for the door.

  “Mom, can you smell something burning?” I ask innocently as I move toward the bag of nuts on the table.

  Mom looks around wildly. “Burning? Where?”

  “Dunno, Mom, maybe the oven?” I keep my eyes firmly fixed on Mom as I feel along the table with my tail and flick the bag of nuts toward my bowl of soup. Mom looks all around the oven with her hammer-vision to check to see if anything is wrong.

  I quickly tip the bag of nuts into my soup bowl.

  Mission accomplished!

  I hide the empty bag under the table as Dad comes back in.

  “No one there,” he huffs. “Must be those silly kid-squids playing practical jokes again. I’ll have to speak to their parents!”

  I take a huge spoonful of soup and move it toward my mouth.

  “Hang on,” says Dad, “Where has my bag of nuts gone?”

  I put the spoon in my mouth and prepare to take the hardest chomp I can.

  “I need those nuts for the weekend,” Dad says. “I got them to go on the bolts to hold the shelves together. They’re special ones covered in whale-stomach oil so they go on really easy.”

  I freeze, mid-chomp.

  Whale stomach oil?!

  The first horrible tang of flavor reaches the back of my mouth and I start feeling really sick.

  Unable to stop myself, I spit the soup and nuts across the table and watch as they bounce and ping off Mom and Dad’s hammers.

  This is going to take some explaining.

  Once I’ve cleaned up all the soup and whale-stomach-oil nuts, eaten another bowl of soup, then the soft-crab-egg salad, and the even softer custard, all the time being watched like a seahawk by my parents, I’m allowed to go back to my bedroom.

  I float at my desk, still feeling a little icky and turn on my laptop-at least chatting with my pals on Plaicebook might cheer me up.

  Wrong!

  How about double-wrong with a double helping of triple-wrong with nineteen kinds of special-wrong all on top?

  The first thing that comes up in my feed is a huge picture of Rick. His holey smile is back and he’s holding a freshly removed tooth in his fin.

  The caption underneath makes me feel even sicker. I’M GONNA HAMMER HARRY!!!!

  The picture has seventy-four likes.

  I slam the laptop closed and begin a seriously fin-folded, face-screwed-up, dorsal-trembling huff!

  I run my tongue across the rows of teeth in my mouth really hoping I can find more loose ones. But other than the one that’s already a tiny bit wobbly I can’t find any!

  I’m beginning to think it would have been better if I’d chomped down on every whale-stomach-oil nut in my soup and broken every tooth in my head!

  What am I going to do???

  “What the heck,” says Ralph, swimming out of my mouth the next morning as him, Joe, Tony, and me make our way to school. “You’re more miserable than a clown fish who’s been fired from the sea-circus!”

  Ralph’s right. I hardly slept last night thinking about Rick.

  Tony and Joe start a quick game of finball as we reach school, but I tell them I don’t want to play. “I just don’t feel like it,” I say as Rick and Donny come strutting in.

  “Hey, rubberhead, check this out!” says Rick, holding up his Seaberry smartphone. His picture on Plaicebook has more than a hundred and fifty likes. That’s nearly every kid and squid in school! “Looks like I’m gonna hammer you, Harry!”

  Donny, Cora, and Pearl laugh like a whale rear end with an upset tummy. Rick waves his Seaberry around to anyone who wants to look.

  “Harry! Watch out!” I hear Joe shout behind me. Tony’s finball thuds into my dorsal with a stinging thwack!

  “Sorry,” Tony says, “I finned it too hard-” But I don’t get to hear the rest of his apology because the force of the finball pushes me through the water straight into Rick!

  Rick bounces off me and nosedives into Cora’s schoolbag, which is open near her tail.

  Rick’s Seaberry spins off into the current and over the school’s coral wall.

  Rick, yelling and twisting, finally gets his head out of Cora’s bag. He has three of her sparkling pink necklaces wrapped around hi
s nose, a wonky line of pink lipstick around his mouth, and three of her fake blond hair extensions floating up from his ears.

  There’s a moment of terrible silence.

  Then everyone in the playpool starts to laugh!

  I get ready for Rick to come over and flubber me-or worse-but Donny points to the wall where Rick’s Seaberry disappeared, and they both swim off to find it. I can see from the way Rick’s shaking his fins that he is very angry.

  He’s not going to let this go.

  As soon as we’re in the swimnasium for PE, I can see that Rick is planning something. Mrs. Shelby has split us into teams for finball, and Rick and Donny are on the other side. I spend the first couple of minutes just trying to stay out of Rick’s way, instead of trying to get the ball.

  “Come on, Harry!” calls Mrs. Shelby from the sidelines. “It’s finball, not water ballet!”

  Rick brushes past me and I feel his finbow crunch into my side. “No one makes an idiot of me,” he hisses as he goes past.

  Ralph gets the ball at the halfway line and dribbles brilliantly around Donny. Going forward, he fins the ball to Tony, who sidefloats around Cora and fins the ball in a great spinning loop up over Rick (who’s zooming toward him) straight to me!

  Well, I have no choice now. I zip forward, fin left, fin right-zoom beneath Pearl and head toward the goal . . .

  Crash!!!

  Suddenly I’m spinning up to the roof of the swimnasium and bouncing headfirst into the ceiling.

  Sparkly starfish explode near my head and spin around me crazily.

  I tumble upside down in a couple of lazy spins and thud into the floor. I can dimly hear Mrs. Shelby telling Rick off for his “Terrible tackle on Harry!” as Joe, Ralph, and Tony rush over to me to help.

  “Are you all right, Harry?” Ralph calls.

  “Harry, buddy, that looked bad,” says Tony, rubbing my hammer where it crunched into the ceiling.

  Joe’s bottom toots several times, but I know that’s because he’s worried.

  Normally I’d be really angry, but this time I think it’s super.

  A big smile spreads across my face.

  “Oh no!” cries Ralph, “Harry’s delirious! Call a clambulance!”

  I hold up my fin. “No, it’s okay! Look!”

  I stick out my tongue.

  They all stare at the tooth lying on it. It was knocked out when my head hit the ceiling.

  “I’m back in the lead!” I yell, spinning back up with a howl of triumph.

  Rick looks totally shocked. He zooms away from Mrs. Shelby, heading straight for me!

  I don’t want a fight, but it looks like I might have no choice.

  Rick wrenches my mouth open with his fins. Then he grabs the tooth from me and starts trying to shove it back into my gum. “It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair!” he yells.

  Mrs. Shelby has to pull Rick off me and give him a good talking to about fair play and rough tackles and not sticking my teeth back in without permission.

  At lunch break everyone’s talking about what happened in the swimnasium and I’m back to being Mr. Popular again. Rick and Donny are scowling at me from across the playpool.

  Ralph is picking bits of lunch out from between my teeth. “Not a bad job, even if I do say so myself,” he says proudly as he swims out of my mouth. “You have the cleanest teeth in the school.”

  I nod and feel around with my tongue to see if there are any fresh wobblers, but sadly all my teeth feel very sturdy and strong.

  Rick and Donny are whispering to each other. Rick looks agitated and Donny keeps pointing in my direction.

  “What are they up to?” I say to my friends.

  “Dunno, Harry, but I reckon you’re safe from attack after what happened this morning,” Ralph replies. “Rick won’t want to risk knocking out any more of your teeth.”

  But Ralph may have spoken too soon because Rick is now zooming across the playpool straight at me! His face is angry, his mouth is sneery, and his tail is swishing powerful strokes, speeding him up and up and up.

  Ralph tries to pull me out of the way, but I’m not sure which direction to go. Rick could still change course. The other kids all get out of his way and their faces turn toward me to watch the upcoming battle.

  But . . .

  Rick goes right past me!

  But?

  What?

  Clannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggg!!!!

  I turn just in time to see Rick crash at full speed into the playpools jungle gym.

  Clannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggg!!!!

  Rick bounces off one prong and boings into another.

  As he comes to a stop, cross-eyed and nose-bent, I can see he’s smiling in the same way I did in the swimnasium, except this time . . .

  Spit.

  One!

  Spit.

  Two!!

  Spit.

  Three!!!

  Spit.

  Four!!!!

  Spit.

  FIVE!!!!!

  . . . freshly broken teeth come out of Rick’s mouth. All around the playpool kids start cheering.

  For Rick!

  “Harry, stop! Don’t be an idiot!” Ralph is pulling at my fin, but I’m determined. I’m not going to stop. “Harry you can’t do this. You can’t!”

  It’s after school and I’m dragging Ralph down the street because he’s stuck to my fin like a stubborn barnacle and I’m heading for the nearest shop that has what I need.

  Ralph is pulling at me, but I’m too strong. “I can’t let you do this, Harry. As your friend and floating toothbrush I can’t let you do this to yourself.”

  “I have no choice!” I shout at him. “Rick’s four in the lead now! Four! How am I going to catch up if I don’t do something drastic?”

  “I don’t know, but this isn’t the answer.”

  We stop outside the sweet shop. I pull Ralph off my fin and reach in to my schoolbag for my money. “Now you stay there; I don’t need you whining in my ear.”

  “No, Harry. No!” Ralph frowns at me. “If you go in there and buy all that candy in the hope that it will rot out more of your teeth, then I resign as your toothbrush!”

  “No need!” I yell.

  “Why?” Ralph says hopefully. “Have you changed your mind?”

  “No. There’s no need to resign because you’re fired!”

  And with that, I storm into the shop, leaving Ralph outside with the shockingest shocked look of all time on his face.

  This is me: “Owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!”

  This is Mom: “What’s the matter?!”

  This is me: “Owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!”

  This is Mom: “Tell me, Harry! Should I call a clambulance? Hugo! Hugo!”

  This is me: “Owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!”

  This is Mom: “Hang on . . . what are all those candy wrappers doing under your bed? Coral Crunchies? Krillix? Fishstar Bars? Sherbet Bluetip? Have you been eating all this candy, Harry? Have you given yourself a toothache?”

  This is me: “Owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!”

  This is Mom: “Hugo! Call the dentist!”

  This is me: “Nooooooooo! Owwwwwww! Nooooooooo! Owwwwwww! Nooooooooo! Owwwwwww! Nooooooooo! Owwwwwww! Nooooooooo! Owwwwwww! Nooooooooo! Owwwwwww!”

  This is Humphrey and Larry: “Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!”

  And this is me in the dentist’s waiting room feeling very sorry for myself.

  It’s Saturday morning and I’ve been dragged to the dentist instead of out playing with my friends.
I’ve been dragged to the dentist because for the last four days I’ve been spending every penny of my allowance on candy in the hope that it will rot my teeth and make them fall out faster. So I’ve been dragged to the dentist because I’ve given myself a massive toothache.

  And do you know what?

  Yup.

  That’s right.

  Not one single extra tooth has fallen out! All I’m left with is the worst toothache anyone in the history of the seaverse has ever had. You leggy air breathers might think it’s terrible having one toothache. Try having eighteen!

  Mom is usually all “mushy” with me when I’m sick, but I can tell this time she is superangry.

  “It’s your own fault!” she says as she flicks through the magazines from the waiting room table. “As a shark, you know that looking after your teeth is really important. Especially because you have so many.”

  I don’t argue with her because I know she’s right-and also because opening my mouth is agony. I just nod and feel extra sorry for myself. And more than a little bit scared. And more than a lot bit in pain. It feels like Ralph is in my mouth nailing tiny pictures to my teeth.

  Ow.

  Then I hear a noise that makes me freeze with fear.

  Zzzzzzzz-ket ket ket-zzzzzzzz-ket ket ket.

  The noise is coming from the exam room, floating into the waiting room through the dentist’s door.

  It makes my tummy turn into seaweed-spaghetti knots. I look up at Mom for some comfort. But she just makes that mom-face at me. You know, the face that moms always make when they’re using their eyes to tell you what a goofball you’ve been.

  I try closing my eyes.

  But that just makes me imagine what could be happening to make that zzzzzzzz-ket ket ket-zzzzzzzz-ket ket ketnoise, which won’t stop, and keeps getting louder . . . and . . .

  ZZZZZZZZ-KET KET KET-ZZZZZZZZ-KET KET KET.

  . . . louder.

  “Mom, Mom, there’s been a miracle,” I say, grabbing her fin. “My toothache is completely gone. Quick, let’s go home.”