Dedication

For my family—E.J.

For Tate Stephen Charuk—H.B.

Contents

Dedication

I Asked if We Could Get a Black Mamba

They All Taste Like Baby Food

Which Is More Fun, Alien Poo or Science?

We Thought It Would Make a Good Splat

The Technical Term Is Floppy Bits

Maybe I Took One Tiny Bite

Four Fifty a Pint Is Criminal

It’s This or Hip-Hop Dance

We Look Like Defeated Supervillains

I’ll Sew Up My Wounded Stomach with Yarn

Maybe You Didn’t Really Want to Take My Money

A Pygmy Hedgehog Sounds All Right

I’m Going to Bake Her into Submission

I Am Evil Because of How Bald I Am

She Won’t Catch You. You’ll Be a Unicorn.

I Felt Like a Wonderpat

Spot-Clean, or the Highway

They Only Have Teeny-Tiny Brains

Lord Baldy Is with Us or against Us

They Are Pies of Evil

He’s Not a Nudnik

Fried Potato and Onion in Your Ice Cream

Your Predictions Are Wrong

Isn’t He a Little Cute One?

A Note from the Author

Back Ad

About the Author and Illustrator

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

I Asked if We Could Get a Black Mamba

Hey there.

By now, you know all about Inkling. You know he’s an invisible bandapat. You know he speaks English, Yiddish, and Mandarin. You know he sleeps in my laundry basket. You know he came to live with me in September of fourth grade when I rescued him from Rootbeer, the hungry French bulldog who lives across the hall.

You know that bandapats are an endangered species from the Peruvian Woods of Mystery. Or possibly the redwoods of Cameroon. Or the Canadian underbrushlands.

Inkling never gets his stories straight. In fact, he’s a liar. He lies so often, I sometimes suspect he’s a secret agent. Who else would have that much to hide?

Nobody I can think of.

Though a secret agent would probably lie better than Inkling does.

Hopefully you also remember that we’ve got to keep hush-hush about Inkling living with me. I can’t tell my parents, my sister Nadia, or my friend Chin from downstairs. Scientists are looking for the last of the bandapats. They want to trap them and take them to top-secret labs. They want to know what makes the bandapats invisible. They wonder why the bandapats can only be seen in mirrors and whether eating so much squash has anything to do with it.

The other reason Inkling has to stay hush-hush is that Mom won’t let me have a pet. She says Dad, Nadia, me, and seven hundred books—that’s already more than she can handle in a small apartment.

She’s really serious about the no-pet thing. Last year before Inkling came, I asked if I could get a black mamba. Sure, they’re lethal, but people keep poisonous snakes as pets all the time. Black mambas grow fourteen feet long. They’re the fastest snakes in the world. Their heads are shaped like coffins. Even the insides of their mouths are black. Once, one was found with a full-grown parrot in its belly.

I read about them in my venomous-reptiles book. They’re for-serious one of the coolest snakes alive.

Mom said no.