Invisible Inkling

“Yes!” Inkling says, irritable. “In fact, I think I’m going to throw up again right this minute.” He makes a horrible moaning noise and I hear a thump as he jumps off the bed, then a scuffle as he runs out of my bedroom. I stand and follow.

The toilet seat clonks up as I enter the bathroom. There’s a puddle of orange barf seeping across the floor, and more spewing from an invisible body into the toilet bowl.

It’s gross. Part of me wants to run away or call Mom—but I know I can’t do either of those things. I step around the barf and sit on the edge of the tub. I feel the space over the toilet and put my hand on Inkling’s furry back as he heaves.

When he’s done, I pick him up and set him down on the bath mat, which is still clean. I flush and bring him a glass of water. I wipe up the barf on the floor with paper towels and spray cleaner, and try to get it off the hallway carpet, too.

“Are you sick?” I ask, when I’m done scrubbing. “Do you have a headache? A fever?”

“Nah. I’m not sick. It was indigestion.”

“What did you eat?”

Inkling huffs. “What do you think I ate?”

“Pumpkin?”

“Cooked pumpkin. Fresh would never disagree with me. Fresh pumpkin I could eat forever and never have a moment of trouble.”

“How much cooked pumpkin did you eat?”

Inkling moans. “Six cans. Well, maybe seven.”

Wow. That’s a lot.

I sit in silence for a moment, picturing Inkling with a can opener on the floor of our kitchen. Then I ask, “Do I need to go clean the kitchen before Dad finds a mess in the morning?”

Inkling gasps. “What? No! What kind of friend do you take me for? I wouldn’t eat Dad’s pumpkin! He needs that for work!”

“Whose pumpkin is it, then, if it’s not Dad’s?”

“Betty-Ann’s.”

I nearly fall over on the bathroom floor. “How did you get Betty-Ann’s pumpkin?”

“I crawled into the truck and got inside a cooler. She drove across the Brooklyn Bridge to her kitchen and unloaded. Before you know it, I was inside her lair.”

“Weren’t you scared?”

“Bandapats are never scared. I had a strategy.”

“For what?”

“Stopping her, of course.”

“But—”

“No buts. When you mess with Big Round Pumpkin, you mess with Inkling.”

“What did you do?” I ask.

“Well, I had big plans,” Inkling answers. “I sincerely did.”

“What plans?”

“Let me explain something. In the Peruvian Woods of Mystery, older bandapats punish nudnik bandapats by lurking in abandoned rabbit warrens. They pop out and biff when the little guys don’t expect it. “

“Pop out and biff?”

“It’s a punishment.”

“For what?”

“For taking other people’s pumpkins, disturbing people’s sleep, maybe hogging the covers or gossiping. For being a nudnik. That’s Yiddish for Really Annoying Person.”

“Okay, so the old bandapat does what?”

“She finds a rabbit warren, or maybe a gopher hole, and she hides. When the nudnik comes by, she pops out and biffs him on the ear.”

“Biffs him.”

“It’s the pop-out that makes it really good, because of the surprise element. You can’t just biff without a pop-out.”

“So you were going to pop out and biff Betty-Ann?”

“Exactly. From inside the cooler, first thing in the morning. After that, there was no way she would keep selling her stupid whoopie pies on the same block as Big Round Pumpkin.”

“But something must have gone wrong.”

Inkling moans and the bath mat moves a little. “The cooler was cold. I couldn’t sleep in there. I thought I’d look around for something warmer. More like a rabbit warren.”

“And then?”

“I was in her kitchen, and there were cans and cans of pumpkin, Wolowitz. You can’t even imagine. Way more than Dad has.”

“What did you do?”

“What do you think I did?” Inkling snaps. “I figured out how to work the can opener, and I started eating. I didn’t even have to chew, you know? I just opened up a can and poured that pumpkin right down my gullet until I was all swollen up.”

“Gross.”

Inkling sighs and crawls onto my lap. “At first, with all that vitamin A surging through me, I felt fantastic. Like a wonderpat.”

“What’s a wonderpat?”

“Wonderpats are bandapats who achieve greatness far beyond the everyday awesomeness of bandapats. They don’t have superpowers. They just do something amazing. Like Lichtenbickle, who tamed the unicorn; or Hetsnickle, who defined the bandapat code of honor. Anyway, I felt like a wonderpat. I got really hyper. I ran around and around Betty-Ann’s kitchen, just itching to biff her. I couldn’t believe I had to wait probably another eight hours. Finally I decided to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge,” says Inkling.

“Why?”

“It’s one of those things people should do when they come to New York City, right?” he says. “And I’ve never done it.”

“You’re crazy.”

Inkling moans. “The canned pumpkin was affecting me. I couldn’t sit still. I felt like the bridge was calling to me. I figured to be back in plenty of time to biff Betty-Ann and make sure she never caused trouble for Big Round Pumpkin again. I found a window, pushed it open, and climbed outside.”

“Then what?”

“I made it across the bridge, but when I got to Cadman Plaza, I felt queasy and threw up in a bush.”