“You’re going to pour that stuff on my arm?” Andy cried. “I don’t think so!”
She tried to step away.
But Kermit grabbed her arm. And poured.
The blue liquid spread over the mosquito bite.
“No! Oh, no!” Andy shrieked.
“My arm!” Andy shrieked. “What did you do to me?”
Evan lurched to the lab table, nearly stumbling over the dog again. He grabbed Andy’s arm and examined it. “It—it—” he stammered.
“It’s gone!” Andy cried. “The mosquito bite—it’s gone!”
Evan stared at Andy’s arm. Perfectly smooth, except for a few drips of the blue liquid.
“Kermit—you’re a genius!” Andy cried. “That mixture of yours shrank the mosquito bite away!”
“Told you,” Kermit replied, grinning happily.
“You can make a fortune!” Andy exclaimed. “Don’t you realize what you’ve done here? You’ve invented the greatest cure for mosquito bites ever!”
Kermit held up the beaker. He tilted it one way, then the other. “Not much left,” he said softly.
“But you can mix up some more—right?” Andy demanded.
Kermit frowned. “I’m not sure,” he said softly. “I think I can mix up a new batch. But I’m not sure. I didn’t write down what I put in it.”
He scratched his white-blond hair and stared at the empty glass beaker, twitching his nose like a mouse, thinking hard.
Dogface let out another loud hiccup. The hiccup was followed by a howl. Evan saw that the poor dog was getting very unhappy about the hiccups. Dogface was a big dog—and so he had big hiccups that shook his sheepdog body like an earthquake.
“I’d better get to work on the hiccup cure,” Kermit announced. He pulled some jars of chemicals off the shelf and started to open them.
“Whoa. Wait a minute,” Evan told him. “I told you, Kermit—I can’t let you feed anything to the dog. Aunt Dee will kill me if—”
“Oh, let him try!” Andy interrupted. She rubbed her smooth arm. “Kermit is a genius, Evan. You have to let a genius work.”
Evan glared at her. “Whose side are you on?” he demanded in a loud whisper.
Andy didn’t answer. She unzipped her orange-and-blue backpack and pulled out some papers. “I think I’ll do my math homework while Kermit mixes up his hiccup cure.”
Kermit’s eyes lit up excitedly behind his glasses. “Math? Do you have math problems?”
Andy nodded. “It’s a take-home equations exam. Very hard.”
Kermit set down the test tubes and beakers. He hurried out from behind the lab table. “Can I do the problems for you, Andy?” he asked eagerly. “You know I love to do math problems.”
Andy flashed Evan a quick wink. Evan frowned back at her. He shook his head.
So that’s why Andy is being so nice to Kermit! Evan told himself. It was all a trick. A trick to get Kermit to do the math test for her.
Kermit could never resist math problems. His parents had to buy him stacks and stacks of math workbooks. He could spend an entire afternoon doing all the problems in the workbooks—for fun!
Dogface hiccupped.
Kermit grabbed the math test from Andy’s hand. “Please let me do the equations,” he begged. “Pretty please?”
“Well … okay,” Andy agreed. She flashed Evan another wink.
Evan scowled back at her. Andy is going to get in trouble for this, he thought. Andy is a terrible math student. It’s her worst subject. Mrs. McGrady is going to get very suspicious when Andy gets every problem right.
But Evan didn’t say anything. What was the point?
Kermit was already scribbling answers on the page, solving the equations as fast as he could read them. His eyes were dancing wildly. He was breathing hard. And he had a happy grin on his face.
“All done,” he announced.
Wow, he’s fast! Evan thought. He finished that math test in the time it would take me to write my name at the top of the page!
Kermit handed the pencil and math pages back to Andy. “Thanks a lot,” she said. “I really need a good grade in math this term.”
“Cheater,” Evan whispered in her ear.
“I just did it for Kermit,” Andy whispered back. “He loves doing math problems. So why shouldn’t I give him a break?”
