Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder Read online

  DOCTOR PROCTOR’S

  FART POWDER

  JO NESBØ

  ILLUSTRATED BY

  mike lowery

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people,

  or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are

  the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons,

  living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ALADDIN

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  First Aladdin hardcover edition January 2010

  Copyright © 2007 by H. Aschehoug & Co. (W. Nygaard), Oslo

  Translation copyright © 2010 by Tara Chace

  Originally published in Norway in 2007 as Doktor Proktor’s Prompepulvet by H. Aschehoug & Co.

  First US Edition 2010

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  ALADDIN is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc., and related logo

  is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  For information about special discounts for bulk purchases,

  please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or [email protected].

  The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event.

  For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau

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  Designed by Karin Paprocki

  The text of this book was set in Perpetua Regular.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1109 FFG

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Nesbø, Jo, 1960–

  [Doktor Proktors prompepulvet. English]

  Doctor Proctor’s fart powder / by Jo Nesbø ; illustrated by Mike Lowery. — 1st Aladdin hardcover ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: New friends Nilly and Lisa help eccentric professor Doctor Proctor to develop

  his latest invention, a powder that makes one fart, making them very popular at school,

  but someone is planning to steal the industrial-strength formula for evil purposes.

  ISBN 978-1-4169-7972-2

  [1. Inventors—Fiction. 2. Eccentrics and eccentricities—Fiction. 3. Flatulence—Fiction.

  4. Friendship—Fiction. 5. Bullies—Fiction. 6. Oslo (Norway)—Fiction. 7. Norway—Fiction.]

  I. Lowery, Mike, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.N43825Doc 2010 [Fic]—dc22 2009027204

  ISBN 978-1-4391-5606-3 (eBook)

  The New Neighbor

  IT WAS MAY, and once the sun had shone for a while on Japan, Russia, and Sweden, it came up over Oslo—the very small capital city of a very small country called Norway. The sun got right to work shining on the yellow and fairly small palace that was home to the king, who didn’t rule over enough for it to amount to anything, and on Akershus Fortress. There it shone on the old cannons that were aimed out over the Oslo Fjord, through the window into the Commandant’s office, and onto the most remote of all the doors. The door that ultimately led to the city’s most feared jail cell, the Dungeon of the Dead, where only the most dangerous and worst criminals were kept. The cell was empty, apart from a Rattus norvegicus, a little Norwegian rat that was taking its morning bath in the toilet.

  The sun rose a tiny little bit higher and shone on some children in a school marching band who had practiced waking up very early and putting on uniforms that itched, and who were now practicing marching and playing almost in time. Because soon it would be the seventeenth of May, Norwegian Independence Day, and that was the day when all the school marching bands in the whole small country would get up very early, put on uniforms that itched, and play almost in time.

  And the sun climbed a tiny little bit higher and shone on the wooden wharves on the Oslo Fjord, where a ship from Shanghai, China, had just docked. The wharf planks swayed and creaked from all the busy feet running back and forth unloading goods from the ship. Some of the sun’s rays made their way between the planks and down under the wharf to a sewer pipe that stuck out into the water.

  And one single ray of sunlight made its way into the darkness of the sewer pipe and made something in there gleam. Something white, wet, and very sharp. Something that bore a nasty resemblance to a row of teeth. And if you knew something about reptiles, but were otherwise very dumb, you might have thought that what you were seeing were the eighteen fangs found in the jaws of the world’s biggest and most feared constrictor. The anaconda. But nobody’s that dumb. Because anacondas live in the jungle, in rivers like the Amazon in Brazil, and not in the sewer pipes running every which way beneath the small, peaceful northerly city called Oslo. An anaconda in the sewer? Eighteen yards of constricting muscles, a jaw the size of an inflatable swim ring, and teeth like upside-down ice-cream cones? Ha, ha! Yeah, right, that would’ve been a sight!

  And now the sun was starting to shine on a quiet street called Cannon Avenue. Some of the sun’s rays shone on a red house there, where the Commandant of Akershus Fortress was eating breakfast with his wife and their daughter, Lisa. And the rays shone on the yellow house on the other side of the street, where Lisa’s best friend used to live. But her best friend had just moved to a town called Sarpsborg, and seeing the yellow house empty made Lisa feel even lonelier than she had before her best friend had left. Because there wasn’t anyone for Lisa to play with on Cannon Avenue. The only other kids in the neighborhood were Truls and Trym Trane. They were the twins who lived in the big house with the three garages at the bottom of the hill, and they were two years older than Lisa. In the winter they threw rock-hard snowballs at her little red-haired head. And when she asked if they wanted to play, they pushed her down into the snow. And with icy mittens they rubbed snow into her face while christening her Greasy Lisa, Flatu-Lisa, or Commandant’s Debutante.

  And now maybe you’re thinking that Lisa should’ve mentioned this to Truls and Trym’s parents so they would rein the boys in. But that’s because you don’t know Truls and Trym’s father, Mr. Trane. Mr. Trane was a fat and angry man, even fatter than Lisa’s father and way, way angrier. And at least ten times as rich. And because he was so rich, Mr. Trane didn’t think anyone had any business coming and telling him anything whatsoever, and especially not how he ought to be raising his boys! The reason Mr. Trane was so rich was that he had once stolen an invention from a poor inventor. The invention was a very hard, very mysterious, and very secret material that was used, among other things, on prison doors to make prisons absolutely escape-proof. Mr. Trane had used the money he’d made from the invention to build the big house with the three garages, and to buy a Hummer. A Hummer is a big, angry car that was made to use in wars and that took up almost the whole road when Mr. Trane drove up Cannon Avenue. Hummers are also awful polluters. But Mr. Trane didn’t care, because he liked big, angry cars. And besides, he knew that if he crashed into someone, his car was a lot bigger than theirs, so it would be too bad for them.

  Luckily, it would be a while until Truls and Trym could christen Lisa with snow again, because the sun had long since melted it on Cannon Avenue, and now the sun was shining on the gardens, which were green and well groomed. All, that is, except for one. It was scraggly, drab, and unkempt, but was pleasant anyway because it had two pear trees and a small, crooked house that might possibly have been blue at one time and that was now missing
a fair number of roof tiles—you could tell that much, anyway. The neighbors on Cannon Avenue rarely saw the man who lived there. Lisa had only met him a couple of times and he’d smiled and otherwise looked sort of like his yard—scraggly, drab, and unkempt.

  “What’s that?” grumbled the Commandant as the roar of a large engine disturbed the morning quiet. “Is that that darned Hummer of Mr. Trane’s?”

  His wife craned her neck and peered out the kitchen window. “No. It looks like a moving van.”

  Lisa, who was generally a very well-behaved girl, got up from the table, without having finished what was on her plate or having been excused. She ran out onto the front steps. And it sure was. A moving van with the name CRAZY-QUICK written on its side was parked in front of the empty, yellow house that used to be her best friend’s house. And movers were unloading cardboard boxes from the back. Lisa went down the stairs and over to the so-called apple tree in her yard by the fence to get a closer look. The men in coveralls were carrying furniture, lamps, and big, ugly pictures. Lisa noticed one of the movers showing the other a dented trumpet that was sitting on top of one of the cardboard boxes, and then they both laughed. But she couldn’t see any sign of what she’d been hoping to see—dolls, small bicycles, a pair of short skis. And that could only mean that whoever was moving in didn’t have kids, at least no girls her age. Lisa sighed.

  Just then she heard a voice.

  “Hi!”

  She looked around in surprise, but didn’t see anyone.

  “Hi there!”

  She looked up at the tree her father said was an apple tree, but that no one had ever seen any apples on. And that now appeared to be talking.

  “Not there,” the voice said. “Over here.”

  Lisa stretched up on her tiptoes and peered down on the other side of the fence. And there was a little boy with red hair standing there. Well, not just red, actually, but bright red. And he wasn’t just small, he was tiny. He had a tiny face with two tiny blue eyes and a tiny turned-up nose in between. The only things on his face that were big were the freckles.

  “I’m Nilly,” he said. “What do you have to say about that?”

  He was supposed to be named William, but the priest refused to give such a tiny boy such a long name. So Billy would have to do. But the ringer of church bells came up with a brilliant idea: a boy who was so tiny that he was nearly invisible should be called Nilly! The parents just sighed and said okay, and thus the bell ringer got his way.

  Lisa asked, “What do I have to say about what?”

  “About my being called Nilly. It’s not exactly a common name.”

  Lisa thought about it. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Good.” The boy smiled. “It rhymes with ‘silly,’ but let’s just leave it at that. Deal?”

  Lisa nodded.

  The boy stuck his right index finger in his left ear. “And what’s your name?”

  “Lisa,” she said.

  Nilly’s index finger twisted back and forth as he watched her. Finally he pulled his finger out, looked at it, gave a satisfied nod, and rubbed it on his pants leg.

  “Jeez, I can’t think of anything interesting that rhymes with Lisa,” he said. “You’re lucky.”

  “Are you moving into Anna’s house?”

  “I don’t know who Anna is, but we’re moving into that yellow shack over there,” Nilly said, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb.

  “Anna’s my best friend,” Lisa said. “She moved to Sarpsborg.”

  “Whoa, that’s far,” Nilly said. “Especially since she’s your best friend.”

  “It is?” Lisa said. “Anna didn’t think it was that far. She said I should just go south on the highway when I visit her.”

  Nilly shook his head, looking gloomy. “South is right, but the question is if the highway even goes that far. Sarpsborg is actually in the Southern Hemisphere.”

  “The Southern what-i-sphere?” Lisa said, shocked.

  “Hemisphere,” Nilly said. “That means it’s on the other side of the world.”

  “Whoa,” Lisa said, taken aback. After she thought about it a minute, she said, “Dad says that it’s super warm in the south all year round, so I bet Anna can go swimming all the time now, whether it’s summer or winter.”

  “No way,” Nilly said. “Sarpsborg is so far south that it’s practically at the South Pole. It’s freezing. Penguins live on people’s roofs down there.”

  “You mean, it snows all year round in Sarpsborg?” Lisa asked.

  Nilly nodded and Lisa shivered. Nilly pursed his lips together while at the same time pressing air out between them. It sounded like a fart. Lisa furrowed her brow, remembering how the twins had called her Flatu-Lisa. “Are you trying to tease me?” she asked. “About my nickname?”

  Nilly shook his head. “Nope, I’m practicing,” he said. “I play the trumpet. That means I have to practice all the time. Even when I don’t have my trumpet.”

  Lisa cocked her head to the side and looked at him. She wasn’t really sure anymore if he was telling the truth.

  “Lisa, you have to brush your teeth before you go to school,” she heard a voice rumble. It was her dad, who’d put on his blue Commandant’s uniform and was waddling toward the door with his big belly. “The ship with the gunpowder for our cannons arrived from Shanghai this morning, so I’ll be home late. You be a good girl today.”

  “Yes, Dad,” said Lisa, who was always good. She knew it was a special day when the gunpowder arrived. It had sailed halfway around the world and had to be handled very carefully and respectfully, since it was used to fire off Akershus Fortress’s Big and Almost World-Famous Royal Salute on May seventeenth, Norway’s Independence Day.

  “Dad,” Lisa called to him. “Did you know that Sarpsborg is in the Southern … uh, Hemisphere?”

  The Commandant stopped, looking puzzled. “Says who?”

  “Nilly.”

  “Who’s that?”

  She pointed. “Nill …,” she started, but stopped suddenly when she discovered that she was pointing at a stretch of Cannon Avenue where there was only Cannon Avenue and absolutely no sign of Nilly.

  Seasick Goats

  WHEN NILLY HEARD Lisa’s dad, the Commandant, tell her she had to go to school, he remembered he was supposed to go to school himself. Wherever it might be. And if he was fast, maybe he would have time to eat breakfast, find his backpack, and if absolutely necessary, brush his teeth and still tag along with someone who knew the way to his new school.

  He squeaked between the moving guys’ legs and into the house. And there, in a cardboard box in the hallway, he saw his trumpet. He exhaled in relief, snatched it up, and clutched it to his chest. Nilly and his sister and mom had arrived with the first load of stuff the night before, and the only thing he’d been worried about was whether the movers would forget the box with his trumpet in it.

  He cautiously placed his lips against the mouthpiece.

  “A trumpet should be kissed. Like a woman,” his grandfather had always said. Nilly had never kissed a woman in his whole life, at least not like that, not right on the mouth. And truth be told, he hoped he wouldn’t have to either. He pressed the air into the trumpet. It bleated like a seasick goat. There aren’t many people who’ve heard a seasick goat bleat, but that’s exactly what it sounded like.

  Nilly heard someone banging on the wall and knew it was his mom, who hadn’t gotten up yet. “Not now, Nilly!” she yelled. “It’s eight a.m. We’re sleeping.”

  She pretty much always said “we,” even if she was alone in her bedroom: “We’re going to bed now” and “We’re going to make ourselves a cup of coffee.” As if Dad weren’t gone at all, as if she still had him in there—stored in a little box, and every once in a while when Nilly wasn’t there, she would take him out. A tiny miniature Dad who looked like the Dad Nilly had seen in pictures. Miniature meant that something was really small, and it made sense that of all people, Nilly would have a miniature dad, since Ni
lly was the smallest boy Nilly had ever seen.

  He went down to the kitchen and fixed himself some breakfast. Even though they’d just moved in the day before, he found everything he needed, because they’d moved so many times, he knew pretty much where his mom would put stuff. The plates in the cupboard on the left, the silverware in the top drawer, and the bread in the drawer below that. He was about to sink his teeth into a thick slice of bread with salami on top when it was snatched out of his hands.

  “How you doing, dwarf?” Eva asked, sinking her teeth exactly where Nilly had been planning to sink his teeth. Eva was Nilly’s sister. She was fifteen and when she wasn’t bored, she was mad. “Did you know that the pit bull is the world’s dumbest dog?” Nilly asked. “It’s so dumb that when it takes food from the dwarf poodle, which happens to be the world’s smartest dog, it doesn’t get that it’s been tricked.”

  “Shut up,” Eva said.

  But Nilly didn’t shut up. “When the dwarf poodle knows the pit bull smells bread and salami and she’s coming to take it away from him, he usually smears slime from elephant snails on the bottom of the slice of bread.”

  “Elephant snails?” Eva scoffed, eyeing him with suspicion. Unfortunately for her, Nilly read books and thus knew quite a few things she didn’t know, so his sister could never be totally sure if what he was saying was a Nilly invention or something from one of those old books of their grandfather’s. For example, this might be something from the book Nilly read the most, a thick, dusty one called Animals You Wish Didn’t Exist.

  “Haven’t you ever seen an elephant snail?” Nilly yelled. “All you have to do is look out the window—there’s a ton of them in the lawn. Big, ooky ones. When you squish them between two books, something oozes out of them that looks like the yellowish green snot that runs out of the noses of people who have grade-three Beijing influenza. There’s no snot worse than authentic third-degree Beijing snot. Well, apart from elephant snail slime, that is.”