Fake Mustache Read online

  PUBLISHERS NOTE: THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. NAMES, CHARACTERS,

  PLACES, AND INCIDENTS ARE EITHER THE PRODUCT OF THE AUTHOR’S

  IMAGINATION OR ARE USED FICTITIOUSLY, AND ANY RESEMBLANCE

  TO ACTUAL PERSONS, LIVING OR DEAD, BUSINESS ESTABLISHMENTS, EVENTS,

  OR LOCALES IS ENTIRELY COINCIDENTAL.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  ANGLEBERGER, TOM.

  FAKE MUSTACHE: OR, HOW JODIE O’RODEO AND HER WONDER HORSE

  (AND SOME NERDY GUY) SAVED THE U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION FROM

  A MAD GENIUS CRIMINAL MASTERMIND / BY TOM ANGLEBERGER.

  P. CM.

  ISBN 978-1-4197-0194-8 (HARDBACK)

  [1. CRIMINALS—FICTION. 2. MUSTACHES—FICTION. 3. DISGUISE—FICTION.

  4. HYPNOTISM—FICTION. 5. POLITICS, PRACTICAL—FICTION.

  6. HUMOROUS STORIES.] I. TITLE.

  PZ7.A585FAK 2012

  IFIC1—DC23

  2012000556

  TEXT COPYRIGHT © 2012 TOM ANGLEBERGER

  ILLUSTRATIONS COPYRIGHT © 2012 JEN WANG

  BOOK DESIGN BY MEAGAN BENNETT

  PUBLISHED IN 2012 BY AMULET BOOKS, AN IMPRINT OF ABRAMS.

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  Contents

  Part I

  Chapter 1: Lenny Junior’s Part of the Story Begins

  Chapter 2: Lovely Downtown Hairsprinkle

  Chapter 3: The Suit

  Chapter 4: Sven’s Fair Price Store

  Chapter 5: Fake Mustache

  Chapter 6: The Jodie O’Rodeo Showdeo

  Chapter 7: The Crime Wave Begins

  Chapter 8: Ten Bucks

  Chapter 9: The Manhunt Begins

  Chapter 10: An E-mail from Casper

  Chapter 11: The Crime Wave Waves Again

  Chapter 12: Casper’s Messy Room

  Chapter 13: Calling the Cops

  Chapter 14: Fako Mustacho

  Chapter 15: Ninja-Like Speed and Accuracy

  Chapter 16: Drive-Thru

  Chapter 17: Another E-mail from Casper

  Chapter 18: Back to Sven’s!

  Chapter 19: You Never Know Who You’ll Meet at Sven’s

  Chapter 20: Looking for a Bargain

  Chapter 21: Sven Again

  Chapter 22: The Evil One

  Chapter 23: A Disgrace to the Name Lenny Flem

  Chapter 24: Missing Curling Practice

  Chapter 25: Even Dogs Love Fako

  Chapter 26: VIP Treatment

  Chapter 27: Free Jell-O

  Chapter 28: Fako Speaks

  Chapter 29: Love at First Sight

  Chapter 30: Jodie’s Crazy Plan

  Chapter 31: Deluxe Teen Werewolf Costume

  Chapter 32: Really Smart Mimes

  Chapter 33: Hank Heidelberg

  Chapter 34: See You Later, Lenny Junior

  Chapter 35: Mom

  Chapter 36: Another Text from Casper

  Part II

  Chapter 37: Jodie O’Rodeo’s Part of the Story Begins

  Chapter 38: Fan Mail and Non-Fan Mail

  Chapter 39: Soymilk

  Chapter 40: Giddyap!

  Chapter 41: You Never Know Who You’ll Meet in a Dark Alley in Hairsprinkle

  Chapter 42: Official Jodie O’Rodeo Novelty Wigs

  Chapter 43: A Really Cute Werewolf

  Chapter 44: No Deal

  Chapter 45: Behind Me

  Chapter 46: Into the Goo

  Chapter 47: Lumps

  Chapter 48: Bored Karate Guys

  Chapter 49: Confetti

  Chapter 50: A Luv Text from Fako

  Chapter 51: Hairsprinkle Municipal Stadium

  Chapter 52: H2FakO

  Chapter 53: Just Like a Regular Girl

  Chapter 54: Election Day Already?

  Chapter 55: Fako’s Biggest Fans

  Chapter 56: Fako!

  Chapter 57: President Elect Fako

  Part III

  Chapter 58: Lenny Tells the Last Part

  Chapter 59: Things Are About to Go Nuts

  Chapter 60: Falling Off

  Chapter 61: Slow Motion

  Chapter 62: Slow-Motion Replay

  Chapter 63: The Sleeping Beauty Thing

  Chapter 64: The Very Last Part

  About the Author

  ou may remember seeing me on TV when Jodie O’Rodeo saved the world. I was that nerdy guy in the background that nobody could figure out what he was doing there. But nobody really cared because Jodie O’Rodeo had just saved the world. Remember?

  Well, that was me, Lenny Flem Jr., and believe it or not, I saved the world too. Me and Jodie saved the world together. And this is the story of how we did it.

  Don’t worry, we’ll get to Jodie’s part soon. But don’t skip ahead, because if you do, you won’t have any idea what she’s talking about.

  See, it all started with me and my friend Casper going to Sven’s Fair Price Store in downtown Hairsprinkle.

  Don’t ever buy a fake mustache at Sven’s Fair Price Store.

  Sven’s Fair Price Store is an awesome place, and I recommend it if you want to buy fake tattoos, fake noses, fake thumbs, fake eyelashes, fake tuxedo shirts, fake books that have secret compartments, fake laughter machines, fake fog makers, fake feet, fake teeth that you wind up, fake teeth that you stick in your mouth, fake gum that snaps people’s fingers, fake dog poop, or fake people poop.

  But the fake mustaches are just too good. They’re made out of real human mustache hair. Apparently, there are men in Belgium who grow their mustaches for a year, then cut them off and sell them to the Heidelberg Novelty Company.

  This makes the fake mustaches really expensive. But they’re worth it . . . if you really want a good fake mustache—which you don’t! It’ll only lead to trouble. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.

  If you buy one, you get this stuff called “spirit gum” for free. That’s what you use to stick the mustache to your face. It really works and it makes the mustache look really, really real.

  I didn’t buy one. My friend Casper Bengue bought one. I got this sticky hand on the end of a sticky stretchy rubber kind of thing. It’s called the Super-Sticky Hand. You can flick it a long way and it’ll stick to whatever it lands on—like a penny, maybe—and then the rubber band part will zip it back to you . . . with the penny. The hand comes in a little plastic egg so that the stickiness doesn’t wear off in your pocket.

  It might seem like a stupid thing to choose, but maybe it was my destiny rather than just a dumb idea. Either way, it’s a good thing I got it because otherwise . . . well, I’m not sure what would have happened, but it would have been bad in a huge, earthshaking, TV-news-special-report kind of way.

  Actually, things turned out bad in a huge, earth-shaking, TV-news-special-report kind of way anyway. But that wasn’t because of the sticky hand. That was because of the fake mustache.

  It was Casper who wanted to buy the best, most expensive fak
e mustache at Sven’s.

  “Look at this, Lenny,” he said to me at his birthday party. (I was the only one who came.) “My nana Nookums gave me four hundred dollars.”

  Casper’s parents are hippies who don’t believe in buying anything unnecessary, but every once in a while his rich grandmother gives him money and makes him promise to buy something as unnecessary as possible. That’s why Casper’s family has a doorbell that says welcome in the voices of two hundred different country-and-western stars, but they don’t have regular stuff that every other family has—like a TV.

  “Nana Nookums wants me to buy a PlayStation.”

  “Awesome,” I said. “But how can you play a Play-Station without a TV?”

  “Precisely,” said Casper. “It’s absolutely pointless for me to follow my nana Nookums’s orders. So I think that means I can ethically spend the money any way I want to.”

  “Really? Are you going to buy a TV?”

  “Of course not. I’m going to buy a fake mustache.”

  “What? A four-hundred-dollar fake mustache?”

  “No, the one I’ve had my eye on—the Heidelberg Handlebar Number Seven—is $129.99 at Sven’s Fair Price Store. I’m going to use the rest of the money to get a first-class man-about-town suit.”

  “Why do you need a first-class man-about-town suit? You’re not a man-about-town.”

  “I’m not now, but that’s only because I don’t have the suit yet. Anyway, you want to come with me downtown? I’m going right now.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  ’ve heard that people in other towns say Hairsprinkle is a very strange place. Maybe because nothing ever changes here. Back like a hundred years ago, lots of towns had trolley cars that went right down the middle of the street on tracks, just like little trains.

  Eventually, people got their own cars and didn’t want trolley cars anymore and got tired of bumping over the trolley tracks all the time. So all these towns paved over the tracks and sold the trolleys for scrap.

  But not Hairsprinkle. Hairsprinkle still has its trolleys, and you can still ride them for ten cents. The people in Hairsprinkle won’t elect anyone to be mayor unless he or she promises to never change a thing. My dad, Lenny Flem Sr., says that it costs a ton of money to keep the trolleys running and the ten-cent fare doesn’t even begin to pay for it, and that’s why his taxes are so high and he’s sick of it.

  But I’m not sick of it. I love riding the trolleys. One of them goes down Hair Avenue, just two blocks down Sprinkle Street from where me and Casper live.

  So it’s not a big deal to tell our parents we’re going downtown, walk two blocks, pay ten cents, and ride right into the city. We do it all the time. And Casper and I have spent a lot of time downtown at Sven’s Fair Price Store and the Hairsprinkle Hot Dog and other places.

  But I had never bothered to go into Chauncey’s Big & Small, Short & Tall before. That’s the first place Casper wanted to go that fateful day.

  re you boys selling candy bars for your GottDangled school? No more candy bars! Get the Helchfitz out of here!”

  I was ready to get the Helchfitz out of the store, but Casper didn’t budge.

  “Don’t worry,” he whispered. “When you’ve got four hundred dollars to spend, you get treated differently.”

  “Are you Chauncey?” he asked the angry man.

  “No!”

  “Where is Chauncey?”

  “Dead!”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Casper.

  “He died in 1908. I’m his brother, Red.”

  If Chauncey had died over a hundred years ago, I didn’t have any idea how old Red was. Nor was there anything red about him. But it didn’t seem smart to ask personal questions.

  “I’d like a suit,” said Casper.

  “Go to the GottDangled Walmart like everybody else. We don’t have a kids’ section!”

  “I don’t want a kids’ suit. Kids’ suits make you look stupid. I want a man-about-town suit for a short man-about-town. And I’ve got cash.”

  Red pulled out a ribbon and lunged at Casper. I thought he was attacking him. But Casper stood perfectly still while Red held the ribbon around his stomach, across his shoulders, from his armpit to his wrist, from his knee to his ankle, from his nose to his belly button, and on and on. He never wrote anything down and he didn’t seem to be paying attention to the measurements he was taking, because he was rattling off questions like a bag of microwave popcorn. Amazingly, Casper answered every question in about a microsecond.

  Double- or single-breasted?

  Single.

  Worsted?

  Yes.

  Belt or suspenders?

  Suspenders.

  Button fly or zipper?

  Button.

  Pinstripe or herringbone?

  Herringbone.

  I got bored and looked around. Mostly it was just racks and racks of suits, some really, really small and some really, really, really big. I’ve never seen anyone in Hairsprinkle big enough to fit into some of those things.

  On a table I saw a stack of fuzzy gray hats. But then I wondered if they were really gray and fuzzy or if they were covered by a thick coat of dust.

  I reached out a finger.

  It was dust.

  “Leave those hats alone, you FarDobbled Candy-Bar-Selling Punkler!” screamed Red.

  I turned around quick and saw Red and Casper rolling their eyes at me!

  “I’ve got just what you need, sir,” Red said to Casper. “The Statesman Deluxe by Porco Risotto Brothers of Milan. It won’t even need tailoring. A perfect fit.”

  He grabbed the closest suit off the closest rack.

  “Just $249.99. Comes with a free cravat.”

  I went over to see it. It was nice, but...

  “That’s a lot of money,” I whispered to Casper.

  “It’s perfect,” said Casper. “Even with tax, I’ll still have just enough left to buy the Heidelberg Handlebar Number Seven.”

  And so he bought the suit.

  Red grabbed the money and petted it and cooed at it while Casper put the suit on. Then Red gave Casper a paper bag for his old clothes and handed him the cravat, which is apparently sort of like a tie. Casper told me he didn’t really want it and took it only because it was free.

  “Come back anytime!” shouted Red. “Well, not both of you! Not the little Parboiled Snert, but the other one!”

  Then Casper and I walked out of the store.

  “Wow, look at that short man-about-town!” exclaimed a passerby.

  “I wonder why he’s hanging around with that nerdy kid,” said another.

  I had to admit it, Casper did look a little bit more like a short man-about-town than a slightly tall nerdy seventh grader, while I still looked like a slightly short nerdy seventh grader. Maybe I should have bought a dusty hat.

  ey, let’s stop at Hairsprinkle Hot Dog next,” I said as we walked up the street.

  “No thanks,” said Casper. “I don’t want to get mustard on my suit.”

  “Can we at least stop in for a drink? I’m dying. I think I inhaled a pound of dust back at Chauncey’s.”

  Casper glared at me. “Look, I’m not going anywhere near that grease pit with this suit on.”

  “Well, if you’re so worried about it, why don’t you put your regular clothes back on?”

  “I have my reasons.”

  “And why are you holding your hand over your face?”

  “There are people who shouldn’t see me without the mustache.”

  I looked around. It looked like just the usual Hairsprinkle kind of people, except there did seem to be more than the usual number of strolling accordion players.

  “Look,” he said, “go have a hot dog if you want, but I’m going to Sven’s.”

  “All right, all right, I’m coming.”

  I don’t think the stuff in Sven’s Fair Price Store changes very often, but there’s so much of it that you can only see a tiny bit at a time. So every time you go i
n there, you see something new. Like the sticky hand thing I told you about. I had never seen those before, so I decided to get one.

  Since it was almost Halloween, I noticed there were more costumes than usual. But I didn’t want a costume, so I looked in the stationery aisle.

  That’s where I found a Wet Pets pen. It was a ballpoint pen and the top end was made of clear plastic. Inside, there was grungy water and some flecks that seemed to be swimming around. It came with a little book called Care and Feeding of Your Water Hogs.

  It was $7.99, and I was sort of thinking about getting one when Casper came over.

  “They’ve raised the price on the Heidelberg Handlebar Number Seven!” he moaned. “How much money have you got?”

  I ripped open the Velcro on my wallet. I had a ten-dollar bill and a one-dollar bill.

  “Let me have the ten dollars!” Casper begged. He seemed pretty upset, but I didn’t really want to give him ten bucks.

  “C’mon, it’s my birthday,” he said.

  “But I already gave you a present,” I said.

  “It was junk,” said Casper.

  I couldn’t argue with that. About five years ago, my mother bought a bunch of Famous Presidents of History action figures at Sultan’s Salvage Store. Any time I get invited to a birthday party, she makes me give one as a present. Nobody wants them, and that may be one reason I rarely get invited to birthday parties anymore.

  “No offense, but who wants a Herbert Hoover action figure?” sneered Casper. “You owe me a real present.”

  “All right, fine,” I said, and gave him the ten bucks.

  This, of course, was a terrible, terrible mistake. A mistake that would change the course of history. But please, please believe me that if I had known what that ten dollars would do, I never would have given it to Casper. Never.

  he Heidelberg Handlebar Number Seven was in a glass case. The cashier told us he wasn’t permitted to open the case, so he went to get the manager, who turned out to be a very, very angry-looking lady wearing a name tag that said HI, MY NAME IS SVEN!

  She was text-messaging someone with her cell phone and didn’t even look up at us.

  “I don’t have time to fool around with the mustaches,” she bellowed. “Just get one of the cheap ones from the pile.” She gestured to a stack of hundreds and hundreds of shrink-wrapped fake mustaches.