Group Writing Project #2
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters. I am not making any profit off of this, as anyone should be able to tell just by reading the story. Like anyone would pay me to write like this! I would like to thank all the fan fic authors who have gone before me, for giving me the guts to do this. This is supposed to be funny; I do poke fun at the characters and some of the odd conventions, but it is only out of love. I should acknowledge, too, that the idea for this fan fic was inspired by (i.e. ripped off of) Agatha Christie's story, "The Advntures of Johnny Waverly." This is completely tongue-in-cheek. No Golden Press characters were harmed in the filming of this episode.
THE ADVENTURES OF BOBBY BELDEN
by Laurie
Trixie Belden yawned in exhaustion as she trudged down the long hallway of Sleepyside Junior-Senior High School towards her locker. There ought to be a law, she thought grumpily, that whenever a student stays at school until dark she should be able to sleep till noon the next day. Or at the very least be excused from math homework.
Trixie, along with her two brothers and her best friend Honey Wheeler, had stayed after school to help out with the dress rehearsal of the Spring play, which starred another member of their semi-secret club, Diana Lynch. It had been a disaster, as most dress rehearsals are, and various lighting, costume, and memorization problems had kept the students at school until well after dark. "Oh woe," Trixie moaned as she reached her locker, "I've got to back at this hall of tortures in less than eight hours!"
Her exhausted sigh turned into a shriek as she opened her locker and an avalanche of books, papers, apple cores, and other esoteric objects came spilling out. That shriek turned into a yell of pure rage as a flash went off behind her. Her almost-twin brother, now the star photographer for the school newspaper, had snapped a picture of the locker, known legendarily throughout the school as the "Garbage Dump," with Trixie standing right in front of it.
Mart took advantage of the fact that Trixie was momentarily paralyzed with rage to take another picture, this time with Trixie, bristling with anger, facing the camera. Knowing, for once, when to quit, he then sprinted off down the hallway, chuckling to himself. "Front page news," he yelled over his shoulder.
Trixie started off after him, but she was up to her knees in garbage and ended up falling flat on the ground. "Oh well," she sighed. "I'll just have to make sure that one doesn't get into the family scrapbook." Just thinking of it--her knee deep in garbage next to Brian receiving the "Student of the Year" award and Mart accepting first prize in the science fair--was enough to make her shiver. "I'll have to consult Bobby on the proper revenge," she decided.
For some reason, Trixie's six-year-old brother Bobby had developed a diabolically devious mind that completely contradicted his angelic appearance. "Brian's a genius, Mart's a whiz with words, I'm the next Sherlock Holmes, and Bobby's specialty is getting even. What a family!" She sighed and began scooping up papers and shoving them into her locker. A glimpse of her latest history test made a slight smile appear on her face. "Who ever thought "They Might be Giants" would ever save me during history class? Brian and Jim don't know everything about how to study," Trixie thought smugly, as she hummed the verses that had enabled her to pass the last test. Istanbul was Constantinople/ Now it's Istanbul not Constantinople/Been a long time gone Constantinople/ why did Constantinople get the works?/ That's nobody's business but the Turks. Grinning to herself, she started singing, off key: Even Old New York/was once New Amsterdam… She frowned. "Now if only they'd write a song about math, I'd be all set. Of course, I thought that "Triangle Man" song would help, but it didn't have anything to do with the Pythagorean Theorem."
She heard footsteps coming towards her down the hall and redoubled her efforts at locker cleaning. She had to get that muddy boot back into the locker before Mart saw it. That would give him ammunition for days. "I have no idea where that even came from. It's not even my size. And what's the deal with the mud?" She spied an object that she had been missing for several years, and shoved it into her pocket as the footsteps sounded right behind her.
"Talking to yourself?," a sweet voice behind her teased, and Trixie sighed in relief. It was not her brother, but her best friend, Honey Wheeler. "Let me give you a hand, Trixie." Honey picked up a long rectangular object. "Trixie, what is a stick doing in your locker?" Trixie grabbed it from her. "It's from my stick-fighting class, remember? Although now that I think about it, it would be perfect for smashing a camera--or other large, useless objects…Seen Mart around?"
Honey stared at her in bewilderment. "Trixie, you're not making any sense. You're probably delirious from hunger; it's been a long night. I brought you a snack from one of the machines." Trixie gratefully accepted the bag of Cheez-its Honey held out to her. Suddenly Honey giggled. "I thought you had that stick in your locker to beat off that huge crowd of "special friends' that are always trailing you around. Jim, Dan, Nick Roberts, Ned Schulz…it' seems to get bigger every day."
Honey's giggle turned into a peal of laughter as Trixie's face got redder with every name. She turned to the locker and starting throwing books in. The two girls finished shoving all of the objects back into Trixie's locker and then forced it shut by throwing themselves bodily against the door. The door groaned in protest, but shut. "That should do it," Trixie said, cheerful once again. At that moment Mart came running down the hall, with Brian and Di right behind him. Trixie, taking a deep breath, was about to launch into a long list of grievances, but one look at Mart's face convinced her that now was not the time.
"Moms just called Di's cell phone, " Brian said breathlessly. "Bobby's been kidnapped!"
"Kidnapped?" Trixie and Honey stared at each other in horror. Then Trixie exclaimed,"Why would anyone kidnap Bobby? Everybody knows we Beldens are poor; we tell everyone we meet."
Mart shrugged. "The kidnappers only asked for a thousand dollars. Of course, for us, who take two dollars spending money on a two week trip, buy cars for fifty bucks, and treasure diamond rings that retail for two hundred, a thousand is quite a bit of money. We're supposed to get home to await further instructions from the kidnappers on where to leave the money. They sound insane. Moms said that each time they call they reduce the ransom amount a little."
"Imagine how quiet Crabapple Farm is right now..." Trixie said half-dreamily. "No shrieks, no wails, no baby talk, no temper tantrums a two-year-old would be ashamed of…" As the others turned to glare at her she flushed, but held her ground. "I love Bobby as much as the rest of you, and you know it! But imagine it..."
The five BWGs paused, each with a blissful look on their faces, until the spell was broken and they ran out to the car.
The fog that the weatherman had predicted had rolled in during the rehearsal. Honey whimsically quoted Carl Sandburg, "Fog comes on little cat feet." With impeccable timing, just then a white cat, barely noticeable in the thick white fog, darted out into the road right in the path of Brian's jalopy. Slamming on the brakes and frantically swerving the wheel, Brian avoided the cat but ran the car into a ditch.
Di giggled nervously. "I though only black cats brought bad luck if they crossed your path."
Trixie groaned. "No cat is good luck as far as I'm concerned. Let me use your phone, Di. We're stuck here. Although I guess you can't expect much from a fifty dollar car." She punched a few numbers, spoke briefly, and then turned to her friends. "The kidnappers are going to call this number, so that we can hear for ourselves that Bobby is fine."
Sure enough, a few minutes later the phone rang, making all of them jump, and Trixie grabbed for the phone. After a few minutes of intense conversation, in which it seemed as though Trixie was trying desperately not to laugh, she held out the phone so that everyone could hear. "They're putting Bobby on now."
Crowding together, the five BWGs only heard someone breathing on the other end. Then the line went dead.
"Trixie, what was that?"
Trixie sighed. "That Bobby! Whenever he gets mad, he does the silliest things….You know how for the past few years he's sounded like a two year old, even though he's six?" The others nodded. "Well, now his language skills have regressed back even further. He's lost all language capacity completely!"
Honey gasped. "Will he ever be okay?"
Trixie sighed and got out of the car. "He'll be fine. He does it on purpose, you know. He thinks that if he talks like a baby, people won't notice that he's six, and so won't expect him to act like a normal six-year-old, instead of a psycho imp. The kidnappers think he's lost his voice due to screaming," an expression of what could have been sympathy crossed her face as she continued, "but I know better. Let's go. We're not that far from home, and I want to be there when Bobby gets back."
"Bobby?" Di gasped. "But what about the kidnappers? What did they tell you?"
"I have the feeling that Bobby will be back safe and sound in about half an hour," Trixie said cryptically, and when Brian demanded that she explain, she just looked at him, smiled, and muttered,"Now who's the smart one?"
Twenty-five minutes later the five tired BWGs walked up the driveway to Crabapple Farm, only to be met by Bobby, smiling ear to ear, looking none the worse for his adventure. He must have had a great time tortur…I mean, playing with his new best friends, Trixie thought sourly. Bobby always did get along well with criminals, ever since he met up with Dick the bogus chauffeur. I wonder what that means…
"Trixie, how did you know?," Honey asked mystified. "How did you know that the kidnappers would bring Bobby back without having gotten the ransom?"
Trixie smiled. "How can you ask that, after all the hours I've spent chasing after the little demo..I mean, angel? All these years, I've secretly been conducting an experiment on the tolerance level of a babysitter when faced with Bobby. I've calculated that no one can spend more than three hours in Bobby's company without having a complete breakdown. At an hour, you start getting a headache. At two hours, you break out in hives, and by the time you're headed for the third hour, you're curled up in a fetal position, sucking your thumb and crying for your mother." Her eyes narrowed. "Believe me," she said fervently, " I know! When I talked to the kidnapper on the phone, he kept asking for his mother. Stage three all right! That's why they kept reducing the ransom amount. When the kidnappers called, they actually offered ME money to come get him. When I refused, they begged me to tell them how to get rid of him--apparently he didn't stop talking until just a few moments before they called us--but I told them that the only way to deal with the Bobby problem was to run. Fast. And not to look back. They dropped him off on their way to the airport. One of them said something about getting an ocean in between him and Bobby.
"That was it?" Mart said skeptically. "No explanations for why they took Bobby?"
"They did say one more thing," Trixie said thoughtfully. "They apologized."
"They apologized for taking Bobby?" Honey said, surprised.
Trixie's eyes gleamed. "No. They apologized because they were bringing him back."
"Trixie!" Trixie's mother had just entered the kitchen, and frowned at her only daughter.
"It's not really his fault, Moms." Trixie added hastily. "It's that curse, you know, from that shrunken head I bought from a bogus shaman in Arizona. I just thought of it today, when I found it again when I was cleaning out my locker." She pulled the tiny head from the pocket of her jeans, "That's when all our problems started, after Arizona. Haven't you ever noticed? Jim's eyes change color, all of our ages started getting mixed up, and some of us start behaving oddly--almost as if we weren't ourselves." She thoughtfully stared at Mart, who fidgeted and blushed. "I feel like sometimes I do things that I would never ordinarily do, things that seem completely out of character, for me. It's affected us all, at one point or another. But not consistently. On one adventure, we'll be fine, but the next one we start acting funny, and then maybe we're okay for two adventures, but then it strikes again…And Bobby--well, I guess the curse explanation doesn't work for Bobby; he was a pest long before Arizona. Must be genetic." She grinned at her mother.
"Don't look at me! He may take after my side of the family as far as looks are concerned, but his personality comes from your father's side." Mrs. Belden couldn't suppress a shudder. Muttering something about her mother-in-law, she retreated to the kitchen.
Since they all had to be up for school in a few short hours, the five BWGs decided to head for bed. Honey and Di called their parents to let them know they would be staying at Trixie's, and then they all headed upstairs. Trixie got Honey and Di extra pajamas, and then got herself ready for bed. She paused at the door to her room. Bobby was not happy to get ready for bed; he missed his new friends, the kidnappers, and he was extra cranky (if that were indeed possible) tonight, due to how late it was. His shrieks shook the house, but, despite the noise level, Trixie couldn't understand what he was yelling; apparently, he hadn't regained the power to say whole words yet--not that he ever really had it.
Trixie closed her eyes, as if in prayer. "Welcome home, Bobby," she whispered weakly. She could feel a headache coming on.
The End