The Tapper Twins Go to War (With Each Other) Read online

  That was Wednesday.

  On Thursday morning, I avoided the closet completely, because I was too scared to see what it smelled like. But I could smell the fish the whole way to school on the bus, and also in the cafeteria that morning.

  It seriously reeked.

  Nobody else seemed to notice it, though. Which was starting to get very annoying.

  REESE

  I definitely started smelling something fishy at one point. But I just thought it was like when you go to the seashore and it’s stinky everywhere. I figured, New York’s close to the seashore Ed. Note: actually surprised Reese knows this. That’s why it stinks.

  Other people smelled it, too. Like, I remember Mrs. Berner sniffing the air in English class on Thursday and going, “Okay, who stepped off a fishing boat?”

  And that same day, Kalisha Hendricks, who sits behind me in math, poked me and said, “Is that you? That nasty smell?”

  I sniffed my armpit, and I said, “Does it smell like a man?”

  And she said, “Yeah, Aquaman.”

  Then she sniffed the air and went, “DEAD Aquaman.”

  That was pretty funny. Kalisha’s hilarious. Plus, she’s awesome at math. I actually wish she sat in FRONT of me, because then I could copy off her without turning around.

  Anyway, the fish was definitely getting kind of reeky by Thursday. In the locker room after soccer, everybody got in a big fight over whose shoes were making the whole place stink.

  But that was pretty funny, too.

  CLAUDIA

  By Thursday night, it seemed like Operation Fishy Revenge was backfiring. I could NOT believe how clueless my brother was.

  And I was getting very worried about the rest of the coats in the hall closet.

  So right before dinner, I secretly went and got Reese’s backpack—which was so rank I would have bailed on the whole thing and gotten rid of the fish, except that by then I was too grossed out to even unzip the pocket—and moved the backpack out of the apartment to our building’s emergency stairwell.

  Friday morning, when I got up extra early to move it back to the closet again, the whole stairwell smelled like a fish store in Chinatown.

  After Reese and I had left for school, Dad must have opened the coat closet for the first time since Tuesday.

  MOM AND DAD (text messages)

  (DAD) I think a mouse died in coat closet.

  REALLY stinks in there

  (MOM) Did you get rid of it???!!!

  No time. Had to go to work. Left

  message for Ashley to search closet

  Did you take coats out???

  Didn’t think of that

  ERIC!!! Calling Ashley now

  CLAUDIA

  Friday morning in the cafeteria, I was sure Reese was going to get what was coming to him. But even though everybody could smell the stink by now, nobody nailed Reese for it.

  People did seem to figure out it was coming from the general direction of the soccer idiots. At one point, Athena Cohen lectured them about their bad hygiene. But that was as close as anybody came to blaming Reese.

  I tried to nudge people along. At one point, I said, “Reese, I think YOU might be what stinks.”

  But then his stupid friend Wyatt went, “Whoever smelt it, dealt it, Princess Farts-A-Lot!”

  So I had to back off.

  SOPHIE

  It was CRAZY smelly by Friday morning. We were cracking up about how nobody could figure out where it was coming from.

  Actually, you weren’t cracking up. You were kind of mad about it.

  CLAUDIA

  I was, like, half-mad, half-worried. Because I didn’t know how it was going to end.

  REESE

  At one point in math class, Ms. Santiago brought in two other teachers to try and figure out what the smell was, and they were all wandering around the room sniffing things.

  The same thing happened in English. But James Mantolini is in both of those classes with me, and I just figured it was him. He’s the kind of person you’d totally believe would smell like dead fish on purpose.

  CLAUDIA

  By the time I got home Friday afternoon, Ashley had emptied out the coat closet, and all the coats were in a couple of huge piles on the couch.

  They all smelled like dead fish. Ashley had the windows open, but I was starting to freak out that this was going to end with me getting in a ton of trouble.

  Fortunately, though, Reese had an early soccer game the next morning in Brooklyn. Since Wyatt’s mom was driving them to the game, Reese stayed overnight at the Templemans’, and he took his backpack with him.

  REESE

  Mrs. Templeman is kind of uptight, and she keeps their house super clean. So she started complaining about the smell pretty much the minute I walked in the door.

  I left my backpack up in Wyatt’s room. Then we went down to the kitchen to get a snack, but all they had was fruit and some kind of organic popcorn that tasted like cardboard.

  We were eating the cardboard when I heard Wyatt’s mom scream.

  Then there was this “Ka-blam-ka-blam-ka-blam!” on the stairs, and a second later Mrs. Templeman ran through the kitchen yelling “AAAAAH!” and holding my backpack in front of her.

  She went straight out the door into their back yard. Almost nobody in New York City has a yard, so you’d think it’d be totally cool that Wyatt does. But the Templemans’ back yard is mostly just plants and furniture, and whenever we try to play soccer out there, Mrs. Templeman yells at us.

  So it’s actually not that cool.

  Anyway, we followed Mrs. Templeman out there to see what the screaming was about. My backpack was sitting on the patio, and she was backing away from it with her hand on her mouth like she might barf.

  Then she said, “Reese—what is that THING in your backpack?”

  And I was like, “What thing?”

  And she pointed at it and went, “THAT THING.”

  So I went over and looked in the side pocket, and that’s when I saw the fish.

  It was pretty nasty.

  At first I was, like, “Eeew.”

  Then I was, like, “Huh. That explains the weird smell.”

  And then I was, like, “How did that fish get in my backpack?”

  I thought maybe it could’ve jumped in. Except I hadn’t been that close to a river in a while.

  Then Mrs. Templeman got a garbage bag.

  Actually, no. First, she called Mom.

  MOM AND DAD (text messages)

  (MOM) Ellen T just called—smell in closet

  likely from dead fish in Reese’s

  backpack

  (DAD) What???

  Call me

  Calling you now

  CHAPTER 4

  THE FISHY AFTERMATH

  CLAUDIA

  One of the problems with any war is that sometimes innocent civilians get hurt. In this case, the innocent civilian was Reese’s backpack.

  And I guess Mrs. Templeman, too.

  But I feel especially bad about the backpack.

  Also, the shin guards.

  REESE

  If it was up to me, I wouldn’t have thrown away the shin guards. It’s not like they didn’t work anymore. They’d just been sitting next to a dead fish for a couple of days.

  But Mrs. Templeman wouldn’t even let me take them out of my backpack. Instead, she made me empty everything else out of it and put all my stuff in the wash. Then she made me put the backpack in a garbage bag and knot it up. Then she made me and Wyatt throw the bag away in a can on the corner so it wouldn’t stink up the house.

  I tried to argue with her, but she said my mom had agreed on the phone that we should throw out the backpack.

  On the way to the corner, Wyatt and I opened up the bag to get another look at the fish. It was pretty gross. Wyatt dared me to touch it, and I was going to pick it up and throw it at him just to be funny. But then Mrs. Templeman yelled at us from her stoop, and we had to cut it out.

  After that, she
dragged us to Modell’s and bought me new shin guards. I felt bad, because I could tell she was pretty annoyed at the whole thing.

  Even though I’d lost my backpack and my shin guards, I wasn’t that angry at first. Mostly, I was just confused about where the fish came from. The next day at the game—we beat FC Riverdale 4–1, and I had a beastly assist—I asked the rest of the team about it. Nobody knew anything. But Xander Ed. Note: Xander is EVIL—more on him later said I must have made the Mafia mad, because they send dead fish to people whenever they’re going to kill them.

  That got me worried. I don’t know anybody in the Mafia, but I think James Mantolini is Italian, and he can be pretty nuts. So I asked Dad about it after the game. He said there was no way James Mantolini was planning to kill me, and it was just somebody playing a prank.

  He also told me it’s not cool to think somebody’s in the Mafia just because they’re Italian.

  On the way home, he took me shopping for a new bag. That’s when I REALLY got mad—because it turned out they no longer sell my exact bag, and the new version only has one side pocket. So now I have to keep my water bottle in the main pocket, and it splooshes Ed. Note: not an actual word around in there and gets my homework all wet.

  After that, I knew I had to find out who put the fish in there. Because I didn’t realize how awesome my bag was until it was gone.

  And it was up to me to avenge its death.

  CLAUDIA

  I once left my favorite purse on the M79 bus, so I know what it’s like to lose something that’s as important to you as Reese’s backpack was to him.

  I really do feel bad about that. If I had it to do over again, I would’ve put much more thought into what would happen to the backpack after I put the dead fish in it.

  I also would’ve put much more thought into what I was going to say if anybody asked me about the situation. Because being honest and trustworthy is EXTREMELY important to me. People who lie about things—like my former best friend, Meredith Timms—are the absolute worst.

  I am NOT one of those people. I do not tell lies. Ever.

  Except this time.

  When he came home from work Friday night, Dad asked me if I knew how a dead fish had gotten into Reese’s backpack. Until then, I didn’t even know the dead fish had been found, so I was totally unprepared for the question.

  It didn’t help that Dad had just walked in while Ashley and I were watching Violent Housewives. Ed. Note: totally stupid but very entertaining show I’m supposedly not allowed to watch it, and I was holding the remote, so I had to switch to the Disney Channel super fast. I was still kind of flustered from that when Dad asked about the fish.

  Basically, I panicked. Instead of telling Dad the truth, or saying something like, “A dead fish in his backpack? That is the STRANGEST THING I ever heard”—which sounds like a denial but technically isn’t, so I could always go back later and prove that I hadn’t really lied to him—I just flat-out denied the whole thing.

  I think my exact words were something like, “Eeeew! A dead fish? No way! I wouldn’t even TOUCH a dead fish! That’s disgusting!”

  In the short term, this was fine. Dad didn’t ask any follow-up questions, and after Ashley left, we ordered in Chinese food and had a pretty fun night until Dad fell asleep on the couch watching Super Future Star! Ed. Note: slightly less stupid show (but also less entertaining ) with me.

  But Mom got back from her business trip on the redeye Saturday morning, and that night all four of us went out for sushi. Even before the edamame showed up, Mom said to Reese, “So how did this dead fish get into your backpack?”

  Reese said he figured it was just somebody playing a joke.

  And Mom said, “I don’t know. Seems like a lot of trouble just for a joke. Mrs. Templeman said it was a pretty big fish.”

  Then Reese told Mom his theory about James Mantolini and the Mafia, which was ridiculous. I saw James’s dad at a school play once, and the only way he could be in the Mafia is if he’s their accountant.

  Mom thought it was ridiculous, too. She also thought it was ethnically insensitive, so Reese got a whole lecture about how you shouldn’t stereotype people, and the Mafia’s not even that powerful anymore, and almost every country has some kind of organized crime, so it’s not just the Italians, and besides which, Italy has a rich history and culture that goes back thousands of years, blah, blah, blah.

  Then she said something like, “Is there anybody at school who’s mad at you?”

  And Reese said, “No. Everybody likes me.”

  Then I snorted.

  I didn’t mean to. It just sort of came out involuntarily.

  The second I snorted, Mom snapped her head around and gave me this look, and I knew I was about to get busted.

  I had to cover fast. “That’s ridiculous!” I told Reese. “I can name AT LEAST five people who don’t like you.”

  “Like who?” said Reese.

  This was tough, because for reasons I will never understand, people actually do like Reese.

  “James Mantolini,” I said. “Sophie, sometimes…” Then I got stuck. And to make things worse, Mom was drilling a hole in my head with her eyes.

  “Claudia,” she said in her mad-but-trying-not-to-yell-because-we’re-in-a-restaurant voice. “Did you put the fish in his backpack?”

  REESE

  Right away when Mom said it, I knew it was you. It was SO OBVIOUS!

  CLAUDIA

  This is when things got a little sketchy for me, morality-wise.

  Because I had like a tenth of a second to decide whether to admit the truth—not just about the fish, but about lying to Dad—or dig in.

  I dug in. Which in this case meant acting like I was totally offended, and I couldn’t believe they’d accuse me of something like that, and even crying a little bit. I also told Mom she’d know what a ridiculous accusation it was if she was around more often and not away on business trips all the time. (This was very unfair, but also very effective, because Mom feels tons of guilt about spending too much time at work.)

  Basically, I made kind of a scene.

  The whole time, Reese was freaking out because he was convinced it was me.

  And the elderly couple at the next table were getting really annoyed at us.

  And I think we scared the waiter a little.

  I am not proud of any of this. If I had it to do over again, I would tell the truth.

  But it worked.

  In fact, it worked so well that Mom and Dad wound up getting mad at Reese for refusing to believe I was innocent.

  REESE

  It was CRAY! Ed. Note: NOT a typo. My brother actually talks like this. She was totally lying, and they believed it! And then they started yelling at me for getting mad at her!

  I was so skronking Ed. Note: also not a typo (or an actual word) angry I could barely eat my California rolls.

  CLAUDIA

  So I got away with it.

  Except I didn’t, really. Because I felt awful for the whole rest of the weekend. Lying like that makes you feel totally gross. And for days afterwards, I walked around scared that Mom and Dad would somehow find out the truth, and I’d be in five times as much trouble because I was guilty of both the fish thing AND lying about it.

  You know that story about how George Washington chopped down a cherry tree, and when he got busted, he admitted it right away, because he couldn’t tell a lie? I totally believe that happened. But I don’t think George Washington told the truth because he was noble. I think he did it because he was very, very smart, and he knew lying is almost always WAY more trouble than it’s worth.

  Honestly, it would have been MUCH less painful if I’d just confessed. I probably would’ve had to use the rest of my birthday money paying for the new backpack, and Mom and Dad might’ve taken away all my electronics for a week or something.

  But it would have been worth it not to feel all guilty and worried.

  The guilt was so bad that by the time I went to bed on Sunday
night, I’d decided that not only was I done trying to get revenge on Reese for the “Princess Farts-A-Lot” episode, but I was going to spend the rest of my life being really, really nice to my brother.

  REESE

  When I went to bed that night, I dreamed about payback.

  Because IT WAS ON.

  CHAPTER 5

  REESE STRIKES BACK (SORT OF) (BUT NOT REALLY)

  CLAUDIA

  Even though this is my book, I am basically giving Reese this entire chapter. Mostly because I still feel bad about his backpack.

  REESE

  It was totally cray for Claudia to ruin my backpack and get away with it! But by the time we left the sushi place, I knew I was on my own. The authorities were helpless.

  I was like Batman in that one movie—like, he’s the good guy, but everybody THINKS he’s the bad guy, even though the truth is he’s the only one who can stop the real bad guy.

  Who was my sister.

  I had to think about it for a while, but eventually I came up with the perfect revenge: putting a dead animal in Claudia’s backpack.

  Not a fish, though, because that’d be copying. Ed. Note: dead animal = also copying (Reese = not creative)

  Except there was one problem: fish are the only dead animals you can buy. You can buy PARTS of other ones, like a chicken leg or something. But it’s super hard to find a whole dead animal for sale.