Whisker Wizard Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by Jennifer Holm and Matthew Holm

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! rhcbooks.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Holm, Jennifer L., author. | Holm, Matthew, illustrator.

  Title: Whisker Wizard / Jennifer L. Holm & Matthew Holm.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Random House Children’s Books, [2021] |

  Series: Babymouse tales from the locker; 5

  Summary: “Babymouse becomes an influencer after she tries out a new whisker style and posts a tutorial online.”—Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020037423 | ISBN 978-0-593-11939-6 (hardback) | ISBN 978-0-593-11940-2 (glb) | ISBN 978-0-593-11941-9 (ebook)

  Subjects: CYAC: Fame—Fiction. | Popularity—Fiction. | Social media—Fiction. | Middle schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Mice—Fiction. Animals—Fiction. | Humorous stories.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.H732226 Whi 2021 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9780593119419

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  a_prh_5.6.1_c0_r0

  For our amazing whisker wizard of an editor: Diane!

  Contents

  1. Bored

  2. Twist

  3. Tutorial

  4. Luv U!!!!

  5. FABI-LOUS

  6. Sponsor

  7. DM!

  8. #OperationBesties

  9. Whispers

  10. Tea Is Spilled

  11. Show the Receipts

  12. DRAMA-RAMA

  13. No Comment

  It had been a long week of school. Finally, the weekend had arrived, and I had plans.

  Big plans.

  I heard footsteps in the hallway.

  “Babymouse,” my mom called. “It’s a beautiful day outside. Why don’t you get up and have a little exercise?”

  Ugh. I grumbled, “How nice a day could it really even be?”

  My mom came into my room and drew my curtains. I shielded my eyes from the bright sunlight.

  “See for yourself!” she chirped.

  “Okay, okay, I’ll get up,” I promised. “Just please, no more light!”

  “No problem,” Mom replied. “But if you’re not out of that bed in ten minutes, I’m sending in Squeak.”

  “Anything but that!” I replied, shooting straight up in mock horror.

  My mom laughed on her way out of the room.

  Of course, I closed the curtains and immediately went back to watching my nature cam. The squirrels were adorable.

  * * *

  Ten minutes later (almost on the dot—how does she do that?), my little brother, Squeak, poked his head into my room. He was eating a lollipop, and he had it all over his face and smeared on his hands.

  I pretended not to notice him, but he didn’t seem to care.

  “Mom wants you to get up and get dressed, Babymouse,” he said, playing with my cell phone. “She said I could touch all your stuff until you got out of bed.”

  Argh!

  Time to start the day.

  * * *

  After kicking Squeak out, I brushed my teeth and put on a fresh outfit.

  Then I climbed back into bed and started watching clips of Fabi at the Fabulous Film Awards on my tablet. Fabi is my favorite actress. She’s so famous she only has one name!

  Fabi had starred in an old-timey black-and-white film recently, so I typed “black and white” into my browser. But that just led me down a rabbit hole of panda videos. I laughed as I watched cubs cuddle, tumble down hills, and fall asleep eating bamboo.

  My dad knocked on the door. Now it was his turn to pester me.

  “Babymouse,” he said. “Why don’t you come spend some time with your family?”

  He put a pile of clean laundry on the floor by my closet.

  “If laundry is the most exciting thing going on out there, I think I’m all good,” I replied.

  “But don’t you want to come down and see what’s going on in the world?”

  “I can see everything worth seeing from right here,” I told him, pointing to my tablet screen.

  “Well, you know where to find us if you run out of videos to watch,” he said. He left, pulling the door closed behind him.

  That was ridiculous, I thought. It would be impossible to watch all the videos in the world. Didn’t he know more were being uploaded all the time?!

  But the truth was that I was bored.

  Instead, I started watching infomercials.

  I lazily scrolled down my screen. Just then, something caught my eye: a do-it-yourself whisker formula.

  Now, I had been using Basic Whiskers for as long as I could remember. Just like my mom, and her mom, and probably her mom before that.

  I had been trying to convince my mom to buy something new and exciting for our whiskers, but she wouldn’t budge.

  “Why be special when you can be basic?” she always replied, quoting the commercial.

  She insisted on using the same product, year after year.

  Even the packaging looked a hundred years old.

  Still, even though Mom wouldn’t buy anything new, she never said I couldn’t make my own whisker formula from a recipe. And if the recipe was on the internet, it had to be legit, right?

  I looked more closely at the description. It was very intriguing.

  Now, that sounded awesome! Besides, all those ingredients sounded safe-ish. Most of them we had in our kitchen cabinets. I decided to give it a try.

  I jumped out of bed and ran downstairs.

  “Coming to help?” Dad exclaimed as I ran by. He and Mom were still folding clothes in the living room.

  “Sorry! Busy!” I said. I had whisker serum to make!

  First, I needed to gather the ingredients, which was a lot harder than I had expected. It was Saturday, and grocery-shopping day was Sunday, so the pantry was pretty bare. There was a lot of oatmeal (what was it with parents and oatmeal?) and a half-finished box of stale granola. I also discovered several cans of soup that nobody liked, mostly cream of mushroom and split pea. There was no way split pea soup should go in anything, so I gave up on the pantry and looked around.

  But I finally found a real lemon in the produce drawer, hidden behind a bag of yucky-looking parsley.

  On to the mustard! I opened the refrigerator and looked inside.

  I checked the recipe, but it didn’t specify which type to use. Perplexed, I took a little of each, just to be safe.

  Plop!

  Into the mixing bowl went all the mustards.

  I had the same problem with the vinegar. I opened a cabinet and saw all different types: distilled white vinegar, red vinegar, rice vinegar, apple cider vinegar, balsamic vinegar, and malt vinegar. I could only reach one of them, or it would have been hard to choose. (It was distilled white vinegar, in case you were wondering.)

  Finally, I was almost done. The last item was going to be easy: mayonnaise. I knew that my dad had j
ust bought some.

  I searched the fridge, but the bottle wasn’t where it usually was.

  Hmm. I looked around the kitchen without any success.

  “Dad!” I called. “Do you know where the mayo is?”

  “In here!” Squeak replied from the dining room.

  I hurried into the dining room, where Squeak was surrounded by mutilated plastic lemons. I was just in time to see him squeeze the last of the mayo onto his sandwich.

  “NoOoOo!” I yelled, scrabbling toward him.

  It was almost in slow motion, as I saw my chance to make the serum slip away onto a disgusting mess of peanut butter and potato chips.

  I took the bottle from him and did my best to squeeze more out, but it wasn’t going to be easy.

  It didn’t work, so I applied more pressure.

  Soon, I had rigged up a contraption consisting of a giant encyclopedia, my mom’s hand weights, and a bowling ball to try to get the last drops of mayo out.

  No luck!

  I went back to see if I could get some from Squeak’s sandwich, but he was just finishing his last bite.

  He showed me how it was all over his face and fingers.

  Yuck! I gagged, avoiding him.

  But I wasn’t giving up yet. All I needed to do was find a mayo-like substance somewhere in the kitchen.

  I looked through the refrigerator. There were dozens of jars, bottles, and tubes full of condiments. Lots of them were too hard to open, a bunch were super smelly, and one was even expired!

  (At least, it smelled expired. It was labeled “Sour Cream.” Why would anyone buy cream that was already sour? It didn’t make sense!)

  But on I went, narrowing down my options. The finalists on my list were vanilla yogurt, French onion dip, ranch dressing, anchovy paste, and horseradish.

  Decisions, decisions.

  I picked up the horseradish bottle. It looked old. Really old. In fact, the label on the back was so faded that I couldn’t read the ingredients. I guess that should have been a sign it was expired and I shouldn’t use it. But I did like horses an awful lot. And from what I could remember, they usually had smooth, sleek hair. So I decided to go with that.

  I dumped the horseradish into the bowl with the other ingredients. Man, I’d thought the anchovy paste smelled bad. The horseradish was even worse!

  When all the ingredients were mixed together, the concoction reminded me of a bubbling swamp. Not a good thing. But I had already spent over an hour making the recipe, so I couldn’t stop now!

  I brought the homemade serum up to the bathroom and closed the door. My Whiz Bang™ was in my pocket, so I decided to take a quick “before” pic.

  “Here goes nothing!” I said to no one in particular.

  I carefully applied a large portion of the gloop to my whiskers.

  I set my Whiz Bang™ timer for three minutes, as instructed by the recipe.

  The smell was so terrible that I gagged a little. My eyes burned like I was cutting into an onion. But I soon forgot all about my eyes stinging because my whiskers started burning, too!

  (Maybe that’s why they put the warning label under the recipe?)

  I tried to hold my breath as I waited. Finally, the timer reached 0:00.

  Beep! Beep! Beep!

  I had never been so happy to hear an alarm go off in my entire life!

  I scrubbed the mess off my face as quickly as I could.

  As soon as I’d washed it all off, I stared in the mirror. My face looked different, all right, but that was mostly because my cheeks were bright red and swollen.

  Despite that, I attempted to style my whiskers. I decided to get creative, twisting them around and around until they stayed put.

  Finally, I came up with an interesting style. I snapped a selfie, my “after,” so I could send two pics to my friends.

  I logged on to my group chat with Penny, Georgie, Wilson, and Duckie to see what they thought of my new look.

  I was glad Penny liked my look, but I had very little time to chat, because I suddenly heard a scream downstairs.

  “Babymouse!” my mom yelled. “Come down here this instant!”

  I gulped, remembering the huge mess I had made in the kitchen.

  “Coming!” I yelled back.

  A minute later, I was in the pantry getting cleaning supplies. After tripping over the broom and mop, I reached up to the top shelf to grab the paper towels.

  That’s when I saw it.

  I spent the next two hours cleaning the kitchen and vacuuming fake-lemon bits out of the dining room rug.

  Then I got a text from Penny.

  Penny sent me a link. I put away the vacuum and ran upstairs. I logged on to my computer and clicked on the website.

  The site was pretty cool! In no time, I got totally sucked in, and I spent the rest of the day checking out new looks. The hours ticked by, and I got sleepier and sleepier. But I couldn’t tear myself away from the screen. In the end, I fell asleep with my finger on the scroll button. Now, that’s dedication!

  * * *

  By the time Monday morning rolled around, my face felt better. Just for fun, I decided to wear my whiskers to school in the Twist.

  While I was checking out my whiskers in the locker mirror, I saw Felicia Furrypaws and two of her friends in the reflection. Then I noticed the oddest thing: they had their whiskers styled the same way as I did!

  I couldn’t believe it! Felicia Furrypaws! The most popular girl in school! Was I still dreaming? Had I accidentally been transported into another universe where I was actually ahead of a trend—or had maybe even started a trend?? Or, more likely, were they just making fun of me somehow?

  The weirdness didn’t stop there.

  All day, I saw other kids with the same whisker style as me. In fact, kids in every grade seemed to be rocking my look.

  Just when I thought things couldn’t get any weirder, I saw our school custodian wearing the Twist!

  My head was spinning. Was it all just a coincidence? Or had someone stolen my idea?

  Maybe I should have trademarked my whisker style, I thought.

  After school, I took the bus home, as usual. On the way, my Whiz Bang™ buzzed. It was a message from Penny.

  My insides were bursting with excitement, but I tried to keep calm. I didn’t want everyone to know how thrilled I was to be cool. Caring about being cool is, of course, very uncool.

  When I walked into the house, Mom was in the kitchen, making cupcakes with Squeak.

  “Has anyone seen the whisk—” she said, stopping short when she saw me.

  “Whiskers!” Squeak finished, pointing at me.

  “Wow,” she commented. “I like your new look, Babymouse.”

  “Just trying out a different style,” I said.

  “Neat,” Mom said. “Very creative.”

  “Thanks!” I replied.

  Mom found the whisk and began to beat the batter. I couldn’t wait for cupcakes!

  * * *

  That night, after dinner, we sat in the living room to watch TV. Dad brought in the tray of cupcakes and put one down in front of me.

  “So, does this new look have anything to do with the smelly concoction I found in the bathroom this morning?”

  “Oops, sorry!” I replied, taking off the cupcake wrapper. “I’ll clean it up before I go to bed.”

  Dad smiled. “Sounds good,” he said.

  He sat next to me and turned on the news channel. On the screen, the shot cut to a reporter.

  Both my cupcake and my jaw fell to the floor with a clunk.

  “That’s funny,” Dad said, pointing. “Look at that reporter’s whiskers.”

  “She has the same style as you, Babymouse!” Mom exclaimed.

  I expected that everything would soon go back to normal, but when I arrived at school, a small crowd was gathered around my locker.

&n
bsp; Had I left a stinky sandwich in there the day before?

  But when I approached, people actually seemed happy to see me.

  “There she is!” someone cried.

  I double-checked to make sure Felicia wasn’t standing behind me. But sure enough, they were talking about me.

  “You’re Babymouse, right?” a boy asked.

  “Yeah, um, hi,” I said nervously. I couldn’t help but notice they all had their whiskers in the Twist.

  They looked like they had tried to do the Twist, but it hadn’t worked out so well.

  In fact, on Whisker Wizards, I would classify most of them as #TwistFails.

  “We need you!” one of the girls said, tugging on my arm. “You have to tell us how to do your look!”

  “Yeah,” another girl said. “I tried a ton of different things yesterday, and nothing worked.”

  It was incredible! No one ever wanted my advice on anything.

  I looked up to see Penny down the hall, speed-walking past the hall monitor.

  “Babymouse!” she gushed. “Everyone is talking about you. Did you see the reporter on the news last night? Your Twist has gone viral!”

  “Please, you have to tell us how to do the Twist!” the first girl pleaded.