Hot Dog and Bob: Adventure 2 by L. Bob Rovetch Page A

thought. But when I wrote it down, it came out “HUMANS!”
    “What in the world?” I accidentally blurted out loud.
    Every single kid in my class turned around to look at me. I didn’t know what was going on with my pencil, but I knew it couldn’t be good!
    “Is there a problem, Bob?” asked Miss Lamphead.
    “No, no problem,” I answered, trying to look as unlike someone with a potentially possessed pencil as possible.
    “Very well.” She continued. “The next word is
invitation.
Geraldo gave Petunia an invitation to his birthday party.
Invitation.
”
    I tried as hard as I could to write
invitation,
but my pencil had a mind of its own. It went crazy, scribbling the words “PREPARE TO BEERASED!!!” I struggled to tackle it. How could a measly little pencil be so strong? Finally I grabbed it by the bottom end, flipped it over and erased. But my messed-up spelling words just got all smudgy. Then everything got all slippery. My pencil was oozing slime all over the place. And to top it off, I could have sworn it was laughing at me.

    “Awesome!” said Barfalot, my least favorite person on the face of the Earth. “Bob just puked all over his spelling test!”
    “Awesome!” repeated Barfalot’s brainless bodyguard brothers, Pigburt and Slugburt. If there was ever a place in the
Guinness Book of World Records
for the meanest, dumbest fifth-grade bullies ever invented, nobody could even begin to compete with the Terrible Triplets.
    “Oh, dear, Bob!” said Miss Lamphead. “You’d better go straight to Nurse Bunyan’s office!”

    I grabbed my lunch box and left, only I didn’t go to the nurse’s office. I slipped into the janitor’s closet and opened my lunch box.
    “How come you didn’t tell me to watch out for scary slime-spewing pencils?” I asked Hot Dog.
    “That ambulance siren of a lunch bell cut me off,” said Hot Dog. “I was just getting ready to tell you about our mission when—”
    “
Our
mission?” I interrupted. “No way! Uh-uh. Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t want anything to do with your crazy interplanetary weirdness!”
    “Sorry, kid,” said Hot Dog. “But you’ve got no choice. If you back out now, the Big Bun’s gonna be hoppin’ mad. And believe me, Bobby boy, you do
not
want to make the Big Bun mad! Besides, she said you did such aswell job helping me get rid of Cheese Face she knows she can count on you.”

    “Really?” I asked. “She said that?”
    “Yes siree,” Hot Dog answered. “And she had plenty of nice things to say about your spunky little girlfriend, too!”
    “Clementine?” I asked.
    “She’s one smart cookie,” said Hot Dog. “Yes indeedy, that one’s a keeper. I betcha if you play your cards right, wedding bells’ll be ring-a-ding-dingin’ for the two of you some day.”

    “
Eww
. Now I really am gonna throw up.” I gagged. “Clementine and I are just friends. That is
so
sick.”
    “Speaking of sick,” Hot Dog said, rubbing his tiny little hands together all excitedly, “where are you keeping that good-for-nothin’ pencil?”
    “I’m not
keeping
it anywhere,” I said. “It’s back in class, on top of my wrecked spelling test.”
    “You—you let him go? Tell me you didn’t just let him go! Oh, this is bad, buddy boy. This is really, really bad!” Hot Dog hopped out of my lunch box and started pacing around in circles. “
That,
I’m sorry to say, partner, was not just any old number-two pencil.
That
, my friend, was
the Scribbler!
”

    “The Scribbler?” I said.

Chapter 3

Pencilvania
    “That’s right,” said Hot Dog. “The Scribbler—the dastardly, dangerous and extremely pointy leader of the Pencil Snatchers gang. They’re out to take over the universe, one pencil at a time. They sneak into school desks and beam the ordinary pencils to Pencilvania. Once the regular pencils are out of the way, the pencil snatchers take their place.”
    “Hold on,” I said. “Isn’t Pennsylvania a state in