McMummy by Betsy Byars

you imagine what it feels like to open an empty birthday present?”
    He stretched out his arms to take in the pod.
    “It feels exactly like this!”

Missing McMummy
    T HIS TIME WHEN MOZIE’S mother awakened him in the middle of the night, Mozie knew what had happened.
    “The professor,” he said.
    “Yes.”
    “I don’t want to talk to him, Mom. He’ll yell at me about the greenhouse being destroyed.”
    “That wasn’t your fault.”
    “I know, but—”
    “You want me to tell him?”
    He hesitated and sighed. “No, I’ll do it.”
    He got up tiredly and padded barefooted to his mother’s bedroom. He picked up the phone.
    “Hello,” he said.
    “Howard Mozer?” It was the operator.
    “Yes.”
    “Go ahead, Professor Orloff, your party is on the line.”
    “Allo! Allo! Are you there?”
    “Yes,” said Mozie, “but something terrible’s happened.”
    “No, iss not terrible, iss goot. The congress has accepted my proposal. Dey are prowiding me vith a huge greenhouse—huge, Hovard. I will grow wegetables for the vorld!”
    “But your wegetables here …” Mozie began. He started over. “Professor, there was a storm—a killer storm, the newspapers are calling it.”
    “Ya?”
    “And McMummy is missing.”
    “Vat? Vat iss missing?”
    “The mummy pod. The pod! Remember I told you that there was a huge pod on one of the plants?”
    “Ya?”
    “Well, that pod is missing. I mean, the pod’s not missing, but what was inside it is missing.”
    “Somevun stole the beans?”
    “If that was what was inside.”
    “Vat vas inside novun knows.” He paused. “But dey haff a goot meal, ya?”
    The professor’s laughter boomed into the telephone at his joke. Mozie grimaced.
    His mother said, “Find out when he’s coming back, Mozie.”
    “Professor, when are you coming back?”
    “I am not returning. De greenhouse is yours. Do vit it vat you—”
    “I don’t want the greenhouse. It’s ruined. It’s—”
    “It served its purpose. I am hanging up now. I meet my challenge. I prowide the vorld vith wegetables! Goot-bye! Goot-bye!”
    The phone went dead, and Mozie stood for a moment as if in shock. He looked up at his mother. “He isn’t coming back.”
    “At least he paid you in advance,” his mother said, trying to smile.
    Mozie nodded. He started for his room and paused in the doorway with his back to his mother.
    “Did you hear what I said about the pod being empty?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, Professor Orloff made a joke of it. He said someone stole the beans. But, Mom—please don’t laugh when I tell you this. I can’t stand it if you laugh.”
    “I won’t.”
    “Batty and I found the pod this afternoon. It was crushed by a tree, but it was whole.”
    “Go on,” his mother said when he paused.
    “So we were going to cut it open—that’s why I wanted the butcher knife. I got Dad’s army knife and we cut a circle and looked inside and it was empty.”
    “And?”
    “And Batty thinks it was empty all along, but I don’t. Later I went back and I put my hand inside, and I could feel—well, ridges like, here and here.”
    He pointed to the space between his arms and chest. “And I reached up and there was a narrowing, like for a neck, and then it widened as if for a head.”
    He was still facing into the hallway.
    “And I took my knife and I went around the whole upper half and I lifted it up—it was like lifting up the half-lid of a coffin. And in the case was—what it had felt like—the shape of a person.”
    “Mozie.”
    “What?”
    “I don’t want you to go back to that greenhouse.”
    “I might have to.”
    “You don’t have to do anything. I wish now I’d never let you go in the first place. Look at me, Mozie.”
    He turned.
    “I don’t know if I can explain this, but a person can get so caught up in things—and I do this myself—so caught up in things that—”
    She broke off. He could see she was having trouble expressing herself. That was a trait that