Underpantsed! Read online

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Excerpt from Fart Squad #6: Blast from the Past

  Back Ad

  About the Author and Illustrator

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER ONE

  Juan-Carlos Finkelstein was already late for school when the harsh reality of an empty dresser drawer stopped him in his tracks. “Mom!” he shrieked. “Where’s my clean underwear?”

  “I just bought a whole new bunch!” his mom called from downstairs. “Stop going through underwear so quickly!”

  You have no idea, Juan-Carlos thought as he closed the empty drawer. That’s when he noticed a pungent fartlike odor wafting over his dresser. He was pretty sure he hadn’t farted all morning, and besides, he didn’t recognize the smell as his brand. But he had more important things to concentrate on at the moment anyway, namely getting to school on time. So he turned his attention to his laundry hamper in the hopes of scrounging up a decent pair of boxers. When you’re a superhero whose power comes from your superpowered farts, it tends to take a toll on your underwear collection.

  A familiar voice from his clock radio made him pause. “Can you believe those kids?” a man asked. “Running around in masks, farting on everyone . . . I’ve heard of loving the smell of your own farts, but these kids must think other people love the smell as well!”

  Juan-Carlos’s father was a radio personality. He had his own morning show, Shockin’ Sheckey, which he recorded live in his home studio, right in the Finkelstein basement. People either loved him or hated him—or, loved to hate him. Juan-Carlos, of course, thought his dad was a comedic genius. Even if he was picking on the Fart Squad right now.

  But then his dad continued, “But seriously, folks, I’m just playing around. I actually think those kids are great! They really saved our butts—ha-ha!—with that whole itching thing, and again with that dinosaur, and who knows what else. They’re stinking up the town—in the best possible way!”

  Dad’s a fan! Juan-Carlos thought happily. Too bad I can’t tell him that his son is one of those kids he’s cheering for! Well, maybe someday.

  In the meantime, there was school to worry about. And that required clean clothes.

  Pulling open the hamper, Juan-Carlos found two pairs of jeans, three T-shirts, five mismatched socks, and what looked like one of his dad’s Grillmaster aprons. But no underwear.

  Oh well. Mom must have already grabbed them, Juan-Carlos thought, peeling back the waistband of his pajama bottoms. “I’ll have to wear these a second time.”

  Only, when he looked down, there was nothing between his pajama bottoms and himself.

  “I’m sure I was wearing them when I went to bed,” he muttered under his breath. “Maybe they came off during my sleep somehow?”

  He wanted to ask his mother—maybe she’d taken them? But that didn’t make any sense. Besides, even if she had, it wasn’t like he could yell at her for doing his laundry. He’d just have to manage. She’d probably have a whole pile of clean underwear waiting when he got home.

  By the time Juan-Carlos’s bus arrived at school, he was in agony. Without underwear to provide a protective layer, his jeans were rubbing him raw! He had to move really slowly as he stepped off the bus and carefully make his way up the stairs and into the building.

  When he finally reached his classroom, Juan-Carlos gratefully slid into his assigned seat. Now that he was sitting down, he noticed that his classmates were also moving slowly. They all look exactly how I feel, Juan-Carlos thought. But there was no way his mom was washing all of their underwear, was there?

  Clearly something else was going on here.

  At lunchtime, Juan-Carlos sought out his friends: Darren Stonkadopolis, Walter Turnip, and Tina Heiney. They all winced every time they shifted in their seats.

  “Let me guess,” tiny Tina Heiney said as she looked around the table. “No underwear, right?”

  “Nothing,” Juan-Carlos admitted. “Even the dirty pair from last night is gone. And I don’t know about you guys, but there was an awful fart smell coming from my dresser that most definitely did not come from me!”

  “Same here!” Tina exclaimed. “Nothing like smelling other people’s farts first thing in the morning to ruin your day.” Tina might have had a dainty appearance, but she talked like a truck driver.

  “And do you guys believe that my mom actually accused me of throwing my underwear in the garbage!” Darren said.

  The other three all nodded as if on cue.

  “Indeed,” said Walter.

  “Pretty much!” Tina answered.

  “Sounds about right,” said Juan-Carlos.

  “I guess you guys have a point,” Darren said with a sigh.

  The truth is, throwing underwear in the garbage after one use is exactly the kind of thing Darren would do. He often acted without thinking, which got him in trouble at school, but made him the kind of quick-on-his-feet leader a team of superheroes like the Fart Squad needed.

  “Did you know that your father referenced the undergarment situation this morning during his broadcast?” Walter commented to Juan-Carlos. “He joked that all of Buttzville had been drafted into special forces, because we’re all ‘going commando.’” When the others stared at him blankly, he explained, “Going commando means going it alone. As in, getting dressed without putting on any underwear.”

  Walter was as brainy as he was wide. He spent half the time explaining things to the rest of the Squad, and the other half of the time acting as their private blimp.

  Tina rolled her eyes. “Guess we know where Juan-Carlos gets his sense of humor,” she muttered.

  Juan-Carlos brightened. “Really? Thanks!” That just made Tina roll her eyes again.

  “It does seem that our current plight is widespread,” Walter pointed out.

  The four Squad members studied the crowd. One of the science teachers was tugging at her pants under the table, like she was trying to make them looser. And even their math teacher looked like she was in pain as she gingerly made her way across the cafeteria.

  “Weird,” Juan-Carlos agreed. After all, how did a whole school’s underwear just disappear? And why?

  “So what’s the deal with everybody’s underwear?” Juan-Carlos asked at dinner that night. “The kids at school said theirs were missing, too.”

  His mother shook her head. “I have no idea,” she answered. “I’ve looked everywhere. Every pair in the house is just gone!”

  “Maybe somebody needed them,” Juan-Carlos’s annoying little sister, Rivkah, piped up. “Maybe it was the Fart Squad!”

  “Nonsense!” Mr. Finkelstein told her. He looked a lot like his son, only taller and with a bushy mustache that matched his slightly shaggy hair. “Why would they do something like that? Those kids are heroes—they’d never stoop to stealing people’s underwear!”

  Juan-Carlos nodded in agreement, but he felt his mood sink. It was nice to know his dad really did admire the Squad, even when he wasn’t on the air. But at the same time, Juan-Carlos was a little frustrated. He looked up to his dad so much. But his dad, well . . . his dad rarely said anything that glowing about Juan-Carlos!

  CHAPTER TWO

  The following evening, things got even worse.

  “I went to the store to buy some new underwear,” Juan-Carlos’s mom told her family over dinner, “but there weren’t any! Not a single pair! At first I thought maybe they’d just sold out, but then I heard one of the sa
lesmen saying that all the underwear they’d had in stock had been stolen!”

  “Stolen?” Juan-Carlos echoed.

  “That’s right.” His mother wrinkled her nose. “And there was the most horrible smell in the store, too. It was awful!”

  Juan-Carlos wondered if it was the same smell from his bedroom the previous morning.

  Later that night, Juan-Carlos was watching TV with his family. “Tonight, breaking news,” the Buttzville Nightly News anchor announced. “All of Buttzville’s underwear has disappeared! Last night half the city reported missing underwear, and today the rest of the city called in with the same complaint. Officials suspect the shadowy group known as the Fart Squad is to blame.”

  “Aw, what?” Juan-Carlos felt blindsided. “Stealing? The Fart Squad? That’s not right!”

  “Shush, we’re trying to watch,” his mom told him.

  “Those guys are creepy,” Rivkah chimed in. “And they smell!”

  “Of course they smell—they’re the Fart Squad,” Juan-Carlos replied right before his mom shushed them both again.

  “This quartet has been seen at the sites of several major events,” the channel’s lead reporter, Windy McGee, continued. “Including at recent UFO sightings and at the tar pit museum when the believed-to-be-extinct dinosaur Fartasaurus Rex went on a rampage through downtown. Now a terrible odor near the scene of the recent thefts seems to point to the foul-smelling foursome. Though nothing has been conclusively proven, authorities have said they are searching for these masked vigilantes and intend to question them regarding their whereabouts over the last few nights and whether they are involved in these recent thefts.”

  “That’s crazy,” Juan-Carlos muttered. “They’re heroes, not villains. How can anyone not see that?”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” his dad said. “Those kids are awesome! Imagine going around farting everywhere and people actually thanking you for it! Brilliant!” He chuckled. “I wish I’d thought of that! But all kidding aside, from everything I’ve heard, those kids have done nothing but try to help this town and its people. So the idea of them stealing underwear all of a sudden?” He winked at Juan-Carlos and tapped his nose. “It just doesn’t smell right.”

  Juan-Carlos chuckled and said his good nights.

  But as he slowly made his way up the stairs, he felt a tightness in his chest, which, when he thought about it, was kind of ridiculous. . . .

  Was it even possible to be jealous of yourself?

  CHAPTER THREE

  The next morning, on his way to school, Juan-Carlos learned that his family hadn’t been the only ones to see the news the night before.

  “It’s those stupid kids,” he overheard their mailman say to their neighbor Mrs. Kaffrey.

  “They must destroy their own underwear all the time with those awful farts of theirs,” Mrs. Kaffrey agreed, clutching her robe tighter around herself. “So now they’re stealing ours!”

  Juan-Carlos frowned. Great! Now everyone thinks we’re thieving criminals!

  As he climbed onto the school bus, the driver, Mr. Radek, was talking to the boy sitting in the front seat. “Darn kids,” he muttered. “Stinking up the city and swiping underwear, too!” Juan-Carlos didn’t know how much more he could take. Why was everyone against the Fart Squad?

  “The Fart Squad didn’t steal your underwear!” he burst out before he could stop himself. “They’re heroes!”

  Mr. Radek sniffed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he claimed. “It’s got to be them. Who else could it be?”

  “I wish I knew,” Juan-Carlos muttered as he crept back toward his usual seat. All around him, kids shifted painfully as the bus lurched into motion.

  Juan-Carlos observed the same trend later that day. “That Fart Squad is a menace,” Juan-Carlos’s teacher, Mrs. Andrews, said to herself as she sat down in her desk chair, wincing.

  “The Fart Squad didn’t do this!” Juan-Carlos insisted. “They help people!”

  “More like they help themselves—to our underpants!” one of his classmates, Joey Fredericks, replied.

  “It wasn’t them!”

  “Yeah?” another kid asked. “How would you know?”

  “Oh, uh.” Juan-Carlos sank down in his seat. “Just a feeling.”

  “Did you see the news?” Tina asked the rest of them that day at lunch. “They’ve decided we’re the ones to blame for all this!”

  “Yeah, I saw it,” Darren said. “I just can’t believe it.”

  “We have been on hand each time a crisis has occurred,” Walter pointed out. “And thus it is not unreasonable to assume we might be responsible for their creation, rather than instrumental in their resolution. And unfortunate reports of a lingering stench aren’t doing much to help our cause.” He sighed. “It is disappointing, however. Not to mention frightening.”

  “Especially since they issued a warning to adults to keep a close eye on all kids,” Tina added. “That’s the last thing I need, my parents figuring out I’m on the Squad!”

  They’d all heard the warning or seen it in the morning papers. With the police searching for the Fart Squad, parents were urged to keep track of their children and report anything suspicious.

  Juan-Carlos shook his head. “My dad still believes in the Squad,” he told the others. For once, he wasn’t joking around. “Which means not everybody thinks we’re bad. We can still fix this. We just have to figure out who’s really behind it and get that underwear back!”

  The others nodded. Yes, that would work—they could restore the town’s underwear and clear their names at the same time! “There’s just one problem,” Tina pointed out. “We have no idea who’s taking the underwear!”

  “Did you notice,” Darren asked, “that the news said half the city’s underwear disappeared the other night, and the rest of it went missing last night? So it took two days for whoever did this to cover the whole city.”

  “Indeed,” Walter agreed. He pulled a newspaper out of his backpack and flipped to a page about the thefts, which showed a map of the city and had each area marked to show the night its underwear had disappeared.

  The four friends studied the map. “It’s like they split the city down the middle,” Juan-Carlos pointed out. “We were all in the first half, here, and then they got the second half last night.”

  “Which means whoever did this probably started somewhere near the middle,” Darren replied, “and they branched out in one direction the first night, then went the opposite way the second night.” He traced a finger down the line separating the two halves. “Somewhere around here.” At the center of town were warehouses and factories. South of that was city hall. North was their school—and where most of the town lived.

  “I know someplace you could look,” someone said behind them. The kids all turned. It was Janitor Stan, their friend and mentor! Stan often walked around during lunch, helping to keep the cafeteria clean and quiet, and now he stood beside their table. “It’s the old Bottom factory,” Stan continued. “Bottom’s Bottoms. They made underwear—pretty much covered Buttzville’s butts, if you know what I mean. But the company went bankrupt last year—bit of a scandal with the owner—and they closed the factory down.”

  “A scandal? What happened?” Darren asked.

  Stan scratched his head. “I don’t remember all the details, but there was something about cutting corners and a few workers getting hurt.”

  “Cutting corners? On underwear?” Juan-Carlos chuckled. “Wouldn’t that just leave you with a hankie—or a diaper?”

  “And the factory’s still there?” Darren asked, ignoring Juan-Carlos’s joke and pointing to the middle of the map.

  “Sure, it’s in the industrial sector, right near the river,” Stan answered, indicating the very top of that line. “Can’t miss it.” He eyed the four of them. “If you’re planning on going out there, just be careful. And maybe you should have a little snack before you go.”

  The four teammates looked at one ano
ther and smiled. They knew what that meant. It meant the Fart Squad was about to get all gassed up!

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Do you hear something?” Juan-Carlos asked as they walked along. It was after school, and the four of them had enjoyed a quick snack of the school’s reheated burritos—the ones that gave them their fart powers—then changed into their uniforms and started out toward the old Bottom factory. But there were voices coming from somewhere nearby.

  “Where are those masked menaces?” they heard a man demand. “How dare they steal our underwear! My butt hurts so much I can’t sit down properly, and I can barely think straight!”

  “Uh-oh! We’d better hide, and fast!” Darren said. The four of them ducked into a nearby alley just as the voices grew suddenly louder. Whoever they were, they were right around the corner!

  “I never trusted those kids,” a second man insisted. “Hiding their faces like that—they must be up to no good!”

  “And the smell!” another said. There were murmurs of agreement.

  “But I can’t keep going without underwear! My legs and butt are killing me!”

  “Doesn’t the department store have a warehouse down here?” someone else said. “Maybe they’ve still got some underwear tucked away in there!”

  The group passed by the kids’ alleyway, still complaining loudly. A few minutes later, their conversation had died down to a dull murmur. “Coast is clear,” Juan-Carlos announced, glancing about.

  “Let’s go,” Darren urged. “The sooner we can find the missing underwear, the better!” Juan-Carlos could see that his friend was still surprised—and hurt—that the people of Buttzville would be so quick to accuse the Fart Squad of this. It was upsetting for all of them.

  The Bottom Factory was a big old abandoned building at the center of town, just where Stan had said it would be. It had a big rusted chain link fence around it, topped with barbed wire, but the chain on the gate was loose enough for all of the kids, even Walter, to slip through.