Free Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder by Jo Nesbø, mike lowery Page B

so your butt is pointing down toward the ground, and let go!” Nilly yelled. “Now, right away!”
    Truls and Trym were so scared that they just did what Nilly told them. They let go. And then wafteddown between the branches, pulling with them a bunch of leaves and acorns, and landing rather hard in a heap in front of Lisa and Nilly.
    â€œWell?” Nilly asked, rolling the matchstick from one corner of his mouth to the other. “Do you guys want some more?”
    â€œN-n-no,” Trym said.
    â€œAll right,” Nilly said. “That’ll be fifty cents, then.”
    â€œWh-what?” Trym said. “Did you hear that, Truls?”
    But Truls hadn’t heard. He was lying on his back on the sidewalk, staring blankly up at the sky, blinking over and over again.
    Trym dug down in his pants pocket and held out a dollar, which Lisa accepted.
    â€œWell, gentlemen,” Nilly said, stuffing the matchstick into his back pocket. “The clock is ticking and unfortunately, Lisa and I have to get going.”
    Nilly and Lisa started running. They made it onto the playground just as the bell rang.
    â€œHey, Nilly!” It was a boy whose face was vaguely familiar to Nilly. “Cool powder! You wanna come play soccer at KÃ¥lløkka after school today?”
    â€œNilly!” someone else yelled. “Børre and I are going to come buy more farters tonight. Do you want to come over to Børre’s afterward and play PlayStation or something?”
    A girl came over to Lisa. “Some friends are coming over for pizza tonight. Can you come?”
    Nilly and Lisa nodded in all directions and ran toward the door to the school.
    â€œCan you believe it, Lisa?” Nilly whispered. “We’re popular. You’ll see—you’ll have a new best friend in no time.”
    Lisa nodded slowly.
    As they filed into the classroom along with everyone else, she tugged Nilly’s sleeve:
    â€œHey, Nilly, I’ve been thinking.”
    â€œYeah?” Nilly said.
    Lisa smiled and looked down.
    Nilly wrinkled his forehead. “What is it?”
    Lisa opened her mouth and was about to say something. But then it was like she changed her mind and closed her mouth again. And when she opened it again, it was like she was saying something different from what she’d been planning to say originally.
    â€œWell, I was thinking that it was strange that you happened to have a bag of fartonaut powder with you,” she said. “And especially strange that it said on the bag that it was regular fart powder.”
    Nilly shrugged.
    â€œYou planned that, didn’t you?” Lisa said. “You filled one of the regular bags with fartonaut powder when we were sitting in Doctor Proctor’s garden yesterday. Because you knew Truls and Trym would stop us someday and when they did, you wanted to have a bag with you so you could trick them.”
    Nilly just smiled in response.
    â€œIsn’t that what happened?” Lisa asked.
    But just as Nilly was about to respond, they were interrupted by the loud voice of Mrs. Strobe saying, “Good morning, my dear children. Take your seats and be completely quiet, please.”
    And then they all obeyed. Mostly, anyway.
    TRULS AND TRYM didn’t go to school that day. They stayed home for four good reasons. The first was that the puny devil might have come up with more dirty tricks. The second was that the other kids at school might have heard about what happened and would forget to be scared of Truls and Trym and laugh at them instead. The third was that when it came right down to it, Truls and Trym were two very lazy guys. But the fourth and most important was that they needed help thinking up a way to get revenge. Because no one was better at revenge than their father, Mr. Trane. And now their big, fat fatherwas sitting in a big, fat armchair in their big, fat home, scratching his fleshy belly. “Interesting,” he said.