Feeding Frenzy Read online

  “Yeah, and Mark was hoping to buy the Seahawks so he could make them play in his front yard every day,” Greg joked.

  “The game should be back on any minute,” Mark reminded us. “When it starts, I need—”

  “Complete silence,” the rest of us answered together. As if you could watch football in silence.

  “It’s so the Hawks can receive my brainwaves,” Mark explained. “They need to feel me cheering them on, even though I’m not there in person. It’s a—”

  He was interrupted by the doorbell.

  “You better disconnect that,” said Greg as I stood up to answer it. “The electrical impulses would probably really mess up Mark’s brain waves. Maybe you should shut off the lights, too,” he called after me. “And the TV, except then, hey, we wouldn’t be able to watch the game at all!”

  I opened the front door, the sounds of what Aunt Trudy would call “some silliness” starting up in the living room behind me.

  Nobody was there. Weird.

  I started to shut the door, when a flash of red and silver caught my eye. A large Christmas present sat at my feet. I picked it up. The “To” part of the tag read “Frank and Joe Hardy.” The “From” part of the tag was blank.

  Also weird.

  Also, also weird? Christmas was almost a month ago.

  Which made me think this wasn’t a Christmas present at all. I was thinking Joe and I had just gotten another ATAC mission, even though we’d just wrapped up the teen arsonist case for American Teens against Crime.

  I decided to hustle the box upstairs and open it. I didn’t want to have to come up with any explanations for Brian and crew. Plus, if it turned out to be an actual present, I’d get first dibs.

  I started for the stairs. “Hey, you got a present!” Greg said as he headed for the bathroom. “Open it up. Maybe it’s cookies.”

  “I was just going to stick it in my room for now,” I told him. “The game’s about to start and everything.”

  “Hey, you guys. Joe just got a present of probably edible stuff and he’s not sharing,” Greg announced loudly.

  “I’m ashamed of you, Joe Hardy!” Chet called from the living room. “Don’t you remember what we learned in first grade about sharing? Get in here.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered to Greg. He grinned at me. “I’m coming, I’m coming!” I yelled back to Chet. It was pointless to try to get the package up to my room now. One of my so-called friends would just tackle me and rip it open. If I kept control of the box, I’d at least keep some control of the situation.

  “It’s for both of us,” I told Frank as I walked back into the living room.

  I started to unwrap the present, but Frank wrestled it out of my hands. He carefully pulled up the tape and slid off the paper. Yes, he’s one of those. And you thought they were all old ladies, didn’t you? It’s okay to admit it.

  Frank here. Anyone concerned about the environment—which should be everyone, since the environment is where we live—recycles wrapping paper by saving it for future gifts.

  Get out of here. This is my part. And how old-lady was that? “Since the environment is where we live.” Come on. It’s true, but come on.

  “Are you an old woman or what?” Brian demanded.

  I just agreed with Brian Conrad. That is the first sign of the apocalypse. You’d better head for your basement. I hope you have lots of canned food and bottled water.

  Frank ignored him. I leaned over his shoulder as he pulled off the lid. He moved the tissue paper covering the contents aside.

  I wasn’t too worried, because our ATAC missions come on game cartridges, so the guys shouldn’t get suspicious if that’s who the package was from. Although sometimes cash and other supplies came with the cartridge.

  It’ll be okay, I told myself. We’ll be able to come up with a decent explanation for whatever they see.

  3

  Death in the Center Ring

  My throat went dry as I stared into the Christmas package. That couldn’t be … I couldn’t be seeing what I thought I was seeing.

  I swallowed hard, trying to work up some saliva. No go.

  “Whaddya get?” Chet asked.

  “Nothing,” said Joe. He reached over my shoulder for the lid to the box. He was too slow. Brian whipped it out of his grasp.

  “Are those …” Greg let his words trail off.

  “They most certainly are,” Brian answered, shooting me a you’ll-never-live-this-down grin.

  Mark began to giggle. Yes, giggle. Like a little girl.

  “They have to be for somebody else,” I stammered, feeling a blush rise from my neck up to my face. Usually it’s only girls who get me blushing.

  “No, no, no,” Brian told me. “Don’t worry.” He waved the gift card in my face. “It says ‘To Frank and Joe Hardy.’ no one is going to try to take those Underoos away from you.”

  “Un-de-roos,” Mark giggled out the word.

  “Oooh, and they’re Scooby Doo ones,” said Chet. “He must be your favorite, because he’s a detective too!”

  Joe and I have a reputation around town for being amateur detectives. No one knows we’re also members of ATAC, American Teens Against Crime, a secret organization that puts teens undercover to help bring down criminals.

  I shoved the tissue paper back down over the—you knows. That’s when I felt it. Something hard and thin under the—you knows. “We have to go put these away,” I blurted out, jumping to my feet.

  “Now? The game is starting,” Greg protested.

  “The game is starting!” Mark repeated. He instantly turned all his attention to the TV.

  “Joe, come on,” I urged.

  “Frank has this thing about his underwear drawer,” Joe explained. Not very helpfully. “He has a whole system. He’s probably going to have to get out the label maker and everything.”

  Joe likes to make fun of my label maker, but it has been useful lots of times. None of those times in my underwear drawer, though.

  “We’ll be back in a minute,” I said. Then I headed up the stairs, trying not to look like I was in too much of a hurry.

  “We got an assignment?” Joe asked as he followed me into my room. “Or have you added even more freak to your neat freak-ness?”

  I dug around in the box and pulled out a game cartridge. “We got an assignment,” I answered. That’s the way we always receive the details of our ATAC undercover missions—disguised as a game.

  “Someone at ATAC is trying to develop a sense of humor,” Joe commented. “And failing. I mean, Underoos. And Scooby Doo. They could have at least sent Spidey.”

  “The pizza delivery method of getting us the cartridges worked fine for me.” I tossed the “game” to Joe. Airline tickets and some cash were also stashed at the bottom of the box.

  “Where are the tickets to?” asked Joe.

  I flipped open one of the folders. “Miami.”

  “Sweet sweetness,” Joe said. Then he slid the game cartridge into my player.

  A huge red-and-white-striped circus tent filled the screen. Yellow flags with black polka dots flapped in the breeze up top. The camera zoomed higher up. A blimp floated overhead. A sign in blinking lights on the side said FOOTBALL FRANKS SEMIFINAL HOT DOG EATING COMPETITION TODAY!

  “It’s that thing from the commercial we were just talking about,” Joe said.

  I nodded, without looking away from the monitor. The camera swooped down and entered the tent. A long, long table was set up in the center ring. I did a quick head count. Fifty teenagers sat there, mounds of hot dogs in front of them. Girls in spangled costumes twisted and twirled on ropes far over their heads.

  “I don’t exactly get how the thing with the girls and the ropes fits in with the eating,” my brother commented. “But I like.”

  a drumroll started up. A spotlight snapped on. And a man in full ringmaster gear—red tailcoat and black top hat—stepped into it. “Welcome to the Football Franks Semifinals!” he cried.

  The c
amera swept around to take in the cheering crowd. And the Football Franks hot dog vendors in every aisle.

  “The winner of today’s competition will go on to the finals, where they will have the chance to earn five hundred dollars for every inch of delicious Football Franks hot dogs they eat. That’s six thousand five hundred dollars for each and every dog.” He threw his gloved hands in the air, and the girls all gave an extra twirl on their ropes.

  “The rules are very simple,” the ringmaster continued. “The hot dogs may be eaten in pieces. Buns and meat may be eaten separately. Dipping food in water is allowed. Food in the mouth when the time is up does count, as long as it is ultimately swallowed. Finally, if there are any Roman incidents, the perpetrator will be disqualified.”

  “Roman incidents?” asked Joe.

  “He has to be talking about puke. Romans weren’t shy about vomiting during big meals. Some of them had one slave to wipe their mouths and another one under the table to clean up the mess,” I explained.

  “Gross,” said Joe. “And how do you know this stuff?”

  “It’s in Seneca. The Moral Epistles,” I told him.

  “Of course it is,” Joe muttered.

  The sound of a shot jerked my attention back to the monitor. Just the starting pistol.

  “Whoa.” Joe shook his head in astonishment. “Look at them go. Do you see that girl on the end? She’s so tiny. Her stomach has to be tiny. How is she fitting all that in?”

  “Stomach size isn’t related to—,” I began.

  “That guy’s out,” Joe said. “He’s having a Roman incident all over the place.”

  The camera moved in on the vomiting guy. Then the image froze.

  “This is David Cole,” the voice of our ATAC contact announced. “He died ten minutes after this video was recorded. An autopsy determined that the cause of death was poison.”

  The image was replaced with a grinning David Cole wearing a crown. He had his arm around someone dressed as a giant hot dog.

  “He looks …” Joe hesitated. “He looks just really happy.”

  “Yeah.” It’s always weird to see a picture of someone looking so happy and normal, goofy even, and know that they are dead.

  “David had been participating in competitive eating contests for three years. He had won every contest he entered. He was considered the front-runner to win not only this semifinal contest, but the final to be held during halftime at the Super Bowl,” our contact continued. “We have determined that David was murdered. The most likely suspects are his competition. Your mission is to go undercover at the Football Franks Hot Dog Eating Contest and find David’s killer.”

  4

  Fully Loaded

  “We need cool names. Competitive eater names,” I told Frank as we started downstairs that night after everyone was asleep.

  “Like that guy Cookie Monster,” Frank said.

  “Yeah. But more like the woman who calls herself the Praying Mantis. A praying mantis can eat a hummingbird. The female bites the male’s head off after mating. That’s an eater name that will make other people in a contest step back. I need a name like that.” I walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge. Frank and I needed some practice materials.

  “I don’t think you’re going to come up with a name that’s actually going to scare the competitors,” said Frank. “Especially since one of them is probably a killer,” he added.

  “We only have two packages of hot dogs. I guess we can start with them.” I tossed the package on the counter. “We have a ton of carrots. We could cut them to the right length, but they’re never going to be the right consistency. Or maybe we should begin with total baby steps. There’s a bunch of Jell-O. That would be easy to swallow. The stuff we read on the Web said getting past the gag reflex is the big thing for gurgitators.”

  “We don’t have much time to get all this stuff down, so—,” Frank began.

  “Duh. I know that much. We just spent the last three hours reading everything we could find on the Web on competitive eating,” I interrupted.

  Frank shook his head. “What I meant was, we don’t have much time to prep for the mission to find the murderer.” Have I mentioned that my brother has no sense of humor?

  He got two packages of hot dog buns out of the cupboard. “I think we should start with the food we’re actually going to be working with. We can baby-step it with the buns.”

  None of the big-time eaters ate the dogs and buns together in a competition. We’d already learned that much. “We need water for dipping,” I reminded Frank as I laid the hot dogs on a plate for nukage.

  “How long are we allowed to dip food in the contest?” Frank asked.

  I could tell from the way he asked that he already knew the answer. Quizzing me is this annoying big-brother thing Frank does sometimes.

  “Ummm, anywhere from an hour to thirty seconds, depending on if the bun is whole wheat or white, and in the case of the dog, if it is boiled, broiled, or barbecued.” I stuck the plate of hot dogs in the microwave and got them going.

  “Funny,” Frank said.

  As if he actually knows the definition of that word.

  “Five seconds of dipping time max,” I answered. I didn’t want to give him an aneurysm or anything. He gets super serious right before a mission. Just because we’re dealing with solving a murder. Jeez!

  Frank poured two glasses of water and set them on the kitchen table. “We should go one at a time,” he said. “Trying to eat this fast is dangerous. We should spot each other. You still remember how to do the Heimlich?”

  “Yep.”

  “Okay, I’ll go first.” Frank grabbed a chair and ripped open a bag of buns. He dipped one in his glass of water, then shoved half of it in his mouth and swallowed it whole. “It’s true what we read online. You really don’t have to chew if you dip. Try it.”

  I folded a bun in half, dunked it for a count of three, then crammed the entire thing straight down my gullet. My gag reflex started up, but I willed the wet wad of bun to keep on going down. A big part of winning at competitive eating is mental, according to the major players.

  I couldn’t help giving a snort, and a little bit of bun came out of my nose. “That doesn’t count as a Roman incident, right? Or what’s that other thing they call it? A reversal of fortune?”

  “I don’t know what you’d call it, except truly disgusting,” Frank said. “Just try not to do it again.”

  The microwave beeped, and I grabbed the plate of hot dogs and set them on the table. They smelled awesome. “I bet I could eat fifty-three and three-quarters of them, just like ryuichi Shinseki in the nathan’s Famous contest in Coney Island,” I bragged.

  “Did you forget the part where Shinseki is supposed to have gastroptosis, that abnormal condition where the stomach can extend below the rib cage?” Frank asked.

  “That’s not why he won. You’re doing him an injustice. It had nothing to do with having a freaky stomach. First, he has the right nickname. Typhoon. A Typhoon is definitely going to crush a Praying Mantis or Cookie Monster! Second, he has the techniques. The Shinseki Shimmy and the Solomon method. We’ve got to get both of them down,” I told him.

  “We don’t have to win the contest,” Frank reminded me. “We just have to be convincing undercover.”

  “Convincing to a bunch of people who have each won a qualifying round,” I countered.

  Frank nodded. “Okay, so, the Solomon method.” He picked up a hot dog and broke it in half. He put a half into each side of his mouth and pushed them in. Chomp. Chomp. Chomp. And the halves were down.

  “How’d it feel?” I asked.

  Frank took a swig of the water. “I know it’s supposed to be like turning your throat into a two-track conveyor belt. But I think mine’s only built wide enough for one.” He took another long swallow of water. “I feel like there’s a chunk of meat caught halfway down.”

  “Do you need me to Heimlich you?” I asked.

  “You know the rule. If you
can talk, you can breathe. And if you can breathe, you don’t need the Heimlich,” Frank said. “But I can see why the International Federation of Competitive Eating discourages training at home. It would be way too easy to choke.”

  “You forgot to do the Shimmy,” I reminded him. “Maybe that was the problem.” I took a hot dog, broke it in half, and tried the double-track conveyor belt thing myself. Except as the meat was going down, I tried to wiggle my body the way I’d seen Shinseki do it in the YouTube clip Frank and I’d watched.

  “Did it help?” Frank asked.

  “Squirming around actually made me want to gag more,” I admitted. “Let me try the chipmunk method.” I grabbed a hot dog and bit it into small pieces as fast as I could. I used my tongue to shove the pieces over to the inside of my left cheek. I repeated with another hot dog until I could feel the skin on my left cheek bulging. Then I got the right cheek pocket filled with meat.

  This was a good move for the last thirty seconds of the competition. If this was a contest, I’d get credit for all the hot dogs I had in my mouth when time was called—as long as I managed to swallow them. I didn’t have to swallow them fast. I just had to get them down.

  Frank watched me closely—to see if he needed to start a resuscitation—as I tilted my head back and tried to let some of the hot dog pieces slide down my gullet. I had the meat packed in so tight that at first it wouldn’t budge. I had to waggle my jaws back and forth and twist my tongue around to jar some of it loose.

  Then it was like a hot dog avalanche in my mouth. The pieces of meat tumbled out of my cheeks. My instinct was to jerk my head up and spit them out, but I just kept telling myself to relax. My throat muscles convulsed as the bits of hot dog moved down, but I managed to keep swallowing.

  “You did it!” Frank cried.

  I drained my glass of water. It was cloudy from the bun dunking, but it was the best thing I’d ever tasted.

  “Yeah, I did it. I ate five whole hot dogs and a hot dog bun since we came down here. Big whoop.” I shoved my hair off my forehead. It was damp with perspiration. “I think I’m already getting the meat sweats!”