The Two-Dollar Dirt Shirt Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Michael Rex

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks and A Stepping Stone Book and the colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Rex, Michael, author, illustrator.

  The two-dollar dirt shirt / written & illustrated by Michael Rex.

  p. cm. — (Icky Ricky ; 5)

  “A Stepping Stone Book.”

  Summary: “Ricky makes a shirt out of dirt and gets into plenty of trouble—and mess.”

  —Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978-0-385-37559-7 (pbk.) — ISBN 978-0-385-37560-3 (lib. bdg.) —

  ISBN 978-0-385-37561-0 (ebook)

  [1. Behavior—Fiction. 2. Humorous stories.] I. Title.

  PZ7.R32875Tw 2015 [E]—dc23 2014011110

  eBook ISBN 9780385375610

  This book has been officially leveled by the F&P Text Level Gradient™ Leveling System.

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v4.1

  a

  To Hank, for showing me the money

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1. The Great Sock Mystery

  2. The Bowler Dude Tragedy (Part 1)

  3. International Food Night

  4. The Ice Man

  5. The Bowler Dude Tragedy (Part 2)

  About the Author

  “Surprise!” yelled a crowd of people as Icky Ricky walked through the front door of his house. Before they could all shout “Happy birthday,” Ricky’s mom stopped them.

  “Ricky! Is your shirt made of dirt?” she asked.

  “Yes it is,” said Ricky.

  “And why is your shirt made of dirt?” asked his mom.

  “Because I couldn’t find Sockless Joe the Hobo,” said Ricky.

  “All right,” said Ricky’s mom. “Tell us everything.” She pulled up a chair and sat down. Everyone in the room looked at Ricky.

  “Sure,” said Ricky. “This is what happened.…”

  It all started when Stew and Gus and I were crossing the street. There was a sock right in the middle of it.

  I was like, “Hey, some dude lost his sock!” and I picked it up.

  “How could you lose a sock?” asked Stew.

  “Maybe he was driving along and said, ‘I don’t want to wear socks today.’ Then he just threw it out the window,” I said.

  “Or maybe it was too hot,” said Gus. “And he just had to take it off.”

  “Maybe he was a really cool guy and was like, ‘Man, socks are for losers!’ and tossed it out the window,” said Stew.

  “And it went right into the window of another car!” I said.

  “Ha! Imagine that!” said Stew. “You’re driving along, and a sock comes flying in the window.”

  “Yeah,” said Gus. “You’d probably crash your car and be really mad.”

  “But what if you were late for work and you only had time to put on one sock, and then a sock came flying in the window?” I asked.

  “You’d be like, ‘Awesome!’ ” said Stew.

  “Or if it didn’t t, you’d just chuck it out your window!” said Gus.

  “You know,” I said, “if your sock fell off, then your shoe would have to fall off as well.”

  “Yeah,” said Gus. “You’d have to lose a shoe, too.”

  “Yeah, and then you’d have a bare foot all day,” said Stew.

  “And then you would get to work and you would get red because you were missing a shoe,” I said.

  “Then you’d get really poor,” said Stew.

  “And become a hobo!” said Gus.

  “Sockless Joe the Hobo!” I said, and we all started cracking up.

  Then I had my best idea of the day!

  “We should find out who this belongs to!” I said. “We’ll go door-to-door and find out who lost this sock so he doesn’t have to become a hobo!”

  “Like Cinderella,” said Stew.

  “Sockerella,” said Gus.

  We went to the first house. “Did you lose a sock?” I asked the man who opened the door.

  “No, sorry,” said the man. “But I did lose a watch a couple of years ago. If you find that, let me know.”

  At the next house, a lady answered the door.

  “Did you lose a sock?” I asked.

  I held it up to show her. Her face got all scrunchy, and she held her nose.

  “Even if I did, I wouldn’t want it back,” said the lady.

  We tried house after house. No one had lost a sock, but lots of people told us to clean our hands with sanitizer. The next house we went to was all boarded up, and there was a backhoe parked on the little lawn. But there were no workers around.

  “I wonder what’s going on here,” I said, and we walked up the front steps. There were some papers taped to the front door, and they all said stuff like “Condemned” and “Demolish.”

  “Cool,” said Stew. “They’re gonna demolish this house.”

  “Yeah,” said Gus. “I want to see that.”

  “That would be such a cool job!” I said. “I’d call myself Ricky the Demolisher! And I’d work on Saturdays and Sundays, too.”

  We looked around the back of the house and noticed that the garage door was open.

  “Maybe Sockless Joe lives in there,” I said. We walked to the garage.

  “You sure we should be here?” asked Gus.

  “It might be private property,” said Stew.

  “No one lives here, and they’re gonna smash the place,” I said. “It should be fine.”

  It was an old garage with a dirt floor. It had all been cleaned out except for one box that said “Garage Sale” on it. There wasn’t much in the box. Some plastic forks, a frame with no picture, a can of old hair spray, and a little paper tag that said “$2.00.” I picked up the hair spray.

  “I wonder if it’s full,” I said, and sprayed some on my arm. It was kinda sticky.

  Gus picked up the tag and held it on his finger. “Hey! Look at me! I’m two dollars.”

  Stew and I laughed.

  “That’s a rip-off!” I said.

  “I’d only pay fifty cents for a Gus!” said Stew.

  I took the tag and put it on the sock. “Maybe we can sell this!” I said.

  “Who’s gonna buy one sock for two dollars?” asked Stew.

  “Someone with only one sock,” I said.

  We heard an engine, and we looked out of the garage. A bunch of construction guys in a pickup truck turned off the street into the driveway. We panicked!

  There was a really skinny door in the back of the garage. We all tried to run through it at once, but we got stuck. Gus and Stew popped out first, and then I pushed through.

  My shirt got caught on some nail heads that were sticking out along the side of the door. I pulled really hard, and my shirt ripped. I twisted out of my shirt and ran.

  Behind the garage were a couple of trees and a low fence. We hopped over the fence and hid. The ground was
dry, and the dirt was all dusty.

  “Why did we run away?” asked Stew.

  “You said it was okay for us to be there,” said Gus.

  “Well, I wasn’t positive,” I said. “We might have gotten in trouble. I just didn’t want to find out.”

  “Where’s your shirt?” asked Gus.

  I told them.

  “Do you need to go back and get it?” asked Stew.

  “No,” I said. “It’s all ripped.”

  “You’ll need a shirt if we want to sell that sock,” said Stew.

  “I thought we were going to find the owner,” said Gus.

  “Either way, you’re going to need a shirt when you go home,” Stew said.

  “Hey, look,” said Gus. He pointed to my arm where I’d sprayed the hair spray. Dirt had stuck to it. Then I had my best idea of the day!

  “We can make a shirt!” I said. “Spray me everywhere a shirt would be.” Gus sprayed my chest, my stomach, my back, and the tops of my arms.

  Then I rolled around in the dirt. When I stood up, it looked perfect!

  “Presenting the Dirt Shirt!” I said, and I walked around like I was a supermodel. Gus and Stew pretended to take pictures.

  The two-dollar tag had gotten stuck to my side. We started walking home, and I showed the Dirt Shirt to everyone I could find.

  “Step right up and get your Dirt Shirt! Only two dollars!” I said. “That’s right! Only two smackers!”

  “And that’s why I’m wearing a dirt shirt,” said Ricky to his mom.

  “I see,” said Ricky’s mom. “Happy birthday!” she added.

  Everyone in the room followed along. “Happy birthday!” they all cheered.

  “I’d hug you if your shirt wasn’t made of dirt,” said Ricky’s mom.

  “That’s okay!” said Ricky. He laughed and asked his mom, “How’d you get everyone here without me seeing?”

  “Well, at first we were going to have someone take you to a movie or something,” she said. “But Gus and Stew said they would keep you busy.”

  “I put an old sock in the road,” said Ricky’s dad, “because I knew you would spend hours trying to figure out where it came from, or building something with it.”

  Ricky laughed again. “Here. You can have it back.” He took the sock from his pocket and handed it to his dad.

  “This isn’t the sock I put out,” said his dad as he scratched his chin. “We need to find out where this came from! Let’s go, boys!”

  Birthday parties can be lots of fun, especially if you play the right games. Here are some ideas for your next super-fun bash!

  #1: Something Strange Is in My Belly

  Put strange objects under your shirt. Have your fellow partygoers try to guess what they are. The closest guess wins!

  #2: Jelly Puzzle

  Put the pieces of a small puzzle in a full lar of jelly. The first person to pull out all the pieces and put the puzzle together wins!

  #3: Musical Gus

  Play music. When the music stops, sit on Gus. Everyone wins!

  The front door opened, and Ricky watched as Bruno’s parents walked in.

  “Why is our living room such a mess?” said Bruno’s dad.

  “Because we couldn’t find the teeny-tiny cigar,” said Ricky, and he smiled a big smile.

  Bruno’s parents did not smile. Bruno was frozen with fear. Ricky glanced around. Everything looked pretty clean, except for him.

  “Is your name Ricky?” asked Bruno’s dad, still not smiling.

  “It sure is,” said Ricky.

  “What’s that thing on the coffee table?” asked Bruno’s mom.

  “Oh, that! That’s all my fault,” said Ricky. “I’ll tell you what happened.…”

  It all started when Bruno and I were assigned to work on a book report together. I would have liked to work with one of my best friends, Gus or Stew, but you have to work with the person you’re told to work with. So Bruno invited me over.

  When I got here, Bruno was flipping out because he’d broken this valuable antique statue.

  “Dude, how did that happen?” I asked.

  “I was chasing a fly around the house trying to kill it. It landed on the statue, and I just swatted it really hard. The swatter knocked the statue from the shelf, and it broke into a thousand pieces!”

  I looked at the ground, and there weren’t really a thousand pieces, more like twenty or thirty, which was a good thing.

  “What the heck’s a guru?” asked Bruno.

  “An expert!” I told him. “So, do you have any glue?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll go get it.”

  “Great,” I said. “I’ll start picking up the pieces.” I got down on my knees and carefully picked up the pieces and put them on the coffee table.

  Bruno ran back into the room.

  “Not on the good coffee table!” he screamed. “It’ll get scratched, and my parents will kill me!”

  So I pulled the front of my shirt up like a shelf and put the pieces there.

  “How’s this glue?” he asked. It was white kiddie glue.

  “Not that!” I said. “Do you have any really strong stuff? It usually comes in a little tiny tube.”

  “I’ll look,” said Bruno. Then he asked, “What are we going to do about the book report?”

  “I’ll start gluing this, and you can start the report,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said, and he ran off to look for glue.

  I started to figure out which pieces fit with each other. Some were easy, but some I couldn’t figure out at all.

  Bruno ran back into the living room with a small tube of Gargantuan Glue.

  “Whoa!” I said. “This is heavy-duty stuff.” I looked at the label, and it had all these warnings:

  “Darn! I really wanted to eat some of this glue,” I said. I pretended to chug it.

  “This isn’t funny, Ricky!” said Bruno. “My parents are going to be home in forty-five minutes. We gotta fix this thing.”

  “Okay!” I said. I uncapped the glue and started to squeeze it out onto the pieces that t together.

  “Wait! Wait!” Bruno yelled. “Let me get some newspaper so the glue doesn’t drip on anything.” He ran off to the kitchen and came back with a pile of newspapers and put them everywhere. He put them on the table, on the floor around the table, on the couch next to the table. He even put some on the chair all the way across the room.

  “I don’t think the glue is going to get over there!” I said.

  “That’s a designer chair! We can’t take chances,” he said.

  Once he was done, I was about to start again.

  “Wait!” he shouted.

  I stopped what I was doing.

  He got up and ran into the kitchen and came back with two big garbage bags.

  “We should wear these so we don’t get glue on our clothes,” he said. He tore some holes in his bag and put it on like a smock. I kept matching up pieces of the statue while he did this.

  “Aren’t you going to put yours on?” he asked.

  “Uh, no,” I said. I was already holding a bunch of pieces together, and they would have all fallen apart if I let go to put the bag on. “I think I’ll glue better without it.”

  “But you’ll get glue on your clothes, then you might stick to other things, and then I’ll get in more trouble, and then—”

  I cut him off. “Bruno,” I said. “Let me do the gluing, and you can do the book reporting.”

  “Okay! Okay!” said Bruno.

  I started gluing the pieces, but some just didn’t t.

  “Hey, Bruno?” I asked. “I can’t figure out how this goes together. What did it look like before it got busted?”

  “It’s an old guy holding a bowling ball,” he said. Then he stood up. “He looks like this.” Then he posed.

  “Oh yeah,” said Bruno. “He’s smoking a cigar.”

  “Really?” I asked. “An old guy with a cigar? I’ll call him the Stogie Fogey.” I started crac
king up, but Bruno wasn’t laughing at all. “It really must be old, then, because no one smokes cigars anymore.”

  The statue started coming together, but some big pieces were missing.

  Bruno looked at it. “Where’s the cigar?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I told him.

  We got down on our knees where the Stogie Fogey had broken. There were still lots of tiny pieces that I couldn’t glue together at all.

  “Where’s the dumb cigar?” asked Bruno as he looked all over.

  “We gotta find that micro-stogie!” I yelled.

  Bruno smiled for the first time.

  I called out like I was looking for a dog, “Here, micro-stogie, stogie, stogie!”

  Bruno started laughing. A clock in the corner bonged a few times.

  Bruno looked up. He stopped laughing. “My parents will be home in thirty minutes!”

  “Ricky!” said Dr. Henderson, the school principal. “What happened to Gus?”

  “He’s asleep,” said Ricky. He and Stew were dragging a snoozing Gus into the cafeteria.

  “Why is he asleep?” asked the principal.

  “Because his mom makes the best cookies ever,” said Ricky.

  “I can’t even begin to know what that means,” said Dr. Henderson. Then he looked closer at Ricky. “Why are you wet and covered with mustard?”