The Spy Who Bugged Me

Jared and Dwayne find an old Captain Electric comic book filled with impossible superhero adventures and advertisements for Toasty Oaties cereal. Children once collected cereal-box tops to order secret-agent goggles, a decoder ring, and a toy periscope. While the boys wonder whether the awful-sounding cereal still exists, Jared notices girls slipping into the playhouse in Sarah Prachett’s backyard. He is certain they are plotting against him, partly because some girls dumped flour on his head at camp after he put toothpaste beneath their pillows.

Sarah identifies the group as the Super Secret Sisters Club but refuses to reveal its purpose. She hints that its members are planning something big enough to attract the attention of all Odyssey. Jared questions her about flour, but she leaves him guessing. When he and Dwayne show the comic book to Whit, Whit remembers both Captain Electric and the mushy cereal from his own childhood. More importantly, he still owns a complete set of the advertised spy equipment and lets the boys play with it.

Jared’s imagination quickly turns play into a serious mission. Certain that girls must be dangerous simply because they are girls, he appoints himself a five-star general and orders Dwayne to disguise himself as a bush. Loaded with Whit’s goggles, periscope, and walkie-talkie, Dwayne creeps close to the playhouse. A large, friendly dog discovers him, licks him, and chases him into a mud puddle. Dwayne abandons the mission, covered in mud and tired of being a bush.

Sarah catches Jared near her yard and warns him that her father does not permit trespassers. Then she teases him by claiming that girls are scientifically smarter than boys and that, as a boy, he cannot be trusted with important secrets. Determined to prove her wrong, Jared persuades Dwayne to make a second attempt. This time Dwayne wears a wig and carries a purse, introducing himself to the club as a new girl named Glenda. His wig promptly falls off. Sarah and the others recognize him, offer him earrings and makeup, and send him away thoroughly humiliated.

Although Dwayne wants to retire from spying at age eleven, Jared invents one more scheme. He attaches a walkie-talkie to Dwayne’s remote-controlled car and secretly drives it beneath a table in the empty playhouse. When the next meeting begins, the boys listen from Jared’s room. The batteries fade during the girls’ explanation of their project, then revive just in time for the boys to hear them discuss shooting the mayor and the sheriff - but not the deputy.

Convinced that the Sisters Club is a band of assassins, Jared and Dwayne rush to Whit. He is dismayed that they have used his toys to invade someone’s privacy and finds their fears ridiculous, but he agrees to visit the club and settle the matter. There he discovers the hidden car and walkie-talkie. Sarah admits that the girls plan to shoot the mayor and sheriff - with cameras. They are creating a calendar of Odyssey celebrities to raise money for the Connellsville Orphans Home, and the deputy simply is not part of the planned photo session.

Whit leaves the girls to their work and promises a serious conversation with the boys and their parents. Jared and Dwayne soon find themselves delivering the finished calendars door to door, with fifty-two houses still ahead of them. Jared nevertheless begins imagining that unfamiliar garbage collectors might be disguised government agents and that one of their customers could lead a conspiracy. Dwayne has finally had enough. Producing a bag of flour, he gives the suspicious spy exactly the kind of attack Jared has been expecting all along.