Meet the Gecko Read Online Free Page A

Really real!
    Next, I added some ugly green arms and put the Mole's camera in between slimy green suction-cup hands.
    It was disgusting!
    It was vile!
    Oh, yeah!
    Then I made up a page like you see in those stu-pid magazines by grocery store checkout stands. Iplayed around with different fonts and finally picked an old-fashioned typewriter-style one for the headline:

    JOEL BOWL EXPOSED!
    And under that came the story:
    Joel Bowl, the notorious “Mole,” was seen yesterday in Cedar Valley, California, where
The Gecko and Sticky
is being filmed on location. Members of the
entertainment community have long suspected Mr. Bowl to be nothing but an oversized, revolting gastropod, but now proof is at hand. Will the garden community of Cedar Valley tolerate this invasion of slime, stench, and visual horror? Or will this perennial pest be driven away, perhaps once and for all? Stay tuned… we'll keep you posted.
    Then I put the Slug-Mole picture on the page, added a background of Old Town that I lifted from the Cedar Valley Chamber of Commerce Web site, and presto! I had the Mole just where I wanted him.
    Dad popped his head through my door. “How's it going, champ?”
    “Great! Come in! You've got to see this!” He hadn't knocked, but who cared?
    Dad stood behind me, looking at my computer monitor. He started shaking his head. “How in the world did you
do
that?”
    “Piece of cake, Dad.”
    “Oh, right.” He sat down on the edge of my bed, still looking at the monitor. “So now what?”
    I gave the page one last save and said, “Now we go do a search.”
    “For?”
    I reopened my Internet connection. “For ‘Joel Bowl’ plus ‘the Mole. ’”
    “Because?”
    “Because that way the search engine will check the entire World Wide Web for any sites that have both
Joel Bowl
and
the Mole
in their text.”
    “I know, but why are you searching for that?”
    “Because …” Just then the computer displayed
Web site found
and then
Found: 87 matches for “Joel Bowl” + “the Mole.”
“Wa-hoo! Eighty-seven matches!”
    “But why?”
    I opened up the first site and said, “Because most Web sites have e-mail addresses. I'm goingto collect them and send everyone who knows the Mole or hates the Mole a picture of him. I'm going to do to him what he does to other people!”
    Dad was starting to nod. “Planning to fight fire with fire?”
    I grinned at him and said, “More like give him a taste of his own medicine.”
    Dad stood up and laughed. “By the time you're done with him, there's no doubt he's going to hate the flavor.”
    Oh, yeah!

CHAPTER 7
The Mole Tastes His Own Medicine
    One of the eighty-seven sites I looked at was for a newspaper in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Someone there really hated the Mole! There was an article in the archives that cut him down low!
    Said he was a liar.
    An embarrassment to journalism.
    Said his work stank like a sewage line.
    They didn't have a picture of him, though.
    And they called him Mr. Bowl.
    Did they really think that would stop him?
    Obviously they didn't have much experience with sneaks and bullies!
    I added their e-mail address to the others I'dcollected. They were going to love my slimy Slug-Mole!
    There was also a television station in Los Angeles that had “journalist Joel Bowl, known to celebrities as the Mole…,” but it was an old link and didn't take me anywhere. I copied and pasted the station's e-mail address, anyway.
    You never know.
    By the time I'd gone through all the Web sites, I had learned lots about the Mole.
    He ruined lives!
    People hated him!
    He was even worse than The Gecko had told me. He was wicked!
    Evil!
    A true villain!
    Well! Maybe he'd gotten away with it so far, but he'd never gone nose to nose with Shredderman before!
    I clicked on Compose.
    I put
MOLE ALERT! (Truth and Justice can prevail!)
in the subject line of a new e-mail.
    Then I wrote a short note and attached the Slug-Mole page. The note said:
    He's a pest! A nuisance! An ugly line