by Mo O’Hara
Frankie thrashed in his bag and glared down the road after Sanj.
“Wow, he normally just does that when he sees Mark,” I said. “He’s still holding a grudge over the whole ‘Mark trying to murder him with toxic gunge and flush him down the toilet’ thing, but I think Frankie has just added Sanj to his hit list too.”
Pradeep bent down to talk to Frankie. “Look, I’m OK. Nothing broken.” He turned to me. “At least I’m taller now, so when Sanj drops me, I don’t have so far to fall.”
“True.” I nodded.
It had been about six months since Pradeep’s brother, Sanj, last dropped Pradeep off the jungle gym. He’d been away at some boarding school for “the gifted,” which just sounded like a great place to go to school.
Sanj had always been a genius, but yesterday he became an actual Evil Computer Genius when he got kicked out of the gifted school. He hacked into its super-encrypted un-hackable computer system and changed all the other kids’ grades to zero and his grade to one gazillion.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. A real-life actual Evil Computer Genius living next door to a real-life actual Evil Scientist like my big brother, Mark. What are the odds? Well, Pradeep figured it out yesterday afternoon. It is seven million, three hundred and forty-four thousand, six hundred and twenty-three to one. Which is about the same odds as winning five lotteries all at once and having the prize money delivered to you by a team of bicycle-riding chimpanzees. At least that’s what Pradeep told me. He found the answer on the Internet.
Anyway, Pradeep’s brother, Sanj, has a real IQ certificate to prove he’s an actual genius. He used to make us look at the piece of paper a lot when he first got it. And, just to make sure we really saw it, he used to press our faces against it on the floor while he sat on us. He didn’t need a certificate to prove he was mostly evil. We knew that already.
I grabbed my backpack and carefully packed Frankie inside, placing his bag in the bottom of a Tupperware box.
“You’re bringing Frankie to school?” Pradeep asked.
“I can’t leave him at home after he got all green-eyed and thrashy with Sanj. He might break out and zombie someone! What if Mom saw him like that? Or Mark came home early?”
You see, the last time they were at home alone together, Mark tried to deep-freeze Frankie. Luckily, I found him pretty quickly when I used the ice dispenser on the fridge door and got a zombie fish cube. You know, I don’t actually think Frankie minded the freezer that much. He just didn’t like being next to the fish fingers.
“Trust me, Pradeep,” I said as we headed off down the road toward the school, “Frankie is safer with us today.”
Pradeep and I got to school just before the breakfast counter closed. That’s when I realized the difference between school breakfast and a big fat zombie goldfish. One is a scary green bulging lump, swimming in a pool of toxic gunge, and the other is a fish.
I stared down at my plate as I went through the cafeteria line, and my green lump jiggled as I moved.
The lunch lady tapped the protective lunch-lady glass with her fingernail. “More egg?” she asked. I shook my head and pushed through the line.
“It’s an egg!” I said to Pradeep as I got to the cereal section of the counter.
“Ahhh,” he said.
Pradeep was getting his usual. He’s eaten the same breakfast every day since he discovered it in first grade. Choc Rice Pops on toast. If there is ever a Choc Rice Pops shortage, then Pradeep’s breakfast world will end.
“Should we get something for Frankie to eat?” Pradeep asked.
Ever since we’ve had Frankie, we’ve been trying to figure out what zombie goldfish eat. At first we were scared that it might be brains. I mean, that’s what all the comic books and movies tell you, right? But the problem is:
a) Zombie goldfish only have a couple of rotten teeth;
b) Brains float;
c) Goldfish have no hands;
d) Even if they could hold the brain still … zombie goldfish only have a couple of rotten teeth.
Therefore …
e) Brains would make a zombie goldfish really mad.
What we eventually realized is that zombie goldfish like to eat anything green, like green breadcrumbs (the moldier the better), or green bits of algae scraped up from the side of the pond.
“I don’t think Frankie’s hungry,” I answered. “He had some green cupcake crumbs before school.”
My backpack started to wobble from side to side on my back. Frankie must have been thrashing around. I unzipped my bag to check on him.
“I’m still not sure it’s a good idea to have Frankie in school,” Pradeep said.
“We had to bring him to school, Pradeep,” I said. “If we left him alone with Mark, it might be Mark who ended up in the freezer.”
“Hey, morons!”
I heard a chilling voice behind me, and Frankie swished his tail so hard that he made his plastic bag tip out of the Tupperware box. I turned him the right way up and re-zipped my backpack.
“Same stupid school, same stupid morons. Mwhahahaha.” Mark laughed his Evil Scientist laugh. No, it couldn’t be. Not him? Not here? Not now?
“No way,” I said as I turned around.
“Way, moron,” said Mark, flicking up the collar of his Evil Scientist white coat. “I’m at your school today. I gotta do an important experiment in the science lab.”
“Why our science lab?” Pradeep asked.
“The lab in my school kinda blew up,” Mark said. Cue evil laugh again. “So I’ve been sent to this dump for the day.”
This wasn’t good. Frankie was in school. Mark was in school. I had to think what to do, and fast.
In my head I scrolled through the list of “Frankie Evacuation Plans” that Pradeep and I had worked out on the walk to school.
There was just one that didn’t seem to require a jet-pack. The only choice was for me to pretend to throw up and get sent home from school, taking Frankie with me.
The only problem was that the teachers were pretty good at spotting real vs. fake vomit. Kids tried to use applesauce mixed with ketchup, peanut butter and orange juice, or the classic baby-food trick, but teachers knew they were faking and just sent the kids back to class, still covered in applesauce and ketchup. No, I had to really get sick. But how?
The answer was staring me in the face. The green slimy breakfast egg was looking up at me from my plate, like a big wobbly Cyclops. All I had to do was eat the egg.
I grabbed Pradeep’s Choc Rice Pops spoon from his hand and scooped up the egg. I gave Pradeep a look that said, “I am making the ultimate sacrifice for friend and fish.”
He nodded respectfully, knowing what I was about to do.
I lifted the spoon and closed my eyes.
“Gulp!” Mark slurped down the egg from my spoon.
“Too slow, moron!” he said, then burped a perfect smelly Evil Scientist burp and headed out of the cafeteria doors.
The burp was nearly gross enough to make me sick, but not quite.
Bbbrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnngggggggggggg! The fire alarm blared.
Everyone ran out into the hallway.
“There’s no way Mark could have blown up our science lab already, right?” I said to Pradeep.
The teachers were assembling people in lines at the classroom doors, ready to exit the building. But the alarm stopped. Then the TVs that were in the hallway by the front desk (you know, the ones that usually show pictures of the swimming team coming twenty-seventh in a race, or advertise a sale at the uniform shop) all came on at the same time. The secretary’s computer screen switched on too. And the whiteboard screens in the classrooms all showed the same letters scrolling across them: B B E D L A M.
Suddenly a voice boomed out of all the speakers. It had one of those distort-effect things on it, so the person talking sounded kind of like a robot.
“Now we got your atten—” one person started to say, but then there was a shuffling sound and a d
ifferent, snootier robot voice said, “No, let me … Ahem. Now that we have your attention. We want you to know that this school will soon be run by BBEDLAM. We’ve taken over.”
“I’m sure bedlam only has one b,” Pradeep said.
“And we know that there is usually only one b in bedlam. We’re not morons, we are being original, OK, so get over it. Where was I?… Oh yes, BBEDLAM has taken over the school. You may now go about your pathetically ordinary lives and await further instruction. There is nothing that can stop us.”
“Except the moron fish,” the other voice butted in. My backpack swung from side to side as Frankie thrashed around.
“Be quiet!” shouted the snooty voice. Then there was what sounded like someone being elbowed in the ribs. “We are live on air, remember!” The snooty robot cleared his throat and continued, “Nothing can stop us now, so don’t even try.”
Just before all the TVs, computers, and whiteboards switched off I thought I heard the first voice say, “Aww, you cut it off before my evil laugh.”
Pradeep shot me a look that said, “They said fish, right?” but I didn’t really understand the look so he said out loud, “They said fish, right?”
I nodded and shot him back a look that said, “And they said moron. And they talked about an evil laugh.” Pradeep didn’t really get that look either so I said it again, out loud. Then I said we had to practice our secret looks because we were both kind of rusty.
We agreed that the first weird robot voice must have been Mark. Frankie reacted to the voice as soon as he heard it. Pradeep was sure the other one was Sanj. But what was Sanj doing here and why was he with Mark? They aren’t even friends. The only thing they have in common is being mostly evil to me and Pradeep.
This wasn’t good. You know that crawly millipede feeling that I got in my stomach when Frankie was first gunged by Mark? Well, I got it again, only this time the millipedes invited over a couple of cockroaches and a tarantula for good measure.
We were all sitting in the hall for assembly, listening to Mrs. Prentice, the principal, lecture us about the misuse of school computers and illegal tampering with the fire alarm. Then she said, “I’ll find out who did this and it would be easier for the purple-traitors if they just came forward now.”
Mrs. Prentice looked at me and Pradeep a lot while she was talking. For about two seconds I thought about telling her that Pradeep’s Evil Computer Genius big brother and my Evil Scientist big brother were somehow behind all this. But then I thought that’s probably exactly what a purple-traitor would say. Even though I wasn’t really sure what a purple-traitor1 was, I was definitely sure that I didn’t want to be one. I don’t even like purple, especially in jelly beans.
Pradeep and I knew we had to find out what was going on, and find out now. We each got bathroom passes from our teachers but left the hall by separate doors, so that Mrs. Prentice couldn’t follow both of us. She must have thought I looked more suspicious, because she followed me, which gave Pradeep the opportunity to get away. I managed to lose her in the art room by hiding behind Darren Schultz’s easel. Then I doubled back to catch up with Pradeep.
Pradeep snuck up to the computer lab ahead of me and peered around the door. It’s where we had our first class anyway, but we needed to get in there before the other kids came out of assembly. I listened carefully for Pradeep’s top secret “The coast is clear” call. Which, it turns out, was “Tom, there’s no one here!”
Not his best.
I went into the classroom and carefully placed my backpack on the floor.
“OK, we need to find out everything we can about BBEDLAM,” I said, thinking that I sounded like the guy in spy movies who tells the spies what to do at the beginning of the movie but then never actually gets to do any of the cool adventure stuff himself. I decided I didn’t want to be that guy so I said, “You know how to do that, right, Pradeep?”
He was way ahead of me. Pradeep was already sitting at one of the computers, typing away.
“I think I’ve found BBEDLAM’s website,” he said. “If Mark and Sanj are working together, then maybe they’re out to get us with this BBEDLAM thing? Why else would they want to take over our school?”
“You’re paranoid, Pradeep. They probably just want to take over the school to make the cafeteria only serve mega choc chunk ice cream or make all the teachers dress as comic-book characters every day or something.”
“That’s just what you would do if you took over the school, right?” Pradeep asked.
“Maybe,” I answered. “But I still don’t think Mark and Sanj’s evil plans have anything to do with us. Anyway, most evil geniuses just want power for the sake of it, don’t they? And they never do anything really cool with it, like cover the earth in a giant bubblegum bubble or make everyone speak backwards or anything, which would be kind of—”
I was cut off by a loud Evil Scientist laugh that sounded from the speaker on the computer. “Mwhaaahaahaahaa!” Then little animated icons popped up on the screen.
“Hey, that little one looks like you, Pradeep,” I said. “It’s even got glasses and a Cub Scout kerchief.”
“And there’s you,” Pradeep said, pointing to a little icon rolled in a rug and wedged in a tiny dog flap in a tiny door.
The Evil Scientist laugh got louder and then a giant sneaker appeared at the top of the screen and stomped the little Tom and Pradeep flat.
It was like seeing my worst nightmare turned into a video game.
“Or I could be wrong about the whole it’s-not-about-us thing,” I said.
The word BBEDLAM splatted across the computer screen and then a word appeared by each letter to spell out:
BIG
BROTHERS’
EVIL
DEEDS
TO [PLEASE IGNORE ADDITIONAL “TO”]
LITTLE
ANNOYING
MORONS
BBEDLAM’s Corporate Statement: BBEDLAM is a top-secret organization founded on the premise of doing high-quality evil deeds to little moron brothers and achieving world domination.
Wow, Sanj was right. BBEDLAM was out to get us, and little brothers everywhere. We had to stop them.
“Pradeep, can you block the website or wipe it or something?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Sanj is the Evil Computer Genius, not me,” Pradeep said.
Then, while we were looking at the screen, more words started to appear:
LITTLE ANNOYING MORON KIDS WILL BE TURNED INTO OUR SUB-ORNAMENTS
Then those words were quickly deleted and this was typed instead:
LITTLE ANNOYING MORON SIBLINGS WILL BE TURNED INTO SUBORDINATES AND USED TO HELP ACHIEVE WORLD DOMINATION [EVENTUALLY]
“Hey! They’re updating the site right now!” Pradeep said.
“Does that mean they’re here?” I asked, grabbing my backpack to keep Frankie close.
“No, they could upload remotely,” Pradeep answered. “But—”
But I interrupted Pradeep’s “but.” “Frankie’s gone!” I held up the backpack. “He must have rolled away while we were looking at the website.”
“So now we have two evil big brothers and a zombie goldfish on the loose to worry about,” said Pradeep. “What else could go wrong…?”
“Pradeep, my lovely, you forgot your lunch this morning.”
Mrs. Kumar’s voice filled the school hallway and I watched Pradeep’s face fall so low, he had to pick his chin up from the floor.
“Anything but that…” he sighed.
As I ran over to the classroom door to see where Pradeep’s mom was, Pradeep hid under the computer table.
Fair enough, really. Parents coming into school when they are not expected is top of the list of the five most embarrassing things that can happen to a kid in elementary school.
5. The school nurse finds something in your hair, but can’t exactly tell what it is, so says, out loud to the rest of the class, “I’m going to have to take a picture of this one and look it up.” (Me—third gra
de.)
4. Your mom mixes up your swimsuit with your little sister’s, so you have the choice to go out to the pool stark naked or wearing a three-year-old’s Dora the Explorer bikini bottoms. (Pradeep—last year.)
3. You admit, in front of the other boys in your class, that you think the best Star Wars movie is the one with the cute, furry little Ewok creatures. (This kid called Ben—just before winter break. He never came back to school.)
2. Your pet zombie goldfish gets loose in the school. (Me—today.)
And 1. Your mom calls you “precious,” “lovely,” or “honey” in a loud voice in the school hallway just as everyone is coming out of assembly. (Pradeep—also today.)
I peeked around the door and saw Mrs. Kumar looking into the classroom across the corridor. Kids were sniggering as they walked past and I could hear whispers of “Isn’t that Pradeep’s mom?”
“Come along, Samina,” Mrs. Kumar called, gently pulling Pradeep’s little sister by the hand. “We’ll have to take Pradeep’s lunch to the office.”
Mr. Swanson came into the computer lab, followed by loads of kids, so Pradeep had to get out from under the table.
“Tom, they’re still online,” Pradeep said as he sat up at the desk. “If we can track down which computer in the school they’re using, then maybe we can shut the website down.”
Pradeep’s hands tapped away at the keyboard at the speed of light.
“I got ’em!” Pradeep said. “They’re in the science lab upstairs.”
“That’s not fair,” I said. “That’s where Mark told us he was going to be and he usually lies so that’s the last place I would look.”
“Actually, when you think of it that way, it’s pretty clever,” said Pradeep. Then we looked at each other. “Must have been Sanj’s idea,” we both said together.
