“Yeah,” I said. “I guess it is.”
“Whatever, Beefer,” said Dylan. “Sam kicked your butt before, he can do it again!”
“Ha,” said Beefer. “He only beat me because of that dumb gerbil!”
A murmur ran through the crowd.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s true.”
“And I’d bet my Wolfsplosion II DVD that he didn’t really win that Muscles thingy, either! That was the gerbil, too, wasn’t it, Sam?”
I sighed. “Yep. It was.”
“See, everyone? He’s nothing. Pathetic. A total fraud,” said Beefer. “Just a weird loser with no friends who draws little pictures.”
The gym was quiet. The other kids stared at me now.
“Sam has friends,” said Dylan, stepping forward.
“Yeah,” said Martha. “He does.”
Beefer winced at this.
“You humiliated me, Sam,” said Beefer. “Now it’s your turn. The final, final revenge. I’m going to pound you—in front of your precious gerbil and the whole school—and there’s not a thing you can do about it.”
Hamstersaurus Rex snarled, ready to defend me. I put my hand on his head to calm him.
“You’re right, Beefer,” I said. “I’m not very tough. You can definitely beat me up.”
Beefer gave a joyless yellow grin. He cocked back his fist to scare me. I didn’t flinch.
“But even so,” I said, “I’ve decided I’m not going to be afraid of you anymore.”
“What?” said Beefer. “But you can’t just decide to—”
“Beefer, the weird thing is,” I said, “we’re actually kind of alike.”
“You take that back!” said Beefer, horrified.
“We are,” I said. “Think about it. We’re both into stuff that other people don’t get. In my case it’s mutant hamsters and drawing ‘little pictures’; in yours it’s exploding werewolves and vandalism.”
“Those things couldn’t be more diff—”
“We don’t quite fit in. We want people to like us, and it hurts our feelings when they don’t.”
“What? No way!” said Beefer, his voice high and frantic. “I don’t have feelings!”
“But hurt feelings is no reason for me to pretend like I’m something I’m not,” I said. “And it’s no reason for you to act like a jerk.”
The other kids were starting to whisper. I could see the color drain from Beefer’s face. His whole world was slipping away, and he didn’t know what to say.
“I am a clear belt!” he shrieked at last.
“It’s okay, man,” I said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You don’t have to lie about that stuff anymore.”
“I’m not lying,” he said, his voice almost a sob. “Clear belt!”
“There’s no such thing.”
“Yes there is. I—I—I did the final test.”
“You head-butted a rock in half?”
“Is that what I said I did?” asked Beefer, licking his lips, eyes darting around nervously.
“Yeah.”
“Then I did head-butt a rock in half!”
“Seriously, you don’t have to—”
“I did, and I’ll prove it!” said Beefer, and he held the trophy at arm’s length in both hands. “Everybody watch this!” And he head-butted the marble trophy as hard as he could. It made a painful thudding sound.
“See?” said Beefer with a smug grin on his face. He held up the trophy. Sure enough, there was now a large crack down the middle—it had been broken in half. “Clear b—” But before Beefer could finish the thought, he slumped to the ground, unconscious.
CHAPTER 22
BEEFER WOKE UP a minute or two later. Soon after that a soot-covered Principal Truitt escorted him to the nurse’s office for medical attention—but not before we could recover the PETCATRAZ Pro™ key he’d stolen from Mr. Copeland. Luckily, Martha never realized that I had, uh, borrowed her key, too.
“Another Little Mister or Miss Muscles trophy destroyed,” said Coach Weekes as he held the two broken pieces in his hands. His eyes were moist. “I’m sorry, Sam.”
“Eh, it wasn’t mine anyway,” I said, taking the broken trophy from him. “I cheated during the competition.”
Coach Weekes gasped. “Sam, you what? How dare you! You desecrated and dishonored a proud and . . . noble . . .” He trailed off, his lip quivering. A big tear rolled down his cheek.
“No need to cry,” I said. “I’m really sorry. If you want to give me detention I totally—”
“No!” said Coach Weekes, now blubbering uncontrollably. “I cheated, too! In 1983, I cheated during the Little Mister Muscles competition. I didn’t really win! I can’t even do a single knuckle-up.”
I put a hand on his shoulder as he wailed. “Well, Coach, this year the real winner was Dylan D’Amato.” I handed her the two trophy chunks. She beamed.
“Thanks, Sam!” said Dylan. “You can keep the little half for being good at drawing.” She handed me back the smaller piece and gave me a big hug. Hamstersaurus Rex grunted as he was squeezed between us.
“You know what this means, don’t you, Coach?” said Dylan.
“What?” said Coach Weekes, between heaving sobs.
“We play disc golf in gym class for the rest of the year!” cried Dylan.
“A bet’s a bet, D’Amato. Congratulations,” he said, sniffling as he shook her hand. “And maybe after class, you could teach me how to do knuckle-ups?”
“Sure, Coach,” said Dylan. “It’s all about proper form.”
“Sam!”
I turned to see Martha Cherie, hands on her hips. “You didn’t really follow the proper protocol in all of this,” she said.
“You’re right,” I said. “Guess I’m kind of a maverick.”
“In your own strange way, though, I see that you went above and beyond to protect the life of an innocent hamster.”
“It was nothing,” I said with a shrug.
“No, it was something,” said Martha, and she gave me a sudden, awkward hug—which luckily offered a chance to clip the PETCATRAZ Pro™ key back onto her lanyard without her noticing.
“You honored the sacred trust,” said Martha. “So by the power vested in me by Horace Hotwater Middle School, I hereby appoint you, Sam Gibbs, to be Junior Deputy Hamster Monitor. . . . Can I do that, Arnold?”
“Sure, whatever,” said Mr. Copeland. “But seriously, Martha, it’s Mr. Copeland. I’m not telling you again.”
And so, I accepted my new post as Junior Deputy Hamster Monitor (my own ID and lanyard to come).
Because Science Night had been completely destroyed, the teachers had no choice but to give everyone As. This kept me from learning any valuable lessons about not leaving long-term projects to the very last minute. So that was cool.
All in all, it was a pretty action-packed Tuesday.
“Wow, Science Night sure is exciting, huh, Bunnybutt!” said my mom, wiping her nose with a tissue as she returned from the parking lot.
“Yep,” I said. “Hey, you’re not sneezing anymore.”
“Wow. Maybe I’m cured.”
She wasn’t. I looked down at my pocket. Sure enough—as I’d almost come to expect at this point—Hamstersaurus Rex was gone.
CHAPTER 23
AFTER THE SECOND-CRAZIEST Science Night on record—apparently some kid hypnotized a flock of pigeons to do his bidding two years ago—life at Horace Hotwater Middle School returned to normal.
Martha Cherie raised her hand a lot. Mr. Copeland sighed a lot. Wilbur Weber mentioned snails more than was strictly necessary. Judy, the lunch lady, occasionally took me aside and told me never to give up on my dream of becoming a dancer. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’d been lying.
In gym class, we all worked on our disc golf fundamentals under Dylan’s expert guidance. Coach Weekes even talked about starting an official school team.
There was no more Beefer Vanderkoff, though. Principal Truitt suspended him, and
he never returned. Someone told me that he enrolled at L. L. Dupree. In his absence, water fountain fires dropped more than 95 percent. Strange as it may sound, I actually found myself missing the guy once in a while. School can get a little boring without a nemesis bent on your destruction.
I’m not sure what became of Michael Perkins. Rumor had it that long after everyone left Science Night, Roberta Fast did find the snake, hiding under a hatchback in the school parking lot, with the disc golf disc still stuck in his mouth. Supposedly, she took him to SmilesCorp’s labs for “special testing.” My mom said that was baloney.
There was no Hamstersaurus Rex, either. The PETCATRAZ Pro™ sat empty on a back shelf in Mr. Copeland’s classroom, its door swinging open on its hinges.
Pretty soon, most of the other kids seemed to forget about the little guy. Not Martha Cherie, though. Dylan didn’t forget Hamstersaurus Rex, either. Grudgingly, the two of them looked for him every day after class, together, just like I had done.
As for me, I kept my Junior Deputy Hamster Monitor ID lanyard—and the brand-new PETCATRAZ Pro™ key Martha had given me—inside my pocket. I missed the little guy, too, but I didn’t go searching for him. Instead, I drew pictures. They chronicled the epic saga of a four-ounce mutant folk hero named Hamstersaurus Rex. I drew the falling solar system, Raisin stuck in the filing cabinet, the Sixty-Foot Sandbag Drag, the Antique Doll Museum rampage, and more.
Somehow I knew that wherever he was, whatever he was doing, Hamstersaurus Rex was going to be okay.
And then one day, when we returned to school after Thanksgiving, we all heard a familiar sound from the back of the classroom. It was a growl.
We turned to see Hamstersaurus Rex—stumpy arms waving, tail whipping, beady eyes blinking—sitting inside his cage like nothing had happened.
“Well, kids,” said Mr. Copeland with smile. “I guess we have a hamster again.”
I approached the cage. Hamstersaurus Rex gave me a toothy grin and a burp of friendship. I laughed and poked my index finger between the bars to give him the world’s smallest high five.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR
TOM O’DONNELL is the author of Space Rocks! and its sequel, Space Rocks! 2: For the Love of Gelo! He has written for the New Yorker, McSweeney’s, and the television shows TripTank and Billy on the Street. He lives with his wife in Brooklyn, New York. Read more about him at www.tomisokay.com.
TIM MILLER is an author and illustrator of picture books. He studied at the School of Visual Arts, where he earned his BFA in cartooning. His first picture book, Snappsy the Alligator (Did Not Ask to Be in This Book), received four starred reviews. Publishers Weekly called his illustrations “bold and goofy.” He lives in Queens, in New York City. You can see more of his work at www.timmillerillustration.com.
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CREDITS
Cover art © 2016 by HarperCollins Publishers
Cover design by Joe Merkel
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HAMSTERSAURUS REX. Copyright © 2016 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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