The Girl Who Knew Even More

by Commander S. T. Bolivar, III

  “Probably made one of the teachers cry again,” Caroline added.

  Mattie’s stomach squeezed. Seeing Real Doyle crashing about made him think about Clone Doyle, who enjoyed baking. Mattie started to open his mouth, and Caroline held up one hand.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said, and just before they reached the classroom door, Caroline stopped and turned to face both boys. “Mattie has something he wants to tell you,” she said to her brother.

  Eliot looked at Mattie.

  Mattie looked around in case any of the other students were paying attention. “I saw a clone,” he whispered. “In the woods.”

  Eliot clasped both hands together. “For reals?”

  “Yeah. It was up in the trees like it was trying to grab me. The eyes were all red.”

  “He thinks we should do something about them,” Caroline added, tugging one hand through her knotted hair. It was looking especially windblown today. The dark tangles climbed toward the ceiling like Lem’s moss crawled toward chipmunks.

  “Of course we should do something!” Eliot’s eyes went bright. “I’ve always wanted to take one of those things apart. We could do that!”

  “Not really what I had in mind,” Mattie told him. The hallway was growing more crowded by the minute. The scones-and-jam scent was starting to be tinged with the smell of student.

  “What else would you want with them?” Eliot asked.

  “To make sure they don’t tell anyone about what Rooney did?” Mattie listed off reasons on his fingers. “To make sure they don’t tell anyone about what we did? To make sure my dad doesn’t get in trouble because the cloning machine was made entirely with Larimore Corporation parts? Take your pick. We have to do something!”

  Eliot put a hand on his friend’s sleeve. “Let me ask you a few questions, Mattie. Are those woods out of bounds?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Are those clones murderous?”

  Mattie blinked. “Not particularly.”

  “Then why were the clone’s eyes red?”

  Mattie thought about this. Eliot had a good point. Typically, the clones’ eyes only turned red when they were stressed or mad. The rest of the time they looked like everyone else. The clone in the tree? He’d been agitated.

  Eliot smirked. “See what I mean?”

  “No, because murderous clones hiding in the woods is definitely something people need to know about.”

  Eliot sighed. “Look, Mattie. You gotta stick to our story. We can’t tell the truth now.”

  Mattie scowled at the Spencers and the Spencers scowled at Mattie. Then Mattie thought about what Eliot said and it made him scowl even more. Eliot had another good point.

  “We’ve let the whole thing go on for too long,” Caroline said.

  “Plus,” Eliot added, dropping his voice, “there’s what we did to Rooney. I don’t want to explain that to the police or my mom.”

  “Ugh.” Caroline’s nose wrinkled. “Agreed.”

  Mattie opened his mouth and Caroline thumped him. “If we tell, they’ll close Munchem.”

  “And throw us in prison,” Eliot said. Mattie and Caroline looked at him and he shrugged. “What? You don’t know. It’s not like this has happened to anyone else.”

  Caroline and Mattie had to admit this was true.

  “Besides,” Eliot continued. “Those woods are creepy and I’ve seen all the movies. You go into them to save the day? You won’t come back out.”

  MOST RESEARCHERS DON’T FAULT ELIOT Spencer on this one. People usually don’t come out of dark forests, dilapidated old houses, and certain dentists’ offices. So what should you do when confronted with one? Avoid it. Just turn around and go elsewhere. It’s simply a good principle to live by. Other examples include never wearing black and navy, never combining dinosaur DNA, and never ever accepting a mysterious invitation to a reclusive billionaire’s remote island. Take my word for it, it won’t end well.

  Now where were we? Oh, yes, Mattie and the Spencers were on their way to American history class. They rushed through the door just as the late bell chimed and took their usual seats by the windows that overlooked Munchem’s new gym. Or, more accurately, the windows that overlooked Munchem’s new gym that was never used for gym class because it had been commandeered by Larimore scientists.

  Caroline leaned close to the glass. “They’re planting flowers again.”

  Mattie leaned close as well. Two stories below, Larimore employees lugged buckets of leafy plants around. It looked like they were trying—and failing—to find sunny spots. The ballroom-turned-gym-turned-lab was covered in hulking gargoyles. They cast uneven shadows everywhere.

  “I don’t know why they bother planting anything,” Mattie said. “Everything they put there dies. It’s just like the gardens.”

  “It’s creepy,” Caroline said.

  “I think it’s nice some things stay the same,” Eliot said, settling into his desk. “Nothing else has around here.”

  It was true. Last term, the mansion shed roof tiles, the hallways were always dirty, and the windows were cloudy with fingerprints. This term, things were cleaner and things were fixed—or getting fixed in the case of the roof, which seemed to be making the repair team use every swear word they knew.

  Even Carter was impressed.

  Bottom line, aside from Mattie nearly being turned into a lawn dart, Munchem Academy was starting to be very academy-like.

  “Do you think Lem is going to make it?” Eliot asked, staring down the beige-faced clock above the whiteboard. “Because if your dad has decided to fire him or melt him down for parts or whatever, I don’t want to wait around.”

  Mattie frowned. He wasn’t sure. When it came to Mr. Larimore anything was possible, and as Mattie was considering it, Doyle and Maxwell strolled into class. The bigger boys dropped into their seats, which squeaked in protest. Or maybe that was just Maxwell. Doyle had put him in a headlock again.

  “I hope Lem gets here soon,” Caroline whispered as Maxwell’s eyes bugged.

  Personally, Mattie doubted Lem would be able to stop Doyle. In addition to being one of Larimore Corporation’s lead scientists, Lem was also one of Munchem Academy’s newest teachers—and possibly the quietest. He was definitely the nicest.

  These were great qualities, but not necessarily useful in a person who was supposed to keep Doyle from spitting on people.

  The late bell rang and Lem surged through the classroom’s door. The tall, thin scientist dropped an armful of papers onto his desk and smeared them around. None of the other students noticed his arrival. They were too busy watching Doyle and Maxwell trying to kill each other.

  “Sorry the demonstration went wrong, Lem,” Mattie said.

  “It didn’t go wrong,” Lem said, running one hand along his black hair. Smoke steamed from it, and Mattie really, really wanted to ask what had happened. “I figured out a way to do it that doesn’t work. There’s a difference.”

  “But not by much,” Eliot whispered. His sister kicked him and Eliot yelped.

  Lem didn’t seem to notice. He flipped some papers around. “It’s all in how you look at it,” he explained. “Remember the Goo-B-Gone experiment?”

  “Couldn’t forget it if I tried,” Mattie said—and it was true. No one would forget that experiment. While Mattie’s old teachers, Mr. Karloff and Mrs. Hitchcock, had mostly been interested in cloning bad students and teaching the rest of them to clean, Lem was interested in teaching his classes about the periodic table, the difference between acids and bases, and to never, ever mix hydrochloric acid with Larimore Corporation’s Dirt-B-Doomed Starter Solution.

  Even when Lem said they should.

  “Ah, yes,” Lem had said at the time, watching the thick pink liquid dissolve Mattie’s desktop (and seconds later the linoleum floor). “I’d forgotten about that.”

  Mattie had taken a step back, the fumes stinging his eyes. “You forgot? How could you forget?”

  “I have a lot on my min
d.” Lem had peered down at the widening hole, studying the newly exposed pipes and then the newly developed holes in the pipes. “Though maybe I’ve just discovered a new technique for making windows and doorways.”

  That was Lem. Always optimistic.

  And thanks to that optimistic new technique, Lem was no longer allowed to teach sixth-grade science.

  “Okay, everyone.” Lem cleared his throat, and patted his black hair. Gray tendrils of smoke swirled into a halo above his head. “Open your books to chapter forty-eight. We’re going to continue our discussion on the events leading up to the Civil War.”

  HummmmmNAH!

  The window air-conditioning unit turned on, flooding the room with icy air. It pushed away the scent of scones and jam and replaced it with the scent of…rain?

  Mattie sniffed and then sniffed again. Yep, it smelled like rain. The air conditioner blew a little harder, ruffling Mattie’s hair. He rolled his shoulders, glanced toward the ceiling, and…

  What is that? Mattie thought. There were swirly, soft wisps circling the plaster ceiling. They seemed to be coming through the air vent and they were gathering closer and closer. They looked almost like a cloud.

  Impossible, Mattie thought.

  “Let’s begin,” Lem said.

  Booooom! something went. It sounded like a far-off roar. Everyone paused. They looked at each other, and then they looked around, and then they looked up. Just in time to see streams of water pour down. Cold water.

  “Argh!” everyone cried. “The sprinklers!”

  Mattie squinted against the water running in his eyes. The white plaster and dark beams were hidden behind that foggy, wispy gray mass. It still looked like a cloud and now it rained like a cloud.

  But it can’t be a cloud, Mattie thought, his eyes still glued to the ceiling. Water soaked through his clothes, dripping all the way to socks and underwear. We’re inside.

  Mattie started to ask the Spencers if either of them were seeing what he was seeing and realized the Spencers weren’t seeing anything. Well, they weren’t looking up. Eliot was scrambling to cover his computer manuals and Caroline was shielding Beezus. No one was looking at the ceiling.

  Well, no one was looking at the ceiling except for Lem.

  Water ran down Lem’s cheeks and dribbled off his black hair and still he did not look away from the ceiling. His face was scrunched tight like he was thinking.

  Boom! Boom! The lights flickered, flashing the room pale pink. Someone screamed. It sounded like Doyle.

  “Everybody out!” Lem shouted. He pointed one finger at the door. “Now! Go!”

  And everyone went, but not fast enough.

  BOOM! The books trembled on their shelves and the whole sixth-grade history class surged forward, shoes squeaking on the wet tiles. Doyle squeezed through the door first and ran down the hallway, arms pinwheeling.

  Thunder, Mattie thought. It sounds exactly like thunder. “What is going—”

  “C’mon, Mattie!” Caroline dug her fingers into Mattie’s arm as pink light lit the classroom again. Something popped and the overhead lights showered them in tiny glass bits. “Do you want to get electrocuted?”

  Mattie did not, and as another round of pink light exploded above them, he raced Caroline out the door and into the scone-and-jam-scented hallway.

  MATTIE AND CAROLINE RAN PAST the lockers and burst through the heavy wooden doors at the top of the steps. Sunshine blinded them and Mattie skidded to a stop, his wet shoes slipping on the dry stone. He gaped. It isn’t raining.

  In fact, outside, the weather was very nearly perfect. The sky was still clear, the air smelled like pine pollen, and all of Lem’s history students were soaked. Mattie peeled off his jacket and wrung it out, creating little puddles around his shoes. He looked around for Lem, but Lem was nowhere to be found.

  “What was that?” Eliot asked, eyes huge.

  “A thunderstorm,” Mattie panted, glancing at the other students to see if anyone else agreed, but everyone was too busy being wet and miserable to pay attention to Mattie—who also realized he was about to sound crazy. Or paranoid. Or crazily paranoid. “It was an inside thunderstorm.”

  The Spencers exchanged a look Mattie knew all too well. It said: Something’s very wrong here. Although sometimes it also said: We’d like another dessert.

  Caroline sat down on the bottom step and shook water out of her shoes and hair. She looked at Mattie like he was one of the Biology frogs she was always rescuing. “You must’ve hit your head when the Falcon crashed.”

  “And now you’re hallucinating,” Eliot added.

  Mattie paused. Maybe the Spencers had a point. Maybe the Spencers had a great point, because inside thunderstorms did sound like something someone with a head injury would see. Except…“I know I saw wispy stuff on the ceiling. It looked like a cloud.”

  Caroline shook her head sadly. “Who’s the president, Mattie?”

  “I’m serious.”

  “What’s two plus two?”

  Mattie glared at her. “The ceiling was raining!” he hissed.

  Caroline turned to her brother. “I got nothing.”

  “I’m telling you—”

  Caroline held up one water-wrinkled hand, attention still pinned to Eliot. “You deal with him,” she said and went back to drying off, muttering about boys and rain and how boys soaked with rain smelled like wet dogs.

  Mattie blew out a long sigh. “Eliot, you gotta believe me.”

  “Ceilings don’t rain.”

  “And headmasters don’t clone students,” Mattie whispered, leaning close. “This is Munchem.”

  Mattie paused, waiting for the reminder to sink in. He knew it did when Eliot’s expression turned pained, like he was being forced to eat worms.

  Or carpet tacks.

  Eliot shrugged. “You probably just saw something that wasn’t there.”

  “Again, this is Munchem.” Mattie shook his head, spraying water like a Labrador. “All sorts of creepy stuff happens around here.”

  “Raining ceilings isn’t really creepy. It’s more…”

  Mattie and Eliot went quiet as they tried to decide what raining ceilings were.

  “Impractical?” Caroline finally volunteered, tugging one shoe back on.

  Eliot nodded. “You probably saw dust or something and it set off the sprinkler system. They can repair Munchem all they want. It’s still old.”

  Another good point, Mattie thought. Apparently Eliot was just full of them today. The sun beat down on Mattie, drying his clothes and making the soaked wool smell moldy. Maybe he had hit his head?

  “What a day! How exciting!” Lem power walked past. His white lab coat was now a dingy gray. It looked cold and heavy as it dribbled around his legs. “Guess they need to work on the fire sprinklers next, huh?”

  See, Caroline mouthed to Mattie.

  Mattie ignored her. He grabbed Lem’s sleeve. “It wasn’t the sprinkler system. You saw it too. There was some sort of cloud on the ceiling. It looked almost like fog, but it wasn’t.”

  “Ha! You’re funny, Mattie!” Lem said and then he laughed like it was the most hilarious idea ever, but there was something forced, something false behind the laugh and Mattie heard it.

  In earlier years, he had heard the same false note when his mother told his father she’d “had this old dress for ages.” In later years, he would hear the same false note when a certain politician swore he had “nothing in his pockets.” There was something about lying that turned people’s voices squeaky or distracted or vague and Mattie always noticed it.

  Just like he was noticing it now.

  Lem turned away to help two girls empty water out of their backpacks. Everyone was trying—and failing—to tidy up.

  Mattie nudged Eliot. “Did Lem sound weird to you?”

  Eliot paused from shaking water out of his ears. “What? No. He sounds like he always does.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. Positive.”

 
“He doesn’t seem off to you?”

  “It’s Lem.” Eliot thought for a moment. “Maybe you should go see the nurse.”

  Mattie frowned. Maybe Eliot was right—not about the nurse, but about Lem. The scientist was always a little late, a little strange, and a lot, well, Lem. In other words, Lem being Lem was a perfectly good explanation.

  Mattie turned his attention to his still-soaked jacket, but no matter how much he told himself Eliot was right, Mattie knew he wasn’t. Lem was hiding something. Lem had lied.

  The question was: why? Why wouldn’t Lem admit there was more going on than a broken sprinkler system? It wasn’t like the scientist had a problem talking about other failed experiments—and that’s what this was, right? Some weird Larimore Corporation project?

  Why not just say so?

  Lem faced his students. “Class dismissed, everyone.”

  Cheers went up.

  “We’ll reconvene tomorrow. For those of you who don’t know what that means, reconvene means we will meet again.”

  Less cheers. Lem didn’t notice. He patted his coat pockets and pants pockets like he’d forgotten something and raced off toward the school gym.

  Mattie nudged Eliot. “Want to go get changed?”

  Eliot nodded and a very soggy Mattie led the equally soggy Spencers down the science wing’s granite steps, through the stone arched arcade, and toward the once overgrown courtyard. Since class was still in session for everyone else, Munchem was oddly quiet. No one was running past them. No one was arguing. No one was trying to stuff anyone else under the bleachers. And no one was paying any attention to the shadow creeping through the school.

  THE BOYS OF 14A LIVED on the second floor behind a single red door. It wasn’t the biggest dorm room (that one was next to the library) and it wasn’t the smallest dorm room (that one was under the garden shed), but Mattie found it pretty comfortable, especially since the improvements.

  The carpet was no longer dirt colored, the windows no longer shook when the wind blew, and the bunk beds no longer swayed…much. Unfortunately, the door still stuck and Mattie had to slam his shoulder into it twice before it popped opened. He fell into the room with Eliot right behind him.