The Boy Who Knew Too Much

by Commander S. T. Bolivar, III

  Or how he might be getting into even more trouble.

  Mattie spent their study hall session working on his essay. He’d titled it “How Munchem Academy Made Me a Better Person,” but it certainly wasn’t good to break into the headmaster’s office, and Mattie couldn’t seem to write himself around it. The guilt sat on his chest, making it hard to breathe, and by the time they were supposed to meet Caroline, Mattie felt a little nauseous and a lot shaky.

  It wouldn’t have been hard to convince Kent and Bell he had to go to the nurse’s office, but Eliot decided to say they’d been assigned extra cleaning. Mattie thought the excuse was pretty good—the other boys certainly seemed to buy it. Or maybe they just didn’t care.

  Either way, Eliot and Mattie waited for Caroline in the dark by an oak tree with a trunk so wide that they couldn’t get their arms around it even if they tried. Which they didn’t because birds were sleeping in the branches and one pooped on Eliot.

  “This would be so much cooler if I had a computer,” Eliot complained as he tried to shake the white bird poop off of his sweater vest. The bird poop didn’t budge. “It’s not like a spy movie at all.”

  “That’s because we’re not in a spy movie,” Mattie said.

  “What is he complaining about now?” Caroline walked out of the dark like she was a part of it, like even her hair was made from shadows.

  “Nothing,” both boys said. It was too dark to see Caroline’s eyes, but Mattie and Eliot knew she was rolling them.

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  “Yes!” Mattie stuffed his sweaty hands in his pockets. “How are we going to get in?”

  “The window.”

  Mattie studied Caroline very carefully. Even in the dark, he could see she hadn’t brought anything with her. “How are you going to open the lock?” he asked. “Don’t you need a tool or a hair pin or something?”

  “Oh.” Caroline waved one hand. “The lock’s been broken for a week now. I saw the work request on Miss Maple’s desk. We can just let ourselves in.”

  “‘Just let ourselves in’?” Eliot echoed. “You could’ve told us that!”

  “True, but then you wouldn’t owe me a favor.”

  Eliot made a gurgling noise, and Caroline turned to Mattie. “Are we doing this or not?”

  “We’re doing it,” Eliot said and started down the path. His sister skipped along behind him and Mattie followed, his stomach twisted tight with nerves.

  “Wait!” Mattie tugged Eliot’s and Caroline’s sleeves, dragging them to a stop. “What if the lock’s been fixed? You said the work request was a week old.”

  “Oh, um…” Caroline seemed to be looking anywhere and everywhere except at Mattie and Eliot. “Freeing the biology lab frogs was messier than I anticipated. There were some casualties. The janitors are still cleaning up.”

  Eliot started to say something, and Caroline jabbed two fingers into his chest. “Not a word, Eliot. Not. A. Word.”

  Eliot seemed to have quite a few words, but he shut his mouth anyway and the three of them scuttled along in the dark until they reached the outside wall of the administration wing. Caroline counted windows to figure out which window belonged to the headmaster’s office and then, once she was sure, motioned for the boys to go ahead.

  “Boost me?” Mattie asked.

  Eliot shrugged. “Nothing like a spy movie,” he muttered, but he let Mattie step on his knee anyway. They both wobbled as Mattie fumbled with the window. The latch was broken, as Caroline had said it was, but Mattie still had to use both hands to pry the glass panels open. They swung outward, toward them. Eliot tried to step back. They teetered once…twice…crash.

  Mattie spit bits of grass from his mouth.

  “Ladies first,” Caroline said and stepped on Mattie’s shoulder to climb through the window. Eliot and Mattie scrambled after her and, for a long moment, all three of them just stood in the headmaster’s office.

  “We did it,” Eliot breathed and Mattie nodded. They were inside the headmaster’s office. They were alone. The plan was working. They grinned at each other and their teeth were stripes of white in the dark.

  “Would you two hurry it up?” Caroline huffed. She was at the bookshelves, inspecting Rooney’s pictures and checking the cabinets underneath the shelves. The cabinet doors swooshed open and shut, open and shut as Caroline searched then, finally, “Beezus!”

  Something—presumably Beezus—went squeak squeak!

  “Put him back!” Eliot whispered at her. “Rooney will know someone’s been here. You’ll get in trouble.”

  “Will not.” Caroline stood up, leaving the cage and cabinet doors open. She cradled something in her arms and, as Caroline drew close to him, Mattie finally saw Beezus.

  “That thing is ugly,” Mattie said. In his defense, it was true. Beezus was quite ugly, but Mattie probably didn’t look very beautiful to Beezus either. Beauty is often a question of perspective. What’s beautiful to one person isn’t always beautiful to another, but who knows what rats find beautiful. Cheese, maybe? A nice bit of carrot? Human flesh?!

  Maybe, because at that moment Beezus was actively trying to bite Eliot’s finger as Eliot shook it in his sister’s face. “You can’t take him with you! You’ll only get caught again!”

  Squeak! Squeak!

  Caroline held Beezus up to her ear. “What’s that, Beezus? Yes, I think he’s quite annoying as well.”

  “Stop it! That stupid rat doesn’t talk!”

  Caroline nodded as though she were listening to someone else and Eliot didn’t exist at all. “He does smell! I’ve told him that several times and he doesn’t believe me.”

  The only thing Mattie smelled at that moment was orange wood cleaner. Rooney’s desk must’ve been recently cleaned. There was a cup of pens, a calendar, and a Post-it note to Miss Maple about ordering more paper clips.

  Headmaster Rooney should check Miss Maple’s purse, Mattie thought.

  “What would Doyle be doing here?” Mattie asked.

  Eliot held up a jar of paste. “Eating paste?”

  It did seem like something Doyle would do, but Mattie didn’t think it would help him impress the teachers. Mattie took another long look at the jar’s sticky, crusty lid. He really hoped it wouldn’t impress the teachers. He had no desire to put that in his mouth even if it did get him a trip home.

  Eliot joined his sister at the bookshelves, and Mattie turned in a small circle, studying the window, the desk chair, and, finally, the closet behind the desk. The door eased open with just the slightest tug on the handle.

  He poked at the coats inside. “Rooney must get cold a lot.”

  Eliot stood next to him. He checked the pockets of each coat, but came up empty-handed. “Why would Headmaster Rooney want an orange plaid jacket?”

  He held up the orange plaid jacket in question. They took a moment to contemplate not only why Headmaster Rooney would wear such a thing, but why anyone would wear such a thing.

  “Grown-ups,” Caroline said at last. She said it so determinedly, and in a way that was so completely Caroline, that there was nothing left to be said and all three of them shuffled out of the closet and returned to searching the office.

  They found nothing.

  Well, that wasn’t entirely true. After all, Caroline did find Beezus, but Mattie didn’t find anything about Doyle and absolutely nothing that looked like a How to Be Good Manual. When the Spencers wanted to leave, Mattie had to drag himself after them.

  What good were criminal acts if you didn’t get what you wanted? Mattie thought about asking the Spencers, but they were busy. Eliot had pushed open the window and was checking outside. The light from the full moon illuminated the whole courtyard in silver and black. It still looked empty, but it was hard to tell what might be hidden in the overgrown grass and the crooked trees.

  “Ready?” Eliot asked. Mattie nodded and put one foot on Eliot’s knees just as there was a rustling in the grass like something was thrashing through it.r />
  “What’s that?” a voice cried out.

  They froze, straining at the window.

  “Teachers!” Mattie squeaked just before Eliot dropped him. They lay on the floor of the office, staring at each other. “Hide!”

  But where? Underneath Rooney’s massive desk? Too obvious. It would be like hiding under the bed in a scary movie. Behind the plushy chairs? Too stupid. The three would be instantly spotted. So that left…

  “The closet!” Mattie whispered. Mattie and the Spencers lunged for the headmaster’s closet door and shut themselves inside, getting a face full of woolly jackets and tasseled scarves. They backed up until their shoulders hit the wall behind them, until something small and hard and round crammed into Mattie’s spine.

  It felt like a doorknob.

  Mattie grabbed it with both hands and the smooth, cool knob turned. Why would there be a door inside a closet?

  “Hey!” Mattie whispered, nudging Eliot with his elbow.

  “Why is this window open?” The voice from the dark was now closer, much closer. It sounded like it was right outside the office, under the window Mattie and the Spencers had used. “Is someone in there? Come out! Right now!”

  “We’re going to get caught!” Eliot exclaimed—although, to be fair, it was a little hard for him to exclaim considering he couldn’t lift his voice above a whisper.

  “We’re not going to get caught!” Mattie wasn’t sure why he said this because he was pretty sure it wasn’t the truth. Actually, he was positive it wasn’t the truth, and the small voice inside his head—the one that was usually right—also agreed it wasn’t the truth. They were totally going to get caught unless…

  Mattie gripped the doorknob harder. “Through here!”

  Eliot grabbed him. “Are you crazy?” he whispered. “We don’t know where that goes!”

  Mattie did know that if they didn’t do something, they were going to get caught. And it was amazing how desperation brought out something that might have possibly always been waiting inside Mattie for just such a moment, because he yanked open that hidden door like he knew exactly what he was doing.

  It fell open to reveal a square of shadows.

  And stairs.

  The stairs went down, down, down into the dark, and all three of the kids drew closer together. “I am not going down there!” Caroline whisper-yelled at Mattie.

  “No one’s asking you!” Eliot returned.

  “Mr. Karloff?” trilled a female voice outside the closet. It sounded like Mrs. Hitchcock. “I think I heard voices!”

  Eliot glared at Caroline. Caroline glared back at Eliot. Mattie started to sweat.

  “Voices?” Mr. Karloff responded. “Where did you hear voices?”

  “Over there!”

  The friends gulped. Mrs. Hitchcock could have meant over there by Headmaster Rooney’s wastepaper basket. She could have meant over there by his picture of a politician who looked more like a beady-eyed hobgoblin than someone engaged in the politics of a nation.

  Which is to say the politician looked exactly as he should look.

  But Mattie, Eliot, and Caroline knew the teacher didn’t mean any of those places. She meant the closet.

  Mattie didn’t stop to think. He didn’t stop to argue. He just grabbed Caroline and Eliot by their arms and hauled them into the dark.

  MATTIE CLOSED THE LITTLE DOOR JUST as a finger of yellow office light crawled across the closet floor. He pressed one ear to the door, listening as the teachers pawed through the coats, making the metal hangers bump into the wall.

  “We need to have your hearing checked,” Mr. Karloff said. “There’s nothing here.”

  “Let me look,” Mrs. Hitchcock said. The hangers went thump thump thump as she banged around in the closet. “Perhaps you’re right,” she said at last. “Unless they went through the door?”

  Caroline gasped and Eliot used both hands to cover his sister’s mouth. The three of them stared at each other as footsteps drew closer.

  And closer.

  Mr. Karloff was on the other side of the door. Mattie felt his eyes bug. He looked at Eliot, at Caroline, and, finally, at the door handle. There was a little button on it like…a lock.

  Mattie stabbed one finger into it and there was the softest click.

  “Did you hear that?” Mrs. Hitchcock asked. “Could they have started without us?”

  “I didn’t hear a thing,” Mr. Karloff grumped and the door shook as he rattled the handle. “See? It’s locked. Rooney would never leave it open.”

  “True,” Mrs. Hitchcock said, but she didn’t sound as if she believed it. “We should get going. They’ll be expecting us.”

  Expecting them for what? Started what without them? Mattie wondered. The door stopped shaking and Mattie carefully pressed his ear to the wood again. He could hear shoes scuffing against the floor and more hangers thumping into the wall.

  Whump!

  Mrs. Hitchcock slammed the closet door with such force it made Mattie’s eardrum shudder. He rubbed one palm against his sore ear and faced Eliot and Caroline, surprised he could see them at all. The stairwell—which had looked so dark before—was now faintly lit with small electric bulbs that flickered and flickered but never seemed to go out.

  Mattie could see the stairs went far down into the ground. He could also see Eliot and Caroline were ready to pound each other. He knew because Carter also had the same look right before he pounded Mattie.

  “I thought you had this planned,” Eliot whispered to Caroline.

  She threw up both hands. “How was I supposed to know the teachers were patrolling the grounds?”

  “Did you let anything else loose?” he demanded.

  Caroline had to think about it.

  “Look,” Mattie whispered. “We can’t go back. They’re searching the other rooms. They’ll catch us in the hallway if we try to leave.”

  “Maybe we should wait here until morning,” Eliot suggested.

  Caroline huffed. “Then the Rooster will catch us.”

  “Well, what do you suggest we do, then?” Eliot asked Caroline.

  “We go down,” Mattie interrupted. “I mean, they’re stairs, right? They have to go somewhere.”

  And, technically, Mattie was right. Stairs usually do go somewhere. They go off cliffs or off the sides of pirate ships. No, wait. That’s a plank. Planks go off the sides of pirate ships. Anyway, the point is: stairs go somewhere and sometimes, as in this case, they go into a very unappealing basement. At least, Mattie assumed it would be an unappealing basement. It could just as easily be a storage room with more Headmaster Rooney pictures.

  “Why would you have a hidden door?” Eliot asked. “Because it leads somewhere you don’t want anyone to go.”

  “There has to be another way out,” Mattie said. He meant to sound confident, more like Carter, definitely more like Mr. Larimore, but, instead, he sounded like Mattie, which is to say the words turned out a bit squeaky.

  Caroline groaned and marched down the stairs, stiff-legged. Her Beezus brown hair snapped from side to side. The boys exchanged a quick glance and followed her, going down, down, down into the basement.

  Except it wasn’t really a basement. Or, at least, it wasn’t a basement like people usually think of basements, because Mattie and Eliot and Caroline walked down one hundred stairs and reached a massive, enormous, completely gigantic room!

  Yes, fine, a basement can be massive and enormous and completely gigantic. It can especially be massive and enormous and completely gigantic if your parents have made their fortune from a reality television series or if they sell that cement fancy ladies inject into their wrinkles.

  But this room was at Munchem Academy, and Mattie had never seen anything like it. The basement’s walls were so far away that Mattie couldn’t see them, and the ceiling was so high that Mattie could only see shadows above them, and everywhere he looked there was machinery.

  “This is stuff my dad makes,” Mattie said, putting one hand on a ca
ble as thick as his wrist. It was warm to the touch even though the air was cool. “I’ve seen those wires and that electrical paneling at his factory.”

  Everyone paused to look at those wires and that paneling and, once they were done, Eliot put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “Who knew you could fit so much underneath a school? It really makes me rethink Munchem’s whole deal. I mean, they’re supposed to be teaching us not to lie and yet look at all of this.”

  Eliot spun in a small circle, his arms spread wide to indicate everything around them. There was a lot to take in. There were smokestacks reaching for the ceiling and cables hanging like jungle vines.

  Mattie really wanted to swing on one. It was very unlike him, and he took a deep breath until the feeling passed. Thankfully, it did, but Mattie’s hands were still sticky like he’d been eating candy and his heart was still thumping like he’d been running even though they were creeping along, trying to be quiet.

  “What are they doing down here?” Mattie asked at last. Caroline and Eliot shrugged.

  “I want a closer look,” Eliot said, approaching the nearest electrical panel with outstretched hands.

  “And I want to get out of here,” Caroline said, grabbing her brother by his collar and hauling him toward her.

  Mattie nodded. “She’s right. We need to find an exit.”

  Eliot grumbled, but agreed. Mattie started to guide the Spencers carefully around the pipes and wires and cables—although is there any other way to pick your way through things that could electrocute you?

  Okay, perhaps they couldn’t all electrocute you, but they could trip you and that’s rather unpleasant.

  Being electrocuted is worse, though, and you should keep that in mind.

  “What are they powering it with?” Eliot craned his head back and stared at curls of steam or, maybe, smoke spiraling above them.

  “Hamsters,” Caroline said with a nod.

  Eliot glared at her. “You can’t power anything with hamsters.”

  “You can if you have enough hamsters.”

  Mattie tried to picture the thousands of hamsters running on the thousands of spinning wheels that it would take to power a machine of this size. “I think Eliot might be right, Caroline.”