by David Lubar
“That was fun,” Mookie whispered as he climbed on his stool. “I love spilling things.”
“What a mess,” Ms. Delambre said. She headed toward the back of the room.
I still had no idea what was going on.
“I’ll clean it!” Abigail leaped up and dashed toward the counter.
“Thank you, Abigail,” Ms. Delambre said. “That’s very thoughtful.”
After Abigail brushed off all the shavings, she took the lenses to the sink and washed them. That didn’t seem necessary, but I’d learned a while back that Abigail never did anything without a reason.
She pulled a brown paper towel from the dispenser and held it up. “Ms. Delambre,” she called. “These are pretty rough. Will they scratch the lenses?”
“There are some rolls of softer towels in the closet,” Ms. Delambre said.
I saw Abigail smile as she went to the closet. After she dried the lenses, she stuck one into an end of the paper towel tube. She took a smaller lens, wrapped the outside with used paper towels, and crammed it in the other end of the tube.
After she put the rest of the lenses back, she brought the tube over to our table. “Go distract Ms. Delambre,” Abigail told Mookie.
“I’m the man for the job.” He walked over to Ms. Delambre’s desk and held up a gear. “Does this look round to you? Gears are supposed to be round, right? But this one sort of looks kind of oval. Will it still work if it’s oval? If not, can I swap it for a round one? Besides, some of the teeth aren’t as pointy as the others. Do they all need the same amount of pointyness?”
I had a feeling Ms. Delambre was going to be distracted for a while.
Abigail handed me the tube. “I made a telescope. I had to estimate the focal length, but it should be close enough. Take a look.”
I stared at her. I didn’t know you could make a telescope that easily.
“Hurry,” she said. “The squirrel could climb down at any moment.”
I held up the tube and took a look. “Hey, everything is upside down.”
“Of course,” Abigail said. “The lenses invert—oh, never mind. Just look.”
I looked. Everything wasn’t just upside down. It was also a whole lot closer. If I’d been able to get goose bumps, I definitely would have gotten them now. Close up, there was no doubt. The squirrel wasn’t holding a walnut.
I was right. “It’s a squirrel-cam.”
“That’s trouble,” Abigail said. “Someone is spying on you.”
4
Squirreled Away
Why would anyone want to spy on me?” That didn’t make sense. I handed Abigail the telescope. Before she could use it, the squirrel fell off the pole. I ran to the window and looked out.
The squirrel was on its side on the ground next to the pole. It got up and staggered a couple steps. Sparks shot out from under its tail.
Sparks?
It took a couple more steps. Little puffs of smoke drifted from its ears. Then more sparks. Its fur caught fire.
The squirrel exploded.
Shiny parts bounced across the road. It was some sort of machine! As I watched, a car ran over one of the pieces.
“Nathan!”
Ms. Delambre pointed at my seat. I slunk back. Abigail, Mookie, and I didn’t get a chance to talk any more during science. Every time we tried, Ms. Delambre flashed us that steamed look that’s a sign she’s in danger of overloading. An exploding teacher is a lot more dangerous than an exploding squirrel.
I decided it would be safer to keep my mouth shut until recess. But I had a feeling my friends weren’t the only ones who knew I wasn’t a normal boy. That was the only way to explain why someone was suddenly spying on me.
While the rest of the fifth grade played kickball, shot baskets, or chased each other around, I huddled with Mookie and Abigail by the broken seesaws, since nobody would interrupt us there.
“Somebody knows I’m a zombie,” I said. “You’ve seen the movies. People don’t like to hang out with zombies. All they do is run from them and scream.”
Abigail patted my shoulder. “You have no reason to panic. All we really know is that someone is watching you. It’s a good idea to gather all available facts before forming a conclusion.”
“Someone knows about me. That’s a fact.” I hated the idea that a stranger had discovered my secret, especially now that I was working on an idea where I needed to totally hide my true identity from the world. I wasn’t even ready to share my idea with my friends yet.
Abigail shook her head. “Maybe not. Maybe they just suspect something. If they already knew your secret, they wouldn’t need to spy on you, would they?”
“I guess that makes sense,” I said. “But how could they even know anything?”
Abigail plopped down on the end of a seesaw. “I’m not sure. But the police found Uncle Zardo right after he spilled the zombie formula on you. You were there when he got arrested. Uncle Zardo used to tell me that people were always spying on him. I never paid much attention to that. But I’m beginning to wonder whether there was some truth to it.”
“And you’re on the computer all night,” Mookie said. “My dad told me they can trace everything you do on the computer. That’s why he didn’t want us to ever get one. But Mom talked him into it, because it makes shopping so much easier. She’s always winning stuff online. Like that dinner in Vermont, or the year’s supply of goldfish food. If we ever get a fish tank, we’re all set.”
“The computer?” I thought about how much time I spent online. Even after I did my homework and read ahead in the textbooks, I still had a ton of time to kill at night. It’s amazing how long an hour lasts when you’re lying in bed and you know you won’t fall asleep. So I’d been playing games. But I didn’t see how anyone could spy on me that way. Zillions of people played games.
“Whatever you do,” Abigail said, “just assume you’re being watched. It would be best if you didn’t go online at all.”
“But I’m playing this really cool vampire game,” I said. “I’m up to level forty-two.”
“Nathan, the game can wait,” Abigail said. “Don’t go online. Don’t do anything unusual at all. You need to be careful until we find out who’s following you and what they’re trying to learn.”
“I’ll be careful.” I’d already learned to watch how I acted. Since I didn’t need to breathe, I never noticed stinky stuff unless I sniffed on purpose. If everyone else was choking and gagging because of a bad smell—which you could sort of count on happening pretty often if you hung out around Mookie—I had to act like I was choking, too.
Or if someone flicked my ear, I had to pretend it hurt. Since the school had several champion ear flickers, including Rodney Mullasco, I needed to stay alert all the time. Rodney had become especially dangerous ever since I messed up his attempt to get Shawna Lanchester to like him. Luckily, he’d never figured out exactly how I’d pulled off that trick.
Speaking of gagging, the bell rang, and we went into the cafeteria for lunch. The choice today, along with the usual sandwiches and salads, was turkey burgers or extra-chunky vegetable soup, which made me glad I didn’t need to eat.
As we stood in line, Mookie pointed at the pale, slimy burgers floating in a shallow pool of greasy liquid. “Those look more like a zombie than you.” Then he pointed at the soup. “That looks like it’s already taken a trip through the digestive system.”
“So what are you getting?” I asked.
“Both.”
I bought a tuna sandwich. I wasn’t going to eat it, but I’d rather not eat a tuna sandwich than not eat a turkey burger.
The other Second Besters—Adam, Denali, Jenny, Jerome, and Armando—were already at our table, along with the group that used to be known as the Doomed. When they joined us, it didn’t drag us down to their level, but sort of raised them up a bit. Snail Girl still didn’t talk much, and Ferdinand still flinched at everything that came near him, but they acted less like outcasts.
“Hey, it’s
Yin and Yang,” Adam said when we sat down.
“Huh?” Mookie asked.
“A pair of opposites,” he said.
“Nate and I aren’t opposites,” Mookie said. “We’re just not like each other in a bunch of ways.”
Adam opened his mouth, then shrugged and closed it. Actually, I guess he was the one Second Bester who’d lost some ground, but he didn’t know it. Everyone thought he was the second smartest kid in the class. They didn’t know Abigail had been hiding her brains ever since she’d gotten teased for being supersmart back when she was little. Adam was actually the third-smartest kid. But the smartest thing I’d figured out was that none of this really mattered. First, second, third, or tenth smartest, Adam was just Adam. I liked him.
I unwrapped my sandwich and let it sit on my tray. Nobody noticed that I didn’t eat. They were all too busy with their food. Ferdinand opened his sandwich and ate all the tuna with a fork.
Denali pointed at the bread and laughed. “Hey—it’s like a bad musical instrument. It’s outta tuna!”
“That’s nothing.” Mookie took a huge bite of his burger, chewed a bit, then, with his mouth still full of food, said, “I’m gobbling a turkey. Gobble gobble!”
“You are what you eat,” Denali said.
All through lunch, I kept looking out the cafeteria window, suspecting everyone who went by. Was the old guy walking a poodle really from around here? Was the pizza-delivery guy who stopped at the house across the street actually a spy? Were those birds in the sky really birds?
I had to keep my zombie identity a secret. Not just because I didn’t want everyone running away from me. There was another reason. I’d already had two chances to be a hero. I hadn’t planned either of them. But they felt wonderful. I remembered the cheering when I won field day, and the faces of the people in the crowd when I’d carried Abigail from the burning house. I wanted to feel that way again. I wanted to be a hero all the time. So I was working on a plan to become a zombie superhero.
The one thing a superhero absolutely has to protect is his secret identity. And, right now, that was the one thing that looked like it was in super danger.
5
Snap the Ball
The best part about skipping lunch was that I didn’t have to go to gym with a stomach full of cafeteria food, like I did back when I was alive.
Mr. Lomux had us sit in the bleachers along the side wall of the gym. There was a rolling chalkboard next to him. That was never a good sign. Words weren’t his best thing. He was much better with whistles and balls.
“Wrestling . . .” He let the word hang in the air like it had some sort of special power. Then he wrote it on the board. He actually got most of the letters right.
“Wrestling is more than a sport.” He stopped and stared at us for a moment. “In East Craven, wrestling is a way of life. We eat, sleep, and breathe wrestling.”
“Well, that leaves me out,” I whispered to Mookie.
“Too bad they don’t fart wrestling,” Mookie said. “I’d be a champ.”
Mr. Lomux kept talking. “When you get to East Craven High School, you’ll have a chance to be a part of one of the best teams in the state—maybe even the whole country—the East Craven Ravens. Only the very best athletes make the cut. It’s never too early to start training.”
Never too early? We wouldn’t be in high school for another four years. We weren’t even in middle school yet. I looked around the bleachers. Some of the kids were leaning forward, like they were ready to leap from their seats and start grappling. Rodney pumped his arms like those professional wrestlers do on TV when they’re shouting at the camera. Ferdinand and a couple other kids scooted back like they wanted to run away.
Mookie raised his hand.
“What?” Mr. Lomux asked.
“Can we get names?” Mookie asked. “Real wrestlers have cool names. Can we do that? I want to be the Mookasaurus.”
Mr. Lomux glared at Mookie for a moment. Five small veins in his head bulged. We could always tell how angry he was by counting the veins. So far, the record was eight. Mookie was dying to see if there was a ninth vein hiding somewhere on that sweaty head.
I thought Mr. Lomux was going to start shouting. But he shook his head and went back to his speech. “We’ll be outside today. But the colder weather’s coming. Wednesday, we’ll start to work on wrestling skills. I wanted to let you know ahead of time, so you could get ready. You might want to put in some extra time at home with your dumbbells.”
Mookie started to open his mouth, but I clamped my hand over it. Mr. Lomux wrote SKILLS on the board. “We’ll be learning takedowns, practicing escapes, doing drills, and turning you into the pride of East Craven.”
He wrote PRIDE, then put down the chalk. “I’m going to lead you to greatness. Our field day victory was only a start.”
Oh boy, not that again. Mr. Lomux had floated around with a goofy smile for a couple days after our school beat Perrin Hall Academy. He even bought pizza for the whole fifth grade.
I think he was looking for another victory. I could understand that. But at least we wouldn’t have to do any sort of real competition against another school. And, better yet, I wouldn’t have to wrestle a monster like Rodney. He probably weighed fifteen or twenty pounds more than I did. Mookie was safe, too. He was shorter than Rodney, but he weighed a lot more.
After Mr. Lomux took attendance, we went outside to play touch football.
“Who do you think he’ll match us up with?” Mookie asked as we walked toward the field.
“Maybe I’ll get Daniel or Abner.” I was one of the lightest kids in the class—and the second skinniest—so there weren’t all that many possibilities. “Or Ferdinand. I think he’s about my weight.” That would be fine with me. I didn’t think Ferdinand was capable of snapping my arms off.
Adam pointed at Dilby “the Digger” Parkland. “I think you’ll be with him, Mookie.”
“Please, no . . . ,” Mookie said as we watched Dilby reach down the back of his shorts to fix some sort of wedgie problem. Then he used the same hand to scratch the inside of his nose.
“Better buy some good soap,” I said. “The kind that kills germs.” Dilby was always digging at some part of his body with one, or both, of his hands.
We joined the rest of our class. Across the field, Shawna and her friends were practicing cheers while they waited for their teacher.
“Why can’t we wrestle them?” Mookie asked.
“Because they’d beat us, and we’d go through life humiliated,” Adam said. “Girls are a lot tougher than they look.”
“They’d hurt us, for sure,” Ferdinand said.
I noticed Abigail standing off to the side, watching the other girls. She was probably tougher than any of them.
When we chose sides for football, I got picked pretty early. Compared with how I used to always be picked last, this was almost a miracle. Everyone still thought I was a great athlete because I’d won field day by doing 239 chin-ups. I can do chin-ups all day. My muscles might be dead, but they never feel tired.
I figured that as long as I didn’t totally mess up, or leave a couple body parts on the field, they’d keep believing that for a while. And maybe I was a better athlete than I thought. Our team won. I actually helped make two or three plays.
“Forget wrestling,” Mookie said as we walked off the field. “I need to practice football. I keep dropping passes.”
“We can toss the ball around after school,” I said. I didn’t like gym, because Mr. Lomux was way too mean. But I liked playing sports with Mookie, since he didn’t care whether he won or not. He just loved to play.
In language arts, we read about Edgar Allan Poe. By the end of the lesson, I actually felt my own life was sort of normal. In art, we got to do whatever we wanted, so I drew space aliens with giant heads and tiny arms. Then I drew more aliens with giant arms and tiny heads. But at least the aliens were the only weird thing I ran into during the afternoon.
“
Want to play ball with us?” I asked Abigail after school.
She scrunched up her nose. “As thrilling as that sounds, I think I’d rather check out what’s left of that spybot.” She pointed to the bits of metal squirrel scattered near the curb. “There could be clues to its origin.”
Mookie and I didn’t see any more suspicious bushes or squirrels on the way home. It looked like I could relax. I grabbed my ball from the garage and we went down the street to the little park two blocks from my house. It’s really just a field, without any playground equipment or other stuff—not even any basketball hoops—but a field was all we needed.
We had the place pretty much to ourselves. A couple kids were kicking a soccer ball around at the other end. A woman with curly white hair was sitting in a car across the street, reading a newspaper. Maybe she was waiting for the kids.
I flicked the ball to Mookie.
“Oops!” It slipped out of his hands. He chased after it, dove on it, then raised it in the air and shouted, “Fumble recovered by Mookie Vetch! Yaaayyyyyy!” He did a victory dance, fell down, got up, then turned toward me and yelled, “Go long!”
I ran down the field. That was another thing I liked. Before I’d gotten splashed with Hurt-Be-Gone, I’d had asthma, so I tried not to run. Now, I could run all day without losing my breath. You can’t lose what you don’t have.
“I’m open!” I shouted.
“Five seconds on the clock! Four! Three!” Mookie hurled the ball. He actually had a pretty good arm. Lots of strength. No control. The ball spiraled over my head. I sprinted, reached up, and tried to catch it. The ball hit my right index finger.
The ball kept going.
So did my finger.
“Shoot.” This wasn’t good. I looked around for my finger. It had landed ten feet away from me, near a clump of dandelions.
“Do the crawly thing,” Mookie said as he jogged over to me.
“Not now,” I said. “Abigail told me to be careful. Remember?”
“Oh, come on, nobody’s watching. It’s so cool. Pleeeeeease.”
