Janitors

by Tyler Whitesides

  © 2011 Tyler Whitesides.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, Shadow Mountain®. The views expressed herein are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of Shadow Mountain.

  All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Whitesides, Tyler, author.

  Janitors / Tyler Whitesides.

  pages cm

  Summary: A sixth grader stumbles upon a secret that threatens to turn schoolchildren everywhere into mindless automatons.

  ISBN 978-1-60908-056-3 (hardbound : alk. paper)

  [1. Students—Fiction. 2. Monsters—Fiction. 3. School custodians—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.W58793 Jan 2011

  [Fic]—dc22 2011007692

  Printed in the United States of America

  Publishers Printing

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  * * *

  For mothers and custodians everywhere, who seem to sweep and vacuum endlessly.

  And for Connie, who swept me away.

  Table of Contents

  "You're going to get an F."

  "That sounds neat."

  "Disgusting."

  "Weird."

  "Better hurry up."

  "You believe me?"

  "Look out behind you!"

  "What kind of maintenance?"

  "There!"

  "Walk with me."

  "Sweet."

  "Them's the worst kind of folks."

  "I got more info."

  "Take the hall pass."

  "What's so funny?"

  "The issue has been resolved."

  "You always make a mess."

  "It'll be too late to study."

  "Hold my hand!"

  "You're just like your father sometimes."

  "Is this true, Spencer?"

  "Ruined by childish riffraff!"

  "So far I'm grounded for a week."

  "A warlock, actually."

  "Take a look, but don't get too close."

  "Today we'll try out some basics."

  "First thing you've got to know about Toxites . . ."

  "It doesn't seem fair."

  "Let's hunt."

  "Get away from him!"

  "I wish you'd just call me Sarah."

  "He's just going inside."

  "You're a genius."

  "There's always a turning point."

  "They're here, I know it."

  "Thanks, kid."

  "The School Board."

  "Into the school!"

  "Actually . . . that was me."

  "Stop singing!"

  "Someone has to end this!"

  "What happened to me?"

  "It's a big decision."

  "A van?"

  Acknowledgments

  Reading Guide

  Chapter 1

  “You’re going to get an F.”

  Spencer shifted the papers on his school desk and looked for a hundredth time at the graffiti in the corner. Last year’s occupant of the desk must have spent hours etching the message into the wooden surface.

  Dummy, Spencer thought. Couldn’t even spell cabbage.

  Truth be told, Mrs. Natcher did smell a little like cabbage sometimes, but she was still tolerable. Today, however, a strong Bath and Body Works fragrance filled the sixth-grade classroom and Mrs. Natcher was nowhere to be seen.

  In her place was a thin, younger woman who had short, stylish hair streaked with pink highlights. She wore high-heeled red shoes and a skirt so short that Mrs. Natcher would have croaked. Turned out that Mrs. Natcher had croaked—well, almost—which was why Miss Leslie Sharmelle had been called to Welcher Elementary that morning.

  Spencer glanced at the clock on the wall. Only a half hour until lunch! The morning had flown by. After a lesson on geography, Miss Sharmelle had started the students creating maps of imaginary lands. Spencer traced a crooked line from his pencil-sketch mountains to the coast.

  “Keep working on your maps, boys and girls,” Miss Sharmelle instructed. “I’ve got to buzz over to the copy machine for a sec.” With half a dozen papers in her hand and her heels click-clacking on the floor, she disappeared into the hallway.

  Instinctively, Spencer swiveled his head to glance at Dez Rylie. Sure enough, there was already a soggy wad of paper coming out of the boy’s big mouth. Only a desk away, Spencer’s map was an easy target. But with the substitute out of the room, Dez wouldn’t settle for a small target like Spencer. Dez was going to spread the fun (and the spit) to everybody.

  With a whoop, he tossed the mass of chewed paper into the air. It made a lazy arc across the room, showering everyone below with drops of Dez-juice. The spit bomb made a fast descent and landed with a splat on Jen McNeal’s new back-to-school shoes.

  Jen screamed, jumping up and shaking her foot wildly. She danced in the aisle as though an army of ants had decided to bunk in her sock. The vigorous foot shaking sent out a spray of spit, and the wad dislodged, flinging sideways and skidding across Juan Rivera’s map. Desperate to save his island, Juan snatched up his map and flipped the spit wad forward.

  The wad (no longer soggy, but still unpleasantly moist) rolled off Juan’s desk and quickly came to a halt between the backrest of the chair in front of him and the girl sitting in it. Instantly, she began to cry.

  As the back half of the classroom erupted into chaos, Dez Rylie threw his head back and laughed at the ceiling. Spencer, who was still shielding his map, noticed that almost everyone else who wasn’t dancing, screaming, or crying was doing the same. Those who had escaped the first onslaught were watching Dez like rabbits in headlights.

  Everyone except Gullible Gates.

  Daisy Gates was seated in the front left corner of the classroom, far out of spit’s way. She might have been humming softly, as she often did, but there was too much noise in the room to be sure. One thick, sandy-colored braid reached halfway down her back. She sat hunched over the desk, her nose an inch away from the forest she was drawing. She scribbled more pine needles onto a tree, somehow oblivious to the upset in the room.

  Dez scowled when he saw her. Spencer opened his mouth to shout a warning, but cringed, unwilling to make himself the target. Dez pushed himself out of his desk and tromped down the aisle, intentionally treading on somebody’s notebook that had fallen to the floor. The back of the room had quieted. Juan was holding his wrinkled map in front of the fan. Jen was alternately blotting off her shoe and drying the tears of her sobbing friend.

  It wasn’t until Dez Rylie’s shadow fell on Daisy’s desk that she looked up. Seeing the bulky kid standing before her, she quickly looked down again, vigorously scrawling pine needles. Dez bent down to examine her work and the entire class held its breath. If Daisy had been humming before, she was definitely not doing it anymore. The clock ticked loudly. Twenty minutes to lunch.

  “Nice map,” Dez said.

  Daisy stopped drawing and looked up. A reluctant smile spread across her face. “Uh, thanks, Dez.”

  “It looks pretty good . . . except for one thing.”

  “What?” Daisy asked, looking at her map as though it had betrayed her.

  “You weren’t listening when Miss Sharmelle told us about forests.” Dez’s fat finger pressed down on Daisy’s pine trees. “Forests can’t grow next to mountains. You’re going to get an F.”

  Daisy sat stricken for a moment, then fumbled for her large p
ink eraser. With hasty movements that tore little marks in her paper, she scrubbed at her forest until it was nothing but a gray smudge next to the mountains.

  Across the room, Spencer’s body tensed. That was wrong. Daisy’s forests could grow wherever they darn well pleased. Taking a deep breath, Spencer began to say “Daisy.” But all he could manage was “Dai” before Dez silenced him with a threatening glare. Spencer felt the “sy” catch in his throat and he swallowed it down.

  “Where can I put my forest?” Daisy asked.

  “Forests only grow on tiny little islands a hundred and two miles from the coast. In geography, we call them Gullible Islands.” Laughing, Dez snatched Daisy’s pencil and drew a big F at the top of her map.

  “You’re so dead, Dez.” Jordan Height broke the silence. Jordan wasn’t as tall as Dez; no one in the class was. But Jordan was usually the first to stand up to the bully.

  “Shut up, pretty boy,” Dez replied, folding his beefy arms.

  “I mean it,” Jordan said. “Miss Sharmelle’s going to drag you to the principal’s office so fast.”

  “I don’t care,” Dez shrugged. “In fact, I kinda hope so. Maybe Miss Sharmelle will hold my hand. She’s a hottie.”

  The students gasped collectively and Spencer averted his eyes, ashamed to even be sharing air with Dez Rylie.

  “You will be going to the office, Dezmond.” Miss Sharmelle’s voice cut through the gasps. She was in the doorway, a large stack of papers in her hand. Her face looked a little flushed, but not as red as Dez’s.

  The bully turned to face her, regaining his composure. “Let’s go,” he said.

  Miss Sharmelle crossed the room, set the papers on her desk, and returned to the open doorway where Dez was waiting for her with a stupid grin on his broad face.

  “And no,” she punctuated, “I will not be holding your hand.”

  Chapter 2

  “That sounds neat.”

  The yellow school bus rumbled to a stop and released a hiss of air before the door opened. Four children with matching brown hair and a smattering of freckles moved to the front of the bus. James took two steps per stair because he was in first grade. Holly held the handrail and descended by hopping on one foot because she was in third grade. Erica jumped down all the steps because she was in fourth grade. The last one thanked the driver and moved down the stairs like a civilized human. Because, after all, Spencer was in sixth grade.

  Once outside, the bus driver checked her mirrors and motioned the kids across the street. Spencer herded his siblings, wondering why the driver had even bothered to check the mirrors. There was never a car on this road anyway. When the children were safely across, the flashing red stop sign tucked away and the bus ambled down the road.

  Without a sidewalk to follow, the four kids moved along the weed-infested edge of the road. September was brown in southern Idaho, but the farmers still fought it with huge sprinklers that launched water in glittering, sunlit arcs across the fields.

  They passed a rundown farmhouse and Spencer turned his siblings up a steep side road. Suddenly, the neighborhood changed. This newly developed area on the hill seemed too fancy for the rest of town. Like pearl earrings on a pig.

  Two blocks into the wealthy subdivision, the kids arrived at their gaudy, three-story home. A few months ago, the lot had blended nicely with the neighborhood. Green lawn and tidy landscaping. But, for better or worse, Spencer’s family had a way of making things their own.

  In the weeks since they’d arrived, the lawn had withered to a dry and crispy brown. A clunker station wagon was parked mostly in the driveway, with one wheel on the dying grass. The car meant Mom was home. The bad parking job meant she was in a hurry.

  The house, too, had once been a monument to wealth. Now it looked recently blown in from Kansas. On the porch, cobwebs hung scalloped from pillar to pillar like someone had hired Spider-Man to do the decorating. The “welcome” mat didn’t look too welcoming, all caked in dry mud so that only the w and e were legible.

  Spencer opened the door and stepped inside, his little brother and sisters following. There was a clank of pans from the kitchen and Spencer heard his mother’s voice. Probably on the phone.

  A three-year-old rounded the corner with a bottle of soapy bubble solution in his hand. The other hand waved a bubble wand, flicking soap onto the hardwood floor.

  “What the . . . ?” Spencer grabbed the wand from the child’s hand. “Who are you?” A second later, two more three-year-olds came careening into view, one with a butter knife, the other with a pair of scissors.

  “Whoa!” Spencer said, seizing his littlest brother by the arm and prying the scissors from his grasp. “If you’re going to play inside with friends,” Spencer lectured, “then you have to be respectful of Aunt Avril’s house.”

  Max merely hissed at his older brother, exposing a chipped front tooth. He made an attempt to grab the scissors back and then ran off.

  Spencer was alone in the entryway. His other siblings had dumped their backpacks on the floor and quietly crept downstairs. Afternoon cartoons on the big flat-screen TV attracted them like moths to a porch light. Not the porch light at Spencer’s house, though. It had been left on 24–7 and burned out weeks ago.

  Spencer sighed. For a house with so many windows, it surely seemed dark. He crossed the room and twisted the wooden blinds to let some light in. Something darted out from behind the leather sofa, nearly stopping Spencer’s heart. It was a cat. Since when did they have a cat?

  Spencer picked up a toy dump truck and kicked some stuffed animals out of his way. The mess in this house was maddening. He would clean things up after dinner, but right now, Spencer needed some time in his sanctuary.

  “Spencer!” his mother called as he headed toward the stairs.

  “Here, Mom!” he answered as if she were calling roll.

  “Spencer, come in here and tell me about your day.”

  Resignedly, Spencer left his backpack on the first step and walked into the kitchen. His mother was a whirlwind. Alice Zumbro was stooped down, digging for the colander while balancing a steaming pot of noodles in one hand and trapping a spatula between her knees as she pinned the phone to her shoulder with her cheek. Her apron nearly tripped her when she stood up, colander in hand, and crossed to the sink.

  Spencer stood obediently near, wishing he could help, but knowing that his mother preferred to do everything on her own. Especially since Dad had left.

  Finally she turned to him, her face moist from the steam of the noodles and her hair sticking in strands to her forehead.

  “How was school today?” she whispered around the phone.

  “Fine.”

  “What did you do?” she asked.

  “Mom,” Spencer protested. “You’re on the phone. I’ll tell you later.”

  Alice shook her head. “Tell me now. It’s just your Aunt Avril.” She carried the dripping noodles across the room and set them on the table, steaming water still oozing out of the colander. “Well?” she mouthed as she passed him on her way to the stove.

  “Well?” echoed Spencer. “The bus ride was boring this morning,” he began. “Boring and long.”

  “Uh-huh,” his mom responded, though Spencer wasn’t sure if it was intended for him or Aunt Avril.

  “I sat by myself because James and Holly and Erica have all made friends.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Mrs. Natcher was gone and we had a substitute named Miss Leslie Sharmelle. She was nice, but some of the kids were mad because we didn’t get morning recess.”

  “Oh, Avril, don’t worry about that,” Alice scolded into the phone. Then she looked right at Spencer and gave him a very clear “uh-huh,” answering his question about who the grunts were intended for.

  “Then this big kid, Dez, went berserk and chucked spit w
ads all over, so Miss Sharmelle took him to the office.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “In P.E., I was picked last for kickball. I ate lunch by myself and accidentally spilled ketchup on my shirt, see?” Spencer stretched his shirt to show his mom the red spot. She tried to glance, but got distracted by the can opener.

  “Then, at lunch recess I met some aliens. They were pretty cool and showed me their ray guns and stuff. So I zapped everybody except Daisy Gates, ’cause everybody picks on her. Then the aliens gave me a lift back to our real home in Washington.”

  “That sounds neat, Spence,” Alice answered. She gave him a dismissive smile, said, “Oh, I know,” to Aunt Avril on the phone, then said “Shoot!” because she realized that she hadn’t put the noodles in a bowl and the colander was leaking hot water everywhere.

  Spencer ducked out of the cluttered kitchen—Aunt Avril’s kitchen—and made his way back to the stairs. His backpack was still there, but someone had flicked soapy bubble solution on one of the shoulder straps. Spencer picked it up carefully and jogged up the stairs, dodging piles of dirty clothes and an open can of soda as he went. He moved quickly, hopeful that there would be no more distractions.

  With a sigh of relief, Spencer opened the door and stepped into his bedroom. Everything was clean. Everything had its place. And everything was always in its proper place . . . except for a heap of pillows in the middle of the floor!

  “Max,” Spencer muttered disapprovingly as he put the pillows back—two on the bed and two in the padded window seat. Spencer hung his backpack on a hook and sat down on a chair to remove his shoes.