“What? Dylan, focus on the rampaging Squirrel Kong that tried to crush me, not what I decided to call my . . .” I trailed off as I had a sudden, unpleasant realization.
“What is it?” said Dylan.
“My UltraLite SmartShot digital camera,” I said with a sigh. “I must have left it down there in the woods. I guess I dropped it in all the commotion. Now I won’t be able to finish my feature film debut.”
“Sure you will,” said Dylan, grinning.
“How?” I asked.
“We’re going to go back and get it.” She stood and cracked her knuckles.
“Again, maybe you weren’t listening to me when I told you about the heinous giant squirrel that haunts the woods behind our school looking for sixth graders to flatten,” I said.
“Oh, please, I’m not scared of some big squirrel,” said Dylan. “And neither is he!”
She pointed to my pocket. Hammie Rex’s head was poking out. His eyes were narrowed with resolve and his fuzzy little lips were pulled back to reveal a row of pointy dinosaur teeth. He burped an angry burp. The little guy was definitely looking for a rematch.
CHAPTER 3
“LOOK, IF I don’t make it out of these woods,” I whispered, “you can have all my drawings. An artist’s work usually goes up in value after they . . . you know.”
“Calm down, Sam,” said Dylan. “I’ll tell you what I told you back in preschool when you got that sand pail stuck on your head: you’re not going to die.”
“That pail was very small! I could have easily run out of oxygen in there!”
“Look, my dad is going to be here in, like, five minutes to pick me up from disc golf practice, so can we just grab your camera and go?”
I swallowed and stepped into the tall weeds. Dylan followed. As we made our way toward the clearing, each cracking branch sounded like the approach of a monster. Every few feet, I stopped to listen for the telltale thump of the beast’s heavy footsteps. Hamstersaurus Rex scanned the woods from my pocket, ready for action.
“No fighting,” I whispered to Hamstersaurus Rex. “Remember?”
He snorted. After what seemed like forever, the three of us made it to the clearing. It was empty. Dylan stared at me and shrugged.
“Well, looks like these woods are giant squirrel– free,” she said. “Probably heard I was coming and got scared.”
“Squirrel Kong was just here,” I said, “I swear.”
Just then Hammie Rex grunted. Dylan and I looked at each other, our eyes wide. His ears were twitching. The little guy heard something. Pretty soon we both heard it, too. It was a faint buzzing sound coming from overhead. Both of us looked up. A small remote-controlled quadcopter zipped by, sixty feet above us, and then disappeared from view.
“Hmm. Maybe that’s what you saw,” offered Dylan.
“Did that look anything like a giant squirrel to you?” I said, exasperated.
“If you squint and turn your head sideways, it sort of looks like a flying squirrel—”
“Squirrel Kong is real!” I cried. The sound of my voice echoed through the woods, startling me.
“Okay, okay. Chill out, Sam,” said Dylan. “Look, the good news is, we found your digital camera.” She reached down and pulled my UltraLite SmartShot out of a bush and handed it to me.
“Thanks,” I said, dusting a few leaves off it. “If this thing is broken, my mom is going to make Squirrel Kong look like a pushover.”
I held my breath and turned it on. It seemed to be functional, but it was displaying an error message on the screen. “Hang on. The memory card is missing. Do you see it anywhere?”
“Nope,” said Dylan, scanning the bush where she’d found the camera. “Doesn’t look like it’s here.”
“It must have fallen out,” I said. “That stinks.”
“What? Memory cards aren’t expensive, are they?” said Dylan.
“No, it’s just . . . that card had my entire movie on it.”
“Sorry, Sam. But if you have to start over, at least you’ll have the chance to think of a better title. What if you called your movie Fatal Payback: The Revenge?”
“That, uh, kind of sounds like a different direction,” I said.
“Look, we’ve seen the giant-monsters-battling-each-other thing before. I’m thinking now that Hammie Rex is a renegade cop who has been pushed too far. Maybe he has a tough-as-nails human female partner, Vanessa McSteel.”
“Played by you, I’m guessing?”
“Whoa. That’s a very interesting idea,” said Dylan, stroking her chin. “I hadn’t even thought of that.”
I sighed. By now, all the other disc golfers had gone home and the school was locked. There would be no getting Hammie Rex back in his cage for the night. I’d have to bring him home with me. So I caught a ride with Dylan and her dad.
When I got to my house I made a beeline for our garage. My mom was still allergic to all pets except our ancient hairless cat, Raisin. So when I brought Hammie Rex home on a secret unauthorized overnight, I used a special hypoallergenic hamster habitat I’d created. Basically, I’d hidden a hamster cage inside an old cardboard box marked “Extension Cords.” I’d poked several holes in the box and lined it with air filters to catch as much of Hammie’s stray dander as possible. I’d even put a few rubber dinosaurs in there, too, so the little guy would feel at home. I took Hamstersaurus Rex out of my pocket and placed him in the box.
“Thanks for saving me today,” I said, scratching him behind his little ear. “But you have to forget about Squirrel Kong, okay?”
Hammie snarled at the name.
“Seriously, Hammie. Besides, we’re never going to see that awful creature again, so it doesn’t even matter.”
His growl sounded doubtful. I closed the lid.
“Hiya, Bunnybutt,” said my mom as I walked in the door. “How was your Meeting Club?”
“Pretty good. Everyone in the club is super cool but very down to earth. It’s a very chill vibe,” I said.
“Chill vibe! Great! Anything else happen at school today?”
“Well, a twelve-foot-tall squirrel tried to squish me,” I said.
“That’s crazy,” said my mom, now staring at me with grave concern. “Because the same exact thing happened to me!” She burst out laughing and didn’t stop for the next ten minutes. My mom’s got a weird sense of humor.
I slept fitfully that night, racked with nightmares about giant rodents. The next morning, I caught the bus to school. Hamstersaurus Rex—hidden in my shirt pocket—dozed peacefully, seemingly untroubled by any bad dreams of his own.
Omar Powell did a double take as he took the seat in front of me. “Yikes, Sam,” he said. “You look terrible.”
“I guess I didn’t sleep well,” I said with a shrug.
“Something on your mind?”
“A giant squirrel tried to kill me,” I said.
“Huh. Sounds stressful,” said Omar as he pulled out his Gamehouser Mega IV and started to play that game where you fling penguins at works of fine art.
Omar didn’t believe me. My mom didn’t believe me. And I could tell that even though she said she believed me, Dylan had her doubts. The worst part was that I was starting to wonder if maybe they were right. People often told me that I had an “overactive imagination” because I liked to draw and make dioramas and sure, maybe because I bent the truth a little here and there. Maybe those people were right. Maybe it wasn’t a giant squirrel I saw? Maybe it was just a really . . . big . . . dog? Or maybe it was two adult men in a squirrel costume . . . rehearsing for a play?
No. I had seen a giant squirrel! And Hammie Rex had seen it, too. I sighed. It probably didn’t even matter at this point. What were the odds that I’d ever see Squirrel Kong again, anyway? I wasn’t planning on hanging out in the woods behind school anytime soon. I took a deep breath and tried to put the whole thing out of my mind and think of whatever the opposite of a giant squirrel is. (A very tiny rhinoceros?)
But I couldn’t c
oncentrate. There was a commotion at the front of the bus that caused Hammie Rex to start awake in my pocket. He peeped out from under the flap. Now kids were crowding toward the windows and pointing as the bus pulled into the school parking lot. We rolled past two parked police cars with their lights flashing.
“Wow. Look at that!” said Drew McCoy.
A massive hole had been smashed through the wall of Horace Hotwater Middle School. It was approximately the size and shape of Squirrel Kong.
CHAPTER 4
INSIDE THE SCHOOL, yellow hazard tape blocked access to Room 117, the science lab. A dozen kids pushed in close to get a better look, but Mr. Grogan stood in front of the door, blocking their view.
“Move along, kiddies. Nothing to see,” said Mr. Grogan as he added another layer of tape. “Room 117 is off-limits until further notice. Principal’s orders.”
I craned my neck as I walked past and managed to catch a glimpse inside. Not only had something big burst right through the wall, whatever it was had utterly destroyed the place! Tables and equipment were overturned and smashed. Books and papers and broken glass were strewn everywhere. It looked like a war zone.
While the other kids were still jockeying for a peek at the wrecked lab, I made a quick detour to our classroom. As usual, it was empty. I was early, and Mr. Copeland never arrived at school before 7:50. I ducked inside and quickly put Hammie back into his PETCATRAZ Pro™ and locked the cage door.
At the lockers, the rest of sixth grade was abuzz with theories about the incident.
“I heard it was a gas leak,” said Julie Bailey, pantomiming. “Kaboomers!”
“No way,” said Jimmy Choi. “My cousin Todd is a policeman and he told me it was a freak mini-tornado that did it.”
“It had to be an earthquake,” said Caroline Moody. “This whole school is completely structurally unsound. Maple Bluffs sits on a major fault line, you know. Another little tremor and the building is going to collapse!” She put her notebook over her head for protection.
“Guys, think logically,” said Jared Kopernik. “It was ghosts.”
“Sam, how do you think the lab got destroyed?” asked Tina Gomez as I stuffed my backpack into my locker.
“Giant squirrel attack,” I offered.
The other kids burst out laughing, just like my mom. I sighed.
“That’s it!”
We all turned to see Ms. Becker, the sixth-grade science teacher, down the hall. She was yelling at Principal Truitt.
“First, invisible snakes at Science Night and now this?” cried Ms. Becker. “My whole classroom has been ruined. If I’d been here, I could have been killed. This school is completely insane. Nobody’s safe!”
“Calm down,” muttered Principal Truitt, taking her by the elbow. “We should discuss this privately in my office so we don’t scare any of the—”
“There’s nothing to discuss. I’m telling you right that now that I quit! Things like this don’t happen at L. L. Dupree Middle School, you know.”
“Please, Maria,” said Principal Truitt. “Be reasonable. We don’t know what happened.”
“Of course we do! It was obviously that weird hamster from Arnold’s classroom that did it!” said Ms. Becker. “We all know how freakishly strong the little vermin is. Everyone says it whipped a fifty-pound boa constrictor around by its tail like a spaghetti noodle. As long as that beast is at Horace Hotwater, I won’t be!” With that she stormed off down the hall.
Weird hamster? Vermin? Beast? She couldn’t possibly mean Hamstersaurus Rex, could she? I was shocked. Sure, the little guy was dino-strong—strong enough to do a few knuckle-ups for me, maybe knock a wooden door off its hinges once in a while. But there was no way he could smash through a brick wall! Plus, why would he even want to? He was a hamster of peace (mostly)!
“Whoa, Ms. Becker just quit, you guys,” said Dylan, joining the rest of us at the lockers. “I wonder if science class is permanently canceled.”
“Makes sense,” said Jimmy, nodding solemnly. “I bet it was Hamstersaurus Rex.”
“You know, I never liked Hamstersaurus Rex,” said Tina.
“Yeah,” said Caroline Moody, dropping her voice low. “He’s always had anger issues.”
“He has not!” I cried. “It wasn’t Hamstersaurus Rex that did this and I know it!”
“Guys, listen to Sam,” said Dylan. “He was with—”
I shushed Dylan as I saw Martha Cherie approaching. She looked pale and shell-shocked.
“Sam, may I have a word?” said Martha quietly, her jaw clenched.
“Um. Okay, sure.”
Martha took me aside and whispered, “I’m really worried, Sam. I think I might have left the PETCATRAZ Pro™ unlocked yesterday when I changed Hamstersaurus Rex’s bedding.”
“No, Martha. Trust me, you didn’t,” I said. “You would have never forgotten a thing like that. Hammie Rex is locked in his cage. You can go check right now.”
“I just talked to Mr. Grogan. He noticed that the cage was empty while he was cleaning our classroom yesterday evening. He didn’t see Hamstersaurus Rex anywhere,” said Martha. She sounded more upset than I’d ever heard her. “You and I both know that the PETCATRAZ Pro™ is rated the strongest small rodent cage on the market. If Hamstersaurus Rex was out, that means the cage was unlocked.”
“Yeah, okay, maybe he was out of his cage, but that’s only because . . .” I trailed off. Unfortunately, my explanation involved admitting that Hammie was with me all night, and that I was totally abusing my Junior Deputy Hamster Monitor privileges by taking the little guy home when I wasn’t supposed to. Who knew what the penalty for abducting a class pet was?
“Listen to me,” I said. “I just know Hamstersaurus Rex didn’t wreck the lab, okay?”
“How?” asked Martha Cherie. “How do you know?” Her voice cracked like she was about to cry.
“Uh, I mean, because he’s a . . . solid dude,” I said. It sounded pretty weak, even to me. She didn’t seem convinced.
“This feels weird,” said Martha.
“What feels weird?”
“Making a mistake,” she said. “I’ve never made a mistake before, Sam. Is this how the rest of you feel all the time?”
Before I could answer the first bell rang.
As we took our seats, I noticed all the other kids eyeing Hammie Rex with suspicion. They muttered under their breath and shook their heads and pointed. Was he already guilty in their minds? In his cage, the little guy looked agitated and confused. He could sense something was wrong.
“Okay, kids,” said Mr. Copeland, frowning. “I know how excited you all are to learn more about pronouns, but there’s something serious we need to discuss first.”
“Snails?” said Wilbur Weber.
“No, Wilbur. Not snails,” said Mr. Copeland. “As you probably all noticed, there’s a giant hole in the side of the school. The science lab has been completely destroyed. We don’t yet know who, or what, caused this damage. But unfortunately, some people think the culprit may have been our class pet, Hamstersaurus Rex.”
“Mr. Copeland, he’s innocent!” I cried.
“Sam, we all know how much you love the hamster. Hey, I’ll admit it, I’m fond of the little guy myself,” said Mr. Copeland. “But we need to wait until we have more information about what happened before we draw any conclusions. Now, does anyone have any concerns they’d like to share?”
“Mr. Copeland,” said Tina Gomez in a stage whisper. “I feel like Hamstersaurus Rex is looking at me right now and he looks angry. I’m literally paralyzed with fear!”
“He’s not angry,” I said. “He’s hungry. If he ever acts nuts, it’s just because he’s hungry.”
“So he wants to eat me?” said Tina.
The other kids gasped.
“Look, Tina, the cage is made of an unbreakable titanium alloy,” said Mr. Copeland. “I checked their website. As long as it’s locked you’re perfectly safe.”
Just then, an anguished
yelp rang out across the classroom. Everyone turned toward the sound. It had come from Martha Cherie.
“. . . Um, is everything okay, Martha?” said Mr. Copeland.
“No, Mr. Copeland, everything is not okay,” said Martha. “May I please address the class?”
“Okay, fine,” said Mr. Copeland. “What’s on your mind?”
Martha stood up and cleared her throat. Her voice trembled as she spoke. “Classmates, I once swore a sacred oath: an oath to protect and serve our class hamster. But the oath is more than that. It also extends to you, the students and faculty of Horace Hotwater Middle School. I am sad to report that yesterday I failed in my duty as Hamster Monitor. I left the cage unlocked and thus I failed to protect you from Hamstersaurus Rex. It is with great sorrow that I hereby tender my resignation as Hamster Monitor.” Martha ceremoniously removed her Hamster Monitor ID lanyard and placed it on Mr. Copeland’s desk.
“Um, you made this lanyard yourself, Martha,” said Mr. Copeland. “You really don’t have to give it back to me.”
“Please don’t try to talk me out of it, Arnold,” said Martha. “As painful as this is, it’s for the best.”
“Martha, you can’t resign,” I said, surprising myself a little. “Hammie Rex needs people to look out for him.”
“You’re right, Sam,” said Martha, nodding. “As my last official action as Hamster Monitor, I hereby promote you, Sam Gibbs, from the rank of Junior Deputy Hamster Monitor to the rank of Hamster Monitor, First Class.”
“What?” I said.
“Is Hamster Monitor a real thing?” whispered Omar. Julie Bailey shrugged.
“May you do a better job than I did,” said Martha, blinking back tears as she shook my hand.
“Martha, please,” I said. “You can’t do this. I—”
“Sorry to interrupt,” said Principal Truitt.
The whole class turned to see her standing in the doorway with Mr. Grogan by her side. He was wearing a baseball catcher’s mask and pads with two thick oven mitts on his hands.
Hamstersaurus Rex vs. Squirrel Kong Page 2
