by Rob Vlock
Just as I was about to pass out from the pain, the magnet cut out and dropped away from my face, clattering to the floor.
Standing in front of me, her hand on the electromagnet’s switch, was Alicia.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Uh, I don’t know.” I put my hands to my face to make sure it was still in one piece. My face felt like it had been sucked on by a gigantic vacuum cleaner, but at least it hadn’t been torn off my head. “Yeah, I think,” I panted.
Alicia looked at me with a curious expression. “What was that about?”
“The usual,” I sighed. “Brandon Marks.”
She squinted at me with her piercing green eyes. “No, I mean what happened with that magnet? It looked like it was . . . stuck to your face. You have braces or something?”
I showed her my teeth in what probably was more of a grimace than the smile I wanted it to be. “No, no braces. I . . . I have no idea what just happened. It felt like it was ripping my face off, though. Thanks for turning it off.”
Without taking her eyes off me, she slowly reached into her backpack.
The bell for second period rang, and Mr. Collins’s next class flooded into the room. Alicia paused, looked around, then took her hand out of her backpack and zipped it up.
“I’ll see you later,” she said abruptly.
She trotted out of the room to her second-period class, leaving me alone with the contraption that had tried to eat my face.
What had just happened? Had I gotten an electrical shock from the magnet? I gingerly reached out and touched the device, bracing myself for a zap. But my finger just met the cool copper wires. No shock. No pain. No nothing.
Hmm.
I reached out to turn the magnet back on.
“Sven?” Mr. Collins said when my finger was an inch away from the switch. “Don’t you have a class to get to?”
“Oh, right. Yeah.” I packed up my bag and headed out for second period, trying in vain to make sense of my run-in with the magnet.
CHAPTER 9.0:
< value= [I Commit a Felony] >
I WAITED THAT NIGHT UNTIL I heard Mom and Dad engaging in their nightly symphony of snores before I slipped out of bed and got dressed. I put on a black shirt and the darkest jeans I had.
What I was about to do was probably the stupidest thing I had ever done in my life—and that included jumping over the cake. But I needed Will’s phone. I needed it. Like, needed needed it. It was all I could think about.
Because if I couldn’t prove that I wasn’t insane, I’d just . . . go crazy. And that phone was the one piece of evidence that could show my arm really had come off. I had to get it back.
So I slapped on my Fighting Lungfish baseball cap, pulled the brim down as low as I could, crept down the stairs, and snuck out of the house.
• • •
The streetlights cast a weak sepia glow as I approached Shallix Pediatrics on Union Street half an hour later. My guts felt like they were turning to jelly. Not just because I was about to do something about a million times more illegal than anything I had ever done, but because Schenectady was kind of creepy at night. Every alley I passed concealed dark shadows that seemed to move and rustle. As I walked, I thought I saw someone—or something—disappear around nearly every corner. Footsteps would echo behind me, but when I turned around, no one was there.
By the time I got to the front door of Dr. Shallix’s office, my fear nearly made me chicken out. I couldn’t believe I was about to do this. I wasn’t a criminal. The worst thing I ever did before this was scarf down a few grapes in the produce section of the supermarket when my mom wasn’t looking.
I glanced behind me to make sure nobody was around. The street was empty. So I tried the door. Locked. Of course. My heart sank. What had I expected? That Dr. Shallix would just leave the place open for anyone who might want to stop by at midnight?
I searched for another way in. The front of the building only had the door and a large plate-glass window. I decided to check out the alley to the right. A slanting shard of light from a streetlight provided just enough illumination for me to keep from walking face-first into a brick wall. I squinted against the darkness, looking for a way in.
Then I saw it. A small window about eight feet from the ground. It looked like it might have been left ajar.
But I couldn’t reach it. If only I could find something to climb on. Like the Dumpster I proceeded to bang my knee against, for example, because I was busy looking up at the window. Ouch!
I was lucky it was positioned just below the window, because it was way too big for me to move by myself. I scrambled on top of it as quietly as I could. The overpowering stench of rotting garbage rising from it made my head spin. I almost fell in, but I regained my balance and nervously licked a film of Dumpster sludge off my finger. Then I pulled myself up to the window. It slid open smoothly, and a second later I hoisted myself onto the sill, one leg inside, one leg outside.
I swung my leg over and tried to lower myself to the waiting room floor. It wasn’t easy. I set my foot down on an end table covered with out-of-date children’s magazines and it nearly tipped over. Luckily, I still had a firm grip on the windowsill, so I managed to keep myself from falling. I tried again, making sure I put my weight squarely at the center of the table, and made it to the floor safely.
The waiting room was so quiet that the soft gurgling of the fish tank filter practically sounded like a raging waterfall. Over its incessant gurgle, I could hear my own heartbeat, punctuated by anxious, quivery breaths.
The waiting room posters and pictures that had looked so annoyingly babyish in the daytime now had a sinister quality. As if Flopsy the Bunny were about to leap from the painting near the front door and sink its oversize rabbit teeth into my neck.
As I made my way toward the corridor leading to the examination rooms, I paused to look into the fish tank. Huh. I’d never noticed it before, but those little guys looked a lot like Mr. Googly Eyes, the pet fish I used to have before I accidentally sent him to fish heaven when I fed him a bit of one of Mom’s cakes.
“Nice fishies,” I said softly. “Just pretend I’m not here, okay?”
My eyes were probably playing tricks on me in the gloom, but it almost looked like they turned toward the sound of my voice.
I made my way down the hallway to the room where Dr. Shallix had taken me earlier. I slowly opened the door and stepped inside. There was no window in there, so it was nearly pitch-black. I strained my eyes but couldn’t make out a thing. So I stooped down and started feeling for the garbage can.
After bumping my head against the leg of a desk (twice), I managed to find it. Reaching in and groping around for the phone, I came up empty. I even pulled the plastic liner out to see if Will’s phone had somehow slipped underneath.
No luck.
I did find a rubber glove on the floor next to the trash can, though. Without thinking, I popped it in my mouth. Chewy. I rolled my eyes at myself in the dark. Why did I have to be so gross? I spat the glove out and tried to think where else I could look for the phone. It had to be somewhere.
Just then, I heard the front door of the office open and shut. And the hallway light clicked on, piercing the dark of the room with a painfully bright sliver of light.
CHAPTER 10.0:
< value= [I Go Dumpster Diving] >
MY HEART NEARLY BURST OUT of my chest. For a long moment, I stood frozen with fear. Then I snapped out of it and dove behind the end of the exam table.
“There is no need to be afraid,” a voice said from the hallway. His voice.
At first I thought Dr. Shallix was talking to me. But then he continued, “We will just have a little talk. You like to talk, yes?”
I heard a scared, muffled whimper in response. It sounded like a kid.
I squeezed myself into a tight little ball, wishing I could become invisible. Or, better yet, disappear altogether. I looked around wildly, desperate to find a better place to hid
e, sure that in a few seconds Dr. Shallix would walk in and find me.
I started to sweat.
And suddenly I really had to pee.
I listened to two sets of footsteps shuffle down the hall. They got closer and closer. In a few seconds, I saw a shadow cross the doorway. They were coming in!
For a dozen excruciatingly long seconds, their shapes loomed in the doorway, not more than ten feet from me. Finally, I heard a set of keys jingle in a lock. The shadows moved and disappeared with the sound of a closing door.
I peeked around the exam table. The hallway was empty. My chest loosened and I took in a big gulp of air. I had to get out of there. Fast.
But even so, I hesitated. I didn’t have what I had come for: Will’s phone. I struggled to quiet the voice in my head that kept screaming run away, and resolved to keep looking.
I cautiously approached the door, then darted out into the hallway, trotting on my tiptoes to avoid making a sound. Ducking into the first doorway on my left, I found myself in one of the other exam rooms. With the light still on in the hallway, I quickly located the garbage can and searched it. Empty. The same thing went for the can in the third room.
Will’s phone wasn’t anywhere.
I let out a deflated sigh and snuck back out to the waiting room. I didn’t want to stick around any longer than I had to. I tried the front door, but it wouldn’t budge. I looked up at the window and realized I’d have to go out the way I came in.
I climbed onto the blue vinyl couch next to the end table, and my sneakers let out a loud, plasticky squeak as they settled into the upholstery. I froze, on the verge of an all-out freak-out, waiting to see if Dr. Shallix had heard the sound. The door he’d disappeared behind didn’t open. I inched over to the end table and carefully stepped onto it so I could reach the window.
Just then, I heard Dr. Shallix’s voice in the hallway.
“You are comfortable, yes? Good, good. I will be right back.”
My stomach plummeted like a satellite crashing through Earth’s atmosphere. I grabbed onto the windowsill and leapt up from the end table. Unfortunately, the force of my jump tipped the end table onto one leg, where it balanced for several seconds. I didn’t wait to see which way it was going to drop. I hoisted myself up to the window and started to lower my body down gently onto the Dumpster when . . .
CRASH!
The end table slammed to the floor, scattering magazines across the waiting room.
“Hello?” Dr. Shallix called out from somewhere inside. “Is somebody here?”
I let go of the windowsill and gravity took over. I tumbled headfirst into the Dumpster. A huge pile of garbage broke my fall.
I lay completely still, trying to blend into the trash. Something hard poked into my back, but I didn’t dare shift position. I could barely breathe, which actually wasn’t a bad thing, given the stench.
Still, that didn’t stop me from fear-eating a used tissue I found stuck to the side of the Dumpster.
“Hello?” Dr. Shallix called from the window directly above me, his teeth gleaming in the moon’s cold glow. “Pumpkin, are you out there?”
Pumpkin? Who was Pumpkin? I hoped he didn’t mean me, because Pumpkin was almost as bad as Trashmouth.
“Pumpkin?” he said again. “Pumpkin?”
After a few seconds, the window slammed shut.
I counted to ten to make sure Dr. Shallix had really gone. The silence deepened. I reached around to move the thing that dug into my back. It felt kind of familiar. Smooth. Rectangular. Kinda . . . phone-like. I struggled upright to try to find a little more light.
It was a phone! With a screen that was spiderwebbed with cracks. Will’s phone. Yes! I had found it!
My triumph lasted about three seconds.
I was rocked off my feet as the whole Dumpster jolted, propelled a good six feet farther into the alley by some huge . . . thing slamming into its side. Five hundred pounds of metal screeched on the pavement.
My hand hit the top edge of the Dumpster and the phone tumbled to the asphalt.
Something in the alley snarled viciously. It sounded a little like a dog, but much lower pitched. Like a cross between a wolf and a bear.
I scrambled up the pile of trash, desperate to find out what could be making that sound. Quivering, I grasped the smooth lip of the container and pulled myself up high enough to peek over the edge.
Right below me, with paws propped up on the side of the Dumpster and lethal-looking three-inch fangs dripping with saliva, was Pumpkin.
CHAPTER 11.0:
< value= [I’m Nearly Eaten by a Chihuahua] >
I KNEW IT WAS PUMPKIN because it wore a pink-and-purple dog tag that said pumpkin. Even in the dark, I had no trouble reading the tag—it was roughly the size of a dinner plate.
The reason the tag was roughly the size of a dinner plate was that Pumpkin was roughly the size of a pony.
Only Pumpkin wasn’t a pony.
Pumpkin was a Chihuahua.
The largest Chihuahua I—or probably anyone else, for that matter—had ever seen.
Pumpkin’s massive dome-like head featured shiny black eyes the size of bowling balls and ears practically big enough to use as sleeping bags. It was like if you took thirty or forty Chihuahuas and mushed them all together to make one supersize Chihuahua.
As cute as that might sound, trust me, it wasn’t. Mainly because Pumpkin seemed determined to eat me.
My mind struggled to understand what I was looking at. Maybe she’d chowed down on some radioactive waste along with her Alpo. Or maybe one of her parents had been an elephant.
Then she snapped at me, coming about an inch from tearing my face off, and any thoughts about why Pumpkin was so huge were instantly replaced by one overwhelming thought:
Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!
I dove back into the Dumpster. My heart thumped like a hyperactive hummingbird. For a few seconds, I heard nothing but silence. Then . . .
BOOM!
Pumpkin slammed her round head into the side of the Dumpster. The metal wall buckled.
BOOM!
The wall buckled some more. A few more head butts and she’d transform my stinky hiding place into a stinky coffin.
I pressed up against the rear of the Dumpster and tried to force my brain to stop freaking out long enough to think of something. How do you get rid of a three-hundred-pound Chihuahua? A fifty-pound strip of bacon? I wasn’t about to find that in the Dumpster.
But I did find what felt and smelled like a half-eaten tuna sub. I took a little bite (I couldn’t help it), and then I stood up and tossed it out into the alley, hoping it would distract Pumpkin long enough for me to make a run for it. Unfortunately, she snapped it out of the air and swallowed it in one bite.
I sat back down in the trash and tried to think of a way out. Even if climbing back into Dr. Shallix’s office seemed like a good idea (which it didn’t), the Dumpster had been pushed too far away. I couldn’t reach the window.
I started to think there was no way out. And to top things off, I still had to pee. Bad. Really bad. I couldn’t hold it much longer. I had to go. Like now!
At first, I figured I’d just go right in the Dumpster. I mean, it was already filled with nasty garbage, right? So who would notice? But being tossed around in a Dumpster of garbage and pee was too gross even for me. So I searched around until I found an empty milk carton and I . . . well, I used it.
When I finished, I threw the half-full carton out into the alley, where it hit the ground and tipped out its contents. I kind of felt bad for littering. But at the moment, littering was the least of my problems.
Suddenly, Pumpkin stopped growling at me. She sniffed the air, turned around three times, and headed straight for the puddle of pee.
Then she started rolling in it.
Eww!
Dogs can be so disgusting sometimes.
After a few seconds, I realized she was so interested in the puddle of pee that I might just be able to sne
ak out of the alley past her. I slowly eased myself out of the Dumpster until I stood on the ground. So far, so good.
I started out of the alley, but then I remembered the phone. Glancing back at Pumpkin to make sure she was still preoccupied, I tiptoed back to where the phone lay on the asphalt, picked it up, and put it in my pocket.
Yes! I had it! As soon as I got home I could—
Uh-oh.
Pumpkin spotted me.
She stood up and took a step in my direction.
I took a step backward.
Then she took another step toward me.
This continued until I backed right into the wall at the end of the alley. I was trapped. And Pumpkin, teeth bared, moved closer and closer.
When she was inches away from me, I closed my eyes and braced myself to be ripped apart.
The thing is, Pumpkin didn’t rip me apart. Instead, she pressed her nose against my hand and sniffed. Then she let out a happy little yip, trotted back to the puddle, sniffed it, and then came back to smell my hand again. She cocked her head at me, reared up, and pinned me against the wall, licking my face all over.
Yuck! I guess she liked my pee.
After about ten seconds of subjecting me to her smelly dog breath, she stopped licking me and went back to rolling in the puddle. I figured that was my cue to leave.
• • •
When I finally made it home, my alarm clock told me it was 1:46 a.m. I had been gone less than two hours. But my whole body felt drained. It seemed more like two days. I could barely find the energy to untie my sneakers.
Once I kicked them off, I tucked Will’s cell phone into the back of my sock drawer for safekeeping and flopped down on top of my bed fully dressed. A sense of hopelessness settled over me like a cold, wet blanket. Sure, I had found Will’s broken phone. But I had also found yet another thing that made me doubt my own sanity—a three-hundred-pound Chihuahua. Who would believe me if I told them I’d nearly gotten chewed up by a lapdog big enough for the Statue of Liberty’s lap? I wasn’t completely sure I believed it myself.
