National Espionage, Rescue, and Defense Society

by Michael Buckley

  “Well, we’ll have to extract those extra choppers.”

  “Extract?”

  “Yeah. You know, yank them out. But there is good news. The tooth fairy is going to owe you a bundle.”

  Gupta slapped his knee and burst into a giggling fit. After a while he wiped the happy tears from his cheeks. “Sorry, that’s an old orthodontist joke.”

  “Is it going to hurt?” Jackson asked.

  “Absolutely. But that’s not even your biggest problem. You’ve got summer teeth.”

  “What are ‘summer teeth’?”

  “Sum ’er going this way and sum ’er going that way,” Dr. Gupta said, chuckling. He wondered if perhaps a career in stand-up comedy had been his true calling.

  Jackson, however, was not amused, and when Gupta spotted his scowl, the orthodontist got back to business. “Sorry. What I’m trying to say is your teeth are all over the place. A few of them are sideways. There’s one that’s upside-down! Don’t worry. It’s nothing a set of braces won’t fix.”

  Jackson felt his heart stop. “Braces!” Nerds had braces.

  Dr. Gupta smiled reassuringly. “A lot of patients worry that braces are going to ruin their lives, but I assure you that nothing will change, Jackson. Your friends are still going to like you. I doubt that anyone will notice at all.”

  When Jackson looked back on that moment, he realized that was when a terrible truth was revealed to him: Adults are liars, horrible, soulless, black-hearted liars. The braces didn’t just ruin his life, they demolished it, then salted the land so nothing would ever grow there again! When Dr. Gupta was finished, Jackson was thirty-two teeth lighter but fourteen pounds of metal heavier. Each of his teeth was encased in a jagged steel cage that ripped at his gums. Worse, a metal halo that Gupta called “headgear” was attached to Jackson’s bicuspids, and protruded out of his mouth and encircled his head like Saturn’s rings.

  It also turned out to be highly magnetic.

  Jackson found that by the end of an average school day, his headgear had collected cuff links, belt buckles, hairpins, cafeteria trays, cell phones, and umbrellas. He once stepped too close to a school bus and became locked onto its bumper. He was helplessly dragged through a rainstorm as children were dropped off all over town. He nearly died the night his father decided to treat the family to dinner at the local hibachi restaurant.

  But the most horrible side effect he suffered wasn’t the pain or the humiliation—it was the sudden end to his reign as king of Nathan Hale Elementary. His popularity vanished overnight. Friends turned their backs when he walked by. Teachers cowered in the lounge, hoping to avoid eye contact. The classroom hamster buried itself under a mound of sawdust and pretended he wasn’t there. Even his best friend turned on him.

  “Nice braces, goober,” Brett said when Jackson tried to sit at their usual lunch table. “You look like you’ve been munching on a bicycle chain.” Their other friends laughed and refused to let Jackson sit down. They banished him to a table in the far corner of the cafeteria where even the custodian with the lazy eye wouldn’t go.

  His brother, Chaz, was even crueler. He called Jackson “Braceface” and “Nerdatron.” (Chaz had a thing for robot humor.) He found particular amusement in Jackson’s headgear. At dinnertime, Chaz would bring a collection of household tools with him to see which would snap off the table and attach itself to Jackson’s face. In the night he snuck into Jackson’s room and strung party balloons to it. When he was suiting up for football practice, Chaz would hang his cleats from it. When Jackson complained to his father, his dad told him to suck it up. “A little ribbing is good for you. It will make you a man.”

  As the winds of autumn arrived and leaves turned yellow, orange, and red, Jackson sensed the coming of football season and a change in his fortunes. Football was Jackson’s last hope for regaining some of his popularity. He was still the team’s star quarterback, even if he did have an Erector set circling his head. Sadly, on the first day of practice, Jackson discovered his headgear prevented him from putting on his helmet.

  “You can’t play without a helmet, kid,” the coach said. “You’ll get brain damage.”

  Getting booted off the football team was the last nail in the popularity coffin. Friendless, Jackson drifted through the halls flashing smiles that were never returned, raising his hand for high fives that never came, waiting by his locker for admirers who never showed up. It was as if the warm golden glow that had shined on Jackson his whole life had been turned off.

  One day he found himself reminiscing at photos in the school’s trophy case—photos of his father leading the Tigers to victory, of his brother catching a touchdown pass. He found a photo of his own team, and saw himself proudly holding the winning trophy, the same trophy his father and brother had won. Sports were the glue that held his family together, especially since his mother died. The Jackson family had no patience for losers. They were winners on and off the field. Where did Jackson fit in now?

  Just then, there was a terrific crash as the winning trophy was yanked through the display case glass by Jackson’s magnetic headgear. It took several teachers a half hour to pry it off his face.

  The next day Jackson was banned from reminiscing.

  The Hyena reached into her pocket and took out a folded note. She double-checked the coordinates written inside and frowned. There was no mistake. She was in the right place and there wasn’t a living soul in sight. Her mysterious new employer had started off on the wrong foot. It was rude to leave a person waiting in subzero weather at the North Pole! With a sigh, she wondered why criminal masterminds were so obsessed with desolate locations. Couldn’t this “Dr. Jigsaw” meet her in Hawaii or the Bahamas? Half of the money she made as a criminal was spent on mittens and long underwear.

  Suddenly, she heard a whipping sound above her and looked to the sky. A black helicopter with no identifying marks of any kind hovered overhead and then landed several yards away. She tried to peer through the windows, but they were tinted black. Then the door opened and two men exited the craft. The first was a tall, thin man with bushy white hair and a neatly trimmed goatee. His face was perfect—too perfect—with well-spaced eyes, a long, straight nose, a strong chin, and not a single wrinkle. But another glance said that this man had had a tremendous amount of plastic surgery; his features had been pulled, pushed, and pounded into place. Now, his dark eyes locked onto the Hyena, studying her features as if making plans to rearrange them as well.

  The second man was enormous, with slicked-back hair and chiseled cheekbones. He peered at the Hyena beneath heavy brows. “You da Hyena?” he grunted. His voice told her all she needed to know. He was a goon.

  “No, I’m at the North Pole ’cause I’m Santa Claus,” she replied. She couldn’t stand goons. Stupidity was like an art form to them, and this particular goon was clearly the Leonardo da Vinci of goons.

  “Dumb” Vinci sneered and turned back to the helicopter. Inside the still-open doorway the Hyena spied a figure dressed all in black. He—or she—turned toward her, revealing a mask with a ghostly skull painted on it. The figure nodded, and on his signal Dumb Vinci handed the Hyena an envelope full of money.

  “Who is that?” the Hyena asked.

  The first man ignored her question. “My name is Dr. Felix Jigsaw. I’m the preeminent expert on tectonic movement—”

  “Tectonic what?”

  “The movement of continents!” said Jigsaw. It was clear he had little patience for people he considered intellectually inferior. “I have a little project I’m working on and I believe you can help.”

  “What kind of project?” the Hyena asked as she counted the cash inside the envelope.

  “I’m going to conquer the world.”

  The Hyena sighed. If she had a nickel for every criminal mastermind who said he was going to conquer the world, she’d be a very rich assassin. They never succeeded. Still, there was a lot of money in the envelope. If that was his dream, who was she to discourage him? “Soun
ds good, boss. What do you want me to do?”

  Dr. Jigsaw took a piece of yellow paper out of his coat and handed it to the Hyena. She looked it over and smiled. Her career was finally on track.

  “Whom should I kill first?” she asked.

  Dr. Jigsaw shook his head. “You aren’t killing anyone. I want you to kidnap them.”

  “Kidnap? That’s a job for a goon. I’m an assassin,” the Hyena said, trying to hand him back the paper.

  “You want da money or not?” Dumb Vinci grunted.

  The Hyena glanced at the envelope stuffed with cash. Inside was more than ten thousand dollars. She remembered that her subscription to Tiger Beat was about to expire … and there were those leather boots she had seen at the mall…. She stuffed the money into her pocket. “Once I get them, where do I bring them?”

  Dr. Jigsaw turned and pointed toward the horizon. It was then that the Hyena noticed a silver fortress in the distance, built on the ice.

  She was going to have to stock up on long underwear.

  Without the gaggle of friends that usually surrounded him, Jackson felt like a ghost—a formless entity that no one could see or hear. He could have worn a clown suit to school or danced Irish jigs with his hair on fire and no one would have batted an eye, not even his old gang. He watched them from afar as they ate their lunches in the cafeteria. When they laughed, he laughed. When they whispered to one another, he imagined being part of their secret.

  He was, in a word, pathetic. But it was during these lonely days that Jackson began to notice things about his friends he had never noticed before. For example, Steve Sarver smelled each bite of his food before he ate it. It didn’t matter whether he was having egg salad or peanut butter and jelly, he sniffed then chewed. Sniffed, chewed. Sniffed, chewed. Sniffed, chewed.

  Ron Schultz limped, favoring his right leg. Lori Baker licked her lips every 2.3 seconds (Jackson timed it). Jenise Corron wouldn’t eat peas. Even his former best friend, Brett Bealer, who had once seemed like the coolest kid Jackson knew, had an odd quirk—he skipped when he ran.

  As Jackson sat on the school bus one afternoon thinking about some of the quirks he had seen that day, he felt a tingling sensation at the back of his brain. It swept through his whole body and set his imagination on fire. Why did his friends do the things they did? Were they aware of their strange habits? He decided to dedicate himself to unlocking the mystery of their puzzling behavior.

  The next day he began his life as a spy in earnest. He eavesdropped on his friends’ conversations. He followed them home. He opened their mail. He dug into their trash for clues. Remarkably, no one questioned his activities. No one stopped to ask why he was sorting through disgusting bags of garbage. Jackson was a social outcast, a misfit, a nerd—kids like that were always doing weird things; it hardly deserved attention. Jackson really was like a ghost.

  Eventually, he found clues—little scraps of evidence like puzzle pieces. When they were assembled, they created a picture of the person Jackson was watching. Soon, he knew more about his old friends than they knew about themselves. Steve had once had a violent case of food poisoning from some bad clams he had eaten in Playa del Carmen, Mexico; Ron had an ingrown toenail; Lori drank too much cranberry juice, which gave her a bad case of dry mouth; Jenise had once had a pea lodged in her nostril for two weeks; and Brett, well, he just liked to skip.

  To his amazement, Jackson realized that all his former friends were misfits too. Each of them had some bizarre habit that could have easily gotten them ostracized … if anyone had noticed. But his discovery puzzled Jackson. If everyone was an oddball, why had he been singled out as a nerd? Resentment set in, and Jackson contemplated revenge. He considered posting a list of his friends’ bizarre tics on every locker in Nathan Hale Elementary. How would Brett and the others like it when they were the objects of ridicule? How would they feel when they had to eat their lunches under the stairs? But something kept Jackson from carrying out his plan. Not loyalty, he realized, but the fact that his “spy” work had been fun. If he was being honest, it was the most fun he had ever had. And if he wanted to do more of it, he couldn’t risk exposure.

  The problem with mysteries is once they are solved, they become boring. So when Jackson was done with his former friends, he began spying on other students, and then when they got boring, he moved on to the teachers and staff, the PTA, the band director, and even the crossing guard. Soon Jackson had unlocked nearly every secret at Nathan Hale, and worried that he might have to turn to schoolwork to keep himself occupied. But then, like a ray of sunshine from the heavens above, the “nerd herd” stumbled into his life.

  They consisted of five of the most awkward kids in the history of fifth grade: Duncan Dewey, a chubby African American kid whose diet consisted entirely of paste; Matilda Choi, a wheezing and gasping Korean American who was never far from her inhalers; Heathcliff Hodges, a freckled kid whose outrageous overbite made him look like a camel; Ruby Peet, a scratching, sniffing, sweating, and swollen collection of allergies; and finally, Julio Escala, otherwise known as “Flinch.” Julio was a walking ball of energy spiked by the dozens of cookies, candy bars, and sugary sodas he consumed each day. He was so hyperactive he appeared as a blur.

  Jackson had never really noticed these particular nerds before. It was easy to overlook them. The nerd herd never participated in any clubs or sports. They steered clear of social settings like dances and pep rallies. They had no use for other kids—not even other nerds. It boggled Jackson’s mind, but it was almost as if the nerd herd didn’t want to fit in.

  When Jackson told his brother about the herd, Chaz bristled. “You sound like you’re envious of them.”

  Though he didn’t admit it to Chaz, Jackson realized that his brother was sort of right. The herd might have been a collection of misshapen goobers, but at least they had each other. They were inseparable, and Jackson longed to have that kind of friendship again. When he realized he was jealous of a bunch of nerds, it was such a shock he accidentally clamped his teeth down on his thumb. His braces locked together like a vice, requiring a visit from the fire department with their “Jaws of Life.”

  The next day, thumb in a splint, Jackson set out to solve the mystery of the herd. It wasn’t easy. He knew close to nothing about them. Besides lactose-free pudding, the only thing that Duncan, Heathcliff, Matilda, Ruby, and Flinch seemed interested in was reading quietly in the library. Jackson had been completely unaware that his school had a library. At first he was dumbfounded that anyone would want to spend their free time around so many books, but then he spotted the school’s librarian, Ms. Holiday. She was an angel in a cardigan sweater. She had blonde hair, skin like milk, and smart-looking glasses that magnified her gorgeous blue eyes. She was so pretty, Jackson could barely concentrate, and promptly fell over a shelving cart, dumping books everywhere. However, he soon discerned that Ms. Holiday was not the reason the herd hung out in the library. The boys in the herd paid little attention to her or her dazzling smile, and the girls, even less. They actually read the books!

  When the bell rang at the end of free period, the herd filed out into the hall. Jackson looked at the books they left behind. Duncan was reading a book on the chemical compounds in glue. Heathcliff’s book was on military mind-control experiments. Matilda had been studying the aerodynamic qualities of rockets. Ruby was reading a guide to surviving hay fever, and Flinch, well, Jackson couldn’t tell what he had been reading since the pages were covered in chocolate and nougat.

  The nerd herd’s reading material was as mysterious as they were. Hoping for better clues, Jackson decided to follow them home. At the end of the day he raced outside to wait for his targets, but they never came out! The other kids fled the school like pigs at a barbecue, but the herd was not among them. Maybe they were at band practice or a meeting of the Star Trek Fan Society, Jackson guessed, but when it grew dark, he had to accept that they had left without him noticing. As he trudged home in frustration, dodging the dozens of mag
netized hubcaps his headgear attracted off of passing cars, he wondered if the herd actually lived in the school. He shook off the idea as silly, but there was certainly something odd about those kids.

  After a week without learning much, Jackson caught a lucky break in class. His teacher, Mr. Pfeiffer, was famous for his lesson plans. Instead of earth science or say, grammar, Pfeiffer concentrated on a subject he was well acquainted with— himself. This particular day was no different. While Pfeiffer waxed on about his favorite vacations, Jackson watched the herd. And something extraordinary happened: All five of them sneezed at the same time. At first Jackson didn’t think much of it. After all, nerds were always sneezing. But the sneeze was followed by something peculiar. No sooner had these nerds wiped their noses than bucktoothed Heathcliff marched to the front of the class and said something to Mr. Pfeiffer in a low voice. The teacher seemed almost mesmerized. He nodded enthusiastically, then gave Heathcliff a hall pass. All five of the nerds walked out of class. A moment later, Pfeiffer was back to discussing the benefits of cocoa butter and aloe vera.

  If the simultaneous sneeze had happened once, Jackson wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but several days later, during Pfeiffer’s lecture on how he planned to redecorate his apartment, the herd went into another sneezing fit. As before, Heathcliff approached the teacher and whispered something, and a moment later the herd was dashing into the hall. Jackson realized he was witnessing a pattern and, also, that Pfeiffer was unqualified to educate children. The next time it happened, Jackson would be prepared.

  A few days later, when the herd’s sinus sirens wailed once more, and when Pfeiffer gave the gang the go-ahead to leave, Jackson darted out into the hall after them. He looked one way and then the other, and spotted them as they raced around a corner.