Homeroom Headhunters

by Clay McLeod Chapman

  It was then that I noticed all the other piles stowed around the room. Stashes of school supplies, each type categorized and stacked in its own mountain. I was up to my knees in the world’s most meticulous lost-and-found collection.

  Textbooks

  Old library books

  Whistles

  Cafeteria trays

  Money

  Plastic cutlery

  And my personal weapon of choice—staplers. Lots of staplers.

  You name it. All here in nice little heaps.

  “Who are you?” I finally mustered.

  “Sully.”

  In an instant, a million little black dots formed into a perfect constellation of her face.

  “Sully Tulliver?”

  “You…you know who I am?”

  I was about to nod yes, when guess who got whacked on the back of his head?

  Just when I’d found her, somebody had to sneak up from behind and bludgeon me with what felt like the world’s biggest math textbook. Knocked out cold.

  That’s one way to cram for class.

  could feel the blood rushing to my head before I opened my eyes.

  Sure enough, I came to—hanging upside down.

  I’d been strung up to a basketball hoop in our gymnasium. There was a jump rope wrapped around the lower half of my legs and tied to the rim. Another jump rope, looped around my torso, held my arms in place.

  I felt like a carcass hanging from a butcher’s meat hook.

  A meat piñata.

  Not a pretty picture, I know.

  I spotted the clock on the gym wall. It was only—10:30 a.m.? Wait. Hold up. That would mean it was still third period. Where was the Halloween assembly?

  But I was upside down. It was really 6:50 p.m. School had been over for nearly four hours! The only sign that the costume competition had come and gone were candy corns littering the gym floor, looking like the lost fangs of a few dozen werekids. Just one more mess for Mr. Simms to pick up.

  I tried to yell for help, but there was something stuffed inside my mouth.

  All I could do was wriggle my hands at my waist. I started to panic. None of this hypothetical maybe-this-is-all-just-a-dream kind of panic, but the oh-I-think-I-just-pooped-in-my-pants kind.

  Remain calm, Spencer, I said to myself. Think. How are you going to get out of this one?

  I heard a door open behind me, which sent an echo through the empty gym. I tried to turn my head around to see who was coming, but I was dangling in the wrong direction.

  I saw bare feet first.

  They were hovering just above—below—me, five sets, each attached to people wearing safety-pinned gym uniforms. Even though their feet were planted firmly on the floor, they looked like a row of wax-skinned bats hanging from the three-point line.

  I had to tilt my head to the side just to get a good look at them—and when I did, I realized there was writing all over their bodies. I got lost reading the scribbled bits of graffiti wrapped around their arms and legs.

  LOST BOY

  WHITE FANG

  ADVERTISE HERE

  The one with the paper clip nose-piercing stepped forward.

  “I blacken the name of our fair city…” he recited. “I beat up people.… I am a menace to society. Man, do I have fun!”

  Say—what?

  “Call me Peashooter.”

  The tall one with the yardsticks stepped up next. He had measured and marked a column of perpendicular lines across the length of his legs to correspond with the metric system—inches, centimeters, and millimeters. His legs looked like a pair of rulers.

  He murmured something I couldn’t quite make out.

  “You’re lard sick?” I managed to ask through my gag.

  “Yardstick.” He raised his voice. “I’m Yardstick.”

  The one with the acne had sketched the symbol of an atom across one forearm, while the image of a drafting compass piercing an anatomically correct heart was drawn on the other.

  “Call me Compass.”

  The next to step forward had LORD OF THE FRIES scrawled across the slope of his belly in a meticulously executed Old English font. There was a skull and crossbones on his forearm. Wait—scratch that. Not crossbones. A fork and knife.

  “The name’s Sporkboy,” he declared as he drum-rolled his own stomach. “Got a problem with that?”

  Again with the crazy eyes.

  I shook my head—nope.

  “Good.”

  Each was wearing about six different whistles, like strings of silver teeth dangling across their chests.

  And they’d armed themselves.

  Compasses bent open to expose their sharp points.

  X-ACTO blades attached to protractors.

  Sharpened pencils.

  I saw Sully standing at the back. She was one of the posse. The only girl among the boys. Her choice in clothes differed from theirs. And no writing anywhere I could see. Her head hung low enough for her hair to cover most of her face, but I saw her eyes peering through.

  “What are you looking at?” she asked. “You already know my name.”

  I stared back at her with pleading eyes: Help help help help help—but she didn’t seem to receive my message.

  Or want to.

  I could almost trace the veins running the length of her pale limbs, and her eyes were overly dilated.

  Like cat eyes.

  Peashooter leaned over until we were face-to-face. I noticed something in his hand.

  Something small.

  With teeth.

  He held out his hand so that I could get a good look-see.

  A staple remover—a four-fanged pincer with spring-locked jaws—was an inch away from my nose. Without saying anything, he slipped its metallic teeth into my nostrils, and pinched.

  Not enough to break the skin. No nosebleeds here. But enough to get my attention.

  I was all ears.

  “Everybody’s gone for the day.” He tugged harder. “Nobody’ll hear you.”

  He released my nose so that I rocked back and forth from the basketball rim. Then he caught me by the nose again, pinching me in place.

  “If I remove your gag, you better not scream. Promise?”

  I nodded. Slowly.

  He detached his staple remover from my nose again. He sunk its fangs into the wad in my mouth and tugged it out.

  A sock. I’d had a dirty gym sock stuffed in my mouth this whole time.

  I took a deep breath, then emptied all that fresh air from my lungs by yelling my head off: “Help me help me help me somebody please get me out of here help help help!”

  Nothing. No cavalry to save the day.

  “Told you nobody would hear,” Peashooter said. “Now you’ve gotta pay for your disloyalty.…”

  Yardstick and Sporkboy each pulled out a sock stuffed with something that appeared to be heavy. Sporkboy started swinging his over his head like a helicopter propeller, sending a slight clink-clinking sound through the air.

  They must’ve been filled with spare change.

  By my hasty calculations, about fifty-seven cents of pain each.

  Give or take.

  “Pound him,” Peashooter nodded.

  In the blink of an eye, both boys advanced and proceeded to whack me as hard as they could. The thud of money against my body brought the holler right out of me: “Ow ow ow!”

  “Never break your promises. Not to us, got it? Word is bond.”

  I gasped. “What do you want from me?”

  “We tied you up to see how you’d handle yourself.”

  “This is some kind of test? Did I pass?”

  “Hardly,” Compass huffed, the acne spread across his face reddening.

  “I’m getting really light-headed up here.…”

  Sully rushed up and brought an inhaler to my mouth. She squeezed off a gust into my lungs.

  “Somebody’s got a crush.” Sporkboy snorted. Compass laughed along with him.

  Out of nowhere, Sully brandi
shed a slingshot. Before Sporkboy could even blink, she’d loaded a penny, aimed, and fired.

  Bull’s-eye—right in the navel.

  “Owww! I was just joking.”

  “For the female of the species is more deadly than the male,” Sully recited.

  “Who the heck said that?” Sporkboy rubbed his sore tummy.

  “Rudyard Kipling.”

  “Yeah, well—For a penny in the belly isn’t as painful as my fist in your face,” he spat back. “That was me. I said that!”

  “Enough!” Peashooter silenced the two of them. He then turned back to me. “We’ve had our eyes on you for some time.”

  “What did I do?”

  “We know you’re looking for an escape.”

  Escape?

  With all the blood in my body rushing to my skull, I was having a full-blown hallucination. Either that, or this had just become the weirdest Halloween of my life.

  “The time to rise is nearly upon us.” Peashooter gnashed the teeth of his staple remover in front of my face. “Who will you stand by? Us—or the cattle you call classmates? You have been chosen to join our tribe. To become one of us!”

  Along his left forearm, I could read DAMAGE DONE.

  This can’t be happening.

  Sporkboy lunged forward, and I flinched, thinking he was about to bludgeon me with his sock cudgel again, but Peashooter held out his hand, halting him.

  “Enough.”

  “Come on,” Sporkboy whined. “Let me just have a little fun with him.…”

  Peashooter leaned into my face.

  “We can do anything we want here.” He grinned. “This is our home.”

  Sully leaned over, whispering, “It can be your home too.”

  “Think about it,” Peashooter said. “We’ll be back for you.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  Peashooter stuffed the sock into my mouth before it even dawned on me to ask him to cut me down.

  • • •

  Mr. Simms wheeled his mop and bucket into the gym. I could hear his key chain rattling at his hip ahead of seeing him.

  “What the—?” he started.

  “Mmm-mff mmff-mmm!”

  Rough translation: Get me down from here before my head pops like a tick fattened up on too much blood!

  “What’s going on here?” he asked, tugging the sock from my mouth.

  “Keep it down!” I gasped. “They’re watching.…”

  “What are you talking about?” Mr. Simms pulled out his pocketknife and started sawing through the jump rope around my torso. “Who did this?”

  “Headhunters!”

  “Head—what?”

  Done with the first rope, he started on the one suspended from the basketball rim and soon sent me splatting against the gymnasium floor.

  Ouch! My body felt like a slab of beef after a few hours with a meat tenderizer.

  “You’ve got to believe me,” I said, slowly regaining my equilibrium. “Somewhere in this school there’s a tribe of teenage headhunters!”

  Mr. Simms gave me a look I was a little too familiar with. He wasn’t buying a word of what I’d said.

  “Headhunters? In…school?”

  “Yes! Well. Sort of.”

  Mr. Simms didn’t say anything for a long time.

  “You don’t believe me?” I said.

  “Would you?”

  He had a point.

  • • •

  Mom hugged me so tight, I think she may have broken a couple of my ribs. Tears ran down her cheeks. I don’t think she’d ever been this happy to see me before.

  Then she gripped my shoulders and shook me until whiplash was inevitable. Fury flashed through her face, eclipsing her relief. “Spencer Austin Pendleton!”

  You know you’re in big trouble when your mother pulls out your middle name.

  “I called the police. I had no idea what had happened to you—”

  “I’m sorry, Mom—”

  “Don’t you ever, ever do something like this to me again!”

  “I said I was sorry!”

  Mr. Simms stepped up, coughing lightly. “You know how boys get, ma’am. Kids’ll start fooling around, and before you know it, there goes the time.”

  Mom let me go, turning her attention toward him.

  “Thank you for keeping an eye on him, Mr.…”

  “Simms.” He held out his hand and shook Mom’s. “Wasn’t any hassle, really. You got a good kid here, no matter how much of a headache he can be.”

  “I’d say he’s a full-on migraine most days.”

  “Mom…”

  “This was the last place I figured I’d find you. What were you doing at school?”

  Mr. Simms and I exchanged a quick glance as I considered telling her the truth. That I had been kidnapped by a tribe of wild kids living in the school who wanted to recruit me?

  Who was I kidding?

  “Oh, you know,” I said. “Just hanging out with some new friends.”

  Be careful what you wish for, ’cause you just might get it.…

  —Eminem

  chools look exactly the same no matter where you go. Greenfield Middle was no different.

  Same endless hallways that reach from one end of the building to the other.

  Same flickering florescent lights buzzing like bug zappers, sucking the energy from my skull: Bzzst-bzzst!

  We may as well have been moths fluttering toward electrified deaths: Bzzzzzzzzzzst!

  The only thing that had changed was my locker, which was never where it was supposed to be. Or where I thought it was supposed to be.

  Next to the gymnasium? Nope.

  The cafeteria? Nope.

  Library? Sorry—try again.

  Another thing that remained the same as my last school was my leprous rep. Contrary to popular belief, being a boat-rock-star only racked up temporary celebrity points.

  What’s the old saying?

  The more things change, the more nobody knows my name?

  For a while, whenever I passed a pack of werekids, their eyes would tighten at the sight of me, as if my mere presence was an insult to their lycanthropic clique.

  A few weeks into November and none of them even looked at me anymore.

  I was a ghost.

  Fine by me.

  I’d survive.

  Somebody had drawn a doodle of my face on the front of my locker, with a spear running through my ears and my brain dangling off the bloodied tip by its cerebral cortex.

  Below it, in bold block letters, it read: EYES ON YOU.

  It was written in permanent marker, so I doubted it’d be coming off anytime soon.

  Sorry, Mr. Simms.…

  Once I got the books I needed, I slammed the metal door shut and came face-to-face with a grizzly bear.

  You heard right: a grizzly bear.

  The overinflated head of our school mascot, Griz the Grizzly, popped out of nowhere, like he’d been hiding behind my locker door, ready to pounce.

  “Don’t do that!”

  Griz’s plastic eyes stared blankly back at me—or, more precisely, over me.

  “You take this job way too seriously, Martin.…”

  Martin Mendleson always volunteered to slip into Greenfield’s mascot costume during pep rallies.

  “Pep rally’s in the gym,” I said. “Better head over before Pritchard wonders where you’ve wandered off to.”

  Heavy breathing seeped through the wire mesh of Griz’s mouth.

  “You okay, Martin? You sound sick.…”

  There was definitely something different about Martin. Usually he was a little more animated when he wore this getup.

  “Martin?”

  Nothing.

  “Ha-ha, Martin.”

  Then from inside Griz’s mouth, I heard, “Kill the pig.”

  Even though it was barely above a whisper, I could make out the slightest giggle. Whoever was settled inside this bear’s belly, it definitely wasn’t Martin.


  Griz stood there staring until I made out the eyes inside the mask’s mouth.

  Sporkboy.

  “Meet us under the bleachers.”

  That’s when Riley Callahan and his crew waltzed up and slapped the mascot upside his fuzzy head. “What’re you two lovebirds up to? Making plans for the winter formal?”

  Griz just stared blankly.

  “Hey, Riley,” the voice inside said. “What’s that smell?”

  Before Riley could reply, a fart erupted from deep within the bear’s plush bowels. Noxious fumes seeped through the wire mesh mouth, straight into Riley’s face.

  Perfect opportunity for me to make my exit.

  With Riley and his crew gagging on poisonous grizzly-bear vapors, I slipped off into the gymnasium.

  Thanks for cutting the mustard gas, Griz.…

  • • •

  Fact: Middle-school pep rallies are never enjoyable.

  What’s fun about being forced to sit through a lame attempt at getting the student body riled up about something as abysmal as middle-school sports?

  First, the Greenfield cheerleading squad would stumble through some half-rehearsed routine, chanting, “BE AGGRESSIVE! B-E AGGRESSIVE!”

  Then the band would blast through some rah-rah-sis-boom-belch.

  And then you have to suffer through some prepackaged spiel by the assistant principal about leading your basketball/football/baseball/numbskull team to victory.

  You love pep rallies?

  To each his own.

  Below the bleachers, the sound of pounding feet was deafening, like a thousand students were marching on my head. I had slipped into the latticework of scaffolding that held up the risers, and had a perfect view of hundreds upon hundreds of shoes, all stomping simultaneously.

  A cattle stampede of herd mentality.

  Spurred on by the chant of cheerleaders: “B-E A-G-G-R-E-S-S-I-V-E!”

  Sounds like they’re out for blood.

  And there they were—perched on the metal framework that held up the bleachers. From their own personal ringside seats, they stared through the gaps in the risers.

  Peashooter gave a quick nod. His paper-clip piercing had a shine to it, even in the shadows. I could just make out the tattoos on his arm. They had changed. Now cursive letters wrapped the length of his right arm like ivy: THE ARTFUL DODGER.

  Pretty cool.

  I found a spot on a metal bar covered in scabs of bubble gum, next to Sully. Her hair was hiding most of her face, but I could see her eyes peering out.