Attack of the Tagger

by Wendelin Van Draanen

  I got a movie clip of the whole thing. And I almost busted out of my disguise and cried, “Gotcha, you villain!”

  Good thing Ryan didn’t give me the chance. Revealing my secret identity by popping out of a stinky sack wouldn’t exactly help Shredderman’s image.

  Not to mention my already poopy image as Nolan Byrd.

  In the blink of an eye, Ryan had slipped the spray can back inside the car—probably under the seat, where Dr. Voss would never think to look—and was gone.

  But still. I was bursting with excitement. I’d trapped him! I’d really trapped him! I zoomed back through the movie clip and viewed it from the beginning. Yes! There he was, spraying his own mom’s car! Yes, yes, yes! I about boinged up and down in my yard-waste sack.

  I checked out my face flap window.

  Nobody to the right…

  Nobody to the left…

  But uh-oh. A truck was slowing down It was turning into the parking lot. It was a gardener’s truck. One with rakes and hoes. One half full of… uh-double-oh! Yard-waste sacks!

  I had to get out of my disguise! Fast! Only just then someone screamed. It wasn’t a little eeeek, either.

  It was loud!

  It was shrill!

  It was close.

  I turned sideways and peeked out my right armhole.

  It was Dr. Voss!

  She circled her car, screaming, crying, yelling for Mrs. Holler to call the police. And boy! Who’d ever guess a principal knew so many four-letter words!

  I stowed my camera safely inside a cargo pocket, then shriveled up and inched back as much as I could. What would Dr. Voss do if she found me? Oh, no! She’d probably think I was the Tagger! I had proof I wasn’t, but what if she got mad and threw my camera? What if she destroyed my evidence?

  Pretty soon the place was swarming with adults. They were everywhere! I was going from flap to flap, trying to figure out what to do! I needed more air! I needed to get out of there! I needed… uh-oh… the gardener was backing his truck right over the curb. Right up to the sacks!

  The driver got out.

  His partner got out.

  They dropped the tailgate, hiked up their pants, and started flinging sacks into the truck.

  Uh-quintuple-oh!

  I peeked out the front flap. Dr. Voss was still stomping around! I looked out the side flap. Those gardeners would be at me in no time! I was 76 pounds! 34.5 kilograms! They’d break their backs!

  They didn’t break their backs. They just hurled me on top and went back for more.

  I didn’t break mine, either, getting tossed in, but boy! when two other sacks landed on me, I was squished! I was dying for air!

  I was afraid to shove my arms out yet, but believe me, I pried open the face hole so I could breathe! And that’s when I saw the police cars pulling up to the school.

  The gardeners got in the truck quick and bumped off the curb and onto the street. I watched the school get smaller. And smaller. And then the truck zoomed around the corner and the school disappeared.

  I didn’t know where we were going, but we were sure going there fast!

  I had to get off the truck!

  I tried untying the sack. I couldn’t see what I was doing! I couldn’t get it open!

  I tried ripping the plastic. It was really strong!

  So I got my scissors and cut myself out. Just rip, snip, snip, like I was coming out of some stinky, sweaty cocoon.

  I stayed low, hiding under other sacks so the gardeners wouldn’t see me in the rearview mirror. And I was planning to climb out at the first red light, only we kept hitting green lights. And forget stop signs! They treated them like slow signs.

  Pretty soon I wouldn’t know where I was!

  I had to do something.

  So I pushed off the sack I was hiding under. I flipped around. I stuck my thumbs in my ears, pressed my face up to the cab window, and shouted, “Wroooagggh!”

  The driver smashed on the brakes—which pushed my face into the window even harder— but when we stopped, I charged for the tailgate, swung myself over, and ran.

  I was never so happy to get home in my whole life. It took me at least an hour. Maybe two! What kept me going was the movie clip. I watched it about twenty times. I couldn’t wait to get it on the Internet!

  After I got my backpack out of the bushes, I snuck through the garage door, dug the house key out of the nail can, and let myself in. Then I went to the laundry room, emptied all my pockets, and stripped down to my underwear.

  Maybe most superheroes know how to do their own laundry, but this one didn’t. But I couldn’t exactly leave my clothes in the laundry basket—they were suspiciously dusty and dirty. And if clothes can breathe, well, mine had bionic breath. Pee-yew!

  So I read the knobs on the washer, measured out some soap, and got the machine running.

  Hey… piece of cake!

  I raced down to the bathroom, took the speediest shower ever, zoomed to my room, and booted up my computer. It was payback time!

  I loaded the movie clip.

  Beau-ti-ful!

  I made a Jogger in Action link that took you straight to it.

  Wa-hoo-hoo!

  I linked the other images I’d gotten at Old Town Square—which I could finally use—and made a Tagger’s Dumb-Baby Friends link on my home page. Who else knew who the Tagger was? it said above it. Click here to see! And under the images I’d gotten at Old Town, I lined up the yearbook mugshots I had scanned in and typed in their names below them: Alvin “Bubba" Bixby, Ryan “Tagger" Voss, Carl Blanco, Manny Davis, and A.J. Penne.

  I ran to the laundry room. The washer was done! I threw my clothes in the dryer.

  Cranked the knob to High.

  Pushed the On button.

  Around they went, rrruhr-rrruhr-rrruhr!

  Laundry’s easy!

  I raced back down to my room. There was still one more thing I wanted to do, but I was having an intergalactic war in my head over it.

  It was a little bit mean.

  But then, this person had been a little bit mean to my sidekick. Actually, really mean. And buster, I don’t care who you are, you don’t mess with my sidekick!

  So I scanned in an image of Dr. Voss from my yearbook. Then I made an I’m the Tagger’s Mother! link that took you to her picture and said: I’m Doctor Ivana Voss, the principal at Cedar Valley Elementary. My phone number is 714-555-9853. Isn’t my son wonderful? Please call and let me know what you think.

  I was having a blast!

  The phone rang. And even though it was down the hall by my mom’s desk, it shot me out of my seat.

  After four rings, the recorder picked up. “You’ve reached Eve ‘n’ Steven’s. Please leave a message at the beep.” Beeeeeep. Then came my mother’s voice, “Nolan? Honey, if you can hear this, pick up the phone!”

  “Hello… ?” I said, like my nose was stuffed with snot.

  “Nolan!”

  “Hi, Mom.”

  ‘”Hi, Mom’? I can’t believe this! What are you doing home?”

  “I came home sick, Mom,” I said through my nose.

  “Why didn’t the school know that?”

  “Because I… I just left.”

  “You didn’t check out?”

  “Nuh-uh. I didn’t want you to have to come home.”

  “Nolan!”

  “Mom, I told you—I can take care of myself.”

  “But—”

  “Everything’s fine, Mom. I haven’t burned down the house or anything. Now I’m going to go back to bed, okay?”

  “Nolan—”

  “Please, Mom? I really want to lie down.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  “No! I mean, I’m okay. Really!”

  “I’m coming home,” she said, and hung up.

  I yanked my clothes out of the dryer. They were hot! I raced down to my room, updated my site, sent an Extra, Extra, See All About It! Tagger Snagged! e-mail to everyone in the Shredderman address book, then shu
t down my computer and hopped into bed.

  A few minutes later, my mom was home.

  Then—uh-oh—my dad came slamming through the door.

  And I could tell from the look on their faces that I’d jumped out of the poop sack and into deep doo-doo.

  CHAPTER

  16 Busted!

  My mom stood by my bed with her arms crossed. My dad sat in my desk chair, studying me. He started to say something, but my mom put out a hand and said, “Let me, Steven.”

  Dad nodded.

  I coughed. Cough-cough-cough.

  “Do you know why I called here?” Before I could answer, she said, “I called here because Mrs. Holler phoned me at work. She wanted to know why you were absent today.”

  Mrs. Holler did that when you were absent? I had no idea! I said, “I’m sorry, Mom. I guess I should have called you. But I didn’t want you to have to come home. I’m not throwing up or anything.” Cough-cough-cough.

  “She said you hadn’t been at school all day.”

  I shrugged.

  Dad leaned in a little and said, “So you came home during morning recess?”

  I looked from my mom to my dad and back again. Then I said through my nose like I had a monster cold, “I’m sorry, okay? I should have told you!

  My dad said, “Nolan, look at me.”

  I looked at him, but it was hard.

  “My question to you, son, is why didn’t I see you when I came home at around eleven o’clock?”

  Uh-oh.

  “Where were you at eleven o’clock?”

  My mouth opened and closed like a stupid fish.

  “No … I don’t believe it!” my mom cried. “Please tell me it isn’t you…!”

  “Who isn’t me?” I choked out.

  “The Tagger!”

  I sat straight up. “The Tagger? You think I’m the Tagger?”

  My mom was pacing all over my room, throwing her hands up in the air, crying. “The school called the parents of all children who were absent today, trying to figure out who spray-painted Dr. Voss’s car.”

  “It wasn’t me, Mom! I swear it wasn’t me!”

  The phone rang.

  “Then why can’t you tell us where you were at eleven o’clock? Your father stopped by the house, got a soda and a snack, used the bathroom— He says your door was wide open. Did he just not see you? I don’t think so! Nolan, you’ve been acting so strangely lately. Is this… is this why?”

  “No! No, it’s not!” I shouted.

  I guess I forgot to talk through my nose, because all of a sudden her face squeezed together. “You’re not sick at all, are you?” She pulled away from me and wailed, “Oh, Nolan!”

  I couldn’t believe she thought I was the Tagger. And maybe superheroes aren’t supposed to cry, but this one did. And once I started, I couldn’t seem to stop. My breathing got all mixed up, and pretty soon I had the stupid hiccups.

  We could hear the answering machine pick up. “You’ve reached Eve ‘n’ Steven’s. Please leave a message at the beep.” Beeeeeep. Dad perked an ear as a voice said, “Steven, this is Sarge—”

  Dad got up and whispered, “I’ll be right back.”

  Mom sat on the edge of my bed and said, “Nolan? Nolan, please talk to me. You’ve always been an honest child. Now please, tell me the truth.”

  I just buried my head under my pillow. How could they think I was the Tagger? It was bad enough that they thought I couldn’t do anything. But how could they think I was a villain?

  I was the good guy!

  I was about to choke to death on hiccups when I heard my dad saying, “Sarge says Shredderman’s posted a movie clip. He says it exposes the Tagger.”

  “Oh, no!” my mom wailed.

  I said, “I’m not—hic—the—hic—Tagger!” Then I sat up and said it louder, “I’m not—hic— the—hic—Tagger!”

  Dad was already booting up my computer. Mom got up and stood behind him.

  I just sat there, hiccuping.

  When they saw the clip, my dad’s jaw dropped.

  My mom gasped, “Ryan Voss? And he sprayed his own mother’s car?”

  My dad leaned back and rubbed his chin. “Well, I’ll be.”

  They both turned to face me. “So… so you’re really not the Tagger?” Mom asked.

  I scowled at her and hiccuped. “Of course not!”

  “But… but then where were you at eleven o’clock? Why did you leave school?”

  Hic.

  Slowly my dad’s forehead crept back. His jaw eased open. His eyes bulged.

  Hic.

  He scoured my desk and spotted my yearbook sticking out of my scanner. He yanked it out and saw Dr. Voss’s face. “You’re…” He was blinking like crazy at me. “You’re…” He snatched up my digital camera and found the movie clip. Then he looked at my mother and whispered, “Eve, our son is… a superhero!”

  “What?”

  “Look!” He showed her the clip. “He’s not the Tagger, he’s Shredderman!”

  “What?” she said again, and now she was blinking like crazy.

  “Shredderman!” my dad said with a grin. “Definitely the coolest superhero to hit this town!”

  My mom covered her mouth. “You built that site? All by yourself?”

  I nodded. Hic.

  “But how? How did you know how to do… all of this?” She was back at the computer, clicking around like mad. “This is amazing! Look at this graphic! Honey, I program computers, and I don’t know how to do half of this stuff!” She turned to face me. “Where did you … how did you …?”

  I shrugged. “It’s not hard.”

  “Ha!” she laughed.

  Dad scooted way close to me. “Nolan, you’ve got to tell me how you managed to get that clip of Ryan Voss tagging his mother’s car. How in the world did you do that?”

  So I told him all about it. Every detail, clear through my getaway in the gardener’s truck. And while my dad was grinning bigger and bigger, my mom’s face was turning whiter and whiter. “You…you jumped out up by Route 7?” she gasped.

  “Uh-huh.” The hiccups were gone.

  “That’s miles away! You could’ve gotten lost! Or been kidnapped! What if you’d been hit by a car? What if—”

  “Mo’Om! Superheroes don’t get lost or kidnapped. Well, if they do get kidnapped, they always find a way out of it, right? I’m fine!”

  “But… you could’ve suffocated!”

  “I had air holes! A snorkel! I’m fine! And don’t worry—I took a shower. And washed my clothes.”

  She checked me over. “In the washer and dryer?”

  “No,” I said, rolling my eyes, “in the shower.”

  “In the shower.”

  Dad said, “He’s kidding, Eve. You know, a joke?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Maybe someday I’ll even figure out how to toast waffles.”

  She looked at me, blinking away. Then she threw her arms around me and started bawling. “My baby!”

  “Mo-om!” I rolled my eyes at my dad.

  He grinned and winked at me.

  So I hugged her back, and the truth is, I was glad they’d found out.

  Super glad.

  CHAPTER 17

  Truth and Justice Prevail!

  Even though I went back to the beginning and told them everything, Mom and Dad still had questions the next morning. I didn’t mind answering them, though. It was like we were all in a secret club together.

  I liked it.

  My dad covered for me with the school. He told Mrs. Holler that I’d been with him the whole time.

  The school didn’t even seem to care. I guess they were too embarrassed that the town tagger was the principal’s son.

  The story was all over the news. Channel 12 showed Ryan being stuffed in the back of Sarge’s car, and the news lady tried to get Dr. Voss to say something, but she just ducked under her arm and ran away.

  My dad wrote a big piece on it, too. Said it would seem suspicious if he didn’t
. His headline was SHREDDERMAN SAVES CEDAR VALLEY. I told him it sounded corny, but he did it anyway. “Why not?” he said. “Not every town can boast its own superhero!”

  “But what if people try to find out who Shredderman is?”

  Dad grinned. “Didn’t I tell you? That’s my new assignment.” He tisked and shook his head. “And I have a hunch he’s going to be one tough superhero to unmask.”

  The next day, everyone was talking about what a jerk Ryan Voss was and how it served him right that he was going to have to spend his weekends painting walls and cleaning gum off sidewalks.

  Everyone but Bubba. Bubba kept muttering about what a jerk Shredderman was and how someday he was gonna get him.

  We’ll see about that!

  We also found out that Dr. Voss is going to pay for a new mural for the Green Machine. Mr. Green says he probably won’t have dolphins again—that it just wouldn’t be the same. He told the class he was thinking about trolls.

  “Trolls?” Miriam Wipple asked him. “Those ugly overgrown elves with sharp teeth and dirty fingernails?”

  “Friendly trolls,” he told her. “In a forest scene with ferns and trees and oversized mushrooms. Or maybe I’ll paint the whole van dark blue and have a comet streaking across the sky.”

  “Cool!” everyone said, so I think maybe he’ll go with the comet.

  Mom and Dad were very interested in hearing about the van. They used to kind of say, Uh-huh, uh-huh, whenever I talked about Mr. Green, but now that they know he’s the Bouncer, they really sit up and listen. Especially since the four of us had a powwow about Shredderman and the site and what we should do to keep it a secret.

  Mr. Green said, “We have to keep a lid on it, or I’ll need to look for a new job.”

  “Why?” I asked him. “They can’t fire you for being my sidekick!”

  My dad said, “That’s right! You haven’t done anything illegal or even wrong.”

  Mr. Green shook his head. “Dr. Voss was pretty fried over the way you exposed her son.” He chuckled. “And that little link to her? Oh, she was fit to be tied.”

  “But I already took her phone number off the site! Mom made me.”

  “Yeah, but before you did, she got calls from all over. I heard a woman from Australia called to scold her!”