Mob School Swap

by Greyson Mann

  But she didn’t. “Haven’t you seen the signs, Andrew?” she said. “Trees with no leaves …”

  Andrew fiddled with his carrots.

  “Um, yeah, Chloe—it’s winter,” I pointed out. “There aren’t leaves on ANY trees.”

  “How about random glowstone towers?” she said, ignoring me. “Herobrine likes to build glowstone towers, you know.”

  Well, that kind of made me think. I mean, Andrew DOES love his glowstone. Could he be related to the legendary human Herobrine? I snuck a peek at Andrew, who was sinking lower in his chair.

  But Chloe wasn’t finished yet. “Herobrine can even take control of ANIMALS,” she said, her voice rising. “Make them do exactly what he wants them to do!”

  Now my pork chop WAS stuck in my throat. And I couldn’t even look at Andrew. Because, I mean, he DOES have a way with animals. Maybe he had Sticky UNDER HIS CONTROL. Maybe Andrew was possessed by the ghost of Herobrine!

  “And he catches mobs in traps, too,” said Chloe, narrowing her eyes at me. “Herobrine sets traps for mobs like us so that he can steal our things.”

  When I actually started choking, Eddy teleported beside me in a flash and whacked my back. A hunk of meat flew across the table and landed on Cammy’s plate.

  Chloe wrinkled her nose as if I were the grossest mob ever. But Cammy? Well, she started laughing. Hard. And, well, you know what happened next.

  Yup. Ka-BOOM!

  Mrs. Enderwoman teleported away from the table, nearly knocking over a cactus plant. Then she said they had to get home to, um, let the dog out or something. Poor Mom, who was covered in gunpowder, offered to send a pork chop home for Pearl, Eddy’s wolf-dog.

  But Eddy said Pearl only eats SKELETON bones.

  See? This is why I like Eddy Enderman. Bones and his spider jockey friends don’t mess with Eddy. Why would they? His wolf-dog could take them down in a single hungry chomp.

  On the way out the door, Eddy said, “See you Monday, Gerald. See ya, Andrew. Maybe I can try out your hockey rink this week.”

  Um, WHAT now? Eddy KNEW about our hockey rink? And wanted to play???

  I didn’t know if I should be thrilled or horrified. I mean, I prefer to have Eddy see me at my BEST—not face-planting across the ice and sliding straight into my own goal.

  So before Andrew and Eddy could sync up their calendars and pick a hockey date, I shoved Eddy out the door and waved goodbye to Mrs. Enderwoman. Then I helped Mom sweep up the gunpowder.

  I gotta say, though, I kept a pretty close eye on Andrew for the rest of the night. Because all that stuff Chloe said about Herobrine started getting under my skin, and I was feeling pretty itchy. Itchy to know more about my boy Andrew.

  Itchy to figure out what was in that trunk.

  DAY 15: TUESDAY

  Did I mention I hate Mondays?

  Yeah, I’d be good with a six-night week. Sure, it would mean 52 fewer nights a year, but if they’re all school nights, I’d cheerfully give them up. Just saying …

  See, Monday night started with a BANG. Not the kind you hear when Cammy explodes or anything like that. It was more like the lid of Andrew’s treasure chest slamming down on my NOSE.

  Andrew had actually left the chest UNLOCKED while he grabbed a shower. I didn’t notice till I happened to casually creep by and nudge the lid with my toe. And sure enough, it opened! So I practically dove into that trunk to see what was in there. And that was the exact second Andrew flew back into the room and slammed the lid.

  OUCH!!!

  My nose swelled up like a pufferfish, and Andrew didn’t even APOLOGIZE. He was all like, “What are you LOOKING for in there?” and I was like, “I dunno. What are you HIDING in there?” And that’s how we ended up giving each other the silent treatment all the way to school.

  Except Chloe wasn’t silent. My Evil Twin had figured out that talking about Herobrine made Andrew REALLY uncomfortable. So of course, she babbled on about it while we walked.

  She pointed out all the trees that had no leaves. She actually spotted a glowstone tower near the swamp—a random tower that I’ve NEVER seen before that actually DID kind of pop up overnight. And when we passed a stray cat, Chloe said, “Don’t you want to tame it, Andrew, and take it home? I mean, you’re good at that—you and Herobrine.”

  Normally, I’d tell Chloe to shut it. But my nose was throbbing from being slammed in that chest—proof that Andrew DID have something to hide. So I let him take the heat from Chloe all the way to school. And I watched him carefully, waiting for him to crack and let something slip.

  Then Sam bounced over and said he had GREAT news—that LOTS of mobs wanted to play hockey with us, now that our rink was finished.

  It’s like the slime had completely forgotten about the last time we’d played hockey. Did he think I’d be EXCITED about another game? Sheesh. He might as well have socked me in my swollen nose while he was at it. With a best friend like Sam, who needs enemies?

  Andrew suddenly quit with the silent treatment and got all chatty with Sam. They started talking about having the game Saturday night. By lunchtime, they had a bunch of mobs signed up to play. And by the end of the school night, Bones was all up in my face about the game.

  “You’re going DOWN, Itchy,” he said, flicking my nose with his bony finger.

  I would have hissed out the perfect comeback, I’m sure. Except my nose stung so bad that my eyes got all watery. And a creeper does NOT shed tears in front of a spider jockey. Not a single drop. EVER.

  So instead, I made like an Enderman and “teleported” home as fast as I could. And then I MIGHT have shed a tear or two, but only because holding all that water in was making my nose throb.

  Every time I look at that locked chest in my room, I start to hiss. If I were even the TINIEST bit like my Evil Twin, I’d just blow my fuse and blast my way into that chest. But I’m not really that kind of creeper.

  Dad says I use my brains, not my blasts—like my Great-Great Grandpa Gerald. But I gotta say, my brains are tired from working overtime. And my nose hurts. And all I really want to do right now is RAP.

  Okay, the front door just creaked open, which means Andrew’s back from school. Which means rap time is OVER.

  Time to put my game face back on.

  DAY 17: THURSDAY

  Dad says it’s okay to toot your own horn when you do something genius. I think the old man has a point there. I mean, if you don’t cheer for yourself, who else is going to?

  So here’s what I did:

  I hit the school library looking for answers. Not the kind you find at the end of Sherlock Bones or Agatha Crispy mysteries. And DEFINITELY not the kind of answers you find in those “facts of life” books, like the one I accidentally checked out last fall. (I’m still having nightmares about some of those pictures.)

  No, I went into the library looking for a way OUT of the hockey game. See, everything I know about hockey, I learned from Andrew. And I’m starting to wonder if hockey is just one big trap he’s setting for me—to make me look bad. Or to make himself look good. Or to prove that humans are BETTER than other mobs.

  So if I can research hockey, I might be able to figure out a new angle here. A way to beat Andrew at his own game.

  Mrs. Collins was in the library, and she’s always THRILLED to see me walk through the door. She was all like, “Hello, Gerald. How nice to see you! What can I do for you today?”

  Since she offered, I put her to work right away—digging up facts on this human extracurricular called “hockey.” She didn’t have a ton of books, but the one she DID have was very useful, I gotta say. It was full of pictures of hockey players.

  When I studied those pictures, I saw that one guy was wearing his own kind of uniform. It had these stripes on it. (He kind of looked like my not-so-Great Uncle who blew up the village well and had to go to jail. I saw his mug shot in an old copy of the Creeper Chronicle. But that’s a whole other story.)

  Anyway, the guy in the stripes is called a “referee.
” And HE’s the guy with all the power. He starts the game, and gives penalties to players who break the rules, and decides whether a goal is actually scored. And here’s the BEST part: He DOESN’T have to play!

  So I’m thinking this referee job is PERFECT for me. I memorized every rule in that book. Yup, I know more about refereeing a hockey game than Andrew will EVER know. And I have the perfect striped sweater to wear for the job, thanks to Mom and her knitting needles.

  So like I said, I tooted my own horn all the way home this morning. And now? I can’t WAIT for Saturday night’s game.

  BRING IT ON.

  DAY 19: SATURDAY MORNING

  There’s a reason I can’t cut Mondays from the calendar. Why? Because Mom won’t let me.

  See, parents control calendars. A creep can’t make a single plan for himself without running it past Mom first.

  Like the hockey game, for example. It’s happening tonight. Every mob at school KNOWS about it and is planning on it. But I made the mistake of NOT letting Mom know about the game. (Well, actually, ANDREW made that mistake.) And it turns out, she made other plans for us.

  She told me at dinner last night that we’re having another dinner party tonight.

  SERIOUSLY???

  You’d think Mom would have learned her lesson after the first two. This mob-mixing thing just doesn’t really work. But she said she has extra special guests coming, and that it’s a surprise, and that Andrew and I had better have our butts at the table—or else.

  So I had to send out a news alert through Emma Enderman at school last night that the hockey game might start a TAD later than planned. It’d be more of an “after dinner” kind of thing.

  Hopefully, everyone got the memo. Otherwise, Mom’s going to have to set a few more places at the dinner table.

  DAY 19: SATURDAY NIGHT

  Parents are CLUELESS. Like, even if clues came POURING out of the sky, my parents wouldn’t catch any of them. If someone was handing out clues in the street for free, my mom would be like, “Ah, no thanks. We don’t need any.”

  So guess who Mom invited over for dinner tonight. No, really: GUESS.

  Not creepers or zombies or Endermen. Not witches or slimes or zombie pigmen. Not pigs or chickens or horses. No, not even HUMANS.

  She invited SKELETONS. And not just any skeletons. Oh, no—when Mom messes up, her mistakes are EPIC. She goes all the way.

  Mom invited BONES and his dad to dinner.

  My special “surprise” was the biggest bully at Mob Middle School sitting next to me at my own dinner table.

  I guess Bones’s dad works with MY dad, and they got to talking one day and realized that Bones and I were going to the same school, and one thing led to another, and … well, you can’t make this stuff up.

  Bones looked as surprised as I did when he walked through the door, at least for a second. But during dinner, he got that gaping grin, and his bony fingers started twitching—like he couldn’t WAIT to use this opportunity to really stick it to me.

  And after what had happened at the last two dinners, I knew my family would give him PLENTY of ammunition.

  After dinner, Mom was like, “Gerald, why don’t you and Andrew take Bones into your room to play?” She actually said that—“to PLAY.” Like we were going to bust out Cammy’s creeper dolls and have a tea party or something.

  “Mom, we’ve got a hockey game,” I reminded her—in my toughest, growliest voice.

  Then she said I’d better remember to “wear a sweater and my thermal underwear.” GREAT.

  Now let me get one thing straight: creepers do NOT wear underwear. But when Mom was on her knitting kick, she knit all KINDS of things that this creeper would never be caught dead in.

  So the second we got to the bedroom, Bones started in. He saw the glowstone on the dresser and was like, “Aw, what a cute little LIGHT. Do Itchy and Drippy need to keep a light on during the day so they can SLEEP?”

  I started to hiss. When Bones flicked his finger against Sticky’s aquarium, I knew I had to do something—fast.

  “Can I get some privacy here?” I said, grabbing my sweater and pushing Bones and Andrew back out the door.

  “You gotta put on your thermal UNDIES, Gerald?” crooned Bones.

  I’m pretty sure I saw Andrew’s mouth twitch, like he actually thought that was FUNNY. Well, Drippy Drew and Bones could buddy up all they wanted. I was DONE.

  I slammed the door so hard after them, the water in Sticky’s aquarium sloshed from side to side.

  Now I’m re-reading my plan and trying not to blow.

  I’M IN CHARGE, I keep reminding myself. I’M the referee. I’M the one who can kick players out of the game if they break rules. I’M the one who decides if a goal counts or not. So I’M the one who decides who wins.

  Problem is, I haven’t decided who I WANT to win yet. Bones is my enemy, but Andrew and I aren’t exactly friends lately either. And we’re DEFINITELY not brothers.

  Here’s what I’m sure about:

  SOME mob’s going to lose the game, and this time, it’s NOT going to be me.

  DAY 20: SUNDAY MORNING

  Don’t. Even. Ask.

  I don’t want to talk about it.

  I mean, we could talk about how UNFAIR life is. Like how referees are SUPPOSED to have power, but they really don’t—not when every mob on the ice gangs up on them.

  Or like how much it stinks when mobs that are SUPPOSED to be your friends, like zombies and slimes and Endermen, decide to team up with the human who has been making your life miserable for the last three weeks.

  Or like how even when a creeper decides NOT TO PLAY hockey, he can still somehow take a puck to the face. And get a swollen lip. And start talking with a lisp.

  But, hey, if we’re going to talk about all THAT, I might as well just tell you how the game went—before I block it permanently from my memory.

  Here goes:

  • I started the game with a faceoff. Bones and Andrew came to the middle of the rink, and I dropped the coal between their sticks. Andrew hit the coal toward the goal. Bones whacked ME in the leg.

  • Andrew passed to Chloe, then Eddy teleported to the goal and caught the pass from Chloe. One of Bones’s spider jock friends elbowed Eddy, and I called a penalty. LOUD. But every single mob on the ice ignored me.

  • Bones took the coal down the ice toward the other goal, which Sam was pretty much filling out with his ginormous green body. When the coal bounced off Sam, everyone cheered for Sam. Except me. Because my nose hurt just THINKING about the last time I’d seen a puck bounce off Sam.

  • Ziggy took the coal down the ice, and Bones pulled his sword—er, stick—on Ziggy. “Slashing!” I called out. But no one listened. “Spearing!” I shouted. Nothing. “Tripping!” That last one was kind of a stretch, but I mean, Ziggy DID kind of stagger when Bones hit him with his stick.

  • Bones turned on me and shouted something I CAN’T repeat. “Misconduct!” I shouted. “Go to the penalty box!” The penalty box was Sock the Sheep’s pen. But it might have been in the Nether, for all Bones cared, because he WASN’T GOING.

  • Bones stole the puck from Ziggy, skated toward me, and took a slap shot.

  • I took a hundred-mile-per-hour puck to the pie hole.

  • I spit out blood and kicked Bones out of the game.

  • Bones raised his bony hand to his ear and said, “What’s that, Lispy? I can’t understand you!”

  • Chloe burst out laughing.

  • The game went on WITHOUT me. And no one—not my sister, or my best friend, Sam, or my sort-of friend Ziggy, or my coolest friend, Eddy—came to see if I was alright. Or backed me up. Or ANYTHING.

  They’re still playing out there, and I’m sitting in my room hissing mad.

  There’s only one mob to blame for all this.

  And he’s not even a mob.

  ANDREW.

  I TRIED to help him fit in at Mob Middle School—with a makeover and a nickname. I tried to make him less
drippy, by figuring out what he was allergic to. I even helped him build his dumb hockey rink so that Bones would think he was tough and maybe show the dude some respect. And what did Andrew do to THANK me?

  He moved into my house, into my room, into my LIFE—and took it all over. He took control of my room with his annoying glowstone. He took control of my squid with his Herobrine powers. He took control of my BEST friends and my BACKYARD and even my FACE with his crummy hockey pucks.

  And now I’m not hissing mad, I’m BOILING mad. Hot lava is spitting and popping inside me. I’m going to BLOW—I can FEEL it.

  Any. Second. Now.

  DAY 20: SUNDAY NIGHT

  I’m a peaceful creeper.

  I use my brains more than my blasts.

  At least that’s what I’ve been telling myself my WHOLE creeper life. And it’s what I’ve been telling Andrew all day, too. But he won’t listen.

  Maybe it’s because everything he owns is covered in gunpowder. Or because his glowstone was blown to smithereens. Or because his treasure chest was blown wide open.

  For days now, I’ve been dying to know what was in there. And now? I wish I’d never looked. I wish I could just rewind to the start of this whole Mob School Swap and do it all over again. Do it differently this time. Do it like Great-Great-Grandpa Gerald would have.

  But I’ll never get that chance.

  There wasn’t a speck of treasure in that chest. No diamonds. No emeralds. No weapons. No armor. Just some lousy seeds to remind Andrew of the farm he lives on. And a newspaper article.