by Tony Abbott
“Cool!” said Mike, as they reached the table.
Liz sat between Holly and her brother Sean and across the table from Jeff Ryan.
“Hey, guys,” said Mike. He set his tray down on the table next to Jeff and lifted his hand to Sean. “How’s it going?”
Sean grinned and slapped Mike’s hand. “Excellent, since I saw you five minutes ago.”
Jeff looked over at Mike’s tray. “Whoa! You actually ordered the hambooger!”
“And he’s not eating it,” said Liz sternly. She pulled two shiny green apples out of her backpack and gave one to Mike.
“Thanks,” said Mike. “But apples don’t do it for me anymore. After being shrunk to the size of a nickel, I’m only interested in one thing—to eat and stay big.”
“That’s two things,” said Liz. “Which reminds me, I’m starting a list right now. I’m calling it—Stuff That Needs to Change.” She pulled a pad out of her backpack and started to write. “Number One. No More Weird Lunches.”
“I totally agree,” said Sean, pulling a blue candy eyeball from his lunch bag and popping it in his mouth. His father, Todd Vickers, was a horror movie director. He had lots of movie props. Some of them were edible.
“Number Two,” said Liz. “No Horror Stuff.”
“You and Mr. Bell,” said Holly. “Mrs. Carbonese, too. They’re trying to ban scary books from school. That’s what the assembly is all about.”
Sean turned to his sister. “But do they know Dad’s coming in to film some school scenes for his next horror movie?”
“Sean!” cried Holly. “It’s a surprise!”
Liz curled her lip at her friends then looked at Mike. “Zoners? Yes, I think so.”
Mike laughed. “You know, it’s all how you look at it. I don’t think this place is as weird as you guys think it is. I mean, show me weird!”
Sean grinned. His teeth were blue.
“Oh, gross!” Then Liz put down her pen and stared out into the hall. “Uh … guys?”
Everyone at the table turned to the door.
It was Principal Bell.
He was standing in the doorway. He was holding the American flag in his hands. Tears were streaming down his cheeks, like little rivers.
“Mike,” whispered Liz. “You wanted weird? Your wish has just been granted.”
Mr. Bell staggered into the cafeteria, holding up the flag. “I … I … I … can’t …!”
He pointed out the door and wept.
There, in a little grassy circle in the center of the parking lot, stood the flagpole.
Except that it wasn’t a flagpole anymore.
It was a—flag pretzel! The long silver pole was twisted into a horrible knot.
“Whoa!” muttered Jeff. “Who would do that?”
“Oh, my school!” sobbed Mr. Bell. Miss Lieberman came running from nowhere to comfort him. They stumbled back to the kitchen together.
Liz snapped her fingers. “You know, guys, a lot of strange things have been going on here.”
“This is news?” said Sean.
“No, listen. My mom heard from her lunch-lady friends that something’s getting into the food cellar under the kitchen.”
“Maybe it’s mice?” said Mike. “We had mice in my old school.”
“No way,” said Liz. “I’m talking about big stuff. Huge school-size packs of hot dogs and—”
“Hog dogs,” mumbled Jeff.
“And bags of french fries,” Liz went on, “and hamburger meat, and big tubs of nacho cheese. But my mom said the worst part was—was—”
“Fooood,” said Mike, running a finger in the sauce on his burger and lifting it to his mouth.
Wham! Liz pinned Mike’s hand down and pushed the apple at him. “If you have to eat, eat something healthy!”
Mike glared at the apple as if it were poisonous. “But … but …”
“You guys aren’t listening!” Liz cried. “I’m talking about a gigantic gross food mess under the school! It’s disgusting. Raw meat and gloppy cheese and mushed french fries and rotten—”
Mike, Jeff, Sean, and Holly stopped eating and held their hands over their mouths.
Liz smiled. “Now that I have your attention, I’ll tell you something else I heard—”
Eeeeiiiioooaaaccch! A horrible screech echoed down the halls!
It was coming from the gym.
3
A Surprise Guest
In an instant, Liz, Mike, Sean, Jeff, Holly, and exactly two hundred ninety-four other kids stampeded from the cafeteria down the hall to the gym.
They entered the big bright room.
The wood floor gleamed under the noon sun.
“Something’s wrong,” whispered Liz.
It was Mr. Gilman, the coach. Normally he would be scribbling on his clipboard and checking kids off one by one as they came through the door—Duffey Liz. Mazur Mike. (He always called everybody by their last names first.) But he wasn’t doing any of that now.
Mr. Gilman was standing in the center of the floor. His clipboard was lying at his feet. His face was all twisted. And he was pointing.
Up.
Liz followed his shaking finger. Then she gasped. Everyone gasped at what they saw.
An enormous, jagged hole was torn out of the gym ceiling. Sunlight flooded into the big room. Birds fluttered around the hole.
“Air-conditioning,” said Holly. “That’s new.”
“But who would do that?” muttered Jeff.
“Guys,” said Liz, “this place is definitely weirding out. I don’t know what it is, but I think we’ve got trouble. Big trouble in our school.”
“My school!” screeched Mr. Sweeney as he entered the gym.
Mike gazed up at the giant hole in the ceiling. “We didn’t have a sunroof in my old school.”
“Ahem!” boomed a voice.
It was Principal Bell. He was standing in the doorway with his hands on his hips, staring down at everybody. He stepped to the center of the gym, right under the jagged opening in the ceiling.
“I am shocked by what is going on in this school and I want everyone to know that I will—”
Splat!
A fat drop of something wet fell on Mr. Bell’s head from above.
Slowly, he looked up.
Splat! Splat!
Two more drops fell, this time on his nose.
Liz looked closely at the stuff on Mr. Bell’s face. It was green and oozy. It smelled bad.
The glop had dripped from the jagged edges of the hole in the ceiling.
“Oh, go finish your lunches!” cried Mr. Bell, as Miss Lieberman came running out of nowhere with a towel. “Be in the auditorium for my reading program assembly. I’ll deal with you there.”
Whoom! In a flash two hundred ninety-eight kids roared back to the cafeteria.
Mr. Bell and Miss Lieberman stalked back out into the hall. Mr. Sweeney went to get a mop.
Coach Gilman stooped for his clipboard and stumbled into the hall, scribbling and mumbling. “Hole … ceiling … suspects …”
But Liz couldn’t move. She stared at the hole in the ceiling, watching the green ooze drip and hiss onto the wooden floorboards.
What is going on here? she thought.
Ripped-open bags of rotten potatoes?
A pretzel for a flagpole?
A sunroof in the gym?
Smelly green ooze?
When Liz stepped back into the cafeteria she was trying hard to make some sense of it all.
She was trying so hard, she didn’t notice right away that something was different. Very different.
The clock said 12:35. Still lunchtime. All the tables were filled. First-, second-, third-, fourth-, fifth-grade kids. Normal kids.
Well, thought Liz, as normal as you could get in this school. In this town.
No, it was something else. Then Liz realized what it was. The kids, nearly three hundred of them, were absolutely quiet. No sound at all.
The cafeteria, jammed with kids, was silent!<
br />
“Strange,” Liz hissed. “Definitely very straaa—”
Then she saw the reason. Well, she didn’t actually see it. It was more like she felt it. It was the floor beneath her. The floor was humming.
It wasn’t humming a tune.
It was—vibrating. A little at first, then a lot. The vibrating turned into rumbling. The rumbling turned into quaking.
Then the linoleum floor tiles began to crack.
And split. And pop.
A bulge heaved up in the middle of the floor.
“This is new,” said Liz. Holly, Sean, Jeff, and Mike stepped around the hump and over to her.
Suddenly, the floor itself gave out an awful, grinding, ripping, tearing sound.
KKRRREEEEEOOOWWNNNCH!
Chairs and tables went flying. Everybody ran to get out of the way as the floor burst apart.
And something came out.
The first thing Liz saw was the thing’s head.
It was the size of a garbage can. It was green and all scaly, with burning red eyes and a long snout.
Under the snout was an enormous open jaw filled with teeth as long as bananas.
Sean looked over at the head twisting in the hole. He tapped his sister, Holly. “Is that Dad surprising us in one of his monster costumes?”
Just then the cafeteria doors swung open and Mr. Vickers appeared with a movie camera on his shoulder. “Hi, kids. I’m here to film!”
That’s when the silence broke.
“Ahhhh!” screamed everyone at once.
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About the Author
Over the last two decades, Tony Abbott has written dozens of mysteries, comics, and adventure books for young readers aged six to fourteen, with series including Danger Guys, the Time Surfers, the Weird Zone, Underworlds, Goofballs, and the long-running fantasy series the Secrets of Droon. He is also the author of the fantasy epic Kringle and the realistic novels Firegirl (winner of the 2006 Golden Kite Award for Fiction), The Postcard (winner of the 2008 Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery), and Lunch-Box Dream. Among his latest novels is The Forbidden Stone, the first installment of the twelve-book saga the Copernicus Legacy. Tony has taught on the faculty of Lesley University’s MFA program in creative writing, is a frequent conference speaker and visitor to schools, and presents workshops to creative writers of all ages. His websites include www.tonyabbottbooks.com, www.thecopernicuslegacy.com, and the literary blog www.fridaybookreport.com.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1996 by Robert T. Abbott
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-4804-8652-2
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
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