Mutant Mantis Lunch Ladies

by Bruce Hale

  Text and illustrations © 2017 by Bruce Hale

  Cover art © 2017 Scott Brundage

  Cover design by Tyler Nevins

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Hyperion, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.

  ISBN 978-1-4847-7874-6

  Visit DisneyBooks.com

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One: Bugs and Kisses

  Chapter Two: If Cooks Could Kill

  Chapter Three: All You Need Is Lunch

  Chapter Four: Missing? Impossible

  Chapter Five: Boo in the Face

  Chapter Six: Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like E.T.

  Chapter Seven: You Can Lead a Boy to Nachos, But You Can’t Make Him Think

  Chapter Eight: Foodfellas

  Chapter Nine: Taped Crusader

  Chapter Ten: Chicken Snoop

  Chapter Eleven: All About the Chase

  Chapter Twelve: Last Janitor Standing

  Chapter Thirteen: Judy Rude-y

  Chapter Fourteen: Bugging Out with the Bug Doctor

  Chapter Fifteen: Army-geddon

  Chapter Sixteen: Crimes and Sister Meaners

  Chapter Seventeen: My Sister the Mini-Mantis

  Chapter Eighteen: Zero Dark Birdy

  Chapter Nineteen: Trash of the Titans

  Chapter Twenty: Van on the Run

  Chapter Twenty-One: Baking Bad

  Chapter Twenty-Two: A Cockroach Orange

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Benny and the Sets

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Bugpocalypse Now

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Safe and Found

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Little Blister

  Preview of Invasion of the Scorp-Lions! A Monstertown Mystery

  Also by Bruce Hale

  About the Author

  For Jodi Hink and her cool kids

  HOW WELL DO you know the staff at your school? Sure, they bandage your scrapes, sweep up your spills, and dish out your lunch. But who are they, really?

  They seem like nice people.

  But what if they’re not?

  What if they’re secretly something much, much weirder?

  Thanks to this suspicion, Benny Brackman and I found ourselves in the school kitchen one night, cowering behind a refrigerator door.

  “¡Ay, huey!” I gasped. “What the heck was that?”

  Benny peeked around the door toward the pantry in the corner. Nothing moved in the dimness.

  “Don’t ask me, Carlos,” he said. “All I saw was you, running like mad. What did you see?”

  “Freakity freaking freakiness!” I said. My heart hammered like a treeful of woodpeckers and my nerves jangled like wind chimes in a hurricane.

  “Can you be more specific?” Benny asked, squinting into the dark.

  “Too many arms, scary-fast, and it nearly took my head off. Where’d it go?”

  I peered around Benny’s shoulder. Although the open fridge did supply some yellowish light, its door faced the wrong way, back toward the deep fryer. My eyes were dazzled by brightness, which made the corner where the creature had ambushed me seem even darker.

  “We should make sure what it is,” whispered Benny.

  “You make sure,” I said. “That thing doesn’t want us investigating the pantry, and I’m inclined to agree with it.” Sweat popped out on my forehead.

  Benny grumbled, but he gave in. We stared at the dark corner, we stared at the exit. All was quiet. Whatever it might be, the monster was motionless.

  “Okay,” I said, my throat dry, “we should go.”

  “You first,” said Benny.

  “No, you,” I said. “I insist.”

  Licking his lips, Benny said, “Let’s go together.”

  “Right.”

  The only problem with this plan was that the path to the exit ran much too close to the murky corner for comfort. My jaw clenched.

  Nothing to it but to do it. My muscles tensed tighter than piano strings.

  “On the count of three,” said Benny. “One…two—”

  “Go!” I yelled.

  “What about three?”

  We burst from behind the fridge with a wild cry, dashing straight for the door. As we tore past the food-prep island, something big stirred in the shadows to our left. Benny raised the can of Raid above his head and spritzed like he was writing the Declaration of Independence in the air.

  Right away, my eyes stung. That sickly-sweet chemical smell filled my nose.

  “Watch where you’re spraying!” I cried.

  Something scuttled behind us. My overactive imagination pictured ten million cockroaches picking up speed. I risked a glance back.

  It was worse.

  The world’s biggest praying mantis was charging straight at us, wearing a hungry expression and an apron that read WHY YOU ALL UP IN MY GRILL?

  Benny checked over his shoulder and his eyes grew wider than a sumo wrestler’s waistband. With a strangled scream, he poured on the speed.

  From behind us came an unnatural cry that I swear sounded like “Don’t you dare leave that fridge door open!”

  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

  According to my teacher, Mr. Chu, you’re supposed to grab your readers by the throat at the beginning of your story, but I feel like I’m just confusing you. You have no idea who Benny and I are, or why we’re being chased through the kitchen by a giant bug.

  And that’s just not fair. (Both the confusion and the being chased, I mean.)

  Let me back up a bit to where this story started. With the day Benny and I discovered what it really means to have a reputation as monster fighters.

  IT ALL BEGAN with a note. We were sitting in class, playing Get Down with Decimals. Mr. Chu had just donned a purple Afro wig and cranked the disco music up to eleven-point-five. “Yeow, can ya feel the funky beat?” he yowled over the heavy thumping. “What’s sixth-tenths in decimals…Tyler?”

  Tyler Spork screwed up his face. “Um…uh, six-point-two?”

  “Wrong-a-ding-dong,” said our teacher. “Tina?”

  “Zero-point-six,” said Tina Green, the coolest girl in class, and a friend. (But not, you know, my girlfriend.)

  “Yeow!” said Mr. Chu.

  “Disco sucks,” Tyler whined.

  Just then, a folded-up scrap of paper plopped onto my desk. After I smoothed it out, the note read:

  Can I talk to you guys at recess? It’s important!!!

  —AJ

  I glanced to my left. From the next row, AJ Banerjee gave me the pleading look of a kid who wants a puppy. He’d arrived late and been jumpy and distracted all morning, so I sent him a thumbs-up. AJ’s look of relief was almost comical. But something—kids’ intuition, maybe?—made me go hmmm.

  Usually AJ just passed along the notes that my best friend, Benny Brackman, and I wrote to each other. Why was he sending us a note?

  I didn’t have to wait long to find out.

  After the bell rang, everyone got up to go. AJ waved us on, so Benny and I headed for the tetherball court. Then, before we could even start a game, our classmate came skulking across the playground like a double agent in a spy movie.

  “Please, you’ve got to help me,” he begged. His big brown eyes were as haunted as a Halloween movie marathon. His body practically quivered.

  “No problem,” said Benny. “T
he bathroom is right over there, third door on the left.” He lifted the tetherball and gave it a whack.

  “I’m not kidding,” said AJ, wringing his hands.

  “What is it, the heartbreak of head lice?” I said, trying to lighten his mood.

  AJ’s lips tightened. “This is serious.” He looked left and right and then whispered, “I saw a bug.”

  I glanced at Benny. The puzzlement was mutual.

  “Um, yeah, I see bugs every day,” I said.

  “This school is lousy with them,” Benny agreed. “Stink bugs, cockroaches, you name it.”

  “No, a giant bug!” said AJ, eyes wild.

  “What, like one of those Hercules beetles?” I asked, taking a swing at the tetherball. I’m no insect expert, but I know the freaky ones.

  “Not a beetle,” said AJ. “Mrs. Perez.”

  “The lunch lady?” I felt my forehead scrunch up in confusion. “I thought you said you saw a giant bug?”

  “She is,” he said.

  Benny frowned. “Funny, but she does such a good impression of a human.”

  “Tricked me,” I said.

  With a frustrated growl, AJ clenched his fists. “Argh, I’m not explaining this right.”

  “No fooling,” said Benny.

  “Why don’t you start at the beginning?” I said.

  “Well, if you think it’ll help,” said AJ. “I was born in London almost ten years ago, the son of—”

  “Not that beginning.” Benny rolled his eyes. “Your problem?”

  “Ah.” AJ took a few moments to gather his thoughts. I would have suspected he was pranking us, but as far as I could tell, he didn’t have a sense of humor. “It started Friday,” he said finally, “when the lunch ladies began giving Tenacity more responsibilities than me.”

  “Tenacity?” said Benny.

  “The other head lunch monitor.” AJ stopped while a bunch of third-grade girls blew past us, squealing. He continued, “That same day, all three lunch ladies started acting strangely.”

  “How strangely?” I asked.

  He gazed off to the side. “Bullying me and the other boy monitors, acting cold. But the worst was when they started getting creepy.”

  “Creepy?” Benny perked up. He’d been zoning out, half watching the nearby basketball game. He’s not big on long explanations.

  “They gave me these weird fake smiles that made my skin crawl.” AJ illustrated this with a fake smile of his own.

  “Ooh, spooky!” Benny joked, smacking the tetherball again.

  AJ flushed. “It was! But that’s not all. This morning, Mrs. McCoy even pinched my arm.”

  “Um, on a scale of one to totally creepazoid, that barely registers,” I said.

  “Yeah, Carlos’s grandma pinches me all the time.” Benny grinned. “I’m a regular pinch-cushion.” He looked for a reaction, but the joke sailed right over AJ’s head.

  Fact was, Benny and I knew creepy. We were becoming experts on the subject, having saved our teacher from turning into a were-hyena earlier that same month.

  “So where does the bug come in?” I asked.

  Lowering his voice, AJ said, “I was bringing a stack of dishes into the kitchen after breakfast today, and my hands were greasy, so I dropped a plate.”

  “Did the lunch ladies give you twenty lashes?” asked Benny. I could tell he wasn’t taking this seriously yet.

  AJ ignored him. “Mrs. Perez was standing right there. She jumped at the noise, and for a split second, she changed.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. Finally things were getting interesting.

  AJ wrung his hands. “I—I know this sounds crazy, but for a moment, I could’ve sworn she turned into…”

  “Into?” I asked, leaning forward.

  “A giant bug,” said AJ.

  “A bug,” I said.

  “Exactly,” said our classmate. “Antennae, wings, six legs—the whole deal.”

  “Let me get this straight.” Benny cocked his head, squinting an eye. “You’re saying one of our lunch ladies turned into some kind of humongous cockroach?”

  “Cockroach, katydid, whatever,” said AJ. “I don’t know my insects.”

  “And then back into a human?” I asked.

  “In the blink of an eye.”

  Some other kids waiting for a turn at tetherball gave us funny looks, so Benny and I eased AJ off the blacktop and onto the grass.

  “Have you been stressed out lately?” Benny asked him.

  “No,” he said.

  “Needing glasses?” I asked.

  “Never.”

  “Nuttier than a Christmas fruitcake?” asked Benny.

  AJ glared at him. “I’m as sane as you, Benny Brackman.”

  I smirked. “That’s not saying much.”

  AJ raised his palms. “I’m telling you both, I know what I saw. And I’m worried. Either I’m cracking up, or something truly strange is happening. Now will you help me find the truth or not?”

  I blew out some air and took in the recess-related activities all around us. It seemed to be a normal day—blue skies, kids playing, yard-duty teachers gossiping. But as Benny and I knew too well, our school—heck, our whole town—was anything but normal. And sometimes people needed protecting from Monterrosa’s weirdness.

  “Why come to us?” asked Benny, acting indifferent. But I caught that sparkle in his eyes. He was hooked.

  “I heard something about you two handling a were-hyena problem,” said AJ.

  “Just rumors,” I said.

  We hadn’t discussed our supernatural experiences with anyone. It had felt great—heck, more than great—being the heroes and saving the day. But it wasn’t the kind of thing you could mention to anybody. Not without getting sent to the funny farm.

  In fact, the only people who knew the whole story were the ones who’d been there—Tina Green, Benny and me, and the comics-store owner, Mrs. Tamasese. I had kept quiet, and I was pretty sure Mrs. T wouldn’t blab, so that left…

  “I heard it from José, who got it from Gabi, who got it from Tina,” said AJ.

  Mystery solved. Tina was not the one to tell your secrets to.

  “I guess word travels,” said Benny. He seemed pleased.

  “It sounded to me like you were the kind of guys who knew what to do when things got weird,” said AJ. “And like you weren’t afraid to lend a hand. Was I wrong?”

  He was asking us to live up to our reputation as heroes. How often does that happen? I looked over at Benny. He raised an eyebrow and offered a crooked grin.

  I rolled my eyes. This was probably a wild-goose chase, or else AJ was a better prankster than I thought. But still…

  “Okay,” I said. “How can we help?”

  ONE OF THE problems with investigating a lunch lady was gaining access. If you wanted to see them up close and personal, you had to snoop before school, during morning recess, or at lunch.

  That didn’t leave a lot of time.

  AJ offered to give us his allowance for a month just for helping to prove he wasn’t crazy. Although Benny wanted to take it, I settled for one week’s allowance and a plate of AJ’s dad’s famous chocolate-chip-oatmeal cookies. It seemed fairer, especially if this ended up being a case of too many scary movies and an overactive imagination.

  With the deal made and only a few minutes of recess left, Benny and I hustled over to the cafeteria. The big room lay empty, the benches and tables already pulled out for lunchtime. It smelled of lemon floor cleaner, sloppy joes, and fresh hot-dog buns.

  A clattering came from the kitchen. The pull-down steel grate that covered the serving counter was shut, so we headed for the door.

  It suddenly struck me. “Wait, we need some kind of excuse,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” said Benny. “The cafeteria isn’t off-limits.”

  “No, but we need a reason to visit the lunch ladies, or they’ll get suspicious.”

  Benny didn’t break stride. “Um…” He snapped his fingers. �
��Hunger. How’s that?”

  Checking the clock, I noticed time was running out like Halloween candy in November. “It’ll have to do,” I said.

  He didn’t even bother to knock. Benny just threw open the kitchen door.

  “Hello, ladies!” he called, laying on the charm. “What’s cooking for a couple of hungry boys?”

  Mrs. Perez, Mrs. Robinson, and Mrs. McCoy all turned from their tasks and looked our way. Like the Three Bears, they ranged in size from big, to bigger, to biggest, with Mrs. Robinson topping the tall end of the scale at something over six feet. They seemed the same as always—like love and comfort in sensible shoes.

  Same old hairnets, same old aprons.

  The shortest and roundest, Mrs. McCoy, set a tray fresh from the oven onto the steel counter. She casually stepped in front of it, watching us.

  “Hello, boys,” Mrs. Perez said in a stiff voice.

  I eyed her closely. No wings, no extra legs. Gabi had always claimed that Mrs. Perez’s blond hair was dyed, but if so, that seemed to be the only fake thing about her.

  “Ooh, fresh cookies?” said Benny, heading for Mrs. McCoy’s tray.

  She held up a plump palm to stop him. “Not ready yet,” she said flatly.

  When Benny didn’t even slow down, Mrs. Robinson stepped away from the sink and gripped his shoulder. “You should not be in here.”

  I edged sideways to see around them. The slender, crispy items lying on the tray didn’t look like any sweet treats I’d ever seen. In fact, they reminded me of a Oaxacan dish my abuela had told me about.

  “We were just looking for, um, a snack,” I said.

  “Snacks spoil meals.” Mrs. Perez snagged Benny’s elbow and steered him back toward the door, catching my arm along the way. “The kitchen is off-limits,” she said, exhibiting all the charm of an alligator with a rash.

  This wasn’t like the Mrs. Perez I knew. She was a warm, motherly woman with a twinkly-eyed smile who would slip a kid a brownie every now and then.

  “Having a bad day?” I asked.

  Her head swiveled smoothly to regard me. “Not at all. It is a beautiful morning.” She sounded as excited as a robot voice on a cell phone.

  Something was definitely off.