When he arrived at the nearest boy’s room, it was empty, thank goodness. Now, how to fit his long, strange body into a stall and still have everything end up where it was supposed to? It took a few minutes of experimenting, but he figured out he had two choices: stand on the floor and have the front of his body sticking out the open stall door, or climb up to the top of the closed stall door with his head and shoulders poking out the top of the stall. He went with option one, since he’d be visible either way. At least, standing on the floor, he wouldn’t have to worry about falling into the toilet.
Naturally, as soon as he got comfortable, three other boys came strolling into the bathroom.
“Hey, check it out!” said one. “The School Bug is using the john!”
Unnerved, Roger lost his concentration. He knew who these guys were. They were older than him and part of the sullen little group in the auditorium who hadn’t been all that happy about Roger being in school. The one who’d spoken was Zeke, and the other two were Bob and a kid who called himself “Stick”—nobody knew why. They were mostly just pests right now but had high hopes of graduating into full-time punks in high school. Roger stood uneasily in the stall door and just looked straight ahead. If he ignored them, maybe they’d finish and go away. Unfortunately, looking straight ahead at the mirrors over the sinks only reminded Roger even more that he was a weird giant mantis, parked halfway into a toilet stall.
“Wow,” said Stick. “How does a bug go to the bathroom anyway?”
“Don’t they make, like, webbing or something from their butts?” asked Bob.
“That’s a spider,” said Zeke. “This is a mantis. Didn’t you read that handout thing the principal gave out yesterday?”
“I made a paper airplane out of mine,” said Stick. “I still wanna know how bugs poop.”
“The other stalls are open,” said Bob. “We could climb up on a toilet and find out.”
“Yech,” said Zeke. “What’s wrong with you two pervs?”
“Aw, c’mon,” said Bob. “It’s science!”
“You wouldn’t know science if you took a class in it,” said Zeke. “Oh, wait, you did. Then you had to take it again over summer.”
“Are you guys about through?” said Roger. “Did you come in here to use the can or what, and do you always all go at the same time like girls?” He’d miss his lunch at this rate, and his mom had packed him a big summer sausage!
“Actually,” said Stick, “we came in for a little artistic expression in the stalls. You mind?” He pulled three permanent markers of different colors out of his jacket pocket and tried to smoothly fan them out in one hand. They almost fell out of his fingers, but he caught them.
Roger wasn’t going to lose his temper again the way he had on the way to school. Still, that didn’t mean he had to just take it. Calmly he turned his head, fixed what he hoped was a very unpleasant bug-eyed stare at the three, and began working his weird mouth parts. He slowly flexed his long, powerful, spined arms once or twice.
“You know,” he said in an even voice, “I’m not hungry enough to eat all three of you, but I’m pretty sure I could manage just one. You want to pick? Or should I?” Stick dropped the markers on the floor.
“Okay, okay,” said Zeke, holding his hands up in front of him. “Take it easy!” All three boys scrambled to get behind the other two, which was something to watch. Roger was glad smiles didn’t show on his insect face.
“Hey, guys?” asked Stick in a slightly squeaky voice. “How’s about we hit the john on the other side of the building?”
“S-sounds good to me,” said Bob. With that, the three made a hasty exit, trying to jam through the door all at once. Stick forgot the markers on the floor entirely, and Roger doubted he’d be back for them. Well, picking them up off the floor with his tarsi would be some more good practice for him. He got back to business and hoped there’d still be enough time left for lunch. Thank goodness he was probably the fastest eater in school, now.
Without further incident, Roger managed to arrive before too much of the lunch period had passed. After yesterday’s Mystery Meat fiasco, his mother let him take a lunch to school now instead of eating cafeteria food—another point to chalk up on the positive side of his transformation. Cafeteria lunches just didn’t have enough meat in them, so his mother packed him large portions of bologna, sausage, ham, and other deli meats that didn’t need much refrigeration.
“After all,” Jerry had pointed out, “the last thing the school wants is a hungry mantis running around.”
Roger was still eating outside. He was on the far end of the cafeteria patio with Jerry and Marlene, even if Marlene still wouldn’t really look at him while he ate. As insects go, a praying mantis is better looking than most, but Roger was well aware that his mouth was a nightmare of squiggly parts and weird wormy things.
Roger was gobbling down a whole summer sausage when he realized that Julie had been walking by and was staring at him as he chewed. Her face went very pale, and she ran for the bushes and was loudly sick.
“Cripes,” said Jerry. “That’s a bit rude.”
Marlene went over to make sure Julie was okay, and after a minute or two, an embarrassed Julie ran back into the school. “She’s all right,” Marlene told Roger, joining them again. “She said to tell you she didn’t mean anything by it. You know, I think she’s trying her best, but she really has a thing about bugs.”
Roger didn’t finish his sausage. He thought about apologizing to Julie but figured she’d be better off if he just stayed away from her.
The rest of the day went almost smoothly. Roger did notice that Mr. Horowitz spent an unusual amount of time in the hallways, even poking his head into Roger’s classes now and then. He seemed to be everywhere. Once, Roger could swear Mr. Horowitz was in two places at once. Was he checking on him? It did seem to make a few teachers nervous, and Mr. Horowitz always made the students nervous.
When he finally met Jerry and Marlene after school, Jerry looked at the back of Roger’s thorax.
“Hey, Roger,” he said. “You got about a dozen spitballs stuck to you.”
“What?” said Roger, spinning his head completely around.
“Stop that,” said Marlene, shutting her eyes.
“I still can’t see down my own back,” said Roger. “I didn’t feel anything! I can’t feel stuff as much as I could when I had skin.”
“It’s okay, Roger,” said Marlene, soothingly. She picked up a stick and started scraping dried spitballs off of Roger’s thorax.
“I wonder which class you were in,” said Jerry thoughtfully as Marlene knocked loose the last spitball. “Whoever it was had to be a darn good shot. You would have seen something go by if he’d missed.”
“It had to be art class,” said Roger. “My work table’s in the middle of the room, and I was really concentrating on what I was doing. I’m in the back of the room for most of my other classes. Maybe one of those kids from the pickup truck this morning? I think I recognized one of them in art, but I don’t pay much attention to who’s sitting in all my classes.”
“Wow,” said Jerry. “Then he’s not just a good shot, but smart enough to keep Mrs. Clancy from catching him. I’m impressed.”
“You’ve got to do what Mr. Horowitz told you,” said Marlene. “Ignore the people who don’t like you, and focus on the people that do.”
“Come on, man,” said Jerry. “I’ll walk home with you again.”
“And I’ll see you later at the lot for practice,” said Marlene.
Roger sighed, his spiracles whistling. Just one more day of school before break.
Chapter Twelve
It was finally Wednesday, the last day before Spring Break.
When Roger looked around in his classes, he saw that most of the empty seats that he’d noticed the day before were filled again. He brought it up to Carl.
“Wasn’t really paying attention,” said Carl, looking around. “Whi
ch kids are we talking about?”
Roger pointed one kid out. “That’s one,” he said. “I don’t want to ask him what’s going on. I’m mostly kind of trying to avoid kids I don’t know right now.”
“I’ll check it out,” said Carl.
Later, between classes, Carl found Roger. “Ha!” he said. “Sounds like our principal made the rounds last night.”
“Huh?” said Roger.
“That kid you pointed to. I talked to him. He said his parents got a phone call last evening from Mr. Horowitz. He didn’t hear what Mr. H. said, but his parents decided that maybe taking him out of school wasn’t such a good idea.”
“Jeez,” said Roger.
“Yeah,” said Carl. “Sounds like Mr. H. is taking no prisoners where you’re concerned. Another kid came up when we were talking and said the principal actually came to her house! Hey, I gotta get to class.”
Roger went to his own class thinking about what his father had said about Mr. Horowitz, and that he was kind of lucky to have him for a principal. I might be the only kid in the world right now who thinks his principal is cool, he thought.
Wednesday went better than the other two days, mostly because Roger was figuring more things out, and maybe because the teachers and the other kids were getting a little more used to him. His classes had gotten almost routine, which Roger thought was pretty good for only his third day as The Giant Mantis in Public School. His penmanship still stunk, but not as bad. Okay, the practice helped. At least today he didn’t have to go up to his English teacher’s desk and read her what he’d written, which was particularly awkward since, although she tried hard to hide it, Roger still creeped Ms. Everson out.
One downside about kids being less afraid of him: it meant that some of them felt like they could pick on him safely.
“RAID!” yelled Zeke as he ran past Roger in the hallway, firing a spray can at Roger as he went by. Roger was badly startled, jumping two feet straight up in the air and throwing a really nice mantis threat display, which got a couple of high-pitched screeches and some applause from the other students. By that time, Roger had noticed the can was labeled “air freshener,” and the only negative result was that he now smelled like a pine forest, which was bad enough.
“Hilarious, Zeke,” he muttered. Obviously Zeke was a lot less concerned about being eaten than he used to be. Naturally, Zeke had been very careful to do this when he was sure no teachers, or especially the principal, were around, and for the rest of the day Roger had to explain to everybody why he smelled like a newly-cleaned restroom.
Later, in art class, Roger did manage to catch the Mystery Spitballer. While working on his clay sculpture, he suppressed his natural tendency to keep his body very still and moved his back around a little bit as he worked. As he’d hoped, the spitballer’s excellent aim was thrown off just enough, and one spitball whizzed past Roger where he could see it. He snapped his head all the way around, which made the students behind him jump, and he caught one kid, his eyes wide, with one hand on the straw still in his mouth. As he’d suspected, it was one of the kids from the pickup truck. Calvin. Roger had just remembered his name.
Calvin quickly put both hands on his desk, fixed by what Roger knew to be one of the most impressive stares in the animal kingdom. It took a moment for Calvin to realize the straw was still in his mouth. He let it drop to the desk. Roger raised one huge open hinged claw, and then snapped it closed on thin air with lightning speed. It made a rather loud noise, as if someone had whacked a foot-wide ruler on a giant’s desk. Roger decided that Calvin’s expression would make for some warm memories on his bad days.
“Mr. McGillicutty!” Mrs. Clancy’s voice had an impressive snap of its own, buzzy or not. “What are you doing?”
Roger turned his head around to the front, more slowly. “Umm … just shaking a bit of clay off my claw.”
Mrs. Clancy looked at the students behind Roger suspiciously. Roger looked back again too. All of the students back there, wide-eyed, nodded slowly in confirmation, including Calvin. Jerry, on the other side of the classroom, was desperately trying not to bust out laughing.
“All right, then. Back to work, everyone,” said Mrs. Clancy.
Roger, quite happy with himself, managed to finish what he was almost certain was some kind of an ashtray by the time class was over.
Lunch was better too on Wednesday. Jerry and Marlene ate outside with him as usual, but some more of his baseball teammates joined them, like Carl, Ricky, and Charlie. Julie was nowhere to be seen, though, which was understandable. It was still pretty nice.
Oh, and Roger also had a P.E. class, Physical Education. Once his favorite class in school, he thought that now it was hardly worth showing up.
When Roger first came into the gym Monday as a giant mantis, Mr. Stark, the P. E. teacher, had no idea on Earth what to do with a giant mantis. He kept reading over Mr. Horowitz’s information sheet on Roger, but it didn’t seem to help him much. So Mr. Stark fell back on the usual solution for a student that couldn’t deal with the gym program and told Roger to just sit the class out.
This would be a dream come true for a class nerd, thought Roger, parked on the wooden bleachers in the gym. He’d probably spend the time reading science fiction or something. But Roger was not a nerd. He was a jock, to put it bluntly, and not being able to participate in sports and physical events was the very worst. He protested being put on the sidelines, but this just made the teacher more stubborn. Mr. Stark liked his routine and didn’t want to add anything weird to it. And Roger was Weird, with a capital W.
So for Monday and Tuesday, Roger stood like a statue up on the bleachers while kids climbed ropes, ran laps, played dodge ball, and did other things Roger would have dearly loved to try with his new abilities. The wooden bleachers only reminded him that he’d much rather be playing baseball with his friends out in the ball field instead of sitting in school being some freaky bug to be stared at while other kids were having fun.
Finally, halfway through the class on Wednesday, a stray dodge ball came right at Roger. He caught it. He’d been thinking about how to do this while watching the game, and snagged the inflatable ball neatly with the smooth parts of his claws without a spine or claw coming anywhere near it. He flipped it back to the other side of the gym, nice and fast, deliberately missing the players by a wide margin. It hit the far wall with a distinct “boom” and bounced clear back to Roger’s side of the gym.
Then Roger decided he’d had enough of cooling his heels. He came down from the bleachers and stepped neatly into the line of kids on his side of the gym. They all grinned at him. The kids on the other side didn’t look as happy. The P.E. teacher stepped forward a bit to say something, then looked at the kids and shrugged.
“Okay, McGillicutty,” he said, folding his arms and grinning. “But you break somebody, then I’ll break you, even if I have to bring a lunch to do it.”
“You got it, Mr. Stark,” said Roger happily.
Roger actually wasn’t much good at dodge ball. It had taken a lot of practice to throw a baseball where he wanted it to go, and he had no such practice with the bigger ball, so he couldn’t risk actually trying to hit somebody with it. With his fast reflexes, nobody could hit him, but he could catch a ball and get the opponent out if the ball came near him. That was mostly what he did, and after a while the other side just stopped throwing the ball in his direction.
They were mostly playing the game around Roger by the end, when the teacher blew a whistle. But the other kids seemed to like watching him, and Roger was having so much fun just doing something in gym class that he didn’t really care.
At the end of the game, Roger leaped onto the bottom of the nearest climbing rope, grabbing it with all four feet, and skittered up it as though he was on flat ground. At the top he flipped over to the bottom of one of the steel ceiling beams, gripping the edges, and walked upside down to the far end of the beam. Then he simply jumped to the distant fl
oor, flipping over again and landing neatly on his four feet. He threw out both arms. “Ta daaaa!” Applause all around.
As the class ended, Mr. Stark came up to Roger. “Look, McGillicutty. You’ve been tops in my class before this happened, and I know how rough this is on you. You did okay with the dodgeball, but there’s still just too many unknowns having you participate in group sports right now.”
“I’ve been doing pretty good with baseball,” said Roger.
“That’s fine,” said Mr. Stark, “but remember, you were an experienced baseball player before you got … mutated or whatever. And I’ll bet it took you some serious practice over the past few days just to get where you are now, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Roger, remembering. “You bet it did.”
“If you want to work up to things like dodgeball, basketball, or any other group sports, maybe you can do some practicing on your own time like you did with baseball. When you come back next week, we’ll focus on individual stuff. Not sure what, though. The rope climb seems to be like falling off a log for you, and I have no idea how I’d set you up for calisthenics.” Mr. Stark shook his head. “I’m honestly sorry, but I really don’t know what to do with you here.” He thought for a moment. “Tell you what. I’ll bring in some free weights, and maybe you can do some lifting? I got no better ideas. To play it safe, maybe you should start bringing a book or a crossword or something to kill time. I could maybe get you a library pass.”
Library pass? The nerd would be jumping for joy, thought Roger. Me, not so much.
“Things might look up when we get to the outside sports,” said Mr. Stark. “Track and things. But seeing you jump, I’m not sure what to build on there either.”
“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how it works out,” said Roger. “Thanks, Mr. Stark.”
Roger Mantis Page 9