by Bruce Hale
“My chicken!” he roared. “My chicken! Ah-hee-hee-hee!” In a lightning-fast lunge, he managed to snatch a fistful of feathers.
Buh-kwaaak! went the bird. Karate Girl danced sideways, putting the desk between her and our chicken-crazy teacher.
“Calm down, Mr. Chu,” she said.
“I…am…calm!” he cried. Without warning, he dived across his desk, both hands outstretched. This time, our teacher caught Tina by the wrists. She struggled.
“Ow!” cried Karate Girl. “You’re hurting me!”
Mr. Chu didn’t even hear her. He sprawled halfway across his desk, trying to tug Tina closer and snapping his jaws at the freaked-out bird in her grasp. I wrapped my arms around Tina’s waist and planted my feet to hold her back, but he was impossibly strong.
The expression on Mr. Chu’s face was purely bestial, all savage appetite.
He dragged us closer…closer…
Fweeeet! A whistle blast cut through the uproar.
Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to look at the source of the sound. Standing in the doorway, her whistle still in hand, was a lanky brown woman in a powder-blue pantsuit and cowboy boots. Our principal, Mrs. Johnson.
“Now, what in the Sam Hill is going on here?” she said.
THERE ARE TWO theories on how to handle principals. Neither one works. After a brief introductory scolding from Mrs. Johnson, we braced ourselves for the inevitable.
Even with help, it took about ten minutes to collect our supplies and cram the chickens back into their carrier. After that, we went on one of the scariest trips at school: straight up to the principal’s office. (I wish I could tell you that Benny and I had never been there before, but my abuela says it’s not good to lie.)
We sat on the hard plastic chairs by the attendance desk. As usual, the office smelled of home-baked brownies, Magic Markers, and fear.
“That could’ve gone a little better,” said Benny.
“You think?” I said.
“Maybe if we’d gotten to sacrifice the chickens—”
I broke in. “We’d be in even more trouble than we’re in now.” I glanced at the school secretary, Mrs. Garcia. She was typing away on her computer, pretending to ignore us, but I knew she could hear every word we said. Secretaries and teachers have ears like bats.
The last thing we needed was to have wild talk of were-creatures spread through the school. But Benny and cautious are two words that don’t go together.
“And after all that exorcising, he’s still a—” Benny began.
“Very patient teacher.” I cut my eyes toward Mrs. Garcia, but Benny was distracted and didn’t catch it.
He rubbed his palms together. “Guess we’ll have to try another cure for—”
“Your dog’s case of heartworm,” I said, glaring. At Benny’s puzzled look, I tilted my head toward the secretary, who had stopped typing and was doing her best not to gawk at us.
At last, Benny got it.
“Ah, yes!” he exclaimed. “Bummer that the heartburn cure didn’t work.”
“Heartworm,” I muttered.
“So we should go visit the, uh, pet store after school.” Benny’s eyebrows waggled like he was sending me a Morse-code message. He may have been my best friend, but subtle he wasn’t.
I rolled my eyes.
Just then, Mrs. Johnson’s door opened and Mr. Chu stepped out, in midsentence. “…all just a—hee-hee-hee—misunderstanding,” he was saying.
“I’m sure it was,” the principal drawled. She rested a hand on her office doorframe and snuck a quick glance at Mr. Chu’s formerly bald scalp. “But if you need a little time out because of stress or…”
Our teacher shook off her concern. “Not me. Never felt better, ha ha!” And with a cheery wave to Mrs. Johnson and an unreadable glance at Benny and me, he swept out the side door.
The principal’s gaze landed on us. My stomach dropped into my socks.
“Boys,” she said, “come in.”
I followed Benny into the office and sat in one of the culprit chairs designed for guilty visitors. You could tell they were culprit chairs because they were hard enough to make you confess to almost anything. But somehow, I didn’t think confessing the real reason for our exorcism would be a good idea.
Not yet. Not till we knew more.
Mrs. Johnson shut her door and strode to the other side of her desk. She stood there, watching us, not speaking. A slim woman with short, curly hair, Mrs. Johnson must have studied the Principal Stare back where she came from in Texas, because she had it down pat.
It felt like fire ants wearing golf cleats were crawling over my skin.
After what seemed like an hour, Mrs. Johnson said, “So?”
“We didn’t do it! We’re innocent!” Benny burst out. “It wasn’t our fault.”
I bit my lip. He’d forgotten the first rule of dealing with principals: never volunteer information.
One eyebrow climbed her forehead. “You didn’t turn those chickens loose?”
“Well,” I said, “technically, we did.”
“But we didn’t mean to,” said Benny. “It just got out of hand.”
“And the”—Mrs. Johnson consulted a notepad on her desk—“dirt, the squirt guns, and the whacking things with sticks?”
I shrugged apologetically.
“All an accident?” said Benny. “We were superexcited about our project. Things got a little messy.”
The principal’s lips tightened into a straight line.
“We were only trying to give our social studies report,” I said. “Honest.”
“Other students make their reports without disrupting the entire classroom,” Mrs. Johnson said. “You’re fourth graders now. I had hoped for better judgment from you.”
I winced. “We’re really, really sorry.”
“Really, really,” added Benny.
The principal’s stare went from one of us to the other. “I could forgive nearly everything but the doggone chickens. Tell me true: Whose idea were they?” She turned the full force of the Principal Stare on me.
My breath stopped. It was all Benny’s idea, of course, but you never rat out your buddies. That was the second rule of dealing with principals.
The silence stretched.
“Um,” said Benny, shifting in his seat.
“We both came up with it,” I blurted. Benny shot me a grateful glance. “But we never thought they’d escape.”
“Carlos.” Mrs. Johnson frowned. “You’re a good student. I expected more of you.”
Did that mean she expected less of Benny?
“Sorry.” My ears burned and I couldn’t look her in the eye. “It won’t happen again.”
“You’re darn tootin’,” she said. Mrs. Johnson gazed at us awhile longer. It looked like she was making up her mind about whether to throw us in the dungeon, stretch us on the rack, or tie us to an anthill.
Finally, she said, “You’ll both serve detention today, and I don’t want you leaving one speck of your mess for the janitor. Not one chicken feather, not one dirt clod. Clear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” we chorused.
“Go on, now.” She made a shooing motion, and we stood up to leave.
Then a thought struck me. Maybe she deserved to know something about our teacher’s problem, if not the whole truth. “Um, Mrs. Johnson?” I said.
“Yes, Carlos?”
“Have you…” How to say this without sounding like a wacko? “Have you noticed anything different about Mr. Chu recently?”
“Different?” Her other eyebrow arched up her forehead. I wished I could do that.
“You know, strange?” I said. “Weird?”
Mrs. Johnson angled her head. “You’re talking about a teacher who dresses up as Dr. Frankenstein, Genghis Khan, and a giant cucumber? Strange isn’t the word. He’s nuttier than a boxful of woodpeckers.”
“No, but see—” Benny began.
“And he’s one of my best teachers,” s
aid the principal. “Don’t try to blame Mr. Chu. He may have overreacted in the heat of the moment, but this is all your doing.”
“But—” Benny tried again.
“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” said Mrs. Johnson, sitting down at her desk and turning her attention to some reports. She used folksy Texas sayings like that sometimes, but what she really meant in this case was beat it.
So we beat it.
Mr. Chu grew more demented as the day went on. He kept laughing like a maniac at things that weren’t funny. That wasn’t so bad, but he completely lost his sense of humor at the same time. He bullied Zizi until he drove her to tears, and he mocked Big Pete’s learning disability in front of the whole class. That was totally uncool.
Luckily, he didn’t attack any other students or chickens, but I guessed it was only a matter of time. Our teacher was a ticking time bomb of weirdness. I couldn’t wait to go hear if Mrs. Tamasese had figured out what Mr. Chu was turning into.
But school being school, I had to.
Not long before the end of the day, the upper grades got called into an assembly. Usually, assemblies were boring with a capital B—a chance for teachers to gossip and kids to snooze while some grown-up with a microphone went blah, blah, blah. But not today.
Standing beside Mrs. Johnson as she gave her usual, keep-your-lips-zipped introduction was a familiar-looking man. He had slick, perfect black hair, like he’d greased it and then combed it back with a steel-toothed comb and a T square. He was as tanned as a tennis player in July. And he wore a sharp-looking navy-blue suit.
“It’s the same guy,” I told Benny.
“Who?” he asked.
“Mr. Helmet Hair. We saw him at the comics store.”
“Who?”
I pointed at the front of the multipurpose room. “That guy. He came in just before we left, asking about magic supplies.”
Benny shook his head. “I can’t believe it.”
“What, that I have such a good memory?” I asked.
“No, that you name people like that. What do you call our principal, Mrs. Kangaroo Boots?” He nodded at Mrs. Johnson’s fancy cowboy footwear.
Then our principal said, “Please give a warm Monterrosa Elementary welcome to Mr. Sharkawy of the Monterrosa Art Museum.” Everyone clapped, in that halfhearted way you do when you have no clue who the person is and you’re just being polite.
The helmet-haired man took a long moment to survey us. He had dark, penetrating eyes, an eagle’s beak of a nose, and a mysterious half smile.
“Magic,” he said, “is all around us.”
“So are germs,” muttered Benny. I stifled a chuckle.
“Monsters…are all around us,” Mr. Sharkawy continued, raking the audience with his eyes. Benny and I both perked up at that.
“Is he talking about…?” I whispered.
Mr. Sharkawy clapped and, with a flash of sparks, a great cloud of purple smoke blossomed. When it cleared, a tall glass display case stood on the formerly bare stage beside him.
An “oooh” arose from the crowd.
“Nice trick,” Benny said sarcastically. But I could tell he was impressed.
The museum guy allowed himself a tiny smile, then continued. “Sub-Saharan African societies, like the Yoruba, Bakongo, and Dan, have long recognized the existence of the supernatural. Just because our culture pooh-poohs it doesn’t mean it’s not real. The supernatural is as real as a wolf howl, as real as this display case. And it’s still here with us today.”
Nervous laughter greeted his remark.
Sliding open the glass front of the case, Mr. Sharkawy removed a freaky-looking wooden mask. When he held it in front of his face, he looked like a dead-eyed, snaggletoothed monster in banker’s clothing.
A chill tiptoed down my back.
“Art like this is the key to understanding the link between our world and the next,” he said. “And that is why it is so important.”
Benny nudged me. When I leaned closer, his whispered words tickled my ear. “I bet this guy knows a thing or two about shapeshifters.”
I gulped and nodded.
Almost as if he’d heard us, Mr. Sharkawy lifted a jackal mask from the case and told us about shamans who could turn themselves into animals. He quickly moved on to talking about the other objects, and about how fascinating the museum’s exhibit was, and how the installation was nearly finished, and blah, blah, blah.
But Benny and I had heard enough.
When the museum guy closed by saying, “And I hope to see all of you soon—even before the grand opening of our exhibit: African Art and the Supernatural,” Benny and I traded a look.
“Count on it,” I said.
AFTER WE SERVED our detention, Benny busted out his amazing skills of persuasion. Somehow, he sweet-talked his mom into dropping us at the comics store while she took the chickens and the rest of our gear home. (For the record, my mom would never do something like that unless my little sister, Veronica, was involved. She believes in teaching self-reliance—to boys, anyway.)
Mrs. Tamasese was dealing with a rush of high school kids when we got there. Benny and I hung out by the front counter until she spotted us.
“Howzit, boys?” she called, ringing up some X-Men comics for a couple of teen girls. “I got what you were after.”
My breath caught. “You did?”
“Yeah, but”—she surveyed the line and the kids pawing through her bins—“give me about fifteen minutes, okay?”
We promised, and I began to head for the shelf where she kept the Bone graphic novels, one of my favorite series. But before I’d taken two steps, Benny grabbed my arm.
“Hold up,” he said.
“What?”
“This could be really bad news,” Benny said.
“True,” I said. “So?”
He raised his pointer finger. “So, as my grandpa always says, never face bad news on an empty stomach.”
I cocked my head at him. “Would that be your three-hundred-pound grandpa?”
“Grandpa Ira? Yeah, why?”
“I don’t think he faces anything on an empty stomach.” Then I thought of what Mrs. Tamasese might tell us and added, “But he’s got a point.”
“Exactly. To the ice cream shop!”
We stepped back outside and tramped down the block. Just as we reached the corner, a person the size of a four-by-four pickup rounded the building and slammed right into me. I staggered into Benny, and we both went down.
“Watch it!” a deep voice barked.
A huge, muscular man towered over us. Dark stubble dotted his strong jaw and shaven head, and he scowled like he was posing for the cover of Fierce Frowns Monthly. He was the kind of hombre who’d play Evil Special Ops Guy in an action movie.
“S-sorry,” I said. “I didn’t see you.”
“Rotten kids,” he growled, eyes sizzling. “Tearing around town, causing trouble.”
Benny and I picked ourselves up off the sidewalk. “Easy, mister,” said Benny. “It was an accident.”
I looked up. And up, and up—hijo, this guy was big. “We’re really, really sorry,” I squeaked. “Did I mention that?”
Up close, an animal odor rolled off him like the stink from a dog kennel. I’m no expert, but at a guess, the guy had last taken a bath when Kennedy was president. I tried to breathe through my mouth so my nostrils wouldn’t die.
“Someone should teach you kids a lesson,” he rumbled. That comment hung in the musky air like a threat. Then, without another word, the giant pushed past us and continued on his way.
“Charming dude,” I said with a tight voice.
Benny gave a shaky laugh. “I can already guess your nickname for him,” he said. “Mr. Stenchy Pits?”
“Bingo,” I said. “What do you think he does for a living? Spy? Truant officer?”
“Preschool teacher,” said Benny.
We dismissed this random Monterrosa weirdness and headed on to the scoop shop. After forti
fying ourselves with some frozen, ice-creamy goodness, Benny and I retraced our steps to the comics store. A half block away, we heard our names called.
“Rivera, Brackman! Wait up!”
Tina Green hustled down the sidewalk to catch us.
“Hey, Karate Girl,” said Benny. “Break any bricks lately?”
“Only faces,” she said, all deadpan. When Benny took a step back, she added, “Nah, I’m just yanking your chain.”
“Going for some comics?” I asked.
Tina shook her head. “Listen, we need to talk. Something is seriously wrong with Mr. Chu.”
“Uh, yeah.” I glanced at Benny. “What is up with him and chickens?”
Crossing her arms, Tina said, “Come on. It’s not just his normal strangeness anymore, and I know you guys know something about it.”
“Whatever do you mean?” asked Benny. He wore that Innocent Blond Angel expression that his mom fell for nearly every time. But not Tina.
“Come off it, Brackman,” she said. “Do I look like a mountaintop?”
“Uh, no,” he said.
“Then stop trying to snow me. Nobody picks exorcism for their social studies project. I saw how you guys were acting.”
I lifted a shoulder. “What? Same as ever.”
Tina’s eyes narrowed. “You’re a terrible liar, Rivera. You guys were hoping all that mumbo jumbo would do something to him, weren’t you?”
She was right; I am a terrible liar. I looked to Benny for help.
“Um, we never…” he began, until her stare made him squirm. “Oh, all right. Yes, there is something wrong with Mr. Chu.”
“What is it?” she asked. “Is he possessed?”
“We don’t know for sure,” Benny said, glancing up and down the street. “But don’t worry. We’ve got this under control.”
Tina barked out a laugh.
“Okay, we’re working on it,” I said. “Look, you can’t tell anybody.”
“Why not?” said Tina. “It’s obvious to anyone with half a brain. Even Big Pete could tell.”
Benny held up his palms in a calming gesture. “We don’t want the whole class freaking out,” he said.
She snorted. “Oh, like nobody noticed that he tried to munch a live chicken? Get real.”