I don’t know how to fit, Mattie thought, but he didn’t get to think it for long because Mr. Larimore was drawing himself up for another lecture.
“Boys! You can’t act like this!” Their father wiped his head again. “It makes me look unfit. It makes Munchem look unfit. You two are supposed to be reformed. Carter”—Mr. Larimore turned to his oldest son—“you had finally turned a corner. You were doing so much better.”
Mattie looked at his feet. Mr. Larimore had confused the Real Carter with the Clone Carter. It was an understandable mistake—even more understandable when Mattie and Carter remembered Mr. Larimore had no idea Headmaster Rooney had been making clones—but it was still an uncomfortable mistake because no matter how much Carter enjoyed angering his parents, deep down Mattie was pretty sure Carter also wanted them to notice when he wasn’t, well, Carter.
“I need to go back home for a few days,” Mr. Larimore continued, and as he did, a pale face appeared at the window above them. It was so pale it could have been a ghost, but unfortunately for Mattie, it wasn’t a ghost at all. It was worse. It was Delia. Her slicked-down blond hair flashed in the afternoon sunlight and then she disappeared. “I need to see your mother,” Mr. Larimore said. “I need to order more computers. And I have to check in with the office. So you two better behave.”
Mattie nodded. “I’ll be good. There won’t be a problem,” he said, and there wouldn’t be as long as Mattie figured out how to deal with the clones, the Spencers, and his little Delia Dane issue.
Maybe not so little, Mattie thought, searching the windows again. Thankfully, Delia was gone.
Mr. Larimore turned back for the school. A narrow chauffeur waited for him at the top of the hill and Mr. Larimore stomped toward him, wiping his head and muttering under his breath.
Carter watched their dad go, and slapped Mattie on the shoulder. “Good job with the glitter,” he said quietly. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”
Mattie wilted. Technically, he didn’t. Delia did. Mattie scowled at his brother. “I know about the clones and the candy, Carter,” he whispered.
Carter frowned. “Yeah, about that…”
“That’s all you have to say? Doyle looks hungry. When’s the last time you fed him?”
Carter had to think about it.
“You can’t just forget to feed him!” Mattie whispered furiously.
“I didn’t forget the clones. When I need something from them, I’ll bring them something. That’s how business works.”
Mattie slumped. Fine. He would feed the clones. Somehow. He glanced at his brother. “You really don’t care if Munchem closes? Last term, you helped us save it. You said you didn’t want to go to military school.”
“That was before I found out Dad was going to be here all the time. I think I’d rather take my chances with a drill sergeant.”
Mattie looked at him and Carter sighed. “Okay, yes, I don’t want to go to military school, but I can’t take him always being here. He drives me crazy.” Carter shook his head, shaggy dark hair flying. “Anyway, things are going to get better.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because now Dad’s gone. It’s time to have some fun.” Carter rubbed his hands together. “I’ve been good for far too long, Mattie. It’s been hard. I’ve nearly strained something.”
“Uh, maybe you should try a little harder.”
Carter laughed. “This is going to be great.”
MATTIE WOULD NEVER HAVE THOUGHT discovering Clone Doyle would be a good thing, but it was. Caroline and Eliot stayed so busy brainstorming ideas to sneak the clones food, they forgot they hated each other.
Maybe things are finally getting back to normal, Mattie thought as he waited for history class to end. Up by the whiteboard, Lem was helping Dr. Hoo test new foods, and as Mattie watched, one of the newly developed sausages tried to wiggle off the plate. Dr. Hoo stabbed it with a fork.
Well, Mattie thought, it’s as back to normal as it gets around Munchem.
The scientists sat at a slate-topped table in front of the classroom, plastic plates piled with food spread out in front of them. Dr. Hoo took a forkful of something purple and put it in his mouth.
“How’s that one taste?” Lem asked, pencil poised above his paper.
Dr. Hoo chewed for a moment. “Like regret in the morning.”
Lem nodded, scribbling something in his notebook. “And the other?”
Another forkful. This time, the stuff was green. There was more chewing and more thinking. “Tastes like feet,” Dr. Hoo said at last, swallowing. “Sweaty feet.”
Mattie felt his eyes bug, but Lem wrote down Dr. Hoo’s observation without even blinking.
“I still think it’s simpler just to steal a few extra sandwiches or burgers from the cafeteria,” Caroline whispered as she pretended to get something out of her book bag. “We can stick them under our shirts. Trust me. No one notices—and if they do, they just think you’re chubby.”
Mattie and Eliot nodded. After all, Caroline would know.
“I agree,” Mattie whispered. “If we all take something at each meal, we’ll have enough, but how do we get down there regularly?”
“We could drug the teachers,” Eliot whispered. “Make them go to sleep. They’ll never know we were gone.”
Mattie studied his friend for a moment. Eliot was a great kid. He was smart and he was loyal, but every once in a while he was also scary. “Yeah, so moving on.”
“If you keep watch,” Caroline whispered, “I could sneak down there and back. You could do some sort of signal so I would know when it was safe to come up.”
“Who’s whispering?” Lem asked, lifting his head to see across the rows of students. “Does someone have a question?”
Mattie and the Spencers went back to their work. Or what passed as work at Munchem these days. It was the last part of American History and everyone was finishing up their Dream Bear questionnaires.
The Dream Bear in question sat on the edge of Lem’s desk, its fangs hanging down and its claws lying out. The teddy was supposed to scare away children’s nightmares, but Mattie was pretty sure it was going to give him nightmares. He concentrated on his questionnaire.
Would you or your family be likely to purchase Dream Bear in the future?
No way, Mattie wrote.
Would you or your family be likely to purchase Dream Bear as a gift?
Only if I didn’t like the person, Mattie wrote.
How would you improve Dream Bear?
Mattie looked from the toy’s claws to its fangs to its beady little eyes. There was so much to cover and yet the questionnaire’s answer blank was so small. He sighed, working in silence until the bell rang.
“Questionnaires!” Lem cried as the students surged to their feet. Doyle and Maxwell tried to duck past him. “Don’t forget to turn in your questionnaires!”
Mattie and the Spencers grabbed their bags as everyone stuffed their questionnaires into Lem’s outstretched hands. The scientist scrambled to keep the papers from falling on the floor.
“We will caucus again on Monday,” Lem shouted. “For those of you who don’t know what caucus means—”
It was too late. Everyone had spilled into the hallway. Mattie and the Spencers followed the crowd of students out the doors and onto Munchem’s lawn. It had been a long week, and when Mattie tilted his face toward the sun, he could almost forget about Delia and clones and how his dad might close Munchem.
Mattie squinted at the sky. Fat-bottomed clouds drifted over the school. They were especially puffy today—especially puffy and foot shaped?
Mattie stared, and as he stared the foot cloud began to blur in the wind. It still looked like a foot, but now it looked like a foot that was partially dissolved in acid.
Well, that’s disturbingly realistic, Mattie thought, tilting his head and watching the cloud’s edges turn pink. Like blood, Mattie thought with a shudder. He was so busy thinking it, he wasn’t watching where he was going. But,
honestly, even if he had been watching, he wouldn’t have expected to see a balloon hit him in the face.
Or for that balloon to be carrying one of his dirty socks.
“What the—?” Mattie snatched at the balloon and the striped sock came loose in his hand. Mattie gaped at it—and then gaped at the schoolyard. There must have been fifty balloons bumping along the ground and drifting listlessly against Munchem’s brick walls.
Each one had a different piece of clothing taped to it. Mattie’s shirts were attached to blue balloons, his socks were attached to yellow balloons, and his pants were attached to big green balloons.
A spring breeze stirred through the grass and Caroline caught a yellow balloon as it passed. “Uh, you want this?” she asked as other students began to wander into the schoolyard. Mattie snatched his sock and stuffed it in his pocket. He grabbed a passing shirt and crammed it under his arm.
“Uh, Mattie?” It was Caroline again and she did not sound happy. “I think you might want to grab that.”
Mattie turned, and wheezed as his underwear floated past on pink balloons!
“Oh, that’s not good,” Eliot said, wide-eyed.
Not good? It was awful. Mattie’s underwear shimmied in the breeze, drifting toward a huddle of eighth grade girls. They shrieked and ran. Mattie ran too. He ran left to grab his pants. He ran right to grab his underwear. He was so busy running to catch his clothes, he didn’t have a chance to thank the Spencers, who were helping.
That’s one of the great things about friends. Sometimes they aren’t just the people you sit with during lunch. Sometimes they’re the people who grab your dirty socks before they hit someone in the face.
The breeze suddenly picked up and Mattie had to dive to grab his gym shorts. He hit the grass with both knees and caught the balloon, and he almost had his shorts free when he heard the laughter.
Not just any laughter. This laughter was mean and a little maniacal. In fact, it was the kind of laughter you might use if you were an evil scientist and just had an evil scientist breakthrough. In this case though there weren’t any scientists (evil or otherwise) standing in the schoolyard. It was only Delia, and she was laughing so hard she was wiping tears from her eyes.
Mattie’s intuition went itchy and his face went bright red. Delia was behind this. He just knew it.
The girl’s laughter turned to giggles and the giggles turned to hiccups and she walked off. Mattie watched her go—or at least he watched until another pair of pants hit him in the shoulder.
“Mattie?” Caroline asked.
“Yeah?”
“I might have been wrong when I said you wouldn’t have a problem with Delia.”
I MIGHT HAVE BEEN WRONG when I said you wouldn’t have a problem with Delia.
It was the understatement of the century and Mattie didn’t know what to say. Then again, what could he say? It isn’t every day you have problems with balloons and your underwear and your underwear being taped to those balloons.
It isn’t every day when Caroline Spencer admits she was wrong too.
Yes, indeed, this was uncharted territory for Mattie, and he didn’t know what to do. “Why is she doing this?” he managed at last.
“Maybe she likes you,” Eliot said, and he sounded so mournful Mattie wanted to thump him. Thankfully, he couldn’t. His arms were too full of clothes. “Maybe it’s Delia’s way of flirting. We don’t know. I can’t get her to pay attention to me at all.”
Mattie and Caroline exchanged a look.
“I would gladly trade places with you if I could,” Mattie said at last, reminding himself that Eliot was his best friend and being best friends meant you had to overlook a few things—even if one of those things was your best friend being in love with your worst enemy. “But somehow I don’t think stringing up my underwear means Delia likes me.”
“Good point.”
Mattie looked at Caroline. “This is bad,” he said. And because this was Munchem, where things always go from bad to worse, another cloud of mucus yellow pollen billowed past them. Mattie coughed. Eliot was right about nature being awful.
“What am I going to do?” Mattie asked Caroline.
“Lock up your underwear for starters.”
“I mean about Delia.”
“What the…?” Everyone turned around. Carter stood on the walk, one arm around a girl’s shoulders. Carter’s eyes bugged and the girl giggled.
“It’s not what it looks like,” Mattie said—although he had no idea why he said it. It was exactly what it looked like: his clothes were strapped to balloons and the balloons were drifting around the schoolyard.
Carter looked at another pair of floating underwear, then he looked at Mattie, then he looked at the floating underwear again.
“Mattie,” his brother said at last, shaking his head. “We gotta talk.”
We gotta talk. Those of you with boyfriends and girlfriends and evil sidekicks will know the horrible dip your stomach makes when someone says those words, and for those of you who don’t? You will.
We gotta talk is a variation on the universally unpleasant We need to talk, and both of those are code for You’re in trouble. I’m going to talk and you’re going to listen.
In instances like these, it’s important to pick the right location for your talk: crowded restaurants, crowded water parks, and even crowded grocery stores are ideal. Why? Because they’re crowded. You have witnesses.
And since Carter didn’t have any of those places, he took Mattie and the Spencers into the dead gardens and made his little brother sit on one of the mossy benches.
“Mattie, we gotta talk about what’s been going on.” Carter folded both hands behind his back and began to pace back and forth on the grass. The Spencers watched him with interest. Mattie watched him with dread. “This latest issue with Delia? It isn’t good. It isn’t good at all.”
Mattie agreed, but Carter’s tone seemed to suggest he was the one whose underwear had just been seen by half the school.
His brother stopped pacing. He stood in front of Mattie and shook one finger at him. “Look, now that we’re friends, I have to stick up for you, but I’m not going to beat up Delia.”
Mattie paled. “I wouldn’t want you to.”
“I have a code, Mattie, and that code includes not hitting girls.”
Another gust of yellow pollen drifted over them and Mattie sneezed. He wondered what else Carter’s code involved, but Mattie didn’t get to ask because his brother kept going.
“And because of my code,” Carter continued, “I’m going to teach you how to do better, how to be better.”
And how to sound like their dad? Because, at that moment, Carter sounded—and looked—almost exactly like Mr. Larimore. Mattie, however, was smart enough not to say it.
“What are you talking about?” Caroline asked. “We need to figure out how to pay Delia back.”
“And why she’s out to get me,” Mattie added.
“What do you think I’m coming to?” Carter paused, collecting himself. “Mattie, here at Munchem, everyone’s a criminal. We fight. We lie.”
“That’s true,” Eliot said. “I lie all the time.”
Caroline shrugged. “I only lie when I have to.”
“Enough!” Carter waved one hand and everyone went quiet. “Now, I was going to start with the basics, but clearly we don’t have time to find lighter fluid and a waffle iron, so I’m going straight to the big stuff.”
Mattie shifted nervously. “Big stuff?”
“Yep, big stuff.” His brother paused again and Mattie decided Carter got his flair for dramatics from their mother. “Mattie,” Carter said at last, pulling a tiny vial from his pocket. “You need this.”
Everyone fell silent. Carter made the vial sound amazing, like Mattie needed to pull a sword from a stone, but the thing was, there was nothing amazing about a tiny plastic bottle filled with clear liquid.
“I don’t get it,” Eliot announced.
Carter dangled
the vial in Mattie’s face. “Put a few drops of this in Delia’s food and it will give her the most epic diarrhea she’s ever had.”
“What is it?” Mattie asked.
Carter grinned. “Do you really want to know?”
“Well, I know it’s gross,” Caroline said.
Mattie agreed, but he was also ever so slightly kinda sorta interested too. Having your underwear put on display for half the school can do that to you. Mattie thought about it. He stared at the bottle. He stared at his brother. He held out his hand.
Carter snatched the vial back. “You want it? You pay for it. Ten bucks.”
Mattie gaped. “For that tiny thing?”
“Ten dollars compensates me for my risk.” Carter rolled the bottle from hand to hand. “I’m not supposed to be selling stuff, but I can’t ignore my fellow students’ need.” He paused. “I’m a giver, you see.”
“I don’t have any money and you know it.”
Carter sighed, and held out the bottle. “Fine, you can consider it a loan.”
Mattie hesitated. This was his chance. This was…“I can’t. I don’t want to make her sick. There has to be another way.”
“You have very limited thinking, do you know that?” Carter said. “After the glitter bomb, I thought you were really going somewhere.”
“That wasn’t me,” Mattie said miserably. “That was Delia too.”
“Oh. Well. That does change things.”
Mattie wilted a bit. He really couldn’t win these days.
Carter put one hand on Mattie’s shoulder. “If you don’t want my brilliant suggestions, fine. But think this through. You need to beat Delia at her own game, and she’s clearly better than you are. She’s a bad kid, probably a future criminal, and how do you beat criminals?”
Mattie thought for a moment. “You become a better criminal.”
TRUER WORDS WERE NEVER SPOKEN. Well, perhaps, truer words were spoken when Mattie’s mother said it is better to be kind than right, but it could go either way really.
Regardless, we’ve reached another important moment in Mattie’s life. Only he had no idea it was important at all. Isn’t it interesting how Mattie’s evolution into the world’s greatest criminal didn’t happen all at once? It wasn’t just one big decision that led him to his destiny. It was a thousand tiny decisions that got him there. And, luckily for you, I know all of them—unlike other biographers I could name. Fine, I’ll name him: Alistair Wicket.
The Girl Who Knew Even More Page 8