The Boy Who Knew Too Much

by Commander S. T. Bolivar, III

  Mrs. Hitchcock took a step toward him. “It’s…”

  “It’s a dead possum,” Mattie said, or at least he tried to say it. Mattie had his arm across his nose and mouth again. It didn’t really help. Nothing helped. The fish dinner had almost been better. The possum was too dead, too stinky, and too smushed. It had a tire track across its back, and a perfect black “C” drawn between its eyeballs.

  C for Carter, Mattie thought. Carter knew Mattie had study hall in this classroom. If Mattie were half as bad as his brother, he would stick the dead possum in Carter’s bed as payback.

  Only Mattie wasn’t.

  Or at least he wasn’t yet.

  Instead, Mattie turned and smiled at Mrs. Hitchcock. “It’s a dead possum,” he repeated, and Mrs. Hitchcock fainted.

  After finding the dead possum, the teachers didn’t seem particularly interested in homework or smiles or even how Mattie agreed with them that the dead possum was indeed disgusting.

  They were interested in work—specifically, the teachers were interested in making the kids clean.

  In addition to the new possum stench in Mrs. Hitchcock’s classroom, there were old fingerprints on the windows and dust in all the hallways and the bathrooms had the greenest and crustiest toilets anyone had ever seen.

  It was Mattie’s job to clean them.

  Well, not just Mattie’s job; it was the job of all the students at Munchem Academy. Whenever they were bad, whenever they made a mistake, whenever they needed improvement, the teachers made them clean.

  “Because cleaning is good for the soul!” Mrs. Hitchcock would repeat. Mrs. Hitchcock taught reading and floor washing, which meant she always smelled a bit like old books and a lot like bleach. Her gray hair fanned around her head in tiny, tight ringlets and, because it was raining today, the ringlets were higher and tighter than ever before.

  “Cleaning will make you good!” Mrs. Hitchcock continued as she paced the hallway, seemingly oblivious to how her clumpy, black shoes smudged all the places Mattie and the other children washed. They’d been cleaning for three straight weeks, and Mattie figured he must be extra good by now.

  Munchem Academy definitely wasn’t anything like Wicket Prep. At Mattie’s old school, the teachers used natural cleaners made of vinegar and oranges. At Munchem, the teachers used bleach and spit. At Wicket Prep, the students studied mildew for biology. At Munchem, the students mostly inhaled it.

  “I don’t remember seeing this on the Web site,” Mattie muttered to Eliot, who wasn’t really washing the floor so much as swirling the dirty water around and around with his equally dirty rag.

  “I’m glad it’s not,” Eliot said, slopping his cloudy water onto the bit of floor Mattie was washing. “My parents would’ve sent me here years ago.”

  Mrs. Hitchcock strolled past them, leaving oily shoe prints on the tile. “For this term’s project, you will each be responsible for an essay detailing your journey at Munchem Academy. You will explain what kind of person you’ve become thanks to Munchem, what you’ve learned along the way, and you will read it at the end-of-term dinner.”

  Eliot made a gagging noise.

  “It sounds nice,” Mattie whispered to him. It didn’t actually, but he was trying to be positive.

  “It sounds like stuff the Rooster will put on the Munchem site to make it look awesome around here,” Eliot said, and Mattie nodded because it did indeed sound like something the headmaster would do. But it didn’t seem that hard. Surely he could come up with something—anything—about how he had changed.

  Mrs. Hitchcock strolled in their direction again, shoes squishing in the water. “After all, Munchem Academy is the world’s greatest reform school!” she announced, making the words sound peppy like the students should repeat them and clap.

  Mattie thought he would totally repeat them and clap if it would help him look reformed.

  Good?

  Clean?

  Mattie definitely wasn’t clean. All the grime turned the students’ skin gray. “Like zombies,” Carter had said that morning at breakfast—although he hadn’t said it to Mattie. He’d said it to his roommates.

  Carter still wasn’t talking to Mattie, but it wasn’t as noticeable as Mattie had feared. This was mostly because the kids at Munchem stuck together. If you shared a dorm, you ate together, had classes together, took your free time together, which meant the other boys from 14A had to hang around Mattie. They didn’t actually talk to him, of course, but they were still around and Mattie could pretend. The headmaster called it enforced team-building.

  Doyle called it a death march.

  Mattie dipped his sponge again, his eyes wandering to Doyle, who was currently spitting into Caroline Spencer’s bucket of sudsy water. Caroline didn’t usually clean with Mrs. Hitchcock, but she was in trouble because she had let all the frogs loose from their cages in the science department. Mrs. Hitchcock spent extra time stepping on Caroline’s work—and Doyle’s too now that Mattie noticed it. Doyle looked over at Mattie and Mattie quickly looked away.

  Too late.

  Doyle flicked something small and slimy from the bottom of his bucket to the top of Mattie’s ear. Mattie sat up straight.

  “Mr. Larimore!” Mrs. Hitchcock shrilled, stomping toward him. “Hands on your work, sir!”

  Mattie’s hands were, in fact, clasped to his ear where they had found the small and slimy thing and were trying to wipe it away.

  Doyle snickered as Mattie slowly put his palms on the floor. “Yes, Mrs. Hitchcock,” Mattie said. Doyle laughed harder. He could hear the waver in Mattie’s words. Everyone could. The two girls next to him elbowed each other and giggled.

  Their teacher stamped her foot. “Everyone get back to work,” she demanded and walked over to check Caroline’s progress. Mattie concentrated on the floor in front of him.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Eliot whispered, crawling alongside Mattie as he pretended to clean the baseboard. Eliot smelled like old-lady purses again, and Mattie wondered if he’d been up in the attic with the blinking lights.

  “Doyle’s just being Doyle,” Eliot said.

  But Doyle was always being Doyle and he was always getting away with it. For the world’s greatest reform school, the kids didn’t seem very, well, reformed. They seemed to be as bad as ever—like they were proud of it. And then there was the dirt situation.

  “Where does it all come from anyway?” Mattie whispered to Eliot, pivoting so his back was to Mrs. Hitchcock and both boys faced the baseboard. “We clean and clean and it always gets dirty again.”

  Eliot scratched his nose with the back of his hand. “Who knows? It’s like the dirt comes up from the air vents.” Eliot sat up a little and glanced around. “Do you smell something burning?” he asked.

  Mattie shook his head. The only thing he smelled was bleach and Doyle’s occasional burp.

  “I definitely smell something burning,” Eliot muttered. “Maybe it’s one of Caroline’s stupid frogs. Maybe it got stuck in the heating vents and is getting fried. It would serve her right for being such a pain.”

  “That’s disgusting,” Mattie said.

  Eliot rolled his eyes. “You think everything is disgusting. Live here a little longer and you won’t care anymore.”

  Mattie really, really disagreed with that, but he didn’t want to argue with the only person who was nice to him at Munchem. Instead, Mattie concentrated on the green film caked on a nearby air vent. It seemed especially difficult to get off. Maybe Eliot did have a point about all the grime and dust wafting up from the ventilation system. Maybe—

  Hooooorrrrrk!

  Plop.

  Mattie froze. He stared. Doyle had hawked a loogie onto Mattie’s hand. It shivered like Jell-O and looked…well, it looked disgusting. Mattie held out his hand and wished it were attached to someone else.

  Mattie shook his hand, his arm, his whole body, and—plop!—the loogie dropped to the wet floor. It shivered again and all Mattie could do was stare. He was horrifi
ed.

  And angry.

  Sometimes when Mattie was horrified and angry, he was known to do things he wouldn’t normally do—things like throwing his sponge. Right in Doyle’s face.

  It was satisfying for precisely three-quarters of a second, and then everyone gasped and Mattie realized what he had done and Doyle realized what Mattie had done.

  Mattie looked at Doyle, looked at the sponge, looked at Doyle, and felt a high-pitched eek! climbing up his throat.

  “You are so dead,” Caroline said. She was right. Mattie should’ve been dead. Doyle should’ve squished him flat and buried him in that overgrown courtyard with the ants and the itchy grass where no one would’ve ever found him. Except for the ants.

  But Doyle didn’t get a chance. Headmaster Rooney suddenly banged through the hallway’s double doors.

  “Doyle!” Rooney barked, charging toward them with such force his shiny shoes squeaked like evil mice against the wet tile.

  “I know what you did!” Squeak! Squeak! Squeak! “I know all about it!” Squeak! Squeak! Squeak—Splash!

  Headmaster Rooney had stepped in Caroline’s bucket. He slid to a stop and shook his left foot, showering Caroline and another kid with dirty water.

  “Admit it,” the headmaster roared at Doyle. “Admit it and it’ll go easier for you!”

  “Maybe you should admit what you’ve been doing!” Doyle stabbed a finger in Rooney’s direction. “I know about the basement!”

  The headmaster’s face went purple. A vein on his forehead throbbed. “How dare you!” Rooney shrieked and seized Doyle’s upper arm, hoisting him onto the balls of his feet. “Detention! Now!”

  Rooney dragged a struggling Doyle down the hallway.

  Mattie slumped with relief, realizing he had been clenching his fists until his fingers were numb. He forced himself to relax. Everyone was still staring after Doyle and Rooney. But Mattie’s brain was stuck on what Doyle said: I know about the basement.

  What basement? Mattie didn’t think Munchem had a basement and, even if it did, who cared? Why would a basement make the headmaster so angry?

  Bell let out a long, low whistle and dropped his rag into his bucket. “I’ve never seen the Rooster so mad,” he whispered.

  Kent nodded in agreement, then Kent and Bell turned to Mattie.

  “You know Doyle’s going to kill you, right?” Bell asked Mattie.

  “Nah,” Kent said. He was kneeling in a patch of sunlight that made his black hair extra shiny. “Killing’s too easy. Doyle will rip his arm off and club him with the wet end.”

  Everyone nodded like this was the most natural thing in the world. Although, considering it was Doyle, it was probably natural to assume Mattie was going to be clubbed by his own arm.

  “Why’d you do it?” Kent asked.

  “Yes.” Caroline narrowed her eyes at Mattie like she was seeing him for the very first time. “Why?”

  Mattie swallowed. He didn’t really know and that worried him. A lot. Throwing the sponge had been rather like stealing that train—it was just something that came over him, like all his frustrations took over.

  His mother had episodes like that too, but usually only when she was purchasing a new hat or a car. Mrs. Larimore had never stolen a train, and she certainly had never tossed a slimy, wet sponge in someone’s face.

  Well, at least as far as Mattie knew.

  Stealing that train hadn’t been particularly satisfying, but throwing that sponge at Doyle? That was kind of sort of possibly very satisfying, and that worried Mattie. He was supposed to be getting better.

  What if he was getting worse?

  Mrs. Hitchcock—who up until that moment had been clutching her throat and staring after the headmaster—jerked to life. She swung around on the students and pointed a shaking finger toward them.

  “Back to work!” she shrilled. “All of you need to get back to work!”

  The students faced the floor again, cleaning with more enthusiasm than before. The boys of 14A moved closer together, scrubbing the same four tiles over and over.

  “What do you think they’re going to do to him?” Eliot whispered.

  “Nothing good,” Kent said, and all the boys shuddered.

  Well, all the boys except for Mattie.

  Mattie was relieved. It wasn’t that he wanted Doyle to get in trouble. It was more that Mattie liked where his arms were attached to his body.

  “Maybe by the time Doyle gets back,” Mattie ventured, trying the words out to see if they had any truth to them. “Maybe he will have forgotten all about what happened.”

  Caroline snorted. “Doubtful. It was a bold move, though. I’m impressed.”

  “Thank you?”

  Kent studied Mattie for several seconds. “What’s your name again, New Kid?”

  Mattie went still. “It’s Mattie. Mattie Larimore.”

  Everyone nodded.

  “You’re still dead,” Caroline reminded Mattie and went back to her own cleaning.

  Mattie looked at Eliot, who frowned. “It’s been nice knowing you, Mattie.”

  MATTIE TRIED TO ENJOY HIS ARMS while he still had them. He used them to shield his face during gym class, where he never managed to dodge the ball. He used them in the cafeteria line to help push his tray along the counter. Later, he used them to cover his eyes from the lamplight because Eliot wanted to stay up reading, and Mattie wanted to sleep one last night with all of his body parts still together in one place. By the next morning, he was sick with waiting.

  But Doyle never showed. He wasn’t at dinner that night, and he didn’t return to room 14A at bedtime. At first the boys wondered if maybe Headmaster Rooney really did have a dungeon, but everyone knew it was a joke. When Doyle didn’t return by the end of the week, however, they began to think maybe it wasn’t.

  “I mean, where could he be?” Eliot asked as they sat down for dinner. Caroline was already at their table, peeling an apple. Everyone else sat with their roommates. Caroline refused to. Last week, when Mattie had asked her why she didn’t get along with the other girls, she’d shrugged.

  “It isn’t that I mind managing people,” Caroline had said. “It’s that I mind when they don’t do what I tell them to.”

  “That’s not really the point of roommates,” Mattie had told her.

  “Isn’t it?” Caroline had asked. She’d looked utterly confused—rather like she did now sitting at their table. “What are you talking about?” Caroline now wanted to know. Her hair was extra high and dark today like a tornado was swirling above her head.

  “Doyle,” Mattie said glumly. “He still isn’t back.”

  “You should be happy about that,” Caroline said and took a bite of her apple.

  Mattie studied Caroline, and Caroline studied Mattie. She was right and Mattie knew she was right, but Mattie didn’t think Caroline should seem so smug about it. He pretended to be interested in the next table instead.

  Unfortunately for Mattie, the only people at the next table were Marcus and Jay. Normally, Mattie wasn’t big on watching people eat, but looking at the two of them now, Mattie couldn’t turn away. There was something just so strange about them.

  To be precise, it was the way Marcus and Jay were eating. It was almost in unison, like they were doing an act or an ice-skating routine. They would slice bite-sized pieces of broccoli from their plates, put them in their mouths, and chew them eight times before swallowing. Then they did it again. And again.

  Mattie sat up and glanced around, trying to decide if anyone else had noticed, but he couldn’t tell. Eliot and Caroline were arguing, Kent was spitting food on Bell, and Carter was looking the other way.

  Mattie slouched down again and played with his food because not staring at Marcus and Jay reminded him about his countdown to being armless—and that will make anyone lose his appetite.

  “Are you going to eat that?” Eliot asked. Mattie pushed his tray toward him. He knew he shouldn’t stare, but he kept thinking about how Marcus had said t
hat weird word on his first day of school. What was it again? Yoohoo? Booboo?

  Mattie sat up. “Yobbo!”

  “What?” Eliot’s mouth was full and bits of food sprayed the tabletop.

  “Yobbo,” Mattie repeated. “Do you know what it means?”

  Eliot shrugged. Caroline sighed. “It means hoodlum.”

  “Oh.” Mattie considered Caroline for a long moment. “How do you know that?”

  She rolled her eyes. “How do you not?” The boys kept staring at her, and Caroline sighed again. “It’s a British word. I learned it watching Doctor Who.”

  “Oh.” Mattie studied Marcus again, wondering why on earth he would’ve said “yobbo.” Miss Maple said Marcus was a good kid. Maybe it had something to do with that? Mattie tugged at his jacket and wondered how Marcus got his sleeve so smooth. Manfred would probably know. Mattie thought he might write him and ask—

  “Mattie? Are you coming?”

  Mattie jumped. Eliot and Caroline were ready to go, holding their empty trays and waiting for him.

  “Yeah,” Mattie said and jumped to his feet. “I’m coming.”

  Thanks to Caroline’s Free the Frogs Project, she still had extra cleaning to finish, so the boys were on their own as they trudged to 14A.

  Mattie had to admit the stairwell looked pretty good since Mr. Scratch’s seventh graders had cleaned it. In fact, Mattie was so focused on how he could almost see the grain in the wooden floorboards that he almost didn’t see the person standing in 14A. The person was…ironing?

  Yes. He was ironing. The sight was so strange that Mattie took a step forward and froze. He knew that shaved head. He knew those enormous hands. Doyle!

  He was back!

  And he was ironing?

  Mattie felt that high-pitched eek! start creeping up his throat again, but Doyle only smiled at him and went back to pressing his socks. For a long moment, no one said anything; then Eliot leaned in to Mattie.

  “Tell him you’re sorry,” Eliot whispered as Doyle removed a sock from the ironing board he’d propped between his bed and Bell’s bed.