The Boy Who Knew Too Much

by Commander S. T. Bolivar, III

  “The basement?” Mattie guessed.

  “Yeah, but besides the basement?”

  The headmaster’s office…the janitor’s closet…and suddenly Mattie knew. He dropped his rag. “The teachers’ lounge.”

  YES, INDEED, THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGE. The sole place sound-proofed well enough that teachers can laugh at their students’ essays. The one place where teachers can hang upside down as they sleep.

  Fine. Be that way. It may not be soundproofed and teachers might not sleep hanging upside down, but the teachers’ lounge is still someplace that is only spoken about in hushed tones.

  And students are never ever allowed to go in there.

  “You really think this will work?” Mattie whispered to Eliot.

  Eliot frowned. “You have a better idea?”

  Mattie shook his head.

  “That’s what I thought,” Eliot said.

  Even though Mattie didn’t have a better idea for sneaking into the teachers’ lounge, it didn’t mean he thought this plan would work. After Mattie realized they needed to search the teachers’ lounge, he’d been at a loss to figure out how to do it.

  It was Eliot who suggested sneaking in during a fire drill.

  “But they’ll do a head count once we get to our assigned posts,” Mattie reminded him. “Karloff and his Santa belly will know we’re gone.”

  “Yeah, and it’ll still take them maybe twenty minutes before they realize it. Think about it: the teachers’ lounge is on the back hall—no one will be around, and if they are, they’ll be leaving for the front lawns. We could take ten, fifteen minutes, and run back. We’ll tell them you were in the bathroom.”

  Mattie had opened his mouth and then shut it. Eliot had a great point. But now that they were hiding in an empty classroom doorway and sweating while they waited for the fire alarm to go off, Mattie’s heart seemed determined to crawl up his throat.

  Eliot watched the clock on the wall across from them. The spindly hands trembled as they ticked. “The fire alarm should go off in three…two…one.”

  Whoop whoop whoop!

  Eliot took a step forward, but Mattie grabbed his arm—just as Mrs. Hitchcock rushed past. She was patting her pockets as if she’d lost something. It made the fuzz from her cardigan drift to the floor in fat puffs. They waited for a beat, and then a beat more.

  “Okay,” Mattie said. “Ten minutes. Let’s do this.”

  While Eliot watched the deserted hallway, Mattie opened the faded and scratched teachers’ lounge door. He leaned inside and took a look around. Empty.

  “C’mon.” Mattie motioned to Eliot. Mattie was prepared to see something amazing—shocking, even.

  “This isn’t what I expected,” Mattie said. The room was small, crammed with furniture and sagging shelves. The walls were beige. The couch was beige. The floor was beige except in certain places where it was stained. The whole place smelled like old books and older coffee.

  “Why would anyone want to lounge in here?” Mattie asked, turning in a small circle.

  Eliot shrugged. Out in the hallway, the siren continued to whine.

  “So.” Mattie braced both hands on his hips. “Where would you hide students?”

  “Maybe there’s a secret passageway or something?” Eliot suggested, checking their time on a bookshelf clock. They had six more minutes. “See if you can find a door.”

  They looked and they looked, but there wasn’t a door. In fact, there wasn’t even any type of door—not a trapdoor, not a hidden door, not even a hole the boys could sneak through. There wasn’t anything besides the few tables, the fewer chairs, and a microwave that was crusty on the inside.

  Mattie’s stomach squeezed tight as he studied the inside of the microwave. Unsurprisingly, he’d found nothing, and while it had seemed quite unlikely anything to do with Carter would be inside a microwave, Mattie felt it was equally unlikely to discover his teachers were cloning their students.

  Who knew what else he might have missed because he hadn’t looked?

  Mattie closed the microwave’s door. “We were wrong. There’s nothing here.”

  “Maybe there’s a trick to it?” Eliot peeked behind some bookshelves pushed against the wall. “Try moving some of the books.”

  “You really think if I move the right book, the bookshelf will move to reveal some sort of passageway?”

  “You really think there’s a cloning machine in the basement?”

  “Good point.” Mattie surveyed the closest drooping bookshelf and lifted a copy of You Are Not Your Students.

  Nothing.

  He moved two dog-eared versions of How to Be Good Enough.

  Still nothing.

  Mattie checked the tabletops and spotted a coffee-stained desk blotter. There were small notes about upcoming tests…someone’s phone number…and…

  “Yobbo,” Mattie whispered. Why was “yobbo” written at the corner of the desk blotter?

  “Wait a sec,” Eliot muttered. His face was squished between the bookshelves and the wall so Mattie couldn’t see Eliot’s expression, but he knew that excited tone. Eliot had found something.

  “What is it?” Mattie asked.

  “I believe it’s two students breaking the rules,” Headmaster Rooney said. “Is that what this is? Is it?”

  Mattie gulped, Eliot gulped, and Headmaster Rooney laughed.

  “My office,” he roared. “Now!”

  Headmaster Rooney was quiet. He was quiet all the way down Munchem’s longest hallway. He was quiet as they walked down the steps and past the portraits and up the sunny corridor that led to Miss Maple’s desk. He was even quiet as he ushered Eliot and Mattie into his office and closed the door.

  An unsuspecting student might assume Headmaster Rooney was quiet because he wasn’t that angry. In fact, an unsuspecting student might assume he or she was just going to receive detention or maybe have to write lines on the whiteboard for a few hours.

  Mattie, however, wasn’t an unsuspecting student. Mattie had lived with Mr. Larimore for eleven years and he knew that quiet angry was way worse than shouting angry. But, right now, all Mattie could think was the following:

  He was going to be cloned.

  He was going to disappear.

  And his parents would never know the difference.

  Mattie stood in front of the headmaster’s desk and took a breath so deep he hiccupped.

  “What was that, Mr. Larimore?” Headmaster Rooney demanded.

  “N-nothing, sir!” Mattie stammered. Eliot and Mattie stood before Rooney’s desk. Mattie couldn’t bring himself to meet the headmaster’s eyes so he stared at the framed pictures instead. It wasn’t helpful. In all of the pictures, the headmaster smiled like a shark—with all his teeth and yet something more.

  “Admit it! I caught you returning to the scene of the crime!” the headmaster yelled. “Criminals always return to the scene of the crime!”

  “What?” Mattie took a step back. “No! Wait—what crime?”

  Headmaster Rooney was turning more purple by the second. “You’re lying! You know what crime! Come clean this instant!”

  “No!” Eliot yelled, his blue eyes enormous. “We didn’t even know there was a crime!”

  “Ah-ha!” The headmaster laughed and laughed. He laughed so hard that his head rolled back and Eliot and Mattie exchanged a look that said, I think this man is insane.

  The headmaster suddenly stopped laughing. “So you are telling the truth! And people say bad kids can’t! I must be getting through to you two delinquents—am I getting through to you?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Good,” the headmaster said and leaned in so close to the two boys that Mattie could smell the tuna fish on his breath. “Now, tell me the truth: What were you doing in the teachers’ lounge during our fire drill?”

  “Nothing,” Mattie said.

  The Rooster’s brows rose into angry orange points. “Nothing? It didn’t look like ‘nothing’ to me.”

  “We were
just curious,” Mattie said slowly. “You know how kids are,” he added and tried to shrug like his mother always did when she said that. Mrs. Larimore had used the expression “you know how kids are” plenty of times, and Mattie was confident it would work here too.

  Rooney wiped white spittle from the corners of his mouth and glared at Mattie. “Stop lying. What were you doing in there?”

  Mattie gulped. His brain kept spinning around answers he couldn’t use. They were looking for Carter. They were looking for hidden doors. They were—

  “Looking for Karloff’s birthdate,” Eliot said.

  “Mr. Karloff,” Headmaster Rooney snapped.

  Eliot nodded. “Mr. Karloff’s birthdate. We wanted to get him a present.”

  Headmaster Rooney leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers, and studied Eliot for a long, long moment. “And why would you want to do that?”

  “He’s our favorite teacher,” Mattie said. “He always looks so jolly. Like Santa.”

  “He’s the best,” Eliot agreed and grinned until the Rooster rubbed his forehead like it suddenly hurt.

  “Mr. Larimore?” Headmaster Rooney said.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I expected better from you. What do you think your father will say when I tell him you broke into the teachers’ lounge when you were supposed to be participating in a fire drill?”

  Mattie tried not to gulp. What would Mr. Larimore say? Probably a great many swearwords.

  Headmaster Rooney scowled. “I was assured you were a good child.”

  Mattie slumped.

  Headmaster Rooney braced both hands on his desk and leaned forward. “Considering this is your first offense and I am feeling generous, I’m going to let you two off with a warning. Do you feel grateful?”

  Grateful? Mattie didn’t feel grateful. He felt astonished. Why would the headmaster let them off with a warning?

  “I said: Do you feel grateful?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Good, very good.” The headmaster rubbed his hands together and studied the boys through narrowed eyes. “But let me make myself very, very clear. If you break the rules again, there will be consequences, and I am very sure you will not like them.”

  MISS MAPLE STOOD OUTSIDE THE HEADMASTER’S office waiting for Eliot and Mattie. It was hotter than ever in this wing of the old house, but Miss Maple wasn’t sweating a bit. She was smiling a smile that belonged in a toothpaste commercial and arranging stacks of blank papers on her desk.

  “That went well, didn’t it?” she asked them, her golden curls bouncing.

  “Yes, Miss Maple,” they said. The boys watched as she put some of the blank papers in a left-hand pile and some in a right-hand pile.

  “Wasn’t the headmaster kind to let you off with just a warning?” Miss Maple continued.

  “Yes!” the boys said in unison, but they knew the Rooster wasn’t kind.

  “Wasn’t it wise of him to know you’ll be good boys from now on?” Miss Maple added.

  “Yes!” the boys said in unison, but they knew he wasn’t wise either.

  He was weird, though, Mattie thought. Very weird. The Rooster wasn’t nice, the Rooster wasn’t wise, and the Rooster most certainly did not let bad kids off with just a warning.

  Miss Maple considered Mattie and Eliot as she sat down at her desk and moved her huge purse to the floor. “I won’t see you back here like this again, will I?” she asked. Her smile looked even whiter under the overhead lights.

  “No, Miss Maple.”

  “Good. Now run along or you’re going to miss lunch.”

  Eliot and Mattie didn’t just run. They fled. They galloped down the long gallery, past the dusty pictures, and up the stairs into the rear hallway. They ran past the dining hall. They ran past the science wing. They didn’t stop running until they reached the overgrown courtyard where, once again, Mattie had to catch his breath and stomp ants trying to crawl up his leg.

  “I thought you had blacked out back there,” Eliot panted. He collapsed onto the nearest bench. For something made out of stone, it wobbled an awful lot, but Eliot didn’t seem to care. “You just stared into space like my grandpa does.”

  Mattie swatted at his ankles. “Sometimes I have to think.”

  “Yeah, well, think faster next time.”

  “There can’t be a next time,” Mattie reminded him. He rubbed both fists into his eyes, feeling very much like punching something. Or breaking something.

  Or maybe just screaming really, really loudly.

  They weren’t any closer to finding Carter! All Mattie had found out was that the teachers liked burned coffee and watched the same British television shows as Caroline.

  Yobbo whatever, Mattie thought as he glared up at the stone angel. Someone had drawn eyeglasses on her. She looked even angrier than Mattie, which was incredibly satisfying.

  “C’mon.” Mattie turned to leave. “Let’s go before we miss lunch and Karloff yells at us.”

  Eliot scraped along beside his friend, but both boys were quiet as they climbed the stone steps to 14A. Mattie couldn’t stop thinking about the Rooster’s talk of consequences. He knew it meant cloning. He was sure of it.

  Which meant Mattie couldn’t get caught again.

  Or maybe it meant he should just give up?

  “I can’t give up,” Mattie whispered.

  “What?” Eliot stopped and turned around. Sunlight was streaming through the upper windows, illuminating the dust in the air. It gave Eliot a dirty halo. “Are you talking to yourself now too?” he asked.

  Mattie faced his friend. “I can’t give up on Carter even if the Rooster does clone me.”

  “Dude, he’ll only clone you if he catches you. Key word: if.”

  Mattie tried not to roll his eyes. Eliot sounded awfully confident for a kid who seemed really close to peeing himself when Headmaster Rooney threatened them. Eliot also sounded smug, which he often did when he had an—

  “Wait.” Mattie peered closely at his friend. Eliot’s eyes were wide and glassy. “You have that look again.”

  “What look?”

  “That look you get when you’re thinking about something, when you have an idea. You always look like your brain hurts.”

  “That’s not nearly as flattering as you think it is.”

  Mattie grabbed Eliot by the shoulders. “What’s the idea, Eliot? What’s the plan?”

  “I think it’s time I introduced you to Marilyn,” Eliot said and turned around. He took the last steps two at a time, and Mattie had to scramble to catch up.

  “Marilyn?” Mattie didn’t remember meeting any student named Marilyn. He knew Caroline, obviously, and there was Eloise from their applied mathematics class, and that blond girl who never talked in biology, but he couldn’t remember a Marilyn.

  “Who’s Marilyn?” Mattie asked.

  “My computer.”

  “We’re not allowed to have computers.”

  “I know.”

  “But you have one and you named it Marilyn?” Mattie gawked. “Is she a robot too? Like Doyle and Carter?”

  “Don’t be stupid. Of course she isn’t. That would be insane. Now,” Eliot said, pointing one finger to the ceiling above them. “Boost me up before Kent comes out and wants to know what we’re doing.”

  Mattie stared at the foam ceiling tiles above their heads. They had made it back to the hallway leading to 14A—and not only had they made it back to 14A, the boys were standing in the very same spot where they had met on the first day of school.

  “I don’t understand,” Mattie said slowly. “How is Marilyn going to help us find Carter?”

  Eliot sighed as if Mattie was especially stupid and Eliot was especially long-suffering. “We can’t go sneaking around anymore, right?”

  “Right.”

  “But we have to save Carter, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So,” Eliot said slowly, “we need someone to sneak around for us. I hard-wired Marilyn into the sch
ool’s phone lines so we can use the Internet. I’m going to use her to check Rooney’s, Karloff’s, and Hitchcock’s email. People leave all sorts of stuff in their inboxes. Maybe it will be stuff we can use.”

  “That’s a great idea!”

  “I know. Now boost me!”

  Eliot stepped on Mattie’s interlaced fingers and the boys teetered left and then teetered right as Eliot grabbed for the ceiling.

  “Hurry up!” Mattie panted.

  “Stop wobbling!” Eliot gasped and, after another two misses, he worked his fingers between the plastic foam ceiling panels, hoisted his forearm over the ledge, and kicked his way into the attic. Mattie stared up at the ceiling as bits of dust and dirt floated down.

  A rope ladder dropped and smacked him in the face. “Ow!”

  “Hurry up!”

  Mattie hurried. The ladder swung a bit too much to make the whole thing fun, but he did get to the top without hurling. Or falling on his head.

  On his hands and knees, Mattie slowly crawled inside while his eyes adjusted to the dark. It was colder up in the attic than it was down in the rooms. It was dirtier too—and that was really saying something considering this was Munchem. There were cobwebs in the corners, dust covered everything, and something gritty clung to Mattie’s palms. He brushed his hands off on his pants and then saw the computer or, rather, he saw Marilyn.

  She was covered in a plastic shower curtain, but Mattie could still see the red and green lights. They looked like eyes in the dark.

  Eliot carefully removed the computer’s plastic wrapping and Mattie sneezed.

  “Do you mind?” Eliot asked.

  “Sorry.” Mattie sneezed again. “Is this what you were doing up here? On that first day, when you and Caroline fell out of the ceiling, were you setting this up?”

  Eliot nodded. “My parents love it here because we’re not allowed to have computers. Munchem is like a detox program for people who love computers, and I love computers.”

  “What’s a detox program?” Mattie asked.

  Eliot paused, screwing up his mouth as he thought. “I think it’s like vacation. My mom goes on them, and when she comes back, she’s happier like she’s been on vacation.”