“Yes,” Miss Maple continued, and she sounded more and more pleased. “They had to go and they didn’t say good-bye because they didn’t have time.”
“Glad to know some things never change,” Carter muttered.
Mattie slipped and Mr. Karloff pulled him upright. His parents couldn’t go. They were supposed to save Carter and Mattie. They were supposed to help save all the kids.
And they were supposed to take Mattie with them. It was that small voice in his head again. It was so small Mattie almost couldn’t hear it, but he could feel it, and it made him feel small in a way that was worse than just being short.
The auditorium doors were shut tight. Mr. Karloff hauled the Larimore boys around the side, shoving them through a side door to the backstage. It smelled like old velvet and old papers. Miss Maple sneezed.
“You,” Mr. Karloff said to Mattie, pushing Mattie into a plastic chair. “You better not move. I have plans for you. And you”—Mr. Karloff looked at Carter and pointed toward the stage where Headmaster Rooney was waiting and smiling at the crowd—“you get out there.”
Carter looked at Mattie, then he looked at Mr. Karloff, then he looked at Headmaster Rooney. Headmaster Rooney looked back like he was counting all the ways he was going to torture the Larimores if Carter didn’t get out there.
“Whatever,” Carter said and marched past the moldy curtains and onto the stage. He had Mattie’s essay clenched in his fist and there was faint applause as he walked to the headmaster’s side.
“And this is Carter Larimore,” Headmaster Rooney began, wrapping one arm around Carter’s shoulders. “He’ll be reading from his essay, ‘How Munchem Academy Made Me a Better Person.’ Carter? Take it away.”
Mattie looked over his shoulder and listened for any sounds coming from the hallway beyond the door. Nothing. Still no Eliot. How much longer would it take to free the others? And where was Caroline? Had she been able to catch Carter the Clone?
Miss Maple dug her fingers into Mattie’s shoulder and shook him. He turned back around and clasped his shaky hands between his knees.
Come on, guys, Mattie thought. We need you.
On stage, Carter cleared his throat. He unfolded Mattie’s essay and looked at the parents and teachers and students. He cleared his throat again. “‘How Munchem Academy Made Me a Better Person’…by Ma—Carter Larimore.”
The microphone screeched and the headmaster scowled. Mattie started to sweat. Did the Rooster know? He was studying Carter awfully hard. His brother wasn’t dressed like the other clones. The others were wearing Munchem blazers and shirts. Carter was wearing a Munchem shirt, but it looked slept-in.
Mostly because it had been slept in.
“At Munchem,” Carter began to read. “I’ve learned about the merits of a clean dorm and a clean classroom. I’ve learned to live up to my potential. I’ve learned—”
Carter stopped reading. He stared at the audience. Mattie knew they were in trouble. Carter could only play good for so long—or he had just spotted his clone on the other side of the stage, hidden in the wings.
“Oh, boy,” Mattie breathed as Carter the Clone waved. Ribbons of silver duct tape hung off his arm.
“What the devil?” Miss Maple whispered and dug her fingers even deeper into Mattie’s shoulder. Mattie barely noticed, though. Carter the Clone waved again and the real Carter gaped. He patted the back of his head like he couldn’t believe his hair really stuck up like that.
“Carter?” Headmaster Rooney leaned a little closer. His attention was pinned to the audience ahead of him. He still hadn’t seen the clone to his right. He had no idea.
But Miss Maple did. She glared at Rooney and gave Mattie a shake. It snapped his back teeth together.
“Is everything all right?” Headmaster Rooney asked Carter.
“Of course it’s not all right.” Miss Maple dragged Mattie to his feet as Caroline suddenly came into view. She was breathing hard and looked furious with the clone. “It’s not all right at all, you fool!”
Headmaster Rooney couldn’t hear Miss Maple’s furious whispers. He was too busy studying Carter, and Carter was too busy smiling at Rooney. He was smiling the same evil smile he had on his face when he dunked Mattie in the pool or peed on Mrs. Kirby-Clegg.
“It’s just nerves, sir.” Carter’s eyes were wide and his voice trembled. “We can be nervous, can’t we? You don’t expect us to be robots, do you?”
Headmaster Rooney blinked. He blinked again. He looked at the audience and then he looked at Carter and then he saw Carter the Clone standing in the wings.
“We are so dead,” Mattie whispered.
And indeed they would be. Mattie needed the clone to come out. He needed proof. He needed the other students. But, right now, he needed to make sure Headmaster Rooney didn’t clobber the real Carter.
Mattie wrenched himself from Miss Maple’s grasp. He would have to defend Carter. Or punch Rooney. Or something.
Miss Maple swore. It was long and impressive and contained variations that even Mr. Larimore didn’t know. She grabbed for Mattie. When that didn’t work, she grabbed for the closest rope.
Miss Maple yanked, Mattie ducked, and the moldy velvet curtains began to sway.
“Uh-oh,” Mattie said as the curtain swung shut. Now they couldn’t see the audience. Now the audience couldn’t see them, and the audience definitely couldn’t see Carter the Clone sit down hard like someone had just deactivated him.
Which maybe someone had, Mattie thought as he held the now broken remote in his hands. He’d fallen on it and now the plastic box was in pieces. Lots of pieces. If he survived this, Eliot was going to kill him.
Mattie jumped to his feet, and Headmaster Rooney crashed into him. Then Miss Maple took a swing at both of them with her purse. It swooshed past Mattie’s head.
“C’mon, you fool!” Miss Maple grabbed Rooney by his arm. Beyond the curtains, parents’ voices began to rise.
“What’s going on back there?” someone’s father yelled.
“Is everything okay?” someone’s mother called.
Mattie opened his mouth to yell that it was not okay at all just as Miss Maple pulled the fire alarm with all her might.
Whoop whoop whoop!
“Stop!” Mattie cried. Miss Maple gave him a kick. Mattie kicked back, but he missed. Rooney and Miss Maple ran through the side door, disappearing into the hallway.
“Carter! Caroline!” Mattie cried. “They’re running away!”
But were they? Headmaster Rooney and Miss Maple weren’t running for the garage with its school buses and vans. They weren’t running for the road. They weren’t even running for the woods. No, they weren’t running away at all. They were running straight for the cemetery.
They were running straight for Eliot.
MR. KARLOFF AND THE CLONES dashed past Mattie.
Whoop whoop whoop!
“Argh!” Mattie cried as he lunged for Marcus the Clone’s ankle. Marcus easily shook him off, but Mattie was up and running. Too bad for Mattie that everyone else was running too.
Parents were going right and left. Students were following parents. Mattie tried to follow the teachers and the clones as best he could, while being pushed sideways and backward.
Carter, Caroline, Rooney, and Miss Maple were heading toward the cemetery. Mattie quickly realized that the teachers and the clones were heading in the opposite direction, for the parking lot. They galloped past panicked parents and plunged through the great double doors. They ran down the steps and across the gravel drive.
Cars were everywhere. The teachers and clones went straight for a white van waiting by the grass. Mr. Karloff got there first. He opened the sliding door, and everyone dove in.
Well, everyone except for Mattie, who was too far behind to stop them.
He stared at the bright red taillights as Mr. Karloff floored the van down the driveway and toward the road. Mattie sagged as parents and students milled around him. No one knew what had just ha
ppened. The proof was getting away! Mattie’s proof was getting away!
A potbellied man shoved past Mattie. He pivoted, searching the crowd. “Where’d the teachers go? Where’s that Rooney?”
Mattie opened his mouth and heard a shout, but it wasn’t just any shout. It was Carter’s voice.
“You better run for it!” Carter yelled.
Mattie plunged back into the crowd. He charged through the school and out the back doors toward the fields. He was fast, but he wasn’t fast enough. Carter and Miss Maple and Headmaster Rooney were well ahead of him, running across the meadow toward the cemetery as if their hair were on fire.
Mattie’s chest tightened. Headmaster Rooney is going to catch them, he thought, tearing across the grass. Have to catch up!
Mattie ran with all his might, but the others’ legs were longer—way longer—and he fell behind. He was just passing the tumbledown headstones when he heard another shout. Something was happening down in the mausoleum.
The tomb was still pushed to the side, so Mattie pounded down the stairs. He stopped at the last step, gaped, and almost went back up. Eliot had definitely freed the others.
But they weren’t going anywhere.
Doyle and Marcus were staggering around the room. Maxwell was barfing in one corner, and Eliot and Caroline were running from Miss Maple. She had her handbag and was swinging it with all her might.
“Run, Mattie!” Caroline yelped as Miss Maple clocked her in the shoulder. “Run while you still can!”
Mattie couldn’t run. His feet felt pasted to the floor. He stared at Rooney, who was standing in the middle of the room, tears streaming down his face. It was so odd, so unexpected, so very un-Rooster-like. He was crying like he was on Como Pasa El Tiempo, like his heart was broken, like everything he’d ever wanted had been destroyed.
But what Headmaster Rooney had wanted was wrong!
Mattie knew it was wrong, and yet now he could almost see things from the headmaster’s point of view: the Rooster had wanted to have a great school. He had wanted to create something bigger than himself.
Even villains thought they were heroes.
“You!” Headmaster Rooney cried, stabbing one finger in Mattie’s direction. Everyone turned around.
“Get him!” Miss Maple shrieked and dove for Mattie. Carter grabbed Miss Maple around the waist and she rammed her elbow into his temple.
“Run, Mattie!” Carter yelled.
Mattie was already running.
“Not that way!” Carter yelled, but it was too late. In his panic, Mattie went left when he should have turned back and now he was just running in circles. With Miss Maple and Headmaster Rooney puffing right behind him.
“I’ve got you now!” Rooney snarled.
Mattie skittered under the closest pod, crawled along on his hands and knees, and popped up on the other side. Miss Maple swore. Headmaster Rooney grunted. Mattie ran faster, feeling like he was leading a horrible parade.
“Mattie!”
Mattie glanced over his shoulder. Carter was waving frantically. Why? Mattie yelped as Miss Maple’s fingers dug into his collar.
“Come here, you little brat!” she screamed.
Mattie ducked again. Why was Carter waving? Now was not the time for waving—wait.
Mattie darted another glance and realized Carter wasn’t waving. His brother was pointing at the now-open pods.
“Aargh!” Miss Maple cried as Caroline tackled her behind her knees. They both hit the concrete floor in a puff of screams and kicks.
Which left just Headmaster Rooney running after Mattie, and Eliot running after both of them, and the pods were now open—
Mattie knew what Carter meant. He knew what he was going to do. Mattie slowed, looking over his shoulder to Eliot.
“Push him, Eliot!” Mattie cried.
“What?” Eliot spluttered.
“Push! Him!”
And as Mattie jumped onto the nearest pod, as he ran across the cushion and jumped down the other side, Eliot did indeed push Headmaster Rooney. He shoved him with all his strength. The Rooster stumbled and fell facedown into the pod. Carter snapped it shut.
“Moof, moof, mwah, mwah!” Rooney cried. Mattie couldn’t understand the headmaster through the thick glass, but he was pretty certain Rooney was saying, “Let me out this instant!”
Or possibly, “I’m going to clone all four of you when I get out of here!”
“Mattie!” Caroline cried as Miss Maple gave her a kick. “Help!”
Miss Maple kicked her again, and Caroline’s grip loosened. She fell to her side as Miss Maple ran for the stairs.
“I’ll get you for this!” Miss Maple shrieked. “You just wait!”
“Get her!” Mattie yelled, but it was too late. Miss Maple took the stairs three at a time and disappeared into the dark.
“Let her go! She doesn’t matter!” Carter tugged Mattie back to the pod containing Headmaster Rooney. The headmaster slammed his palm against the glass and yelped.
“Dude,” Eliot whispered. “You don’t see that every day.”
“Nope,” Mattie wheezed, still trying to catch his breath. In the movies, you could always tell who the bad guys were. In real life, bad guys looked like regular people. Mattie thought that was even scarier.
“What are we going to do?” Caroline moaned.
“We could clone him,” Carter suggested, flicking the glass to tease the headmaster. “See how much he likes it.”
“Why would you want another Rooster?” Eliot demanded.
“Cloning Rooney would make us as bad as he is,” Caroline said, crossing her arms. “Stop antagonizing him!”
Carter flicked the glass harder.
“We should call the police,” Mattie said. “We’ll go back to the house and get some of the parents. When we show them this”—Mattie waved at the pods and the room and the computers and, well, everything—“they’ll have to believe us.”
Caroline nodded. Carter nodded. And Eliot? Well, Eliot leaned over and turned on the pod.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Caroline’s eyes were wide and her hair was huge. She grabbed for the pod’s control panel. “Turn it off!”
“No,” Eliot said as he blocked her. Behind him, the headmaster stopped pounding on the glass. He began to giggle. Then he started to laugh. Then he passed out.
“Eliot!” Caroline smacked her brother’s arms and chest. “He’s going to forget everything!”
“Yes.” Eliot nodded and then nodded some more. “I think that’s for the best actually.”
The best? Mattie lunged for the control panel too and Eliot waved both of them off.
“I don’t understand,” Mattie told him. “We have to tell the police.”
Eliot gave Mattie a big shove. His expression was worried, and it stopped Mattie dead. “But what happens after we tell the police?”
Carter nodded. “I was thinking the same thing.”
What? Mattie looked at Carter and then at Eliot. “They’ll arrest Rooney and the rest of them.”
“We’ll be heroes,” Caroline added.
“And Munchem will close,” Eliot said quietly.
Carter nodded again. “Exactly.”
Everyone paused to think about this. Carter stared into space. Mattie scrunched up his nose. Eliot scratched his cheek and Caroline smoothed down her hair.
“We won’t go to school together anymore,” Eliot continued. “You know what Mama said. ‘Caroline, if you can’t make Munchem work, you’ll have to go to that girls’ school.’”
“And I’ll have to go to military school,” Carter said.
“And I’ll get sent to another boarding school without Marilyn,” Eliot said. “I’d hate that.”
Mattie stared at his friends and his brother. He wasn’t sure where his parents would send him if Munchem closed, but he knew wherever it was, it wouldn’t have the Spencers or Carter around and the realization made Mattie’s knees go a bit weak.
He had friends now and t
hey were important to him. When did that happen anyway? How could something that felt so strong have snuck up on him? Did it happen when Eliot showed him Marilyn, the supercomputer? When Caroline introduced him to Beezus? Or was it just now, when they fought the Rooster and won?
Mattie had no idea how he had changed, but he did know he was different now. Maybe those were the best changes, the ones that crept up on you, the ones that stowed themselves away inside you so you could discover them later.
“I don’t want to go to another school,” Caroline said. “I can’t be myself there. I belong here.”
“Yeah,” Carter said. “Me too.”
“Me three,” Mattie said and everyone looked at him in surprise.
“Mattie,” Carter said hesitantly. “All you’ve wanted to do since you arrived is go home. Are you sure?”
Mattie nodded. “I think I fit in better here.”
“I think you’re more you here,” Carter said.
“I think so too,” he said.
“But what about the machines?” Caroline asked.
“And what about the clones?” Eliot added.
Carter nodded. “What about the other teachers? You said they were all in on it.”
“Maybe it won’t be a problem,” Mattie said slowly, watching the real students. Doyle and Marcus weren’t staggering anymore and Maxwell wasn’t barfing in a corner any longer, but they still looked baffled. “Mrs. Hitchcock and Mr. Karloff were getting into the Munchem van. I saw them as I ran down here. They had the clones with them. I think they knew they were in trouble. I’ll bet they’re halfway across the state by now.”
Carter rubbed his chin. “Which means…”
Everyone turned to study the now unconscious headmaster. He was drooling on his satin pillow and his hair stood up in spikes. Mattie thought it made him look like he had horns.
“What if we left him in the pod?” Eliot suggested.
Mattie peered down at Headmaster Rooney. “He would forget about the machine and the clones and we could pretend like nothing happened.”
“But something did happen,” Carter said, and he said it a bit testily. But can you really blame him? After all, Carter did get cloned. He studied the real Doyle, Maxwell, Jay, and Marcus with a frown.
The Boy Who Knew Too Much Page 20