The door opened.
“You can’t come in,” Brittany and Brooke told the boys. “This is our room now. It’s extremely private.”
“No it isn’t, it . . .” Cody never finished his sentence. The sight that met his eyes made him want to puke. There, in their old bedroom, were more shades of pink than on a lipstick display counter and more flowers than on a coffin.
The girls had decorated the dorm.
“All the other rooms were unsuitable,” Marybeth told Cody and the boys. “Miss Prim said we were welcome to take this one. She told us we were free to decorate any way we liked.”
“There was a bunch of crummy junk in the bunks,” Virginia added. “It smelled bad. We threw it all away.”
“You what?” Ratface shrieked. “All my stuff? Gone?”
“It was rubbish,” Virginia said with a shrug. “We did you a favor by getting rid of it.”
“You’ll pay for this,” Victor said, shaking his fist. “You can’t just kick us out!”
“Watch us.” Brittany and Brooke pushed the boys out and slammed the door.
Ivanov, the hunchbacked hall monitor, hobbled down the hall and led the boys to their new sleeping quarters—a cold, drafty room that used to be the stables, once upon a time when the Splurch Academy grown-ups had horses pulling their carriages and wagons. The floor of each stall was covered with a layer of moldy, stinky straw. A few lucky boys found rope hammocks to sleep in.
“We need to hold a council of war,” Carlos said grimly.
“Sure, but it’s almost dark,” Cody said, looking out the window. “Griselda’s probably gone to bed. Want to go raid the kitchen?”
They tiptoed through the shadowy hallways. At the sound of clicking heels on the stone floor, they froze and drew back against the wall.
It was Priscilla Prim, with a duster in her hand. She opened a closet door and began nosing through, remarking in disgust at the clutter inside.
“What’s this?” she cried. “Who’s hiding in there?”
She stepped back into the hallway, holding a skeleton by the arms.
Priscilla propped him against the wall and dusted him off. Then she paused and took a closer look at his necktie and hat.
“Why, bless my bunions,” she said. “It’s Uncle Rastus! You poor old thing. Why are you stuffed in a closet? You should be down in the nice, quiet crypt with Aunt Rhoda! I’ll just take you there right now.”
She tucked him under one arm, turned, and let out a little shriek.
“Not so fast, my meddlesome sister.” It was Farley, silhouetted in the dim light at the end of the hall, glowering at Priscilla. “Drop the bones.”
“You can jolly well bet I won’t,” Priscilla retorted. “Uncle Rastus isn’t yours. He’s his own skeleton. He deserves a peaceful rest down in the crypt with his wife.”
Farley seized Uncle Rastus’s arm. “I keep him around for . . . sentimental reasons. I’ll just take him now.”
Priscilla pulled back on Rastus’s other arm. “Sentimental hogwash! You haven’t got a tender bone in your body. Have you no respect for your own uncle’s remains?”
Farley smirked. “I have the utmost respect for his remains. That’s why I need to keep him around.” Uncle Rastus’s ribcage rattled from the tug-of-war between Farley and Priscilla. “Good of you to locate him for me just now. He’d wandered off again.”
“Nonsense!”
Farley wrenched Uncle Rastus out of Priscilla’s grasp. “Got him!” The skeleton collapsed into a heap of bones. Farley scooped him up in his arms. “Oh, and sister dear? Since you’re so eager to be in charge of the student brats, I turn the reins of the school over to you. I’ll be busy in my laboratory working on my research.”
Priscilla snatched at the piles of bones, but Farley held them out of her reach. “You’ve always managed this school by neglecting it,” she said.
“La-la-la-la,” Farley retorted. “I’m not listening.”
“You’ll be listening when Mother shows up,” Priscilla shot back. “I’ve mailed her a letter listing the atrocities I see. Poor nutrition, nonexistent education, appalling hygiene, no arts, no culture, no athletic opportunities for these poor boys. . . . Why, they’re spineless wimps! My girls could mop the floors with your measly, puny, malnourished boys!”
“Who’s she calling puny?” Mugsy whispered.
“Yeah,” Victor growled. “Spineless wimps? I’ll show her . . .”
At the mention of his mother, Farley’s eyebrows twitched. Then he smiled.
“I’ll take that as a challenge,” he said. “A match between our students to show Mother which school is truly supreme.”
“I accept your challenge. With pleasure,” Priscilla said. “Which sport shall it be?”
“Kickboxing,” Farley said.
“Awesome!” Victor whispered.
“You’re out of your mind,” Priscilla said.
“Mud wrestling,” Farley said.
“No, you imbecile,” Priscilla said. “Something civilized. That’s why athletics were invented. How about field hockey?”
“Fine,” Farley said. “But if we’re doing sports, we’re doing them old Splurch style.” He opened the door to his laboratory.
Priscilla nodded. “All’s fair in love and war?”
“War, anyway,” Farley said.
“Whoever loses will tell Mother how wonderful the other one is.” Priscilla rubbed her hands together.
“Fair enough,” Farley said. “But also, whoever loses will leave.”
They stomped off in different directions. The boys stared at one other.
“Um, Cody?” Ratface whispered. “So whose side are we on? Farley’s or Miss Prim’s?”
“Neither,” Cody declared. “We’re only on our side. All for one and one for all!”
“Right—like that candy bar,” Mugsy said. “The, uh, Three Amigos?”
“The Three Musketeers.” Sully rolled his eyes. “So do we try to win the game and get rid of the girls, or do we lose the game and get rid of Farley?”
“Tough choice,” Cody said. “I say we escape before the game ever happens.”
Victor folded his arms across his chest. “Right. Like that’ll work.”
“Sure it will,” Cody said.
“Well, in case we don’t escape,” Victor said, “I say we clobber them. No way am I going to let those slimy girls beat us at sports. Besides, girls just plain don’t belong at Splurch Academy. Period.”
CHAPTER SIX
THE MONKEY
The next morning the girls confronted Cody and his friends after breakfast.
“We heard about the field hockey game,” Marybeth said. “Get ready to lose, boys. You haven’t got a prayer.”
“Guess again, cream puffs,” Victor growled. “The other day? That basketball game? We weren’t even trying. We didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”
“Ha,” Roxanne said. “That’s a good one. We annihilated you. And by the way, the Priscilla Prim field hockey team came in second in States this year.”
“Hygiene inspection!”
It was Miss Prim coming around the corner wearing a special set of glasses with telescoping lenses.
“Hold out your fingernails, please!”
The boys held out their hands. The girls stayed to watch. Miss Prim grasped Mugsy’s wrist to examine his hand closely.
“Never,” she said, “in my decades of teaching, have I ever, ever encountered such filth. You. Show me your ears.”
She seized Victor’s ear and stuck a lighted probe inside it.
“There’s so much wax in here, you must have difficulty hearing,” she said. “Hellooooo! Can you hear me, young man?”
Victor rubbed his ears. “Ow!”
“How come you don’t hygiene-check the girls?” Cody protested. In reply, Miss Prim began leafing through strands of his hair using two Popsicle sticks.
“Lice check,” she snapped. “The good news is your hair is so greasy, the lice just slip right out. I
can’t say the same for the cockroaches.”
Cody scratched his scalp.
“All you boys, report to the infirmary after morning classes for a pressure washing. Chop-chop, girls. Off to class.” She strode down the hall, searching for more Splurch boys to torment.
Brittany and Brooke stuck out their tongues at the boys. They left, still testing every brick to see if it was loose, every wooden panel to see if it was a trick one.
“What are they searching for, anyway?” Carlos asked.
“Probably fairies,” Ratface sneered.
“Let’s find out,” Cody said. He took off running after them.
He turned and walked away, but gave his friends a wink.
Sure enough, Virginia grabbed him by the arm.
“You’ve found hidden . . . what?”
Cody shrugged. “Oh, nothing. Come on, guys. Let’s go.”
Virginia hesitated, then spoke.
“The problem is,” she said, “we don’t know exactly what we’re looking for ourselves. But we know it’s hidden in a top secret place. And we’re pretty sure we’ll recognize it when we see it.”
Wheels were spinning in Cody’s head. Here was a great chance to mess with their heads. “So, you’re looking for, like, hidden compartments and stuff?”
Carlos caught Sully’s eye and grinned. Cody could tell his friend knew what he was thinking.
Cody patted Virginia on the back. This was going to be fun. “Now, the thing you need to understand about Splurch Academy is, it’s haunted.”
Mugsy’s jaw dropped. Ratface’s eyes bugged out. Cody worked hard not to laugh. Even his friends believed him!
“It’s under dozens of ancient magical spells,” he continued. “So, the trapdoors and hidden stuff aren’t always there. They’re only there sometimes. So don’t give up if you go to a spot and you don’t find any evidence of trapdoors and stuff. You just have to keep trying.”
Virginia frowned. “How do we know you’re not totally tricking us?”
“You don’t know,” Cody said. “You’ll just have to take our word for it.”
“And why should we trust a bunch of dirty, stinking, disruptive boys?” Roxanne demanded.
Ratface pulled a straw and some bits of paper from his pocket. “Watch this,” he whispered to Carlos. “Those snooty girls deserve the spit wad treatment.” He filled his cheeks with wads of spitty paper.
“You should trust us because . . . ,” Cody began, but then the girls started shrieking.
Thut! Thut! Thut! Ratface peppered the girls with machine gun-style spit wads.
Virginia wiped the spit wads off her face. “She always knows if someone’s trying to hurt one of us,” she said. “So don’t mess with any of us.”
“Yeah,” Brittany and Brooke added. “Not if you want to live.”
“Oooh,” Cody sneered. “I’m so scared. What is she, about twelve pounds?”
“That’s enough, Princess,” Virginia said. “Let the rat boy go.”
“Princess?” Carlos said. “A girl monkey?”
“Why not?” Marybeth said. “Get this straight, Splurchies: Girls rule, boys drool.”
Mugsy retorted, “Oh yeah? Well . . . boys are awesome and girls . . . are possums!”
“Nice,” Marybeth said. “Wow. You’re so smart, I just have no response to that one.”
And, laughing, the girls turned and left.
“Ha! ‘Girls rule, boys drool,’” Ratface mimicked. “They rule the kingdom of Loser-ness, maybe.”
Victor folded his arms over his chest. “We’ll show them who rules,” he said. “And when we do, it won’t be pretty.”
“They’ll go flying out of here in their stupid plane so fast,” Ratface added, “they’ll make a sonic zoom.”
“Sonic boom,” Sully corrected him.
“Yeah, that’s what I said,” Ratface said.
“All the same,” Mugsy replied. “Memo to me: Stay away from the monkey.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE BATHROOM
“FIRE!”
Cody covered his face with his arms.
Four hundred gallons of water blasted from Miss Threadbare’s fireman’s hose and hit him full force, nearly knocking him over. It plastered his uniform to his body. His skin felt like it was peeling off.
Then it stopped.
“Bombs away, Tessie!”
Miss Threadbare pulled a chain, and Cody looked up just in time to see an avalanche of frothy soap suds fall from buckets near the ceiling onto their heads. Nurse Bilgewater, wearing Wellington boots and a snorkel mask, walked up the line, lathering and scrubbing the boys’ heads with a long-handled brush.
Another blast of water washed away the suds, followed by a wind tunnel of cold air, which dried the boys off. Sort of. It made all their hair stand up straight. They were still shivering as they left the infirmary.
It had been a gruesome afternoon. Co-ed dance lessons had begun, and each Splurch boy had to tango with a Priscilla Prim girl. When the boys refused to dance with the girls, Priscilla Prim forced them to dance with her. She smelled like ancient lilac perfume. And breath mints. Breath mints that couldn’t hide the bad breath underneath.
And now this cold pressure wash. Like walking through a car wash. Those rotten girls and their rotten headmistress!
Speaking of girls, there was the small matter of revenge to attend to.
“People are still at dinner, and Farley’s in his lab, right?” Cody said.
“Should be,” Sully said. “Why?”
Cody grinned. “Let’s go.”
They broke into Farley’s private room and raided his bathroom. In the medicine cabinet they found just what they were looking for.
“Geezer Cream?” Carlos said. “What on earth does he do with Geezer Cream?”
“You don’t wanna know,” Ratface said.
“Laxo Cleanse?” Cody said. “Nose Drops? I don’t ever, ever want to get old.”
“The longer we stay at Splurch, the less likely we are to live that long,” Sully said.
“And that’s supposed to be comforting?” Ratface snorted. “Thanks a lot.”
“What are we doing with all this stuff, anyway, Cody?” Mugsy said.
Cody grinned. “We’re going to get back at those girls for stealing our dorm room so bad, they won’t ever mess with us again.”
Mugsy scratched his head. “With Nose Drops?”
Cody smiled an evil grin. “With all the squirty, slimy, gooey, grody stuff we can find. With toilet paper. With mop water. With shaving cream. Nothing will be safe. Their pillows. Their sheets. Their shoes. They’ll never see it coming. Then, whammo!”
“Awesome!” Ratface said. “I’ve taught you well, young Cody.”
“Young Cody nothing,” Cody said. “I was a pro before I ever met you.”
They sprinted to their old dorm.
“Ugh, these sheets smell like fabric softener,” Ratface said. “Pew.”
“My mom used to use fabric softener,” Mugsy added, and his lower lip began to tremble.
“Steady, Mugsy,” Cody warned.
“Too bad we can’t stay and watch them find all this stuff,” Ratface said.
“Do you really think we can make them leave before the game?” Carlos asked. “That Priscilla Prim is pretty tough. She won’t give up easily.”
“Don’t you remember what happened when we tried to steal Farley’s Cadillac?” Ratface asked. “Smash-ola! We nearly got killed. You think stealing a plane is going to work better? You don’t know how to fly!”
“We weren’t nearly killed,” Cody said. “We almost got away! Without even knowing how to drive. We were close. If we’d had a plane, we’d have made it for sure. This time maybe Sully could find us a book on flying from the library. We can become experts before we ever climb into the driver’s seat.”
“Cockpit,” Sully corrected. “Cody, you can’t learn to fly from a book. It takes hundreds of hours of practice to get your pilot’s licen
se.”
“Who needs a license?” Cody said. “I’m not worried about getting a stupid ticket. This is a one-way trip. I just want to get home.”
Mugsy sighed. “Home. It’s like I’d forgotten the word.”
“Yeah,” Carlos said. “Me too.”
“Imagine us just flying home,” Ratface said as if he were half asleep. “Just flying through the air, landing in our own backyards, and saying, ‘Mom, Dad! Sorry about the lawn, but it’s great to see you!’”
“They’d get mad at me,” Victor said. He scowled. “They’d say, ‘How come you’re not at that reform school? We paid good money for you to be there.’”
“They wouldn’t say that if you explained everything to them.” Carlos patted Victor’s back. “Then they’d understand.”
“Or they’d say I was making it up,” Victor said.
“I would rather deal with persuading my parents than deal with staying alive at Splurch Academy,” Cody said. “Once we’re out of here, our biggest problems are behind us.”
Sully looked at the clock. “Those girls’ll be back here any minute,” he warned.
“C’mon, guys, we’d better get out of here before they come back,” Cody said. “Let’s scoot.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE TOENAILS
Cody woke up the next morning in his moldy manure straw bed to see a sign draped across the stables:
THIS MEANS WAR.
The girls had drawn pictures of each of the boys with X’s through them.
“Guys, look at this,” Cody cried. “The girls left us a thank-you note.”
He climbed out of his stall and kicked at where Carlos lay sleeping in the straw. “Wake up, ’Los!”
Then the sight of his own foot made him freeze in terror.
“What’s up, Cody?” Carlos murmured, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Cody buried his toes in the straw. Then he noticed Carlos’s toes. They were the same.
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