“I had the weirdest dream,” Mugsy said. “I dreamed I went with my mom to the beauty parlor, and she . . . aaaauugggh!”
Everyone had hot-pink nails.
“They did this to us,” Cody fumed. “Those Priscilla Prim freaks! They’re gonna pay for this.”
Sully tried chipping at his toenails with a sliver of rock, but all he did was hurt himself. “I suppose they thought they were paying us back for what we did to their room.”
“Our room,” Cody said. “Never forget it’s our room. They swiped it from us. They started this whole thing. They’re the bad guys. We’re the good guys.”
“Technically, they’re the bad girls,” Sully said.
“Both,” Ratface said. “Pushy females, always barging in where they’re not invited! Farley never invited his sister. How do you get this stuff off?”
“We’re not on Farley’s side all of a sudden, are we?” Victor said. “It takes some special chemical to get it off.”
“We’re on nobody’s side but ours,” Cody declared.
“We can hide our feet inside our—hey! They stole our shoes!” Ratface shrieked.
“And our socks,” Mugsy said.
“New uniforms?” Ratface asked. “What’s wrong with these?”
The boys trudged to Miss Threadbare’s office. Miss Prim and the girls waited by a table piled high with new uniforms.
Cody looked down at his toes. He could show Miss Prim exactly what Virginia had done, but he decided he’d rather not.
“Sorry,” Cody mumbled.
The headmistress nodded. “That will do. Girls, please issue the boys their new clothes and shoes. In order to get your new shoes, please give us your old ones.”
Cody and the boys looked at one another.
“Um, Miss Prim, ma’am,” Carlos said. “We don’t have any shoes.”
“Why not?” The headmistress frowned. “The other boys had shoes.”
“Ours were stolen,” Carlos said, glaring at Marybeth.
Priscilla peered at the boys. “A likely story. I cannot reward irresponsibility like this. You’ll get no new shoes until you produce your old ones. If this means you go barefoot, let that be a lesson to you. I have no time to trifle with inter-student rivalries. Go inside and change clothes.”
They went into the changing rooms next to Miss Threadbare’s office and squirmed into their new uniforms.
They met up in the hallway.
“Not a stripe in sight!” Ratface said. “We look like total dweebs.”
“The old uniforms were way more comfortable,” Victor added.
Priscilla Prim poked her head in. “Tie your ties properly . . . there.”
Cody hadn’t worn a collared shirt and tie since his great-uncle’s funeral, long before coming to Splurch Academy. It made him feel choked, like he could barely breathe.
Miss Prim clapped her hands. “Listen up, everybody, today we clean the school from top to bottom. Seventh-graders will climb up to the chandeliers in the faculty lounge and polish the brass and crystal,” she said. “Sixth-graders will dust the bookshelves in the library. Fifth-grade girls will sweep the corridors and fifth-grade boys will mop them on hands and knees.”
“Like that’s fair,” Victor muttered. “They sweep, we scrub.”
Miss Prim didn’t hear him. “Ivanov will distribute your brooms, buckets, and sponges here.”
“Faculty, this way,” Priscilla Prim said. “You will paint my bedroom, varnish all my furniture, and fix the plumbing in my bathroom. Come along! Busy hands make happy hearts!”
The faculty looked ready to rip Miss Prim limb from limb. The girls began sweeping the front entranceway, while the boys tested their sponges to see how much sudsy water they’d hold. Quite a lot, as it turned out.
“You guys got the same idea I’ve got?” Cody whispered.
“Aw, Cody, don’t. We’ll only get in huge trouble,” Sully whimpered.
“Listen to ’em scream!” Cody laughed.
“They look like wet rats.” Ratface snorted with laughter.
“That’ll teach you to paint our toes,” Victor said.
The wet sponges came sailing back. They were followed by six furious girls wielding brooms like ninja poles.
Cody held up his bucket. “Bring it on, ladies,” he said, taunting them with his suds. “We ain’t afraid of you.”
“That’s because you’re stupid,” Virginia hissed. “One, two, three, ATTACK!”
Whoosh! Arcs of hot, steaming bubbles intersected with whirling broomsticks. Whap! Whap! Broomsticks connected with arms and legs and bare pink toes. Girls skidded on suds, boys skated on sponges. When Priscilla Prim arrived, every single fifth-grader was soaking wet, bruised, and filthy.
“They started it, Miss Prim,” Marybeth hollered.
“Liar!” Ratface shrieked. “You stole our school!”
The monkey pounded her chest and screamed a primal scream at Cody.
“There, there, sweetie.” Priscilla patted her pet monkey. “Good, Princess. The girls are all right.” She gave Princess a breath mint, then ate one herself.
Then she scowled at the boys. “I can see that years of my brother’s neglect hasn’t done you wretched boys any favors. A day’s detention in the stocks should do the trick, while I plan a proper punishment.”
“You’re just like your brother,” Cody said.
Miss Prim sucked in her breath. That got her. She shook it off.
“Girls, run along and fetch yourselves a change of clothes. Bandage up your wounds, then take a rest until you feel like resuming the day’s activities.”
“No way!” Cody yelled. “You can’t play favorites like that!”
“Oh, can’t I?” Miss Prim tapped her long fingernail on Cody’s chin. “I can do whatever I want. To the stocks.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible now, sister dear,” said a voice. Priscilla Prim turned slowly.
There stood Farley. Howell was beside him, wearing gym shorts and a whistle around his neck. “It’s time to begin the boys’ field hockey training. I’m afraid they haven’t got time for detention today.”
“But they require a punishment,” Priscilla fumed. “They have it coming!”
“Oh, rest assured, dear sister,” Farley said. “Coach Howell will make sure they get exactly what is coming to them.”
CHAPTER NINE
THE RUNAWAY
“Take a ten-mile run,” Howell barked. “Anyone who lags behind answers to me.”
“You didn’t just say ten miles, did you?” Mugsy asked. “Maybe, like, ten meters?”
“Yo. Mr. Howell. Dog man,” Ratface said. “It’s hockey. Not track. Let’s not bother with all this running. Shouldn’t we, like, hit the puck with the racket or something?”
“What’d you call me?” Howell growled.
Ratface took a step back. “Dog man?” he said. “It’s a compliment. Right? For you.”
“Zip it, mutt,” Howell said. “Okay. Mark. Set. Go.”
Running ten miles meant looping around the Academy grounds over and over and over and over and over and over again. Over the lawns, through the woods, past the stream, and into the murky swamp. Coach Howell jogged along easily. Sometimes he got distracted by squirrels and bounded off, and sometimes he stopped to scratch behind his ears, but he always came back and caught up with the boys.
Cody’s entire body was one huge cramp. His lungs burned, his legs ached, and his bare feet were pink with nail polish and red with blood from the tiny cuts he got on grasses and twigs.
Once Victor tripped over a stick hidden in the grass. He rose to his feet, muttering, and flung the stick far away.
Mr. Howell, who was chewing out Sully for being lazy, paused. His eyes followed the stick. His tongue lolled from his mouth. And before he could say “Pick up the pace, lazybones,” he was off like a shot, tearing up the grass, chasing after the stick.
The boys gasped at one another.
“Did you just see wha
t I saw?” Sully said.
Howell came trotting back with the stick in his mouth, looking very proud of himself. At the sight of the boys staring at him, his face grew red. He spat out the stick and tried to pretend nothing had happened. He and the boys shuffled off, jogging.
Cody’s mind was spinning. Would it work again?
Ratface and the other boys doubled over laughing.
“Guys?” Sully said. “You might want to run. Now.”
“I’m sick of running,” Mugsy protested. But Sully took off sprinting faster than Cody would have thought possible. He turned and saw a muddy Howell come racing after them.
“It’s gonna be a long practice,” Carlos panted, falling into step beside Cody.
It was all the boys could do to crawl back into the Academy when practice was over.
After dinner, Cody limped down the hall and passed by the cafeteria. Griselda came out carrying a covered dinner tray.
“Oh. You. Boy. Take this to Farley.”
Cody was too tired to protest or think up an excuse. He made his way down the hall and knocked on Farley’s laboratory door with his foot. His wobbly arms could barely balance the tray straight.
There was no answer. But Cody could tell Farley was inside. He could hear him grumbling at something.
He kicked the door again. “Coming!” came a yell from within.
Farley wrenched the door open and poked his head out. “What? Who? Oh.” He looked down and noticed Cody. “What do you want?”
“Nothing,” Cody said. “Griselda sent me with your dinner.”
Farley slipped out and pulled the door shut tight behind him. His clothes were ripped and tattered, his skin scratched. He looked like he’d lost a bad fight with a food processor.
Farley ignored him and lifted the lid off the tray. “Ah. Soup.” He took a few slurpy bites of soup while Cody still held the tray on trembling arms. “That’ll do. Take this back to the kitchen. A man of science has little time for simple pleasures like eating.”
“I didn’t think you ate people food, anyway,” Cody said, stalling. “You know. Right? I mean, I thought you ate people as food. Generally speaking.”
Farley took one more bite of soup. “How I long for the day when I never need to listen to the obnoxious prattle of another delinquent boy.”
The door behind Farley opened silently. Something reached out. Farley wasn’t aware of it. Cody tried to think of some way to delay Farley so he could get a better look at it.
It was a hand. A hand of bleached bones.
“Well, we all have our dreams,” Cody said. “We don’t like listening to you, either.”
That hand . . . that elbow . . . that shoulder . . . it had to be Uncle Rastus!
Farley noticed Cody staring and whipped around. An annoyed look crossed his face. He shoved the bony arm back through the door and slammed it shut.
CHAPTER TEN
THE CAGE
“Those crummy girls,” Mugsy moaned. “We really need to get our shoes back. Everywhere I walk in this disgusting school, bugs go crunch under my feet.”
“Yeah,” Ratface said, “and rat poop goes squish.”
Cody lay in his pile of stinky straw and stared up into the darkness. His body was sore and his mind was weary. Uniforms, girls, hockey games, skeletons . . . it was too much to sort out. What he’d give, right now, to be back home! To take a hot bath in his own bathroom and wash off all this Splurchy grossness, then crawl into his own bed and go to sleep. His dog, Snarfy, would curl up at the foot of his bed. Poor Snarfy! He must have been so lonely with Cody gone. Sure, his parents had sent Cody here, telling themselves that this impressive academy for troubled boys would do wonders for their disruptive son. But Snarfy? He wouldn’t understand any of that. He’d just feel abandoned.
Like Cody.
The other boys were just as miserable. They brooded on revenge.
“Do you realize what a nightmare it would be if she actually ran this place?” Carlos said. “She doesn’t want to improve anything. She only wants to spoil her girls, torture us boys, and make Farley mad.”
“She wants to turn us into girls,” Ratface said. “She’s a monster!”
Sully sighed. “What else is new? All the teachers at Splurch Academy are monsters. It’s in the rules.”
Cody kept thinking of the bony hand reaching through Farley’s door.
“Hey, guys,” he said, sitting up in the straw, “let’s go check out what Farley’s working on in his lab. Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s good news for us.”
“What if he catches us?” Sully asked.
“It’s dark,” Cody said. “He’ll be out hunting. Ratface, can you still pick a lock?”
“Does Griselda cook with rotten meat?” Ratface retorted. “Of course I can.”
They tiptoed through the halls to Farley’s lab. Cody listened at the door.
“Nobody’s in there,” he whispered.
Ratface picked the lock. They went in.
“I can’t see what would have chewed Farley to pieces in here.” Carlos fingered the science equipment. “Look at all this stuff! What do you suppose he’s making?”
“A bomb, I’ll bet,” Ratface said.
“Not a bomb,” Mugsy said. “Just some new way to make our lives miserable.”
Carlos was fascinated by Farley’s lab. “Geez, I’d love to mess around with this chemistry set. I wonder what this button does?”
“Don’t just go pressing random buttons!” Sully said.
But Carlos pressed the button, anyway. The floor rumbled. A crack appeared, then an opening.
“That’s it. You pressed the self-destruct button,” Sully said, backing away as far as he could.
Slowly, slowly, a table on a pedestal rose from beneath the floor. The table was cluttered with wires, papers, meters, a strange device, and something large covered with a cloth drape. And bones. A heap of animal bones.
“Mon-grel-o-what?” Mugsy sounded out the words.
“I’ve never heard of that dinosaur before,” Sully said.
Carlos was more interested in the device. “Animatrometer,” he read. “I wonder what it measures.” He followed the electrical cables. “Where do these go . . . oh!”
He yanked off the drape. Underneath was a tall, glass dome.
Inside the dome was Uncle Rastus. If ever a skeleton looked down in the dumps, this one did.
Cody tried lifting the dome, but it seemed sealed shut. He tapped on the glass. “Hey, Uncle Rastus,” he called. “What’s the matter? C’mon, you can tell us.”
“Oh, sure he can tell us,” Victor said. “Dude, he’s dead. Looks like he’s been dead for a long time. He didn’t move a muscle.”
“Hasn’t got any muscles to move,” Carlos said.
“I swear I’ve seen him move before, though,” Cody said.
“Nah, Farley’s probably just keeping him in there for some sort of joke,” Ratface added.
“Farley doesn’t joke,” Cody said. “Not like this. He’s Farley’s prisoner. I say we should let him out.”
“Yeah,” Victor said. “Maybe once we let him out, he’ll come rip our hearts right out of our chests at night.”
“Oh, come on,” Cody said. “He will not. You just said that he hasn’t got any muscles to move with.”
Ratface searched for a door or a switch that would raise the dome. He couldn’t find anything. “Only way to get him out is to smash him out,” he said. “But if we do, Farley will probably be able to guess who did it.”
“What I want to know is why,” Cody said. “Why is Uncle Rastus here in the dome, and what’s with those other bones?”
“C’mon, let’s get out of here,” Victor said. “Before Farley finds us.” They headed out of the lab.
“Two dead skeletons,” Sully mused. “A relative and a reptile. What’s the connection?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE TREASURE
The boys skipped lunch the next day and headed for their
old dorm room in search of their shoes. Cody and the other boys hid in the shadows around the corner and peeked out as the girls left their dorm room with magnifying glasses. Roxanne had a utility belt around her waist with all sorts of picks and instruments attached. The girls made their way slowly down the hall, still probing every door, every panel, and every brick.
“Aha!” Marybeth cried, listening to a wooden panel and rapping on it with her knuckles. “This is hollow!”
Carlos and Cody looked at each other. There really were secret compartments here? Cody had made that up!
Marybeth pulled a screwdriver from her belt, and in seconds had the panel removed. Roxanne shone a flashlight inside the hole.
Virginia removed a penny from the jar and examined it. “This isn’t the treasure. This penny’s date is only forty years old. We’re looking for something older than that.”
The girls put the jar back and moved off down the hall.
“Do you really think Farley stole treasure from Miss Prim?” Carlos asked.
“If he tried, he’d end up stealing his mother’s dentures,” Cody said. “Come on, let’s go find our shoes.”
They raced to their old dorm room.
“C’mon, Ratface, use your nose,” Sully said. “Our shoes shouldn’t be hard to sniff out. Especially Victor’s.”
“Watch it,” Victor grumbled.
“Well, you can’t deny your shoes stink like a cheese factory,” Sully said. “Ratface is attracted to the smell of cheese.”
“I was even before Farley turned me into a rat,” Ratface said proudly.
They tore through the dorm room. No sign of the shoes. They searched under the beds and in the closets and drawers. Nothing.
They searched the bathrooms. No sign of shoes. Until . . .
“I’m not touching those,” Carlos said. “Uh-uh. No way.”
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