by Josh Lieb
Ah, well. He would wait. And he would plot. He had done it before.
“Soon, my sweet, soon,” said the rat. “Soon, we will have our revenge.”
Wrundel purred.
acknowledgments
Many thanks to:
Ben Schrank
Gillian Levinson
Kristin Smith
Anthony Elder
Tom Lintern
Richard Abate
Mary Jeffcoat
Lark Palma
and the late Jimmy Gasque, who would’ve enjoyed this.
LIKED JOEY?
Meet Oliver Watson.
He doesn’t turn into a rat, but he does run for class president.
And yeah, he’s also an evil genius.
Turn the page for a peek at his story . . .
Chapter 1:
FEAR ME
Someday you will beg for the honor of licking my feet. You will get down on your stupid, worthless knees and beg, “Please, sir! Please! Let me lick the diseased dog dung from between your toes.” (I will be standing barefoot in the dung of diseased dogs—just to make it grosser for you.) And if I am in a good mood and am not too disgusted by your stupid, wormy tears or your stupid, scrunched-up face, I will allow you the signal honor of licking my feet clean. Even though you don’t deserve it.
But that’s all in the future. At the moment, I’m in the seventh grade.
In fact, at this precise moment, I am in Mr. Moorhead’s English class as he prattles on about Fahrenheit 451. Moorhead considers himself a “cool” teacher (see plate 1). That means he still wears the clothes he wore in college. Unfortunately for Moorhead, college was ten years and twenty pounds ago. His legs look like a pair of light-blue water balloons, stuffed as they are into too-tight jeans. He can’t get all the buttons on his crotch to stay fastened anymore (Way cool, Mr. M!), and he wears plaid flannel shirts that gape open over his salmon-pink belly. He’s balding, but he thinks if he leaves his hair messy enough, we won’t notice. He also keeps a pack of cigarettes in the pocket over his heart. This is supposed to say, “I am a teacher, but I’m not a saint.” In reality, it just makes his saggy man-breasts look bigger. It also says, “I smell bad.”1
PLATE 1: Moorhead considers himself a “cool” teacher.
Moorhead is one of those sad people who go into teaching so they can be worshipped by the only people sadder than they are—students. Prime example: Pammy Quattlebaum, so-called smart girl and insufferable butt-lick, who sits in the front row, nodding her massive head frequently to show Moorhead that not only has she done the reading, she understands exactly what he’s saying.
Meanwhile, I am in the back of the room, drawing pictures of bunny rabbits on my binder.
Moorhead is way too cool to lecture standing up or sitting down. Instead, he lounges sexily against his desk, elbow propped on the dictionary, as he lays his knowledge on us. “The book depicts a world turned upside down.” (Pammy nods.) “A world where firemen don’t put out fires—they set them.” (Pammy nods again, more emphatically.) “A world where the most dangerous weapon you can own”—here he holds up his copy of Fahrenheit 451—“is a book.” (Pammy nods so hard I can hear her tiny brain rattle, like a popcorn kernel in a jelly jar.)
Moorhead, simulating deep thought, runs his fingers through the pubic growth that decorates his scalp. “What do you think? Are books dangerous? Are they. . . powerful?”
Pammy surges out of her seat, arm straining for the sky. She will apparently pee herself if she’s not allowed to answer this question.
But Moorhead’s eyes slide over to me. “What do you think, Oliver?”
Pammy shoots me a dirty look. Some of my other classmates giggle and don’t bother trying to hide it. Randy Sparks, the Most Pathetic Boy in School, stops licking dried peanut butter off his glasses long enough to give me a sympathetic smile.
Moorhead grins like he’s made a great joke. I am fairly certain I was only assigned to this class—which is far beyond my tested reading level—so he’d have someone to make fun of (besides Randy, of course).
I make him say my name again before I answer, “I don’t know.”
Moorhead’s face crumples with disappointment, but his eyes shine with satisfaction. “Oliver. Didn’t you do the reading?”
I shake my head sadly. Moorhead sighs. He looks like he wants to cry for me. Or burst out laughing. It’s like his brain can’t decide.
Actually, I read the book when I was two. And even then I knew it was regurgitated bird pap, fit only for morons and seventh graders. In case you’re lucky enough to have escaped it, Fahrenheit 451 is one of those books that is about how amazing books are and how wonderful the people who write books are. Writers love writing books like this, and for some reason, we let them get away with it. It’s like someone producing a TV show called TV Shows Are the Best and the People Who Make Them Are Geniuses.2
In Fahrenheit 451, books are illegal (because they’re so powerful) and a fireman’s job is to burn all the books he can find in big bonfires. This is supposed to blow your freaking mind.3
Moorhead walks back to my lonely little desk and puts a comforting hand on my shoulder. “It’s too bad you skipped it, big guy. Because it happens to be one of the best books written in the past century.”
His furry fingers rest on my shoulder like caterpillars. I decide not to bite them. One of the best books of the century? Fahrenheit 451 doesn’t rank as one of the best birdcage liners of the century.
And besides—even if it were “one of the best books”. . . is that anything to brag about? Wouldn’t it look kind of drab and shabby when compared to the book that’s the actual best?
It doesn’t pay to be good at something unless you are the absolute best at it. Otherwise, you’ll eventually go up against someone who can beat you. That is why I do not try to play soccer, sing in the school chorus, or dance, even though I am moderately talented at all of these things. I concentrate on what I am good at: being a genius.
I am the greatest genius in the universe. I am the greatest genius in the history of the universe. Plus, I am unceasingly, unreservedly, unspeakably evil. Making me the most powerful force for evil ever created.
And poor Mr. Moorhead thinks I’m the dumbest boy in his English class.
The bell rings. Moorhead gives me one last pitying glance, then strolls back to the board. “Read the next chapter for tomorrow, people. And remember—nominations for student council have to be submitted at your next homeroom.” He smiles at Jack Chapman, who lowers his handsome head modestly and runs a bashful hand through his soft and kinky hair. Jack exits with the throng, enduring much backslapping and people yelling, “You got my vote, Jack.” I pretend to fumble with my books so I can see what happens next.
It’s lunchtime. As always, Moorhead reaches into his shirt pocket for his pack of cigarettes and shakes one out. He does this right after class, even though he can’t smoke in the classroom, even though he can’t smoke in the school. He must walk a legally mandated ten yards off school property before he can smoke his death stick. But he always pulls it out right after class.
He looks at the cigarette with longing . . . then with surprise. He holds it close to his weak, middle-aged eyes. There’s a message typed neatly on the little tube: YOUR DIET ISN’T WORKING.
Moorhead stares at the cigarette a moment, then looks up with suspicion and fury. But the only people he sees are me and Pammy, who is also dawdling, but for very different reasons.4
Pammy gives him a simpering smile, which he ignores. I, halfwit that I am, am singing a song to myself as I look for my pencil under the desk. The only words to the song are “Three, please. Can I see threeeee pretty pictures. . . .” Moorhead gives me a scornful glance before hurrying out of the room.
But the look of terror on his face in that single, unguarded moment of surpris
e is truly a beautiful, beautiful thing.
There will be three full-color photographs of that moment waiting for me by the time I get to my locker.
1. Which he does.
2. Probably the name of Aaron Sorkin’s next project. Ha.
3. I plan on having a Fahrenheit 451 party one day. To get in, you have to bring a copy of Fahrenheit 451. Then we build a big fire and . . . well, you do the math.
4. She wants him to read a poem she wrote about lowering carbon emissions. Absolute garbage. Sample verse: Carbon credits are the answer/ To our planet’s dreaded cancer.
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