For you, thought Milton gravely. For me, it’ll be like a game of dodgeball, with me as the ball.
Dr. Pemberton walked away. Damian released his grip on Milton and caught up with the teacher.
“Excuse me, Doctor, but I’d like to discuss some new ideas I have for keeping disorder around here, if I may…”
Milton and Virgil stared at the two of them as they walked down the hallway.
“That guy is bad news,” Virgil muttered. “Like, ‘war declared, disease outbreak, little girl trapped in a well, Raffi on tour’ bad news.”
Milton was silent. He felt a chill creep up his spine watching Damian ingratiate himself with Dr. Pemberton. This was a side of Damian that Milton had never seen before—shrewd, calculated, and subtle. He had become part of the establishment and, with that, had access to all sorts of powers ripe for abuse.
The stress of impending detention held Milton in its kung-fu grip. Milton’s grip on reality—kung fu or otherwise—seemed gone for good.
15 · A LUCKY BREAK
LUCKY SPUN IN his small cage, whipping around so fast that he became a white blur of anxious, captive energy.
“When it settles down,” Bea “Elsa” Bubb said to Cerberus as they squatted beside the cage, “we can begin.”
After a moment, Lucky lay panting at the floor of his cage, unable to free himself from his ferret nature, which is typically asleep for eighteen hours a day. He gave one last, hostile glare at his captors before slipping into unconsciousness.
Principal Bubb sneered with satisfaction. She pulled out a small, curving tube from the inner pocket of her snakeskin muumuu and poked it through the bars of the cage.
She pressed one end gently against Lucky’s lower back and the other to her thin, scaly lizard lips and sucked. Her yellow eyes rolled back into her head as a small coil of pink and blue electricity sizzled out of Lucky and into her tube. She grimaced as though chewing several pieces of extra-strength aspirin.
“Eww,” she mumbled. “Ferrets sure are musky…even their spirit strands.”
Lucky shuddered as if having a bad dream. Bea “Elsa” Bubb delicately withdrew the tube from the cage, careful not to drop the electric worm dangling at the end.
“Don’t worry,” she muttered to Lucky. “You won’t go pop, weasel. There’s plenty of spirit where that came from. You’ll barely miss it.”
She delicately placed the tube against Cerberus’s trembling lower back.
“It’s okay, my sweet, tri-headed prince,” she cooed. “You won’t like this, but we have to find the owner of this miserable, smuggled creature.”
With the faintest of exhales, Principal Bubb sent the crackling coil of ferret energy into Cerberus. The hound from Heck gave a full-body quiver and, with a trio of small yaps, began to blister all over. Cerberus spun around with agitation. When he settled after a few moments, he was no longer who he was. He was, for all appearances, Lucky.
“Lucky” panted as Principal Bubb scritched the back of his neck.
“Settle down, dear. Your ghastly deformity is only temporary. Just one more thing and we can get on with this unfortunate charade.”
She trotted back to her desk and opened her middle drawer, removing a small black velvet case. Inside was a pair of deep-red contact lenses. At the back of the drawer was a little white box with a screen, kind of like an old iPod with a few factory-unauthorized adjustments.
Principal Bubb squatted next to Cerberus. She held his newly ferretized head back and plopped the contact lenses in his eyes.
She patted his arched back. “There, there,” she said.
She flicked on the box. On the screen was a grainy picture of herself as seen from Cerberus. The contact lenses warped her already warped face, creating a visual double negative that almost made a positive. Almost.
“Now, my love, my biddle tummy tum…I want you to root out our smuggler.”
Cerberus twitched uncomfortably in Bea “Elsa” Bubb’s arms.
“Yes, I know, that means mingling with those filthy guttersnipes, but no one said that upholding all that’s wrong and vile would be easy.”
She lovingly scooted Cerberus down the hall toward the classrooms. As the former dog bounded awkwardly away in its new body, Principal Bubb wiped away a speck of hard black crud that had oozed from her tear duct.
“Now be a pet, pet, and I promise that whatever you catch, you can keep.”
16 · HATCHET JOB
IF TEDIUM WERE, say, a hurricane, Marlo thought in the back of class, then home ec would definitely be a Category Five.
Her teacher, Miss Borden, even looked dull: a round face with features that looked hastily sculpted in dough, a fussy hat pinned into mousy brown hair tied tight in a bun, and a dreary blouse buttoned up to her chin.
The only unbland things about her were her eyes—dark and dangerous as an abandoned well—and the fact that she was cutting out a dress pattern with an ax.
“Ladies,” Miss Borden said with a voice like the crease in a freshly starched shirt, “to become a decent homemaker, you must look the part. And that means getting everything just right. Perfectly straight lines, and NO DANGLING THREADS!”
She chopped the gingham fabric with a mighty whack. Marlo was dragged out of her daydream with a start. She wiped the spot of drool on her chin and pretended to be interested, or at least conscious.
“I apologize for the rude awakening, Miss Fauster,” the teacher scolded. “But being a good seamstress takes precision and a pathological eye for detail. Likewise with other essential home economics skills such as interior design and cake decorating. How do you expect to make a tidy home if you don’t pay attention?”
“I couldn’t care less about making a ‘tidy home,’” Marlo replied. “I already know how to sew, and I’m not interested in any of this happy-homemaker garbage.”
The teacher glared at Marlo. “How do you expect to attract the attention of a potential husband? Certainly not with your charm and poise.”
Lyon and Bordeaux traded wicked “Oohs” with each other. Marlo was beginning to feel like her old self: the source of class disruption. It felt good to be bad again.
“I’m not interested in a husband. He’d only slow me down. Besides, what kind of husband did all this bunk get you, anyway?”
Bordeaux whispered to Lyon, “I knew she didn’t like boys!”
Miss Borden fumed. She seemed to be just a few snarky comments away from a meltdown. “I, to my eternal regret, never settled down with anyone other than my sister. I blame my parents. They were always…in the way.”
She stared at her ax with faraway eyes. With a shudder, she went from bubbling rage to arctic chill. This disturbed Marlo far more. Miss Borden left her sewing area and walked over to a basket in the far corner of the room.
“Well, future homemakers, in the event that you do one day meet Mr. Right, that will invariably lead to the ultimate fulfillment of every woman’s great purpose: motherhood.”
The teacher picked out a dozen small sacks of flour from the basket and swaddled each in either pink or blue blankets, before pinning the blankets tight with a safety pin so that the corner stuck out like a pointy little head. Next she put tiny pale pink or blue socks, depending, over the corners so that they looked like little fuzzy caps.
She stacked the lot in a wooden shopping cart and wheeled them down the aisle.
The girls gazed at one another with bewilderment. Bordeaux, however, clapped her hands and grinned.
“Dollies!”
Lyon elbowed her in the side as Miss Borden passed out the flour babies. The teacher handed Marlo a lumpy, gunnysack pouch wrapped in pink flannel. Lyon leaned into Bordeaux.
“Look, the vampire has a little baby bat,” she jeered. “It’s plain and shapeless like its mama.”
Miss Borden turned sharply. “What is going on here, girls?”
Lyon turned coolly to address her teacher. “We can’t concentrate with Marlo’s constant grumbling.”
; “It’s really distracting,” added Bordeaux. “We’re trying to learn how to become good homemakers, but—”
“Is there a problem, Miss Fauster?” the teacher asked tartly.
Marlo slunk back in her seat, plopping her doll on the desk. “No, ma’am. No problem.”
“Good. Now, with your markers, give your darling bundles of joy a face. And be sure to name them. This will help you to establish a strong bond with your little one.”
The girls, apart from the beaming Bordeaux, heaved a collective sigh and proceeded to scrawl features upon their flour babies.
“Don’t forget the fangs, Vampira,” whispered Lyon through pursed, candy pink lips.
Marlo seethed quietly as she drew a pony face on her doll. Whenever she was stressed, she found ponies strangely calming.
“And for those of you who think this is silly,” Miss Borden announced, eyes trained on Marlo, “you’ve obviously never considered the financial advantages of babysitting.”
The teacher took her ax and walked across the room toward the kitchenette.
“Now while you’re getting acquainted with your babies, I’ll start preparing the ingredients for our class casserole.”
She slid a stalk of celery across the counter, raised her ax above her head, and commenced chopping.
“One, two, three, four…”
Marlo tranced out, doodling on her flour baby, adding long eyelashes to its wet pony eyes. She couldn’t stand this. She just had to score brownie points with the meanest girls she had ever met.
“Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen…”
Before she knew it, Marlo found herself leaning across the aisle to Lyon.
“Home ‘Ick’ with Miss Boredom more like, huh?”
Lyon gawked back at Marlo as if a park statue had suddenly come to life and addressed her. Marlo realized she hadn’t earned so much as a brownie crumb.
“Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty…”
Lyon and Bordeaux exchanged looks. Then Lyon shot her perfectly manicured hand in the air.
“Miss Borden,” she cooed in a skillfully sweet voice.
“Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine…” The teacher looked up as if awoken abruptly from a dream.
“Yes, Miss Sheraton. What is it?”
Lyon smoothed her shining blond hair demurely. “Well, teacher, I was trying to concentrate on caring for my new baby when Miss Fester interrupted me, calling you a boring old witch…that smells like dusty farts.”
Lyon smiled innocently as the class held its collective breath.
Miss Borden’s pupils dilated until her eyes were completely, unfathomably black. The full force of her glare was aimed straight at Marlo. What little color Marlo had in her face drained away. She swallowed hard, though her mouth was as dry as a cotton ball.
“I d-didn’t,” she stammered. “Well, not exactly.”
Bordeaux murmured to Lyon behind her cupped hand. “Who’s the baby now?”
Miss Borden whacked the ax into the table so hard that the oven door flung open.
“Forty!!”
Her rage again chilled suddenly, giving Marlo goose bumps. Miss Borden curled her thin, creased lips. “Miss Fauster,” she said, overenunciating, “I’d like you to join me after school for a private tutoring session. I have an ax to grind with you.”
17 · CAGEY CRITTER
LUCKY LICKED HIMSELF furiously while Bea “Elsa” Bubb squatted beside his cage, staring at him with revulsion.
“Disgusting creature,” she grumbled. “As if something as repulsive as you could ever be cleansed.”
She rose slowly, her dimpled knees popping in protest. “Well, the Galactic Order Department is always giving me grief about not serving fresh lunches,” she snickered. “How would you like to join us for lunch, you fuzzy little entrée, you?”
Lucky stopped lapping to give Principal Bubb a long, heartfelt hiss.
“Oh, the feeling is more than mutual,” she replied as she grabbed her lop-eared, dwarf-rabbit purse and headed out of her office. “We’ll continue our little chat after my teachers’ meeting.”
The lizard lady chortled wickedly before slamming, bolting, latching, and chaining the door behind her.
The incarcerated ferret gazed angrily at the door before continuing his personal hygiene regimen. He was determined to have the last lap.
Milton stared at his feet as he shuffled along the excessively lemony hallway, dreading his date with Damian. A familiar musk, however, poked through the chemical stench.
Milton looked up and saw a fuzzy, lumbering white blur billowing toward him.
“Lucky!” Milton squealed.
The ferret looked up suddenly, then ran into the wall at full speed. Milton rushed toward him and scooped the dazed creature into his arms.
“Lucky, you made it! Did you get my contract…?”
Milton stared into his eyes. “Are you okay, little guy? Your eyes are kind of bloodshot…Hey, and where are your dice?”
The ferret blinked its wild, confused eyes and wriggled in what seemed like severe discomfort.
Milton wiped away goop from the animal’s eyes and sighed deeply.
“It’s okay, little guy,” Milton whispered sadly. “It was a tall order, snatching a contract for a boy’s immortal soul. I’m just glad you’re all right.”
Milton scratched the animal behind the ears—or tried to, anyway—before it reared back and hissed. Milton gazed upon him with a look of parental worry.
“C’mon,” he said, “let’s get you something to eat. You don’t seem like yourself.”
As Bea “Elsa” Bubb clacked down a hall on her way to the teachers’ lounge, her fuzzy bunny purse (with floppy ears and all) began to vibrate. She stopped, looked over her shoulder suspiciously, then fished her surveillance pod out of her bag.
She held the box in her scaly palm. Its tiny screen blinked red, casting her face in a lurid, scarlet hue. She jabbed the on button with her thumb, and a shower of static and snow danced on the screen.
“Hmmm,” she mumbled. “Some kind of interference. As if he were in the presence of something, something…” Principal Bubb shuddered. “Good.”
Through the geometric clouds of digital static emerged a gawky, concerned face dominated by a pair of broken glasses.
“I should have guessed,” murmured Principal Bubb. “Milton Fauster, the rye seed in my dentures.”
The screen went dark as the fake ferret was thrust, struggling, into the dim safety of Milton’s backpack.
She smiled. “It’s always good to have a mole, even when that mole is a demon dog in ferret’s clothing.”
18 · FLEE THIS CIRCUS
MILTON STRAIGHTENED HIS handwritten flyer, then pinned it to the bulletin board in the cafeterium.
MILTON’S PAIR OF DICE: LOST
“There,” he whispered to the ferret tucked under his arm. “We’ll find your collar. I’m sure that’s why you’re acting so weird.”
He rubbed the panting animal’s back, arriving at a cluster of swelling blisters by its tail. Milton frowned. “Why don’t you take a nap in the knapsack while I get you some food? You don’t look so hot.”
The ferret flinched and squirmed as Milton stuffed him in the bag.
The cafeterium was full of nervous boys in search of something edible that, ideally, wouldn’t maim them. Aside from the baited Automat machines, the only other unusual thing in the cafeterium was a purple dinosaur with an idiotic grin humming inane songs. The needy creature lunged toward unwilling boys with the intent of hugging them.
On the old, broken-down television in the corner was the image of a freshly painted bench.
“As paint is exposed to air,” droned the announcer, “it undergoes a painfully slow drying process. Here it is in real time…”
Several boys from Milton’s chemistry class sat at a rusty metal table just beneath the TV. On top of it sat an unappetizing platter of overcooked broccoli and mushy cauliflower.
“Eat up, piggy,” taunted the larger bully as he reached across the table for a fistful of tofu and shoved it into Virgil’s face.
“Yeah,” snorted the shorter redheaded thug. “Sooie! Sooie!”
Hunger and fatigue had stripped Milton of his usual caution.
“Hey, guys, leave him alone,” Milton said, hovering just behind Virgil, who was slumped over his plate. “Isn’t this place bad enough without us turning against each other?”
One of the twins rose and answered Milton’s question with an abrupt, two-handed shove. “Shut your pie hole, four eyes!”
Virgil muttered to himself. “Mmmm. Pie.”
“Better four eyes than no brain!” Milton countered defiantly, though his trembling lip gave him away.
The red-haired hooligan pulled back his fist like a cobra coiling to strike. “You scrawny little…”
But before the bully’s fist could make a connection with Milton’s face, an even larger hand wrapped around it in mid-punch.
“Now, now, there will be none of that,” said the hand’s owner, Damian, in his new, smooth-as-snakeskin manner.
The two apprentice bullies seemed to evaporate in Damian’s presence, as if they had suddenly been demoted to the lesser of two evils.
Milton looked up into Damian’s dark, inscrutable eyes suspiciously.
“Uh…thanks, I guess.”
Damian grinned. His gold tooth glinted for an instant, like a spark in a dynamite factory.
“Don’t thank me, old friend,” he said with a queasy warmth. “I’m a pain artist, and like most artists, I prefer to work with a blank canvas. And I have a whole palette of painful new techniques I can’t wait to experiment with during our little playdate later.”
Milton’s spine froze like a poisoned Popsicle.
Damian wrapped his arms around his apprentice bullies, and looked down upon them with a condescending affection.
Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go Page 8