Dinosaur Boy

by Cory Putman Oakes

  Dr. Cook and Principal Mathis had a short, whispered conference that even I, in the front row, could not hear. As Dr. Cook talked, I saw Principal Mathis’s eyes move from Allan, to me, and back to Allan again.

  Finally, Principal Mathis faced us and cleared her throat.

  “Please raise your hand if there are any diving rings, of any color, in your possession.”

  I sneaked a look behind me. Only Nora was raising her hand, and that was probably only because her fingers were still clenched around the purple ring. There was really no point in her trying to pretend she was innocent, like everyone else was doing.

  Principal Mathis was undaunted.

  “I want you all to empty your desks. And your pockets. And your backpacks. Put everything on top of the table in front of you. Right now.”

  Nobody said anything, but the room was suddenly full of scuffling noises as everybody piled their belongings in front of them.

  I tried to catch Sylvie’s eye as I unzipped my backpack, but she didn’t look at me. She had already stacked her books neatly on her lab table and was now building a tower of KitKats beside them.

  Principal Mathis walked up and down the aisles, pausing beside each student to poke through their stuff. Whenever she found a diving ring, she leaned down and whispered in that student’s ear. Afterward, that student got up and stood in a perfect line in the back of the room.

  First it was Gary Simmons. Then Mary Bishop. Then Brad. Then, no surprise, it was Nora. And finally, a girl named Vivian Cho. Principal Mathis lined up all five of them beside the classroom door.

  Allan and Cici were not among those rounded up, even though Principal Mathis spent longer at Allan’s table than at anyone else’s.

  “Thank you, Dr. Cook,” Principal Mathis said finally. “So sorry to disturb your class.”

  She left the room. The line of ring-tossers left with her.

  Dr. Cook cleared his throat and returned to the board.

  “Where were we? Oh yes. Method. Procedure. Results. And Conclusion. Each of these headings deserves a separate space on your project display…”

  Next to me, Sylvie made a small movement.

  She stuck her hand down by her leg and opened her fingers slightly, so that I could see what she was holding.

  It was a tiny tube of superglue.

  Layups/Standing Up

  At first, I wondered how Allan and Cici had avoided being caught up in what came to be known as “the Great Purge.” But the answer soon became clear.

  At lunchtime immediately following that epic morning in the science lab, Elliot pulled six rings off my plates, three red and three yellow. On the scorecard Sylvie had stolen, those were Allan’s and Cici’s colors.

  They had gotten so good at the game, they hadn’t had any rings left to bust them.

  After the Great Purge, nobody ever played the ring toss game again. But that didn’t mean everyone left me in peace. The next day, Jeremy Harris tripped me on the way to the computer lab. And during lunch, I discovered that someone had written “DINO DORK” with a purple felt-tip marker on all of my tennis balls.

  That afternoon, when Principal Mathis arrived to take Jeremy away, she also searched Emma’s desk. I was shocked when she discovered the purple marker.

  “Vivian was my best friend,” Emma hissed at me, as she gathered up her Hello Kitty backpack.

  I watched sadly as Emma’s pink Converse disappeared out the door, right behind Jeremy and Principal Mathis. I hadn’t known Jeremy at all. Actually, I had always assumed he was kind of strange because he wore overalls all the time. But I had thought Emma was one of the nice ones.

  As I gazed after Emma, I caught Allan glaring at me. As though this was all my fault. He sat two rows behind me and slightly to the left.

  I didn’t like that he sat behind me. It made it far too easy for him to watch me. Whereas, if I wanted to look at him, I had to go through the uncomfortable, slow process of twisting around and smashing all my plates against the back of the chair.

  I had a feeling Allan was planning his next move. But I didn’t get to find out what it was until gym, a few days after the Great Purge.

  Our basketball unit had started early this year. Elliot was, of course, thrilled. But I was miserable. If you ever try dribbling a basketball with a long tail trailing behind you, you’ll understand why.

  That day, we were supposed to be learning layups. Coach Carpenter demonstrated the concept (which, it was obvious to me, I would never come close to achieving) and split us into groups beneath the gym’s four basketball hoops to practice.

  I waited glumly for my turn to come. When I was almost at the front of the line, I saw Cici attempt a layup on the next hoop over. She tripped, fell on her face, and lay sprawled out on the gym floor, moaning.

  Even from a distance, it looked fake. So I wasn’t exactly surprised when, as soon as Coach Carpenter ran to her aid, Allan appeared in front of me.

  He stood with his back to Cici and the coach and used his enormous head to cut me off from everyone else in the gym.

  “Time for a chat, Butt Brain,” Allan said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out half of a bologna sandwich.

  He must have been doing it just to bug me. I mean, who else brings a sandwich to gym? I tried not to make a face as he raised it to his lips and bit off most of it in just one bite.

  Allan watched me carefully as he chewed. He did it with his mouth open, and I could see shreds of bologna dangling from his teeth.

  The smell of meat was nauseating. The whole thing made my stomach lurch. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t trust myself not to hurl. But I didn’t let myself look away until he finished the sandwich with a second smaller bite and stuffed the empty baggy back into his shorts pocket.

  “What happened to Parker?” he asked me, as he wiped his mouth. “And the other kids who got kicked out?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. I tried to sound casual, even though my mind was working overtime, trying to figure out what he was getting at.

  “You heard me,” he said, crossing his arms. “Where is Parker?”

  “How should I know? He got kicked out of school. I haven’t seen him since that day in the computer lab.”

  “Neither have I,” Allan said icily. “Neither has anyone. His phone’s been shut off, and he’s not at his house. And Cici says it’s the same with Nora and Vivian and all of the other kids too.”

  I frowned. It had never really occurred to me to wonder about Parker, or any of the other kids Principal Mathis had thrown out of school. I just assumed they’d had to enroll in the other public school, across town. Frankly, I had just been glad they were no longer around to torture me.

  “It’s not my problem,” I told Allan.

  “It is now,” he informed me.

  Allan swiveled his big head and glanced over his shoulder, to where Coach Carpenter was still bent over a prostrate Cici. The rest of our class was standing around, bored, waiting for the signal to return to layup practice. Elliot and Sylvie were among them, both watching me with worried eyes.

  “Parker was my friend,” Allan said, turning his head back to me. He took a step forward so that he was right in front of my face. “What did you do to him?”

  I could smell the remnants of his sandwich on his breath. But I didn’t become nauseated this time. Instead, I felt my entire body tense. My tail gave a warning twitch. Suddenly, I had a powerful urge to whirl around and whack Allan right in the face with the ends of my spikes.

  There were only two problems with this:

  1. The tennis balls probably would have made my tail just bounce off his cheekbones, instead of ripping his face to shreds.

  2. That definitely would have been a violation of the school’s code of conduct, not to mention my promise to Principal Mathis.

  So instead, I looked Allan
right in the eye. He was wearing his normal, annoyed expression. His thick eyebrows were knitted together in the very center of his ugly face. There was anger in his eyes, as usual, but there was something questioning there too.

  He really does want to know where Parker is. He thinks I know something.

  I decided to use that to my advantage.

  I leaned even closer to Allan so that our faces were practically touching.

  “Parker messed with me,” I told him, in what I hoped was a menacing tone. “Don’t make the same mistake.”

  Allan’s eyes narrowed. I did not back down, although a large portion of my brain had already started to rethink the tough guy strategy.

  Luckily, Coach Carpenter came to my rescue. Sort of.

  “Back to business, everyone,” his voice boomed. “And for heaven’s sake, pay attention to where you put your feet. I don’t have time to fill out any more accident reports today, OK?”

  Allan and I continued to stand there, eyes locked, until Allan finally blinked.

  “This isn’t over,” he informed me.

  “Probably not,” I agreed.

  Allan turned and went to the back of the nearest layup line.

  I stayed where I was until my shaking subsided enough for me to be able to walk to a line on the other side of the gym from Allan’s.

  I had done it. I had stood up for myself.

  Sylvie was right. It felt good. I didn’t feel like I had been stomped on and gotten the wind knocked out of me. Which is how I normally felt after an encounter with Allan. Instead, I felt full of energy. Like I might actually be able to do a layup without being weighed down by my plates and without tripping on my tail.

  But I still couldn’t help being the tiniest bit curious about what had really happened to Parker. And all the rest of the ring-toss kids who had been kicked out.

  • • •

  Later that day, after proving to everyone in gym class that my newfound confidence in my layup abilities was entirely in my head, I told Elliot and Sylvie what Allan had told me about Parker and the other kids who had been expelled.

  “So they’re just…gone?” Elliot asked.

  I shrugged.

  “I guess so. I don’t know why Allan would lie about it.”

  “Ohhhh, intrigue!” Sylvie pulled her hood back a fraction of an inch. Her eyes were sparkling with excitement.

  “It’s not like they could all just disappear,” Elliot said. “That’s crazy. We would have heard something about it.”

  “We could check their houses,” Sylvie suggested. “It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out where they all live. It must be nearby, right?”

  I nodded. “Parker lives two streets away from me.”

  Sylvie smiled and rubbed her hands together.

  “I guess we know what we’re doing after school today!”

  “No way.” Elliot shook his head. “It’s not like we’re friends with Parker. We can’t just show up at his house.”

  “We can if he doesn’t know that we’re there,” Sylvie said, winking in Elliot’s direction.

  Elliot shook his head.

  “This is a bad idea,” he said, to no one in particular.

  • • •

  Bad idea or not, Sylvie could not be talked out of it. As soon as school was out for the day, the three of us walked to Parker’s house.

  We did our best to be stealthy. But let’s face it, it’s kind of hard to sneak up on someone when your group is made up of a part-dinosaur, a really tall kid, and a girl in a bright orange sweatshirt.

  “We’re like the worst spies ever,” Elliot complained, picking the thoughts right out of my brain.

  “Shhhh.” Sylvie put a finger to her lips and ducked behind an oversized plant. She nodded to the house I had directed us to.

  “You’re sure that’s it?” she whispered.

  I nodded. I walked by Parker’s house almost every day, but I had only actually been inside of it once. For a birthday party. Two years ago. When Parker’s parents had forced him to invite everybody in the class, including me and Elliot. I remembered the red and blue stained glass parrot on their front door. Parker’s parents were really into bird-watching or something.

  I could see the bird through the branches of the plant we were hiding behind. Sylvie motioned for Elliot and me to stay put. Then she crawled on her hands and knees to peek her head around the side of the foliage.

  Elliot shifted his long legs uncomfortably on the ground beside me. It wasn’t actually raining (which was kind of miraculous, since it was afternoon in Portland), but the ground was still wet and slightly muddy from that morning’s rain. We were all going to have wet butts after this. Mom was probably going to make me hose off my tail before she allowed me in my house.

  Sylvie crawled back around to us.

  “There’s a light in the front hall,” she reported. “That means someone must be home.”

  “See? Allan doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Elliot scoffed. “Can we go home now?”

  “We haven’t seen Parker yet,” Sylvie reminded him. “Which room is his?”

  Elliot looked over at me, and we both shrugged.

  Sylvie gave us an exasperated look.

  “We’ve only been here once,” I reminded her. “And the party was mostly in the backyard.”

  “Fine,” Sylvie said, and thought for a moment. “We’ll have to sneak around the side of the house then and look in some windows. It shouldn’t take us long to find his room.”

  To me, that sounded like an excellent way to get caught. Why was Sylvie so determined to see Parker? Perhaps she felt some sort of kinship with the kid whose desk she now sat in? I looked over at Elliot. From his face, I could tell he felt the same way I did. But since neither of us had the energy to argue with Sylvie, we got up off the muddy ground and followed her around the bush.

  We were halfway up Parker’s driveway when the garage door started to go up.

  Sylvie motioned us frantically back to the bush. She and Elliot both scrambled back down the driveway and dove to safety.

  I got as far as the edge of the driveway before something suddenly jerked me backward. I looked behind me.

  One of my tail spikes had lost its tennis ball and was now stuck in a flowerbed. I reached back and tried to jerk my tail free, but the spike was buried too deep in the mud and wouldn’t budge.

  The garage door was now a quarter of the way up, and I thought I could hear somebody talking.

  I turned around and tried to reach the end of my tail, so that I could dig it free. But my tail did not want to bend that way. I heard a pop, and I bit my lip to keep from yelling as I felt a sharp stab of pain, just above my spikes.

  A small flash of orange appeared beside me and pulled my spike free. The yank sent another stab of pain racing up my tail, but I ignored it and followed Sylvie back to the safety of the bush.

  I cradled my aching tail in my hands as we peered through the leaves to see if we had been caught.

  A tall woman wearing shorts and tennis shoes walked out of the open garage. She was carrying a large garbage bag in one hand and holding a cell phone to her ear with the other.

  “It’s been difficult, of course,” she was saying as she walked to the end of the driveway. “We miss him terribly. But we’re managing.”

  Sylvie looked at me questioningly. I mouthed, Parker’s mom.

  The three of us crouched down even farther and did our best to be invisible. But Mrs. Douglas appeared oblivious to our presence, even when she paused at the end of the driveway, less than an arm’s length away from us, on the other side of the plant.

  “I finally got started on his room today,” she said into the phone. “You wouldn’t believe the clutter. It’s going to take me days to clean it out!”

  She swung the garbage bag onto
the curb and turned, walking back into the garage. The three of us sat in silence as the garage door shuddered and slowly rolled back down.

  Elliot and I stared at each other. Sylvie reached around the bush and dragged the garbage bag into her lap.

  “She was talking about Parker, wasn’t she?” Elliot said finally.

  Instead of responding, Sylvie started picking at the knot on the top of the bag.

  “I think so,” I replied, the pain in my tail momentarily forgotten as I struggled to make sense of Mrs. Douglas’s words.

  It’s been difficult… We miss him…

  Those aren’t the sorts of things you say about someone who has been safely enrolled in the school across town. Those are the kind of things you say when somebody has—

  No, I told myself. Don’t even think it.

  “He can’t be dead,” Elliot whispered, stealing my thoughts again. “What could have happened?”

  Sylvie gave up on the knot and ripped a hole in the side of the garbage bag, spilling the contents onto the muddy ground in front of her.

  Clothes.

  A wadded-up assortment of shirts, jeans, and track pants fell out of the bag. I spotted a familiar shade of red and pulled it out of the pile.

  I shuddered as I recognized the sneering face of the Angry Bird.

  The last time I had seen that shirt, Parker had been wearing it. And leading half of our computer class in the Butt Brain chorus.

  I reached over and dug through the rest of the clothes, looking for holes. Stains. Rips. Anything that would explain why Mrs. Douglas would throw them away.

  But there was nothing. The clothes were all perfectly ready to be worn. There was no reason to throw them away.

  Unless, of course, there was no longer someone to wear them.

  Do Stegosauruses Like Salsa?

  That evening, my tail wouldn’t stop hurting. So Mom took me to the vet.

  The. Vet.

  When I asked her why we weren’t going to see my regular pediatrician, Dr. Bakker, my mom turned to me in exasperation.