Homeroom Headhunters

by Clay McLeod Chapman

  If my calculations were correct, there were three hours that I was actually at home, eating dinner with Mom before turning in early, just to crawl out through my bedroom window.

  If you told me that I’d be going out of my way to hang out at school twenty-one hours out of each day, I would’ve said you must be mistaking me for some kind of academic maggot.

  I had wedged open the window of my bedroom with a butter knife when I’d left earlier that evening, making sure it didn’t seal shut behind me. That way, when I got home, all I had to do was jimmy the window and crawl back in.

  “Look who decided to finally come home.”

  I froze, straddling the windowsill. The voice came from a corner of my bedroom, still hidden by early morning shadows.

  “…Mom?”

  The light flickered on, revealing Mom in her bathrobe, sitting at my desk. From the bags under her eyes, it was easy to see that she wasn’t rested.

  I crawled the rest of the way inside and fell onto my bed, staring up at the ceiling.

  No sleep for me.

  “What are you doing still up?”

  “Waiting for my son to come back from wherever he was all night.”

  “I just went out for a walk.”

  “Five hours ago?”

  “You’ve been waiting for me?”

  “Where did your hair go?”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “Why would you cut it all off? You’ve always had such beautiful hair.…”

  “It’s just hair, Mom.”

  “I don’t even recognize you anymore.”

  “It’ll grow back.”

  “I wasn’t talking about your hair!” Mom stopped, closed her eyes, and took a breath. She exhaled—slowly. “Start explaining.”

  “Can you just let me sleep for a little bit?”

  “Try again.”

  “It’s not what you think. Honest.”

  “Please—tell me what I’m thinking. And while you’re at it, give me one good reason why I shouldn’t padlock you inside this room for the rest of your life!”

  “It’s a fire hazard?”

  “Spencer.” Mom’s voice strained. It sounded like her esophagus had collapsed.

  The first tear to roll down her cheek caught me by surprise. I didn’t expect that.

  The second and third only made matters worse.

  “Mom?”

  She didn’t say anything at first, just rubbed her hand over each cheek. “I thought we could do this. You and me. I thought we could make it work.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I can’t do this alone.”

  We both were sniffling now, Mom and me, watching the morning sun seep through the bedroom window. Then my alarm started to ring.

  Time to go to school.

  GHOST STORY NUMBER FOUR: SULLY

  Chosen Name: Sully

  Given Name: Sully Tulliver

  Area of Study: Biology

  Weapon of Choice: Slingshot

  Last seen: 7th grade

  Notes: Green eyes. Auburn hair. Freckles along the bridge of her nose. Sharpshooter. Heard her laugh once. Doesn’t like talking about herself much. Marches to the beat of her own tribal drum.

  SULLY FIELD NOTES ENTRY #1:

  LOCATION: ROOFTOP

  TIME: 12:00 MIDNIGHT

  SULLY: I’ve always been a bit of an etymologist.… “Circle, circle. Dot, dot. Now you’ve got a cootie shot.”

  Sully loved bugs as a kid. Back in elementary school, she carried a magnifying glass wherever she went. She would set up shop on the playground and inspect kids for nits, all through recess.

  Guess who she had a crush on?

  None other than Riley Callahan himself.

  SULLY: Even back then, he had the most immaculate hair you’d ever laid eyes on.

  When Riley asked Sully for his own personal examination in first grade, she nearly peed in her pants.

  SULLY: I sat him down on the swing set and held my magnifying glass about an inch away from his hairline. It was hard to keep my wrist from shaking.

  Only problem was—Sully examined him for so long that she ended up magnifying the heat of the sun through the lens.

  It was like aiming a laser directly onto Riley’s scalp.

  Riley smelled something burning, but he had no idea it was his own hair. Sully realized what was happening when all that fancy styling mousse caught fire. Riley’s head went up in a blaze. He started screaming, swatting at his head. All the other kids watched him run ’round and ’round the playground until their teacher finally put out the flames with her coat.

  Riley said Sully set his hair on fire on purpose.

  Her private practice shut itself down shortly thereafter.

  SULLY FIELD NOTES ENTRY #2:

  LOCATION: LIBRARY

  TIME: 1:00 P.M.

  I only had to flip through a few yearbooks before I found her photo. The picture was the same one her parents had used for her MISSING flyer.

  Someone had written alongside her face:

  COOTIE CATCHER

  SULLY: Riley got everybody to call me that. “Circle, circle. Square, square. Now you’ve got it everywhere.”

  Whenever Sully walked through the halls, she would hear from behind her back, “Watch out! The Cootie Catcher’s coming through!”

  She was never able to outrun the nickname.

  SULLY: It got to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore.

  ME: So that’s why you joined the Tribe? Because of a nickname?

  SULLY: You’d understand if you’d been called something like that your whole life.

  ME: There has to be a bigger reason than that.… Why did you leave?

  SULLY: I don’t want to talk about it.

  ME: Okay. Sorry.

  SULLY: Riley better wear a shower cap to school tomorrow.

  ME: You gonna futz with the sprinkler system or something?

  SULLY: Pediculus humanus capitis.

  ME: What’s that?

  SULLY: You’ll see…“Circle, circle. Knife, knife. Now you’ve got it all your life.”

  he baseball cap worked for thirty seconds.

  I slipped through Greenfield’s front doors with the brim pulled down as far as it would go. Ten paces into the building and Pritchard snatched it off.

  “No caps in school,” he droned. Then he realized who he was addressing. “Spencer? What happened to your hair?”

  “Trying to be more efficient, sir. Now that I don’t have to wash my hair in the morning, I have an extra thirty-three-point-six seconds to focus on writing my personal memoir.”

  Pritchard wasn’t amused.

  “Pick your hat up from my office at the end of school.”

  • • •

  Things didn’t get itchy until third period.

  Fifteen minutes from the end of class, Mr. Rorshuck dropped a bomb on us.

  “Pop quiz,” he announced as he handed them out. “You have fifteen minutes.”

  Sitting directly behind Sarah Haversand, I noticed her scratching the top of her head as if deep in thought.

  “Start…now!”

  I attacked the first question.

  I spotted Martin Mendleson absentmindedly digging the tip of his pencil into his scalp.

  By the time I finished question #2, something fell onto my paper.

  Leaning over, I watched it crawl across an equation.

  A wriggling digit.

  “Mr. Rorshuck?” I raised my hand, hoping to control the mounting panic in my voice.

  “Not in the middle of a quiz, Mr. Pendleton. You know the rules.”

  “But this is—uh, I think this is an emergency.”

  Sarah kept scraping her scalp, harder now. A squirming snow flurry scattered across her quiz sheet. She leapt to her feet, screaming, pointing toward her desk.

  “What is that?!”

  Everybody turned toward her, suddenly scratching at their own heads.

  “Eyes on your own paper
, everyone,” Rorshuck called out.

  I could see the lightbulb go off in Sarah’s brain.

  “Lice?” she yelled. “Lice!”

  Immediately, the rest of the class went cross-eyed, looking up toward their own hairlines.

  “Li-li-liiiiiiice!” Sarah’s scream erupted from her throat like molten lava pouring forth from a volcano.

  Kids soared out of their seats. “LICE! LICE! LICE!”

  Rorshuck yelled after them. “The quiz isn’t over yet!”

  But it was too late. The bell rang and the outbreak began.

  I looked up to see a loosened fiberglass panel. Through the gap, I spotted the disembodied grin of none other than the Cootie Catcher herself.

  • • •

  “We have a nit-free policy here,” Assistant Principal Pritchard said over the intercom later that day. “Until we’re positive that students no longer have any egg sacs in their hair, they will not be allowed back in school.”

  The next day, there were so many buzz cuts in the hallway, I lost count.

  It almost felt like I had started a trend.

  When I first saw Riley Callahan’s freshly shorn head, I couldn’t help but feel a sudden swell of pride.

  Riley glanced over and made eye contact with me. There was a haunted look in his eyes. Almost hollow. There was barely any resemblance between the Riley standing before me now and that clear-complexioned, perfectly coiffed kid I’d bumped into when I got here.

  I could hardly recognize him anymore.

  • • •

  I snuck up to the roof during lunch with my food. It was just about the only spot left where I could think.

  Pendleton. Table for one, please.

  I looked at the back of my milk carton and—surprise, surprise—found Sporkboy staring right back at me, smiling from his MISSING picture.

  It was Benjamin’s yearbook photo: Same carroty hair. Same chubby cheeks. Same smile.

  After I finished my milk, I tore off the back section of the carton, slipping Sporkboy’s picture into my pocket, like a baseball card.

  Here’s a Benjamin Greenwood original. Mint condition. Not even a single crease in the cardboard. Collect them all.

  I wondered if my photograph would pop up on a carton of two-percent one day. Make your way onto the back of your own milk, and you’re a team member for life.

  Who are we? We are the Milk Carton Kids.

  Have you seen us?

  “Is this roof taken?” someone asked from behind me.

  Sully.

  “Why, no.… Have a seat.”

  We split my meal between us.

  Impromptu picnic.

  “It’s hard to spot you in the hallways,” she said. “Too many bald heads.”

  “That reminds me.” I pulled out a square sheet of paper from my backpack. “I have something for you.”

  “What’s this?”

  I folded the sheet in half. Then folded it again.

  Then I folded each corner into the center.

  I flipped it over and folded all four corners toward the center on the other side.

  I stuck my thumbs and forefingers into the flap pockets, bringing all four fingers together in the center so that they made a sharp point.

  “Ta-da,” I said. “Your own personal cootie catcher.”

  I slipped behind Sully and began to pick at her hair.

  “Look at me,” I said. “I’m an orangutan searching for nits!”

  “Quit it.”

  “Mm-mm! It’s a regular monkey buffet up here!”

  “That’s not funny!” She laughed.

  “All you can eat!”

  We both stopped laughing and neither of us said anything for the longest time.

  “You’re giving me those googly eyes again,” she said finally. “What are you thinking?”

  “Do you miss home?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Don’t you ever wish you could go back?”

  “I guess I could if I really wanted to.” She shrugged her shoulders. “But why would I, when I’ve got everything I need right here?”

  “You guys should’ve taken over a shopping mall instead,” I said. “At least then we could go to the movies or something.”

  “Did you just ask me out on a date?”

  “No!”

  “Good—because I’m way older than you.”

  “You’re not that much older than me.”

  “Two years, at least!”

  “I’ve been told I’m very mature for my age.”

  Sully laughed. I liked it when I could make her laugh.

  “Just think,” she said. “Before long, you’ll be one of us.”

  One of us.

  For Sully, I would shed the rest of my life like a butterfly crawling out of its cocoon.

  This would be my new start. My clean slate.

  Just like Mom wanted.

  GHOST STORY NUMBER FIVE: COMPASS

  Chosen Name: Compass

  Given Name: Jimmy Winters

  Area of Study: Chemistry

  Weapon of Choice: Compass-chucker, X-ACTO knuckles

  Last seen: 8th grade

  Notes: Second in command. Major superiority complex. More insecurities than most. Highly volatile.

  COMPASS FIELD NOTES ENTRY #1:

  LOCATION: LIBRARY

  TIME: 10:00 P.M.

  It wasn’t too difficult to find Jimmy Winters’s photograph in the yearbook. Someone had already played connect-the-dots with his pimples.

  COMPASS: Acne vulgaris has run in my family for generations.

  Compass always has a crop of creamy mushroom-capped acne sprouting from the surface of his oily skin.

  Even today, the outbreak of whiteheads stretches over his nose, his forehead, his cheeks—like a cluster of toadstools about to pop.

  COMPASS: I tried benzoyl peroxide, prescription medication, even alpha-hydroxy acid baths. But the pimples grow back.

  His classmates always made fun of him.

  “Look at the size of that oil slick!”

  “Don’t walk behind him. You might slip.”

  “Bet you could funnel that oil from your face and fuel my dad’s car!”

  COMPASS: You get used to it. After a while, you just grow thick skin.

  Thick, scaly, red skin. With whiteheads.

  COMPASS FIELD NOTES ENTRY #2:

  LOCATION: SOCCER FIELD

  TIME: 12:00 MIDNIGHT

  Compass asked me to run an errand for him before Thanksgiving.

  He wanted me to sneak onto the soccer field with a flashlight and a pair of rubber gloves to hunt for…

  COMPASS: Amanita muscaria.

  ME: Musca-what?

  COMPASS: Mushrooms. From the fly agaric genus? They’re a highly psychoactive basidiomycete fungus. Pretty poisonous stuff. They sprout along the soccer fields at night. We have to pick them before Mr. Simms mows in the morning.

  ME: What do you want with a bunch of mushrooms?

  COMPASS: Just a little science experiment.

  I had to get down on my hands and knees to sift through the grass.

  Then I had to pluck each mushroom from the soil and hold it up to the flashlight, just to see if it fit Compass’s criteria:

  White-gilled. Deep red cap. White spots.

  A. muscaria!

  The resemblance between the toadstool and Compass’s complexion was uncanny, but I figured I shouldn’t mention it.

  Sore subject.

  COMPASS FIELD NOTES ENTRY #3:

  LOCATION: SCIENCE LAB

  TIME: 1:00 A.M.

  Before he became Compass, Jimmy had been at the top of his class. A’s in every subject. Particularly the sciences.

  Chemistry was his jam.

  There was one event every year that Jimmy counted down the days to: the Greenfield Middle School Annual Science Fair.

  Jimmy had won first place two years in a row. He wouldn’t settle for second on his eighth-grade presentation. There was one more blu
e ribbon in his future, and he’d stop at nothing until it was pinned to his lapel.

  COMPASS: For my project that year, I had been thinking about isolating certain strains of food-borne bacteria. But my chemistry teacher, Mr. Fitzpatrick, said, “No pathogenic agents.” I had to keep it safe.

  Jimmy settled for something simple:

  Developing his own supermushroom.

  The day before the science fair, Mr. Fitzpatrick had Jimmy stand before his science class to explain his project. Jimmy was never one for public presentations, mainly for complexion-related reasons.

  COMPASS: I told the class I would be winning the blue ribbon with an inorganic compound I’d developed that would increase crop yields by forty percent. To illustrate the success of my macronutrients, I’d decided to use my fertilizer to grow a giant fiber head mushroom.…

  But someone at the back of the classroom had apparently snorted. “Fiber head?” they said. “You mean, like, a whitehead? ’Cause I can count a couple fiber heads about to burst across your nose right now!”

  COMPASS: I’d show them. I’d win first place and head to nationals and win there, too. Then I’d come back to Greenfield and every last student would beg for my forgiveness.

  He’d begun his Nobel acceptance speech already.

  Jimmy’s science project was a piece of cake. He would grow his own mushroom, from spore to sprout, in a matter of minutes.

  COMPASS: Amateur stuff, really. All it took was one shoe box full of soil, a household microwave, some fungal-tissue cultures—and my own special blend of growth hormones.

  Jimmy had already calculated the proper amount of moisture and fertilizer he’d need for germination.

  COMPASS: But not too much. A little dab will do you.…

  Jimmy would microwave the mycelium right there in the cafeteria, getting that mushroom to grow before the judges’ very eyes.

  COMPASS: See you in the winner’s circle.…

  The not-so-simple part? Keeping the other students from tampering with it.

  Somebody had poured red food coloring into his spore samples the night before.

  Science fair sabotage.

  COMPASS: When it was my turn to present my project, I flipped the switch—and sure enough, the machine warmed my spores. In seconds, I could see tiny fiber heads budding up from their shoe-box bed. They kept growing. Thirty times their normal diameter in three seconds!