by David Lubar
“Sort of,” Abigail said. “But don’t worry. He’ll get there.”
The bell rang. Shawna and Rodney had just been the start of things. The day got even more interesting. When we walked into home base, Ms. Otranto smiled at Abigail and said, “Can I count on a little more class participation from this point onward?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Abigail said.
All through class, every time Ms. Otranto asked a question, she looked directly at Abigail, even when she didn’t raise her hand.
The same thing happened in science. Ms. Delambre gazed at Abigail like she wanted to adopt her. The whole time Ms. Delambre set up the experiment, she talked to Abigail. It was actually a pretty cool experiment. Ms. Delambre had hooked up a thermometer to a computer, and plugged that into a projector so the whole class could watch the display. We were going to see how much energy a lightbulb lost as heat.
It wasn’t just the teachers who treated Abigail differently. The other kids looked at her like they expected her to answer everything. They looked at me, too, but in a different way. They were trying really hard to get me to like them. I got splattered with friendliness all morning.
“Hey, Nate, you were awesome in the gym.”
“Want to come over after school? You can ride my dirt bike.”
“Man, Nathan, I thought you were amazing on Saturday. Rodney looked like he’d been hit by a meteor.”
“I got some cookies in my desk. Want one?”
They seemed to think that if I didn’t like them, I’d hurt them. I wanted to scream at them, Hey, I like you! I won’t hurt you. I’m not a bully. Treat me like a normal kid!
Except, of course, I wasn’t a normal kid. And I had another secret that, if they knew it, would totally change the way they treated me. I was pretty sure nobody offers cookies to zombies or invites them over after school.
When it was time for recess, Mookie, Abigail, and I fled to the side of the school.
“I want to grab them and shake them,” I said. “I want to tell them I won’t hurt them.” I turned toward the playground and shouted, “I won’t hurt you! I’m not like Rodney.”
“I just want them to stop staring,” Abigail said. “But that’ll happen. They won’t stay amazed by us forever. Something else will distract them.”
“I hope so.” There was one other thing I was worried about. I checked my watch. Recess ended in about ten minutes. Right after the bell rang, I’d find out if an important part of my life had changed.
12
The Table Remains Stable
We went in for lunch. The classroom was one thing. You didn’t really get to talk with your friends a whole lot in there. But lunch was something else: It was a social situation. Whoever you were in the lunchroom, that’s who you were as a person. I noticed Abigail was walking very close to me.
“Careful. You’re near death,” I said.
“What?”
“I was trying to make a joke,” I said.
“Oh. Yeah, I get it. Near death. Good one.” She didn’t laugh.
“Nervous?” I asked.
“A little. These are our friends. I don’t want them to think we’ve been hiding important things from them.”
“But we have,” I said. “I have. You have. I’m still hiding something really big.”
“I’m not hiding anything,” Mookie said.
“In your case, there are some things you should keep to yourself,” Abigail said.
We reached the table. Our group had once been the Second Besters—kids who weren’t so good or bad at something that we stood out. I was the second-skinniest kid in class, Mookie was the second-fattest. Denali was the second-funniest. We were all second at something.
Abigail’s original group, the Doomed, were the kids who’d been left without any group. They’d been stuck at their own table when school started, but they’d joined us earlier this year, after Mookie and I became friends with Abigail. So we were sort of a mixed group scooped up from the bottom of the ladder—or the bottom of the pool.
The instant I sat down, Ferdinand yelled, “Don’t hit me!”
“Knock it off!” I shouted.
That was a mistake. Ferdinand squealed and dived under the table.
“He really should just keep his tray down there,” Mookie said. He picked up Ferdinand’s sandwich and handed it to him under the table.
That was true. Ferdinand spent a lot of time hiding. I peeked under. “Hey, I only hit bullies. Okay?” I tried to keep my voice as gentle as possible.
Ferdinand nodded, but stayed where he was.
Meanwhile, Adam was staring at Abigail. “I guess I’m not a Second Bester,” he said. He pointed across the cafeteria. “Eddy should be sitting at this table instead of me. He’s the second-smartest kid in school.”
“Nobody here likes Eddy,” I said.
“Everybody here likes you,” Abigail said. “You’re part of the group.”
“Everybody.”
We all turned and looked. I think it was the first time any of us had heard Snail Girl say a word. She blushed and stared down at her tray.
“Then it would be smart of me to stay,” Adam said. He picked up his peanut butter sandwich, sniffed it, then took a bite. He’d gotten into the habit of smelling all his food, ever since that unpleasant incident with the hamburger. I guess I couldn’t blame him. He could blame me, but that’s another story.
We all started eating. Everyone except for me, of course. And things, at least here at our lunch table, felt perfectly normal. Mookie stuffed his face and made gross comments. Denali made jokes. Adam and Abigail talked about things nobody else understood. Eventually, even Ferdinand climbed out and joined us.
“What do you think Mr. Lomux is going to do?” Mookie asked when we headed to gym.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I bet it won’t be fun.”
Mr. Lomux obviously wanted to make me suffer. Luckily, he only seemed to know one way to do that—make me work out real hard. That, of course, didn’t cause me any suffering at all. I could jog from here to California without stopping.
We ran laps for the first half of class. Then we started doing sit-ups and push-ups. I thought about acting exhausted and dropping out. But I was tired of him, and tired of how he pushed kids around. They really shouldn’t let bullies become teachers.
I did everything he threw at us, and stuck with it even after most of the kids had dropped out. Maybe that was a mistake, because at the end of class, as I was walking out, he grabbed my shoulder and said, “There’s something weird about you, Abercrombie.”
“Just that I love gym,” I said. “But I guess that’s pretty weird.”
I noticed that Eddy and Rodney hung back as everyone else was leaving. They huddled together with Mr. Lomux. I didn’t like that, but there was nothing I could do about it.
13
Princeton Charming
It was weird having Dad drive us to Princeton for the regional finals. He was really proud of me for entering the Brainy Brawny competition. But I wasn’t doing it for the reasons he thought. I guess if he knew the real reason, he’d be even prouder. He’d also totally stop me from doing it. Parents don’t seem to want their kids to tackle evil organizations.
We’d had an easy win at the South Jersey round in Hurston Lakes. I figured things were about to get harder, but I wasn’t worried. Abigail and I were wearing our new Belgosi Upper Elementary team shirts. Ms. Delambre had gotten them for us. Mookie had stuck with his Team Mookie shirt.
“I’ve dreamed of coming here,” Abigail said as we walked across the campus.
“I’ve dreamed I was a poodle,” Mookie said. “And then I dreamed my pizza was talking to me. I wasn’t a poodle that time. I was a hamster. The pizza was pepperoni. With olives that winked. Hamsters love olives.”
“What’s so special about this place?” I asked Abigail. I knew it was a famous college, but there were tons of colleges all over the country.
“Everything. Can’t you j
ust feel how wonderful it is?” As soon as she said that, I guess she realized I wouldn’t even feel anything if one of the buildings fell on me. “Well, you know what I mean.”
“I guess.” The students I saw walking around the campus didn’t look all that different from the ones at Romero Community College. They were just big kids carrying books. Some were wearing fancy clothes, and others were in torn jeans.
We found the gym. There were twelve tables set up for the teams. This time, there wasn’t so much of an audience. I spotted people who were obviously parents. Some of them had large signs or banners. I also spotted Mr. Murphy, who was dressed like a college professor. But I was a good enough spy not to wave at him. Or laugh.
I studied the other teams. You can’t really tell how smart people are by looking at them, but sometimes you can get an idea how good they are at athletic stuff. From what I saw, the competition would be tough. There was definitely a lot of muscle in the room. On the other hand, I was pretty sure nobody was going to make us step into a boxing ring.
All of the tables had small signs taped to them. I found ours: BELGOSI UPPER ELEMENTARY, EAST CRAVEN, NJ. There was a name card on the table in front of each of the three chairs. I was in the middle. Happily, there was no sign of a team name.
A guy in a tan corduroy suit greeted us. I noticed his tie had a picture of Shakespeare on it. After we sat, he explained the rules: For the academic part, three teams would compete at a time. It was a little different from what we’d done at Belgosi, since there were more teams. The first round would narrow things down to four teams. Then, all four would compete in the physical part. The two highest scorers would compete in the final creative-thinking part.
“We just need to win one academic round,” Abigail said. “That’s good. I’ll bet there are some real smart kids here. This is Princeton.”
“Yeah, we’re in Princeton,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean any of the teams are from here. We’re the winners from southern New Jersey, right? That means we’re from closer to Princeton than anyone else.”
“So one of the teams could be from Harvard, or Yale.” She said those names like they were magical places. “Or Dartmouth or Cornell.”
“Abigail, they’re all from elementary schools. Just like us.”
She ignored me. “I’ll bet there’s someone from NYU or Columbia. Swarthmore! Rutgers! MIT!”
I had to stop her before she named every college on the East Coast. “Check out the signs. Harker Elementary. Dunwich Academy. Lovecraft Upper Elementary. They’re all just kids. They’re exactly like us—except not as smart.” I gave her a smile, but I could tell she was still nervous.
“Duke!” she said. “Brown!”
Mookie leaned past me and put his hand on her shoulder. “Look, Duke is a dog’s name and Brown is just a color. I don’t know what a Swarthmore is, but it doesn’t sound very tough. And Princeton—that sounds like a prince who weighs too much. You need to forget about all that stuff and just be a smarty-pants show-off. I think I know what will help.”
He hunched over and got that look in his eyes.
“Not now!” I said. The last thing we needed was for him to clear the gym with a blast of gas.
“What are you talking about?” He reached down to dig through a pocket in the leg of his pants, pulled out a tiny plastic rabbit, and slid it across the table to Abigail. “I got you this for luck. I couldn’t find a rabbit’s foot.”
“Uh, thanks.” Abigail took the rabbit. “I’m not superstitious, you know.”
“Neither am I,” Mookie said. “But I believe in good luck.”
Our team got to go in the first round, which didn’t make things any easier for Abigail. The guy in the suit stepped up to the microphone and started the competition. He told us his name was Dr. Phibes. Then he read the first question.
“The topic is geography. Name the longest river in Europe.”
There was a pause of at least a second and a half. It seemed like a century. I was used to Abigail answering the questions way before they were finished.
Finally, she reached for the buzzer, but she moved her hand like the button was red hot and she didn’t want to touch it.
Buzzzz.
A kid on the Laughton Elementary team said, “The Volga.”
“Correct,” Dr. Phibes said. That gave Laughton a ten-point lead. Dr. Phibes read the next question. “Who wrote the novel Animal Farm?”
The same thing happened. Abigail froze, and Laughton scored. Now, we were down 20 to nothing.
I looked at Mookie. “We’re in trouble.”
“I have an idea,” he whispered.
“Bigger rabbit?” I asked.
“Nope. Not a rabbit. I think Abigail needs to meet a dumb bunny.”
I couldn’t even begin to guess what he meant by that. But if Mookie had an idea that didn’t involve emptying his intestines, that was fine with me.
“Now for a math question,” Dr. Phibes said. “The sum of two digits is twelve. Their product is thirty-five. What are the—?”
Buzzz.
Mookie slammed the buzzer and shouted, “Zero!”
“Wrong,” Dr. Phibes said.
Laughton got it. We were down minus-10 to 30.
“Next question, on biology,” Dr. Phibes said. “In phototropic plants, there is—?”
Buzzzz.
“Vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry!” Mookie shouted.
Everyone in the gym was staring at us. Some of the kids on the other teams were laughing. Abigail turned toward Mookie and opened her mouth like she wanted to scream at him. I could understand her horror. Here we were in what she felt was one of the smartest places in the world, and Mookie was making our team look like total idiots. I had to admit, it was a brilliant idea. He was trying to shock her back into action. I just hoped it worked.
After staring at Mookie for another moment, Dr. Phibes got the correct answer from Harker, then asked the next question. “This one is about foreign languages,” the professor said.
I saw Mookie inch his hand toward the buzzer.
“In the small region between France—”
Buzzzz.
Abigail beat him to it. “Basque,” she said.
“Correct,” the professor said.
Abigail gave me a small smile. “Had to be. Basque is spoken in the region between France and Spain.”
“Good thinking. Keep it up.”
And that pretty much turned things around. Abigail was back. We killed the other two teams and made it to the second round with a nice score.
I got lucky with the physical section. Two of the three events were for endurance, which I totally rock at. I didn’t have to knock anybody out. I don’t think that was supposed to be part of the Brainy Brawny competition, anyhow. I’m pretty sure that was just Mr. Lomux’s own special way to do things. The third part was strength. Mookie tackled that one, and managed to get third place, which thrilled him.
He pumped his fist in the air as he came back to our table. “The Mookster snags a bronze medal in the intergalactic Olympics.”
I slapped him on the back. “Yup—you’ve dazzled the universe with your powers.”
With our score in the first round, and my two wins in the second, we easily made it to the finals.
“Feeling like a smarty again?” I asked Abigail as we got ready for the last round.
“Yeah.” She glanced back at the table where we’d nearly lost everything. “I don’t know what happened to me.”
“You let yourself get impressed by the wrong stuff,” I said. “No big deal. Everyone does it.”
For the creative round, we had to do a drawing of a horse and make a face out of clay. I’d always been a pretty good artist. Now, when my hand was totally steady, I was even better. I got us an easy win.
“It still feels sort of weird to win anything,” I told Abigail after the judges announced the results.
“I know what you mean,” she said. “But I think it will be fun getting use
d to it.”
“Regional champions,” Dad said as we left the gym. “Imagine that.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Pretty amazing. I guess we’re going to Washington.”
That’s where the final round would be. The eight regional winners from the United States, along with those from other countries, would all compete in Washington, D.C., two weeks from now. If I could feel a nervous tingle, I’d have been totally tingling. But as always, I was dead calm. And I had to keep in mind that my goal wasn’t to win the whole Brainy Brawny competition; my goal was to get RABID to try to recruit me.
That night, right after dark, fireflies swarmed outside my window. Since it was way too early in the year for them to be real, I knew the lights were a message from BUM. The fireflies formed the word PARK. Then they flew off. I watched them fade into the distance, making scattered bright flashes as some of them exploded or crashed into telephone poles.
Once I was sure my parents were asleep, I slipped out of the house and headed for the park.
14
Ear Flicks and Flowers
“You’ve done well,” Mr. Murphy said. “I couldn’t have asked for a better performance. You’ll probably draw their attention.”
“I have a good team.”
“Yes, you do. Now we need to be prepared. There’s no way to know how RABID will contact you. Or even when. I suspect the attempt will occur before you go to Washington for the competition. It might not even be obvious. Nobody is going to come up to you and say, ‘How would you like to help destroy the free world?’ ”
“I guess that would be a bad way for them to recruit people.” I smiled at the image of someone in a trench coat, with a large hat and dark glasses, slithering up to me and whispering, Psssst. Want to join the forces of evil?
“You just have to keep an eye out for anyone who talks to you, or even moves within view. They’re going to check you out first. It could be something as simple as offering you two comic books—one funny and one violent—and seeing which one you accept. Or watching your reaction to a staged accident. If you seem like someone they can’t use, they won’t ask you to meet with them, and our efforts will have been wasted. So you have to make sure to act like an impressionable young man who can be talked into doing bad things.”