The Pizza Party

by Theo Baker

  Frankie sighed.

  “All right, it’s really simple. First, we’ll synchronize our watches. And then, at precisely 12:04, Frankie, you move into position Bravo.” I used a ruler to slide an eraser labeled “F” to the Bravo spot on the map — G4, if you’re going by the grid. “You stay put at G4 and keep watch of your north-by-northeast vector.”

  “Huh?”

  “Then, at 12:06, Ashley, you move into position Delta.” I slid her “A” eraser accordingly. “Now make a note that this is not your primary position. This is your secondary position. You must not, under any circumstances, make your way to position Epsilon until 12:09, or unless I give the OK, or unless we have to fall back to plan B, at which point we’ll rendezvous at position Omega. Got it?”

  “No!”

  “And then, at exactly 12:07, I will deploy the AI drone — Frankie, did you procure the AI drone?”

  “That’s a negatory, chief.”

  “Frankie!” I sighed and rubbed my face all over.

  “Why don’t I just go in and distract Miss Adolf?” Ashley said. “And you run in and grab Katherine.”

  “That sounds too complex,” I said. “Frankie?”

  “I’m going with Ashley on this one. Obviously.”

  “OK, I’m hungry, so let’s just do it,” Ashley said.

  “Wait —” I yelled after Ashley, but she’d already gone into the classroom. I moved a few paces closer to the door and pressed myself against the lockers, trying to blend into the environment.

  “Miss Adolf!” I heard Ashley yell. “Come quick! Some girls are using multiple sheets of toilet paper in the bathroom!”

  “Two squares, maximum!” Miss Adolf barked. “That’s the rule. Lead the way, Miss Wong.”

  I really did feel myself start to blend into the lockers as Ashley and Adolf — fencing sword pressed against her shoulder — marched out of the classroom and strode right past me.

  “Frankie, take up position Bravo and watch my flank,” I whispered before slipping inside.

  I’d never been in my classroom all alone before. It was kind of spooky. And exhilarating. So many bad ideas came streaming through my brain. Find Adolf’s grade book and change all my grades. Find the teacher’s edition textbook and become a school legend. Set the clock ahead by three hours. Put pizza grease on McKelty’s seat. Open all the windows and finally let some fresh air into this drab and oppressive torture factory!

  No, Zipper Man, no. Don’t open the windows. Katherine will climb out. Get Katherine.

  I sneaked over to the desk, moving in the shadows, and snatched Miss Adolf’s messenger bag.

  “Hey, girl,” I said, opening it up.

  But there was nothing alive in there. At least nothing I could see. Steeling all my courage, I reached my hand into the opening and riffled through Adolf’s assorted sundries, feeling three sticks of old gum, a bottle of pills, a tube of lipstick, a knot of tights, and some sort of mass that I can only describe as “squishy.”

  “Hurry, Hank,” Frankie whispered from position Bravo.

  “I need just a few more seconds.”

  Then I saw her. Katherine was by the window. And the window was open! It was just open an inch, but the latch was undone, and all that was separating Katherine from Splat City three flights down was her nudging the window with her beak.

  “There she is!”

  “Adolf’s coming, Hank. Wrap it up and fall back to position Epsilon!”

  “I like the lingo, Frankie.”

  “Fall back to position Epsilon, Hank. Fall back now!”

  “Stall her,” I replied as I tiptoed toward Katherine. “OK, Katherine, don’t do anything stupid. You have so much to live for. Come with Uncle Hank . . .”

  “She’s coming, Hank! Abort! Abort!”

  My hand hovered just above Katherine’s cool, scaly skin, and I heard Frankie begin moaning and whimpering.

  “Why are you lying on the floor in front of my classroom like a stray puppy, Frankie?” Miss Adolf asked.

  “Oh, Miss Adolf, I’m so sick. My stomach. Take me to the school nurse.”

  “Miss Wong, take this malingerer to the nurse’s office.”

  “But it looks pretty bad,” Ashley said.

  “Help me, Miss Adolf,” Frankie wailed. “Argggh, it burns!”

  “Now, Miss Wong. And if I find out you’re up to something . . .”

  Suddenly, I could feel Miss Adolf’s presence in the classroom. I had two options: save myself or save the lizard.

  In case you don’t remember the beginning of this book, I chose option one and dived under Miss Adolf’s desk . . . also known as position Dead Meat.

  So, here we are again. And I’m still not invisible.

  In case you’re like me and you’ve got a short attention span, I’ll reset the scene. I am flat on my stomach, underneath Miss Adolf’s desk. Miss Adolf has kicked off her shoes. Her feet are a hairbreadth from my nose, and from the smell of them, they may have already contracted a raging case of trench foot. They certainly live in a world that is terribly cold and damp. So while Miss Adolf is grading papers with her evil red pen up above, I’m down here, and Katherine is on the window ledge, one mental and physical leap away from an untimely death. And to make matters worse, I feel a sneeze coming on. My face is starting to scrunch up. It’s inevitable.

  I had to face the facts. I can’t eat metal. I can’t sniff fear. And I can’t make myself invisible. I can’t even blend in!

  No matter what I do, I end up in a crazy situation. That’s my only superpower. But you know what? That’s not a bad one to have.

  Because who wants to go their whole life being invisible? Who wants to spend every day afraid of being noticed? Not me. I’m the bird with bright yellow feathers. I belong to the sacred order of anti-blenders. We’re the real heroes in this world. Most of the time we get eaten, sure, but sometimes . . . sometimes we’re the ones who stand tall, who lead the brigade over the hill to victory, who change the world, who . . . sneeze at exactly the wrong time.

  But I was thinking fast. As I felt the sneeze rushing through my body, I took out my wallet and threw it across the room to distract her. It clanked off a desk just as I smothered most of the sneeze somewhere in my neck. It worked, all right. But I did get clobbered when Adolf startled and kicked out. Trench foot right to the nose.

  “What was that?” she said, and sprang to her feet, raising her sword and sniffing the air. “Who’s there? I know there’s someone here. I can smell you, so just come out.”

  I watched her feet. Her very gross feet. She sneaked around the side of the desk and then pounced with a leap to the side. When her feet left the ground, I scurried out from under the desk and hid behind the other side of it, back pressed to the metal. She sniffed again.

  Just then someone poked their nose through the door.

  “State your business,” Miss Adolf said.

  “Ah, Miss Adolf.” I recognized the voice. It was the school custodian. He was a nice guy. Fond of cats. “Sorry to disturb someone as senior as you, but there’s been an incident in the bathroom.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, with one of the cleaning staff and . . . something about a sword.”

  “Really, how very odd.” I saw Adolf hide the sword behind her back.

  “She’s very upset. And with your sense of authority and deep womanly compassion, well, I wondered if you could help me calm her down?”

  “Surely it was just a hallucination, perhaps caused by those ghastly cleaning products,” Miss Adolf said, and slid the sword out of sight right next to me. It was so sharp that it cut off three of my hairs. “Perhaps I might be able to talk some sense into the woman,” she said, then jammed her smelly feet back into her shoes and clicked away into the hallway. The door closed.

  “I’m alive,” I whispered, and fist-pumped.

  I sprang to my feet and turned to the window.

  I didn’t see anything at first. No need to panic. Katherine was probably just
camouflaged. But then, as I got closer, I still didn’t see anything, not even when I felt the day’s cool breeze blowing through the wide-open window.

  One thing that had absolutely not flown out of the open window? Locusts. I looked back at Miss Adolf’s desk, where three giant, gross insects circled above her stinky sandwich. Someone, and I’m not saying it was me, must have forgotten to take the plastic tub out of the classroom, and also left it a little bit open. Just enough for them to learn that if they pushed, they’d be free.

  “Well, brain,” I said as I bolted from the class into the hallway, “we’re officially dead.”

  Two days later, Emily was cleared for release by her doctors. She was supposed to come home the day after her surgery, but they had to stay an extra day so Mom’s and Dad’s injuries could heal.

  I spent those two days searching the classroom high and low for Katherine. I also searched far beneath the windows, down on the playground blacktop, for any grisly stains. I found nothing — except for locusts. The school was swarming with them. Those things breed like you wouldn’t believe. It got so bad that a news team came over and filed a very troubling story about the sad state of London’s schools. Then they sprayed our school with a mist they said wasn’t toxic, but from everyone’s red eyes, you would have thought it was mustard gas.

  When I wasn’t at school, I spent all my time trying to make a fresh lizard from stuff around the house, just something to fool Emily for long enough for me to find the real Katherine. But I got kind of sidetracked with the rubber cement. If you brush a coat of it on your skin and it dries, it looks scaly. So it was a lot of fun to coat my arms with the stuff and then rub off the scales into little rubber cement balls and store all the little balls in a cup on my desk. . . .

  Like I said, sidetracked.

  I had a close call yesterday when Emily called to video chat. It’s a good thing I had printed out a picture of Katherine for a “lost pet” flyer, so when she called, Katherine appeared to be hanging out on my bed in the background. Thank goodness lizards spend most of their time just sitting around and not moving.

  The flyer bought me some time, but it wouldn’t last. So I stopped trying to concoct a replacement lizard out of spare parts, and started trying to figure out a way to buy a plane ticket to Tegucigalpa, Honduras, without any major credit cards.

  I had just finished entering the numbers of my go-kart “junior driver” license into the airline website when I heard keys jangling outside the front door.

  I froze like a trapped animal, my eyes darting around. The only way out was the window. And the only lizard in the apartment was the one I’d printed out. As quickly and silently as possible, I sprinted to the lizard printout, wrote “Gone fishing” on the back, rubber-cemented it to the door, and dived under my bed. I got as still as possible, concentrating, praying that for once in my life I could become invisible.

  Yes, I know what I said about being the heroic anti-blender. But that was two days ago. When I find Katherine, I’ll put a feather in my cap. But until then, I don’t want Emily to eat me alive. Come forth hidden superpower! Don’t fail me now!

  “Come on, love,” my dad was saying. “Why don’t you go and lie down?”

  “That would be lovely, Stan,” Mom said. “My head is killing me.”

  “I was talking to Emily.”

  “I want some ice cream,” Emily croaked.

  I heard the freezer open. “It’s all gone,” Mom said.

  “All of it?” Dad said.

  “Very supportive, Hank,” Mom muttered to herself, and with my mind’s eye, I could see her shaking her head. “Well, let’s run you a nice bath instead.”

  “Ooh, that’d be nice.”

  “I was talking to Emily.”

  The freezer shut, and I heard Emily’s little feet traipsing down the hallway. For a moment, I thought she paused at my door, but then she threw open the door to her own bedroom.

  “Come, my sweet,” she croaked with a sigh. “Where’s my sweet girl? Are you in here? Where are you?” Then her croaking grew louder and more reptilian. “Hank! Where are you, Katherine? Mom! Hank lost Katherine! Mom!”

  I didn’t move a muscle when Emily burst into my room croaking for blood. She didn’t see me, though. I guess it was hard for her to see through all the tears.

  Mom and Dad didn’t see me, either. They didn’t even look in. They just saw my note about going fishing. What? It always works in cartoons.

  Mom sighed. “I don’t have the strength to handle whatever Hank’s up to,” she said. “My head is killing me. You’ll do it, won’t you, love?”

  “Me?” Dad said. “I can’t even bend over.”

  “But I have head trauma.”

  “But I’m also the one who has to call Miss Adolf back about whatever Hank did this time. Why do I have to talk to that woman?”

  “Because she called your cell phone,” Mom said.

  “But —”

  “Stan, I’ve had enough trouble helping Emily through this complex time. I’m going to run a bath.”

  “But I’m the one in the back brace!”

  “And I’m the one who had her tonsils out,” Emily croaked. “I’m the one with no ice cream. I’m the one with no lizard. If you both don’t help me find Katherine right now, then I’m going to —”

  “OK, OK.” Mom and Dad sighed.

  Once I heard the three of them start tearing Emily’s room apart in search of yellow eyes, I slithered out of the apartment, sent an SOS, and met up with my friends at the Spicy Salami. We had a lot of strategy to plan. Papa Pete was wiping the table when Frankie and Ashley arrived.

  Man, I felt terrible. “Emily’s never going to forgive me,” I said. “If only I’d just grabbed that lizard when I’d had the chance. It’s just like World War One.”

  “Huh?” Frankie said.

  “Frankie, lemme see your wallet,” I implored. “Do you have, like, a twenty? Maybe I can get another lizard. They can’t cost more than twenty dollars, can they? They all look the same, don’t they?”

  “Not to Emily, they don’t,” Ashley said.

  “It’s true that there’ll never be another Katherine.” I hung my head. “But maybe, with an old photo of her, I can find one that looks exactly like her.”

  “Not with my twenty.”

  Papa Pete put his big hands on my shoulders. “Hank, there’s only one way this time.”

  “Hypnotize Emily into believing she never had a lizard?” I felt everyone looking at me. I even felt myself looking at me. This was really crummy. “Tell her the truth. But I hate the truth!”

  “You’ll be all right,” Frankie said. “We’ll come with you and take up position Bravo.”

  “Thanks, guys, but I think this has to be a solo mission.”

  And as I got up, I accidentally bumped the table with both knees, sending no less than three plates shattering to the cold hard floor. “I hate tables, too.”

  I had a long walk back. You know how three weeks can vanish in the blink of an eye? Well, this ten-minute walk lasted a century. I had to tell Emily that I had lost her best friend. I know that Katherine’s just a lizard, but friends are friends, and Katherine’s really not so bad. For a moment there, we were almost bonding.

  I stopped before the door to my apartment. The hundred-year walk was over. On the other side of the door was the truth. And the truth was that I was a major screwup. I shook myself all over, took a deep breath, and let out my getting-down-to-business shriek. Ms. DeLillo pounded her ceiling beneath me with her broomstick. I stamped my feet loudly in response. “Not now, not now!”

  I opened the door and walked in with my eyes closed. I opened an eye. Everyone was sitting on the sofa, huddled around something. Seeing nothing life-threatening, I opened the other eye. On the coffee table, in front of the sofa, I saw the shredded remains of my pizza-box presentation.

  “Well, Hank,” Dad said with folded arms. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  “Look, I kno
w I messed up my history project. I should have tried harder and all, but there’s something I have to say first. Emily, I lost Katherine. I took her to school. I wanted to use her in my project. She’s such a cool animal, and I wanted to show everyone that, but Miss . . . but I lost her. I lost her forever, and it’s all my fault. I’ll do anything to make it up to you.”

  From her blankets on the sofa, Emily looked at me blankly. I could read nothing on her face. This was the worst. She was too hurt to do anything. But behind those beady, unmoving eyes of hers, I knew she was plotting her sweet revenge.

  “I’ll do anything,” I said.

  “Anything?” she croaked.

  “Anything, Emily. I promise. I’ll clean your room. I’ll get you a real, human friend. I’ll even eat locusts.”

  “So basically, you’ll be my servant?”

  I felt my life force draining out of my ear. But there was nothing left for me to do but agree to it. “I will.” Seeing the sadistic gleam in her eye, I added hurriedly, “For a week.”

  “Hmmm. What do you think, Katherine?”

  “Katherine?”

  Katherine had been camouflaged in Emily’s grayish blanket. I now saw a yellow eye looking blankly at me.

  “While you were out fishing, Hank,” Dad said, “I went to see your teacher at school. She showed me these ripped-up pizza boxes, and at first I had no idea why your teacher wanted to show me all this trash. But it turned out the trash was also your history project. Well done, kiddo.”

  “But it really looked cool before Miss —”

  “Miss Adolf also told me,” my dad went on, “that you claimed there was a live lizard inside those pizza boxes. She didn’t believe you of course. But then this afternoon, while she was grading your paper, she happened to find a live lizard behind a filing cabinet. What do you have to say for yourself?”

  “That you guys should be proud of me. I didn’t lie to my teacher.”

  “I think you owe your sister an apology,” Mom said.

  “I already gave her one.”

  “I accept your apology, Hank.”

  “Great! That’s great, Em. So since Katherine’s back and you’re not angry at me anymore, that means that we’re —”