CHAPTER TWELVE - It Was Only a Dream
There was a buzzing in my ears. Something outside of my head was making a very annoying racket. What on earth could it be?
I opened my eyes. To my amazement, I was in science class! All of my classmates were there too, and the clock on the wall said it was almost time for the bell to ring!
The buzzing was from a little remote controlled helicopter that was flying through the room. At the front of the room was some middle-aged guy I had never seen before, wearing a wrinkled tie. “As we can see,” he said while working the controls on the remote control, “the rotating wings of the helicopter generate enough lift to keep it from crashing onto any of your heads.”
“Can you make it hover over Geake’s head?” asked Poindexter. “Maybe the updraft will open up his skull and pull out whatever tiny brain he’s got in there!”
“Very funny, Mr. Poindexter,” said the weird, unknown middle aged guy. He cradled the helicopter remote control in his hands as if it were a baby, while a look of sheer glee was written all over his face. It was obvious that whatever side benefit his class might get from learning about the science of flight was secondary. He was just playing with his toy in class like a little kid.
I leaned over in my chair and whispered to Poindexter, “Hey, Donny, whatever happened to the Korean castle and all those monk-like wizards? And where’s Marlin, Hornsby and Skinpeeler?”
Poindexter looked at me as if something had just dribbled out of my nose. “Will you get with it, Densewater?” he hissed. “Mr. Marlin’s up there, playing with his helicopter. Hornsby’s probably in class acting like a jerk, as usual. I never heard of Skinpeeler or of any Korean monk wizards!”
I stared at him in disbelief. I thought Donny was my friend! Why was he acting like this? “I don’t get it!” I said. “We drank the formula, and then Hornsby took us to Korea!” Poindexter looked at me as if he thought my brain had split a leak. “Don’t you remember the potion at all?” I nearly cried. He still looked at me blankly. “We were roaches, and we flew, remember?”
“You’re a roach, all right!” Poindexter spat at me angrily, holding up his fist. “If you don’t shut up, I’ll squash you like one too! I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
This couldn’t be! I blinked my eyes rapidly, fighting back tears. It was as if Donny had forgotten everything we’d been through, and every kind thing he’d said to me. In exasperation, I turned around in my desk, and unexpectedly found the middle aged guy looking at me.
“Is anything wrong, Mr. Drywater?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“No, Mr. … uh … sir,” I said, not knowing what to call him. Some of the goofballs in the class sniggered.
“The name is Mr. Marlin,” said the middle-aged dude with a condescending smile. “I’ve been your science teacher since the start of the year, remember?”
No, I didn’t remember. But everybody else in class sure did! For the rest of the period, I heard nothing but snide remarks and nasty comments from everyone around me. “Hey, Drywater!” whispered Tyson from behind me, “did you forget and leave your brain in your refrigerator this morning? I’ll bet the leftovers in your fridge can do more with it than you can!”
I shriveled up in my chair, as small as I could get. What was going on? One minute I was blasting everything in North Korea to smithereens, and the next I was being tormented like usual by the bozos in school. And what had happened to Mr. Marlin? The funny looking guy up there with the paunchy stomach and his toy helicopter was definitely not the long-bearded Mr. Marlin I knew!
Finally the bell rang. The middle aged pretend Mr. Marlin rushed forward to retrieve his baby helicopter on the floor before anyone stepped on it on their way out. “Remember to read chapter five tonight in your texts,” he called out to the class as they noisily gathered up their books to leave. “It’s all about the wonders of flight!”
The wonders of flight! I could tell him a thing or two about that, from what I had just experienced.
I saw Poindexter heading out the door. Swallowing my fear, I darted after him. Maybe I’d get pulverized for this, but I had to find out what was going on!
“Hey, Donny!” I called out to him loudly in the hall. Slowly he turned toward me, pure malice written all over his face. That wasn’t a good sign. But like an idiot, I rushed on. “Don’t you remember any of it? Mr. Marlin, our science teacher, the guy with the beard, who was always saying ‘Good morning’ even though it was afternoon? And he took us through a jump rope to England where we saw some guy get hit by lightning, and then he made our text books come alive! You were eaten by a shark, remember? And then there was the wizard's duel between Mr. Marlin and Skinpeeler, and we went to Korea, and … and …”
I could tell it wasn’t registering in his feeble brain. I braced myself for his fist to come crashing into my jaw.
Then he did a very unexpected thing. Stepping up to me, he put his big, beefy hand on my shoulder and said with real concern in his voice—real concern, mind you, which is was rare for the old Poindexter I knew before we had become friends—“Maybe you better go see the school nurse.”
I looked at him with pleading in my eyes. “You don’t remember?” I choked. “None of it at all?” My eyes were welling up, and I brushed at them angrily. Not the blasted tear thing again!
He shook his head. “None of it at all. I think you’ve been eating pizza mixed with airplane glue, or something. You’re positively nuts!”
Then he turned and walked quickly away, shaking his head in disgust. I just stood there like an idiot, stunned. He didn’t remember. None of it. Not a bit. Nothing. Nada. My new best friend was no longer a friend at all. I just didn’t get it. Suddenly my stomach didn’t feel very good.
“Hi, Blake,” said a beaming Mary Ellen Paul as she trounced up to me. “We had the most fantastic science lessen from Mrs. Hornsby today. We made butter! We churned some cream until it turned all gross and yucky looking! And then we ate some! It made some kids sick. Cool, huh!”
I looked at her as if a purple piece of broccoli had sprouted out of her nose. “Did you say Mrs. Hornsby?” I asked wildly.
She looked at me funny. “Sure, who else?”
“But I thought your science teacher was a man!” I said bluntly.
She blinked in surprise. Then she started to laugh. “Oh, Blake, you’re such a kidder. You really had me going there for a minute! Mrs. Hornsby, a man!” She laughed, then trounced off down the hall in search of some other victim to annoy.
I walked through the school in a daze. This was unreal. What had happened? How could everyone have suddenly forgotten everything? And how could Hornsby have changed from a man to a woman?
Or was I the one with the problem? Was I losing it? Should I go see the school nurse like Poindexter said?
I sat in a stupor during the last two classes of the day, not hearing a word either teacher said. My brain felt like it had been fried with onions. When the final bell rang, l wandered vaguely down the hall and out the front door of the school, and down the sidewalk toward home. I just couldn’t figure out anything anymore. I started to spin grandpa's watch again, making it look like the paunchy guy's helicopter blades. But it didn't help.
Coming to the city park on my way home, I decided to go over and wander around. Maybe it would help calm my feeble brain.
What a fool I must have looked like to Poindexter and the whole class. Not even knowing who my teacher was! But the trouble was, I didn’t know him! I’d never seen him before that moment when I opened my eyes and there he was playing with his little toy helicopter.
And Poindexter. He must think I was positively bonkers, after I asked him about all those things he obviously didn’t remember. But how could he not remember them? He had been right there when I went through them all! None of it made any sense!
Passing a park bench, I brushed past some old dude who had his head buried in a newspaper. Just as I got past him, he called out from behind me, “Excuse me, young ma
n, but do you have the time?”
That voice! I knew that voice! It was Mr. Marlin!
Wildly, I spun around and practically pounced on him. “Mr. Marlin!” I fairly screamed. “What’s going on?! And what are you doing here?!”
He looked at me for a moment over his newspaper, his eyes squinting as if he were trying to understand. “Pardon me, but I’m afraid you have the better of me. My name is Manning Snulkbarf. And all I’m doing here is reading the paper.”
I looked at him with wild eyes. “You too!” I said again in a strangled voice. “You don’t remember either?!” He just looked at me with pity in his eyes.
I slumped down on the park bench next to him and buried my face in my hands. Suddenly I was bawling uncontrollably. And I didn’t care who saw me either. This was just too much.
“There, there,” said Mr. Marlin—or Snulkbarf, or whoever he was—“it can’t be all that bad. It’s a very beautiful middle-of-the-night, after all!”
I jerked my head up to stare at him, my bleary, tear-streaked eyes boring into his. He smiled at me. Then he slowly started to fold his newspaper up smaller and smaller, while he started to talk.
“No, I don’t really know who this Mr. Marlin person is that you’re referring to. But let’s suppose for a moment that I did. And let’s suppose for a moment—just pretending, mind you, and making believe—that we made up a story about how he was, let’s say, your science teacher.”
I let out a little gasp, but he kept going. “And let’s pretend that in fact he was not just an ordinary science teacher who was frustrated at having to go into teaching rather than work as a highly paid scientist at a pharmaceutical lab. But let’s say that instead he was, let us say, just to be different—a wizard.”
I gasped again. He smiled at me, then continued. “And let’s say that this make-believe wizard hid a powerful potion in your pocket watch, and when you drank it, some other evil wizard tried to control you and force you to destroy some other wizard dudes—“
“Stop pretending!” I cried. “It’s YOU! You’re Mr. Marlin, my science teacher!!”
He smiled at me sadly, and for a moment didn’t speak. Finally he said, “No, my boy, I’m not. I’m only pretending. You see, I have to. For if a certain young fellow stops saying to himself ‘It’s only a bad dream, it’s only a bad dream, it’s not real,’ and starts believing it again, then I’m afraid, we’re all going to be in a great deal of trouble!”
We looked at each other for a long time. My brain isn’t the fastest in the world, but slowly I started to put the pieces together. Finally, I looked away from him and sighed sadly. “I suppose you’re right,” I said blandly. “It is only a dream. It has to be.” And believe it or not, it really seemed like it! The whole thing was so unreal, that it just had to be a dream. It was sure a life-like dream, though!
He leaned over and patted me on the back. “Well, done!” he said triumphantly. “And just as I planned and hoped all along! I always thought that a potion that powerful—if one really existed, mind you, which it doesn't—would have to have the seeds of its own destruction within it. And all the person receiving the potion would have to do is use the power he was given to merely disbelieve—to realize, it was only a dream. His disbelief would nullify the very power itself. And a certain young, junior wizard would then have amazingly outwitted his superiors, and would have spared a great deal of pain and suffering among the humans that he has grown to like so well.”
He smiled at me. “Thank you, Mr. Drywater, for proving that certain junior wizard right—which of course, you never did, because none of this ever happened.”
He stood up abruptly. “Well, I’d best be off. It looks like there might be a lightning storm any minute.” There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
I looked at him, almost pleadingly. “But it was so fun in the beginning! And now I know everything’s just going to be boring and awful, especially with you gone.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Mr. Snulkbarf. He suddenly looked at me knowingly. “You still have your friend Donny Poindexter!”
“Him!” I spat. “He hates me! And he’s constantly trying to prove it, too!”
“Is that so?” said Mr. Snulkbarf, a sly look in his eye. “I should think that a little careful reflection on your dream of what didn’t happen over the last few days—and it didn’t happen, mind you—would show Mr. Poindexter’s deeper feelings about you in an entirely different light! Perhaps those feelings merely need to be reawakened.”
A sudden thought streaked through my mind. “Poindexter!” I suddenly yelled. “He drank the potion too! That means he must remember! He has to remember, just like I do!”
Mr. Snulkbarf just smiled at me. “Perhaps,” he said slowly. “And perhaps, just like you, he has realized that it was all only a dream that he can never talk about.”
He swatted at a passing fly with his partly folded newspaper. “Or, perhaps he truly doesn’t remember,” he said suddenly. “Perhaps your disbelief is so complete—blessedly complete, I might add—and therefore is so powerful, that you even took his memory and even his drinking of the potion away too--assuming he ever drank it, which he obviously didn't.”
Suddenly he leaned over and picked up something from the ground at my feet. "I say, is this yours?" he asked curiously.
It was the comb! That disgusting comb he had given me only a few days ago, that he said would give me protection!
I smiled suddenly. "Now I know it wasn't completely a dream!" I said. "You gave me that comb! And people you meet in dreams can't give you something as real as that!"
Mr. Marlin looked at the comb, raising an eyebrow. "You say I gave this to you?" he asked in surprise. "My goodness! You must have been dreaming! I would never give something as disgusting as this!" He dropped it on the park bench.
Then he smiled at me again, with those same old grey teeth that matched his suit. “Be seeing you around, young man,” he said casually. "And don't forget to comb your hair, now and again." Then he sauntered off, stuffing his now many folded newspaper under his fingernail where it disappeared.
I looked after him for a long time after he rounded a corner and disappeared. None of it was real. It didn’t happen. It simply didn’t.
Or did it? Could it really have happened? Was it possible?
I shook my head, my vision blurring for a second. It almost seemed that I saw a mountain slope half covered in snow, with a strange castle clinging to its side. I was floating in the air, and sparks were shooting out of my fingers.
‘It never happened!’ my mind yelled frantically. ‘It was only a bad dream!’ The image faded and disappeared. I was in the park, sitting alone on a park bench in the sunshine.
I sighed. Well, it was at least that—a dream. And that’s the way it would stay. I didn’t dare believe otherwise.
Finally I got up and turned to go, picking up the grimy comb for no good reason and shoving it in my back pocket. I had walked just a few feet when I was suddenly struck by a curious thought.
Just what did he mean by that last little comment, that he’d be seeing me around …?
Sneak Peak from book 2 of the Stewards of Light series - Chapter 1 of "My Math Teacher is a Vampire"
Coming December, 2014!
MY MATH TEACHER IS A VAMPIRE
by Duane L. Ostler
My Science Teacher is a Wizard Page 12