Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
To Byron
because the first one
changed my life—and
because he asked for it.
My Teacher
Fried My Brains
CHAPTER ONE
First Day Blues
I was standing in the bathroom, brushing my teeth, when I looked up and saw a horrible green face in the mirror.
“Hey, Duncan,” rasped a voice from behind me, “what time is it?”
A wave of terror washed over me. “Go away!” I yelled, spattering toothpaste foam across the mirror.
“Wrong answer!” shouted the face. “It’s not go-away time, it’s bopping time!”
A strong arm wrapped around my neck. “Help!” I screamed. “Aliens!” But even as I was screaming, I saw in the mirror that the arm holding me was a strong human arm.
“Patrick!” I shouted, mad now instead of terrified. “Come on, Patrick, cut it ow! ”
I said “OW!” instead of “out” because Patrick had just landed a major noogie on my skull. I would tell you why my big brother was beating on me if I could, but I can’t, because I don’t know. He just does that sometimes. I do it to other people. You know how it is: you get upset, things build up inside you, and suddenly you BOP! someone.
Or maybe you don’t. But that’s how things work in our family.
Patrick gave me another noogie.
“You creep!” I screamed, trying to wriggle out of his grip. “Get out of here!”
“Quiet up there!” shouted our father.
I would have yelled for him to make Patrick leave me alone, but it wouldn’t do any good. Dad’s theory is that life is rough, and I might as well get used to it. That may be true, but I’ve noticed that when I hit kids in school none of the teachers say, “Why, Duncan, what a good lesson you’ve just given little Jimmy in the fact that life is rough.” What they usually say is, “Look, you little jerk, I’ve had about enough of your antics. One more stunt like that and you’re heading straight to the principal’s office!” Or if they’re feeling particularly nice they might say, “Now, Duncan, that’s not how we solve our problems, is it?”
It is in our family. What planet are these teachers from?
“What planet are they from?”—a good question, considering what had been going on around our town.
See, things had been pretty tense in Kennituck Falls since last spring, when this alien named Broxholm kidnapped weird Peter Thompson and took him off into space. Even though Broxholm was gone, people were still frightened—as if they thought there were aliens still lurking around, waiting to grab people.
With the grown-ups that scared, you can be sure kids around here had about the worst summer ever, mostly because parents were afraid to let their little darlings out of the house. It seemed like the town motto was, “I don’t want you disappearing like that Peter Thompson.” (Well, my parents didn’t say that. But most of the others did.) I bet a hundred years from now people in this town will still be telling their kids that if they don’t behave an alien boogey man will get them.
To make things worse, Peter Thompson’s father—who didn’t really give a poop about Peter when he was here—had decided that he really missed his son.
Mr. Thompson had come up to me in the park one day. “You know where he is, don’t you?” he said. “You know where they took my boy.”
I had stared at him for a moment. Mr. Thompson was skinnier than he used to be, and there were dark circles under his eyes. Then I remembered what Peter had said when he let me stay in his house to hide from the alien: “Don’t worry about my father. He won’t mind. He won’t even know!”
It had been true. Mr. Thompson was almost never there, and when he was, he didn’t pay any attention to Peter at all.
So I had looked at him, all skinny and sad, and said, “What do you care where he is?” Then I ran away because I was afraid he was going to hit me. I suppose it was a pretty rotten thing for me to say, but I had a feeling that the main reason Mr. Thompson was so upset was that everyone else thought he should be.
To tell you the truth, I kind of missed old Peter myself. Everyone used to think I hated him. That wasn’t true. I just picked on him because I didn’t know what else to do with him.
Well, maybe I did hate him a little, because he was so smart and I was so dumb. Except I wasn’t really dumb. I just thought I was. Of course, my family and my teachers had given me a lot of help in coming to that conclusion.
I was feeling plenty dumb when I got to school that morning. First of all, I was late because of the fight with Patrick. Second, my head hurt where my father had whacked me afterward. (At least he whacked Pat, too. He always treated us both the same way when it came to that.) Third, I couldn’t find my classes, so I kept walking in on things that were already in session.
The reason I couldn’t find my classes was that it was the first day of school, and I had never been in the building before.
The reason I had never been in the building was that I had played hookey the day we had our junior high orientation tour. I’d figured there was no point in going, since I hadn’t expected to pass the sixth grade. (I think the only reason I did pass, which was kind of a shock, was that after what happened with the alien the school decided to pass our whole class out of sympathy or something.)
Well, the first day in a new school is hard enough if you get there on time and have some idea of what’s going on. You don’t really need things like walking in late and having some big, tall man with black hair and eyes like coal grab your arm and say, “Not off to a very good start, are we, Mr. Dougal?”
“Aaaahh!” I shouted. “Leave me alone!”
That seemed to startle the man. (Actually, it startled me, too. But the way he grabbed me reminded me of the first time I had met Broxholm, when he was pretending to be a substitute teacher and stopped me from beating up on Peter Thompson.)
“Stop that!” said the man, giving me a shake.
I stopped, mostly because I had recognized him. He was the assistant principal. His name was Manuel Ketchum, and he had come to work at our school last spring, after the old assistant principal had a nervous breakdown. According to my brother Patrick, Mr. Ketchum was a real beast. Most kids called him “the Mancatcher” when he wasn’t around.
I guess the Mancatcher must have heard of me, too.
“I’ve been warned to keep an eye on you, Mr. Dougal,” he said. “I can see why already.”
He asked me for an excuse for being late, which I didn’t have. Then he gave me a lecture about punctuality and responsibility, which made me even later for where I was trying to go.
I had to stick my head into three rooms before I found the one where I belonged. Each time I did, I could hear kids snickering when I left. That really fried me. I hate it when people laugh at me.
It was almost as bad when I finally did find the right room. It was home economics class! I couldn’t believe they had scheduled me for home economics.
Fortunately the teacher was a real babe. And she smiled when she saw me come in! That was the first ni
ce thing that had happened all day.
“Are you Duncan Dougal?” she asked in a kindly voice. When I nodded she smiled again and said, “My name is Miss Karpou. I’m glad you finally made it.”
“She’ll change her mind once she gets to know him,” someone whispered.
The people who heard it started to laugh. I started to blush. If I could have figured out who said it, I would have whapped the jerk.
I did notice it was kind of nervous laughter. In fact, the whole seventh grade seemed a little twitchy that day. Kids are always a little nervous the first day of school, of course. But this was something more. I think being back in school had everyone thinking about the alien again.
Ms. Karpou went back to what she was talking about, which was how to use the equipment without hurting ourselves. Except she wasn’t very good at it, because she managed to burn herself almost immediately.
“Ouch!” she cried. She popped her finger into her mouth, then spun around and bent over the counter. For a minute I was afraid she was going to cry. Instead, she turned and ran out of the room.
I felt bad. Miss Karpou was young, she was pretty, and she had been nice to me. I didn’t want her to be sad.
The class got a little rowdy then, and pretty soon the Mancatcher came in to shut us up.
Naturally, he blamed everything on me.
As if things weren’t bad enough already, at lunchtime this huge eighth grader named Orville Plumber (which is probably half his problem anyway) came up to my table and said, “Hey, kid—you Duncan Dougal?”
I looked up and said, “What about it?”
Orville smiled, a big, nasty, gap-toothed smile, and said, “I’m gonna turn you into dog meat.”
CHAPTER TWO
An Alarming Situation
I’ve been held back a couple of times, so I’m bigger than most kids in my class. But Orville was like a small mountain. I swallowed hard.
This Vietnamese kid named Phon Le Duc started to giggle. “Go get him, Duncan,” he said.
I could have killed Phon for that. The problem was, I nearly had killed him a couple of times last year, since I used to beat him up about once a month. So I could see why he would have been happy to watch Orville cream me.
“What did I do?” I asked, stalling for time.
“Nothing,” said Orville. “I just don’t like your face. Come on outside so I can rearrange it.”
“Oh, shut up and sit down,” said a voice from behind me.
It was Susan Simmons—the girl who had unmasked the alien last spring.
Susan Simmons, one of the five best-looking girls in seventh grade.
Susan Simmons, who was probably the smartest kid in our class, now that weird Peter Thompson was gone.
Susan Simmons, who walked up to Orville Plumber and said, “Go away.” That’s all she did—just said, “Go away.”
You want to know the amazing thing? Orville went. Actually, the first thing he did was turn pale. Then he went.
I turned to Susan. “How did you do that?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Ever since last spring a lot of people have been afraid of me. The dumber they are, the more they’re afraid. Orville probably thinks I stole some secret weapon from Broxholm and I was ready to use it to drill a hole through his skull.”
“Is that true?” I asked, remembering the way Broxholm had melted the school doors shut when he was making his getaway. I also remembered how much time Susan had spent exploring Broxholm’s house. Maybe she had found something there.
She just smiled and said, “What do you think, Duncan?”
Then she turned and walked back to her own table.
I was frustrated. I wanted to talk to Susan some more. I felt good when I was with her. But she had her own group of friends, and just because I had helped her fight the alien didn’t mean she was going to let me in. OK, I guess I hadn’t really helped. But I’d been involved! Me, Susan, and Peter—we were the only ones who had really known what was going on. You’d think that would count for something.
I was also embarrassed, since it doesn’t look good to have a girl save you from being turned into dog meat.
Things didn’t get any better after lunch. I still hadn’t figured out how to get around the building, so I was really late for my sixth-period class, which was math. I tried hard to find it—I really did. I had promised myself I would do better in school this year. (So far that idea wasn’t working out very well.) Also, I knew kids would laugh if I came in late again, especially if they had already heard about Susan saving me from Orville. To top things off, I knew from Patrick that the math teacher, Mr. Black, was pretty cranky.
So I really wanted to get there on time.
I kept running up and down hallways, looking for Mr. Black’s room. My brain felt like it was melting. I couldn’t make any sense of the building. When I finally did find the room I was panting and my heart was pounding.
“Ah, Mr. Dougal, I presume,” said Mr. Black when I walked in. “I will accept your lateness today. However, in the future either be here on time or plan to spend the period in the office.”
I had had it. Between my brother, my father, the Mancatcher, and Orville Plumber, I just wasn’t ready to have anyone else dump on me—especially when I had been trying so hard to do something right.
Does your mouth ever do things without getting your permission first? Mine does. It did it right then. I looked at Mr. Black and my mouth said, “Bug off, pinhead!”
About three seconds after the words came out of my mouth I realized what I had done. My skin turned cold. At the same time I felt a hand grab my arm.
“What did you say?” asked Mr. Black, yanking me around and staring into my face.
“Nothing,” I whispered. “I didn’t say anything.”
Mr. Black pulled open the door and shoved me through it. “You can try again tomorrow, Mr. Dougal. For today, I think you’ll be better off out here.”
Inside I could hear the kids laughing.
I really hate it when people laugh at me.
If Mr. Black thought I was going to stand in the hall until the end of the period, he was wrong. I was getting out: out of his hall, and out of his school.
I was heading down the hall when I saw the fire alarm. I figured since I was leaving, everyone else might as well leave, too.
That’s not true. I don’t know what I figured. I just know that I reached out and pulled it.
The bell started to clang. Doors flew open. Screaming kids poured out of the classrooms. “It’s the aliens!” they cried. “The aliens are back!”
It should have been funny. It would have been funny, if not for one terrible fact: when I pulled the alarm, it sprayed purple ink all over my hand! It didn’t take much brainpower to figure out that the ink was to mark people who turned in false alarms.
I had to wash the stuff off. I ran for the boys’ room.
Duh! Brilliant move, Duncan. That’s exactly what they expect you to do—which shouldn’t have been too hard to figure out, except I was either too scared or too stupid to manage it. Fortunately, my brother had warned me about this.
I shot back into the hallway. Things were still in an uproar. Some kids were actually crying because they were convinced the alien invasion had begun. Teachers were shouting and trying to get them out of the building.
As fire drills go, this was a total disaster.
Jamming my purple hand in my pocket, I pushed through the confusion and headed for the back door of the school. The door opened onto a loading dock. Three or four empty cardboard boxes were stacked at the far end. Closer to me stood a big green dumpster, already starting to stink in the afternoon heat.
What I really wanted to do was take off and run. But since about half the school was outside already, I couldn’t do that without being caught. I had to hide someplace.
Well, at least I wasn’t in the boys’ room. I figured the Mancatcher was there right now, looking for a kid with a purple hand.
I pulled m
y hand out of my pocket and stared at the purple stain. It was like a big sign that shrieked, “Duncan did it! Duncan did it! ”
Where could I hide? I peeked back around the door. Things were quieter now. Maybe I could hide someplace inside until school was over.
I opened the door, slipped through, and almost swallowed my tongue.
The Mancatcher was heading right toward me.
CHAPTER THREE
An Extra Hand
I shot back out the door and looked around in desperation. Where could I go?
I could see only one place where no one would look for me.
The dumpster.
The Mancatcher would be coming through the door soon. No time to think—only to do. I ran across the loading dock, grabbed the lip of the dumpster, and swung my leg over the edge.
When I looked down inside I almost changed my mind. Four feet below me waited a smelly mass of banana peels, bread crusts, half-eaten hamburgers, and things too gross to mention. I considered turning back. Then I heard the door start to swing open.
Taking a deep breath, I swung my other leg over and dropped into the dumpster.
My feet sank several inches into the trash. A cloud of fruit flies swarmed around my head. It was like jumping into a swamp. The only thing I didn’t get was the smell. That was because I was holding my breath.