Creature from the 7th Grade : Boy or Beast (9781101591833) (2 page)

 

The Journey Begins

IT'S THE MIDDLE
of the night. I awake screaming in a sweaty, heart-stopping panic, gasping for breath, legs tangled in the sheets. I've had this nightmare before. Seven times in the past seven days, but who's counting. Dave mumbles “shut up” from his bed on the other side of the room and goes back to sleep faster than you can say “little brothers are a serious pain in the butt.”

The dream always begins the same way. First my face turns green. Then I get scales all over my body. Next my toes transform into hideous, long, webbed things that taper into razor-sharp toenails. By the time the gill slits begin to form at the base of my ever-lengthening neck, I scream and wake up. Just your plain old recurring “I'm turning into the Creature from the Black Lagoon” dream.

Creature
happens to be my favorite monster movie. The scene where the creature skulks around in his lagoon and watches mild-mannered Dr. Reed's beautiful girlfriend, Kay Lawrence, swimming just above his head is a classic. I give it eleven goose bumps out of a possible ten on the fear-o-meter. It is an official “Monsterpiece” in my book.

My dad says that if you have a vivid imagination and you go around watching scary movies before you go to bed, you have to be prepared for a certain number of bloodcurdling nightmares. It comes with the territory.

But this isn't my imagination. I know it. Just as sure as I know that E equals mc
²
. So I drag myself out of my nice warm bed, quietly tiptoe over to the bathroom, doing my best not to wake Dave again, and try to tell myself that the clammy sense of dread I'm experiencing is from staying up too late watching
Poltergeist
and
Rosemary's Baby.

Still shaking, I peer into the mirror. The circles under my eyes are definitely darker. But then, if you woke up in the middle of the night for the last seven days in a row, the circles under your eyes would be pretty dark, too. And my skin
has
taken on an alarming greenish caste. After careful scrutiny, I chalk it up to the fluorescent bathroom lighting and shuffle back to bed.

I remind myself that it was just a dream. But try as I might, I am unable to shake the feeling that life as I know it is about to come to an end.

IT'S NOT THAT
EASY BEING GREEN

MY SCIENCE TEACHER,
Mr. Arkady, stands in front of first-period science class and slowly writes the word
HERPETOLOGY
in big script letters across the blackboard. He looks and sounds exactly like a vampire. If I didn't know for 100 percent certain that Bela Lugosi was dead (I saw his grave in a documentary on the SyFy channel once), I would swear he had returned as a Stevenson Middle School teacher and taken over Mr. Arkady's body.

I asked my mom to get me transferred out of his section when school started this year because I didn't want to have a vampire for a teacher, but she just said I'd have to deal with it. I'm glad she made me, because he turned out to be one of my favorite teachers. (But I still wouldn't want to run into him in a deserted alley on a dark and stormy night.)

“Who knows vut that vurd means? Hands, please,” he says, gliding back to his desk, humming a haunting melody, and carrying an ancient leather-bound notebook in his long bony fingers. There is a rumor floating around that Mr. Arkady keeps a running total in there of all the people whose blood he has sucked and turned into vampires, along with their vital statistics—height, weight, hair color, and exact moment of death (or undeath).

In my opinion, Mr. Arkady is a really great teacher. He has a good sense of humor, he encourages us to think on our own, and he always has time to talk to us about our problems. The fact that small children run screaming at the sight of him is not his fault.

“Surely somebody knows the meaning of that vurd.”

A sea of blank faces stares back at him.

I know exactly what herpetology means (it's sort of a hobby of mine, actually), but I am much too busy staring at my hand to raise it. It's all dry and cracked looking. And it has the same dull greenish tinge that it had in my nightmare last night. Hmm.

Lucille Strang, one of my best friends, raises her hand. Lucille knows the answer to just about any question you could think of asking and isn't bothered one bit by the fact that the rest of the class thinks she's a know-it-all. Because basically she does know it all.

Lucille has an IQ of about forty million and a mouth so jam-packed with braces that it's virtually impossible for her to get through a metal detector without an intervention from the National Guard. At six feet one and a half inches, she is the tallest girl in the entire Stevenson School District, grades prekindergarten through twelve, and, as far as I can see, the tallest girl in all of Decatur, Illinois, population 76,122.

At Stevenson Middle School if you're a boy and you're really tall, you get three extra points on your popularity scorecard. If you're a girl it's at least ten points against you. If you're Lucille and your hobbies are experimenting with fruit flies, playing with your ferrets, and learning about the space-time continuum, take off another fifteen.

What's up with my feet? They're all puffy and swollen. They crowd the sides of my size-three sneakers like they're trying to escape. This is not a good feeling.

“Students, please, vair did you hide your brains today?” Mr. Arkady says, drawing himself up to his fullest height and hunching his shoulders like he's adjusting his bat wings before swooping down on an unsuspecting victim. “Surely somevun besides Miss Strang knows vut a herpetologist is.”

Sam Endervelt raises his hand. He's my other best friend. It's a small subset. He's kind of round and really, really pale. He sort of looks like Gomez from
The Addams Family
except he's too young to have a mustache. A lot of people are scared off by Sam's freaky, ultralong dyed purple hair. He's sort of pre-Goth. Like he's not all the way there yet, but he paints his fingernails black and wears a fake nose ring. He also sings soprano in the school chorus because even though he's six months older than I am his voice hasn't changed yet, either. He's harmless. I swear.

If I'm a geek, Sam's an off-the-charts supergeek. He says the number on his popularity scorecard is so low it's unlisted. Sam knows a lot about popularity scorecards. He should. He invented them. There's no actual card or anything. As Sam is quick to explain to anyone who will listen, it's a humorous way of demystifying popularity that makes it seem silly and unimportant. Guess what? It doesn't work. Uh-oh. My calves are starting to tingle. Like when you've been sitting in one position for too long and your legs are about to fall asleep. Only I haven't been sitting in one position for too long. Did I mention that my tongue is also up to something funny? It feels thick and lumpy and dry.

Sam pokes me in the back. “What's with your neck, pal?” he whispers. “It looks like it's got mold growing all over it.”

“I have no idea,” I whisper frantically.

“I guess that's what happens when you don't wash behind your ears.” He chuckles. For a moment I wonder whether I'm getting some kind of weird cosmic payback for my inattention to personal hygiene. “You're starting to look like Jeff Goldblum in
The Fly
.”

“If you ver a herpetologist . . .” Mr. Arkady continues as he scans the room for someone to call on. (He's actually 35 percent less likely to call on you if you raise your hand. I keep track of stuff like that.) “Vut ting vood you know a lot about . . . uh . . . Amy?”

Amy Armstrong, the most popular girl in Stevenson Middle School, grades five through eight, and possibly the universe, looks up distractedly. “Gee, I'm drawing a blank.”

“Perhaps if you and Rachel Klempner paid as much attention to vut I am sayink as you do to the notes you are passing to each udder, maybe you vood know vut is goink on in this class.”

Amy Armstrong gives Mr. Arkady a dirty look.

Rachel Klempner, on the other hand, smiles cheerfully, like Mr. Arkady has just paid her a great compliment. She pretends to like everybody to their faces, and then she goes around behind their backs and says terrible things about them. In fifth grade she started a rumor that Lucille and Sam and I had a contagious disease that caused us all to have really bad hair. No one would sit next to us for weeks.

Rachel has been going out with Larry Wykoff since last year. She wears this stupid ring he gave her to commemorate the day he first texted her. It looks like it came out of a Cracker Jack box, and it's made out of plastic. Once it got lost during gym period, and she almost had a nervous breakdown and had to be sent to Nurse Nancy's office.

Rachel and Amy are members of the One-Upsters, a seventh-grade clique dedicated to the proposition that all middle-school girls are definitely
not
created equal, and the ones with better clothes and even better hair really are . . . well . . . better.

One-Upsters can usually be found hanging with Banditoes, their male counterparts. Banditoes, like Craig Dieterly and Larry Wykoff, are great at sports, care deeply about their sneakers, and tend to have fewer pimples than everybody else. Banditoes and One-Upsters wouldn't be caught dead talking to Mainframe weirdoes. Namely Lucille, Sam, and me.

We Mainframes are happy to hang with anybody who is willing to hang with us. Nobody's exactly lining up. Well, actually, on the first day of school this year, Alice Pincus asked if she could be a Mainframe, and of course we said yes because (A) we think it's rude to reject people who want to join your clique. And (B) nobody ever wants to and it's pretty embarrassing having a clique with only three people in it. But after she hung with us for a few days, Alice Pincus ditched us and went on the waiting list to become a One-Upster.

“Take a vild guess, Miss Armstrong.” Mr. Arkady isn't about to give up. “Vut does a herpetologist do?”

What's up with my shoulders and my neck? It's like my insides are rearranging themselves. It doesn't exactly hurt. But I wouldn't recommend it, either. I ache everywhere. I am definitely coming down with something. If this continues I will have to go see Nurse Nancy for sure.

“I think I know!” Amy says excitedly, like for once in her life she might actually have the answer to a question besides “What time does the party start?”

“I believe a herbologist is someone who knows a lot about different kinds of cosmetics. And herbs.” Amy smiles beguilingly at Mr. Arkady, then goes back to reading Rachel's note.

“It's
herp
etologist, Miss Armstrong.” Mr. Arkady is clearly not beguiled in the least.

Suddenly I get such a severe cramp in my right arm that I start waving it around in the air.

“Mr. Drinkvater, vill you please put us out of our misery and tell us in vut field you vood be an expert if you ver a herpetologist?”

“I would know all about amphibians and reptiles, like snakes and turtles and lizards,” I blurt out, lowering my right arm and massaging it with my left. I really do feel sore. I hope I'm not getting the flu. Halloween is Friday. It's my favorite holiday, and I don't want to miss it. Last year I went as Frankenstein. This year I'm either going as the Invisible Man or the Mummy.

“Derivation, if you please, Mr. Drinkvater,” Mr. Arkady asks.

“The word ‘herpetologist' comes from the Greek word ‘herpeton,' which means things that crawl,” I say as I hold the back of my hand to my forehead to see if I'm running a fever. I don't feel warm. I feel cold and clammy. “Like Herman, for example.”

I glance over at Herman the iguana, who usually spends his time lazing in the corner of his cage under the relaxing glow of his basking lamp. He suddenly begins to pace around his little enclosure like a convicted felon trying to break out of the slammer.

Herman's looking over at me like he's just laid eyes on a long-lost friend. He makes happy little chirping sounds and jumps up and down trying to attract my attention.
Sit, Herman. Stay.

“Good goink, Charlie,” Mr. Arkady says, slinking back to the blackboard.

My legs feel like someone is rubbing them with sandpaper. I pull up my pants a couple of inches and check out my ankles, which are slowly but surely turning wrinkly and green right before my eyes.

“Speekink of things that crawl,” Mr. Arkady says, smiling at the class and revealing his sharp, pointy incisors, “today you vill select a topic for your report on ‘herpeton ' from the followink . . .” As he speaks he writes on the blackboard:

 

FROGS
,
TOADS
,
NEWTS
,
SALAMANDERS
,
TURTLES
,
LIZARDS
,
SNAKES
,
CROCODILES

 

“You vill present a detailed analysis of the animal of your choosink. Matink habits. Genealogy. Dietary needs. Funny facts. By the time I am through vit you, you vill be junior herpetologists yourselves. . . .”

Everything about me seems like it's getting just a little bit bigger. My pants are tighter. My shirt collar bites into my neck like a noose. I've heard of growth spurts, but this is ridiculous. It's like I'm in
The Incredible Shrinking Man
, except instead of getting smaller, I'm getting bigger. And greener. And scalier. It's only first period, and my popularity scorecard has already plunged a good ten points. I'll be into triple negative digits by lunchtime if this goes on much longer.

“Projects vill be due in vun month, and vill be graded on accuracy, depth, and originality,” Mr. Arkady says. “Tink out of the box. Amaze me.”

Herman is so excited he writhes ecstatically in his cage. He knocks over his water container and stands on top of it, struggling to climb over the side of the terrarium.

“What's with Herman?” Sam whispers.

“Yeah, it's like he's having some kind of an attack,” Lucille adds.

“What did you have for breakfast, Charlie?” Sam asks. “Your breath smells like seaweed.”

Lucille sniffs the back of my head. “Yeah, and your neck smells like dirty socks.” She sniffs some more.

“Hey, that tickles,” I say. “Cut it out.”

Herman makes a sudden, high-pitched squealing noise, takes a running jump, and practically flies out of his cage in one long, graceful motion. He has sensed the presence of the other scaly critter in the room. And it's me. Herman comes bounding over two full rows of desks and leaps into my arms.

“Bad Herman,” Mr. Arkady says sternly. “Back in your cage this minute.”

Herman pays no attention. He nuzzles his face against my shoulder and makes soft cooing sounds as he licks my cheek.

“Looks like Drinkwater finally found someone to appreciate his inner beauty,” Larry Wykoff says drily. When he isn't busy being Rachel Klempner's idiot love slave, Larry is humor editor for the school paper,
The Sentinel
. He plans to be a famous comedy writer when he grows up. He calls himself “Mr. Funny,” and I hate to admit it, but he sort of is.

“Mr. Drinkvater, please return that igvana back to his cage immediately,” Mr. Arkady orders. “Vee vill not tolerate playink vit animals durink class.”