Creature from the 7th Grade : Boy or Beast (9781101591833) (3 page)

“Yes, sir,” I reply. All eyes are on me as I stumble over my expanding feet and nearly drop Herman on his head when I return my scaly friend to his terrarium.

“You walk like you play football, Charlie Lancelot Drinkwater,” Craig Dieterly says. He has been trying to guess my dreaded middle name ever since he figured out I hated it. This was in second grade, when we all had to sit in a circle and call out our middle names, and when it got to me I said I didn't have one.

“That's not it,” I whisper back.

“How 'bout Melvin?”

“Uh-uh,” I reply, and hit my knee on Mr. Arkady's desk. The shiny red apple that Rachel Klempner brought him this morning rolls off and hits the floor with a thud. I am so mortified I would dig a hole and crawl into it if I could. “I'm really sorry, sir,” I say, sinking into my desk chair. “I'm just not myself today.”

“What a relief.” Craig Dieterly chuckles.

“That's not nice,” Lucille whispers.

“Nice is for sissies,” Amy replies, applying a fresh coating of lip gloss to her bright-red lips.

“Does it come naturally, or do you have to work hard to be such a total dweeb, Drinkwater?” Norm Swerling asks.

“Takes one to know one,” I retaliate, and then instantly regret it. You can't win with these people. Don't even try.

“Look who's talking,” Craig Dieterly pipes up. “It's Snow White's other little-known dwarf, ‘Pathetic.'” He points at me and laughs.

Dirk and Dack Schlissel, Neanderthal-sized identical twins, and fellow Banditoes, laugh along with Craig Dieterly. The Schlissels have huge bodies and tiny heads. What they lack in intelligence they more than make up in brute strength. Sam and I can never decide if they each have their own separate brain (we don't think so) or whether they share a common one (much more likely).

“Quiet in the classroom!” Mr. Arkady barks. “Not funny, Mr. Dieterly.”

Sam takes out a magnifying glass from his fanny pack and studies the back of my head intently. “If I didn't know better, Charlie,” he says under his breath, “I'd say you were undergoing a series of dramatic molecular changes on the cellular level.”

“Oh great,” I murmur.

“I'm really worried about you,” Lucille whispers. “You should see a specialist.”

“In what?” I reply. “Herpetology?”

Suddenly I can feel my teeth getting longer and sharper. My neck grows longer, too. And skinnier. I stare, transfixed, at my fingers as each of my hands morphs into a claw with three sharp talons. My toenails burst through my sneakers. I cross my legs and try to hide my lower extremities under my desk. It's my nightmare come true: I, Charles Elmer Drinkwater, am turning into the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

ROCK AROUND THE CROC

RI-I-I-I-I-I-NG!
That's the bell, and not a moment too soon. I grab my backpack and lurch out of the crowded room in a blind panic, leaving Sam and Lucille in my wake. I cover my face with my notebook and hurtle through the noisy hallway to the service stairs. I push open the metal door and begin the steep ascent to the roof. I have no idea what I'll do when I get there. I only know I can't let anybody see what is happening to me.

I hear Sam behind me, huffing and puffing, trying to catch up. Sam is built for sitting and eating. Not running. “Hey, wait for me!” he shouts.

“Me too!” Lucille cries. “Slow down!”

I wish I could. But the change is fully upon me now, and a desperate animal instinct to flee has taken over and propels me up the steps three at a time. With every passing second I feel my bones lengthening, my joints realigning, and scales multiplying to cover my expanding body. I am literally bursting out of my clothes. Pieces of my shirt hang in shreds around what used to be my waist.

By the time I reach the third floor my spindly neck has grown so long I have to stoop to keep my head from hitting the ceiling. Rows of spiky ridges erupt all over my scaly green body faster than I can count them. My formerly matchstick-thin legs are growing into massive coils of bone and sinew, like drumsticks on a steroidal chicken.

As I burst onto the roof, a long and powerful tail suddenly explodes from the base of my spine, causing me to lose my balance, nearly sending me tumbling back down all the way to the basement.

Sam arrives, gasping for breath. Lucille is close behind, panting and holding her side. They stare at me, too stunned to speak.

I look down. My tiny feet have blossomed into webbed green flippers the size of platters. I reach up to what used to be my forehead and realize I no longer have a face. In its place a long bony ridge connects my enormous crocodile-like jaws to my sloping cranium.

Forget about being popular. At this point I would happily settle for human.

The sun breaks through the clouds, slashing a blinding white-hot ray across my enormous green body. My scales sparkle and glisten. My transformation is complete. The monster lives. I throw my long neck back, open my jaws to the sky, and cry, “I am the Creature from the Seventh Grade!”

Sam runs his pudgy fingers through his dark purple hair and shakes his head in disbelief. He rubs his eyes. “Charlie, is that really you?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” I say in my easily recognizable, high, squeaky child's voice. I have the body of a ferocious monster but I still sound like a little girl.

“Wow!” Sam exclaims. “You look just like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, except bigger. If Wes Craven only knew. He could direct the sequel, and you could star in it, and you wouldn't even have to act! Think of all the money they'd save on makeup and prosthetics.”

“Don't get too worked up about it, Sam,” I reply. “I'm sure this whole transformation thing is only temporary.”

“We're taking you to Nurse Nancy's office right now.” Lucille heads for the door to the stairs. “Let's go.”

“What's she going to do about it?” I ask. “School nurses aren't even allowed to give you
aspirin.
They can't do anything.”

“He's right,” Sam adds. “I got sent to Nurse Nancy's office with a splinter last week and she couldn't even touch it. All she could do was take my temperature and put cool compresses on my forehead.”

“We have to do
something,
” Lucille says. “We can't just stay up here on the roof all day twiddling our . . . um . . . claws.”

“Maybe we slipped through a wrinkle in the space-time continuum,” Sam says. “And we're all in some kind of alternate universe.”

“OMG!” Lucille exclaims. “I've only been trying to find out if the space-time continuum exists as more than just a pure mathematical construct for my whole life! Can you imagine if we just stumbled into it during Arkady's class? Wouldn't that be thrilling?”

“Yeah, thrilling.” I am not exactly convinced. “Why don't you guys hide me in the utility closet next to Principal Muchnick's office and go figure out what's happening to me and make it un-happen?”

“Good thinking,” Sam says. “We'll go search for ‘spontaneous mutation in the adolescent Homo sapiens' on the Internet. We could try to decode your genome if we could find an electron microscope.”

“I've always wanted to get my hands on one of those things,” Lucille confesses.

“My uncle Leon knows someone who works at NASA,” Sam says eagerly. “I bet we could borrow one of theirs.”

“Are you serious? Call him right now.” Lucille is practically jumping up and down. “This is so exciting I can't stand it.”

“I don't want to be a buzz kill or anything,” I say, “but do you think you guys could concentrate on getting me off the roof before somebody sees me, or would that be too much to ask?”

“Sorry, Charlie,” Lucille replies. “I didn't mean to get carried away.”

I point to a discarded packing blanket lying in the corner by the trash. “Why don't you wrap me up in that thing and lead me to the closet?” I ask.

“Consider it done!” Lucille says as she grabs the blanket and throws it over my head. “We'll get you back to your old sixty-eight-pound weakling self so fast your head will spin.” My two friends lead me to the door to the back stairs.

“I can't wait,” I say as I bang my head on the ceiling. “Ouch.” I keep forgetting I am so tall. I tear a hole in my blanket with the tip of my pointy claw so I can see where I'm going, and we hurry down to the second-floor landing together.

Sam opens the door to the hallway. Lucille pokes her head out and looks around cautiously. “The coast is clear,” she whispers. “Let's run for it!” My enormous flippers make a loud flapping sound as they smack against the linoleum.

“Keep it down under there, Charlie,” Sam whispers. “Everybody'll hear you.”

As if on cue, Alice Pincus comes scurrying around the corner, heading for the girls' room, and nearly bumps into the three of us. “What're you guys doing in the hallway?” she demands. “You're supposed to be in English. You missed attendance. Everybody's looking for you. Where's Charlie?”

“We can't tell you,” Sam says. “It's a secret.”

“What do you have under those blankets?” Alice continues. I hold very still.

“Guess,” Lucille answers.

“I bet it has something to do with Halloween,” Alice announces proudly.

“I bet you're right,” Sam says.

“Is it scary?” Alice asks.

“Extremely,” Lucille replies.

“Goody,” Alice chirps. “I love being scared.”

“Then you're in for a real treat,” Lucille says.

“We have to go,” Sam says. “We're late.”

It is getting very warm under my blanket. Alice heads for the bathroom, and we continue down the hall to the utility closet. Sam opens the door and I quickly step inside, knocking over a pile of dictionaries with my tail. A box of old erasers falls on my head. Clouds of chalk dust billow in the air.

“Stay put,” Sam orders. “And don't worry. You'll be you again. I promise.”

“Are you sure?” I ask.

“Absolutely,” Lucille replies confidently. “Someday we'll look back at today and have a big laugh about the whole thing.”

“I hope so,” I say. “Because I'm sure not laughing about it now.”

“Shush,” Sam orders me as he shuts the door. “Think positive thoughts.”

I listen to the clatter of my friends' footsteps as they race down the corridor. I stand alone in the dark closet, trying to come up with a single positive thought.
I won't have to spend a lot of time shopping for a Halloween costume this year
is the only thing I can come up with. The dust from the chalk is making my eyes water and irritating my very large nasal passages. I try not to sneeze.

Suddenly the door to my hiding place flies open and Rachel Klempner is standing in front of me. I am so startled I scream and drop my packing blanket. Which makes Rachel Klempner scream. And then I scream again.

“What . . . who . . . how . . .” she stammers, shaking her head in disbelief.

While I try to think of something reassuring to say, the tickling in my nostrils becomes unbearable and I can control myself no longer.

Achooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!
The force of my sneeze blows Rachel Klempner backward across the hall. She nearly crashes into a wide-eyed Alice Pincus, who is returning from her trip to the bathroom.

“It's me. Charlie Drinkwater,” I explain meekly. “I transformed.”

“You are the scariest thing I ever saw in my whole life,” Alice squeals. “I love it. I'm telling everybody.” And then she races back to Mrs. Adams's English class.

Before I have a chance to catch my breath, a bunch of excited seventh-graders are texting and pointing their camera phones at me. “What's it like to have flippers?” Norm Swerling asks. Amy Armstrong wonders if it's okay to touch my tail. Rachel Klempner asks me if I bite. I am so mortified I shut my eyes and pretend that I'm invisible.

You know that dream where all of a sudden you're walking around school in your underwear and everybody in your entire grade is staring at you? Well, this is exactly like that dream, only about THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILLION TIMES WORSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Plus it's really happening.

Sam and Lucille hear all the commotion and come racing back just in time to see Principal Muchnick emerge from his office, clapping his hands together loudly. He's dressed in his usual three-button suit. His oily black hair is slicked back neatly. His pine-scented aftershave enters the hallway before he does. He's fat enough to make a believable Santa Claus every year at the middle-school holiday assembly. But not a very jolly one. Everyone hurries back into the classroom when they see the principal. Except me.

“Come with me this instant, young . . . um . . . whatever you are,” he says, and a minute later I'm standing in his office, trying to explain that the enormous webbed and scaly green creature with the long, floppy tail pacing nervously in front of his desk really is Charlie Drinkwater.

“It's me, Principal Muchnick,” I plead. “My brother, Dave, got early acceptance to Michigan State. My parents' names are Fred and Doris. I'm a founding member of the local chapter of Junior Scientists of America. I was born on August sixteenth. I live at four forty-two Lonesome Lane. Look. It's all here in black and white,” I say as I hand him my student ID.

“Ever hear of a little thing called identity theft?” Principal Muchnick says, eyeing me suspiciously. “How do I know you're not a dangerous monster pretending to be Charlie Drinkwater?”

“If I were a dangerous monster, wouldn't I be out on a rampage, killing innocent people and knocking over buildings or something?” I protest.

“Maybe . . .” Principal Muchnick refolds his pocket handkerchief into a perfect triangle.

“If I were a dangerous monster, why would I be standing in front of your desk, carrying a book bag, holding a number-two pencil in my claw, and trying to convince you that I am an unpopular seventh-grader in Stevenson Middle School, grades five through eight?” I continue. “What would be the point of that?”

“Heaven help me, I believe you.” Principal Muchnick sighs. He hands back my ID. “Leave it to you to pull a stunt like this.” Principal Muchnick has had it in for me since the time I complained to him about being on the football team. To this day he thinks I fainted on purpose. Believe me, I didn't.

“Okay. So what do I do with you now, Charlie Drinkwater? School guidelines specifically forbid bringing animals onto school property without a properly executed pet authorization form. You don't happen to have one of those conveniently tucked away in that backpack of yours, do you?”

“No, sir,” I reply. “I'm afraid I don't.”

He pulls a large volume marked
Rules and Regulations
from his bookshelf and searches through its contents. He reads intently, shaking his head and
tsk
-ing under his breath. The furrows in his brow deepen.

“Is there a problem?” I ask.

“It seems there is some doubt as to whether a student needs an official pet authorization form if the pet in question also happens to be the student.” Principal Muchnick sighs again, puts the book away, and picks up the telephone. “In situations such as these, there is only one thing to do.”

“What is that, sir?” I ask nervously.

“Phone your parents and tell them to pick you up immediately.” He begins to dial. “And then I will call an emergency session of the local school board to discuss your, shall we say,
precarious
situation.” He drums his fingers absentmindedly on his desk and waits for someone to pick up.