Dinosaur Boy (10 page)

Later that night, when I tiptoed out of my room and down to the front door, I was not surprised when sixteen pounds of fluffy, white rage came barreling down the stairs after me.

We didn't have an alarm system in our house. Fanny, who slept at the foot of my parents' bed with one eye open, her tiny paws itching to defend her home, was more than adequate for that purpose. But I was ready for her.

“Fanny!” I whispered, standing my ground at the foot of the stairs and holding a spare tennis ball right in her line of vision.

She skidded to a halt.

I threw the ball down the hall, toward the kitchen. When she tore after it, I quietly slipped out the front door. Then I waited, safely hidden in the darkness of the porch, and listened hard for a full minute. Nothing. No sound anywhere. My suburban Portland neighborhood was fast asleep.

I shook my head as I walked down our driveway. It had been
shockingly
easy to escape my house, with my parents being none the wiser. I filed this information away for later use during my teenage years.

My school is only six blocks from my house, and I made it there in record time. I felt very exposed, walking on the quiet streets alone. The streetlights felt like spotlights, and I was kind of freaked out by the sight of my own shadow. From the side, all you could see were my plates and the long curve of my tail. There was nothing human-looking about my shadowy silhouette at all.

I was glad to finally leave the streetlights behind and duck into the relative darkness in front of the administration building.

Elliot was already there. He was wearing a black ski cap, a black sweatshirt, and black sweatpants. In one hand, he held a flashlight, which was switched off. He looked like the dictionary definition of “burglar.”

I was wearing my blue raincoat, modified to accommodate my plates, over plaid pajama bottoms and sneakers. It hadn't occurred to me that our midnight heist would require a change of clothes.

“Where's Sylvie?” I asked him.

“Not here yet,” he answered, shifting his flashlight nervously from hand to hand. “Do you think she's even coming?”

“This was her idea,” I reminded him.

“Yeah…I was thinking about that on the way here.”

“Oh?” I encouraged him.

“How do we know she's not on Principal Mathis's side? I mean, they're both Martians, right? Maybe they're setting us up.”

“For what?” I asked, peering into the surrounding darkness. I didn't think for one minute that Sylvie was in cahoots with Principal Mathis.

“Remember that
Twilight
Zone
episode when aliens come to Earth?” he asked.

“Are you sure that only happened in
one
episode?” I asked finally, taking a mental inventory of all of the
Twilight
Zones
Elliot had made me watch over the years.

“You know the one I'm talking about,” Elliot insisted. “The one where they say they're here to help humans and they have this giant book about how they are going to ‘serve man'?”

“I guess…”

“It turned out to be a cookbook, Sawyer. That's all I'm saying.”

“Elliot,” came a voice from the darkness behind him. “I already told you that Martians don't eat Earthlings.”

Elliot gasped dramatically and whirled around as Sylvie materialized out of the night and walked up the steps to meet us. As usual, she was wearing her orange sweatshirt, hood up. Strangely, she still looked less conspicuous than Elliot.

Elliot eyed her suspiciously.

“Isn't that exactly what you would say if you
were
planning to eat us?” he asked.

Sylvie opened her mouth to respond, but I cut her off.

“Why don't we concentrate on figuring out how we're going to get inside the school?” I suggested.

Sylvie motioned to the door.

“It should be unlocked.”

It was my turn to eye her suspiciously; she shrugged.

“Try it,” she suggested.

I reached for the door. Despite Sylvie's confident tone, I was very surprised when it opened easily.

“How did you do that?” Elliot demanded of Sylvie. “This place is usually locked down like a prison.”

Sylvie wiggled her eyebrows at him.

“A Martian never reveals her sources,” she said mysteriously.

“No, that's reporters,” Elliot said. “
Reporters
never reveal their sources.”

“Oh,” said Sylvie, looking momentarily deflated. Then she brightened. “Well, it's the same thing for Martians.”

She reached past me to open the door wider. I turned, intending to tell Elliot to lay off Sylvie, but I was blinded by headlights before I could get a word out.

“Car!” Elliot hissed. “
Hide!
”

Sylvie let go of the door and dove behind a pillar on the right side of the building. Elliot and I ran to hide behind the pillar on the left side.

The door swung shut with an agonizingly loud
click
, and then there was silence.

The car had the words “Viking Security” printed on the door, and a blue siren was stuck on top of the roof. The siren was off, which I thought was a good sign, but the car was doing a slow circle of the parking lot directly in front of the administration building.

I tucked myself as far back into the shelter of the pillar as I could go, being careful not to squish Elliot with my tail, while the probable events of the next day flashed before my eyes.

The police. Our parents being called. The grounding.

The headline: “Dinosaur Hybrid Caught Breaking into School.”

Thanks to the T. rex in Jersey, everybody already thought dinosaur hybrids were violent. Now, thanks to me, they'd also think we have criminal tendencies. Great.

The car's headlights swept over the administration building door three times. Each time, I held my breath and waited for the sound of the engine turning off and a door opening. But it never came. After the third time, I heard Sylvie's loud whisper.

“We're OK! The car's leaving!”

I looked around the pillar again, just as the car disappeared around the corner, toward the faculty parking lot.

The three of us all let out giant, relieved breaths and ran to get inside before the security guard came back.

• • •

Once the door had closed behind us, Elliot held up his flashlight, but I shook my head. It was even darker inside the school than it had been outside, but we couldn't risk a light. The security guard might see it. Even from a distance. We used our hands to help us creep by the front desk.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I felt my way past Ms. Helen's empty desk. I had half expected to find her sitting there in her usual spot, glowering at us in the dark from behind her fan and her woefully out-of-date solar system model.

It did occur to me that we had just proven, definitively, that Ms. Helen was not, in fact, permanently attached to her desk. Too bad we wouldn't be able to tell anybody.

It was easier to see once we got inside Principal Mathis's office. Her front window overlooked a large streetlight, which filled the room with a dim, but welcome glow.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Elliot asked, looking around hesitantly.

“Anything out of the ordinary,” Sylvie answered, heading straight for Principal Mathis's desk. “I'll check her laptop. You guys look everywhere else.”

Principal Mathis didn't have much stuff in her office. So
everywhere
else
was just a large, wooden cabinet on the back wall. Elliot and I walked up to examine it.

It was a huge, antiquey-looking wood armoire with metal details. The two big doors on the front had fancy handles in the shape of grinning lizards.

“I don't think it's locked,” Elliot said quietly, running his hand over one of the lizards and jiggling it slightly. “I think if I just pull on it—”

“Careful,” I admonished him. “Don't break anything.”

“It's too heavy to break,” he informed me, tugging hard but not budging the door one bit. He stepped back for a moment, then wrapped both hands around the left lizard head for a second attempt.

The door still did not move.

“Here.” I stepped up next to him and grabbed the right lizard, bracing my foot against the side of the armoire for leverage. “On three. One, two—”

“Three!” Elliot grunted, and we yanked in unison.

The doors both swung open, and Elliot tumbled backward. I swayed back as well, but managed to stay upright with a little help from my tail.

That's why I was the one who saw Principal Mathis's head staring at me, eyeless, from the shelf inside the armoire.

I'm only slightly ashamed to admit that I screamed like a little girl.

I like to think there may have been the tiniest of dinosaur-worthy roars in there as well, maybe near the tail end of my ear-splitting shriek. But I don't think there was. It all sounded pretty high-pitched to me. Nothing like when I had lost my temper in the cafeteria.

“What? What is it?” Elliot scrambled to his feet. I slammed the door of the armoire before he could see what was inside.

“Shhhhhhhh!” Sylvie hissed at us. She was sitting at Principal Mathis's desk, and her irritated scowl was lit up by the computer screen in front of her. She made no move to join us in front of the armoire of death. “
Quiet!
What did you find?”

“P-P-P-Principal M-M-M-Mathis.” I pointed feebly at the lizard head door. “Her—her
head
.”

“Ew!” Elliot declared, and immediately opened the door to see for himself. I stepped out of the way so I wouldn't have to see it again.

“It's probably just her mask,” Sylvie said, sounding bored as she continued to stare at the computer screen and punch keys. “Her
human
mask. She's a full Martian, remember? She needs a disguise to fit in here.”

“
Awesome
.
”
Elliot appeared around the side of the armoire, holding Principal Mathis's face in one hand. Inside the armoire, I spotted a blank mannequin head. The stretchy plastic face must have been draped over it, causing the illusion of Principal Mathis's severed head.

I watched Elliot stretch the face out in his hands, crumple it into a handful of skin, then stretch it out again. A horrible thought occurred to me.

“Sylvie,” I said, looking hard at her face through the glow of the computer. “You're not wearing a human mask, are you?”

She laughed.

“No. I don't need a mask. I'm half-human, remember? And I take after my mother.”

“Good,” I said, and shuddered.

“I've got to get something like this for Halloween,” Elliot said, mostly to himself as he kept playing with the mask.

Still disgusted by the whole thing, I turned away from Elliot and opened the armoire door to see what else was inside.

The topmost shelf held the now-naked mannequin head. There was also a metal stand full of business cards and several rows of white boxes.

There wasn't enough light to read the tiny print on the business cards, so I stuffed one in my pocket for later and grabbed one of the white boxes instead.

Inside, there was a tangle of pink straps and buckles. I had to turn the whole thing over several times in my hands before I realized that it was a harness. It looked kind of like the one that my mom had bought for Fanny, only Principal Mathis's was bigger and bright pink. It was also covered with cheap-looking plastic gemstones.

Next to the harness was a spray can. I held up the can to catch the light from outside, and I could just barely make out the words “GOOD BOY” written in large, white letters. Underneath, in slightly smaller letters, were the words: “BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION SPRAY.”

Principal Mathis must have a dog. A big dog, based on the size of the harness.

The bottom shelf was crammed full of boxes. They had been arranged kind of like a Jenga puzzle, so that every single inch of space on the shelf was taken up. I wiggled a box free.

Red Vines.

The entire shelf was stuffed full of Red Vines.

Weird. Just weird.

“Hey, Sawyer!”

Elliot peered around the side of the cabinet. He was wearing Principal Mathis's face over his own.

“Detention!” he declared, through Principal Mathis's lips, shaking an accusatory finger at me. “We have a zero tolerance policy here, Mr. Bronson!”

“
Boys
,” Sylvie scolded us. “I need a hand over here.”

I smacked Elliot on the side of his head and went to join Sylvie in front of the computer.

“There's nothing strange on her hard drive,” she informed us. “Just school stuff. The school probably owns the computer, so she wouldn't risk putting anything on there that might give her away as a Martian.”

“Then what are we still looking at the computer for?” Elliot asked, wearing his own face again and squinting at the bright screen from the other side of Sylvie.

“I want to get into her personal email. I think I know her username, but I don't know her password.”

Sylvie typed a few keys and hit enter.

Access
denied. Password does not match username.

Sylvie bit her lip in frustration.

“Can't you hack it?” Elliot asked.

Sylvie turned to him, an accusatory expression on her face.

“What, just because I'm half Martian, you think I'm a computer nerd?

Elliot shrugged.

“I don't know. You've got to be more advanced than us, right? I mean, you got to Earth somehow. And no humans have walked on Mars yet.”

“Martian
scientists
may be more advanced,” Sylvie said, “but I'm eleven. I only assigned myself the computer because I'm pretty sure I'm better at it than you. But that's not really saying much, is it? If you—”

“Guys,” I interrupted. “This isn't helping. We need to think. If you were Principal Mathis, what would your password be?”

“Mantis?” Elliot suggested, looking only half serious.

“I already tried every variation of her name I could think of,” Sylvie said.

“What about her birthday?” I suggested.

“I don't know her birthday,” Sylvie said, with a shrug. “People choose passwords that are meaningful to them in some way. But she doesn't have much personal stuff around. It's hard to guess what would mean something to her.” She gestured at the principal's desk, which was completely bare except for the computer, her nameplate, and a small stack of manila folders.

“Try ‘Red Vines,'” I suggested, thinking of the cabinet.

Access
denied.

“‘Licorice,'” I tried again.

Access
denied.

“This is making me hungry,” Elliot complained, eyeing the bottom shelf of the cabinet. “Do you think Mathis would miss one box of Red Vines?”

“Yes,” Sylvie answered immediately.

“Really?” Elliot looked disappointed. “How much candy can one Martian eat?”

“She's probably selling it,” Sylvie explained. “There's a huge black market for Earth candy on Mars. All those Red Vines would be worth a
fortune
there.”

I turned my attention back to our password problem. Suddenly, I remembered the harness.

“I think she has a dog,” I ventured. “Dog? Puppy? Canine?”

Access
denied. Access denied. Access denied.

“This is going to take all night,” Elliot complained, looking at his watch and yawning. “My dad gets up for work at four thirty. I have to sneak back into my house before then.”

Out of ideas, I looked around the office for help. Principal Mathis's lone piece of artwork caught my eye:

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.

—Victor Hugo

“Try ‘Hugo,'” I suggested.

Sylvie typed the four letters, and suddenly Principal Mathis's in-box appeared on screen.

“Nice,” Elliot said, and leaned over Sylvie's shoulder.

I frowned.

“Martians use Gmail?” I asked skeptically.

Sylvie nodded, her face serious. “Google started on Mars, you know. Earth is just their beta-testing ground.”

She scrolled through screen after screen of mundane emails, mostly to and from teachers and other school personnel.

“Boring,” Elliot declared. “Principal Mathis is the most uninteresting alien
ever.”

“Wait,” Sylvie said. “This might be something.”

She clicked on an email from someone named “Client J.”

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Dear Mathilda,

Attached please find my completed purchase order for the shipment we discussed. My buyers are very eager to acquire their new pets and are also interested in seeing your line of accessories. I trust you will provide feeding instructions, as well as assurances that all specimens are purebred. Several of my clients have small children and are concerned about the potentially aggressive nature of hybrids. Please see the purchase order for more detailed specifications on this matter.

Sincerely,

J.P. Tabar

Executive VP, Jupiter's Finest Pet Emporium

Our mission: to find you a pet as unique as you are!

“Pets?” Elliot read aloud, from behind me. “Principal Mathis sells pets?”

Thinking of something, I pulled the business card out of my pocket and held it up so I could read it by the light of the computer screen.

“I guess so,” I said, although something about this whole thing wasn't making much sense to me. Why would Principal Mathis be hiding a classroom full of students if her secret job was selling pets?

There was a faint squeal of car brakes outside. Elliot, who was closest to the window, ran over and peeked through the open blinds.

“The security guard is back!”

“The computer!” I yelled, slamming the laptop shut. “He'll be able to see the light!”

“Wait!” Sophie grabbed the computer, knelt under the desk, and opened it again. “I want to see the attachment to this email—I'm downloading it now.”

“He's getting out of the car!” Elliot exclaimed from the window.

“Sylvie!” I exclaimed, looking nervously toward the window. “We don't have time to read that! We've got to go!”

“I'm printing it!” Sylvie announced, still under the desk. “Where's the printer?”

I spotted it over on top of the bookshelf. I fumbled around in the dark for the power button, basically just pushing buttons until something flashed green.

“He's coming up the steps!” Elliot squealed, backing away from the window. “We've got to get out of here!”

“Get the email, Sawyer!” Sylvie ordered, running for the door of the office. Elliot followed her.

I felt around the paper tray on the front of the printer, but it was empty.

“It's not here!” I whispered. “It didn't print!”

“Forget about it! Let's
go
!” Elliot implored.

I followed them into the front office. Elliot scooted past Ms. Helen's desk and headed for the back door. Besides the front door, where the security guard was, it was the only way out of the building.

It was a good plan, except that the back door was at the end of a long hallway, immediately opposite the front door. There was no way we would make it, not without being seen.

I grabbed the back of Elliot's shirt and pulled him back into the front office just as the door swung open.