Homeroom Headhunters

• Title Page
  
• Copyright
  
• Dedication
  
• Part I: October
  
• The Boy Who Cried Firecrackers
  
• My Little Friend
  
• The Girl on the Telephone Pole
  
• Tall Tales at the Dinner Table
  
• Keeper of the Graffiti
  
• Oral Reports
  
• The Ass in Assistant Principal
  
• The Girl on the Milk Carton
  
• Overdue Books
  
• Assembly (of the Dead)
  
• The Girl in the Boiler Room
  
• Piñata de Carne
  
• Part II: November
  
• Pep Rally (of the Undead)
  
• Lay of the Land
  
• Pep Rally (of the Living)
  
• Dodgeball for Dunces
  
• The Ol' One-Two Sucker Punch
  
• Ghost Story Number One: Peashooter
  
• Pop Quiz: Hallway Headhunting
  
• Spectral Protection
  
• Ghost Story Number Two: Yardstick
  
• The Law of Claw and Fang
  
• Ghost Story Number Three: Sporkboy
  
• Pop Quiz: Welcome to Blunderdome
  
• Barbershop in the Boiler Room
  
• Ghost Story Number Four: Sully
  
• Revenge of the Cootie Catcher
  
• Ghost Story Number Five: Compass
  
• Pop Quiz: Things to be Thankful for this Thanksgiving
  
• Part III: December
  
• Milk Carton Kids
  
• Snow Day (of the Dead)
  
• Living Target Practice
  
• Leave of Absence
  
• Meat the Parents
  
• Forty Detained Days/Forty Suspended Nights
  
• The Boob in Booby Trap
  
• Ghost Story Number Six: Mr. Simms
  
• The Trojan Reindeer
  
• Home is Where the Heart is (Carved)
  
• Acknowledgments
  

et's just get this out of the way up front:

I totally did not burn down my last school.

That's an overblown rumor. Whoever tells you I did is lying, straight to your face, so don't believe them.

It was only a couple of classrooms.

Most of the building is still standing.

And as far as the classrooms that
did
burn—well, that wasn't completely my fault either.

Honest.

And it wasn't like I planned to set my lab ablaze. It just kind of—well, you know.

It kinda just happened.

One day, you're learning about the digestive tract of amphibians, trying really,
really
hard to stay awake, when, out of nowhere, the fireworks stashed inside your backpack start shooting out from beneath your desk, and the hiss of mini-missiles sends everyone onto the floor like some middle-school Armageddon.

You know.

An accident.

In the spirit of total honesty, I'll admit, it wasn't completely out of nowhere.

The Bunsen burner probably had something to do with it.

Billy Templeton just had to drop a
double-dog dare
on me. If he hadn't goaded me into holding a bottle rocket over Mr. Bunsen's blue flame, that firecracker wouldn't have shot itself directly into my backpack, igniting the rest of my stash.

In my defense, just so you know, nobody got hurt.

Well. Mostly.

Do frogs count?

Who knew formaldehyde was that flammable? Just one stray spark from a Funky Monkey Fountain and—
KABOOM
.

Amphibious hand grenades. Wet shrapnel splattered against the blackboard, and tendrils of frog intestine tangled in Miss Beasley's hairdo.

She should have ducked.

I still maintain my innocence. You can't blame a kid for bringing his stash of firecrackers to school.

I mean,
you could
. But you shouldn't. Not in this case.

It was for a science project.

I swear.

I was working on a model of the big bang theory. And I needed—well, a big bang.

If you're going to talk about the cosmological conditions of the beginning of the universe, you need all the firepower you can find. That's just a scientific fact.

So, in a sense, this?
All this?
This was all in the name of science.

Okay. The truth—
the God's honest truth:
The morning this all happened, the people hereby designated as my parents decided to break some news to me.

I'll spare you the gore.

Let's just say it was the nonnegotiable, not-up-for-discussion-because-you're-young, just-take-it-all-in-and-let-it-fester kind of news.

The kind of news that makes your veins feel like one big wad of wicks, all of them tied to the firecracker you call your heart. Once your blood gets boiling, that fuse gets lit and there is just no extinguishing it. It's only a matter of time before—
KABLOOEY
. You're splashed all over the walls.

So. Just to set the record straight:

My name is Spencer Pendleton—and I totally did not set my last
school on fire…

…On purpose.

All I wanted was for somebody to listen.

You believe me—right?

Right?

ay hello to…

My Little Friend.

My inhaler has gotten me out of more scraps with asthma than I can count.

Some kids have teddy bears. Others have blankies.

I cling to my inhaler like a third lung.

As far as medication goes, I've been on everything.
Twice.
Simply listing my prescriptions gets me wheezing. We've got long-acting beta-2 agonists, leukotriene modifiers, cromolyn, nedocromil, theophylline, ipratropium, fluticasone, budesonide, triamcinolone, flunisolide, beclomethasone, mometasone, salmeterol, formoterol, and zafirlukast. Even
pyromediakleptogrossulfate
!

That last one I made up just to see if you were still paying attention.

• • •

Monday. 7:54 a.m. Main hallway.

Welcome to the jungle.

The first bell at Greenfield Middle hadn't even rung yet and I already knew Riley Callahan. I had him pinned from the very moment we passed each other in the hall.

Riley has what the rest of us call Popular Guy Complexion.

I bet Riley Callahan has never had a blemish his entire life. Ten bucks says he's captain of the Pimple Cream Team.

Riley pressed his hand against my chest, his eyes locked onto My Little Friend dangling around my neck.

“Is that a PEZ dispenser?”

“It's an inhaler.”

“You got asthma or something?”

“Nope,” I said. “I just like inhaling corticosteroids for the fun of it.”

“Watch your mouth…
newbie
. Before somebody knocks it off your face.”

“Never heard of this Newbie guy before.” I held out my hand. “Name's Spencer.”

The muscles in Riley's jaw tensed, and everybody stopped walking. Bodies clotted up the hallway. The aroma of bloodlust filled the air, and, before I knew what was happening, I found myself in the center of a boxing ring made up of our classmates.

One kid started chanting: “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

Then another: “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

Then three more, ten more,
twenty
, until the whole hallway was echoing: “FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!”

Once the Ring of Death wraps around two students, only one is allowed to leave on his own two feet. That—or a teacher comes and breaks it up.

Everybody was waiting to see what Riley would do next.

I must admit, I was pretty curious myself.

I watched as the fingers on his right hand slowly curled up.

Uh-oh
.

He reeled back his hand.

Not good, Spence. Not good at all.

Press the
PAUSE
button, please.

• • •

Flashback to a wise old woman saying:
Don't rock the boat.

Mom had dropped me off at school that morning. She planted a kiss flat on my forehead in front of all the kids entering the building, even though I pleaded with her not to.

“Ready for your first day, hon?”

“Ready as I'll ever be.”

“Did you remember to pack your inhaler?”

“Right here, Mom.…”

“Okay, then,” she sighed. “Promise me one thing?”

“…What's that?”

“Don't rock the boat, Spencer.”

These were her words of wisdom.

Thanks a lot, Mom
.…

• • •

Now press
PLAY
.

There I was, about to get my lights punched out, wondering if a fistfight with Riley Callahan constituted boat-rocking or not.

If it didn't, what I did next surely did:

I brought My Little Friend up to Riley's face and squeezed a long-winded spritz of chest steroids straight into his face. He clutched his eyes, yelling—then charged.

I stepped to my left, clearing a path directly into the lockers behind me. Riley's forehead met metal—
THWONK!
—sprawling him flat across the hallway floor.

Suddenly I was the captain of the USS
Saving My Ass
, navigating my way through a sea of students, setting sail for neutral waters.

How's that for boat-rocking?

I don't think I'd ever hauled my rear end that fast in my entire life.

That's when my lungs started to flutter.

Here it comes—I could feel it in my chest.

Little Friend, don't fail me now!

I brought my inhaler up to my mouth, squeezed…

…And nothing.

Empty.

I'd used up my medication on Riley's face.

This was bad. This was
really
bad.

A wave of light-headedness washed through my skull. My knees softened, sending me toppling onto the floor. I lay there on my back, face up, staring at the ceiling. Prickles of light popped up at the bottom of my eyeballs.

Then things got mondo bizarro.

One of the fiberglass panels along the ceiling pulled itself back, and I saw a hand. A pale hand.
A girl's hand
—reaching out from inside the ceiling.

The hand was holding an inhaler.

Oxygenated blood must've stopped flowing to my head because clearly I was hallucinating.

Angels. The heavens opening. That sort of thing.

Totally delusional.

That hand dropped the inhaler onto my chest, and I grabbed it just in time to squeeze off a gust of medicated air. Oxygen eased into my lungs again.

Hallelujah, I thought. I'm not dying today!

All thanks to a guardian angel hidden behind the ceiling panels.

Kids stopped walking through the hallway and circled around me on the floor. All I could see were their curious faces staring down.

Mr. Jim Pritchard, my new assistant principal, rushed through the hall and kneeled next to me. “Are you okay? Can you breathe?”

“Think so,” I huffed.

“What happened?”

“An angel reached down from heaven and gave me an inhaler.…”

I pointed toward the ceiling—but the panel was in place, like nothing had happened.

I glanced at the inhaler in my hand, looking for the name on the prescription.

Winston Reynolds.

I read the date along the side. Expired. Five years before.

I'd just sucked down moldy-oldie medication.

No wonder I was seeing things.

“I'm taking you to the clinic.” The skepticism was thick in Mr. Pritchard's voice. “Get you checked for a concussion.”

I had the sneaking feeling he didn't believe in angels.