[Janitors 01] Janitors

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Whitesides, Tyler, author.

Janitors / Tyler Whitesides.

pages cm

Summary: A sixth grader stumbles upon a secret that threatens to turn schoolchildren everywhere into mindless automatons.

ISBN 978-1-60908-056-3 (hardbound : alk. paper)

[1. Students—Fiction. 2. Monsters—Fiction. 3. School custodians—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.W58793 Jan 2011

[Fic]—dc22 2011007692

Printed in the United States of America

Publishers Printing

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For mothers and custodians everywhere, who seem to sweep and vacuum endlessly.

And for Connie, who swept me away.

Chapter 1

“You’re going to get an F.”

Spencer shifted the papers on his school desk and looked for a hundredth time at the graffiti in the corner. Last year’s occupant of the desk must have spent hours etching the message into the wooden surface.

Dummy,
Spencer thought.
Couldn’t even spell cabbage.

Truth be told, Mrs. Natcher did smell a little like cabbage sometimes, but she was still tolerable. Today, however, a strong Bath and Body Works fragrance filled the sixth-grade classroom and Mrs. Natcher was nowhere to be seen.

In her place was a thin, younger woman who had short, stylish hair streaked with pink highlights. She wore high-heeled red shoes and a skirt so short that Mrs. Natcher would have croaked. Turned out that Mrs. Natcher
had
croaked—well, almost—which was why Miss Leslie Sharmelle had been called to Welcher Elementary that morning.

Spencer glanced at the clock on the wall. Only a half hour until lunch! The morning had flown by. After a lesson on geography, Miss Sharmelle had started the students creating maps of imaginary lands. Spencer traced a crooked line from his pencil-sketch mountains to the coast.

“Keep working on your maps, boys and girls,” Miss Sharmelle instructed. “I’ve got to buzz over to the copy machine for a sec.” With half a dozen papers in her hand and her heels click-clacking on the floor, she disappeared into the hallway.

Instinctively, Spencer swiveled his head to glance at Dez Rylie. Sure enough, there was already a soggy wad of paper coming out of the boy’s big mouth. Only a desk away, Spencer’s map was an easy target. But with the substitute out of the room, Dez wouldn’t settle for a small target like Spencer. Dez was going to spread the fun (and the spit) to everybody.

With a whoop, he tossed the mass of chewed paper into the air. It made a lazy arc across the room, showering everyone below with drops of Dez-juice. The spit bomb made a fast descent and landed with a
splat
on Jen McNeal’s new back-to-school shoes.

Jen screamed, jumping up and shaking her foot wildly. She danced in the aisle as though an army of ants had decided to bunk in her sock. The vigorous foot shaking sent out a spray of spit, and the wad dislodged, flinging sideways and skidding across Juan Rivera’s map. Desperate to save his island, Juan snatched up his map and flipped the spit wad forward.

The wad (no longer soggy, but still unpleasantly moist) rolled off Juan’s desk and quickly came to a halt between the backrest of the chair in front of him and the girl sitting in it. Instantly, she began to cry.

As the back half of the classroom erupted into chaos, Dez Rylie threw his head back and laughed at the ceiling. Spencer, who was still shielding his map, noticed that almost everyone else who wasn’t dancing, screaming, or crying was doing the same. Those who had escaped the first onslaught were watching Dez like rabbits in headlights.

Everyone except Gullible Gates.

Daisy Gates was seated in the front left corner of the classroom, far out of spit’s way. She might have been humming softly, as she often did, but there was too much noise in the room to be sure. One thick, sandy-colored braid reached halfway down her back. She sat hunched over the desk, her nose an inch away from the forest she was drawing. She scribbled more pine needles onto a tree, somehow oblivious to the upset in the room.

Dez scowled when he saw her. Spencer opened his mouth to shout a warning, but cringed, unwilling to make himself the target. Dez pushed himself out of his desk and tromped down the aisle, intentionally treading on somebody’s notebook that had fallen to the floor. The back of the room had quieted. Juan was holding his wrinkled map in front of the fan. Jen was alternately blotting off her shoe and drying the tears of her sobbing friend.

It wasn’t until Dez Rylie’s shadow fell on Daisy’s desk that she looked up. Seeing the bulky kid standing before her, she quickly looked down again, vigorously scrawling pine needles. Dez bent down to examine her work and the entire class held its breath. If Daisy had been humming before, she was definitely not doing it anymore. The clock ticked loudly. Twenty minutes to lunch.

“Nice map,” Dez said.

Daisy stopped drawing and looked up. A reluctant smile spread across her face. “Uh, thanks, Dez.”

“It looks pretty good . . . except for one thing.”

“What?” Daisy asked, looking at her map as though it had betrayed her.

“You weren’t listening when Miss Sharmelle told us about forests.” Dez’s fat finger pressed down on Daisy’s pine trees. “Forests can’t grow next to mountains. You’re going to get an F.”

Daisy sat stricken for a moment, then fumbled for her large pink eraser. With hasty movements that tore little marks in her paper, she scrubbed at her forest until it was nothing but a gray smudge next to the mountains.

Across the room, Spencer’s body tensed. That was wrong. Daisy’s forests could grow wherever they darn well pleased. Taking a deep breath, Spencer began to say “Daisy.” But all he could manage was “Dai” before Dez silenced him with a threatening glare. Spencer felt the “sy” catch in his throat and he swallowed it down.

“Where
can
I put my forest?” Daisy asked.

“Forests only grow on tiny little islands a hundred and two miles from the coast. In geography, we call them Gullible Islands.” Laughing, Dez snatched Daisy’s pencil and drew a big
F
at the top of her map.

“You’re so dead, Dez.” Jordan Height broke the silence. Jordan wasn’t as tall as Dez; no one in the class was. But Jordan was usually the first to stand up to the bully.

“Shut up, pretty boy,” Dez replied, folding his beefy arms.

“I mean it,” Jordan said. “Miss Sharmelle’s going to drag you to the principal’s office so fast.”

“I don’t care,” Dez shrugged. “In fact, I kinda hope so. Maybe Miss Sharmelle will hold my hand. She’s a hottie.”

The students gasped collectively and Spencer averted his eyes, ashamed to even be sharing air with Dez Rylie.

“You
will
be going to the office, Dezmond.” Miss Sharmelle’s voice cut through the gasps. She was in the doorway, a large stack of papers in her hand. Her face looked a little flushed, but not as red as Dez’s.

The bully turned to face her, regaining his composure. “Let’s go,” he said.

Miss Sharmelle crossed the room, set the papers on her desk, and returned to the open doorway where Dez was waiting for her with a stupid grin on his broad face.

“And
no,
” she punctuated, “I will
not
be holding your hand.”

Chapter 2

“That sounds neat.”

The yellow school bus rumbled to a stop and released a hiss of air before the door opened. Four children with matching brown hair and a smattering of freckles moved to the front of the bus. James took two steps per stair because he was in first grade. Holly held the handrail and descended by hopping on one foot because she was in third grade. Erica jumped down all the steps because she was in fourth grade. The last one thanked the driver and moved down the stairs like a civilized human. Because, after all, Spencer was in sixth grade.

Once outside, the bus driver checked her mirrors and motioned the kids across the street. Spencer herded his siblings, wondering why the driver had even bothered to check the mirrors. There was never a car on this road anyway. When the children were safely across, the flashing red stop sign tucked away and the bus ambled down the road.

Without a sidewalk to follow, the four kids moved along the weed-infested edge of the road. September was brown in southern Idaho, but the farmers still fought it with huge sprinklers that launched water in glittering, sunlit arcs across the fields.

They passed a rundown farmhouse and Spencer turned his siblings up a steep side road. Suddenly, the neighborhood changed. This newly developed area on the hill seemed too fancy for the rest of town. Like pearl earrings on a pig.

Two blocks into the wealthy subdivision, the kids arrived at their gaudy, three-story home. A few months ago, the lot had blended nicely with the neighborhood. Green lawn and tidy landscaping. But, for better or worse, Spencer’s family had a way of making things their own.

In the weeks since they’d arrived, the lawn had withered to a dry and crispy brown. A clunker station wagon was parked mostly in the driveway, with one wheel on the dying grass. The car meant Mom was home. The bad parking job meant she was in a hurry.

The house, too, had once been a monument to wealth. Now it looked recently blown in from Kansas. On the porch, cobwebs hung scalloped from pillar to pillar like someone had hired Spider-Man to do the decorating. The “welcome” mat didn’t look too welcoming, all caked in dry mud so that only the
w
and
e
were legible.

Spencer opened the door and stepped inside, his little brother and sisters following. There was a clank of pans from the kitchen and Spencer heard his mother’s voice. Probably on the phone.