Sinister Substitute (5 page)

His plan was to then return Ms. Veronica Krockle to Geronimo Middle School (late at night and blindfolded, of course) and be done
with the whole maddening mess without
making
a mess (by, say, killing her).

But, Damien now thought as he zoomed home and changed out of his disguise, this was all taking longer than he’d expected.

Way
longer.

And since (as we all know) desperate, diabolical times call for desperate, diabolical measures, he began plotting ways to adjust his plan.

He had to figure out what to do next!

And when, exactly, to rid himself of that nasty cat-scratch teacher.

Apparently he wasn’t the only one thinking this, as he was accosted the moment he entered the kitchen.

“Boss!” Pablo cried, his little ratlike face screwed into a pained squint. “That lady’s a beast!”

“A monster!” Angelo agreed, through a mouthful of food.

“Want some soup?” Tito asked from over by the stove, where he was stirring a steaming cauldron of rosemary potato chowder.

And really, this summed up Damien’s dilemma. The Bandito Brothers were idiots and annoying and ate him out of house and home, and yet the aroma in the kitchen made him forget all that.

It was nose-wigglingly wonderful!

In no time, the despicably wicked Damien Black was on olfactory overload, drooling like a basset hound.

Damien, you see, did not cook.

He barely took time to eat.

He couldn’t be bothered with things like nutrition and hydration and hunger pains.

He had work to do!

Banks to heist!

People to abduct!

And yet the aroma in his kitchen made his knees turn to jelly.

“She threw her breakfast at me!” Pablo complained.

“And her lunch at me!” Angelo added (although through the food in his mouth it sounded more like “Ah wunhhh ah eeee!”).

Tito simply delivered a bowl of soup to Damien and asked, “Toast?” as Damien jelly-kneed into a chair.

Damien nodded, then held his long, pointy nose over the steaming bowl, his eyes drifting closed as he inhaled.

“You okay, boss?” Pablo asked (recognizing that there was something rather odd about his idol’s behavior).

Damien snapped to. “No, you fool, I’m not!” He grabbed his spoon and jabbed it in Pablo’s direction. “I had the wrong kid! How could I have followed the wrong kid? Four of those brats told me he owned a gecko, and I could tell he was hiding something when I asked him. But when I followed him, he
couldn’t
have had the—”

It was at this point that Damien almost slipped. You see, the Bandito Brothers did not know exactly what it was that the boy and Sticky had that Damien wanted so badly. They only knew that Damien wanted whatever it was very,
very
badly.

So immediately Pablo’s and Angelo’s ears perked.

Their eyes sharpened.

Their breath caught.

They were finally going to find out what this was all about!

(Tito, meanwhile, buttered the toast.)

But Damien (much to Angelo and Pablo’s dismay) caught himself in the nick of time. “—he didn’t have my
stuff,”
he said, then dug into his bowl of chowder.

Pablo and Angelo drooped, then watched Damien eat, wondering what his brilliant brain was plotting as he brooded in silence over his soup.

Damien was, indeed, plotting, but his situation with the boy had him at a great disadvantage. Children, you see, all looked alike to him. (That is, unless one had radically red hair or a brilliantly blond buzz cut. But even then, it was tough.) To Damien Black, distinguishing one child from another was like reading Chinese characters. The
vertical and horizontal lines of their faces all ran together in his mind. He had to really concentrate to distinguish one character from the other. And then, when several of them were thrown together, he got confused. They all just looked too similar.

Too annoyingly, confoundingly similar.

However, as he reached the bottom of his chowder, Damien (feeling now fortified and surprisingly refreshed) had the spark of a new idea.

And with it came the determination to try again.

He had to!

After all, he told himself, he now knew at least one thing more than he’d known the day before:

The boy was definitely
not
named Dave Sanchez.

Saving his sarcastic, fierce-faced teacher did not seem to Dave to be a good use of his superpowers.

(Or, in this case, superpow
er
.)

After all, superpowers should be used to fight evil, not save it, right? And according to Dave (and nearly every student at Geronimo Middle School), Ms. Veronica Krockle was most definitely evil.

So after considering Sticky’s position on saving Ms. Krockle, Dave had only one thing to say to his sticky-toed friend:

“No way.”

“Ah,
hombre,”
Sticky said with a shake of his head. “Get your head out of mud pie.”

“My head’s not in mud pie,” Dave snapped. “Ms. Krockle’s a beast!”

“Don’t I know,” Sticky said with a snort.

“So why would I want to save her?”

Sticky studied the tips of his little gecko fingernails. “To save yourself,
señor.”

“To save my—?” But then Dave understood. Damien Black wouldn’t let a little thing like following the wrong boy stop him. Damien Black would return to school! And he’d keep coming back until… until Ms. Krockle was freed and could tell the police that he was a madman! The police would arrest him and this time they’d
keep
him behind bars!

Dave hated to admit it, but Sticky was right. Freeing Ms. Krockle was
his
ticket to freedom, too.

Now, while these gears were grinding in Dave’s head, Sticky watched.

And waited.

And when he saw that Dave had reached the
inevitable conclusion, he gave Dave a sage little smile. “It may be ugly-buggly,
señor
, but it needs to be done.”

Dave pushed off on his bike. “I can’t believe it,” he grumbled. “I’ve got to save
her
?”

“It’s the right thing to do,
señor.”

“How can you
say
that?” Dave glanced over at the gecko on his shoulder. “How can you of all people—well, of all
lizards
—say that?”

Sticky shrugged. “He’ll kill her if you don’t.”

“Do I care? Do I really care? How many things has she killed?

How many frogs has she cut up? She’s evil, Sticky. She’s mean.”

“Don’t I know,” Sticky repeated. “But it’s still the right thing to do.”

“There has to be a better way,” Dave grumbled. “There just has to!”

And so, to avoid facing the inevitable, Dave did
not
sneak out that night to rescue Ms. Veronica Krockle. Instead, he did his homework, did his chores, and went to bed before being told to.

I should, perhaps, point out that it wasn’t fear holding him back.

It was the idea of rescuing Veronica Krockle.

Can you imagine a task so distasteful, so repulsive, so
counterintuitive
that you would do your homework
and
your chores
and
go straight to bed, all without being asked?

I thought not.

Now, it’s a well-known fact that sleep has many healing properties. Most people are aware that sleep is the time for your body to make repairs, but it is also linked to fighting off cancers
and bolstering memory and (believe it or not) losing weight.

As you can see, sleep is amazing, powerful stuff.

What sleep
cannot
do, however, is change reality.

It can only help you avoid it.

Until you wake up, that is.

And then you’re right back where you were.

Dave did, in fact, wake up the next morning.

And Dave did, in fact, find himself in the midst of his same dilemma:

Should he save the Crocodile?

Or risk facing off with Damien Black?

But… wouldn’t he also have to face off with Damien Black if he went to the mansion and set Ms. Krockle free?

Wasn’t saving her like two hazards in one?

Well… not if he went to Damien’s house while Damien was substituting at school. That might work.

Might
.

More confused than ever, Dave did what any sensible boy of thirteen would do in such circumstances:

He buried his head under the covers.

“If you play hooky,
señor,”
Sticky whispered through a slit in the blankets, “you will give yourself away.”

“He can’t keep coming back!” came Dave’s muffled response.

“Sure he can,
señor.”

“The school’s gotta figure out that he’s a phony sooner or later!”

“Most likely later,” Sticky grumbled. He crawled under the covers and began pulling on Dave’s ear.
“Ándale, hombre!
Quit being such a
bobo
slowpoke.”

Pulling on Dave’s ear was something Sticky did out of desperation. Usually because, say, a boulder was about to smash them to mush. Or a snake was about to strike. Or Dave was looking
left when a semitruck was bearing down on them from the right.

He also did it when Dave was being just plain stubborn.

As you might imagine, Dave hated it when Sticky pulled on his ear. Not only was it annoying, it reminded him of being a little kid.

Of being at the market with his grandma.

(His grandma who, it’s sad to say, had long since died.)

“Stop that!” Dave said, flailing under the covers. “Leave me alone!”

Unfortunately for Dave, his mother (who had just opened his door) came rushing in and pulled back the covers.
“Mi’jo?”

Sticky dived under the pillow while Dave bolted upright, caught his breath, and said, “Sorry. Bad dream.”

Mrs. Sanchez looked at her son with concern. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

“Uh, no.” He glanced at his clock. “Wow! Look at the time! I’m gonna be late!” And with that he got dressed and charged around the house, gathering his schoolwork, eating breakfast, brushing his teeth, and shouldering his bike.

“Later!” he called to his family on his way out the door.

“Have a good day!” his mom and dad called back.

“Say hi to your girlfriend,” Evie singsonged.

So Dave zipped down the stairs (without running into or over anyone), zoomed to school (without getting a flat), arrived on time (or, more precisely,
early)
, and discovered (by over-hearing other students talking) that Dr. Schwarz was no longer substituting for Ms. Veronica Krockle.

“Yes!” Dave said, pumping his arm. And as he headed off to his first-period class, he felt good all over. “See, Mr. Doom-and-Gloom?” he whispered
into his sweatshirt, where Sticky was hiding. “She’s back, he’s gone!”

“Ay chihuahua,”
Sticky said with a little tisk. “Something’s not right about this,
señor
. That was waaaaaaay too easy.”

“Maybe
you’re
what’s not right, huh? Maybe it wasn’t Damien Black to begin with!”

“Ay-ay-ay,” Sticky said with a sigh, and really, what else was there to say? There was simply no talking to Dave when he was this happy. You see, the wiring in his thirteen-year-old brain had switched to silly-circuit, and the fact is, facts have no place in the snap-happy zapping of silly-circuits. Facts are simply powerless when a brain is in such a state, and nothing Sticky could say or do would pop Dave out of it.

What
would
pop his silly-circuit, however, was walking into science class.

The teacher in the seventh-grade science classroom was not wearing a lab coat and black boots.

Nor was she wearing a brown tweed suit.

No, the teacher waiting patiently for her class to file in was just an ordinary, curly-haired, skirt-suited substitute, sporting a string of plastic pearls and a glittery I LOVE TEACHING pin.

“Wow, another sub?” Calvin Jones whispered as students huddled outside the science classroom. “The Croc must be on her deathbed or something.”

Guilt jolted through Dave. Where
was
Ms. Krockle? He had seen traps and cages and dungeons inside Damien’s monstrous mansion with
his own two eyes. He’d almost gotten caught in a couple of them! Was she in one?