The Battle of the Red Hot Pepper Weenies (11 page)

J
ermaine presented a
perfectly good argument for why he should be allowed to stay home from school and play video games. “We're just going to be walking in the stupid woods all day, and learning about stupid animals, stupid birds, and stupid plants.”

“It's educational,” his mom said. “You'll get to be face-to-face with nature.”

“I'll get ticks or something,” Jermaine said. “You want me to get ticks?”

“You'll be fine.” His mom handed him his lunch. “Get going.”

So Jermaine found himself on the bus, along with all his classmates, heading for the William Stintz Wildlife Sanctuary.

“This is stupid,” he told Barney Emmerson, who had the aisle side of their bus seat.

“Come on, it will be great,” Barney said.

“Maybe for nerds,” Jermaine said.

An hour later, the bus rolled through the gate of the
wildlife sanctuary, drove past several buildings, and pulled up to the curb next to a large wooden cabin. According to the sign, it was the
REPTILE EDUCATION CENTER
.

“I didn't think reptiles needed an education,” Barney said. He laughed at his own joke.

“That does it,” Jermaine muttered. He'd been afraid they'd end up someplace with crawly things. It just wasn't natural for something to slither around without legs. He could see a display of stuffed and mounted snakes through the large window near the front entrance of the cabin. A sign above the display promised:
MEET OUR NATIVE WILDLIFE
.

“Not me.” Jermaine hopped off the bus with the rest of the class, strolled past Ms. Dwetch as she counted heads, went into the building, then dashed out a side door marked
NO EXIT
before he had to actually look at a snake close up.

He glanced over his shoulder as he moved away from the building, to make sure nobody noticed his escape. That was a mistake. The side door was only a step and a half away from the top of a steep slope. In the middle of his second step, Jermaine lost his footing and stumbled.

“Gah!” he screamed repeatedly as he plummeted toward the bottom of the hill. It was at least a twelve-gah tumble, not that Jermaine counted. He was too busy bouncing off rocks.

Luckily, the thornbushes he rolled over on his way down cushioned his fall just enough so he didn't snap any bones. But by the time he'd skidded to a stop, his left arm wasn't feeling too good, his right knee throbbed like it had been smacked with a golf club, and his face felt like it had been used as a scratching post by at least a dozen cats.

Still on his back, Jermaine looked up the way he'd come. The hill was too steep to climb. He didn't want to risk tak
ing another tumble. But there was a narrow path right in front of him that led around the hill.

He got up, brushed bits of gravel and leaves from his hands, and started to hobble down the path, figuring he'd eventually find an easy way to get back up to the bus. The slope on the other side of the path wasn't so steep, but it was covered with thornbushes all the way up.

“Stupid wildlife…,” he muttered. He kept muttering and groaning, which is why he didn't notice anything unusual at first.

When the sound finally caught his attention, he froze in his tracks. At that point, he realized he'd been hearing it for a while. Hearing it, but not really listening.

Until now. Now, it had his full attention.

No way…

He listened with both ears. He even tried to listen with his eyes, nose, and skin. Above the sudden thudding of his pulse in his temples, he heard it again.

Shika-shika-shika-sshhhhh.

The rattle came from somewhere behind him.

“Snake,” Jermaine whispered. The word, barely spoken, had the power to jack his pulse even higher. He scanned the ground, but didn't spot anything.

The rattle got louder and faster. Jermaine sprinted for the hill on his left. Thornbushes snagged at his legs, but he pushed his way through. A couple feet up the hill, when he stopped to catch his breath, he heard the rattle again. It was closer.

Jermaine forced his way deeper. The bushes grew denser. He pushed the branches away from his face, trying to make a path where no path seemed possible.

“Jermaine…?”

He heard his name shouted in the distance. They were looking for him. They must have spread out through the parking lot, he realized, to check the other buildings.

“Here!” he shouted. “Down here!”

“Where?”

Jermaine recognized Barney's voice. “Up the hill on the other side.” He tried to turn around, but he was too tangled to move. A thousand thorns snagged his clothes.

“Why are you up there?” Barney called.

“A rattlesnake was chasing me,” Jermaine said. Maybe the other kids would scare off the snake. Or maybe the people who ran the place would catch it. Better yet—maybe they'd kill it.

Barney laughed. “Good one.”

“It's not funny!” Jermaine screamed.

“Sure it is. Rattlesnake? Right. There aren't any rattlesnakes around here,” Barney said. “We just learned that inside.”

“I don't care. Get me out of here.”

“I'll tell Ms. Dwetch I found you,” Barney said. “Don't worry. I won't mention the snake. No point having everyone laugh at you.”

“Wait! Don't go!”

There was no answer. Jermaine listened to the sound of Barney running off. Then he listened to the rattle. It was closer now. But it was more than just close. It was all around him, coming from every bush.

“Help!” Jermaine pictured dozens of snakes slithering toward him, crawling up inside his pants legs and down the back of his shirt, sinking their fangs into him all at once and pumping the wounds full of deadly venom.

He looked at a branch that ran right past his face. It shook, making a rattling sound.

So did other branches.

Shika-shika-shika-sshhhhh.

Jermaine twisted, trying to break free. The branches tightened. The whole hill filled with rattling as every bush shook. Thorns dug through his clothes, piercing his flesh. The branches tightened across his chest, keeping him from screaming again. The ground beneath him pulsed as the roots shivered in anticipation.

As the branches pulled him down to the ground, Jermaine learned there are far worse things in the woods than snakes.

I
f my dad wasn't
so lazy, he would have cut down the tire swing years ago. But the swing stayed where it was, dangling from the old apple tree, long after I'd lost interest in it. Dad hadn't drilled drain holes in the tire, either. Which is why it had a bunch of gross, slimy water in the bottom. Stagnant water—that's what you call it. I didn't know that when I first encountered the little suckers. I learned it later. Anyhow, insects love stagnant water—especially mosquitoes.

The first time I got bitten, I was in the backyard with my friend Arnold, flying balsawood airplanes. I glanced down at my arm just in time to see the insect flit away. It looked like a mosquito, except it was green.

“Shoot,” I said, scratching at my arm.

“What's wrong?” Arnold asked.

“I got bit.”

“Bitten,” he said. Arnold was always correcting me. It was a pain, but it was his only bad habit, so I put up with it.

I noticed some more bugs near the tire swing. “Come on
let's go out front.” I didn't want to get bit—I mean bitten—again.

But the next day, I had to go in the backyard to get my soccer ball. I got another bite. Same kind of green bug. This time I managed to smack it before it took off. One less bug to bite people.

I took my soccer ball over to Arnold's house. But he didn't want to kick it around, because he was all wrapped up in making this computer game.

“Can I try it?” I asked.

“I guess. But it's not all working yet. And it's way too easy.”

“I don't care.” I sat down at the keyboard and clicked the mouse cursor on the
START
button. A rocket ship came out of the left side of the screen. Enemies came out of the right side.

A couple of the enemy ships froze in the middle of the screen. “I'm still working on the motion routines,” Arnold said. “The delta
X
value for acceleration keeps getting cleared, and I don't know why.”

I didn't bother responding to that, since I had no idea what he meant. Instead, I started shooting the enemies. In a couple seconds, I wiped out the first wave. “You're right. It's pretty easy.”

“After I get it working, I'll make it harder.”

I was racking up an awesome score. And I kept winning extra ships. Before I knew it, I had fifty ships. And then eighty. A little later, I was all the way up to ninety-nine.

“Cool,” I said. “Watch me get one hundred ships.”

“Uh-oh…,” Arnold said as I blasted away at more enemies.

“What's wrong?” As I asked that, I won my one hundredth ship. But instead of
100,
the display showed
0
. And the
GAME OVER
message popped up. “Why'd that happen?”

“It wrapped around back to zero,” he said.

I didn't get it. Math wasn't my best thing. “What do you mean?”

“I only used two digits for the number of ships. So after ninety-nine, when it reached one hundred, all the program saw was zero-zero. It thought you were out of ships.”

“I still don't get it,” I said.

“Never mind.”

I let it go. I hung out for a while longer and listened as Arnold tried to explain other computer-programming stuff to me, like how he had to tell the difference between when you held a key down and when you hit it a bunch of times. None of that made much sense to me, either.

When I got home, I made the mistake of putting my soccer ball in the backyard. That earned me another bite. The next day, we had a test on complex fractions, which I really don't understand. Except, I sort of understood everything this time. The questions didn't seem all that hard.

Over the next two or three weeks, I found myself understanding more and more of the stuff my teachers talked about—not just math, but science and English, too. I was grasping things that made no sense to me before. I even finally understood what Arnold had been trying to tell me about the keyboard, and about the ninety-nine ships. It was like when my dad rolled the miles on his old car. It went from
99,999
to
0
.

I was definitely getting smarter. Day by day. At a fast rate. By the end of the month, I was smart enough to figure out
what was happening. It was the bugs. Something in their bite was raising my intelligence. There are lots of examples of this sort of cooperation in nature. It's called
symbiosis.
Two organisms help each other. Each gains something. I provided the insects with nutrients—specifically, my blood—and they, in turn, provided me with greater intelligence.

I made sure to go out to the backyard each day. Then Dad started talking about getting rid of the tire swing. I couldn't let that happen.

“I'll take care of it,” I said. I was smart enough to know he'd leap at the offer.

“You sure you can handle it?” he asked.

“No problem. I'll get Arnold to help me.” But I was planning to do it by myself. I didn't want Arnold getting bitten and catching up with me. I was already a lot smarter than he was. I knew how to fix all sorts of mistakes in his computer program. Not that I told him. I didn't want to show off, or have him wonder how I got so smart.

I took our stepladder out back. Then I propped some cinder blocks under the tire so it wouldn't fall when I sliced the rope. After I cut the tire down, I carried it out to the edge of the backyard and stuck it behind a hedge where nobody would notice it. The stagnant water sloshed, and a bit of it spilled, but there was plenty left to provide a nice breeding ground for my symbiotic pals.

Perfect. The bugs were safe, and I could continue to grow smarter. I must have gotten bitten at least fifty times while I was moving the tire. But that was fine. I could feel my intelligence swelling and growing.

I headed toward the house. But I then realized there was no reason to grow smarter a little at a time. I wanted to do it in
one huge dose. So I went back, took off my shirt, and sat by the tire.

They swarmed over me. I grew even smarter. Pretty soon, I knew I was the smartest kid in the world. And then the smartest person.

How high can I go?
I wondered. Was there a limit? Would I reach a maximum, and then stay there? I contemplated the enigma of an upper limit to intelligence. Even finite things can appear infinite if the upper boundary is sufficiently distant.

And then my ultrasuperbrilliant mind had another thought. What if my brain had only a certain capacity for intelligence? Or what if my IQ reached 999? Was it possible that my intelligence could wrap back to zero, like the number of extra lives in Arnold's game?

That was too much of a risk. I was smart enough. I got up, batted the bugs away from me, and walked toward the house. I felt dazzlingly brilliant. I understood problems in math and science that nobody had ever been able to figure out. I saw a five-step proof of Fermat's theorem and a beautifully elegant way to confirm the four-color map theorem.

And then I felt a click, like a counter was turning over in my brain.

Huh? What? Why am I here? I itch
. “Momeee!” I screamed. There were bugs out here. Bad bugs.
I'll ask Daddy to kill them.
I ran inside, where I would be safe from all those stupid bugs.

E
dith had gone
to the library to look for the latest book in a mystery series she was hooked on. They didn't have it, so she browsed around a bit. She finally found a couple other books that looked interesting, including a graphic novel. As she was heading toward the circulation desk, she noticed a shelf under the videos with a sign that read:
PERSONALITIES. CHECK ONE OUT TODAY
!

That's weird,
Edith thought.
Maybe it's something about celebrities.
The shelf held a row of small plastic cases, about half the size of the ones movies come in. Each case had a label on the side. Most were just a word or two.
ADVENTUROUS, OUTGOING, FUN-LOVING, POPULAR
. Stuff like that. It wasn't all good stuff. There were a whole bunch with labels like
LOSER, COWARD, CRYBABY,
and other things Edith wouldn't want to be.

She grabbed the one labeled
POPULAR
and took it up to the desk.

“What's this?” she asked the librarian.

“Personalities,” she said. “It's the latest thing. We're the first library in the county to offer them.”

“Oh. Right.” Edith didn't want to admit that she still had no idea what it was, so she checked it out with her books.

As soon as she left the library, she opened the case. There was nothing inside except for a stretchy wristband—the kind people wear to show they're against a disease or in favor of some sort of cause. Except, instead of rubber, this was made out of braided wire.

Edith slipped the band onto her wrist, then stood there for a moment, trying to sense any change.
This is silly.
She knew a wristband couldn't make her popular. She sure didn't feel any different.

On the way home, as she passed the playground, a couple girls from her class ran over from the basketball court. “Edith, wait up,” they called.

“Come play, Edith.”

“She's on our team.”

“No, she's on our team.”

They fought over her until she shouted, “Stop that!”

“Sure thing, Edith,” they all said.

She put her books down and played ball until it was time for dinner.

The next day, Edith got invited to sit at the cool table in the cafeteria. And everyone wanted to be her partner for an art project.

Every day, for three weeks, Edith was popular. Other things changed, too, but not so much. She was a bit bolder than usual, and a bit happier. She realized that each personality band, just like each real personality, contained a mixture of traits, but the strongest was the one listed on the label.

And then the moment she'd dreaded finally came. It was time to take her books back to the library.

She didn't want to return the band. She took it off and left it on her desk. When she handed the books to the librarian, she said, “I lost the personality.”

The librarian leaned closer and stared at Edith. “Are you sure it's lost?”

“Absolutely.” The funny thing was, Edith knew if she was wearing the band, the librarian would probably believe anything without questioning her. That's how people are treated when they're popular. They can get away with all sorts of stuff. But, without the band, Edith had a hard time even getting people to notice she was alive. That didn't matter. The band was hers now, forever. “Is there a fine?”

“No. That's not our policy.” The librarian pointed to a door behind her desk. “Come in the office. We have to fill out a loss report.”

That's not so bad.
Edith had been afraid she'd have to pay for the personality. She'd fill out reports all day if it meant she didn't have to give up being popular.

Edith followed the librarian into the office. The librarian closed the door and handed Edith a pen. It was attached to a wire, like the pens her parents used to sign for stuff with their credit card. The other end of the wire went inside a black box that was attached to the USB port on a computer.

Edith picked up the pen and looked at the form. The first line asked for the missing title. She wrote,
Popularity
. The rest of the form asked for her name, address, and phone number. At the bottom, there was a box for her to check.
Patron gives the library permission to obtain a replacement?

Why not?
She didn't care what they did. She put a check-mark in the box. The pen got hot all of a sudden. Edith tried to let go, but her fingers curled around it. Her arm started to shake.

It lasted just an instant. Then her fingers fell open and she dropped the pen. The librarian lifted the lid of the black box and pulled out a wristband. She put it in a plastic case. Then she took a label from her printer. Edith noticed one word on it:
DISHONEST.

The librarian stuck the label on the case. “That's all. You can go.”

Edith got up and stumbled out of the library. The world felt flat and strange, like she wasn't really a part of it. Something important had been sucked out of her.

As she wandered past the playground, she heard kids talking.

“Who's that?”

“Nobody.”

“You can say that again. She's a total nothing. She's got no personality at all.”

Edith got home just as her mom was taking a garbage bag out to the curb. “I cleaned up some junk on your desk,” her mom said. “If I waited for you to do it, it would never happen.”

“whatever.” Edith went upstairs and sat on her bed. She had no desire to do anything else. There was really no place she wanted to go. There was really nothing at all she wanted to do. Ever.