Xander and the Lost Island of Monsters (4 page)

It's Mean Girl Number One, Lovey. As a baboon. Wearing clown makeup and a clown suit, her nostrils huge, her hairy knuckles dragging on the ground.

Not only did I make her look horribly—and awesomely—ugly, she is also doing something not so polite. If you've seen apes or monkeys at the zoo, you might have experienced this: sometimes they poop and then throw it. They hurl it at the people gawking at them through the glass, and even though it just hits the window, everybody screams and ducks as it slides down in front of their faces. It's completely disgusting—and completely hilarious.

That's what Lovey was doing in my picture. Pooping into her hand. Getting ready to throw it.

I make a weird squeaking noise and slap my hand over my mouth. It is the grossest, most spectacular caricature I've ever seen. The only thing is, I have no memory of drawing it.

How did it get into my notebook?

I'm about to put it away, but I just have to admire it for another minute. It's really, really good. County-fair-blue-ribbon quality. She looks alive. You can almost
smell
the stench.

I gaze at the drawing for another minute, this strange sort of excitement building inside of me. I feel like I did last year, when I asked my father for a Nintendo 3DS for my birthday and he said they were too expensive, but then he handed me this perfectly shaped box and I tore away a little corner of the wrapping paper and I recognized it.

Yessss!
I want to yell. I want to wave the drawing around the classroom, shout about it to the town, publish it in the local newspaper.
Look at how great this is!
I grin and swallow the giggles that want to come out. I've never, ever felt this way about a drawing I've made before.

Then I make a fatal error. A laugh escapes from my gut. If you can call it a laugh. It's more like an elephant trumpet. Deafening, echoing around the room, reaching every single ear. I can't control it. My hand falls away from my face, and I bend over, laughing my head off.

Peyton and Clarissa start laughing at my laugh. That makes me laugh even harder—so hard that tears come out and splash on the page. The colors don't smear. Peyton's guffawing so much he turns bright red and can't breathe; he just slaps the table over and over with his palm.

“What's so funny?” Lovey yanks the notebook from my hands.

“No!” I leap forward to get it back. My stomach lands on Clarissa's desk, on top of the glue. I hit my chin on the edge of Lovey's desk and bite my tongue. “Ow,” I say, tasting blood.

“Xander!” Clarissa shrieks. “My project!”

Lovey's face turns bright pink. She juts out her chin, and her hair fans out as if she's been electrocuted. She hops up and down, her mouth moving and a string of drool coming out, too mad to talk anymore.

Just like a baboon.

I'm lying stomach-down on Clarissa's desk, and Mr. Stedman's leaping across the room, and quite possibly I'm bleeding to death, but still I can't stop laughing. I point at Lovey and just let it out. That excited feeling stays with me. Finally, I am conquering Lovey.

Then Lovey gets her voice back. “WHAAAAAT IS THIS? I'll KILL YOU!” I've never heard a girl bellow like that before. She sounds like Peyton's dad.

I try to get up and away. Too late. She flings the notebook down, grabs me by the shoulders, and twists me off the desk. I fall on my back, the newspaper sticking to my chest. She's over me, raising her fist, and I close my eyes, waiting for the punch.

And still I can't stop giggling.

T
wo whole hours after spring break began, I'm still at school. Torture in the first degree. This is against the Geneva Convention, I think.

I must be exceptional. I never really thought so before today. But it turns out I am.

I'm the first kid in the history of time to get detention the day that spring break starts.

Yay, me.

Peyton pulled Lovey off me before she could break my face. Getting beat up by a girl:
masculinity, minus 2,000 more points
. Having to be rescued by your best friend:
masculinity, minus another 50 points
.

And somehow, though she's the one who attacked me, I'm the one who's in trouble.

Mr. Stedman's being a jerk, making me wait around until he's good and ready to let me go. No book to read, no paper to write on, no nothing. Just me sitting here while he cleans up his classroom and does stuff on his computer—I don't know what. Probably playing solitaire, or writing to all his imaginary girlfriends.

Finally, he types a note in boldface addressed to my
Parent and/or Guardian
, prints it out, and hands it to me. “That drawing you created is a form of bullying, Xander. It shall not be tolerated.”

“I didn't draw it,” I say, but I know that sounds like a lie. “And she bullied
me
. She called me ugly and made a crack about Asians. What about that?”

The slightest frown crosses his face. “Well. I didn't hear that, so I can't punish her.” Mr. Stedman crosses his arms. “Anyway, Xander, you're not allowed to punish her yourself, no matter what she says. It's not an eye for an eye around here.”

I just nod. What else can I do? He won't believe me.

I
don't even believe me. How can somebody draw something and not remember doing it?

“Xander, I don't know why everything has to be so difficult with you,” Mr. Stedman says with a sigh. “Go on home.”

I don't hesitate. I stick the letter into my back pocket, grab my stuff, and run out.

I find Peyton sitting at the bus stop. It's warm and breezy, just like spring break is supposed to be. So much for the weather forecast. This makes me feel better. I grin. “Aren't you supposed to be at baseball practice or something?”

He shrugs and holds out a bag of Flamin' Hot Cheetos. His blue-green eyes squint up at me from under his ball cap. His skin is a permanent goldenish tan from all the time he spends in the sun. “Don't tell my dad.”

I won't. Peyton's dad is basically bent on turning his son into some kind of super Olympic athlete. Water polo in the fall. Basketball in the winter. Baseball in the spring. Summer's for training camps in at least two sports. Extra time is designated for long-distance running. Or mountain biking down hills so steep and rocky I have a panic attack just looking at them.

Mr. Phasis is a navy pilot, and he wants Peyton to follow in his footsteps. If he found out Peyton skipped practice, he'd ground him for two weeks, easy.

“I'll throw some dirt on you so it looks like you went.” I kick a cloud toward his shins. The thought of his father makes bubbles churn in my stomach. He would rather Peyton find a new best friend. One who could mountain-bike or ski or even play driveway hoops with him.

The day after my birthday last year, I went over to Peyton's house, my Nintendo 3DS in my hand and a brand-new game loaded up.

I knocked five times fast and three times slow, our special
Hey-it's-me-I'm-coming-in
code, and put my hand on the doorknob. Mr. Phasis threw open the front door, a smile settling over his face like one of those clear plastic Halloween masks. His blond-red hair bristled like a rooster comb on top of his head. “Peyton's busy, Xander. Come back another day.” He began to close the door.

I stuck my foot into the doorway without thinking. Mr. Phasis was supposed to be gone for a few days, flying people to Florida. “Hey, Mr. Phasis, erm…” I tried to think of a reason why I had to speak to Peyton. Besides the video game. “I…the teacher…Mr. Stedman…” I was babbling, as I always did when I spoke to Mr. Phasis. “He gave me some work for Peyton.”

Mr. Phasis leaned against the door frame and considered me the way my grandmother considers mushy brown bananas when she's deciding whether to make some banana bread or just throw them away. “Why didn't Peyton get it at school?” He crossed his massive arms over his barrel chest.

I shrugged. “Mr., um, Stedman, like, forgot.”

Mr. Phasis looked down his long nose at me. The same nose Peyton has. Peyton says it's an aquiline nose, which means it's like an eagle's. “Two minutes. No more.” He moved aside. I leaped through before he could change his mind, and ran upstairs.

In his bedroom, Peyton stood at the far corner of his bed, struggling with the upended mattress. Grunting, he pulled a blue fitted sheet over the corner, then pushed the mattress back down onto the bed frame.

Immediately the sheet slid off the corner. “ARRRGH!” Peyton squawked. “IT. WON'T. STAY. DOWN!” He sat on the bed, put his hands in his feathery hair, and tousled it until it was as wild as a tangle of weeds.

“Hey.”

Peyton looked up and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. Was he crying? “Now is not a good time, Xander.”

I gulped, feeling my own cheeks go hot. Maybe I could cheer him up. I held up the 3DS. “Look what I got for my birthday.”

“Good for you.” Peyton stood up again and turned his back to me. “I can't hang out. I've got chores to do. I've been working on this stupid bed for more than an hour.” He lowered his voice into an imitation of his father's. “‘There's a wrinkle here, son. Redo it.'” He kicked the bed frame, then screeched and grabbed his foot. “OOWWWWW!”

“Hey, what'd the bed ever do to you?” I put the 3DS in my pocket and shut the door. “Didn't he show you how to do it?”

“Yeah, but only once, and I didn't think it would be so hard.” Peyton sniffled, his brows knitting together. “Who cares if there's a wrinkle? Why does it have to be so perfect? I'm not in his stupid military.” Peyton flopped on the bed again.

“Leave it to me.” Finally, I could prove to Mr. Phasis that I knew something. “My grandmother showed me how to do this.”

“But doesn't she do it some weird Japanese way or something?”

“No, she doesn't do it some weird Japanese way or something. She does it better than a military guy,” I retorted. “Just you watch.”

Peyton had missed one key step—you have to put one corner of the fitted sheet on first, then the opposite diagonal corner, pulling it taut. After I did the other two corners, I put the flat sheet on, folding the top part down like a tight envelope. Finally, I showed him the special secret. I slid under Peyton's bed and pulled the corners as snug as possible so there wasn't a single wrinkle on the surface.

“Thanks, Xander.” Peyton sounded relieved. I saw his bare feet hopping back and forth. “It looks one hundred percent perfect now.”

“No prob.” I gave the sheet one final tug.

Directly below me, I heard Peyton's dad moving around on the first floor. “Ha,” I said. “Your dad sure is loud.”

“Tell me something I don't know.” Peyton threw a blanket over the bed.

“Do the corners like I showed you, and I'll pull this tight, too.” I fixed up the blanket.

Downstairs, Mr. Phasis's voice rumbled. I could catch some of the words. “I better go see…little ne'er-do-well…distracting Peyton.”

Did he just call me a “ne'er do well”?
Indignation rose in my throat like a scream.

Mrs. Phasis said something I couldn't quite make out. I thought I heard my name.

Mr. Phasis kept going. “…real troublemaker…lazy…not even in…GATE program.”

Something like a cold, hard stone materialized in my gut.

“Phillip!” Mrs. Phasis said in a loud, stern voice. “I will not have you picking on him. That poor child. His mother—”

“It's not like I…to his face. Hey, PEYTON!” Mr. Phasis bellowed suddenly. These words went right into my eardrum, loud as a firecracker. “YOU DONE YET?”

“Almost!” Peyton shouted back.

Peyton's father clomped out of the kitchen, with one last comment to his wife. “I can't wait…Peyton…Army and Navy Academy…away from bad influences.”

The Army and Navy Academy?
I sat up. Ouch. Bad idea. Wooden board, meet forehead. I slid out from under the bed. “Peyton,” I said breathlessly, “your dad's sending you to military school!”

Peyton snapped his quilt high up over the bed and let it float down. “Yeah. For high school.”

“Yeah?”
I echoed. “You know?”

Peyton shrugged. “Yeah. It's a good school. They have excellent sports programs, and their graduates go to top colleges.” He said it like he was reading from a brochure. “It'll be fine,” he mumbled.

My chest clenched. High school without Peyton? That would be impossible. Like, utterly impossible. Everyone from around here had to be bussed to Valley Mountain High. Nine hundred teenagers and one little me. I would perish.

And Peyton—Peyton was not the military type. He couldn't even make his bed.

Peyton's dad flung open the door, his eyes darting around the room. “What are you boys up to?”

Irritation shot up my spine. I had a sudden, self-destructive impulse to tell him,
Making your son's IQ points go down, as usual,
but, thankfully, I managed to say nothing.