54 - Don't Go To Sleep

Klonk!
“Ow! The Klingon got me!”

I rubbed my head and kicked my life-sized photo of a Klingon—one of those
warlike aliens on
Star Trek
—out of the way. I’d been reaching for one
of my favorite books,
Ant Attack on Pluto,
when the big hunk of cardboard
fell off the top shelf and klonked me on the head.

I kicked the Klingon again. “Take that, you evil piece of cardboard!”

I was fed up. My stuff kept attacking me.

My room was packed with junk. Things were always leaping off the walls and
whacking me on the head. This wasn’t the first time.

“Uhn!” I gave the Klingon another kick for good measure.

“Matthew Amsterdam, twelve-year-old geek.” My older brother, Greg, stood in
my bedroom doorway, murmuring into a tape recorder.

“Get out of my room!” I grumbled.

Greg totally ignored me. He always does.

“Matt is skinny, small for his age, with a round, piglike baby face,” he
said. He was still talking into the tape recorder.

“Matt’s hair is so blond that, from a distance, he almost looks bald.” Greg
spoke in a deep, fake voice. He was trying to sound like the guy who describes
animals on those nature shows.

“At least I don’t have a Brillo pad sitting on my head,” I cracked.

Greg and my sister, Pam, both have wiry brown hair. Mine is white-blond and
really thin. Mom says my dad had the same hair as me. But I don’t remember him.
He died when I was a baby.

Greg smirked at me and went on in that
Wild Kingdom
voice. “Matt’s
natural habitat is a small bedroom filled with science-fiction books, models of
alien spacecraft, comic books, dirty socks, rotten pizza crusts, and other
geekazoid stuff. How can Matt stand it? Scientists are puzzled by this.
Remember, geeks have always been a mystery to normal humans.”

“I’d rather be a geek than a nerd like you,” I said.

“You’re not smart enough to be a nerd,” he shot back in his regular voice.

My sister, Pam, appeared beside him in the doorway. “What’s happening here in
Geek World?” she asked. “Did the mother ship finally come for you, Matt?”

I threw
Ant Attack on Pluto
at her.

Pam is in tenth grade. Greg is in eleventh. They gang up on me all the time.

Greg spoke into his tape recorder again. “When threatened, the geek
will
attack. However, he is about as dangerous as a bowl of mashed potatoes.”

“Get out!” I yelled. I tried to close the door, but they blocked it.

“I can’t leave,” Greg protested. “I have a school project. I have to watch
everybody in the family and write a paper about how they act. It’s for social
studies.”

“Go watch Pam pick her nose,” I snapped.

Pam knocked Greg aside and pushed her way into the room. She grabbed me by
the neck of my
Star Trek
T-shirt.

“Take that back!” she ordered.

“Let go!” I cried. “You’re stretching out my shirt!”

“Matthew is very touchy about his geek clothes,” Greg mumbled into the
recorder.

“I said, take that back!” Pam shook me. “Or I’ll sic Biggie on you!”

Biggie is our dog. He’s not big—he’s a dachshund. But he hates me for some
reason.

With everybody else—even total strangers—he wags his tail, licks their
hands, the whole bit. With me, he growls and snaps.

Once Biggie sneaked into my room and bit me in my sleep. I’m a heavy sleeper—it takes a lot to wake me up. But believe me, when a dog bites you, you wake
up.

“Here, Biggie!” Pam called.

“Okay!” I cried. “I take it back.”

“Good answer,” Pam said. “You win the noogie prize!” She started knocking me
on the head.

“Ow! Ow!” I gasped.

“The geek’s sister gives him noogies to the head,” Greg commented. “Geek
says, ‘Ow’.”

Finally Pam let me go. I stumbled and collapsed on my bed. The bed knocked
against the wall. A pile of books rained down on me from the shelf over my head.

“Give me that tape recorder for a second,” Pam said to Greg. She snatched it
from him and yelled into the microphone. “The geek is down! Thanks to me, Pamela
Amsterdam, the world is safe for cool people again! Woo! Woo! Woo!”

I hate my life.

Pam and Greg use me as their human punching bag. Maybe if Mom were around
more, she’d be able to stop them.

But she is hardly ever around. She works two jobs. Her day job is teaching
people how to use computers. And her night job is typing at a law firm.

Pam and Greg are supposed to be taking care of me. They take care of me, all
right.

They make sure I’m miserable twenty-four hours a day.

“This room stinks,” Pam groaned. “Let’s get out of here, Greg.”

They slammed the door behind them. My model space shuttle fell off the
dresser and crashed to the floor.

At least they left me alone. I didn’t care what mean things they said, as
long as they went away.

I settled on my bed to read
Ant Attack on Pluto.
I’d much rather be on
the planet Pluto than in my own house—even with giant ants shooting spit rays
at me.

My bed felt lumpy. I shoved a bunch of books and clothes to the floor.

I had the smallest bedroom in the house—of course. I always got the worst
of everything. Even the guest room was bigger than my room.

I didn’t understand it. I needed a big room more than anybody! I had so many
books, posters, models, and other junk that there was barely room for me to
sleep.

I opened my book and started reading. I came to a really scary part. Justin
Case, a human space traveler, was captured by the evil ant emperor. The ant
emperor closed in on him, closer, closer…

I shut my eyes for a second—just a second—but I guess I fell asleep.
Suddenly I felt the ant emperor’s hot, stinking breath on my face!

Ugh! It smelled exactly like dog food. Then I heard growling. I opened my
eyes.

It was worse than I thought. Worse than an ant emperor. It was Biggie—ready
to spring!

“Biggie!” I screamed. “Get off me!”

Snap!
He attacked me with his gaping dachshund jaws.

I dodged him—he missed me. I shoved him off the bed.

He snarled at me and tried to jump back up. He was too short. He couldn’t
reach the bed without taking a running leap.

I stood on the bed. Biggie snapped at my feet. “Help!” I yelled.

That’s when I saw Pam and Greg in the doorway, laughing their heads off.

Biggie backed up to take his running jump. “Help me, you guys!” I begged.

“Yeah, right,” Pam said. Greg doubled over laughing.

“Come on,” I whined. “I can’t get down! He’ll bite me!”

Greg gasped for breath. “Why do you think we put him on your bed in the first place? Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

“You shouldn’t sleep so much, Matt,” Greg said. “We thought we had to wake
you up.”

“Besides, we were bored,” Pam added. “We wanted to have some fun.”

Biggie galloped across the room and leaped onto the bed. As he jumped up, I
jumped down. I scurried across the floor—slipping on comic books as I ran.

Biggie raced after me. I ducked into the hallway and slammed the door just
before he got out.

Biggie barked like crazy.

“Let him out, Matt!” Pam scolded me. “How can you be so mean to poor, sweet
Biggie?”

“Leave me alone!” I shouted. I ran downstairs to the living room. I plopped
myself on the couch and flicked on the TV. I didn’t bother to surf—I always
watch the same channel. The Sci-Fi channel.

I heard Biggie bounding down the steps. I tensed, waiting for him to attack.
But he waddled into the kitchen.

Probably going to eat some disgusting doggie treats, I thought. The fat
little monster.

The front door opened. Mom came in, balancing a couple of bags of groceries.

“Hi, Mom!” I cried. I was glad she was home. Pam and Greg cooled it a little
when she was around.

“Hi, honey.” She carried the bags into the kitchen. “There’s my little
Biggie!” she cooed. “How’s my sweet little pup?”

Everybody loves Biggie except for me.

“Greg!” Mom called. “It’s your turn to make dinner tonight!”

“I can’t!” Greg yelled from upstairs. “Mom—I’ve got so much homework to do!
I can’t fix dinner tonight.”

Sure. He was so busy doing his homework, he couldn’t stop driving me crazy.

“Make Matt do it,” Pam shouted. “He’s not doing anything. He’s just watching
TV.”

“I have homework too, you know,” I protested.

Greg came down the steps. “Right,” he said. “Seventh-grade homework is
so
tough.”

“I’ll bet you didn’t think it was easy when
you
were in seventh
grade.”

“Boys, please don’t fight,” Mom said. “I’ve only got a couple of hours before
I have to go back to work. Matt, start dinner. I’m going to go upstairs and lie
down for a few minutes.”

I stormed into the kitchen. “Mom! It’s not my turn!”

“Greg will cook another night,” Mom promised.

“What about Pam?”

“Matt—that’s enough. You’re cooking. That’s final.” She dragged herself
upstairs to her bedroom.

“Rats!” I muttered. I opened a cabinet door and slammed it shut. “I never get my way around here!”

“What are you making for dinner, Matt?” Greg asked. “Geek burgers?”

“Matthew Amsterdam chews with his mouth open.” Greg was talking into his
stupid tape recorder again. We were all in the kitchen, eating dinner.

“Tonight the Amsterdams have tuna casserole for dinner,” he said. “Matt
defrosted it. He left it in the oven too long. The noodles on the bottom are
burned.”

“Shut up,” I muttered.

Nobody said anything for a few minutes. The only sounds were forks clicking
against plates and Biggie’s toenails on the kitchen floor.

“How was school today, kids?” Mom asked.

“Mrs. Amsterdam asks her children about their day,” Greg said to the tape
recorder.

“Greg, do you have to do that at the dinner table?” Mom sighed.

“Mrs. Amsterdam complains about her son Greg’s behavior,” Greg murmured.

“Greg!”

“Greg’s mother’s voice gets louder. Could she be angry?”

“GREG!”

“I have to do it, Mom,” Greg insisted in his normal voice. “It’s for school!”

“It’s getting on my nerves,” Mom said.

“Mine too,” I chimed in.

“Who asked you, Matt?” Greg snapped.

“So cut it out until after dinner, okay?” Mom asked.

Greg didn’t say anything. But he set the tape recorder on the table and
started to eat.

Pam said, “Mom, can I put my winter clothes in the closet in the guest room?
My closet is packed.”

“I’ll think about it,” Mom said.

“Hey!” I cried. “She has a huge closet! Her closet is almost as big as my
whole room!”

“So?” Pam sneered.

“My room is the smallest one in the house!” I protested. “I can hardly walk
through it.”

“That’s because you’re a slob,” Pam cracked.

“I’m not a slob! I’m neat! But I need a bigger bedroom. Mom, can I move into
the guest room?”

Mom shook her head. “No.”

“But why not?”

“I want to keep that room nice for guests,” Mom explained.

“What guests?” I cried. “We never have any guests!”

“Your grandparents come every Christmas.”

“That’s once a year. Grandma and Grandpa won’t mind sleeping in my little
room once a year. The rest of the time they’ve got a whole house to themselves!”

“Your room is too small to sleep two people,” Mom said. “I’m sorry, Matt. You
can’t have the guest room.”

“Mom!”

“What do you care where you sleep, anyway?” Pam said. “You are the best
sleeper in the world. You could sleep through a hurricane!”

Greg picked up the tape recorder. “When Matt isn’t propped up in front of the
TV, he is usually sleeping. He is asleep more than he’s awake.”

“Mom, Greg talked into the tape recorder again,” I tattled.

“I know,” Mom said wearily. “Greg, put it down.”

“Mom, please let me switch rooms. I need a bigger room! I don’t just sleep in
my room—I
live
there! I need a place to get away from Pam and Greg. Mom—you don’t know what it’s like when you’re not here! They’re so mean to me!”

“Matt, stop it,” Mom replied. “You have a wonderful brother and sister, and
they take good care of you. You should appreciate them.”

“I hate them!”

“Matt! I’ve had enough of this! Go to your room!”

“There’s no room for me in there!” I cried.

“Now!”

As I ran upstairs to my room, I heard Greg say in his tape recorder voice,
“Matt has been punished. His crime? Being a geek.”

I slammed the door, stuffed my face in a pillow, and screamed.

I spent the rest of the evening in my room.