Dinosaur Boy (14 page)

And for a second, I think Principal Mathis remembered that person too. Her face softened, and she looked at me the way she had looked at me across the principal's desk when I had first met her.

“I never take the good ones, Sawyer. Only the troublemakers. The ones who make school miserable for everybody else. There were a lot of them here. Usually, I have to go to two or three schools to fill an order as large as this one. Think of it as a cleansing. You may not realize it now, but what I have done here will only enhance your educational experience.”

Her soft face melted, and her eyes became steely once more behind her enormous glasses.

“Of course, I am breaking the rules just a little bit today. I need thirteen to fill this order. As of this morning, I was one short. But my clients are eager to take possession of their shipment, and fortunately number thirteen fell into my lap just now.”

I shook my head.

“You might need a lesson in math, Principal Mathis. You had thirteen last night,” I argued. “Counting Allan and Cici, you expelled thirteen kids.”

“Yes, I expelled thirteen. But one boy turned down my invitation to Camp Remorse.”

My mind was racing. That
would
explain why I had counted only twelve. But who was missing? I wracked my brain. Who hadn't I seen on the obstacle course?

In my head, I ran through the list of expelled students. Gary, Brad, Mary, Nora, and Vivian had been expelled in the Purge. Jeremy and Emma, the next day. Then Justin and Gabrielle, for throwing food at me in the cafeteria. Then Sam, for hanging the sign on my chair. I had definitely seen all of them on the obstacle course. Who was I missing?

The answer came to me suddenly: Parker.

It had been his disappearance that had caused us to go searching in the first place, but had we actually
seen
Parker in the portable, or had we just assumed he was there because all of the other kids were there? What had happened to Parker?

And more importantly, if Principal Mathis only had twelve…

I looked up. Mathis had been watching me work through all this in my head. She nodded when she realized I had finally caught up.

“Elliot brings the total up to thirteen,” she explained. “Lucky for me he was with you this morning.”

The sound of Elliot's name made me want to leap at Principal Mathis, but I was held back by the jump rope. I strained my arms as hard as I could, but nothing happened. Next to me, Sylvie was jerking back and forth, trying to free herself.

“You can't take him!” I yelled. “Elliot is one of the good ones! The best ones! You said it yourself, you never take the good ones!”

“Desperate times…” Principal Mathis shook her head and picked up the Good Boy spray. “He'll make someone an excellent pet. Don't you worry, I'll make sure he goes to a good family. Maybe even one with children for him to play with.”

She took a step toward us, holding up the spray can.

“Now, time for you to go back to sleep. When you wake up, this will all be over.”

“You won't get away with this!” Sylvie screamed at her. “We'll tell! I'll tell my father. And the police! And—”

Principal Mathis cut her off with a laugh that was more like a snort.

“I have never been afraid of the Martian Council. They have known about me for years, and they haven't been able to stop me yet. And as for the humans? Well, that's the wonderful thing about doing business on Earth. No one believes children. Not even when they're telling the truth.”

She took a step closer to our closet. Then she smiled and held up the can, finger poised over the sprayer.

Next to me, Sylvie drew in a breath and held it, so that her cheeks puffed out. I did the same. No way was I breathing in any more of that stupid Good Boy spray. By the time we woke up this time, everyone would be gone. Including Elliot.

And Principal Mathis was right. No one would believe us.

Unfortunately, the decision not to breathe was not exactly a long-term solution to our problem. My lungs started to burn after about a minute. Beside me, I heard Sylvie pound the ground in frustration.

Principal Mathis stood patiently in front of us, holding the can at the ready. She wasn't the least bit concerned. She knew we would have to breathe eventually.

Sylvie gave in first. When she tried to get in a quick gasp of air, Principal Mathis sprang forward like a cat and blasted her in the face with the Good Boy spray. Four times.

Sylvie's eyes grew wide. Then they rolled up into her head as she slumped to the floor.

I could smell the gross, sweet smell of the spray. That meant it was getting in through my nose. I couldn't help it—my hands were tied, so I couldn't use them to cover my nostrils.

I could feel my resolve crumbling. My anger toward Principal Mathis faded away as the Good Boy spray snuck up my nose and into my brain. I couldn't remember why I was upset. I only wanted to be good. I wanted her praise more than I wanted anything else in the world.

Principal Mathis leaned over me.

“Breathe, Sawyer,” she ordered me.

I did. And my reward was four puffs of spray in the face.

Then there was just darkness.

“Wake up! Sawyer! Wake up!”

An annoying voice was coming at me through a thick fog. I couldn't quite place who it was or what they were saying. Or why they wouldn't leave me alone.

“WAKE. UP!”

This time, the words were punctuated by a sharp pain in my right side. Then another one. And another one, and another one, as something kept hitting me mercilessly.

“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake—”

“OK!”

My eyes flew open, and I rolled slightly to the side, to get out of the range of Sylvie's foot.

“What time is it?” I asked immediately. “Are we too late?”

“I don't know,” Sylvie said. She sounded frustrated. I couldn't see her very well in the dim light of the closet. “I woke up a few minutes ago. It sounds really quiet out there…”

She trailed off.

We were probably too late.

Not that it really mattered. We were both still tied up in jump ropes and stuck inside a dark closet in a building everybody thought was abandoned. It could be hours before anybody found us. Maybe even days.

By then, it would be far too late to help Elliot.

My tail started to cramp. I had rolled over halfway on top of it. I shifted my weight, and it gave an involuntary jerk of relief. One of my tennis balls snagged something on a nearby shelf, causing a waterfall of what felt like construction paper to rain down on me.

Tennis
balls.

“Sylvie!” I rocked upward to a sitting position. “See if you can use your feet to curl my tail up, so that the end is up by my hands.”

“Why? Do you have an itch?”

“No, I have razor sharp spikes that can totally cut through jump rope.”

I had spent so much time and energy trying to fit in, trying to convince everyone that I was safe to be around, that I had actually forgotten I could be dangerous.

When I wanted to be.

I could hear Sylvie wiggling around on the floor. After a moment, I felt her feet nudging the end of my tail toward my butt. It took a few more minutes, and a lot of grunting and weird contortions on both of our parts, but eventually I was able to get one of my spikes up to my bound hands. I twisted the tennis ball off the end and gingerly positioned a part of the rope against the sharp, serrated surface. I moved my hands back and forth a couple of times, and the spike sawed right through the rope.

Once my hands were free, I was able to cut myself and Sylvie out of our ropes in less than a minute. We threw ourselves against the closet door, but it flew open the second we touched it.

Principal Mathis hadn't even bothered to lock us in.

The kids were still running the obstacle course. I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Above their heads, the clock said 9:02 a.m.

We had only been asleep for about ten minutes.

I looked at Sylvie in confusion.

She reached down and picked up the can of Good Boy spray, which Principal Mathis had left on the floor just outside of our closet.

“‘Good Boy and Good Girl products have not been tested on hybrids,'” she read out loud. “‘Results may be unpredictable.'”

I frowned. “Principal Mathis didn't know that?”

Sylvie shrugged. “She's a full-blooded Martian. Her vision is so bad she can probably barely see the can, let alone read the fine print. Come on, let's get everybody out of here before she comes back.”

“And before the Jupiterians arrive,” I added. I had absolutely no interest in meeting them.

Sylvie ran into the midst of the obstacle course.

“Hey!” she said, waving her hands to get everybody's attention. “It's OK! We're going to get out of here! Follow me!”

Everybody ignored her and continued along the course as though Sylvie wasn't there at all.

“Stop running!” Sylvie yelled at the top of her lungs. “Stop doing that! Did you hear me? We've got to get out of here!”

She marched over to Elliot and grabbed his arm.

He shook her off and leaped over a stack of mats without missing a beat.

“The fan!” I remembered suddenly.

I dragged a chair over to the corner. Standing on tiptoe, I was just barely able to reach the off button.

By the time I climbed down off the chair, the temperature in the room had already started to rise. The crazy obstacle course running continued for several minutes, but soon a few of the kids started to miss steps. A couple rubbed their eyes. Nora fell off the top of the climbing wall right onto Brad, who was stumbling around in a daze.

Allan locked eyes with me, and I could literally see the moment when the Good Boy spray left his system. One second his eyes were cloudy and unfocused. The next, they were piercing into me like twin laser beams.

With a snarl, Allan threw himself at me.

• • •

We fell to the floor in a tangle of arms and my tail. I thrashed, but Allan was much bigger than I was and I couldn't get him to budge. I squirmed as hard as I could, but Allan quickly had both of my arms pinned down to my sides. He was sitting on my chest, and my plates on my back were being squashed so painfully against the ground that it was hard for me to think of anything else.

Allan grinned down at me as he slowly pulled back his right arm, aiming a fist right at my face.

It occurred to me then that one of my tail spikes was still un-tennis-balled. And it could saw through Allan's leg just as easily as it had sawed through the jump rope.

No. That would just be proving Allan right. And there was no way I was going to do that.

I closed my eyes, bracing myself as I waited for the punch to land.

Then, suddenly, I heard Allan shriek. And the pressure on my chest was gone.

I opened one eye just in time to see Elliot pull Allan off me and set him roughly back down on his feet.

“I am twice your size,” Elliot growled, keeping a grip on the front of Allan's T-shirt. “I could
break
you. And I will, if you ever mess with Sawyer again. Got it?”

Allan nodded quickly. Elliot released him but continued to glare threateningly at him.

Sylvie sauntered over, reading from the fine print of the Good Boy can again.

“‘Abrupt cessation of product may cause violent outbursts in up to five percent of subjects,'” she quoted. She looked around suspiciously at the other kids.

None of the rest of them appeared to be part of the 5 percent. In fact, they all looked a little bit confused and out of it.

Allan smoothed down the front of his shirt.

“Sorry,” he said to Elliot, then turned to me.

“Sorry,” he repeated.

Elliot was looking at him strangely. The scary look on his face had been replaced by confusion.

“Dude? What's wrong with your hair?”

Allan brought a cautious hand up to his head. I had been concentrating so hard on the fact that he was about to punch me, I hadn't noticed that his usual buzz cut had been replaced by a full head of hair that was gelled into tall spikes.

“Mathis,” he muttered, trying to make the spikes lay flat with the palm of his hand. Despite his efforts, the gel kept them more or less upright. “After she brought Cici and me here last night, she brought in a groomer. I think she gave me hair extensions.”

“A
groomer
?” Sylvie exclaimed. I could have sworn she was holding back a giggle. I didn't blame her. The idea of Allan having his hair done like a poodle
was
pretty funny.

Allan shrugged.

“It's all pretty foggy. What exactly is going on?”

“We'll explain later,” Sylvie said, before Elliot or I could open our mouths. “But right now, we've got to get out of here. Follow me!”

She strode purposefully toward the front door of the portable, putting on the heavy gloves she had snagged from the janitor's closet that morning. Most of the kids stumbled automatically after her. After being under the influence of Good Boy for so long, they were probably all a little more susceptible to being bossed around than usual.

“Are you OK?” Elliot asked me.

I nodded.

“Thanks,” I told him. “I didn't know you could…I mean, I know you're tall and everything—”

“I always wanted to do that to Allan,” he confessed with a smirk. “I just never got the nerve up.”

Allan, listening to our conversation, just grunted. Then he turned toward the front of the room with everybody else.

Sylvie reached for the door. The second her gloved hand touched it, there was an enormous spark and she let out a high-pitched scream and flew backward.

For a moment she seemed to float in the air, moving in slow motion. Then she hit the ground on her back, with a painful sounding thud. She did not move.

And all of us smelled burned hair.