We Dine With Cannibals (10 page)

Middle school has its own rites of passage. The
most brutal, violent, and hard to understand of these is called dodgeball.

Celia and Oliver did not like dodgeball. Celia and Oliver might have preferred the lions of the Kalahari or the bullet ants of Brazil to facing Greg Angstura on the blacktop at recess.

“Oliver,” Celia said as the class split into two teams with a row of red rubber balls placed in a line between them. “Remember the spears. We can dodge anything.”

“Hold on!” Mr. McNulty shouted. “Team change! You and you, trade places.”

Celia looked to her left and looked to her right. Mr. McNulty had pointed at her. She had to go over to the other team. She would have to play against her brother.

“I … um …,” she said.

“Go on! You're holding up the game.”

Celia's shoulders slumped and she made her way across to the other side.

Mr. McNulty blew one quick blast on his whistle and the kids raced for the balls in the center of the blacktop. Oliver and Celia stood frozen in place, helplessly staring at each other. Dodgeball had begun. It was kill or be killed.

Greg Angstura whipped a ball sidearm at Oliver's head. Should he go left? Should he go right? He wavered. He waffled. At the last moment, he ducked. The ball sailed over him and smacked right into Jill Bessemer's face.

“Ow,” she groaned, burying her face in her Corey Brandt T-shirt.

“Out!” Mr. McNulty blew his whistle and hooked his thumb to the sidelines. On both sides boys and girls were falling down with the smacking sting of rubber on flesh. Greg Angstura was a demon. He raced from side to side, taking kids out, firing rubber balls like the thunderbolts of Zeus.

Celia stood toward the back, sidestepping balls as they flew her way. Very few did. Greg was dominating the court, and it looked like her team would win. Except that Oliver had also moved to the back of the court and was sidestepping balls as they came his way. The boy who beat all his video games went out. Annie and Stephanie went out. Oliver was the only one left on his side of the blacktop, sweating and panting and leaping from side to side. The other kids watched him from the sidelines with blank stares, just like the mummies in
Peru. This all felt a little too much like the fake Inca death trap. What twisted mind invented these sorts of tortures?

“Try to catch something!” Mr. McNulty pleaded. “Play!”

Greg raced toward the line in the center of the court and hurled a ball at Oliver with one hand. Oliver jumped and let it sail between his legs. As he landed, Greg swung another ball out from behind his back and it sailed right at Oliver's nose.

“Watch out!” Celia shouted.

“Ahhh!” Oliver shouted and put his hands up to protect himself. There was a loud
thwack
, and then silence.

Oliver had caught the ball.

“Out!” Mr. McNulty blew his whistle and hooked his thumb to the sideline for Greg to leave the court.

“You helped him! That's cheating!” Greg yelled at Celia. She just shrugged.

As Greg moped over to the sidelines, he scooped up a ball at his feet and, in one rapid motion, flung it at Oliver, who was still staring at the ball in his hands. Greg's throw struck him right in the ear with a
gong
! He wavered and waffled on his feet. He went to the left. He went to the right. He fell onto the blacktop with a
plop
.

“Hey! That's cheating!” Celia yelled and ran up behind Greg Angstura, who was laughing at how Oliver fell down.

He was still laughing when Celia's fist hit him square in the face. It was his turn to hit the pavement. Celia was the only one on the blacktop left standing.

“Out! All of you! Navels! Angstura!” Mr. McNulty yelled and blew his whistle again and again. “To Principal Deaver's office!
Now
!”

“But—,” Celia objected.

“Ugh,” Oliver groaned, still lying on the ground.

“Ugh,” Greg Angstura groaned, also still lying on the ground.

And just like that, recess came to its brutal end.

Principal Deaver was still at her desk when Oliver and Celia trudged back in. Half of Oliver's face was red from where it met the blacktop. Greg Angstura had a black eye. Celia's face was intact, but her sense of justice was wounded.

Sixth grade, she had decided, was nothing but a series of unfair punishments and cruel rituals. Like most things, it seemed like a lot more fun on television.

“I am not happy to see you both again,” the principal said. “And Mr. … um …”

“Angstura,” Greg said.

“Yes, Mr. Angstura.” Principal Deaver looked at his face. “I think you should go to the nurse to have your eye looked after while I speak to these two.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Greg said as he left the room again. He stuck his tongue out at Oliver as he went.

“Hey!” Oliver started to shout, but Celia put her hand on his leg to stop him. They were in enough trouble already.

“Navels.” Principal Deaver sighed. “Do you know who Theodore Roosevelt was?”

“There's a statue of him in the Natural History Museum,” said Oliver.

“He was the president of the United States,” said Celia, rolling her eyes at her brother.

“He was. He was also an explorer, much like your father. He led the first expedition to navigate
the River of Doubt, a river in the Amazon rain forest. His son Kermit joined the expedition and played a pivotal role in its success. Father and son worked together, and now the River of Doubt is named after them, the Roosevelt River. There is no more Doubt. The greatness they achieved as explorers is due to one thing: Teddy Roosevelt's commitment to physical fitness.”

“You mean, like, gym class?” said Oliver.

“I do,” said the principal. “He believed that a mind could be healthy only if the body was healthy. They were part of a system and one could not be strong unless the other was strong.”

“Okay,” said Celia, not sure what the principal was trying to say.

“Your performance today has been weak,” said Principal Deaver.

“So … you want us to lift weights?” Oliver asked.

The principal sighed and rubbed her eyes. “My school is like the Roosevelt expedition, parent and child working together to discover the Golden City of Knowledge. I am like the parent. You are like the child. And you are not strong enough to accompany my expedition.”

“We don't really like expeditions,” Celia tried to explain. “We're sort of indoor kids.”

“It's a metaphor, Celia.” Principal Deaver sighed.

“I think you mean a simile,” Oliver added. “When something's
like
something else, it's a simile, not a metaphor.” Celia's jaw dropped as the principal's face tightened. Oliver just shrugged at her. “What? I know stuff too.”

The principal studied the twins in silence for some time and then her face cracked into a forced smile. She started writing on a piece of paper on her desk. “I think two weeks should do it,” she said at last.

“Two weeks should do what?” Celia asked.

Principal Deaver handed Celia a note on school stationery.

“Give that to your father,” she said. “We will call to let him know you are coming.”

Celia looked down at the note. Of all the injustices she and Oliver had thus far faced, this was perhaps the worst injustice yet.

Oliver and Celia were being suspended for two weeks.

“You can't suspend us on the first day of school!” Celia objected.

“Celia, you have hit another student. Oliver nearly killed that same student with a lizard. I believe I
can
suspend you for two weeks and I believe I just have. You are the weakest part of my expedition! How's that for a metaphor, Oliver?”

Oliver shifted nervously in his chair. He hadn't meant to offend her.

“You may take your lizard from Mr. Rondon before you go.” Principal Deaver went back to looking at papers on her desk and Oliver and Celia knew their meeting was over, along with their first day of sixth grade.

Everyone else was in class and the hallway was as silent as a tomb.

Actually, as the twins knew all too well, tombs are rarely silent. There are bugs buzzing and spiders chewing, and lizards hissing and occasional death traps. One could more accurately say that the empty school hallway was as silent as an empty school hallway. Nowhere else in the world is there such an eerie silence.

“Who names his son Kermit?” Oliver wondered.

“An explorer,” said Celia with a roll of her eyes, pulling her brother along.

The door to the custodian's closet was still closed when Oliver and Celia got there. Their backpacks were weighed down with notebooks and textbooks they wouldn't use for another two weeks.

They couldn't hear any movement on the other side of the custodian's door.

“Maybe we should come back another time?” Oliver said. “I mean, if this were a horror movie, there would be a creepy body on the other side of this door and the moment we discovered it, it would start a whole chain of horrible events that would end with one of us getting eaten by cannibals.”

“Yeah, but if this were a comedy, we'd find Mr. Rondon dressed up like a giant baby or something. Or, like in a soap opera, he'd be in there crying for his long-lost brother.”

“And then we'd have to help find his brother and it would start a whole chain of horrible events that would end with one of us getting eaten by cannibals.”

“That doesn't happen in soap operas.”

“Well, it could.”

“Well, you have to get Beverly,” Celia said.

“I know, but—wait … what?
I
have to?”

“She's your lizard.”

“She's Sir Edmund's lizard.”

“Still. Your responsibility.”

Oliver sighed. The injustices would never cease.

He knocked on the door. No answer.

“I tried. Let's go home,” he said.

“Try the knob,” Celia said.

Oliver tried the knob and the door opened. It creaked.

“Of course it creaks.” Oliver groaned. “It always creaks just before something terrible happens.” He closed his eyes and pushed the door open, wondering what it would feel like to be eaten.

“Hello,” Mr. Rondon's voice boomed happily.

“
Gurrrlp
,” Beverly said, which was a completely new noise for her. Oliver opened his eyes to see Beverly on Mr. Rondon's lap. The custodian was petting her like she was a small dog. He set her on the floor carefully.

“Come,” Mr. Rondon said. “Quickly, quickly.” He ushered the twins into his little closet and closed the door. There was a shelf filled with cleaning liquids and a cart with a giant trash can
on it and a lot of supplies and a big sink and an entire wall covered with mops. “I am sorry you had trouble. Now we hurry, hurry, hurry.”

“What are you talking about?” said Celia, impatient.

Mr. Rondon turned and rummaged through the mops hanging on the wall until he found the one that he was looking for.

“Aha!” he said, and smiled. “All okay.”

He turned around holding a brightly colored mop that the twins immediately knew was not a mop at all. For one thing, it had no handle, and for another, all the strings were different colors and they all had knots tied in them. They all hung from a thick cord made of gold.

“A key-poop,” Oliver said.

“Khipu,” Mr. Rondon corrected him, smiling.

“Okay, now really,” Celia demanded. “What is going on here?”

Mr. Rondon opened the collar of his shirt to reveal the tattoo on his neck: an ancient key with all kinds of crazy writing in squiggly letters around it, ancient Greek letters, to be precise.

The symbol of the Mnemones.

“You take khipu,” he said. “You will need. For the Lost City of Gold.”

“Um,
what
?” said Oliver.

“We don't want it,” said Celia, crossing her arms.

“You need soon. Your mother say so.”

Celia uncrossed her arms.

“Wait, you've seen our mom?” Oliver exclaimed. “When? Where?”

“She come to me, just a few—”

With a
bang
, the door burst open and Principal Deaver stood in the hallway. Next to her stood a large school safety officer, even larger than Mr. Rondon. The officer clutched his walkie-talkie like a weapon. Mr. Rondon quickly shoved the colorful bundle of string into Celia's backpack. The principal didn't seem to notice.

“I believe it is time for you to be going,” the principal said. “Your suspension has begun.” She gestured at the lizard and Oliver picked Beverly up in his arms like he was carrying a baby. He grunted under the lizard's weight. She didn't scurry onto his back this time, so he had to strain his arms to carry her out of the closet.

“Mr. Rondon,” the principal said, looking at the custodian's open collar. “I never did notice your tattoo before. How very …
interesting
. Perhaps you can tell me about it in my office.” She looked down at Celia. “You may go,” she said. “Go straight home. Your father is expecting you.”