“Mrs. Susan must have found out about the grease,” Mindy whispered in a panic.
“How could she?” Owen asked me.
“I have no idea.”
“Get up here,” Nerf commanded through the microphone. “Let’s see how hard you can hit this wadd.”
“Maybe Mrs. Susan’s just trying to embarrass us,” I suggested. “She probably thinks we can’t even break that thing open.”
“We probably can’t,” Owen said. “The Dark Arts Club uses a lot of paste. I could barely cut through it.”
“Come up here now!” Nerf insisted.
All four of us nervously stood as the crowd simultaneously booed and cheered. They were all thirsty for confetti.
We walked down the bleachers and over to the platform.
As we stepped up, I saw Darth Susan with Nerf standing right next to her. She was smiling so sweetly that it made my teeth ache. She winked as if to say, You’re going to do great. Then she winked again to say, You’re going down. She was an excellent dual-purpose winker. I gulped and pushed at my nose like I was wearing glasses. Nerf reached out and handed the stick to me.
“Why don’t you do the honors, Tip?” Darth Susan said. “You can stand on the box while the rest of your little group stands around you.”
“I don’t think that would be fair,” I said, hoping to talk my way out of this. “We didn’t win the supplies—Nerf did. He’s the hero. Let him hit it.”
“Well, aren’t you sweet?” she cooed. “Now, climb up onto that box and don’t get down until that wadd’s good and broken.”
We were doomed. And not doomed like the planet currently was with all the craziness in the streets and society falling apart. We were doomed like four kids who were out of their element. Geeks who had foolishly tried to pull off a practical joke that was about to backfire miserably.
We shuffled across the platform to the box.
I stepped up onto the box while Mindy, Owen, and Xen circled around me. I’ll be honest, which is something I always try to be: This felt like a terrible moment—maybe our worst day ever. Sure, there was the time we had hooked up the school’s computers to the wrong generator and accidentally blew up three monitors, but this felt worse.
Nerf began chanting with the crowd, “Hit the wadd, hit the wadd, hit the wadd!”
The entire student body joined, and soon my ears were ringing with the chant. I looked up at the piñata that was now hanging directly above me.
Some of the grease was starting to seep through the bottom, and a big fat drop smacked me in the right eye. I wiped it away and glanced around, wondering where Principal Woth was.
“Hit the wadd, hit the wadd, hit the wadd!” the crowd continued to shout.
“Just get it over with,” Mindy cried.
The screams got even louder. “Hit the wadd, hit the wadd!”
“This is probably my fault,” Owen sobbed.
Owen always blames everything bad on himself. I think he feels that it’s somehow his fault that the third Sand Thrower movie is so awful. Owen is just that kind of person. He’s smart, but sometimes he thinks life would be easier if he were less smart and didn’t have to think about things. Now he was overthinking what was happening.
“This is not your fault, Owen,” I said as a second grease drop smacked me on top of the head. “This mess belongs to me. I should never have suggested it.”
I looked up and summoned the courage of Beltcrazan, who is a human/robot hybrid in the Elf Scrimmage game. Whenever Beltcrazan gets in a pinch, he plugs his right leg into a wall socket and says,
Saying the words out loud made me feel a little braver, and when a third grease drop plunked down on my eyes, I pulled the stick back and forcefully swung. It wasn’t the hardest hit, but the piñata was so saturated that even my lame whack caused the wadd to burst and shower us with old smelly grease.
The crowd loved the oily surprise. They cheered and screamed as gray, goo-covered confetti filled every crevasse and crook of our bodies.
Darth Susan declared the Supply War officially over and instructed Nerf and his team to take all the supplies they had won to her office. The rest of the school exited the bleachers and made their way back to their classes. We four Geeks remained on the platform looking like greasy nerds.
I guess I wasn’t surprised that the entire school had laughed at us—that happened pretty often. I also wasn’t surprised to be covered in foul oil—because now my outsides felt as awful as my ins.
I wiped grease from my eyes and looked over at Nerf. Before he left the platform, he turned to take one last look in our direction.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Hunted Down
Everyone cleared out from the football field and returned to the school. It had been loud and overwhelming, and now it was just silent and depressing. Tyler, the janitor, approached us. He seemed unfazed to see the four of us standing there covered with greasy confetti.
Tyler had ratted us out! He was a lousy janitor but a pretty good snitch.
I wanted to be angry, but I was too sticky to throw a fit. The grease made it incredibly difficult to walk away from Tyler—one of us would slip, and then one of us would trip over that person, and another would pull the other down. We were like a less-coordinated bunch of greased pigs. Tyler was no help. He just stood there laughing as if we were the funniest mess he had ever seen. He even got out his phone and started filming.
I fell seven times before we reached the gym/bomb shelter where we knew the industrial showers were located. The showers were super powerful and were used for emergencies for when someone needed to hose off suspicious dust, or wash out their hair after being attacked in the streets by a gang of Fanatics doing makeovers.
We stood under the powerful water with all our clothes on and let it blast the grease and confetti off us.
It took only a couple of minutes, and when we were done, we no longer slipped while walking. We still smelled like grease, but our feet had traction.
“If my calculations are correct,” Xen said, “I swallowed one-point-two pounds of that disgusting grease. My insides feel like a gas station restroom.”
“If my calculations are correct, this day’s been a bust,” I added.
As we stepped out of the gym/bomb shelter with sopping-wet clothes and low spirits, the school intercom screeched to life, followed by the sound of Darth Susan’s scary voice.
“Uh-oh,” I groaned.
“We will be cracking the whip and taking away privileges,” Darth Susan continued. “All for your adorable personal safety. If you wish to thank someone for what’s happening, you might take it up with the AV Club.”
After she finished, the school crier shouted out from his post.
A classroom door down the hall burst open, and Nerf, Weasel, and Mud stepped out of their Dystopian Baking class. Weasel spotted us and yelled, “Hey, Nerf, it’s Tip and the Geeks. Let’s go thank them hard.”
We took off running down the hall.
I don’t want to brag, but I’m actually a pretty good runner. It’s probably because I’ve had a lot of practice fleeing from bullies. Mindy’s pretty good as well, but Owen’s slow, and the books Xen ties to his feet to make himself taller don’t exactly make him Dystopian Olympics material. But at the moment we were running like a team, a nonathletic, scared-out-of-our-wits team.
A couple more hallway doors opened, and other students joined Nerf in the chase. We dodged book bunkers and study hammocks as we scurried into the unlit cafeteria. Lunch was long over, and the room was shut down for the day. The floors were sticky and I could still smell the burnt asparagus and slightly expired tuna they had served for lunch. I considered running right through the cafeteria and out the far doors, but instead I jumped over the front counter and into the kitchen.
My friends did the same.
We crouched behind the counter hoping to hide. I desperately wanted to take out my inhaler to calm my breathing, but I was too nervous to move.
“If
we’re caught, it’s wedgies for sure,” Xen whispered.
“And toilet swirlies,” Owen added.
“And low fives.” I shuddered.
Nerf and his gang of not-well-wishers burst into the dark cafeteria, whooping and calling out our names.
It would have been nice for a teacher to come into the cafeteria and save us, but that wasn’t going to happen. Occasionally when things got out of hand, Staffers would stand near the trouble and hope the misbehaving students would knock it off. But at the moment, there were no Staffers to be found, and we were on our own.
“You Geeks have done it this time,” Nerf continued. “You blew it.”
I could hear people walking around the cafeteria, moving chairs and looking for us under tables. Someone threw something made of glass, and it shattered against a wall.
I motioned for my friends to follow me, and we began to quietly scurry farther back into the dark kitchen. I knew it was only a matter of moments before Nerf searched behind the counter, so we needed to hide for our lives. I wanted to go into the pantry, but when I opened the door, we were stopped by the sight of Principal Woth crouched behind a large box of irregular refried beans.
We backed out of the pantry and over into the far corner of the kitchen. It was dark, but it was easy to tell that we had run out of room to move. We were trapped next to a refrigerator and a large metal cabinet labeled POTS and PANS.
“My shy bladder’s relaxing,” Xen warned us.
“Does anyone have a club or a spear?” I asked.
I saw someone jump over the counter and land in the kitchen. It was Nerf. We were done for. He opened the pantry door, and I heard Principal Woth pleading.
“Please leave me alone,” he said.
“Sorry,” Nerf replied.
Nerf closed the pantry door and began to walk in our direction.
I shifted and tried to squeeze between the refrigerator and the metal cabinet. As I squirmed, I felt the cabinet move. It pushed out slightly from the wall, and even in the dark, I saw that there was some sort of open space behind it.
Owen saw it too.
Without communicating, we pushed the cabinet out a few more inches, and all of us scrambled behind it and into the hidden area. Mindy and I pulled the cabinet back into place.
While I was trying to catch my breath, Mindy whispered, “What is this place?”
I didn’t answer, so Nerf wouldn’t hear us. Besides, I had no idea what the space was. It seemed to be a forgotten room hidden behind a cabinet.
“Keep looking for them,” Nerf said from the other side of the cabinet. “Search everywhere.”
We heard someone open the doors of the cabinet looking for us. But since we were behind it, they found nothing. Nerf said a few words that most parents don’t like to hear and then closed the cabinet doors.
“There’s nobody in the kitchen,” he shouted.
“Maybe they evaporated,” Weasel hollered back.
“Don’t be dumb,” Nerf said sarcastically. “They probably never came into the kitchen, or they went out the other door. But they didn’t evaporate, whatever that means. Now let’s check Q Hall.”
Nerf barked some more orders, and I heard multiple footsteps scurrying away. After we were sure they were gone, all four of us took out our government-issued inhalers and pumped twice.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Bitten
“That was way too close,” Mindy said while exhaling.
“And where are we?” I asked, taking out my phone and turning on the flashlight.
As the room came into view, we all gasped, and Mindy followed her gasp with a “wow.”
The hidden room was actually not that impressive to look at. It was about the size of a normal bedroom but with low ceilings. There was nothing in it except for four large tin cans sitting in the middle of the floor.
“Splimp, do you think there’s food in those?”
“Maybe,” I replied.
“Do you think Lunch Lady Sniddle knows this room is here?” Mindy asked.
“I try not to think about Sniddle,” I answered.
Owen stood up and walked over to the cans. He picked one of them up.
“It’s empty.”
The next two cans were empty as well, but the fourth one was heavy and full of something.
“It’s got to be food. Forgotten food. That means nobody will miss it if it gets eaten.”
“Really?” Xen asked in disbelief. “The whole school is looking to thank us hard, and you’re thinking about food?”
“Why not?” Owen asked. “I’m always thinking about food. Besides, we’ve got time. I’m not leaving this room. No way. I plan on sneaking out when everyone’s gone and heading home without getting beat up. Hopefully by tomorrow people will have found something else to worry about other than us. In fact, maybe the world will finally end, and we won’t have to bother with any of this.”
“That’s actually a really sound plan,” Xen admitted. “It reduces our chances of humiliation by over twenty-three percent.”
“Of course it’s sound,” Owen bragged. “I came up with it. Years of being a coward have made me clever.” We sat in silence for a while before boredom made all of us antsy.
Owen took out his pocket rock.
Gently, he began to tap the top edge of the fourth tin can. When it didn’t immediately pop open, he started to tap harder. When that didn’t work, he went at the can like it contained a working lightsaber or a cheat code to the game Muffin Warrior, which we had been playing for months and still couldn’t beat.
“You need to bang quieter,” I begged. “Someone might hear us.”
“Splimp, it’s sealed tight.”
Owen pounded the can as hard as he could. It took some real whacking, but after a dozen more hits, the top finally cracked open around the edge. Owen hammered the lid back.
We all stood and walked over.
I shone my phone on the now-open can.
Inside was a green chunky substance.
“That’s disgusting,” Mindy said. “Ugggh.”
“It doesn’t smell that bad,” Owen said.
“It doesn’t smell like anything,” I pointed out.
“That’s what I mean,” Owen insisted. “It smells like nothing, and nothing doesn’t stink.”
“Actually,” Xen interjected, “it’s been proven that even nothing has an odor, and you can…”
Xen stopped talking, because Owen had put his pointer finger into the green goo and was pulling it back out. Whatever the substance was, it didn’t look like nothing.
I noticed that there was a date stamped on the side of the can.
“Look at that date,” I said. “That stuff’s over thirty years old.”
Owen held his finger up to his nose and took a sniff. He then shrugged and opened his mouth.
“Don’t do it!” Mindy insisted. “DON’T—”
It was too late. Owen stuck his finger into his mouth and licked off the green ooze. Sure, there wasn’t a lot of extra food these days, but I didn’t think things were bad enough to go eating thirty-year-old green goo. We all watched Owen with expressions of horror. Surprisingly, he didn’t die, or even make a sour face.
“It’s not bad.”
Owen reached his hand into the large can and pulled out a big fat chunk of goo. Before any of us could say anything, he bit right into it. It was one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever seen—and these days, I see a lot of disturbing things.
“Stop it,” Xen pleaded with Owen. “I have a weak stomach.”
Xen didn’t need to remind us. Not only did he have a relaxed bladder, but he got hiccups whenever he was scared and gas when he was nervous, and we’d all witnessed various things that made him throw up. He once hurled after seeing a dirty cafeteria tray. Another time, an educational movie showing how to milk a cow made him toss his cookies. He even puked when one of our teachers was just talking about warm eggs.
I thought for sure he would blow chunks
after seeing Owen bite into the large, wet blob, but Xen held it together and just hiccupped.
“It’s pretty tasty,” Owen reported. “I think it’s Salisbury steak or something.” He dipped his hand back into the can for more. As he pulled his fist out of the goo, a little something extra appeared.
Actually, a lot of something extra appeared.
Hundreds of wet spiders burst from the ooze and scurried up Owen’s arm. Mindy screamed, and when Owen realized what was happening, he outscreamed Mindy by at least ten decibels, which is an above-average way of saying he almost burst my eardrums.
Owen whipped his hand from the ooze and flung spiders all over the small space. I dropped my phone and started to swat at the ones that had been flung onto me.
Xen started spewing chunks!
I could feel spiders biting me as I kept bumping up against my friends. Each time I jumped, my head hit the ceiling and I saw stars. I knocked over a puking Xen and tripped over Mindy.
I fell hard against the ooze-covered floor.
Owen bent over and charged at the back of the metal cabinet, pushing it out into the kitchen and creating an escape route. I scrambled up off my butt and followed Mindy through the opening. We all spazzed around, slapping and brushing off spiders like it was a choreographed dance.
I ran to one of the giant kitchen sinks and stuck my arms and face under the faucet. Mindy ran to another sink and climbed into it. She turned on the water and sat beneath it like she was taking a sink bath. All of us were hollering, and I felt certain that Nerf and his gang would hear us and return to the scene.
After a few uncomfortable minutes, we got ourselves brushed off and calmed down to a less hysterical mood. Owen whimpered as we each searched our arms and skin for bites. I had at least twenty welts. The others had slightly fewer.
The marks didn’t hurt so much, but they sizzled and were warm to the touch. The spiders who had followed us out or been flung off were now squished or hiding in the cafeteria somewhere.