Then one day a Latino boy with a mouth full of licorice approached her. He was shaking so much from the sugar that she could barely understand what he was saying. Then he reached into his shirt and turned a glowing knob on a strange harness covering his body. One twist and he was normal. That was the day she met Flinch. It was also the day she became a secret agent.
Matilda was invited to join a team of kids who all had weaknesses. Flinch was hyperactive. Pufferfish was allergic to everything. Gluestick ate too much paste, and Choppers had the biggest buckteeth she had ever seen. With the help of a supercomputer named Benjamin and special nanobyte technology, each of their weaknesses was turned into a strength. Flinch’s hyperactive energy made him superstrong and lightning-fast. Pufferfish’s superallergies allowed her to detect lies, danger, and even the tiniest clues at a crime scene. Gluestick’s love of adhesives made him a human wall crawler, and Choppers’s big teeth allowed him to hypnotize people. Unfortunately, Choppers had turned out to be a criminal mastermind who had betrayed the team. The new fifth member was Braceface, whose monstrous orthodontia could become any tool. And for Matilda, the asthma that had made her feel so powerless became her biggest asset when she was given a pair of inhalers that not only eased her breathing but allowed her to fly. She still had asthma, but now it didn’t limit her. Now she was “Wheezer,” and nothing could stop her.
“It’s time to get to work,” Pufferfish said. “There are three astronauts aboard this station, and the last thing they want to see is a bunch of kids goofing off outside the window. As you know, the station has a ruptured oxygen tank. Unfortunately, the onboard computers have gone screwy and can’t pinpoint its location. Even worse, all the tanks are linked, so soon they will all be empty. Our job is to find the damaged tank and fix it before they run out of air inside. There are tanks all over the station. Let’s split up and find it.”
“Hopefully before my lunch is cold!” Flinch said.
Wheezer closed her eyes and concentrated. A quick squeeze and the inhalers were blasters again, sending her flying farther into space like a rocket. She angled toward the far side of the station, marveling at its construction: a series of interconnected pieces that looked like a LEGO set assembled by an alien toddler.
As she neared her section, she immediately spotted a seeping milky gas drifting out of a white tank mounted on the outside of the hull. She pushed a button on the chest plate of her space suit and a cable fired a magnetic tether. It connected to the station’s metallic skin and stuck tight. Another button on the chest plate reeled in the slack and soon she was less than a foot from the damage.
“I found our broken tank. It has a big, jagged hole. Not clear what caused it,” Matilda said.
Gluestick responded. “Could be anything—pieces of old satellite, rockets, stray meteorites, even a golf ball. There’s a lot of junk floating around up here.”
“Give me half an hour and I’ll have it fixed.”
“Don’t waste a second,” Gluestick said. “That’s all the oxygen we have left in our suits. Do you need any help?”
She felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to find Gluestick standing behind her. “How did you get here?”
“I walked,” he said, pointing to his feet.
“Are you worried about me, Gluestick?” she said.
“Um, I just didn’t see anything, uh, in my section and, ah, I just …”
Wheezer smiled. She had a little crush on her teammate. It was nice to see he might feel the same way.
“Activate welding goggles,” she said, and a pair of black lenses dropped down from her space helmet. She closed her eyes and concentrated on her hands. There was a soft click in the inhaler and a hot, blue flame ignited at the tip. Through the blackness of her welding goggles she could see its faint flickering, and she went to work on the gaping hole in the air tanks. “This fix is only temporary. These tanks will tear just as easily if something else crashes into them. Perhaps they should build some kind of protective shell.”
“I’ve been talking with NASA all day about it,” Gluestick said. “We have technology they won’t have for decades. I think it’s time we shared.”
As Matilda worked, Gluestick kept her company talking about his fascination with space. It was nice to have a conversation with Duncan. Most of their usual interaction involved spy work and filing reports.
All too soon, the tank was sealed. “All done,” Matilda said as a little red light flashed on her helmet. “Uh-oh. What’s that?”
“That’s our oxygen supply,” Gluestick said. “Time to go inside, Wheezer.”
“All right, all right. Keep your space suit on,” Matilda said, but before she could unclasp her tether, she was struck from behind and flung forward. She slammed hard into Gluestick, causing the boy to hit his head on the side of the ship and knocking him unconscious. A meteoroid about the size of an orange floated nearby. Wheezer was surprised that such a small thing could hit so hard. Just then another one flew by and slammed into the ship. She turned to see where it had come from only to spy a small wave of sharp space rocks heading right for them. The station would never survive such an onslaught. She’d be lucky if she could save Gluestick.
“Uh, I’ve got a problem out here,” Matilda said.
“Wheezer, you’d better get back in here,” Pufferfish cried. “You and Gluestick only have a couple minutes of air left!”
“I’m a little busy,” she said as she aimed her inhalers at a fast-approaching rock. She pulled the trigger. There was burst of light, then an explosion, and in the blink of an eye the meteoroid was vaporized—one down and a hundred to go. Unfortunately, the rebound force of the blast slammed her and Gluestick into the ship. It hurt, but she had no time to fully recover.
“Gluestick, wake up!” she cried, but got no response. More of the rocks were approaching fast.
She had to stop them, but there was only one way, and it was likely suicide. Without a second thought, Wheezer bravely released her tether and attached it to Gluestick’s suit. He was safe. She pressed the plunger on her inhalers and swerved into the path of the approaching meteoroids.
“Bring it,” she said, and with another squeeze she flew headfirst into the avalanche, zigzagging between rocks and zapping them one by one as she sailed past. When she broke through the other side of the rock shower, she used her inhalers to spin around and fly back in. She knew she would only get one more shot at saving the station and she had to make it count. So she closed her eyes to concentrate—a nearly impossible task considering the blaring alarm going off in her ears and the dizziness she was feeling from the lack of oxygen. Somehow she managed to will all the nanobytes in her blood to give her inhalers a full charge of energy. The scientists at the Playground had warned her to never bring the nanobytes to their fullest charge. They said the blast could kill her. But what else could she do? Gluestick was in trouble, and so were the astronauts. She had to save everyone, even if that meant dying herself. So with her hands glowing like two tiny suns, she took aim at the remaining rocks and pushed the plungers on her inhalers. The explosion sent her spinning wildly off course, end over end away from the ship … and that’s when her air ran out.
Heathcliff Hodges was not insane. All you had to do was ask him. Sure, he was angry and irrational and had attacked several of the guards at the Arlington Hospital for the Criminally Insane, but anyone would react that way if they had to sit in group therapy three hours a day learning how to hug. Every day he and a collection of insane misfits talked about their feelings. It was driving him bonkers.
“I almost destroyed the world,” Dr. Trouble cried, tears streaming out of the eyeholes of the huge black mask he refused to take off his head. It had big antler-like appendages that were incredibly distracting. They were also prone to poking the other patients in the eyes. “I mean, I was this close! If I could have just gotten my mystic pyramid to line up correctly with the path of the sun I would have fried the entire Earth like an egg!”
“You?
??ll get another chance,” Ragdoll said, patting him on the shoulder. She was annoyingly supportive of the other patients in group therapy, which baffled Heathcliff. Ragdoll had built a machine that turned an entire town into paper dolls. Where was her compassion when half the population of Athens, Georgia, was flattened like a pancake?
“No, I won’t!” Dr. Trouble cried. “The sun only aligns in that precise manner every one thousand years. I blew it!”
“You could always clone yourself,” said Scanner. His high-tech suit worked like a photocopier, producing unlimited and perfect copies of him. He had used his duplicates to rob banks from Arlington to Dallas. Seemed like a great plan to Heathcliff; unfortunately, the fool had run out of toner during a heist. “Make a copy of yourself and pack it away for a thousand years. That’s what I’d do.”
Dr. Dozer smiled at the group. “Those are all good ideas, but let me remind you that they are also against the law. Does anyone have any legal ideas that might make Dr. Trouble feel better?”
The room was silent.
Dr. Dozer frowned. “OK, well, we’ll work on that next time. For now, I’ve noticed that Heathcliff hasn’t spoken.”
“Don’t call me that,” Heathcliff snarled.
“I’m sorry,” the doctor replied. “Would you prefer your other name? Simon?”
“I’ve given up on that one, too,” he said.
“Then what are you calling yourself?”
Heathcliff grimaced. “I haven’t decided.”
“Well, until then, is there something you’d like to share with the rest of the group?”
Heathcliff looked around the room with disgust. He considered keeping his thoughts to himself but then wondered if getting a few things off his chest might not make him feel better after all.
“I hate all of you!”
“Hey!” Scanner cried. “That’s not very positive!”
“Scanner, Heathcliff has a right to express his anger. This is a safe harbor,” Ragdoll said.
Heathcliff turned his angry eyes on Ragdoll. “I particularly despise you!”
Ragdoll whimpered.
“I’m losing my mind,” he continued. “And yes, I get the irony that this is a mental hospital, but I was perfectly sane when I was dragged in here. Do you know what it’s like to sit in my room without any diversions—no books, no television, no explosives! All day and all night I have to listen to my roommate, Chucky Swiller, giggle like an idiot at the boogers he digs out of his nose!”
“Let’s be honest. This isn’t about your situation. This is about the teeth, isn’t it?” Dr. Dozer asked.
Heathcliff frowned. “Yes! My amazing, glorious, magnificent hypnotizing teeth! Knocked out by a lucky punch from one of my bitterest enemies. And now, look at me. I’m powerless. Just some regular kid with a genius-level intelligence—surrounded by morons!”
He hunched down into his chair and tried to avoid their pitying eyes. What he didn’t want to tell anyone was that, along with the therapy, the empty space where his teeth had been was driving him crazy. He had developed the habit of poking his tongue in and out of the empty cavern, with its coppery-tasting hole, over and over again. He did it day and night as if his tongue might probe once more and find that his front teeth had suddenly returned from a long summer vacation. He could stand it no longer!
He leaped from his chair and yanked it off the floor. With all his strength he hefted it against a nearby window, which shattered on impact. Heathcliff dashed for it—prepared to cut himself to pieces if it meant escape—but before he even reached the jagged window frame, two hulking guards were on him. Both of the men were easily six foot seven inches tall, all muscle, with shaved heads and sour faces. They wrapped him in a snug straitjacket and shackled his hands and feet with chains that linked into a padlock at his chest. They slipped a hard plastic mask over his face to prevent him from biting anyone, then hoisted him onto a dolly.
“You do realize that when I rule this world you will suffer?” he seethed.
“I believe you’ve made that clear,” one guard said.
“You dare mock me? You will be the first to taste my merciless rage,” Heathcliff grumbled.
“Pipe down!” the other guard said. “You’ve got a visitor.”
Heathcliff was rolled into the visitors’ room. It wasn’t much more than a long hallway lined with cubicles. Each had a chair that faced a thick glass window. Many of the hospital’s patients were too dangerous to have direct contact with visitors, so they were separated by the window and communicated by telephone. On the other side was a familiar face—his goon. The man looked like he’d lost a fight. One of his eyes had gone blind and his hair had a peculiar streak of white running down it.
“So,” Heathcliff said into the phone his guard held to his ear.
The goon tried to pick up his phone, but one of his hands was nothing but a metal hook. He struggled with the receiver and it fell out of his steel claw seven times before Heathcliff lost his patience.
“Use the other hand, you fool!”
The phone was attached to a plastic cord that was very short. To wrap it around to his other ear the goon nearly had to strangle himself.
“What do you want?” Heathcliff barked but suddenly wished he could take it back. The goon had a reputation as a man who liked to break bones. Heathcliff suddenly worried that the thick glass between them might not be thick enough.
“I got good news fer ya, boss.”
“Tell me you’re going to get me out of here,” Heathcliff begged. He was so excited the phone fell from his shoulder onto the desk. The guard stared at it indifferently. Heathcliff leaned over so that his ear was near the receiver.
The goon shook his head. “Can’t do it, boss. This place is tighter than a drum. They’ve got guards guarding the guards. Never seen anything like it. You know they only put the most dangerous screwballs in here.” The goon paused. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say you was a screwball.”
“If you can’t free me, how could anything you’ve come to say be considered good news?”
“I delivered the present.”
“The present? What are you talking about?”
“The box and the letter! Ya know, the one you gave me in case of dire consequences. You said to give it to Gertrude Baker if you ever got arrested. Her mom moved her to Ohio, but I got it to her.”
Heathcliff grinned as he remembered. “If I wasn’t in a straitjacket, I would hug you! Good news, indeed. Do you know what was in the box and the letter?”
The goon looked offended. “As a goon, I take my employer’s privacy very serious. It’s sorta an unwritten rule of the profession.”
“Well, you would have hardly understood it, but that present will destroy the world.”
“How is that good news, boss?” the goon said.
“Because if Gerdie Baker is as smart as I remember, she’s going to build a machine so dangerous they’ll be forced to let me out so I can stop her. Screwball will soon be free!”
“Screwball? I thought you were calling yourself Simon.”
“If the world thinks I’m crazy, who am I to argue?” Screwball said, then a sudden giggling fit came over him. It went on and on.
“Wow, boss, that laugh is creepy,” the goon said.
“You like it?” Screwball asked. “I’ve been working on it for a while. I think it has the right combination of foreboding and madness. New name! New laugh! New doomsday plot to destroy the world!”
Then he laughed again.
“Real creepy, boss.”
ALL RIGHT, LET’S GET THIS TEST STARTED. THE LESS TIME I’M ALONE WITH YOU THE BETTER!
BEFORE WE GET STARTED, YOU NEED TO VERIFY YOUR IDENTITY, SO PLEASE TELL ME YOUR CODE NAME.
HEE-HEE. I FORGOT HOW FUNNY THAT CODE NAME IS … GIVE ME A SECOND. OH BOY! I HAVEN’T LAUGHED THAT HARD IN YEARS. I NEARLY WET MYSELF.
OK, NO MORE GOOFING OFF. LET’S GET TO THE TEST.
TO ACCURATELY DEDUCE YOUR MENTAL STATE, IT IS
IMPORTANT THAT YOU ANSWER EACH QUESTION HONESTLY. EVEN IF THOSE ANSWERS MAY MAKE YOU APPEAR TO BE A LOONY-TUNE, YOU STILL MUST ANSWER AS CLOSE TO THE TRUTH AS POSSIBLE.
EACH QUESTION IS MULTIPLE-CHOICE AND HAS FOUR POSSIBLE ANSWERS, WHICH IS WHY WE CALL IT A MULTIPLE-CHOICE TEST, DUH! SEE, NOW YOU’RE CATCHING ON.… YOU MIGHT WANT TO WRITE DOWN THE NUMBER OF POINTS FOR EACH OF YOUR ANSWERS ON A PIECE OF PAPER. LET’S BEGIN.
______________
1. WHEN PEOPLE DON’T LISTEN TO YOUR IDEAS, WHAT DO YOU DO?
a. CRY (3 POINTS)
b. POUT AND STOMP FEET (2 POINTS)
c. BREAK SOMETHING (5 POINTS)
d. PLOT THEIR DEATHS (10 POINTS)
______________
2. ARE PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT YOU BEHIND YOUR BACK?
a. OF COURSE THEY ARE! (3 POINTS)
b. NO, THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT ME IN FRONT OF MY FACE (2 POINTS)
c. NOT SO MUCH TALKING BUT LOTS OF WHISPERING (6 POINTS)
d. WHO CAN HEAR THEM WITH ALL THE VOICES IN MY HEAD? (10 POINTS)
______________
3. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
a. LORD AND MASTER OF ALL I SEE (7 POINTS)