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  Mrs. Hamp held up her hands in defense. “Don’t look at me. Mr. Hadley’s a government man. We don’t interfere with them.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’m a mother. And you shouldn’t interfere with me, either!”

  Chapter 22

  “Ruined by childish riffraff!”

  In the noisy moments just before class started, Spencer sat in his desk. A thin smile spread across his face when he recalled his mother chewing out Mrs. Hamp a few minutes ago. But the smile couldn’t last, filled as he was with guilt and shame about disappointing his mom.

  Daisy didn’t look much better, sitting in the corner. She arrived at the classroom much later than usual, her eyes pink from sleeplessness and tears. They glanced at each other only briefly. Just long enough to make sure that they were both still alive.

  Neither of them would look at Mrs. Natcher. They didn’t want to see if she still had sticky strawberry syrup in her gray hair.

  The only troublemaker who seemed unaffected by the events at the ice cream social was Dez. He belched in unison with the bell, trying to make his burp last longer. His expression quickly changed as Mrs. Hamp’s crackly voice sounded over the intercom.

  “Dezmond Rylie, Spencer Zumbro, and Daisy Gates. The principal has arrived and demands to see you—immediately.”

  Spencer stood on trembling legs. Daisy tried to get up twice, but seemed frozen in place. As Spencer passed her desk, she found the courage and stood at his side.

  Dez moaned obnoxiously but jumped to his feet. Dez seemed to have no trouble walking, having gained his “principal’s-office legs” through repeated trips to the front office.

  “Take the hall pass,” Mrs. Natcher said. She might have added, “You all get F’s for the year,” and Spencer wouldn’t have been surprised.

  At the door, Daisy shamefully lifted Baybee from its place on the bookshelf. The doll’s diaper was modestly in place once more, but the plastic forehead looked a little scratched from the bathroom tile.

  As they stepped into the hallway, Dez snatched the baby doll from Daisy’s hand. “I don’t trust you with that,” he said, tucking the hall pass under his arm.

  The three kids walked in silence for a while. But Dez, King of Unnecessary Noise, soon started making squishing sounds with his mouth every time he took a step.

  “You know,” Dez said, “the principal’s not so bad if you know how to handle him.” Spencer and Daisy didn’t acknowledge, but Dez continued anyway. “He likes it if you call him respectful titles like ‘Emperor Fatso,’ or ‘Honorable Senator Blimp.’”

  “Be quiet, Dez,” Daisy said.

  “Huh?” cried the bully. “What happened to you, Gullible Gates? You used to believe everything I said.”

  “’Cause I used to think you might have something worth saying.”

  The kids were at the principal’s office much sooner than they had hoped. But no amount of lollygagging could postpone the undesirable P-R-E-D-I-C-A-M-E-N-T they had gotten themselves into.

  Mrs. Hamp had a pleased glint in her eye as she motioned for the three kids to wait on some benches until the principal was ready for them.

  They waited about five minutes, Dez making Baybee dive-bomb off the bench onto her head over and over again while accompanying the scenario with gory sound effects.

  Then the principal’s door opened and Dez was summoned inside. The bully tossed Baybee onto the bench and went through the door as though he were going out to recess.

  Daisy and Spencer waited nervously on the bench. Baybee sat between them, and Daisy held one of the doll’s hands while Spencer held the other, feeling the uncontrollable need to hang on to something, even if it was only a lifeless, plastic doll.

  Dez appeared a few minutes later, his face a storm cloud brewing with bolts of negative energy. “See you chumps in about a week,” he grunted. “Emperor Fatso decided to spend me.” Dez probably meant to say suspend, but the bully didn’t look like he was in any mood to be corrected.

  As Dez walked away, Spencer and Daisy’s attention turned back to the principal’s office. A man filled the doorway, almost as big around as he was tall.

  Principal Poach wore a striped collared shirt and pink tie that looked miniature against his portly belly. He had a walrus face, complete with bristly brown mustache.

  Principal Poach’s eyes were squinty and small as he pointed at Spencer and Daisy with two fingers that looked like microwaved hot dogs. Then the hot-dog fingers wiggled, a gesture that Spencer interpreted to mean “get in my office now.”

  The two kids arose, Baybee dangling between them, and entered the office. Principal Poach shut the door and waddled to his desk chair. The principal was so round that the only way Spencer could tell he was walking, and not rolling, was by the stripes on his shirt. Once comfortably nestled into his padded chair, the principal stroked his mustache for a moment. Spencer looked for tusks, but didn’t see any.

  “An entire event—ruined!” Principal Poach said. His voice was high and whiny. It seemed biologically impossible for such a massive body to produce such a piercing voice. “Ruined by childish riffraff!” He slammed a hand onto the desk.

  “Twenty-four years I have been principal of Welcher Elementary, and I have never—never—heard of such behavior. We do not tolerate it. We cannot abide it.”

  What Daisy and Spencer didn’t know was that Principal Poach was giving them his memorized speech for first-time offenders. Dez had made it to speech number eight before Principal Poach suspended him.

  “During the Edo period of Japan, at the time of the Samurai, criminal punishment included such cruelties as imprisonment, exile, and penal labor. At any rate, the Samurai warriors of Japan saw the need for a corrective course of action to rectify one’s misdoings.”

  The speech, aside from being really hard to understand, made Spencer and Daisy shift uncomfortably in their seats. The parts of Principal Poach’s speech that Spencer understood were the bits about imprisonment, exile, and, although Spencer wasn’t exactly sure about “penal,” labor was never good.

  “Thus it is with you, my young friends,” Poach continued. “You are in need of guided correctional behavior. Due to the offense, I see fit to . . .”

  At this point in the speech, the principal would generally insert a punishment; he had any number of them memorized. But that morning, Principal Poach did something extraordinary. He left the safety of his memorized speech, looked right at Spencer, and began to speak on his own.

  “Mrs. Hamp told me of your mother’s visit this morning. I find your claims about the BEM highly unlikely. However, safety of the children is our top priority, and we will monitor school visitors more closely in the future.”

  Great for the future, Spencer thought. But what about the things that already happened?

  “We can never truly know if Mr. Hadley put you up to the task of mess making, as you have declared. But someone has to be punished. The ice cream social was a tragedy. I had more than a dozen e-mails from angry parents this morning. The janitors contacted me last night and I . . . I really wanted to suspend you.” He sighed, his walrus cheeks jiggling.

  Spencer and Daisy sat still as the principal rambled. They squeezed Baybee even tighter, feeling like they were barely balancing between suspension and the unknown.

  “But I’m not going to,” Poach went on. “Suspend you, that is.” His hot-dog fingers were nervously interlaced. “I would have, but the janitors encouraged another punishment more appropriate to the offense.”

  Spencer and Daisy looked at each other, eyes wide. Please, don’t let it be what I’m thinking, Spencer thought desperately.

  The principal regained composure and picked up his speech at the “insert punishment here” line where he had departed. “You shall both spend time in detention with the janitors after school, every day for the rest of the wee
k. I expect your full cooperation in this. Our head janitor, John Campbell, was very kind to dissuade me from suspending you. You might want to thank him.”

  Thank him? Yeah, right! Spencer felt sick. Daisy’s tears finally leaked out. They were being turned over to the janitors. Marv and Walter would be furious about the theft of the hammer.

  Spencer knew he would have preferred imprisonment or exile. Heck, even a samurai execution might be less painful than what the janitors would do.

  “In addition,” Principal Poach went on, “you shall both write a nice letter of apology to the Parent-Teacher Association, who organized the ice cream social. The parents will be glad to see that you are paying for your wrongdoings. Unfortunately, I must forbid you from attending any PTA activities for the rest of this year.”

  With some effort, Principal Poach stood up and smiled a walrus smile. “That will be all, children. I expect that no further disciplinary action will be necessary. Do your homework, eat your veggies, and don’t go looking for any more trouble.”

  But Spencer and Daisy didn’t have to look far to see trouble. Even as Principal Poach concluded his speech, one of Jamison’s creatures, a vulture-bat, crawled out from behind a painting of George Washington and took flight. The little creature swooped down to Poach’s desk and landed on the rim of an open can of peanuts. Both Daisy and Spencer had their eyes glued to the creature.

  “What?” Poach huffed, following their gaze to his desk. Meanwhile, the vulture-bat folded its wings and dropped into the can, scavenging for nuts.

  “Oh,” the principal said. “I guess it’s not professional to leave my snacks out, is it?” He picked up the can of peanuts. “But I just can’t help myself. I love a good peanut.”

  In horror, Spencer and Daisy watched as the hot-dog fingers descended into the peanut can.

  “Don’t!” Spencer finally shouted. The last thing he wanted was for the vulture-bat to get a good meal off the principal’s fingers. The walrus-shaped man paused for a moment and glanced in the can. Apparently seeing nothing, he plunged in and withdrew a few peanuts. Poach stuffed the nuts into his mouth and crunched noisily.

  “What’s the matter with you?” the principal asked.

  Spencer floundered for an excuse. Poach obviously hadn’t seen or felt the creature in the can. “It’s just that you . . . you forgot to wash your hands.”

  Principal Walrus chortled, his belly bouncing. “Pish posh,” he said, pointing back at his desk. “I use instant hand sanitizer.”

  Spencer peered around the principal and saw the bottle of sanitizer. It was the kind that doctors claimed killed 99.99% of all germs.

  Unfortunately, a slimy yellow salamander creature was wrapped around the bottle, wide mouth drooling all over the top.

  Chapter 23

  “So far I’m grounded for a week.”

  Mrs. Natcher’s classroom was relatively peaceful without Dez. At least, an artificial sense of peace could be felt if Spencer and Daisy avoided eye contact with Mrs. Natcher.

  The rest of the school day passed normally. Spencer aced the spelling test and Daisy misspelled only colonel.

  When the bell rang at the end of class, Spencer and Daisy hung back, wondering if it was worth trying to escape before detention. But what did it matter anyway? Sooner or later the janitors would catch them and punish them for stealing the bronze hammer.

  The chance to run was shot down when Mrs. Natcher took Spencer and Daisy by the arms.

  “The principal informed me of your detention with the janitors,” she said. “Perhaps I could help you find them, so you don’t get lost along the way.”

  Mrs. Natcher escorted them down the hall to the waiting hulk of Marv Bills. With a formal head nod, Mrs. Natcher turned them over.

  Marv glowered over the kids for a moment. “All right,” he said once Mrs. Natcher was gone. “John Campbell isn’t here right now, so you kids’ll be scraping gum off the desks until he gets back.”

  “Don’t you mean Walter Jamison?” Spencer said. He didn’t mean for it to sound so defiant. Spencer just wanted Marv to know that he and Daisy were aware of the janitor’s lies.

  “Come on,” Marv said and led the children to Mrs. Cleveland’s sixth-grade classroom. Wordlessly, Marv withdrew two flat razor blades that retracted into a handle by sliding a button back and forth. From his other pocket, he took two pairs of latex gloves.

  “You’ll need these. I want you to get under each desk, use the blade to scrape off the gum, and then throw it in the trash. If you finish this room, move to the next. I’ll come get you when Mr. Campbell arrives.” Spencer and Daisy accepted the razor blades and Marv pushed them into the room.

  It was a disgusting and intimidating assignment. The classroom had at least twenty-five desks. As Spencer crouched under the first desk and saw four hard, dried blobs, he silently vowed never to chew gum again. For Spencer, there could be no worse punishment than chipping off someone else’s ABC gum.

  Spencer pulled on his latex gloves. Last time he’d worn one, it had made him uncatchable. These gloves were plain and nonmagical, but at least they would keep the germs off his hands.

  Daisy didn’t seem to mind the task. She was already on her second desk, holding the fragments of stale gum in one gloved hand while working vigorously with the razor blade in the other. Taking a deep breath, Spencer followed her example and was surprised at how easily the old gum came free.

  “I bet your parents weren’t too happy last night,” Spencer said.

  “They were just worried sick. So far I’m grounded for a week. But it will probably be longer once Principal Poach calls to tell them what we did at the social.”

  “You didn’t tell them?” Spencer dodged a piece of gum as it chipped off and fell toward him.

  “What could I say? That we were on a secret mission for the BEM?” Daisy shook her head. “My parents have heard all kinds of stories from me. I know what they’d say: ‘Daisy, dear, someone was trying to trick you.’”

  “That’s what my mom told me,” Spencer said. “Minus the ‘Daisy, dear’ part.”

  “She thinks Garth Hadley was tricking us?” Daisy stopped scraping. “Could that be true?”

  “I don’t know. We just need to be careful.”

  They chipped rock-hard gum in silence.

  “You sure made a mess in the cafeteria yesterday,” Daisy reminisced, as though it were a pleasant memory. “Bet your parents were pretty mad about that. They were there, weren’t they?”

  “Just my mom,” Spencer answered. “But yeah, she was pretty mad.”

  “What’d she say?”

  “Said I was like my dad.”

  “Isn’t that a good thing?” Daisy asked, halting her gum scraping.

  “At your house it would be,” answered Spencer. “But I haven’t seen my dad since I was about ten.”

  “Where is he? On business somewhere?”

  “His own business,” said Spencer. It sounded too bitter, so Spencer explained. “My dad used to teach biology at a junior high school. His best friend was this scientist guy named Rod Grush. Sometimes they’d travel to do experiments and projects. It really made my mom mad because sometimes he’d be gone for days.”

  Spencer sat back. It was weird to tell this story. Like sharing a spoon with someone, which Spencer would never do for fear of germs. It seemed to link them together in an extra personal way.

  “Got so bad,” Spencer continued, “that Mom wouldn’t even let us say Rod Grush’s name around the house. About two years ago, my dad and Rod went to Texas for a project. He never came back.”

  “Must be a big project,” Daisy said, turning back to her gum chipping.

  Spencer felt his face go red. Gullible Gates didn’t understand. How could she, with her funny, Ford-driving dad?

  “No, Daisy,�
�� Spencer said. “You don’t get it. He’s not coming back. Nobody knows where he is. The junior high fired him. Mom says that his projects meant more to him than his family, and that’s why he took off.”

  “What?” Daisy’s voice was rich with disbelief. “I don’t believe it,” she said, a fresh piece of gum sticking to her razor blade.

  “What do you mean, you don’t believe it?” Spencer asked. He was getting angry, the way he always got when he thought too much about his dad.

  “I mean, your dad’s got to come back. Nobody loves their work more than their family.”

  Spencer slumped against the leg of a desk, his anger fleeing. His face was still hot and there were tears in his eyes. “I used to think that too. I miss him. He was the coolest guy.”

  “Did he say he’d come back?”

  “Yeah,” Spencer said, wiping a stray tear with his shoulder. He kept his head low so Daisy wouldn’t see.

  “Then you’ve got to believe him,” answered Daisy.

  “It’s easy for you. You believe everyone.”

  “Not anymore. I only believe people that I trust.”

  “Do you trust me?”

  “Duh,” Daisy said. “I think you—”

  Daisy stopped short and Spencer’s tears dried instantly as the classroom door opened. Marv stepped inside. “John Campbell is ready to see you now. Follow me.”

  As Spencer tried to regain control of his emotions, the prospect of facing the head janitor made him weak. Daisy came to his side and they followed big Marv until they stood at the top of the janitorial steps. Spencer noticed a few spots of sticky, dried root beer that hadn’t been mopped. The stains made polka dots on the stairs.

  “Down,” Marv pointed. The children obeyed, slowly descending the steps and feeling as if the janitors’ storage/office would swallow them like a shark.

  The basement room had been tidied since the last time Spencer and Daisy were down there. At the center desk, two chairs sat vacant, side by side. On the other side of the desk was the head janitor. Marv moved into position behind him like an ogre awaiting commands.