Janitors: Secrets of New Forest Academy Read online

  Spencer clicked off the light and locked the closet door. He had a 7T pushbroom in his hand. Anything struck by the pushbroom would be sent floating upward. It would be enough to get the job done.

  The fire alarm finally went silent as Spencer reentered the library. He didn’t have much time to destroy the Grime in Dez’s backpack. Once the teachers got the “all clear” sign, the school would be flooded with people again.

  Spencer approached the backpack quietly. If the Toxite sensed him coming, the creature would bolt. And Spencer didn’t have time for a wild Grime chase.

  He leveled the bristly end of the pushbroom toward the backpack. The zippers jingled slightly, and Spencer saw the backpack pulse like a heartbeat. Looked like the Grime had found something tasty inside.

  Spencer shuddered. Wilted, black banana peels? Melted gobs of leftover Halloween candy? He didn’t want to imagine what kind of nasty messes might be lurking in the folds of Dez’s backpack. How could anyone live with such a filthy backpack? Spencer’s was always tidy and clean, just like his bedroom, his closet, and nearly everything else that belonged to him.

  Finally close enough, Spencer slammed the bristles of the pushbroom into Dez’s backpack. The creature squealed as the backpack shot into the air. Halfway to the ceiling, the zipper parted and the Grime leapt out.

  Injured from the first strike, the slimy creature landed ungracefully on the floor and scurried toward the bookshelves. Spencer thrust with the pushbroom but missed by an inch.

  The Grime leapt onto the tall Biographies shelf and scrambled out of reach. Spencer wished that he’d grabbed an ordinary broom. A single tap would have sent him rising in pursuit. If he wanted to catch the Grime now, he would have to climb the old-fashioned way—shelf by shelf.

  Gripping the pushbroom in his left hand, Spencer leapt onto the bookshelf. He was halfway up the Biographies when a crowd of voices drifted through the hallway. Time was up. Any moment now, the librarian, Mrs. Natcher, and his classmates might return to the library to look for him.

  Spencer hoisted himself higher, reaching the top of the bookcase in time to see the Grime scamper forward, leaving footprints in the thick dust. Spencer swung the pushbroom, but the angle wasn’t right and he missed again.

  His best chance was to climb on top of the bookshelf. Spencer cringed. That wasn’t going to happen. No one had dusted up there for months—maybe years! Anything could be hidden in that dust. Just at a glance, Spencer saw an old paper airplane, a Snickers wrapper, and a wad of fuzzy gray gum. It was like a breeding ground for germs. And there was nothing that Spencer hated more than germs.

  Farther down, he noticed that a white plastic bucket had cut a trail through the dust. It was shiny and new, as if someone had recently slid it into place. But why would there be a bucket on top of the bookshelf?

  The escaping Grime leapt, cutting through Spencer’s thoughts. Its bulbous fingertips suctioned onto the side of the white bucket. With a twist and a slither, it disappeared over the rim to hide.

  Spencer inched sideways along the bookshelf, finding toeholds between books as he worked his way toward the bucket. He set the pushbroom in the thick dust. Reaching forward, he could barely grip the rim of the white bucket. He dragged it toward him, ready to snatch the pushbroom if the Grime tried to dart away.

  The library’s emergency exit squeaked open. Mrs. Natcher was the first to enter. She gave a little shriek when she spotted her student standing halfway up the Biographies bookshelf.

  Whether it was Spencer’s utter terror at what he saw when he peered into the bucket or the powerful draft of drowsiness that struck him, something caused the boy’s foot to slip from the bookshelf.

  Spencer’s arms pinwheeled as he fell. He struck the ground and rolled onto his back. Ten feet up, on top of the dusty bookshelf, the white bucket wobbled and teetered, threatening to spill its deadly contents.

  “Please, no,” Spencer whispered. Under Spencer’s pleading gaze, the bucket righted itself and came to a standstill, overhanging the top of the bookcase by an inch or two.

  Spencer closed his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. When he opened them, he was staring into the powdery-white face of Mrs. Natcher. The teacher’s lips were pursed tightly enough to crack a nutshell.

  Spencer’s escapade was the last straw. Students had been misbehaving in the library all morning. And how could Mrs. Natcher know that Spencer had just discovered the reason?

  A bucket load of squirming, angry Toxites.

  Chapter 3

  “That’s all?”

  Spencer sat on the bench in the front office, staring into the dull, lifeless eyes of Mrs. Natcher’s infamous hall pass, Baybee. It was a plastic baby doll wearing nothing but a diaper. The shame of carrying it usually discouraged kids from making unnecessary trips out of the classroom. But Mrs. Natcher deemed this trip to the principal’s office very necessary.

  Spencer rubbed a finger over the scratches in Baybee’s head. A couple of months ago, Daisy had used Baybee to fight off Dez, scuffing the hall pass violently on the bathroom tile.

  At least Daisy was innocent this time. Spencer didn’t even have a chance to tell her what he’d seen before Mrs. Natcher punted him down the hallway with the Doll of Shame.

  A nasal, whiny voice suddenly drifted out of the open doorway of the principal’s office. “Spencer Zumbro!” He said the name like a game-show host announcing a winner.

  But Spencer did not feel like a winner. He rose from the bench, resolved to face his punishment. With Baybee dangling limp from one hand, Spencer passed through the open doorway. He glanced around the big man’s office. A picture of George Washington hanging on the wall, an open can of peanuts on the desk. Everything looked the same as the last time Spencer was here. Even the reprimanding speech started out exactly the same way, with Principal Poach slamming his hand onto the desk, fat fingers jiggling on ­impact.

  “Twenty-four years I have been principal of Welcher Elementary, and I have never—never—heard of such behavior.”

  His thick, pink fingers traced down the back of the telephone on his desk. “I just had a very informative conversation with the librarian.” He offered a false smile. “Why don’t you tell me your side of the story?”

  Spencer remembered Daisy’s last words to him: “Don’t get caught.” But Spencer had known all along that someone would catch him. Somehow, knowing that he would get in trouble gave him courage. He knew he was doing the right thing, even if nobody else could see it. There was no point in trying to weasel out of this.

  “It’s all true,” Spencer said. “I pulled the fire alarm and climbed onto one of the bookshelves.”

  Such a quick confession really threw Principal Poach out of his groove. “No. I don’t think you understand me.” He interlaced his hot-dog fingers. “I’m going to ask you one more time. Did you, or did you not, pull the fire alarm?”

  “I already said,” Spencer muttered. “Yes. I pulled it. And I climbed up the bookshelf—the Biographies section, I think.”

  Principal Poach leaned back with a humph. “What to do? What to do?” the principal muttered to himself. “Pulling the fire alarm is one thing ... I might have let that slide. But this blatant disregard for library books must not go unpunished!”

  He sat forward, and Spencer heard his poor chair groan under the man’s weight. Spencer was imagining all the terrible judgments that could possibly escape Poach’s mouth: detention, suspension, execution ...

  “Tell me ...” The principal squinted. “Do you like to read?”

  Spencer shifted Baybee from one hand to another. Was this a trick question? “Yes,” he finally admitted.

  “Then I’m afraid this is going to be hard for you to accept.” Principal Poach cleared his throat like a judge pronouncing a verdict. “From this point on—for the rest of the school year—you are absolutely forbidden from reading any book from the library’s Biographies section!”

  Poach sat back, allowing his punishment to sink in. Spe
ncer felt the corners of his mouth tugging into a smile. He wanted to pull Baybee into a victory embrace. That was it? That was the whole punishment? Spencer didn’t even like reading biographies. Who did? In fact, Spencer knew a couple of his classmates who would love a punishment like this.

  “That’s all?” It came out with a relieved laugh before Spencer could choke it back.

  Principal Poach suddenly floundered, seeing that the punishment had not carried the profound impact that he’d expected. “Oh, no! You think that’s all? I’m just getting started! That was only the appetizer.”

  Spencer’s smile faded as he realized that he had just provoked the principal into further punishment. “You will also...” Poach was stalling, probably trying to decide which of his usual punishments would be best. “You will also fill out a behavior form and turn it in to Mrs. Natcher.”

  Spencer inwardly breathed a sigh of relief but tried to look upset on the outside. Filling out a behavior form wasn’t bad either.

  “Now, let’s see ...” Principal Poach muttered. “Where are those forms?” Then he spotted them across the desk.

  The large man leaned forward, stretching for the stack of behavior forms pinned under an elephant-shaped paperweight. His round middle interfered, hitting the desk and preventing his short arms from reaching the papers. After squirming for a moment, Poach sat back and glanced at Spencer sheepishly.

  “Why don’t you just grab a form on your way out? Make sure you fill in all the lines.”

  Spencer stepped up to the principal’s desk. He reached down and picked up the heavy elephant paperweight.

  A harsh whiteness suddenly clawed at Spencer’s vision, like a flurry of snow and fog had consumed him. He shut his eyes tightly, and when he opened them again he was seated behind the steering wheel of a vehicle.

  A fuzzy radio station was playing music from the eighties. He glanced over at the passenger’s seat. A young woman with red hair was slouched in the seat, fast asleep. Her seat belt had cinched too tight, leaving a mark across her neck.

  Spencer suddenly started whistling along with the song. But that couldn’t be possible, since he’d never heard the song before and the whistle definitely wasn’t his. And the hands on the wheel were old and strong ...

  Why? Why was this happening again?

  More whiteness, and for a moment, Spencer thought he would crash the vehicle. But the mysterious hands guided the steering wheel until a complete fogginess overtook Spencer’s vision. He blinked hard.

  “Now look what you’ve done!” Principal Poach squealed.

  Spencer was slumped forward on the principal’s desk, Baybee pinned under him. The elephant paperweight had rolled out of his hand, and the behavior forms were scattered on the floor. Spencer stood up abruptly, blinking a few times.

  “Cheyenne, Wyoming,” Spencer muttered.

  “What was that?”

  Spencer shook his head. “Never mind.” He grabbed a sheet of paper and scooped Baybee off the desk. Spencer hurried out of the principal’s office, glancing over his shoulder as the large man struggled to restack the fallen forms.

  Spencer had been in the office the whole time, hadn’t he? So who was driving on the highway west of Cheyenne, Wyoming?

  Chapter 4

  “That’s tonight?”

  Spencer arrived at the lunchroom rattled from his strange incident in Principal Poach’s office. It wasn’t the first time he’d experienced something like this in the past month or so. The handful of instances seemed random. They struck without warning. But each time, he’d gone somewhere and known exactly where it was.

  This time it was Cheyenne, seen through the eyes of an old man in a vehicle. Last time it was a warehouse in Philadelphia, with men in hard hats driving humming forklifts. Each time, the experience was so short that Spencer was left wondering if it had really happened. He kept the incidents to himself, trying to make enough sense of them to be able to share them with Daisy or his mom. But there wasn’t even enough to form a decent explanation.

  Without thinking, Spencer fell into the dwindling lunch line, tucking Baybee under one arm. When he got to the counter, he wasn’t surprised to see Meredith getting his food together.

  Meredith was middle-aged and pear-shaped, wearing the unflattering uniform of a lunch lady. Her formless shirt was pink, blue, and white with a few dots of yellow that might as well have been mustard stains. Her brown hair was held together in a hairnet, which made her forehead look rather large. She always wore plastic food gloves, but her fake nails usually poked through, defeating the whole sanitary purpose.

  “Hi, bud.” She slid a fruit cup onto Spencer’s tray next to the mashed potatoes. Today her gloves were intact, so Spencer knew he could eat lunch with the reassurance of proper kitchen sanitation. “Heard you had some trouble in the library this morning.”

  “Great,” Spencer said. “Does the whole school know about that?”

  Meredith shook her head. “Your friend told me. What’s her name?” She wrinkled her large forehead. “Daisy, that’s it.”

  Spencer nodded. Meredith was pretty good at pretending like she didn’t know the kids. Her acting usually convinced Daisy, who had in turn almost blown their cover a dozen times.

  “Have a good lunch,” Meredith said as Spencer walked away. “Make sure to eat your mashed potatoes.”

  Spencer found Daisy alone, finishing her lunch at a table in the corner.

  “You’re alive!” she grinned when she saw him.

  Spencer sat down across from her and propped Baybee on the table next to their trays. “Fill out a behavior form and I’m off the hook,” he announced.

  “That’s it?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he added, “and I can’t read any more biographies from the library.” He grinned. “Bummer.”

  “Just biographies?”

  Spencer nodded. “That’s the shelf I was climbing.”

  Daisy slid her tray aside and leaned forward. “Why were you climbing the bookshelf? I mean, I figure it’s got to have something to do with Toxites. But Dez was suspicious so I told him you were trying to get away from the fire.”

  “But there was no fire,” Spencer said.

  “Well, the alarm went off.” Daisy was notorious for believing anything, so this was a typical comment from Gullible Gates.

  Spencer slurped a peach out of his fruit cup. “The alarm went off because I pulled it, remember?”

  “Of course I remember. But I had to tell Dez something.” She sat back and scratched her head. “So why were you climbing the bookshelf?”

  “We’ve got a huge problem in the library. I’ve never seen anything like it.” He picked up his fork and skewered a limp green bean. “There’s a bucket on top of the bookshelf. Full of Toxites.”

  “What?” Daisy gasped.

  “It was weird. There were probably like fifty of them, crammed in on top of each other. They seemed angry, like the ones I met in that apartment back in September. They were all thrashing around in there.”

  “Why didn’t they climb out?”

  “I don’t think they could. It looked like they were trapped. The Toxite I was chasing crawled in there to hide. It probably didn’t even know it was walking into a one-way trap.” He shoveled a big forkful of mashed potatoes into his mouth.

  “We need to get them out of there before someone else finds that bucket,” Daisy said. “If only we could get into the school when nobody else was around.”

  “Ugh!” Spencer suddenly gagged. His mashed potatoes slid out of his mouth and back onto his plate.

  “Eww!” Daisy turned away. “That’s disgusting.”

  “You’re telling me,” said Spencer. “There’s something in my mashed potatoes. I almost barfed!”

  Spencer prodded the white mess with his fork. Sure enough, a piece of rolled-up paper was hidden in the soggy potatoes. “I’m never eating school lunch again.” Spencer made a face and pushed the tray away.

  “Wait a minute,” Daisy said. “May
be it’s a message from Meredith. Like that time we found the key for the stash in your chicken patty.”

  The two kids stared at the prechewed mashed potatoes for a moment. “Go ahead.” Daisy pointed. “See what it says.”

  Spencer held up his hands. “I’m not touching it.”

  “Oh, come on. It’s your spit.”

  “Not anymore. I gave it to the potatoes.”

  Daisy rolled her eyes. “You’re such a germ freak.” She snatched up Baybee and used the doll’s plastic hand to scoot the little scroll of paper from the mashed potatoes. Then Daisy dropped the hall pass and carefully unrolled the note.

  Orchestra concert. Tonight at 7. I’ll be here with a key to the library.

  “Oh, no,” Daisy said. “That’s tonight?”

  “It’s perfect.” Spencer glanced toward the kitchen to see if he could catch a glimpse of Meredith. Then he looked back at Daisy. “What’s the matter?”

  “I haven’t learned my part yet.”

  “For what?” Spencer asked.

  “For the concert.”

  “Umm ...” Spencer tried to hold back a grin. “You’re not in the orchestra.”

  “I’m not? Phew!” Daisy wiped her forehead. “I thought it was something everyone had to do.”

  Chapter 5

  “Violins.”

  A red Ford truck pulled out of the Gates driveway, leaving a big black dog barking savagely in the yard. Despite all the times that Spencer had been to Daisy’s house, the guard dog never seemed to grow accustomed to him.

  “Orchestra concert, huh?” Mr. Gates said to his young passengers. He had insisted on dropping Spencer and Daisy at the school, even though it was only a few blocks from the Gates home, easily within walking distance. “I played in the sixth-grade orchestra once.” Mr. Gates’s country drawl gave the words a twang.

  “You did?” Daisy gave her dad a surprised look.

  “Yup. Played the triangle. But they kicked me out. Said I was too obtuse.”