By the Grace of Todd Page 11

  “Thanks, Lewis.” I lay back down and shut my eyes. Before long, I could hear his soft snores. But sleep was miles away for me. Persephone’s voice rang in my memory. “Yer the brawn round here. Pull yerself up by yer bootstraps and send those curs home with their dadblamed tails between their legs!”

  It all sounded very exciting, but I hoped it wouldn’t have to come to that. Tomorrow was Project Judgment Day. After Max got his A, why would he care what happened to the Toddlians? We’d have to bring them to the fair if we won, but it’s not like he’d have to train them anymore. I could ask for them back and still be his friend. He’d probably be bored of them by then, anyway. So Max would get his A, I’d rescue the Toddlians, and my spot as the newest member of the Zoo Crew would be safe. There. I’d found a solution to everyone’s problems!

  Maybe I wasn’t such a bad god, after all.

  Maybe.

  CHAPTER 20

  I chewed on my pencil the next day, waiting for the bell to start science class.

  “Are you worried too, Great Todd?” Lewis asked from my shoulder. “Do you also fear our people will be harmed in Max’s sadistic circus?”

  I wiped my pencil on my jeans. “Nah, there’s nothing to worry about. You guys have survived earthquakes and floods . . . Hey, you’ve even survived a chameleon attack. What’s one little science project?” I tried to sound calmer than I felt. “Max won’t let anything happen to your people. You’re his ticket to an A, remember?”

  Someone slugged me in the shoulder. It was Max himself. “That’s right, Buttrock. Easy A. Who you talking to?”

  “Uh, myself.” I forced a chuckle. “Only way to have an intelligent conversation, right?”

  He cracked his knuckles. “Sure, whatev. I hope those little buggers brought their A game today.” He snort-laughed.

  I was about to ask him if I could have the Toddlians back after class when the bell rang and Mr. Katcher came out of his lab, goggles and all. He twirled his mustache like a cartoon villain and said, “All right, my future Nobel Prize winners, it’s time for the continuation of the science rodeo!”

  As he pulled out his harmonica and sang his theme song again, I took a deep breath. This is it, Todd—once this is over, Max will be done with the Toddlians and you can have them back. Duddy will know about the little guys and can help you take care of them. Everything can go back to normal.

  The first team’s project was a papier-mâché volcano that refused to erupt. Mr. Katcher rescued it by pouring some stuff from a test tube down the hole. It really exploded then, splattering us all with tiny pieces of pulp and paste.

  After that a couple of girls presented a crusty bug collection that I remembered from fifth-grade science at Roosevelt. As one of them held up a monarch butterfly, its brittle wings fell off. But Mr. Katcher gave them extra credit for neat handwriting on the bug labels.

  Somebody else had brought their pet Sea-Monkeys in a fishbowl, removed the cover that kept them in the dark, and then made them do “tricks” with a flashlight. It all seemed kind of lame compared to what we’d taught the Toddlians, but Mr. Katcher seemed totally taken in.

  Max must’ve also been worried that the cheesy Sea-Monkey acrobatics were going to steal our thunder, ’cause he waved his hand as soon as Mr. Katcher finished praising the “effort it took to train brine shrimp to perform on command” to remind him it was our turn.

  Max set the aquarium at a table in the front of the room, and I helped arrange all the props for the circus. I hoped Max didn’t realize Lewis was missing—he had hunkered down in my hair and wouldn’t come out. My scalp itched like crazy from his nervous twitching.

  I had the important job of holding the FLEA CIRCUS REDUX sign while Max acted as ringmaster. He’d even brought his MP3 player and two speakers to blast the headbanger music he thought made the circus more “dramatic.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” Max shouted over the screaming guitars, “feast your eyes on the coolest circus you’ll ever see!” He pulled the sock out of his pocket and placed it reverently into the empty aquarium, then set the floss high wire over it. Mr. Katcher slid his goggles up to his hair and knelt next to the table.

  “What exactly are the subjects of this experiment, boys? Because I don’t see any movement.”

  Max bent over next to Mr. Katcher. “You have to look real close, Mr. K. They’re itty-bitty dudes.” He pointed to the sock, and I squinted into the aquarium from the top.

  From my hair, Lewis gasped. “They’re gone!”

  I gently picked up the sock and held it at eye level, trying to see.

  There was dirt and hair and some gross stuff I couldn’t identify, but as far as living creatures were concerned, Lewis was right . . . Nada.

  “Lemme see that.” Max ripped the sock away from me. “What the heck?” He clenched his teeth and waved it in my face. “Buttrock, where are they?”

  I grabbed the sock and turned it inside out. They had to be there. They had to! “Hey, guys!” The class snickered as I whispered to the sock. “If you’re in there somewhere, come out . . . please!” I shook it over my other hand a couple times, not caring about what happened to their huts. A bunch of dead skin flakes fell out, but that was all.

  Max was breathing like a crazed bull. “What have you done with them?”

  I shrugged. “I . . . well . . . you’ve had the sock.” I couldn’t stop shaking once the words were out of my mouth. That was as close as I’d come to standing up to him, and it scared me spitless.

  Mr. Katcher stood, and his mustache drooped into a frown. “Is this your way of making a joke, young men? Because wasting valuable class time isn’t only not funny, but it just earned you an illustrious F.”

  “WHAT?” Max bellowed. “We put a lot of work into this. The bug people have been practicing for hours learning their stunts. Maybe they’re being shy.” He snatched the sock and scoured it for any sign of life.

  Mr. Katcher cocked his head to one side and looked at me.

  I nodded. “It’s true. I know it sounds crazy, but I saw a spark on my lucky baseball sock, and then my neighbor Lucy . . . We saw them under her microscope.”

  Max ran and grabbed one of the class microscopes and shoved the sock under it. “Dude, look!” he pleaded. “A tiny civilization, with huts and everything!”

  Mr. Katcher sighed and stared into the eyepiece. He focused for a sec, and then shook his head. “I see some dirt and debris, but nothing more than possibly the filthiest sock I’ve ever encountered.”

  “Those dirt specks, those are the huts!” I explained. “If you use a higher magnification, you can see them, I promise!”

  He looked again. “I see a big hole, charred around the edges.”

  “That’s where they were toasting my toe jam! And when the fire got out of control, they put it out with—”

  “Settle down!” Mr. Katcher told the cracking-up class. Even Duddy was laughing.

  “Good one, Todd!” he snickered. “Tiny toe–jam–eating people! Ha!”

  “But it’s true!” I insisted.

  “I’ve heard enough,” Mr. Katcher said, tossing the sock back into the aquarium. “You boys ought to be thankful I’m not giving you both detention for wasting time and trying to pull a hoax. Science may be cool, but it’s no joke.” He pulled a red pen from his lab coat pocket and marked big Fs on the tops of our project evaluation sheets. When he handed mine to me, he said, “I had hoped for better things from you, Todd. I hope you’re taking better care of Camo than you are of your grades.”

  I walked back to my desk and laid my head on it. The next team simulated a tsunami in an aquarium with some gravel and water. Only their aquarium had cracked on the way to school, so Mr. Katcher made us let them use ours. “Adding insult to injury,” as Dad would have said.

  What had happened to the Toddlians? Lewis was having a nervous breakdown in my hair, wo
ndering where they were, would he ever see them again . . . His freak-out was full volume, and I couldn’t believe no one heard him. But the tsunami had been a success, and Mr. Katcher went off on a tangent about underwater earthquakes for the rest of the period.

  I had my own tidal wave of guilt to deal with. When we’d found Pinchy dead, I had felt rotten. I still did. But losing an entire civilization? It was like I’d really killed somebody who had friends and hopes and dreams. And not just one somebody. I’d committed mass neglecticide, all because I was too much of a wimp to stand up to Max.

  What did I have to show for it? A dirty sock and a big fat F. I’d never gotten an F in my life, not even when I caught head lice from Duddy’s cousin at a sleepover and had to miss three weeks of school till the school nurse dug through my hair and declared I was nit-free.

  It itched like I had lice now, the way Lewis thrashed around in my hair, crying for the family he’d never see again. As soon as the bell rang, I raced to the bathroom to avoid Max. I interrogated Lewis in the stall. Had he heard from Persephone again? Did have any clue of where the Toddlians could be? All he could hiccup out was, “No!”

  I had to get to my next class. I poked my head out the door and was yanked into the hallway by Max, who was foaming-at-the-mouth mad. He lifted me off the ground by my shirt and mashed his forehead into mine. “What are you tryin’ to pull, Butroche?” He’d used my real name. Not a good sign. “Where are those little punks?”

  He slammed me into a locker, and I prayed one of the kids scurrying down the hall would get a teacher. “I . . . I don’t know. You had the sock. How could I have taken them?” He thought that over and was about to turn me loose when Lewis hiccupped.

  “What was that?” Max said, scanning my shirt.

  I hiccupped and forced a burp for good measure. Max would rip my hair out by the roots if he knew I had a Toddlian on me. The second bell rang, and Max let me go. “If you see any of those buggers,” he snarled, “you tell ’em Uncle Max is gonna squish their skulls . . . one at a time.”

  He stomped off and I darted down the hall to the library, where I had independent study. I spent the whole period trying to calm the jittering Lewis while not getting in trouble for whispering to myself like a paranoid idiot.

  I spent my lunch break there, too. There was no way Max would let me sit with the Zoo Crew, and Duddy and his new pals wouldn’t exactly welcome me at their table. Dick tripped me a couple of times during gym, but I didn’t care. I had only one thing on my mind.

  Where were the Toddlians?

  CHAPTER 21

  HERMAN

  Meanwhile . . .

  Dick’s paternal person returned, and I waited for him to go back inside his dwelling. He pressed a button on a device near the ceiling of the car, then emerged and slammed the door shut. The hatch rumbled closed, but when it was nearly done, it bounced off a round device that Dick called “a soccer ball” and seemed to jam, leaving a small opening. Should I attempt to escape through it? There was ample space for someone much larger than myself . . . Wisdom, Herman, wisdom. You have no idea where you are in relation to Todd’s dwelling, and if you think it is cold in here . . .

  The paternal person had extinguished the overhead light as he left, but the sun shone brightly through the high windows. I had enough light to carry out my mission.

  I summoned my courage and climbed carefully down Mount Britannica, then hastened on wobbly legs across the cold gray floor to where the car sat, motionless but still radiating a most pleasant heat. It seemed the only way into the confines of the car was to climb the closest black circular object known as a tire. I grasped a protruding nub and hoisted myself up, slowly scaling the nubs and grooves of the black surface, stopping often to rest my quaking limbs. At last, heart pounding, I reached the oily summit.

  It was deliciously warm under the belly of the car, and it smelled comfortingly of earth and metal. I was tempted to not go any farther, but I knew that if I remained, the temperature of the metal would soon cool to that of the rest of the room.

  There was a steel connector beneath me that led to an engine surrounded by myriad belts, hoses, and fans. I tottered across it, then grabbed a black belt and swung up for a topside view.

  My quest was to reach the glass-encased compartment of the car, where the warm air would linger longest.

  I wound my way across the labyrinth of hoses and belts until I reached a black grate that covered the mouth of some kind of ventilation device. I shimmied through a narrow slot and hurled myself onto the soft, fuzzy covering of the seat.

  Ah! This was more like it! I burrowed down into the fluffy sable-colored fibers and savored the warmth that embraced me. Now if only I could find a morsel of nourishment . . .

  I was just beginning my scan of the interior when a human dressed in dark clothing knelt to point a silver wand through the opening in the hatch. Everywhere the wand pointed, a beam of light followed. My heart pounded anxiously. Obviously our fearless leader, the Great Todd, was human, but humans had also caused my people misery and despair. Would this be a Todd-type human or a Max-type human?

  I tried to hide in the shadows, but the dark figure slipped through the opening and stood, shining the light right into the car.

  I stared blindly into the overpowering white light and gulped. Have you come for me?

  CHAPTER 22

  After school I heard Max make plans with Spud and Dick to go “egg some more cars,” so I hightailed it home alone. Well, not really alone. Lewis was still in my hair, blubbering that he’d never told Persephone how he felt about her, and now she was gone.

  I’d just passed Mr. Whitaker’s weedy yard when some kind of ninja jumped out of the bushes, scaring the Cheez Whiz outta me. “Looking for this?”

  The ninja was about my size and spoke with a familiar, female voice. She held out a big matchbox and slid it open. I squinted and could just make out Persephone waving her cowboy hat at me. Dozens of Toddlians were clustered around her. Lewis squealed and scrambled down my arm to my hand, then leaped through the air like a grasshopper to the open box. There were hugs and tears all round, and I was so relieved I almost cried a tear or two myself. I couldn’t believe the little guys were safe! I hadn’t killed them after all. But who had saved them?

  I looked at the ninja again. She wore a black sweat suit and ski mask. The long black braids sticking out told me everything I needed to know: I’d been one-upped by my nerdy neighbor.

  “How’d you get that?” I asked, reaching for the box.

  “Oh no you don’t!” Lucy gripped the box tighter, and our fingers touched for a second, which was gross, but I wasn’t letting go this time. Lewis was leading Persephone and Herman out of the box and onto my arm. They crawled up my sleeve while Lucy let me have it.

  “Last night I had a visitor desperate for someone to rescue her people from an ‘ornery cuss who was lower than a snake’s belly.’” Here Lucy peeled off the ski mask and squinted at me. “The Toddlian had first gone to her leader for help, but her leader had failed her. So I considered it my duty and honor to use subterfuge (telling Susan I was working on another independent project involving photosynthesis, ergo I needed to go outdoors) to confront that monster, Max, who masquerades as a sixth grader.”

  “Polecat!” Persephone hollered in my ear.

  “So I trailed that vile excuse for a Homo sapiens to school today, and while he was busy scheming with his cronies, I slipped the sock from his backpack, assured the little hostages I meant them no harm, and granted them safe passage into this box.”

  The Toddlians in the box cheered and clapped.

  “You went to Wakefield dressed like that?”

  Lucy rolled her eyes. “No, I was dressed as an ordinary schoolgirl. I put on these black clothes to conduct my second rescue mission. The Toddlians said Herman’s captor was ‘an overfed human with poor taste in T-shirts,’ so I kn
ew he was at Dick Nixon’s house.”

  “I’d have ridden one of those bushy-tailed critters to get ya myself,” Persephone explained to Herman, “but they all stampeded soon as they saw me sneakin’ up on ’em.”

  Lucy nodded. “That numbskull Dick had left poor Herman to perish of hypothermia in his garage. Fortunately, the door was ajar, and we were able to crawl in and free him.”

  “Told ya I’d find somebody with the gumption to help!” Persephone said, stomping her spur into my shoulder.

  “Yowch!” I howled. “Stop that!”

  “Stop what?” said a gruff voice behind me.

  Before Lucy and I knew what was happening, Max had swiped the matchbox out of our hands. From inside it came the terrified screams of the Toddlians, calling for their god to save them.

  Not again. It felt like I’d been sucker punched and couldn’t catch my breath. I can’t lose them again.

  Max stepped between Lucy and me. “I saw you two holding this box, so I came over to check it out. And here you are, with my A in your hands.” He thumped my chest. “I thought you were cool. I thought we were friends.”

  “I took the Toddlians,” Lucy said. “Todd had nothing to do with it.”

  He turned to her. “You nerdy little loser. You cost me my Xbox!”

  Persephone spurred me again. “You gonna whoop his hide or do I have to?”

  “Hush,” I whispered, trying to keep her safe.

  Max spun to me. “Who you hushin’, Butroche? Trying to protect your ugly brainiac girlfriend? Oh, how sweet. Buttrock and the Brain, teaming up to make Max look like a stupid idiot.”

  “You don’t need any help in that department,” Lucy said through her teeth. “Besides, I already told you, Todd didn’t have anything to do with stealing the sock.”