By the Grace of Todd Page 3

  “You’ll have to take your glasses off.”

  I did and looked again.

  “What do you see?”

  “Nothing but a dirty blur.”

  She messed with the knob on the side of the scope until I could make out some dots going back and forth between bigger dots that didn’t move. “There’s something alive all right, but I can’t tell what.”

  “Focus,” she muttered, and turned the dial on the side of the scope. “How’s that?”

  The dots turned into squiggles. The squiggles moved between brown circles, blended together, then separated again. I fiddled with the knob until what was on my sock came into focus.

  No. It couldn’t be.

  “Ho-ly mo-ley.” I straightened up, rubbed my eyes, and looked again.

  “What is it?”

  “Uh . . .” I suddenly felt light-headed and weak-kneed. Could Mrs. Pedoto’s soy shake have some sort of herb in it that caused hallucinations? ’Cause there was no way I was seeing this.

  I estimated there were fifty of them, about the size of ants. But they didn’t look like ants. They looked like . . . people. Little pale-skinned people. Some were smaller and wobbled around like Daisy, and some were bent over and had long white beards. But most of them had brown hair and seemed about my age. They wore dingy white toga thingies. “Whoa.”

  Lucy breathed down my neck. “Todd, what is it? Let me see. As you said, it’s my microscope.”

  “Chill a sec, would you? It’s my sock!”

  Whatever they were, they were busy zipping back and forth from round brown buildings that looked like dirt huts. I couldn’t tell what the yellowish stuff they carried was, but they stuck it on the end of sticks and then waved them over a minuscule fire. “That’s what made the spark!” I whispered. “Whoa.”

  Lucy shoved me out of the way. “I can’t take it! What are you—”

  She stared into the scope, then said something that would have shocked my mother. “I can’t . . . it’s not . . . how did they . . .”

  It was the first time I’d ever seen Lucy at a loss for words. And if she saw them too, then I wasn’t crazy—at least not any crazier than her. Unless we both were hallucinating.

  “What do you think they are?” I asked.

  “Not what, Todd. Who.” Lucy didn’t look away from the microscope. She started talking ultra fast. “Well, it’s fairly obvious that there is an entire civilization living on your sweat sock. Some of them must be females, because there are little ones who appear to be babies. Yes, that one right there has pigtails! I’m not sure how they reproduce or regenerate. Maybe it’s spontaneous, like you originally thought. And they’re advanced enough to build dwellings and to cook; that’s what they’re doing around the fire, although I can’t see what it is they’re preparing to eat. Probably some form of bacteria.” Lucy twisted the focus knob a fraction. “No. No, wait. Those look like . . . toenail fragments they’re scraping. They’re scraping gunk off a big piece of toenail and roasting it like marshmallows!” She shuddered and zoomed in a little closer to the sock, then finally stood straight up and took a deep breath.

  “Lucy?”

  She turned slowly toward me, her eyes glazed over. “Unbelievable,” she breathed. Then she pumped my hand so hard I thought my arm would break off. “Do you realize what you’ve done, Todd Butroche? You’ve spawned life through sheer grossness!”

  CHAPTER 5

  The next morning, I sat in science class like a zombie. Mr. Katcher was going on about “cool science facts” and his big plans for our science projects that were coming up, but I couldn’t focus on anything. All I could think about was the tiny civilization living on my sock. The civilization that Lucy seemed to think we were responsible for.

  The day before, she’d talked so fast I didn’t know how she was breathing. “These creatures are AMAZING! We are teetering on the brink of history! You know that, don’t you?”

  I’d been teetering on the brink of something, all right. “I think you better go,” I’d said, wiggling out of her grip. “I’ve got stuff to do.”

  Lucy had blinked at me about a billion times. “Stuff? You have stuff to do? What about your people?”

  “My people?”

  “Yes! Let me break this down for you. Since we are responsible for pulling these individuals out of their secure environment under your bed, we are responsible for ensuring that they continue to live in safety, agreed?”

  She was even crazier than I thought. “Uh, I had a funeral a little while ago for a hermit crab I totally forgot about. One crab. How do you expect me to keep an entire city of tiny people alive?”

  Lucy had plopped down next to me on the bed. “I’m going to help you! We can teach them to read and write. Think how fast they could advance in math and science . . . They’re obviously very intelligent. We can train them to be peaceful and tolerant. A civilization that knows no war. No oppression by tyrants! No slavery!” She got so excited she nearly bopped me in the face as she spread her arms wide and threw back her head. “No droughts or plagues or famines!”

  I was officially freaked out. I’d tried to tell her about all the things I had on my plate: that new skateboard wasn’t going to ride itself, and besides, Duddy and I needed to come up with a strategy to remove Ernie Buchenwald from our lives for good. But nothing I said would convince her. Finally I’d kicked her out of my room, saying I needed time “to think.”

  Now Duddy grinned at me and displayed the super nugget he’d just mined from his nose. Even though I was distracted, I couldn’t help smiling. I wrote a 7 on the corner of my Dragon Sensei notebook and held it up for him to see.

  I’d been scoring Duddy’s boogers for as long as I could remember. To get a perfect 10 there had to be blood and lots of snot attached. Duddy grinned again.

  If he liked that, what was he going to say when I told him about the tiny people on my sock?

  I glanced up at the front of the class. Mr. Katcher was saying, “I know it’s early in the semester, but I like to kick-start those creative juices and see what my pupils are made of! Not only will you have individual science projects, but you also will participate in a class project. Now, pay close attention, my budding Einsteins, because I have someone special here whose very life will depend on you!” He disappeared into his secret lab and came back out with a little lizard clinging to the side of his goggles.

  “This,” he said, untangling the lizard from his goggle strap and holding him up, “is Camo, our very own veiled chameleon. Chamaeleo calyptratus. It’s your job this year to nourish and sustain this magnificent creature. In fact, you will be taking turns lizard-sitting Camo in your own homes!”

  The class twittered with excitement.

  “Dude,” said a voice from the other side of the classroom, “the thing looks like an alien! Check out the freaky eyes.”

  I turned to look at the speaker. Max Loving. Five foot four and about 150 pounds of pure meanness. He was even mean to a chameleon. The girls all made oohing and aahing sounds, snickering as if Max had just said the funniest thing ever. Meanwhile, my male classmates tittered nervously, clearly afraid to anger the lion.

  Max’s interruption made me think of the little people on my sock at home. They weren’t freaky looking—they were kind of cute, actually.

  But what was I supposed to do with them? Train them to do my homework or something? Teach them computer programming? I didn’t even know how to get the stupid antivirus thing on my computer to stop telling me to update it.

  Maybe I should just give them to Lucy. She’d take good care of them. I mean, she’d probably have them doing calculus and studying for their little bug people SATs within the day, but that’s what every . . . erm . . . parent wanted, right?

  But something bothered me about the idea of giving them away, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. When I’d briefly looked at the
little people through the microscope yesterday, I could have sworn one of them looked right at me and pointed with his tiny bug finger. For one brief moment I’d imagined we locked eyes. It was like he was . . . happy to see me, or something.

  Me. Todd Butroche. Okay student, pretty much a dork, and with poor sanitary habits.

  I had to be imagining it, right?

  That’s when I looked up and nearly peed myself. Mr. Katcher was standing over me, and he didn’t look happy. Even his weird, waxy mustache seemed to point at the floor, like a frown.

  “I asked you a question, Mr.—” Mr. Katcher hunted for my name on his clipboard.

  “Butroche,” I said.

  “Ah, Mr. Butroche.” He bent down, vaporizing me with stale coffee breath. “Would you mind sharing your opinion about the phenomenon of which we were just speaking?”

  Hoo boy. “About chameleons needing gut-loads of butter worms?”

  The class snickered. That’s when I noticed Camo had been put away—Mr. Katcher had moved on from chameleons.

  “Negative.” He sighed and stood upright. “Is there such a phenomenon as spontaneous human combustion? If you were paying attention to my cool science fact, you should have no difficulty enlightening the class on the subject.”

  Holy frijoles. I actually knew what he was talking about. “You mean when people burst into flames by a chemical reaction on the inside, with no external heat source?”

  His eyebrows shot into his hair and the handlebars nearly touched his ears.

  “Why, yes! That’s exactly what I mean. Now, what’s your opinion on that phenomenon?”

  “Oh, I believe.” I sat up straighter in my chair and piled it on. “I mean, if it can happen to moldy hay bales when they overheat, why not people? Lots of scientists don’t accept combustion as fact, but I do.”

  I guess Mr. Katcher was a believer too, because he whacked me on the back and said, “Very good, Mr. Butroche. You possess one of the most important qualities of a great scientist: the ability to multitask. However, I expect you to participate in class discussions in the future. Understood?”

  I nodded, relieved. I couldn’t believe that Lucy had just saved my butt.

  Mr. Katcher had made his way to the front of the room, and now he leaned against his desk. “Let’s get back to our class science projects. You’ll have until Friday to work on them, and as I explained, the winner will go on to the regional science competition at the Topsfield Fair this weekend, securing two free ride wristbands.”

  A cheer rose up from the class. The Topsfield Fair is pretty much the coolest thing to happen in the suburban Boston area. They have a ride called the Slingshot that makes literally everyone puke.

  Mr. Katcher walked back to his desk. “I’d like to just take a few minutes and find out who will be partnering with whom. So let’s go down the rows and you can each tell me who you’d like to work with. Capisce?”

  He pulled a notebook off his desk as Duddy poked me hard in the shoulder. I turned around.

  “You and me. Ant farm. Amirite?”

  I nodded. Duddy had done an ant farm for every science project since kindergarten. It was tried and true, and frankly, he did all the work, which suited my schedule very nicely.

  But that’s when I heard my name.

  And most bizarrely, it was coming out of Max Loving’s mouth.

  Mr. Katcher peered at him over the edge of his notebook. “What’s that, Mr. Loving?”

  Max cleared his throat and looked right at me. “I said, I’ll be working with Todd Buttrock.”

  Whaaaaaaaa? Had I landed in an alternate dimension? Lucy had a lot to say about those, but I understood even less about them than about moldy hay bales.

  Mr. Katcher shot a surprised look at me but nodded and jotted down what I assumed was my name in his notebook. “I’ll assume you mean Todd Butroche. Excellent. And what will you be working on?”

  “A catapult,” Max replied. He was staring right at me now, his dark eyes piercing beneath his bushy black eyebrows, and it was kind of making me have to pee. “We’re going to build one big enough to shoot a watermelon. Blammo!” Max pantomimed a huge melon sailing at a window, then dissolved into evil laughter.

  Other kids laughed too, but I could tell their guffaws were the frightened kind. Better Todd Butroche than me, they were all thinking. I glanced at Duddy, who motioned for me to speak up.

  I shook my head and shrugged. Max Loving had gotten me. There was nothing I could do.

  Mr. Katcher kept going down the row, and Max looked right at me and winked. I gulped, scanning my brain to figure out how I’d attracted his attention. Nothing. What was this about?

  I turned my eyes down to my desk and stared at the worn surface, trying to disappear.

  I almost succeeded too—at least mentally—when Mr. Katcher announced, “That means everyone is currently paired up except for . . . Ernie Buchenwald and Duddy Scanlon.”

  I shot back up, my eyes darting around, panicked. No. Seriously. Had Duddy and I angered some kind of bully gods?

  “I’llworkalone,” Duddy blurted out loudly at the same time Ernie said, “Yetttthh! Duddy Thanlon will do my thienthe project! I mean . . .”

  Mr. Katcher looked up, distracted. “What’s that? So you want to work together? Great.” He made a final mark in his notebook and slammed it shut. “I can’t wait to see what you come up with.”

  I turned around and looked at Duddy with wide eyes. He was even paler than usual.

  It was hard to imagine how the day could get any worse.

  Until . . .

  Mr. Katcher put his notebook down on his desk, then picked up a funny little mesh box with a handle and brought it over to Camo’s tank. “Todd Butroche!” he shouted.

  “Here!” I yelled back, startled.

  Giggles all around. Mr. Katcher turned to me with a big smile. “As your reward for your intelligent answer about spontaneous human combustion, Todd, you may be the first of your peers to Camo-sit for a week.”

  “Awww,” groaned the class. I would have groaned, too, if I had any emotions left. The last thing I needed was to be strapped with taking care of a high-maintenance lizard. I glanced over my shoulder to see Max’s reaction. He surprised me with a little nod. What is going on?

  “You all will have a turn, but Todd is first.” Mr. Katcher pulled Camo out of the cage and carefully set him into the little mesh box. “Here you are. I’m also including instructions, which must be followed pre-cisely.” He patted me on the back. “Excellent work, Todd. I’m sure he’ll be in good hands.”

  I was sure he wouldn’t be. I wanted to tell Mr. Katcher that Camo wouldn’t last a day between VanderPuff and Dr. Drool, but he’d moved on to another cool science fact.

  I looked through the mesh at Camo, and he stared back at me, clearly unimpressed.

  Even a lizard didn’t want to hang out with me. So why did Max Loving?

  CHAPTER 6

  I thought things had gotten as bad as they possibly could in science class that day. But there was another big “Oh no!” waiting for me at home.

  Mom met me at the door. “Hi, honey! Lucy came over a couple of hours ago and I let her into your room, since you two are such good friends now.”

  “Mom!” I exclaimed. Ernie had tackled Duddy to “talk about thienthe” right after the bell rang, so I hadn’t had a chance to tell him about the tiny people. And now Lucy was here? Could I not catch a break?

  “What is that?” Mom pointed at Camo’s case. That’s all it took for VanderPuff to start barking and growling like a maniac. Dr. Drool and her Blankie were close behind. She clapped and squealed and did the twirling, fist-pumping stomp dance she does when she’s especially bent on destruction. I held the cage as high as it would go, hopped over beast and baby, and raced to my room.

  “Remember,” Mom hollered after me, “I h
ave a piano lesson in half an hour, and you’re on Daisy duty!”

  I ran into my room, shut the door behind me, and set Camo’s cage on the floor. “Look, Lucy, it’s been a rough day, and I kinda want to chillax, so if you don’t mind . . .”

  Lucy hadn’t heard a word I’d said. She was bent over my desk with the sock spread out, talking to it. “Hellooo, how . . . can . . . we . . . help . . . yooou?”

  I tapped her on the shoulder. “Ahem!”

  Lucy jumped and turned around. “Oh! I didn’t hear you come in!” She leaned into my face. “Well, whaddya think?”

  She was wearing red plastic sunglasses with huge, thick lenses duct-taped to the frame. “I made these micro-glasses this morning so we could view your people without having to stick them under the microscope all the time. Neat, huh?”

  “Snazzy.” Mr. Katcher would have loved her new accessory. Why did it suddenly feel like I was living in a bad sci-fi flick? “Look, you really need to go—”

  “I knew you wouldn’t mind if I came into your room, since you wanted help taking care of your civilization. I’ve been in here all afternoon.”

  “Peachy.” I tossed my books on my bed, since my desk had been overrun by Lucy and the humants. “Uh, don’t you have to study for school?”

  “I told Susan I was working on an independent project.”

  “At my house?”

  “Mm-hmm. She assumed it was piano-related. I didn’t correct her.” Lucy handed me the glasses and picked up a small white board from my desk. It was covered in diagrams and numbers. “I’ve learned so much about them today.” She pointed to a stick figure lifting a car. “For instance, although they are roughly the size of ants, they have incredible agility and strength.”

  I stared at her illustration. “And they have cars?”

  Lucy rolled her eyes. “That’s just a visual aid! Of course they don’t have cars . . . yet. But they can lift things almost fifty times their own weight.”