Curse of the Spider King (20 page)

“Take up your bows!” Mr. Phitzsinger bellowed. As he spoke, a strange clump of too-blond hair flopped around like a fish on his always-sweaty, always-red forehead. “And watch your spacing!”

Haley Shoop was first up in Tommy's line. He was glad of that. She'd surely make up for his poor scores. Haley scooped up her bow and gave the bowstring a practiced pull. She looked over her right shoulder at Mr. Phitzsinger.

“Nock arrows!” He yelled.

Haley selected a golden arrow with blue and orange fletchings and swiftly put it to the bowstring.

“Draw!” cried the P.E. teacher. Followed shortly by, “Release!”

Haley's first arrow sliced through the air in a blink and struck the target an inch outside of the bull's-eye.

Tommy loved the pop-thud sound of the arrow piercing the plastic target.
Just once
, he thought,
I'd like to hear that sound from my own shot.

Haley seemed frustrated with her first attempt. She took up the second arrow, put it to the string, and lined up her shot. Tommy clenched his fingers and tried to focus on Haley's technique. Her feet were shoulder's- width apart in-line with the target. The elbow of her right arm came backward as she pulled the arrow back on the string, fingers to the corner of her mouth. Her left arm held the bow straight out, slowly leveling the tip of the arrow with her target. Then the arrow leaped from the string and buried itself several inches deep into the upper left quadrant of the bull's-eye.

“Yeah!” Tommy blurted out a little louder than he'd meant to. Haley turned around. Her surprised expression melted away into a sweet smile and a blush. She turned back to the target and loaded up another arrow. Her final shot slammed into the blue outer ring, uncharacteristically poor for Haley.

“Bows down!” called Mr. Phitzsinger. The shooting was over. Students put their bows on the floor and went to the targets to collect their arrows. Some students had to retrieve theirs from the netting behind the targets. Not Haley. She yanked her arrows out and marched over to the teacher.

The composite score appeared on the basketball scoreboard: 118.

“Decent score,” said Mr. Phitzsinger. “Very decent! You know, you guys keep shooting like that, you might have a chance to beat the teachers.”

The gym erupted in cheers. The first archers went to the end of the line, and a new group of students took up the bows.

Haley slowed down a bit as she passed Tommy. She looked at him a moment, smiled, and then stared at the ground.
That was weird,
Tommy thought.
Girls are weird.

The next three archers went by way too quickly for Tommy. He waited a few moments and stepped up behind the large orange cone. It reminded Tommy of the cones that emergency crews set out around an accident scene.
Kinda fitting
, Tommy thought.

“Take up your bows!”

Tommy did. It was an awkward thing, all yellow and black with pulleys and loops of bowstring all over. He held the compound bow as if it were some kind of trap that might spring shut on him. Why couldn't they play soccer against the teachers? Tommy could play soccer. He pictured himself dribbling circles around his literature teacher.

“Nock your arrows!”

Tommy selected a golden arrow with orange and blue fletchings, the same arrow Haley had used first. He tried to balance the front of the shaft on his left hand while fitting the nock onto the bowstring. It slipped off.

“Draw!”

Tommy's fingers fumbled.

“Release!”

Tommy looked side to side. All the other kids fired their first arrows. Tommy tried again to nock the arrow. This time, he fit the arrow onto the bowstring, but as he lifted the bow, the shaft fell away from the bow.

Thwack! Thud! Thwack!

Tommy heard his classmates firing their second arrows, and he struggled to get the arrow back onto the bow. Sweat rolled down his back. His fingers felt clumsy and numb. But he got them to work well enough to at last get the arrow nocked. But in his rush, the back of the arrow was much higher than the arrowhead.

Tommy pulled back on the bowstring, felt the resistance of the pulleys, and pulled even harder. When he could not pull back any farther, he let go. The bowstring stung his fingers and grazed his forearm. “Ow!” The arrow zipped away and . . . clattered onto the hardwood gym floor.

“C'mon, Bowman!” Mr. Phitzsinger bellowed. “You'd think with a name like yours you'd shoot better'n that!” Everyone giggled.

Tommy reddened, grabbed a second arrow, and fit it to the string. He aimed quickly, seeing the gold bull's-eye, but it looked so far away. And Tommy couldn't make himself focus. It was as if the bull's-eye bobbed among the circles of blue, white, and red. Uttering an exasperated sigh, Tommy fired. But after putting the first arrow into the floor, he'd aimed the second way too high. It sailed well over the target and caught in the top of the white netting.

Chirrups of laughter snickered out of the line behind him. His shoulders sagged, and he stared at the floor. He wished he could shrink himself down, squeeze between the boards on the gym floor, and disappear. Most of the other kids had fired their third arrows, and Mr. Phitzsinger seemed to be staring at Tommy.

Tommy sighed and picked up his final arrow. Without thinking, he fit it to the bowstring. He raised his bow and aimed. As he drew back the bowstring, he felt a tingling in his fingertips of his right hand. It was as if his hand had fallen asleep, but only his fingertips. He raised the bow and aimed. The bull's-eye still seemed so tiny and far away, but it stayed relatively still for a change. He held his breath.

Tommy released the arrow.

It flew straight toward the target but just a little high. It bounced off the top of the target and flipped into the netting. More laughter from behind, but one “Awww,” and Tommy was sure it was Haley. It didn't help. If anything, it made things worse.

20

Falcon Day

FALCON DAY.
The thought hit Tommy during his third mouthful of cereal the next morning, and a brick of ice seemed to form in his belly. But that was nothing compared to the chilly, twisting knots he felt later that morning in homeroom. Haley Shoop, the seventh-grade archery ace, was absent.

The bell rang, and Tommy trudged to his first-period class. Without Haley, the seventh grade would have no chance at beating the teachers in the afternoon archery meet. Everyone would see how low Tommy's group's score was, and everyone would know exactly why the score was so low.
Maybe Haley is just running late,
he mused.
She could still show
up in time
.

“Go, FALCONS! Go, FALCONS! GO!”
Hundreds of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders stomped their feet on the bleachers in the gym and clapped their hands to the
Boom-boom-thwack
of their familiar fight song. Tommy stood last in his line of four. Four! Haley still hadn't shown up.

“Can you at least try to hit something on the target?” Brock Eastman jeered from the next line of archers over. “We're going to need all the points we can get, Tommy!”

Tommy scowled and was about to reply, but music, even louder than the din of the students in the stands, blared on the gym's PA speakers. Tommy recognized the music. It was the deep, brassy piece that played in the
Star Wars
movies whenever Darth Vader showed up. And suddenly, fifteen figures entered the gym from behind the targets. It was the seventh-grade teachers, and each one carried a long bow and wore a dark hood and cloak, like a band of villains. Led by Mr. Belanger, the science teacher, the teachers took their places on either side of the gym.

As the music died down, Mr. Phitzsinger came to the front of the gym and motioned for the students to quiet. “Welcome to the Falcon Day Teachers versus Students Archery Meet,” he said. “The rules are simple. The first student in each of the seven lines will shoot first. Three arrows. Once all arrows are fired, I'll tell you to retrieve your arrows and add up your score. Ten points for a center ring bull's-eye. Two less points for each ring outside of that. Write your score on the score sheet and submit it to me. I'll post the scores on the basketball scoreboard. Seven teachers will take their turn next, repeating the same process. We'll alternate until the student lines are through.”

“Archers ready?” the gym teacher called out. The students stepped up to the cone at the firing line. “Nock your arrows. Fire when ready!”

The first student in each line put an arrow to the string and fired.

THWACK, THUMP, WHAP!!

No one missed the target. That was both encouraging and discouraging to Tommy. Lots of points for the students, but if this kept up, Tommy would look like even more of a dork when he shot one up at the ceiling or into the floor.

The teachers came next. Mr. Belanger had two ten-point bull's-eyes and a seven-point red circle. And even though some of the less-skilled teachers barely got their wobbly arrows to the target, the score at the end of the first round was Teachers 146, Students 112.

The next two rounds went by in a blur. The teachers led by sixty points, and Tommy found himself standing at the firing line.

“Archers ready!”

Tommy picked up the green bow at his feet, and something peculiar happened. The bow didn't feel awkward. No, indeed. It seemed as comfortable as sliding on his favorite pair of jeans. Tommy looked up at the target. The bull's-eye seemed unusually large . . . like a great big Frisbee just a few feet away.

“Nock your arrows!”

Tommy selected a silver arrow with white and blue fletchings. He nocked the arrow, and it didn't slip away from the bowstring.
What in
the world?
He had never felt so relaxed with a bow in his hands. Tommy easily pulled the bowstring back until the fingertips of his right hand grazed his cheek. Then he took aim.

The moment the arrow left the string, Tommy's vision blurred, and he felt like he himself were blazing toward the target . . . as if his eyes were glued to the tip of the arrowhead, then . . .
WHUMP
.

There was an audible gasp from the crowd, broken a moment later by a roar of applause from the bleachers behind Tommy. Kids shouted and cheered.

Tommy shook his head, blinked twice.

It can't be.

Had he missed altogether? He must have. And someone from one of the other lines must have accidentally shot the wrong target, for there, plunged deep into the very center ring of the bull's-eye, was an arrow. His arrow? Surely not. That had to be it, because Brock Eastman was at the front of the next line over, and he was staring at Tommy's target. It was Brock's arrow.

“Good shot,” Brock said, sounding surprised.

Tommy's head swiveled comically back and forth between Brock and the target.
A bull's-eye? Me?

“How'd you do that, Bowman?”

Tommy shrugged. “I . . . I don't know.”

“Whatever,” said Brock as he selected his next arrow. “Just keep doing it.”

Tommy took another arrow out of the cone. In one swift motion, he set the arrow to the string, drew his hand back to his cheek, and lined up the shot.
Amazing,
Tommy thought. Just the day before, he'd had no idea how to judge the distance and the height of the shot. Now, it seemed so clear. The arrow simply had no choice but to go straight into the bull's-eye. Tommy let it go. This time the sensation of his vision riding along with the arrow wasn't nearly as disorienting. Now it felt . . . normal. For a split second, all Tommy saw was a huge, yellow circle, and then,
WHUMP
. The arrow—
his arrow
—stuck out of the bull's-eye right next to his first shot. It couldn't have been closer if Tommy had run up to the target and rammed the arrow in with his hand. It was almost as if—

“Aaahhhh! Ow, ow, ow, OWWWW!!”

Tommy spun to his right. Brock was down on his knees. His face was beet red and he clutched his left forearm. Tommy saw the ugly, purple bruise spreading on Brock's arm and knew immediately what had happened. “Brock, are you okay?”

“No, I'm not okay!” Brock squealed. “The bowstring almost cut my arm in half!”

The crowd grew silent, and Mr. Phitzsinger commanded the archers to put down the bows and came running over. He knelt by Brock, saw his bruised arm, and grimaced. “I told you to keep a little bend in that arm,” he said. “Think you can still shoot?”

“It hurts,” Brock complained. “I need to go to the health room.”

“Okay, Son,” said Mr. Phitzsinger, helping Brock to his feet. “The show will have to go on without you though.” But then he looked up and saw the two bull's-eyes in Tommy's target. He looked to Tommy. “Twenty points with two arrows? Who did that?”

Tommy blushed and said quietly, “Uh . . . I did.”

“You?” Mr. Phitzsinger laughed. “You shot two—no, you're pulling my leg.”

“No, he did. I saw him,” said Brock. “Do it again, Tommy.”

Tommy reluctantly picked out his final arrow and put it to the string. He pulled back the bowstring and aimed. For whatever reason, Tommy wasn't quite sure why, he felt like he shouldn't hit the exact middle of the bull's-eye again. The bowstring sang, and the arrow flew straight and true—into the second yellow ring of the bull's-eye. The students in the bleachers erupted again.

“That's a twenty-nine-point set, Bowman,” Mr. Phitzsinger declared. Then he yelled over to the seventh-grade teachers. “Hey, Belanger! Tommy Bowman just beat your best set!”

Mr. Belanger, one of the most good-natured teachers in the school and never one to put down a student, couldn't help his astonishment. Tommy watched him mouth the words “NO WAY” and couldn't help but grin. The other kids in Tommy's line patted him on the back and asked him the same question over and over again. Tommy's answer was the same each time: “I don't know.”

Mr. Phitzsinger helped Brock to the waiting assistant principal, Mrs. Rout, who ushered the injured boy out of the gym. Then he yelled, “Fire when ready!” At the end of the fourth round, the gym teacher collected the student score sheets and posted the scores. To the delight of the crowd, the students had the lead—410 to 394.