Dunc and Amos Meet the Slasher (2 page)

There were kids all over the mall. It was an every-year, last-night-before-school ritual. Everybody came to the mall to discuss teachers, classes, clothes, and strategy.

Amos kept an eye out for Melissa while they played Galaxy Snot-Ranger at the video arcade.

“Don’t you think it’s kind of interesting that these car burglars only hit cars at the mall?” Dunc asked.

“Where would you go if you needed about a thousand empty cars?”

“It’s okay, I guess, but you’d think they’d
move around. To make sure nobody caught on.”

Amos shrugged. “They seem to be doing just fine without your help. Give me another quarter. I’m up to two hundred thousand points. I’m about to max out and break the all-time snot record.”

A group of girls walked past the entrance of the arcade.

Amos quit punching buttons and sort of floated over to the door. Melissa was one of the girls.

“Amos, what about your game?”

“You finish it for me. Mr. Smooth is now on the job.”

Oh, great, Dunc thought.

Amos hurried past the girls. He positioned himself at the end of the mall by the water fountain, leaned casually up against the wall, and waited.

Melissa and her friends were walking toward the fountain. It looked like it might actually work.

Except that the wall Amos was leaning on was a door. The door to the women’s rest room. An elderly lady with a cane pulled the
door open from the inside. Amos had all his weight on his elbow. He lost his balance and fell sideways into the rest room.

Dunc couldn’t see him anymore. But it didn’t matter. Amos could be located by all the screaming and yelling from the rest room.

The lady started beating him with her cane. “You pervert! This will teach you to mess with a defenseless woman.”

Amos tried crawling away from the woman, but she hit him harder and kicked him in the ribs for good measure. It started a chain reaction. Another woman joined in with her umbrella. One lady got in a couple of licks with her purse. Then she pulled out a can of Mace.

When Amos finally got away, he was beaten to a pulp. He walked like a mass of quivering Jell-O.

Melissa and her friends had disappeared.

Dunc helped him walk back out to the bicycle rack. “Are you okay?”

Amos looked up at him with his one good eye. The other one was swollen shut. “Never felt better.”

“I don’t think Mr. Smooth impressed Melissa.”

“Why don’t you rub a little salt on my cut lip while you’re at it?”

Dunc shrugged. “I was just telling you so you wouldn’t try this particular move next time.”

Amos tried to throw his leg up over his bike. “There won’t be a next time. She probably thinks I’m a complete geek and will never call me or even speak to me again.”

“She doesn’t speak to you now.” Dunc sighed. “Besides, there’s a chance she didn’t know it was you.”

Amos’s face brightened a little. “You think maybe?”

“I think you fell in the door before she could be sure who it was.”

Amos smiled. “I can live with that. If we hurry, we might be able to catch up with her.”

He pedaled off toward Melissa’s house.

Dunc sighed. “Maybe I should have told him the truth.”

The first day of school. It had an exciting yet deadly ring to it.

Dunc was up two hours early arranging the contents of his notebook and backpack in alphabetical order. Even his pens and pencils were in perfect alignment. All pens were placed lettering-side-up, and every pencil was exactly the same length.

Amos was tending to business also.

He was in his dad’s bathroom splashing the “green stuff” on his face. He slapped it on until his cheeks were sore. Then he poured it on his hair and rubbed it in.

When they met in front of Amos’s house,
Dunc wished he had brought a gas mask. Amos had a smell that traveled thirty feet in front of him.

Dunc held his nose. “That stuff should be illegal. You should be arrested for polluting the environment.”

Amos sniffed in the air. “I don’t smell anything. Besides, the label says a little of this stuff will drive a girl wild.”

“I can certainly understand that. The fumes are toxic.”

Dunc made him ride on the opposite side of the road all the way to school.

The schoolyard was alive with music and conversation. Dunc and Amos locked their bikes in the rack just as the first bell rang.

Their first class was homeroom with Miss Monroe.

Miss Monroe was new this year. She was blond, pretty, and very inexperienced. She said they could sit anywhere they wanted.

Freddie—the Zit—Pittman took her up on it. He sat in her chair.

The class was pretty much in chaos. Paper planes were flying everywhere, and a
couple of the kids in the back were using a work table for break dancing.

Dunc was reading a copy of
Computer Weekly.
Amos had managed to get the chair behind Melissa’s. He was hanging on every word she said to her second-best friend Steffie Thompson—until Melissa took a deep breath, held her nose, and moved to another desk.

Everything came to a complete standstill when the door opened and the principal walked in. Not because of the principal but because of the student with her.

He was no run-of-the-mill, ordinary kid. He had outrageous red spiky hair and an earring in one ear. He was older and outweighed everybody in class by fifty pounds. His clothes were black. All black. Including a leather jacket with zippers and metal stuff all over it.

The principal handed Miss Monroe some paperwork and left.

“Class, I want you to meet … Slasher Davis. Unusual name. Just have a seat anywhere.”

Slasher’s eyes narrowed as he looked
around the room. Finally they fixed on a desk in the back.

It was Amos’s desk.

Slasher swaggered to the back of the room. He picked up the desk and dumped Amos out on the floor.

“Thanks, Teach. I’ll take this one.”

Amos pulled his face up off the floor and sat up. “Nice to meet you, Slasher. Hope you like the desk.”

The bell rang.

There was a mad dash for the door. Slasher deliberately stepped on Amos’s hand as he left.

Dunc helped him up. “What a creep. Do you need to go to the nurse or anything?”

“No, I’m okay. That guy is just lucky I’m in a good mood. Otherwise there might have been bloodshed.”

“Yeah, yours.”

Amos picked up his books. “You forget those kung fu classes I took. I’m a deadly weapon.”

“Amos, you only took two classes.”

“What are you saying?”

“Maybe you should just try to stay out of his way.”

“Okay, but it’s not because I’m afraid or anything. It’s only because you want me to.”

“Thank you, Amos.” Dunc smiled and grabbed his books.

The morning classes went a little better than homeroom. Except for PE, when Amos got his head a little too close to the bow in archery, and part of his eyebrows ended up stuck to the target.

At lunch they sat at their regular table. Tommy Farrel and Jesse Perez were involved in a burping contest. Tommy had just let one go that shook the building.

What happened next shouldn’t have. It was just one of those unlucky turn of events.

Amos got up to return his tray. His foot caught the edge of the table. He did a full somersault and came up on his feet. It was amazing. The only problem was that he lost the tray.

It flew to the next table and landed in a kid’s lap. But not just any kid.

Slasher Davis.

Mashed potatoes stuck out in little clumps on his spiked hair. He was not a happy camper.

Before Slasher was through, Amos was wearing the tray around his neck. An orange was stuck on his nose, and two milk cartons were attached to his ears.

Dunc helped him get the tray off before he choked to death. “I told you to stay away from that guy.”

Amos looked at him.

A cafeteria worker walked over and chewed Amos out for damaging school property. She told him he’d have to pay for the tray.

The bell rang.

School was over for the day. They were sitting on the bed in Amos’s room. Or Amos was sitting. Dunc was afraid to sit on the bed. Amos had a lifetime collection of trash, food, and clothes under that bed. Dunc preferred to stand. That way he could see if anything crawled out.

“As I see it, we have two big problems,” Dunc said. “The stereo thieves and Slasher Davis.”

“I no longer have either of those problems.” Amos put his hands behind his head and leaned back. “My dad just got a new
stereo, and I am never going back to school.”

“You have to go school. It’s a law.”

“I read somewhere, when your life is in danger, that law is null and void.”

Dunc started straightening the desk. “Your life isn’t in danger. Slasher just told you to stay out of his face.”

“And I intend to. I may move to Canada.”

“You’re taking the wrong attitude with this thing. I have a plan—”

“Hold it right there. Your plans are bad. Worse than bad. They’re defective, demented, and harmful to my body.”

“This one isn’t.” Dunc moved to the dresser. He straightened it.

Amos waited.

He moved to the closet and began to color code Amos’s shirts.

“Stop that!” Amos yelled. “Are you going to tell me or what?”

Dunc went back to the desk and started sharpening pencils.

“If you don’t stop that, I’m going to shove those pencils up your nose. I like my room
just the way it is. It has character. Now—are you going to tell me?”

“No, you’re probably right. We probably couldn’t pull it off It might not be worth it to try to make Slasher your friend anyway.”

“My friend?” Amos swung his legs around so he could face Dunc.

“Yeah, have you seen that strange group he hangs out with? I noticed they’re all sort of like him.”

Amos hugged his knees. “You mean big, ugly, and illiterate?”

“In a way. But they all dress the part. That’s the key. I was thinking we could dress you up like one of his gang. Maybe then he’d leave you alone.”

“I don’t know. I have my image to think of.”

“Right.”

“Okay—so I don’t have an image. But I’m still not so sure about this. Where would we get the clothes?”

Dunc smiled. “Your sister, Amy.”

“You can’t be serious. I wouldn’t be caught dead in her clothes. Which, by the
way, is exactly what I would be if she found out. So forget it.”

Dunc threw up his hands. “Okay. If you want to be on the run for the rest of the school year …”

Amos thought for a moment. “I don’t get it. How would wearing a girl’s clothes help me?”

“Not just any girl’s. Amy’s. Remember when she went through that motorcycle phase? She had a black leather jacket and a boyfriend named Eagle.”

Amos grinned. “It was Vulture. He used to park his motorcycle in our living room and rev the engine. I’m pretty sure my dad paid him to leave town. Amy got over him though. She’s into granola clothes now.”

“Perfect.” Dunc headed for the door. “She won’t be needing her jacket and stuff.”

“Stop!”

“What’s the matter now?”

“You forget. Amy said she’d dismember me, among other terrible things, if I ever went near her room. I believe her.”

“No problem. You stand at the door and keep watch. I’ll look for the stuff.”

Dunc found a cardboard box in the back of Amy’s closet. It had everything they needed. It also contained her personal diary for the last five years.

Amos was excited. Not about the clothes. About the diary.

“Do you know what this means?” Amos asked.

Dunc shook his head.

“This”—Amos waved the diary—“means I won’t have to wash dishes for years.”

“People really shouldn’t read other people’s personal stuff,” Dunc said.

Amos laughed. “This from a person who just broke into another person’s room. Don’t try to talk me out of it. You don’t have to live with her. I need some kind of leverage.”

Dunc shrugged. “Well, come on then. We don’t have much time. Mr. Johnson gave us homework, remember?”