I am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to be Your Class (12 page)

 

Which is why cover has always been so important to me. Why I’ve done everything I can to fly under the radar at school, to be a being of complete bland boringness to my

 

classmates. When you draw attention to yourself, dangerous things can happen.

 

For instance: Liz Twombley is hugging me. Furiously. Frantically. Right in the middle of the cafeteria. Her left hand clasps the back of my head and grinds my face into her body. Since Liz stands a good foot taller than me, even you can do this math.
⁷⁰
I am caught in a web of equal parts humiliation and exhilaration.

 

“Oh, Oliver,” she emotes. “You’ll be the best class president ever.” Her clique—Megan Polanski, Shiri O’Doul, and Rashida Grant—remain seated at the Popular Table, watching this display with abject, slack-jawed horror. I struggle to free myself, but I can’t decide how hard I should fight.

 

“Be careful, Crisco-breath,” taunts Tatiana, sauntering past with a carton of chocolate milk. “You might suffocate.”

 

That makes up my mind for me. I somehow find the strength to push Liz away, find the appropriate words to say thank you (“Your sweater smells fuzzy”), and rush to my table, where Randy Sparks waits with a slice of pizza—forgotten—stuck halfway into his mouth.

 

Liz gives me one last longing look and returns to her friends. Megan, Shiri, and Rashida, without speaking, without exchanging so much as a glance or gesture, stand up and move to another table. Middle-school cruelty has struck again. The girl who took me into her arms was the Most Popular Girl in School. The girl who let me go is nothing.

 

Liz is just one of the victims of my political career. This morning, Jack Chapman announced he was withdrawing from the race so he could concentrate on his studies.
⁷¹

 

There’s also been a massive increase in farting in class. My new high profile has made me a magnet for bullies, even bullies who should know better, and I suspect Pistol, Bardolph, and Nym are running low on blow-darts. Yesterday, Alan Pitt—he of the loud mouth and bad complexion—slammed me into a locker so hard I nearly broke a finger. My minions filled him with Lazopril darts, but too late to do any good. Ten minutes later, he laid such a stinker in history class that I thought the gas was going to melt the zits off his face.

 

Still, it’s all worth it. Once again, I have triumphed.

 

Randy Sparks has recovered enough to swallow the cheese in his mouth. He gives me an encouraging smile. “I guess you’re going to be president now, Ollie.”

 

I dig frantically into my pocket and pull out a greasy dollar bill. I push it across the table to him. “Okay, okay. Here,” I say. “It’s all I’ve got.”

 

Randy is puzzled. “I don’t want your money.”

 

“It’s all I’ve got!” I scream, “I’ll bring more tomorrow!”

 

He gives me a nervous smile, looks around to see who’s heard me. “No. Take it back. That’s yours.”

 

“
Okay
!
Okay
! I’ll steal money from my Mommy and give it to you!”

 

“But I don’t want—” Randy is yanked to his feet by the beefy paw of Miss Broadway, a rather enormous new math teacher. “Leave him alone,” she commands.

 

“But I wasn’t—I don’t want his money. I don’t know why he thought—” protests Randy, but the look on Broadway’s broad face silences him.

 

“Really, Rudy, I expect better from you.”

 

“Randy,” says Randy miserably.

 

“Whatever you’re calling yourself today,” says Broadway, refusing to concede anything. “Now move to another table. And if I see you bothering Oliver again, I’ll report you.”

 

Randy sighs
⁷²
and walks out of the cafeteria, leaving his lunch behind. Maybe I’ve pushed him a little too hard this time. But nuisances like Randy Sparks shouldn’t be encouraged, and since there’s no way I can apologize, I do the next best thing and finish his pizza for him.

 

Coincidentally, it’s pizza night at the Watson house (Mom burned her tuna soufflé), and we are all digging into a large pie from Big Fred’s.

 

Daddy is nibbling at his half of the pie, which is covered with pepperoni (which I find repulsive). “So,” he asks, trying to muster up something that resembles excitement, “how’s the campaign going?”

 

I’ve waited patiently through his entire dinnertime lecture (tonight’s topic: “Let’s make the politicians fight the wars!”) for him to give me this opening.

 

“I’m president,” I say, through a mouth full of anchovies and hot peppers.

 

Daddy makes his obligatory attempt to contradict me. “No, you have to be elected first.”

 

And this is where I get to drop my bomb.

 

“Nuh-uh, Daddy. Liz and Jack dropped out, so I’m the only one running.” I speak slowly, both to savor the moment and to make sure he hears me right. “So I get to be president. Just like you.”

 

The entire point of dropping a bomb is to get an explosion. Mom obliges, and is out of her seat and hugging me,

 

Twombley style, in no time flat. But that’s not the explosion I wanted.

 

My eyes are on Daddy, who sits there, eyes unfocused, fondling his glasses, looking concerned. Confused. What bitter truths must be racing through his brain right now? What new, grudging respect for his only son is forcing its way onto his consciousness? His mouth opens. Here it comes. Here it comes. . . .

 

“I’m sorry, Oliver.”

 

No.

 

He should be staring down at his plate, rethinking his entire youth, realizing just how empty his school-age accomplishments were, since
I
can equal them.

 

Or he should be looking at me with admiration. With realization. He should be slapping me on the back, giving me a proud and hearty “Good work, kid.” Not that I want that.

 

Or he should be weeping. Just weeping. Weeping would be fine.

 

But not
this
. Not
pity
.

 

“Oliver won,” says Mom, confused.

 

“No, dear. Oliver’s going to be president. But he didn’t win anything,” says Daddy. He gives me a rueful smile—the one that means he’s about to teach me a very important lesson. “I think Oliver knows what I’m talking about.”

 

 

For once in his life, Oliver doesn’t have a clue.

 

 

“We live in a
democracy
.” He says the word like it’s something holy. “And the important thing in a democracy isn’t
winning
an election—it’s
participating
in it. The struggle. The campaign. I mean, if you just
walk into
the office, well . . . it’s wonderful to be so valued by your peers”—here he gives me a condescending wink—“but really, you haven’t won anything, have you? It’s like something you’d see in a Communist country. Or some banana republic where the elections are fixed. Would my victory in tenth grade have been as sweet if I hadn’t had to beat Louis Goldberg? It wouldn’t have been a victory at all.

 

“The beauty of the American system is the crucible of ideas. Two people—or more—being thrown into the ring and having to win the hearts and minds of their fellow citizens. That’s what keeps government strong. And that’s what keeps
student
government strong.”

 

I think my heart has stopped beating.

 

My God. He actually believes this crap. And, in his eyes, I have accomplished
nothing
.

 

Does he think Rocket-Firing Boba Fett Dolls grow on trees?

 

He’s convinced one member of his audience. “I’m sorry, Oliver,” says Mom. “I didn’t understand. . . . Maybe you’ll get to run against somebody next year.” She gives me her most loving smile.

 

Daddy gives me a playful punch on the shoulder. “I guess it just wasn’t meant to be, huh, Champ?”

 

I nod, and I try to swallow, but it feels like I’m swallowing chalk dust. I can feel my features hardening into a permanently blank mask.
What do I have to do to impress this man
?
⁷³

 

I tap my left foot once. . . .

 

My internal organs are melting together—I can feel them—congealing into a stew of red-hot lava. They threaten to spew out my mouth and all over his rotten smirk.

 

I tap my left foot again. . . .

 

I can feel my hair turning into freezing cold fire. It’s drilling into my brain.

 

I tap my left foot a third time. . . .

 

“Why is she doing that?” sweats Daddy.

 

He’s looking down at Lolli, who is glaring up at him with hate like he’s never seen before. She sounds like she swallowed a chain saw. Her nostrils are wide and foaming. Her eyes are as flat and dead as two dirty pennies.

 

“She needs a walk,” I say.

 

“She just went out before dinner,” says Mom.

 

“She needs a walk,” I say, and I jump to my feet. My faithful hound, my loving, loyal dog follows me out the door.

 

Lollipop needs a walk?
I
need a walk.

 

I need to let my temper cool before I accidentally tap my left foot a fourth and final time—and Lollipop does something neither of us can take back.

 

And more than that: I need an opponent.

Do you like video games?

 

Of course, you do.

 

Come here. You’ll
love
this one.

 

You know the game where you have a plastic guitar, and you hit buttons that make the little guitarist on screen strum along to whatever song is playing? This is like that game but better.

 

I am sitting in the amphitheater, a part of my Control Center I don’t use much. I am playing with a plastic guitar. There’s a thick curtain in the center of the room. My technicians are getting the game ready behind that curtain.

 

“We’re done, sir,” says Chauncey the technician (who’s been much more respectful lately).

 

“Excellent. Let’s begin!”

 

Chauncey pulls back the heavy velvet curtain, revealing two stacks of the largest stereo amplifiers you will ever see in your life. There’s a marionette hanging in the air between them. What’s interesting about this marionette is that it is a real person. A fourteen-year-old boy, in fact, in a pair of
Knight Rider
pajamas. There’s a bag over his head.

 

And one more thing: There’s a guitar strapped to his chest.

 

“Bag off,” I order. A technician pulls a string, and the bag is yanked into the rafters. Oh, look—the marionette is actually Alan Pitt! I’m surprised the bag fit over his zits.

 

“Hi, Alan!” I say, perfectly friendly. “What do you want to play first?”

 

“Who is that?” says Alan, who is still wearing a blindfold. “Where am I? What’s going on?”

 

“We’re having a playdate. What kind of music do you like? You a classic-rock guy? You look like a classic-rock guy.”

 

He turns his flabby pink ear toward me. “I know that voice. You go to school with me. Who is this? Parker Albanese? Because I flushed your iPod down the toilet?”

 

“No . . .” I drawl slowly. The tension in the air is delicious.

 

“Randy Sparks? Because I peed in your gym locker? I will crush you for this. . . .”

 

“Maybe . . .”

 

“Ted Philips? You only
thought
I kicked your ass last time. That was just a warm-up. Or maybe that fat kid who drinks chocolate pudding through a straw. I spit in your hair one time. Did you know that?”

 

I decide to play Cream’s “Tales of Brave Ulysses”
⁷⁴
first. I really love Clapton’s guitar work on that song, even though pretty much everything he’s done since then gives me diarrhea.
⁷⁵

 

As the first quiet, spooky notes creep out of the speakers, and Jack Bruce starts singing about “shiny purple fishes,” my fingers delicately touch the buttons on my controller. The ropes tied to the marionette jerk into action, forcing him to gently strum the guitar.

 

“What . . . hey . . . this is . . .”

 

Ginger Baker’s drumsticks CRACK down like the Auction Hammer of God, and Eric Clapton begins an almost ugly pounding stomp down an endless guitar staircase. My little fingers sweat on the buttons as I try to keep up.

 

The marionette is doing some
really
impressive stuff now—bobbing, jerking, strumming, kicking, windmilling.

 

Once, when I’ve hit enough notes in a row, the marionette goes into a split, ripping his pajamas.

 

“Ow! Who’s
doing
this? Just
stop
!” That’s the marionette talking. It keeps saying those things, no matter what buttons I push. Maybe if I play long enough . . .

 

Sheldrake joins me halfway through “Sweet Jane.” I turn down the music so we can hear each other. Lollipop, who’s curled up on top of my bare feet, whines with appreciation; she’s wearing special noise-canceling earphones I devised for her, but I know they don’t keep out all the sound.