I am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to be Your Class (20 page)

 

This is a big crowd. At least, it’s as big as a crowd at Gale Sayers Middle School can get. All the children in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades—even though the eighth graders will be going to high school next year and won’t be voting in the elections. And they bused in the fifth graders from the three elementaries that feed into this school, even though they won’t be voting, either, just so they can get a taste of how important student government is.

 

Plus all the teachers of all those students. A lot of the parents for a lot of those students. Reporters. Curiosity seekers. Cops.

 

So many people that Principal Pinckney has had to hold this assembly in the parking lot, because the auditorium wouldn’t contain everyone. And they’re all just standing there, like cattle in a holding pen, facing the stage. Newspaper reporters on one side, TV journalists on the other, common folk jammed in the middle. All hemmed in by the dozen or so news vans that are parked around the perimeter with their satellite poles pointed at the sky. All because the great Sheldrake is going to give a speech.

 

There are three rumors running through the crowd at this moment. One is
RANDY SPARKS SLEEPS NAKED
. This is supposed to creep everyone out by making them think about what Randy Sparks looks like naked. It also makes him sound like some kind of weird hippie who is into nudism and being in touch with his body and gross things like that.
¹⁰⁰
Actually, he wears oversize T-shirts and underwear when he sleeps, but he’d have to bring in pictures to prove it to anyone.
¹⁰¹
My instructions were for this rumor to be planted in the back of the crowd. I want to watch the revulsion on peoples’ faces as it works its way forward.

 

The second rumor is
RANDY SPARKS HATES PIZZA
. If anything, this’ll creep people out more than the thought of Randy naked. Who doesn’t like pizza? Communists? Terrorists? Communist terrorists? Only someone evil, that’s for sure. I’m having that rumor planted in the front part of the crowd.

 

The third rumor making the rounds is
THE FAT KID CAN SET FIRE TO THINGS WITH THE POWER OF HIS MIND
. I actually didn’t plant that one—Tatiana did. She came up with the idea of planting a rumor completely on her own (great minds thinking alike and all; she doesn’t know anything about my rumors). I’m not quite sure what she’s trying to do with this rumor—maybe make people think I’ll set them on fire if they don’t vote for me? Ah, Tati. You whip through this world like a gold-plated greyhound, leaving fear and anger wherever you go.
¹⁰²

 

I’m onstage at the moment, seated with the other candidates for class office. Me and Randy (his hair plastered down with mousse) and the other rising eighth graders sit to Principal Pinckney’s left. He stands at a lectern giving his introduction.

 

“. . . though not a native of our fair city, he has made it famous as a home of industry. . . .”

 

The rising seventh graders sit on his right. Standing in the front row are all our parents. Well, not all—Daddy is at home, sulking. He hasn’t been the same since the pledge drive. To be honest, I thought canceling the pledge drive would give him a chance to pay more attention to the election. I hadn’t reckoned on what an enormous baby he is.

 

Mom’s here, though, with her new BFFs Logan Michaels and Liz Twombley. All three of them are wearing pink
TEAM TUBBY
T-shirts. Tatiana stands in front of them, wearing a pink silk kimono that mysteriously appeared in her mother’s laundry basket yesterday. It has gold and purple dragons embroidered on it, and it has a big stiff collar that juts out on either side of Tati’s face like emerald wings. I never dreamed she would actually wear it to school. Somehow she’s getting away with it.

 

Her arms are crossed in front of her body in the billowy sleeves. She has a focused look on her face as she tries to listen to Pinckney’s speech, which isn’t easy, because Mom and the girls are pinching each other and giggling behind her. Tati raises one of her dainty cocoa-brown hands and snaps her fingers; Mom, Liz, and Logan shut up instantly.

 

Verna Salisbury is here, too, with her arm very convincingly draped around Scott Sparks’s waist. She’s really playing this girlfriend act to the hilt. Scott turns to look at her every ten seconds just to make sure she’s really there. Verna makes encouraging faces at Randy, who smiles bravely but looks like he wants to pee himself. I’d feel sorry for him, but it’s a well-known fact he’s a creepy, pizza-hating nudist.

 

Pammy Quattlebaum and the other suck-ups have also wormed their way into the front row. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is desperate to hear what the great man has to say.

 

“And so, without further ado . . .”

 

Thunderous applause as Sheldrake emerges from his phalanx of bodyguards. It’s curious to watch him from this angle, to see him almost as others see him, as a figure of respect and power. He stands at the lectern in his rumpled tweed sport coat, his corn-silk hair fluttering in the breeze, looking a bit more now like an extremely wise professor than a Captain of Industry.

 

“There has been a great deal of speculation as to why I would wish to speak at a middle school assembly, to talk about student council elections. I assure you, I have no sinister ulterior motive. . . .”

 

Except to guarantee that your boss will win the election.

 

“I simply have a deep and abiding faith in the power of representative Democracy, and when I realized that student election season had rolled around again, I asked Mr. Pinckney to let me say a few words to you, the future leaders of this great nation, about the precious gift you are about to exercise for the first time.
¹⁰³
About the important decision you are about to make . . .”

 

This is all just a bunch of meaningless bologna he’s using to waste time before he gets to the important stuff. This moment. Now. When Sheldrake tells the good people how, quite unexpectedly, he met a young man here at the assembly who possesses all the gifts of leadership and honesty anyone could hope for in a class president.

 

“Out of the blue, here at this assembly, I met a young man who has all the gifts of leadership and honesty anyone could hope for in a class president.”

 

Sheldrake will admit that this young man’s positive attributes might not be obvious to the naked eye, but Sheldrake has a good feeling about him.

 

“Oh, maybe it’s not apparent to the naked eye . . . but let me tell you, I have a good feeling about this young man. . . .”

 

And though he isn’t telling anyone who to vote for, the ris-ing eighth graders might want to take a good long look at Oliver Watson Junior.

 

“And far be it from me to tell anyone whom they ought to vote for, but the rising eighth graders among you would be well advised to take a good long look at—”

 

That’s when the bomb goes off.

 

At least, I think it’s a bomb. I’m no expert on these things, but the part of the stage Sheldrake is standing on isn’t there anymore. And there is a BOOM that sounds like God’s toilet flushing. Then someone is yelling, “Revenge is ours! Revenge is ours!” And everyone starts screaming.

 

Now it’s just general pushing, shoving panic. People are running in different directions, into each other, in circles. Ms. Broadway stands on a chair, screaming her idiot head off about “terrorists” and “space invaders.” Vice Principal Hruska tries to bring her back to reality by giving her a light slap on the face. She breaks his nose with her elbow.

 

The stage is shaking wildly, like a Slinky made of Jell-O. Randy, who’s fallen into my lap,
¹⁰⁴
whispers, “Jeepers.” But the most interesting thing from where I sit is the sight of the newspaper reporters in the crowd not panicking at all. Instead, they drop their notebooks—as if they were expecting this—and pull ugly-looking fighting batons from their jackets; then they rush the stage, looking like nothing so much as a platoon of highly trained mercenaries. They’re the ones yelling, “Revenge!”

 

They should be taking the stage easily—except an opposing platoon emerges from the crowd to fight them. These are the TV journalists and their camera crews, who have, rather mysteriously, pulled out weapons of their own and are now engaging the newspaper guys in battle, right in front of the stage, as everyone else runs for cover.

 

My mother is frozen in place, her eyes fixed on me, clearly desperate to save her beamish boy. “Marlene!” barks Tati, “Run!” But even Tatiana’s considerable charisma can’t convince Mom to abandon me and run for cover. Logan and Tati tug on Mom’s skirt, to no effect. She won’t budge. Then, suddenly and heroically, Liz takes a running start and tackles Mom around the ankles, pushing her to safety behind a fallen section of the stage.
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Just in time, too, because the wave of battle immediately washes over the spot where they’d been standing.

 

It seems to be an even fight, until the TV guys’ news vans trundle toward the action, lowering their satellite masts as they approach and pointing them at the newspaper reporters. Funny thing—when they’re lowered like that, those satellite masts look kind of like the antiaircraft guns on an Abrams tank. . . .

 

It all happens so fast. In fact, I see all of this in the five or ten seconds before one, two, three people suddenly throw their bodies on top of me, shielding me from the action. It pays to have a Pistol, Bardolph, and Nym.

 

-—Headline,
Omaha World-Herald
, Special Edition, May 2

 

Pistol, Bardolph, and Nym peel themselves off me as soon as the fighting dies down. Just as I suspected, the new librarian and the Chinese exchange student (whose armpit I’ve just spent a fragrant five minutes inhaling) are two of my protectors.

 

The third is Pammy Quattlebaum. She gives me an embarrassed shrug and trots back to the parking lot, joining her friends, who are gathered in a circle hugging and crying. They will spend the next two days squealing with leftover terror, and no one will squeal louder or longer than Pammy.

 

It’s strange, but I somehow like Pammy even
less
now that I know she’s not just a brown-nosing drama queen, but also some sort of martial arts master. If only because it means she’s a lot harder to kill.