Scare School (5 page)

At school the next morning, I looked at everyone differently. As I walked to my classroom, I studied the kids who passed by me.

Was one of them the imp?

I stepped into the room and waved hello to Mr. Kimpall. Was he the imp? I wondered.

He is nearly as short as the imp! I thought. But he’s too nice to be the disgusting creature, I decided.

We had a geography test that morning. But I couldn’t concentrate on it.

I kept gazing around the room, staring at the other kids as they filled in their test papers. Was one of them the imp?

I watched Tonya. She leaned over her paper,
moving her lips as she wrote. Tonya was left-handed, I saw.

Were imps left-handed? Was that a clue?

I turned and watched Simpson. He kept scratching his spiky brown hair with his pencil. He shook his head, frowning down at the test questions.

Simpson always seems terrified of the imp, I thought. And I am pretty sure he’s not pretending to be afraid.

Of course, I could be wrong. Simpson could be the imp.

All of this thinking was making my head spin. And I realized if I didn’t get down to work, I was going to flunk the test.

It’s no good to suspect everyone, I told myself. That won’t get me anywhere.

I need clues.

Of course, the scrawled messages from the imp were clues.

“READ MY LETTER: WHO WILL DROP FIRST?” That had to be some kind of clue.

The Web site said that imps love to play games, especially word games. They love to challenge humans.

Was that message some kind of word game? What could it mean?

“Time is up,” Mr. Kimpall said from the front of the room. “Put down your pencils.”

“Oh, no,” I muttered. I gazed down at my test paper. I hadn’t written a word.

I really tried. But I couldn’t get the imp out of my mind.

That afternoon, I stepped into the band room for rehearsal and gazed around. I saw Teri changing her clarinet reed.

She could be the imp, I thought.

Or Mr. Kelly. Or the big kid who plays the tuba.

Ms. Simpkin poked her head into the room and waved hello to Mr. Kelly.

She
could be the imp, I thought.

What if the principal of the school was the imp? Would that explain why all the teachers were so terrified?

My head throbbed. I realized I was gritting my teeth.

Sam, you’ve got to relax, I told myself. You are totally stressed.

Maybe practicing on my sax will help calm me down, I thought. Playing music usually helped.

I pulled my sax case off the shelf. I dropped to my knees and started to open it—and saw a white sheet of paper taped to the top.

“Whoa. What’s this?” I muttered.

I tugged the paper off the case. And stared at the red letters, scrawled in paint: READ MY LETTER:

WHO WILL DROP FIRST?

“Oh, wow.” A voice behind me made me spin around.

I found Teri standing there, reading the note over my shoulder. “Sam—be careful,” she said softly.

I let the note fall to the floor. “I’m not afraid of stupid notes that don’t even make any sense!” I cried angrily.

I grabbed the sax case and pulled it open. Then I lifted out the two sections of the horn.

I started to slide them together. Then stopped.

Wait. Something felt funny. Something was wrong.

I tried to set the sax sections back in the case. But my hands wouldn’t let go.

My fingers were wrapped tightly around them. I tried to raise my fingers. To uncurl them.

But they were stuck tightly to the saxophone pieces.

“Hey!” I cried.

I shook my hands hard. But they wouldn’t come unstuck.

My heart pounding, I stared at the two sax sections. Someone had poured a thick layer of glue over them.

No matter how I moved, I couldn’t pull my hands away.

“Mr. Kelly? I need help here!” I shouted. My
voice came out high and shrill.

Several kids turned to stare at me.

Mr. Kelly had been talking to the snare drummers. He turned, saw me down on the floor beside my sax case, and hurried over.

“Sam, what’s the problem?”

I raised my hands with the horn sections attached. “I’m stuck,” I said. “My hands are glued to the sax.”

Mr. Kelly’s mouth dropped open in shock. He bent down beside me. He gave one of the sax parts a gentle tug.

“See?” I said. “I’m totally stuck.”

He stared at my hands. “Let’s see what we can do,” he muttered.

He grabbed the fingers on my left hand and tried to pry them up.

No. They wouldn’t budge.

He grabbed the sax section and pulled with all his strength.

I heard a ripping sound—and felt a wave of pain sweep down my arm.

“OW! NO—STOP!” I screamed. “MY SKIN! MY SKIN IS TEARING OFF!”

Mr. Kelly phoned my parents. He said they would meet me at the emergency room.

He helped me to my feet, then guided me to his car in the teacher parking lot. Kids stared at me as I made my way through the hall.

Some kids thought it was a joke. But they stopped laughing when they saw the pain on my face. I heard some kids murmuring about the imp.

Mr. Kelly held open the door to his gray Camry. I lowered myself into the seat and rested the sax parts in my lap.

“The doctors will know how to unstick them,” he said. He was trying to sound cheerful. But I could tell by his voice that he was really worried.

As we pulled into the hospital parking lot, Mr. Kelly turned to me. He stared down at the sax pieces, then raised his eyes to me.

“Don’t tell your parents about the imp,” he said softly.

My mouth felt dry as dust. I swallowed. “Excuse me?”

“If he finds out about it, it will only make things worse,” Mr. Kelly said.

I groaned and tried to raise my hands. “How could things be any worse?” I asked.

“If the secret gets out, the imp will go berserk,” Mr. Kelly said. “He will hurt people. He really will. He will go after everyone in the school.”

I saw my parents crossing the parking lot. Dad held Mom’s arm. They looked really worried.

“There they are,” I told Mr. Kelly. I pointed.

He grabbed my sleeve. “Don’t tell, Sam,” he repeated. “I’m warning you.”

We caught up to my parents at the front desk. They turned and stared in shock at the pieces of the saxophone stuck to my hands.

Before I could open my mouth, Mr. Kelly spoke up. “Someone at school played a cruel trick,” he told them. “The principal is looking into it.”

Dr. Gubbin didn’t know what to do. He was a young man with a short black ponytail hanging from
the back of his green surgical cap.

He had me perched in front of him on a metal exam table. He kept rubbing the front of his green gown with both hands, studying my hands. Studying me as if I were an alien from a different planet.

He tsk-tsked several times and kept shaking his head. Then he tried rubbing a few different liquids over my hands.

They were supposed to loosen the glue. But they didn’t work.

My hands were totally cramped now. And my shoulders ached from holding the heavy metal sax parts for so long.

Finally, he turned to my parents. They were huddled together on the other side of the exam table.

“I may have to try a mild acid,” he said.

“NO WAY!” I shouted.

“If I can’t find something to dissolve the glue, I might have to bum it off,” Dr. Gubbin said. “It will do some skin damage. But we should be able to heal it up in a month or so.”

“Please—” I begged. “No acid!”

Dad’s face had turned as green as the doctor’s lab gown. “If that’s the only way … ” he muttered.

“It will burn a little bit,” Dr. Gubbin told me.

“No. Please—” I repeated. “If you bum my hands … ”

I tried to raise them—and one hand pulled loose.

The saxophone piece clattered to the floor.

“Hey—!”

Everyone cried out at once.

“See?” I said. “We don’t need acid!”

“Good news. I guess that last solvent did the trick,” Dr. Gubbin said. “Let’s apply some more to the other hand and see what happens.”

A few minutes later, Dr. Gubbin released my other hand.

A few minutes after that, I was riding home with my parents in the backseat of the Taurus. My hands still stung and ached. Patches of skin had been torn off on both palms, and two of my fingers had to be bandaged.

“Sam, who would do such a horrible thing to you?” Mom asked, turning to face me from the passenger seat.

“You just started this school,” Dad said, turning onto Palm Street. “You haven’t made any enemies already—have you?”

“Well …”

I took a deep breath and let it all come out.

“I told you, but you wouldn’t listen to me. The school is haunted by a vicious creature,” I said. “He’s about three feet tall and looks like a big green rat. Except he has a human face.”

“Excuse me?” Mom turned around again to look at me.

“It’s an imp,” I continued. “Imps are not supposed to be real. But this one is.”

I took another breath. The words came tumbling out of me. “Everyone in school is terrified of the imp,” I said. “Even the teachers. The imp has magical powers, and he can do horrible things if he gets angry.

“Remember when I came home without my jacket?” I continued breathlessly. “I told you the imp took it. You laughed at me. But it was true. I tried to take back the jacket. I got into a fight with him. And I pulled off his tail.”

I raised my raw red hands. “This was his revenge,” I said. “A kid didn’t do this to me. The imp did.”

We weren’t home yet. But Dad pulled the car to the curb. He and Mom both turned to me. “Sam—” Dad started.

“You’ve got to help me,” I said. “We’ve got to get rid of this imp. No one else will do it. So, will you help me? Will you?”

My parents stared at me for the longest time. Mom chewed her bottom lip. Dad tapped his fingers nervously on the seat back.

“You believe me—don’t you?” My question came out in a whisper.

Mom shook her head.

“Sam, this is exactly what you did at your last school,” Dad said. “Blaming your problems on others.”

“You promised us you wouldn’t do this anymore,” Mom said in a trembling voice. “You are making up stories to keep from facing the truth.”

“But this time you’ve gone too far. Your story is too crazy for
anyone
to believe,” Dad said.

“I’m very worried about you,” Mom said. “Very worried.”

“Me too,” Dad said softly.

“You … don’t believe me,” I muttered. I had a heavy lump in my throat.

I wanted them to believe me. I
needed
them to believe me.

“Okay. I’ll prove it to you,” I said.

I knew what I had to do. I had to draw the imp out. I had to force a showdown.

The next morning, I hurried to the computer room before school started. I printed up a bunch of signs. The signs read “READ MY LETTER:
YOU
WILL DROP FIRST!”

I took a roll of tape from the art room, and I began taping up my signs all over school.

“Sam, are you crazy?” a voice called.

I turned to find Tonya staring at me in horror. She wore a stiff-looking white blouse and a black skirt over black tights.

I finished taping a sign to the science lab door. “Why are you dressed like a pilgrim? It’s not Thanksgiving,” I said.

“I’m in the chorus,” she replied, staring at the sign. “We’re singing at the assembly this morning.”

“Oh, yeah,” I muttered. I had forgotten there was an assembly.

Good, I thought. Good timing.

“Take that sign down, Sam,” Tonya warned. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“It’s war,” I said. “Me against the imp. No way I’m taking it down.”

I held up my stack of signs. “Help me put them up?”

She brushed back her straight black hair. “You’re crazy,” she said. “How can you be so crazy after what the imp did to you yesterday?”

I began walking down the hall, searching for a good place to hang the next sign. “Don’t you want to get rid of the imp, Tonya?” I asked. “Don’t you want to go to a normal school where people aren’t afraid all the time?”

“Of course,” she replied, following after me. “But there’s no way. He has too much power, Sam. Your signs are only going to make him angry. And when he’s angry—”

I grabbed Tonya’s arm. “I’m angry, too,” I said. “Look what he did to my hands.” I showed her the cuts and burns. “I’m angry, too, Tonya. That’s why I’m going to do everything I can to get rid of the creature.”

She tried to pull free. But I held on to her arm. “Why won’t you help me, Tonya? Why?”

We both jumped as Ms. Simpkin came around the corner. “Sam? Tonya?” The principal hurried over to us.

“Tonya, the chorus is already onstage,” she said. “You’d better get over there.”

She turned to me. “Sam, why aren’t you in class? The assembly will be starting in a few minutes.”

“I—I have these signs,” I said. I started to hold them up.

But Ms. Simpkin spun away and trotted back the other way. “Let’s go, you two,” she called back to us. “We have a guest speaker this morning. We don’t want to hold up the assembly.”

Tonya turned and ran toward the auditorium.

I stared after her, thinking hard. An assembly …

An assembly …

Suddenly, I had a plan.

The assembly was pretty boring. But no one cared. It meant we got out of class.

The chorus sang two songs. They sounded pretty good. But the girl at the end of the top row slipped during the first song and nearly fell off the bleacher.

She caught her balance. But her face stayed bright red for the rest of the performance.

The speaker was a young woman who talked about volunteering to help out with things in the community. She said kids could make a real difference, and it wouldn’t take up much of our time.

I didn’t really hear too much of her talk. I could only think about the imp and what I planned to do.

Yes, you’re right. I was obsessed.

I had made up my mind to destroy the imp once and for all. And nothing was going to stop me.

When the speaker finished, most kids clapped. A few kids in the back rows booed, just to be funny.

Ms. Simpkin glared at them. Then she walked to the podium to thank the speaker.

I took a deep breath and jumped up from my seat. I pushed my way over kids’ legs to the aisle.

“Hey, Sam—where are you going?”

“Sam, sit down!”

“Ow! Get off my foot!”

I ignored the kids in my row who tried to stop me. I knew what I was going to do. I had been planning it all through the assembly.

Ms. Simpkin didn’t see me run down the aisle. She didn’t see me climb onto the stage.

She was making an announcement about the band concert on Friday night. “I want everyone here to cheer on our great band,” she said.

I don’t think she noticed me until I was standing next to her at the podium.

She let out a startled cry as I pulled the microphone from her hand.

I moved away from her and turned to the audience.

“Hey, imp—!” I shouted into the microphone. “Hey, imp—you want me? Come find me!”

My hands were trembling. My voice came out high and shrill.

But I didn’t care.

I lifted the microphone close to my mouth. “Come find me!” I screamed.

And then I held up the imp’s tail. I raised it high over my head in my free hand. And I waved it in the air.

“You want this back?” I screamed. “Hey, imp—you want this back? Come and get it! I dare you! Come and
try
to get it back!”

I shook the limp green tail, waving it high over my head. “YOU will drop first!” I cried. “Come and get this! Come on—unless you’re chicken!”

I stopped to take a breath. My heart was pounding. My whole body was trembling.

Were the kids cheering me on? Were they behind me?

No.

A heavy silence had fallen over the auditorium.

I saw pale faces staring up at me in wide-eyed horror.

I sank back. I lowered the tail to my side.

Have I gone too far? I wondered.

Have I?

The answer was
yes
.

The next day, the imp went berserk.