Sinister Substitute (6 page)

And Sticky had told him about clammy walls in the labyrinth under the mansion where people could be shackled upside down until they cried for mercy. Sticky had told him about torture chambers filled with creaky, clanky killing (or contorting) contraptions! Sticky had told him … well, enough to make him shudder just thinking about going back to Raven Ridge.

But… what if Ms. Krockle
was
on a deathbed? A deathbed Damien Black had strapped her to!

What if, right now, that madman had her bound and gagged and was preparing to plunge a knife through her eeky-shrieky heart?

Okay, so he might have to plunge the knife in a bunch of times to find it, but what if she did actually have a heart, and piercing it with a knife did actually kill her?

This was the point at which the silly-circuiting in Dave’s brain shorted out.

This was the point at which he started feeling like … a coward.

“Hey,” Yasmine Branson said, nudging Fons Soto, “I am not sitting in someone else’s seat again. That was totally awkward.”

“Yeah,” Eli Laslow said. “Me either.”

And so the class filed in (dutifully taking their assigned seats) and sat quietly, gazing upon their new substitute (whose name, they learned from the flowery script on the whiteboard, was Ms. Dede Bartholomew).

“Good afternoon, class,” the teacher said after the tardy bell rang, her double chin wiggling as she warbled. (She was, to dress it kindly, a plus-sized woman.) “I understand that yesterday’s substitute was a bit… strange.”

“You can say that again,” students all around grumbled.

“There were apparently complaints that all he wanted to talk about was
geckos
?”

“Yeah,” Fons muttered. “What was up with that?”

The substitute chuckled. “I could understand if he’d wanted to talk about
the
Gecko. After all, I’ve heard the Gecko goes to school here.”

“Here?” Fons asked, sitting up.

This was followed by a flurry of questions and comments:

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Yeah. My dad said he’s a field-worker!”

“No way! I heard he’s in
high
school.”

“Hey, if you could scale walls like he does, why would you even go to school? Or work in the fields?”

“I sure wouldn’t.”

Then Lily (who’d remained uncharacteristically quiet for two days now) said, “He does go to school. He goes to Yucca Middle School. I have a friend who knows him.”

“You
do
?” everyone asked, turning to face her.

“She’s lying,” Yasmine Branson muttered with a scowl.

“Shut up,” Lily said, half getting out of her seat.

“You’re
always
lying,” Yasmine said with a shrug.

Then Dave (whose brain had not quite adjusted to the sudden switch in circuitry) said, “Uh … I’ve heard the same thing.”

Lily turned on him. “What—that I’m a liar?”

“No!” Dave sputtered, and turned a rosy red. “That he goes to Yucca.”

“See?” Lily said, pointing an angry finger at Yasmine. “Who’s a liar now, huh?”

Yasmine sneered, first at Dave, then at Lily. “Are you guys, like, going out or something?”

“Shut
up
!” Lily said, flying out of her seat.

Well! Just when it seemed the two girls would come to blows (or, at least, scratches), Ricky Zaragoza pointed at the ceiling and cried, “Look!”

And there was Tyler Mills’s extra-credit gecko from the day before, hanging (rather miraculously) from the ceiling above their heads.

“That dweeb sub from yesterday would be going crazy right now!” Reuben laughed.

“Yeah. Ooooh, a gecko!” Fons said sarcastically.

Now, as all heads (including the sizeable sub’s) cranked back to get a look at the gecko on the ceiling, all mouths dropped open. It is just a natural thing for a mouth to do when the head to which it’s attached cranks backward.

And in the process of cranking heads and dropping jaws, Sticky (who’d been slyly watching the new substitute the whole time) got a lizard’s-eye view inside the gaping mouth of Ms. Dede Bartholomew.

Suddenly his little gecko heart started clattering like castanets.
“Señor!”
he whispered up at Dave’s ear. “The tooth! Look at the tooth!”

Sure enough, there it was, inside the gaping
mouth of the double-chinned, apple-cheeked (and, I might add, completely whiskerless) substitute: a sparkling gold molar.

It wasn’t just any molar either.

It was the first molar behind the top left canine.

When Dave saw it, his skin did not just crawl. It crept and prickled and shivered and ran cold and then hot, and
then
crawled.

He now realized that he could no longer bury his head under the covers and hope Damien Black would go away.

Damien was like a recurring nightmare.

In one form or another, he would keep coming back.

And so it was that Dave decided:

It was time to return to Damien’s monstrous mansion.

It was time to rescue Ms. Veronica Krockle.

The minute Dave realized that their female substitute with the curly hair and jostling jowls was, in fact, Damien Black wearing another (amazingly elaborate) disguise, a boxing match began inside his head.

In one corner: Stay in school until the end of the day.

In the other: Ditch.

If he left school early, he could ride up to Damien Black’s mansion, sneak inside, rescue Ms. Krockle, and get out of there before Damien had had the chance to peel off his latex face. JAB, SMACK, BAM. With quick moves and fancy footwork, he could (perhaps) land a knockout in round one.

But rallying back from the other side were some simple, indisputable facts: Getting inside Damien’s nightmarish mansion had never been easy. (JAB!) The place was
huge
. (PUNCH!) And he had no idea where Ms. Krockle was being held, or if she was even still alive. (BAM!)

Plus, Dave had never ditched school.

Not even one class period.

To the Sanchez family, ditching school was like stealing. “Just because you don’t have to pay to go to school,” his parents had told him, “doesn’t mean it’s not expensive. It’s a gift that you must respect and appreciate.”

So, despite all the reasons it would make his life easier, Dave did not feel right about cutting school, even if it was just for one class period.

It would be wrong.

Disrespectful.

A big, bad no-no.

So! This might well have been the knockout
blow to the ditch-school side, had it not been for Sticky helping it to rally back. “What will you be missing if you leave school now?” he whispered. “That silly acting class? You think that goofy gaucho will even notice?”

Which, Dave had to admit, was true. His last course was drama, the class was huge, and Mr. Teevo rarely took roll.

“We need a head start,
señor,”
Sticky whispered. “You may be speedy on your bike, but not speedy enough to beat that evil
hombre
to the mansion!”

Which was also true. Damien would certainly be able to get up to Raven Ridge in his car much faster than Dave could on his bike.

“And your deliveries,
hombre,”
Sticky said, landing a final blow. “You need time for those!”

Dave had only three deliveries that afternoon, but most businesses closed at five-thirty or six o’clock. Without the extra time, he would never make it.

And so, in the end, not only did the ditch-school side rally back, it won.

Now, rather than go through the school and risk being seen, Dave clicked the Wall-Walker ingot into the powerband, scaled a back wall, sneaky-toed along the roof, and scurried down to the bike racks, where he unlocked his bike, hopped on, and pedaled away.

But as he was tearing through town on his way to Raven Ridge, he started wondering how in the world he was going to rescue Ms. Krockle without giving away who he was. His Gecko disguise of a black T-shirt, ball cap, and sunglasses would probably not fool Ms. Krockle. She’d had him in class all year!

He also started worrying about Damien Black. If things went wrong and he did run into him, would Damien recognize him from school?

These growing worries were rumbling through Dave’s brain as he went by a thrift store. A thrift
store that had a window display that caused Dave to come skidding to a halt.

“What the
jalapeño
are you doing?” Sticky cried, for the sudden stop had practically thrown him off Dave’s shoulder.

“I just had a brainstorm!” Dave cried, whipping the bike around.

“Uh-oh,” Sticky said, which was completely out of character for the lizard. In normal circumstances (as well as stressful ones), Sticky would say, “Ay-ay.” Or “Ay-ay-ay.” Or “Ay-ay-ay-ay!” But “Uh-oh”?

Sticky was worried.

“Just stick to the plan,
señor.”

“What plan?” Dave said, heading inside the thrift store. “We don’t have a plan!”

“Get up to that crazy
casa
, set her free, get out of there! That’s the plan.”

“That’s no plan!” Dave said, opening the door and hurrying inside. “And even after we set her free, that’s not going to stop Damien from
coming back. And we might not recognize him next time!”

“So true,” Sticky mused. He cocked his head, looking at Dave. “So what’s
your
plan?” he whispered.

Dave hurried over to the window display, taking down a faded yellow sweatshirt that had large brown lettering across the chest spelling out YUCCA.

Yucca Middle School.

“Señorrrrr!”
Sticky said. “This
is
a brainstorm.”

Dave looked very pleased. “And,” he said, picking up a worn, very traditional-looking black bandanna, “I’ll use this to cover my nose and mouth. Like a field-worker keeping the dust out!”

Sticky gave him a sly grin. “Very confusing,
señor.”

Dave grinned back. “Exactly.”

So Dave paid for the sweatshirt and bandanna, then continued up to Raven Ridge, where he found a secluded spot in the forest on the outskirts of Damien Black’s mansion to hide his bike and put on his disguise.

When he was ready, Sticky said,
“Híjole!
You look crazy good!”

And with that they sneaky-toed through the fearsome forest, determined to get in and out of Damien’s mansion before the dastardly villain returned home.

While Dave and Sticky were sneaky-toeing through the fearsome forest, the Bandito Brothers were inside the mansion drawing straws.

Now, by “drawing straws,” I do not mean that they were broadening their artistic horizons by putting the finishing touches on, say, a still life of a bottle of soda with straws poking out of it.

No, by “drawing straws,” I mean that they were choosing who would be saddled with the distasteful task of delivering a very late lunch to Ms. Veronica Krockle.

And although they were drawing straws, the Bandito Brothers were actually using weeds.

Weeds that were strewn (or clumped in great messy piles) around the mansion.

Weeds that were a seasonal mix of tall (and short) grasses, delectable dandelions, thorny thistles, wild arugula, and the occasional stick. Weeds that were used for the care and feeding of a buck-toothed burro named Rosie.

These weeds were (as you might imagine) an on-going source of annoyance to Damien Black, but Rosie was part of the Bandito Brothers package. She was (aside from their well-callused feet) their sole source of transportation. And although she’d been banished by Damien Black to the outside of the house, as the old saying goes, when the cat’s away, the mouse will play. (Or, in this case, when the villain’s away, the mariachi band will play. And no, I am not referring to their instruments.)

Tito, in particular, had a soft spot for Rosie. So much so that he had (without Damien’s knowledge or notice) sawed and chiseled and
nailed and drilled away at a remote back entry until he had, at long last, installed …

A donkey door.

The donkey door was very much like a doggy door only considerably larger. In fact, it took up over half the door. And the flapping rubber shield that is typical on most doggy doors was, instead, a large black trash sack.