Spider Brains: A Love Story (Book One) (23 page)

Kids muffled their laughter.

"Shh!" Morlson bit out a sharp sound that ended as if air escaping from a tire going flat.

"
The
end." Cinda curtsied pulling at the hem of her skirt.

"Very well done, Cinda."

Kids applauded. Billy stuck his finger into his throat acting like he does, feigning to vomit, again.

"Very nice." Morlson continued. "Okay, then. Up next... Matthew Ryder." Morlson rolled Cinda's project back to the wall putting it back in place then from the long shelf that ran the wall's length, she extracted Matt's aquarium.

When Matt stood his chair scraped across the floor like an animal screaming in pain. Then, it stopped suddenly as it caught on something and tipped backwards falling over. David and Joe both held up Ls to their stupid foreheads, silently proclaiming Matt a loser.

"Oh. Sorry." He said placing his chair back upright.

I rolled my eyes, as I laid my forehead onto my crossed arms on top of my desk.

"Matthew." She coaxed him forward. "No problem."

Matt slumped and shuffled his way up to the front and Morlson, as she did with Cinda, rolled Matt's project up next to him. Then, returned to sit at her desk.

"Um."

"Dork!" Joe coughed into his a clenched fist.

"Shut up creep." I yelled at him through a wash of several people either chuckling with or hissing at Joe.

"Miss Speider. Manners. Please. In my class we will have manners!"

I pressed my back hard against my chair and blew out a puff of air. Then I crossed my arms tight against my chest.

"Matthew. You can continue." She snarled a glance at me, a laser shot.

"Um. I incubated a chicken egg too. Like Cinda. Um. But, actually, it begins to pry its way out of the shell on the 17th day and that's when you should stop turning it, at least
three
times a day." Matt was up there refuting Cinda's information. A dangerous proposition considering Morlson's apparent love-affair with Cinda. Morlson started to shuffle her big butt in her chair, looking uncomfortable (like, when you get all squirmy, like, when you're trying to suppress a big ol' fart?) by Matt's public correction. But, he continued, his back to Morlson, unawares of his error, "The chick begins to pick through the shell with its 'egg-tooth' which it loses shortly after emerging from the shell."

"Excuse me." It had to happen. "Mr. Ryder," Oh no, he'd lost first-name basis with the toadmeister, "I must disagree with you."

"Huh?" Matt stopped and turned to Morlson.

"You're wrong. Cinda's report is correct. I'm most 100% sure. In fact, as you'll note on your report, I've marked you down for incorrectness. Cinda got a perfect grade."

"But, Mrs. Morlson, I'm sure..."

"Sorry Matthew," Then she tipped her head like 'you poor stupid dear', "Cinda's report is the correct one."

"Doi, doi, doi!" Came booming out of David and Joe jumped in.

Morlson stopped Matt's presentation mid-stream as she rolled his project away and back against the wall, putting it onto the long shelf that ran its length. "Boys. Stop. Matthew you may sit down."

Matt walked as if knee-deep through a pile of horse manure back down our aisle to his desk. From behind me, it sounded as if he fell with his entire weight back into his seat.

"Okay. Fine. Next." Morlson looked at the next report on the heap of folders and then lifted it up to view the one underneath it. "Is Tammy Jomes here today?" She asked the class.

A murmur of no's wafted through the room.

"Well, fine, then." She dropped the top folder back onto the pile. "Next is," she looked up at me, "Miss Susie Speider." I can't even describe the face Morlson made. Biting into tin with a silver filling? Accidentally, flipping cat poo into your mouth while cleaning the litter box? A mix of the two is my best guess. I mean. The shivers came back as if I had malaria or something.

I arose slowly feeling like my body would melt before getting to the front.

This time Morlson didn't move. I stood there waiting but she wasn't intending to roll my project, yet another aquarium, next to me. I waited and waited. Expecting it to show up any moment now. But, nothing.

I looked behind me. Morlson just stared venomously at me and motionless.

My face broke into a anxious smile, gleaming braces catching a ray of the ceiling-mounted fluorescent lamps. My lips twitched from a smile into a nervous pucker and, then, closed to conceal my teeth.

She knew the photo left at her house was of me, my mouth, my braced teeth!

I looked back at the class and felt my skin go hotter than hot could be. I raised my arms up but let them fall hard to my sides at the same time letting out a gasp of air and turning to the wall with all of the projects on it.

But, something was wrong about the way it looked. The web looked detached and hung loosely. Even so, I placed it onto the rolling cart and pushed it to the front.

I stood and looked out at the other student's faces. Billy was looking at Ricki. Jamie covered her eyes mocking embarrassment for me. Cinda was talking to Melinda, openly. Joe crossed his eyes and flopped his hands in front of him acting as if I were a moron. David was laughing at Joe. Matt's face mirrored mine in this unnatural shade of red.

"Miss Speider, we don't have all day."

"Um. No. Yes. Okay." I began. "My project is to observe the life cycle of a spider." I thought I heard Morlson snicker but it was so quiet, I could've been mistaken. "I captured a spider and her web..."

"How you know it's a girl, Susie? Did you hold up it's little legs!" Joe bellowed out and that time I heard it, Morlson did laugh. Openly.

She tried to cover.

"Now, kids. Funny as that was. Let's settle down and let Miss Speider talk about her... spider." She snickered. I turned to her. Then, something, like a trigger pulling off a shotgun registered in my head--Morlson, the sprayer, my aquarium. I turned to look down inside my at my science project again.

And, then, I saw it.

My spider was curled up in the corner of the glass. It was dead.

I looked up at Morlson, my eyes wide. I looked over to the pumper bottle.

It was a pump sprayer of
Raid
. Raid™ Rose & Flower Insect Spray. Morlson had sprayed my science project with Raid!
She'd killed my spider
.

"You know. Mzzzz. Morlson," I extended her title long like a buzz saw so she couldn't mistake it for a mistake, "You're an evil, EVIL woman." I turned and ran out of the class.

As I pushed through the door, everyone gasped but then went completely still.

Behind me, reverberating off the walls, I heard Morlson screaming at me from inside her room, "Thief! Thief! You stole that idea, Miss Speider. You're not that smart, you're not! You stole it!"

T
ears
sluicing down my cheeks trickled off my face, onto my shoulders and got absorbed by my sweater as I ran through the hallway, down around the corner and out a set of glass doors.

FORTY TWO - Shell Shock & Partially Paralyzed

"Uh." Morlson grunted down to her floor on her knees, sprayer in hand, as she tried to find me under the dark cover of her bed.

"Why you..." She grunted again as she laid her big oafish body down onto the floor, "...little monster." She squawked.

Monster!
No less. Of all the slanderous comments.

"Sh-sh-she wants to kill you!" Rider, and all of his obvious observations, was starting to get to me.

My legs felt nearly back to normal by the time I'd scampered my way over the length of bushy cigarette-permeated carpeting under Morlson's bed. Although, every now and again my feet tingled like walking on a bed of coals. Still, for the most part, I was moving like my old self. Zinging hither and yon and finally reaching the baseboard, attaching my claws to the wall and walking up as if I had teeny tiny suctions cups on my feet.

Over near the wall smelled less surgically antiseptic and I felt safe again, for a while.

Until, Morlson's head popped just above the mattress when she sat up. Hobbling to her feet, she clomped around the foot of the bed and over to where I'd emerged--triumphant!

However. As she stood scanning the floor, trying to catch sight of me, her head was at the exact level that I had climbed up to!

EGAD!

I acted like David in the Louvre. Rock still. To take in even the slightest breath would mean certain death.

Morlson knelt down again, on this side of the bed, now. She hadn't seen me!

"R-r-run!" Rider screamed from the darkness.

I bolted up an inch but then Morlson moved again.

She lowered her groaning body onto the corner side of the bed this time eyeballing the carpeting underneath, from that angle.

I bolted up another inch.

"Huh. Huh. Huh." Each devious chortle fell darker on the problem. She sounded like a woman consumed.

"N-n-NOW!" Rider drilled out, motivating me forward.

I scrambled.

I reached the ceiling but I still had about one foot to make it into the dark corner where Rider was hiding.

F
ORTY THREE
- Spider Insults

Rider was rolling his front claws together as if planning the next caper of the century.

"That was close!"

"Y-y-yep! Close. C-c-close!"

"What's she doing now?"

"Dunno."

Cowering in the corner where we balled up, Morlson had sat up, legs out straight in front, looking around her body, still examining the floor around her.

She even ground her butt into the carpet, acting like, if I was under that bounty of fleshy rump-a-roni, nothing could survive. "There, ya little sucker. Take that!"

"Oh. My. God." I looked at Rider. "She's so gross."

Rider didn't speak. I looked at him but he'd gone silent.

"You're an odd creature."

Rider arched his two left eyebrows at my words. But, I wasn't finished.

"Odd and weird."

He arched the other set of eyebrows, looking at me but sort of, almost, like, behind me too. Still, I needed to say more.

"Kinda
geeky
!"

All four of his eyes enlarged to the point of being, um, buggy!

"A v-v-vile oath! On a s-s-spider!" He ran around his web in circles.

"I'm sorry. It was just a..."

He stopped circling his web, "A v-v-vile oath!" He said again. "Against a s-s-spider! N-n-no l-l-less!" He stopped circling and put all four of his middle set of claws onto his waist. He raised his fore claws and fisted them at me.

"It was only..."

"Y-y-you have g-g-gone against all th-th-things s-s-spider. We have r-r-rules you kn-kn-know! R-r-rules. For r-r-reasons!"

"Calm down." I shrugged him off and worked my way to the outer edge of his web, checking out the toad below. "You're kind of flipping out over nothing."

"N-n-nothing? N-n-nothing?"

"Exactly. Nothing."