The Battle of the Red Hot Pepper Weenies

A Brief Word of Introduction

All the Rage

Frankendance

The Ratty Old Bumbershoot

Dear Author

The Wizard's Mandolin

Into the Wild Blue Yonder

Yackity-Yak

Wish Away

The Department Store

The Battle of the Red Hot Pepper Weenies

Just Like Me

What's Eating the Vegans?

Let's Have a Big Hand for Gerald

Bird Shot

The Princess and the Pea Brain

Petro-fied

Time Out

Galactic Zap

The Taste of Terror

The Cat Almost Gets a Bath

Yesterday Tomorrow

Take a Whack at This

King of the Hill

Book Banning

Braces

Turkey Calls

Reel

Bad Luck

Rattled Nerves

Smart Little Suckers

Overdue onto Others

Put on Your Happy Face

Moods

Keep Your Spirits Up

Sting, Where Is Thy Death?

A Word or Two About These Stories

About the Author

Reader's Guide

I need to thank several people, and apologize to a whole lot of others. Feel free to skip this part if you aren't one of them—though you'll never know for sure unless you keep reading. It's difficult to get one book of short stories published. The fact that I have four is a miracle. The miracle workers are my publisher, Kathleen Doherty; my editor, Susan Chang; and my publicist at Tor, Dot Lin. I'm a lucky guy. My wife, Joelle, and daughter, Alison, gave me lots of feedback for these stories, and never complained too much about being in the presence of a compulsive story writer. More luck on my part.

Bill Mayer, the artist who draws those amazing Weenies, deserves a lot of credit for the popularity of these collections. It would be impossible to name all the people who work to get the book from me to you, including distributors, booksellers, and the guys in the ware house, but it would also be impossible not to thank one person in particular. Ed Masessa has done amazing things for the Weenies.

The teachers and librarians who share my stories with their students deserve my thanks, as do all of you young
readers who've told your friends or your teachers about my books.

Speaking of young readers, I guess this is as good a place as any to apologize to all the seventh-grade boys who might not be amused by a certain line in one of the stories. (You'll know which line I mean when you read it.) I was just kidding. Honestly.

Onward. Enjoy the stories. Don't read them in the dark. You won't be able to see the words.

K
ieffer Loomis was
the only kid in our whole school who never got angry. He was so calm, it was spooky. I'm no hothead myself, but life dumps tons of bad stuff on everybody. Some of it isn't fair. Some of it is just plain rotten. For example, I yelled at my little sister Jilly last week when she colored all over my library book with her crayons. She started to cry, which made Mom angry, which got me in trouble, which made me even angrier.

I didn't stay angry forever. And Mom took the library fine out of Jilly's allowance. So it all worked out. But I'd never seen Kieffer even raise his voice.

There are a couple of ways to deal with any behavior that's too weird to ignore. You can figure it out, or you can change it. I started by trying to figure it out. Two weeks ago, I went over to Kieffer at lunch and asked, “How come you never get angry?”

He looked at me like that was a stupid question. “What do you mean?”

“You never lose your temper,” I said. “How do you stay so calm?”

Kieffer shrugged. “I guess that's just the way I am. When something bothers me, I swallow it.”

“Swallow it?”

“Yup. You should give it a try.”

That didn't sound like it would work. But I had a chance to find out for myself the next day. When Bobby Thugger pushed me down on the playground, I sat there and tried to swallow my anger. I could feel it swelling in my throat. Nope. I knew right away that it wouldn't work. My anger was too large, and my throat was too small. I got up and pushed Bobby. That felt a lot better. So much for swallowing my anger.

As I said, there are two ways to deal with weird behavior. One way is to ask about it. The other is to change it. Or, in this case, do something that most boys are really good at—see how far you can push it. I don't know who came up with the idea, but this morning a bunch of us—me, Dwight, Alan, Richie, and Patrick—decided that our only goal in life was to make Kieffer lose his temper. We were going to break his calm, big-time.

“No matter what, don't give up,” Dwight said as we waited in front of the school.

“Nope. Total attack,” Alan said.

“But it can't look planned,” I said. “It has to look like accidents.”

“There he is.” Patrick pointed across the lawn at Kieffer, who'd just reached the school yard.

“Me first.” Alan charged toward Kieffer at full speed. When he got close, he shot his hands out and shouted,
“Tag! You're it!” He shoved Kieffer harder than I'd ever seen anyone get tagged outside of a professional wrestling ring. The poor guy flew at least five or six feet before he landed on his butt. After landing, he slid a couple more feet. By then, Alan had dashed away.

Kieffer looked around like he had no idea what had just hit him. His face grew expressionless for a moment. His jaw clenched, like he was going to shout. Then, even from a distance, I could tell he was swallowing. It looked like he was choking down a golf ball.

You're doomed,
I thought. That had just been a warm-up. We had the whole day ahead of us. I ran to the wood shop and grabbed a screwdriver while the teacher wasn't watching, then headed for the lockers. I jammed the blade into the edge of Kieffer's locker and twisted, hoping I could mess up the door enough so it wouldn't open. Then I backed off and waited.

It turned out I did a pretty good job jamming things up. Kieffer tried to open the locker. It wouldn't budge. He raised his fist like he was going to punch the door. Then he sighed, swallowed, and walked off.

Life grew worse and worse for Kieffer throughout the morning. After lunch, we got other kids involved so he wouldn't suspect our group. By the end of the day, the whole class was taking turns making him miserable.

Still, amazingly, he swallowed every bit of his anger.

Maybe we just couldn't get mean enough. But on the way out of the building, Alan did the tag thing again. This time, he did it on the stairs, catching Kieffer from behind.

I winced as Kieffer went tumbling. As much as I wanted to see him explode, this was a bit too rough.

I guess the fall had stunned him. He lay there on his back, staring up at the clouds. Nobody moved. Finally, I stepped forward to give him a hand. I figured that would be a nice thing to do, even if the guys got mad at me.

Just as I was about to reach out and say something friendly, I noticed Kieffer's lip was twitching. His jaw moved like he was trying to swallow, but his head jerked like something dry and jagged was caught in his throat.

Maybe we hadn't lost, after all. The anger was finally too much for him to swallow. But he hunched his shoulders, clenched his fists, and gulped. I could swear I saw a pulsing lump slide down his throat—a big wad of swallowed anger, moving like a fat rat through a slim snake. I guess Kieffer's anger still wasn't too big to swallow.

But it was too big to stomach.

Kieffer's shirt rippled, like someone was punching at it from the inside. He stared down at his gut and moved his lips. Faintly, I heard him say, “Oh, no…”

The anger burst out—all of it—years of swallowed anger. It exploded from inside him. Kieffer's anger was dark and wet, with shiny scales that hurt to look at. It had claws like saw blades and teeth that dripped green venom. As it swelled, it let out a howl that made my eyes bleed and my teeth crack.

Some of the crowd froze, or dropped to the ground. Some turned to run. It didn't matter. Kieffer's anger was everywhere. As I spun away, I felt a burning slash rip across my back. My legs went numb. I fell. I dragged myself a foot or two with my hands and elbows, then gave up and flopped on my chest.

My vision was fading. I could see Kieffer, not far away. His
eyes were glazing over. The screams all around me had turned into whimpers. Anger had destroyed all of us.

“Sorry,” I whispered.

Kieffer smiled.

How could he possibly be happy? “What?” I asked. That was as much as I could manage to say.

“It felt good to let all that anger out,” Kieffer said.

I'll bet it did.
As I closed my eyes and sank into the darkness, I realized the weirdest thing. I wasn't angry at all.