Creature from the 7th Grade : Boy or Beast (9781101591833) Read online

  Rachel has been going out with Larry Wykoff since last year. She wears this stupid ring he gave her to commemorate the day he first texted her. It looks like it came out of a Cracker Jack box, and it’s made out of plastic. Once it got lost during gym period, and she almost had a nervous breakdown and had to be sent to Nurse Nancy’s office.

  Rachel and Amy are members of the One-Upsters, a seventh-grade clique dedicated to the proposition that all middle-school girls are definitely not created equal, and the ones with better clothes and even better hair really are . . . well . . . better.

  One-Upsters can usually be found hanging with Banditoes, their male counterparts. Banditoes, like Craig Dieterly and Larry Wykoff, are great at sports, care deeply about their sneakers, and tend to have fewer pimples than everybody else. Banditoes and One-Upsters wouldn’t be caught dead talking to Mainframe weirdoes. Namely Lucille, Sam, and me.

  We Mainframes are happy to hang with anybody who is willing to hang with us. Nobody’s exactly lining up. Well, actually, on the first day of school this year, Alice Pincus asked if she could be a Mainframe, and of course we said yes because (A) we think it’s rude to reject people who want to join your clique. And (B) nobody ever wants to and it’s pretty embarrassing having a clique with only three people in it. But after she hung with us for a few days, Alice Pincus ditched us and went on the waiting list to become a One-Upster.

  “Take a vild guess, Miss Armstrong.” Mr. Arkady isn’t about to give up. “Vut does a herpetologist do?”

  What’s up with my shoulders and my neck? It’s like my insides are rearranging themselves. It doesn’t exactly hurt. But I wouldn’t recommend it, either. I ache everywhere. I am definitely coming down with something. If this continues I will have to go see Nurse Nancy for sure.

  “I think I know!” Amy says excitedly, like for once in her life she might actually have the answer to a question besides “What time does the party start?”

  “I believe a herbologist is someone who knows a lot about different kinds of cosmetics. And herbs.” Amy smiles beguilingly at Mr. Arkady, then goes back to reading Rachel’s note.

  “It’s herpetologist, Miss Armstrong.” Mr. Arkady is clearly not beguiled in the least.

  Suddenly I get such a severe cramp in my right arm that I start waving it around in the air.

  “Mr. Drinkvater, vill you please put us out of our misery and tell us in vut field you vood be an expert if you ver a herpetologist?”

  “I would know all about amphibians and reptiles, like snakes and turtles and lizards,” I blurt out, lowering my right arm and massaging it with my left. I really do feel sore. I hope I’m not getting the flu. Halloween is Friday. It’s my favorite holiday, and I don’t want to miss it. Last year I went as Frankenstein. This year I’m either going as the Invisible Man or the Mummy.

  “Derivation, if you please, Mr. Drinkvater,” Mr. Arkady asks.

  “The word ‘herpetologist’ comes from the Greek word ‘herpeton,’ which means things that crawl,” I say as I hold the back of my hand to my forehead to see if I’m running a fever. I don’t feel warm. I feel cold and clammy. “Like Herman, for example.”

  I glance over at Herman the iguana, who usually spends his time lazing in the corner of his cage under the relaxing glow of his basking lamp. He suddenly begins to pace around his little enclosure like a convicted felon trying to break out of the slammer.

  Herman’s looking over at me like he’s just laid eyes on a long-lost friend. He makes happy little chirping sounds and jumps up and down trying to attract my attention. Sit, Herman. Stay.

  “Good goink, Charlie,” Mr. Arkady says, slinking back to the blackboard.

  My legs feel like someone is rubbing them with sandpaper. I pull up my pants a couple of inches and check out my ankles, which are slowly but surely turning wrinkly and green right before my eyes.

  “Speekink of things that crawl,” Mr. Arkady says, smiling at the class and revealing his sharp, pointy incisors, “today you vill select a topic for your report on ‘herpeton ’ from the followink . . .” As he speaks he writes on the blackboard:

  FROGS, TOADS, NEWTS, SALAMANDERS, TURTLES, LIZARDS, SNAKES, CROCODILES

  “You vill present a detailed analysis of the animal of your choosink. Matink habits. Genealogy. Dietary needs. Funny facts. By the time I am through vit you, you vill be junior herpetologists yourselves. . . .”

  Everything about me seems like it’s getting just a little bit bigger. My pants are tighter. My shirt collar bites into my neck like a noose. I’ve heard of growth spurts, but this is ridiculous. It’s like I’m in The Incredible Shrinking Man, except instead of getting smaller, I’m getting bigger. And greener. And scalier. It’s only first period, and my popularity scorecard has already plunged a good ten points. I’ll be into triple negative digits by lunchtime if this goes on much longer.

  “Projects vill be due in vun month, and vill be graded on accuracy, depth, and originality,” Mr. Arkady says. “Tink out of the box. Amaze me.”

  Herman is so excited he writhes ecstatically in his cage. He knocks over his water container and stands on top of it, struggling to climb over the side of the terrarium.

  “What’s with Herman?” Sam whispers.

  “Yeah, it’s like he’s having some kind of an attack,” Lucille adds.

  “What did you have for breakfast, Charlie?” Sam asks. “Your breath smells like seaweed.”

  Lucille sniffs the back of my head. “Yeah, and your neck smells like dirty socks.” She sniffs some more.

  “Hey, that tickles,” I say. “Cut it out.”

  Herman makes a sudden, high-pitched squealing noise, takes a running jump, and practically flies out of his cage in one long, graceful motion. He has sensed the presence of the other scaly critter in the room. And it’s me. Herman comes bounding over two full rows of desks and leaps into my arms.

  “Bad Herman,” Mr. Arkady says sternly. “Back in your cage this minute.”

  Herman pays no attention. He nuzzles his face against my shoulder and makes soft cooing sounds as he licks my cheek.

  “Looks like Drinkwater finally found someone to appreciate his inner beauty,” Larry Wykoff says drily. When he isn’t busy being Rachel Klempner’s idiot love slave, Larry is humor editor for the school paper, The Sentinel. He plans to be a famous comedy writer when he grows up. He calls himself “Mr. Funny,” and I hate to admit it, but he sort of is.

  “Mr. Drinkvater, please return that igvana back to his cage immediately,” Mr. Arkady orders. “Vee vill not tolerate playink vit animals durink class.”

  “Yes, sir,” I reply. All eyes are on me as I stumble over my expanding feet and nearly drop Herman on his head when I return my scaly friend to his terrarium.

  “You walk like you play football, Charlie Lancelot Drinkwater,” Craig Dieterly says. He has been trying to guess my dreaded middle name ever since he figured out I hated it. This was in second grade, when we all had to sit in a circle and call out our middle names, and when it got to me I said I didn’t have one.

  “That’s not it,” I whisper back.

  “How ’bout Melvin?”

  “Uh-uh,” I reply, and hit my knee on Mr. Arkady’s desk. The shiny red apple that Rachel Klempner brought him this morning rolls off and hits the floor with a thud. I am so mortified I would dig a hole and crawl into it if I could. “I’m really sorry, sir,” I say, sinking into my desk chair. “I’m just not myself today.”

  “What a relief.” Craig Dieterly chuckles.

  “That’s not nice,” Lucille whispers.

  “Nice is for sissies,” Amy replies, applying a fresh coating of lip gloss to her bright-red lips.

  “Does it come naturally, or do you have to work hard to be such a total dweeb, Drinkwater?” Norm Swerling asks.

  “Takes one to know one,”
I retaliate, and then instantly regret it. You can’t win with these people. Don’t even try.

  “Look who’s talking,” Craig Dieterly pipes up. “It’s Snow White’s other little-known dwarf, ‘Pathetic.’” He points at me and laughs.

  Dirk and Dack Schlissel, Neanderthal-sized identical twins, and fellow Banditoes, laugh along with Craig Dieterly. The Schlissels have huge bodies and tiny heads. What they lack in intelligence they more than make up in brute strength. Sam and I can never decide if they each have their own separate brain (we don’t think so) or whether they share a common one (much more likely).

  “Quiet in the classroom!” Mr. Arkady barks. “Not funny, Mr. Dieterly.”

  Sam takes out a magnifying glass from his fanny pack and studies the back of my head intently. “If I didn’t know better, Charlie,” he says under his breath, “I’d say you were undergoing a series of dramatic molecular changes on the cellular level.”

  “Oh great,” I murmur.

  “I’m really worried about you,” Lucille whispers. “You should see a specialist.”

  “In what?” I reply. “Herpetology?”

  Suddenly I can feel my teeth getting longer and sharper. My neck grows longer, too. And skinnier. I stare, transfixed, at my fingers as each of my hands morphs into a claw with three sharp talons. My toenails burst through my sneakers. I cross my legs and try to hide my lower extremities under my desk. It’s my nightmare come true: I, Charles Elmer Drinkwater, am turning into the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

  ROCK AROUND THE CROC

  RI-I-I-I-I-I-NG! That’s the bell, and not a moment too soon. I grab my backpack and lurch out of the crowded room in a blind panic, leaving Sam and Lucille in my wake. I cover my face with my notebook and hurtle through the noisy hallway to the service stairs. I push open the metal door and begin the steep ascent to the roof. I have no idea what I’ll do when I get there. I only know I can’t let anybody see what is happening to me.

  I hear Sam behind me, huffing and puffing, trying to catch up. Sam is built for sitting and eating. Not running. “Hey, wait for me!” he shouts.

  “Me too!” Lucille cries. “Slow down!”

  I wish I could. But the change is fully upon me now, and a desperate animal instinct to flee has taken over and propels me up the steps three at a time. With every passing second I feel my bones lengthening, my joints realigning, and scales multiplying to cover my expanding body. I am literally bursting out of my clothes. Pieces of my shirt hang in shreds around what used to be my waist.

  By the time I reach the third floor my spindly neck has grown so long I have to stoop to keep my head from hitting the ceiling. Rows of spiky ridges erupt all over my scaly green body faster than I can count them. My formerly matchstick-thin legs are growing into massive coils of bone and sinew, like drumsticks on a steroidal chicken.

  As I burst onto the roof, a long and powerful tail suddenly explodes from the base of my spine, causing me to lose my balance, nearly sending me tumbling back down all the way to the basement.

  Sam arrives, gasping for breath. Lucille is close behind, panting and holding her side. They stare at me, too stunned to speak.

  I look down. My tiny feet have blossomed into webbed green flippers the size of platters. I reach up to what used to be my forehead and realize I no longer have a face. In its place a long bony ridge connects my enormous crocodile-like jaws to my sloping cranium.

  Forget about being popular. At this point I would happily settle for human.

  The sun breaks through the clouds, slashing a blinding white-hot ray across my enormous green body. My scales sparkle and glisten. My transformation is complete. The monster lives. I throw my long neck back, open my jaws to the sky, and cry, “I am the Creature from the Seventh Grade!”

  Sam runs his pudgy fingers through his dark purple hair and shakes his head in disbelief. He rubs his eyes. “Charlie, is that really you?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” I say in my easily recognizable, high, squeaky child’s voice. I have the body of a ferocious monster but I still sound like a little girl.

  “Wow!” Sam exclaims. “You look just like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, except bigger. If Wes Craven only knew. He could direct the sequel, and you could star in it, and you wouldn’t even have to act! Think of all the money they’d save on makeup and prosthetics.”

  “Don’t get too worked up about it, Sam,” I reply. “I’m sure this whole transformation thing is only temporary.”

  “We’re taking you to Nurse Nancy’s office right now.” Lucille heads for the door to the stairs. “Let’s go.”

  “What’s she going to do about it?” I ask. “School nurses aren’t even allowed to give you aspirin. They can’t do anything.”

  “He’s right,” Sam adds. “I got sent to Nurse Nancy’s office with a splinter last week and she couldn’t even touch it. All she could do was take my temperature and put cool compresses on my forehead.”

  “We have to do something,” Lucille says. “We can’t just stay up here on the roof all day twiddling our . . . um . . . claws.”

  “Maybe we slipped through a wrinkle in the space-time continuum,” Sam says. “And we’re all in some kind of alternate universe.”

  “OMG!” Lucille exclaims. “I’ve only been trying to find out if the space-time continuum exists as more than just a pure mathematical construct for my whole life! Can you imagine if we just stumbled into it during Arkady’s class? Wouldn’t that be thrilling?”

  “Yeah, thrilling.” I am not exactly convinced. “Why don’t you guys hide me in the utility closet next to Principal Muchnick’s office and go figure out what’s happening to me and make it un-happen?”

  “Good thinking,” Sam says. “We’ll go search for ‘spontaneous mutation in the adolescent Homo sapiens’ on the Internet. We could try to decode your genome if we could find an electron microscope.”

  “I’ve always wanted to get my hands on one of those things,” Lucille confesses.

  “My uncle Leon knows someone who works at NASA,” Sam says eagerly. “I bet we could borrow one of theirs.”

  “Are you serious? Call him right now.” Lucille is practically jumping up and down. “This is so exciting I can’t stand it.”

  “I don’t want to be a buzz kill or anything,” I say, “but do you think you guys could concentrate on getting me off the roof before somebody sees me, or would that be too much to ask?”

  “Sorry, Charlie,” Lucille replies. “I didn’t mean to get carried away.”

  I point to a discarded packing blanket lying in the corner by the trash. “Why don’t you wrap me up in that thing and lead me to the closet?” I ask.

  “Consider it done!” Lucille says as she grabs the blanket and throws it over my head. “We’ll get you back to your old sixty-eight-pound weakling self so fast your head will spin.” My two friends lead me to the door to the back stairs.

  “I can’t wait,” I say as I bang my head on the ceiling. “Ouch.” I keep forgetting I am so tall. I tear a hole in my blanket with the tip of my pointy claw so I can see where I’m going, and we hurry down to the second-floor landing together.

  Sam opens the door to the hallway. Lucille pokes her head out and looks around cautiously. “The coast is clear,” she whispers. “Let’s run for it!” My enormous flippers make a loud flapping sound as they smack against the linoleum.

  “Keep it down under there, Charlie,” Sam whispers. “Everybody’ll hear you.”

  As if on cue, Alice Pincus comes scurrying around the corner, heading for the girls’ room, and nearly bumps into the three of us. “What’re you guys doing in the hallway?” she demands. “You’re supposed to be in English. You missed attendance. Everybody’s looking for you. Where’s Charlie?”

  “We can’t tell you,” Sam says. “It’s a secret.”

&nbsp
; “What do you have under those blankets?” Alice continues. I hold very still.

  “Guess,” Lucille answers.

  “I bet it has something to do with Halloween,” Alice announces proudly.

  “I bet you’re right,” Sam says.

  “Is it scary?” Alice asks.

  “Extremely,” Lucille replies.

  “Goody,” Alice chirps. “I love being scared.”

  “Then you’re in for a real treat,” Lucille says.

  “We have to go,” Sam says. “We’re late.”

  It is getting very warm under my blanket. Alice heads for the bathroom, and we continue down the hall to the utility closet. Sam opens the door and I quickly step inside, knocking over a pile of dictionaries with my tail. A box of old erasers falls on my head. Clouds of chalk dust billow in the air.

  “Stay put,” Sam orders. “And don’t worry. You’ll be you again. I promise.”

  “Are you sure?” I ask.

  “Absolutely,” Lucille replies confidently. “Someday we’ll look back at today and have a big laugh about the whole thing.”

  “I hope so,” I say. “Because I’m sure not laughing about it now.”

  “Shush,” Sam orders me as he shuts the door. “Think positive thoughts.”

  I listen to the clatter of my friends’ footsteps as they race down the corridor. I stand alone in the dark closet, trying to come up with a single positive thought. I won’t have to spend a lot of time shopping for a Halloween costume this year is the only thing I can come up with. The dust from the chalk is making my eyes water and irritating my very large nasal passages. I try not to sneeze.

  Suddenly the door to my hiding place flies open and Rachel Klempner is standing in front of me. I am so startled I scream and drop my packing blanket. Which makes Rachel Klempner scream. And then I scream again.