Sinister Substitute Read online

  A plan that was now in full sinister swing in Ms. Veronica Krockle’s science classroom.

  As Damien towered above Fons Soto (or, according to his seating chart, Dave Sanchez) and confronted him about owning a gecko, he knew he was close to getting what he wanted.

  He could just feel it.

  This boy was definitely hiding something.

  And the whole class was obviously helping him!

  The air was positively charged with lies!

  Sneaky, snotty, bratty-faced lies!

  “Uh, not me,” Fons said with a nervous laugh. “Actually, I’ve never owned a gecko.” Then he added, “Maybe someone’s just messin’ with your head?”

  Messing, indeed!

  Unfortunately for Damien Black, he misinterpreted just how these students were messing with his head, and as he sneered at Fons Soto, his dark, deadly eyes danced with laughter.

  This Dave Sanchez boy was no match for him!

  After school, he would follow him.

  Corner him!

  Once again the powerband would be his!

  Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha!

  Chapter 6

  AFTER SCHOOL

  After school, Damien Black did, indeed, follow Fons Soto (who he thought was named Dave Sanchez).

  And Dave and Sticky followed Damien Black.

  Dave had slipped into his own (not-so-elaborate) disguise: black shirt, dark shades, ball cap. He’d also clicked in the Wall-Walker ingot and was making full use of his ability to move quickly along roofline shadows, unnoticed.

  Damien, on the other hand, had done a speedy job of disguising his disguise by dumping the glasses, pocket watch, pipe, coat, and vest. Instead of an eccentric professor, he now looked like a tall, lanky, narrow-nosed nerd.

  “Are you sure that’s Damien Black?” Dave whispered to Sticky. “It doesn’t look anything like him!”

  “Ay-ay-ay,” Sticky grumbled. “Trust me for once, would you, señor?” He cocked his head at Dave. “Why else would he be following that boy?”

  “Maybe they’re just going the same direction?”

  Sticky rolled his eyes. “Don’t be a bobo dingo. It’s him.”

  “Okay, so if it is him,” Dave said after shadowing the sinister substitute for another minute, “what are we going to do?”

  “Hmm,” Sticky said, tapping his little gecko chin as he and Dave moved along a good twenty feet above Damien. “You really want my advice, señor?”

  “Uh, yeah,” Dave said (in a drawn-out, all-knowing-thirteen-year-old way).

  Sticky eyed him. “And you’ll take my advice this time?”

  “I always take your advice.”

  “No, señor, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do!”

  “No, you don’t!”

  “Yes, I do!”

  Sticky thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Never mind. Just do whatever you want.”

  “But I don’t know what I want to do!”

  “So you’ll take my advice?”

  “Sticky! Just tell me!”

  “Okay, señor. I think you should do this.” And before Dave knew what was happening, Sticky was up on his hind legs with his hands cupped around his mouth, shouting, “HEY, DONKEY BREATH!” down at Damien.

  Dave froze. “What are you doing?” he said through gritted teeth, but it was too late.

  Damien looked up.

  “YEAH, YOU!” Sticky shouted down at Damien (although Sticky’s amazingly loud voice sounded for all the world like it was coming from Dave). “YOU THINK I DON’T KNOW WHO YOU ARE, YOU BLACK-HEARTED BOZO?” Then Sticky dropped his voice and said to Dave, “There you go, señor. Our work here is done.”

  Sticky, of course, was quite right. Why would Damien follow Fons Soto when “Dave Sanchez” was obviously not the one with the powerband? “Dave Sanchez” couldn’t possibly be the Gecko.

  The real Dave, however, was having a little trouble processing this. And so (as is usually the case when one is stunned, shocked, or just plain mentally zapped) Dave stayed there, frozen (in this case to the wall).

  Damien, too, was shocked, and although the rest of him stayed put, his jaw dropped.

  His eyes caught fire.

  His mind spattered and sputtered until sparks seemed to fly from his dastardly ears.

  “Ándale, hombre!” Sticky whispered to Dave. “Unless you still don’t believe me … ?”

  So, lickety-split, Dave scurried over the roof and out of Damien’s view, but he was not happy. Not happy at all. “I can’t believe you did that!” he said to Sticky. “That was crazy! What if he comes after us?”

  “Ay-ay-ay,” Sticky grumbled. “This is the thanks I get for sizzly-quick thinking?”

  “Sticky! It was crazy!”

  Sticky shrugged. “But it worked, right?”

  Dave had to admit that yes, it had worked. And after he got over the shock of Sticky’s brash tactic, he had one big worry remaining. “What if he’s back tomorrow?”

  “Hmm,” Sticky said, the wheels in his brain clickity-clacking like crazy. At last, he asked, “Uh … you say that scary señorita has never missed a day? Ever?”

  “That’s what I’ve heard. And she’s been there for ever.” Then Dave grumbled, “I never in a million years thought I’d wish she’d come back, but I do.”

  “Hmm,” Sticky said again.

  Now, while Dave was ditching Damien Black and changing into his Roadrunner Express sweatshirt and racing around town making his delivery-boy deliveries, Sticky’s brain continued to clickity-clack, thinking about something he really didn’t want to be thinking about. Not only did he not want to be thinking about it, he didn’t want to be thinking about what might happen if he told Dave about it.

  But still, he was thinking about it.

  And still, he was thinking about telling Dave about it.

  Sticky, you see, wasn’t sure who was more evil: Damien Black or Veronica Krockle.

  Damien, on the one hand, had caught him and caged him.

  Ms. Veronica Krockle, on the other, would be happy to catch him and kill him (and then cut him into little science-project pieces).

  That is, if she were after him.

  Which she was not.

  Damien, however, most certainly was.

  So to Sticky, this was a stalemate.

  Gridlock.

  A fifty-fifty hate-hate lose-lose situation.

  But in the end, Sticky felt he had to do something, so he cleared his throat.

  He took a deep breath.

  He looked at Dave (who was relieved to finally be pedaling home to dinner after his long, stressful day) and said, “Uh, señor?”

  “Yeah, Sticky? What’s up?”

  “Uh … I don’t think that scary señorita is sick.”

  “Huh?” Dave glanced down at the gecko, who was creeping out from inside his sweatshirt. “You’re talking about Ms. Krockle?”

  “Sí, señor.” Sticky took another deep breath and then blurted, “I think that loco honcho has her.”

  Dave nearly collided with a car as the significance of Sticky’s words sank in. He swerved to the curb, then stopped and stared at the gecko. “You think Damien Black kidnapped her?”

  Sticky’s head bobbed solemnly. “If I know that evil hombre, he’s got her locked up inside that crazy casa. And, señor, there’s only one way to stop him from coming back to school.” He looked directly at Dave. “You have to rescue her.”

  Chapter 7

  SIMMERING SOUP

  Damien Black did not live alone in his maniacal mansion on Raven Ridge.

  Oh, he would have liked to, but three men (who were known in their hometown as the Bandito Brothers) had, at one point, bumbled their way into his house, and try as he might to get rid of them, they always seemed to come back.

  The Bandito Brothers—Tito, Angelo, and Pablo—were not actual brothers (although they fought like they were). They were a mariachi band.

  A bad one.

  They screeched o
ut songs.

  Played out of tune.

  And (as it was their real purpose in forming the band) they stole stuff.

  Yes, the Bandito Brothers played at being a band, but they were actually a band of thieves. And in all their crooked years, these out-of-tune crooners had never met another thief, another swindler, another anyone as clever as Damien Black.

  They were, it’s fair to say, awestruck by the treasure hunter. And, despite the fact that Damien called them bumbling bozos and had, on several occasions, come close to killing them, the Brothers were sure that deep in his dark, dastardly heart, Damien Black liked them.

  And so, time after time, the Bandito Brothers returned to the monstrous mansion from which they’d been banned, in hopes that someday they, too, would be clever and crafty and rich like Damien Black.

  Now, the simple truth is, Sticky was right:

  Damien had, indeed, abducted Ms. Veronica Krockle.

  And Damien had (to his sinister surprise) discovered that he couldn’t handle her alone.

  Oh, he’d had no problem clonking her over the head (with the smooth, appropriately twisted, and remarkably dense humerus of a pygmy hippo—a bone he’d acquired while on a hippo safari in the forests of Tiwai Island).

  He’d had no problem blindfolding her and transporting her up to Raven Ridge (in his devilishly dandy 1959 Cadillac Eldorado).

  And he’d had no problem hoisting her like a rag doll up ninety-nine steps to a remote, windowless tower in his maze of a mansion and locking her up.

  But after she came to?

  Oh my.

  Damien discovered (to his horror) that he’d abducted a mad cat.

  An angry alligator!

  A wild and wicked wasp of a woman!

  And what a stinger that voice of hers was!

  And so, once again, he’d turned to the Bandito Brothers for help.

  “Tie her up and shut her up!” he’d commanded.

  “Who is she?” they’d asked.

  “Just do it!” he’d snapped, and shoved them inside the tower room with a fat roll of duct tape.

  Damien was not, I should point out, a coward. He simply did not want Veronica Krockle to see him, or to know where she had been taken (hence the windowlessness of the room). His plan was neither to keep her nor to kill her. Oh no. She was not nearly important enough for that. He just needed her out of the way until he’d tracked down the boy and snatched back the powerband.

  His plan was to then return Ms. Veronica Krockle to Geronimo Middle School (late at night and blindfolded, of course) and be done with the whole maddening mess without making a mess (by, say, killing her).

  But, Damien now thought as he zoomed home and changed out of his disguise, this was all taking longer than he’d expected.

  Way longer.

  And since (as we all know) desperate, diabolical times call for desperate, diabolical measures, he began plotting ways to adjust his plan.

  He had to figure out what to do next!

  And when, exactly, to rid himself of that nasty cat-scratch teacher.

  Apparently he wasn’t the only one thinking this, as he was accosted the moment he entered the kitchen.

  “Boss!” Pablo cried, his little ratlike face screwed into a pained squint. “That lady’s a beast!”

  “A monster!” Angelo agreed, through a mouthful of food.

  “Want some soup?” Tito asked from over by the stove, where he was stirring a steaming cauldron of rosemary potato chowder.

  And really, this summed up Damien’s dilemma. The Bandito Brothers were idiots and annoying and ate him out of house and home, and yet the aroma in the kitchen made him forget all that.

  It was nose-wigglingly wonderful!

  In no time, the despicably wicked Damien Black was on olfactory overload, drooling like a basset hound.

  Damien, you see, did not cook.

  He barely took time to eat.

  He couldn’t be bothered with things like nutrition and hydration and hunger pains.

  He had work to do!

  Banks to heist!

  People to abduct!

  And yet the aroma in his kitchen made his knees turn to jelly.

  “She threw her breakfast at me!” Pablo complained.

  “And her lunch at me!” Angelo added (although through the food in his mouth it sounded more like “Ah wunhhh ah eeee!”).

  Tito simply delivered a bowl of soup to Damien and asked, “Toast?” as Damien jelly-kneed into a chair.

  Damien nodded, then held his long, pointy nose over the steaming bowl, his eyes drifting closed as he inhaled.

  “You okay, boss?” Pablo asked (recognizing that there was something rather odd about his idol’s behavior).

  Damien snapped to. “No, you fool, I’m not!” He grabbed his spoon and jabbed it in Pablo’s direction. “I had the wrong kid! How could I have followed the wrong kid? Four of those brats told me he owned a gecko, and I could tell he was hiding something when I asked him. But when I followed him, he couldn’t have had the—”

  It was at this point that Damien almost slipped. You see, the Bandito Brothers did not know exactly what it was that the boy and Sticky had that Damien wanted so badly. They only knew that Damien wanted whatever it was very, very badly.

  So immediately Pablo’s and Angelo’s ears perked.

  Their eyes sharpened.

  Their breath caught.

  They were finally going to find out what this was all about!

  (Tito, meanwhile, buttered the toast.)

  But Damien (much to Angelo and Pablo’s dismay) caught himself in the nick of time. “—he didn’t have my stuff,” he said, then dug into his bowl of chowder.

  Pablo and Angelo drooped, then watched Damien eat, wondering what his brilliant brain was plotting as he brooded in silence over his soup.

  Damien was, indeed, plotting, but his situation with the boy had him at a great disadvantage. Children, you see, all looked alike to him. (That is, unless one had radically red hair or a brilliantly blond buzz cut. But even then, it was tough.) To Damien Black, distinguishing one child from another was like reading Chinese characters. The vertical and horizontal lines of their faces all ran together in his mind. He had to really concentrate to distinguish one character from the other. And then, when several of them were thrown together, he got confused. They all just looked too similar.

  Too annoyingly, confoundingly similar.

  However, as he reached the bottom of his chowder, Damien (feeling now fortified and surprisingly refreshed) had the spark of a new idea.

  And with it came the determination to try again.

  He had to!

  After all, he told himself, he now knew at least one thing more than he’d known the day before:

  The boy was definitely not named Dave Sanchez.

  Chapter 8

  SILLY-CIRCUITING

  Saving his sarcastic, fierce-faced teacher did not seem to Dave to be a good use of his superpowers.

  (Or, in this case, superpower.)

  After all, superpowers should be used to fight evil, not save it, right? And according to Dave (and nearly every student at Geronimo Middle School), Ms. Veronica Krockle was most definitely evil.

  So after considering Sticky’s position on saving Ms. Krockle, Dave had only one thing to say to his sticky-toed friend:

  “No way.”

  “Ah, hombre,” Sticky said with a shake of his head. “Get your head out of mud pie.”

  “My head’s not in mud pie,” Dave snapped. “Ms. Krockle’s a beast!”

  “Don’t I know,” Sticky said with a snort.

  “So why would I want to save her?”

  Sticky studied the tips of his little gecko fingernails. “To save yourself, señor.”

  “To save my—?” But then Dave understood. Damien Black wouldn’t let a little thing like following the wrong boy stop him. Damien Black would return to school! And he’d keep coming back until… until Ms. Krockle was freed and could tell the
police that he was a madman! The police would arrest him and this time they’d keep him behind bars!

  Dave hated to admit it, but Sticky was right. Freeing Ms. Krockle was his ticket to freedom, too.

  Now, while these gears were grinding in Dave’s head, Sticky watched.

  And waited.

  And when he saw that Dave had reached the inevitable conclusion, he gave Dave a sage little smile. “It may be ugly-buggly, señor, but it needs to be done.”

  Dave pushed off on his bike. “I can’t believe it,” he grumbled. “I’ve got to save her?”

  “It’s the right thing to do, señor.”

  “How can you say that?” Dave glanced over at the gecko on his shoulder. “How can you of all people—well, of all lizards—say that?”

  Sticky shrugged. “He’ll kill her if you don’t.”

  “Do I care? Do I really care? How many things has she killed?

  How many frogs has she cut up? She’s evil, Sticky. She’s mean.”

  “Don’t I know,” Sticky repeated. “But it’s still the right thing to do.”

  “There has to be a better way,” Dave grumbled. “There just has to!”

  And so, to avoid facing the inevitable, Dave did not sneak out that night to rescue Ms. Veronica Krockle. Instead, he did his homework, did his chores, and went to bed before being told to.

  I should, perhaps, point out that it wasn’t fear holding him back.

  It was the idea of rescuing Veronica Krockle.

  Can you imagine a task so distasteful, so repulsive, so counterintuitive that you would do your homework and your chores and go straight to bed, all without being asked?

  I thought not.

  Now, it’s a well-known fact that sleep has many healing properties. Most people are aware that sleep is the time for your body to make repairs, but it is also linked to fighting off cancers and bolstering memory and (believe it or not) losing weight.

  As you can see, sleep is amazing, powerful stuff.

  What sleep cannot do, however, is change reality.

  It can only help you avoid it.

  Until you wake up, that is.

  And then you’re right back where you were.