The Battle of the Red Hot Pepper Weenies (9 page)

T
he phone connection
was pretty bad. That wasn't surprising, since Stan's dad was calling from the Brazilian rain forest. Even so, it was good enough for Stan to hear him say, “I can't be home in time for your birthday. But I'm sending you a surprise.”

“Dad's sending me a surprise for my birthday,” Stan said after he'd hung up. He was sad that his dad wouldn't be there, but he was used to it. His dad traveled all over the world, studying plants, insects, and animals.

“That's great,” his mom said. “A surprise present will make the day really special. Maybe we should have a party.”

Stan wasn't sure about that. He'd had a couple parties, but they weren't all that much fun. Mostly, the kids sat around, ate potato chips, and stared at one another while they waited for the cake. But maybe his dad would send him something so incredibly cool that a party would actually be fun.

Stan checked the porch each day for a package. Finally, one week before his birthday, he found a large box right outside the door. He tore it open and discovered a giant ball.
But it wasn't the kind of ball you play with. It was covered with red, yellow, and green stripes. There was no note or card—just a slip of paper with the word
PIÑATA
.

“Cool.” Stan knew what a piñata was. They were filled with candy. Kids would wear a blindfold and swing a bat until someone connected hard enough to smash the piñata open and spill the candy.

He took the package up to his room, then told his mom, “I decided I want a party.” He didn't mention the piñata. She wasn't big on candy, and he suspected she really wasn't big on blindfolded kids swinging baseball bats.

Stan invited all his friends. And since that was only two kids, he also invited a lot of his other classmates. He couldn't help bragging to everyone that he had a supersecret surprise.

The morning of Stan's birthday, his mom set up a table in the backyard with chips and soda. Stan waited until she went inside. Then he tied a rope around the piñata and hung it over a tree branch.

“Cool, a piñata,” Trevor said when he arrived. All the other kids had the same reaction. Stan checked to make sure his mom wasn't coming out, then grabbed the bat and large handkerchief he'd hidden behind the garage. “Who wants to go first?” he said. Not that it mattered. He planned to control the rope so that nobody else could hit the piñata. After all, it was his present. He was the one who should have the fun of whacking it.

His plan worked. Everyone missed. “I guess it's up to me.” Stan handed the rope to Trevor, who was so amazingly uncoordinated, he'd never pull the rope at the right time to avoid the piñata's destruction. Then he grabbed the bat, put on the blindfold, and got ready to give the piñata a beating.

Inside, Stan's mom was reading the mail. There was a letter from her husband. He started out with, “I'm sending home some amazing specimens I've collected. There's a large box coming. It contains the egg case of a giant piñata spider. Be careful not to break it. It's perfectly safe as long as it remains intact. But the spiders are incredibly aggressive once they are released.”

Stan's mom frowned. She hadn't seen any large package. Just the small one that came that morning with Stan's present. She hadn't told him about it yet. She figured she'd let him open it during the party. That would be fun for all the kids. She thought about asking him whether he'd seen a large box. But he was busy with his friends. She could ask him after the party was over.

It was only slightly later—maybe a minute at the most—when she heard the first screams coming from the backyard. Screams, shrieks, and some minor crashes. She couldn't help smiling. It definitely sounded like the kids were running all over the place. Her son's shouts seemed to be the loudest of all. His squeals of joy made her feel good.

“Those kids are really having a fun time,” she said as she settled in her chair and sipped a cup of tea. “I hope the neighbors don't mind a little noise.”

A
s soon as
I heard the high-pitched voices and the clatter of stones in the distance, I tried to lead Duncan away from the slag pile. But I guess Duncan's hearing is just as good as mine. Or maybe even better. Predators have great hearing. Duncan might not be a wolf or a jaguar, but he definitely responded to the sound of potential prey.

“Hey, let's go to the mall,” I said as he started to cut through the woods.

“The mall's for losers.” He sped up. The voices were clearer now. It sounded like seven or eight of them.

I chased after him. We broke through the trees, and I saw them. Looked like second-or third-graders, climbing over the slag heap of broken shale we called Bare Head Mountain. It wasn't a mountain—just a hill covered with loose stone. It had three boulders at the top. The one in the middle looked sort of like part of a head. The kids were pushing, laughing, rolling, and having a great time, screaming, “I'm king of the hill,” as they fought to stay on the top.

“Wrong.” Duncan jabbed his thumb at his chest. “I'm
king of the hill. They just don't know it yet. But they're gonna learn.”

“Come on, this isn't any fun,” I said.

“It will be.” He jogged ahead.

I stood for a moment, wondering whether to leave. Duncan liked to play rough. And he didn't seem to care who he played with. He was just as happy tossing around a couple third-graders as he was tackling a middle school kid. There was no way I could stop him. He'd kick my butt and enjoy every second, even though I was supposed to be his best friend.

Duncan was already at the bottom of the hill. He reached out and grabbed a kid who was just scrambling up. He actually lifted the kid off his feet before he flung him backwards.

The kid landed facedown. He got up on his hands and knees, then fell again. The rest of the kids didn't seem to notice. I guess they were still too busy trying to be king of the hill.

I walked over to the fallen kid. He turned his tear-streaked face toward me, then gasped like I was some sort of movie monster.

“You okay?” I asked.

He nodded and made wet, gulping sounds.

“You might want to take off.”

He got up and tottered toward the woods. Another kid landed at the bottom of the hill. He sat up, then clutched his shoulder.

Duncan had gotten about halfway to his goal, and so far, he'd taken out four kids. The kid at the top had the advantage of being able to see what was happening. He turned and scrambled down the other side of the heap. The two remaining little kids kept tugging at each other, trying to become
the new king. They didn't have a clue that the game was about to change.

Duncan grabbed them by their shoulders and flung his arms out, tossing the kids aside. They came to a rest at the bottom of the hill, slumped like rag dolls.

I made sure neither of them had broken anything, then watched as they fled into the woods.

“I'm king of the hill,” Duncan said.

“Yup.”

“Try to knock me down.”

“No thanks.”

“Come on. It's no fun by myself.”

“I'm going home.” I turned away.

“No.”

The word sent a chill through me. The way he said it, I felt like a dog being yelled at. I sighed and started to climb the hill. I figured I'd give it a good effort, try to avoid getting injured when he pushed me down, and then pretend I was too hurt to play anymore.

Halfway to the top, I paused.

“Scared?” Duncan asked.

I didn't answer. I was watching the boulder to his left. It had moved. Not like it was rolling. But—and I know this sounds crazy—like it was expanding.

“Come on, wuss! Come knock me off.”

I took another step. The boulder expanded a bit more.

“Why don't you come down. It's dangerous up there.”

“Why don't you knock me down?” He tilted his head back and spat in the air. I dodged as the loogie arced down toward me.

The boulder kept expanding. No. It wasn't expanding. That wasn't the right word. It was unfolding.

Duncan stooped, grabbed a rock, and lobbed it in my direction. I guess he was out of spit.

The boulder continued to unfold, like a fist unclenching. The rock Duncan threw at me cracked against the slag a yard to my left.

The fist was fully unclenched now. The boulder on the other side of Duncan also started to open.

“Look!” I shouted, pointing to the stone hands on either side of him.

“Nice try.” He grabbed another rock.

The hands jutted to the side. Loose rocks and slag slid down the hill as arms extended.

He rose. He. It. whatever you call a slag hill with arms and legs and a crude head. He rose to his feet. I tumbled from mine and rolled to the ground.

I looked up. Duncan was atop the rock head, screaming, “King of the hill! King of the hill!”

One rock hand reached up, curled a forefinger, and flicked Duncan off. He sailed over my head and landed somewhere in the woods.

In the face, stone lips moved—slowly, as if it had been centuries since they last parted. The voice, a low rumble like the groan of a rock slide, spoke. “The hill is king of itself.”

I stood there, frozen, as he folded back down. Then I turned and ran into the woods, wondering whether Duncan could have survived.

I found him a hundred yards away, lying on his stomach across a fallen tree. His shirt had been shredded by the
branches that broke his fall. He had the groggy eyes of a boxer who'd just lost fifteen straight rounds. His leg was bent the wrong way. His face was cut and bleeding. The injuries were bad, but not fatal.

The little kids had found him, too. They were taking turns climbing up on his back and shouting, “I'm king of the bully.”

I thought about chasing them off, but it looked like they were having a lot of fun, and they didn't seem to be hurting him all that much.

“The hill is king of itself,” I told Duncan. I figured it was worth sharing the message.

“What?” He seemed puzzled. Maybe he was too stunned from his fall to understand. Or maybe he was the sort of kid who could never believe anything was better or stronger than he was. Not even after he'd been turned into a piece of living playground equipment. It didn't matter. I understood the message.

I headed off to get help. Duncan would need a lot of patching up. He'd need plenty of medical attention. And he'd need to find someone else to hang out with.

M
orley Blezner slunk
into the school library, paused to glare at Ms. Dawner, the librarian, and Mr. Lawrence, the library assistant, and then stomped over to the shelves. He'd rather be almost anywhere else. Books were stupid. The library was stupid. But he had to pick a book for a report. And he didn't have any at home. So he had no choice.

Ms. Dawner walked over to him, all smiley and cheerful. “Can I help you find something?”

“No.” Morley turned away from her. He could find his own book. He was sure she'd give him something really bad. Something thick and important. He wanted to get away from her before she tried to offer more help. He walked between two rows of shelves, so he'd be out of sight, and pulled a thin book out at random.

There was a spaceship on the cover. “Cool,” he said. He opened the book and saw it was filled with pictures from science fiction movies. He spotted a page with a scene from his favorite movie. “Awesome!”

He thought about taking the book out. But he wasn't
interested in the rest of the pictures. He checked over his shoulder. Nobody could see him. Slowly, carefully, so it wouldn't make any sound, he ripped the page from the book. Then he slid the book back on the shelf.

As he turned away, something slammed against the back of his head.

“Hey!” Morley spun around, ready to throw a punch. But nobody had hit him. He looked at the floor. The book was there, like it had flown off the shelf. Another book, a lot thicker than the first, shot at him from a lower shelf, bouncing off his chest.

“Ow!” Morley staggered back.

More books flew at him from both sides. He turned and ran, fleeing through a hail of books.

The books drove him out of the aisle and across the library. He raced toward the door. Before he got there, he had to pass the reference section. He almost didn't make it out alive. A couple encyclopedia volumes, a world atlas, and a whopping unabridged dictionary did major damage.

Finally, Morley escaped through the double doors. Crying, gasping, bloody and bruised, he limped down the hall toward his class.

“Well, he's gone,” Mr. Lawrence said as the doors hissed shut behind Morley.

“You know,” Ms. Dawner said, “I'm still not sure book banning is a good idea.”

“It'll do until something better comes along,” Mr. Lawrence said. “I just wish the process didn't make such a mess.” He sighed, and started putting the books back on the shelves.

U
ntil she stepped
into Dr. Kublanko's waiting room, Shelly felt pretty good about getting braces. Half the popular kids in school wore them, and Shelly did have to admit that her overbite made her look more than a little bit like a bunny. She got tons of advice from her friends once she spread the news.

“Chew lots of gum now,” Sarah told her, “because you won't be chewing any once they put the braces on.”

“Plan on eating spaghetti for the first few days,” Lorie warned her. “You won't feel like chewing.”

Now, she was just minutes away from her first session in the chair. It was only an exam, but it brought her that much closer to the moment when it all became real. The waiting room was so dim and gloomy, Shelly paused right inside the doorway.

“Don't worry,” her mother said. “They'll be off again before you know it.”

Shelly nodded and sat on a couch that was wedged against one wall. A younger girl was slumped in a chair across the room. When she looked up, Shelly smiled.

The girl's head drooped back down.

“He's very reasonable,” Shelly's mother said, whispering the last word. Shelly knew that
reasonable
was her mother's way of saying
cheap
.

That could definitely describe the waiting room. The place certainly didn't resemble any other office she'd been in. It smelled more like an antique shop than a dentist's office. The furniture was old and worn. There weren't any magazines. There was no music or radio. There wasn't even a receptionist.

Dr. Kublanko popped into the waiting room and said, “Shelly?” He looked almost too young to be a dentist.

“That's me,” Shelly said. She followed him as he bounced down a short dark hall to a room with a dentist's chair. When she looked at the chair, a pang rippled through her stomach. For an instant, she thought of turning and fleeing. What was so terrible about a few crooked teeth?

“Hop right up,” Dr. Kublanko said.

Shelly got in the chair.

“Let's have a look,” he said.

Shelly opened her mouth. Dr. Kublanko examined her for a moment, then said, “Well, let's get started.”

“What?”

“The braces,” Dr. Kublanko said.

“But, don't you have to do some X-rays? Isn't this just an exam?”

“Oh, you need braces. And there's no point in waiting. So let's get them on.”

Dr. Kublanko went to work. It took a lot less time than Shelly expected. The doctor just slipped something over all her teeth. One minute, she was sitting there with her mouth
open; a moment later, she was aware of this strange
thing
against her lips.

“It feels funny,” Shelly tried to say. But it came out “Ih eel zunny.”

“You'll get used to it,” Dr. Kublanko said. “I'll see you again in exactly one week.”

Shelly slid out of the chair. It was odd—she'd assumed the strange metal in her mouth would feel cold, but it was very warm.

She probed the braces with her tongue. They felt weird.

“That wasn't so bad, was it?” her mom asked when Shelly returned to the waiting room.

“Gesh not,” Shelly said, which was as close to
guess not
as she could come at the moment. She wondered when it would start to hurt. Her friends told her that her teeth might ache for a day or two.

That evening, she still felt fine. There was no ache, no discomfort at all other than the strangeness in her mouth. She was almost completely used to her braces by the time she went to sleep. She halfway woke up once in the middle of the night, and had the strangest feeling that she didn't have her braces on.
I must be getting used to them,
she thought as she fell back to sleep.

In the morning, her mouth felt fine. No pain, no discomfort. She wondered how the braces could work if she didn't feel anything. At her next appointment, she asked Dr. Kublanko about that.

“Oh, these are the latest design,” he said as he examined her. “Everything is going perfectly.” He took a thin hose with a nozzle at the end and put it inside her mouth.

“What are you doing?” Shelly asked, speaking around the nozzle.

“Oh, just cleaning things a bit. Hmmmm. From the way these look, I'm guessing you breathe through your nose. Try to breathe through your mouth. The braces work best when they get lots of air.”

That didn't make sense. Shelly was going to say something, but she suddenly felt very tired. She blinked. Had she dozed? She looked up at the doctor. “There,” he was saying. “All set until next week.”

“Uh, okay.” Shelly still felt strange. Her eyes wandered round the small room, settling for a moment on a diploma hanging above the sink. Shelly looked at the date. Dr. Kublanko had gotten his degree more than forty years ago. That didn't make sense. He couldn't possibly be that old.

“Relax,” the dentist told her. “Everything is progressing just the way it's supposed to. Now get along home.”

On the way out, Shelly saw a girl in the waiting room. The girl smiled at her and said, “I'm just here to see if I need braces.”

Don't go in there
. Shelly almost spoke, but she was too tired to find the right words. It wasn't worth the effort. She dropped her head and turned away.

Shelly woke again in the middle of the night. Something glinted on the windowsill, right up against the screen. Shelly started to get up, but the room danced in circles and slid from under her. As she fell back to sleep, she felt something slipping onto her teeth.

“I want to get my braces off,” she told her mom the next morning.

“But that's ridiculous, dear,” her mom said. “You need to
wear them for at least two years. Otherwise, they won't do any good. What's wrong? Are the other girls teasing you?”

Shelly shook her head. She saw there was no use trying to explain it to her mom. But the dentist was another matter. She'd talk to him at her next appointment.

“And how are you?” he asked Shelly as he tilted her chair.

“There's something wrong with my braces,” she said.

“Oh, really? Well, it's easy to adjust these things.” He reached onto his tray and took up a small pliers. “What exactly is the problem?”

They leave my mouth and crawl around the room at night.
That's what Shelly wanted to say. But, suddenly, she was afraid to admit that she knew this. Shelly looked at his face—it was so young, except for his eyes. She turned away, scared to stare into those eyes. “Uh, they feel a bit loose,” she said.

“Oh, dear. Here, see if this is better.” He did something inside her mouth.

Shelly nodded. “Much better,” she said when the dentist had removed the tool.

“Good. Now let me do just one more thing.” He placed another tool, the one connected to a hose, into her mouth. “Great,” he said a moment later. “All done.”

Shelly realized she was nearly asleep. She dragged herself from the chair and staggered out of the office. When she got home, she fell right into bed and slept without waking during the night.

The next morning, Shelly looked carefully at her teeth in the mirror. Nothing seemed to have changed. Then she looked at her face. She was tired. There were dark bags under her eyes. Her face seemed older; her hair seemed dry and brittle.

I didn't look like this before,
she thought. It had all changed after her first visit with Dr. Kublanko. She touched her cheek. The skin felt more like wax than flesh. She was sure that her youth and energy were being stolen. It had to be the braces. That night, she set her alarm to ring at three thirty in the morning.
It's going to end,
Shelly thought as she lay down in her bed.

The alarm jolted her. She sat up and switched it off.

Her tongue ran across bare teeth. She looked around the room. The braces, like a metal spider, were on the windowsill, sitting in the moonlight. As she caught sight of them, they rushed toward her.

“No!” Shelly shouted.

The braces scurried to the bed and sprang up onto the mattress.

Shelly clamped her hand across her mouth.

Sharp wires dug into her skin as the braces climbed her nightshirt. Wires stabbed at the hand she'd clamped across her mouth.

Shelly grabbed the braces with her other hand and ripped them free. She flung them to the floor. They started to charge back toward her. Shelly rolled to the floor and slammed her fist down on the braces. They flattened, but sprang right back into shape. She kept hitting them. Over and over, she slammed the braces. It took every bit of strength she had. The world wavered. She felt more drained with each strike. Shelly wondered if she was going to pass out.

“
Shelly!
What's going on? Why are you on the floor?”

Shelly opened her eyes, sat up slowly, and looked at her mother standing in the doorway. “My braces,” she said.

Her mother switched on the light and knelt next to
Shelly. She put a hand under Shelly's chin and looked at her mouth. “What about them? They seem just fine.”

Shelly started to speak. The braces rubbed against her tongue. She looked at the spot on the floor. It was bare.

“You'd better get some sleep, young lady,” her mother said. “You have school tomorrow. Oh, and I almost forgot. Dr. Kublanko called. He needs to make another adjustment to your braces. You have an appointment with him tomorrow, right after school.” She paused and shook her head. “I honestly don't see how he can give so many appointments and charge so little. But I'm certainly not complaining.”

Shelly nodded, unable to speak. Tired and drained of energy, she crawled back to bed.
It must be my imagination,
she thought.
It was a dream or something
.

“It doesn't matter,” Shelly whispered. She was too exhausted to care. She felt so tired, and so old. Nothing was important—not the braces on her teeth, not even the cuts and scratches on her hands. Shelly had no idea how those small injuries had gotten there, but they didn't matter, either. The cuts would heal. And in just a few years, she'd have nice, straight teeth. Wouldn't that be wonderful?