Bigger, Badder, Nerdier Read online

  “We don’t like those movies,” Mindy said defensively.

  “I don’t hate them,” Owen corrected her.

  “How sweet. Well, now that you’re here, why don’t you four run off to your classes before you’re marked tardy.”

  I looked around the empty halls in confusion.

  “Why don’t you just cancel school today?” I asked. “Are the Staffers even here?”

  “What a bright young boy,” she said sarcastically. “Like a one-watt lightbulb on its last ray. I can’t just cancel school. Education is too important. Sure, the Staffers are either waiting in line or have taken temporary jobs selling movie tickets. It turns out they can make more doing that for a few days than they can earn by working here all year.”

  “That doesn’t seem right,” Xen said.

  “You’re a child,” Darth Susan replied. “What would you know? Now, all of you get your troublesome behinds away from me and into your classes.”

  “But…” I tried again.

  We ran down the empty halls to our classes—Mindy and Xen to theirs and Owen and me to ours.

  Mr. Upwonder wasn’t in class, and there was only one other class member. The other student was an Old-Schooler named Hansen. He was sitting in the front row and kept scolding me and Owen every time we talked.

  I ignored Hansen and kept talking to Owen.

  “The school is empty, and Darth Susan’s acting like it’s no big deal.” I made sure I was facing him so that he could read my lips. “She’s had no problem canceling school in the past. Remember when she canceled a week of school because she had spring fever?”

  “Yeah,” Owen said loudly.

  “You have no right to be whispering,” Hansen squawked. “Sit quietly.”

  “We have no teacher,” I squawked back. “I think it’s okay to talk.”

  I continued to whisper, knowing the world was already in pieces.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Figuring It Out

  The rest of the day was just as odd. In my third-hour class, I was the only student.

  At lunch there were only seven people in the cafeteria, and no cafeteria workers.

  Fourth hour had four students, including me, one Old-Schooler named Byron, and two Antisocials whose names I didn’t know. During class Byron began whittling something, and the Antisocials stayed at the edge of the room trying to blend in with the wall.

  Ten minutes into class the door opened.

  Darth Susan came in, followed by the Pep Liaison and a tall gentleman wearing a dark blue uniform and holding a clipboard. All three stared at us.

  I raised my hand, but nobody acknowledged me.

  The fact that the Pep Liaison was here made me uneasy. After all, he had been part of the problem a couple of months back when we saved the school. Even though he always smiled, he was never to be trusted.

  “And you say these numbers are normal for your school?” the dark-suited man asked.

  “Perfectly normal,” Darth Susan said as she glared at me and my raised hand. “Plus, the few students who do come are unimpressive and nothing to celebrate.”

  “Celebrations are a shameful waste of time,” Byron the Old-Schooler said as he whittled.

  The dark-suited man looked at Byron and coughed uncomfortably.

  “Of course,” Darth Susan said.

  She then ushered the blue-suited man out of our classroom while scowling at me. When the door was closed, I hopped up and pushed my face against the small window and looked out into the hall.

  I saw Darth Susan and her pathetic posse disappear down the hall in the HTV.

  “What is going on?” I said aloud.

  “It’s not any of our business,” Byron said. “And I’m glad of it. Minding my own business is one of the few pleasures I’m allowed to enjoy.”

  The two Antisocials in the room just stood there blushing.

  I know that my friends and I are socially awkward. Sure, we don’t often fit in or stand out, and people overlook us and make fun of us. We have bad style, out-of-date hair, and only one another as followers on all social media. Still, I have to say that compared to the Old-Schoolers and the Antisocials, we are downright with it and outgoing.

  “I’m leaving,” I told them.

  “In my day, we never left class early,” Byron said.

  “This is your day,” I reminded him. “We’re the same age.”

  I left the room and walked down Q Hall, keeping my eyes peeled for any sign of the HTV. I knew Mindy was in Senseless Economics, so I headed there and peered through the window on the classroom door.

  She was sitting alone and staring at the chalkboard. I entered her one-person class and took a seat beside her.

  “That’s where Scott McLaughlin sits,” she said.

  “Well, it looks like he’s not here today,” I replied. “Did Darth Susan come by?”

  “Yes, with Peppy and some tall blue guy.” Mindy sounded both bored and fed up at the same time. “They took a class count and then started talking about how nobody values education anymore. The blue guy also said something about acting fair, or a fairness act.”

  A bell went off in my head!

  Some of my favorite informational things to read are books and articles about how the government works. Last week I finished a two-hundred-page article about the legal system in Piggsburg and how the town spends the money the government gives it. For the record—not wisely. The week before that I read a paper on NinCon Troopers and the different ranks they can have. And the week before that I read a paper on census taking and how the government keeps track of people in various areas and regions by conducting censuses.

  The most riveting part of the census paper was about education and how the government keeps track of the students in school. They use census information to further control everyone.

  “The Fairness Act!” I shouted.

  “What?” Mindy asked.

  “I can’t believe I was so blind.”

  “Blind?” Mindy said. “Like after the time you ate that glowing pudding?”

  “Yes, but the blindness I’m talking about now might not be temporary. The Fairness Act is what they call the education census rule. The government does surprise inspections to get a count of how many students are attending a school. But since it’s unfair to judge a school’s attendance by just one day, the Fairness Act requires the government to get a second day’s sampling and average the two numbers.”

  “No,” I shouted. “They’re counting our school numbers, and because everyone’s waiting in line for the movie, we have next to none. If our second-day numbers are anything like today’s, we are doomed. According to the Fairness Act, if a school has two days of less than twenty-five percent attendance, it’s in danger of being shut down. If it has two days of less than ten percent, it is to be shut down immediately and all students and staff shipped off to other schools or outposts.”

  “Or in Darth Susan’s case,” Mindy said, finally catching on, “she will be offered an early retirement and be free of her job forever while we suffer at outpost #72.”

  “Exactly! She’ll win and finally get what she wanted before we stopped her two months ago.”

  Owen and Xen burst through the door and into the classroom.

  “I heard everything,” Owen informed us.

  “I didn’t,” Xen said.

  “I also just heard Peppy tell Darth Susan in secret that the second count is scheduled for tomorrow.”

  It looked like the fight to avoid outpost #72 and ruin Darth Susan’s day was heating up once again. As we brainstormed about what to do, it was Xen who struck upon the one idea that just might work. It was a wild idea, and the odds of success were a billion to one.

  I stared at Owen. “What did you say?”

  “Great fussy widgets,” he answered. “Milton MacDuffin says it all the time.”

  “You know Milton?” I asked.

  “Everyone knows Milton.” Owen looked at me like I was an idiot. “He only st
arred in the third movie.”

  “Wait!” I said with fervor. “Darth Susan’s nephew, the one she was talking to in the theater prop house, was named Milton. He was the one who kept using that dumb saying.”

  “Milton MacDuffin is related to Darth Susan?” Owen was beside himself.

  “She used the fake LAME to trick Milton into giving her the information,” Xen said.

  “And she bribed Peppy so that he would schedule the surprise counts on the two days that she knew nobody would be here,” Owen added.

  “She’s the worst!” I said needlessly.

  None of us could argue with that.

  “Well,” I said loudly, “it looks like it’s up to us to ruin things for her. Which means we’ve got a job to do.”

  Sadly, there wasn’t time to stop and point out how bad Xen’s tagline was.

  LAME was on the move.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Paper Jam

  The first step in our somewhat-genius plan required paper. Not a couple of pieces of paper but hundreds and hundreds of pieces. Procuring the goods wasn’t going to be easy. These days paper was a hot commodity. When teachers get their hands on any, they protect it with their lives.

  At WADD, teachers fight for paper. Darth Susan and the Jocks won most of it during the Supply War. But when the teachers got it, they would hoard and hide it. We had heard rumors about them hiding a magical mountain of paper under an Arm-ageddon chair in the Staffers’ asylum. Arm-ageddon chairs were blocky and typically made of concrete or something strong to help the chair keep its shape in the event of Armageddon. The chairs were usually covered with some fabric or blankets to make them a little more comfortable to sit on.

  The Staffers’ asylum was sort of like a teachers’ lounge but with less hope. It was a room where teachers went to recover from headaches or eat one of the lousy selections from the vending machine.

  The Staffers’ asylum was four doors down from the office. We were able to break into it without much trouble. Mindy only needed to click her fingers to send a small shock wave that shattered the doorknob.

  “Your clicks are as strong as your claps,” Xen said in awe.

  “Thanks. I’ve been practicing.”

  Inside were a table with wood chairs that didn’t match, a TV that didn’t work, a microwave, a vending machine, two couches, and one Arm-ageddon chair. Owen took a seat.

  For a while now we had heard that the teachers hid all their paper under the Arm-ageddon chair. Darth Susan never came into the Staffers’ asylum, so they felt it was a safe place.

  Owen got up, and Mindy grabbed the edge of the blanket and pulled it off the top of the chair. Instantly we could see that the stories were beyond true. The paper wasn’t under the chair. It was the chair.

  My friends looked at me like I had lost my mind.

  “What? I don’t want to say it,” I argued. “It’s stuck in my head like a bad song.”

  “Well, sing it to yourself,” Mindy said.

  I grabbed two reams of paper that were currently helping to form the Arm-ageddon chair’s right arm. Mindy then threw the blanket back over it.

  It was now up to Xen to work his magic. Designing things wasn’t one of Xen’s LAME gifts. He was good at it long before we were bitten by spiders. Xen had designed our LAME logo and most of the creative things the AV Club had used in the past. Now he needed to design a flyer that would potentially ruin Darth Susan’s plans and prevent us from having to attend outpost number #72.

  Xen sat down at the table and went to work. As soon as he was done, we took the flyer and the paper and prepared ourselves for what would probably be the hardest part of our plan. There was no way around it—we were going to the library.

  We left the teachers’ asylum and walked down the hall in a group as Owen listened for lizards and secretaries.

  “You know no one is ever going to realize what we’ve done to save this place,” Mindy said forlornly.

  “Bums me out too.” Owen sighed. “I would love people to stop thinking we’re only good at things like sudoku and computers.”

  “Yeah,” Xen said. “I’d like someone to invite me to play beat ball without me having to be the beat.”

  “It’s not going to happen,” I informed them. “But luckily, middle school isn’t forever. In a couple of years we’ll be in high school and we’ll be getting ignored there instead.”

  We walked down the hall and made it past the office, and then we headed toward the kingdom of Mrs. Shh. She possessed the one thing we needed most. Our plan couldn’t go forward until we’d tricked her into letting us use it. We were hoping she would be gone today, but Owen could hear her inside the library, taping books closed.

  “If this goes wrong, Mrs. Shh will kill us,” Mindy whispered. “Last time I saw her, she swatted me with a book about manners because she thought it would make me less sarcastic. Then she yelled at me for having dark hair. I guess one of her cats has dark hair, and the cat has been giving her attitude lately.”

  We reached the library doors and stood there for a moment. Tyler had fixed them, and they were now back in place and locked.

  There was a lot on the line. And I just wasn’t sure that the League of Average and Mediocre Entities could pull this off.

  Despite my lack of confidence, it was time to disturb the queen.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Snappy Solutions

  Darth Susan is the most feared person at WADD. For a school secretary, she’s done a good job of rising to the top. The second-most feared person isn’t Principal Woth. In fact, he doesn’t even register on the scare scale.

  No, the second-most feared is Mrs. Shh. Not because she’s the librarian and refuses to share her books without a battle—a fact that makes her a first-round ballot for the Horrible Human Hall of Fame. Or because she is the inventor of the Very Dismal System. What gives Mrs. Shh the most power is that she controls the copy machine. Nobody can touch it without her blessing.

  The reason the copy machine is in the library is because a while back Mrs. Shh had gone head-to-head with Darth Susan over who got the best parking space. Darth Susan won by accidentally having Mrs. Shh’s car smashed by a wrecking-havoc ball.

  Mrs. Shh wasn’t too happy about that. So at the beginning of last year, she broke into the office and stole the old beat-up-and-tied-together copy machine.

  Then she made a dam of books in front of the doorway to prevent anyone from being able to get to it.

  Eventually the dam burst when a couple of Sox slid into it, but nobody tried to take the machine back. Even Darth Susan knew that it was a battle she couldn’t win. So the copy machine stayed in the library. Now anyone who needs to make a copy must beg and plead.

  And getting permission to make copies was almost impossible. First of all, you have to BYOP (bring your own paper) and offer Mrs. Shh gifts—things like cat treats for her cats, or interesting buttons.

  Yeah, that’s right: Mrs. Shh loves buttons. I can’t explain it, and please don’t make me. She’s just one of those grown-ups who does things that don’t make any sense.

  Our plan to use the copier required a sacrificial pawn, and Xen had reluctantly agreed to be it. He was the only one of us who hadn’t had a run-in with Mrs. Shh. Plus, he wanted to see if he was a good enough actor to pull off the lie he was going to have to tell.

  So Xen stood in front of the library door while me, Mindy, and Owen hid inside empty lockers nearby and looked out the slots. Once we were set, Xen knocked. A few seconds later I could see Mrs. Shh’s eye staring out at him through the peephole.

  After what felt like my entire lifetime, she threw open the door.

  “I have asthma,” Xen told her. “I only breathe through my nose.”

  “Well then, I’ll fine you for sniffing in the books,” she said.

  “Okay, I just thought you might be able to tell me what a six-holed pearl-plated flat button is. I’ll get someone else to look.”

  “What did you say?” she dema
nded while grabbing Xen by the shoulders and looking him in the eyes.

  “Nothing,” Xen said, acting (or maybe not acting) nervous. “Someone found a six-holed pearl-plated flat button outside.”

  “Impossible,” Mrs. Shh told him. “Impossible.”

  “Right. Sorry to bother you.”

  “Wait!”

  Mrs. Shh stepped all the way out of the library and glared down at Xen. I could see that his knees were knocking and he was trying hard not to burp.

  “Do you think I’m dumb?” she asked.

  I made a silent wish that Xen wouldn’t be as honest as he usually was.

  Xen shook his head.

  “I see what you’re doing. You want to keep the button to yourself, don’t you?”

  “Actually…”

  “Nice try. Do you think I was born yesterday?”

  Xen shook his head again. It was easy for him to be honest about that question. Nobody thought Mrs. Shh was born yesterday. She looked older than at least a couple of thousand yesterdays.

  “Well, it’s not going to work.” Mrs. Shh pulled the library door closed and locked it. “Now show me that button.”

  Xen turned on his feet and marched back down the hall with Mrs. Shh following him.

  Once they were out of sight, we slipped from the lockers and up to the library door.

  Mindy clapped her hands, and the entire doorframe and door broke from the wall and came falling down. We threw our arms up to stop the door from crushing us.