Dinosaur Boy (11 page)

Sylvie dove under Ms. Helen's desk while Elliot and I both wedged ourselves underneath the large counter that separated the main office from the rest of the administration building. My tail, pulled tight against us like a seat belt, was the only thing keeping us from bursting out of the cramped space. Elliot's elbow was jammed into my side, and his fingernails were digging into the end of my tail. But I was trying too hard not to breathe to care about any of that.

I couldn't see the security guard, but I could hear his footsteps on the linoleum floor, and I could see his flashlight making wide arcs around the office. It lit up the front desk, the file cabinets, and the piles of paper waiting to be organized. It swung to the left; soon, it would illuminate Ms. Helen's desk, with its model solar system, the printer—

The
printer.

There was a small printer on Ms. Helen's desk, right next to the fan. Approximately three inches from the top of Sylvie's hoodie, a green, flashing light was announcing that a print job had been completed. And the evidence was right there, waiting to be collected in the paper tray.

Why
hadn't we run when we had the chance?

Even if we did get away, which wasn't looking very likely, the email proved that somebody had been in Principal Mathis's office that night. She would know that somebody was on to her.

The footsteps stopped abruptly, and the flashlight beam stopped, inches before hitting Ms. Helen's desk.

The footsteps started again, and a door creaked open. From my vantage point underneath the counter, I could see the security guard let himself into Principal Mathis's office.

I looked back toward the desk just as a tiny hand floated up from underneath. In one smooth move, Sylvie's nimble fingers hit the power button and the green light vanished. There was a slight rustling sound as she snatched the incriminating printout from the paper tray and brought it down, into the relative safety underneath the desk.

Not one second later, the security guard emerged from the principal's office. He closed the door behind him, turned his flashlight off, and walked back toward the front door of the building.

“Seeing things,” he mumbled to himself, as he let himself out and locked the door behind him. A short time later, we heard the sound of a car engine slowly fade into the distance.

Elliot unclenched his fingers from my tail and tumbled out from underneath the desk.

“Close one!” he exclaimed. Elliot's face lit up with excitement—I'm not sure he'd had this much fun in years.

I crawled out after him, wincing as all of my squashed plates sprung back into place. Sylvie was already out from under Ms. Helen's desk, holding the piece of paper up so it caught the dim light from a nearby window.

“I don't get it,” Elliot said. “Mathis sells pets? That's her big secret?”

“Uh-oh,” said Sylvie, her eyes locked on the printout.

“What?” I asked, coming over so that I could read it too. “What does it say? What kind of pets does Mathis sell?”

Sylvie looked up at me, her eyes like shiny quarters in the faint light.

“Kids,” she said. “Principal Mathis sells kids. That's why she's keeping Parker and the others. She's going to sell them. As
pets
.”

“We've got to go to the police,” Elliot concluded the following morning.

“Slow down, please,” I pleaded, panting.

Coach Carpenter, having apparently run out of ways to torture us
indoors
, was forcing us to do laps around the school. For the entire period. No exceptions for those of us with heavy dinosaur parts that jiggled uncomfortably at even the slowest jog.

Or for those of us who are extra sensitive to the sun. Sylvie lumbered along beside me, wearing her usual sweatshirt over her gym uniform and sweating heavily. Her face was already bright red. The extra sunscreen she had smeared all over her face had all dripped off somewhere around the second lap.

I had the printout from last night in my pocket. I had it memorized by now, but I still took it out every once in a while, just to make sure it really said what I remembered:

The agreement went on to discuss pricing, customs issues, insurance, and something called “indemnification in the event of casualty or loss,” but all I could think about were the jeweled harnesses in Principal Mathis's office. My stomach twisted into a sick knot.

“The
po-lice
,” Elliot called over his shoulder. He pronounced the word carefully, as though he thought I might be having trouble hearing him. I wasn't. I was just breathing so hard that it was tough getting words out. Elliot was not breathing hard at all. He was probably fighting the urge to run circles around Sylvie and me.

Curse him and his long, basketball-trained, 100 percent human legs.

Neither Sylvie nor I answered him. He turned around so that he was jogging backward, facing us.

“We can call them anonymously,” he suggested, looking quickly over his shoulder to make sure the path behind him was clear.

“And tell them
what
?” I demanded.

That many words at once took all the breath I had, and I had to pause to suck in enough air to keep from passing out. “That a Martian”—gulp—“is selling students”—gasp—“as pets”—gasp—“on Jupiter? No one will”—wheeze—“believe us!”

“No!” Sylvie sputtered. “You can't…”

She came to a halt, resting one hand on her knee and using the other one to motion us to stop. Her head hung down like a limp dish towel, and I could see sweat dripping in a steady trickle off the end of her nose.

Beside her, Elliot jogged uneasily in place.

“If Coach Carpenter catches us stopping, we'll have to do push-ups,” he reminded us.

Sylvie grunted and waved her hand at him in what I had a feeling might be an obscene gesture on Mars.

I stopped too, gratefully, and took the opportunity to lift the end of my tail off the ground. It was all scraped up and raw. Even my newly formed calluses weren't enough to protect it from being dragged around on the ground this long. Maybe Coach Carpenter would let me stop running if I showed him
actual
blood…

Sylvie finally caught her breath and raised her head.

“You
can't
tell anybody about the Martian stuff!” she pleaded. “That was a secret!”

“We won't tell them about
you
,” Elliot assured her. “Just Principal Mathis—”

“If they find out about her, they might find out about me. And then my mom would get in trouble. She might even lose her restaurant! And I'll get shipped back to Mars. Is that what you want?”

“I thought that was what
you
wanted,” I reminded her. “At least, the going back to Mars part. You keep saying how your dad is coming to get you any day now—”

“He is,” Sylvie snapped. “He
is
coming to get me.”

“Then why do you care if you get sent back there?”

Sylvie removed a purple Pixy Stix from her pocket and tapped it thoughtfully against her lip.

“I
do
want to go back to Mars,” she said finally. “But I don't want my mom to get in trouble.”

“That's if they even
let
you go back,” Elliot added helpfully. “In movies, whenever the government captures aliens, they do all kinds of experiments and stuff on them.”

“Nobody,” Sylvie said darkly, pointing her candy stick at Elliot “is going to do experiments
on
me
.”

“Of course not,” I agreed. “Obviously, we can't tell the police that Principal Mathis is a Martian. They'd never believe us anyway. We'll leave out all of the Mars and Jupiter stuff, and just tell them that we found a bunch of kids trapped in a portable. That's it. They don't have to know it has anything to do with aliens at all.”

Sylvie shook her head. “When they find the kids, they'll arrest Principal Mathis. And once they arrest her, they'll find out she's a Martian. What if they start looking for other Martians? Allan was right, you know, I
am
an illegal alien. Just not exactly the way he thought,” she added, with a slight smirk. “I mean, my mom's an American, so I guess that makes me an American too. But it's not like I have a social security number or a birth certificate or anything. My mom probably broke like half a dozen laws to smuggle me here!”

“Sylvie, we have to do something!” I exploded, although privately I was thinking about Mrs. Juarez and how nice she had been to me. I didn't want her to get in trouble or Sylvie to get taken away. But… “We can't let eleven kids get shipped off to Jupiter!”

Sam Ramsey had been kicked out just that morning, for hanging a “Beware of Dog” sign on the back of my chair (with “Dog” crossed out and “Dinosaur” handwritten in). We could only assume he had been put in the portable with the others. That brought the total number of expelled kids to eleven.

“She won't ship off
eleven
kids,” Sylvie said. “The order was for thirteen, remember? And the order form said that ‘delivery will be taken when all thirteen juveniles have been secured.' So she needs two more before she can deliver them. We've still got some time.”

“Time to do what?” Elliot asked, still jogging in place. “You know, the rest of the class is going to catch up to us eventually and lap us…”

“Time to take care of this ourselves,” Sylvie explained. “No police.
We'll
rescue everybody.”

“How?” I demanded. “We can't get into the portable. We can't even talk to the kids inside—”

“Then what makes you think the police will be able to?” Sylvie said.

“The police can break down doors and stuff,” I pointed out.

“So can
we
,” Sylvie informed him. “If it comes to that. But I don't think it will. We just need some time to think and come up with a plan, OK?”

“I don't know…” I said. I thought about the kids in the portable. Were they still running in mindless circles around the obstacle course? It seemed so wrong not to do something
immediately,
now that we knew.

Then again, I couldn't help but remember Parker's Butt Brain chant and Brad's face as he dumped water into my lap. Maybe a few days of them running the obstacle course wouldn't be the worst thing…

“The class is catching up!” Elliot announced, looking into the distance over our heads. “Quick! Someone pretend they hurt an ankle or something, so we don't get in trouble for stopping.”

Sylvie immediately plopped down on the ground, and cradled her right foot in her hands. Elliot and I both bent down and pretended to help her.

“The Martian stuff is a secret,” she told us, her voice barely over a whisper, even though Coach Carpenter and the rest of the class were still hundreds of yards away. “Humans aren't supposed to know
any
of it.”

“Then why'd you tell us?” Elliot asked.

Sylvie looked up at him. There was hurt in her eyes.

“Because we're
friends
,” she spat at him. “Friends tell each other secrets. Friends also
keep
each other's secrets.”

Sylvie's chin wobbled, as though she were about to cry.

“OK, OK,” I said quickly. “We won't tell the police. Or our parents. We'll figure this out ourselves. Right, Elliot?”

Elliot nodded and Sylvie's face lit up.

“Thanks, fellas,” she said. “I knew I could count on you. We'll think of something. I'm sure of it.”

• • •

But by the end of the day, none of us had had any bright ideas.

I regretted my promise to Sylvie for the entire walk home.

Well, not exactly
regret
. I was glad she had trusted Elliot and me with her secret, and I wanted to keep it for her. But that didn't change the fact that there were eleven kids who needed our help…

Eleven
kids
who
tortured
you. Bullied you. Threw rings at your plates.

I tried to ignore the nasty little voice in my head. The one that sort of wanted to see Parker and his cronies shipped off to Jupiter.

Let
them
all
realize
what
happens
when
they
pick
on
Sawyer
Bronson!

I shook my head violently to silence the voice.

No matter what they had done to me, none of them deserved to be sold as pets on another planet. And if I was the only one (well, along with Elliot and Sylvie) who could do something about it, then I would. Because it was the right thing to do. I would think of something brilliant.

Any minute now…

I was almost beginning to wish I really did have a second brain in my butt.

No flashes of inspiration came to me, so I let myself into the house, waved to my mom, and went upstairs to begin the excruciating process of disinfecting the scrapes on my tail.

Half a bottle of Bactine later, I realized I should really ask my grandfather if there was a less painful way to heal dinosaur skin…

My grandfather.

He was not the police and he was not a parent, so talking to him wouldn't technically be breaking my promise to Sylvie. Plus, he hadn't bothered to answer my last message, so he probably wouldn't even read it. So what was the harm?

I finished up with the Bactine and sat down at my computer.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Dear Grandpa,

I don't know if you got my last email or not, but I'm writing you again because things have gotten weird. For one thing, my principal is an alien. And I think she might be evil. My new friend, Sylvie, is an alien too. But she's not evil. (I think she's a different kind of alien.)

I also think that a bunch of kids in my class might be in trouble. Sylvie and my friend Elliot (he's not an alien or a dinosaur—he's just a normal kid) and I are trying to help them, but we don't really know what we're doing. Sylvie says we shouldn't talk to the police or anyone else, but I'm not sure we can handle this on our own.

I don't know what aliens have to do with dinosaurs. Do you? Maybe it's just a coincidence. It seems like there's a lot of weird stuff going on here, all at once.

Anyway, I'm really hoping to hear from you soon…

Love,

Sawyer

P.S. My tail is getting better, but it still really hurts when it gets scraped up. Is there any kind of special cure for dinosaur skin?

I sat there for ten minutes after I hit send, but nothing new popped up in my in-box.

With a sigh, I went downstairs to make myself a big salad and put the finishing touches on my science fair project.