Andrew North Blows Up the World (10 page)

Melvin still looked pale, and he was sort of shivering.

“You still don’t look so hot, man,” said Tony. “It’s over. Relax!”

“Yeah,” I said. “You didn’t eat the potato salad at lunch today, did you?”

“I had seconds of it,” said Melvin.

“Not smart,” I said. “You should never eat that stuff after Wednesday.”

Then it happened. The only thing that
can
happen when you mix nervousness with Friday potato salad.

Melvin started shaking and coughing. He stepped out of the line, leaned his back against the wall, and puked. Right there in the hall!

“Ew!” shouted Nicole. “You almost puked on my shoes, you jerk!”

Mr. Summers jumped over the pile of puke to Melvin. “Are you okay, Melvin?” he asked.

“Of course he isn’t!” said Ryan. “He just ralphed on the floor!”

But Melvin nodded. I could tell he was more embarrassed than anything else.

“Keep heading back to class, everybody,” said Mr. Summers. “It’s nothing to worry about. Someone pukes at the program every year.”

Just then, I heard a high-pitched shriek. Mrs. Wellington was running up the hall.

“You see, Joyce?” said Mr. Summers. “You get the kids all worked up thinking the program is life and death, and every year someone gets sick!”

“I’m going to sue the school!” said Melvin.

Mrs. Wellington gave Mr. Summers a dirty look, then pulled out a walkie-talkie.

“Hank,” she said into it, “we have a two-thirteen in the hall. Secure the doors and keep the parents from leaving the auditorium, then get out here and clean it up!”

She hustled us along, toward the room. A few seconds later, I saw Mr. Gormulka round the corner and rush toward a supply closet. Obviously he was going to be busy for a few minutes…

… which made this a perfect chance for me to get that calculator back!

“I think I got some puke on me!” I said, thinking on my feet. “I’d better go wash up.” No one can stop you from going to the bathroom when you have puke on you. It’s like sharpening your pencil when the lead is broken.

I ran down the hall, away from the class. Past the gym. Past the third-grade hall. Down into the second-grade hall and right up to Storage Room B!

I put the key into the keyhole, and this time, I didn’t hesitate. I turned the key right away and opened the door. This was it! I was about to go into a room that no other kid in school history had ever gotten into and lived to tell the tale!

I never would have guessed what I’d see inside of it.

Dave the Monkey nodded, as if to say “Mission accomplished,” as the door to the secret headquarters slowly opened. Dave couldn’t talk, of course, but Agent North could tell what he was thinking just by looking into his intelligent monkey eyes.

“Great job, Dave,” Agent North said. “Are you ready for this?”

Dave nodded, clapped his hands, and screeched.

The two of them stood before the open door to Dr. Cringe’s secret headquarters. The quest was at an end, as long as they could get in and out without falling through any trapdoors.

Agent North took a cautious step into the room, looking around in shock at the shabby furniture and piles of junk. …

Storage Room B didn’t look like an evil spy’s headquarters at all. There was no shark tank. No spider pit. No booby traps at all, as far as I could tell. No arrows shot out at me when I stepped inside, and no trapdoors opened beneath my feet.

In fact, it looked more like a little apartment than anything else. There was an old orange armchair, a table, a stereo, and a microwave.

There were posters for polka bands on the walls. On the wall by the armchair was a poster with a bunch of guys who were dressed like Mega Mart cashiers, only with sillier hats. The logo on top said they were called Whoopee Norm Eddlebeck and the Dairyland Dutchmen. Another poster had a bunch of different bands on it. There was a logo on top for the Racine Polka Fest.

On one wall, there were a bunch of shelves. One of them was full of junk—old mittens and stuff. Stuff from the Lost and Found, probably. The top shelf held a bunch of toys, electronics, and other stuff that looked like it had been confiscated—including Jack’s calculator!

The other shelves seemed to be covered with boxes and boxes of comic books. At least
that
rumor was true!

But I didn’t see a supercomputer or anything. And certainly no dead bodies. I couldn’t
smell
any bodies, either. All I smelled was stale popcorn.

Wow
.

My first thought was
Boy, what an underachieving supervillain! Not a single booby trap!

But then I came to my senses.

This was not Mr. Gormulka’s secret headquarters. It was just a room where he hung out. He didn’t kill people in here. He just listened to polka music and read comic books, from the looks of it.

For a second, I felt relieved. Even if I got caught, I was definitely going to live through the night. At worst, I’d probably just have to do indoor recess for a week for taking the key and breaking into the room.

But then I started to feel disappointed.

Everything Jack had told me was wrong!

Had he lied to me? Had he lied to me … about
everything
?

All of a sudden, I felt really stupid. Was it possible that Jack wasn’t a spy at all? That he hadn’t been ignoring me since he turned thirteen because he had to be all secretive? That he was just ignoring me because he had become a total jerk?

I didn’t know what to think about it. I almost couldn’t, because it hurt too much. But at the same time, these thoughts just kept coming at me.

Maybe that spot where the bodies were buried in the house down the street was just an old garden that had been overgrown by weeds. And when the lights were on in that abandoned house behind the cemetery on Bartleby Way, it probably wasn’t ghosts, like Jack said. It was probably just realtors, like Mom said. Why would ghosts even need to turn the lights on, anyway?

And Wayne Schneider probably wasn’t an old rock star in disguise. He was probably just some fat guy who lived down the street.

I felt like I was going to be sick. In just a couple of seconds, I had gone from feeling like a superspy at the top of my game to feeling like a really dumb little kid.

Everything I’d ever believed was a lie!

Maybe Dad really
was
an insurance salesman. He didn’t say “yeppers” just to throw people off. He actually said “yeppers.” His boss, the one who had come to the program, really
was
the boss of the insurance company, not the boss of all the local international superspies. He’d probably never seen a real laser flamethrower in his life.

There was no secret chamber underneath our house that had a swimming pool, a gym, and a sauna, or any training facilities. Not even a tunnel to the spy headquarters.

And, worst of all, I wasn’t going to be getting a monkey anytime soon.

I was so bummed, I couldn’t even bring myself to run when I heard the sound of Mr. Gormulka’s voice behind me.

“Well, you did it, North,” he said calmly. He sounded mad, but not like he was going to attack me or anything. “No other kid has ever got in here before. Your brother tried to about a hundred times. How did you get it unlocked?”

I turned around and looked at him. He was still holding his mop. He didn’t look nearly so murderous anymore. He
just looked like a regular mild-mannered janitor with a scar above his eyebrow.

“I found a copy of the key this afternoon,” I said. “Sorry about that.”

“I could suspend you for life for taking that,” he said. “But now that you’ve seen inside, I guess I’d better not, huh?”

I looked over at him, wondering what the heck he could mean. Surely he wasn’t going to kill me because I’d seen his comic books and polka posters! “Why not?” I asked.

“I guess you were probably expecting to see dead bodies or piles of money or something in here?” he asked. “Those dumb rumors just won’t die.”

I shrugged. I didn’t want to look as stupid as I felt.

“It’s just where I keep all my stuff,” he said casually. “My wife hates polka music. Won’t let me play it in the house. And she doesn’t like me wasting my money on comic books, so I have to keep my collection hidden in here. I have to be really careful not to let anyone see it. If the teachers knew, it would probably get back to my wife. She and Coach Walker have tea together all the time. And then I’d be in big trouble!”

“So that’s why you won’t let anyone see this room?” I asked.

“Yep,” he said. “No dead bodies or anything. Just the stuff I don’t want my wife to know about.”

I took another look around, feeling like a real idiot. I was just Jack’s very own version of Tony Zunker. He was probably just telling me these lies to see if I’d believe them. He
probably remembered that Mr. Gormulka went around whistling polka music and just made up that story about Will Hannon so I’d be freaked out if I heard him whistling!

I felt like the most gullible person alive.

“I think I’d better get back to the classroom,” I said.

“Not so fast,” said Mr. Gormulka. “I ought to give you indoor recess or detention, at least, for snooping around where you’re not allowed. But I’d rather just have you promise me that you won’t tell anyone what’s really in here. If anyone asks, tell them some story about dead bodies or something. My wife’s already heard that one.”

I shrugged. “I
guess
I can keep my mouth shut,” I said, “but can I have the calculator back? The one that got taken up yesterday?”

“Is that all you were after?” said Mr. Gormulka. “You’re getting it back on Monday, anyway.”

“I know,” I said. “But it’s my brother’s. I wasn’t supposed to take it. And he needs it tomorrow.”

“Fair enough, I guess,” said Mr. Gormulka. “I wouldn’t want your brother to flunk out of whatever grade he’s in now because of me.”

He walked over to the top shelf, took the calculator down, and handed it to me. “Here,” he said. “Promise you won’t tell anyone what’s in here?”

“I promise,” I said.

“And I’ll take the key back, too,” he said.

I handed it over to him.

“Just don’t let me catch you snooping around again,
okay?” he said. “When your brother and that Mark Brueggen kid were poking around, people started thinking this place was some kind of Chamber of Secrets or something. I don’t wanna go through that again!”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be quiet.”

“Good,” he said. “Now get back to your class.”

And I walked out of the room, back to my classroom.

When I had left to break into that room, I had been Andrew “Danger” North, superspy.

But when I walked back into class, I was just regular old Andrew North.

When Neil came up and said, “Nice job on the solo, An-
dy,
” I didn’t even have the energy to call him a cheese bag.

Agent North had never felt so down. All his life, all he had wanted to do was be a spy. He had been training since he was six. And now he was going to have to go back to being a regular kid, just like everyone else. Just a regular kid with messy hair and no pet monkey. No flying car or pants-dropping whistle, either. It was a lot to get used to. He had planned to be a spy until he was an old man. But now his plans had been thwarted.

Perhaps he could join a polka band. …

Through the intercom, we could hear the fifth graders singing, which meant the show was just about over. Once they finished, Mrs. Wellington would probably make a speech asking everyone to donate money to the school. Then they’d open the doors and let our parents come get us.

I sat at my desk and opened Jack’s calculator. No one had messed with it. When I turned it on, the message I’d typed in the day before came up. I pushed a button marked CLEAR and it disappeared.

I breathed a sigh of relief. If Jack had found that message, he wouldn’t just be mad that I’d used his calculator—he’d also probably laugh at how stupid I’d been.

A few minutes later, Mom, Dad, Jack, and Aunt Brianna picked me up, and we all went out for ice cream at the ice cream shop on Venture Street. But I still felt depressed. When even ice cream doesn’t make you feel better, you know you’ve got problems.

While we ate, we listened to Aunt Brianna go on and on about how the music really spoke to her and how she just had to find a recording of “Hello Central, Give Me No Man’s Land.” She said she was going to start collecting old parlor songs and become a real expert. Mom said it would go great next to her collections of cookie jars, antique buttons, plates with cartoon characters on them, and Raggedy Ann stuff.

I tried to act happy, but I couldn’t even look at Jack. And I realized for the first time that my dad wasn’t acting like a dork to throw people off. He was just kind of a dork, plain and simple.

But then, when we were about halfway through with our ice cream, Mr. Cunyan walked in with a guy wearing a suit. A
sharp-looking
guy. His hair was perfect. He totally looked like a spy.

“Well, Jim!” said the guy, walking over to us. “Fancy meeting you here!”

“Hi, Ward!” said Dad. “Everyone, this is Ward, my boss.”

Everyone waved. It was weird. Dad’s boss looked just like I imagined he would when I thought he was the head of a spy company.

“And I believe you know Mr. Cunyan,” said Dad’s boss, pointing to Mr. Cunyan. “Especially this guy!”

He pointed at me, and I smiled as best I could.

“You did a bang-up job on that solo,” said Dad’s boss. “I was very impressed.”

“You were great!” said Mr. Cunyan. “Mrs. Wellington probably won’t put me on cafeteria duty for life after all!”

“Yeppers,” said Dad as he put his hand on my shoulder. “We’re very proud of him. Would you two care to join us?”

“Oh, I’m afraid we can’t,” said Dad’s boss. “We have important business to discuss!”

He winked at Dad, and the two of them walked over to a booth at the other end of the ice cream shop.

It suddenly occurred to me that something strange was going on. Not counting Mrs. Wellington, people don’t go around winking unless they’re up to something.