Andrew North Blows Up the World (6 page)

This sounded like an order. And of course I wanted to go down there; they sounded like they were having fun. Being ordered to was as good an excuse as any. I got up and headed to the basement door.

I know I was just going down to the basement, but it felt like I was going into the danger zone. Jack was down there, probably all ready to be a jerk. And Todd was in high school. High school! High schoolers aren’t always known to be very nice to third graders.

So I decided to keep a low profile, almost like spying. I opened the door to the basement really slowly so it didn’t make a single creak, and I walked down really slowly, without making a sound. I was pretty successful, if I do say so myself. Jack had taught me well. I’d been down there a couple of minutes, just watching them play video games, before he even noticed I was there.

“Get lost, kid,” he told me with a sneer.

“Mom sent me down here to listen to the music,” I said. “She thinks it’s depressing.”

Todd turned to me and made what I guess he thought was a scary face.

“It’s evil music,” he said in a low, creepy voice. “It’s all about demons! It’ll make you want to kill your parents!”

I shrugged, trying to act cool. “It still can’t be as bad as the stuff Mr. Cunyan likes,” I said.

“Oh man!” groaned Todd. “Mr. Cunyan? That guy’s not dead yet?”

“Man,” said Jason. “That guy was a wacko!”

“Is he making you sing a parlor song at the program this year?” asked Todd.

I nodded.

“Remember when we had to sing ‘Down on the Farm’?” said Jason. And he started singing, “How ya gonna keep them down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree?”

Then Todd sang, “How you gonna keep them down on the farm after they’ve seen you pee?” and everyone laughed.

“What about ‘The Pennsylvania Polka’?” asked Jason. And he started singing that one, too. “It started in Scranton; it’s now number one … the Pennsylvania Polka!”

“Man,” said Todd, “high school sucks, but at least nobody makes me sing old geezer music anymore.”

“The program is tomorrow night,” I said. “It’s gonna stink, too. All the songs are lame. And I have to sing a solo.”

“You poor kid,” said Todd. “If I had to do that, I’d just go hide somewhere they’d never find me.”

“Like Storage Room B?” I asked. I figured that while I
had them talking, I’d see if
they
knew anything. It was some awfully good spying, if I do say so myself.

“Yeah!” said Todd. “Man, I know a kid who spent his whole life trying to get into that room. No one gets in there. Not even teachers!”

“It’s probably where Mr. Gormulka keeps all his stuff,” said Jason. “Is that guy still around, too?”

“Yeah,” I said. “They say he guards that room with his life.”

“Well, sure he does,” said Todd. “Everyone knows Gormulka’s stashing anything valuable that ever got lost in that room, anyway. I heard there’s some huge collection of comic books in there. He’s probably gonna sell it off when he retires and use the money to move to Florida.”

“Mark Brueggen once told me he had a secret spy headquarters in there,” said Jason.

“Mark Brueggen is a dork,” said Jack, rolling his eyes.

Jack and his friends started ignoring me and talking about everyone else they knew who was a dork besides Mark Brueggen, but at least no one was telling me to get lost. It looked like as long as I stayed out of the way and didn’t run up to tell Mom that they were swearing, I was okay. I even made a point of swearing along with them when someone got killed in the video game, just so they knew that I wasn’t some little kid who didn’t know how to swear.

I had been hoping one of them would tell me that Storage Room B was just a little closet full of old mittens
and that there was an easy way to pick the lock, but no such luck. It looked like I was in just as much trouble as I thought I was!

I didn’t think they really knew much, though. Maybe Todd and Jason were their class’s version of Tony Zunker— people told them weird stuff just to see if they believed it, and they did!

But it was interesting that they’d both heard about the comic books being in there. A lot of people seemed to think that. It almost had to be true! If I got in there, maybe I could look through them a bit. A long time ago, I saw an ad in an old comic book offering pet monkeys for only $19.95, but I stupidly didn’t write the address down. The comic book was about forty years old, but I’ll bet I could still send money to that address. There’s no way they could go out of business offering a deal as great as that.

When I’d been down in the basement for about fifteen minutes, Mom came down with a load of laundry to toss in the washing machine.

“Are they giving you any trouble, Andrew?” asked Mom.

I shrugged. “Nah,” I said.

“Are they letting you play?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I played a lot.”

I hadn’t actually played at all, of course. I hadn’t even asked to. But I knew that if I said no, Mom would give Jack a talking-to right there, and he’d never forgive me for it.

“Good,” she said.

I noticed that Jack even gave me a tiny little thanks-for-
not-getting-me-in-trouble nod at that point. And after Mom left, he didn’t even try to stop me from grabbing a can of Mountain Dew.

I had successfully infiltrated the group. That’s what spies call it when they break into a group and don’t get kicked out or discovered: infiltrating it. I sat back, sipped a Mountain Dew, and swore right along with them. It was awesome. It was like getting to be a teenager four years early!

After everyone had gone home, I started thinking up plans to get the calculator/communicator back.

I just needed to distract Mr. Gormulka. Maybe I could just eat some of the potato salad and puke it back up. Then, while Mr. Gormulka was busy cleaning up the puke, I’d escape from the nurse’s office, pick the lock to Storage Room B, and get the calculator back. Just like that!

But I didn’t kid myself: that plan wasn’t exactly foolproof. For one thing, eating the potato salad might not really make me puke. Other people ate it on Fridays, and they seemed to do okay. For another, if it
did
make me puke, it might make me too sick to escape from the nurse’s office in the first place. And what if I couldn’t get the lock picked? I still didn’t really have a plan for that.

I was just working on a plan B when Jack came into my room.

“Hey, man,” Jack said.

“Hey!” I said. I could hardly believe it. Jack hadn’t come into my room in months! Maybe he wanted to compliment me on my swearing.

“You wanna know the truth about Mr. Gormulka?” he asked. “It’s top-secret, but I think you should know.”

“Sure!” I said, sitting upright. Jack hadn’t told me any secrets about the town in months!

“That Mark Brueggen kid is a dork, but he’s also right,” said Jack. “Gormulka’s a spy. For the bad guys. He works at the school because he knows there are spies here in Cornersville Trace, and being a janitor makes it easy for him to spy on kids.”

I couldn’t believe it. Ryan Kowalski had been telling the truth!

“So why don’t the good guys arrest him?” I asked.

“He’s way too clever for that,” said Jack. “There’s no real evidence that will hold up in court against him. Everyone at the spy headquarters knows he’s a spy, but no one can prove it. You can’t just arrest people and send them to jail without proof!”

“So you’ve been to headquarters, then?” I asked, hoping that he’d finally admit it.

“No comment,” said Jack. “I shouldn’t be telling you all this. It’s top-secret stuff. But I have to warn you that you could be in big trouble.”

“Really?” I asked.

“I think Gormulka is zeroing in on someone at the school,” said Jack. “And it’s probably you. And the last time he attacked a student, it was during the music program.”

“No way!” I said.

“Seriously,” said Jack. He lowered his voice to almost a
whisper and leaned in close to me. “It was when we sang ‘The Pennsylvania Polka.’ There was a kid in my class that year named Will Hannon who was always trying to break into Storage Room B. When I look back on it now, I’m sure that he was a spy. He told me he’d seen a bunch of comic books in there when he walked past while Mr. Gormulka was opening the door. On the day of the program, he told me he’d finally gotten inside and that he’d be telling me what was in there soon. But right before we went onstage, he disappeared. And he was supposed to be singing a solo, just like you’re doing tomorrow!”

“He just disappeared?” I asked as a chill ran down my spine.

“They never saw him again,” said Jack. “The school tried to cover it up. They said that he’d never shown up for the program at all and that his family had moved to Florida. But I know he was there that night… and then he was gone.”

“You think Mr. Gormulka got him?” I asked.

“Of course,” said Jack. “His family had to go into hiding so Mr. Gormulka couldn’t get the rest of them, too. I don’t know if he’s still alive or not. All I know is that when we were singing ‘The Pennsylvania Polka,’ I thought I heard him screaming out in the hall. No one in the auditorium noticed, because we were drowning out the screams with our singing!”

“Wow,” I said quietly. My knees were shaking. For a second there, I noticed Jack looked like he was almost smiling. I guess he was trying not to get me
too
scared.

“So I just wanted to warn you to be careful tomorrow
night,” said Jack. “Watch out for Mr. Gormulka, and don’t try to take him on yourself! Even the best spies at headquarters think he’s too dangerous to fight!”

“What do you think he’s hiding in Storage Room B?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” said Jack. “Those comic books are probably just bait to lure spies into the place. Who knows what he’s really hiding? I want you to promise me you won’t try to get into that room, no matter what.”

I paused for a second. “What if I knew that something was in there?” I asked. “Something really important?”

“Forget it!” said Jack. “It’s not important enough to get killed over! Got it?”

I nodded. Jack nodded back, shook my hand, and then went back to his room without another word.

I had always known that Mr. Gormulka was kind of a jerk, but it was crazy that he was really
that
dangerous!

I had promised Jack I wouldn’t go in there, but now I knew I had to do it. I had no choice. A dangerous guy like Mr. Gormulka could use that calculator to take over the world if I didn’t get it back!

Agent North felt the cool metal of the chains chafing his wrists as he dangled above the shark tank.

“It’s curtains for you, North!” shouted Dr. Cringe. As North was lowered closer and closer to the water, Dr. Cringe raised a mop in the air and laughed in triumph, then began whistling “The Pennsylvania Polka.”

North fell closer and closer, kicking his legs, trying to block out the incredibly creepy sound and hoping and praying that Dave the Monkey would show up and rescue him. …

I was tired the next morning, because every time I nearly got to sleep the night before, I’d imagine getting eaten by a shark in a secret shark tank under the school. Or sometimes I just imagined Mr. Gormulka turning the calculator in to his bosses, who used information from it to capture Jack and my dad and hold them hostage in some secret chamber under the South Pole guarded by penguins with chips in their brains that turned them into evil kung fu experts. If they got captured—or worse—it would be all my fault. I barely got two hours of sleep the whole night!

What if Mr. Gormulka kidnapped me in the middle of the program, like he did to Will Hannon? What if he realized that I was from a family of spies, and used the calculator to blow up the whole auditorium and get rid of my whole family, including Aunt Brianna, at once? Sure, he’d take out the entire auditorium, too, but supervillains don’t care much about innocent bystanders. He’d probably be happy about it!

Even if my whole family
didn’t
get blown up, I still had to worry about nailing my solo. I was still kind of afraid I was going to mess up—while wearing a cutesy sweater in front of the head of the spy company!

Mom made me a special breakfast with eggs and pancakes instead of regular old cereal, but I could hardly eat. I was so nervous, I thought I might puke.

Just before we left for school, Jack turned to me and whispered, “Remember what I told you. Stay away from Mr. Gormulka!”

“I will,” I said.

But I knew I had to get that calculator back.

All through math class that morning, I kept my eye out for Mr. Gormulka. It’s scary to be trapped in school when you know someone there is out to get you! Whenever I heard a door open or heard the sound of someone dropping a book, I jumped about a foot in the air.

In the morning, I said I had to go to the bathroom and tried to sneak into Storage Room B while I knew Mr. Gormulka would be setting up tables in the lunchroom, but Mrs. Rademacher was in the hall, prowling around. There was no getting past her.

I was so caught up worrying about getting into that room that I almost forgot to be nervous about the music program until right after recess, when Mrs. Wellington, the principal, came into the room. She just walked right in without knocking. Principals don’t have to knock.

“Hi, Joyce,” said Mr. Summers.

“Hello, Brian!” she said cheerfully. “I need to borrow your class for a minute, please.”

Mr. Summers nodded and motioned her in. Teachers always have to do what the principal wants.

“Hi, boys and girls!” said Mrs. Wellington. “How’s everyone feeling today?”

“Better than you look!” said Ryan Kowalski. A few kids giggled. Even Mrs. Wellington smiled a little. But she always smiled. I’ve almost never seen her not smiling.

“That’s good,” she said. “Might as well get it out of your system now, Ryan. I just came by to remind all of you to be
on your very best behavior tonight at the music program. You will be, won’t you?”

Everyone nodded. Why wouldn’t they nod? I mean, if some kid was planning to throw a water balloon in the middle of it, they wouldn’t blurt that out to Mrs. Wellington, would they? No one was
that
stupid.