The Battle of the Red Hot Pepper Weenies Read online

  The kid spun toward me so quickly, I figured I’d startled him. “You noticed me?”

  “Hard not to,” I told him. My eyes scanned him from top to bottom, then back up. He was wearing cheap sneakers, jeans, a white T-shirt, and a Red Sox jacket. He had on a cap, brim forward, with the letters BL stitched on the front. Beneath the cap was the kind of face ten-year-old girls like to cut out of magazines and grandmothers like to pinch. And on his face was the kind of smirk kids like me like to erase. “Who are you?” I asked again.

  “I’m bad luck,” he said.

  I laughed. The kid didn’t lack guts. I had at least five inches on him, and thirty pounds. I figured I could flick him across the street if I wanted—not that I was in the mood. But I couldn’t let the kid’s words go unanswered. “You don’t look so tough,” I told him, getting ready to dodge if he took a swing at me.

  He shook his head. “I didn’t say I was tough. And I didn’t say I was bad luck for you. Though I could be. I said I was Bad Luck.”

  I could hear the capital letters when he spoke, but I still didn’t get it. “You’re Bad Luck?”

  “Yeah.” He glanced over his shoulder, then pointed to a car that was coming down Bradshaw Street. “Observe.” He snapped his fingers.

  Paboom!

  The right front tire blew, just like that. The car skidded to a halt, and the driver hopped out. He looked at the tire. Then he kicked the flat and started swearing.

  “Bad Luck,” the kid said, grinning at me with a smug look like he’d just performed a magic trick.

  Before I could say anything, he pointed across the street toward some first-graders walking home from school. “Let me demonstrate.” He clapped his hands. The kid in front tripped on the sidewalk and went down hard on his left knee. He started crying. The others laughed and walked ahead.

  “You did that?” I asked, remembering when the same thing had happened to me back in second grade.

  “Sure did.”

  I chewed on the information for a moment. “So what you’re saying is when a kid catches a baseball in the face, or loses his homework, or gets snagged in the thumb by his own fishhook, you’re to blame?”

  He made a small bow, then straightened up, still wearing that smug expression. “I can’t take credit for every single bit of bad luck on the planet, but I do get around.”

  “That stinks,” I said, stepping away from the wall. I’d had my share of bad luck, but I’d never expected to find myself face-to-face with someone who was responsible for most of it. I thought about a June day two years ago when I’d broken my leg right before summer vacation. Compound fracture. I’d spent half the summer in a cast. “That really stinks.”

  “Careful,” he said. “It’s bad luck to pick a fight with Bad Luck.”

  I curled my fingers into a fist. It would feel so good to flatten him. But he was right. This guy could sink a ship or strike a house with lightning. I’d have to be crazy to mess with him. “I’m not a fool,” I told him.

  “I didn’t think so. Well, it’s been charming chatting, but I must be going.” He started to walk on past me.

  “Hey,” I said. “I have to know one thing.”

  “What?” he asked, turning back toward me.

  “Why?”

  “No reason,” he said.

  “There has to be a reason,” I told him. “There’s a reason the sky is blue. There’s a reason leopards have spots. There has to be a reason for bad luck.”

  I think he was about to answer when he glanced back down the street at a man walking a dog. He got a glint in his eyes as he pointed his finger at the man.

  Snap.

  The leash broke with a twang and the dog went running. The guy chased after him.

  “Sorry, couldn’t resist,” Bad Luck said. “But, as I was going to tell you, how should I know why I’m here? I just do what I do. And I do it very well. But I can’t explain it. I mean, is there any reason you’re here?”

  “Not till now,” I said. Before I could talk myself out of it, I closed the distance between us and hit him as hard as I could. I slugged him square in the jaw, and he dropped like a sack full of rocks.

  I stared down at him. Now what?

  There was no way I could leave him there. He’d find me when he woke up. I didn’t want to become Bad Luck’s pet project. I lifted him up, threw him over my shoulder, and headed home.

  I guess other people couldn’t see him, because nobody asked me what I was doing carrying a body down the street. Good thing he wasn’t too heavy.

  I put him in the room over the garage where my folks store all the old furniture. I tied his hands behind his back. From what I’d seen, he seemed to need them to make stuff happen.

  Yeah, it was crazy for me to hit him, but I’d had my share of bad luck, and I figured that, if nothing else, I’d be doing everyone a favor. Naturally, as soon as I finished tying him up, I started to have doubts about the whole thing. He couldn’t really be Bad Luck.

  But after a day, he hadn’t asked for food or begged to use the bathroom. After two days, he hadn’t even asked for a drink of water. As far as I could tell from my frequent trips to the garage, he never slept. And every time he looked at me, that stupid smirk twitched across his lips.

  A week passed. Then another. “I haven’t noticed much of a change,” I told him one evening. I’d fallen into the habit of sitting with him, talking. “The world is pretty much the same.” Somehow, I’d expected to make a difference.

  “I’m not responsible for all the world’s problems. Don’t forget Stupidity. He’s pretty busy. And all the others: Coincidence, Tragedy, Glitch, all those guys. Hey, you should meet Poetic Justice. Talk about a guy who’s full of himself.”

  I thought about those forces running loose in the world, causing problems for a reason nobody knew. Big troubles and small misfortunes. Nothing I did would make a difference.

  “Are you the sort who holds a grudge?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “We’re cool. But don’t expect any favors, either.”

  “Fair enough.” As I untied him, I couldn’t help laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  “Don’t you get it?” I tossed the ropes into the corner of the room. It felt good to laugh.

  “Get what?” He stood up from the chair, but he didn’t stretch or act stiff, even though he’d been sitting in one position for a couple weeks.

  “Think about it,” I told him.

  He grinned and shrugged. “Not a clue.”

  “Well, was it Good Luck that you ran into someone who could see you and knock you out?”

  He stared at me for a while. Finally he admitted the same thing I’d already realized. “I guess it was sort of bad luck….” For once, his smirk faded completely.

  “How about that?” I opened the door. When I’d first met Bad Luck, I’d been furious at the idea of this force, this thing, that could cast misfortune about him like a child flinging a handful of gravel on a playground. When he’d told me he didn’t even know the reason he was doing it, that had been too much.

  He went out and headed down the steps that led to the driveway. Halfway there, he stumbled.

  Bad luck.

  Even though I was pretty sure he didn’t feel any pain, I winced as I watched him tumble to a landing on the hard asphalt.

  For a moment, he didn’t move. Finally, still lying there on his stomach, he pointed across the street to Mr. Jurgin’s house. A tree branch fell from the large maple in the front yard, crunching the roof of Mr. Jurgin’s new Porsche. I guess Bad Luck needed to make sure he could still function. He staggered to his feet. He didn’t look back as he walked away.

  “See you,” I said.

  He sort of waved over his shoulder. I knew I’d be seeing him again. I’d be seeing him all my life. We all would. There was no escape from Bad Luck. That didn’t seem fair. But at least I knew we weren’t alone. Bad Luck, and all his buddies out there, had a force to deal with also.
/>   They had their own Bad Luck. I guess they had all the other misfortunes, too. Somehow, that made it all seem just a little bit more fair.

  RATTLED NERVES

  Jermaine presented a perfectly good argument for why he should be allowed to stay home from school and play video games. “We’re just going to be walking in the stupid woods all day, and learning about stupid animals, stupid birds, and stupid plants.”

  “It’s educational,” his mom said. “You’ll get to be face-to-face with nature.”

  “I’ll get ticks or something,” Jermaine said. “You want me to get ticks?”

  “You’ll be fine.” His mom handed him his lunch. “Get going.”

  So Jermaine found himself on the bus, along with all his classmates, heading for the William Stintz Wildlife Sanctuary.

  “This is stupid,” he told Barney Emmerson, who had the aisle side of their bus seat.

  “Come on, it will be great,” Barney said.

  “Maybe for nerds,” Jermaine said.

  An hour later, the bus rolled through the gate of the wildlife sanctuary, drove past several buildings, and pulled up to the curb next to a large wooden cabin. According to the sign, it was the REPTILE EDUCATION CENTER.

  “I didn’t think reptiles needed an education,” Barney said. He laughed at his own joke.

  “That does it,” Jermaine muttered. He’d been afraid they’d end up someplace with crawly things. It just wasn’t natural for something to slither around without legs. He could see a display of stuffed and mounted snakes through the large window near the front entrance of the cabin. A sign above the display promised: MEET OUR NATIVE WILDLIFE.

  “Not me.” Jermaine hopped off the bus with the rest of the class, strolled past Ms. Dwetch as she counted heads, went into the building, then dashed out a side door marked NO EXIT before he had to actually look at a snake close up.

  He glanced over his shoulder as he moved away from the building, to make sure nobody noticed his escape. That was a mistake. The side door was only a step and a half away from the top of a steep slope. In the middle of his second step, Jermaine lost his footing and stumbled.

  “Gah!” he screamed repeatedly as he plummeted toward the bottom of the hill. It was at least a twelve-gah tumble, not that Jermaine counted. He was too busy bouncing off rocks.

  Luckily, the thornbushes he rolled over on his way down cushioned his fall just enough so he didn’t snap any bones. But by the time he’d skidded to a stop, his left arm wasn’t feeling too good, his right knee throbbed like it had been smacked with a golf club, and his face felt like it had been used as a scratching post by at least a dozen cats.

  Still on his back, Jermaine looked up the way he’d come. The hill was too steep to climb. He didn’t want to risk taking another tumble. But there was a narrow path right in front of him that led around the hill.

  He got up, brushed bits of gravel and leaves from his hands, and started to hobble down the path, figuring he’d eventually find an easy way to get back up to the bus. The slope on the other side of the path wasn’t so steep, but it was covered with thornbushes all the way up.

  “Stupid wildlife…,” he muttered. He kept muttering and groaning, which is why he didn’t notice anything unusual at first.

  When the sound finally caught his attention, he froze in his tracks. At that point, he realized he’d been hearing it for a while. Hearing it, but not really listening.

  Until now. Now, it had his full attention.

  No way…

  He listened with both ears. He even tried to listen with his eyes, nose, and skin. Above the sudden thudding of his pulse in his temples, he heard it again.

  Shika-shika-shika-sshhhhh.

  The rattle came from somewhere behind him.

  “Snake,” Jermaine whispered. The word, barely spoken, had the power to jack his pulse even higher. He scanned the ground, but didn’t spot anything.

  The rattle got louder and faster. Jermaine sprinted for the hill on his left. Thornbushes snagged at his legs, but he pushed his way through. A couple feet up the hill, when he stopped to catch his breath, he heard the rattle again. It was closer.

  Jermaine forced his way deeper. The bushes grew denser. He pushed the branches away from his face, trying to make a path where no path seemed possible.

  “Jermaine…?”

  He heard his name shouted in the distance. They were looking for him. They must have spread out through the parking lot, he realized, to check the other buildings.

  “Here!” he shouted. “Down here!”

  “Where?”

  Jermaine recognized Barney’s voice. “Up the hill on the other side.” He tried to turn around, but he was too tangled to move. A thousand thorns snagged his clothes.

  “Why are you up there?” Barney called.

  “A rattlesnake was chasing me,” Jermaine said. Maybe the other kids would scare off the snake. Or maybe the people who ran the place would catch it. Better yet—maybe they’d kill it.

  Barney laughed. “Good one.”

  “It’s not funny!” Jermaine screamed.

  “Sure it is. Rattlesnake? Right. There aren’t any rattlesnakes around here,” Barney said. “We just learned that inside.”

  “I don’t care. Get me out of here.”

  “I’ll tell Ms. Dwetch I found you,” Barney said. “Don’t worry. I won’t mention the snake. No point having everyone laugh at you.”

  “Wait! Don’t go!”

  There was no answer. Jermaine listened to the sound of Barney running off. Then he listened to the rattle. It was closer now. But it was more than just close. It was all around him, coming from every bush.

  “Help!” Jermaine pictured dozens of snakes slithering toward him, crawling up inside his pants legs and down the back of his shirt, sinking their fangs into him all at once and pumping the wounds full of deadly venom.

  He looked at a branch that ran right past his face. It shook, making a rattling sound.

  So did other branches.

  Shika-shika-shika-sshhhhh.

  Jermaine twisted, trying to break free. The branches tightened. The whole hill filled with rattling as every bush shook. Thorns dug through his clothes, piercing his flesh. The branches tightened across his chest, keeping him from screaming again. The ground beneath him pulsed as the roots shivered in anticipation.

  As the branches pulled him down to the ground, Jermaine learned there are far worse things in the woods than snakes.

  SMART LITTLE SUCKERS

  If my dad wasn’t so lazy, he would have cut down the tire swing years ago. But the swing stayed where it was, dangling from the old apple tree, long after I’d lost interest in it. Dad hadn’t drilled drain holes in the tire, either. Which is why it had a bunch of gross, slimy water in the bottom. Stagnant water—that’s what you call it. I didn’t know that when I first encountered the little suckers. I learned it later. Anyhow, insects love stagnant water—especially mosquitoes.

  The first time I got bitten, I was in the backyard with my friend Arnold, flying balsawood airplanes. I glanced down at my arm just in time to see the insect flit away. It looked like a mosquito, except it was green.

  “Shoot,” I said, scratching at my arm.

  “What’s wrong?” Arnold asked.

  “I got bit.”

  “Bitten,” he said. Arnold was always correcting me. It was a pain, but it was his only bad habit, so I put up with it.

  I noticed some more bugs near the tire swing. “Come on let’s go out front.” I didn’t want to get bit—I mean bitten—again.

  But the next day, I had to go in the backyard to get my soccer ball. I got another bite. Same kind of green bug. This time I managed to smack it before it took off. One less bug to bite people.

  I took my soccer ball over to Arnold’s house. But he didn’t want to kick it around, because he was all wrapped up in making this computer game.

  “Can I try it?” I asked.

  “I guess. But it’s not all working yet. A
nd it’s way too easy.”

  “I don’t care.” I sat down at the keyboard and clicked the mouse cursor on the START button. A rocket ship came out of the left side of the screen. Enemies came out of the right side.

  A couple of the enemy ships froze in the middle of the screen. “I’m still working on the motion routines,” Arnold said. “The delta X value for acceleration keeps getting cleared, and I don’t know why.”

  I didn’t bother responding to that, since I had no idea what he meant. Instead, I started shooting the enemies. In a couple seconds, I wiped out the first wave. “You’re right. It’s pretty easy.”

  “After I get it working, I’ll make it harder.”

  I was racking up an awesome score. And I kept winning extra ships. Before I knew it, I had fifty ships. And then eighty. A little later, I was all the way up to ninety-nine.

  “Cool,” I said. “Watch me get one hundred ships.”

  “Uh-oh…,” Arnold said as I blasted away at more enemies.

  “What’s wrong?” As I asked that, I won my one hundredth ship. But instead of 100, the display showed 0. And the GAME OVER message popped up. “Why’d that happen?”

  “It wrapped around back to zero,” he said.

  I didn’t get it. Math wasn’t my best thing. “What do you mean?”

  “I only used two digits for the number of ships. So after ninety-nine, when it reached one hundred, all the program saw was zero-zero. It thought you were out of ships.”

  “I still don’t get it,” I said.

  “Never mind.”

  I let it go. I hung out for a while longer and listened as Arnold tried to explain other computer-programming stuff to me, like how he had to tell the difference between when you held a key down and when you hit it a bunch of times. None of that made much sense to me, either.

  When I got home, I made the mistake of putting my soccer ball in the backyard. That earned me another bite. The next day, we had a test on complex fractions, which I really don’t understand. Except, I sort of understood everything this time. The questions didn’t seem all that hard.